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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

#281

Post by aikah »

AlexB138 wrote: post #72
cm2187 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France cannot really control the wave of migrants anyway. But it is unlikely that the terrorists are one of these migrants. My guess is that they were French nationals/residents.

>My guess is that they were French nationals/residents. Based on what? I'm pretty uninformed here, and it seems like a lot of people are bringing up refugees. Curious why you think the opposite.

What he means is french muslims , which are nationals/residents. Charlie Hebdo attackers were french nationals, though having a north african/african background.

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

#282

Post by gammafactor »

jules wrote: post #193
lazaroclapp wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It can be rational in the context of anti-colonialism and sovereignist ideology and historical revanchism, as well as many other not at all irrational ideologies. It might or might not be effective, depending on the specific political goals in question. It is not, in general, about religion per se, except in so much as religion is part of group identity (in a similar vein as say, nationalism). But that is not the…

You really think that the sincere belief that you will spend an eternity in heaven and secure a place in heaven for 70 family members of your choosing and earn the love of God has nothing to do with it? It's hard for people who are not religious fundamentalists to understand that some people really believe this with as much certainty as you and I believe that the sun will rise tomorrow. This belief is precisely why s…

Amen. People don't quite understand how resilient and nasty the Islam language virus is. They're projecting their own religious points of view to these primitive savages.

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

#283

Post by ics »

Asbostos wrote: post #250
jacquesm wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A way to let others know you're safe even if you can't get through to them personally.

Does that have any value beyond reinforcing people's irrational fear of mass deaths? What if you let your family know you're not one of the 100 killed in this attack then die as one of the 600 murdered in France each year by common crime? I saw this happen with the London bombings. A colleague was almost in tears because her son lived in London and she couldn't contact him on the phone. It turned out he was fine, as…

There are more [geographical] disasters besides terrorist attacks. Tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc. where it's much more likely for broad swathes of people to be affected.

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

#285

Post by gotchange »

vonnik wrote: post #108
jmspring wrote: post #13

The repeated attacks, heavy immigration of refugees...I'm hoping for the best, but I feel like there is a powder keg here. Whether or not it is based in any fact, how this is handled and plays out is a serious concern.

It's really important to understand the Muslim community in France, and not evoke false connections. We don't know if the attackers had anything to with the flux of Syrian migrants moving across Europe now, but my guess would be: they had nothing to do with it. There are about 5 million Muslims in France, which accounts for about 7 percent of France's total population. France has deep, long-standing and often trouble…

You forgot to include the recent intervention in Mali by French troops. This incident definitely upset the Al Qaeda in the Maghreb people and this terrorist attack was probably a retaliatory attack for the intervention.

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

#286

Post by e12e »

clock_tower wrote: post #260
kryptiskt wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?)

The UK and Ireland are outside of Schengen. Hence the improvised refugee/homeless camp on the Calais side of the tunnel.

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

#287

Post by clock_tower »

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.

I said that concessions will work no better with ISIS than they will with Nazis and Communists. Both the Nazis and the Communists were revolutionary movements convinced that the world was going their way. When they got concessions, they became emboldened; the only way to be left alone by them was to challenge and defeat them.

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

#288

Post by jewbacca »

livatlantis wrote: post #100

In Paris right now. We are in shock. At both the scale and the extremely coordinated nature of the attacks on civilians at multiple locations. I work near rue Bichat and Le Petit Cambodge, a warm little restaurant in the 10e that my colleagues and I frequent, where people were tonight killed. The Bataclan is a well-known concert venue for metal bands, where I've seen several bands play live. Les Halles is at the cent…

I know this is a piddlingly minor thing, but I'm seeing it propagated everywhere, and in the spirit of having an informative HN thread:

'Eagles of Death Metal' is not a death metal band.

What they do play is eclectic and hard to label as anything more specific than "rock", but doesn't fit even a very inclusive definition of metal. See: https://www.youtube.com/user/EaglesDeathMetalVEVO/videos

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

#289

Post by tormeh »

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 agree. Süddeutsche Zeitung had a very good article (in German) on how young people who feel like their life is lacking are recruited into literal Islam, whether violent or nonviolent.[0]

0: http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/salafismus-als-jugendkult...

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

#290

Post by usaphp »

erickhill wrote: post #257
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 live…

The article you mentioned has no explanation of where he got those figures, as far as I know there is no official data on this and estimates range from 3Mln to 60Mln [1], which as you can see is quite bizarre estimate. According to official documents there were 799,455 people executed in a period from 1921 to 1953 [2] and keep in mind that's a total number of execution, not only those that were executed for political reasons, and that's over a span of 30+ years, so thats around 72 person a day across a whole soviet union territory (around 160+Mln people)

> on top of the estimated 20 million Soviet troops and civilians who perished in the Second World War

What does it have to do with Stalin? It was a war and people perish during a War.

> estimated that the death toll directly attributable to Stalin’s rule amounted to some 20 million lives

Just think about it, Stalin was in power for 30 years, so he had to "directly attribute" to a death of 2000 people every single day? Sounds quite bizarre to me. No official data of the 20Mln of "dead by Stalin's attributing", if you want to down vote me - at least show me official data.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin#Calculating_the_...

[2] - http://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/sep/12/highereduca...

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