I was in Dublin packing to go to Southern France when the news hit. My Irish hosts said they 'd been through that for 30 years and could relate.
I called to check all people I knew were safe. (yes) then I started reading.
I was especially disgusted with people who rubbernecked and shot pictures or short films of agonizing people in a pool of blood - the police had to disperse them. (I refused to look at those grisly imaged and can’t believe some made money off them via the gutter press I won’t bother giving the name of so as to avoid encouraging such abysmal standards of ethics).
I’m On the Tgv, reading the online French press.
First, let us acknowledge we don’t know much.
We do know the guy’s main apparent occupations, when not fighting/being violent , was getting drunk or high. So, not what you’d call “Muslim” (a very basic tenet is Islam is to abstain from alcohol so he couldn’t have been much of a believer if he was known for drunkenness in his neighborhood).
We know he had fake weapons and pretended to be delivering ice cream in order to get through.
He was a truck driver.
He plowed into the crowd and crushed as many people as he could, swerving to hit more.
Special forces were there quickly and took him out, but you can do a lot of damage with a truck in just a minute or two.
Whether he was ordered by Daesh or a Lone Wolf, his goal isn’t prove that nothing is safe.
Should we watch anyone who drives a truck?
Eric Ciotti, who’s a hard line right politician, played right into the terror 's discourse by saying ‘people’ should be preventively jailed. Considering the guy was known for violence, but on no way associated with any form or Islam or radical thought, should all violent guys who can drive be put into preventive jail? Or did he mean all Muslim guys should be jailed preventively ? He might have wanted to score easy political points but I’m not sure he comes out making sense.
The state of emergency, which grants extraordinary powers to the police (especially waiving the need for warrants - anyone can come into your apartment, restaurant, shop… At any time for any reason) was supposed to be lifted on July 26 and will continue. Opposition parties are demanding to know why it was going to be lifted. Even though the attack took place as said state of emergency was in place.
(because, duh, it’s super expensive and police officers are exhausted).
Three days of national mourning will take place, with flags at half mast.
Nice is a weird microcosm - everyone acknowledges that there are serious mafia issues, including with corrupt politicians. It’s very hard line, right wing politically, lots of older people with money who used find the ‘balance’ maintained by the 'networks ’ (ahem) okay. However this has been unraveling, with Marseilles disrupting the balance - I don’t know which families/ clans and interests are playing out. While Marseilles is a known problem area in terms of radical Islam contamination, Nice wasn’t on the map much beside for shady deals.
In a marker of the discontent, French President François Hollande and Prime Minister Manuel Valls were booed Friday when they visited the attack site on the seaside promenade. Onlookers said they should have done more to ensure their security.
The French apparently have never accepted challenges to “French culture” or new ideas from abroad that are not classically French, so to speak. We had a neighbor when I was young whom immigrated from France (married an American soldier). I remember hearing her disdain for the Arab minority in France. Come to think of it, she wasn’t crazy about the Quebecois either.
@Tating : this area is heavily, heavily opposition party compared to valls /Hollande. It’s like Obama going to Trump country. So, not surprising they’d be booed.
D received a mailing from a college today with the primary (large) photo/quote: My ___ U(niversity) experience took me to Nice." Talk about bad timing.
It may be convenient for the proponents of such a rule that most members of the majority religion do not normally wear any particular obvious item of clothing associated with that religion. It is likely that if they did, such a rule would have received more opposition (as opposed to increased support from those who dislike those of minority religions).
But how do they determine if something is being worn as a religious symbol or for some other reason (e.g. a woman covering her head on a cold day or following advice from dermatologists about avoiding sun exposure)? Or if someone wearing something for religious purposes that does not look stereotypically like the usual items worn for such purposes (e.g. an Orthodox Jewish man wearing a hat that is not a yarmulke or other kind of hat commonly associated with such wearers)?
Also, the Muslims do not consist of anywhere near 25% of the population of France. Various estimates range from 3% to 9%, although that is the third largest after Christian and no religion.
I am sure there is some escape clause that lets one drink, rape a non believer and so on if the acts are done to promote one’s belief system. Watch a few of Zakir Naik’s peaceful satanic sermons which were the source of motivation for Bangladeshi killers and you get the idea.
From France :
84 dead, 52 critically injured, 150 injured.
Nice is a big city and thus has two hospitals, which were trained for this event, so that doctors, nurses, medics etc were immediately operational. All children were sent to the children’s hospital, especially as some were in strollers whose parents pushed them away from the truck to protect them (and thus the parents may be dead.) Lots of ‘lost’ (siblings, children) stories. A mother who’d lost her toddler in the panic sent a picture through facebook, it was retwitted 22,000 times and the toddler was reunited with her mother.
The French Blood Bank issued an appeal to stop coming donating blood as they’re well supplied.
People, interviewed throughout France, show fortitude. The general attitude is 'if we stop living, they win '. A middle schooler explained he wasn’t ready to cower in his room, that he has lots of things to do with his summer.
A psychologist was on TV to explain that if parents are afraid for their children, it’s okay, it’s human, but we’ll only get through it together, so scared parents who worry about dropping their kids, should talk with the other parents who must be equally scared, and share how they cope, because then they’ll feel less alone in their fear.
An expert explained Nice had lots of mosques active in fighting radical Islamism, including measures against kids who wanted to go to Syria, preaching against djihad, and were consequently threatened including death threats taken seriously. The killer seemingly wasn’t a mosque - goer anyway. His wife is being interviewed Robert and get a better profile.
The killer has emerged as seriously disturbed: he abused his wife and when she left him, taking their daughter, he made a show of taking daughter’s teddy bear and stabbing it repeatedly, as well as, I quote 'defecating everywhere '. (this from an official source, not the wife.)
Two police divisions are working the case: one specialized in terrorism and one specialized in the Nice area (which, as I said, is a peculiar environment.)
67: Estrosi, Ciotti, etc, are part of a movement within the party of the right formerly known as UMP. They're similar to UKIP but are within the regular party. Because the National Front is a powerful force in that area, they see themselves as offering a 'Republican'alternative to those who agree with the National Front, as a 'bridge' between National Front (both traditional and Marine variety) and the traditional right. The other parties are virtually invisible and near vanished in the last elections (I don't know what they were and how.)
The portrait that is emerging of the Nice attacker is that he wasn’t an observant Muslim. He drank, ate pork, didn’t pray, didn’t observe Ramadan.
He seemed to be just an angry man. He was mentally unstable, beat his wife, was a petty criminal, never accomplished anything, and recently got fired from his truck driver delivery job.
It was more like he was going postal than was waging jihad.
It’s likely having a truck driving license, which already requires a difficult exam (months of study required for the first level or Permit A, and on top of it another exam called B permit) will now include psychological and criminal background checks.
However, we should remember that trucks ’ main reason to be is to transport goods, not to maim and kill.
Daesh is now saying the guy was one of their soldiers. Experts are saying they don’t claim stuff unrelated to them and will thus drag the revelation of proofs, while others say it’s an opportunistic claim.
The question most ask is “how was that truck allowed in, when the Promenade Des Anglais was cordonned off and closed to traffic?”, (turning it into a pedestrian area, due to the fireworks , where no vehicle was allowed) ?
The driver said he was delivering ice cream apparently, but were some of the people in the cordon who let him in, his accomplices?
4 people are in custody.
The first victim targeted was a religious Muslim woman, a veiled mother of 7 who was a permanent resident, come to enjoy the fireworks with her husband who had gone to get the car when the truck hit her.
The driver’s father is saying that his son suffered a “mental breakdown” in 2002-2004 and was prescribed medications for his emotional problems. He also agreed that his son was a loner who was frequently depressed, angry, and violent.
There are lots of children still in the hospital. 5 are too young to identify themselves and no one has come to claim them. One is six months old. A grandmother got her two grandkids back bu has no news from their parents. A dozen parents or grandparents are still looking for children.
Some bodies are so mangled they haven’t been identified yet. Some have not ben claimed. Sometimes an entire family was mowed down - grand parents, parents, son.
Nice Matin has pictures of the children being sought, and as I closed that page the frontpage became the announcement to stop looking for Kylan, as he was found, dead.
Apparently the killer became “radicalized” very very quickly. They found no islamist or radical literature at his house, nor any religious literature of any kind apparently.
His lawyer said he couldn’t believe it, since he was your typical little thug, unpleasant, haughty, violent, not very smart - but nothing like radicalized lowlifes.
What’s surprising to me (considering I’m in Southern France right now with my inlaws) is that people are horrified, angry, but also matter-of-fact.
I’m not sure how to describe it.
The 1o’clock news said the sun seemed “insolent”, people sitting at the cafe terrace, eating ice cream, looking like nothing happened, and if you come close you realize they’re talking about what happened, or wear sunglasses because of the glare but also because of the crying.
@albert69 - in the US we already have things like bollards or giant boulders surrounding or blocking off areas that might be attacked by a truck. The thinking here was probably to not get a truck bomb get close to the building. If you go near the White House you see bollards that probably go down 20 feet or more.
I’ve seen regular synagogues in the suburbs with decorative boulders on the street side of the building. They are really providing security. In my old neighborhood, we did the same thing after too many drunk drivers hit the sign at the entrance. Nice plantings with a few big rocks that would stop any car.
Now, I’ll bet you that places where pedestrians congregate will have more bollards or heavy gates, ones that can rise or fall depending on when they’re needed. It doesn’t help if some doofus lets a truck in though. They just won’t let anyone in.