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Victims mourned as France investigates Paris attacks
Country enters second day of mourning as police make arrests and find weapons in a car abandoned in Paris suburb.

People have gathered across France as the country marks its second day of mourning following coordinated attacks claimed by ISIL that killed at least 129 people in Paris.

Mourners lit candles and laid flowers on Sunday at the locations of the attacks across the capital, standing in silence as police investigators elsewhere in the country launched a search for the attackers' accomplices.

Stepping up their hunt for information, authorities found several AK47 assault rifles in the back of an abandoned SEAT car in an eastern suburb of Paris.

Paris attacks: Weapons found in 'getaway car'

Several Kalashnikovs have been found in an abandoned car believed to have been used by some of the Paris attackers, French judicial sources say.

The black Seat car was found in the eastern Paris suburb of Montreuil on Sunday, suggesting some of the attackers got away.

Earlier, the first of the seven dead attackers was named as Ismail Mostefai. Six people close to him are in custody.

France is in three days of mourning for the 129 people killed in the attacks.

3 Paris terrorists identified, one by shot-off finger

French authorities have identified three terrorists out of seven killed while staging attacks in Paris on Friday. Their relatives have been detained and are being questioned. Unofficial reports suggest one of them was just 15 years old.

Among the identified terrorists who blew themselves up is a French citizen, Omar Ismail Mostefaï (born November 21, 1985). He was raised in Courcouronnes, a poor neighborhood of Paris.

Mostefaï had a criminal record of petty crimes, having been convicted eight times between 2004 and 2010, but never serving jail time.

Although Mostefaï was put on a list of people with a high-risk of radicalization in 2010, he was “never implicated in an investigation or a terrorist association,” AFP cited Paris prosecutor Francois Molins as saying.

Our terrorism double standard: After Paris, let’s stop blaming Muslims and take a hard look at ourselves
We must mourn all victims. But until we look honestly at the violence we export, nothing will ever change

Any time there is an attack on civilians in the post-9/11 West, demagogues immediately blame it on Muslims. They frequently lack evidence, but depend on the blunt force of anti-Muslim bigotry to bolster their accusations.

Actual evidence, on the other hand, shows that less than two percent of terrorist attacks from 2009 to 2013 in the E.U. were religiously motivated. In 2013, just one percent of the 152 terrorist attacks were religious in nature; in 2012, less than three percent of the 219 terrorist attacks were inspired by religion.

The vast majority of terrorist attacks in these years were motivated by ethno-nationalism or separatism. In 2013, 55 percent of terrorist attacks were ethno-nationalist or separatist in nature; in 2012, more than three-quarters (76 percent) of terrorist attacks were inspired by ethno-nationalism or separatism.

We brought this on ourselves: After Paris, it is time to square our “values” with our history
The West's behaved horrifically in Middle East for decades. We can't be surprised by Paris. Let's look in a mirror

Another horrific attack emanates from the shattered, shredded Middle East into the beating hearts of Western civilization. It is impossible to miss what it means that the City of Light, the justified pride of the French, was the scene of Friday’s spree of violence, hostage-taking and murder. We cannot any longer watch the tragedies befalling Middle Eastern societies and shut the television off when supper is ready. Their tragedies are ours—a point that was destined to be forced upon us sooner or later.

By the most recent count available at writing, 127 are dead in Paris and who knows how many are wounded or traumatized. The Pentagon and the Strangeloves who run it, it turns out, are not the only ones who can pull off a shock-and-awe assault. If the French and all the rest of us are smart, we will dwell long and hard upon the implications of this stark reality.

“This is not just an attack on Paris, it’s an attack not just on the people of France,” President Obama said in a glumly presented statement Friday night. “This is an attack on all of humanity and the universal values we share.” There is something perfectly right in this, and then something perfectly wrong.

CONFIRMED: French Government Knew Extremists BEFORE Attack

As predicted and previously reported, terrorists who took part in an unprecedented attack in the center of Paris killing over a 100 and injuring hundreds more, were well-known to French security agencies before the attack took place.

The UK Daily Mail reported in its article, "Hunt for the Isis killers: One terrorist identified as 'young Frenchman known to authorities' - another two found with Syrian and Egyptian passports," that:

One of the terrorists involved in last night's attacks in Paris has been officially identified as a Parisian, according to local media reports. 

The man, who was killed at the Bataclan, was identified using his fingerprints and was from the southern Parisian neighbourhood of Courcouronnes. 

French reports say that the man, who was around 30 years old, was already known to French anti-terrorist authorities prior to last night's attacks. 

Similarly in January 2015 in the wake of the "Charlie Hebo attack" which left 12 dead, it was revealed that French security agencies tracked the perpetrators for nearly a decade beforehand, having arrested at least one terrorist a total of two times, incarcerating him at least once, tracked two of them overseas where they had trained with known terrorist organizations and possibly fought alongside them in Syria, before tracking them back to French territory.

Paris Terror Attacks: France Now Faces Fight Against Fear and Exclusion

The attacks that took place at a series of venues in Paris on November 13 are already the deadliest on French soil since 1945. At least 127 people have been killed in six different places. Reports say that another 100 are in “absolute” critical condition. Police have reported that eight people believed to have carried out the attacks are also dead – seven by blowing themselves up.

It was not as though France had not prepared itself to face such a tragedy. Anti-terrorist measures have been at their highest level in Paris since January, when two brothers attacked the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 12.

This was obvious to any bystander over the past few months. Armed soldiers have become part of the Paris experience. Yet the government’s security plan, the plan vigipirate, was not enough to stop what is so far believed to be the most organized and coordinated attack Islamic State has perpetrated outside its territory. Details are still thin on the ground, but IS has claimed responsibility. President François Hollande has blamed the group and made it clear that he sees this as an act of war.

How Saudi/Gulf Money Fuels Terror

In the wake of the latest terrorist outrage in Paris, the big question is not which specific group is responsible for the attack, but who’s responsible for the Islamic State and Al Qaeda in the first place. The answer that has grown increasingly clear in recent years is that it’s Western leaders who have used growing portions of the Muslim world as a playground for their military games and are now crying crocodile tears over the consequences.

This pattern had its beginnings in the 1980s in Afghanistan, where the Central Intelligence Agency and the Saudi royal family virtually invented modern jihadism in an effort to subject the Soviets to a Vietnam-style war in their own backyard. It was the case, too, in Iraq, which the United States and Great Britain invaded in 2003, triggering a vicious civil warfare between Shi‘ites and Sunnis.

Today, it’s the case in Yemen where the U.S. and France are helping Saudi Arabia in its massive air war against Houthi Shi‘ites. And it’s the case in Syria, the scene of the most destructive war game of them all, where Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf states are channeling money and arms to Al Qaeda, the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh), and similar forces with the full knowledge of the U.S.

Democratic Candidates All Want to Destroy ISIS, But Mostly Debate Domestic Issues
An oddly unsatisfying debate in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack.

A day after the horrific terrorist attacks in Paris, the three Democratic presidential candidates told a national audience that America must be part of an international coalition that uses military force and other tools to destroy ISIS, but gave little insight into their thinking about how they would confront the threat in an increasingly volatile world.

Compared to remarks by the Republican candidates on Saturday (Donald Trump said France’s gun control laws worsened the carnage while others said President Obama created ISIS by bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq), the Democratic candidates were less inflammatory, more nuanced and projected some understanding of the region’s complexity.

“We have to look at ISIS as the leading threat of an international terror network,” former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said. “It cannot be contained, it must be defeated.... But it cannot be an American fight. And I think what the president has consistently said, which I agree with, is that we will support those who take the fight to ISIS.”

The Democrats face off: A good, substantive debate that put Hillary’s weaknesses on display
The second Democratic debate saw Hillary stumble a bit on national security and Wall St., but to no great effect

The second Democratic 2016 presidential debate just wrapped up, much to the delight of journalists and other social pariahs who spent their Saturday night listening to three people snipe at each other over Depression-era bank legislation. It was actually a pretty good debate, with the moderators tossing out mainly substantive questions with good follow-ups, and the candidates picking away at each other on the areas where they actually disagree.

On the political front, this debate laid out many of the weaknesses that Hillary Clinton brings to the race as the frontrunner and heavy favorite, and she didn’t do the greatest job in neutralizing them. The gruesome terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday night shifted the debate’s early focus to national security, which, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, people tend to view as one of Clinton’s inarguable strengths.

As the candidates dug into the broader issue of terrorism and the specific problem of what to do with the Islamic State, the discussion invariably turned back to the invasion of Iraq, the event that precipitated all the current chaos and slaughter. The growth of the Islamic State in Libya led to questions from CBS’s John Dickerson about the wisdom of the Obama administration’s Libya intervention. Hillary voted for the Iraq invasion (which she now says was a mistake) and she backed the Libya intervention (which she still defends). Dickerson drew a line between the two and asked “how did you get it wrong with Libya if the key lesson of the Iraq war is have a plan for after?” Clinton’s answer was that they did have a plan, but it’s been beset by “turmoil and trouble” as a part of a broader “arc of instability” in the Middle East. True enough! But that gets us right back to the question of whether the more aggressive interventionism favored by Clinton is actually a good idea.

The Class War Has Already Started

Pundits and apologists are quick to chastise anyone who even speaks of class war, as if the words alone might spark what the pundits and apologists fear.

The pundits and apologists dread the words because they know the Class War has already started. The mainstream media’s hope is that denial will somehow suppress the broader recognition that the fault lines in American society are cracking wide open.

Last week’s entries explained why increasing wealth/income inequality is the only possible output of the current social- political -economic order. All the proposed “fixes”–more regulations, more taxes, more bureaucracies, etc.– will fail because they are merely extensions of a failed system that optimizes inequality, monopoly, cronyism, stagnation, low social mobility and systemic instability.

Visual Culture Impacts US History: What Is Seen and What Is Erased?

Nicolas Lampert's A People's Art History of the United States is a fascinating, if anecdotal, look at the ways activist art propels and augments social change movements. It makes no bones about the fact that it is not an all-encompassing survey of progressive art but is instead a look at the ways specific activists have used visual media - broadly defined to include everything from installations and street theater to painting, sculpture, puppetry, poster-making and photography.

Along the way Lampert interrogates how imagery has been used to promote rebellion against the British; support abolition; boost woman suffrage; honor Chicago's Haymarket martyrs; contest lynching; oppose World War I; publicize the World War II-era incarceration of Japanese citizens and US-born Japanese Americans; support civil rights and, later, build the Black Panther Party; push museums and galleries to feature more women and people of color; oppose nuclear power; support People with AIDS; and build a more peaceful and egalitarian world.

All told, A People's Art History covers a lot of ground and is a valuable resource for anyone interested in how community organizing and popular culture intersect. It is also an instructive look at the ways the historical record is distorted by the stories we choose to tell and the images we choose to accompany them.

Millions of Android Devices Vulnerable to Remote Hijacking: Baidu Wrote the Code, But Google Made it Possible

Last month, Chinese security researchers uncovered a security vulnerability in an Android software library developed by the Chinese search giant Baidu, and when it comes to security vulnerabilities, this one’s a whopper. It allows an attacker to remotely wreak all sorts of havoc on someone’s phone, from sending fake SMS messages to downloading arbitrary files to installing other apps without the user’s authorization.

The widespread deployment of the vulnerable software library makes things even worse. The library, known as the Moplus SDK, is used by over 14,000 separate Android apps. By some estimates, as many as 100 million unique Android devices were vulnerable. And that isn’t even the worst of it.

Further investigation by researchers at Trend Micro showed that this wasn’t just the result of some security bug. The Moplus SDK was actually designed to do all the terrible things described above. That’s right: Baidu apparently actually built the capability into its SDK to remotely upload files, install apps, and trigger all sorts of other actions—and this capability existed on every device on which an app that contained the Moplus SDK library had been installed.

Global Warming Is Draining the Waters of Life

LONDON—Up to two billion people who depend on winter snow to deliver their summer water could see shortages by 2060 as upland and mountain snowpacks continue to dwindle.

An estimated 300 million people could find, 45 years on, that they simply won’t have enough water for all their needs, according to new research.

Climate change driven by rising atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide—in turn, fed by human combustion of fossil fuels—may already be affecting global precipitation. Researchers have consistently found that much of the world’s drylands will increase as global average temperatures rise.

Fracking Goes on Trial for Human Rights Violations

As convoys of heavy trucks carry fracking equipment into new oil fields in neighborhoods and wildlands around the world, an alliance of human rights organizations is making plans to put the entire practice of hydraulic fracturing on trial. The court is the Permanent People's Tribunal, a descendant of the Vietnam War-era International War Crimes Tribunal. The Peoples' Tribunal is a branch of no government on Earth. It has no power of enforcement. It has no army, no prison, no sheriff.

So what's the point?

The point is that it matters to tell the truth in a public place. It matters to affirm universal standards of right and wrong, to clearly say, "There are things that ethical people do not do to one another and to the Earth."

It matters especially when international and national justice systems, even in purported democracies, are seemingly incapable of protecting people and the commons - air, water, fertile soil, stable climate and all the other necessary conditions for the exercise of basic human rights. It is especially important when transnational corporations are allowed to write the laws that regulate their own actions, making their transgressions effectively "legal," no matter how outrageous.