On 14th July, the day France celebrates the formation of the French republic, 84 people were killed, 202 are injured with 24 on life support, by a truck which plowed into the crowd on the promenade des Anglais in Nice.  Here is an account from FranceTV about how help was delivered in the hours after the attack.

France is where I am staying now, it is where my in-laws and my partner are from.  As worried friends and family tried to contact us to make sure that we were okay, I decided not to dig into the story or post more pictures of the person who committed this monstrous crime.  Instead I decided to look for ways to help.  I went to donate blood, but the hospital in the small town, 200 kms from Nice, was overwhelmed by people who were trying to give blood.  I will try again tomorrow.

For people in the United States, Noor Al-Sibai published this great blog on Bustle.com on how to help, and guidelines for how to react to the probability of even more Islamophobia in the coming days.

The most important question I keep hearing among friends and family in Gap (the tiny French town I just moved to) is why no one has done much to bring Bush Jr. and his cohorts to justice for the illegal war that is, at least in part, responsible for the terrorism.  Yes, I understand that France also has some work to do internally.  However, this month, we learned that despite the findings of the Chilcot report, the question of whether Blair and Bush committed war crimes by attacking Iraq will not be addressed by the International Criminal Court.  In fact, Common Dreams reported that on July 6th, Bush Jr. celebrated a peaceful happy 70th birthday secure in the knowledge that he would not be tried for war crimes. Individual groups, like The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, have begun the process of indicting members of the Bush Administration by filing criminal complaints against the architects of the torture program.  There is a growing movement to bring Bush, Cheney and the architects of the war to justice.  Join it.