July 14, 2016: Nice, France. Bastille Day
The drop that makes the vase overflow. The straw that breaks the camel's back. The beyond words disgusting terrorist attack in Nice is just the latest in a long and painful series of massacres fueled by the unchecked spread of radical Islam in France. In Nice, grief-stricken and furious mourners joined together for a minute of silence. The Prime Minister of France was booed. Unheard of. Incredible. And yet, completely understandable.
France is angry. Deeply, profoundly angry. Four years after the massacre of little children in Toulouse, 18 months after the slaughter of satirical cartoonists in the center of Paris, seven months after the Bataclan and other atrocities, a violent and perverse Tunisian with criminal convictions and a residency permit, plotted the murder of families enjoying the summer evening of July 14th in Nice. There were a half dozen ways this attack could have been prevented, but it was not.
And President François Hollande thinks he's doing ok.
The French trusted their government to put serious measures into place to fight the spreading menace of radicalized Islamists. And it is now dawning on everyone that this trust has been tragically misplaced.
Deploying a level of cynicism unlike any that I have ever seen in thirty years in France, François Hollande deliberately hamstrung his own ministers, in a Machiavellian play of divide and conquer, that ensured that nothing would be done, other than to exhaust the police, kept running by an army of repeat offenders who should not have been out on the streets at all, thanks to the unparalleled incompetence of the government and its failure to enact coherent policy of any kind.
There is, to this day, no policy concerning jihadists returning from Syria and Iraq. No solution of the 10,000+ people referenced as security risks - a number too high to keep track of. No new prisons to hold the petty criminals, like the killer of Nice, who blend into the massive crowd of other petty criminals. No sustained policy of expulsion of foreign nationals convicted of crimes. No review of family reunification (regroupement familiale) as the main source of immigration. No change in the grotesque laxity in sentencing of recidivist criminals. No real strengthening of the intelligence community. And on and on. Instead there is a permanent State of Emergency in which constitutional rights are suspended while CGT activists block roads with impunity, casseurs abuse the police and terrorists roam free.
After the tearful solidarity that brought masses into the street following the shock of the Charlie Hebdo assassinations, France is experiencing an unprecedented swell of anger which threatens to become a tsunami if no vessel is found that can contain or channel it.
La goutte d'eau qui fait déborder le vase.
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NEW: Major French newspapers including Le Monde, Libération and Le Figaro are reporting that the French government lied about the security arrangements. After published reports saying that only one municipal police car - and no National Police - blocked the entrance to the Promenade des Anglais, the Minister of the Interior, Bernard Cazeneuve, officially opened an inquiry by the "Police of the Police" into the security arrangements.
NEW: In the week since this post was written, Europe has seen five more murderous attacks. Wuerzberg (axe on a train: Afghan or Pakistani), Ansbach (bomb in backpack: Syrian), Munich (gun: German-Iranian), Reutlingen (machete: Syrian); and today, Saint Etienne de Rouvray (knife beheading of priest: French on terror watchlist)
