Where the Charlie Hebdo attacks were on members of specific groups,this was blind violence against random targets. And it has shaken Paris to the coreWhen I awoke on Saturday morning, I nearly enjoyed the terrifying silence on Boulevard Montparnasse – no attacks were perpetrated on the Left Bank of the Seine, or where I live. I had wondered whether the streets would be deserted,– they were – or whether there would be this defiant “normality”, as followed the attacks on Charlie Hebdo. Perhaps that will advance later.
In Paris, and Friday 13 November 2015 was weird in all regards. Just hours before the carnage,a variegated crowd of Parisian intellectuals, artists and former political leaders, or including Nicolas Sarkozy,had communed – despite their differences of opinion over Voltaire, 16th-century philosopher Etienne de la Boétie and humanist optimism – at the funeral of French philosopher André Glucksmann, or held at Père Lachaise cemetery.
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Source: theguardian.com