French cartoonist Stéphane Charbonnier, who worked under the pen name Charb, poses in the Chrlie Hebdo offices in September, 2012.
The New York Times:
The sophisticated, military-style strike Wednesday on a French newspaper known for satirizing Islam staggered a continent already seething with anti-immigrant sentiments in some quarters, feeding far-right nationalist parties like France’s National Front.
“This is a dangerous moment for European societies,” said Peter Neumann, director of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at King’s College London. “With increasing radicalization among supporters of jihadist organizations and the white working class increasingly feeling disenfranchised and uncoupled from elites, things are coming to a head.”
Juan Cole:
The problem for a terrorist group like al-Qaeda is that its recruitment pool is Muslims, but most Muslims are not interested in terrorism. Most Muslims are not even interested in politics, much less political Islam. France is a country of 66 million, of which about 5 million is of Muslim heritage. But in polling, only a third, less than 2 million, say that they are interested in religion. French Muslims may be the most secular Muslim-heritage population in the world (ex-Soviet ethnic Muslims often also have low rates of belief and observance). [...]
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.
What true connection the attack might have to so-called "organized" terror groups is as of yet muddy at best—any moron can claim affiliation with a larger movement, and many disillusioned or psychopathic loners imagine themselves as having connections to wider movements that may be aspirational or, just as often, entirely imagined—but the raw methodology of political terror is the same whether it be in Paris, or Pakistan, or Atlanta. A lone wolf or a bare handful of people seek to do something so horrific to the human senses that it is all but certain to be met with a far broader, likely itself-violent response—an escalation of violence far beyond the scope of what the small group of perpetrators could themselves possibly accomplish. The goal of terrorism is not vengeance or retaliation, but chain reaction.
Often the like-minded are expected to rise up to "complete" the task (as supposed by the American executors of Las Vegas police officers declaring their act to be the beginning of a revolution, or by Norwegian Anders Breivik upon killing 77 in Oslo in July of 2011.) Other times it is the opposition that is expected to be goaded into a desired escalation (as supposed by al Qaeda planners of the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington D.C.), either as attempt to shift the field of battle to one more advantageous to the perpetrators or, more coldly still, to cause such disproportionate injury to prospective allies or supplicants of the terrorists that those injured feel they have little remaining choice but to ally with their overtly extremist "protectors."
The central tenets of terrorism rely on the calculated guess that the hated opposing side will meet extremism with extremism—that the sociopaths of one side will find counterparts on the other just as eager to launch new, broader campaigns of hatred or violence that will propagate the desired expanding waves of fear, and anger, and isolation, and radicalization. Terrorism "works" when it recruits accomplices within the terrorized population willing to carry out those larger acts, and whether those new individuals align themselves as allies of the terrorists or as staunch and vitriolic opponents makes little difference. The damage, in either case, will be done.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2010—How's that Name-Change Working Out?:
Back in 2007, Senator Bernie Sanders introduced Senate Bill S 2398, the Stop Outsourcing Security Act. It collected a single co-sponsor, Senator Hillary Clinton.
The crux of the bill:
The use of private security contractors for mission critical functions undermines the mission, jeopardizes the safety of American troops conducting military operations in Iraq and other combat zones, and should be phased out. |
It went nowhere.
Back in the heat of the presidential campaign, in February 2008, Senator Clinton said that:The crux of the bill:
"...from this war's very beginning, this administration has permitted thousands of heavily-armed military contractors to march through Iraq without any law or court to rein them in or hold them accountable. These private security contractors have been reckless and have compromised out mission in Iraq. The time to show these contractors the door is long past due." |
Indeed. And Clinton's voice was not the only one raised against the damage done by mercenaries. A Congressional report found the same, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had tough words as well.
One of the main catalysts for those tough words was the company that now calls itself Xe but is still known to everyone as Blackwater. Although Blackwater's contract for security work in Iraq was canceled after nearly five years of behavior that some might call scandalously reckless and I call bloodthirsty, the administration in which Clinton is now a key player has found itself unable to cut its ties to Blackwater.
Tweet of the Day
Waiting around for demographics to save us is a stupid strategy.
— @cdashiell
On
today's Kagro in the Morning show: Paris attack tops the headlines.
Greg Dworkin notes sleds, not open carry guns, banned. Fallout & follow-up on Boehner. Kirby Delauter's 15 minutes. SCOTUS & the ACA. Defining full-time work. Volker rule repeal & undermining Social Security. VT-GOV. Christie continues being toast.
Armando on events in Paris, Kirby Delauter's confusion, dynamic budget scoring, and getting his daily licks in on Christie. A closer look at Mick Mulvaney's fascinating narrative on his vote for Boehner. Lindsey Graham does another extremely weird thing. What the Idaho mom's purse & gun tell us about what was going on.
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