There have been multiple terror attacks in Paris. As I write this, there are reportedly dozens dead, and hostages being held.
I hope all WHTM readers in Paris are safe, and that this nightmare doesn’t get any worse.
This is a NO TROLLS/NO MRAs thread.
IIRC, Moocow is French. Sorry if I have that wrong. If I have it right, I hope he’s okay. Same to any other French Mammotheers, including lurkers.
@skiriki
Yeh, that pretty much sucks.
@OoglyBoggles – re, French people feeling fear. I’m going to suggest that Europeans are not so prone to that emotion. Oh, in the heat of the moment certainly, but… I am French, I regularly go through Paris, I live in London which is known to be at risk, near a site which has been explicitly threatened. To tell you the truth, I feel anger most easily, and an increasing need to exercise self-control to make sure my anger is directed at the right places. It should really be called aggravationism, not terrorism, because there are definitely people whose anger will be ill-directed. No matter, it’s just as dangerous, or more so.
I also feel a large amount of ‘here we go again’. You know my parents grew up sleeping in bomb shelters right? And large parts of my own life have been marked by significant terrorist risk, from one source or another. If we have ever been safe, it’s been for brief periods.
My sympathies go out to the people in France. What a horrible destruction of life.
Of course the local right-wing xenophobes are wringing their hands about refugees.
There are reports that a part of Calais camp has been set on fire, but this is still unconfirmed.
French values in a nutshell – Laurent Joffrin in La Liberation. Not a good translation. By cold blood he means keeping a cool head. Civisme is acting in accordance with the requirements of civic duty.
@Anfenwick
I never knew, but I’m glad at least you and your folk are safe. And you’re right it is aggravationism, specifically against immigrants.
@Kale:
That’s actually part of why. They want any ‘peaceful Muslim refugees’ to have nowhere else to turn but them, so they work to make sure that nobody else will dare have them by actively stirring up the hatred.
It’s pretty common for some of these wannabe state types, which ISIS/ISIL/Daesh definitely qualifies as. Big strong men kicking over as many wasps’ nests as they can so that everybody else will have to rely on them for protection. They want a state of panic on their OWN side even more than on their opponents’ side, because that’s how they retain power.
I fear for the unavoidably increased threat level against my many many Muslim friends. This is a complete disaster.
My uncle was traveling in Paris yesterday. He happened to be in Avignon today, thank god.
Reuters now report 140 dead in total.
Okay, awareness of how I sound kind of like some immature kid here or something, but fuck it.
First, just hoping things don’t get worse.
Second…*sigh* I’m honestly wondering whether the human race has anything to offer anymore. I know it sounds really immature, but I don’t care right now.
My thoughts are with Parisians, and also with the victims of last night’s Beirut terror attacks. Las night’s attacks were every bit as savage and barbaric as tonight’s, but they’re easy to miss in America. The media carefully avoided calling them “terrorist,” and referred to the target as a “Hezbollah stronghold,” instead of a civilian neighborhood being bombed by ISIS murderers, because the attacks happened to Muslims. Now that Paris is in the news, we’ll forget about them, when our sympathies should be with the victims of both these atrocities.
I’m in no way trying to downplay the awfulness of the Paris attacks — they’re horrifying to the point where I can’t even process them — but the things we notice and the things we don’t show the relative importance we place on different places, and the lives of people who live there. They affect the policy choices our societies make, and those policy choices can cause or contribute to further atrocities.
Those of us in the West, and in America and Britain in particular, played a major role in the rise of ISIS by not preventing our countries from radically destabilizing Iraq, and indirectly, the rest of the Middle East. We can’t look away from the suffering that continues to cause, and only notice the murder of Europeans.
What bothers me the most is how the refugees are going to get blamed for this, even though t is much easier to trafficate the necessary equiment by any other means. Those people ran away from that. even if the guilty ones came with them, they did that, they CAME WITH THEM. they were not all of them.
@hedin
It’s pretty amazing. I barely even knew about the Lebanon attack until earlier this evening. Had no idea it was so bad. It’s disgusting the way certain events are downplayed in the media.
Okay, it seems that the Calais camp fire is just recycled pictures. So, maybe some good news, sorta…
Perhaps the tendency to blame the refugees will subside once the identity of the attackers is revealed. I’m expecting the usual disaffected young men, probably French by birth, but I could be wrong.
The Daesh had been making a lot of noise in recent months about how much they hate the French. Considering the successes that France had in Mali, compared with the failures of Britain and America, this makes a certain kind of nightmarish sense: France is the enemy they most fear and so most want to intimidate away.
My thoughts and best wishes go to all the survivors and all those who lost family or friends in the attack.
(Earlier tonight I was in a discussion elsewhere on the web where someone said that this was the fault of Europeans for having insufficient balls. I was very pissed off at that.)
Migrants are now fucked. So are we all, really.
The governments of Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, and other like-minded parties will play this to the hilt. And a lot, a lot of people susceptible to conservative propaganda will eat it up all over the continent.
This might yet kill Europe, but not in the way Daesh expected. Or maybe they did.
It’s quite possible that it was intended as an action against refugees. Daesh has stated that they despise them. After all, it’s blasphemy not to want to live in the God-ordained paradise on Earth they’ve created.
I apologize for the blunt tone. I’m shaken and hopeless. It will not be all right.
My prayers and thoughts to the people of France.
Also: Donald Trump has decided to join the crowd of DISGUSTING PEOPLE, but I don’t think this is really news. Just a cherry on top of turd sundae.
@dhag85
Yeah. I don’t think I’d have even heard of it if i hadn’t happened to catch a few minutes of Pacifica radio. It’s hard, because there are so many awful things happening at any given moment. It’s easy to steer good, compassionate people (and everyone else) just by choosing what to discuss, and how to frame it. I don’t even think it’s intentional (well, at least not completely so) — just subtle biases and preconceptions, working on a large scale.
Donald Trump should lose his Twitter privileges. His tweet was particularly gross considering he is running for President. Disgraceful pompous ass.
Btw, thank you again David for this thread. I really needed somewhere to talk about this and Mammothers are the best.
yes. Thanks.
Also, it was confirmed. the islamic state reivindicated the attacks. they justified it as a “revenge” for what happened with Siriah
I don’t have words…
May the survivors and first responders all get the help they need.
I’m just numb at this point. I just hope that France in general and Paris in particular can find a way to bounce back from this. They have survived worse in the past, so I’m quietly confident. Vive la France, vive la Republique. I hope that all the Mammotheers and their loved ones in France are well.
I should be in bed by now, but I don’t think I can manage that yet.