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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

#451

Post by TeMPOraL »

rdudek wrote: post #445
spdustin wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last I heard, they were doing this to avenge their countrymen. In fact, we don't really know all the whos and the whys , we just know the whats . And what happened was a horrible thing that needs to be investigated, pored over, and responded to in a measured, rational way that doesn't become a nationstate-enabled revenge plot.

When you avenge your countrymen, you avenge by killing the people at fault... not innocent folks enjoying a concert.

Unless you want to do actual damage. In terror attacks, deaths are only collateral, the real damage is the overreaction of the attacked nation. It's an effective thing if you blame a country.

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

#452

Post by myegorov »

benihana wrote: post #363
bedhead wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are trying to rationalize with people who are irrational. They don't reconcile. It sucks. It's depressing.

>You are trying to rationalize with people who are irrational. In my opinion, this is the most dangerous statement in this thread. Saying the actions of these people is irrational loses any ability to understand why they're doing what they're doing and how we can stop them. It turns them into a faceless enemy who are doing things because of hate, which is easy and makes my ego feel better, but doesn't really explain…

I agree that with asymmetrical warfare resorting to terrorism is rational. What seems irrational is our inability to recognize the struggle of our enemy for what it's worth and our refusal to negotiate. I can't think of an example where negotiations (as in granting that your partner in negotiations is your peer) haven't led to a net positive outcome. To take but one example close to home: The Soviet Union was founded by a terrorist group. The ultimate recognition of the state by western powers and their foreign policy of engagement -- aside from the Cold War era -- was instrumental in bringing the enemy to its knees (whatever the wider repercussions of this outcome).

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

#454

Post by Animats »

The US terrorism alert level has not been raised, and there are no US terrorism alerts from Homeland Security following this.[1] PJM and CAISO (the two biggest US power grid operators) aren't showing any emergency actions or warnings. So the US anti-terrorism community isn't seeing an imminent threat.

[1] http://www.dhs.gov/news/2015/11/13/statement-secretary-jeh-c...

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

#455

Post by gozo »

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.

That is only because up until recently you could buy blank fire guns in Slovakia that were easily converted to real guns. Otherwise most of the weapons are from the Balkans as a consequence of the war.

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

#456

Post by m_mueller »

aianus wrote: post #411
imaginenore wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISIS is a jihadist terrorist organization, and that's recognized by most governments, many Islamic ones even. It's dishonest to compare openly fighting ISIS with blowing up and shooting civilians as a primary mean. What happened today was not "civil unrest".

> It's dishonest to compare openly fighting ISIS with blowing up and shooting civilians as a primary mean. That's all well and good to say when you know enlisting in the US military in conventional warfare against ISIS has a good chance of succeeding. But what if the US was the small poor state and ISIS was the world's largest economy whose military targets were too well-defended to attack? I'm sure you'd find lots o…

I find this relativism disconcerting. Please explain how targeting innocent civilians for their ethnicity or beliefs is equal to military vs. military operations. Most of the world is shades of grey but one has to recognize when an ideology is clearly a danger to human society and needs to be fought against. Whether and how violent the means need to be is up for discussion, I just can't understand why people would downplay what ISIS, Boko Haram, Taliban and similar groups are doing. Just because the term "Freedom Fighters" has long been intemixed with Terrorism doesn't mean that it applies here. IMO most of these groups don't want to 'liberate' people, instead they want to either bind them to their religious ideology, kill or enslave them.

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

#459

Post by davesque »

deciplex wrote: post #408
davesque wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. What dang quoted was a slur. Definition from http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_eng... : "An insinuation or allegation about someone that is likely to insult them or damage their reputation" Saying that "Islam soils the reputation of islam" is a slur by any reasonable interpretation. The link provided some information but the first sentence did nothing to that effect and was simply inflammat…

This wasn't a mere insinuation, this was a claim made along with some study linked in support of the claim. And since the topic at hand is precisely Islam's reputation in the first place, it seems we can't have any conversation about Islam's reputation for violence (deserved or not), and what to do about it, at all. If your goal is to integrate Muslims living in Western nations into Western society, what is going on…

The OP began by saying "Islam soils the reputation of islam. It has a massive problem of large percentages of Muslims supporting (or being okay with) violence and terrorism." Without further proof, that statement is an allegation at best and a slur at worst (especially if the following proof doesn't hold up).

He then went on to say "42% of young Muslims in France believe suicide bombings are justified (35% overall)." So why wasn't his original statement "Islam in France among 42% of Muslims less than 30 years of age (that were prompted to answer a survey question in an environment we know nothing about) soils the reputation of Islam?"

So, he began by making a broad generalization about Islam as a whole and then quoted a statistical observation about a small percentage of Muslims. Sorry, but 2 + 2 = 4. Broad generalization + no proof = slur.

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

#460

Post by fein »

NotHereNotThere wrote: post #436
fein wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were active shooters in this instance. Not much you can do about bombs, see Timothy McVeigh.

And this is the point I'm trying to make. Adding armed citizens into the mix will just shift the method of killing. I've seriously considered the "arm your citizens" argument, and honestly can't think of it helping, at all. These guys aren't your run-of-the-mill muggers; they're actively thinking about inflicting the highest casualties in the most efficient manner. Today it's shootings since most people wouldn't be a…

At the very least you have some form of self defense. Do you assume all gun owners to be incompetent oafs? I probably shoot more than most police.
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