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Islamic State Claims Responsibility for Paris Attacks; Death Toll At 127
The L.A. Times reports that Islamic State, the group variously known as ISIL, ISIS, and Daesh, has claimed responsibility for the multi-pronged terror attack yesterday in Paris which left at least 128 people dead, most of them from among the audience of a rock concert at the Bataclan theater, in the heart of the city. Details of how Friday’s assaults were carried out remained hazy. It was still unclear, for example, whether the restaurants and concert theater were attacked by two separate teams of militants or one group that went from one place to another. ...
Attackers opened fire on the crowd with automatic weapons, shouting “God is great!” or blaming France for airstrikes on Islamic State in Syria, according to some reports. Dozens of concert-goers were killed before French forces stormed the theater.
Many Parisians posted appeals and photos on social media asking for news of friends or loved ones whom they had not heard from since the attacks. One man said on Twitter that a government hotline set up to inquire about missing persons was so overloaded that calls could not get through.
In the wake of the attacks and with an overloaded public infrastructure, Facebook activated its post-disaster check-in tool for Parisians to notify loved ones that they are safe. According to Reuters, French President Francois Hollande has vowed to undertake a "mercliess" response to the attacks.
It's a lot simpler than that... they're not motivated, by and large in these sort of things, by strategy. It's a desire for vengeance. They see their brothers being killed, and civilians caught in the crossfire, and want their attackers punished for it. With groups like Daesh there's also a religious aspect. France has earned a reputation for being "anti-muslim" for a lot of different things, such as the hijab ban, but extending well back to their colonial days, and they're additionally seen as a symbol of debauchery and general social immorality.
Honestly there are times I've actually found myself rooting for them, such as in their attempt to stop the Iranian/Lebanese troops with Russian air support ... er, I mean "Syrian military's"... breaking the siege of Kiweiris airbase. Given that Assad is responsible for the vast majority of the deaths in this conflict, mainly from barrel bombing major cities into rubble, as well as extensive firings of chemical weapons into cities and torturing to death over 10k people at intelligence centers, I'm not exactly thrilled about the prospect of him regaining control over the country and purging anyone who he thinks might have ever opposed him to cement his power. But then things like this come reminding me that the people that they're killing are a force whose core is a bunch of sex-slaving antiquity-destroying international-terrorist assholes, so really, whichever way those sort of battles go, one doesn't need to see the outcome as a "bad thing". ;) Likewise their western expansion overrunning al-Hader, that was mainly Nusra holding the town, which - while certainly better than Daesh - they're not exactly a bunch of role models. Now that the FSA is working on stopping Assad's overrun of the M5 near Aleppo, it might actually be worth caring about which side is winning that one (same as some of the north Hama conflicts and the advances into Latakia, which have actually been going quite well for the anti-Assad forces, particularly the FSA, thanks to their endless stocks of Turkey-sourced Saudi-supplied US-originated TOW missiles... if they had any effective way to takedown aircraft this conflict wouldn't even be a tossup).
I have a lot of concerns about the anti-Daesh YPG (Kurdish) operations. Not that the YPG isn't orders of magnitude better than Daesh in behavior - they are. But they have done some bad things still, such as entirely driving Arab residents out of some villages they've captured (small-scale ethnic cleansing). And now they're going to be capturing some sizeable cities that have long held simmering Arab-Kurdish conflicts over who controls them. I have deep concerns that this is going to be setting, or at least, renewing, the seeds for future Arab-Kurdish conflicts unless they can learn to behave themselves properly...
I really can't see any situation where this is going to turn out well, and I can see many situations where it turns out unimaginably bad (now Israel has started randomly bombing inside Syria, hitting the Damascus airport just a few days ago... hey, who else wants to come bomb Syria, why not just invite the whole world?). But hopefully the "best of the terrible options" will be the result rather than the worst one. IMHO that would be the situation reverting to how it was before the Russian-Iranian surge, with Assad slowly but steadily losing ground, forcing him into a negotiating position - wherein the reigns of government could be passed off to someone who's at least less of a torturous tyrant and acceptable to the moderate resistance... then the international community could agree to help them wipe out the radical resistance. Russia won't be happy and won't support any resolution unless they can keep their Latakia airbase and Tartous naval base, but that could be arranged. I think something along those lines could result in a "best of the terrible options" scenario.
Worst of the terrible options? Literal nuclear war. Nuclear powers actively attacking in Syria at the moment: Russia,
Hello from Sputnik 2. I am receiving you.
> You can't determine their strategy with insults.
"Terrorism", meaning intimidation of the civilian population through unpredictable attacks against people not directly involved in the conflict, is a useful description of the strategy. It can also be very effective: look at the history of Ireland, or of the resistance fighters in Poland during World War II.
Once upon a time, people were generally less stupid.
If any 'claim of responsibility' emerged hours or days after a terrorist attack it would be treated with the utmost suspicion. Even if transmitted directly to them, news networks would notify the authorities of course, but they might not even report it publicly. Unless a phone call or fax was received at the moment of breaking news, some times even minutes before, the information was deemed to be zero-credible or less than zero, more likely than not the work of a crank. And news sources were generally averse to being cranked.
News sources did not even want to be cranked by governments. They'd never forget to add the words "allegedly" or "believed to be" when repeating a government source who was pretty sure who was behind something. Some acts of terrorism in those days would end up being reported as if they were... simply crimes. The 'who' would not be examined at length until or unless individuals were actually brought forth and charged. Then, their connections to organizations would be explored.
Then the 21st century dawned and people have become generally more stupid.
Now ascribing an organization to an attack is as simple as starting a rumor or sending a tweet. Everyone is on the verge of believing anything, they just need a little push either way. There is no burden of proof, only a preponderance of NOISE. Axe-grinding news sources and governments are already blaming them anyway to take advantage of this lower IQ, so they're already on the ball. Just like Michael Ledeen at AEI was blaming Saddam Hussein for 9/11 on the afternoon of 9/11. (Hint: that was Donald Rumsfeld's favorite website. Can you see a decade of bad road ahead?)
Now a claim by a single so-called 'unnamed source within the government' is cause enough for a press association like AP to drop the 'allegedly' and report the deed as having been done by those people, ready to put in the history books.
If all information should be free, we're sure getting what we paid for.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
That's a load of bunk.
You do a disservice to the historical record by describing the situation in terms that fit your(read: the government's) narrative. The security forces abandoned their posts because they were sympathetic to ISIS as often as they didn't.
The US left the country under despotic control of the religious minority because they were more favorable to American interests. The religious majority had a revolution(called ISIS) in response to predictable resentment of a puppet plutocracy which didn't represent the will of the nation it ruled over(hostile to US interests).
For a country like the US, the largest exporter of arms and munitions in the world: this was an obvious recipe for violence and instability which raises the question to what extent all of this is/was deliberate?
For over a decade the United States has stoked the coals of a civil war by preventing the borders of Iraq from being divided in to two smaller states and propping up an oppressive minority regime. By forcing these two religious groups to live in the same house, and by picking winners and losers from a distance: we virtually guaranteed this bloodbath, which has conveniently created a manufactured need for more weapons, equipment, and munitions from the United States.
The genocide in Rwanda, and the ongoing conflict in Palestine are just more examples of this playbook getting used over and over to great success.
When you're in the business of selling weapons and importing natural resources: stability in your trading partners backyard is a "Bad Thing" TM. Look at what has happened to the Saudis as a result of ISIS: dirt cheap oil pumping up the US stock market while they are forced to finance the tools of wars at the expense of domestic services.
This is the real reason the United States is pissed off at Russia meddling in their colonialism sandbox: bombing all militants indiscriminately will deescalate the conflict(which obviously isn't what we want).
This is also the reason why drug legalization was declared "off the table" by President Obama: it would undermine our ability to fuel drug violence in Latin/South America.
The worst case scenario for the United States/Global Multinationals is a world where people stop killing each other and their representative governments look out for their citizen's interests by undermining Corporate Oligarch's desired Free Trade agreements which allow the multinational's/NGOs to engage in "Dumping" to preclude domestic industrial growth, thereby keeping them dependent on foreign imports.
We make these terrorist nut-bags recruitment efforts easier with our interventionist foreign policies and engaging in these games of statesmanship. This is why I think it is important that we drop some nukes to send a message: "bow down before your corporate overloads, slaves."
I think it's also important to note: as far as these multinationals are concerned, their employees/American voters are just as much the "enemy" as some random jackass with an AK47 in the sandbox. To them: we are human labor and they want to keep control over us to enjoy the fruits of that labor at a steep discount. If they can keep us educated in STEM: all the better/more productivity for them to enjoy without paying a fair salary.
There is no cognitive dissonance in those seeming conflicted positions/views. To the extent their suffering reduces the prices I pay at Walmart: I'm OK with that due to my pitiful salary. Divided AND conquered? You betcha! :P "Don't bet on the underdog: back the stongest player and hope your interests become intertwined."
Americans introduced the hash tag #PrayForParis. To which a Parisian replied "Friends from the whole world, thank you for #prayforParis, but we don't need more religion! our faith goes to music! kisses! Life! champagne and Joy! #ParisisaboutLife". I found that amusing, despite the fact I read it last night shortly after the attack.
It seems that American tweeps don't know that the French value their secular state. Which must seem odd to people in a country where so many people are still religious.
no, I don't have a sig
We should stop calling them Islamic State ... and start calling them islamic sodomites, or something that might offend their world views.
You would respond to violence by calling them names. They would then laugh, and continue with the violence. It's obvious which is more effective.
If you really want to call them something that might do some good, call them "Brigands". That puts them in a class, in Islamic law, where the appropriate action by other Muslims is neither to support them, nor avoid criticizing them as members of a different-but-possibly-valid branch of Islam, but to apprehend them and put them to death for their crimes. It also fits their actions, so it may be persuasive.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It is as if they've got a list of parties (nations) to piss off and are going down the list one by one. By this logic China, Japan, or Brazil ought to be next in line.
Besides which, they do seem to be doing their damnedest to drum up popular support for military action against them. Both the US and the UK will point to this attack and say to their respective electorates: "See? Told you that restraint won't help against these extremists. Now will you believe me? We need to actively engage those criminals *now* before they become too large to contain.".
I could understand (but not agree) if they just wanted to have their "caliphate". If you wanted to build a state you'd want to control territory and then secure it.
But going after a Russian airliner? The country ruled by an ex-soviet KGB colonel? The one who has shown he can (and will) use dumb (read: cheap) bombs to raze whole villages simply to get at one target? The one who comes from a long tradition that has demonstrated that as far as they're concerned normal rules of war don't exist? The one party that might otherwise be persuaded to sell arms (as long as they're to uses against US and UK forces)? Well ... if they looked for another adversary they've just got one.
And France? How much of the coalition's bomb runs are carried out by French aircraft? How many of the drones do the operate over Syria and Iraq? Not all that many? Man! We gotta change that! Lets piss 'em off big time and see if they can't do better.
The only reason I can think of is that they hope to goad Paris into dropping a nuke on Raqa ... decapitating ISIS ... and (I suppose) starting WW-III. Could that be it? Could they really aim at igniting a full-scale war between approx. 1 bln. muslims and 4 bln. non-muslims?
Or is thinking not their long suit? Are they too absorbed in their faith for that?
Anybody?
They werent, Pol Pot was a Buddhist.
Stalin was Christian.
Mao was Taoist/Buddhist.
They abbolished religions because they feared them as competition, like any tyrant.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Someday people will look back on the shared delusion of religion and wonder what the fuck was wrong with everyone.
The funny part is that they already do. For example, Ra or Ptah aren't popular anymore.
Exactly. No one will take you seriously if you say you worship Thor or Neptune or Ganesh or Anubis, but lots of people will happily try to lop off your head if you don't worship Jesus or Mohammad. And really, what's the difference?
(Although at least Mohammad appears to have been an actual living person, as opposed to Jesus, who is now pretty well proven to have never actually existed. And yes, I'm serious- there's a ton of proof now that Jesus never really existed.)
So yeah, we're ALL atheists to some degree. I just happen to believe in one less god than my neighbor (a devout Christian) does.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
More people have died due to the Republican's failure to expand Medicaid than have died in terrorist attacks. So, who should we really nuke?
Now, as to who France might see fit to nuke, Mecca seems like it would make a fine object lesson about religion-based acts of terrorism.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
No, we will not. You do not exterminate cockroaches with a sniper rifle. You may shoot a few of them like that for fun, but they breed much faster than you can kill them. Gas or a nuke would be much more effective. It only took two nukes to impress Japan enough to abandon its "no surrender" policy. With ISIS it may take more, but either all the terrorists will be afraid or they all die - a good result anyways.
As for the refugees in Europe - drop the sanctions on Russia in exchange for sending all the refugees to Siberia - Russia can probably place them somewhere at least 1000km away from the nearest village and without cars or trains they will stay put (or become bear food).
What a load of bullshit.
The terrorists killed most of the people in Paris with suicide explosive vests.
Fuck...what is it with retarded Americans and their stupid John Wayne fantasies ?
Some fat diabetic in a mobility scooter with their pop gun isn't going to do jack shit except be another statistic.