Charlie Hebdo: Gun attack on French magazine kills 11

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30710883

there's a video doing the rounds where you can see the shooters attack. it also shows them killing a cop, so yeah don't watch it

Maybe too soon to consider the consequences but there ain't nothing but ugliness ahead.

fuck! shot that cop point blank

So are the gunmen still on the run at the moment and is it known how many there are?

evidently yes they are on the run, in the north of the city. three I think?

gonna be fun here in the south of the country I'm sure! though paris is a long way from here in many senses

yeah three ppl is what the police has said. they haven't given any specific info about where the search is happening but it is in the norther suburbs (they ditched a car at porte de pantin, which has been recovered by the police)

"The man hunt is currently centred around the Seine Saint-Denis to the north and east of Paris."

wandering around some of the 'burbs in the Seine Saint-Denis (like, near the Stade) feels like you're in Batman or something, so this'll be great.

fucking hell they're fucking executing cartoonists for cartooning. this strikes rather close to home (i'm a cartoonist, so is my wife, 70% of my friends are cartoonists). I feel sick right now.

yeah, as long as atavistic fanatics like this shed blood on occasion, The War on Terror will go on.

at this point, "on occasion" = daily, but not in the west (which i take to be yr point)

well sure, this one's different cuz it's us

noticeable that the Yemen suicide bombing has dropped off the BBC News website main stories listing completely.

sorry morbs i cannot summon the necessary sangfroid at this moment

the first name of one of the cops killed is Ahmed. this is France today: it's not a war of Islam, or the Maghreb, or the Middle East, discretely separated from "the real France". looking forward to this point being missed about a million times in what's coming (i.e. I should not read Le Pen's remarks)

a little freaky watching the rolling news coverage of this from inside Broadcasting House

sorry Jon, i didn't mean to shortchange your anxiety.

kinda surprised it took this long for there to be an Islamic terror attack on French soil tbh (unless I missed something...?)

School shooting last year for starters.

yes and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldenberg_restaurant_attack

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_Paris_M%C3%A9tro_and_RER_bombings

stray thoughts...

i really worry that this will hand a few upcoming elections to the front national.

i saw a still image of the gunmen executing the wounded cop and almost vomited.

and yes, sadly there have been many terror attacks--incl. numerous anti-semitic attacks--in france over the past few decades.

Not to mention a previous attack and threats against this pub. The Intercept:

In 2011 its offices were firebombed the day after it named Muhammad the putative “editor-in-chief” of its forthcoming issue. At the time, Stephane Charbonnier, one of the cartoonists reportedly killed today, stated his belief that the attack was not the responsibility of French Muslims but of “idiot extremists”.

... A 2013 edition of Al Qaeda’s Inspire magazine had also placed the editors of the publication on a hitlist of media figures and politicians.

One wonders how much of a police/intel presence was kept near the offices after these events, and for how long.

one of the cops killed today was Charbonnier's state-assigned police protector

ho shit, thx, hadn't seen that.

I'm not sure I was aware Al Qaeda had a magazine. (avoid Impact Factor crack here)

Yeah, I heard (from a coworker) this morning that assigned police protection was on-site when this attack took place, is that legit?

i know this is terrible to say, but we still don't know who did it, just who everyone suspects is very likely to have done it

if i'm not mistaken the teenaged american citizen that the US killed in a drone strike in yemen was one of the editors of the al qaeda magazine... or perhaps it was his father. but yes they have a magazine, and have had for quite some time. (insert joke about it being the in-flight mag-- sorry, gallows humor.)

the first name of one of the cops killed is Ahmed. this is France today: it's not a war of Islam, or the Maghreb, or the Middle East, discretely separated from "the real France". looking forward to this point being missed about a million times in what's coming (i.e. I should not read Le Pen's remarks)

― droit au butt (Euler), Wednesday, January 7, 2015 3:56 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Haven't many Middle East countries been at war with each other for the last 100 years?

I'm not really familiar with French politics/society, so correct me if I'm wrong, but is it surprising that some extreme Islamists'/Muslims' hatred for another maybe less extreme/more progressive Islamist/Muslim is demonstrated regardless of the country they live in or are at? I guess I don't see how extremists' views on how their own people should be or act can simply disappear when they are abroad.

Sorry if I missed your point (genuinely interested).

US Muslims died in the Sept 11 attacks, people took very little note of it.

the point is that the "mainstream" French society on which this was an attack is multicultural to its core, and includes a lot of muslims. so this wasn't an attack by "muslims" (as outsiders) on "the french" (exclusive of muslims) as the front national is likely to frame it.

i doubt the murderers cared much about the ethnicity of the policeman they killed FWIW.

xpost

still sickening to think these three guys are still running around suburban paris... or wherever they are by now.

That makes sense, amateurist. I overlooked the Front National.

"mainstream" French society on which this was an attack is multicultural to its core

that may be how extremist muslims see it but is that how other French people see it? France has always seemed deeply racist/monocultural to me.

you can't generalize about "French people"

there are people -- many of whom vote for the F.N. -- who see islam as a foreign body attacking French society

and there are people who see French society as fundamentally diverse and multicultural

the balance is different -- and likely more xenophobic -- than in the USA. but that doesn't mean there's a range of feeling and opinion.

typo

that doesn't mean there ISN'T a range of feeling and opinion

Max made a MAD comparison on Gawker, that isn't correct. South Park doesn't fit either because the artwork is so important. Moreover, it isn't a megaphone for European fascism. If there's an American comparison, it's Fantagraphics. Charb reminded me of Bagge: terrific cartooning and a Reason worldview.

RIP

yes exactly.

xpost

yeah this hits very close to home, these folks were not infantile provocateurs but real artists.

still feel on the verge of vomiting.

Juan Cole:

"Al-Qaeda wants to mentally colonize French Muslims, but faces a wall of disinterest. But if it can get non-Muslim French to be beastly to ethnic Muslims on the grounds that they are Muslims, it can start creating a common political identity around grievance against discrimination.

The operatives who carried out this attack exhibit signs of professional training. They spoke unaccented French, and so certainly know that they are playing into the hands of Marine LePen and the Islamophobic French Right wing. They may have been French, but they appear to have been battle hardened. This horrific murder was not a pious protest against the defamation of a religious icon. It was an attempt to provoke European society into pogroms against French Muslims, at which point al-Qaeda recruitment would suddenly exhibit some successes instead of faltering in the face of lively Beur youth culture (French Arabs playfully call themselves by this anagram). Ironically, there are reports that one of the two policemen they killed was a Muslim."

http://www.juancole.com/2015/01/sharpening-contradictions-satirists.html

They spoke unaccented French,

One of the people quoted by the Guardian, who was in the building, said they were speaking in broken French, fwiw

that part is unnecessarily conspiratorial for the larger point about the intended effect of attacks like this, of genuine terrorism in general, i think

I am personally close to both the Paris' world of journalism and illustration, it has been a dark day for me. My uncle called my mother here in Canada to tell me to get 'the muslims out of Montreal while we still can!', things are about to get real ugly in France I fear.

White House suits telling us they were "highly trained and organised professionals, not lone angry men"

Yet they didn't have code to get in building, or even a getaway car?

Yeah, someone asked me about Muslims in Canada and I had to explain how Quebec has taken a hard line with Muslims compared to the rest of the country.

[off-topic]
Actually, yesterday an Asian guy told me he experienced racism in Toronto and asked if that was widespread in Canada and why it was so, as he was being courteous. I just remembered yesterday an Iranian guy also told me "you hear about Canada more now than 20 years ago" and how it was all bad press. Thanks, Harpo!
[/off-topic]

the first name of one of the cops killed is Ahmed. this is France today: it's not a war of Islam, or the Maghreb, or the Middle East, discretely separated from "the real France". looking forward to this point being missed about a million times in what's coming (i.e. I should not read Le Pen's remarks)

― droit au butt (Euler), Wednesday, January 7, 2015 10:56 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So far all major french media outlets (of all political spectrums) have took notice of the death of Ahmed, who just recently got french citizenship.

"Al-Qaeda wants to mentally colonize French Muslims, but faces a wall of disinterest. But if it can get non-Muslim French to be beastly to ethnic Muslims on the grounds that they are Muslims, it can start creating a common political identity around grievance against discrimination.

Beur youth culture (French Arabs playfully call themselves by this anagram).

Ironically, there are reports that one of the two policemen they killed was a Muslim.

what's the english word for verlan?

This is a silly debate, but verlan words are anagrams in a sense?

i've read a bit about islamic history but i'm not an expert in it at all (and as you can imagine a lot of what i know are the places where islamic history and jewish history touch) but there are two different points here - one is wahhabism as a more contemporary phenomenon and the second is the currents of colonialism and violence that have existed at different times throughout islamic history. in either case i think it's a mistake to explain islamic fundamentalist violence as primarily a reaction to western interventions even though that certainly has played some role in its current manifestations.

the whole world has been effed for thousands of years. its not like the English tradition doesnt recently have tons of bloodshed on its hands. i dont see the point in morally judging when the whole world has always been a war hungry madhouse.

i just dont see the point in judging this vast group of people to all have something fundamentally different about them than the west. something about throwing stones if u live in a glass house.

uh nobody said any of that

I'm sure we're all plenty comfortable judging ISIS. no one's rendering judgment on Muslims as a whole

i'm not judging anyone and it should go without saying (but maybe i should say it anyway) that islam is a complex and rich tradition with many different beliefs and ideologies. right now i'm talking about a particular tradition within it and not saying in any way that all of islam is this or that which would be absurd in addition to bigoted.

muslim brotherhood dates back to the 20s if that's what the danish guy was talking about. a standard answer for people looking for an intellectual origin of anti-western fundamentalism is sayyid qutb. al-wahhab & ibn saud were late C18th, purist, revivalist & very conservative but not exactly political in the sense people are talking about here. a lot of arab nationalists were pro-western/influenced by e.g. french political thinkers

people are saying they are religiously motivated. i take that as a sort of judgement on islam as a whole.

why? two people read the same text and one is inspired to pacifism and the other is inspired to go to war. they're both religiously motivated.

half of KSM's official statement was praise for enlightenment radicals and american revolutionary heroes

as someone said on another thread: read better

xp

KSM not part of ISIS btw

if we are to stop terrorism we need to look at it as a dynamic system rather than isolated groups.

this is john kerry playing wack a mole

we're not going to stop terrorism. remember all the times you made fun of the "war on terror"? the silly part isn't the war part. the silly part is you can't defeat a tactic.

i am not above entertaining the idea of making the world a safer place. that is the purpose for society and civilization imo.

i made fun of career arms dealer us politicians using that as a sales pitch. i take this stuff seriously tho. i have family in france.

You can get the full text of Lawrence Wright's 9/11 book The Looming Tower here -

https://archive.org/stream/TheLoomingTower/TheLoomingTower_djvu.txt

The early chapters deal with the sources of modern Islamist thought, especially Sayyid Qutb, mentioned already by ogmor.

The role of Sadaam's former Baathists should not be overlooked

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/the-hidden-hand-behind-the-islamic-state-militants-saddam-husseins/2015/04/04/aa97676c-cc32-11e4-8730-4f473416e759_story.html

His account, and those of others who have lived with or fought against the Islamic State over the past two years, underscore the pervasive role played by members of Iraq’s former Baathist army in an organization more typically associated with flamboyant foreign jihadists and the gruesome videos in which they star.

Even with the influx of thousands of foreign fighters, almost all of the leaders of the Islamic State are former Iraqi officers, including the members of its shadowy military and security committees, and the majority of its emirs and princes, according to Iraqis, Syrians and analysts who study the group.

They have brought to the organization the military expertise and some of the agendas of the former Baathists, as well as the smuggling networks developed to avoid sanctions in the 1990s and which now facilitate the Islamic State’s illicit oil trading.
...Rather than the Baathists using the jihadists to return to power, it is the jihadists who have exploited the desperation of the disbanded officers, according to a former general who commanded Iraqi troops during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Yeah, one thing I would also say from my limited reading of their propaganda is that ISIS could potentially seem like it had a lot to offer for someone not ostensibly religiously motivated but very nihilistic/cynical/vicious -- adventure, action, rape, etc. So it has occurred to me that not all of its recruits may wholesale buy into the ideology deep down, but may just like the opportunity it purports to afford to basically live in a video game.

As that article noted--Two decades ago, the elaborate and cruel forms of torture perpetrated by Hussein dominated the discourse about Iraq, much as the Islamic State’s harsh punishments do today.

Michael Weiss is kind of an idiot but his interviews with ISIS members recently suggest a lot of people joining now are locals who just need $$$

http://uk.businessinsider.com/isis-defector-explains-why-people-continue-joining-group-2015-11?r=US&IR=T

Would be interesting to know how their failure to make any military or strategic headway this year has impacted foreign recruitment.

short book excerpt from politico on the connections between/supercession of IS and AQ

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/isis-jihad-121525#.VdXrKab3ac2

Also probably important is the rise of pan-Arabism or Arab Nationalism in the early 20th century, which was not at all a "radical Islamic" movement but did pave the way for the idea of a post-colonial united ME region, a mantle that wahabbists have taken up with a very different spin.

― on entre O.K. on sort K.O. (man alive), Wednesday, November 18, 2015 2:36 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

others here know more than me; i thought the growth of islamist movements sprang from the failures of pan-arabism to deliver

Right, I just mean I credit pan-Arabism with a new wider regionalist thinking that islamist movements took up, I think we're saying similar things.

Started reading Looming Tower thanks to this thread (h/t to Ward for the free link). Wright is such a great storyteller, the kind of writer I find myself trying to sneak in another page of every chance I get -- in the elevator, in the hallway, etc.

Looming tower is amazing

I read Going Clear and Thirteen Days in September (not quite as gripping but the subject matter is drier) and I devour pretty much anything he writes in the NYer.

I may try to read everything he's done, although the twins book doesn't sound that interesting to me.

Wasn't sure where to put this, so, France beheading attack: Suspect Yassin Salhi kills himself

"Prosecutors regarded Salhi as a militant Islamist, but the delivery driver maintained that he was motivated by a grudge against his employer."

"His head - reportedly bearing Arabic inscriptions - had been hooked on to factory railings, alongside two flags, also with Arabic writing on it."

weird

Also weird that someone I know knows someone who got a phone call from his brother saying, "I'm off work today, one of our driver's just beheaded my boss."

Every saud has a killer lining

dude was that necessary

Not even defensible tbh let alone necessary

Man shot in Paris on Charlie Hebdo anniversary

Shot while trying to enter a police station while yielding a knife, according to reports.

... and wearing a suicide vest... allegedly.

... fake suicide belt apparently, guy was no genius obv.

http://hurryupharry.org/2016/04/03/charlie-hebdo-on-brussels/
^ Interesting analysis of latest controvercial piece

https://interc.pt/2wpsGdq

Greenwald OTM

If only I could figure out how to use 700 words to say "Piers Morgan and his ilk are mendacious idiots"

He probably is OTM, but I also just feel like I didn't really get the *lack* of nuance to their humor until it targeted a subject I understood better. Like I thought there was more going on in the other covers and I didn't understand the context. Now I doubt it.

'je suis charlie' being embraced as a slogan by brainless right-wingers is one of the funnier things i've lived thru

Beyond the ~offensive~ layer, that Texas cover was just really dumb and didn't make sense.

Well, there's a reason the vast majority of people in the world, francophones or not, had never heard of this publication before January 2015. It's not exactly Mad Magazine

I don't necessarily disagree with his overall point, but it seems kind of silly for GG to assert that the reaction to this new cartoon has vindicated him, say that "the examples are far too numerous to comprehensively cite", and then quote Piers Morgan, James Woods and the fucking Prison Planet guy rather than anyone quoted in his original article.

one of GG's best in a while imo

that's like saying "this turd didn't float"

Loving that shift in response from PM and others though