Paris Attack

[Mega]

28 dead when i went to bed, 128 this morning......very bad indeed..............words fail me. Except that if you train,arm & pay Terror scumbags to attack other people (Syria/Libya etc) Then....you change your mind....lose possative control of the situlation.........there is every chance this will happen.

Who?
Well who did 9/11..........did not the Saudi-royals take out put options on united airlines just before the attack?.........all but one of the hi-jackers where Saudi's where they not?????

Just a thought

[shiny!]

Re: Paris Attack

It's just awful. Some months back I expressed condern that the massive influx of Muslims into Europe would turn out to be a trojan horse... that some day a signal would go out and there would be attacks all over Europe at the same time. I think this attack is a taste of things to come. This is jihad, but the West has been too naive and politically correct to believe it.

Islam has waged war on "unbelievers" for centuries, long before the insane screw-ups of modern politicians gave this generation of jihadists an excuse.

[Mega]

Re: Paris Attack

[Mega]

Re: Paris Attack

ISIS was made by the WEST to attack Nationa like Syria/Libya & Irac...i suspect Iran & Russia where on the wet dream list in Washington as well.............except "They" lost control of their Jackels................

Mike

[shiny!]

Re: Paris Attack

They lost control of something they meddled with but never understood. But the tendency towards violence was there to exploit. You don't see the West recruiting and arming the Amish to become insurgents. That would be ludicrous.

There's a lot of blame going around: blame the West, blame Bush and Obama, blame Liberals, blame the EU's open border policy, blame political correctness... But ultimately, the people who committed murder did so because they want to kill un-believers. Jihad is intrinsic to fundamentalist Islamic belief. I blame them the most.

[touchring]

Re: Paris Attack

They lost control of something they meddled with but never understood. But the tendency towards violence was there to exploit. You don't see the West recruiting and arming the Amish to become insurgents. That would be ludicrous.

There's a lot of blame going around: blame the West, blame Bush and Obama, blame Liberals, blame the EU's open border policy, blame political correctness... But ultimately, the people who committed murder did so because they want to kill un-believers. Jihad is intrinsic to fundamentalist Islamic belief. I blame them the most.

We have already talked about this 1 year ago - http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthr...raine%21/page3

The bankers wanted to seize Ukraine's economy (it's no coincidence that one of their own is now the President and Ukraine's minister of finance is a born in America American hedge fund manager), and the Obama administration wanted to withdraw Iraq and Afghanistan and needed to divert the MSM and the attention of the public from the failures in Iraq and Syria.

With similar goals, the two worked together to back a coup of the "brutal" Russian controlled government in Ukraine. By doing so, the entire world's attention and MSM were lifted off Iraq, and this allowed ISIS, which was at that time was still very weak, to have the chance to seize the Iraqi major city of Mosul along with all its gold, cash and oil resources, and establish a stronghold in Iraq. With this victory, ISIS's fame and wealth grew and more recruits all over the world joined them.

Now the cause is clear, but the question is whether it is a mistake out of complacency, or was it done deliberately knowing that ISIS will grow out of that?

[makimanos]

Re: Paris Attack

You can create a monster but are you sure that you can control it? Anyway these people live in the middle ages according and their chronology that's why they think the west as crusaders.

[touchring]

Re: Paris Attack

You can create a monster but are you sure that you can control it? Anyway these people live in the middle ages according and their chronology that's why they think the west as crusaders.

You have to be a greater monster to control a monster.

Their existence justify people like Putin and cruel authoritarian regimes because people know that only a cruel government can deal with Islamic extremists. Look at what Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the number of people executed in recent years. Look at what happened in Gaza. Look at the crackdown in China Xinjiang regions after the separatist committed terrorism - entire cities and villages are punished - it doesn't just end with the death of the terrorist.

Democracy, or whatever that is left of it, is under threat.

[shiny!]

Re: Paris Attack

Now the cause is clear, but the question is whether it is a mistake out of complacency, or was it done deliberately knowing that ISIS will grow out of that?

I'm not sure we'll ever know, or that it even matters in the long run. Regardless of whether it was accidental or intentional, this crisis is not going to be wasted. Twice this evening I heard "experts" being interviewed, who said the killers must have communicated via encryption-enabled apps. The conversations immediately turned into discussions of how companies who make these apps should be required to turn over their encryption keys to law enforcement.

Now there will be an even bigger push for countries to build walls and fences to keep bad guys out. But they will also keep honest citizens in. Once you've built a wall, you won't be able to leave without government permission. Welcome to a world of East Berlins with zero privacy. The total surveillance state has been creeping up for a long time but now there's no reason to hide it. Frightened people will be begging for it.

[astonas]

Re: Paris Attack

I noticed, Mike, that you gave this thread exactly the same title as the one from last time around: Paris Attack. Was the reference intentional? If so, thanks for the reminder.

In any event, it caused me to go back and re-read that old thread. Sadly, I don't think very much has improved since then. My own responses are not much changed either. Perhaps I haven't learned, any more than anyone else in this misbegotten world seems to have.

Tribalism continues to increase its dominance over the world's dialogues. Sometimes, as in Paris then and now, it is religious tribalism, which insists on feeding an ever-growing rift between one religion and another. Sometimes, as in recent weeks' discussions here on iTulip, it is tribalism surrounding opinions on race, or ideology. But if anything, the knee-jerk tribal-defense response is stronger than ever, just about everywhere, and on all sides. We are with increasing frequency allowing our many and various outsourced conceptions of identity to override our own critical thinking faculties, and that is simply ... dispiriting.

We here also seem to have had better conversations in the past. I see several very real external reasons why one might expect more conflict now than before, but it still saddens me to realize that we have collectively not overcome these. Perhaps we really are but a microcosm for the broader world. Violence or incivility on one side is used to justify even more of the same on the other, and the whole mess spirals out of control toward a bitter end.

My seven-year-old has learned not to use "he started it" as an excuse. Perhaps, in time, we adults may as well, and break the vicious cycle.

In a fit of optimism toward that end, I'd like to make a suggestion, and I sincerely hope it helps, at least in this little iTulip "world" of ours:

There is a considerable difference between castigating an idea, vs. attacking the person (meaning the iTulip member, not an external author) advancing that idea. The first permits the other member to change their mind, indeed, in extrema it might be the only way to encourage that. But attacking the person implies that such change is not possible, that the person is permanently connected to an idea, regardless of any evidence one might show. This assumption of unchangeability not only insults the other person unnecessarily, but it speaks very poorly of the writer's own understanding of human nature.

So attack a given liberal idea, if you like. But don't attack "liberals". (That being a meaningless generalization anyway.) And attack an idea that you see as racist, but don't attack the person putting forward the idea. (That is the surest way to guarantee that they will never change their mind, even if you can construct a perfectly air-tight argument.) This doesn't weaken one's argument, to the contrary: in both examples I gave, the difference isn't about being right, but about being effective in one's argumentation. One's arguments become stronger when focused on the ideas, not weaker.

I was relieved to note, as I reviewed the last "Paris Attack" thread, that even when I was laying into Mn_Mark's confessed white supremacy full force, I largely manage to keep the focus on the egregious fallacy of his IDEAS and ARGUMENTS rather than his SELF, so I think it is pretty clear that this suggested restriction needn't soften either one's passion, or one's invective. One can (and should) be able to be strident against any ideas that lead inevitably to, for example, genocide. But a focus on the ideas leaves open the door for the other person to ultimately reject, rather than double down on, such uniquely hate-filled ideas, when the logical causality is shown without doubt. They may or may not do so in the end, of course, but it certainly is pointless to begin any discussion with the assumption that they cannot. (If that really is the case, why argue at all?)

Let's also not forget the possibility that one may have misunderstood the intent of the other member; I can't count the number of times I've encountered (or written!) things like "well, yes of course you're right on that, but that wasn't what I was arguing about." A focus on ideas permits such a clarification, a personal attack does not.

Every time we dehumanize those of a different tribe than ourselves, every time we dismiss them as being lesser people, rather than critically examining and countering the ideas that they put forward, we deepen the preexisting rifts in our world, here and everywhere. The impact is far greater than merely another fallacious (ad hominem) argument. It is a direct attack on everyone's ability to have a conversation in this space. Attacks on personal identity poison the well for us all.

After that whole screed, my actual request is very simple. Can we please agree to knock it off already? Personal attacks do not need to be welcome here. We all certainly have a free-speech right to use them. And we may even all drift toward them in our most heated moments. But that doesn't mean that they are compatible with intelligent conversation, of the sort that (used to, at least) define this site and its members.

Who knows, a sensible, civil, example here might even, in some small way, propagate out to the broader world. ;)

It really does strike me that many problems there and here differ only in scale.

The Paris Attack, then and now, is ultimately about an ongoing and inevitable blending of cultural identities, some of whose adherents do not wish to blend at all - ever. But if seeking a peaceable path through that transition is resisted, a tremendously violent one becomes inevitable. The real question is whether we have passed the point of inevitability yet, or if we are merely ... on the way there.

[touchring]

Re: Paris Attack

I'm not sure we'll ever know, or that it even matters in the long run. Regardless of whether it was accidental or intentional, this crisis is not going to be wasted. Twice this evening I heard "experts" being interviewed, who said the killers must have communicated via encryption-enabled apps. The conversations immediately turned into discussions of how companies who make these apps should be required to turn over their encryption keys to law enforcement.

Now there will be an even bigger push for countries to build walls and fences to keep bad guys out. But they will also keep honest citizens in. Once you've built a wall, you won't be able to leave without government permission. Welcome to a world of East Berlins with zero privacy. The total surveillance state has been creeping up for a long time but now there's no reason to hide it. Frightened people will be begging for it.

I never knew what a police state was like until I was in Chengdu, the capital of a Western Chinese province just next to Tibet, earlier this year.

There is police presence everywhere, there's an armored police truck on like every major road junction in the city - this is not a joke. Chengdu is quite a big city of more than 10 million people so there had to be a huge number of policemen out on the street to achieve that degree of visibility, probably in excess of 50,000.

In my 2 days there, I had to go through airport style x-ray screening no less than 10 times. I had to go through one before I entered the subway. I had to go through one before I entered the coach terminal. I had to go through one before entering the high speed rail station. I also need to have my finger prints taken when I took the HSR.

I thought to myself, it's a good thing, with police everywhere, I never felt safer than in any other foreign city.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Paris Attack

This is a very long read. Packer is one of the New Yorker's best writers. It makes you stand back and keep quiet for a long time.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...d-most-popular

[Mega]

Re: Paris Attack

Hmmm...............one critical reveiw to their music they didn't hang round to debate.............

[astonas]

Re: Paris Attack

Hmmm...............one critical reveiw to their music they didn't hang round to debate.............

When words and ideas go out into the world, they do indeed have life-or-death consequences.

In the case of ISIS, the belief structure is already well-understood. This piece does a great job of explaining that ISIS really DOES believe in an apocalyptic near-future. I consider it crucially important reading.

If the vast majority of Muslims in the world falter in their current conviction that the literalist religion ISIS promulgates is NOT their own, it will make the terrorist attacks we have seen so far look like child's play. Their inclusion and acceptance by western society is crucial to averting a worldwide bloodbath of literally biblical proportions. This battle for these hearts and minds is being waged mostly on the internet, and the side that can offer them a deeper sense of belonging and acceptance could well be the only one that survives.

Again, in this battle for hearts and minds it is valid, even necessary, to call out and criticize repugnant IDEAS. But we must be careful to refrain from assuming that these ideas are immutable in individuals, by attacking PEOPLE. Many quiet readers might still be forming their own opinions on the matter. Our ability to "fight fair" on these pages could have very real and sobering consequences in the wider world.

[astonas]

Re: Paris Attack

This is a very long read. Packer is one of the New Yorker's best writers. It makes you stand back and keep quiet for a long time.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...d-most-popular

A long read, but a vital one. Thank you, Thailandnotes, for this important contribution on the mechanisms of ISIS recruitment.