Charlie Hebdo: Gun attack on French magazine kills 11

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?

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

Absolutely, though there at least was some degree of trolling/provocation. Didn't the magazine recently/briefly make Mohammad its EIC? Admittedly, provocation is one aspect of satire.

Seems like a lot of European countries/cities are torn between their well-meaning, progressive, open-society instincts and a sort of reactionary nationalism. Like, wasn't it France that banned, or tried to ban, headscarves? Iirc, they did it, or at least couched it, in the name of equality, but the result seemed reactionary and certainly sparked some outrage.

what's the english word for verlan?

spoonerism maybe?

I am walking on eggs now and I don't really know where I stand on Charli Hebdo, I never did know actually, but right now I'm certain I can say that the endless provocation wasn't worth it.

what happened is not the magazine's fault

Has this been linked to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXf1CaU6aWo

Seems like a lot of European countries/cities are torn between their well-meaning, progressive, open-society instincts and a sort of reactionary nationalism. Like, wasn't it France that banned, or tried to ban, headscarves? Iirc, they did it, or at least couched it, in the name of equality, but the result seemed reactionary and certainly sparked some outrage.

Yes. Notably, there is a tenuous relationship between the magazine and fascistic nationalism. They received some attention for their frequent harassment of Jean-Marie Le Pen.

i.e. it's impossible to contextualize this horrible situation into familiar themes.

what's the english word for verlan?

Verlan is the inverse of L'inverse (lan-ver). Not sure there's an English word equivalent, but a cousin of Cockney slang.

http://p5.storage.canalblog.com/58/13/177230/59962592.jpg

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/former-onion-editor-freedom-speech-cannot-be-killed

The Charlie Hebdo gunmen also shot a police officer in the head as he lay dying on the sidewalk. These people are not just enemies of cartoonists or the ideals of the West. They’re enemies of human life. They care for nothing, believe in nothing worth believing in, and therefore their ideology, whatever it may be, is worthless. Moot. Not even worth our consideration for a moment.

They cannot kill everyone who disagrees with them. There are not enough bullets in the world for that. The most responsible thing we can do is be aware that the most likely threat to freedom will now come from within. We cannot, should not, police our own thoughts – or the thoughts of our fellow citizens. Because the First Amendment does not just protect our free speech; it protects all expression, including religion.

former onion editor otm

Seems like a lot of European countries/cities are torn between their well-meaning, progressive, open-society instincts and a sort of reactionary nationalism. Like, wasn't it France that banned, or tried to ban, headscarves? Iirc, they did it, or at least couched it, in the name of equality, but the result seemed reactionary and certainly sparked some outrage.

i know what you mean, but a strong national self-identity of secular egalitarianism is critical in France, and defines the approach away from an open society/reactionary nationalism axis.

i'm sure everyone knows this already but secularism in France is called Laïcité + has a long history

Verlan is the inverse of L'inverse (lan-ver). Not sure there's an English word equivalent, but a cousin of Cockney slang.

― bit of a singles monster (Eazy), Wednesday, January 7, 2015 3:18 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I use verlan for lots of words myself! Anagram and spoonerism both makes sense to me.

i know what you mean, but a strong national self-identity of secular egalitarianism is critical in France, and defines the approach away from an open society/reactionary nationalism axis.

― Fizzles, Wednesday, January 7, 2015 3:23 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Indeed, secular egalitarianism is so loosely defined that it has been used by both fascists to discriminate and even generally more open minded people view 'becoming french just like the others' as the ultimate goal for an immigrant, it's assimilation instead of integration, like how well the terrorist spoke french is debate you would only have in France (perhaps I'm wrong here).

but I think CH was such a weird institution that it's hard to place it in a debate concerning the immigrant french youth.

"was"

I hope the will exists to keep the mag going, frankly. As a fuck you to zealots

But I suppose not

the three shooters have been identified.

Unconfirmed reports three suspects have been arrested.

http://www.liberation.fr/societe/2015/01/07/le-siege-de-charlie-hebo-vise-par-des-tirs_1175326

but I think CH was such a weird institution that it's hard to place it in a debate concerning the immigrant french youth.

― Van Horn Street, Wednesday, January 7, 2015 9:36 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The culture of satire and mockery in media in France is so ancient, I doubt in France it's perceived as a "weird institution"?

The three supposedly arrested according to Liberation.

liberation liveblog say not arrested, just located?

Said arrested two minutes ago but has changed.

French media reports have circulated claiming to identify the three shooters as Saïd Kouachi (age 34), Chérif Kouachi (age 32) and Hamyd Mourad (age 18). Saïd and Chérif Kouachi are said to be brothers native born to France, while Mourad’s nationality is unknown. Police have also reportedly conducted raids on two apartments in the efforts to track down the shooters.

Chérif Kouachi, one of the alleged assailants in today’s attack, was sentenced to three years in prison in 2008 for attempting to travel to Iraq and join the insurgency active there at the time. As Bloomberg News reported at the time of his sentencing:

“Kouachi said on the stand that he was inspired by detainee abuse by U.S. troops at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison, though he was relieved he was stopped. The court said Kouachi had wanted to attack Jewish targets in France, but Benyettou had told him that France wasn’t a “land of jihad” but Iraq was.

Kouachi, who alternated between periods of smoking marijuana and attending Benyettou’s classes, said he’s now working in a supermarket and his main interest is rap music.”

Update (4:04PM): Le Point reports that Saïd and Chérif Kouachi had “returned to France from Syria last summer”.

not quite clear on how fixing the place where these men learned how to talk, walk, and eat without dribbling food on the floor is relevant to this story of mass murder

Guardian is reporting arrest now.

Tons of Europeans are in Syria/Iraq fighting on one side or the other at the moment, and people have been warning that they would be 'radicalized' when they came home for quite some time (also, traumatized and all that) So news that they were warriors in Syria is very very relevant to this story.

yeah the syria angle is one of the scariest parts of this whole, very scary thing.

btw i didn't say by the way that the charlie hebdo folks were not provocateurs (the cover above intimating incest b/t marie le pen and her dad is a case in point!) just that they were hardly /just/ provocateurs. or put another way, they were unusually sophisticated provocateurs. and good artists. that they were assassinated like this is just...

and yeah although i liked juan cole's piece a fair bit the "irony" he identifies is lost on me.... muslims killing other muslims is not an anomaly--it's actually, horrifically quite routine these days.

Channel4News: Ukip's Nigel Farage tells #c4news what happened in Paris is the result of having "a fifth column" living in France and the UK who "hate us".

muslims have been killing other muslims since the dawn of the religion, it's kind of a thing

xp

obviously the dog whistle he's employing there is repulsive (since he doubt means to implicate all muslims in europe, not just the radicalized few), but in a sense he's not incorrect.

xpost to tracer

That makes sense about Syria, I didn't think that through, still there's something unhelpful about establishing "french born" vs not, as like the primary piece of valuable information about these people

It is to french people, what with Marine Le Pen and the FN and their nationalist rhetoric.

it's not unhelpful if we're looking at how this will push the oncoming debate about integration here. there's a lot of effort put into integrating new arrivals (I know, we're among them!) but it's different for those from here. I'm talking about in schools, where these murderers were educated, how they were educated; because this will be a point of discussion right away (and rightly so)

Tons of Europeans are in Syria/Iraq fighting on one side or the other at the moment, and people have been warning that they would be 'radicalized' when they came home for quite some time (also, traumatized and all that) So news that they were warriors in Syria is very very relevant to this story.

Thats been a big big thing here in AU as well - a rising number of mostly young kids (male and female - and not always already muslim either) running away to join the ISCircus. And, more often than not, ending up dead about 15 mins after they land there.

In Britain the government is trying to find ways of revoking passports of the impressionable young men who go out there, rendering them stateless. VERY dodgy, against international law etc. - better to take these young adults back home and deal with them maturely, because there will always be impressionable hot-headed young adults with grievances and it is possible to direct that energy to a less toxic place.

It is very important that they were french born. It is a big change in terrorism in Europe that it is no longer foreign cells, or cells organized from abroad, but perhaps small groups radicalized and choosing to do something on their own. It changes how intelligence should work massively.

Of course, big reason they are getting radicalized is massive amount of islamophobia going around in Europe.

Arrest operation going down in Reims

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