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Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

nytimes.com

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Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

#251

Post by buserror »

toyg wrote: post #172
buserror wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the 'foreign' policy is irrelevant. The 'foreign' policy is made to appear the state is 'doing something' while MOST of the problem has been in the country for many, many years. Most of the problem is that the youngsters of immigrant stock have not been integrated, and have nothing else to do than turn to crime and/or religion, so are just RIPE for radicalism... And there's little the state can do…

Of course craziness can explode in many ways, but denying that foreign policy is a huge trigger is just disingenuous. How many suicide bombers have you seen in Canada or Sweden? And they have a huge migrant population, larger than France in percentage terms, with various degrees of (non-)integration. But they don't set other countries on fire nor they usually bomb anyone, so they don't get hit by paramilitary network…

Fair enough; I think I should have said that it's not 'only' foreign policy that matters, it's part fo the factors of course. You can play with thought policies when you are not already crowded with a population of people who feel they are being dealt (rightly, or wrongly, or perceived, or real) the wrong hand.

The real sad thing is that it puts a lot of other people in the wrong sort of focus, all the people who ARE integrated, who made the efforts, who overcame the hurdles of segregation and racism; these are the 'visible' people who'll get in trouble in the next few weeks/months in the daily lives, and perhaps make them wonder if it was such a good idea to identify and 'join' a population that is just angry and looking for a soft target.

Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

#252

Post by iMark »

scrollaway wrote: post #230
iMark wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's their choice not mine. As much as I'm able to claim, I'd never advocate such.

And there stems the entire problem with islam from. A lot of people killing "in its name"; more often than not, where that is just abused as an ideology to rally more marginalized people to the cause. We'll never be able to stop those that abuse religions and causes for political gain, but we can starve their number of "soldiers" by not giving impressionable people more reasons to hate a country.

I don't believe Islam is fundamentally different than Christianity. Present day interpretations aside, I believe both share a similar DNA.

I believe the solution is to look inward (as I've already, "do no harm"), rather than to condemn outwards.

And yes, I'm willing to concede the naiveté of my viewpoint.

Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

#253

Post by lemevi »

usaphp wrote: post #224
Svip wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he might be talking about Stalinism. Or at the very least, just Stalin.

So you think Stalin was as bad as ISIS and Nazis? edit: Why downvotes? I've asked a question, I wonder how western people see Stalin in history. I as Russian see him as the one who was involved in defeating Nazis

As a Russian do you know about the purges he enforced? What is your opinion about the killing of people just for being educated or having having grievances with stalin's governing. Is it OK to kill people for disagreeing with government policies? Like even the post-Stalin soviet government had disowned him.

Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

#254

Post by tormeh »

cm2187 wrote: post #203
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a major problem is that even they can't know who among them - in the big groups of refugees making the journey - is an isis member or supporter, and even if they're not, there's no telling who is going to radicalise in the future. The attacks earlier this year in paris weren't done by someone that came from that area, iirc.

The French TV mentions that the terrorists were speaking French. And based on previous attacks it is more likely to be home grown terrorists. Syria is probably just a pretext, like a lot of European leftists in the 70s were using the Palestinian situation to justify their terrorist attacks.

Hm... Interesting parallels:

In the 70s, European communist terrorism was widespread because of support from the Soviet Union. Now, European islamist terrorism is widespread because of support from the middle east. I'm aware that the CIA et al. have been doing exactly the same thing, but it's just a sad pattern.

Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

#255

Post by jacquesm »

ps4fanboy wrote: post #188
asasasasasas wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if we were to remove our dependence on foreign oil? Though fusion is a long way out, hypothetically, if we didn't have any reason to interfere and could just leave the Middle East to figure out its own problems, they wouldn't have a reason to see us as the enemy.

Wouldn't that destabilize the middle east even more?

It would start an avalanche. The problem is that you never know when or where those stop.

Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

#256

Post by clock_tower »

RogtamBar wrote: post #84
dragonwriter wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How can a country possibly prevent these things while still maintaining a free society? You can't even prevent them when not being a free society. Its not like terrorism only occurs in free societies.

This is bullshit and you know this. There is very little chance of anyone successfully getting up to terrorism if society is a) riddled with informers b) detaining people without charges is legal c) totalitarian ideology and political supremacy makes the establishment of parallel societies impossible. Border controls make importing terrorists next to impossible. The former eastern Bloc had no terrorist incidents. Pul…

The Eastern Bloc had plenty of terrorism, as well as organized crime -- who do you think was supplying all those black markets?

Being a police state is one thing; being an _effective_ police state is something else, much harder (at least in the pre-computer era). In the Soviet case, it didn't help that they didn't really care much about crime...

Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

#257

Post by erickhill »

usaphp wrote: post #208

I don't understand how can you talk about ISIS, Nazis and Communists in the same sentence? Communism has nothing to do with violence compared to ISIS and Nazis... Edit: Why downvotes? Idea of communism does not propose violence, Nazis and ISIS on the other hand do.

As horrific and scary as terrorist acts are to civil societies (and impactful to our politics), Stalin's rule was far more devastating. "In February 1989, two years before the fall of the Soviet Union, a research paper by Georgian historian Roy Aleksandrovich Medvedev published in the weekly tabloid Argumenti i Fakti estimated that the death toll directly attributable to Stalin’s rule amounted to some 20 million lives (on top of the estimated 20 million Soviet troops and civilians who perished in the Second World War), for a total tally of 40 million." http://www.ibtimes.com/how-many-people-did-joseph-stalin-kil...

Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

#258

Post by jacquesm »

slantedview wrote: post #86
user_0001 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What should be done? Bomb the hell out of the Syrians? Surely they have suffered enough. Iraq III? Maybe this time.... maybe.... Send the ground troops into Saudi? Quatar? Acknowledging that some of ISIS / Al-Qaeda gripes do have some merit, stop interfering in other countries affairs, stop propping up dictators because they are "our" dictator. Something else? Unfortunately for the Syrians, my money is on bomb the he…

Our bombs and bullets are what led to the creation of ISIS. Surely the solution is not more bombs and bullets.

Bombs, bullets and money.

Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

#259

Post by igrekel »

janus24 wrote: post #192
asasasasasas wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP meant that this is the first time since WWII that France has closed its borders, which is true. For those curious about 2005 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_French_riots#State_of_eme... Edit: I was wrong, the President said the borders were closed, but then clarified that they weren't.

The borders are not closed, it's just a restoration of border controls.

Border controls were already restored in preparation for the Paris conference.

Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

#260

Post by clock_tower »

kryptiskt wrote: post #126
clock_tower wrote: post #93

I'm very curious about where the attackers got those firearms. France isn't as heavily disarmed as England, but it isn't exactly the United States for firearms availability; if any of the offenders' weapons can be recovered, I'm sure there will be interesting things to learn from their serial numbers.

There are open borders in most of EU and it's a piece of cake to buy automatic weapons in eastern Europe, gangs in Sweden import theirs from Slovakia for example.

I hadn't known that it was as bad as that! (Other posters here mention old Soviet arms caches, and the general surplus of weapons spread by the fall of Communism.) It sounds like the UK benefits quite a bit from being on an island... (Are they in Schengen or not?)
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