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State of emergency in France

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Re: State of emergency in France

#201
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That'll just make things worse, I'm afraid. "Disarm" in this context probably includes a very large occupation force, and would be seen as a defacto invasion of their lands.

Really, the only way (in my opinion) to stop this now and de-escalate the hatred, is to segregate via mass deportations and pull-backs of expats. It's not a "pretty" thing to suggest, and I'd even argue against it on moral grounds as it'll include complete innocents.

Re: State of emergency in France

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nothing would be more crushing to ISIS than people of all faiths living peacefully, happily side-by-side, as friends, neighbors, and families. People living in Syria and Iraq have their cities bombed by western armies. People in Lybia saw it earlier. Maybe they lost their friends or relatives in a war. Sorry but your naive words about peaceful living would sound like a bullshit to them.

> your naive words about peaceful living would sound like a bullshit to them I understand the reasoning (but please dial back the tone), but I think it's wrong: First, peace is often made by those same people who survive war and other horrors. The great modern institutions of international peace were built by the survivors of WWII (and WWI before it), people who saw far more and were far less naive than you or me. Th…

No. I don't live there. But I know that US and France invaded those countries and are fighting again IS. What was the true reason to do that I don't know. And what were the objectives of attackers I don't know too. They declared it was a revenge for Syria.

You are right, the United Nations was founded after the war to prevent conflicts to give a chance for other ways to resolve them. People who saw what war is didn't want to see it again. But people today are other generation. Was a decision to invade Lybia, Syria, or Iraq approved by UN? Was there any dialog? Were all diplomatic and economic measures avaiable used? Was it really necessary?

I didn't mean to be rude but I still think words about peaceful living from western countries won't reach people in Middle Asia.

Re: State of emergency in France

#203
post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just think that conflict fueling unrest more than anything else. Despite the attention it receives, Israel is actually a pretty localized issue. It has very little to do with the biggest conflicts in the Middle East. If Israel weren't around, Syria would still be destabilized and we would still have ISIS. Also, your rhetoric around wiping Israel off the map kind of gives your agenda away.

My agenda. :D I got the idea of wiping Israel off the map from PLO "peace suggestion". I'm not going to pick a side in that stuff. I'm just extremely cynical that there would ever be peace.

When you pull your rhetoric out of the PLO playbook, you've already chosen a side.

Re: State of emergency in France

#204
post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My agenda. :D I got the idea of wiping Israel off the map from PLO "peace suggestion". I'm not going to pick a side in that stuff. I'm just extremely cynical that there would ever be peace.

When you pull your rhetoric out of the PLO playbook, you've already chosen a side.

Not picking a side is not knowing what PLO wants?

I really thought that everybody would consider "wiping Israel our of Levant" outright ridiculous idea. I will try to be more specific next time.

Re: State of emergency in France

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Israel weren't around, Syria would still be destabilized and we would still have ISIS. Are you sure? According to the founding father of Zionism Theodore Herzl, “the area of the Jewish State stretches: “From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.” According to Rabbi Fischmann, “The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon.” When viewed in the current…

> According to the founding father of Zionism Theodore Herzl, “the area of the Jewish State stretches: “From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.” Yeah, it's just that no Israelis want any more areas. Except the extremist ones.

How much power do the extremists hold in this situation? Usually extremists hold a lot of power due to their outsized impetus.

Re: State of emergency in France

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your naive words about peaceful living would sound like a bullshit to them I understand the reasoning (but please dial back the tone), but I think it's wrong: First, peace is often made by those same people who survive war and other horrors. The great modern institutions of international peace were built by the survivors of WWII (and WWI before it), people who saw far more and were far less naive than you or me. Th…

No. I don't live there. But I know that US and France invaded those countries and are fighting again IS. What was the true reason to do that I don't know. And what were the objectives of attackers I don't know too. They declared it was a revenge for Syria. You are right, the United Nations was founded after the war to prevent conflicts to give a chance for other ways to resolve them. People who saw what war is didn't…

> People who saw what war is didn't want to see it again. But people today are other generation.

I suspect the same thing. Many in the US and elsewhere in the West since 9/11 have been quick to embrace violence, as well as the scourges that brought earlier wars: Nationalism, racial and religious prejudice, etc. What happened to the norms that said these things are dangerous? Is it that the generation who experienced the consequences has died out, and now we are ignorant again? Is that why history repeats? A lesson learned lasts no longer than a generation? How depressing.

I also wonder if I am merely remembering a golden age that never existed. Certainly during the Cold War many bad, hateful things happened.

> I still think words about peaceful living from western countries won't reach people in Middle Asia.

Remember the idea that the generation of WWII knew about war and peace, and our generation has forgotten. Perhaps the current generation in the Mideast is the one that knows, far better than we do, about war and peace.

Re: State of emergency in France

#207
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you pull your rhetoric out of the PLO playbook, you've already chosen a side.

Not picking a side is not knowing what PLO wants? I really thought that everybody would consider "wiping Israel our of Levant" outright ridiculous idea. I will try to be more specific next time.

No, picking a side is when you claim that wiping Israel off the map is the only solution.

Re: State of emergency in France

#208
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Not to disagree with your point about Bayesian reasoning but would you care to cite some source for your assertion about the relative dangers of white-supremacy groups and their ilk versus Islamic terror groups? 9/11 alone killed 2996 people [1] including hijackers and there's little question Al Qaeda/ISIS adherents would have killed many more if they could have. It was certainly not for lack of trying. [1] https://e…

Sorry for the delay, I've been AFK all day. My assertion (which it, for the most part is) is not based necessarily on body count (which is an important statistic, but not the totality of terrorist goals, which are to assert dominance and terrorize).

Consider the number of mass shootings that have occurred in the US this year (294 as of 10/1)[0]. Not all of them are acts of terror, but a surprising number could be considered as such. High-profile mass killings (like the Umpqua college one) are often carried out by young white men who wish to assert their dominance over a culture they feel doesn't respect them. As a rule, I'm probably better off being wary of young white men than young black or brown men (gets to the prior probability problem in GPs post).

Consider the broad response to the recent college student protests at Mizzou and across the country. I know of threedifferent arrests for making death threats on yikyak - these are also terrorist acts. They are acts carried out by people aiming to inspire terror in their victims. [1], [2]. While we're on that subject, take a look at what happens to anyone targeted by gamergate activists. I haven't compiled the statistics on death threats targeting people like Randi Lee Harper and Anita Sarkeesian, but I'm sure we can call that terrorism as well.

Consider attacks made against abortion clinics. I'll just leave the wikipedia article here. [3] Again: violence enacted with the intent to suppress behavior with which the perpetrators disagree. Terrorism.

Think about the astounding number of racial hate crimes committed in the US. Not all of them are specifically terrorist, but a large percentage of them are committed in order to suppress and terrorize a people. I mean, just google black church bombings, or for that matter look to our not-so-distant history of lynchings.

We do ourselves a disservice as a people if we only consider as terrorism the big-bomb, large-attack events. There's more to terrorism, and our homegrown terrorism which (speaking perhaps over-broadly here) grows out of sense of white, male, christian entitlement and superiority being perpetuated through violence is something to which we (as USians) often turn a blind eye. We should own our past and do better in the future.

0: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/01/2015-...

1: http://www.michigansthumb.com/news/article_a8145fb0-8af3-11e...

2: http://www.themaneater.com/stories/2015/11/11/suspect-arrest...

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence

Re: State of emergency in France

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be interested to see what you would think of this, your statement, if you were holding the dismembered body of your father, mother, sib,ing or loved one in your arms. Dead. Our free societies do not no Eed to change. Theirs do. And the solution is very simple. The problem is nobody has the balls and determination to do it. There's a fundamental incompatibiliti between ideologies and behavior. Being poor, uned…

> I would be interested to see what you would think of this, your statement, if you were holding the dismembered body of your father, mother, sib,ing or loved one in your arms. Dead. I pray that I would have enough presence of mind to not be overcome by grief and be able to utter the same statement as I did now. People who are now holding their dead are a fraction of a fraction of percent in Europe. I feel for them,…

> People who are now holding their dead are a fraction of a fraction of percent in Europe

See, that, right there, is the problem. As well as the obvious way in which other commenters seem to have interpreted my post through their obviously distorted lens.

On the first point, these people are not numbers. They are human beings. They are someone's father, mother, child or sibling. That's where cold statistics fail us. Nobody should tolerate the idea of people being killed by the hundreds every so often in a theater or futbol field and argue that they are "a fraction of a fraction of percent". Sorry, that's just sick.

On the other point. It's interesting that I did not say "let's kill them all". All I said was "The world needs to unite against them, not respect their bullshit religion and ideology." and that was obviously taken by many to mean "let's kill them all". And that is NOT what I said or even implied.

The world truly needs to unite against "them". And "them" means the "crazy as fuck radicalized segment of the Muslim religion". It does NOT mean all Muslim's, the vast majority of whom are normal folks who just want to live a good life and would not hurt anyone any more than the average Christian, Jew or whatever.

Some posters went as far as to ask why I want revenge (with the implication being killing them).

This interpretation of my comment reveals the poster's world view more than anything else.

I did not propose revenge or killing? THEY are seeing this. Not I. I did not say any such thing.

I happen to think the world needs to unite against them (the radical crazies) and segregate them. Give them a chunk of space --a country-- where they can be as fucking crazy as they want. Let them be and maybe we talk to them again in 200 years.

During that time they don't get to benefit from anything the rest of the world has to offer. They get to exist within their own sick rules and enjoy anything they can create. They think women ought not be educated? Fine. They don't get to buy iPhones and computers and cars. Why? Because they are also designed and built by highly educated and capable women and if their ideology looks at them almost as animals then they should not benefit from anything women create anywhere in the world.

In other words, let them live any way they want and under whatever sick rules they want to live under IN THEIR OWN LAND.

And, yes, they don't get to move into any Western country without first proving, way beyond any doubt, they can live by our rules and our social conventions.

And, no, we --meaning nobody-- buys their oil. They can choke on it.

It's really interesting to read a comment where the justification, to paraphrase, is something akin to "the dead are a small percentage of the population". This terrorism problem is much larger than that. And it is the START of a MUCH, MUCH bigger thing. My heritage is one that saw multiple millions of people murdered in a genocide. Genocides don't start with a memo distributed to millions saying "OK, let's do it today". No, crazy sick crap like that starts slowly and grows to a boil, expands and gets out of control.

Some people, like me, today and for a few years are screaming "we have to deal with this now". Others are making ignorant comparisons with the rate of automobile accidents, etc.

The problem with this logic is that automobile accidents are a matter of statistics and probability. There is no intent behind it.

Terrorism has actually changed our world and terrorists would detonate a nuclear bomb in a large city if they ever get their hands of one.

The probability of car accidents in Europe or the US killing six million people in one event or even in one year is exactly zero. The probability of a terrorist group killing millions somewhere is a number greater than zero. That is a huge difference and anyone who does not understand this and insists on comparing to statistics on death by smoking, driving, police shootings or falling off ladders really needs to slow down and think hard about this.

Some of us are looking at this with a degree of desperation because we see what could and is likely to happen if the West does not react with determination. Calling someone's father, mother sibling an insignificant percentage of the population as a justification for not acting to stop this as soon as humanly possible is to, effectively, say it is OK to one day wake up to news on CNN that a nuclear bomb was detonated somewhere in Europe and millions of lives were lost.

Will that convince you? Is that what it will take for you to fully grok what's been going on and where we are headed? That would be sad.

Anyhow, let's not argue. We are not the problem.

Re: State of emergency in France

#210
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be interested to see what you would think of this, your statement, if you were holding the dismembered body of your father, mother, sib,ing or loved one in your arms. Dead. Our free societies do not no Eed to change. Theirs do. And the solution is very simple. The problem is nobody has the balls and determination to do it. There's a fundamental incompatibiliti between ideologies and behavior. Being poor, uned…

> The delusional stone age brutal inhuman apes pushing around nonsense have to. "They're stone-age apes, so LET'S BEHAVE EXACTLY LIKE THEM, ganging up and kicking the crap out of them with the biggest club we can find." What a superior, enlightened approach! We shall begin preparations henceforth. Oh wait, we're already bombing "them" back into the Stone Age...

> LET'S BEHAVE EXACTLY LIKE THEM > bombing "them" back into the Stone Age

This is YOUR view and lens, not mine.

Where did I say that? Please quote. 'Cause I did not. Read my other long comment on what I think should happen.

In a nutshell, I think we need to leave them alone. Give them a chunk of land big enough for them to have a great time under their own rules and let them be for 200 years. But they do NOT get to enjoy anything from the Western world or travel/move/interact with us. If we are shit, well, then, they get to live within their own little fantasy all they want and leave us the fuck alone.

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