I repeat, this is NOT a DRILL!
"The worst mass shooting of the year unfolded horrifically on Wednesday in San Bernardino, California. It is impossible to know whether the number of such shootings has risen in recent years because the databases go back only a couple of years. And experts fiercely debate whether mass shootings that involve four or more deaths are on the rise. Four or more dead is a standard used by congressional researchers and other experts who study mass killings. Nonetheless, the stream of shootings this year — including an attack on a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado that left three dead last week and a shooting at a community college in Oregon that left 10 dead, including the gunman, in October — has intensified the debate over the accessibility of powerful firearms.
Related:
"The shooting last week was the latest in a long series of attacks on abortion clinics, and it has fueled conversations about two of the country’s most heated topics: guns and abortion rights. Here in Colorado Springs, pockets of the city were still on guard. At Penrose Hospital, where three of the wounded were still being treated, a “security concern” prompted the hospital to go on lockdown on Monday morning, though no details were available. The lockdown was lifted after the Colorado Springs police responded, and the hospital said everyone was safe."
"The man accused of killing three people at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic left a decades-long trail of broken marriages, scant social connections, and a reputation for religious zealotry that didn’t match his yen for gambling and extramarital affairs. New court documents and interviews reveal Robert Lewis Dear as an occasionally violent, fundamentalist loner who was known to nurse a grudge against abortion providers.
They literally make these guys up, don't they?
Dear’s former wife, Barbara Mescher Micheau, said on Wednesday that Dear never talked much about Planned Parenthood, although ‘‘obviously he was against abortion.’’ ‘‘He was always plotting revenge against people he felt did him wrong and you know it didn’t take much for him to feel like somebody did him wrong,’’ Micheau said. ‘‘So he would spend a lot of time trying to get back at people, trying to figure out ways to get back at people.’’ Micheau was Dear’s second of three wives, and in the affidavit she filed to divorce him in 1993, she described him as angry and isolated. Micheau said Dear had no friends, according to the document.
Oh, Dear!
He would listen to music on headphones for hours, ignoring her. He’d vanish for gambling trips to Las Vegas or Atlantic City and suddenly explode in anger at home, kicking her and pulling her hair. She added that he appeared devoutly religious. ‘‘He claims to be a Christian and is extremely evangelistic, but he does not follow the Bible in his actions,’’ Micheau wrote. ‘‘He says as long as he believes he will be saved, he can do whatever he pleases. He is obsessed with the world coming to an end.’’ Dear also married Pamela Ross, who told The New York Times that he didn’t seem overly zealous, standing against abortion but not dwelling on it. Court records show they divorced in 2001. Still unknown is...."
Okay, enough of the Planned Parenthood event.
You can ride through the rest of the links for more.
Two databases that track mass shootings — shootingtracker.com and gunviolencearchive.org — depend on news accounts and are not official. Nonetheless, they give an indication of the widespread nature of such episodes."
“It’s a matter of how you slice it,” and one can only wonder why that is.
Obama hammers home gun control message in response to San Bernardino mass-shooting - Right on cue.
SAN BERNARDINO SHOOTINGS - 'FALSE FLAG INSIDE JOB CONSPIRACY' - The 2 December 2015 shooting in *San Bernardino*, in California, appears to be a government false flag operation.
You better get geared up to READ THIS before moving on here.
"Shooting rampage sows terror in California" by Amanda Lee Myers and Justin Pritchard Associated Press December 02, 2015
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP) — A heavily armed man and woman dressed for battle opened fire on a holiday banquet for his co-workers, killing 14 people and seriously wounding more than a dozen others in a precision assault, authorities said. Hours later, they died in a shootout with police.
It's the same goddamn script we have been getting.
Authorities were trying to determine a motive, which could include workplace violence or terrorism.
Wednesday’s shooting happened at a social services center for the disabled where the suspect’s colleagues with the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health were renting space for a celebration. It was the nation’s deadliest mass shooting since the attack at a school in Newtown, Connecticut, three years ago that left 26 children and adults dead.
Stink!
San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan identified one dead suspect as Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, the other as Tashfeen Malik, 27, his wife or fiancee. Burguan said Farook was born in the United States; the chief said he did not know Malik’s background. Earlier this year he traveled to Saudi Arabia and returned with a wife, later growing a beard. Farook was a restaurant inspector for the health department, according to public records.
Why does the story keep changing? So we don't know what really happened?
This guy looks like a sheep-dipped patsy!
FBI agents and other law enforcement authorities converged on the center and searched room to room for the attackers. They had indeed escaped.
As the day’s first bursts of gunfire echoed through the large three-building complex, some people locked themselves in offices, desperately waiting for police and texting or making hushed phone calls to loved ones.
‘‘People shot. In the office waiting for cops. Pray for us. I am locked in an office,’’ Terry Petit’s daughter, who works at the center, texted him.
Petit choked back tears as he read his daughter’s words for reporters outside the center, where social workers find jobs, housing and transportation and provide other services to people with disabilities such as autism, cerebral palsy and epilepsy.
It's crisis acting, and who attacks a center for the disabled. Seriously.
Triage units were set up outside, and people were wheeled away on stretchers. Others were marched from the building, hands raised so police could search them and make sure the attackers weren’t trying to slip out.
Oh, this is looking like a staged drill with each passing paragraph.
As the manhunt dragged on, stores, office buildings and schools were locked down in the city, and roads blocked off. About four hours after the morning carnage, police hunting for the killers riddled a black SUV with gunfire in a shootout 2 miles from the social services center in this Southern California city of 214,000 people. Farook and Malik were found with assault rifles and semi-automatic handguns, and were wearing ‘‘assault-style clothing’’ with ammunition attached, authorities said. Television news helicopters captured the aftermath, as officers slowly approached the mangled SUV.
With police looking for a dark SUV, officers staking out a home in the nearby city of Redlands saw a vehicle matching that description. Public records show the home is a possible residence of a family member of Farook. Authorities pursued the SUV, and a gunbattle erupted around 3 p.m. One officer among nearly two dozen involved in the shootout suffered a minor injury.
OMG, this is exactly what the bloggers are saying.
A fake bomb — a metal pipe stuffed with cloth — was thrown from the SUV during the chase, said Agent Meredith Davis of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Three explosive devices — thought to be real and all connected to one another — were found at the social service center and later detonated by a bomb squad, police said.
Why not Marathon-ize it?! Good God!
A third person who was spotted running near the gunbattle was detained, but Burguan said it was unclear if that person had anything to do with the crime. At a late-night news conference, Burguan also said that early witness accounts of three shooters were probably wrong: ‘‘We are reasonably confident at this point that we have two shooters and we have two dead suspects.’’
This is the same old crap we have been shoveled since Oswald. These government handlers always disappear.
President Barack Obama urged the country to take steps to reduce mass shootings, including stricter gun laws and stronger background checks. ‘‘The one thing we do know is that we have a pattern now of mass shootings in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in the world,’’ Obama told CBS.
Says the man who heads a mass-murdering empire responsible for millions of deaths based on damnable lies.
The couple dropped off their 6-month-old daughter with relatives Wednesday morning, saying they had a doctor’s appointment, Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said after talking with family. Farhan Khan, who is married to Farook’s sister, told reporters he last spoke to his brother-in-law about a week ago. He said he was in shock, condemned the violence, and had ‘‘absolutely no idea why he would do this.’’
The usual story regarding family and friends.
"The shooting sounded like "an organized plot," and preliminary information seems to indicate that "this is personal, and there seems to suggest some element of revenge and retaliation," said Erroll G. Southers, director of Homegrown Violent Extremism Studies at the University of Southern California and a former FBI agent. "What it says to me, it's someone who's familiar with the facility, it's someone who knew exactly what room they were going to go to. They knew exactly which way they needed to escape," Southers said. "They've done their homework, they know what the response time in this jurisdiction."
That part was in print and the linked piece was about verbatim.
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Starting to have that feel to it, but the propaganda pre$$ would surely tell us if there were such things, right?
Muslim Leaders Condemn Massacre »
See what got knocked down to second this time?
Related: Accounts conflict as officer’s trial begins in death of Freddie Gray
That was dropped from the roll altogether.
"Jury selection begins for officer charged in Baltimore man’s death" by Juliet Linderman Associated Press December 01, 2015
BALTIMORE — Jury selection for the first police officer to go to trial in Freddie Gray’s death began Monday with a judge questioning potential jurors about their knowledge of the case, which has led to widespread protests and rioting and fueled the Black Lives Matter movement.
Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Barry Williams conducted initial questioning in a courtroom but planned to interview at least 66 prospective jurors in a private conference room. The large pool of people suggested how difficult the selection process could be.
William Porter is one of six officers charged in the death of Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died April 19 of a severe spinal injury he suffered while in police custody.
Porter, who is also black, is accused of failing to get medical help for Gray during several stops made by the police van that carried Gray on a 45-minute trip. At the end, officers found Gray unresponsive. He was taken to a hospital and died a week later.
The officer is being tried first in part because prosecutors want to use him as a witness in the trials of several other officers. He is charged with manslaughter, assault, misconduct, and reckless endangerment.
The judge asked 75 potential jurors whether anyone had not heard about the case, the citywide curfew imposed after Gray’s death, or the settlement paid to his family. No one responded.
A small group of protesters gathered outside the courthouse during the proceedings. If Porter is acquitted, there could be protests and possibly more unrest in the city.
A conviction could send shock waves through the city’s troubled Police Department. “Everything is at stake. The future of the city is at stake,” Police Commissioner Kevin Davis has said.
In a separate development Monday, a court in Chicago set bond at $1.5 million for a white police officer charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of a black teenager last year.
Also Monday, federal authorities said an online threat that led the University of Chicago to cancel classes during the day targeted whites and was motivated by the Chicago teenager’s shooting.
Jabari R. Dean, 21, of Chicago, threatened to kill 16 white male students or staff at the school on Chicago’s South Side, according to the criminal complaint.
Dean, who is black, was arrested Monday morning. He did not enter a plea later in the day on a charge of transmitting a threat in interstate commerce in court....
Enjoying the psyops, kids?
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Again, San Bernardino took attention away from Chicago:
"Chicago mayor fires police chief in wake of video release; Defends delayed release of police shooting video" by Don Babwin Associated Press December 02, 2015
CHICAGO — Rahm Emanuel sought for months to keep the public from seeing a video that shows a white police officer shooting a black teenager 16 times. Now, a week after the video’s release, the Chicago mayor has fired the police superintendent, created a new task force for police accountability and expanded the use of body cameras.
But Emanuel’s effort to keep the video secret and his long wait to take action at the police department has stirred deep skepticism among those protesting the teen’s death. Many activists are especially incensed by the fact that the video first surfaced during a reelection campaign, when the mayor was seeking African-American votes.
‘‘In our community, everyone is saying it [the video] was not released because of the election,’ said Corey Brooks, a prominent black minister.
(Blog editor moans an incredulous "No!")
Had it emerged earlier, the video ‘‘could have buried’’ Emanuel’s chances for reelection, Columbia Law School professor Bernard E. Harcourt wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece published Monday.
The mayor defended the decision to withhold the video from the public until the investigation was finished and the officer charged with murder.
‘‘You don’t compromise an ongoing investigation,’’ he said. ‘‘Yet it’s clear you all want and the public deserves that information. They’re two conflicting principles.’’
Asked by a reporter if Emanuel thought he would become a distraction himself and would consider resigning, the mayor responded, ‘‘You’ll make that judgment. I think I’m doing my job.’’
Emanuel on Tuesday announced the dismissal of Garry McCarthy, who only days ago insisted to reporters that the mayor had his ‘‘back.’’ McCarthy’s departure came just a week after the video was released. The mayor praised McCarthy’s leadership but called it an ‘‘undeniable fact’’ that the public’s trust in the police had eroded.
That is everywhere.
‘‘Now is the time for fresh eyes and new leadership,’’ Emanuel said.
Is that an announcement of resignation?
Protesters have been calling for McCarthy’s dismissal in response to the handling of the death of Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old who was killed in October 2014.
Some aldermen, particularly members of the city council’s black caucus, have also been seeking McCarthy’s resignation, citing the city’s crime rate and questions about the department’s transparency.
The city released video of the shooting only after a judge ordered it to be made public....
Emanuel introduced McCarthy as his pick to lead the department in May 2011, replacing former FBI agent Jody Weis, who was unpopular with many rank-and-file officers who claimed Weis did not stand behind them.
The mayor credited McCarthy with modernizing Chicago’s police force, getting illegal guns off the streets and pushing a community policing strategy that the mayor said had reduced overall crime rates to a record low.
Then he cut him loose when it was politically expedient.
In particular, McCarthy was a constant preacher on the need for tougher punishments for gun offenses. He hammered on the fact that many murder suspects had prior gun convictions, which McCarthy argued should have kept them off the streets.
The silent Chicago video shows McDonald walking down the middle of a four-lane street. He appears to veer away from two officers as they emerge from a vehicle, drawing their guns. Van Dyke opens fire from close range and continues firing after McDonald crumples to the ground.
Police have said McDonald was carrying a knife, and an autopsy revealed that he had the hallucinogenic drug PCP in his system. Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez has said the 3-inch blade recovered from the scene had been folded into the handle.
Also Tuesday, relatives of another person fatally shot last year by Chicago police stepped up their pleas to have the squad car video made public. Emanuel spokeswoman Kelley Quinn said the city was ‘‘looking into’’ releasing it.
Police have said 25-year-old Ronald Johnson III was fatally shot by an officer on Oct. 12, 2014. At the time, authorities said he pointed a gun at police.
His mother, Dorothy Holmes, has said he was running away from police.
She and attorney Michael Oppenheimer have seen a copy of the video because of lawsuits they have filed.
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Related: Deval Patrick to advise task force on Chicago police
How is that going to help, other than give him something else to screw up?
Also see: Officer Attacked After Helping Stranded Driver
Just a reminder.
5th Graders Arrested for Alleged Bomb Plot
Fire alarm!
"Student shot outside of schools area in Roxbury, officials say" by Jeremy C. Fox Globe Staff November 30, 2015
A Boston high school student was shot Monday near several schools in Roxbury, and authorities were searching for a person who witnesses said fled on a bicycle, according to Boston police and a law enforcement official.
The shooting seemed to be the topic of every conversation Monday as students streamed out of the O’Bryant School. Ashley Wu and Miray Yildiz, both freshmen, said they were in an engineering class when the school was put on lock-down.
“At first we thought it was a drill,” Yildiz said.
Wu said they learned about the shooting by getting online and checking Twitter.
“It actually happened literally right in front of our school,” Yildiz said.
They turned off the lights in their classroom and sat on the floor in a corner of the room for about 40 minutes waiting for the danger to pass, Wu and Yildiz said. Overhead, they heard the whirring of helicopter blades.
Joel Gray, another freshman at the O’Bryant School, said that in his classroom some students laughed at first when they thought it was only a drill, but their teacher ordered them to stop and warned them that the danger was real. Gray, 14, said he could not hear any gunfire from where he was, but that a fellow student told him there had been five shots fired.
Christian Lubin, 15, said he was in the library when the O’Bryant School was ordered locked down. Lubin said he had heard that a teacher ran to the police station in Dudley Square, just blocks away, to report the crime.
After school, students were told they all had to leave the building. Club meetings and other after-school activities were canceled, and even the library was closed, students said.
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Related:
Ex-Millis officer who sparked Sept. manhunt indicted
School Fire Drills: Alarm in Millis
No Mystery in Millis
Johnson's Home is a Jail
Ex-Millis officer linked to bomb threat, shootout found dead
Doesn't make any sense at all.
"Sounds like someone wouldn’t play ball during a Sandy Hook-style false flag that went south" -- one step
That does.
"State Police and public safety officials from several Central Massachusetts communities searched by air, water and land Saturday for a Leicester man wanted by Worcester police for an unspecified crime. The man is believed to have stolen a rowboat from a neighbor to avoid capture. Leicester police arrived at the man’s home at 12:45 a.m., and were told by a resident that the man had just left, police said. The resident also reported hearing what he believed were gunshots. Police searched the area and found an assault rifle, ammunition, and a survival kit behind the home. Police from Spencer and Paxton joined two State Police K-9 units to search the wooded area and Waite Pond in Leicester. The search was called off at about 4:45 a.m. when the rowboat was found abandoned across the pond, and police concluded the man had then fled on foot, according to a statement from Leicester police."
Related:
Man’s body found in burned-out car
Man arrested in Sharon after police standoff
"Armed Leicester man was focus of all-day manhunt, police say" by Peter Schworm Globe Staff November 30, 2015
EAST BROOKFIELD — On Friday night, Dean Largesse assaulted his girlfriend in Worcester and threatened to kill her, according to authorities. He then smashed her phone so she couldn’t call police and drove off in her car.
For most of the next day, he led police on an extensive manhunt after escaping across a pond in a stolen rowboat, leaving a blood-stained rifle and a cache of ammunition at his Leicester home.
Police added a helicopter and a boat to the search, and scanned a nearby pond with a thermal imager. They eventually found the rowboat on the opposite side of the pond that had been taken from a neighbor’s home.
In a search of Largesse’s home Saturday afternoon, police found two additional firearms, ammunition, high-capacity magazines, and a bulletproof vest.
When Largesse, 32, was arrested in Royalston around 10 p.m. Saturday, he was armed with two guns and wore a bulletproof vest. He was taken into custody without incident.
Prosecutors said they did not know why Largesse’s rifle was blood-stained or what motivated him to stockpile so much ammunition. Largesse’s lawyer declined to comment.
Largesse works as a subcontractor for a utility construction company, his lawyer said in court, as he asked the judge to consider releasing his client to home confinement on a GPS monitor. That request was denied.
Court records show that Largesse was charged with assault in 2011. In August, he was charged with domestic assault and kidnapping after allegedly grabbing his girlfriend by both arms and throwing her to the ground. He then forced her into his car and drove away. Later, when she tried to escape, he attempted to run her over, police said.
He was released on personal recognizance....
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Also see: The Next False Flag Event Will Take Place In Multiple Cities
"Kenyan university wasn’t cleared for terror drill" Associated Press December 02, 2015
NAIROBI — A leading Kenyan university should have sought authorization from the ‘‘highest security office in the country’’ for a practice exercise to test terrorism preparedness that led to a stampede in which one person died, a police spokesman said Tuesday.
Police are discouraging institutions from carrying out drills on their own, Charles Owino said in a statement Tuesday. Strathmore University in Nairobi carried out a drill Monday that students believed was real and they stampeded, killing one staff member. Strathmore has said the drill was carried out in collaboration with area police.
A total of 30 people were injured.
Some students told local radio station Capital FM that loud bangs and people pretending to be extremist attackers caused panic. Memories of the April 2 attack by four gunmen from Somali extremist group Al Shabab that killed 147 people at a university in eastern Kenya are still fresh with many Kenyans.
In an earlier incident, one student died and 141 were injured when students of a Nairobi university stampeded when they mistook a loud blast by an electrical fault for a terrorist attack.
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An article like that simply reinforces the point that the propaganda pre$$ would tell you if it were all a drill -- just as they told you Iraqis emptied incubators onto floors and Saddam had WMD.
"Two Kenyans in police custody have admitted assisting Iranian state intelligence to plot attacks on Western targets in Kenya, Kenya’s police chief said Saturday. Abubakar Sadiq Louw, 69, and Yassin Sambai Juma, 25, confessed to being spies for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, an elite and secretive unit, Joseph Boinnet said. He said that the two had made several trips to Iran and had been given money by their handlers to case their targets for future terror attacks and to recruit others."
Why would they do that when they just inked the nuclear deal?
"At least three people were killed when mortars were fired on a United Nations base in the northern Mali city of Kidal early Saturday. The attack came eight days after Islamist extremists attacked a luxury hotel farther south in the capital, Bamako, in which 20 people were killed. Two UN peacekeepers and a contractor were killed in the Saturday assault in Kidal that also injured 20 people, said Olivier Salgado, spokesman for the UN mission in Mali."
"Cynthia Ohayon, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, said whoever is elected will have a hard time fulfilling voters’ hopes. ‘‘The expectations are so high — for change, for justice, for the fight against corruption,’’ Ohayon said. The presidential guard staged a coup in September that lasted only a week and caused the election, originally scheduled for October, to be postponed."
What former French colony are they talking about?
"Clashes between troops, rebels kill 30 in Congo" Associated Press November 30, 2015
KINSHASA, Congo — Clashes between rebels and soldiers in eastern Congo killed at least 30 people, including civilians and a United Nations peacekeeper, the director of an activist group said Monday.
Rebels from the Allied Defense Forces attacked government forces Sunday in Eringeti in North Kivu province, said Omar Kavota, executive director of a local group that tracks these attacks. The United Nations said its nearby base was also attacked.
Rebels, a UN peacekeeper, civilians, and soldiers were among the dead after 10 hours of fighting, according to the information from the Center of Study for the Promotion of Peace, Democracy, and Human Rights.
At least 10 others were injured and 43 homes burned in the town, 34 miles north of Beni. The area has been the site of repeated attacks by the rebels, who have origins in neighboring Uganda. Those attacks have killed at least 500 civilians since October 2014, according to the United Nations.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned the violence in a statement Monday, identifying the nationality of the killed peacekeeper as Malawian.
How is that U.N. sex abuse investigation going?
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That was Belgium's sphere, wasn't it?
"Boko Haram extremists Saturday claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing of a procession of hundreds of Shi’ite Muslims and threatened more attacks on opponents of its radical form of Islam. Shi’ite leaders said at least 21 people died in Friday’s attack near Nigeria’s northern city of Kano. Posting on social media Saturday, Boko Haram identified the bomber as Abu Suleiman al-Ansari."
Suspected Boko Haram bombing hits Shiite procession
Raid frees 900 held by Boko Haram
Pope appeals for peace in Central African Republic
"Pope Francis visits mosque, delivers message of peace to civil war zone" by Kevin Sieff Washington Post December 01, 2015
BANGUI, Central African Republic — Pope Francis traveled to the center of this country’s civil war on Monday, crossing the dangerous border between Christian and Muslim neighborhoods as he launched what may be his boldest diplomatic effort yet.
Hundreds of UN peacekeepers patrolled the streets, AK-47 assault rifles slung over their shoulders, as the pontiff rode in while residents waved white flags symbolizing peace. It was the first time in recent memory that a pope has plunged into the middle of an armed conflict.
When Francis arrived at the city’s Koudoukou central mosque, a green building, a group of community leaders and schoolchildren were waiting. During a ceremony inside, Francis bowed toward the Muslim holy city of Mecca and sat on a plush white sofa next to the imam.
For weeks, this visit had been in doubt. Foreign troops in this former French colony had said they could not guarantee Francis’s safety. In two years of war, more than 6,000 people have been killed, mostly along religious lines.
Violence continued until the morning Francis took off for PK-5, the Muslim enclave that has dwindled from 122,000 to 15,000 inhabitants in two years because of militia assaults. Many people questioned whether the pontiff’s visit would trigger a hostile response from a war-weary population.
But as roaring crowds lined the roads, standing in front of long-shuttered businesses and schools, it became clear that most people here saw the pope’s arrival as a game-changing moment — perhaps the beginning of a new peace process or renewed international attention.
‘‘I still can’t believe he came,’’ said Gaspar Ndjawe, a local resident who watched from across the street as the pope arrived in his open-air popemobile. ‘‘We need his message of hope. The people are tired of this life.’’
After Francis left PK-5, hundreds of Muslims who had essentially been barricaded inside by the armed Christian militias burst into areas of the city that had been off-limits for months.
PK-5 was once the commercial center of Bangui before it became the heart of a conflict between two bands of militias, the mostly Muslim Seleka, which in 2012 overthrew the country’s president, François Bozize, and the mostly Christian anti-Balaka, which rose up in opposition.
The conflict has devolved into a cycle of brutal killings and reprisals. Even though it began as a struggle over political power and access to state resources, many of its victims have been targeted simply for being Christian or Muslim.
Even as the streets of Bangui were filled with chants of peace as the pope boarded his plane home to Rome, there were reasons to be concerned.
Next month, the country will hold elections, and the list of candidates now includes former president Bozize, who is wanted in the Central African Republic for war crimes and is currently sanctioned by the United Nations.
Others candidates have ties to the armed groups still waging war.
Even though Francis appears to have the attention of many of the country’s Christian and Muslim religious leaders, they exercise limited influence over the men who are fighting....
Then who does?
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Related: Members of tiny Episcopal church in Otis rebel at sale
"Tunisia democracy struggles to survive" by Bouazza Ben Bouazza Associated Press November 27, 2015
TUNIS — An attack by Islamic State militants on Tunisia’s presidential guard has left this North African country, its economy, and its democracy even more vulnerable just days before four Tunisians head to collect the Nobel Peace Prize.
Five years ago, a desperate Tunisian street vendor set himself on fire, unleashing a pro-democracy movement that swept the Arab world. This week, a Tunisian street vendor blew himself up on a presidential bus, killing 12 others in the name of the Islamic State and further darkening hopes for this country’s economy and newfound freedoms.
Alone among the nations that underwent the turmoil of the Arab Spring, Tunisia has emerged as a democracy, but just this last year has seen three devastating terrorist attacks claimed by the Islamic state that killed more than 70 people.
What Tunisia needs now, analysts and the government say, is better intelligence and jobs for youth who see holy war as their only future without resorting to the brutal tactics that first sparked the revolution.
After each attack, the government has promised better security — including passing a counterterrorism law over the summer criticized by human rights activists as draconian — yet the attacks have continued.
Their goal is to ‘‘seed chaos and destabilize the country, and in doing so, make a fledgling democracy fail,’’ Prime Minister Habib Essid said after the attack Tuesday.
In March, two gunmen trained in a camp in neighboring lawless Libya unleashed carnage in the country’s leading museum, the Bardo, killing 22, mostly foreign tourists.
Three months later, the Mediterranean beach resort of Sousse was the stage of a bloody operation by a student, also trained in Libya, who killed 38 tourists, mostly British.
The government announced new measures after the latest attack to combat the extremists, putting the country back under a state of emergency.
Issandr El Amrani, the North Africa director for the International Crisis Group, said without a coherent strategy for reform it will be easy for police to fall into the kind of bad old habits that feed the problem.
‘‘The government as a whole — not just security forces — need to address socioeconomic woes,’’ he said.
That's lost in the fusillade of fear, be they terrorists or nut patsies.
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Same problem as yesterday, readers, so.... it’s time we start doing less and wanting more.
