Massacre In Paris

[Spike 12,049]

90% of terrorists are white people.

I find both of your claims incredibly stupid. Way to shoehorn a religion and a 'race' into something as asinine as 'terrorist'.

People can barely agree what constitutes 'terrorism' let alone what constitutes a white person.

[Kieran. 6,317]

I find both of your claims incredibly stupid. Way to shoehorn a religion and a 'race' into something as asinine as 'terrorist'.

People can barely agree what constitutes 'terrorism' let alone what constitutes a white person.

Great thank you for your input.

[Spike 12,049]

Great thank you for your input.

Thanks for yours too. Very insightful.

[Kieran. 6,317]

Thanks for yours too. Very insightful.

Favorite member on these forums by far

[MefiX19 1,092]

@Rmpr @xPetrChechx oh... i got it now, that was actually a clever plan.

[Spike 12,049]

For instance most Muslims from North Africa and the middle-east are Caucasian. Caucasian is often used in exchange with 'white person' but people of middle-eastern descent are considered 'white' for some reason. I'm Caucasian and white but Zidane isn't?I don't get the pointless semantics of it. Why not just say 'western-European' since most of the time that is what people are referring to as 'white people'.

On another not 'people-of-colour' is one of the stupidest terms I've ever head. I'm not a coloured person? There is something different about me to the others? Why make another us vs them term? It is so stupid, my GF is South-East Asian which is a PoC if I'm correct but can't relate to Afro-Americans another PoC in the slightest manner in terms of racial and cultural prejudice. To me it is just another term that exasperates the difference and divide between races.

I think at the end of the day it is less about us vs them but how the strong can take advantage of the weak, it just happens it conveniently can be manipulated by those in power as 'us vs them'. Look at all the black on black violence in Africa that serves no purpose other than to give more power to those on top of the dog pile. At the very core of all these issues, it is the strong taking advantage of the weak.

This was smashed out in a few minutes so I'm sorry if it comes off abrasive or hypocritical in any manner, I'll adress those issues later.

EDIT:

More examples of terrorism carried out by people that aren't white or Muslim

Japan Imperialism of the 20th century

Chinese Imperialism, Tibet, Taiwan, etc

North Korea's facist regime

Che Guevara (was he white or native American?) in Bolivia and Cuba

Bombings in Bombay

2008 Christmas Massacre

Muslim Massacre in the Central African Republic

General Butt Naked

Ghenghis Khan's invasion of essentially the whole world

Yanghzou Massacre

Polynesian Cannibalism in New Zealand (I think?)

There is so much evidence of terrorism in world history.

Terrorism isn't limited to Muslims or whites. Anybody, anywhere throughout life and history could be a terrorist. To make assumptive remarks like '90% of terrorists are white people or Muslims' is a very harmful statement to make.

[zolayes 14,489]

@Spike .. for something written off the cuff it was IMO very lucid and analytical

[Fulham Broadway 16,393]

Yeah because unlike in europe those people in middle east cant live with each other beacause of their 'religion' that is going on for hundreds of years. Sure the usa shouldnt get involved because of their real intentions, but european got involved to save people down there who are innocent. Sure we wont just let them kill each other and not try to help. But bottom line is that there are some crazy people who mix religion with fucked up ideals and drag people into this to create army and war etc. Raising kids from their early ages to become living bomb one day. That is messed up.

Dont compare europe to middle east. They cant live in peace. We can. Sure bombings from eu planes on their cities are not justified, but it was a decision to stop ISIS from spreading. Ironicaly we let hundreds and hudreds people thru borders every day.

Even if there is just 1 percent of 20m (or how many people will get in eu in couple years), thats enough to close borders and secure europe from more terrorists. Its obvious there are terorists among refugees. I have nothing against refugees who want to escape their land (althrough they should fight for their land in first place like europeans fought for ours. We didnt just escape in time of wars ffs) but I have major hatred towards any terrorist or even idealists of their religion because those will never live in peace. And that is enough to close borders.

We had wwi and wwii and didnt escape. War ended because we wanted that. We fought for it. Middle east doesnt know what they are fighting for. For religion? Sorry but fuck that. If their religion is killing people its just wrong. If they wanted to stop the war they would get together ask for help and thats it. But no they want to solve it on their own for years and years and years. And i dont want that to be spread in europe.

Everyone knows Isis is financed by usa or their agencies and Merkel is Obamas bitch (sorry for expresion but its true). Trying to destabilize EU. And sure terrorists are the easiest way to destabilize that.

Sure everyone is nice and all now but people must be fooling themselves if they think paris was exception. There will be more and more of that. In couple years france will have same number of muslims as they have caucasians. Try to stop that when it will be to late will only lead to extreme decisions. And yet people think everything will be fine. Im not sure what governments are thinking. Living in delusion. And when you will be in danger, you will only then realise allowing all this and being nice was a mistake. Every single person on borders would be ideal. If that is not possible close borders. Its for greater good.

Wake the fuck up. Stop praying and start thinking.

I dont think you understood my post. There seems to be two schools of thought, and responses to the medieval Middle Eastern death cults such as ISIS. One is 'oh its our fault, creating a power vacuum from neo Colonialism in Iraq, libya etc'. The other is to be gung ho and bomb and kill. Both approaches fuel the young idealistic jihadist God botherers.

Ironically in France and Germany there was a similar vein of thought up until the 18th century that things were ordained by god and that Kings had divine right bestowed upon them from above. To challenge this was heresy.

Cue reasoning, science, and rational thought - The Enlightenment, and revolution. This is the only way forward for human progress.

[iceboy 992]

THats ok but I follow all the Kenya news and it is the POOR people who suffer most through the terrorists. They are trying to destroy the country's economy and as

always it is the weakest and poorest who suffer most

True, too many radicals group who wants to control the state..this world is being shit mate.

[-Kaplan- 410]

Weren't there bombings in Beirut that killed like 43 people? Supposedly ISIS took the blame for that as well.

[Fernando 6,376]

I think the meaning of terrorism for me as to oppose to something else is the act.

What this terrorist did is just something unexpected that took people by surprised and kill many.

A war that says Israel or USA fights at least you have warning. Like we are going to bomb your ass.

I much prefer to know that it's coming then something so unexpected and horrible.

And obviously you got the motives, one is create chaos and confusion. The other to end a conflict even if you don't agree with and innocent lives are lost.

So that is my distinction between the Islamic terrorist attacks, vs the Imperial empire warfare.

[xPetrCechx 13,546]

@Rmpr @xPetrChechx oh... i got it now, that was actually a clever plan.

Yeah... Both had tickets to the main stand.

[herzogian 148]

I dont think you understood my post. There seems to be two schools of thought, and responses to the medieval Middle Eastern death cults such as ISIS. One is 'oh its our fault, creating a power vacuum from neo Colonialism in Iraq, libya etc'. The other is to be gung ho and bomb and kill. Both approaches fuel the young idealistic jihadist God botherers.

Ironically in France and Germany there was a similar vein of thought up until the 18th century that things were ordained by god and that Kings had divine right bestowed upon them from above. To challenge this was heresy.

Cue reasoning, science, and rational thought - The Enlightenment, and revolution. This is the only way forward for human progress.

While I am all for the humanistic approach etc I. just would like to point out that the "optimism" concerning the enlightenment also existed in the 19th century but was completely shattered after the two world wars.

A lot of people shared the optimism that through science and rational thought we could achieve to create a true utopia. Sadly the reality turned out to be horribly different.The idea that progress of science automatically makes humanity better has been exposed as poppycock. Besides all the wonderfull things we got through scientific 'progress', it also brought us automatic rifles, biochemic weapons and atomic bombs which are keeping the world in a weird stranglehold right now. Also, concerning rational thought, there are problems cause there isn't just 'one' rational thought. The Nazi's thought they where very rational when they ordred the endlösung. Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest was hijacked by the Nazi's and used to legitimize the extermination of many people who where considred lesser beings. There was a very rational approach in explaining why these people where different and how they should be killed, and it was accepted by a lot of people whom you propably would classify as rational. Just like science, rationality is subject to our limitations as human beings. This tackles one of the early principles of the enlightenment: that humans are good and rational by nature. Which,sadly, is not the case and which, again sadly, makes "the enlightenment-project" a lot harder.

Don't misunderstand me, I too think that the ideas of the enlightenment are propably the most useful and trustworthy in trying to reach 'a better world' but we may never forget what happened in the 20th century. If we forget that dark note the 'way of enlightenment' will only lead to darkness. ( Apologies for the pathos in the last sentence)

[Leif 6,006]

Favorite member on these forums by far

remember when i stole your life savings and you had to rebuild from the ground up

[Muzchap 8,966]

For me it's all about 'Global Education' and a fair distribution of wealth.

There's no coincidence that people with a high level of education prefer diplomacy to resolve issues, whilst those without education tend to err towards violence.

Yes, the current forms of Govt in the world are not the best, but they are the best we have right now, yes the distribution of wealth is appalling and more needs to be done to resolve this.

But viewing all leaders as corporate puppets is not a healthy view - we only see the public side of the decisions these 'Leaders' have to make, I don't doubt it's a hard job. I have had similar experiences when I was forced to lay off around 30% off my staff at a previous job. I came up with a model that was only slightly more expensive (meant no bonuses for us, no pay rises for a few years and some people dropping to 4 day weeks, to keep ALL employees) - sadly it was rejected and good people lost their jobs. Why? Because the people above me had to reduce the headcount for an acquisition - but couldn't say anything as bound by NDA.

So at first I was furious, then I had to accept that they made the right decision as 70%+ of employees were better off under their approach. You will never get the 30% to agree (well not all of them) that it was the right decision as 'emotions' cloud the issues, a few years on - I still bump into these people and they are all doing well and are happy. I bet if I asked them now, their views would be different.

So a combination of time and intelligence will always triumph (IMHO) the knee jerk reactionary of let's resort to violence or anger.

How the world implements this is beyond my Intelligence - but I'm sure there are people capable out there.

[Dion 2,476]

Questions to any atheist here.

When someone writes pray for peace what does that means to you?

I believe in God and I definitely understand that prayer is communication with God.

What is your thoughts and meaning of such?

Would you get offended if someone told you to pray for so and so?

It means nothing to me. It means this person is wishing for peace and that's it. I might get a little bit offended if a person knows I'm an atheist and says stuff like that directly to me, because I would feel in doing so this person does not respect my position regarding faith and deities, but it wouldn't be a big deal. Other than that I'm indifferent.

[CHOULO19 24,332]

I think you're underestimating a huge fact in the discussion, Nour... which is religious extremists are crazy people.

When no one attacks they'll kill because some small newspaper in France made fun of their faith.

I agree with most of what you said, but Western countries are just taking advantage of something they didn't create themselves and who definitely won't end if they stop funding and attacking. They turned a small thing into a giant and I don't think it's so simple to stop it now.

Even without funding and attacks now, I believe they can still orchestrate any attack (albeit smaller) they want and as those people aren't sane, it doesn't need much for them to feel motivated.

Of course that also has truth in it. Ultimately, the truth always resists simplicity (J. Green) so no analysis can hold all the truth. But I think it's too easy to just look at religious extremists as they are. We're much more likely to understand when we analyze how they came to be. And this is no way justifying what they've become but merely trying to find more solutions.

Even ISIS and Al Qaeda need a rhetoric to recruit people. Religion is a tool; it's an incredibly powerful tool, but ultimately just a tool. It is NOT a/the cause. For example, the internet history of some British citizens who went to join ISIS in Syria showed that their last purchases included "Islam for dummies". And this is similar to a lot of normal middle class Europeans who have went to Syria to become jihadis. In fact, quite a few come from non-practicing muslim backgrounds and as much as a quarter of French jihadis in Syria were not even Muslim! Most probably, the majority of those Europeans did not join ISIS because they are crazy or because they are Muslim, they joined them because they feel for various reasons alienated and unable to be integrated into their societies. Those are very complicated cases to study but ones we have to look at if we're serious about fighting ISIS.

You mentioned the Charlie Hebdo attackers. One of them was actually arrested back in 2008 on terror charges by the French authorities. He was an 'occasional muslim' who drank alcohol and smoked pot. According to the investigation he was radicalized by the invasion of Iraq, particularly the attack on Fallujah and the violations at the Abu Ghraib prison. It is too easy to say that they all are crazy (which in many cases they just are) but all of them are humans who generally need a reason to go from their ordinary lives working in an IT company or running a shoes store or herding sheep to becoming jihadis. And again this certainly is not to justify their awful choices but to stop more people going down that same road.

Onto the 'bulk' of the extremist jihadi movement: the recruits from the middle east, north Africa and middle Asia. What are the reasons and major factors there? Those are what I mentioned in my original post, mainly from a western perspective as there are also many factors that need to be addressed internally here. But lets go through why people join ISIS from some of the main countries: Iraq? The sanctions, followed by the sledge hammer (invasion) followed by the sectarian isolation and non-inclusion policies. There was no Al Qaeda in Iraq prior to the invasion. Now the majority of ISIS leaders are ex-Baathist (and secular I might add) army leaders who were all sacked after the invasion. North Africa? The invasion and destruction of Lybia with all the arms and money that were thrown into it. Afghanistan? Doesn't take a genius to figure that one out. Arabian gulf? The billions of dollars that are being 'invested' to by KSA to radicalize people with their Wahabi version of Islam. Chechnya? The incredibly long Russian oppression of the population. Syria? Obviously there is the brutality of the Syrian regime but arguably more important are the weapons and money thrown in there to bring extremists from all over the region and arm and fund them to fight the regime...etc. Obviously there are many other factors, but those are some of the major ones which can or at least should be addressed.

So will all of this stop the threat of ISIS in days, weeks or even months? Of course not. But the world is where it is at the moment and I struggle to think of more effective means of battling the threat of ISIS. Regardless, if one thing is certain, it is that the usual sledge hammer response of bombing everything you don't like is guaranteed to make things much much worse.

[Laylabelle 9,296]

Sad and scary world we live in at the moment