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State of emergency in France

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Re: State of emergency in France

#71
post #39
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need targeted surveillance and by that I mean something that many will vehemently disagree with. Before you down vote, please make the effort to read to the end and then down vote! If I was a doctor and my patient had cancer in his foot, then if try to treat the foot to get rid of the cancer. I would also pay particularly close attention to the leg connected to that foot, to make sure that the cancer did not sprea…

It's your opinion. As much as I disagree with it it was a well written and we'll thought out post, and as such it is very much against the HN guidelines for you to be downvoted this way.

Except for the whole Muslim-cancer analogy.

Re: State of emergency in France

#72
post #63
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Draconian measures targeted against large ethnic groups has been historically unsuccessful in Europe. It also grievously violates the core principles of an open and liberal society, which are presumably what we are supposed to be defending. Vehemently disagreeing with your opinion is a crucial necessity for anyone who stands for democracy and liberty.

Your comment tells more about your identity than anything else. Not that there is nothing really wrong with that. Democratic state could take any stance on the subject. Probably one that is easy to sell to people. This stuff comes interesting when we have democracy and liberty fighting against each other. Which do you choose?

My identity isn't particularly relevant to these foundational principles. I could be a committed nihilist or an anti-liberal ideologue and still explain how draconian ethnic surveillance violates the principles of an open liberal society.

Whether an open liberal society is ultimately good or worth maintaining is something I don't bring into the debate at this point. Since it is essential to the core values of the French republic, disputing it seems pretty futile.

If "democratic" has any real meaning, a democratic state can not take any stance on the subject: it can't take an anti-democratic stance, because that would be a contradiction in terms. Of course democracy is endangered by terrorism in exactly the way that people point out constantly: it undermines the basic security and "social fabric" that allows for democracy.

Re: State of emergency in France

#73
post #18
post #5

Didn't France approve sweeping surveillance laws back in July? And they even were on high alert due to international talks happening in Paris... Italy and Spain also stopped terrorist cells this month, but they don't seem to have such laws... Guess they need more unwarranted power, uh?

We need targeted surveillance and by that I mean something that many will vehemently disagree with. Before you down vote, please make the effort to read to the end and then down vote! If I was a doctor and my patient had cancer in his foot, then if try to treat the foot to get rid of the cancer. I would also pay particularly close attention to the leg connected to that foot, to make sure that the cancer did not sprea…

You understand how bayesian reasoning works, right? There are probably between three and six million muslims in France alone. Whatever monitoring you're doing, you're proposing to find on the order of a few hundred people, if that. False positives (which, remember: we cannot distinguish from actual positives) would end up targeting orders of magnitude more innocent people than guilty.

Worse, by breaking the compact of a free and just society with respect to a single religious group (cough), you're basically doing the terrorists' jobs for them - you end up marginalizing and disenfranchising huge swaths of your population (remember again: millions of people in France alone). Even if one is not not ethically and morally appalled by your proposal, the problem remains: your proposal would probably contribute more to radicalization than any other single action the terrorists themselves could take.

It is at a time like this when we most need to stick to the principles of a free, just, and open society. We need to re-affirm those, and I say that as an American who has lived through the post-911 transition into a security society. Learn from our mistakes: we've gone and made people more radical, spent more civilian and military lives, because as a nation we somehow thought we could fix the "muslim problem" through fighting and surveillance. Neither worked.

What will (eventually) work is working toward a nation and a world where all people are free and equal. Sure, there may still be attacks against such a nation, but that's what police are for (when the police are also just and equal). Furthermore, it's a lot harder to radicalize people when they live in a safe and just society that pays attention to them. I'm not surprised at all, given how non-muslim westerners have treated the religion and people, that we are seeing radicalized people.

And aaaaalso, this bears mentioning although it's kind of tangential. Not all muslims are brown. Not all muslims speak bad english / french. Consider all the work Imperial Japan did to wipe out christianity (you can't tell a religion by looking at someone), and all they did was make it stronger and drive it underground.

Consider: in the US, actually, the biggest terrorist threats come from white people. White people of the white-supremacy and militant-anti-abortion camps are responsible for far more terrorist attacks on US soil than ISIS and al-qaeda combined. We, as a nation, just don't really like to talk about surveiling all white people. It'd be ridiculous, a fact we understand instinctively because the white narrative is the non-marginalized one.

Re: State of emergency in France

#74
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're asking for more ideas and this is something I've had to painstakingly talk to people about all day, so here's a shot at this. First of all, identify the problem. Why are there terrorist attacks? Saying "religious nuttery" achieves nothing. Nuttery always exists but is in majority not enough to push people to suicide bombings. Terrorist attacks exist because of political power and influence. They're efficient,…

It's completely possible that the message sent here was not aimed to anybody living in France. It's also likely that certain large portion of French are not going to be satisfied unless something drastic is done. To them it's not about the problem, it is about feelings and identity. So this can't be solved entirely. Best thing to mitigate the problem would be a knee-jerk reaction that does least amount of damage. Bec…

> Best thing to mitigate the problem would be a knee-jerk reaction that does least amount of damage. Because in democracy you will have that knee-jerk, sooner or later.

That's an interesting take on it, and I don't really disagree with it. Maybe I hate that I don't disagree with it though. I hate having to settle for something. :/

Re: State of emergency in France

#75
post #54
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an alternative? All I see is naïve suggestions. As I see it we have several options: 1. We accept the fact that we will have more terror attacks in major European cities as a given. We such it up and we continue to live in a free and liberal society. 2. We accept total surveillance of our society. As the technology becomes more honed, terror attacks might be easier to prevent before they start. 3. We acce…

I always wonder why I never see this one on lists of choices: 5. Stop killing large numbers of Muslim people in the Middle East every week and see if that doesn't make them less likely to kill comparatively small numbers of people in Western cities every couple of years.

A million times this. Disarm the region by UN force. Establish peace and lot's of the issues at hand will be solved with it.

Yes it's hard but it needs to be on the top of that list.

Re: State of emergency in France

#76
post #31

This is a HN frontpage material only becuase it's on GitHub?

It is on the front-page of HN because sufficient HN members found it interesting enough to upvote. If you visit Github, I am sure you will find quite a few stories that have not made the front page of HN.

Re: State of emergency in France

#77
post #28
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is to monitor all Muslims living in Europe And Christians, of course (Brevik). Probably atheists and Jews as well, just in case.

Please don't partially quote me as it alters the meaning: > is to monitor all Muslims living in Europe who have the potential to be radicalised The last part of that is important. I'm talked about targeted surveillance.

I was quoting the relevant part. Or rather, the irrelevant part. I don't see why only Muslims that have the potential to be radicalized should be monitored.

Re: State of emergency in France

#78
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's completely possible that the message sent here was not aimed to anybody living in France. It's also likely that certain large portion of French are not going to be satisfied unless something drastic is done. To them it's not about the problem, it is about feelings and identity. So this can't be solved entirely. Best thing to mitigate the problem would be a knee-jerk reaction that does least amount of damage. Bec…

> Best thing to mitigate the problem would be a knee-jerk reaction that does least amount of damage. Because in democracy you will have that knee-jerk, sooner or later. That's an interesting take on it, and I don't really disagree with it. Maybe I hate that I don't disagree with it though. I hate having to settle for something. :/

I hate it too :/. But it makes sense. A valve to relieve pressure - in some direction that isn't destructive, or doesn't contribute to further radicalization, creating a feedback loop.

Re: State of emergency in France

#79
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an alternative? All I see is naïve suggestions. As I see it we have several options: 1. We accept the fact that we will have more terror attacks in major European cities as a given. We such it up and we continue to live in a free and liberal society. 2. We accept total surveillance of our society. As the technology becomes more honed, terror attacks might be easier to prevent before they start. 3. We acce…

Surveillance is not going to fix the issue. If we want to have fewer terrorist attacks, we have to prevent radicalisation by fixing the social issues that cause it. If we continue to do nothing, the problems will get worse, and surveillance will be futile. Fixing social issues is not easy. Masses of youths without education or perspective, racism, increasing segregation between the middle and lower classes can't be f…

> I'd suggest starting with schools. Make sure that kids go to school.

We already try to do this, they already fight this with violence (on us and on their own children).

Re: State of emergency in France

#80
post #54
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an alternative? All I see is naïve suggestions. As I see it we have several options: 1. We accept the fact that we will have more terror attacks in major European cities as a given. We such it up and we continue to live in a free and liberal society. 2. We accept total surveillance of our society. As the technology becomes more honed, terror attacks might be easier to prevent before they start. 3. We acce…

I always wonder why I never see this one on lists of choices: 5. Stop killing large numbers of Muslim people in the Middle East every week and see if that doesn't make them less likely to kill comparatively small numbers of people in Western cities every couple of years.

I didn't know France was doing that?

Anyhow it works relatively nicely here in Finland. We only take part in UN operations as peacekeepers. And we don't have radicalized Muslims doing strikes in Finland. But for some reason Finnish Muslim radicals still travel to Syrian and join ISIS.

I don't think Levant will be peaceful in my lifetime unless Israel magically disappears from the map.

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