Category: France

OFFICIALS IDENTIFY THREE ISLAMIC TERRORISTS IN FRENCH ATTACK

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Three French-born Muslims — Said Kouachi, 34, Cherif Kouachi, 32, and Hamyd Mourad, 18 — have been identified as the terrorists whose rampage in Paris killed 12 and wounded 11 others:

After a long day of rapidly changing information, U.S. counterterrorism officials said Wednesday night that they cannot be certain of the status of the three suspects in the Paris attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine. Information from French sources has been contradictory, they said.
Earlier Wednesday, two senior U.S. counterterrorism officials told NBC News that one of the suspects in the attack had been killed and that two others were in custody. However, the officials later said the information that was the basis of that account could not be confirmed.
Authorities earlier identified the three men as Said Kouachi, 34, and Cherif Kouachi, 32, French nationals who are brothers, and Hamyd Mourad, 18. Late Wednesday, French police released photos of the brothers and asked for public help in finding them, and French authorities said the youngest of the three suspects had surrendered to police.
An official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly discuss the investigation told The Associated Press that the men were linked to a Yemeni terrorist network. Cherif Kouachi was convicted in 2008 of terrorism charges for helping funnel fighters to Iraq’s insurgency and sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Twelve people were killed in the attack by gunmen, armed with AK-47s, who attacked the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a publication that has enraged Muslims for publishing cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.
A source familiar with the investigation told NBC News on Wednesday night that two officers who had been assigned to protect Charbonnier for the past several years came down from an upper floor and intercepted the gunmen. Both officers were shot, however, and one died at the scene. The other was wounded and is expected to survive.
The men targeted those magazine employees who had created or published cartoons showing Muhammad — asking for their victims by name, the source said. They executed editor and cartoonist Stephane Charbonnier, popularly known as Charb; Bernard Maris, a Bank of France economist who was a columnist for the magazine; and three cartoonists.

Uncertainty about the status of these suspects — which of them are in custody, whether one has been killed — should be cleared up within a few hours. It is astonishing that one of these monsters was previously convicted on a terror-related charge, yet served only 18 months in prison.




 

UPDATED: MUSLIM TERRORISTS ATTACK MAGAZINE OFFICE IN PARIS, KILL 12; AL-QAEDA IN YEMEN?

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At least 12 people were reportedly killed when Islamic terrorists with AK-47 assault rifles attacked the Paris offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo today:

One of the men was captured on video shouting “Allah!” as four shots rang out. . . .
“This is a terrorist attack, there is no doubt about it,” President Francois Hollande told reporters after rushing to the scene of the attack. . . .
Sirens could be heard across Paris as Prime Minister Manuel Valls said security would be ramped up at transport hubs, religious sites, media offices and department stores. . . .
Late last year, a man shouting “Allahu Akbar” (“God is greatest”) injured 13 by ramming a vehicle into a crowd in the eastern city of Dijon. French officials say several attacks were prevented in recent weeks and Valls has said France had “never before faced such a high threat linked to terrorism.”

This is the same magazine whose offices were fire-bombed in 2011 for publishing cartoons about the Prophet Mohammad. The terrorist gunmen are reportedly still at large.

UPDATE: “We are all Charlie now.”

If only the National Rifle Association hadn’t stopped France from closing the “gun show loophole” . . .

UPDATE II: An interesting claim:

Two terrorists shouted that they were from al Qaeda in the Yemen before they launched the brutal attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris.
Cédric Le Béchec, a 33-year-old estate agent who witnessed the attack on the satirical magazine, said the men told bystanders to inform the media that they were from the terror group.
He said that the men arrived in a black car, stopping in the middle of the street. One of them was carrying a rocket-propelled grenade. They were dressed in black military-style clothing.
Mr Le Béchec said that before launching the assault, the attackers approached another man in the street saying, “Tell the media that this is al-Qaeda in the Yemen.”

It is never wise to jump to conclusions based on early reports in a breaking news situation like this. But if this report is accurate, why do Yemeni Muslims hate French journalists?

That is to say, of all the places in the world where these terrorists could have struck, why Paris? Was this simply a target of convenience, some place nearby where these Muslims lived? I have no idea what the French policy is vis-a-vis Yemen, but this attack would seem to invite the question of whether Islamic terrorists give a damn about any nation’s policy. Muslims want to kill us all and destroy our civilization, and we should never make the mistake of thinking that our government policy is to blame for Islam’s murderous hostility toward us.

UPDATE III: OFFICIALS IDENTIFY THREE ISLAMIC TERRORISTS IN FRENCH ATTACK




 

Death by Criticism

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Bernard Loiseau was one of the world’s most famous French chefs:

Ten years ago, Loiseau was France’s most feted chef. The charismatic cook’s beaming face smiled from billboards, TV shows and recipe books. His restaurant, Le Relais Bernard Loiseau in Saulieu, Burgundy was a favourite with the late president François Mitterrand.
Robert de Niro would drop in by helicopter for his signature dish of frog’s legs with garlic purée and parsley sauce.
But on February 24, 2003, the chef finished his lunchtime service, rolled up his apron and drove home. Telling his ten-year old son — one of three children — to go and play outside, he went upstairs, locked the bedroom door and shot himself in the head with a hunting rifle, a present from his wife.

What happened? Loiseau had been privately warned by the editor of the Michelin travel guides that his restaurant was in danger of being demoted from the coveted three-star ranking. Michelin denied it at the time of Loiseau’s suicide, and tried to fix the blame on other critics, but a just-discovered note confirmed the truth.

The night manager at Waffle House doesn’t have any self-esteem issues, but the great French chef couldn’t stand to be a mere two-star chef.

(Hat tip: T.R. Sterling.)

‘Arab Spring’ Update: Hostages Killed in Algeria; French Fight Islamists in Mali

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“The International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs had entrusted him with the making of a report, for its future guidance. And he had written it, too. I’ve seen it. I’ve read it. It was eloquent, vibrating with eloquence, but too high-strung, I think. Seventeen pages of close writing he had found time for! . . . But it was a beautiful piece of writing. . . . It was very simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning in a serene sky: ‘Exterminate all the brutes!’”
— Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

If you have been troubled recently by the thought that Mr. Kurtz may have been onto something, certainly you aren’t alone. We haven’t been doing too well in the Suppression of Savage Customs lately:

In a bloody finale, Algerian special forces stormed a natural gas complex in the Sahara desert on Saturday to end a standoff with Islamist extremists that left at least 23 hostages dead and killed all 32 militants involved, the Algerian government said. . . .
The siege at Ain Amenas transfixed the world after radical Islamists linked to al-Qaida stormed the complex, which contained hundreds of plant workers from all over the world, then held them hostage surrounded by the Algerian military and its attack helicopters for four tense days that were punctuated with gun battles and dramatic tales of escape. . . .

The Obama administration remains clueless:

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said much remains “sketchy” about what  happened at the remote Ain Amenas gas field.
“We know that lives have been lost,” he said.
Asked how many Americans were in danger and what happened to them, Panetta  said he knew Americans were still being held hostage earlier Saturday. On what  happened to them, he said, “we need to get better information.”

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports on events in neighboring Mali:

With French officials saying confidently on Saturday that an advance by Islamist militants on Bamako, Mali’s capital, had been halted, France’s foreign minister told African leaders that “our African friends need to take the lead” in a multilateral military intervention in Mali. . . .
The French defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said Saturday that France now had 2,000 troops in Mali, with more in the region, and that France was likely to add to its forces there. . . .
Residents have told local news agencies that the Islamists have left Diabaly, which they seized as an important way station on the road to the administrative capital, Ségou, north of Bamako.
French airstrikes have halted the Islamist advance toward Mopti and nearby Sévaré, French officials said, while they confirmed that the village of Konna, north of Mopti, was now back in the hands of Mali’s government. The French have also sent troops along with Malian forces to secure a bridge over the Niger River at Markala, north of Ségou.

Mitt Romney was mocked for mentioning Mali in his final debate with President Obama. Professor Stephen Clark observed this week that the connection between “the Islamist takeover of northern Mali with the NATO-led overthrow of the Gaddafi” in Libya was overlooked by the media:

Mali is a knock-on consequence of a failed north-African policy. Just such consequences were the fear expressed by some with US interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those failed to materialize. Now that they have materialized as a consequence of Obama’s policies the grand-high poobahs and their courtiers are as silent as church mice.

William Wallis in the Financial Times described the uprising in Mali as a “boomerang” of U.S. anti-terror policy, and this inspires bitter Kurtz-like reflections from Ed Morrissey:

The boomerang in this case came from our extremely ill-advised and reckless intervention in Libya, which turned that nation into a failed state and sent tentacles of radicalism throughout the Sahel. And what did we gain from the Libyan adventure and the revolution we blessed in Egypt by tossing a 30-year ally to the wolves? In the latter, we now have leadership that feels entirely comfortable using eliminationist rhetoric against Israel; in the former, we have a burned-out consulate, four dead Americans, and a central government whose writ won’t run in half the country. Our policies in the last two years in this region have emboldened our enemies and disillusioned our allies, and in this case we didn’t get anything at all in trade for the unintended consequences we have reaped.

Don’t worry, Ed: The President’s a Nobel Peace Prize winner! And I’m sure the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs is eagerly awaiting your final report.

PREVIOUSLY:

France Battles Islamists in Mali

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American political commentators have shown little interest in the war that France is fighting against an al-Qaeda-linked uprising in Africa:

As a new round of French military raids targeted Islamist rebels in Mali on Sunday, both sides of the battle said they were determined to win.
Sunday’s raids were the latest in a French operation to help the Malian government stop advances by militant Islamist forces. France has sent several hundred troops to join the fight and plans more raids on Monday, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told Radio Europe 1.
“We have to eradicate this terrorism,” he said Sunday.
Islamist rebels in Mali acknowledged Sunday that they had suffered heavy losses in a battle against the country’s military and French troops.
“This is a holy war. The deaths are normal,” said Sanda Ould Boumama, spokesman for the rebel group Ansar Dine, which is linked to al Qaeda.
“Our fighters are prepared to die for our cause,” he told CNN by phone.

More news and background from the BBC:

French warplanes have bombed the town of Gao in eastern Mali, extending their attacks deep into rebel-held territory.
France’s military has been in action against Islamist militants in Mali since Friday, helping government forces recapture the central town of Konna.
A resident in Gao told AFP news agency all Islamist bases in the town had been destroyed and the militants had fled.
Earlier, a presidential official in Paris had described the militants as “well-trained” and “well-armed”.
Islamist groups and secular Tuareg rebels seized northern Mali in April 2011, but the Islamists soon took control of the region’s major towns.
For months, Gao has been in the hands of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (Mujao).

OK, you’re probably asking, “Why France?” Beginning in the 1890s, France held Mali as part of its colonial possessions in West Africa. Mali became an independent country in 1960. This history, and the fact that French is the most common European language in Mali, explains why French troops were sent to fight the Islamist rebels.

‘Learning French,’ IYKWIMAITYD

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Valérie Allain as Mireille Belleau in French in Action (1987)

“Many have criticized the depiction of Mireille as gratuitously sexist. The camera often lingers on the actress’s chest and bare legs. ‘You’re seeing the videotape through a male gaze,’ said one female teaching assistant who asked not to be identified.”
— New York Times, March 4, 1990

Maybe Ace of Spades should teach a course, “Methods of Humor,” because he absolutely killed me with this casual walk-up to the joke:

Anyone keeping to those New Year’s declarations? I’m continuing trying to learn French . . .

Did my left eyebrow arch suspiciously at that set-up? I can’t say that it did, and I certainly didn’t suspect the punchline to which it was leading:

I’m mostly using “French in Action,” an immersion course from the 80s, which used to run on PBS. Anyone remember it? I actually did remember it — seeing it here and there — and it stuck in my mind chiefly because the main actress is gorgeous and has the highbeams on in 30% of her scenes (here, at about 1:40-2:00). I remember actually watching it just for the highbeams.
When the videos were used at Yale, three female students lodged a protest due to “sexism” — because the girl’s legs get featured a fair amount, and, of course, her highbeams. Which, in fairness, are halogen. Blinding.

It’s funny, but he’s not kidding. This French chick is, comment dites-vous? Oui, très érotique. Her name is Valérie Allain, and she was 21 when the series aired on public television. She’s now a 47-year-old mother of two, but thanks to the miracle of film, she is forever the delightful ingénue for students of French — and students of high-beams.

We’re talking high-beams of such startling intensity that you may never fully recover from the acute retinal trauma, my friends. Continue reading ‘Learning French,’ IYKWIMAITYD →

Two French Female Police Officers Murdered by Adbdallah Boumezr

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A 30-year-old North African immigrant is under arrest after French authorities say he confessed to shooting two policewomen, Alicia Champion and Audrey Berthaut. Bare Naked Islam offers this translation of a French news article:

The policewomen were responding to a call about an Arab who had robbed a purse from a female neighbor. Abdallah . . . struck the police sergeant, stole her gun, and shot the 35-year-old mother of two with several shots to the face.
The second policewoman, newly married, ran to hide in a small alley, but the killer shot her to death with at least 7 bullets to the back, using her own gun.

Eric Dondero has much more at Libertarian Republican, explaining:

As of this writing, there is zero news on the murders in any American media. Nothing from the Washington Post, New York Times, LA Times, Huffington Post, Drudge, CNN, MSNBC, even Fox. Not even blogs are covering it.

A complete blackout by U.S. news organizations!

You Say That Like It’s a Bad Thing

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“François Hollande will strike fear into the hearts of the rich,” is the headline on a column by Nabila Ramdani in the British Independent.

Permit me to suggest two likely results (a) some genuinely rich people will leave France, taking their wealth with them, and (b) a lot of the “rich” people in France won’t be so rich any more.

The point is that “rich” is often used to designate people who, at any given time, have a high annual income. This is not the same as “rich,” as in having a massive net worth, and it is certainly not the same as the cartoonish Thurston Howell III stereotype: People born to ultra-wealthy parents, who grow up in extraordinarily affluent circumstances, with nannies and butlers and chauffeurs, top-flight private schools, winter ski vacations at the family chalet, summers in the Hamptons, etc.

It’s resentment of the Thurston Howell III types that fuels this spiteful rage to make the rich “pay their fair share,” and so if François Hollande tries to jack up taxes on those people, they’ll either find ways to evade the taxes or else they’ll get the hell out of France. One way or another, by driving investment capital out of the private sector, such a soak-the-rich policy will have the effect of stifling economic growth, and reduce the incomes of everybody, including some high-income people — entrepreneurs, high-skill technicians, sales executives — who, earning less money in a weakened economy, will therefore not pay as much taxes at the higher rate as they would had the rates stayed the same.

So all this “strike fear in the hearts of the rich” noise is either just noise, or else it’s a plan to spread the misery around.

BTW, yes, I realize this is my second post in a row about François Hollande, and yes, I realize you probably don’t give a damn about the French. But it’s all over Memeorandum, and the rest of the news seems kinda meh today. So let’s have more fun with Euro-weenies, eh? Here’s Independent columnist Peter Popham:

Rise of far right threatens
to pollute politics across Europe
They may not have claimed ultimate victory, but the biggest winners of the elections in France and Greece were the parties of the extreme right. Fringe parties, some of them routinely labelled “neo-Fascist” until recently, have made stunning inroads into mainstream European politics, to the point that in France, Norway, Finland, Hungary and Austria they either hold or threaten to hold the balance of power. Governments are increasingly faced with the choice of either giving ground on hot-button issues such as immigration and Islam, or ceding power.

Hang on here: France elects a socialist who wants to impose tax rates as high as 75 percent, and it’s the “extreme right” we’re worried about? Speaking of irrational fear, Charles Johnson is hearing jackboots on the cobblestones again, as Diary of Daedalus reports:

The Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn Party has won 7% of the votes in Greece’s recent election. They will get 21 seats in the new parliament. This gave Charles Johnson an orgasm since he is obsessed with Nazis!

Seven percent of voters in Greece, a country with a population (11.3 million) roughly the size of Ohio, vote for this far-right party, and Charles Johnson imagines . . . what? The Greek neo-Hitler building up a mighty war machine? An Aegean Kristallnacht? An invasion of Macedonia? Greek bombers and tanks rampaging across the Mediterranean? Headline from the London Daily Mail:

Rise of the Greek neo-Nazis: Ultra-right
party Golden Dawn wants to force
immigrants into work camps and plant
landmines along Turkish border

Sounds scary, except they only got 7% of the vote! Assuming that the other 93% of Greek parliament members aren’t down for this agenda, the wacko plans of these “ultra-right” guys are as much of a genuine danger as the threat of Ron Paul becoming president. (OK, that scenario had some people jittery in December.) We’re talking about a comparative handful of powerless kooks in a weak, impoverished and demographically collapsing country on the far side of the globe.

The same people who want us all to freak out about Greek Nazis, of course, would be the first to accuse of us of irresponsible fear-mongering if we pointed out the dangers of, inter alia, narco-terrorists in Mexico or Mahmoud Ahmahdinejad in Iran.

Hell, I’m more afraid of Canadians than I am of the Greeks, and we could probably wipe out Canada in a week or two without mobilizing much more than the Minnesota National Guard.

You people need to get a grip, or you’ll end up gibbering nonsense on “progressive” talk-radio like Charles Johnson: