France

[Mr. Perfect]

Dunno, immediately after the attacks hollande ordered the borders closed and vowed a "war without pity". Looks like France has found a hybrid of Trump and Bush.

[Typhoon]

Dunno, immediately after the attacks hollande ordered the borders closed and vowed a "war without pity". Looks like France has found a hybrid of Trump and Bush.

Closing the borders makes sense to 1/ prevent further incursion by foreign nationals and 2/ prevent escape of any accessories.

For France to be a hybrid of Trump and Bush, France would have to invade Iceland in response. Unlikely.

[kmich]

The Exploitation of Paris - Frank Bruni

Can’t we wait until we’ve resolved the body count? Until the identities of all of the victims have been determined and their families informed? Until the sirens stop wailing? Until the blood is dry?

Or must we instantly bootstrap obliquely related agendas and utterly unconnected grievances to the carnage in Paris, responding to it with an unsavory opportunism instead of a respectful grief?

First news of the gunfire there on Friday didn’t dribble out until about 4 p.m. Eastern time in the United States.

Within four hours, Ann Coulter tweeted:

"Too bad there were no concealed carry permits ... anywhere in Europe ... since 1818."

Hasty?

Hardly.

An hour earlier, Judith Miller tweeted:

"Now maybe the whining adolescents at our universities can concentrate on something other than their need for "safe" spaces..".

Before we knew all that much about what had happened, before many Americans had even caught word of it, before the ones who were aware had moved past horror and numbness, Paris wasn’t just a massacre.

It was a megaphone to be used for whatever you yearned to shout.

That’s how it works in this era of Internet preening, out-of-control partisanship and press-a-button punditry, when anything and everything becomes prompt for a plaint, a rant, a riff.

It all happens in the click of a mouse, its metabolism too furious to allow for decorum or real perspective.

I woke Saturday morning to Paris-pegged commentary about not just gun control and free speech on American campuses but also climate change—yes, climate change—and of course immigration, albeit to the United States, not France.

What does Paris have to do with climate change?

Well, apparently President Obama’s justly profound concern about rising temperatures is proof of his inadequate attention to terrorism and an indictment of his ability to do triage overall.

Or so I gather from a column written by Roger L. Simon for PJ Media. Simon characterized Obama as “a ludicrous man who thinks the world’s greatest problem is climate change in the face of Islamic terror."

Does battling the latter prohibit battling the former?

Simon also mentioned that Obama had once referred to the Islamic State as “the JV team” and had sought to scale down American military commitments abroad. While I question the usefulness of bashing Obama within 24 hours of the Paris attacks, I acknowledge that his past and present assessments of the Islamic State and his readiness (or not) to use American might are fair points of debate in the context of Paris and how we respond to it.

But I don’t for the life of me see why Miller and many others, including Coulter, felt the need to construct a bridge from Paris to Mizzou and Yale.

Yes, some American students’ demands for “safe spaces” have gone much too far, endangering free speech and a vital exchange of ideas. Yes, the Yale campus is overwrought (I’ve watched that viral video). And, yes, the insult of certain Halloween costumes pales beside the bloodshed in Paris. Duh.

But there are countless offenses and injustices that pale beside the bloodshed in Paris — what doesn’t? — and there’s absolutely no reason to believe that the people articulating those offenses and injustices would claim otherwise. Using Paris to delegitimize them is puerile. It’s also tasteless, cheapening what happened there.

At this point it’s our ingrained habit to rush with dizzying speed into hyper-political overdrive and treat any shocking new development as fresh fodder for an old argument. That’s what Newt Gingrich did, joining Coulter in crying out for more firearms:

"Imagine a theater with 10 or 15 citizens with concealed carry permits. We live in an age when evil men have to be killed by good people.."

On Saturday morning I read that Paris was going to be good for Republicans. I read that Paris was going to be good for Democrats.

I felt sick. For a few hours, even a few days, I’d like to focus on the pain of Parisians and how that magnificent city reclaims any sense of order, any semblance of safety. I’d like not to wonder if Hillary Clinton’s odds of election just ticked upward or downward or if Donald Trump’s chest-thumping bluster suddenly became more seductive.

I’d like not to be told, fewer than 18 hours after the shots rang out, how they demonstrate that Americans must crack down on illegal immigration to our own country. I read that and was galled, and not because of my feelings about immigration, but because of my feelings about the automatic, indiscriminate politicization of tragedy.

It’s such a disrespectful impulse.

And it’s such an ugly one.

[Simple Minded]

The Exploitation of Paris - Frank Bruni

Can’t we wait until we’ve resolved the body count? Until the identities of all of the victims have been determined and their families informed? Until the sirens stop wailing? Until the blood is dry?.......

It’s such a disrespectful impulse.

And it’s such an ugly one.

kmich,

Thanks for posting. The ugly side of politics and celebrity seem universal.

With so much competition among broadcasters, the desire to be first, and wave the flag of one's preferred crusade seems stronger than ever.

I am always disappointed, that no matter how tragic the news, the talking heads always endeavor to make it worse, by attempting to outdo their competition with superlatives, adjectives, and predictions of doom.

[Typhoon]

The Exploitation of Paris - Frank Bruni

Can’t we wait until we’ve resolved the body count? Until the identities of all of the victims have been determined and their families informed? Until the sirens stop wailing? Until the blood is dry?.......

It’s such a disrespectful impulse.

And it’s such an ugly one.

kmich,

Thanks for posting. The ugly side of politics and celebrity seem universal.

With so much competition among broadcasters, the desire to be first, and wave the flag of one's preferred crusade seems stronger than ever.

I am always disappointed, that no matter how tragic the news, the talking heads always endeavor to make it worse, by attempting to outdo their competition with superlatives, adjectives, and predictions of doom.

Quite.

The same poor form was exhibited, but deleted, on this forum.

And, as this is France thread, let's continue any debates about USA policy and politics in the USA threads.

France 24, btw, earned considerable praise globally for it's rational histrionic-free reporting of these tragic events.

[Alexis]

Daniel Psenny, journalist at French daily Le Monde, lives just opposite the concert room where terrorists made a shooting rampage on Friday evening. From his window, he filmed this short movie of people fleeing the concert room by a side exit, people laying on the streets, wounded being carried to safety under fire.

Warning: Do not show this movie to children nor to sensitive persons. Do not visualize it if you don't really want to. Do not take it as despicable "death porn", take it as a document about terror acts, and resilience of some people in the face of danger.

tdyK_C-FeBE

(what is written in French, I have already explained above)

After having made this movie, Psenny went in the street to help carry wounded people to safety. He received a bullet in the arm, he has been treated and his life is not in danger.

What I can say is that my courage has never been tested under fire. If it was ever to be, I want to equal those people taking care of wounded under threat to their own lives.

[Alexis]

French Ministry of Defense announces "massive bombings" of Raqqa by French air force.


Note: waiting for details, but remember that "massive" in that context remains probably mid-size by American standards. France has only a limited number of aircrafts on zone.


Still, it's something that has to be done. Even if it had little direct impact on terrorists, it would be the thing to do for reason of principle.

[Alexis]

You want unusual musical moments?

Here is a Marseillaise played on the great organ of the Paris cathedral during the memorial service today.

Pa3YOKk-uLk



Interesting days, we are living.

[Alexis]

Image of the Pyramids with projection of the flags of countries most recently stricken by Jihadists: Russia and its airliner (224 casualties), Lebanon in Beyrouth (41), France in Paris (132 to date)



Nicely done. Thanks to Egyptians

[noddy]

French Ministry of Defense announces "massive bombings" of Raqqa by French air force.


Note: waiting for details, but remember that "massive" in that context remains probably mid-size by American standards. France has only a limited number of aircrafts on zone.


Still, it's something that has to be done. Even if it had little direct impact on terrorists, it would be the thing to do for reason of principle.

from all reports it was targets that nato/us were going to do but for symbological reasons they let the french do them.

which means, so far, no changes or consequences in outcomes, just more bluff and bluster.

[Apollonius]

Enemies foreign and domestic - Matthew Hennessey, City Journal, 15 November 2015
http://www.city-journal.org/2015/eon1115mh.html

Can a civlization cowed by campus millennials summon the resolve to defeat Islamic terrorists?


When terrorists attack innocents, when barbarians slaughter concertgoers, when zealots target outdoor cafes, when fundamentalists murder “infidels” on the streets of Paris, New York, Madrid, and Mumbai—when these things happen, we are reminded of just what a unique civilization we have inherited in the West and just how fragile that inheritance is. We are reminded, too, that among us are those who would be content to toss it all away.

In the darker corners of the Internet and the leftward precincts of academia, the Enlightenment values of liberty, reason, and universal human rights—not to mention the world-changing political revolutions they inspired in Europe and the Americas—amount to little more than a cheap intellectual justification for the historical forces of imperialism, slaughter, and subjugation. Usually, it’s easy to ignore those who respond to events such as the attacks in Paris with soliloquies to the effect of: “Well, you know who the real terrorists are, don’t you?” Or, “You can’t expect an entire civilization to take centuries of insults lying down.” Or, “Do you know what’s happening in Palestine right now, yesterday, and every day?”

It’s not easy to ignore those sentiments today. We’ve only just realized in the last week that a significant cadre of college-age Americans put no stock in the Enlightenment principles enshrined in our Constitution. Maybe you saw the vice president of the University of Missouri’s student body telling an MSBNC anchor, “I personally am tired of hearing that First Amendment rights protect students when they are creating a hostile and unsafe learning environment for myself and for other students here.” Maybe you saw the video of the young Yalie shrieking at a professor to “Shut up” because he had the arrogance to suggest that she and her compatriots could handle being treated like adults. Maybe you read the op-ed in the Yale Herald in which another student claimed to be uninterested in debate. “I just want to talk about my pain,” she wrote.

Maybe, too, you noticed how the adults at Missouri and Yale (and at other schools) reacted to these bullies. They scampered. They caved. They groveled. They apologized. And they resigned. It doesn’t bode well for Western civilization, does it, that our best and brightest young things are less than convinced that it’s better to live in an open society governed by laws than it is to live in a society governed by subjective notions of fairness and progress. I’m sure Isis would love to get its hands on such a place. Far easier to hijack a population in thrall to relativism than to conquer a free people who know why they’re free and are committed to remaining so.

Isis and its admirers are surely banking on our civilizational response to its aggressions resembling the reactions of Missouri president Tim Wolfe and Silliman College master Nicholas Christakis to the insubordination of their students. They expect us to freeze up. The expect us to be cowed. They expect that we will apologize and give them what they want.

And why wouldn’t they? Every time they hit us, we make a big show of our outrage and resolve. Ultimately, though, we find a way to pull back from doing the job that needs to be done. Our memories are short—they can be measured in the four-year cycles of presidencies and academic life. Their memories are long—they can be measured in centuries and millennia. They see our civilization as a Johnny-come-lately, wet behind the ears and unsure how to respond to a bully. They may be right. I hope not. I hope French president François Hollande means it when he promises that France’s response will be pitiless—for civilization’s sake.

[Apollonius]

On the need to think clearly - Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal, 15 November 2015
http://www.city-journal.org/2015/eon1115td.html

One has to pity—a little—politicians obliged to react publicly to events such as those on November 13 in Paris. They can’t pass over them in silence: but what can they say that does not sound banal, hollow, and obvious? They can only get it wrong, not right.

That does not excuse inexactitude and evasion, however. French president François Hollande called the attacks cowardly, but if there was one thing the attackers were not (alas, if only they had been), it was cowardly. They were evil, their ideas were deeply stupid, and they were brutal: but a man who knows that he is going to die in committing an act, no matter how atrocious, is not a coward. With the accuracy of a drone, the president honed in on the one vice that the attackers did not manifest. This establishes that bravery is not by itself a virtue, that in order for it to be a virtue it has to be exercised in pursuit of a worthwhile goal. To quote an eminent countryman of the president, Pascal: Travaillons, donc, à bien penser: voilà le principe de la morale. Let us labor, then, to think clearly: that is the principle of morality.

President Obama was not much better. He made reference in his statement to “the values we all share.” Either he was using the word “we” in some coded fashion, in spite of having just referred to the whole of humanity, or he failed to notice that the attacks were the direct consequence of the obvious fact that we—that is to say the whole of humanity—do not share the same values. If we shared the same values, politics would be reduced to arguments about administration.

Politicians are not the only ones, however, to utter worse than clichés (which have at least the merit of being true): the Irish pop star turned guru, Bono, said that the events on November 13 were an attack on music. Mr. Bono might as well have said that this was an attack on restaurants, or even on Cambodian cuisine, or for that matter on football. Apparently, in his view, if only the French government outlawed music, the terrorists would achieve their ends and would therefore desist from future attacks.

On the night of the events, I followed the coverage in the Guardian, the British liberal newspaper whose website is one of the most popular of its type in the world. When the acknowledged toll of the attacks was still “only” 40, the paper published an article saying, en passant, that the vast majority of Muslims abhorred these attacks. I do not exclude the possibility that this is so, but we do not know, and can probably never know, that it is so: for if Queen Elizabeth I had “no desire to make windows into men’s souls,” we have no ability to do so, certainly on this question. But the Guardian wanted it to be so, and therefore, to its own satisfaction, it was so. This is a kind of magical thinking that persists in a supremely scientific age, and is dangerous because completely ineffective.

If ever there were a time to keep Pascal’s words in mind, this is it.

[Typhoon]

It is not often that a group should be hunted without quarter and killed without mercy, however, ISIS is one such group.

[Heracleum Persicum]

SBbbjVt_zac
v5q7-5WuGrQ
aGDfraL2GRE

[Mr. Perfect]

It is not often that a group should be hunted without quarter and killed without mercy, however, ISIS is one such group.

Why hasn't anyone done it.

[Heracleum Persicum]

It is not often that a group should be hunted without quarter and killed without mercy, however, ISIS is one such group.

Why hasn't anyone done it.

Mr. Perfect .. seems you not lookin at my posts .. you guys are arming ISIS , you not fighting ISIS but arming ISIS

Here again the clip (she saying you guys should stop arming ISIS)


IHkher6ceaA


Graham sayin continue arming ISIS

mC7Fz0d9H8M


.

[Heracleum Persicum]

PJYCDcYBz-Y

[Mr. Perfect]

Good stuff az. I know full well. You need to ask the colonel, he struggling with this.

[Heracleum Persicum]

.


Marine Le Pen was invited to meet with Hollande at the Elysee on Sunday

Sarkozy said that it was time to treat Russia as a full-fledged ally in the fight against ISIS and Islamic extremism. Sarkozy has never been an enthusiast for banishing Moscow from Europe, a position he held even when some European leaders were working themselves into an anti-Putin frenzy over Crimea. This has been Le Pen’s position as well, and it has a logic, given that the Russians are the most potent military force fighting ISIS at this time. Of course it implies putting on the shelf for a moment the probably fanciful notion that there can be created a viable Syrian “Third Force” that is neither pro-Assad nor jihadist. There may be one at some future point, but the moment to defeat ISIS is now.

Another shift in the underlying global diplomatic plates concerns Saudi Arabia. The twittersphere this weekend was full of references to Esquire’s Charles Pierce article on the “one way to defeat ISIS” which noted that practically all the funding for Islamic terrorism came from the Sunni gulf petrostates, especially Saudi Arabia. Hillary Clinton was quoted (from a 2009 Wikileaks document) as saying that Saudi Arabia was the “most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.” In claiming this, she was repeating the consensus of Western intelligence estimates. Islam is as diverse as every global religion, and can be both the foundation of a culture of science and learning or ignorance and death. But the Wahabbi strain, developed in the 18th century in Saudi Arabia, tilts towards the latter. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, most of the money funding ISIS is Saudi. Probably the West ought to draw some conclusions from those facts as it considers who are its potential allies, and who are its enemies.

The other side of that coin is that the Shi’ite groups, including Iran, are at least provisionally on our side. It’s not clear at this point whether treating Iran as a friend is akin to aligning with Stalin against Hitler in World War II, or whether Iran will fulfill its destiny of becoming something much better than a Shi’ite dictatorship. I’d bet on the latter, but even if I’m wrong, I’d have thought aligning with Stalin in 1942 was the correct thing.

Israel—have you noticed how seldom Israel’s name comes up when one thinks of who are useful Mideast allies in the battle against ISIS?—no doubt feels differently. The very day an ISIS suicide bomber hit a Hezbollah neighborhood in Beirut, killing 40, The Israel Project sent out one of its cheerful emails boasting that Israeli planes had just struck Hezbollah targets in Syria. Hezbollah, one might remember, is basically the only Arab force which has fought consistently against ISIS. (The Kurds are not Arab.) Forgive me for not being entirely clear which side Israel is on.

When I first wrote Saturday, finding myself thinking that the attacks on Paris had put the West in a position where there was little choice but war, I wondered of course, as did some readers, whether, overly caught up in anger and emotion, I had taken leave of my senses. But a war against ISIS is not a war of choice—not like overthrowing Saddam, or Qaddafi. For Europe, I think, it’s a war of survival, and as long as the United States is linked to Europe by treaty, I think we should be, are obliged to be, good allies. I was pleased today to see that Graham Fuller, a veteran scholar and intelligence analyst and 100 times more knowledgeable about the Mideast than I am, is more or less on the same wavelength. In what I believe is the most cogent analysis of the ISIS I’ve seen thus far, Fuller writes

ISIS, with its horrific attack on purely civilian targets in Paris, has established new realities about its nature, capabilities and intentions. The need for its elimination can now no longer be in doubt. It is not that Parisian lives are more important than others, but Paris changes the game. . .[ISIS] has now overturned the analyses of most observers, including myself, who tended to view it as primarily regionally and territorially-focused, intent on (non-viable) state-building, Caliphate formation, targeting regional enemies rather than operating on a broader world stage. Now recent bombings in Beirut, the destruction of a Russian airliner midair, and the vicious attacks in Paris have now raised level of threat to new heights.

What is yet unclear is how much the Paris action was the brainchild of a centralized command structure operating out of the ISIS capital in Syria, or an action by local “franchise” organizations or “wild-cat” operations inspired by ISIS to act locally.

Whatever the case, these series of events now call out for broader and deeper international action. ISIS must be eliminated.

Fuller writes as someone who realized fully the folly of invading Iraq, and that previous American interventions laid the groundwork for ISIS. Nevertheless, now the folly would be not intervening. The action against it must be genuinely international—Fuller recommends not an American action, or a NATO one, but one sanctioned by the United Nations, a genuine international coalition. No doubt Saudi Arabia would be skeptical, and probably Israel too. Let them stand up and be counted for ISIS, then! My guess is that rather than objecting, they would prefer to go along.

In any case, a few months ago, I agreed with Steve Walt that ISIS was a regional problem that could probably be contained. I don’t any longer. Fuller’s view has changed, and I’m curious to see whether Steve’s has as well.

.

[Mr. Perfect]

They were warned. hollande and obama should resign.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/iraq-says-sha ... 16264.html

Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has said his country's intelligence services shared information they had which indicated that France, the United States and Iran were among countries being targeted for attack.

He did not elaborate, but the comments came after 129 people were killed in Paris on Friday by gunmen and suicide bombers in attacks claimed by Islamic State.

"Information has been obtained from Iraqi intelligence sources that the countries to be targeted soon, before it occurred, are Europe in general, specifically France, as well as America and Iran," Jaafari said from the sidelines of talks in Vienna on ending the war in Syria on Saturday.

He said the countries had been informed. A video of his comments was posted on his website.

[Heracleum Persicum]

.


Tehran Azadi scare

IMG_4258.PNG (124.85 KiB) Viewed 1660 times

[Mr. Perfect]

Mark the time! Someone said "Wahabbism" on TV for the first time.

[noddy]

next they will learn that all the toxic wahabbi madrasses are funded by rich saudis.

[Alexis]

Mark the time! Someone said "Wahabbism" on TV for the first time.

France's Marc Trévidic is generally considered the best judge of the country when it comes to dismantling Jihadists networks.
His interview published yesterday (link in French)

On foreign policy, he concludes:

France is not credible in its relations with Saudi Arabia. We know very well that this Gulf country has put the poison in the glass, spreading Wahhabism. Paris attacks are one of the results. Claiming to struggle against radical Islam while shaking hands with the king of Saudi Arabia is akin to struggle against Nazism while inviting Hitler to your table.

(sorry, HP... you are no longer the most extreme anti-Saudi on record )

[Mr. Perfect]

Problem is that Isis is the wayward son. Ship sailed on ksa some time ago. Old talking points now, 2005 or so.