The Toulouse gunman called a news channel two hours before the police surrounded his apartment building. I wonder if he gave away his location with that call. It lasted eleven minutes. Although, according to police, they had had this guy under some degree of surveillance for several years, and they had found a link between one of his earlier shootings and his mother’s I/P address. This part is weird and creepy:
Earlier on Tuesday, authorities had offered new details on the killings at the Jewish school, an assault that has stunned the nation and terrorized Toulouse. They said the gunman seemed to be filming his actions as he coolly shot his victims. Mr. Guéant said surveillance footage from the school’s security cameras showed what appeared to be a video camera strapped to his chest.
Asked why he targeted a Jewish school, he said, “The Jews kill our brothers and sisters in Palestine.” But, of course, his earlier targets had been blacks and Arabs in the French armed services.
He told [Ebba] Kalondo he had carried out the attacks in protest at France’s decision to ban women from wearing the full Islamic veil and because of the country’s military presence in Afghanistan.
He said “the victims were chosen at random” and that anyone “bolstering the operation in Afghanistan” or “working for the Sarkozy machine” was a target.
So, he’s pretty much pissed off about nine different things and decided to just start killing people at semi-random. Hopefully, he will follow through and surrender peacefully. But there’s still this to worry about:
Speaking to FRANCE 24’s senior editor Ebba Kalondo for 11 minutes in “clear French”, he said that his actions were part of a “much larger campaign” and that the country could expect further attacks in Lyon, Marseille and Paris.
Maybe that’s just bluster. In any case, I wonder if France will use this as an excuse to set up a global network of secret prisons where no legal due process applies?
Naaaaaahhhh…what kind of nasty country would do something like that, I wonder?
AG
P.S. This Obama fella you are supporting?
Can you even imagine how draconian the response would be if exactly the same sort of scenario (including the threat of further actions in other areas of the U.S.) were to occur here?
We’d find out quickly enough how “symbolic” the National Defense Authorization Act really is. My own guess? There’d be the beginnings of a massive TSA-like system immediately set up with full so-called “bipartisan” support. Betcha the plans are already formulized and awaiting implementation. Betcha.
I put the word “bipartisan” in quotation marks because when the shit hits the fan, the 1% shows its true internal unity. The unity of self-interest. All of the internecine squabbling, the bitching and moaning about Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals etc. magically disappears every time the federal food trough monopoly is seriously threatened.
Bet on it.
No effort is made to distinguish Jews from Israelis. And this is nothing new. As a Jew who has never even set foot in the middle east, I will state that no effort has ever been made by the Israelis to seek from me approval of their agenda.
No effort? RU Kidding? Fortunately the effort has not been terribly successful.
http://ideas.time.com/2011/09/29/why-fewer-young-american-jews-share-their-parents-view-of-israel/
I meant by the alleged shooter. Sigh.
Personally, I agree with the sentiments of the young folks discussed in that article.
I wonder if France will use this as an excuse to set up a global network of secret prisons where no legal due process applies?
Considering that Sark has been sucking up to Le Pen supporters lately, I wouldn’t put it past him.
No, no, you don’t understand — the French never do anything bad, only the Americans do.
“Set up?”
Have you ever read about France’s counter-terrorism policies?
They do not screw around.
Off topic but people might want to check out Wired’s cover story this month. I’m astonished that I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere.
It was a wreck list diary on dkos a few days ago.
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See my breaking news diaries:
Neo-naziKilling Spree France – UpdateNo one needs to teach the French about torture, just check the adventure in North Africa and the War of Independence in Algeria. The suspect has been named as Mohammed Merah, 24, a Frenchman of Algerian origin. I dispute the argument his killings of the Jewish children (execution style with a head shot) as being anti-semitic. It’s all about terror Al-Qaeda style instigated by its present leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. Beware of the Saudi Salafists!
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I get the point that a guy like this would be quite happy to off anybody if you just wound him up and pointed him in the right direction, yet somehow I can’t help thinking that the deliberate targeting of Jewish children has to be defined as antisemitic.
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Anti-semitism is an ill chosen word, which has its raison d’etre only in our day, when it is sought to broaden this strife between the Jew and the Christians by supplying it with a philosophy and a metaphysical, rather than a material reason. Pope Benedict XVI: Jewish people must never again be blamed for crucifixion.
The killings in southern France was an act of terror. The Frenchman as every terrorist does, searches for the soft target. After the murder of French soldiers, he unfortunately chose a grammar school and Jewish children. If there was an American school, he could similarly have chosen it as a target. This was a revenge killing to punish the state of Israel for its bombardments in Gaza. Any motive would have sufficed, I was thinking of the massacre in Kandahar of Afghan children by US Staff Sgt. Bales on March 11. One may never know what triggers a murderous rage with political motives. The state of Israel cannot claim victimhood and hide behind its mask of anti-semitic accusations and white-wash its own violent acts of the settlers and illegal occupation of Palestinian land.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
Cross-posted from my diary – Israel Rhetoric: Right Way Wrong Way
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."It appears the police may be closing in with an assault on the shooter’s position. Short video from the BBC included at the link.
Hopefully, he will be killed in a shootout that will cost no other lives.
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BREAKING NEWS
After a 30 hour siege where the French police tested the gunman’s endurance, Mohammed Merah managed to end his life in a gun battle with elite forces entering his appartment. Unfortunately, three French police were wounded and one seriously. Mohammed got his martyr’s death what the French police had hoped to prevent.
Yesterday I listened to the France24 senior editor Ebba Kalondo who spoke with the gunman by phone just hours before the siege started. Many, many questions will be asked in the performance of the intelligence service, how this fanatic could come back to France after receiving a Salafist indoctrination in the AfPak border region. One year ago, he was interrogated by the French DCRI service.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."