Tunisia Hit With Third Terrorist Attack This Year | 30-Day State of Emergency In Place

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From Anne's FB page

I want to share my FB friend Meriem's beautiful photo and say that -- while I will continue to fly the French flag -- I applaud her gesture.

With several FB friends from Tunisia, please know that I am terribly concerned about your country. Being deeply involved in Sudan for years and knowing what can happen when a blossoming society -- whose women are among the most progressive and educated in Africa -- is co-opted and redefined by fundamentalist forces, I am fearful for my friends in Tunisia.

Tunisia was hit today with its third terrorist act this year, killing at least 12 people, wounding 20 members of the presidential guard, and prompting the president to declare a 30-day state of emergency. The Tunis airport has been closed, along with tourist sites.

The attack was carried out by jihadists. Thousands, according to the NY Times, of Tunisian citizens have traveled to Iraq and Syria to join ISIS.

My FB wall reported on two earlier attacks in Tunisia this year. The Islamic State carried out an attack at the Bardo National Museum in March, killing 22 people. In June, 38 people including 30 British tourists were killed at a beach hotel in Sousse.

Thank you Meriem for reminding us of the terrible challenges faced by the people of Tunisia, under assault by terrorists seeking to undermine their beautiful country. You are a symbol of compassion and intelligence whatever flag you are flying, and I regret that you may change it too often in today's world. I see where this is going, so be sure to tag me in the future. ~ Anne.

Related: Want to Beat the Islamic State? Help Tunisia Foreign Policy

Military victories over the Islamic State’s fighters will  help to destroy their image of macho invincibility. But if we really want to defeat ISIS for good, ideas must triumph. Societies must have ideological alternatives they can believe in. 

Luckily there is such an alternative. It’s called Tunisia.

Despite long odds, Tunisia (pop. 11 million) has emerged as the Arab Spring’s lone success story. Tunisians have stuck to their hard-won democratic institutions despite considerable political and economic turmoil. The Islamist Ennahdha Party has played a crucial part in this success by demonstrating its willingness to share power with its ideological opponents and allowing genuine political competition. The Nobel Committee’s decision to bestow its latest Peace Prize on four groups with prominent roles in the country’s democratic transition has lent international recognition to the Tunisians’ achievement.

Hillary Clinton's Plan To Take On ISIS | Watch Nov. 19 Council of Foreign Relations Speech

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Hillary Clinton's Plan To Take On ISIS | Watch Nov. 19 Council of Foreign Relations Speech

For friends trying to understand fundamentally what's going on with ISIS, VOX shares an overview of the history of ISIS: a 15-20 minute read that is highly informative.  AOC calls out three key paragraphs that are relevant to our understanding of the world and content strategy.

9 Questions about ISIS You Were Too Embarrassed To Ask VOX

The Apocalypse

ISIS's first obsession, though, is not the caliphate but the apocalypse. The group's leaders, by every indication, earnestly believe that their role is to help usher in the final days and the end of the world. McCants explained, in his interview with Williams, how this belief developed into ISIS's focus on building a state:

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Rape of Women

ISIS also promotes what the New York Times's Rukmini Callimachi called a "theology of rape": a vast infrastructure of sexual violence and slavery, with ISIS encouraging rape as not just a tool of war but a matter of daily life in the caliphate. Yes, this is its own awful recruiting tool, but it's even more than that: It's a way for both the group and its individual members to demonstrate power by associating sexual violence with victory.

Original Caliphates Centered on Religious Expression

For jihadists, the caliphates are the height of Islam's glory, the banner of a sort of Islamic nationalism. Framing your jihadist movement as the rebirth or continuation of the caliphate is a way of asserting the idea that all Muslims should be joined in one state, that they should be ruled by Islam (or more specifically, the jihadists' version of Islam), and that all other Islamic authorities and states are apostates.
The jihadists also promote the idea that because the caliphates existed a long time ago and were politically organized around Islam, they must have therefore been ultra-conservative theocracies. But that is quite simply false: At their height, the caliphates were centers of artistic expression and scientific development.


Sending Prayers & Personal Resolve To Paris | Global Secularism Must Advance

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The city of Paris is even more formative in my psyche than New York.  Having worked in Paris well over 200 times, even moving to a residence hotel in the city for many years, for me Paris is the great international symbol of secular values. In its imperfection, Paris is also the symbol for the worst of imperialism, and I do not minimize the negative impact of Paris on other cultures in the world. This is the story of mankind -- not humankind, because women have had very little to do with the constructs of imperialism. 

Still, Anne of Carversville embraces the values of secularism -- fearing orthodoxy in every religion as a far greater threat to the advancement of global civilization than any other force. At this moment, we wait to understand the full extent of the horrors perpetuated on ordinary citizens of France and their guests by ISIS thugs. As global citizens and women of courage, we refuse to be silent in the face of terrorists -- whatever flag they wave. ~ Anne

The Book That Really Explains ISIS (Hint: It's Not The Gur'an) Think Progress

In 2004, a PDF of a book entitled “The Management Of Savagery” was posted online and circulated among Sunni jihadist circles. Scholars soon noticed that the book, which was published by an unknown author writing under the pseudonym “Abu Bakr Naji,” had become popular among many extremist groups such as al-Shabaab in Somalia, and was eventually translated into English for study in 2006 by William McCants, now the director of the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at the Brookings Institution. The book, McCants told ThinkProgress, was written as an alternative to the decentralized, “leaderless” approach to jihadism popular in the mid-2000s. Instead of using isolated attacks on super powers all over the globe, “The Management Of Savagery” offered an expansive plan for how a group of Muslim militants could violently seize land and establish their own self-governing Islamic state — much like ISIS is trying to do today.

And then:

“The key idea in the book is that you need to carry out attacks on a local government and sensitive infrastructure — tourism and energy in particular,” McCants said. “That causes a local government to pull in security resources to protect that infrastructure that will open up pockets where there is no government — a security vacuum.”

ISIS's Savage Strategy in Iraq The New Yorker

The ISIS' 'Management of Savagery' in Iraq Huffington Post

The calculated madness of the Islamic State's horrifying brutality Washington Post

Gisele Bundchen Burqa Disguise Comes As More Burqa Bans Take Effect

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Gisele’s Burqa Disquise Busted

Did Gisele Bundchen really think she and her sister would remain unknown, scurrying into Paris’ International Clinique du Parc Monceau in open-toed shoes On July 15? Worse yet, the two femmes rode in a car driven by the supermodel’s regular chauffeur.

For real women who must wear burqas or die, open-toed shoes are not permitted.

Gisele reportedly was seeking a nip and tuck on her eyes and her breasts, after having breast-fed two children. The next day her driver picked up the supermodel and sister Rafaela at the Bristol Hotel and drove them to the exclusive Les Sources de Caudalie spa, where the former Victoria’s Secret Angel, who reportedly made $47 million last year as the top model in the world, recovered for five days.

Burqa or not, Gisele was silly to think she could keep her plastic surgery visit under wraps.

On the subject of women wearing burqas, the French are quite sensitive, having banned the burqa on the streets of Paris in 2010.The fact the Gisele pulled the stunt during the month of Ramadan, causing strict Muslims to be offended over her disrespectful act. Her action came at a time when several African countries have instituted new burqa bans, now that the disguise is being used by terrorists.

Then there is the minor matter of Gisele telling her adoring fans that there is “no way” she’d ever have plastic surgery.

Note that there are a few naysayers who insist that the story isn’t true. There have been no denials from the supermodel or members of her staff.

Global Burqa Ban News July 2015

The Dutch debate the burqa — and ban it Politico

The areas covered by the ban — schools, transportation, hospitals and government buildings — are those places where concerns for interpersonal communication and safety are especially critical, said Afshin Ellian, a professor of jurisprudence at the University of Leiden and an expert on multiculturalism, citizenship, and human rights. “People have to be recognizable in such areas,” he said. “And anywhere in a free society, it is crucial that people are able literally to look each other in the face.” In a statement to the press, Plasterk echoed that importance, noting that “in schools you have to be able to look one another in the eyes. If a mother comes to pick her child up at school you need to be able to see if it really is the mother.” (Indeed, in January, 2013, a woman wearing a niqab kidnapped a Muslim child from a local school; the five-year-old girl, who could not see her abductor’s face, thought the kidnapper was her own mother, who also wears a niqab.)

Niger Bans Full Islamic Veil In Diffa After Suspected Boko Haram Bombings International Business Times

Niger banned the full Islamic veil in the country’s southeast border region of Diffa following a spate of suicide bombings by women dressed in the religious garment, an official told Agence France-Presse Wednesday. The attacks have been blamed on the Nigeria-based Boko Haram terror group, which Niger’s army has been battling since February.

“Women in the region are forbidden from wearing the full veil until further notice, in order to prevent suicide attacks by Boko Haram,” Diffa Mayor Hankouraou Biri-Kassoum told AFP.

 

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