Tea at Trianon: The Men Who Killed James Foley

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, August 24, 2014

The Men Who Killed James Foley

From The New Yorker:

A video showing the beheading, by a black-garbed executioner, of the American journalist James Foley is the latest in a series of sickening acts that the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, has visited on the world in recent months. Foley’s execution was presented as a choreographed “message to America” by this band of performance-minded terrorists, who seek to be seen, heard, and feared by as many people as possible. Jim Foley, who was forty, was a handsome and quietly intrepid man who reported for GlobalPost, a Boston-based news site. He was in the field in northern Syria when he was abducted, two years ago. He had previously reported on the revolution in Libya, and had spent six weeks in the custody of Muammar Qaddafi’s regime after being captured, with several other journalists, on a battlefield in the Western Desert. It was a traumatic experience for Foley and the others, who feared for their lives after witnessing a friend, the South African photojournalist Anton Hammerl, be shot in the stomach and left to die. In the video of Foley’s execution, a masked ISIS fighter threatens to execute Steven Sotloff, an American reporter who has written for Time and other outlets, if President Barack Obama does not take the proper “next steps.” As proof of deadly intent, the masked fighter drags Sotloff before the camera as well. (Read more.)