The invention of the idea of ‘Fast Radicalization’ is a propaganda tool that places everyone in the Muslim minority in France under suspicion, that is it’s reason d’etre ! It discards the practice, even the idea of evidentiary based investigation, in favor of a new kind of political Spectral Evidence, a notorious tool of Cotton Mather in the Salem Witch Trials. All quotes from this essay,I won’t call it a ‘news story’, in italics.

‘French police arrested a man and a woman on Sunday as new details suggested the truck driver who killed 84 people in Nice and who was described by Islamist militant group Isis as one of its “soldiers” may have radicalised shortly before committing his attack.’…

‘In an interview with newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, Manuel Valls, French prime minister, said: “The investigation will establish the facts, but we know now that the killer was radicalised very quickly.

The claim on Saturday morning by Islamic State and the fast radicalisation of the killer confirms the Islamist nature of this attack.” ‘

‘Bernard Cazeneuve, interior minister, said on Saturday that people interrogated by police had indicated that he had undergone a rapid transformation from someone with for a long time no apparent interest in religion and who had never been flagged by intelligence services as a potential security threat.

“It shows the extreme difficulty of the anti-terrorist fight because we are dealing with individuals who are receptive to Daesh’s message and engage in extremely violent acts without necessarily having participated in [military] combats or getting trained,” Mr Cazeneuve added, using an alternative name for Isis.’

Anonymous sources quoted:

‘A person close to the investigation said that contacts in the phone found in the truck that Bouhlel used to plough into the crowd celebrating Bastille Day on Thursday evening were local jihadis.’

Then the briefest sketch of the perpetrator of this crime, Bouhlel, emerges out of the dross of hysteria, speculation and unconfirmed reports:

Tunisia-born Bouhlel had a conviction for affray but had not been to jail, unlike some other jihadis who were radicalised in prison.

A father of three, he lived in Nice with a French visa, had separated from his wife several years ago and worked as a delivery driver. He had rented the 19-tonne truck he drove to commit his massacre three days before the attack.

RTL, the French radio station, reported that his father in the town of Msaken, Tunisia, produced a 2004 psychiatric order for his son.

Closing the essay is a statement by presidential aspirant Alain Juppé :

Alain Juppé, the former prime minister who is seeking the centre-right presidential nomination, on Sunday criticised the Hollande government for its “fatalism.”

“It’s clear today that we need to switch gears in this fight that is a permanent and extremely serious threat,” he told Le Parisien.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cf12a30e-4c01-11e6-8172-e39ecd3b86fc.html#axzz4EfcjTlyF

I thought Mr. Juppé’s comments echoed a  recent essay at the Financial Times by policy/security expert François Heisbourg, the reader can judge for herself if my comment is valid:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b25fe8cc-4a6a-11e6-8d68-72e9211e86ab.html#axzz4EaXdjrIB

Political Observer