Tea at Trianon: Knife Attacks Around The World

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

Tuesday, July 3, 2018

Knife Attacks Around The World

From Zero Hedge:

All humor aside, some folks in the US who want to do away with the Second Amendment are probably saying smugly, “Well, knife attacks are bad, but only people with GUNS can kill dozens of victims quickly.” Those folks would be wrong. For example…

In 2014, 33 people were killed and 130 more were injured when a group of men coordinated a terror attack using knives at a train station in southwest China’s Yunnan Province.

In 2015, fifty workers at a Chinese coal mine were killed in a coordinated knife attack. Fifty more workers were injured.

In 2016, a facility for the disabled was attacked by a man with a knife. He killed 15 people and injured 45, then later surrendered himself to police.

In 2017, 18 people walking down a city street were injured when a man attacked them with a knife

13 people were seriously injured by a knife-wielding assailant at a shopping mall in Beijing earlier this year. One woman died from her injuries.

This tells me that it isn’t really a problem with guns. It’s a problem with people. (Read more.)