Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

This really is a full service blog.

Chutkan laughs. Lauro sits back down.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Ask and You Shall Receive: Counter to Countering Terrorism Edition

Ask and You Shall Receive: Counter to Countering Terrorism Edition

by | 130 Comments

This post is in: , ,

Both John and Ann Laurie have touched on the domestic, US political response to Syrian refugees in the wake of Friday’s attacks in Paris. And in the article John cites there is a reference to the suspicion that the Syrian passports found with the attackers were forged/fake. That was actually confirmed yesterday. And the Egyptian passport found at the scene belonged to one of the victims, an Egyptian national, who was attending the match at the Stade National. It has also been suggested that part of the motivation for the attacks, specifically for the targeting, was that it would increase suspicion of refugees, as well as push public opinion and political elites to reject Syrian refugees.

From a strategic viewpoint, this makes perfect sense for ISIS. Part of their argument is that only Muslims who accept tawheed, the radical unity of the Deity, are really Muslims and the only place one can really be a Muslim is one ruled by Muslims who accept tawheed (these Muslims are called muwaheedun) for those who accept tawheed. Moreover, ISIS’s recruiting argument to support this doctrinal/theological/ideological contention is that true Muslims are not welcome and not safe anywhere else. By casting suspicion on Muslim refugees, whether they are from Syria or other states, and enflaming public and political passions against accepting refugees in specific and Muslims in general, they are able to create a self fulfilling prophecy. What ISIS wants is for the US and other states to clamp down on admitting refugees. And they want threats against and actual violence against Muslim citizens of these states to increase. A self fulfilling/self sustaining effort.

But only if we actually play into ISIS’s hands. ISIS’s strategy can only be successful if we give them what they want. They do not have the ways and means to achieve their ends – they need us to provide them for them! This was also the case with bin Laden. If you go back and look at bin Laden’s stated goals in his Letter to America, you’ll see a list of what he wanted to achieve. Click over, read or reread them, and see just how many of his goals were achieved. And then ask yourself how many were only achievable if we overreacted and provided the ways and means for him to achieve his ends. Terrorism, whether its ISIS or al Qaeda or some group not yet in existence, is not an existential threat for western states and societies. The reactions and responses that these groups’ actions try to evoke through the use of terrorism in western states and societies is, however, a potential existential threat. Combatting terrorism can only be successful if it is done on our terms, not those set by and beneficial to the terrorists themselves.

* The featured image are internally displaced Iraqi children between Jisr Diyala and Abu Thayla, Mada’in Qada, Iraq. I took this picture, as well as several others in the summer of 2008. We had stopped to provide their parents with some humanitarian assistance supplies: basic dry staples and sundries and clothes and some toys for the children. They had fled from north of Baghdad and were squatting in a building at an industrial site.

Reader Interactions

130Comments

  1. 1.

    Adam L Silverman

    I have no idea why the formatting is pushing sentences into strange places and punctuation to be separated from the sentences its part of. So if any of the tech guys are still awake: help?!?!?!?!

  2. 2.

    jl

    Thanks for a very useful post.

    Seems to me an important practical question is, regardless of whether one of the terrorists came through refugee channels, would the attack have been likely to have occurred anyway because most of the perpetrators and apparent planners were Belgium and French nationals and residents?

  3. 3.

    Adam L Silverman

    @jl: I think that’s the case. It is clear that ISIS is attempting to motivate Muslims who are not going to move to, or not going to stay within, the caliphate to take matters into their own hands back home. So while you can argue that you have ISIS, proper, contained militarily in parts of Syria and Iraq, they still have the ability to reach out and cause trouble through proxies and surrogates who are members of the states and societies they’re attacking.

  4. 4.

    JPL

    OT>.. Interrupting this important topic to see if Corner Stone is okay. Cincy is no longer undefeated for those wondering.

  5. 5.

    srv

    You know how the intertubes prove there are no aliens?

    Because if they wanted to spy on us and had to constantly update their browser tech to fix CSS and XML errors, they’d have already sent the meteors. What higher intelligence would do otherwise?

  6. 6.

    Villago Delenda Est

    The vermin of the American right are playing into DAESH’s hands as easy as pie. They are such idiots. Cruz and Abbot typify the stupidity of the “Christian” right.

  8. 8.

    feebog

    Well written Adam. Spot on analysis. Morons like Jeb! and Cruz are reacting exactly as ISIS hoped they would.

  10. 10.

    Suzanne

    I am despondent tonight. I don’t remember ever feeling more disappointed in my countrymen and -women. Mr. Suzanne is trying to dissuade me from leaving the country.

  11. 11.

    Adam L Silverman

    @jl: No. All I know is that one of the perpetrators/attackers had been on French intelligence’s/security’s radar at one point, but that he had seemingly dropped off or been lost in the shuffle. The other thing I caught briefly is that none of the perpetrators/attackers were on any US watch lists. Caught that on a chyron on CNN while I was on the helix machine at the gym while I looked up. I actually watch cartoons on my iPad, but I happened to look up at one of the TVs at the right time.

  14. 14.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Suzanne: These things are cyclical. We go through periods of nativism/xenophobia, religious revival/extremism, etc. Right now they just happen to be overlapping. And remember the US turned away those fleeing the NAZIs on the SS St. Louis and rounded up and placed Japanese Americans in concentration camps. We’ve been through this before, we’ve survived it, and we often come out the other side better than when we went in. And part of why it all seems overwhelming is 24/7 media – news and social. To quote the only decent line of dialogue from the movie version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: “My dear boy, the Empire is always in peril.”

  15. 15.

    Elie

    I am really pissed that my entire, lengthy comment was disappeared, never to return

    Enough for tonight…

    Goodnight

    Love your quote: “my dear boy, the Empire is always in danger”

  16. 16.

    mclaren

    I was watching Zombies of the Stratosphere earlier tonight, a 15-part Republic Pictures serial with Leonard Nimoy in a minor bit part.

    Then I realized I wasn’t watching the Republic Pictures serial at all, but was listening to press statements by the former planners of the 2003 Iraq invasion tapped as “Foreign policy experts” by CNN and FOX News.

  17. 17.

    jl

    I’d like to track down that report that one of the (European resident or citizen) planners was in some magazine or website bragging about moving arms and planning an attack. If so, isn’t that grounds to go find and detain the guy without any further evidence? How could someone like that ‘fall off the radar’?

    Unless the TYT report is wrong, which it could well be. I’m not the biggest fan of TYT, and got tired of Uygur’s endless diatribes about Obama not really being a progressive. But I’ve been looking at it recently for news on Turkey.

  18. 18.

    Adam L Silverman

    @efgoldman: she was adorable. She got that stuffed whatever it was, and her brothers got penny whistles we bought in bulk in Dublin on a weekend of leave before we deployed.

  21. 21.

    Adam L Silverman

    @jl: I don’t know if he’s referring to the same guy that had caught the French authority’s attention.

  22. 22.

    greennotGreen

    For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in,

    Matthew 25:35

    Of course, this will be the sermon in all churches this coming Sunday, right? Right? If not, then all of Christianity is responsible for the act of Islamophobes. No?

    Then how are all Muslims responsible for the acts of a handful?

    Of course, I understand why Syrian refugees are responsible for the acts of French and Belgian Muslims. After all, Iraq was invaded in revenge for the terrorism of a bunch of Saudis. Makes perfect sense.

  24. 24.

    Adam L Silverman

    @jl: @efgoldman: I usually watch cartoons based on comic books. Whatever I’ve either bought or I can stream on the wifi from Amazon Prime. Today I was watching Planet Hulk. I also sometimes watch documentaries and I’ve watched all of Falling Skies at the gym. I had to start doing this because if I watch the cable news channels on the TVs I wind up yelling at the TV.

  28. 28.

    jl

    @Adam L Silverman:

    ” if I watch the cable news channels on the TVs I wind up yelling at the TV. ”

    Sounds like my folks. I tell them to watch cartoons instead, it is time better spent, and I’ve shown them how to do it on the computer too. But they don’t listen. Them damn oldsters these days, they just don’t listen. What can you do with them?

  31. 31.

    TaMara (BHF)

    Thank you. I spent most of the day discouraged as the Usual Suspects got all the attention with their hate and fear mongering. As the evening went on, I found enough information to counter them. This was a much needed post for me.

  33. 33.

    Adam L Silverman

    @jl: The gym, or rather wellness center, I work out at down here in FL has a large contingent of senior citizens that use it. I yelled at one of the TVs here on Sunday AM shortly after redeploying in 2008. I scared some poor octogenarian off of a treadmill. So I stopped watching the TVs.

  34. 34.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Elie: Its not optimum, but they’re working on it. Think of it as a kitchen remodeling. Right now its ugly and a pain in the tuchas and you can’t see an end in sight. But once its done, you’re going to be thrilled with the result.

  35. 35.

    jl

    @Adam L Silverman: If I wanted to look at or read stuff that will not make me yell, what are good news sources to read to find out news like what suspect was on a watch list,and whether Uygur is BSing or not? What do you read to keep up with that kind of news?

  39. 39.

    Adam L Silverman

    @jl: BBC’s website is good. Al Jazeera English. The Guardian. Juan Cole. I think I saw the thing about the watch list on a link I came across in a comment thread at Little Green Footballs. But I also may have seen it at Rawstory when I went to see if TBogg had a new post up.

  41. 41.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Suzanne: Technically everything is moving towards greater entropy. We have a real issue with history. We either spend a lot of time pontificating about it, but drawing the wrong conclusion (Munich for instance) or we ignore it and don’t learn anything from it. Despite all that we always seem to muddle through somehow.

  42. 42.

    sharl

    @Adam L Silverman: This NYT article seems to confirm that French and Belgian intelligence services are pretty good at identifying potential terrorists, but that they are being overwhelmed when it comes to keeping track of them.

    The near misses raise troubling questions about the Belgian intelligence service and their French counterparts, not to mention concerns about Europe’s system of open internal borders, which has allowed terrorists to move freely between countries while outpacing the intelligence sharing needed to stop them.

    “Every time there is an attack, we discover that the perpetrators were known to the authorities,” said François Heisbourg, a counterterrorism expert and former defense official. “What this shows is that our intelligence is actually pretty good, but our ability to act on it is limited by the sheer numbers.”

    Relatedly, I wish there was a transcript of this afternoon’s Fresh Air, In Attack’s Wake, France Grapples With What It Means To Be French. It was an interview with Elaine Sciolino, longtime Paris resident and NYT writer posted there. She really got into the complexities of French culture, especially the angry young Muslims who are not being integrated into French society, and how the French government often aggravates the situation further. It seems that a similar situation exists in Belgium. It’s totally believable that the social media-savvy Daesh presents an appealing image to such angry and frustrated young people.

  43. 43.

    max

    @Corner Stone: TEXANS! HONK HONK! BARBARA! WE WONNN!!!

    Well done, as in how the fuck did they manage that? And 10-6 too, same as the Cowboys-Bucs score. Weird.

    @Adam L Silverman: I have no idea why the formatting is pushing sentences into strange places and punctuation to be separated from the sentences its part of.

    Did you paste it in from another application? Or quote from an HTML document? Discus does the same thing everytime I paste a quote in from an OP into a comment box. The conversion from application X to Web Browser Y results from going <nl> to <cr><lf> and back to <nl>. It winds up injecting spurious newlines, which the WP edit box is probably converting into spurious <br>’s. (That’s be my guess; I usually have to go back and edit the posted text afterwards to remove the extraneous <br>’s.)

    I definitely think Daesh is trying to take the war to enemy air force’s homeland. I am also pretty sure that they don’t want to provoke the kind of attack Al-Qeada was looking for (and got and didn’t like) but are believing that if they can get the ‘crusader armies’ to attack them directly that they can beat them. Because they are just as crazy as the Christian end-timers but they don’t obsess with Megiddo but a Syrian town instead.

    max
    [‘Because they’re fucking nuts.’]

  44. 44.

    Adam L Silverman

    @TaMara (BHF): I’m doing it for my Mom. She bought about a dozen pears and only got through about 6 before they got not fit for eating. So she asked what I could do with them and I pulled a pear tart tartin recipe. The only thing I’m not doing is the cast iron pan. I’m using an oven safe non-stick pan.

  46. 46.

    jl

    @efgoldman: Saw an item where CNN anchor was badgering a French Muslim they were interviewing to ‘take responsibility’ for the attacks. Not do a condemnation or disassociate himself from it, but to ‘take responsibility’. And apparently not just for the attacks, but the bigoted backlash that follows. Link below contains the bizarre transcript. But CNN is really into pandering to what it thinks is its intended audience, I guess Fox News viewers that want the BS delivered goofy and bland without the naked partisanship (aka, nobody).

    CNN International Anchors Press French Muslim To Accept “Responsibility” For ISIS Attacks In Paris.
    http://mediamatters.org/video/2015/11/16/cnn-international-anchors-press-french-muslim-t/206878

  47. 47.

    Adam L Silverman

    @max: I typed everything into the new post function at WordPress. The only thing copied and pasted were the links.

  48. 48.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Suzanne:

    Mr. Suzanne is trying to dissuade me from leaving the country.

    Good God, where would you go? I mean, we’re the land of spree shooters. If it’s crazy to accept Syrian refugees, to take in an American immigrant practically indicates a death wish!

  51. 51.

    jl

    @sharl: I think it is true that France has an approach to national identity and citizenship and an approach to racial and ethnic minority communities that is uncomfortably close to the US right wing dream. There is French national identity, and if you are citizen and you assimilate then you are officially equal, what’s the problem?

    Only in the goofy lala land of US reactionaries is Yurrp one big bad super liberal dystopia.

    And Belgium, I guess people get lost in the fight over national identity and a functioning federal government as the Flemish and Walloons fight it out. Though Wiki says they got a functioning national government together in 2011 after 4 or 5 years without one.

    Anyway, not to blame Belgium or France for the attacks. ISIS/Daesh alone is guilty of that crime. But I wonder if the political cultures of the two countries pose problems for integrating minority communities.

  53. 53.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    @jl:

    As far as France goes, a lot of what I was reading in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo murders is that French culture prides itself on being “secular” without realizing it still has a Christian/Catholic bias. That often means that minority religions (Muslim, but also Jews and other non-Christians) have to deal with things like “no religious symbols in the schools” bans that mean Muslim girls have to give up headscarves and Jewish girls can’t wear a Star of David while their Christian classmates wear purity rings and crucifixes without a peep from school officials.

    France has no idea how many religion-based bias crimes they have every year, because they specifically refuse to count them. They’re really, really poorly equipped to deal with social problems that are based in minority religions.

  54. 54.

    mclaren

    @efgoldman:

    Seems to me, the US is the most ahistorical Western democracy, by far. Hell, even Russia and the former satellite countries, which re-wrote the history books regularly, have a better sense of their own history than we do.

    I beg to differ, sir. Every true American knows that a blonde-haired blue-eyed Texan Jesus marched ashore from the Mayflower with his winchester rifle to clear the continent of them Injun varmints so that America could fulfill its Manifest Destiny.

    After making Mexico safe for democracy by stealing the upper half of it and renaming it “Texas” and “California” and “Arizona” and “Nevada” and “New Mexico,” Americans proceeded to pacify the Phillippines by teaching their barbarous insurectos the good Christian values of waterboarding.

    After finding a large empty continent (except for the 6 million American Indians who mysteriously vanished) and taming it by the sheer dint of their staggering entrepreneurship and Protestant work ethic, Americans moved on to save Europe by selling them Coca-Cola and guns and warships during the 1940s. America single-handedly won the second world war by shipping lots of bullets to the 40 million Russians who died defeating Hitler.

    After WW II, America proved the brilliance of its form of laissez faire capitalism by selling Japan and Europe lots of construction cranes and pickup trucks and bulldozers to rebuild the rubble piles that had formerly been cities. During the 1950s, the U.S. of A. amounted to 50% of the world’s GDP, a stunning achievement purely attributable to American genius that had nothing to do with the fact that the rest of the industrialized world had blown itself up and most of its population now dragged around wheelbarrows containing their former household belongings.

    America suffered terribly in the second world war, losing more than 300,000 young men, as compared to the trivial 40 or so million lost by the Russiand and the negligible 9 million lost by the Japanese.

    Sometime after World War Two, things mysteriously went wrong in America, due to Sinister Commies or Long-Haired Hippies, or possibly because the rest of the world rebuilt and no longer needed our crappy cheapjack manufactured products.

    Now, in the 2010s, America can only regain its former glory by harnessing the genius of its entrepreneurship, its glorious laissez faire form of capitalism, and also by looking around for lots more darkies to murder so we can steal their land and grab their goods.

    Proof positive that America is Greatest Nation in History™ and the Mightiest Military Power the Earth has Ever Known ©.

  55. 55.

    sharl

    @jl: In her interview with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross, Elaine Sciolino said that Arab minorities in the U.S. are assimilated far more easily than in France; she basically said the differences are so great that there is no comparison. I read enough Twitter feeds of angry Arab-Americans to wonder if she might get some push-back on that, but I suspect she is mostly right; the argument would be over the degree to which the situations are different.

  56. 56.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Mnemosyne (tablet):
    You people are driving me crazy. In an age with Steven Universe, Friendship is Magic, Gravity Falls, Teen Titans (not the Go! version), Batman: The Animated Series, Adventure Time, Over the Garden Wall, Harvey Beaks, Chowder, and… so many others, when Japanese cartoons like Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Kaiba (and so many other greats) are being imported, you’re rewatching plotless comedy shorts for the hundredth time. Look, they were good cartoons, but only ‘good’. They look like incredible classics because a quirk of television economics and rich people’s prejudice collapsed the animation industry for fifty years. We’re over that. Watch the new stuff. It’s hilarious, moving, charming, and thought-provoking.

  58. 58.

    sharl

    @Mnemosyne (tablet): Yup, that’s what Sciolino was saying on Fresh Air, and she even noted that bit you mentioned about the French not doing any social research/studies to assess the nature and magnitude of their problem. I guess if you don’t think you have a problem, why would you spend resources to study it? Sciolino bemoaned the fact that she could only offer educated speculation to Terry Gross on some of issues they discussed – based on her many years living in France – because there was actually no hard data on which to base her assertions.

  59. 59.

    mclaren

    @efgoldman:

    Buy a lot of really, really, really warm clothes. Even with the earth warming, it’s still very fucking cold in Antarctica.

    Even then, make sure you get an igloo with an ocean view. That way, in Antarctica, you’ll only have assholes on 3 sides of you.

  61. 61.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Frankensteinbeck: I’ve seen every episode. And was quite upset when Young Justice only got two seasons, as did the Legion of Superheroes. The Green Lantern and Beware the Batman CGIed toons weren’t too bad either. Even Batman: Brave and the Bold was pretty decent. Especially the Etrigan episodes…

    Not quite sure why Cartoon Network can’t get this stuff right or why WB doesn’t yank their chain a bit. Given that DisneyXD is able to maintain four separate Marvel cartoons at once, you’d think WB and cartoon network or WB and the CW could get its act together. Of course they let Fox kill Constantine, so…

  62. 62.

    mclaren

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Cowboy Bebop. Serial Experiments Lain. Neon Genesis Evangelion. Trigun. Ghost in the Shell: Arise. Space Pirate Captain Harlock. Justice League Unlimited. Batman: The Animated Series. Superman: The Animated Series. Invader Zim. Ren and Stimpy. Johnny Bravo. Courage the Cowardly Dog. Dexter’s Laboratory. The Powerpuff Girls. Ulysses 31. Sherlock Holmes in the 25th Century. Re-Boot. Teamo Supremo. Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. Dennō Coil.

    The list goes on…

  65. 65.

    Anne Laurie

    @Suzanne:

    Mr. Suzanne is trying to dissuade me from leaving the country.

    I understand the impulse, but fuck those guys — leaving the public square to them is exactly what they want.

    Social progress never moves as quickly as we hope, but remember: Even our local sociopaths who’d have been yelling Juden Raus kill all the immigrants in 1938 now “have” to preface their public vileness with Nixonian we could do it, but it would be wrong, that’s for sure pieties. TOLERANCE is the default, so much so that the wingnuts spend half their time looking for ways to label everyone other than themselves “intolerant”.

  66. 66.

    Mandalay

    @Suzanne:

    Mr. Suzanne is trying to dissuade me from leaving the country.

    Seriously? Just three days after the attacks in Paris and you are thinking about leaving the country? Seriously?

  68. 68.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    I do watch the new stuff. I’m just playing to ef’s old man prejudices.
    ;-)

    Manga doesn’t really appeal to me, but I watch a lot of Disney XD and Cartoon Network. They’re more on the light entertainment side, but I would add “Star vs The Forces of Evil” and “Penn Zero, Part-Time Hero” to your list.

    And I have gotten sucked into marathons of “Doc McStuffins” and “Sheriff Callie’s Wild West.” Sometimes my brain needs to rest.

  70. 70.

    jl

    @efgoldman:

    ” they’re like cornered, wounded rats, striking out in any direction. ”

    One hope is that is what ISIS/Daesh is doing too, recently.

  71. 71.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Also, “Bob’s Burgers.” It has completely overtaken “The Simpsons” as the best animated show about a family. We semi-accidentally watched this week’s “Simpsons” and I almost clawed my eyes out.

    But I’m sorry, if you think that “What’s Opera, Doc?” or “Duck Amuck” or “Feed the Kitty” are only remembered as great thanks to repetition or nostalgia, you really, really need to watch them again.

  77. 77.

    Anne Laurie

    @efgoldman:

    Seems to me, the US is the most ahistorical Western democracy, by far.

    When I was young and quick to outrage about this, my old man told me that most people came to America to rewrite and/or forget their pasts. We’re the (actual or philosophical) offspring of con artists, refugees, cultists, business failures, borderline schizophrenics, remittance men & chronic malcontents. So of course there’s a persistent thread to American culture that those of us who have “lit out for the territories” can re-invent ourselves & our histories to better suit our more ambitious fantasies.

    It’s not a complete explanation, but there’s enough truth in it to be useful.

  78. 78.

    Mandalay

    The past few days have been pretty shitty, but there is some excellent news on the terrorism front….

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and seven other former and current government officials are at risk of arrest if they set foot in Spain, after a Spanish judge effectively issued an arrest warrant for the group, it has been reported.

    A step in the right direction of giving that vile fucker pariah status.

  79. 79.

    ruemara

    @Frankensteinbeck: OK while I am a nostalgia buff, I have to agree, concur and enthusiastically yawp my cosignatory status on this comment.

    @Southern Goth: teen titans go should be boiled in oil and set fire to. It is definitely made for people who have no affection for the teen titans. But I am sure it was a lovely costume.

  81. 81.

    Anne Laurie

    @Adam L Silverman: If you’re looking for an easy introduction to Japanese anime (you didn’t ask, but there’s lotsa great stuff easily available), here’s a couple suggestions:

    BECK: MONGOLIAN CHOP SQUAD. Written, hand to goddess, by a manga artist obsessed by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. There are disaffected high school kids, a middle-aged guy with a Say Anything backstory, genetically engineered animals, weird riffs on Tarantino films, semi-acceptable rock music, and a satisfactory conclusion. Only 26 half-hour (24 minute) episodes, so you don’t feel like you’re committing yourself to a marathon.

    TWIN SPICA. A (very) little girl decides she’s going to enter Japan’s extremely competitive astronaut training program and become a “rocket pilot”, despite every possible obstacle. If you ever read Heinlein’s juveniles, this series reminds me a great deal of books like FARMER IN THE SKY and HAVE SPACESUIT WILL TRAVEL. It’s only 20 episodes, so, again: not an overwhelming commitment. (Actually, the first episode sets up the framework of the whole thing very efficiently — watch that and you’ll know whether you want to continue.)

    KAMI-CHU! A middle school girl wakes up one morning and discovers she’s a Shinto goddess — for what that’s worth. Her new status allows her to see all the small gods that invigorate every corner of the landscape, little Bruegel characters tumbling in the corners of the screen. Reminiscent of SPIRITED AWAY or HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE, but somewhat less determinedly whimsical. She attends the annual god convention (where going to presentations gets a card stamped for door prizes), helps the battleship Yamato return to its home port one last time, turns into a cat for a Fight Club spoof episode… and simultaneously deals with the all-important minutia of young-teenage-girlhood (first crush, unreasonable school rules, friends who are alternately fascinating & annoying). Only 16 episodes in this one.

  83. 83.

    Anne Laurie

    @mclaren:

    Cowboy Bebop. Serial Experiments Lain. Neon Genesis Evangelion. Trigun.

    All fine works, in their way, but *not* good starter anime. Too long, way too much filler, extremely depressing, and at least one absolutely bullshit ending that will make newbies swear off ever going near another anime series. It’s like trying to introduce someone to “film” by suggesting The Seventh Seal, Aguirre: the Wrath of God, and Shoah.

  85. 85.

    Anne Laurie

    @Major Major Major Major: If you must have Bones Studio, WOLF’S RAIN is better in every way than Evangelion — even if it does suffer from the same inability to come up with a reasonable ending.

    I realize that every young lad of a certain era fixated on Asuka and/or Rei, for reasons, but IMO the repeated attempts to “reboot” the series just indicate what a crappy premise it was in the first place.

  86. 86.

    jacel

    @jl: Rachel Maddow’s show tonight (Monday, 11/16) explained the background on the ISIS plotter who was featured in an ISIS-published magazine and their videos. He is from Belgium, but is assumed to have been in Syria most of this year, after escaping from a gun battle with police in Belgium a week after the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

  88. 88.

    seaboogie

    One of the things that I found puzzling about the Daesh threats (yep, I am down with that moniker) against the US is that they threatened and attack on Washington DC. If they had been paying any attention at all, they would know that the Teabangelicals who feed on such fear would be absolutely down with that.

  90. 90.

    ? Martin

    I wonder if Republicans today bothered to ever learn about the St. Louis, or did they edit that particular chapter out of their history books for being insufficiently patriotic.

    On May 13, 1939, the German transatlantic liner St. Louis sailed from Hamburg, Germany, for Havana, Cuba. On the voyage were 937 passengers. Almost all were Jews fleeing from the Third Reich. Most were German citizens, some were from eastern Europe, and a few were officially “stateless.”
    …
    The German Foreign Office and the Propaganda Ministry also hoped to exploit the unwillingness of other nations to admit large numbers of Jewish refugees to justify the Nazi regime’s anti-Jewish goals and policies both domestically in Germany and in the world at large.
    …
    Following the US government’s refusal to permit the passengers to disembark, the St. Louis sailed back to Europe on June 6, 1939.

    The St. Louis would not be received today by the US under either Jeb! or Cruz’s plans – because they were not Christian.

  91. 91.

    Anne Laurie

    @efgoldman:

    Or escapers from religious persecution, in the case of my people.

    I put that in the “refugee” category.

    Funny story: My paternal grandparents grew up not far from each other in Connemara, emigrated separately to Canada, then moved to NYC before my dad was born. Their marriage seemed dutiful at best — they didn’t seem to like each other much, and according to my dad never had — but plenty of good Irish Catholics in the 1920s *did* marry fellow emigres, more out of duty than love.

    It wasn’t until my grandmother died that we discovered the Awful Truth: She was born Orange, while her husband was a cradle Catholic. For a gently reared young Anglican lady on the eve of the Troubles, falling in love with a Catholic policeman must’ve been one enormous shock to the system. Her only son predeceased her, so we assume he never know that there had been a love story that lead to his birth — one strong enough that she’d renounce her family & he’d essentially give up contact with most of his (she wasn’t popular with his kinfolk, but then, she was one of those women who prefer to be respected rather than liked).

  94. 94.

    Mike G

    Serbian police just arrested a refugee with the same-name Syrian passport as the one in Paris, with a different photograph; it is likely that both are fakes.
    Daesh must be laughing their asses off at what panicky, pants-pissing morons red state governors are. But then Republican Xtians are accustomed to making decisions based on made-up stories.

  97. 97.

    ? Martin

    @Anne Laurie: I started with Space Battleship Yamato way back in the 70s that by some miracle was broadcast on TV in NYC. Getting a really good first hit is important.

    Bebop is what got my kids hooked. It’s more approachable to american audiences, and has a nice variety in episodes. Trigun should also work pretty well, I would think. I think Americans will always respond well to westerns.

  98. 98.

    Anne Laurie

    @John Revolta: If you want samurai, how about CARRIED BY THE WIND? Or MORIBITO: GUARDIAN OF THE SPIRIT?

    I included Kami-Chu! because Adam’s talked about loving mythology & folklore, and that’s one of the best modern animist stories I’ve ever seen.

    And if you want wacky, there’s SHINGU: SECRET OF THE STELLAR WARS — which starts with the young narrator explaining that “the government” has finally admitted that they’re in touch with aliens, but then, everybody had pretty much figured that out already. Especially since half the newcomers in this small Japanese town turn out to be alien ambassadors… Strong flavor of R.A. Lafferty, if you’re an sf reader.

  100. 100.

    David Koch

    @jl: Uygur is a conspiracy theorist.

    Olbermann opined to Bohrman that Uygur had difficulty separating facts from things he wanted to be true.

    Uygur blames his demotion on MSNBC on… wait for it… Obummer

    Uygur said that, in April, MSNBC president Phil Griffin called him in for a talk. Griffin allegedly told him that “people in Washington” were concerned with his tone on the show.

    Seriously. Obummer is deciding who hosts shows on MSNBC? If criticism of Obummer was forbidden, why has Chris Hayes been employed for so long.

    Uygur has pushed the CTs that the FBI killed Michael Hastings, that the government was spying on Ben Gazzara kook Sheryl Attkinson, that the government framed stalker freak Barrett Brown.

    Uygur is loony toons and I wouldn’t trust anything he states. That said, Ana Kasparian seems like a lovely intelligent person.

  102. 102.

    Donalbain

    I don’t understand the hysteria over the passport at all. If you are planning to blow yourself up, why do you carry a passport unless it is because you want your (claimed) identity to be a statement in and of itself? Once again, western governments are doing exactly what the terrorists want them to do.

  105. 105.

    mclaren

    @Suzanne:

    I am despondent tonight. I don’t remember ever feeling more disappointed in my countrymen and -women. Mr. Suzanne is trying to dissuade me from leaving the country.

    In the dark days after 9/11, these words by Thomas Jefferson helped me. They may help you:

    A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to it’s true principles. It is true that in the mean time we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war & long oppressions of enormous public debt. (..) If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, & then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are the stake.

    Source: The Letters of Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Taylor, 4 June 1798.

  107. 107.

    Adam L Silverman

    @jacel: really not much of a mastermind. As Digby highlighted the stadium portion of the attack was largely a failure and given the size of the Bataclan and the numbers of people on the streets, I restaurants, and bars even those parts of the attacks didn’t produce as large a casualty list, fortunately, as they could have. The only sophistication was in using attackers from France that knew Paris.

  108. 108.

    Anne Laurie

    @John Revolta: We get all our anime via Netflix — or YouTube!

    The Spousal Unit actually has a Cruchyroll account, but he doesn’t like watching on his laptop screen, so mostly we watch DVDs on our one TV. We *just* upgraded to a BluRay player, and he’s got the HDMI thingie working so he can plug in a thumb drive. (That’s how we finally watched DENNOU COIL.) Next step, a Roku box… we’ve been talking about one since Netflix first offered them (we still pay the premium for discs, since there’s so much stuff we want to see that’s not streamed) but the Round Tuits are sadly scarce in this household.

  109. 109.

    Anne Laurie

    @Adam L Silverman:

    By and large it just doesn’t appeal to me.

    Well, there’s so much of it, and it varies even more than Western anime IMO. If you run out of stuff to watch on the treadmill, though, you might try the first episode of Twin Spica or Moribito just for the heck of it… they’re pretty self-contained, and well drawn without calling too much attention to their “artistry”.

  111. 111.

    Frankensteinbeck

    For the ‘starter anime’, anything by Miyazaki, of course! Especially his later movies. Spirited Away should suit a wide, wide variety of tastes.

    I am a bit addicted to serieses that start off looking conventional, but you soon learn are anything but. In that vein I recommend Rozen Maiden (the deepest characters and psychology ever), Puella Magi Madoka Magica (cruelly dark, with the most evil villain in television), and Soul Eater (action anime, think Naruto, but better in every way and most importantly no filler).

    If you can get them, the old fan sub versions of all anime are better than the official releases. Western distributors are obsessed with censoring. A lot of the time the censoring is just pathetically overboard, too. It’s really sad.

    @Adam L Silverman:
    Anime is not a genre, it’s a medium – but that still doesn’t mean you have to like it! Individual tastes.

    @Major Major Major Major:
    Paprika is a little weird (only a little, by my tastes) and great.

    @Anne Laurie:
    I loved Kamichu! Sweet, mostly quiet, and so not-Western. For another quiet one, I recommend Haibane Renmei.

  113. 113.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    The vermin of the American right are playing into DAESH’s hands as easy as pie. They are such idiots. Cruz and Abbot typify the stupidity of the “Christian” right.

    Always. Just like with OBL.

    Maybe it was growing up in an abusive household, but I always get calm when “we” are attacked. And I watch the pants-pissers and the hair arsonists and the mad circle runners.

    I think the right is sounding more unhinged because non-righties have opted out of their media experience so the whole “epistemological closure” is actually even more closed. You don’t have to be getting paranoid newsletters or posting on Freep, now you have the former big three networks and a con network on twitter.

  114. 114.

    Another Holocene Human

    @greennotGreen: This kind of stuff makes me so ragey. Hey, if you read Matthew (that’s the right one–right?) I’m pretty sure that’s the test of whether you’re going to Heaven or Hell. This religion is all about salvation, right? So this is the only way to safeguard your salvation. Sure, you were baptized. But if you don’t do these things, the Lord ain’t know you when the hour come.

    But some people’s only interest in religion is as a tribalistic club to wallop other people with. And there are preachers who are greedy for money and money alone who will let them. (Okay, money, and a piece of tail from adults or children.)

  115. 115.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Adam L Silverman: The one with the Native American terrorist with a grudge we can all understand? And it was the 1940s! Ahead of its time.

    I grew up on cartoons where super villains polluted the ocean … just because. Because there were villains. Villains pollute the ocean. You grow up, become a villain, and pollute the ocean. Muwah ha ha.

  116. 116.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Mnemosyne (tablet): Cracked the whip, you mean. Snow White took 7 years to make and in the meantime his stable turned out these incredibly labor intensive hand-drawn shorts in an attempt to keep the money flowing and the lights on. Warners, OTOH, was a money making concern.

    Another example where sometimes Narcissistic Personality Disorder can accomplish something good. And unlike Steve Jobs, Disney’s veteran animator crew didn’t seem to hold any of it against him. (Unlike for the tech industry at the time, there was no safe, boring, blue chip company alternative. All cartoonists and animators worked in sweatshop conditions with asshole bosses for miserable pay, from the newspapers to the comics to the film industry, and for all I know the rewards at the end were better in film since movies could make money beyond the wildest dreams of print.)

  119. 119.

    Another Holocene Human

    @sharl:

    Relatedly, I wish there was a transcript of this afternoon’s Fresh Air, In Attack’s Wake, France Grapples With What It Means To Be French. It was an interview with Elaine Sciolino, longtime Paris resident and NYT writer posted there. She really got into the complexities of French culture, especially the angry young Muslims who are not being integrated into French society, and how the French government often aggravates the situation further. It seems that a similar situation exists in Belgium. It’s totally believable that the social media-savvy Daesh presents an appealing image to such angry and frustrated young people.

    I think Frontline (PBS) did a report on this when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Needless to say, the Europeans have made absolutely no progress since then either. Although Germany has softened a bit towards third generation (!) Turks. This is so well known, just scroll back a few days on Balloon Juice and multiple commenters predicted that the terrorists were born in Europe.

    You can’t treat human beings that way. Some of them snap. ISIS is just a convenient peg to hang that hat on.

  122. 122.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Another Holocene Human: I keep thinking about how right after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, a seemingly nice Austrian I was following on G+ suddenly calmly explained that now her liberal friends should understand why we need far-right anti-immigrant groups like PEGIDA.

  123. 123.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Another Holocene Human:
    Being an animator for Walt was apparently a curious contrast. Walt himself was a prissy jerk, and for the most part they didn’t like what they were working on. It was too bland, too censored. On the other hand, he would give people a chance that others wouldn’t, train them into the best in the industry, and not treat them like disposable resources even though he was anti-union and… well, a jerk. So animators wanted to work for him, and eventually move on as masters of their craft, like Walt Kelly. Definitely love/hate going on. It helped that Walt really, really cared about cartoons, about both animation and storytelling. He was a godawful bad storyteller, but he cared and tried, and the animation was stellar. The best.

  124. 124.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Matt McIrvin: Such moments are so disappointing. I’m happy to say though that my sister took part in anti-PEGIDA counter protests in Eastern Germany. Proud of her.

  125. 125.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Frankensteinbeck: Yes, there was definitely job stability and that helped define the Disney house style, Walt Disney trained his guys to do what he wanted and they in turn would train the next generation. All of that ended in our times, and the Disney lineage actually walked out and moved over to Pixar (or was laid off). And Pixar is Disney now so we’re full circle.

    Disney management from what I recall could see everything was going to computers and for some reason didn’t have faith in their old team of animators. Apparently Pixar, which was doing … computers, huh, was highly interested in former Disney animators.

  126. 126.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Another Holocene Human:
    Eisner. Eisner hated animation, and when he became head of Disney said he was going to shut down their animation division. Walt’s kids hated him for it, and it took a while, but they got him out. What stopped Eisner was The Little Mermaid. It made incredible amounts of money, and in particular sold a lot of toys. ‘Anything for a buck’ was Eisner’s religion, so instead of closing Disney Film Animation, he ordered them to make the same movie over and over again for the foreseeable future, and that’s why we have Disney Princess Movies. When television animation made a resurgence, he was willing to go for that, although… well, one producer complained that he sent a script to the executives for approval, and it came back marked ‘too funny.’ That was kinda the norm around 1990, though.

  127. 127.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Another Holocene Human:
    Pixar, alas, is not perfect. There’s apparently major internal personality politics issues. They kicked the (female) creator of Brave off the project and edited it heavily because they thought the original ‘would not appeal to boys’, and kicked the creator of Bolt (the guy who created Lilo and Stitch) off that project because it was ‘too weird.’

    Still, they made Wall-E, Wreck-It-Ralph, Frozen, and Inside Out (since Pixar=Disney now), so there’s no question that when they’re on, they’re on.

  129. 129.

    Xenos

    @Suzanne: I moved to Europe. Given all that is happening I am much happier to be here than living among all the bigots who dominate public life in the states.

    That and being married to a European who is much happier here. If she is happy, I am happy.

  130. 130.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    The Chris Sanders story is … complicated. He’s very talented, but not quite as talented as he seems to think. He went to work for Dreamworks but seems to have managed to alienate people over there as well now.

    Oh, and the close-minded manager who just didn’t understand Sanders’ genius take on American Dog? Was John Lasseter.

    If you haven’t already, you really should read the book Ed Catmull wrote a couple of years ago, Creativity Inc. It’s part management treatise, but the other half is a pretty detailed account of how they turned the animation studio around.

    Also, Don Hahn’s documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty is a really interesting insider’s view of what went wrong. People forget now that Eisner and Katzenberg were brought in as part of a triumvirate with Frank Wells, and it was Wells’ death in a helicopter accident that set up the Eisner/Katzenberg conflict.

Comments are closed.