Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

American History and Black History Cannot Be Separated

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

The words do not have to be perfect.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Ah, the different things are different argument.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

You are here: Home / Silverman on Security / Paris Attack Updates: Updated with France 24 Live Feed; Updated Again and Again

Paris Attack Updates: Updated with France 24 Live Feed; Updated Again and Again

by | 170 Comments

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Since Betty C’s thread is a few hours old, here’s a front page update on the attacks in Paris. The BBC is reporting that there was an explosion near the Stade de France, though it is unclear if this was a suicide attack or a more conventional bombing. The Beeb is also reporting fifteen killed near the Bataclan Arts Center and up to sixty people being held hostage there. Finally, they’re reporting that France has closed its borders!

I’m sure we’ll all be updating each other as the night and the weekend goes on, but we should all keep two important points in mind: 1) the reporting is going to change several times as new information becomes available, so what seems to be an accurate now may not be in a few hours. And 2) terrorism, no matter how repugnant or terrible, is a very low probability event. Terrorists real targets aren’t the immediate victims, they are the rest of us; their intention is to scare us into taking actions we would never ordinarily do.

Finally, all of our thoughts and prayers are with the people of France.

Update: Anoniminous provided the link to France 24’s live feed. So no one has to go looking for it, the link is here:

France 24 Live Feed

Update 2: France 24 just reported that the law enforcement response at the Bataclan is complete and two of the hostage takers are dead.

Update 3: In comments Robert Waldman posted the following, which I thought was important enough to be seen as part of the actual post on the front page:

“Anyone stranded in Paris reading Balloon Juice on a smart phone might be interested in the twitter hastag #PorteOuverte (open door). It is being used by people offering shelter to the stranded and by stranded people seeking shelter. Parisians are hosting stranded strangers who don’t think they can safely return to their homes or hotels.

The standard suggestion is to communicate location only privately with direct messages in case there are terrorists on twitter.”

Thanks Robert!

 

 

Reader Interactions

170Comments

  5. 5.

    SiubhanDuinne

    CNN headline reporting that police are storming the concert hall. The sound is off and I’m too far away for these tired eyes to read the closed captioning.

    Edit: What Debbie said.

  7. 7.

    debbie

    Whatever going on is horrible, but if this turns out to be an organized attack by a single entity, then we’re at a whole new level of hell.

  9. 9.

    Elizabelle

    Gary Clark, Jr scheduled to play the Bataclan in a few weeks. Saw him at Dave Grohl’s July 4th festival. Terrific artist.

    I would trust Democrats to keep us safer than Republicans. Someone quipped we’d get President Ted Cruz if an attack like this happened in the US.

    I dunno. People still remember W’s misadministration quite well. President Obama has kept us pretty safe (although perhaps ISIS is going after softer targets).

    Would obtaining arms be a problem were they to try to strike in the US? I think no.

  11. 11.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Has anyone heard further about those reports a while ago that there were new attacks in Les Halles and at the Louvre and le Centre Pompidou? As Adam rightly points out, the reporting changes all the time.

  12. 12.

    Steeplejack

    The France 24 coverage is very good. I flipped over to CNN for a moment, and Wolf Blitzer was already (a few minutes after 6:00 p.m. EST) asking some ex-CIA talking head whether he could determine if this was ISIS or al-Qaeda. WTF. Back to France 24.

  13. 13.

    PsiFighter37

    This is nuts. Good thoughts and wishes to the people of Paris and France.

    That said, once the dust settles, something clearly needs to get fixed on the other side of the pond. People thought the EU was going to break apart because of financial reasons, but if they all start throwing up their borders again, it is curtains on the European project.

  14. 14.

    debbie

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    But can you even trust the reporting? I’ve heard that the attackers came into Europe among the refugees and that they easily got arms in Bulgaria.

  15. 15.

    D58826

    @debbie: I don’t think the authorities have any choice. You can’t wait out people who are intent on self distruction. The only thing you gain by waiting is more dead hostages.

  18. 18.

    Steeplejack

    @sharl:

    People may have France 24 on their cable system and not be aware of it. It’s on the MHz network. I tried a title search for “France 24” on my brother’s (unfamiliar to me) cable system and found it right away.

  20. 20.

    Arclite

    Yeesh, awful.

    Adam’s got a good point though, your chances of being killed/injured in a terrorist act are extremely low. I’m reminded of how over the past 30 years, reporting on crime in the USA has increased threefold, while actual crime has declined by more than a third over that period.

    Lastly, has anyone claimed responsibility? I’m assuming either ISIS or Al Queda, but a lone wolf/homegrown group isn’t out of the question.

  27. 27.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Anoniminous: @Omnes Omnibus: @Steeplejack: I’ve updated with the link to the Live Feed from France 24 so no one has to go looking for it. If anyone knows how to embed a live feed in the actual post, as opposed to just linking to it, please tell me how and I’ll do it – or if you’re a front pager, please just do it. Thanks.

  31. 31.

    Adam L Silverman

    @debbie: Its possible, but unlikely. Refugees are some of THE most vetted people anywhere. Either at point of origin/departure or point of arrival.

  33. 33.

    Omnes Omnibus

    It looks like security forces stormed the Bataclan. Multiple sources are saying the two gunmen killed. Hostages are being evacuated.

  35. 35.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Adam L Silverman:

    It would also seem unlikely to be refugees based on the (reported) number of locations and the locations chosen. I supposed it’s possible that some extra muscle came in with the refugees, but people who are relative strangers to a country wouldn’t be able to have that kind of coordination. Also the reason why it was stupid for anyone to think the attack on Oklahoma City was committed by anyone other than an American.

  37. 37.

    Steeplejack

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Jesus, don’t put a live feed in here while the site is under construction!

    I suggested cable TV—and C-SPAN is, in fact, running the France 24 coverage right now—because, chances are, it will be more reliable than any (probably overloaded) Internet feed.

  38. 38.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): While it is far too soon to tell, I think that is correct. Local knowledge was necessary to carry this out, as well as good command, control, and communication.

  39. 39.

    Ruckus

    I’ve been very quiet about the site because I know the back end was borked by being held together by duct taped, bailing wire and spit.
    But it is getting to be fucking unusable. Every time I try to read a another post or refresh comments I get a null article warning and it takes 3 clicks to move forward. Now 3 clicks is not a big deal in the over all scheme of things but to do any thing? Links doesn’t work at all and of course as others have noted any linkage gets you put in moderation.
    I’ve been hanging around here a long time, seen many come and go and it pisses me off that I’m seriously thinking of being one of them because of this.
    Fix the damn blog. Please.

  44. 44.

    D58826

    Well leave it to the GOP to find a way to make a terrible situation into a pitch for the NRA. Gingrich is tweeting that things would have been different if there had been 20-30 people in the theater with concealed weapons. These people are beyond sick

  45. 45.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Ruckus: They’re working on it. We appreciate your patience and understanding. I can offer you a gift certificate for a future visit to some website you probably don’t want to go to?

  49. 49.

    Robert Waldmann

    Anyone stranded in Paris reading Balloon Juice on a smart phone might be interested in the twitter hastag #PorteOuverte (open door). It is being used by people offering shelter to the stranded and by stranded people seeking shelter. Parisians are hosting stranded strangers who don’t think they can safely return to their homes or hotels.

    The standard suggestion is to communicate location only privately with direct messages in case there are terrorists on twitter.

  50. 50.

    Elizabelle

    @Ruckus: Have not had as many problems with my MacBook, but hope you stick around. It is frustrating, but seems to be improving. (Numbers! Yea.)

  52. 52.

    Peale

    @debbie: nah. It actually simplifies things quite a bit if it’s coordinated by one group. Now if it were a bunch of unrelated lone wolves picking the same evening or a lot of different groups deciding to hit Paris all at once and not even talking to each other…well that complicates things much more.

  53. 53.

    trollhattan

    @D58826:
    He seriously wrote that? Yeah, that’ll fix it–hundreds caught in crossfire as dozens of theater-goers start blasting away in the dark. Gosh, it’s too bad Newt isn’t running again. Still have a bag of Adelson cash in his closet he hasn’t spent?

  54. 54.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Arm The Homeless: Doesn’t surprise me. France’s law enforcement, security services, and intelligence services are going to be stretched very thin. It will be interesting to see if France chooses to invoke Article 5 of the NATO Treaty. If so, it would allow the Supreme Allied Commander Europe to mobilize NATO resources to assist.

    I will say that the French military and law enforcement are very good at what they do, despite being the butt of perennial jokes here in the US.

  55. 55.

    Ruckus

    @SiubhanDuinne:
    Living in quake central (Calif) sort of makes one think of them regularly. Especially if you had significant loss(es) from them. I lost a going business, best friends a mile away from us lost their house and all their possessions other than their cats.
    So I’ve followed the USGS site for the last 20+ yrs.

  59. 59.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Ruckus:

    A lot of the issues seem to be browser or device dependent. I have issues on my iPhone that I don’t have on my tablet or laptop, and vice versa. Is there another browser you can use? I know Firefox has a lot of wonkiness of its own, and I think the website and Firefox may be interacting in bad ways.

  61. 61.

    Adam L Silverman

    @SiubhanDuinne: Yes, two hostages killed, hostages being evacuated. Latest total casualty reports I saw about 15 minutes ago was 35 dead total. I would expect that to be revised.

  64. 64.

    Arm The Homeless

    @Adam L Silverman: I doubt the French would want international troops in their streets. What would France get from NATO that they can’t deploy, themselves?

    This is going to bring out a lot of ugliness, on all sides. Le Pen and radicals are the only winners here.

  65. 65.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Ruckus:

    I have never lived in an earthquake-prone area, so it’s slightly academic to me — although my brother lost his house in the 1994(?) Northridge Quake and it took close to two years to rebuild.

  66. 66.

    Randy P

    Bataclan hostage situation is over, but the France 24 feed just reported that the hostage-takers may have thrown explosives at the hostages before it was over.

    So the body count is expected to rise.

    Oh god.

  68. 68.

    Ruckus

    @Adam L Silverman:
    LOL
    Thanks for the laugh. Maybe the pass should be for BJ when it gets fixed.

    @Elizabelle:
    I’m on iMac and while the site has/had it’s readability issues up until yesterday it was usable. Now pretty much not.

    Look every one I try to be a positive person and have been building things (including my now unneeded web page for my business that I lost in the great fucking recession) for decades, my patience is getting about as thin as the hair on my head.

  72. 72.

    Gravenstone

    @D58826: Some reports had the terrorists equipped with automatic weapons. Given Gingrich’s proposed scenario, yes the situation certainly would have been different. Rather than the terrorists methodically murdering people to heighten the terror (as has been reported elsewhere), they simply would have opened up with full automatic fire on the crowd at the first sign of armed resistance. Fucking cretin that man is.

  74. 74.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):

    Also the reason why it was stupid for anyone to think the attack on Oklahoma City was committed by anyone other than an American.

    Yet that is precisely what the vermin of the Village did at the time.

  75. 75.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Arm The Homeless: There are three reasons I could foresee to invoke Article 5. 1) To get NATO on a response footing in case assistance is needed and to reinforce that an attack on one NATO member counts as an attack on all. 2) To assist with securing the borders. Given the nature of the Schengen Accords, securing the borders is what is going to stretch French resources very thin. If you can move NATO personnel in to do that, then that frees up French resources to work within the country. 3) Reinforce European solidarity as the bulk of assistance would come from the European members of NATO as they’ve got more resources closer to France.

  84. 84.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @D58826:

    I have always had a pretty good (read: extensive) vocabulary, but I simply cannot summon the words for what I think of these fuckers.

  85. 85.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Villago Delenda Est: I have a funny story about this. I was on a plane back to St. Andrews University where I was pursuing a grad degree in International Security through the Department of International Relations and its affiliated Center for Terrorism Studies. When I got back to St. A’s I went to check in at the department before going to rack out and sleep off the jet lag. I had no idea what had happened. I got up there and someone asked me my take. I asked what happened, they described it, and as I was studying Middle Eastern extremist/terrorist groups they figured I’d be able to provide a good guess of which one would do this. I asked my supervisor, if he still had a copy of the Turner Diaries on his book shelf? He did. I turned to page 14 and read the bottom paragraph that describes a leaderless resistance/lone wolf attack on a Federal building and said I expect it would come out it was a far right American extremist. He went on TV to speculate which Middle Eastern group it was. Things were a but uncomfortable around the office after that…

  86. 86.

    Ruckus

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):
    Safari is worse.

    And yes I’m concerned about the French attacks. I’m also concerned about what the morons in the republican party want to do about it. And then about what the US is going to do about it.

  100. 100.

    JMG

    France’s relations with its Muslim minority make Mississippi (or Charlestown, Mass) look like Woodstock. It’s an ongoing huge problem and will remain one. My daughter is in business school in Bordeaux, studying wine management. She is fine but freaked of course. Her best friend in France lives in Paris, but is also fine.

  103. 103.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Adam L Silverman: Not only do you put the idiot provincial reconstruction dumbshits in their place, but this, too. You really are my kind of staff officer, even if you’re not in a uniform!

  104. 104.

    raven

    @Nate Dawg: They said many of the dead were killed by frags. There is now way the police/military went in without flash bangs but frags seem less likely.

  105. 105.

    Arm The Homeless

    @debbie: Windows 10, while running Chrome, has been leaps and bounds better than either the mobile, or the desktop version on my phone.

    I blame Obama, of course.

  106. 106.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @SiubhanDuinne: It turns out, and I should have remembered before commenting, that the lights go out at 1:00 am every day. Sorry for the misrepresentation.

  107. 107.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Villago Delenda Est: I was just a grad student. I really didn’t mean to embarrass him in front of other students and faculty. Turned out I was correct and he wasn’t, but things were frosty for a while.

  109. 109.

    Diana

    @Adam L Silverman: good story. I remember hearing the news about Oklahoma City bombing and thinking, no-one in the middle east has ever heard of Oklahoma City, it must be a local. But it’s good to know that the fools spouting the theories that these were Muslim terrorists at the time had in fact been told that before they went on the air.

  112. 112.

    sharl

    Welp, media neocons of hardcore and softcore intensity – e.g., Noah Pollock, Eli Lake, Josh Rogin – have immediately presumed that ISIS is responsible (and ISIS will certainly be happy to take credit), but leftie Weird Twitter is swarming them (at least until they get blocked).

    Apparently the President said this morning that ISIS is contained, but unwisely didn’t append “in Syria” to that, so the neocons (and possibly Jake Tapper/CNN as well) have jumped on this.

  116. 116.

    Amir Khalid

    @Diana:
    I vaguely remember that a Muslim American was arrested soon afterwards, but he turned out to have nothing to do with the bombing.

  117. 117.

    gf120581

    Quite an ugly Friday night.

    Oh, on an added note, I’m not surprised to see Gingrich trying to exploit this. As anyone who saw he try to use the Susan Smith nighmare for political gain in 1994, Newt has a ghoulish habit of it. Just another example of what an utter piece of shit he is.

  119. 119.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Diana: It was what it was. I think it was worse that President Clinton said he was wrong at a press conference the following week.

    Once I came back to the US, got my doctorate, and made good all was forgiven. The last time I saw him, back in 2003, he kept introducing me to people as his former student…

  121. 121.

    Arm The Homeless

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Looks like my confirmation bias is in full effect. That fire was from Nov. 2nd, not today. Sorry for passing on incorrect info.

  124. 124.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Adam L Silverman: I can understand why things would be a bit chilly.

    But here’s the deal, IMHO: if one is actually an expert on terrorism, well, one is an expert on terrorism who looks at the target and from that tries to figure out who is the most likely to have selected that target, and why. To fall back on “it had to be someone from the Middle East” as the default is lazy, to say the least, but no one has ever accused the US MSM of exercising even perfunctory due diligence on a breaking news story. It kinda, sorta undermines your status as an expert, n’est ce pas?

  125. 125.

    Adam L Silverman

    @sharl: The issue isn’t that they are contained in Levant. Part of ISIS’s concept of operations, for lack of a better term, is to radicalize local Muslims to ISIS’s doctrine of tawheed (radical unity of the Deity) and its violent imposition. By doing so they hope to inspire local attacks that would be called leaderless resistance or lone wolf attacks by individuals or small groups operating completely independently of ISIS and anyone else. The intention is to get a huge overreaction by the non-Muslim majority and government, thereby reinforcing the ISIS doctrinal/theological message that one cannot be a Muslim unless one 1) accepts tawheed and 2) moves to where Muslims who accept tawheed are running things. If this happens it will fracture Muslim communities, including generationally, and provide both an influx of Muslims to the areas ISIS controls in the Levant and radicalized Muslims in their home countries willing to undertake terrorist acts in support of the mission without having to be coordinated by anyone.

  130. 130.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @MomSense:

    Probably lots of young people at that concert.

    I saw a report flit past (BBC liveblog?) that someone saw a man calling for people in the nearby cafes to take shelter in the theatre.

  131. 131.

    sharl

    @Adam L Silverman: Thanks. Did you hear the statement by Obama on ISIS that so many are referring to on social media? I did not, so I don’t have an opinion on it, but I’m wondering what you think. I’ll go look for it in the meantime.

  132. 132.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Villago Delenda Est: Anyone can make a mistake, or, given limited information, draw a different conclusion. It is going to happen. I look at the stuff with Ukraine and Putin and draw very different conclusions than several people who I respect greatly.

  136. 136.

    xenos

    French border police have been stepped up over the last week. On Saturday afternoon I was driving to CDG from luxembourg, and there must have 8 border control cars lined up, reviewing the traffic. All week they have been holding up rush hour traffic at the border, checking the cars, looking for something.

    A couple weeks ago they started ticket controls in the trains 150,000 commuters use from luxembourg each evening. The commute home to France has been quite difficult for a lot of people as a result.

    I suppose the french government has been aware something might happen, and has been watching one of their more porous borders.

  138. 138.

    Emma

    Am I the only one who’s never had a problem with the site after the first couple of days? I’m on Chrome on my tablet and it’s fine. My laptop is firefox and that tends to be quirky if I hit the back button but otherwise ok.

  140. 140.

    Steeplejack

    Okay, even France 24’s coverage is getting a little thin. French senator bloviating for a while just now. Statements from politicians coming in. I might switch off for a while. The details will be what they will be.

  141. 141.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Ruckus: I’m not sure its another Crusades, but in reverse order. I think what we’re seeing is a composite of several things. 1) stressed societies, with serious cleavages – tribal/kinship, religious, political dealing with a legacy of colonialism, post-colonial authoritarian government, and drought induced complications; leading to 2) the attempt to define/redefine who is and is not a member of those societies and states, how to divvy up power and resources, etc – all of which is, historically (including here in the US) a very violent and often prolonged process; and 3) an internal struggle within Islam over what it actually is, who is going to control it, how it will relate to the non-Muslim world. I really think that 1 and 2 lead to a situation more analogous to the 30 Years War and 3 is similar to reformation/counter-reformation including all the different stages of the reformation from Luther to Calvin to Knox to Cromwell.

  142. 142.

    Anne Laurie

    @Diana:

    I remember hearing the news about Oklahoma City bombing and thinking, no-one in the middle east has ever heard of Oklahoma City, it must be a local.

    That was my first thought too, but my friends in Houston informed me that the OK universities actually had a steady flow of grad students coming through in petroleum extraction majors. Of course it turned out to be good Murican terr-ists after all, but it was another reminder that there are very few “unglobalized” corners left in this modrun world!

  143. 143.

    D58826

    Trump also jumped in and criticized the gun control laws in France. The French ambassador replied by calling Trump a vulture. according to A. Mitchell. She said that she never remembers a diplomat responding that way. If there ever was any doubt that the right wing nuts and much of the GOP not only live in a different universe but no longer qualify as members of the human race.

    Interesting the French President is making his second TV appearance of the evening. Unlike W who hide for eight hours on 9/11..

  145. 145.

    Villago Delenda Est

    From Newt’s twitter feed:

    We live in an age when evil men have to be killed by good people

    This will not end well for you, Newt. Not at all.

  146. 146.

    Fair Economist

    @Satby: I’ve had no trouble at all with the site. None. Not always happy with the formatting decisions, but no trouble.

  148. 148.

    debbie

    @D58826:

    I doubt “vulture” is a word in the ambassador’s portfolio but I’m glad he/she pulled no punches. Enough of the bogus jingoism.

  150. 150.

    sharl

    @Adam L Silverman: That’s actually Obama’s statement about the Paris attacks. Apparently he had an interview earlier today (or maybe late yesterday) where his offered his opinion about the campaign against ISIS. Major media reported it, and lots of conservative media seems to have been particularly excited about it, if my Google search results are any indication.

    Something about ISIS having been contained, but not decapitated…

    Eh, I need to pack up and head home. I’ll look for it later, once I identify a trustworthy source. Dunno, maybe it’s on the White House website?

  152. 152.

    Ruckus

    @Adam L Silverman:
    Thanks
    I was going on my not so recent learning of world history. The Crusades seemed to click as close as anything. And that brings up that what seems to me to be that a vast majority of the Muslim world does not follow the radical wing. But they have been/are going to get an inordinate amount of hatred, even if it turns out that this was not a radical Muslim attack, lone wolf or coordinated. Someone in another post commented that we would never see the end of the effects of W’s moronic adventure in the middle east and I think that is a valid point. Never is a long time but if you lived in Iraq or surrounding countries and listened to any of our conservative politicians I can certainly think that it’s possible that the direction of humanity has changed for the worse due to his actions and it’s going to take centuries and many deaths to change that.

  154. 154.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Peale: That’s the hard part to answer. As I often say and write: Nothing is as dangerous as a democracy when it is scared! This goes directly to Clausewitz understanding of the people (population) being the passion component of his strategic trinity.

  160. 160.

    magurakurin

    @Calouste:

    A 6.something earthquake in or off the coast of Chile is hardly news unfortunately, there’s one about every other week.

    Japan, too. Earthquakes are woven into the fabric of life here. It’s not if, it’s when the next one hits you. Life goes on.

  161. 161.

    Marc

    @Ruckus: I actually think that Saudi funded mosques are ultra reactionary, and that oil money has flooded more moderate strains of Islam. There was a sobering opinion poll on attitudes in global Islam. Extreme intolerance is a majority opinion across many areas, especially Africa and the Middle East.

  162. 162.

    goblue72

    32,000 people die in the U.S. every year from guns. That is the equivalent of 9-11 happening 10 times a year, ever year. Just imagine that. Once every 5 weeks, a 9-11. 5 weeks, another one. 5 weeks, another, 5 weeks, another one. As far as the eye can see, until the bodies of the dead are piled higher than the Twin Towers. But religious extremists – THEY’RE the real threat to our civilization and national security.

    So yeah, let’s go bomb some NON-state, borderless, religious nutbar cultists who don’t even qualify as semi-organized paramilitaries, let alone quasi-state actors that could conceivably be deemed instrumentalities of a nation-state. That’s sure to solve the problem. Would probably help if we sent some “advisors” and large caches of weapons to some other group of NON-state, borderless actors whose current flavor of despotic fanaticism we haven’t declared “worse than Hitler” this week.

  166. 166.

    LanceThruster

    Will Dems in tomorrow’s debate look ‘weak on terror’ giving chest thumping Goopers some new life?

  168. 168.

    p.a.

    @Ruckus:sigh. notrue Muslim…

    And before I get trashed, can we have thought experiment?
    Would one rather be an out gay person in a majority Christian country or majority Muslim?
    Open atheist?
    Feminist?
    Christian in a Muslim majority country or vice-versa?
    Would one be safer as a minority sect Muslim in a xtian country or a Muslim country?
    As an atheist I have no warm cuddlies for any religion, and I see the fundy paranoia here, but when the answer is “well Uganda and maybe Russia” are Christian countries as dangerous, one can’t say a miniscule minority is the problem.

  169. 169.

    D58826

    Listening to some of the analysis on MSNBC and it is very depressing. Issues such as the large number of unemployed young people, a Muslim population that isn’t well integrated into the local society, the rise of anti-Semitism, the rise of the hard right nativist political parties, whither the EU can survive,and the huge flow of refugees from failed states in the middle east and Africa. There are so many threads running thru these events that it may well be impossible to address them. American politicians, esp the GOP, keep talking about strong American leadership but they never get into details about what to do (other than bombing somebody). Depressing

  170. 170.

    J R in WV

    @Adam L Silverman:

    That isn’t really valuable, it seems to be a rote formulaic list that says “firearms in (list conditions) are regulated by French law” over and over, with no specificity. Probably posted by some NRA-like group seeking to make it clear that regulation and legal restrictions on gun ownership is everywhere but the USA. But of course there are legal and regulatory restrictions here in the USA as well, thankfully.

    When we visited Bilbao a couple of years ago, there was a Beretta shop across from the hotel, I wanted to stop in but we never had the time.

    Thanks for all the posts!

    Folks, when something like this happens, even the Innertubes are strained, let alone Balloon Juice, so please, be patient. I’m running Ubuntu 14.04 and Firefox 41.0.2 and other than traffic issues I’m having no problems right now. Haven’t for several days, actually.

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