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Post by questa on Jan 11, 2016 22:35:19 GMT
That's right, Mark and Mossie, Mustn't forget the illegitimi, they are out there, even as we speak...
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Post by Deleted on Jan 14, 2016 12:37:45 GMT
Last weekend on the anniversary of the January attacks, a commemorative oak tree was planted in a corner of the Place de la République. Doesn't look like much now. There is a plaque at the base of it. Originally, they were going to list the names of all of the January victims, but after what happened in November that plan flew out the window.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 8, 2016 10:58:39 GMT
The Casa Nostra Italian restaurant has reopened and is beginning to wish that it hadn't. Apparently, they are averaging about 6 customers every evening, down from 50-60 before the attacks. That's the price they have to pay for selling the video surveillance film of the attack for 50,000 euros.
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Post by chexbres on Feb 8, 2016 12:11:51 GMT
You've got to be kidding!!! Bad karma always bites you in the keister...
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Post by lagatta on Feb 12, 2016 19:44:45 GMT
I guess they'll only get tourists who are ignorant of the story, and a few members of the hardcore arstle contingent.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 13, 2016 16:32:56 GMT
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Post by lagatta on Feb 14, 2016 1:03:49 GMT
Yes, I watched that three times and could watch it again, but don't want to be obsessed by it. All my friends in Paris are still not themselves yet... thanks.
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Post by mossie on Feb 14, 2016 16:32:40 GMT
Very moving, and very sensible.
Never look back, always look forward with hope and trust.
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Post by questa on Feb 15, 2016 0:10:46 GMT
What Mossie just said ^ .
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Post by Deleted on Feb 15, 2016 19:48:28 GMT
For some reason, considerable ado was made about the "three month anniversary" of the Bataclan massacre over the weekend. It already seems like it was ages ago, except for the intense security in Paris which is just beginning to relax a bit. 'Eagles of Death Metal' are even giving a concert at the Olympia tomorrow because they want to finish the concert that was interrupted on 13 November. Survivors received free tickets in exchange for their ticket from three months ago. There was also a rather confusing distribution of other tickets to families of victims. I'm not sure that it was in good taste, but I will not formulate any criticism because the intention was not bad. But I am having a bit of trouble imagining who would want to relive a new version of a concert where their son/daughter/friend/etc. was killed.
Twelve victims are still in hospital, two in intensive care. If it takes more than 3 months to try to put a shooting victim back together, I don't even want to think of how many bullets went into their body, or where.
I read a long article about support groups created by survivors on Facebook. They feel a need to get together regularly to talk about what happened. At the same time, other survivors flee these groups because they find it completely unhealthy to keep talking about that night over and over again. In any case, most of them say they returned to look at the crime scenes the very next day or a day later, so when I made my first photo report, I probably took pictures of some of them.
Obviously, very many of them are still seeing psychologists regularly, with the main problem being a feeling of guilt for having survived, for watching others being killed and not doing anything, for not knowing what to do, for running away.
And I know very well why it was so important to have major commemorations just three months after the event. Everybody feels certain that something else will almost certainly happen, possibly something even worse than the events of 13 November with the 130 dead and more than 350 injured. The survivors needed to have this moment to themselves before the memory is swept away by a more terrible event.
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Post by lagatta on Feb 16, 2016 23:28:42 GMT
That is really a horrible thought. It is probably because of the escalation from Charlie. I don't get the same feeling from the people I know in Madrid, London or New York, just to mention some western cities (where I know people) that experienced such attacks. I have friends in Istanbul, and in Tunis, but it is a bit different in those "secular Muslim" States. They know that the fundies are out to get them, just as much as a friend of mine working in the Canadian equivalent of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Vancouver did in terms of some violent Christian fundies. Probably even more, as it would be unrelenting: once off the job, my Vancouver friend had little to fear.
You have expressed why my friends in Paris are so glum; not just a horrible event, but such a foreboding.
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Post by lagatta on Feb 28, 2016 16:29:10 GMT
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Post by chexbres on Feb 28, 2016 17:26:09 GMT
I walked my dog past Bataclan today, for the first time since the attack. There are still barricades right in front of the doors, because many people seemed intent on running across the street to take photos of what they thought they might find inside. I thought this was grisly and just awful, but realized that many people just don't think about what they are doing.
There's still a small, but very moving, pile of tributes attached to the fence on the median strip across from Bataclan, which was obviously well-tended by people who missed their friends and family. Absolutely nobody was taking pictures of that.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 28, 2016 17:34:29 GMT
For people who are wondering, the Bataclan is supposed to reopen at the end of this year after extensive renovation. I imagine that they will be changing certain configurations as much as possible so that people will not be reminded of the scene of the crime. I also expect emergency exits to be much more prominent, even though the existing ones worked just fine for people who could get to them. After all, there were more than 1500 people in there. (And we never forget those discotheque fires and such where everybody dies because the emergency exists were "chained shut.") But I'm sure that in the future, people at the Bataclan will want to spot where the emergency exits are immediately. They are already doing so automatically in other theatres, obviously.
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Post by chexbres on Feb 28, 2016 20:49:42 GMT
I know a couple of people who never sit with their backs to the door of anyplace they set foot in.
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Post by lagatta on Feb 29, 2016 0:32:59 GMT
I was in the métro here and the monitor that shows news clips, weather delayed trains etc had a most unfortunate add for a disaster film called "Assaut sur Londres" in Québec, and, I checked, "London has fallen" in English. You know, the underlying fear of an attack on a great city when there is a summit event, and huge loss of life and heritage buildings.
Strangely, in France and francophone Europe it is titled "La Chute de Londres". I see no reason for a different name here.
I am NOT going to see that. Hope they don't show it in planes! Have people already forgotten the real assault on London a little over 10 years ago?
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Post by patricklondon on Feb 29, 2016 18:07:28 GMT
Yes, we've been getting the same adverts on our TV. It looks prototypically shlocky, but we survived similar apocalyptic scenes in the TV series Spooks (MI5) and in at least one James Bond film where all sorts of action went around where I live. Interesting point about the survivor support groups, kerouac. There were of course similar groups in London after the 2005 tube bombings - in those days, I seem to remember blogging was a major part of it, and at least one person got very publicly active in work on reconciliation and anti-Islamophobia. My blog | My photos | My video clips"too literate to be spam"
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Post by Deleted on Mar 1, 2016 7:17:38 GMT
Work is still continuing at the Petit Cambodge, but what I saw inside did not look like restaurant equipment. Is is coming back or not? Meanwhile, the places that have reopened like the Petit Carillon right across from it, or A la Bonne Bière on the corner of the canal have now removed the floral and candle tributes and are returning to 'normal' life, assuming that normal life still exists.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 1, 2016 7:22:28 GMT
The 'tribute' wall on rue Alibert (mentioned by Lagatta in post 613) is a little too jumbled for my taste, but its enthusiasm is to be commended.
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Post by lagatta on Mar 1, 2016 8:29:39 GMT
Yes, I didn't think it was particularly attractive either - but normally these things sort themselves out. At least there are no bloody padlocks.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 17, 2016 7:08:50 GMT
Le Petit Cambodge reopened this week. It is very high tech and modern inside, but the windows reflect to much that I will have to go back at night to get a proper picture. When I saw the fencing around the statue at République, I thought they might have decided that the time has come to remove the stuff and clean it up. But then I realised that the barriers were almost certainly just set up because there were several big demonstrations last week on Place de la République and they certainly did not want things knocked over... or thrown at the police. The municipal café on the place also reopened this week. It had been closed due to a fire in February 2015. It was supposed to reopen in December, so they were a bit behind schedule, but it is nice to see that it is back. The former name of Café Monde et Médias has been changed to the motto of the city of Paris which has been repopularised since the terrorist attacks: Café Fluctuat Nec Mergitur.
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Post by questa on Mar 17, 2016 10:22:03 GMT
I must admit to a little surprise that, even as we have been swooning over Istanbul's beauty, no one has made mention of the terrorist attack on Turkey's capitol, Ankara.
38 killed, 125 badly wounded...not the numbers or organisation of the Paris attack, but worth a thought for the people affected.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 17, 2016 16:05:23 GMT
There's always that terrible problem of "tragedy divided by distance." One death in your own country is worth 10 in the next country or 100 deaths a continent away, with only a few exceptions, such as plane crashes or, even worse, planes crashing into skyscrapers -- or when the vision is heartbreakingly captured such as dead Aylan on the beach or Omaira, the little girl who died in the mud over a three day period while the television cameras of the world recorded her goodbyes to her family.
Every now and then something stays with us forever while thousands of people die tragically and anonymously every day all around the world.
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Post by whatagain on Mar 17, 2016 19:40:32 GMT
It was all over the news in Belgium. Did you hear that one terrorist was killed in Belgium (one was caught and 2 escaped) when police went to arrest them in Forest (part of Bruxelles) ?
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Post by cynthia on Mar 18, 2016 1:46:24 GMT
Yes, Whatagain, it was covered in some detail on our public radio, but not much on the commercial television, as they are busy covering the nonsense of the Trump campaign. But I still don't know what to make of it. Was it someone who had ordered the events in Paris or participated in the events? It may be too early to hope for more details.
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Post by lagatta on Mar 18, 2016 17:15:48 GMT
Breaking news: Salah Abdeslam arrested in Molenbeek (Brussels). He had evidently been staying in a "safe house" in Forest, another Brussels commune. I spent a week in Forest a few years ago, chez des amis. It is fine; a "mixed" area, quite posh atop the hill, more "populaire" and multiethnic below, but not a slum by any means. Reports state that he was wounded. Hope the bastard DOESN'T die; he is far more useful alive. I'm looking at Brussels paper Le Soir. live.lesoir.be/Event/Fusillade_a_Forest There seems to be police intervention ongoing in both neighbourhoods. Now Le Soir says Abdeslam was wounded in a leg, which is rarely fatal nowadays.
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Post by lagatta on Mar 18, 2016 17:32:00 GMT
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Post by htmb on Mar 18, 2016 17:40:39 GMT
Thank you, Lagatta.
France24 has live video/audio from outside the apartments, though there's really nothing to see at this point.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2016 17:52:58 GMT
I've been following this news for a few hours. Gare du Midi is now the main train station for traffic with France (it used to be Gare du Nord in Brussels), so there are a lot more things going on in that area now.
Already with the Belgian police raids the other day, I saw three times more police and soldiers in the streets of Paris than just one day before. They are not taking any chances. (Meanwhile both the army and the police are buried under applications from young men and women since last year.)
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Post by mossie on Mar 18, 2016 21:25:14 GMT
Good job they have caught the principal suspect in the Paris assault. And a good thing he was shot, I hope it is a serious wound to stop him running again.
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