Tragedy in Nice, France

[Wolkenkrabber]

At the time of writing, the death toll is at 77. Perhaps that's not the final figure though.
It's a sad thing, especially on Bastille Day.

I don't have all the answers to this stuff, but I do feel that it's those who have a vulnerable temperment who decide to get involved in terror attacks. At the moment it seems to be one guy who was driving the truck at the crowd.

I guess because France has a large Muslim population, if only a miniscule percentage of that population is vulnerable enough to think this is the thing to do, then it's still more likely than if there is a smaller Muslim population. The same logic could in the past probably be applied to Irish people in the UK - of which I am one - so I'm not saying this is about having too many Muslims. Just the statistical chance of an extremist attack taking place.

Here in the Uk there is a group called the EDL which is agressive and sometimes violent towards anyone deemed "foreign". Having seen a documentary about them, they all seem to be "troubled" individuals. One of the subjects of the documentary admitted this himself.

I guess in America the same troubled individuals go on shooting sprees leading to things like the Columbine massacre and many other similar attacks. Of course there is another issue in the US with the police and black people, and I don't necessarily have the answer to that. But I am grateful that most cops in this part of the world (and people in general) don't carry guns. If I were American I guess I'd be one of those Democrat voters trying to get rid of firearms as a way of life.

In general it seems to me that if you create the circumstances/tools for vulnerable minds to kill people then it is more likely that they will do so. So extremism/terrorism is an excuse for some of these mass murderers, the availability of killing machines (i.e Guns) seems to make it an easy option for others.

It's difficult to cure the whole world of these problems, and I suspect Trump will come out and say: these guys are why you should vote for me. And thus the world will take a further lurch to the right. Instead of promoting peace it will lead to more hatred and extreme views. If we could just get everyone to forget religion, drop an E and have a dance together, things would be better (but then that's the old "Turn on, tune in and drop out" thing really. And that hasn't solved things exactly).

I hope I haven't offended anyone with this post. Not the intention.

[WhiteNoise]

This is beyond terrible.

@Skyscraper
One disturbed man, a crowd and a truck was all it took.

It's not guns, it's not blacks, it's not Islam, it's not cops, it's batshit fucking awful people who outrageously exaggerate their own beliefs and take advantage of our moments of vulnerability to make a cowardly and gruesome demonstration of power.

How do you stop unreasonable people like that? There's no easy way of waging a blanket war against, or identifying and preventing the actions of people like that, so all we do is rail against the groups they claim to represent, and all that does is feed distrust and hatred against each other.

What we should do is keep going about our days and enjoying what freedoms we have without fearing that our lives are in danger - I seriously hope we all don't start becoming scared (or legally disallowed) to go outside, to travel, to meet in groups, to celebrate anything in numbers.

And we can all understand that no group, hardly a single group, is represented by the most extreme of its members, and try to not angrily drive ourselves apart apart along our ideological borders because of any past (or future) events.

But I have a sinking feeling it's all going to get a lot worse before anything like that catches on...

EDIT: And public gatherings have been banned in Nice until further notice.

[sandelic]

I just don't know what to say about this kind of horrors that are been happening lately, not just in France, but everywhere.
I, too, don't have answer to this kind of thing, and all I can do is offer my condolences to the French people, and even that sounds so empty and meaningless in face of pain these people are going trough.
I wish we could do something, but it's impossible to predict and stop this kind of lunatics.
It's all just so sad...

[Ben_j]

I haven't been following a lot on this because this weekend I was best man at my best friend's wedding and had other, happier things to think about. It's just horrifying, and sad on so many levels... The government is using this to extend the state of emergency, they had announced the day before the tragedy that it would be lifted by the end of july. The very state of emergency we were in that prevented absolutely nothing of the attack 4 days ago, that was used to keep ecology activists at home and under surveilance during COP21, or to ban manifestations, how convenient when you're trying to pass a law that drastically changes the labor code... And effectively it did nothing to stop terror attacks.