#nice attacks

No religion in the world preaches violence or revenge in this brutal form. Killing innocent lives to make a point can only be a thought of a twisted mind, not a religious mind. No one with a sane mind would even ever think of hurting another innocent soul. Dhaka attacks struck me really hard, so much so that I was having nightmares. The mum in me is worried sick for the safety and well-being of her child. The more I read about the attack the more I couldn’t understand that how can kids in their late teens and early twenties from  affluent families who had probably not seen difficult times in their lives can fall to such a horrific level where they start killing innocent lives. People in a cafe enjoying a cup of coffee, out there on a vacation were just killed. And for what? Just to make a statement….!

And then came Medina and Dhaka again, where on Eid a festival widely celebrated people were killed by suicide bombers. Then came Kashmir where people were attacked by pellet guns which are non-fatal in nature but so many of the victims were left blinded.

And now it’s Nice. Many of you would have seen a latest picture of Nice attacks where a baby corpse is seen next to a doll. I was in a crowded station when I saw that picture and tears trickled down my eyes looking at it. A kid no more that 4 years along with 83 others lost their lives because of a crazy man. And what surprises me even more is that the truck driver killer has a family of his own. He has three kids and still he went on to brutally kill innocent families, kids, and babies. This is wrong.. totally wrong, no one can justify. No religion can support it, this kind of violence.  And today we have an 18-year old in Germany who shot 9 people mostly in their teens before shooting himself.

ATTENTION EDITORS – VISUAL COVERAGE OF SCENES OF INJURY OR DEATH – A body is seen on the ground July 15, 2016 after at least 30 people were killed in Nice, France, when a truck ran into a crowd celebrating the Bastille Day national holiday July 14. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard – RTSHZK8

We already have so many natural and man-made calamities where thousands loose their lives. We have typhoons and earthquakes, droughts and hurricanes, landslides and tsunamis, all these claiming thousands of lives each year. We don’t need terrorism to add to the loss. We don’t need people with twisted ideology, and those with political agendas to take anymore lives. Humans have become the worst creatures to inhabit the earth. Selfish and self-centered. If we keep going at this rate, the time would come really soon when the whole human race would be wiped off.

Mazhab nahi seekhta aapas mein bair karna.. No religion preaches animosity.

My heart goes out to all the families who have lost their loved ones in the recent attacks across the world. May their souls rest in peace. And may their families get the courage to overcome the grief.

This needs to stop. We need to learn to live and let live. We need to accept our differences and in no circumstances ever should anyone reach a stage where they start taking innocent lives. Each life is precious and NO ONE deserves to die this way.

He took part in a poignant silent walk to remember his loved ones close to his home in Gattieres, southern France – just hours after French rugby legend and former secretary of state Bernard Laporte, 52, personally rang him to express his condolences.

Christophe and his wife Veronique

Christophe and his wife Veronique

Mr Lyon travelled to Nice on Thursday with his Italian-born wife Veronique, 55, son Michael, 28, an economics teacher, and in-laws Francois Locatelli, 82, and Christiane Locatelli, 78.

They then met up for a special reunion with his own parents Gisele, 63, and Germain, 68, who were holidaying in the French Riviera on Thursday.

But just hours later he watched on helpless as all six were mown down by truck terrorist Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel after watching the Bastille Day fireworks display on Nice’s Promenade des Anglais.

Such a tragedy.

Credit: Mirror.co.uk

By Melissa Etehad, Washington Post, July 15, 2016

Following the attack in Nice that killed at least 84 people, former House speaker Newt Gingrich has called for deporting everyone in America with a Muslim background who believes in sharia law.

“Western civilization is in a war. We should frankly test every person here who is of a Muslim background and if they believe in sharia they should be deported,” Gingrich told Fox News’ Sean Hannity.

“Sharia is incompatible with western civilization. Modern Muslims who have given up sharia--glad to have them as citizens. Perfectly happy to have them next door,” he added. Further, he said: “Anybody who goes on a website favoring ISIS or al Qaeda or other terrorist groups, that should be a felony, and they should go to jail. Any organization which hosts such a website should be engaged in a felony. It should be closed down immediately.”

Gingrich also said that the attack in Nice is the “fault of Western elites who lack the guts to do what is right, to do what is necessary,” and suggested that mosques in America need to be monitored.

Gingrich’s proposal, which made no distinction between U.S. citizens and noncitizen, would violate scores of First and Fourteenth Amendment-based Supreme Court rulings and laws that together bar discriminating on the basis of religion, favoring one religion over another by the government and restricting freedom of expression and and belief.

Specifically the First Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

In addition, the Supreme Court has ruled that the government has no power to strip people of their citizenship, which would be necessary to deport anyone who is a citizen.

Apart from that, there are an estimated 3.3 million Muslims in the U.S., according to a recent Pew Research survey who, by Gingrich’s proposal, would have to take his “test.”

Nor is there any evidence suggesting a link between a “belief in Sharia” law and acts of terror in the U.S.

“Look, the first step is you have to ask them the questions,” said Gingrich. “The second step is you have to monitor what they’re doing on the internet. The third step is--let me be very clear--you have to monitor the mosques. I mean, if you’re not prepared to monitor the mosques, this whole thing is a joke.”

Gingrich has been mentioned as a potential vice-presidential running mate with Donald Trump, who after the Nice attack called off an announcement of his choice originally scheduled for Friday. Gingrich’s suggestion goes beyond anything suggested even by Trump, who has called for a moratorium on Muslim migration.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the attack in Nice as well as Gingrich’s call to “test” and deport Muslims in the United States.

“When former House speaker Newt Gingrich suggests that American Muslims be subjected to Inquisition-style religious test and then expelled from their homes and nation,” CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awaid said, “he plays into the hands of terror recruiters and betrays the American values he purports to uphold.”

In 2014, at a terrorism conference in New York, FBI Director James B. Comey downplayed the roles of mosques in connection with terrorism.

“I actually don’t see religious institutions as a central feature of recruitment in the United States,” he said. “I see it increasingly as an online phenomenon without center, which makes it very difficult for us.”

Eryk Bagshaw, The Age, July 16 2016

He was a divorcee, a drunkard and a delivery man. On Thursday, he murdered 84 people as they watched the fireworks on Nice’s Promenade des Anglais.

Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel didn’t pray, didn’t fast, drank alcohol and used drugs, his father revealed on Saturday.

From his 12th floor cramped and shabby flat in Nice, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel plotted to turn a 19-tonne refrigerator truck into a tank.

On Bastille Day, that tank would take 10 children and many more parents with it as it veered violently from left to right down more than two kilometres of the seaside promenade.

In its path was 27-year-old Parisian, Timothy Fournier, who died in efforts to save his pregnant wife, and 11-year-old junior baseballer, Brodie Copeland, who was run down with his father Sean, along with hundreds of other men, women and children including 21-year-old Russian student, Victoria Savchenko.

Those neighbours who knew Lahouaiej-Bouhlel at the apartments in Nice’s Quartier des Abattoirs, told The New York Times he tended to grunt to “bonjour” and beat his wife.

Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had only ever had one conviction before, for road rage, despite being known to police for violence and petty theft.

Born in 1985 in Tunisia, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was not known by Tunisian authorities to hold extremist views, and while he held a French resident permit for the past 10 years, he never obtained nationality, according to Al Jazeera.

To French authorities, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had remained under the radar, a miscreant but no martyr.

His father, Mohamed Mondher Lahouaiej-Bouhlel told Agence France-Presse that his son had battled with depression.

“From 2002 to 2004, he had problems that caused a nervous breakdown. He would become angry and he shouted … he would break anything he saw in front of him,” said Lahouaiej-Bouhlel.

“He didn’t pray, he didn’t fast, he drank alcohol and even used drugs,” he said.

A neighbour who asked only to be identified as Jasmine told The Guardian UK: “He was quite handsome, greyish hair, looked a bit like George Clooney.”

“He never answered when we spoke or said hello, he just sort of stared at us aggressively.”

“I was really scared of him. All I knew is that he had trouble with his wife, but we never saw her or their kids. He spent a lot of his time at a bar down the street where he gambled and drank.”

It remains unclear what drove Lahouaiej-Bouhlel to pile a truck with ammunition, grenades and guns and run down those families who spilled out from the cafes and restaurants on one of France’s most famous promenades to watch the fireworks.

The 31-year-old’s modus operandi appears to come straight out of the Islamic State textbook.

Just last month ISIS’s Cyber Caliphate channel promoted using cars for terrorism after its spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani urged followers to murder non-believers “with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him, or poison him.”

But neighbours’ recollections of Lahouaiej-Bouhlel don’t point to a man of religious fervour--he often dressed in shorts, enjoyed salsa music and was not known to the mosques in Nice.

By Adam Nossiter, NY Times, July 15, 2016

PARIS--Twice before in the past year and a half, the French people and their leaders had faced devastating attacks with a remarkable spirit of unity and resilience. On Friday, as the country woke up to the slaughter in Nice, the mood was different.

Ordinary citizens questioned whether enough had been done to protect them. The political opposition was critical of the government’s antiterrorism effort. There was little linking of arms or cries of liberté, égalité, fraternité.

Instead, there was recognition of an unpleasant new reality that everything France has tried so far has failed to protect it from terrorism.

That grim realization, in turn, has given rise to new frustration and--in contrast to the aftermath of attacks in January and November last year--new disunity and partisan sniping.

The country’s Socialist president, François Hollande, breaking records of unpopularity in the polls, is severely weakened. He confronts a rising populist onslaught from the far right, and even challenges within his own party. Facing an election next year, he is almost certain to lose--if he is a candidate.

When not batting away terrorist threats, he is nibbled by petty scandals, like spending 10,000 euros a month for haircuts.

France, meanwhile, is perhaps the Western country most threatened by terrorism.

That menacing combination produced unusually immediate criticism of the country’s opposition leaders on Friday, and a muted response within Mr. Hollande’s own ranks.

The tone had changed radically from the days after France’s previous terrorist attacks.

If the response after the Charlie Hebdo attack in January 2015 was an outpouring of solidarity, which melted into resignation with the attacks in Paris last November at the Bataclan concert hall and outside a stadium, then the Nice attack has been greeted by mounting public impatience.

“I can’t hide that I feel a deep anger,” said Christian Estrosi, the head of the Nice region and a member of the Republicans, the party of former President Nicolas Sarkozy, on French television Friday morning.

“How is it possible in our country that after everyone said there was a state of emergency, a state of war, we forgot it after Charlie Hebdo,” he said. “Then there was the Bataclan. After the Bataclan, we forgot. There was Brussels. After Brussels, we forgot and there was Nice, so there are questions that need to be answered.”

To be sure, the critics had few suggestions for what the government should have done to head off the Nice attack. Already, the government’s effort has been considerable.

Over eight months, there have been thousands of arrests in France’s Muslim communities, dozens of judicial procedures, heavy surveillance, and repeated bombing of Islamic State strongholds. France was under a state of emergency before Nice, and continues under one.

Neither that effort, nor local police forces, could prevent the Nice attack.

The Nice attack has driven home the increasingly unsettling realization that France will have to live indefinitely with terrorism as it becomes a front line state in the global struggle with the Islamic terrorism.

It was something Prime Minister Manuel Valls acknowledged Friday, as French officials have repeatedly in the previous months. “The times have changed,” he said, “and France is going to have to live with terrorism.”

The sense of helplessness was fueled by the fact that this attack was carried out by someone the authorities characterized as a petty criminal unknown to French intelligence officials, using an ordinary truck.

“It’s a catastrophe,” Roger Carvalho, an investment banker of Portuguese descent, born in France, said near the Place de La Madeleine in Paris. “Anybody can be a terrorist today. Anybody can hire a truck and kill people.”

Nice attack: France calls up 12,000 reservists

France has called up 12,000 police reservists to help boost security after Thursday’s attack in Nice in which more than 80 people were killed.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve also appealed to “all willing French patriots” to sign up as reservists, to help protect the country’s borders.

Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel drove a lorry along the sea front through crowds before police shot him dead.

So-c…