This Time It's War: French press react with horror to attacks

[Wash. state Desk Jet]

Source: yahoo news AP

Members of a police intervention unit walk near the Bataclan concert hall in central Paris, on November 14, 2015
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Members of a police intervention unit walk near the Bataclan concert hall in central Paris, on November 14, 2015 (AFP Photo/Florian David)
Paris (AFP) - "This time it's war," declared the Le Parisien daily, as France's media reacted with horror but determination after Friday's wave of attacks that left at least 120 dead.

Centre-right daily Le Figaro took up a similar theme, splashing with the headline "War in central Paris" amid scenes of carnage at several locations in the French capital.

Many papers called for unity in the country that is still reeling from jihadist attacks in January that claimed 17 lives.

"In the name of the true martyrs of yesterday, the innocent victims and in the name of the Republic, France will be able to stay united and stand together," said Le Parisien.

The "terrorist barbarism" has crossed a "historic line," said the head of the left-leaning Liberation daily, calling for France to stay resolute.

"It is impossible not to link these bloody events with the battles raging in the Middle East. France is playing its part there. It must continue to do so without blinking," wrote Laurent Joffrin in an editorial.

Sports daily L'Equipe splashed the one word "L'Horreur" ("Horror&quot across a black front page.

Papers immediately made the link between the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine that claimed 17 lives in January, spawning an outpouring of solidarity around the Twitter hashtag #jesuischarlie (I am Charlie).


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/time-war-french-press-react-horror-attacks-060754351.html

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[Spitfire of ATJ]

1. The original motive terrorists do this is to impress the masses back home to follow them....

In the rush to think up attacks the reason for the attacks has been forgotten.

What's also not been noted along the way is the masses REJECT this kinda stuff and that mass murdering psychos have a really small fan base.

[Wash. state Desk Jet]

2. Psychological warfare

.

[Hortensis]

12. ISIS is a doomsday cult and in a terrorist class all by itself.

One terrorism expert I read said normally terrorism that kills is counterproductive as a means of advancing a group's real aims as it typically results in overwhelming government action, although smaller terrorist attacks against facilities may be bought off. In groups like al-Qaeda, the kind of attacks that make the newspapers are usually lead by someone wanting to make a name for himself and gather followers and move up within a terrorist organization. Insurgency as self-promotion.

ISIS, as we know, is something else. Its leadership is very religiously extreme, and its intent is to conquer these lands for the caliphate by 2020, but only as a next step in the apocalypse:



This map was published by ISIS.

Frankly, these people don't scare me a fraction as much as their counterparts here in our own Christian right. Our own religious extremists share this doomsday cult's belief that it's time for us all to meet at Armageddon, or Dabiq in ISIS's version. Pew says our own Christian doomsday cultists number about 30,000,000, and they vote in good numbers.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

15. I'd be worried if they were being greeted as liberators.....

They tear into town and shoot the cops and rape the women but they can't hold the town for long because they are hated by the locals. They're more like an outlaw biker gang than an actual political movement people want to have in charge. Any maps or literature they put out is pure fantasy.

[Hortensis]

16. Of course. They don't know that, though.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

17. I see it as being no different than the crap put out by the KKK....

The problem is the Republicans in our country have come to believe politics is a sales job so they see the slick packaging from these guys as actual competition.

[LittleGirl]

3. Living in Europe

this is absolutely frightening. This kind of attack could happen anywhere and that's what's so frightening about it.

[elias49]

6. Unfortunately if you feel that way, the terrorists have won. nt

[LittleGirl]

8. maybe you don't have a

spouse traveling this coming week, eh? What a heartless comment to make. They haven't won. They are destroying any peace we can hope for. Thanks for trying to ruin my day but you can't and won't. Just like the terrorists that did this to the citizens in Paris.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

18. He's saying if their goal is to terrorize than don't be terrorized.....

That way you aren't a part of their target audience.

[LittleGirl]

21. that makes no sense

don't be terrorized? Gun toting idiots in the states are terrorists in my eyes.
And they are now carrying assault rifles to show off. And after yesterday, in Paris too.

have you ever left the states?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

23. Yes. They will tell you the best defense against terrorism is to refuse to be terrorized....

If you panic you make bad decisions.

I don't know if you know history but Hitler rose to power by claiming he would keep Germany safe from communist terrorists who he blamed for the Reichstag fire and this led to the eventual elimination of the rights of the citizens and established a right wing totalitarian police state with himself as dictator for life.

They KNOW this in Europe and don't want to fall into that trap.

[LittleGirl]

36. of course

I know history and lived in Germany for 3 yrs and being a baby boomer, I'm well aware of it.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

37. Than you know Europe doesn't freak over terrorism.

[Javaman]

11. stay classy. nt

[elias49]

14. Ha! Get real.

Not meaning to spoil anyone's day. It's coffee. Drink.

[Javaman]

35. Keep digging. Stay classy.nt

[7962]

4. I'm curious as to where these attackers came from.

I imagine it will take some time to figure that out

[reddread]

5. it will take longer for us to get the truth than it should

because, unfortunately when it comes to terror attacks the US Government would rather lie to the taxpayers and victims.

[Yo_Mama]

24. Uh, newsflash, this happened in Paris, France, not a dominion of the US government.

They know one of them was French, one was the "refugee", and some came from Belgium. The Belgium police have swept through a Muslim-heavy district there already.

We'll know the identities of at least four or five of them by Monday.

[christx30]

7. Headline on cnn.com said

Syrian passport was found by police near the body of one of the attackers. If true, it brings up lots of troubling questions.

[7962]

9. Just saw that on the news. Another that was killed was a French citizen

and he was on a watch list for ties to ISIS

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

10. I'm sure the French authorities will investigate the passport

to verify that it was a government-issued passport given to a Syrian citizen and the attacker is indeed that Syrian citizen. Or not.

This will all take some time.

[philosslayer]

13. Self contained cell, just back from Syria

As per the BBC

http://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-34815972

[Spitfire of ATJ]

19. We have people in this country that think we should glass the entire Middle East.....

Anything less than that they consider to be "weak".

[7962]

20. These attacks continue and that number will increase

I've seen the same thing.

[Warpy]

28. Ohe has been identified as a French national who lives just outside Paris

A black market arms dealer arrested in Germany last week has been tied to the attack. He supplied the guns and explosives.

The French aren't stupid. They're putting this whole thing together quickly.

[riderinthestorm]

22. I really hope we're smarter this time. Find the funding and starve the beast

we must cut off the money flowing to ISIS. If there's going to be a coordinates international effort, I propose it's a global criminal investigation operating along with a global effort to shut off the money spigot.

These are a few things that will not solve the terrible and tangled web of causation and violence in which the attacks of Friday night were spawned. A 242-ship Navy will not stop one motivated murderous fanatic from emptying the clip of an AK-47 into the windows of a crowded restaurant. The F-35 fighter plane will not stop a group of motivated murderous fanatics from detonating bombs at a soccer match. A missile-defense shield in Poland will not stop a platoon of motivated murderous fanatics from opening up in a jammed concert hall, or taking hostages, or taking themselves out with suicide belts when the police break down the doors. American soldiers dying in the sands of Syria or Iraq will not stop the events like what happened in Paris from happening again because American soldiers dying in the sands of Syria or Iraq will be dying there in combat against only the most obvious physical manifestation of a deeper complex of ancient causes and ancient effects made worse by the reach of the modern technology of bloodshed and murder. Nobody's death is ever sacrifice enough for that.

...

Abandoning the Enlightenment values that produced democracy will not plumb the depths of the vestigial authoritarian impulse that resides in us all, the wish for kings, the desire for order, to be governed, and not to govern. Flexing and posturing and empty venting will not cure the deep sickness in the human spirit that leads people to slaughter the innocent in the middle of a weekend's laughter. The expression of bigotry and hatred will not solve the deep desperation in the human heart that leads people to kill their fellow human beings and then blow themselves up as a final act of murderous vengeance against those they perceive to be their enemies, seen and unseen, real and imagined. Tough talk in the context of what happened in Paris is as empty as a bell rung at the bottom of a well.

...

It's not like this is any kind of secret. In 2010, thanks to WikiLeaks, we learned that the State Department, under the direction of then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, knew full well where the money for foreign terrorism came from. It came from countries and not from a faith. It came from sovereign states and not from an organized religion. It came from politicians and dictators, not from clerics, at least not directly. It was paid to maintain a political and social order, not to promulgate a religious revival or to launch a religious war. Religion was the fuel, the ammonium nitrate and the diesel fuel. Authoritarian oligarchy built the bomb. As long as people are dying in Paris, nobody important is dying in Doha or Riyadh.

...

It's time for this to stop. It's time to be pitiless against the bankers and against the people who invest in murder to assure their own survival in power. Assets from these states should be frozen, all over the west. Money trails should be followed, wherever they lead. People should go to jail, in every country in the world. It should be done state-to-state. Stop funding the murder of our citizens and you can have your money back. Maybe. If we're satisfied that you'll stop doing it. And, it goes without saying, but we'll say it anyway – not another bullet will be sold to you, let alone advanced warplanes, until this act gets cleaned up to our satisfaction. If that endangers your political position back home, that's your problem, not ours. You are no longer trusted allies. Complain, and your diplomats will be going home. Complain more loudly, and your diplomats will be investigated and, if necessary, detained. Retaliate, and you do not want to know what will happen, but it will done with cold, reasoned and, yes, pitiless calculation. It will not be a blind punch. You will not see it coming. It will not be an attack on your faith. It will be an attack on how you conduct your business as sovereign states in a world full of sovereign states.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a39727/paris-attacks-middle-eastern-oligarchies/

[GliderGuider]

25. I hope so too. but I'm not holding my breath.

This situation is custom made to give the bang-bang constituency more influence. 9/11, 7/7, Mumbai, the Spanish train bombings, Blackwater, Gitmo, drone attacks, Beirut, Gaza ... the emotionally driven positive feedback loop of violence is amplifying at a breakneck pace.

[riderinthestorm]

27. I sadly agree.

I've been probably flogging the Charles Pierce article too much but I believe that killing ISIS's funding is obviously the right answer, I'm hoping more DUers understand that asap.

Especially before this debate where this will surely come up and candidates will put out their remedies.

I sincerely hope one or even all of them insist on stopping the funding of ISIS as part of the solution (if not the greatest part).

[Yo_Mama]

26. ISIS derives a lot of its funding from the areas it has seized. From tribute, ransoms, oil, taxes,

other normal sources of state revenue.

There is no way to cut off funding but to root ISIS out of the lands they have taken.

[riderinthestorm]

29. It's banking somewhere. Some entities are moving that money around

someones paying for the flights, the repairs, the parts, the ammunition. Humvee spare parts aren't just sitting around. RPG repair parts aren't to be bought in the streets of Sinjar. Someone paid the expenses of the terrorists in Paris. Same as the 9/11 terrorists. They didn't just arrive with $300,000 cash and start paying for flying lessons, houses, apartments, cars etc with cash.

The money is flowing through channels that can and should be stopped.

It's also indisputable that they're getting outside funding beyond war spoils. Time to find those state sponsors of terror, name them, freeze their assets and put,the screws on.

[Yo_Mama]

31. There appear to be Islamic criminal conspiracies in most the cities of Europe

They do a lot of drug dealing. According to this particular Muslim "ism", it's justified if it is for the cause.

Ending the capacity to do this in Europe will mean moving through the criminal organizations and jailing one whole lot of people for a good long time.

[riderinthestorm]

32. Yup but surely doable and would end ISIS much more effectively

than more bombs.

There are banksters, attorneys, high level investment corps like the Saudi/US investment Carlyle Group that know where and how this money is being held and distributed. It's time to transcend the corrupt partnerships with such deeply flawed allies like the Saudis and put the hammer down.

[sorechasm]

30. Good article. Sounds like we could track the source of the terrorist funding but

Someone's afraid to find from who's doorstep the pot of gold is distributed.

It's no mystery to those of us on DU.

[riderinthestorm]

33. A late welcome to DU!

[sorechasm]

34. Thanks ridersinthestorm!

Great to be among thought provokers like yourself.
"...on you the world depends...life will never end..."
(Now I'll be humming the Doors all night long).