Earlier quoted context omitted.
How will cutting off immigration do anything? I think it's important to realize that this is something that happens and that you don't necessarily have to do anything . If you get a cold, you don't quarantine your block and divert your life savings to rhinovirus research, you just deal with it and try and take sensible precautions about hygiene.
Equating this with a cold virus is the height of imbecility. Governments have a responsibility to protect their citizens. The scope of this protection is up for debate, but ignoring it is not a choice that most citizens will tolerate.
Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say
321–330 of 672 posts
Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much "chatter" do you really need to coordinate something like this? If it is a small group of just half a dozen people you should be pretty much invisible if you act a bit clever. Coordination can be done via throw away sim cards and personal meetings so you don't really need to communicate that much.
Getting guns, grenades, creating bombs: These things take time, effort and "chatter".
'Chatter' is a sign of stuff not working as expected, if terrorists are half as intelligent as I give them credit for they'll know to stay off the phone and off the internet. You'd have a bigger chance locating them by the absence of traffic than by traffic assuming they are not as dumb as we'd like them to be.
Incidentally, and violating my own rule, that's why I don't believe in the whole 'snooping makes us safer' rubbish. If anything it just increases the size of the haystack for a constant number of needles.
Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say
#323This soils the reputation of islam. I know some good people (muslims) who suffer from prejudice on a daily basis because of attacks like these. Being a muslim in a foreign country is an increasingly difficult and isolating experience.
Islam soils the reputation of islam. It has a massive problem of large percentages of Muslims supporting (or being okay with) violence and terrorism. 42% of young Muslims in France believe suicide bombings are justified (35% overall). http://www.pewresearch.org/files/old-assets/pdf/muslim-ameri...
"Can Suicide Bombing of Civilian Targets to Defend Islam be Justified?" (p. 53)
Not a lot of wiggle room in that one. Thought perhaps the question might've been a bit more vague or general. However, it states specifically "civilians". Really...? ...42%? That's astonishing.
Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
I definitely put all three in the same category. Stalin was probably less bad than Hitler (he killed more people than Hitler did historically, but imagine the body count if Hitler had won); but it's not easy to choose among totalitarian regimes -- or aspiring totalitarian regimes, in ISIS' case.
Only when counting famines and a civil war type situation among his casualties. He killed much less than Hitler otherwise (which would still be a lot).
Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's precisely the point. Bar psychopaths, nearly everyone thinks they are doing the right thing, even as they do horrors. These people are so deeply indoctrinated that they think they are ultimately doing good in the eyes of god.
That's equating "do no harm" with "do the right thing". I don't believe the comparison stands.
If god is great and non-believers are bad and "god" says it's righteous and just to punish the non-believers, then naturally doing "god's work" is doing no harm?
Actually the truth is even messier... most of these young men committing atrocities are merely indoctrinated pawns who know very little of their own religion and instead defer to their "emir."
This ideological poison is being propagated by those individuals, with power/financial interests back in the middle east. I think the individual committing the act believes they are doing good, and the individual who convinced them to do it is too morally corrupted & detached to care about ideals such as "civilian life."
There are far more atrocities that occur in this world than there are psychopaths in the general population.
If we hope to make any progress toward peace, I think we need to truly understand the reasons why and how weak, impressionable minds with poor cultural integration can be manipulated to commit such atrocities.
It's easy to label these individuals as determined, unreachable psychopaths (particularly out of fear) but the sad truth is, most extremism is borne not of evil but of weakness. A select few manipulate this weakness to convince otherwise insignificant people, often with desires of grandeur to commit unthinkable acts. This power of perspective becomes increasingly obvious as you realize most problems with immigrants in European countries occur in the 2nd and 3rd generations -- those who have seen the true horrors of war first hand are not so easily fooled.
The hard truth is: if society doesn't provide susceptible minds with alternatives first, a small but steady % will be at the mercy of whomever comes along promising "answers."
Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
It looks like you're not quite as naive as you'd sounded at first... Remember, Stalin didn't go in for executions; he preferred slave labor. Deaths in the GULAG -- which could be as high as in the non-death-camp Nazi concentration camps, or higher -- should be counted as well as executions. (Remember how part of Stalin's price for peace with Japan was 300,000 Japanese slaves, none of whom ever returned to Japan after…
That's a war, Nazi Germany attacked USSR, people had to fight them, Stalin is not a field officer to force solders to march through a minefield, people die in a war, I don't think you are right here equating people who died fighting for their country with those who were executed for whatever reason.
Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say
#327I'm not entirely sure how I would define my guiding motivation in life, but I swear "do no harm" would be part of it. I despair at those who believe otherwise.
That's precisely the point. Bar psychopaths, nearly everyone thinks they are doing the right thing, even as they do horrors. These people are so deeply indoctrinated that they think they are ultimately doing good in the eyes of god.
So these indoctrinated individuals don't really see it as too horrendous of a crime to kill someone.
Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say
#328Earlier 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…
Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say
#329Earlier 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…
That's a caricature. A lot of the perpetrators, like in 9/11, are highly educated and even westernized people, not some backwater goat herders believing such BS.
They could be attracted to those tactics as a mean of compensating for personal issues etc (same way weirdos shoots up a school or a cinema elsewhere), but the political element is involved too.
The fundamendalist is not someone who believes naively such things (most devout village folks are peaceful and pragmatic and could not care less), but rather someone who "goes back" into believing such things (and even has self-doubt he tries to shake by action etc).
Re: Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say
#330Earlier 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.
I don't think they closed their borders. They invoked the Schengen protocol for re-instituting border controls. Under Schengen driving from France to Italy or Germany is like driving from Texas to Louisiana. But there is a clause allowing re-instituting border controls under certain conditions, including a national security emergency. [edit: source France24; http://mashable.com/2015/11/13/france-border-airlines-fligh…
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