{"id":29597,"date":"2015-01-07T11:20:27","date_gmt":"2015-01-07T16:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=29597"},"modified":"2015-01-07T11:20:27","modified_gmt":"2015-01-07T16:20:27","slug":"claire-berlinski-reports-from-the-scene-of-the-paris-massacre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/01\/07\/claire-berlinski-reports-from-the-scene-of-the-paris-massacre\/","title":{"rendered":"Claire Berlinski reports from the scene of the Paris massacre"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ricochet.com\/terrorist-attack-charlie-hebdo-killers-still-large\/\" target=\"_blank\">Claire Berlinski<\/a> wasn&#8217;t working as a journalist earlier today, but she happened to be right in the area of the terrorist attack on the offices of the French satirical magazine, <em>Charlie Hebdo<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If I sound incoherent, it\u2019s because I am shaken. The reasons will be obvious.<\/p>\n<p>I had no intention of reporting on this from the scene of the Charlie-Hebdo massacre. I was walking up Boulevard Richard Lenoir to meet a friend who lives in the neighborhood. But the moment I saw what I did, I knew for sure what had happened. A decade in Turkey teaches you that. That many ambulances, that many cops, that many journalists, and those kinds of faces can mean only one thing: a massive terrorist attack.<\/p>\n<p>I also knew from the location just who\u2019d been attacked: Charlie-Hebdo, the magazine known for many things, but, above all, for its fearlessness in publishing caricatures of Mohamed. They\u2019d been firebombed for this in 2011, but their response \u2014 in effect \u2014 was the only one free men would ever consider: \u201cAs long as we\u2019re alive, you\u2019ll never shut us up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They are no longer alive. They managed to shut them up.<\/p>\n<p>The only thing I didn\u2019t immediately know was how many of them had died.<\/p>\n<p>All of them, it seems, or close enough. So did two police officers who had been assigned to protect their offices. Twelve are dead for sure; I assume that number will rise; seven are seriously injured. It was at the time I was there unclear how many were wounded.<\/p>\n<p>And the attackers are still at large.<\/p>\n<p>Given that two police officers are dead, now doesn\u2019t seem the time to say what comes to mind about the fact that the assailants escaped. It will say this much though: if they\u2019re not dead before nightfall, I\u2019ll say exactly what comes to mind, respect for the dead be damned.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This was the Twitter update sent shortly before the attack began:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\">\n<p>Meilleurs v\u0153ux, au fait. <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/a2JOhqJZJM\">pic.twitter.com\/a2JOhqJZJM<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Charlie Hebdo (@Charlie_Hebdo_) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Charlie_Hebdo_\/status\/552773881283764224\">January 7, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This was the worst terrorist attack in Europe since the London tube bombings of 2005. If I\u2019m correct \u2014 I have not checked carefully \u2014 it was also the worst in France since the Nazis were running the place.<\/p>\n<p>I was there only by luck: I had no desire to see this. Luck is probably not the right word. I wish I hadn\u2019t seen it. But lucky, certainly is the right word to use in noting that I was running late, and thus there a few minutes after the fact. Had I not been running late, it\u2019s fairly obvious what might have happened. They weren\u2019t discriminate in their targets.<\/p>\n<p>There wasn\u2019t much for me to do. I didn\u2019t even have a pen on me. I spoke to a cameraman from <em>France 3<\/em>, to make sure I understood the facts. I didn\u2019t ask if I could quote him, so I won\u2019t use his name. But his comment summed up the sentiment. \u201cThis is the kind of thing you expect in Pakistan. And now it\u2019s coming here.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Claire Berlinski wasn&#8217;t working as a journalist earlier today, but she happened to be right in the area of the terrorist attack on the offices of the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo: If I sound incoherent, it\u2019s because I am shaken. The reasons will be obvious. I had no intention of reporting on this from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,28,11],"tags":[47,477,786,257],"class_list":["post-29597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-media","category-religion","tag-islam","tag-magazines","tag-paris","tag-terrorism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7Hn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29597"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29598,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29597\/revisions\/29598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}