Paris Attack

[Mega]

Re: Paris Attack

When i think of what the West has done to the East.............

[Mega]

Re: Paris Attack

Ok,Ok Yes its Alex Jones..............but Steve is right, you DON'T attack Islam like this!

Mike

[don]

Re: Paris Attack

keep in mind there's a much bigger picture here . . .

Who profits from killing Charlie?


Putin did it. Sorry, he didn't. In the end, it was not Russia "aggression" that attacked the heart of Europe. It was a pro-style jihadi commando. Cui bono?

Careful planning and preparation; Kalashnikovs; rocket-propelled grenade launcher; balaclavas; sand-colored ammunition vest stuffed with spare magazines; army boots; piece of cake escape in a black Citroen. And the icing on the lethal cake; faultless Paris-based logistical support to pull that off. A former top French military commander, Frederic Gallois, has stressed the perfect application of "urban guerrilla technique" (where are those notorious Western counter-terrorism "experts" when one needs them?)

They might have spoken perfect French; others said it was broken French. Anyway, what matters is that they uttered the magic word; "We're al-Qaeda." Better yet; they told a man in the street, "Tell the media that this is al-Qaeda in Yemen", which means, in American terror terminology, al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP), which had Charlie Hebdo's editor/cartoonist Stephane Charbonnier ("Charb") on a hit list duly promoted by AQAP's glossy magazine Inspire. Accusation: "Insulting the Prophet Mohammed."

And just to make sure everyone had the perpetrators implanted on their brain, the killers also said, "Allahu Akbar"; "We have killed Charlie Hebdo"; and "We have avenged the Prophet."

Case closed? Well, it took only a few hours for French police to identify the (usual?) suspects; French-Algerian brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi. The third man - the driver of the black Citroen, 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad - then turned himself in with an ironclad alibi. So the third man remains a cipher.

They all wore balaclavas. The Kouachi brothers have not been captured. But the police seem to know very well who they are. Because they found an abandoned ID in the black Citroen (oh, the troubles of being a command in a rush ...) How come they didn't know anything before the carnage?

Right on cue, Cherif Kouachi's bio was splattered all over. He was on a global watch list. Along with six others, he was sentenced in May 2008 to 3 years in prison for "terrorism"; in fact unloading a dozen young Frenchmen via madrassas in Egypt and Syria to none other than Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the killed-by-an-American-missile former head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and the spiritual father of Daesh/ISIS/ISIL.

Also right on clue, a full narrative was ready for mass consumption. The key point; French police privileges the hypothesis of "Islamic terrorism". According to their "experts", this could be an attack "ordered from abroad and executed by jihadis coming back from Syria that have escaped us", or it could be "suburban idiots that radicalized themselves and concocted this military attack in the name of al-Qaeda."

Scrap option two, please; this was a pro job. And staying with option one, this points right at - what else - blowback. Yes, they could be Daesh/ISIS/ISIL mercenaries trained by NATO (crucially, France included) in Turkey and/or Jordan. But it might get even false-flag nastier. They could also be former or current French special forces.

Blast Islam, will travel

Predictably, Islamofascism peddlers are already having a field day/week/month/year. For simpletons/trolls/hordes exhibiting an IQ worthy of sub-zoology, when in doubt, demonize Islam. It's so convenient to forget that untold millions from Pakistan's tribal areas to street markets across Iraq continue to feel pain devastating their hearts and lives as they are expendable victims of the jihadi mindset - or "Kalashnikov culture", as it is known in Pakistan - profiting the "West", directly or indirectly, for decades now. Think ritual droning of Pakistani, Yemeni, Syrian, Iraqi or Libyan civilians. Think Sadr City witnessing carnages over 10 times worse than Paris.

What French President Francois Hollande defined as "an act of exceptional barbarism" - and it is - does not apply when the "West", France in the front line, from King Sarko to General Hollande himself, weaponizes, trains and remote-controls assorted mercenaries/beheaders from Libya to Syria. Oh yeah; killing civilians in Tripoli or Aleppo is perfectly all right. But don't do that in Paris.

So this, in the heart of Europe, is what blowback feels like. This is what people feel in the Waziristans when a wedding party is incinerated by a Hellfire missile. In parallel, it's absolutely impossible that the oh so sophisticated Western intel network had not seen blowback coming - and was impotent to prevent it (how come the scapegoats du jour, the Kouachi brothers, were not in the gallows?)

Of course the ultra-elaborate Western counter-terrorism expert network - so proficient at strip-teasing us all at every airport - saw it coming; but in shadow warland, portmanteau "al-Qaeda" and its myriad declinations, including "renegade" Daesh/ISIS/ISIL, are used as much as a mercenary army as a convenient domestic threat "against our freedoms".


Who profits?

US Think Tankland, also predictably, is busy spinning the drama of an "intra-Muslim" split which provides jihadis a lot of geopolitical space to exploit - all this sucking the Western world into a Muslim civil war. This is absolutely ridiculous. The Empire of Chaos, already during the 70s, was busy cultivating jihadi/Kalashnikov culture to fight anything from the USSR to nationalist movements all across the Global South. Divide and Rule has always been used to fan the flames "intra-Islam", from the Clinton administration getting cozy with the Taliban to the Cheney regime - helped by Persian Gulf vassals - advancing the sectarian Sunni/Shi'ite schism.

Cui bono, then, with killing Charlie? Only those whose agenda is to demonize Islam. Not even a bunch of brainwashed fanatics would pull off the Charlie carnage to show people who accuse them of being barbarians that they are, in fact, barbarians. French intel at least has concluded that this is no underwear bomber stunt. This is a pro job. That happens to take place just a few days after France recognizes Palestinian statehood. And just a few days after General Hollande demanded the lifting of sanctions against the Russian "threat".

The Masters of the Universe who pull the real levers of the Empire of Chaos are freaking out with the systemic chaos in the racket they so far had the illusion of controlling. Make no mistake - the Empire of Chaos will do what it can to exploit the post-Charlie environment - be it blowback or false flag.

The Obama administration is already mobilizing the UN Security Council. The FBI is "helping" with the French investigation. And as an Italian analyst memorably put it, jihadis don't attack a vulture hedge fund; they attack a satirical rag. This is not religion; this is hardcore geopolitics. Reminds me of David Bowie: "This is not rock'n roll. This is suicide."

The Obama administration is already mobilized to offer "protection" - Mob-style - to a Western Europe that is just, only just, starting to be diffident of the pre-fabricated Russian "threat". And just as it happens, when the Empire of Chaos mostly needs it, evil "terra" once again rears its ugly head.

And yes, I am Charlie. Not only because they made us laugh; but because they were sacrificial lambs in a much nastier, gruesome, never-ending shadowplay.


Pepe Escobar

[Raz]

Re: Paris Attack

I'm afraid I could not possibly disagree with you more on this point.

Yes, Mega. With freedom comes responsibility.

But there is a valid venue that is acceptable for adjudicating accountability for that responsibility. A comment that is merely nasty is protected. One that is slander/libel may be result in action in court. But there is no speech that does not itself cause a death, for which a death penalty (or twelve) is appropriate.

We respect religions out of respect for the people who follow them. They are people who have a right to hold opinions, and it is a civic nicety to treat people as one would like to be treated oneself. But while we would all like to be respected, we do not have a right to forcibly extract that respect from others who disagree with us. A society based on THAT principle, leads not to civilization, but madness.

It is inherently dangerous when any idea - religious or otherwise - takes universal precedence over human life. The idea that showing a picture of a prophet, or saying disparaging things about him, is not only punishable by death within a community of believers (who have chosen to adhere to that code) but also outside that community (no choice allowed) is simply advocacy of the lowest form of barbarism. To the extent that a religion claims a right to demand respect in this way, that religion is incompatible with democratic society, and demands extirpation.

In this case, blaming the victims of islamic terrorism based on their speech implies that a death penalty is appropriate for people who criticize religions. The victims may well have been, as you say, "looking for trouble." But they were doing so in the same manner that a soldier is when sent off to war. They were choosing to put themselves at risk to hold society back from a very slippery slope, in this case that of self-censorship based on fear for one's life.

That makes them heroes, however unseemly the things that they said may have been.

This isn't just US bias. It was most famously stated by a Frenchman:

+1.

[Raz]

Re: Paris Attack

+2

But I would push it even a bit further.

What I find absolutely fascinating(like rubbernecking at a horrific car crash) is how accepting folks are of one discriminatory system(Islam, based on it's own founding tenets regarding women and non-Muslims) that is completely incompatible with our own system(values).

Would western countries accept new immigrants who are adherents to a stated white race supremacy doctrine that is incompatible with western national values?

Of course not.

Why do western countries accept new immigrants who adhere to a stated religious supremacy doctrine that is incompatible with western national values?

Why the difference?

In short, for two reasons: (1) political correctness, which is tyranny with manners, together with (2) moral cowardice.

The New York Slimes decided to not print cartoons of Mohammed, yet the VERY NEXT DAY displayed a picture of the Virgin Mary
covered in elephant dung. It's apparently okay to insult Christians (PC) but nothing must be done that could in any way offend Muslims (moral cowardice).

[Milton Kuo]

Re: Paris Attack

So............you walk up to Mike Tyson & say you hate rape-est like him?
;)
Mike

The television program, "In Living Color," made fun of Mike Tyson when he was in his physical prime in the early 1990s. No one on the program got punched or murdered by Tyson.

[Mega]

Re: Paris Attack

Given that they were warned by EVERYONE to cool it, given that they made coments that the Holy book was SH*t & that the profit was Gay........two things that would for sure inflame the situation.......nope, am sorry for the police killed, they forced to die because of this.............

[BK]

Re: Paris Attack

The sad part of these Paris attacks is that this should have been anticipated given the state of emergency after the pre-Christmas attacks in Paris and the roll out of the French army (you will not see this reported in the NYTimes) see http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...s-9943109.html

[astonas]

Re: Paris Attack

Ok,Ok Yes its Alex Jones..............but Steve is right, you DON'T attack Islam like this!

Mike

... unless you have the courage of your convictions, in asserting the right to a free press.

I'll agree it was incredibly dangerous. And since they've been firebombed before, Charlie certainly knew it as well.

But proceeding in the face of fear is a pretty good definition of courage.

Are you suggesting that all courage is worthy of contempt? Or just in this case?

Is freedom of expression a human right NOT worth defending?

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Paris Attack

Given that they were warned by EVERYONE to cool it, given that they made coments that the Holy book was SH*t & that the profit was Gay........two things that would for sure inflame the situation.......nope, am sorry for the police killed, they forced to die because of this.............

Cowardice is a trait wherein fear and excess self-concern override doing or saying what is right, good and of help to others or oneself in a time of need—it is the opposite of courage. As a label, "cowardice" indicates a failure of character in the face of a challenge.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Paris Attack

Recently, there are many mentally deranged people that are acting crazy in the name of religion. I won't be too quick to associate such acts with religion and we should stop "glorifying" them. Mentally deranged people are more common than we think, and some of them are able to act and speak very normal.

The human mind is fragile, war, inflation, unemployment, etc, can cause insanity..

The human mind CAN be quite fragile, and it CAN be quite robust.

What I believe to be far worse than people who are haunted by participating in/witnessing violence are the people who are inoculated from any mental/emotional consequences of participating in ideologically based violence due to the "Get Out of Moral/Ethical Jail Free Card" they receive from their religion.

[jpetr48]

Re: Paris Attack

Cowardice is a trait wherein fear and excess self-concern override doing or saying what is right, good and of help to others or oneself in a time of need—it is the opposite of courage. As a label, "cowardice" indicates a failure of character in the face of a challenge.

Excellent quote and gets to the problem in this argument
Mega raised two separate problems
1) an attack on society and its rights-free press
2) attack on an individual

Character is needed in both of course but I will and have overlook others slanderous comments about me. What I will fight for is freedom and liberties that are endowed to our nation because if we allow those freedoms as a society to be removed, our way of life will be changed forever. This is what is happening to the interior parts of Europe with these no go zones- where rule of law is Sharia law. Europe has made a decision to silo a people group from their way of life. That silo is now diffusing into their way of life and like a genie out of the bottle, this faction will not go back into the bottle.

[Woodsman]

Re: Paris Attack

In short, for two reasons: (1) political correctness, which is tyranny with manners, together with (2) moral cowardice.

The New York Slimes decided to not print cartoons of Mohammed, yet the VERY NEXT DAY displayed a picture of the Virgin Mary
covered in elephant dung. It's apparently okay to insult Christians (PC) but nothing must be done that could in any way offend Muslims (moral cowardice).

No, it's not okay to insult Christians and the NYT never published any recognizable image of Mary covered in elephant dung. This is a mental construct that exists outside of the actualities of the events it purports to reference. People who accept this tale as reality and catalog its memory as an affront to Christianity are victims of a repulsive political cynic and opportunist named Rudy Giuliani. He fabricated religious controversy where none existed over a painting he never actually saw.

In fact, most people who accept this right wing mythology have never seen the image. Personally, I'd doubt anyone who saw it cold and unprompted would ever once associate the picture with any mental reference they carried of Mary. But then what is faith if not believing without seeing and knowing without understanding? Doubting Thomas that I am, I sought out the offending image.

Steel yourselves, friends.




Now pause and reflect on it so that the silliness of it all might sink in deep - the original events, the mythological force it took on, and the self-righteous ignorance of those who persist in seeing it as a political totem. That the painting now hangs in Hobart among the collection of a Tasmanian professional gambler and vintner seems perfect. God may work in mysterious ways, but His sense of humor at the folly of His creation is self-evident.

I'm an artist and I think I've learned a few things about producing art and about art criticism. For the past several years, I've drawn mostly portraits and my work is of the generally banal and representational variety most people feel comfortable mislabeling as "art." I don't have enough skill as yet (and so consequently little interest) for abstraction and after Rothko I'm left wondering what's the point of it anyway, although mine is a minority opinion among professionals and academics.

That's not to say I don't value abstraction and expression or have any misapprehensions about the point and place of the approach. I also don't expect that any work either of representation or abstraction has to be "about" anything at all. And the longer I work, the less I believe that anything meaningful about art can be effectively communicated with the debased currency of art critics - words. Then again, I can talk about art and making art for hours, so go figure.

Sometimes the "about" of a work is obvious and sometimes I'm clueless unless the artist tells me. And in the case of Chris Ofili's "The Holy Virgin Mary" the blessed virgin does not immediately come to mind, thank you. Someone had to point out to me the words "virgin" and "Mary" rendered colored pins, I must admit. I don't care for it but I will say that the aesthetic skill required to produce it is somewhat more evident than that of other works exhibited at the time:


Proudly Owned by Hedge Fund King Mr. Stephen Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors.

But what did the artist have to say about his painting?

"There's something incredibly simple but incredibly basic about it," Ofili said. "It attracts a multiple of meanings and interpretations."

Okay, that's nice and vacuous and content free. Clearly Mr.Ofili knows his way around critics. Yet is he purposely "desecrating somebody else's religion," as Giuliani claimed at the time? And what's his religious perspective, if any?

"I was brought up a Catholic and was an altar boy," he said.
"I believe in God, but I'm not dominated by it.
We all studied math, but we don't go around spewing numbers. Religion should be used in the appropriate way."
"The church is not made up of one person but a whole congregation, and they should be able to interact with art without being told what to think," he continued.
"This is all about control," he added. "We've seen it before in history. Sadly, I thought we'd moved on."

Ofili asserts that "elephant dung in itself is quite a beautiful object" and as a man of Nigerian descent his work is replete with elements of African folk art. African art has always incorporated dung without meaning to be offensive -- near where Ofili's painting hung in Brooklyn, there is an African mask made of wood, honey, metal and dung. Elephants in Africa represent power. Dung is meant to suggest fertility. Old Master painters used mummy brown, a pigment consisting of pulverized Egyptian mummies, but no one complains about the shadows in 18th-century European paintings of the Virgin being made out of dead people. And the same show that featured the image of Mary also presented another similarly crappy painting named "Afrodizzia," only this one had balls of dung with the names Miles Davis and Cassius Clay written on them. If Giuliani and the right wing ideologues think the work is expressive of anti-black or racist sentiment, they have yet to speak out.

As it is, the painting is insubstantial as an artistic or social expression. There's just not much to it and were it not for the efforts of right wing politicians and the reactionary ideologues that comprise their power base, the painting would have none of the notoriety and potency ascribed to it. It would be exactly what it is, a big, expensive, semi-abstract collage, eight feet high and six feet wide, resting on two balls of resin-covered elephant dung with pins stuck into them.

So one alter boy who grew up to be political entrepreneur looking for votes and donations says its "sick stuff." Another altar boy who grew up to be an artist say's it's all about control. Mr. Ofili seemed clear on that point, too. Speaking at the time he said of the tempest:

"It's like a play, and somehow I got mentioned in the script. I think there's some bigger agenda here."

In the same way we may doubt Giuliani's sincerity, we may doubt the artist's sincerity and aesthetic vision. Ofili is far from the first artist to contemplate the sacred and profane and had he named his painting "The Virgin Mildred", Guiliani might have had to choose another stunt.

While it takes no great judge of character to note the same cynical opportunism among the art entrepreneurs represented in the Brooklyn Museum's "Sensation" exhibit - never mind Charles Saatchi for his brilliant and highly profitable exploitation of the entire affair - it is a matter of proportionality. The artist merely harm the bank balances of credulous collectors while the politician does genuine harm to humans everywhere.

In the end, it's all shit in the worlds of high politics and high art. Artists like Ofili smear shit and sell it for millions, the politicians talk shit and sell it for millions, and we eat shit in large, malodorous helpings. For any connection with the events in Paris, political correctness, the moral courage of the Times, or the the alleged persecution of Christians, is shit too. Bull shit.

FRED, since the thread has moved from reporting and discussion on the on the tragic Paris event and has become a debate on political correctness, religion and morality, it seems destined for Political Abyss. Might we move it there now and tone down the noise before it gets too loud?

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Paris Attack

The sad part of these Paris attacks is that this should have been anticipated given the state of emergency after the pre-Christmas attacks in Paris and the roll out of the French army (you will not see this reported in the NYTimes) see http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...s-9943109.html

I agree to a certain extent.

But "easier said than done" is a considerable understatement.

France is looking at circa 1000 foreign fighters active in Syria/Iraq.

Those who return, presumably with broader/deeper skill sets to conduct attacks, would present higher potential risk of conducting an attack as well as higher risk of attack success.

Do you preventatively detain them?

Is that legal?

If legal, which ones and for how long?

Do the French DGSE/DCRI monitor their phone/internet coms?

Monitoring them all is relatively easy, analyzing and disseminating is the harder part.

Do the bad guys use tradecraft measures and OPSEC discipline to counter known broad surveillance?

If so, how do you know?

IF you know, how do you allocate your relatively small population of specialist police/intelligence personnel to comprehensively surveil what is a fairly substantial population of potential terrorists?

Technological advances certainly have made the life of the sovereign state easier to surveil individuals' and groups' electronic emissions.

But a small group of well trained, motivated, and disciplined bad guys who carefully manage their electronic emissions and mitigate their risk of infiltration by not recruiting outside of a highly trusted network is a VERY tough nut to crack.

Especially against a broad, deep, and growing background of competing unassimilated, unfulfilled, and unhappy ethnic/ideological noise.

But in having said that, one of the suspect brothers got pinched for facilitating French foreign fighters to Iraq, which would probably make him worthy of increased and ongoing police and intelligence scrutiny.

I'd even hazard a guess that he'd be the type of guy("junior management" facilitator) who police/intelligence folks would develop a careful approach to pitch him to become an informant based on his conviction.

[radon]

Re: Paris Attack

I am 110% in favor of freedom of thought & you should be free to express what you wish. I am very sorry for those killed, but with freedom comes re-sponce-abilty people. If i made false claims about someone.........they take action against me!

I could say nasty things to people about themselves or their children, it might be true but just because i have the freedom to say it & its true should i say it?......Yes he/she is fat & uglay sone of a bi*ch......but why look for trouble?

I read tonight that the now Dead French press people had just finished attacking Islam on Twitter that very morning.....not a very bright thing to do....there comes a point when hummor turns into haressment...........

Mike

Do you honestly think any sane person would machine gun your family if you called his wife a warthog? Any ideology that condones murdering someone for satire deserves all the harassment it can get. This is the sort of thing that is fueling the rise of the right in Europe. Does anyone remember what happened the last time?