At Least 120 Dead in Paris Attacks
- Thread starter GoodEnoughForMe
- Start date
The purpose was in most part, to test and demonstrate nuclear weapon, as well as terrorize Japanese population. The military goals could be achieved through conventional bombing, several orders of magnitude cheaper and with several orders of magnitude less civilian casualties.You are? But you just said that the targeting of Hiroshima made "little to no military sense"
Bugfatty300
Buddha Squirrel
I don't want to derail this thread further but I just to warn you that ihr.org is a site ran by right-wing holocaust deniers.
Let's get the thread back on topic
NEWS
Now that ISIL have killed citizens of China and Russia in the last couple of weeks, then of course those two states will not veto resolutions against ISIL in the UN Security Council. Le sigh.
O Camikaze and other moderators: do we get to discuss the Mali hostage situation here? It's still about anti-Western Islamic terrorism funded by those same purported allies of ours.
Another thing which is a selling point for this dementia is that it offers certainty. No more trying to live a life, seeing how to help your friends and family, get girls, plant that new tree, fix a draughty window, etc. Just take a rifle and kill people and party, at some point you die in battle.
NEWS
Now that ISIL have killed citizens of China and Russia in the last couple of weeks, then of course those two states will not veto resolutions against ISIL in the UN Security Council. Le sigh.
O Camikaze and other moderators: do we get to discuss the Mali hostage situation here? It's still about anti-Western Islamic terrorism funded by those same purported allies of ours.
Propaganda's always been essential to this kind of thread. We've already Godwynn'd the thread, so we can compare this to Nazism. It's
Your world is crap, kill these Jews and Slavs and Gypsies and Negroes who've done nothing to you!
versusYour world is crap, kill these filthy Western dogs who've done nothing to you!
Of course, they are told that these people appear to have done nothing to them but x or y or z somehow justifies their killing or they've covertly damaged whatever THE CAUSE is. It's the same thought process undergone by those charming ungentlemen of the IRA, UVF, etc., or by the various guerillas and military coups in Latin America up to the '80s. To this day I still find justification for crimes and felonies being Oh no, but X is a soldier. Obviously, fighting a war = instant absolution. It's circular logic at best if there's any lgoic to it, but somehow it suffices for a lot of people.Another thing which is a selling point for this dementia is that it offers certainty. No more trying to live a life, seeing how to help your friends and family, get girls, plant that new tree, fix a draughty window, etc. Just take a rifle and kill people and party, at some point you die in battle.
Yes, of course, but Saudi Arabia -and the other Wahhabist states also- preach against intoxicants of all types -in the name of God- while paying these people to get high and kill the hated infidel dog -in the name of God once again.
chijohnaok
King
Latest from the BBC on the origins of the attackers:
^And?
The attackers were at least 8. Is everyone else from a different first-EUcountry or something, and 2 is a strange number for a country where more than half the illegals arrive through?
Iirc some were even EU citizens already, no?
Maybe it is not a good idea to drain us from cash and expect us to host millions of immigrants as well, amirite.
The attackers were at least 8. Is everyone else from a different first-EUcountry or something, and 2 is a strange number for a country where more than half the illegals arrive through?
Iirc some were even EU citizens already, no?Maybe it is not a good idea to drain us from cash and expect us to host millions of immigrants as well, amirite.
brennan
Argumentative Brit
If we assumed that the hearsay about terrorists travelling under cover of the refugee crisis were true, what would be the implications of restricting the movement of refugees?
None. The terrorists would use alternative cover.
None. The terrorists would use alternative cover.
chijohnaok
King
"Hearsay" confirmed by a French Prosecutor:
The implication might be that it would be prudent to better screen those coming in.
"restricting" does not mean banning the movement or admittance of all refugees.
Wouldn't it be possible to still allow the admittance of refugees but to be a little more careful in doing so?
Yes, perhaps the terrorists may still find an alternative means to enter. Does that mean though that you need to make it easy for them to do so?
Why does someone put locks on the door of their home?
Why does someone use passwords on their smartphones, computers, online bank account access, debits cards, etc?
Why does someone use an anti-virus program on their computer?
Why does the civfanatics.com website require you to enter a password to log on?
You may not be able to prevent every attempt by a burglar or hacker to infiltrate, but you will stop most burglars/hackers attempts.
brennan
Argumentative Brit
It's already easy to cross borders, always has been. Even history's most heavily defended borders were porous. This paranoia is silly.
Moderator Action: I would recommend a separate thread.
O great and wise Fire of the Dutch, we heed your recommendation for now, even though hints that the attacks are connected might Surface.
It's not the origins, it's merely their point of entry.
chijohnaok
King
It's the same point of entry that has been used by thousands of refugees coming into Europe. That doesn't necessarily make them a refugee that turned into a terrorist, they might have been terrorists posing as refugees. But it appears that they infiltrated into Europe through the same channel as refugees have.
This is why some (including myself) are suggesting that the process of screening people coming into Europe be enhanced. That said, I am not a resident of Europe. What Europe collectively, or European countries individually decide to do is up them them. I have relatives who live in Europe, but again, it's not for me to say what happens there.
What do you mean by ‘enhanced’?
Also, opinion piece from Jonathan Freedman on the Grauniad:
Also, opinion piece from Jonathan Freedman on the Grauniad:
Let’s deny Isis its binary struggle – and celebrate the grey zone
Jonathan Freedland
Violent jihadism longs for a polarised world of black and white. We should not fall into that trap, even as we debate how to defeat it
The grey zone is where I want to live. Islamic State hates it, that place between black and white, where nothing is ever either/or and everything is a bit of both. Those who have studied the organisation tell us “the grey zone” – Isis’s phrase – is high on the would-be warriors’ to-eradicate list, along with all those other aspects of our world that so terrify them: women, statues of the past, the pleasures of the present.
Specifically, the grey zone refers to the sphere of coexistence where Muslim and non-Muslim might live together. That’s anathema to the frightened young men of Isis, who yearn for a world divided on binary lines, with room for only two categories – them and the infidel. Such a world would be as clean and neat as computer code, with Isis the ones and the rest of us reduced to zeros.
No wonder a city such as Paris – indeed, the very idea of a city – appals them. Such places are all about mixing, like with unlike. The modern city, whether Paris or Beirut, scares them because it suggests that human beings might just be able to rub along, those who are Muslim and those who are not, living in the same places, visiting the same shops, watching the same football matches, listening to the same music.
“Refugees welcome” scares them. It undermines their insistence that the west has an ingrained hostility to Muslims and could never be their home. Isis despises empathy and longs instead for polarity and conflict. They want atrocities such as last week’s in Paris – or today’s siege in Mali – to sow fear and loathing, so that non-Muslim majorities turn on their Muslim neighbours until the latter conclude the only place they can ever truly belong is the caliphate. One or the other, either/or. In the Isis mind, ambiguity, like a hybrid identity, is weakness and decadence.
In this last, trembling week, the grey zone has sometimes seemed to be shrinking. Not in the way Isis planned, but rather, under internal pressure. Our own debate about what to do next, about how to deal with a force that we struggle to describe, let alone understand, has polarised too, as it often does at moments of great strain. We’re losing sight of the grey.
Take what has been a perennial element of these conversations since 12 September 2001. Are terror attacks such as these “blowback” for western foreign policy? Stop the War rushed to make that point, too quickly even for its own tastes: within hours of the attacks, it had posted a blog headlined “Paris reaps whirlwind” of western action, only to take it down soon afterwards. Meanwhile, others slam such talk as a sophisticated form of victim-blaming or even western self-hatred, in which everything is always our fault, a worldview that strips Isis of moral agency and responsibility.
It can be hard to hear yourself think above the clamour; the voice of the grey zone gets drowned out. But there’s a distinction to make. There are the motives, even theology, of the hardcore Isis ideologues; and there’s what drives previously uncommitted people to rally to their flag. For example, it might be true that Isis ideology is rooted in something deeper than a desire to avenge western foreign policy – yet also true that lethal western interference in mainly Muslim countries has recruited disaffected young Muslims to violent jihadism. Both statements could be true at the same time. Yet too often people argue as if it’s one or the other, 1 or 0.
For my own part, I can see the appeal of the “blowback” case. Since 9/11 the west has kept intervening, and the terror has not stopped. But it’s such an incomplete account. Shiraz Maher of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King’s College, London, has interviewed more than 100 Isis volunteers and reads the group’s propaganda diligently. He is clear that militants have been radicalised by western “sins of omission” just as much as the west’s “sins of commission”.
Many headed to Syria in 2013, for example, before Isis had established its caliphate or made the descent into outlandish barbarism, having come to the disgusted conclusion that the west was not going to bomb the Assad regime and that, if they wanted to defend Syrians from Assad’s barrel bombs, they would have to do it themselves. Similarly, the 1990s generation was radicalised by the west’s failure to intervene earlier to save Muslim lives in Bosnia.
In other words, attributing Isis terror – or even Isis recruitment – to western action is a temptingly neat explanation, but it fails to account for the fury at western inaction. In the violent jihadist worldview, western intervention has been a provocation – but so has western non-intervention.
What’s more, it’s not just military action that triggers a fierce Isis response. Recall the beheading of the US journalist James Foley. It came after US planes had been circling over the Sinjar mountains of Iraq. Except those aircraft dropped not bombs but food parcels, water supplies and blankets to the desperate Yazidi people then threatened with starvation, the murder of their men and the sexual enslavement of their women.
It seems Isis regards any nation that gets in the way of its caliphate restoration project as a legitimate target – and that’s almost everyone. On this logic, the only way to be safe from its grasp is to do nothing, to repress even our humanitarian impulse to help people dying of cold on a mountainside.
And yet even that acquiescence would not make us safe. Isis theology, warns Maher, compels true believers to force a confrontation with “Rome” – the dominant west – eventually. Even if we leave them alone, even if we stand aside and let them rule the entire Middle East, “Ultimately they will come for us.”
It’s possible to know all this and, simultaneously, to know that action against Isis with no accompanying action against Assad will be seen as tacit support for the butcher of Damascus and drive more recruits to Isis. And to know the same would be true if intensive bombing of the Isis bastion of Raqqa led to heavy civilian casualties. A UN-mandated force involving Turks, Saudis and the Gulf states might look better, but even the scantest US participation will see the operation branded and damned as the handiwork of the hated west.
Every question we now face – surveillance, shoot-to-kill, border policy – is like this. There’s a strong moral instinct to act, and there are the attendant dangers. To point out the latter does not weaken your commitment to the former. We can be both ruthless in our determination to defeat this mortal enemy and mindful of the risks. We have to be both. We have to inhabit that space that is neither black nor white, but grey. It is the only place any of us can breathe.
And yes, indeed, certainty is one of the things these madmen look for.Jonathan Freedland
Violent jihadism longs for a polarised world of black and white. We should not fall into that trap, even as we debate how to defeat it
The grey zone is where I want to live. Islamic State hates it, that place between black and white, where nothing is ever either/or and everything is a bit of both. Those who have studied the organisation tell us “the grey zone” – Isis’s phrase – is high on the would-be warriors’ to-eradicate list, along with all those other aspects of our world that so terrify them: women, statues of the past, the pleasures of the present.
Specifically, the grey zone refers to the sphere of coexistence where Muslim and non-Muslim might live together. That’s anathema to the frightened young men of Isis, who yearn for a world divided on binary lines, with room for only two categories – them and the infidel. Such a world would be as clean and neat as computer code, with Isis the ones and the rest of us reduced to zeros.
No wonder a city such as Paris – indeed, the very idea of a city – appals them. Such places are all about mixing, like with unlike. The modern city, whether Paris or Beirut, scares them because it suggests that human beings might just be able to rub along, those who are Muslim and those who are not, living in the same places, visiting the same shops, watching the same football matches, listening to the same music.
“Refugees welcome” scares them. It undermines their insistence that the west has an ingrained hostility to Muslims and could never be their home. Isis despises empathy and longs instead for polarity and conflict. They want atrocities such as last week’s in Paris – or today’s siege in Mali – to sow fear and loathing, so that non-Muslim majorities turn on their Muslim neighbours until the latter conclude the only place they can ever truly belong is the caliphate. One or the other, either/or. In the Isis mind, ambiguity, like a hybrid identity, is weakness and decadence.
In this last, trembling week, the grey zone has sometimes seemed to be shrinking. Not in the way Isis planned, but rather, under internal pressure. Our own debate about what to do next, about how to deal with a force that we struggle to describe, let alone understand, has polarised too, as it often does at moments of great strain. We’re losing sight of the grey.
Take what has been a perennial element of these conversations since 12 September 2001. Are terror attacks such as these “blowback” for western foreign policy? Stop the War rushed to make that point, too quickly even for its own tastes: within hours of the attacks, it had posted a blog headlined “Paris reaps whirlwind” of western action, only to take it down soon afterwards. Meanwhile, others slam such talk as a sophisticated form of victim-blaming or even western self-hatred, in which everything is always our fault, a worldview that strips Isis of moral agency and responsibility.
It can be hard to hear yourself think above the clamour; the voice of the grey zone gets drowned out. But there’s a distinction to make. There are the motives, even theology, of the hardcore Isis ideologues; and there’s what drives previously uncommitted people to rally to their flag. For example, it might be true that Isis ideology is rooted in something deeper than a desire to avenge western foreign policy – yet also true that lethal western interference in mainly Muslim countries has recruited disaffected young Muslims to violent jihadism. Both statements could be true at the same time. Yet too often people argue as if it’s one or the other, 1 or 0.
For my own part, I can see the appeal of the “blowback” case. Since 9/11 the west has kept intervening, and the terror has not stopped. But it’s such an incomplete account. Shiraz Maher of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King’s College, London, has interviewed more than 100 Isis volunteers and reads the group’s propaganda diligently. He is clear that militants have been radicalised by western “sins of omission” just as much as the west’s “sins of commission”.
Many headed to Syria in 2013, for example, before Isis had established its caliphate or made the descent into outlandish barbarism, having come to the disgusted conclusion that the west was not going to bomb the Assad regime and that, if they wanted to defend Syrians from Assad’s barrel bombs, they would have to do it themselves. Similarly, the 1990s generation was radicalised by the west’s failure to intervene earlier to save Muslim lives in Bosnia.
In other words, attributing Isis terror – or even Isis recruitment – to western action is a temptingly neat explanation, but it fails to account for the fury at western inaction. In the violent jihadist worldview, western intervention has been a provocation – but so has western non-intervention.
What’s more, it’s not just military action that triggers a fierce Isis response. Recall the beheading of the US journalist James Foley. It came after US planes had been circling over the Sinjar mountains of Iraq. Except those aircraft dropped not bombs but food parcels, water supplies and blankets to the desperate Yazidi people then threatened with starvation, the murder of their men and the sexual enslavement of their women.
It seems Isis regards any nation that gets in the way of its caliphate restoration project as a legitimate target – and that’s almost everyone. On this logic, the only way to be safe from its grasp is to do nothing, to repress even our humanitarian impulse to help people dying of cold on a mountainside.
And yet even that acquiescence would not make us safe. Isis theology, warns Maher, compels true believers to force a confrontation with “Rome” – the dominant west – eventually. Even if we leave them alone, even if we stand aside and let them rule the entire Middle East, “Ultimately they will come for us.”
It’s possible to know all this and, simultaneously, to know that action against Isis with no accompanying action against Assad will be seen as tacit support for the butcher of Damascus and drive more recruits to Isis. And to know the same would be true if intensive bombing of the Isis bastion of Raqqa led to heavy civilian casualties. A UN-mandated force involving Turks, Saudis and the Gulf states might look better, but even the scantest US participation will see the operation branded and damned as the handiwork of the hated west.
Every question we now face – surveillance, shoot-to-kill, border policy – is like this. There’s a strong moral instinct to act, and there are the attendant dangers. To point out the latter does not weaken your commitment to the former. We can be both ruthless in our determination to defeat this mortal enemy and mindful of the risks. We have to be both. We have to inhabit that space that is neither black nor white, but grey. It is the only place any of us can breathe.
chijohnaok
King
enhance: to increase or improve (something)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/enhance
enhance: to ​improve the ​quality, ​amount, or ​strength of something
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/enhance
Some possible steps for how to "enhance" the screening process:
----ensure that all refugees/people coming in are interviewed
----check them (whenever possible) against databases of known terrorists/criminals
----more crackdowns on those forging passports
If there are other steps that security experts think appropriate they should be considered as well.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/enhance
enhance: to ​improve the ​quality, ​amount, or ​strength of something
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/enhance
Some possible steps for how to "enhance" the screening process:
----ensure that all refugees/people coming in are interviewed
----check them (whenever possible) against databases of known terrorists/criminals
----more crackdowns on those forging passports
If there are other steps that security experts think appropriate they should be considered as well.
chijohnaok
King
[My bold emphasis above]
So the West is damned if we intervene with force.
We are damned if we intervene with humanitarian aid.
And we are damned if we do nothing.
That certainly doesn't leave us with many option, now does it.
Berzerker
Deity
Maher's sounding like a neo-con... They're coming for us no matter what! I dont buy that, Putin's part of the west and ISIS didn't attack "him" until after he intervened on Syria's behalf - and they wouldn't be attacking us either if we weren't trying to hand their country over to the Shia. They're largely a secular army using religion for recruitment and they are carving out a country from the smoldering ruins of regimes under Saddam and Assad.
We could have avoided this mess had we left Saddam alone or left after "liberating" Kuwait, and we could have avoided this mess if we just carved Iraq up along cultural/ethnic boundaries after ousting Saddam. But no, we had to save Iraq from Iraqis... They dont wanna be part of the same country. But the nastier we got, the nastier the reaction from the recently dis-empowered. Just get the hell out of there and let the Muslims have their civil war.
We could have avoided this mess had we left Saddam alone or left after "liberating" Kuwait, and we could have avoided this mess if we just carved Iraq up along cultural/ethnic boundaries after ousting Saddam. But no, we had to save Iraq from Iraqis... They dont wanna be part of the same country. But the nastier we got, the nastier the reaction from the recently dis-empowered. Just get the hell out of there and let the Muslims have their civil war.
I know the meaning fo the word enhance. But you hadn't mentioned how you would enhance border controls.
Given that ISIS/ISIL and similar organisations ultimately aim for world conquest in their mad creed, all we can do is intervene and stop them.
Berzerker
Deity
How do you define "the West"? I define it as white Christian "crusaders" waging wars in Muslim lands... Putin's been slaughtering Muslims for close to a couple decades and many Muslim veterans of those wars now fight for ISIS... And before that Russia was killing Muslims in Afghanistan. I'd say Russia and Putin are part of the west in the eyes of Middle and Near Eastern Muslims.
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