Gun attack on French magazine Charlie Hebdo kills 11

[semper occultus]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30710883

Gunmen have attacked the Paris office of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 11 people and injuring 10, French officials say.

Witnesses spoke of sustained gunfire at the office as the attackers opened fire with assault rifles before escaping.

Police have launched a major operation in the Paris area in their hunt for the attackers.

Charlie's latest tweet was a cartoon of the Islamic State militant group leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The satirical weekly has courted controversy in the past with its irreverent take on news and current affairs.

The magazine was fire-bombed in November 2011 a day after it carried a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad.

President Francois Hollande is at the scene and is planning to hold an emergency cabinet meeting.

'Black-hooded men'
Two of those killed are police officers, France's AFP news agency reports, and five of those wounded are critically injured.

An eyewitness, Benoit Bringer, told French TV channel Itele: "Two black-hooded men entered the building with Kalashnikovs.

"A few minutes later we heard lots of shots."

The men were then seen fleeing the building.

"It's carnage," French police official Luc Poignant told another French channel, BFMTV.

Police have warned French media to be on alert and pay attention to security following the attack.





* WARNING Graphic content *

[stefano]

Thanks semper. This is a huge thing - already being boosted to hell by Bloomberg TV (it's on the TV where I'm working today), and will be grist to Martine Le Pen's mill... as for all Muslim-haters I guess. Funny, though, how quick everyone is to call it an "attack on free speech" and not, you know, a mass murder. As though the former is worse. And as though certain types of speech aren't liable to criminal prosecution in France.

[semper occultus]

.....not from a clear blue sky ofcourse....

France steps up security over terrorism threat

Latest update : 2014-09-25

France announced that it will increase security on transport and in public spaces on Thursday amid growing concerns over the threat of terrorism.

“Preventive measures against the risk of terrorism will be strengthened at public sites and on transport,” read a statement issued by the French presidency following a war cabinet meeting.

http://www.france24.com/en/20140925-fra ... sm-threat/



Attacks put France on Islamist terror alert

FRENCH forces stepped up security for Christmas yesterday after three separate acts of violence in three days left around 30 wounded and reignited fears of attacks by islamist radicals.

Published: 00:00, Wed, December 24, 2014

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/548 ... rror-alert

[stefano]

Mohammed has had enough of extremists: "It's hard to be loved by arseholes..."

[RocketMan]

The strike was apparently done during a weekly meeting of the entire staff, maximizing the fatalities. I wonder how they knew how to do that.

I am sickened by these events. I am sickened by the people who commit them, I am sickened by myself for momentarily allowing myself to think along the lines of "fucking primitive fundamentalist sand niggers" even though I know better, and I'm sickened in anticipation of the vile, racist stuff people will actually say out loud and post on social media... and I am sickened by the media which immediately laps up the eternal narrative of the irrational muslim threat despite reams of evidence regarding the Strategy of Tension.

And my heart goes out for the dead, the wounded and the traumatized.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Holy shit.

The strike was apparently done during a weekly meeting of the entire staff, maximizing the fatalities. I wonder how they knew how to do that.

That is a non-trivial point. You don't plan that from a camp in Pakistan. But it is also worth considering how embedded Islamic fundamentalism has become in Paris (and the rest of the EU!) in the past decade. They don't need to launch anything from outside the borders of the countries they strike. The same basic, no-tech skills and networks that allowed Hamas to accurately target strikes are just as available to a bitter Imam in the city of light. "Observe and report."

The best part about false flag terrorism is this: your assets will almost always keep carrying that flag for you. The existence of Gladio B does not mean that Islamic terrorism is all a Langley/Brussels fabrication.

[82_28]

Time for America's new crop of congressional freshmen to roll out the FREEDOM FRIES "told ya so"!

[82_28]

I relented and actually watched the video. Who was the calm filmer? It would be pretty easy I would think to find this person, if in fact it wasn't someone desiring it to go viral with something inflaming.

About the video -- yeah. Don't watch it if you don't want to see someone innocent killed. It is an awful kick to the gut to "watch".

[slimmouse]

.

Charlie's latest tweet was a cartoon of the Islamic State militant group leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The irony for me here is that a recent James Corbett podcast goes into very great detail about how this Bakr Al Baghdadi guy truly is a cartoon character, given the nature of his almost shapeshifting existence within the mind of the more informed observer.

[Searcher08]

Holy shit.

The strike was apparently done during a weekly meeting of the entire staff, maximizing the fatalities. I wonder how they knew how to do that.

That is a non-trivial point. You don't plan that from a camp in Pakistan. But it is also worth considering how embedded Islamic fundamentalism has become in Paris (and the rest of the EU!) in the past decade. They don't need to launch anything from outside the borders of the countries they strike. The same basic, no-tech skills and networks that allowed Hamas to accurately target strikes are just as available to a bitter Imam in the city of light. "Observe and report."

The best part about false flag terrorism is this: your assets will almost always keep carrying that flag for you. The existence of Gladio B does not mean that Islamic terrorism is all a Langley/Brussels fabrication.

Werd.
These day, people can become assassins for cartoon characters, and that doesnt result in their actions being any less horrendous.
Hideously casual execution in that video.

[RocketMan]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ttack.html

A young mother and cartoonist who survived the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris today said she had let the suspected Al Qaeda killers into the magazine office.
Corrine Rey said she had returned from picking up her young daughter from a kindergarten when she was confronted by two heavily armed men wearing balaclavas.

'I had gone to pick up my daughter at day care, arriving in front of the magazine building, where two masked and armed men brutally threatened us,' said Ms Rey, who draws under the name 'Coco'.

'They said they wanted to go up to the offices, so I tapped in the code,' said Ms Rey, referring to the digi-code security system on the inter-phone.
Miss Rey and her daughter hid under a desk, from where they saw two other cartoonists being executed.

'They shot Wolinski and Cabu,' she said, 'It lasted five minutes. I had taken refuge under a desk.

She said the men 'spoke French perfectly' and 'claimed they were 'Al Qaeda terrorists'.

According to Charlie Hebdo's lawyer, four cartoonists were killed by the masked gunmen: Cabu, Wolinski, Tignous and Charb, the pen name of Stephane Charbonnier, also the chief editor at Charlie Hebdo.

I found the "perfect French" part interesting, as somewhere else I read that the men spoke "very bad" French. There were three men, one of whom apparently hung back as the getaway driver, so that could explain that. So, perfect French and balaclavas to cover the faces.

[semper occultus]

....yes, I noticed that...also some confusion ( to me ) about how many attackers there were....

2 or 3 in the building ?
3 or 4 making a get-away ?
2,3 or 4 hijacking a car ?

...but probably inevitable & understandable in the circumstances .....

....but the message that "...we're Al Queda..." seems to be consistent & perhaps aimed as much at ISIS as the West....


Another, unnamed witness from an office across the corridor said she and her colleagues had heard “a huge boom”. “Then someone opened the door to our office and asked where Charlie Hebdo was. He had a rifle. We backed away. Afterwards he left, we heard gunfire. We went to the windows, there were two men running with guns, speaking in bad French … They were shouting outside, and shooting again. Afterwards I saw someone leaving the building with his hands covered in blood.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/j ... -under-way




http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2 ... rlie-hebdo
http://www.humanite.fr/charlie-hebdo-le ... oco-562041
http://www.20minutes.fr/societe/1511879 ... ndissement

[stefano]

At the moment I reckon they're young French Arab veterans of the Mali insurgency who fought with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Because of the 'perfect French', which you can hear when the one guy executes the cop (he says "Je vais me le tuer" rather than "Je vais le tuer", a slang locution that would be unusual for a North African), and because the planning and execution suggest the support of a local network. As does the fact that they had assault rifles - although I haven't seen anything proving that they could switch to full automatic fire so it might have been those welded ones that are easier to get.

I don't think it was a false flag in any sense more direct than the broad one that Western intelligence agencies encourage shit like this, although it should be noted that Charlie Hebdo, however annoying its Mohammed obsession, is no Jyllands-Posten. It is very firmly on the left, and ran with this Mohammed thing for the principle of free expression (and to stir controversy and move copies, of course). It has always been viciously against Marine Le Pen and the Front National. If it doesn't publish again and France keeps going fascist, then the FN will be rid of a visible thorn in its side.

[82_28]

...but the message that "...we're Al Queda..." seems to be consistent & perhaps aimed as much at ISIS as the West....

Since everything has to be, by default, "false flag" anymore if you're even going to delve into reasons for this kind of shit. . . I prefer using that angle for the time being as it will bring up a whole host of "who benefits" line of questions and propaganda. It will also place the safety of the existence of satirical publications/broadcasts into question as well. That was a pretty fancy car they were driving, not like the rag-tag group that galavants around the deserts in their Toyota pick-ups.

I'm rolling with false flag, myself. I only say so because of the calm demeanor of the camera person. There wasn't a HOLY SHIT or OY(I?) VEY just a calm bit of footage with no fear of being shot themselves which was promptly uploaded. If I saw someone get their brains blown out across the street from me, I would be freaking -- obviously.

They were clearly targeted at an exact time. I'm thinking of how I would be able to hear a commotion outside my place just in time to capture the popular "allu akbar" (or however it's spelled) and then graphic footage of wanton murder and then just stand there and turn your camera off.

[elfismiles]

Well, so far today I've heard various rumors...

- they first went to the wrong office building / office room (?) and apologized and left without hurting anyone
- they were speaking "perfect French" when inside the building but some other "Caucasus" regional language when outside speaking to each other ... but that seems like a very wide net if even accurate.

Demographics[edit]

Main article: Peoples of the Caucasus

Further information: Languages of the Caucasus

Ethno-linguistic groups in the Caucasus region[2]

The region has many different languages and language families. There are more than 50 ethnic groups living in the region.[3] No less than three language families are unique to the area, but also Indo-European languages, such as Armenian and Ossetic, and the Turkic language Azerbaijani are local and used in the area. Russian is used as a common language.

Today the peoples of the Northern and Southern Caucasus tend to be either Eastern Orthodox Christians, Oriental Orthodox Christians, or Sunni Muslims. Shia Islam has had many adherents historically in Azerbaijan, located in the eastern part of the region.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasus#Demographics

... and the bit about at least one of them speaking French outside when the cop was executed might contradict that.