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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFrance plans to keep state of emergency until Isis is defeated
Mr Valls said the special measures, which give police in France a range of powers, including the ability to detain suspects without warrants, should continue until we can get rid of Daesh [Isis].
As long as the threat is there, we must use all available means, he told the BBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. It is a total and global war that we are facing with terrorism?.?.?.?The war we are conducting must also be total, global and ruthless.
Earlier this week Claude Bartolone, president of the National Assembly, said the parliament will very likely be asked to extend the powers when the initial three month period for the emergency measures ends on February 26.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)Looks like the French are going down the same road we did after Nineleven(TM).
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)But..to your question....if ISIS is defeated ( pls. notice that Russia has been bombing them for a few months with much more effectiveness than OUR 14 month bombing)
anyhow, ISIS will be given some other name, just as "Taliban" became "Al-Quada" became "ISIS" in our need to keep arms manufacturers paid.
Yo_Mama
(8,303 posts)you ARE in a state of emergency.
What would happen if they didn't have them? Not one of the leftish parties in France wants to find out.
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)Total war is the demand of the hour. We must put an end to the bourgeois attitude that we have also seen in this war: Wash my back, but dont get me wet! (Every sentence is met with growing applause and agreement.) The danger facing us is enormous. The efforts we take to meet it must be just as enormous. The time has come to remove the kid gloves and use our fists. (A cry of elemental agreement rises. Chants from the galleries and seats testify to the full approval of the crowd.) We can no longer make only partial and careless use of the war potential at home and in the significant parts of Europe that we control. We must use our full resources, as quickly and thoroughly as it is organizationally and practically possible. Unnecessary concern is wholly out of place. The future of Europe hangs on our success in the East. We are ready to defend it. The German people are shedding their most valuable national blood in this battle. The rest of Europe should at least work to support us. There are many serious voices in Europe that have already realized this. Others still resist. That cannot influence us. If danger faced them alone, we could view their reluctance as literary nonsense of no significance. But the danger faces us all, and we must all do our share. Those who today do not understand that will thank us tomorrow on bended knees that we courageously and firmly took on the task.
Joseph Goebbels
His whole Total War speech is here: http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb36.htm
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)just keep it over there in the sandbox where only impoverished, backward, dark skinned non-christian types get hurt.
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)Different day, different bogeyman.
EX500rider
(10,518 posts)Except I don't remember any Jewish groups killing 130 people in one night in Paris (or Berlin) so this bogeyman seems a little more real.
Initech
(99,909 posts)DFW
(54,050 posts)And I have to be down there once a week for work. This will not make my trips down there any more pleasant.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)Or are things pretty much the same as usual?
Huge presence of armed paramilitary personnel at train stations (I mean as in with machine guns and body armor), even now having X-ray machines for baggage and metal detectors at train stations at tracks where international trains leave from. Greater police patrols in town (just Paris--I haven't been elsewhere lately), though the terror brigade attacks by the finance authorities haven't increased. Since most of the small businesses they have been harassing are French-owned, they may have either run out of small businesses in Paris to attack, or else they are being told to concentrate on foreign-owned businesses--no idea. This trip, I didn't change planes at Paris, so I can't tell you what it's like at CDG.
There was a scary drop-off in people on the street the first two weeks after Friday the 13th. Not as deserted as Brussels, but at one Métro station, I was there at 7AM, during the start of rush hour, there were 3 people in it, and two of them were me and my wife. It's usually wall-to-wall people at that hour. By the ay, it's like this in Brussels, too. At the hotel I stay at, the annual Christmas market is right outside, and there were armed soldiers everywhere. The hotel allowed the soldiers to use their street-level business lounge on their breaks, since it was a sort of free protection, and it cost them nothing more than a few free cups of coffee. I talked with some of them, and they were a little apprehensive, but didn't think anything would happen so soon after the one cell that conducted the Paris attacks had been wiped out except for a couple of individuals who were on the run (one showed up in Morocco, so they were at least half right).
The Parisians seem to have pretty much the same attitude as New York City after 9/11--damaged but refusing to let it shut them down. After all, Paris was an important city even before Mohammed captured Mecca in 622. The French will complain ten times as much about their own government as they will about any Muslims. One place I hang out in has several employees who are of Arab ethnicity (never asked their religion, so they could just as easily be Lebanese Christians), two of which are women. The one guy is their in-house photographer and the two women work in accounting and administration. No headscarves or anything other than their features and names to indicate Arab origin, and no one thinks the slightest thing of it. They speak flawless Parisian French, and are treated as no less French than the European French who work there.
SO, you could say they WANT to be normal again. But no matter how you slice it, they are a wounded society trying to bounce back--just like we were. It will take time.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)rather than news reports. I think you get a much clearer picture that way. Different people might have different perspectives, but as more people speak out you begin to get a more fleshed out idea of how things really are vs. what the media is telling us.
DFW
(54,050 posts)I don't even know what the American media was telling you. The Friday the 13th attacks occurred about 6 weeks before I leave for my usual New Year's trip to the States, and my workload increases to frantic in that time, especially since I took 4 days off for that thing at the White House in DC in between. In the time I was here, I barely saw a newspaper or a news broadcast.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)not, especially when it comes from MSM sources. Or conversely, that everything is normal and all is well from the left wing outlets.
Lately, I have started to distrust the left's version of things almost as much as I have always mistrusted the right. Both sides have an agenda, which is why I like to hear from people who actually live in Europe. Thanks again - always great to hear your perspective!
DFW
(54,050 posts)It seems that a lot of people want things to conform to their own particular points of view, which reality seldom does.
I can tell what I see or hear, but I can't bend it to conform to someone else's wishful thinking. If someone wants to come to a different conclusion, be my guest--learn French or German or Dutch or Russian, or whatever is spoken where you want to go, then go talk to the locals and form your own conclusion.
On the other hand, if someone has a preconceived conclusion, they might as well sit in front of their computer screen and proclaim it to the world, and back it up with a link or two. It'll probably be a whole lot less accurate, but hey, it's a LOT more comfortable.