The Week of January 5th, 2015
Care
1. Terrorist Attack Against Satirical French Newspaper
In the late morning of Wednesday, January 7th, two armed gunmen stormed the Paris headquarters of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper, and killed ten civilians and two police officers in one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in French history. Eleven others were wounded in the attack. It appears the paper, a weekly in the long French tradition of political cartoon satire, was targeted because of its publication of controversial cartoons depicting the prophet, Muhammad, and disparaging of him and Islam. The attack was not the first against the paper nor against European journalists writing about Islam; in 2011, Charlie Hebdo’s headquarters were firebombed in apparent retaliation for comments by its editor-in-chief; in 2004, Dutch journalist and filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was shot and decapitated in broad daylight in Amsterdam following the release of his controversial film Submission. As of Friday night Central European Time, one of the assailants has surrendered to French authorities near the Belgian border and the two others had been killed in an ambush by French special police forces.
In a separate but seemingly connected attack, two other assailants held dozens hostage in a Jewish grocery store in southeast Paris on Friday, one of whom was later killed by the police in a raid coordinated with the one that killed the Charlie Hebdo terrorists. Four French civilians were killed by the gunmen, though it is unclear if they were killed before or during the police raid.
The attack was the deadliest on French soil since 1961 at the height of the Algerian Civil War, and the deadliest in Europe since the July 7, 2026 London Underground bombings. It came as France continues to play a central role in international coalition efforts against the Syria-based Islamic State. French forces are also currently conducting anti-terrorist operations against Islamic extremist cells in North Africa, notably in the former French colonies of Mali and Chad. Wednesday’s attack coincides with a rise in anti-Islamic and far-right sentiment in Europe and in France in particular, galvanized by the increasing popularity of the Islamophobic political party le Front National under its leader Marine Le Pen. Le Pen immediately blamed “radical Islamism” for the attack, and observers are forecasting a further rise in her party’s popularity following this gruesome act.
2. NAACP Bombing
A Colorado Springs, Colorado chapter of the NAACP was the suspected target of a bomb that went off early January 6th. There were no injuries, although many people were shaken up and many others were reminded of a time when bombings against African-American activists were commonplace. Surprisingly, this event was not covered by MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, or the New York Times until the day after the attack. Many people learned of the bombing through the social media outlet Twitter, where the hashtag #NAACPbombing was trending. The FBI is investigating the case to determine whether it was a terrorist crime; the bomb went off between the NAACP and a barbershop next door.
When Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion for Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, he contended that electoral racism had been tamed. Many Americans claim that the country is a post-racial society, but for some the bombing of Martin Luther King Jr.’s home is still fresh in their mind, as are many other violent tactics utilized by whites in the Jim Crow South. Hopefully, events like the attack on the NAACP will remind us that racism is alive. Fixation on a post-racial society may lead to willful ignorance of continuing racial inequities in the present day.
3. New York City Decline in Crime
New York's crime rate seems to have mysteriously fallen following the city's police officers’ recent decision not to follow the 'broken windows theory’ in protest of the statements of mayor Bill de Blasio with regards to police brutality. The theory is based on the idea that enforcing the law on minor infractions would reduce more violent crime later on, a policy that the NYPD has employed since the mid-1990s. In the first week of 2014, the NYPD arrested over 400 for jumping turnstiles, while in the same week in 2015, only three were arrested. As a result of this drastic downturn in crime, courts all over New York City that are typically busy with traffic and parking violations are left idle and even close early, with summons for such offenses declining 90% compared to last year.
The protest began after the death of two officers, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, killed on duty in an ambush by a gunman who later killed himself. The attack appeared to have been inspired by the protests surrounding the Eric Garner grand jury decision, ostensibly as revenge for the killing of Garner by police. The NYPD accuses the mayor of an 'anti-police' rhetoric, and a contract dispute between the city and the police also contributes to the tension. The results of this police protests will serve as a test of the broken windows policy. Will crime rise as a result of not enforcing minor infractions? If crime falls or even just stays flat after the protest, the NYPD may inadvertently undermine itself by proving the debated broken windows theory ineffective.
4. Nigerian Oil Spill Settlement
On Wednesday January 7th, the Royal Dutch Shell Company agreed to pay out an $84 Million settlement to members of the Bodo community in the Niger Delta as reparations for two devastating oil spills in 2008 and 2009 that resulted in the destruction of thousands of hectares of land. The landmark settlement is considered one of the largest payouts for environmental destruction ever. Roughly 16,000 local fishermen will receive $3,300 in individual reparations, while the remaining $30 million will be left to the Bodo community as a whole.
The two major spills, some of the worst on record, mark a low point in a long history of environmental exploitation in the Niger Delta region. It is estimated that over 1.5 million tons of oil have spilled in the Niger Delta over the past 50 years, which is equal to one Exxon-Valdez size spill per year. The exact cause of such widespread destruction is not certain. Oil Companies like Royal Dutch Spell typically lay the blame on pervasive oil theft and illegal refining (which allows them to avoid compensation), but in this case, internal Shell documents claimed that their own aging infrastructure created the highest risk for hazards.
While this settlement represents a victory for the residents of Bodo and conservationists, it cannot make up for the decades of environmental destruction that has marred one of the most important marine ecosystems in the world. In order to protect what remains of the Niger Delta ecosystem, much more stringent regulations are needed to reign in both illegal activity and the actions of large oil companies. It is unlikely that this will happen anytime soon.
5. Obama to Veto Keystone Project
On January 6th, the day the new US Congress was sworn in, the White House announced that President Obama would veto the Keystone XL pipeline project if it came to his desk. The project has been a long-lasting political quagmire, dividing the nation even as many point to its insignificance.
Opposed by environmental groups, the pipeline would transport oil from the Canadian tar sands, where the extraction process is significantly more energy intensive than a normal well, to refineries in Louisiana. It has been pointed out, however, that the tar sands are already being developed without the pipeline and the oil shipped by train. The pipeline would lower the transportation costs of this tar sands oil, but the overall effect on global oil markets and environmental protection efforts would likely be insignificant.
Republicans have championed the pipeline project as a job creator, but besides the estimated 40,000 very short-term construction jobs associated with building the project, its long-term impact is unclear. Several liberal sources have claimed that the pipeline’s construction will only yield 50 permanent jobs. Either way, the oil economy has adapted around the long stalled Keystone project, leading to other pipeline expansions and a developed train route, and the country is, hopefully, moving slowly away from oil. In all, the Keystone issue seems much less relevant to the prosperity of the nation than either side would like the voters to believe.
Don’t Care
0. Thigh Gap Censorship
On December 31st, the British Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), responding to a complaint from an online shopper, ordered retailer Urban Outfitters to remove images of an underwear model from its website because her “thigh gap” was unhealthily wide. In its official ruling, the ASA acknowledged the defense offered by Urban Outfitters that the model was “naturally tall and slim,” but swept it aside, pithily stating, “we considered that the model looked underweight in the picture.” The ASA feared that “using a noticeably underweight model was likely to impress upon that [young] audience that the image was representative of the people who might wear Urban Outfitters' clothing, and as being something to aspire to,” and thus concluded the image was “irresponsible.”
The decision of the ASA has generated mixed responses. Maureen Shaw at mic.com wrote that “the U.S. needs to follow the U.K.'s lead,” adding that such ads have “harmful consequences” for body image. Many, however, are irked by the troubling policing of expressive mediums by government. Elizabeth Nolan Brown of Reason called the ASA’s act an example of government “trying to manipulate beauty standards through censorship” and added that the ruling violates principles of “free expression and commercial enterprise.” What’s more, the choice to ban the commercial display of some body types that are too thin “seems rather counterintuitive” and says, in Brown’s view, “that women naturally prone to thigh gap are freaks who must be banned from our view.” The ruling comes on the heels of several other assaults on expressive conduct by the U.K., including the criminal investigation of British reality star Katie Hopkins for nonviolent tweets that some complained were “racist,” and the arrest of politician Paul Weston for publically quoting a passage from Winston Churchill that disparaged Islam.
Aaron Gordon, Kevin Corkran, Monika Hur, Ben Mandel, Will Kirkland, and Sam Houskeeper contributed