Terrorists take Eagles of Death Metal show in Paris hostage

[tapitsbo]

But if suicide bombers are being used as patsies it's a totally different calculation which wipes out their testimony after the fact and dehumanizes a population portrayed as resorting to such tactics.

I predict paranoia about implant killswitches will be rising in coming yours amongst the far tinfoil spectrum.

It's funny because once I read a paper in university valorizing suicide bombers for deciding their own death, denying their oppressors the decision to end their life. If our suspicions about braonwashing ring true then this breathless thesis is far from accurate.

[Harvey]

Interestingly, using a custom range for date, from a week before the attacks to April 2000 there's no single reference to "Mahoud Admo" anywhere on the internet, according to google. Is the name spelled correctly? Also, several times the google search field altered the name and had to be reset.

I took an article at random mentioning "Mahoud Admo" the Mirror article here, and tried the same search for all the names referenced.

Mahoud Admo

Fatiha Toun

Tobias Ramsie

Etienne Athea

Fatima Merzouki

Alexander Thiele

Only the last three names of witnesses given appear to have any internet history, under the names given, according to google. Caveat emptor.

[a11235813]

It's interesting however that the LTTE ultimately seem to have been losing their war whereas other groups have had great success with other less direct methods.

Actually, that's one of the lessons of history that targeted peoples and nations need to learn. All other considerations aside, suicide bombing or even guerrilla warfare as a sole or primary tactic of war against any state is by far the least effective weapon there is, and has inevitably led to defeat; that's why I emphasized its emotional parameters, and that historically, in real cases, it's been the weapon of last resort, when no other means are available to correct a vast imbalance of military power.

That's not to say it always fails, but when it has been effective, it was employed only as a very, very limited tactical weapon, to achieve very specific tactical objectives, and only as part of a much wider war plan using a variety of means, including conventional, propaganda and guerrilla warfare, and only with the overt or covert support of one or more states. Mythology aside, alone, suicide bombing (and guerrilla warfare in general) not only accomplishes very little in terms of actual damage to the enemy; unless it is backed by the kind of resources only possessed by states, it ends up doing much more good to the enemy than harm, and much more harm to the suicide bomber's cause than good.

Hi Alice,

Thanks for your insightful posts.

Indian here, somewhat close to the area in question (are there any other Indians at RI? Joe Hillshoist, how are you mate?)

LTTE have actually used suicide bombers to great effect, particularly as assassins. Rajiv Gandhi, India's former prime minister, was their most high-profile victim - the main reason the LTTE were wiped out was their loss of support in India and the rest of the world after this assassination.

.

[82_28]

I don't think anyone has seen Joe in almost ages.

[stoneonstone]

Found the Guardian article with more interesting details on the shooting - specifically attire, attitude, and firing control. The military burst stood out. That is fire discipline that only pros have.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/n ... nd-killing

Along with The Mirror outlier

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/pa ... ck-6834503

two to keep pdfs of before they vanish...as I suspect our Mahoud Admo has by now.

[semper occultus]

That's not to say it always fails, but when it has been effective, it was employed only as a very, very limited tactical weapon, to achieve very specific tactical objectives, and only as part of a much wider war plan using a variety of means, including conventional, propaganda and guerrilla warfare, and only with the overt or covert support of one or more states.

....yes, some very interesting points - real food for thought Alice.....

any generalisation is lways open to having a few holes poked in it but generally I think it stands up ..I might qualify the following...

...and only with the overt or covert support of one or more states.....

.....with :

...the extent to which an insurgent group enjoys legitimacy or support amongst the host population...

....geography....

......is that enough to sustain an effective group on its own though ...?

....arguably true of the Taliban......who have a long historical tradition of resisting foreign encroachment through ancient adherence to "guerilla" tactics then just melting back into the farms & villages - helped by their geography, and the Kurds ( "no friends but the mountains" ) , and some of those peculiar groups up in the Andes seem to have been around for decades - and all of those seem to have some plug into the global drugs traffic aswell .....

.....also having your own armed militia is practically an entry qualification for participation in the political process in certain arenas ...

...Hizbollah - would come under the external state-support banner but don't know enough about the history of the PLO to take a historical perspective on their "success" such as it is...

[stoneonstone]

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1511/16/nday.06.html

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Chris, joining us via Skype now is Mark Colclough, he was walking with a friend towards the Cafe Bonne Biere on Friday when he witnessed the terror beginning. Mark, thank you for being with us. Can you tell us what you were doing on Friday, where we you going and what you saw?

MARK COLCLOUGH, PARIS ATTACK WITNESS: Hello. We were talking home from a restaurant. We were vacationing in Paris. We were there for a conference and had taken the day off. And were just being tourists in Paris. And we had gone out for a dinner around 9:00 p.m. We decided to call it a day. We were making our way through Paris simply using Google Maps as our navigator to get home. At that point we --

CAMEROTA: Tell us what --

COLCLOUGH: Excuse me?

CAMEROTA: Yes, just tell us when you realized something horrible was unfolding.

COLCLOUGH: Yes, we came close to Cafe Bonne Biere and we heard an initial crack bang which we thought was fire crackers, a big one. I directly looked ahead of me. About 20 meters ahead of me, just off to the right I could very clearly see a gunman who had taking position in a tripod shooting position, was lean into his semiautomatic rifle.

[07:35:05] He swiveled to the right and he took three shots, instantly killing the three people, at least shooting the three people at the cafe. I could clearly see, to the right of him.

CAMEROTA: Mark, what was the gunman saying? How were they behaving?

COLCLOUGH: We weren't close enough to hear if they were saying anything at all. Because he was back lit, it was very hard for us to see any facial details clearly. We could see what he was doing. We couldn't hear if he was saying anything.

What we could see was that he intentionally shot at -- he took four shots at the three individuals. Then he took a step forward, swiveled it a little bit and put two rounds through a car, which was ten meters directly in front of him. I saw he shot the driver of the car.

CAMEROTA: And, Mark, what was happening? What was everyone doing while this was unfolding?

COLCLOUGH: Well, listen, I didn't see what was happening around. I was just watching the shooter and the carnage he was creating with his weapon. When I think back through my recollection, speaking with you now, what I recall most clearly are the sounds of his rifle.

I heard he was shooting, shoot, look, shoot, look, shoot, look, pause, as one does when one has military training. I assumed for a moment I was looking at perhaps a SWAT team or specialist team that were doing something in connection with a police investigation.

So even for the first second or two I had doubts about whether we had stumbled upon a police sting of some kind. It wasn't until he moved forward, stepping into the cafe. I saw him pan over the cafe with his rifle and I heard him open fire inside the cafe.

At that split second, I knew this was an attack against civilians. And I shouted to my travel friend that we should seek cover immediately.

CAMEROTA: Mark, it's so frightening and the idea that so many people witnessed these just unspeakable aftermath of these attacks, you know, it's of note that you are a psychotherapist. What do you do moving forward? How do you erase the psychic impact of everything that you saw Friday night?

COLCLOUGH: I think that's a very good point, Alisyn. It's not a question about erasing. It's a question about embracing it. Denial is a very powerful defense mechanism for any person alive. And it's through -- working through my feelings and working through especially what I see when I close my eyes, when I fall asleep, it's working through that process that I will be able to allow it to not become a traumatic episode for myself.

CAMEROTA: Mark, it's a challenge for you and everyone here in Paris. Thank you for sharing the story and we wish you all the best moving forward. Thank you for being here.

COLCLOUGH: Thank you very much, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: The French Air Force -- thank you. The french Air Force hitting ISIS targets in Syria following Friday's terror attack, as you know. So should the U.S. somehow be more involved, be more aggressive in the fight again the terror group? Martin O'Malley, Democratic presidential hopeful talks about the strategy, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:41:28]

[vince]

I heard he was shooting, shoot, look, shoot, look, shoot, look, pause, as one does when one has military training. I assumed for a moment I was looking at perhaps a SWAT team or specialist team that were doing something in connection with a police investigation.

So even for the first second or two I had doubts about whether we had stumbled upon a police sting of some kind. It wasn't until he moved forward, stepping into the cafe. I saw him pan over the cafe with his rifle and I heard him open fire inside the cafe.

At that split second, I knew this was an attack against civilians. And I shouted to my travel friend that we should seek cover immediately.

CAMEROTA: Mark, it's so frightening and the idea that so many people witnessed these just unspeakable aftermath of these attacks, you know, it's of note that you are a psychotherapist. What do you do moving forward? How do you erase the psychic impact of everything that you saw Friday night?

COLCLOUGH: I think that's a very good point, Alisyn. It's not a question about erasing. It's a question about embracing it. Denial is a very powerful defense mechanism for any person alive. And it's through -- working through my feelings and working through especially what I see when I close my eyes, when I fall asleep, it's working through that process that I will be able to allow it to not become a traumatic episode for myself.

CAMEROTA: Mark, it's a challenge for you and everyone here in Paris. Thank you for sharing the story and we wish you all the best moving forward. Thank you for being here.

COLCLOUGH: Thank you very much, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: The French Air Force -- thank you. The french Air Force hitting ISIS targets in Syria following Friday's terror attack, as you know. So should the U.S. somehow be more involved, be more aggressive in the fight again the terror group? Martin O'Malley, Democratic presidential hopeful talks about the strategy, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:41:28]

.....cough.... Blackwater in disguise.... cough

[semper occultus]

...possibly....otoh this is basically a re-iteration - at the micro-level - of this argument...

if you think that Arabs can't coordinate successful terror attacks in Europe without help -- or outright orchestration -- from white people, that's racist.

I was using "racist" in the thought-stopping sense.

....."terrorist" training camps have existed for decades...German neo-nazis were boasting about getting military training in Lebanon back in the 1980's....www.nytimes.com/1981/06/27

.also - at the risk of coming over all NRA - its alot easier doing the whole hollywood commando - rambo act when you're shooting unarmed civilians diving under tables or cowering in the corner ....these putative military skills don't get them very far when the anti-terrorist force eventually turns up...

[stoneonstone]

http://readynews.org/16-11-2015/id33728.html

"60 Minutes": The Paris Attacks
16.11.2015, 6:15
The following is a script from "The Paris Attacks" which aired on Nov. 15, 2015. Scott Pelley is the correspondent. Michael Gavshon and Keith Sharman, producers.

...

Scott Pelley: What was the very first thing you saw?

Mark Colclough: A gunman. Dressed in black. Black boots, black trousers, tight, a black sweater of sorts, no collar. And standing in a very clear gun position, shooting position. He was holding a weapon, and had it shoulder, had it shouldered, and was shooting quite deliberately and precisely.

Mark Colclough, a Danish psychotherapist, was walking with a friend, toward the Bonne Biere café.

Scott Pelley: Where was he shooting?

Mark Colclough: The French have a habit of having chairs outside the cafe, so you can sit with your back to the window, and just watch the world go by. And people were doing that. And he shot three of them, just like that. The three that were sitting outside, he shot very quickly.

Scott Pelley: So, as he opens fire on the crowd outside the cafe--

Mark Colclough: Three people. There wasn't a crowd. He had positioned his leg so he would-- he would stand in a kinda tripod kind of way. Had the rifle up to his left shoulder. And quite deliberately shot, looked, shot, looked, shot, looked, stopped.

"The French have a habit of having chairs outside the cafe, so you can sit with your back to the window, and just watch the world go by. And people were doing that. And he shot three of them, just like that."
Scott Pelley: What happened to those three people?

Mark Colclough: They fell off their chairs.

Scott Pelley: He hit them all?

Mark Colclough: Oh yeah, they were dead. Or, they fell off their chairs. We could see that. That's the first thing I saw. He was shooting that way, down to his right. Then he gyrated back, and he shot straight ahead into a car that was parked, that was at the crossroads next to the café.

This is the scene. There's the car. And these are the people who "fell off their chairs." The man recording this video says to himself, "Poor people, it can't be true, it can't be true."

Scott Pelley: What happened next?

Mark Colclough: He then stepped forward, and then he turned right and walked into the café that the three people had been sitting in front of.

Scott Pelley: It didn't appear to you that he had the weapon set on automatic, and he was just sweeping the room?

Mark Colclough: No. It wasn't random.

Scott Pelley: But he was picking out his targets, shooting them one at a time? Moving to the next target?

Mark Colclough: He shot the three, then he shot into the car. Then he moved into the café. Looked right, panned right with his weapon, didn't shoot. Panned left, duck-duck-duck. Pause. Duck-duck-duck. Pause.

The shooting stopped. The gunman fled. Mark Colclough and his friend went to see if they could help.

Scott Pelley: When you went into the café what did you see?

Mark Colclough: Wounded. Some were, I could see one guy had been shot in his thigh. I could see another woman had already been given an oxygen mask, and was-- I could see the paramedics had put themselves on either side of her so I thought she was more critically wounded. And then towards the bar I could see on our left, I could see there were three of four dead bodies lying in front of the bar. Civilians. So, I looked down, and I saw big puddles of blood. Puddles. Not little droplets, but puddles.

Scott Pelley: Tables turned over?

Mark Colclough: Yeah.

Scott Pelley: Chairs flipped over? Chaos?

Mark Colclough: And the, again, the smell of gunpowder in the room.

[stoneonstone]

Mark Colclough.
http://therapy-in-english.dk/
Easy enough guy to find. I'm sure he's being straightened up on what he thinks he saw and heard. As to where poor 26 year old Mr. Admo is...one can only guess.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Will these events take away attention from the Paris Climate Summit next
month?

What’s Really at Stake at the Paris Climate Conference Now Marches Are Banned

By banning protest at COP21, Hollande is silencing those facing the worst impacts of climate change and its monstrous violence

by Naomi Klein



Whose security gets protected by any means necessary? Whose security is casually sacrificed, despite the means to do so much better? Those are the questions at the heart of the climate crisis, and the answers are the reason climate summits so often end in acrimony and tears.

The French government’s decision to ban protests, marches and other “outdoor activities” during the Paris climate summit is disturbing on many levels. The one that preoccupies me most has to do with the way it reflects the fundamental inequity of the climate crisis itself – and that core question of whose security is ultimately valued in our lopsided world.

Here is the first thing to understand. The people facing the worst impacts of climate change have virtually no voice in western debates about whether to do anything serious to prevent catastrophic global warming. Huge climate summits like the one coming up in Paris are rare exceptions. For just two weeks every few years, the voices of the people who are getting hit first and worst get a little bit of space to be heard at the place where fateful decisions are made. That’s why Pacific islanders and Inuit hunters and low-income people of color from places like New Orleans travel for thousands of miles to attend. The expense is enormous, in both dollars and carbon, but being at the summit is a precious chance to speak about climate change in moral terms and to put a human face to this unfolding catastrophe.

The next thing to understand is that even in these rare moments, frontline voices do not have enough of a platform in the official climate meetings, in which the microphone is dominated by governments and large, well-funded green groups. The voices of ordinary people are primarily heard in grassroots gatherings parallel to the summit, as well as in marches and protests, which in turn attract media coverage. Now the French government has decided to take away the loudest of these megaphones, claiming that securing marches would compromise its ability to secure the official summit zone where politicians will meet.

Some say this is all fair game against the backdrop of terror. But a UN climate summit is not like a meeting of the G8 or the World Trade Organization, where the powerful meet and the powerless try to crash their party. Parallel “civil society” events are not an addendum to, or distractions from, the main event. They are integral to the process. Which is why the French government should never have been allowed to decide which parts of the summit it would cancel and which it would still hold.

Rather, after the horrific attacks of 13 November, it needed to determine whether it had the will and capacity to host the whole summit – with full participation from civil society, including in the streets. If it could not, it should have delayed and asked another country to step in. Instead the Hollande government has made a series of decisions that reflect a very particular set of values and priorities about who and what will get the full security protection of the state. Yes to world leaders, football matches and Christmas markets; no to climate marches and protests pointing out that the negotiations, with the current level of emission targets, endanger the lives and livelihoods of millions if not billions of people.

And who knows where this will end? Should we expect the UN to arbitrarily revoke the credentials of half the civil society participants? Those most likely to make trouble inside the fortressed summit? I would not be at all surprised.

It is worth thinking about what the decision to cancel marches and protests means in real, as well as symbolic, terms. Climate change is a moral crisis because every time governments of wealthy nations fail to act, it sends a message that we in the global north are putting our immediate comfort and economic security ahead of the suffering and survival of some of the poorest and most vulnerable people on Earth. The decision to ban the most important spaces where the voices of climate-impacted people would have been heard is a dramatic expression of this profoundly unethical abuse of power: once again, a wealthy western country is putting security for elites ahead of the interests of those fighting for survival. Once again, the message is: our security is non-negotiable, yours is up for grabs.

One further thought. I write these words from Stockholm, where I have been doing a series of climate-related public events. When I arrived, the press was having a field day with a tweet sent by Sweden’s environment minister, Åsa Romson. Shortly after news broke of the attacks in Paris, she tweeted her outrage and sadness at the loss of life. Then she tweeted that she thought it would be bad news for the climate summit, a thought that occurred to everyone I know who is in any way connected to this environmental moment. Yet she was pilloried for her supposed insensitivity – how could she be thinking about climate change at a time of such carnage?

The reaction was revealing, since it took for granted the notion that climate change is a minor issue, a cause without real casualties, frivolous even. Especially when serious issues like war and terrorism are taking center stage. It made me think about something the writer Rebecca Solnit wrote not long ago: “climate change is violence.”

It is. Some of the violence is grindingly slow: rising seas that gradually erase whole nations, and droughts that kill many thousands. Some of the violence is terrifyingly fast: storms with names such as Katrina and Haiyan that steal thousands of lives in a single roiling event. When governments and corporations knowingly fail to act to prevent catastrophic warming, that is an act of violence. It is a violence so large, so global and inflicted against so many temporalities simultaneously (ancient cultures, present lives, future potential) that there is not yet a word capable of containing its monstrousness. And using acts of violence to silence the voices of those who are most vulnerable to climate violence is yet more violence.

In explaining why forthcoming football matches would go on as scheduled, France’s secretary of state for sport said: “Life must go on.” Indeed it must. That’s why I joined the climate justice movement. Because when governments and corporations fail to act in a way that reflects the value of all of life on Earth, they must be protested.

[tapitsbo]

...possibly....otoh this is basically a re-iteration - at the micro-level - of this argument...

if you think that Arabs can't coordinate successful terror attacks in Europe without help -- or outright orchestration -- from white people, that's racist.

I was using "racist" in the thought-stopping sense.

....."terrorist" training camps have existed for decades...German neo-nazis were boasting about getting military training in Lebanon back in the 1980's....www.nytimes.com/1981/06/27

.also - at the risk of coming over all NRA - its alot easier doing the whole hollywood commando - rambo act when you're shooting unarmed civilians diving under tables or cowering in the corner ....these putative military skills don't get them very far when the anti-terrorist force eventually turns up...

Just because it was a professionally trained looking white man doesn't mean it wasn't ISIS. Just because it may have been ISIS doesn't mean it wasn't ALSO private mercenaries.

Also the equivalence between Soldier and Fortune and Dabiq doesn't cancel out the intriguing differences. There may be a certain kind of "racism", even in suggesting they are mirror images of each other (for many reasons).

The suppression of sustainable energy, and of movement from fossil fuels has been and will continue to become a security liability for all sorts of parties.

[AlicetheKurious]

Just because it was a professionally trained looking white man doesn't mean it wasn't ISIS. Just because it may have been ISIS doesn't mean it wasn't ALSO private mercenaries.

Every piece of information should be placed in context, and understood in relation to all the other pieces.

And the odd media silence on this particular piece is interesting in itself.

[MacCruiskeen]

"Sébastien" allegedly spent two-and-a-half hours chatting with the killers in the Bataclan, yet not once does he tell us (nor does anyone think of asking him):

1. What language did the terrorists speak?

2. If French, then: fluently, haltingly, with an accent or not? Which accent?

3. What did they look like? "Very muscular" and "white", for instance? Or different?

4. Above all - and this really beggars belief!! - HOW MANY OF THEM WERE THERE?

"Sébastien" made a point of seeking anonymous global fame (and by god he got it, instantly); and yet he tells us nothing about anything that matters. You'd think, naively, that the police and the mass media might be interested in hearing him answer these -- and other -- questions. You'd think they'd make a point of finding him.

Eleven days on, still not a peep from him, from "The Pregnant Woman" or from the Twitterer who allegedly brought them together. They've all vanished without trace. (Try Googling them.)

Just because it was a professionally trained looking white man doesn't mean it wasn't ISIS. Just because it may have been ISIS doesn't mean it wasn't ALSO private mercenaries.

Whatever the capabilities of "ISIS", and whatever mercenaries they may employ, these people do not control the Western mass media.