PARIS

[Suzy]

I am so shocked, horrified and saddened by what's happening in Paris right now.

I'm not French, but France is an indelible part of my life and growing up years. I went to a French school, where I did my baccalaureat and I spent many summers there as a teenager with a French family that became as close to me as my own. Then we lived in Paris for four years and one of my children was born there. So, even if I don't have French genes, part of my heart is there and always will be.

But not only that, the attacks are horrifying and scary for anyone in the free world. Don't know what else to say. I am so sad for the people of Paris and for France.

[lou]

Just waking up to the news here, Suzy. How horrible.

[Suzy]

Dreadful and terrifying.

[Pru Freda]

I worked in Paris briefly in the early 70s. It was, and remains, my favourite city. Shocking and appalling news.

Viva Paris!

[Daniel]

I've never been to Paris, but I'm both sad and angry that this is happening yet again.

[Miss Terri Novelle]

It's heartbreaking to see this happening.

[whdean]

Very sad. That's all I can say about it without saying something else.

[ameliasmith]

I haven't been in Paris since the 80s, and the only person I can think of who is from there seems to be currently living in Switzerland, but I too have been watching the news. Very sad and troubling.

ETA. So much for not knowing anyone there. The artist profile I was going to write for the magazine is about a couple. I tentatively set up an appointment with them for Tuesday this morning. The woman sounded a little upset, but I don't know her, so I couldn't gauge what was going on/how serious it was. It turns out that their son is in Paris and was badly injured. He's in the hospital in stable condition, according to my facebook feed, but now I feel awfully callous about merrily setting up an interview appointment for Tuesday. 

[Becca Mills]

It's awful, and in combination with the two other recent attacks -- Beirut and the Russian airliner -- it's profoundly alarming in a global sense.

[whdean]

Nov 15, 2015 19:04:35 GMT -5 Becca Mills said:

It's awful, and in combination with the two other recent attacks -- Beirut and the Russian airliner -- it's profoundly alarming in a global sense.

Time to lock and load.

ETA: The English believe that Arthur will return in their time of need ("Rex quondum, rexque futurum"). I'm not sure that my avatar will return to save them. But the French have a very interesting quality. Those "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" turn downright badass when you actually attack France. Whatever happened will be "addressed." That gives me some comfort.

[lindymoone]

It's all so horrific... But I'm not a big fan of locking and loading. For less than a week I've been back in Turkey, where ISIS killed over 100 people at a peace rally last month. Even though we're on the west coast, far from the Syrian border, I am a bit scared to leave the house.

I am 1/4 French (as you might guess from my real name: Aimee Louise), but that's of no importance. We're all French on Bastile Day, so to speak. But these terrorist attacks are not unexpected, unfortunately. France is seen by (not just) extremist Muslims as being an "intolerant to Muslims" country, among the leading western nations. I wrote an obnoxious rant about this subject yesterday for facebook, and deleted it for fear of backlash. It went something like: no one (not even me) changed their pics to the Turkish flag last month when more than 100 people died and 400 were injured by the ISIS bombing at a peace rally; no one changed their pics to the Lebanese flag either...

I've seen posts by Americans who I grew up with, who think they are good "Christians", talking about there being no such thing as moderate Muslims, about "nuking" the Middle East to solve the problem! Ignorance is a very dangerous sort of bliss. The vast majority of men, women and children suffering at the hands of ISIS consists of Muslims in desperate need. And the vast majority of Muslims are "moderate" -- but for how long, if they get exterminated by us or each other, and only the extremists are left?

Was there ever a generation who said, "We DON'T live in troubled times", I wonder?

[ameliasmith]

I'm also leery of knee-jerk military reactions, though obviously something has to be done about DAESh (I'm trying to use that acronym now, even though I'm not sure how to pronounce it).

Nov 16, 2015 1:45:22 GMT -5 lindymoone said:

But these terrorist attacks are not unexpected, unfortunately. France is seen by (not just) extremist Muslims as being an "intolerant to Muslims" country, among the leading western nations. I wrote an obnoxious rant about this subject yesterday for facebook, and deleted it for fear of backlash. It went something like: no one (not even me) changed their pics to the Turkish flag last month when more than 100 people died and 400 were injured by the ISIS bombing at a peace rally; no one changed their pics to the Lebanese flag either...

I'd also had that impression of France being more hostile to Muslims, and the Muslim population being more ghettoized there than elsewhere in Europe, but was a bit vague on it, so thank you for confirming that.

I do have a few people on my FB feed who've done an overlay with both the French flag and the cedar of Lebanon on it, but they're few and far between. I live in a small town, but I do have some Muslim (or from Muslim background) acquaintances even here, some of them more liberal than moderate. I don't know why so many people are blind to the diversity of people and beliefs within religions. And it's true, the bombing in Turkey barely registered. I'm not even sure if I saw a news story about it. I hope that things get more settled there, so that you and your neighbors can feel safe again! 

[Daniel]

Nov 16, 2015 1:45:22 GMT -5 lindymoone said:

Was there ever a generation who said, "We DON'T live in troubled times", I wonder?

I doubt it. Humans have always been willing to murder each other over a difference in philosophy, and I don't see that changing any time soon. 40,000 years of "civilization" has not brought enlightenment, just more efficient ways of killing.

[Deleted]

Lindy,

I can't imagine how scary that is. I had no idea ISIS was causing havoc in Turkey too. One of my FB friends posted about the Kenya attack back in April that I was unaware of too. This whole thing is just so horrific and heartbreaking. Even though something has to be done about these attacks, it's hard to know what. I think the past several years have proven there's no easy answer.

[whdean]

I don’t think that blaming France for failing to integrate Muslims stands up to the counterfactual test. France also has a rocky history (and present) with Jews and Roma, but they’re not going on killing sprees. And if the French treatment of Muslims is to blame for their actions, who’s to blame in the UK, Canada, the U.S., Australia, Spain, Turkey, and Lebanon--the last two being majority Muslim countries? I’m probably open to the criticism of ignoring the wider world: I should also be asking who’s to blame in the Philippines, Indonesia, China, Pakistan, Russia, India, and (basically) all of North Africa. Last I heard, in fact, every insurgency around the world has Muslims on one side or both--that’s one heck of a coincidence.

I’m an analyst by disposition. One rule I go by is this: If I have to twist myself in knots to make an explanation fit the facts, I probably have a bad explanation on my hands. Since I can’t explain the coincidence of these facts, I have to infer that Islam contains a radical subculture that’s larger and more violent than that of other ethnoreligious groups. It’s difficult to deny because this is one of those cases where the facts speak for themselves.

What anyone (including Muslim victims) can do about it is open to question. In one case in Canada, the father of recently radicalized man called police and apparently begged for their help in doing something about his son before his son did something bad. The cops couldn’t do much: You can’t charge him with bad intentions. As I recall, he went off to fight with the baddies. I don’t think this is the only case of parents trying to intervene either.

As for the criticism that we only care about dead French people, well, who cares about the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Christians and other sects in the Middle East and Africa? It’s hard to get concrete numbers, but it seems like more are killed every week than were killed last week in Paris, Lebanon, and Turkey put together. But what of it? Anyone can play this game, and it’s not the kind of game anyone ever wins.

[lindymoone]

Dean, I hope no one thinks of this is a game, or that I blame the French for what happened there. I certainly didn't claim that anyone here at the Pub only cares about "dead French people"; I was talking about social media at large. I don't see the French as hostile to Muslims; their modern society is based on more secular ideals, though it can't help but nod to its primarily Catholic past. I was just pointing out that some Muslims feel more persecuted there than in other European countries, as evidenced by laws that emphasize security and human/civil rights over religious rights. (Just as some Christians think they are being persecuted in the US because they are losing some of their priviledged status as other groups finally gain their civil rights.)

Frankly, my own (secularist) view is that France has it right. I think religion is a trouble-maker everywhere it goes. Every religion, no matter its good intentions. Everyone is free to disagree with that, and strongly. No one should be persecuted for their beliefs -- not religious people, not atheists, not Pastafarians...

But no one has the right to go chopping people's heads off, either.

So what do we do? I wish I knew the answer to the age-old question: How can we respect the rights of those who don't respect ours?

[whdean]

Yes, there are no easy answers. Our new Prime Minister, Trudoolander, has decided to bring in 25,000 refugees before the end of this year. Why? Because, presumably, his Twitter followers thought it would be a great idea--so compassionate, so wonderful, so Him. How will we screen them and where we'll put them in the next six weeks? No one knows. A lot of money will be spent on a solution that breaks with UN's policy of keeping refugees near their homelands until they can return.

How will it end? Probably badly for some of us and some of them. The people who come will become embittered when, inevitably, we can't integrate them because they can't speak English or French, and can't work anywhere. Either some of them or some of their children will decide that this naive gesture was a cheat and that they're really victims. Then bad things will happen.

[Suzy]

Of course nobody thinks this is a game or that you blame the French, lindymoone. It's a very complex problem (if you can call it that) and nobody has the answer. I think people in the western world identify more with something that happens in Paris than in Beirut, because Paris is a city we think of as the city of romance and culture. Just like New York and London, these are cities we visit often and many of us have friend and family there.

The killing of innocent people in any country of any race or creed is wrong and horrible.

[Deano]

It won't last. The only common factor in Da'esh's campaigns around the world is that they make themselves hated, a natural result of their bigotry and brutality. They can keep killing, but really all they're truly killing is themselves both metaphorically and literally.

[ameliasmith]

This morning I spoke with a man whose son was badly injured in the Paris attacks. I was interviewing him about his art (this was set up a while ago, nothing to do with the attacks). The young man is still in the hospital and was in a medically induced coma for a while, but he is awake now and able to speak and remember. The father will be going over to see him tomorrow, and really there is just nothing to say about the whole thing when you're talking with someone so closely affected by it.