The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    Profiles in Cowardice

    By Doctor Cleveland on Sun, 11/15/2015 - 11:31am | Politics

    My thoughts are with Paris today, and with Beirut. We were in the airport, waiting for a delayed flight, when the news broke Friday evening, and so the Paris new broke to us through cable TV and the Beirut news did not reach us at all. There is too much to say about these crimes. For now I can only say that the United States has, at this point, precisely the news media that terrorism wishes us to have.

    CNN was on the TV above us. And we added a bunch of French new sources to our twitter feeds. Not so shockingly, the death toll reported in France (and by the other European news outlets on our feeds) was always significantly lower than the numbers being thrown around on CNN. I woke on Saturday in the weird position of being both sickened by how many lives were lost and queasily grateful that the number is lower than American media first said. No matter how bad things seem, Wolf Blitzer can always make them seem worse.

    In fact, making things seem even worse is American TV's primary job. Profiting from fear is TV news's main business strategy, from your local station at 11 pm to the 24-hour networks. TV news will literally ask us, in its commercials "Should you be worried?" Listen, and you will hear that phrase coming back over and over again. They want their audience as frightened as possible. For a group dedicated to spreading terror, they are perfect.

    Long before anything was clear in the reports from Paris. CNN was asking who else should be worried. Should Germany be worried about an attack, since they have so many refugees? Will there be attacks on the United States? Is New York tightening its security? These questions are not just idle and irresponsible. These questions amplify terrorists' signal. The terrorists spent their resources, probably a healthy share of their resources, trying to terrify the people of Paris, and then CNN deliberately terrifies people thousands of miles away for them, for free.

    And, like all fear-mongers, cable news (and some right-wing political figures) turned swiftly to a weak, powerless scapegoat for their fears. Friday night, that meant scapegoating Syrian refugees, refugees from Daesh, for violence committed by Daesh. Before the identity of even one terrorist attacker was confirmed, even before the attacks themselves were over, cable news was proceeding as if it were a confirmed fact that the terrorists were refugees. Of course, the investigation so far is finding French and Belgian nationals. Closing the borders to refugees will not keep out Daesh; Daesh already recruits in Paris itself, and in London, and in Chicago. Instead of going after the funding that allows terrorism to flourish, our native fear-mongers demonize the tired, the hungry, and the poor, the tattered refugees struggling to be free. And that, too, is exactly what Daesh wants. Because Daesh does not want those people to escape them.

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    The terrorists spent their resources, probably a healthy share of their resources, trying to terrify the people of Paris, and then CNN deliberately terrifies people thousands of miles away for them, for free.

    This point gets totally lost.  There are a limited number of people in the world who will murder for a cause, much less engage in mass murder for a cause.  Of those people, a limited number would consider radical Islam a worthy enough cause and of those people, a limited number would act at the behest of ISIS and of those people, only a limited number could actually pull off such an act and even among those who have the will and means, they will have to rely on a whole bunch of uncontrollable factors to actually succeed and even then, after one attack they are likely to die or be captured and are forever taken off the board.

    I know that some people imagine there are capable, well-equipped and willing sleeper cells in all the major cities of the world just waiting on the order to act, but I think that gives ISIS way too much credit.


    by Michael Maiello on Sun, 11/15/2015 - 11:46am

    Denial of the reality of the power and global reach of the Islamic State will only produce a short lived false sense of security. There may not be many people willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their cause but there are enough and every bomb the US, France or Russia drops helps to create new volunteers to fight the Crusaders.

    The era of subduing   the Muslim world with force without costs or reprisal has ended, they have learned our ways and how to avoid and circumvent our security as these recent attacks have clearly shown.

    The actual number of attacks on the Crusader homelands doesn't need to be large to create the desired fear and reactionary responses, the French frontier is closed for the first time since WW2 and refugees  will be targeted for surveillance and   repressed while civil liberties will take a secondary position behind civil defense.


    by Peter (not verified) on Sun, 11/15/2015 - 1:03pm

    My Templar uniform is being cleaned so I will not be doing any subduing today. So I might as well point out a few details that eluded your account. The Daesh will only prosper if enough of the Muslim world consider it's claim to bear the Caliphate to be legitimate. What if you throw a Caliphate and nobody comes?

    All the involvement by outside parties in the conflict are clearly aligned with Muslim people who are not on board with their project. It goes without saying that the outside groups have their own agendas. But your interpretation makes all those other Muslims out to be simple tools. That argument has certainly been made by Al Qaeda and the like. But the fact remains that Daesh is doomed if enough Muslims repudiate it.


    by moat on Sun, 11/15/2015 - 2:36pm

    Another era that has ended is where Western populations are differentiated from their Crusader militaries and governments, OBL made this point very clear. In or out of uniform you, I and everyone else are justifiable targets to be given no quarter.

    I doubt there will be much voting, polling or popularity contests involved in this growing Islamic force. Enough people will offer support, more than enough will submit to its authority and the rest will flee or face the sword.


    by Peter (not verified) on Sun, 11/15/2015 - 3:13pm

    Yes, I got the memo about how we all can be killed at anytime.

    Since you brought up the subject of eras, I suggest you get caught up on the history of warfare. There have been some developments that you need to understand before venturing an opinion about what being given no quarter looks like now.


    by moat on Sun, 11/15/2015 - 3:39pm

    The odds of being injured or killed in one of these attacks are still extremely low but that didn't stop hundreds of people in Paris from running in fear, for no apparent reason, from a gathering in Paris today.

    More dangerous and reactionary is that the French government is in panic mode demanding a three month state of emergency while their warplanes bombed civilians in al-Raqqa Syria to display their superior moral standards.


    by Peter (not verified) on Sun, 11/15/2015 - 5:44pm

    Yeah, people running in fear. Funny.

    So, you are cool with the killings in Paris because they are a response to the people who died in the bombings in Syria.

    Duly noted. After this explanation, it is clear that only France is responsible for what has happened. And here I was, thinking it might be more complicated than that.

    Merci.


    by moat on Sun, 11/15/2015 - 7:44pm

    According to CNN, Raqqa is Being Silently Slaughtered stated that no civilians were killed in the French attack.


    by Aaron Carine on Sun, 11/15/2015 - 10:05pm

    But somehow they always manage to bring up that "an American" was among the victims. Or only one, or ten...  How about, "among the victims, there are French, German, English, and so far, one American."  It just makes us seem a little less like the selfish assholes that we are if we might include others in the report.


    by CVille Dem on Sun, 11/15/2015 - 6:26pm

    That sort of tribalism is natural and common. I'm sure the French victims of 9/11 got a lot of air time on French TV, as well as victims from other countries got their air time on their country's tv.


    by ocean-kat on Sun, 11/15/2015 - 10:00pm

    So if NYC 'tightens security' it's supposed to be a secret? News should be sanitized so as not to scare viewers and help the terrorists? That is a profile in...courage?

    Who does the filtering...?

    The western world, and certainly not Germany alone, cannot absorb entire populations of the 'tired, hungry, poor' from every war torn Muslim nation, from Pakistan to Libya.

    Cameron has said you cannot have a social safety net, & social security with open borders, the UK doesn't have one.

    At some point, what is wrong with these Muslim nations, their governments, their community/social values and, and yes, their religious tenets the mixture of which is allowing thousands of them to engage in wholesale murder of each other, and mayhem, must be recognized, and addressed, mostly by themselves.  The West cannot cure what ails them and their societies. Moving them to Europe won't cure the problems that caused their exodus, it may only spread those problems.

    As to 'expending their resources' Paris already had at least 2 attacks this year before this one, from Match magazine, Sept. 2015, some of the points:

    A seasoned French anti-terror expert says France is destined to be subject to Muslim terrorist attacks and will not be able to prevent them. He says it takes 25 officers to monitor 24/7 one radical suspect living in France.

    Muslim radicals on Jihad over Iraq/Syria/Libya wars, local and imported across open EU borders, are increasingly too adept with plans and communication to be detected by anti-terror police.

    They are living in isolated non-assimilated Muslim communities. 

    Even with law changes, more terror judges, or even a lock 'em up Gitmo type operation...it will prove impossible to stop all attacks.


    by NCD on Sun, 11/15/2015 - 8:47pm