Lafayette, at least some of us still remember you.
UPDATE: Wretchard writes --
It looks like the wave of attacks is over, been some time now no new incidents. Period of damage assessment, counting up casualties, finger pointing and political posturing to follow as usual.Not only them.
The significant thing is the attacks happened in the teeth of a heightened alert associated with big soccer matches. In fact Hollande himself was watching a game. So the French security forces and intelligence people were completely blindsided on this.
That means there are networks they don't know about, which are capable of Beirut-size operations. I think Scotland Yard and MI5 will be burning the midnight oil tonight.
First things first, deepest condolences to the French nation and thoughts and prayers to those who have lost loved ones.
ReplyDeleteLet us hope they are burning the midnight oil, but I think it takes Himalayan arrogance to believe the authorities can stop every potential terror attack. It is just not possible to harden the hundreds of thousands of soft targets that exist, and no one could afford to do it even if it were. Paradoxically, that is why it is actually cheaper and more effective to be on the offense than on the defense. It doesn't help of course that our own fifth column, our elites, are avid to eliminate the framework of nations and borders to line their own pockets.
That these were coordinated attacks that stayed under the radar is what is chilling.
ReplyDeleteI figure that the terrorists have ceased to use electronic communications to coordinate.
ReplyDeleteThat's probably right.
ReplyDeleteA nation of serfs and slaves isn't going to be able to do what Charles Martel or Charlemagne's Karling dynasty did. Especially since they lack the requisite virtues in their leaders.
ReplyDeleteThat's why the counter to asymmetrical attacks is to asymmetrically hard one's own population by converting a sub culture of warrior virtues into one closer to the mainstream.
That's not necessarily going well when military bases full of that warrior culture are disarmed in America. Civilians have better freedom, but that's assuming there's no interference from the same people who disarmed the military.
"That means there are networks they don't know about, which are capable of Beirut-size operations."
ReplyDeleteA bunch of Know Nothings there. Without Bush II's intel results from non suborned FBI and Gitmo interrogations, the West is running blind, as usual.
ReplyDelete"That's why the counter to asymmetrical attacks is to asymmetrically hard one's own population by converting a sub culture of warrior virtues into one closer to the mainstream."
Precisely. The problem is , this poses a threat to the elites, who would rather see the population harmed than encourage any action that might lead to competition.
Hopefully you all took my advice a few days ago, and got out to shoot something.
ReplyDeleteYou can still do it now. Or again.
Kenjutsu is fine for tooling and refining the lizard, machine, brain stem. Futures, pasts, imaginations of what may be, emotions, and logical core beliefs are unnecessary to survival.
ReplyDeleteAfter all, I don't consciously practice how to walk (except in tai chi), as my autonomic motor control functions, below the conscious hemispheres of the brain, are far better at it now. Some people have affiliated it with blindsight as well, the ability for the system to see, but for the visual cortex to be blank.
There are too many major and minor control muscles in the legs, and in the balance of the inner ear, for conscious control to be efficient. The conscious mind can barely even imagine the number of variables, let alone hold them all in at once.
The point is, people have been imagining solutions to political reform via elections in this country for some time now, as a palliative for internal and external threats. This top down hierarchy is not merely ineffective, it has become dysfunctional and cancerous, with HIV in the bargain. It is time for the system to crash and fall back on what works, the individual calculating "non elites" at the bottom, the ones that actually spend their lives making the system work rather than "decide" policy as Trump and others would wish to have the power to do.
As for firearms accuracy upgrades, people might wish to consider dry firing drills rather than wasting all that precious ammo that is difficult to replace (intentionally so by the upper management).
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dryfiretrainingcards.com/
I heard about this one sort of passed down through the grapevine, so to speak, of other sources.
Gonna need some of that ammo for "moving targets" later on.
I think I agree with Althouse on this, who articulated what flashed through my mind as I listened to the commentary. I don't think there was any new ground broken here, or that who ever organized this attack was a mastermind. And, I think it could have been so much worse, if the perpetrators actually were tactically sophisticated and highly skilled.
ReplyDeletehttp://althouse.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-well-coordinated-series-of-terror.html
This is a very appropriate version of La Marseillaise: The refugees of Nazi conquest defiantly sing the French anthem over the Nazis singing Die Wacht am Rhein, a patriotic song popular in Germany during the Franco-Prussian War and WWI.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Funk's House of Geekery, a number of actual European refugees from the Nazi invasions were cast in this scene. One was the pretty young woman who appears about 1:10. She is Madeleine LeBeau, a French actress who fled Europe in 1940 with her Jewish husband and apparently the last living credited cast member of the movie.
Interestingly, both songs began at the Rhine: The Marseillais was originally called "Chant de guerre pour l'Armée du Rhin."