Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

In Paris right now. We are in shock. At both the scale and the extremely coordinated nature of the attacks on civilians at multiple locations.

I work near rue Bichat and Le Petit Cambodge, a warm little restaurant in the 10e that my colleagues and I frequent, where people were tonight killed. The Bataclan is a well-known concert venue for metal bands, where I've seen several bands play live. Les Halles is at the center of Paris. Everyone who lives here has close connections to these areas; they took place very close to our everyday lives. Even those of us fortunate enough to know that our friends are safe are reeling from what has happened.

This is the first time since the Second World War that France has declared a state of emergency.

It's too early to come to any conclusions. It's too early to talk about immediate and long-term ramifications, about connections to the refugees, how these events will make France more 'communautariste'. That time will come, but it's too early right now.

It's 2am right now, Paris is mostly awake. We mourn those who lost their lives.

I'm glad you are safe.

Actually, this is not the first time that France has declared a state of emergency.

It was declared in 1984 and 2005. And it was declared in Algeria in the 1950s and 1960s.

The OP meant that this is the first time since WWII that France has closed its borders, which is true.

For those curious about 2005 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_French_riots#State_of_eme...

Edit: I was wrong, the President said the borders were closed, but then clarified that they weren't.

The borders are not closed, it's just a restoration of border controls.

I don't think they closed their borders. They invoked the Schengen protocol for re-instituting border controls. Under Schengen driving from France to Italy or Germany is like driving from Texas to Louisiana. But there is a clause allowing re-instituting border controls under certain conditions, including a national security emergency.

[edit: source France24; http://mashable.com/2015/11/13/france-border-airlines-flight... . Hollande did refer to 'fermeture des frontières' which is confusing https://twitter.com/Elysee/status/665314066106159104 ]

This is being pedantic, but it's the first enforced curfew since WWII...I think we can cut the GP a break, since the all this stuff is part of the state of emergency/emergency measures.

Peace to all.

Border controls were already restored in preparation for the Paris conference.

I know this is a piddlingly minor thing, but I'm seeing it propagated everywhere, and in the spirit of having an informative HN thread:

'Eagles of Death Metal' is not a death metal band.

What they do play is eclectic and hard to label as anything more specific than "rock", but doesn't fit even a very inclusive definition of metal. See: https://www.youtube.com/user/EaglesDeathMetalVEVO/videos

"Live updates: At least 100 dead, multiple sites attacked, France's borders closed"

--LA Times Headline

You have thoughts and good wishes coming from NYC and from Texas. I'm in New York; my dad is in Texas.

My dad is a WW2 veteran. He fought on the front lines of Normandy Beach, The Battle of France, and Liege, among other places like the Battle of the Bulge.

He was housed in France by people there who welcomed and supported him. He was assisted by the underground resistance. He has an enormous amount of love for the French people that he helped liberate and who helped liberate themselves.

There was a family that took him in somewhere in the French countryside and fed him the first meal he'd had in weeks that wasn't out of a can. They cooked food, washed his clothes, and gave him some wine and a decent bed to sleep on.

My dad is 96 now, and about 10 years ago the granddaughter of that family tracked him down and sent him a letter telling him how she had always heard about this man who came there to help them. He has treasured this person ever since and stayed in touch with her.

When I talked to him on the phone tonight, he was in tears about what has happened in that country he fought so hard to protect so many years ago and the people who are experiencing what you are going through.

Best wishes to you and yours. From Texas and New York, Vive la France.

I'm neither French nor American nor a particularly emotional person, but your post made me tear up. We Europeans all need to be more thankful for people like your father who fought a war on foreign soil to protect a foreign culture.

Sad. Of course. I know the French people will not be intimidated by this.

I find it sometimes asphyxiating to realize humanity has come so far and yet can devolve into baseline animal behavior at the drop of a feather. We are very far away, as a whole, from being an enlightened species.

Clearly there's a huge problem with a small percentage of people in the Islamic world. It seems obvious the "adults on the planet" could and should have the power to truly unite against this ridiculous minority and stop these lunatics cold. Now. Not in ten years. Now.

I don't know what the solution might be but it certainly isn't anywhere near appeasing or accepting them (the minority is what I am talking about). I do know it is sad and ridiculous that in the year 2015 we have to take off our shoes to get on planes and worry about getting shot in a theater or restaurant.

Haven't we all had enough?

Nope. There were another one about 10 years ago when giant riots happened in many suburbs of Paris. And both these attacks and the riots have the same root cause: a lack of integration of France's african immigration.

This was corrected by the President's office, clarifying "closing the borders" as "restoring border controls". As a side note, during Shengen, border police still exists but is allowed to place controls wherever they want. It's not clear to my why controls at the borders is more efficient than intense, random in-land controls.

I spent a day last year tracking down a war grave in France and was very much impressed with the absolutely incredible state of maintenance of the graves. One cemetery after another that looked absolutely impeccable and as if it had been created last week instead of many decades ago.