Slashdot Mirror
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.
> 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>
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.