The Kenya massacre and the most shamefully Chamberlian article the Guardian has ever published

I have been a faithful Guardian reader for 43 years, during which time I have seen many of the good, the bad and the ugly episodes that have illustrated its history. But never have I read such a crass piece of shamelessly opinion-pandering nonsense to equal that which was posted on the paper's website today by Simon Jenkins, former Times editor and current National Trust chairman.

Jenkins analyses the ongoing crisis in Nairobi, Kenya, and in his conclusion he deploys the well-worn - and arguably justified to a certain degree -  opinion that;

"The "war on terror" has failed on its own terms. It had made dozens of countries not pacified but terrified. By deploying violence against a succession of Muslim states, the world's leading powers have made their business its business and invited retaliation. They have not crushed al-Qaida any more than they have suppressed extreme Islamism. They have refreshed rather than diminished that extremism, and made the world less safe as a result."

Fair enough, although I shall not allow myself to be innocently tempted into developing the futile chicken-and-egg answer that 9/11 demanded a response, but was itself due to western aggression, which was in turn a response to other threats against the west etc and ad infinitum, but what does Jenkins think should be done faced with the mindless slaughter of about seventy civilians of many nationalities in a shopping centre by religiously and ideologically-motivated terrorists?  He says that the British Prime minister should, despite the fact that four British citizens are said to have been slaughtered in Nairobi as I write these words, ignore it, just as all western leaders ignore all incidents in which;

...the Somalian al-Shabaab sect merely shot up a street in Mogadishu...

He goes on to add that because large gatherings of people are vulnerable to terrorist attacks that....

It might be sensible to discourage like-minded crowds from gathering in one place, be they co-religionists or party faithful or merely the wealthy; 

...and that

The modern urban obsession with celebrity buildings and high-profile events offers too many publicity-rich targets. A World Trade Centre, a Mumbai hotel, a Boston marathon, a Nairobi shopping mall are all enticing to extremists. Defending them is near impossible. Better at least not to create them. 

In other words, Simon Jenkins is advocating that Britain and the West should appease terrorists by abandoning the beliefs and principles which hold that the free association of like-minded individuals in public is an inherently necessary right and an essential component of a democratic society, that western society should decree and enact a bland and anonymous social landscape in which neither rich, poor, religious, ethnic, political or other societal groups  may congregate, and that it should abandon or adapt its fundamental principles of freedom of movement because a terrorist organisation says so.

The Guardian is not to be criticised for publishing Jenkins' article - after all, 'Comment is Free' and that's how it should be - but Simon Jenkins' article is nothing more than an abject sop to terrorism and a rehash of the naive cowardice of Neville Chamberlain's paper-waving-in-the-wind capitulation to Adolf Hitler.

He should be ashamed of it.

France - suicide as a means of ideological and political terrorism

Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral

It was with horror that I read the news of the suicide of Dominique Venner, 78, an extreme right-wing historian, former OAS nationalist terrorist and virulent opponent of France's new law giving homosexuals the right to marry. He walked into Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris in the middle of the afternoon, placed himself before the altar, and blew his brains out with a handgun. Vanner had sent an open letter to the website of extreme right party Nouvelles de France just before killing himself.

In the letter he explained the reasons for his action. "I killed myself in order to awaken sleeping consciences" he said, and in a clear reference to immigrants he said he was protesting against "the replacement of our population". He also left a post on his blog in which he denounced the gay marriage law and predicted that "a France which falls under the power of Islamism is a probability".

I wrote above that I was horrified by this news, but perhaps I should explain why. That a right-wing bigot, homophobe and racist should commit suicide doesn't bother me in the slightest. But what does horrify me is that his death is part of a wider and deeply worrying phenomenon in France - that of using suicide as a form of terrorism to promote ideological and political views and opinions.

That this should occur in France is not exactly a surprise, given the country's obsession with suicide and abnormally high suicide rates. There have been several particularly gruesome suicides by teachers over the last couple of years, including several instances in which the victims poured petrol over themselves in front of children, set themselves alight and burned to death. Needless to say they often leave notes which protest against their working conditions, and trades unions man the barricades to loudly denounce government policies they say lead to these events.

There has also been a long string of suicides at France Telecom over the last few years, and each one is exploited by the unions to denounce what they call inhuman management practices and punishing work schedules.

Then there are those who set themselves alight inside or outside unemployment offices or other government agency premises to protest against everything from their social security payments to housing problems to perceived unfair treatment by staff.

And how do I know all this? I know it because I read the press, which splashes front-page headlines to accompany each one, and every time they do those who comment them and various organisations denounce such-and-such a government policy or such-and-such an injustice.

Political parties also jump on the bandwagon to score cheap political points. The UMP, the Front National and the homophobic Catholique extremist agitator Christine Boutin have all blamed the government for Vanner's suicide. 

This is grotesque manipulation, both physical and intellectual terrorism and it must be resisted. Two things need to happen here.

The first is to say that 'enough is enough' and insist that the press, which whips up virulence and conflict (and much-needed advertising revenue) each time someone kills themselves in a spectacular manner for ideological and other reasons, stops publishing high-profile and sensationalist gutter-press articles on this phenomenon. After all, if these suicides were given less prominence some of those who may be tempted to kill themselves may be dissuaded from doing so in the knowledge that their act would be largely ignored.

And the second thing to do is for French society to make it very clear that suicide is not an acceptable manner of expression in a civilised and democratic country. Killing oneself to advance a cause is terrorism, it's as simple as that, and it's high time this was made clear by senior French personalities, journalists, bloggers and the public at large.

Have AQMI executed a French hostage in Mali, and if so, why?

The AQMI logo

France woke up this morning to the news that Islamic terrorist group the AQMI (Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Magheb) has announced that they have executed Philippe Verdon, a French national who was taken hostage by them in November 2011. The alleged execution was said by an AQMI spokesman to have been in reprisal for ongoing French military action against them in Mali.

French authorities have not confirmed his death as of this evening, and there has been no independent confirmation of the killing either, but many analysts consider both the source of the information and the channels via which it was communicated to Paris to be relatively trustworthy.

But a vital question remains. Why did the AQMI make this statement and what can they hope to gain by making it? 

France, unlike Britain, America and some other western allies, is a country which is known to have paid ransoms amounting to millions of euros to free French terrorist hostages on many occasions in the past. However it has been widely speculated for months that President François Hollande has refused to do financial deals with organisations with which France is at war, and that includes the AQMI.

Which, of course, begs the question of why the AQMI, knowing this, would kill a hostage to try and obtain a ransom for those left alive which may well not be paid.

It would be tempting to think that they may be trying to outblink the French and make them cave in to their demands, but there is also another possibility.

The AQMI in Mali are cornered by French elite and other military forces who are tracking them down to their last mountain refuges and killing them at a steady, and high, rate, and their military defeat seems inevitable. But crucially there are several high-level AQMI leaders still at large in the area. Unlike their foot soldiers, many of whom are prepared to die in jihad, the leaders have more ambitious goals. They are motivated by the prospect of political, financial and long-term ideological victory, and not by fighting to the death in a short-term war which is already lost. They want to stay alive and live to fight another day.

Which is why it may just be possible that the AQMI are engaging in a process of negotiation with the French in the hope of obtaining a quick ceasefire and possibly saving their own lives, even if doing so means a prison term.

That which, in turn, makes it possible to hope that the announcement of the execution of Philippe Verdon is a negotiating ploy and not a fact.

Let's hope that that is the case.

Hollande's lonely war in Mali - Iraq revisited?

Al Qaida fighters in Gao, Mali. (Photo Issaf Sanogi AFP/Getty Images)

After two years of terrorism and territorial conquest in Mali by Al Qaida and its affiliates, France has decided to act to put a stop to it. The principal reasons and objectives are threefold;

To eliminate Islamist terrorists, regain control of the country and secure its borders.
To stop Islamic fundamentalists taking over Northern Africa and thus putting themselves within easy reach of Europe.
To foster a climate which would favour the creation, after many years of anarchy, of a democratic government in Mali.

All that looks great on paper, but then again so did George W. Bush's plans to rid the world of Saddam Hussein, install democracy in Iraq and rid it of terrorists, and we all know how that ended.

Mali is twice as big as France, and the insurgents are largely battle-trained for having served in Libya and elsewhere in the Arab world. Many of them are foreigners (Libyans, Yemenites etc) and they see Mali as a vulnerable and thus primary target in their efforts to gain a foothold in Africa.

France began its intervention at the end of last week, and it began it alone. The idea was that it would consist of a few weeks of bombing from a safe height and then everyone goes home and opens a bottle of beer, the enemy defeated. But that's not how things have turned out.

The effort got off to a bad start with a botched attempt to save a French hostage which ended with the death of two soldiers as well as the hostage, and a helicopter pilot was killed in another mission at about the same time. The French government acknowledged that they had underestimated the enemy's military capabilities.

Since France's initial attacks the rebels have managed to reorganise themselves to the extent that they have made further advances in the west of the country. And so it was announced yesterday that France would send 2000 ground troops to help the overwhelmed Malian army to stop the rebels' progress and push them back. Troops on the ground then, and thus further casualties.

And as if things weren't bad enough already, today's events have changed the whole face of this conflict. Hundreds of people were taken hostage today by Islamic militants acting in the name of the Malian war at an oil refinery in Algeria. The hostages include an undetermined number of Americans, Brits, French citizens and others. Some were taken hostage and driven away, some - including a French national - were shot dead during the initial engagement, the Algerian workers were allowed to go free, and this evening sees the hostage-takers surrounded by Algerian troops and demanding to be allowed to take the rest of their hostages back to Mali. The French war cabinet is to meet this evening.

In other words, this war is spreading its tentacles into another country. Many countries in this part of Africa have sizeable French expat populations and there is every reason to believe that the rebels will try to drag other nations into the war.

All of which explains why Hollande felt obliged to issue a statement this evening in which he affirmed that he would, in accordance with the Constitution, consult parliament if this war is still ongoing after four months.

Four months!!!??

Yes, four months, at least.

Two, or even three, four, five or ten thousand men on the ground, even with decisive air support, cannot hope to control a country as large as Mali, or hope to keep tabs on what their enemy is doing, and where. There are several porous borders with Mali, and all of them are used as refuges by the insurgents.

France seems to have forgotten the lessons it learned during its disastrous campaigns in Indochina and Algeria, both of which were doomed from the start. The objectives that France has set for itself in Mali cannot possibly be achieved by France alone, and France is only alone because Hollande has made a hasty decision which has taken its allies, including those African countries who are trying to put together a peacekeeping plan, by surprise.

Make no mistake, this war, like that of Bush, has been more or less unilaterally declared, and, like Bush's war, and for the same reasons, it shall drag on and on only to ultimately fail.

Paradise? What Paradise prithee?

Warning: not to be placed in underpants

I just read the story of an Afghani suicide bomber who today tried to kill Asadullah Khalid, a man who earns his honest daily crust and cup of water as head of Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security (NDS). Khalid survived the attack, but the bomber did not. He did however manage to blow himself to bits, which is to be counted as a half-victory for him I suppose.

It subsequently emerged in an email update by the NDS that the bomber's explosives were "placed around [his] genitals" and that the practice  went "against all Islamic and cultural practice". 

This reminds me of other, similar, suicide attacks, including the failed attempt by a Nigerian Al Qaida wannabe suicide bomber who tried to blow up the airliner he was on over Detroit Michigan in 2009 as it began its landing approach. He too had placed his explosive charge inside his underpants but 'unfortunately for him', when he tried to set his bomb off it failed to explode and burst into flames instead. Result? Our hero sustained serious burns to his genitalia and survived and the plane landed safely.

Now I'm no expert on suicide bombing as I have not had the opportunity to have a go myself, and nor am I a learned Islamic scholar but I must admit that there's an insistant question which is nagging itself into my mind. I mean, isn't the idea that once you've finished the job of slaughtering other people you go up to heaven or wherever to be welcomed by '72 virgins and 70 wives and everlasting happiness'? Fair enough, as they say, to each his own.

But what's the goddam point of being welcomed by all that lusciously tempting womanhood at lofty and lusty celestial altitudes when you just blew your private parts to kingdom come and will never be able to indulge yourself in the endless sexual debauchery you were so much looking forward to?

As I say, I'm no expert in the matter but hey! 72 virgins all around and no way of having fun with them for the rest of eternity?!

Thanks, but no thanks. I'll take a pass on that as they say on the other side of The Pond...

Mohammed Merah: a sordid trail which leads from from terrorism to a reality which France ignores..

Mohammed Merah

The name of Mohammed Merah first hit the world's press in March of this year when the self-styled terrorist became the prime suspect in the killing of three off-duty French soldiers and four Jewish children and staff at a Jewish school in southern France.

He would be shot and killed by a police sniper in his hometown of Toulouse after a 30-hour siege and a shootout.

His story would normally have ended there and his name would eventually have been forgotten by all but his family and those of his victims but it was not to be. Since the killing of Merah the French press has continued to focus on his family, largely at their demand, and their drip-feed of revelations have given a horrifying insight into how Merah became a killer. The wildly differing reactions of various members of his family after the killings have painted a somber picture of their lives and they offer a revealing insight to she spread of Islamist/Salafist tendencies in France. They are also a tragic testimony to the harsh realities of life within France's Muslim community.

Many details of Merah's past became known soon after his death. He was brought up by his divorced mother in a climate of violence, he had "a violent profile from childhood and behavioural troubles", and he had been arrested and jailed several times for relatively minor offences. He once tried to commit suicide by hanging and French intelligence agency the DCRI had been tailing him for three years because of his connections to radical Islamic groups.


His older brother Abdelkader was also followed by intelligence agencies and he was arrested shortly after his death. Abdelkader now faces preliminary charges of 'complicity in murder and conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism in connection' with Mohammed's killing spree.

Shortly after that their father began legal action for 'murder with aggravating circumstances' against the police units who were involved in the siege and killing of his son. Press rumours began to speculate upon the possible existence of a sharp differences of opinion on Merah's actions within the Muslim community.

The affair had just begun to disappear from the front pages when a major development instantly propulsed it back into the spotlight. Mohammed Merah has a second brother, Abdelghani, and he recently announced the upcoming release of a book in which he relates his side of the story. Called 'My Brother the Terrorist', it makes for chilling reading.

He firmly condemns his brother Mohammed for his actions and goes on to allege that his family played a major role in Mohammed becoming an Islamic radical before denouncing "the hate, the racism and the antisemitism" which he claims were omnipresent within the family. He criticises the "indecency" demonstrated by his father when he accused the police of wrongdoing and  relates how Abdelkader insulted his girlfriend because she was Jewish and told him to "leave your dirty Jewish girlfriend." Abdelghani did not do so however and his enraged brother stabbed him seven times. Abdelghani also accuses Abdelkader of being instrumental in Mohammed's conversion to radical Islam.

He accuses his sister Souad of having similar tendencies and that she had told him several times that she was "proud of Mohammed and the crimes he committed", adding that she was proud that he had had the courage to become a Moujahidin.

The book was a bombshell and Souad in particular was outraged by it. Which is why she met with him and other members of the family in a park - where they thought they would not be seen - to discuss it. But they were seen, by a television crew from French TV station M6. They secretly filmed the whole scene and Abdelghani carried a microphone which recorded the conversation, although precise details of how this operation was mounted remain sketchy.

Souad was heard to say "I think well of Bin Laden and at least the Salafists are actually doing something." She goes on to say "I detest the Jews, all those who are massacring Muslims."

This led to more major headlines of course, and a Parisian judge immediately ordered the opening of a preliminary inquiry in view of charging her with 'apologism for terrorist acts.'

Abdelghani Merah has subsequently revealed that he has received "threats" from his family and that his mother has threatened to commit suicide in front of his own child if he allows the book to be published.

That is the sad and tawdry tale of the Merah affair so far, more shall surely follow, and there are major lessons to be learned from it.

Moderate Muslim clerics and the vast majority of the Muslim community deplored Mohammed Merah's actions, just as they deplored his father's decision to begin legal action against the police and have deplored Souad's opinions. They are also worried that the constant drip of insights into how Salafism spreads amongst Muslims will reflect badly on the Muslim community as a whole.

But their sentiments, if understandable, are misplaced. A large majority of French citizens know full well that the vast majority of French Muslims and the wider Muslim immigrant community are totally opposed to terrorism in the name of Islam, that they categorically oppose Salifism and radical Islam in all its forms, and that they wish to lead peaceful lives.

The irony of the situation is that the very fact that members of Merah's family are washing their dirty laundry in public should be seized upon as an opportunity to better understand not only how Salifism recruits in France, but also as a pointer to what should be done by French society to prevent Muslim children being brought up to hate and despise others to the point of wanting to kill them.

The truth is out in the open now and it is up to French society to face up to its implications as well as its duty to better integrate its Muslim communities. Terrorists deserve no quarter and intelligence efforts to track them and stop them acting should be intensified, but - and more importantly - it is time that France offered its Muslims the possibility of a better future.

France's 'race' and 'terrorist' issues highlight the failure of laïcité and social policy

A group of laïcists brush off social issues with a smile

Here are the headlines of the eight articles which were to be found, one after the other, at the top of the Figaro website homepage at 11:30 this morning;

Prasquier: a warmongering Islam is developing
Terrorism: Manuel Valls promises more arrests
Do you fear an increase in terrorist acts by Islamists in France? (poll, with over 80% of 'yes' votes as I type)
Valls: these terrorist networks are within our communities
Bruguière: Muslim proselytes are the most dangerous
Twelve apprentice Jihadists ready to die as martyrs
The Jews of Sarcelles refuse to give in to fear
CRIF: Radical Islamism is Nazism (CRIF = Representative Council of Jewish organisations in France.)

These articles and more were posted over the last 24 hours and they all concern issues related to weekend raids on alleged jihadists in various cities by anti-terrorist police which resulted in twelve arrests and the death of one suspect, who was shot after he opened fire on police officers who wanted to arrest him. Those arrested are suspected of being implicated in a grenade attack on a kosher grocery store which took place in the Parisian suburb of Sarcelles on September 19.

Although the other French papers did not put quite as much emphasis on the story as Le Figaro did they all ran prominent coverage and analysis by various experts and former terrorist police chiefs. In what is being interpreted as a riposte to the arrests, drive-by shooters fired blanks at a synagogue, also in Paris, on Saturday evening which prompted President Hollande to meet urgently with CRIF representatives to reassure them and promise increased police protection for "religious sites".

The fact that France is preoccupied with these events to this exaggerated degree may surprise some but this situation has been brewing for months, as anyone who follows race and terrorist issues in France will attest, with each week bringing its lot of race and terrorist-related articles and pronouncements by politicians.

The Mohammed Merah affair, in which a young French-Algerian man who described himself as an Islamic terrorist shot and killed seven people and seriously wounded several others during three attacks in March, shocked the country. Three of the victims were off-duty soldiers and most of the remaining victims were Jewish. He was killed after a 30-hour siege.

The story dominated the press for many weeks, but it has since been overtaken in importance by a slew of more recent race/terrorist-related incidents and statements.

Jean-François Copé, candidate for the presidency of the right-of-centre UMP, has been quite busy stoking the fires of racial tensions in France over the last few weeks. He caused outrage a while back with the assertion that "anti-white racism" existed in predominantly immigrant areas of cities and he was even rounded on by his own party.

Undeterred however, last week saw him back in the headlines with a statement in which he said that young thugs (read Muslim thugs) steal food from other children on the pretext that "you mustn't eat during Ramadan."

Other headlining stories over the last month or two include that of the Charlie Hebdo Mohamed cartoons, which led to outbreaks of vandalism and attacks on Jewish-owned or run property amid vain calls by Muslim community leaders asking people to remain calm. The Chief Rabbi in Lyon received death threats and elsewhere three Jewish men were attacked with a hammer and iron bars.

Front National leader Marine le Pen predictably joined in by foolishly falling into a cheap journalistc trap laid by a journalist from Le Monde and saying that kippas should be banned in public. This caused a furor for days. Also, October 4th marked the 10th anniversary of the murder of Sohane Benziane, a 17-year-old girl who was covered in petrol and burned alive in a storage room for rubbish bins in a high-rise building in Vitry-sur-Seine in affair involving family honour. This crime has become synonymous here with sexist attacks by men in immigrant communities and their perceived machism.

These and other stories have been given prominent press coverage for months and the culminating effect is very bad news for France, particularly given that the country has the largest Jewish and Muslim populations in Europe. But what could possibly have led to this situation in a country which prides itself on its multiculturalism?

France's social fabric is defined and underpinned by its strong secular principles, called 'laïcité', the idea of which is to ensure that religion and religious considerations come second to the idea that, whatever one's origins, one is French first. The system arguably worked well while Catholicism was massively predominant, but that changed after the Algerian War when large-scale immigration from Algeria began and was increased in scope with the worldwide phenomena of increased immigration in general.

The result is that France now has a large and varied immigrant population, many of whom live in poorer areas on the outskirts of cities, where unemployment is rife. Racial tensions have been simmering for years and anti-immigrant racism has become commonplace. The post 9/11 era has exacerbated the situation, as have the Arab Spring conflicts, and Jews have become the scapegoat for the frustrations of a tiny minority of disaffected Muslims, more and more of whom have gone overseas for jihad training, inspired by terrorist attacks and a desire for revenge.

But the situation is much the same in Britain, which has its own problems with immigration and home-grown terrorists so the fact that France has these problems to deal with too does not in itself explain the country's current fever-pitch obsession with all things racial and terrorist.

This is because France is slowly waking up to the realisation that the principles of laïcité are becoming irrelevant, and fast. They were not designed with the current situation in mind, a situation which sees large populations of immigrants living together. They were designed as a colonialist 'we're all French together' sop to its overseas territories, including Algeria, and not as a means of social integration in France, which is why all efforts to apply it have ended in failure.

Nor was laïcité meant to help combat inequalities and societal problems, even more so given that it was precisely the idea of laïcité that contributed much to France's disastrous integration policies, which have led to the development of sprawling immigrant ghettos. These policies have led to the alienation of many young immigrants and the increase in what is erroneously termed 'Salafist' tendencies within their ranks. France now has 12,000 Salafists on its territory according to French intelligence agencies

Poverty, unemployment, a sentiment of abandon and a refusal based on the principle of laïcité to tackle head-on the problems facing individual immigrant communities ('we are all French so there is no racism and thus no problem to resolve') has created a major social crisis.

Those who commit Antisemitic acts and those intent on pursuing terrorism must be punished severely, but until France admits that it has serious social problems and begins to address them instead of hiding behind the fig-leaf of laïcité the situation will only get worse. France's problem is not one of racism and terrorism, it is the direct result of the country's failure to integrate its immigrants.

A time-bomb of hate and resentment is ticking away in France, and it's time France began to try and defuse it before it's too late.