Dining behind the Bataclan
We were eating dinner at Bespoke, a fun tapas restaurant on Rue Oberkampf in the 11eme in Paris, the night of November 13th. We crossed Richard Lenoir and walked down Oberkampf at 9:51 that evening--past the corner of the Bataclan. We didn't notice anything unusual--nor did any one else on the street that we noticed. The first we heard of the "hostage situation" was a text we received from a friend in New York City at 10:52.
We then had our own drama, not knowing much, but knowing from international messages that something was happening around the corner on our block. The steel gates of the restaurant were closed (causing a Canadian woman next to us to start smoking--really woman? We're all locked in a space under police alert and you light up a cigarette?). Soon the blue lights of riot and rescue vehicles were bathing the empty street outside us, and then riot police...singly and in jogging formations--started to pass.
We assumed we were locked in for the long haul but sometime around midnight the SWAT guys pounded on the screens and told us all to prepare to run. "Allez! Allez!" they yelled as we sprinted down Oberkampf away from the Betaclan and toward the bright spotlights of the TV crews (this picture of the two of us running appeared in the November 15th edition of Le Monde).
I don't think we were scared--I recall thinking I should bring up the back to protect those in front of me, and that I'd seen the scene of victims running away from disasters toward TV crews before--I'd just never been part of the footage. Our friend recalled that his car was parked on Folie de la Mericourt--could he get there to retrieve it? It turns out he still could, even with all the police cordons. We rode home silently on the Velib bike system.
We still owed Bespoke for our dinner that night--it turns out that one way to walk out on a dinner bill is to get evacuated in the middle by black-clad cops. I hadn't felt up to returning to the 11eme--(but did the following Friday night. The owner told us that only one other table had not returned to clear their bill. He had had 1900 euro of open tabs after we all evacuated.)
What can be learned? I am already prone to believe that religion has never contributed a single positive thing, and the religious war claims of ISIS provide yet another preposterous example proving my rule. This isn't a war--this is imbalanced young men confusing testosterone with crackpot dogma.
Never believe any sentence that has the word "God" in it--at least if that silly noun has an initial capital letter. You know you're about to get fed crap--unlike the spectacular food at Bespoke.
I can imagine that some idiot somewhere is trying to explain to the west what it's like to not be able to get together with your friends for fear that those warm bodies together will draw the wrath of a drone or a rare French jet fighter.
At least that's a point ISIS tried to make in their statement bragging about their ultra organized attack (you're kidding right? Eight guys walk down two different streets and shoot up two restaurants and then meet up at a rock concert and shoot people? This is the work of terror masterminds? My friends could coordinate this, and include the filming of a rap video, without any texts or cell phone calls, in a minute. The groups of 15+ jogging-in-formation French riot police who passed in front of our restaurant's windows outclassed the organization of these slobs by miles and miles.)
So, two conclusions: we need to ban religion, and these individuals and their bosses are idiots.
But idiots even without stupid references to the will of god will still kill you as long as we keep selling guns to them. So, at some point we need to stop selling the guns. How hard is this to figure out? I'm guessing these particular automatics were not built by a US or other western manufacturer, but that's just a fault of the supply chain. (I'm just guessing--in most of our recent wars we've been fighting against weapons sold by our own foundries--when it comes to lethal force, one check is as good as the next.)
We then had our own drama, not knowing much, but knowing from international messages that something was happening around the corner on our block. The steel gates of the restaurant were closed (causing a Canadian woman next to us to start smoking--really woman? We're all locked in a space under police alert and you light up a cigarette?). Soon the blue lights of riot and rescue vehicles were bathing the empty street outside us, and then riot police...singly and in jogging formations--started to pass.
We assumed we were locked in for the long haul but sometime around midnight the SWAT guys pounded on the screens and told us all to prepare to run. "Allez! Allez!" they yelled as we sprinted down Oberkampf away from the Betaclan and toward the bright spotlights of the TV crews (this picture of the two of us running appeared in the November 15th edition of Le Monde).
We still owed Bespoke for our dinner that night--it turns out that one way to walk out on a dinner bill is to get evacuated in the middle by black-clad cops. I hadn't felt up to returning to the 11eme--(but did the following Friday night. The owner told us that only one other table had not returned to clear their bill. He had had 1900 euro of open tabs after we all evacuated.)
What can be learned? I am already prone to believe that religion has never contributed a single positive thing, and the religious war claims of ISIS provide yet another preposterous example proving my rule. This isn't a war--this is imbalanced young men confusing testosterone with crackpot dogma.
Never believe any sentence that has the word "God" in it--at least if that silly noun has an initial capital letter. You know you're about to get fed crap--unlike the spectacular food at Bespoke.
I can imagine that some idiot somewhere is trying to explain to the west what it's like to not be able to get together with your friends for fear that those warm bodies together will draw the wrath of a drone or a rare French jet fighter.
At least that's a point ISIS tried to make in their statement bragging about their ultra organized attack (you're kidding right? Eight guys walk down two different streets and shoot up two restaurants and then meet up at a rock concert and shoot people? This is the work of terror masterminds? My friends could coordinate this, and include the filming of a rap video, without any texts or cell phone calls, in a minute. The groups of 15+ jogging-in-formation French riot police who passed in front of our restaurant's windows outclassed the organization of these slobs by miles and miles.)
So, two conclusions: we need to ban religion, and these individuals and their bosses are idiots.
But idiots even without stupid references to the will of god will still kill you as long as we keep selling guns to them. So, at some point we need to stop selling the guns. How hard is this to figure out? I'm guessing these particular automatics were not built by a US or other western manufacturer, but that's just a fault of the supply chain. (I'm just guessing--in most of our recent wars we've been fighting against weapons sold by our own foundries--when it comes to lethal force, one check is as good as the next.)
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