generalspeaking

History Re-Interpreting Itself

"This is a definitional question. If he never communicated with [Daesh], it's hard to call him a [Daesh] operative."
"But [Daesh] is a movement/brand/ideology as well as a group -- and they use that broader identity to instigate terror."
Dr. Daniel Byman, professor of security studies, Georgetown University, Washington

"All the French citizens who struck within the nation's territory in 2015 were known, in one capacity or another, to judicial, penal or intelligence services. They have all been on file, watched, listened to or incarcerated along their path of delinquency toward violent radicalization."
French Parliamentary commission

"We must no longer think in terms of French or French-resident people, but in terms of francophones."
"Thousands of Tunisians, thousands of Moroccans, and Algerians can be dispatched into our territory."
Patrick Calvar, head, France's domestic intelligence

It is known that about 60 percent of French prisoners are Muslim, while representing only 8 percent of France's total population. Prisons are known everywhere, and particularly in France, as being breeding grounds for the spread of fanatical Islam. In theory it is known that this is where many of France's terrorists cut their teeth on jihad. And to monitor the prison population of 68,000 there is a "prison intelligence" force of 114 specialists, who are also tasked to monitor the activities of 235,000 Muslim parolees.

Due diligence by French law enforcement agencies have succeeded in preventing nine planned terror attacks since 2015 into 2016, representing vigilance over known Islamic State sympathizers. But French law enforcement agencies have not habituated themselves to cooperation, with a gap existing between police and domestic intelligence. The Kouachi brothers of Charlie Hebdo infamy were known to police. One of the November Paris attackers shooting at the Bataclan theatre was identified to France by Turkish intelligence as a radical.

France has the largest concentration of Muslims in all of Europe, and more French Muslims have travelled to take part in terrorist activities abroad than any other European country, even as the hostility that exists between the Muslim community and the rest of France makes each more susceptible to the effects of global terror. Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel slipped through the cracks of surveillance, a petty crook not investigated to ties with jihadism.

"The man behind the running-over operation in Nice, France, is a soldier from the Islamic State. He carried out the operation in response to calls to target citizens of coalition nations, which fight the Islamic State", appeared on a social media account associated with Daesh; obviously taking credit for what they quite apparently inspired. The man may not have exhibited what may be considered a typical terrorist profile, but his actions certainly spoke for terrorism.

When he rented that large moving truck and deliberately plowed it into the thick of the Promenade des Anglais revellers, this was a man who meant business and his business was to rack up as many casualties as possible. With the weapon he controlled before police were able to stop his rampage, he left a cemetery's-worth of dead in his wake, and enough injured men, women and children to keep area hospitals busy trying to save lives.

Bastille Day in France will never seem the same again. From its original revolutionary violence perpetrated by the brutality visited upon the country's aristocratic social and economically privileged elite, to the present time where French Muslims feel themselves underprivileged in a privileged society, penetrating that society and demonstrating their contempt and their violent antipathy to all that is held sacred by the French, they exact their vengeance.

Labels: France, Heritage, Immigration, Islam, Terrorism

posted by Pieface @ Monday, July 18, 2016