The end of terrorism

What is happening now in Russia is historical.

Compare these two events:

11 September 2001: A terrorist attack in New York results in a series of wars that have already killed 5 million people, more than 90% civilians, and are still festering.

23 March 2024: A terrorist attack in Moscow results in all the attackers arrested and produced in court in less than 24 hours, and no new war or revolution is started.

What a difference!

Otherwise, 2 aspects are the same: 1) A massive killing of innocents, broadcast live in the media, and 2) No consensus on the responsibilities, as different theories are competing.

What we are witnessing now is a great civilisational event, marking the beginning of the end of terrorism as we know it, since 2001 or even since the murder of Archduke Ferdinand on 28th June 1914 that triggered the World War 1, resulting in 20 millions deaths, half of them civilians.

It is an undeniable fact that the Russian people are teaching us how to deal, as a society, as a civilisation, with terrorism.

Also truly remarquable is the ratio of military to civilian deaths in the Ukraine war: Less than 10% civilians deaths. We need to look at the pre-Napoleonic wars to see such low casualties among civilians!

Again, whatever side our sympathy tends to favour and whatever propaganda each side would like us to believe, let's give the Russians and the Ukrainians the credit they deserve: They fight between soldiers, like the aristocrats of the very ancient times, and not against civilians.

This forces respect, and Russian and Ukrainian soldiers behave in a more civilised way than the Western promoters of this war for which, in the words of the half-crazy former advisor of the Ukrainian government, Arestovich, who sometimes says things that would send maybe anyone else to jail or worse, "Russians are barbarous with money and we are barbarous without money, that's why they (the West) can utilise us for their purposes"...

The West is unable to end terrorism because it is possessed by it. Even philosophically, René Girard has not really been able to "end Clausewitz", and the nazi philosopher Carl Schmitt remains, de facto if not openly, the dominant figure in the Western concept of politics and war.

Beyond rhetoric, if we look at the basic facts like the remarkable respect for civilians from the Russian and Ukrainian sides, we must admit that both countries are well on the way to "denazification".

Then the collective West will have to denazify itself also. Let's work to do that without a war. If possible.

New-born

Love is like a new-born: always naked,

and naked forever.

We put clothes on love, we educate and scold love, we are exasperated, angry, disgusted, in awe and laughing at love,

And we never disrespect and especially, never abandon love, the new-born baby that has gracefully visited us!

John le Carré, who wrote "love is whatever you can still betray", and Emmanuel Lévinas, who even more poignantly described our lives as "the always renewed postponement of the hour of betrayal", were perfectly accurate, especially Lévinas who rises so high above sentimentalism that very few people -and certainly not me- can understand him till now. But Novalis, 150 years before them, as in anticipation, entirely reversed this dark, sentimental and somehow complacent vision, and prepared a ground for our work towards an answer: "We must never admit that we love ourselves. This is the secret of the only true and eternal love". What Novalis describes here is the opposite of the physical and spiritual self-destruction that our lazy times call "self-love". Because we don't really understand yet what we mean by "ourselves", and we are in complete illusion regarding where and what is the boundary between "you" and "me", as we try to assimilate this to an international frontier, complete with its border posts, armed guards, visa and periodic shootings.

Questioning a terrorist

Here is a video of one of the shooters who killed more than 100 people in a concert venue in Moscow yesterday.

Shooter interrogation

So, that is really interesting:

In Russia, terrorists do not disappear in thin air, and they are not shot by the police. 

They are caught and interrogated.

Exactly the opposite of each terrorist attack in France in the last 20 years!

We in France should ask the Russians to train our police! Especially those at the very top. Remind them who they are supposed to serve: The people, and to whom they are answerable: The judges. Not politicians.

After cleaning the top police echelon we will finally find out who ordered the terrorist attacks of 2015 (Charlie Hebdo, Bataclan).

And honour the memory of Helric Fredou.