Rod Dreher over at The American Conservative has posted a couple of updates on the Paris Jihad Attacks which convey the ominous sense that the situation has deteriorated in Europe, perhaps irretrievably so:
UPDATE: From a reader in Paris:
This is — in a way — the beginning of the end. More than 100 dead innocent people so far. At the same time, our best special ops troops are being deployed all over Africa. We don’t have enough soldiers and our enemy lives next door. This is war, a new kind of war and we better get ready ASAP. “Hell is empty and all the devils are here”. Thank you for you prayers, this is a combat beyond reason. We won’t go quietly into the night, but we might go at the end.
UPDATE.2: What the state of emergency means, according to French media analysis of the President’s statement:
• Under the countrywide state of emergency, “protection security zones” can be established.
• In the metropolitan Paris region (Ile de France):
• All people “whose activity is dangerous” can be consigned to their homes.
• Entertainment venues and meeting halls can be closed provisionally.
• The forced surrender of weapons and “administrative searches” permitted.
• Border controls reestablished, with mobilization of French Customs with immediate effect.
• Schools and universities in the Paris region to be closed on Saturday.
• School trips on Saturday cancelled.
• A defence council will meet at 9am and 1,500 extra troops have been mobilized
• In the metropolitan Paris region (Ile de France):
• All people “whose activity is dangerous” can be consigned to their homes.
• Entertainment venues and meeting halls can be closed provisionally.
• The forced surrender of weapons and “administrative searches” permitted.
• Border controls reestablished, with mobilization of French Customs with immediate effect.
• Schools and universities in the Paris region to be closed on Saturday.
• School trips on Saturday cancelled.
• A defence council will meet at 9am and 1,500 extra troops have been mobilized
UPDATE.2: Some people on Twitter have their noses out of joint because I tweeted earlier saying that Angela Merkel’s generous refugee policy is going to guarantee much worse than what happened in Paris tonight in Germany. They had the idea that I’m blaming refugees for the Paris attacks. I am confident that refugees had nothing to do with this attack, nor do I expect that genuine refugees would carry out the same in Germany, or anywhere else. Merkel will have accepted over a million refugees by the end of this year, and her government is expecting millions more by 2017...
On Wednesday, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble warned that Germany faced a potentially destructive “avalanche” of refugees, adding that “avalanches can be triggered when a somewhat careless skier heads down the hill, shifting just a little bit of snow.” Many viewed that as an analogy to Merkel’s September decision to welcome thousands of refugees stranded in Hungary.
It’s a different world now. If only a tiny percentage of those refugees are ISIS supporters or agents, Germany — and Europe — faces more of what Paris got tonight.