Just to pile onto what Betty is saying below:
Western civilization survived two global wars and nuclear brinkmanship. (And McVeigh who killed 168 with a truck). https://t.co/pfLez1olLh
— Zeynep Tufekci (@zeynep) July 15, 2016
Nice is a tragedy for the people who died, their families and friends but it is not an inherently system transforming threat unless we make it so.
A poorly piloted Airbus will produce more deaths than Nice. Ebola killed more people in a week and repeated itself week after week than those who died in Nice.
Terrorism, especially symbolic, mass casualty soft target terrorism is a strategy of weakness used to promote over-reaction and stupid thinking in a powerful and resilient opponent. Creating a stupid and hysterical response is the aim of an attack. Not being stupid and not being hysterical while taking reasonable precautions defeats the intended effect of an attack.
If the West was facing an opponent with 10,000 nuclear weapons and thirty Category A divisions within six hours of a shared border that is a significant threat. Instead we are facing opponents who can creatively improvise weapons to attack soft targets where their theory of change is based on opposition stupidity. A problem, a tragedy, but not a civilization threat.
aimai
Precisely! Hear! Hear!
LesBonnesFemmes
Or, good Lord, just think of Death By Handgun here in the US.
Cermet
And many attacks will be just lone wolves hoping to be notice. THe war on terror is stupid, counter productive and only meant to provide circus to the masses so the 0.001% can bank all the cash for the massive weapon build ups being justified by this stupid phony war.
FlipYrWhig
Do we know yet that this has anything whatsoever to do with Islam? Because as I recall for at least the first day after Oklahoma City every pundit said that was Islamic terrorism too.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Something I’ve been curious about: Last week they found the flight recorders (I believe?) from the Air Egypt flight that everyone assumed was terrorism and no group ever claimed credit for. I saw a brief article reporting that there was a theory that smoke in the cockpit indicated at least a good possibility of mechanical failure. That story, the whole story about that flight, has kind of vanished from the news– kind of like the Kalamazoo shootings of late spring barely got a “breaking news” cause it was a white guy with a gun.
(Quick google search says as of a couple of weeks ago, no clear indication of accident vs attack. Still no claim of responsibility that I’ve seen, which is surprising even if it was a crash)
Elizabelle
Well said, Richard.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@FlipYrWhig: What I’ve heard: the driver was a thirty-one year old with dual French-Tunisian citizenship (which I’m pretty sure means French born) with a record of petty crimes and no known association to any terrorist group. I think that raises questions of how he got hold of the weapons, which is more difficult in France than here, no?
Major Major Major Major
@FlipYrWhig: If I were a betting man, and I am, I’d put money on it being Islam-related, if only at the hashtag level.
And that would be wrong, as far as bets go.
cmorenc
@Richard Mayhew:
Objectively, the number of people realistically impacted or threatened by psychopathic homicidal madmen in the U.S. is actually very small in absolute numbers, much less than the number lethally affected by more pedestrian risks (e.g. traffic accidents) – but nonetheless, scary movies about homicidal psychopaths sell a Hell of a lot of tickets – people are viscerally afraid of boogeymen under the bed or lurking in the nearby woods out of all proportion to their actual incidence.
Cool objective analysis of relative risks is of less help than we wish it was in addressing public concerns about terrorism and ISIS.
Major Major Major Major
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I read (could be wrong) that the only ‘real’ weapon was the pistol. By far most of the damage was by truck.
Cat48
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Egypt is not transparent bc it hurts tourist trade. We will probably never know.
The Dangerman
@Cermet:
The MIC had to come up with an enemy that would never collapse/implode like the Soviet bloc; it’s genius, actually. Evil genius, mind you, but genius nonetheless….
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Major Major Major Major: ah, I was just looking at the NYT run down of what we know and what we don’t, and there was no mention of the cache of weapons in the back of the truck. That was being discussed last night as a valuable clue that would all but certainly lead to a trail.
Just looked at the Washington Post, no mention of other weapons, and no mention of a correction by authorities.
Elmo
Richard, I disagree. It is a civilization-level threat, because there is a sufficiently large faction in this civilization that will make it one.
To my mind, a significant part of what we call our civilization is our commitment to minority rights and religious pluralism. If those go away – if the Newt Gingrich Inquisition gets underway and we start detaining and deporting American Muslims and “changing the rules” of our society in order to “win the war” – then our civilization has been deeply, even mortally, wounded. That will no longer be a civilization worth defending.
There should have been a nationwide howl of outrage at the idea of an American Inquisition. Newt and Trump both should be shunned, ostracized, and held up as objects of scorn and disgust. Instead there is polite questioning, mild inquiries about the Constitution, and immediate pivot to poll numbers. At least 40% of Americans have no problem at all with this madness, and cheer at the idea of a religious inquisition with stripping of citizenship for those who fail.
That’s a very serious threat to our civilization, I think.
Bobby Thomson
It is a threat because people are reliably stupid.
ETA also, too, what Elmo just said.
MomSense
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I thought it was reported that the weapons in the back were duds/fakes.
JMG
As long as I’ve been alive, which is getting to be a long time, polls have shown a majority of Americans don’t believe in the Bill of Rights when they’re not told that’s what they are. This is true in times of peace and prosperity as well as after big terror attacks. Democracy and constitutional freedom require hard work and thought, which people naturally oppose.
cokane
A reminder that France (and all of the wealthy Euro nations) have about 1/3 to 1/4 of our homicide rate. If US citizens killed as often as French that’d be at least 8,000 fewer deaths in the US every year.
Major Major Major Major
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The Guardian said last night that the other stuff was fake.
berliner2
French domestic terrorism is first and foremost a French domestic problem.
Feathers
As someone who grew up inside the Beltway during the Cold War, the post 9/11 fear squawking has always just astounded me. We could hear air raid siren tests during school, but the lesson just went on. When the news goes on about what would happen if a terrorist attacked the mall!!!!, I remember hearing about how the Federal Highway Administration had plans drawn up of how to reroute traffic if entire cities were destroyed, with contingencies for various configurations of multiple cities no longer existing.
They don’t do civil defense in schools anymore, but they should. They taught about what to do in fire, flood, tornado, and earthquake – basically so the nuclear war stuff wouldn’t freak the kids out so much. If they are going to do shooter drills, they need to add the other stuff back in – global warming is on the way. Folks argue that nobody remembers that stuff, but the point of it is to teach that there is a right way to do things in these situations, so that you are primed to listen to the warnings and instructions should you need them later in life.
Josh Marshall had a great post last night – This Is Not The Natural State of Things, where he pointed to a tweet from John Scalzi noticing that the current rise in autocracy surely had something to do with WWII passing from living memory. Marshall notes “The belief that we can roll the dice with no consequences, that we can provoke and act out with no consequences is a dangerous illusion.” That is Brexit in a nutshell.
The current world of peace and safety the West lives in requires a great deal of trust. Destroying that trust in the name of political gain, holding onto “my money,” or keeping “my” children safe is a very dangerous game to play.
Major Major Major Major
@Elmo: the enlightenment was always a radical idea. A few centuries hasn’t changed human nature much.
schrodinger's cat
Remember the time when the French were cheese eating surrender monkeys and patriots ate Freedom fries?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@JMG: I always say that to a good chunk of Americans, “Freedom of Religion” means “Free to be any kind of Protestant you want, Catholics (recently) and Jews (mostly) tolerated”. I’d shudder to think what kind of support even that phrasing would get in the Heartland.
And increasingly, to “political correctness” hall monitors of the liberal media, “Freedom of Speech” means “You have to listen to me” (I’m looking at you, Jonathan Chait)
ETA: @MomSense: @Major Major Major Major: thanks, that’s kinda weird in its own way, and weird neither of the papers of record mentioned that.
Robert Paehlke
Nice is only an existential threat if it tilts politics enough to elect to fascist regimes in France or the USA. There has never been a nuclear armed fascist regime.
low-tech cyclist
@schrodinger’s cat:
Don’t’cha know? People in other countries aren’t real. They’re just an invention to be useful props for whatever right-wing meme is going around on a given day.
Amir Khalid
@Robert Paehlke:
There was a race to develop the first working nuclear arms between the Allies and Axis sides back in WWII. Had the Axis powers won that race, that war (and the decades thereafter) could have played out differently.
ETA: As it is, any fascist regime that comes to power now could, at least conceivably, develop nuclear arms.
Major Major Major Major
@Amir Khalid: Thanks, Oppenheimer!
There’s scads of alt history about your scenario, as I’m sure you know. Some of it’s even well-written!
JPL
@Robert Paehlke: LePen is following in Trump’s footsteps, in calling for war against Islam fundamentalists. We might be on our way.
eric
I would argue that it is an offshoot of American Exceptionalism — Temporal Exceptionalism. In other words, these times — our (or my) times are the most essential in human history and unlike anything that has come before. As a result, people can ignore the old rules because today (a high-tech today) is nothing like the past. So, it is not simply people forgetting or not knowing the past, it is people discounting the past as fundamentally irrelevant.
patrick II
A republican governor who doesn’t allow expanded medicaid causes more deaths each year than Nice. Nationwide, 5 million who should be insured who aren’t, and that results in approximately 5,000 deaths per year. Lack of insurance doesn’t televise as well, but kills more Americans.
Thanks Judge Roberts.
Chip Daniels
We also like to position ourselves as the center of the universe.
Yet in actuality, America and Europe are at the periphery of the war raging within the Muslim world; there is far more bloodshed and terror in Syria, Iraq and other Middle Eastern nations that we experience.
The reason we get targeted is the fervent hope that the Western powers can be manipulated into being a proxy warrior for or against the various factions.
Iowa Old Lady
@Elmo: This. As I believe Obama has said, we need our constitutional protections the most when it’s hardest to obey them because people are frightened.
The other day I recommended David Taylor’s novel, Night Life. It’s set during the McCarthy era and you see what fear of communism did when people used it to grab political power.
dmsilev
@schrodinger’s cat: Those were the days when we were supposed to respond to things like this by going shopping, right?
low-tech cyclist
@Feathers:
Just outside the Beltway in the early 1960s, we just did fire and air raid drills. So there wasn’t any sugarcoating of it.
But yeah, the whole notion of al Qaeda or ISIS or any other terrorist group as an ‘existential threat’ is laughable. The Cold War, with its threat of nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction, was an existential threat. Religious radicals with trucks and guns aren’t.
And there’s no way we can fortify ourselves enough to defend against a fraction of the potential attacks on the level of an Orlando or a Nice. We can try, of course, but it would make a lot more sense to try to create the sort of world where a lot fewer people had enough to be angry about that they’d try something like this.
Chris Volner
Calling these losers terrorists gives them way too much credit. How about we just start calling them pond scum, filth, or whatever the Arabic word is for “LOSER”. Or perhaps just apostate.
Face
Cant wait to see the new security “features” at this year’s Macy’s parade.
If there’s one thing Americans do well, it’s wildly overreact.
Elmo
@Iowa Old Lady: I missed the rec at the time – thanks for repeating it!
celticdragonchick
I disagree. This is the third major attack in France in what…a year? Concert venues, supermarket stores, a newspaper, now a bunch of families on the Promenade enjoying fireworks.
A country will take this sort of thing only so much before changes get made (and that is exactly what ISIL wants). Mass casualty events like this have a far stronger impact on social structures than criminal events which kill 1 or 2 people.
Example: AQ in Iraq blowing up the Shiite shrine which effectively started the Iraqi civil war.
Example: Hamas and Hezbollah blowing up pizza restaurants, buses, and murdering children in their homes in Israel until the voters respond by electing far right hardline asshole Bibi.
Others online have made the point that ISIL is in deep trouble on their various war fronts, so attacks like this are a way to divert attention and pressure. These attacks will keep strengthening the hands of far right nationalists, though, just like in Israel. If we see this on a large scale in Europe (going hardline nationalist) then ISIL will, in effect, have managed to turn the East Vs West civilization war back on again.
nominus
Speaking of declining civilization, my idiot Senators decided to dial up the hypocrisy:
cruz.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=2736
So the questions begin:
If their freedom-loving “patriots” need gunz to fight off the oppressive government, doesn’t this effectively doom them in new ways? Assuming, of course, that they weren’t already doomed in the legal sense….Or does this law only apply to less-white people who kill a law enforcement officer?
Weren’t these the same assholes who said that adding new laws wouldn’t solve criminal acts when it comes to guns, but somehow this is going to make a difference?
Weren’t these the same assholes who said that you didn’t need hate crime laws because murder is murder and it’s already illegal?
scav
Self-aggrandizing existential dramatics, it does seem to be the chosen hobby by people who otherwise seem to be doing rather well and have nothing better to do (especially when it helps them achieve other objectives, ranging from selling newspapers, filling air-time, polishing prejudices or winning political office).
burnspbesq
Hoisted from the comments to the RBG thread, because there are still far too many people who aren’t taking the Trump threat seriously enough.
schrodinger's cat
Let’s also not forget that Western civilization was responsible for the two world wars and nuclear brinkmanship. Also the meddling in the affairs of oil rich Middle East since the dawn of the last century.
eric
@celticdragonchick: i think the point is different: ISIL is not an existential threat to us; we are the existential threat to us, and ISIL is the catalyst. The Soviets were themselves an existential threat, as were we.
schrodinger's cat
@burnspbesq: Word. Trump as President will be a global disaster.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodinger’s cat: to be fair, that was actually an Improvement compared to what everybody was up to in the 10th-19th centuries.
MattF
Trump tweets that Pence really is his VP pick. Really.
Major Major Major Major
@MattF: I wonder how Pence feels about being announced by tweet.
schrodinger's cat
@Major Major Major Major: The nuclear brinkmanship was an improvement over the hot wars? Yes I agree.
vheidi
@patrick II: Deserves to shouted from the rooftops (not to mention guns…) Well said.
schrodinger's cat
@MattF: Two dumb blondes jokes, write themselves.
Peale
@Major Major Major Major: So he was driving around with a truck full of fake weapons? Or was the report false? Fake weapons would be novel. False reports, not so much.
MomSense
@burnspbesq:
We are way past the normal propriety when it comes to what Supreme Court Justices or any person of conscience should say. It is every decent person’s place to say something. This isn’t populism or politics as usual. I’m sorry RBG apologized but it seemed like the media were going to make her the story instead of the evil, things wannabe dictator der Trump is saying. Way to miss the story, media.
Who knew that when fascism came to America it would be covered in spray tan, topped with faux fur, and observed uncritically by the news media.
Major Major Major Major
@Peale: The former, yeah. Also read that it wasn’t “full” so much as “he had a fake rifle and a dud/fake grenade.”
pseudonymous in nc
@MattF: Sad!
Elizabelle
@MomSense: truly. The media are doing themselves in as ably as Trump is.
MattF
@MattF: Note that Trump’s tweet comes just one hour before the deadline for Pence to withdraw from the Indiana Senate race.
Elizabelle
@MomSense: Ps. I adore your last paragraph.
Belongs as a tag line.
Amir Khalid
I don’t know if anyone here has mentioned it yet, but the Donald has officially tweeted that Mike Pence is his running mate.
ETA:
@MattF:
Dang. You beat me to it.
Major Major Major Major
@MattF: I read here(!) that Pence was refusing to do it if he wasn’t announced before the deadline, sooooo.
liberal
@MomSense:
Agreed. We’re way, way past that point.
Patricia Kayden
@celticdragonchick: I agree. Sadly, this may push more French people into the National Front which may lead to more militarization among some Muslims. I don’t expect the French to become immune to these horrible attacks and it wouldn’t surprise me if some overreact.
pseudonymous in nc
@celticdragonchick:
That’s assuming a kind of agency and logistical capacity I don’t think is present, or at least isn’t obvious. If we’re in the domain of “hashtag terrorism”, where self-radicalised losers seek retroactive validation and notoriety by being bound to the cause, saying “ISIL did this” feels like a category error.
Mnemosyne
@Feathers:
This somehow made me think of anti-vaxxers and their insistence that they should be allowed to “protect” their own children even if it means endangering other people’s children. IOW, it’s a pervasive problem right now, I think.
pseudonymous in nc
@MattF: I wouldn’t be surprised if Tr*mp needed to be informed of this even though it was common knowledge. Or maybe he’s just so full of himself that he wanted to make a show of cancelling but also hog the spotlight. Assume both.
MattF
@MattF: Clinton campaign puts out its first anti-Trump/Pence ad.
Bill E Pilgrim
It’s Trumppence!
Forget Hiddleswift, Trumppence is all the rage now.
If that it’s the most fittingly Dickensian name for these two Scrooges, then I don’t know what would be.
dmsilev
@MattF: So much for delaying the announcement out of respect, or whatever, for the victims of last night’s attack. Trump can’t even keep his nonsense straight for 12 hours at a time.
Iowa Old Lady
@Elmo: It was an Edgar Award finalist last year, which is how I found it. It gives you a picture of the 50s that does not show up on Leave It to Beaver.
Major Major Major Major
@pseudonymous in nc:
On Facebook, I likened it to blaming the IRA for that guy shooting up the Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs. It didn’t go over well.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Bill E Pilgrim: Sigh. If that isn’t the most…
Went straight to “You do not have the right to edit this comment” the moment I posted it. Shakes fist…
schrodinger's cat
@MattF: True and effective. I am sure Snooze Hour Giggle Sisters will tell us what a serious conservative Pence is tonight.
Mnemosyne
@Iowa Old Lady:
People don’t realize how severe the censorship was on TV in the 1950s. The whole story about how “I Love Lucy” was forbidden from using the word “pregnant” or “pregnancy”? They were only allowed to address it at all because Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were enormously powerful in the TV industry. Other shows would have just gotten a flat “no.” And they were TV stars who were legally married to each other both on and off screen!
schrodinger's cat
@Major Major Major Major: Really? Trench warfare and the entire ugliness WWII was an improvement? Is that your Slate pitch or snark?
Scotian
@Feathers:
Excellent comment, in what is a thread started by an excellent OP in my opinion. Like Feathers I grew up in the Cold War in a known first strike target (still live there to this day, love my home) and the way the angst, sturm, and drang goes with these terrorist attacks as civilization level threats really irritates me. The problem is they can be, but only if those within the civilizations hit allow them to be by reacting in fear, which is generally the point of such attacks to begin with. Responsible politicians in civilizations will point this out and argue that the thing we most do not want to do is what our enemies want us to do, something which should be basic obvious common sense. Alas, instead too often we get the nationalists and the fear mongers wanting to use such as paths to power regardless of the damage they do in the process, or worse, knowing the damage they will do and seeing that damage as a good thing. It is there, as others have already noted the real threat to civilizations come from in these attacks. This is what we as civilizations need to be on guard against and denounce whenever it crops up, sure you deplore the act of violence, but you also deplore those that would use it to create fear and enact agendas they could otherwise not do.
This I see as one of the enduring legacies of the way the Bush43 Administration and the GOP used the 9/11/01 event. Prior to that whenever such national catastrophe hit, where such fear was generated the American leadership of the day united and dealt with the fear and channeled it into healthy reactions, they did not further and further whip up the fear for narrow partisan political purposes. This time it happened, and the imprint it left in American society I fear is a part of what has allowed someone like Trump to arise to this level of politics, AND it is no coincidence that it is in the same party that drove and rode that post 9/11/01 fear for said political partisan uses. How this gets resolved, that I wish I could also describe, but that, that I fear is going to be a long hard slog, and the ripples created in the wake of what happens in the meantime do not leave me feeling comfortable at all. There are some up here in Canada who think I’m nuts for believing Trump even has a low order possibility of winning, that it could never happen. Events like Nice and others, they help that path become a potential reality, especially if they start happening more and more on American soil.
Trump is a civilization level threat as President. His contempt for your Constitution and separation of powers is clear in what he claims he would do, and the damage inflicted by such a President at war with his own system of government in a society as powerful and globally dominant as yours would be profound, and ripple far beyond your own borders. So on one level I agree with Richard in his opening post, but on others I agree with the commentators in this thread who make this point.
I never thought I’d miss the Cold War, but one of the things that reality did was force politicians to be more restrained and realistic in their rhetoric and actions because the consequences were so serious and dangerous. This is part of why Trump not only needs to be defeat in November, but crushed. A statement needs being sent not just to the domestic elements involved, but to the global extremists as well that America and Americans will not be so easily manipulated into such stupidity by their actions, that instead all those actions will cause is increased determination to cherish the values and freedoms America has classically stood for and fought for.
America for all its failing and faults really is one of the great civilizations and societies for such in human history, too often that gets lost, forgotten, or turned into propaganda either for those that want ot fault America for all things that it gets wrong and for being the global powerhouse it has become in the post WWII world, and/or for those that want to turn a blind eye to those limitations and failings and simply proclaim American exceptionalism is in all things. It is. Yet it is still a remarkable social contract and society, and to pretend that isn’t true too is also wrong. I believe in the America that I see reflected in those like Hillary Clinton as one of the greater gifts humans have managed to create for each other, warts and all, and I would hate to see that lost because of the hate and fear being generated and played/preyed upon by those like Trump and far too many on the far right and GOP in the US.
Nice is a tragedy, a horror, and something to be fought against. It is not though anywhere near a civilization level threat unless people make it such in the pursuit of their own narrow political/social/economic agendas. Terrorism is a tool of the weak against the strong because they have little more/better to use, so it is incumbent on the strong to see this, understand this, and not let themselves be so played and manipulated. Terrorism by definition is used on soft targets and civilians to create fear to make societies change in ways they would otherwise not, this is not new or news, and it needs to be dealt with by not doing what those using terror want. Fought against, yes, but fought against rationally, coldly, and clearly, that is the way to go.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodinger’s cat: Neither! On balance, the 20th century was actually quite nice, when you compare it to most of the other centuries.
Technocrat
@Major Major Major Major:
I’d say it was more like some random hacker making an attack in the name of Anonymous. You could argue that he’d be justified in making the claim, as long as the aims of the attack map to the general aims of Anonymous.
In a similar vein, if you blow up a thing that ISIL would blow up, using a method they would use, what differentiates you from a “paid” member?
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Since Egypt got the recorders and no one else did an investigation, you’ll never hear about this again.
My dad’s a pilot and former NTSB investigator. EgyptAir 990, back in 1990, was deliberately crashed by the first officer. The evidence is overwhelming and incontrivertible. Unless you’re Egypt’s air authority. They still blame Boeing for the crash, saying it was not possible that their pilot did this, and that a mechanical failure must be to blame.
schrodinger's cat
@Major Major Major Major: True regarding disease and epidemics but not true with respect to war.
Major Major Major Major
@Technocrat: Ah, but the key distinction is that ISIS actually exists and isn’t a bunch of 12-year-olds in their mom’s basement.
@schrodinger’s cat: I think it was Pinker who ran an analysis and found that, per capita, even the wars weren’t that bad.
Once you get more granular though, especially on a per capita basis for certain ethnicities, it looks more dire.
dedc79
@dmsilev: His campaign is such a shit show. He can’t even stop leaks within his own immediate family.
Major Major Major Major
Update from the prosecutor, via the Guardian liveblog:
trollhattan
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
IIUC they’ve recovered the FDR data, which indicate heat and smoke in the cockpit and a forward compartment, but not the CVR data yet. It’s not going away because 1. the fire source needs to be identified and 2. Airbus needs to know if it was an equipment failure and if so, does it pose a risk to other planes.
An incendiary device, a lithium battery, a short circuit? We don’t know anything about the cause.
dedc79
I find myself somewhere between your post and celticdragon’s comment. Your post is devoid of emotion. Perhaps that’s the way it should be, perhaps you’re right about what the rational response would be (although plane crashes and ebola are strange examples to use because we freak out about both of those things, and, at least with plane crashes, spend a shit ton of time and money trying to figure out what went wrong and prevent it from happening again). But I don’t think it’s realistic or even fair to expect the french people to react unemotionally to this series of attacks. Even if the casualties pale in comparison to other non-terrorism causes, the message here is clear – we can hit you anywhere at any time – when you’re at a cafe, a concert, out for a stroll on the promenade.
schrodinger's cat
@Mnemosyne: ::Waves: Thanks for your email. I was traveling this week and haven’t had a chance to respond to you, yet.
Feebog
I’m puzzled about the security precautions for this event. I have worked on a large street fair for several years, doing the layout and acting as the contact point with the Fire and Police Department. We have always blocked off the main entrances to the event, which is held over four blocks on a city street. Blocked off usually means two vehicles parked across the street to keep unwanted vehicles out of the venue. Of course enough space has to remain for an emergency vehicle to get through. I didn’t see any barriers what so ever in the video of the truck as it first rolled and then accelerated down the street and into the crowd in the street and on the sidewalk. Perhaps there were barriers, but they certainly did not stop or even slow down the truck
daverave
” Not being stupid and not being hysterical while taking reasonable precautions defeats the intended effect of an attack.”
I keep seeing the adults in the room (USA) saying how we have to be “smart” in dealing with ISIS and other terrorist orgs (Clinton said the exact same thing last night about Nice.) However the Amurikan public at large is sick and tired of being told to be smart, they don’t trust smart and for the most part they are not real smart themselves so their natural reaction is the desire to turn the whole Middle East (ex-Israel) into radioactive glass. That will show those Mooslims! This is how fascists like Trump gain traction.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@trollhattan: The “smoke and fire” indicators were sent over ACARS: No data has (or will be) released from whatever is on the recorders. Egypt claimed that both recorders were too badly damaged, sent them to France for repair, France fixed them and sent them back. Again, you will never hear a word about what is actually on those recorders. Egypt is terrified of losing more tourist traffic than they already have.
Major Major Major Major
@daverave:
What is? Saying not to be an idiot?
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
The sad thing is that terrorists seem to understand all too well what kind of people American conservatives are. I’ve never understood how a major political party could con so many people into thinking it’s “tough” and “fearless,” when it’s toughness and fearlessness seems to consist of screaming, “Are you scared yet? Why aren’t you scared yet? What’s wrong with you? We’re all gonna die! Why the fuck aren’t you scared shitless? Do you want the terrorists to win?“
FlipYrWhig
@Feebog: I thought I had heard that the truck had already run some earlier barricades to get to the street where the carnage then occurred.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodinger’s cat: Some years ago Matt White produced a great webpage cataloguing all the major wars and atrocities of the 20th century. The first half was way worse than the second, with the two-peaked spasm of the world wars–it’s interesting how, from the 10,000 foot view, you can see even all the little global superpower proxy wars of the Cold War era as just the gradual tailing off of the slaughter that was World War II. And the Eighties and Nineties look remarkably tranquil–all the Middle East/Central Asian and African wars of the era barely register on this scale.
What I don’t know is what this graph would look like continued into the 21st century. It feels like violence ticked up again, but given that you can barely see the Congo Civil War on this chart, I’m not sure that’s actually true.
Major Major Major Major
@Matt McIrvin: One of the main drivers of the relative peace of the late 20th century was Asia calming down, especially with China pivoting towards global capitalism. I’ll also note that that graph doesn’t include all the ideologically-inspired starvation, fruit-rotting-in-the-sun, starving-at-the-doors-of-the-granary style stuff, which is essentially political violence.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Matt McIrvin: I think maybe it seems worse than it is because it’s happening now. I’d guess that anything seems worse when you know it’s happening while you’re watching.
Feathers
@Mnemosyne: Don’t forget the production code for movies, too!
Much has been made of the artistic problems caused by US movie/TV censorship of the 30s-60s, but the danger they created for today hasn’t been dealt with. That our fictive visual past is a wonderland where women were happy housewives and mothers, children minded their parents, blacks quietly knew their place, and lawmen were always good (or corrupt and quickly disposed of by the good guys) surely has much to do with the fantasy of a “great” America that lies somewhere behind us.
One of the things about film noir that I love is that it, more than other genres, does manage to peel back some of the facade. There are so many rotten and corrupt cops that even though they get punished at the end, it isn’t all that reassuring.
A film I highly recommend is the uncut version of The Phenix City Story. Phenix City, Alabama was a town just across the Mississippi from Fort Benning and under the complete control of the local crime syndicate. The townspeople unite to take back control of their town, which ended up requiring martial law, with governor calling in the National Guard to protect the people from the gangsters (and the police force). The story was a nationwide sensation and when the movie was made, the reformers told the MPAA that they wanted their story told honestly, so the production code was loosened. To add to the documentary feel, the film is introduced by footage of the actual people portrayed in the film, talking to a reporter who covered the story. I’d recommend watching the movie first and then the interviews, because the interviews assume that you know the basics of the story. However – STRONG content warnings – rape, beatings, child murder, racial epithets – they are all there. This film was shown to the Freedom Riders before they travelled South to let them know what they were up against. It should be more widely seen seen today.
Matt McIrvin
@Major Major Major Major: Actually it does include some of that. The famines under Mao are in there, I think.
Major Major Major Major
@Matt McIrvin: That’s what I get for reading on my phone.
scav
@dedc79: There’s a wide range of possabilities between lacking emotion and allowing it to govern your response without fetters. The emotional response to airplane crashes or ebola might be to swear to never fly again or close all borders to anyone from the entire continent of Africa, not to undertake long-term methodical investigations of what happened and how to prevent it. It’s not a one reaction or the other choice.
But then, I’m odd, I don’t really believe in whatever these absolute bubbles of safety some people seem to believe in. Holiday crowds in first world nations can still get hit by lightning, tornados or crazy people with trucks. Even “good” people that eat their carrots get cancer. High income neighborhoods are the locale for the occasional stupid family-dispute shootings (“We didn’t think those kinds of things would happen here.)
Major Major Major Major
@scav: I had carrots with dinner last night, but I’m a bad person, so I think I’m in the clear for cancer.
Cat48
@FlipYrWhig:
France needs to invest in those huge concrete barricades the US puts out around DC & NYC when they have large events. If you have the right equipment, they can be moved easily after the crowd is gone.
burnspbesq
@Feathers:
Point taken, but to nitpick, I had forgotten that the Mississippi formed the border between Georgia and Alabama.
scav
@Major Major Major Major: Good for you. I’m a bad person entirely without carrot intake for a few days, so clearly must be destined to flourish like the green bay tree or whatever that thing was.
FlyingToaster
@Feebog: They were assuming normal accidents, so they had sawhorses, orange barrels, and parade fences to set off a pedestrian area for the fireworks.
Next Bastille Day, they’ll have a zipper truck and 42″ Jersey barriers.
1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet)
@Feathers: I hate to argue with a post about a worthwhile film and an important part of the history of the 20th century southern US, but the river in question is the Chattahoochee, which runs along the Alabama-Georgia border, The Mississippi is farther west, by the width of two states.
I think you’re spot-on about how the limitations of old movies and television has a bad effect of what many people know about how the world once worked, and how it can work now, which is the really important part of your post.
Major Major Major Major
@FlyingToaster: Zipper trucks are so cool.
pseudonymous in nc
I have friends who are in Nice right now and were on the streets last night. For them, feeling the crowd’s panic in the aftermath was scarier than the actual attack — being in a group of people that didn’t know what was happening and didn’t know what to do, all hind-brain and flight instinct.
lgerard
@Feathers:
Not to mention that they also assassinated the Democratic nominee ( and certain electoral winner) for Attorney General because he promised to crack down on them
gvg
@The Dangerman: what weapons build up? Fighting this kind of enemy does not require much special in weapons. I don’t see huge research projects and development programs like the cold war needed. More troops maybe, more guns and a resupply of helicopters but not fancy airplanes or targeting systems or missles. this is not the kind of even the actual MIC complex likes IMO.
What it produces is a percent of voters that are hysterical and call themselves tough while actually being unaware babies. They are cowards in public and few people seem to point it out. But they can be manipulated into voting for certain candidates so some politicians are encouraging it. Oh, and IMO Cheney and other visible whiners are encouraging attacks on us by showing such weakness. I really can’t stand these chicken littles.
Stan
@Feathers: “Phenix City, Alabama was a town just across the Mississippi from Fort Benning”
Across the Chattahoochie. Either that or Alabama moved since I was last there ;)
Technocrat
@gvg:
Probably not actual weapons. But I’d guess you could sink many millions into a surveillance/big data/machine learning/prediction solution. I’d be surprised if people aren’t pitching such solutions as we speak.
daverave
@Major Major Major Major:
No, by having someone that reinforces their perception that we need to do stupid/reactive things and who reinforcess their fears.
RaflW
Indeed, as Germanwings 9525 showed us, even an intentionally piloted death-flight didn’t elicit the reactions that we’re getting from Pence, et al.
Aziz Poonawalla
I’m a bit of a lurker here but had to mention that this tweet you shared inspired me to write my own thoughts, as a Muslim, about the Newt’s Plan. Couldnt help but update it with some schadenfreude at the end, either.
beliefnet.com/columnists/cityofbrass/2016/07/gingrich-muslim-go.html
raven
@Stan: No “i” .
Miss Bianca
@Aziz Poonawalla: thanks for posting!
J R in WV
CCTY surveillance with facial recognition, all stored in on-line databases with high-speed search facilities, available to all law enforcement agencies anywhere, all the time. Expensive, and scary.
There’s research on easy ways to spoof facial recognition, changing the look of facial characteristics you can’t change, but which you can mask. Distance between your eyes, from your nose to your upper lip, more subtle things like angle of cheek bones, etc. Before long dark glasses will be regulated because they make it hard to determine distance between your eyes.
I will tell you “I told you so” and “you saw it here first” when the time comes, if we are allowed to communicate by then. After all, the intertubes allow them to conspire their very scary threatening acts together.
Dee Loralei
@Aziz Poonawalla: I tried to reply to your post at belief net, but can’t remember my passwords. Thank you, I loved what you wrote. Hope it gets front paged here!
Ian
@Robert Paehlke:
See Russia: Vladimir Putin.
Ian
@nominus:
Are you saying Ted Cruz is pulling an infamous “Ted Cruz”?