581–590 of 737 posts
(Warning: It's really long, but answers a whole lot of questions that a whole lot of westerners, outsiders have about that group, the region, their funding, recruiting, idealogy and why they still haven't been defeated. Well worth a read.)
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Are you actually going to put some lone nut jobs here and there on the same level as organized and determined jihadists? If so, you need to include the tens of thousands of murdered people that ISIS has been responsible for. You'll need to include the Russian jet that was blown up, the attack in Paris, and all those killed by al-qaeda on 9/11, etc. You'll also need to explain why the FBI terrorist list doesn't show t…
The FBI is concerned about white supremacists: http://thegrio.com/2015/05/12/fbi-white-supremacists-law-enf... (this particular domain isn't the best, but it's a story that was repeated all over the place) And stuff like https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2012/may/extremism_052212/e... , etc. And they were in fact doing more, but a lot of it (along with funding) has gone by the wayside since 9/11.
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> It's my sincerest hope that French troops will be deployed to Syria in the near future, Maybe you should join the counter-terrorism forces or intelligence community instead to help your country, if that what you're actually after, not just blind revenge because you have to admit that these attacks were a big SNAFUS on the French security apparatus part and some heads got to roll over this but I was amazed to see th…
> I find it really amusing that the general sentiment in France towards guns and a 2nd amendment style right is negative when it is not a stretch to say that some lives could have been saved if armed persons of the populace came to the rescue Please, no. Liberalization of guns (that is, a tool for hurting and killing living beings) doesn't solve terrorism. It doesn't make people safe. It doesn't help. People in USA d…
ps: I'm not even against there policy, I'm just following the simple engineering rule that errors happen, and having lots of weapon everywhere are more opportunities for things to go wrong. So far nobody has the solution against violence.
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>his main motto is 'close the borders' I'm not out of touch enough to have missed this opinion. But that is not the same as saying that people should be sent back to war zones. We don't have borders with Syria. But you are right that I don't know specifically what that Dutch politician actually demands other than closing the borders.
> that is not the same as saying that people should be sent back to war zones. "In the region", you can choose whether to send them to: 1) Turkey, an increasingly-authoritarian regime which is already overflowing with millions of refugees, making money with the fanatics and holding mainstream cultural values that tend to despise people from Syria/Kurdistan/Iraq; 2) Lebanon, a country where refugees from other conflic…
They prefer that such migrants should travel to Europe, who are naively taking those migrants in.
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> And no one in Europe is advocating throwing anyone back into a war zone. Ah, you must be a bit out of touch with recent developments in NL. We're soon to have elections and it looks like we'll have Geert Wilders for prime minister, his main motto is 'close the borders', the secondary one is 'the problem is the foreigners' and the third is 'let's throw all those refugees out'. And whether it is exactly 40% or not is…
> We're soon to have elections and it looks like we'll have Geert Wilders for prime minister That's incredibly depressing. I only know of Geert Wilders from the court case (it was part of a law class), but I always assumed he was some uber-fringe politician who would never get anywhere near high office. The world is entering a new period of radicalization and I'm very worried about the consequences.
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The right answer? Kill Assad and help the people take back Syria. We should have done it three years ago before much of the moderate resistance was killed but it still needs doing. And as for your Israel jab, they're better to the Palestinians than the Arab states in the area are. And none of the Israelis I've talked to seem to have inherently racist beliefs but many of the recently middle-eastern Arabs do. (About th…
Right? Just like killing Saddam and Gadafi stabilized the region. I'm sure nothing bad would happen. It's not like something worse than Al Quaida can happen again. Europe fully deserves the migrant crisis. It went into Middle East guns blazing, and expects to come out of it unscathed.
I work with a Muslim and I'm a Christian. Since we are both very conservative, I actually have more in common with him than with my secular coworkers and friends. Unfortunately we both work remotely and live several hundred miles from each other. I think we could be good friends if we lived closer. One thing I have learned talking with my Muslim coworker is that, just like in Christianity, there are many divisions an…
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/nov/16/paris-attac...
In another article I read this month (but can't seem to find right now) it was explained that "terrorism" was mostly... a social network -- and the article above agrees with that characterization, I think.
This whole mess doesn't have a lot to do with religion, Islam or otherwise; it's about young people trying to find meaning.
It may sound absurd, preposterous, ridiculous, despicable even, to compare today's terrorists to peaceniks from the 60s, but dismissing them as "crazies" is even more wrong, and less helpful.
(And I say this as a Frenchman having lived in Paris all my life).
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Breivik was most certainly part of a movement. They have web forums and everything.
I am aware of the "white power" movement that exists online, some are just trolls but some are serious, and there is always this moment in which it feels the jokes are a little too sincere...I say this as a non-white male. Moreover, beyond stormfront and trolls, there do indeed exist political, nationalist parties and groups. Nonetheless, Breivik, unless I'm wrong about it, was not part of a movement trying to domina…
The biggest difference is - for want of a better word and I'm really sorry about using that term in the current context - because of their ability to execute. They would if they could, they just can't.
I work with a Muslim and I'm a Christian. Since we are both very conservative, I actually have more in common with him than with my secular coworkers and friends. Unfortunately we both work remotely and live several hundred miles from each other. I think we could be good friends if we lived closer. One thing I have learned talking with my Muslim coworker is that, just like in Christianity, there are many divisions an…
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Wow, that's a complete cop out. Can you come up with any definition of "terrorist" where significant numbers of the one billion Chinese are commiting terrorist atrocities abroad, for example?
Can you come up with one where significant numbers of the billions of Muslims in the world are committing terrorist atrocities abroad? The vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace, just like everybody else. To your question though, the French resistance during the second world war could easily have been called terrorists, as could the American revolutionary army.
I think one of the major issues is defining peaceful and non-violent. From my personal experience (I am from a Muslim country), I have seen many Muslims who would not commit violence themselves, but they do not have any trouble if some extremists commit violence. Some would even give moral justification of the violence. In our country's atheist community we commonly joke "Extremists want to kill us, Moderates want Extremists to kill us". FWIW, apostasy is punishable by death in some Muslim countries.
To sum up, almost all the Muslims are non-violent, but how many of them are truly peaceful? You will be very surprised to know the number.