14 July 2016: +80 dead in truck attack in southern France

[tomahawk6]

French security is concerned about the possibility of a civil war caused by right wing elements.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/18/nice-attack-has-a-bisexual-muslim-hustler-put-france-on-the-path-to-civil-war.html#/articles/2016/07/18/nice-attack-has-a-bisexual-muslim-hustler-put-france-on-the-path-to-civil-war.html

 

[The Bread Guy]

The claims that such attacks are ISIL inspired by ISIL days after such an event, could just be them claiming responsibility after the fact for a unrelated random event, to inflate their appearance on the world stage.

Good point, with a good example.

 

[The Bread Guy]

French security is concerned about the possibility of a civil war caused by right wing elements.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/18/nice-attack-has-a-bisexual-muslim-hustler-put-france-on-the-path-to-civil-war.html#/articles/2016/07/18/nice-attack-has-a-bisexual-muslim-hustler-put-france-on-the-path-to-civil-war.html

Algeria 2.0?

 

[brihard]

Just got back from visiting the site of the attack and the memorial that has sprung up... Shitty and sobering to be there in person.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Just got back from visiting the site of the attack and the memorial that has sprung up... Shitty and sobering to be there in person.

Thank you for being there.

 

[jollyjacktar]

Just got back from visiting the site of the attack and the memorial that has sprung up... Shitty and sobering to be there in person.

Yes, thank you for making the effort.  I can only imagine the emotions one must feel seeing the site.  I would be in sensory overload.

Hope you left something nasty on "his" hate cairn (if it still exists). 

 

[a_majoor]

French security is concerned about the possibility of a civil war caused by right wing Nativist elements.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/18/nice-attack-has-a-bisexual-muslim-hustler-put-france-on-the-path-to-civil-war.html#/articles/2016/07/18/nice-attack-has-a-bisexual-muslim-hustler-put-france-on-the-path-to-civil-war.html

That tired old trope again. Looking at the political platforms of these groups reveals they are socialists (i.e. left wing), with a distinctly ethnic/nationalist bias as to "who" receives the benefits of the state.

Put the two together and you have....

 

[a_majoor]

Heroic attempts to stop the massacre. Some people are able to run to the sound of the guns when needed:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3696234/I-tried-open-door-pulled-gun-Hero-motorcyclist-reveals-moment-jumped-bike-stop-ISIS-killer-truck.html

'I tried to open the door.. he pulled out a gun': Hero motorcyclist reveals moment he jumped off his bike to stop ISIS killer truck
Frenchman Alexander Migues told of moment he leapt from his motorbike
He clung on to ISIS killer Mohamed Bouhlel's 19-tonne death lorry in Nice
But as he tried to get into the cab, the truck terrorist pulled his gun on him
Bastille Day hero credited with slowing terror truck down and saving lives
By FLORA DRURY IN NICE FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 21:14 GMT, 18 July 2016 | UPDATED: 14:32 GMT, 19 July 2016

A hero motorcyclist has told of his frantic bid to stop ISIS truck terrorist Mohamed Bouhlel by trying to jump from his bike and onto the lorry as it ploughed at high speed into crowds in Nice.

In an act of astonishing bravery, Alexander Migues sped his bike alongside the 19-tonne truck as Bouhlel ran over 84 people watching fireworks on Bastille Day.

Speaking for the time, he revealed how he leapt onto the moving death machine and clung on as he tried to wrestle the driver's-side door open several times as the truck sped along the promenade.

Scroll down for video

'I saw the truck rise (over the median strip) and run over a lady, he told Nice Martin.
'He was on the sidewalk and then he returned to the road and he tried to run me over too,' he said.

'It was instinctive, I cannot even explain how I managed to go chasing a truck. When I saw that he was really determined, I tried something,' Migues said

Despite his bravery, Migues was forced to abandon his attempt when the terrorist pulled a gun on him.

The Frenchman has been credited with saving lives by slowing the truck enough to give another motorcyclist time to throw his scooter under the wheels of the lorry.

The dramatic attempt to stop Bouhlel made headlines around the world after the life-and-death struggle was captured on video.
'He arrived in a scooter and threw it under the wheels of the truck to stop. I let go of the door and when the scooter tapped the truck I heard the noise of bullets,' Migues said.

Migues desperately tried to stop Mohamed Bouhlel by trying to jump from his bike and onto the lorry as it ploughed along the road at high speed

Migues remains traumatised by the experience and says he didn't sleep for the first 36 hours after the attack and now has nightmares.
He said he wished he could have hung onto the truck longer and slowed it more so that victims would have had more time to flee its deadly path.

But he can take comfort that the time when the scooter went under the truck to when the police engaged in a firefight there were no more killed.

'For 36 hours I did not sleep, then it gets a bit better. But when I wake up I take my bike or I do drive roundtrips to clear my mind,' he said.

Teddy bears, toy elephants, plush rabbits and heartbreakingly a child's drawing of young children with angel wings have dominated the myriad candlelit memorials that have sprung up the length of the Promenade.

The city folk have been devastated that so many young children have been killed or severely injured in the attack and the toys are often placed carefully on the pavement by other young children who instinctively understand the solemnity of the moment.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3696234/I-tried-open-door-pulled-gun-Hero-motorcyclist-reveals-moment-jumped-bike-stop-ISIS-killer-truck.html#ixzz4ErvLW3KY
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[brihard]

Sharing my reflections on this, as I've previously written them elsewhere...





It's taken me some time to collect my thoughts about the attack in Nice. Today we visited the Promenade des Anglais where it happened, and stopped at the impromptu memorial that has arisen to pay our respects.

I really cannot think of a more idyllic and pleasant place than the waterfront of Nice on a beautiful day. I can see why so many visit, and why the Côte d'Azur is a playground for Europe and beyond. The attack itself occurred during France's national celebration; it would be like someone attacking the post-fireworks crowd on Canada Day. A bunch of normal people and families having fun together on what until then was probably a perfect evening. We were nearly here ourselves already to visit my partner's family; had she not chosen to spend Bastille Day in Paris, we likely would have been part of the Nice waterfront crowd. It reinforces on a personal level the sheer randomness and unpredictability of such violence.

It was jarring, the contradictions. Visiting today I was struck not exactly by how things were different, but by what seems to have become a new normal here. A hundred meters of waterfront boardwalk was covered with flowers and tributes, with hundreds of tourists like us stopping to pay respects before carrying on as they otherwise would have. Flags are at half mast, but, as they must, will rise again just as the city itself must. Sunbathers were spread out on the beach as normal, and tourists pay their Euros to go parasailing, but now under the watchful eye of a standing patrol of very serious looking French soldiers equipped and armed just as per service in war. But those soldiers have just become part of the background.

We're seeing that everywhere, heavily armed soldiers and police deployed as a deterrent in public places. The post-Paris state of emergency that was to have expired July 26th was extended. Military and police reservists have been called up en masse to bolster Opération Sentinelle. Of course, on the scale of a whole country, the ability of police and soldiers in any conceivable numbers to proactively protect anything but the most critical and symbolic targets is practically nil. If someone wants to attack a public but non-specific target, they will find a way past what is essentially a security blanket of thinly deployed forces.

France is extremely cosmopolitan. The diversity here exceeds anything I've seen in Canada. My concept of French culture has been shaped in the past by Québec, but the French are not nearly so insular and defensive about 'Frenchness' as the Québécois are. But it seems like the social fabric in the mainstream communities is stretched badly and fraying. It feels like tolerance is slipping, like a wedge is being driven between French society, and those communities that are seen as less than assimilated- it seems that merely being integrated into French society is increasingly no longer enough if you show any visible differences. Granted this is off my limited experience of a week on the ground and conversations with Cynthia's friends and family in the wake of the attacks, but it echoes what I've been hearing for some time now.

As Canadians I think we need to be much more attentive to what is happening in Europe. Make no mistake, it's coming our way. It's slower to cross the Atlantic, but the same crisis of radicalization will hit us if we allow it. Immigration is an immutable reality. We will continue to have people different from 'us' arriving in our country. Those already in Canada will raise families, kids will be born who are Canadian and nothing else. We must not allow ours to become a country with 'no-go' neighborhoods, where we have neglected to embrace those on our own soil as fellow Canadians, and where consequently enough feel alienated enough that the 'otherness' becomes self sustaining through generations. It has become a national security imperative NOT to be blindly suspicious, but to proactively engage communities that may be sliding to the fringe of our society. We will never be able to know or measure what we have prevented in doing so, but we will know when we don't.

Our police and intelligence services will always be trying their best to detect and proactively disrupt attacks. But each one so disrupted indicates a probable failure by our society to have averted the conditions that lead to radicalization in the first place.

I'm no blind optimist, certainly not a naive pacifist, and I don't espouse an unthinking 'kumbaya' approach to security. I do believe that 'terrorism' as a tactic is to a degree inevitable, BUT that no specific individual act is. It will happen because we cannot always get it right. But we've gotta get it as right as we can. That means being attentive to and reducing the conditions that allow for the confluence of desperate, pathetic and vulnerable individuals, and the emergence of groups who would exploit and radicalize them to commit violence. The attacks are planned by those who stand out, but generally perpetuated by those who are falling through the cracks. Let's try to detect and close those cracks, and as best we can make ours a society that it as hard as possible for one of our own to want to hurt.

 

[mariomike]

Sep 20, 2016

8 new arrests in France truck attack that killed 86 in Nice
http://www.680news.com/2016/09/20/8-new-arrests-in-france-truck-attack-that-killed-86-in-nice/
PARIS – French authorities have made eight new arrests in connection with the Bastille Day truck attack in Nice that left 86 people dead, the Paris prosecutor’s office said Tuesday.