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5 Facts That Explain the Charlie Hebdo Attack. Except the Important 1.
Time magazine, at 9:09 p.m. Eastern, posted an article entitled: “5 Facts that Explain the Charlie Hebdo Attack.”
No peeking. Can you guess the nasty five?
Unemployment? Check.
Youth unemployment in France is over 24%. As high as that figure may be, another troubling statistic surpasses it. The average person in France believes that 31% of the population is Muslim; in reality, the figure is 7.7%.
Notice that last sentence? According to Time, anti-Muslim sentiment counts as three of the five “facts” that “explain” Wednesday’s massacre. There’s migration:
Rising anti-immigration sentiment in France comes at a time of historic levels of human movement….Frontex, the EU’s border agency, estimates that 270,000 people tried to enter Europe illegally last year, shattering the previous high of 141,000 in 2011, the year of the Arab Spring. In 2014, more than 3,000 migrants died in their attempts to reach Europe.
And of course the all-time most popular go-to, racism:
Approval for Marine Le Pen’s Front National, an anti-EU, anti-immigration party, has steadily risen. In 2010, 18% in France said they agree with the party’s ideas. That number has grown each year since, reaching an all-time high of 34% in the most recent TNS Sofres poll.
I’m not kidding about this one — waiting for a passport:
As of August 2013, France had the third-longest wait time in Europe for immigrants seeking naturalization: an average of 14 years. According to U.S. counterterrorism officials, there are more than 3,000 ISIS recruits believed to hold Western passports.
It’s as if Time thinks that 3,000 ISIS recruits with western passports is too few.
Lastly — and bizarrely — there’s this “fact” that “explains” the attack:
President Francois Hollande’s approval ratings have dipped as low as 12%, the lowest tally ever for a French president. (According to more recent figures, they’ve ‘rebounded’ to 15%). The President has pledged to step down and not seek reelection in 2017 if he can’t curb unemployment. Currently at 11%, the unemployment rate is almost higher than his approval ratings.
Read that one again. Decipher, if you can, how a politician’s approval ratings can explain the murder of 12 people.
And while you’re at it, decipher, if you can, how Time magazine manages to “explain” a terrorist attack by radical Muslims belonging to a worldwide death cult without using the words “terrorist” or “fanatic” or “fundamentalist” or “Wahhabi” or “radical Islamist” or even “Al Qaeda” — despite this, according to the Telegraph:
The terrorists shouted that they were from al Qaeda in Yemen before they launched the brutal attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris, according to one witness…
So let me add another “fact” that might “explain” the murderous attack in Paris: the absolute certainty — the justified certainty — by the attackers that the response to their actions by the western media would be, mostly, weasel-worded, terrified, politically correct, cowardly, lickspittle claptrap. That they can go on killing and bombing and shouting whatever they want, and the western media — exemplified by the eunuchs at Time magazine — simply won’t connect the dots.
Published in General
Time magazine?
I figured their five would be:
1.) Bush
2.) Bush
3.) Bush
4.) Bush
5.) Bush
They forgot Climate Change. It was cold that day in Paris. Unusually cold…
More such nonsense at the NYT. (link goes to twitchy, all you need to red is the first sentence)
I doubt many who still read the legacy really believe the ridiculous yarns they spin to try to excuse the excesses of the Religion of Peace, but I wonder if the “journalists” themselves still believe it.
In 1940 France was a country of 40 million. The Germans subjugated her with an invading force of 3 million, about one half of which was kept in reserve.
Let’s see… that was an army about 7.5% the size of the general French population. It’s amazing what a small group of determined people with guns can do!
I think Time just has a bad case of the Chicken Vox. They’re afraid to admit the truth and Demsplain the Matty Yglesias way.
And there are those in the west who believe these delusions.
They had some Stukas and Panzers with them too, however.
According to Wikipedia, in 1940 just 10 per cent of the German Army was motorized. They could only muster about 120,000 vehicles (compared to the 300,000 vehicles of the French Army). Also, almost half the German soldiers were over 40 years of age.
“… the eunuchs at Time magazine simply won’t connect the dots”.
And yet they also won’t print the cartoons.
While this isn’t the place to get into this conversation; what the French had on paper, wasn’t the same as what the French had in reality.
Not to be an alarmist, but I’m wondering if France is on the verge of a period of serious civil unrest. My daughter studied in Dijon ten years ago and was concerned then about the banlieues outside Paris. It has gotten worse since then.
“Youth unemployment in France is over 24%. As high as that figure may be, another troubling statistic surpasses it. The average person in France believes that 31% of the population is Muslim; in reality, the figure is 7.7%.”
Let’s look at that construction. Imagine reading this:
“The satellite TV subscription rate in France is over 61%. As high as that figure may be, another troubling statistic surpasses it. The average person in France believes that 72% of all automobile tires are underinflated; in reality, the figure is 14%.”
Because one statistic is numerically higher doesn’t mean it has any relevance or influence over the other statistic. But it’s a nice way for the writer to diminish the impact of the Youth Unemployment statistic, which might suggest that the dynamic power of European socialism might be a tad oversold.
I’m beginning to think this….
should be the international symbol for the West. Refusing to recognize, and deal with reality is not a great survival strategy. I’m waiting for the #illridewithyou response where suddenly, it’s the poor picked on Muslims who we need to worry about.
So am I to understand from Time that some guys with sufficient military training to pull off this coordinated attack did so because they were discouraged that they were unemployed?
When are Western leaders and Western liberals going to stop exhibiting signs of battered-spouse syndrome? Muslims ARE going to hit us again. And Muslims DON’T love us.
Can the wise people at Time Magazine please explain to me why no one attacked their offices when W.’s approval ratings were -12% (the lowest for any President for like forever)?
Well, that didn’t take long. NYT is concerned about the effect on…..Muslims.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/08/world/europe/paris-attack-reflects-a-dangerous-moment-for-europe.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&_r=0
TIME , like many other publications and news outlets, provide rationales for supposedly smart people to keep from facing simple truths. As time goes on these rationales become more and more absurd. It’s an echo-chamber for mutual delusion.
You guys don’t think high unemployment can be an important part of the reason? That sounds a little knee jerk to me. In fact, it sounds almost like you have been just a little bit infected by the liberal prejudice against the transformative power of gainful employment.
I’ve seen it proposed elsewhere that one reason for high alienation in the European immigrant community is unemployment, and the reason for high unemployment is simply laws and regulations which make it hard and expensive to hire the least qualified.
You can see the same thing in America. I think Thomas Sowell has pointed out that before there were (meaningful) minimum wagee laws, and also before there were laws making it hard to fire (which means, of course, hard to hire), black and white youth unemployment were equally low.
In Europe, it’s too expensive and too risky to hire the least qualified. Those are generally immigrants and children of immigrants. It’s pretty natural that living in wealthy societies that refuse to give them work, they start to feel anger and hate, doncha think?
EDIT: In no way am I defending violent ideologies. Squirming every which way to avoid mentioning Islam as a cause is part of the liberal disease. But that doesn’t mean we need to jerk our knees and deny EVERYthing they propose.
They blame it on other causes because they’re afraid that if they identify Islam extremism in any way, it will trigger off the deep-seated hatred and violence of their readers. Surely, if their readers knew that radical Muslims were behind a murderous attack, those fanatical white Christians will take out their anger on peaceful Muslim shopkeepers and librarians. They’ll start another round of the crusades or something.
That’s why the world needs journalists like Time to remind those violent Christian extremists that they themselves have much to blame for the “climate” of violence out of which this incident grew.
I ask again: when do we stop playing at this? The collective we, I mean?
I often compare the response to militant Islam in these modern times to the response to the Nazis in the early 20th century. they are different to be sure, the two movements, but our response to both, at least early on, was and is one of appeasement. With the Nazis, they went way too far and we said “Enough is enough.” And we dealt with them.
I know someone is going to read this and then reply with all of the ways thatIslamic terrorists are different than the Nazis. Don’t. I get it.
My question is this: what line do they cross that gets us to stop playing around? Is it another 9/11? And when they cross it, what action will we take, specifically?
It strikes me that the degree to which the collective West is to blame for this, and many other terrorist attacks, is the degree to which we sit and wring our hands over it, gnash our teeth, but yet simply tolerate it.
I recently obtained a concealed pistol license. I do not actually carry (I obtained the license to avoid the waiting period when buying a pistol) because I just don’t think it necessary to carry a pistol everywhere I go. I don’t imagine myself walking in to the Shell station and encountering an armed robber. But I’m starting to think that I, and anyone else who’s a gun enthusiast, ought to start carrying so that we can do what our government cannot: defend ourselves from radical islam. How many people today are dead at Charlie Hebdo if there were even one trained employee carrying a concealed weapon? Maybe all. But maybe fewer.
I think that if the unemployment rate were 1 percent, they still would have attacked the offices and murdered those reporters at the magazine.
The Times continues its tradition of useful idiocy. First communism then Islamism.
Lets not argue the Fall of France here. At least save it till I can post about it. Suffice to say that’s a very misunderstood conflict.
I think a minor correction is in order here. I would like to point out that it looks as if the author of this piece was poorly served by whomever chose the headline for it. (I don’t know the newspaper industry, but I’ve *heard* that the person who writes the headline is usually not the person who writes the article?)
The headline is “5 Facts That Explain the ‘Charlie Hebdo’ Attack”, but the article itself does not say that. It says:
In other words, the article itself attributes the motivation for the attack to one reason (anger at the cartoon images of Muhammad), and then gives 5 reasons why the attack is going to make things worse for Muslims in Europe.
This is a much more reasonable argument than what the headline would suggest.
This can’t be right. The U.S. and Canada aren’t anywhere on this list.
No, I do not. I do not think one has to deny the power of gainful employment to do all kinds of good things to deny that it is an important part of the reason that three people organized a premeditated attack on a satire site to punish them for heresy. I think it’s a huge logical leap, and that to make it requires you to explain why this doesn’t happen daily — after all, France has had high unemployment long before yesterday.
Every newspaper in the western world should be running cartoons of Mohamed today. On the front page. But I won’t hold my breath for that to happen.
As for these terrorists, once caught they should be tried & executed in a most humiliating and public manner. Those who aided them in any way should be jailed. Their businesses and assets should be taken by the government. Their friends should be ostracized.
These animals must be put down, swiftly and without mercy.
I don’t disagree. Except: do we know that the attackers in Paris were unemployed? Or even poor? Or victims, if you like, of sclerotic European socialism? We do know that the attackers on 9/11 emphatically were not. They were middle class graduate students. French employment law is, if such a thing is possible, even stupider than American employment law. But it’s probably more reasonable to conclude that the loosely associated murder cults that are sprouting up among Muslim groups in the west — and I include the ones in Boston, Brooklyn, Paris, London, etc. — have less to to with employment statistics and more to do with a sick ideology of death merging more closely every day with Islam.
Psychopathic murder cults don’t prey on the the unemployed. The Manson Family was filled with, basically, debutantes.
Our problem is that we refuse to see it for what it is. We tiptoe around recognizing that, whether we like it or not and whether it’s polite or not and whether it’s convenient or not, Islam as it is now practiced in many many places is a sick and dangerous ideology. And because Islam’s own leaders refuse to clean it up — many of them, let’s face it, actually prefer this, because it takes the domestic pressure off of corrupt leaders in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc. — we’re left in the awkward position of having to do it ourselves.
That’s a fair point. And it probably went down exactly that way, with the headline writer topping the piece in a particularly idiotic way.
On the other hand, none of the reasons listed — to provide a “context” for the attack — do anything of the kind. None of them talk about radical Islam.
Native French also suffer from high unemployment. Are they murdering cartoonists in the streets? Are they shooting unarmed police officers in the head as they beg for their lives?
No. Because native French culture is not a corrupt, insane, cowardly, hateful, backwards death cult.
I stand somewhat corrected here by several of you. But only somewhat. My dad the chemist used to point out that breathing asbestos was only dangerous if you are smoker (for some chemistry related reason). It doesn’t affect non smokers.
Get the point? Islam is asbestos. Unemployment is smoking. The fact that unemployed non-Islamics don’t turn into murderous devils doesn’t necessarily mean that unemployment is not a factor.
EDIT. And hey, I can’t believe that at ricochet, of all places, people would deny that working is good for you. That’s what I meant by knee jerk. If a liberal says it, it must be wrong, even if yesterday you thought it was right.
With that somewhat aggresive parting shot, it’s time for me to hit the sack. I’ll look in tomorrow. Night all!