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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.
Each act of terrorism breeds hatred from the victims, which leads to the mistreatment of those considered like the aggressors, which leads to the formation of circumstances likely to breed terrorists.
So yes, it appears these hateful acts are quite likely to continue.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
It's pretty obvious the world would be far better off without religion.
^^^ THIS.
Someday people will look back on the shared delusion of religion and wonder what the fuck was wrong with everyone.
It's like a mind virus or brain disease that most people simply accept. WTF??
The amazing part is that most people don't consider it as a disease to be eradicated.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Local terrorism in Iraq/Syria and the region is very effective, as terrorism feeds extremism. It can destabilize the government and help create the kind of power vacuum that inevitably leads to the most brutal group (presumably the terrorists) being the only ones capable of maintaining discipline and restoring order. In a situation like Iraq or Syria, moderates have the majority behind them but their fractured nature makes them inadequate once a civil war has turned to many-sided brutality -- moderates just aren't good enough at brutality to win at that game, and their soldiers hear the brutal stories and run away from their posts in fear.
Without 9/11 there would probably be no Islamic State, so clearly they can accomplish a lot with remote terrorism as well. It can draw a country into helping destabilize a region where the terrorists can take advantage of the chaos. It's also always useful to make your enemy panic and devote their resources to trying to defend against the indefensible. And if IS can make enough panicked westerners blame and shun Muslims, the shunned outcasts become much easier to recruit.
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What are the motives of these terrorist groups? What does killing people randomly accomplish?
Terror... 9/11 was appalling for a while but then the terror effect wore off. With actions like this, small penny packets of terrorists can keep up the pressure for months and years. Intelligence services in Europe are worried, those in the USA should be even more very worried right about now. The USA has thousands of miles of hard to partro coastline where squads of terrorists could land and ISIS has plenty of foreign fighters that would fit right in, even on the streets of US cities and these guys are not Syrian or Iraqi farm boys who speak broken english and stick out like a sore thumb, they are well educated and intelligent. Then there is logistics. In France/Germany/Britain guns are relatively difficult to get ahold of but as we can see quite doable. In the USA, however, guns are easier to get ahold of than a driving license so try to imagine the possibilities. Let loose 30 or so two man sniper teams in the USA, throw in some suicide squads for good measure and expend them one at a time over a long period. The sniper teams in particular would have no problem equipping themselves by buying firearms at garage sales, out of the back of cars in Walmart parking lots, at gun shows, etc... and they could be on the loose for weeks and months so if anybody thinks the Columbine High, Sandy Hook Elementary were bad or especially the Beltway sniper attacks imagine those kind of a scenario times hundreds of times over and going on for months and even years.
The motive is to discourage western powers from interfering in their take over of Iraq and Syria.
Its worked too. Look why happen in the UK when Cameron tried to get support for an intervention. The Obama response to the Syrian situation has been similarly tepid, why? because the public is tired of it. The support for an on going war is soft. Partly because the citizens of Western nations know fighting ISIS paints a target on our backs. It effects the US a little less than other because 1) our military is so huge and 2) We are 'the great Satan' and know that we are going be a target anyway for legacy reasons.
Its just another facet of the asymmetric warfare strategy. They know our military structure isn't designed for troops to be on deployment after deployment after deployment. They stir up trouble, shrink away, stir it up again and force us to come back to the table. Its all about wearing us down. Part of that is attacking the public. They are not ignorant of history. They know a big part of why we did not achieve the outcomes we sought in the Asia proxy conflicts with the USSR is because of the erosion of support at home. Attacking the general public is a way to achieve that or hasten it.
Where OBL got it wrong was picking a target that was a little to symbolic. The WTC is something that is pretty removed from most of us. Most of America, France, and the UK does not look like NYC but its symbol of power for us. So the response become something like "Remember the Maine" or "Remember the Alamo" and gins up a desire to seek revenge out of national or cultural pride.
When you start routine attacks on movie theaters, eateries, and shopping malls on the other hand the danger is real to the public on a personal level. I go the movies, I go out to to dinner etc. I am not NYC banker that is a might as well be another world to me.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
As anyone with even elementary reading comprehension can see, he didn't say religious attacks shouldn't be condemned, but that religions shouldn't be condemned if someone attacks and claim it was in their name.
It's unsurprising to me that you particularly didn't understand that, and I won't be surprised if you still don't after reading this, either.
It's pretty obvious the world would be far better off without religion.
The greatest tragedies of the 20th century were not committed in the name of religion.
Maybe you should learn history before spounting such nonsense about religion.
What does that have to do with his point? If I said "I would be better off if I don't drink sulfiric acid", would your response be "but that isn't even a major cause of death in the US"? Because that is exactly the type of irrelevant argument you just made above.
Someone can claim something is bad even if it isn't the only or even worst thing in the world.
You can make claims that religion does more good than harm, but referencing other evils of the world is very irrelevant.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
One thing that makes us better than them is....we try hard to limit civilian causalities when striking military targets.
Except the leaked Collateral Murder video shows Americans deliberately attacking and killing civilian first responders. America considers this a war crime when our enemies do it. None of the killers were ever charged with a crime, and neither were any of the officials who covered it up and lied about the existence of the video before it was leaked.
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>
Pol Pot, Stalin, and Mao were all atheists. Suck on it.
The difference is that Pol Pot, Stalin, and Mao didn't do the things they did because they were atheists, whereas religious fanatics do horrific things precisely because they're religious fanatics. Sorry to burst your simple little thought-bubble.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
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
Actually, Pol Pot, Stalin, and Mao did what they did because they were athiests.
Errr, no. And as someone who has studied Pol Pot a bit (due to family connections with some of his victims) it's clear that his atheism was not a significant motivating force in his rampage. And it's clear that neither Stalin nor Mao did anything due to their lack of belief, while o the other hand Hitler embraced the Catholic church and they embraced him back. Does "Gott Mitt Un" ring a bell?
It's hard to murder millions of people just because you don't believe in something.
For example, there are lots of people who don't believe in leprechauns, why aren't they out there committing atrocities? Why don't we label the "aleprechanists" and worry day and night about what they might do? Because it would be silly, that's why.
The fact is that lack of belief in something is rarely a motivator to do anything, let alone commit horrific atrocities.
Your average atheist isn't going to be motivated to kill people in the name of his/her magical sky-daddy or the promise of an afterlife. Most of us atheists realize that we only get one life to live, and so we try to make the most of it here and now. Yeah, some of us are assholes, but most of us just want to live our lives in peace and not be persecuted in the name of any of the 100,000+ religions that are all vying for dominance, often at the point of a sword or a thumb on a detonator.
Show me an example or two of atheists who've committed atrocities in the name of atheism (if you can), and I'll show you a hundred that have done it in the name of religion.
Seriously, show me some examples of people who have said "I'm killing people specifically because I don't believe in god!". Statistically there are probably some, but I can't think of any offhand.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
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?