y va marquer wrote:

Irish gunner wrote:

Mocking is fun, and can be constructive and informative.

when innocent people are dying due to these distortions of religion.

B-b-but if Islam is the religion of peace, surely Muslim extremists would just be extremely peaceful?

IG do you think this kind of na na na post is actually contributing something to the discussion?

It's contributing to my amusement, and you've repeatedly told me to not take tolly discussions too seriously, so I'm not.

damn ive lost +4 rating, im not sure what ive said thats so controversial.

how am i ever going to get to +69 at this rate?

Anonymous have closed down around 10,000 ISIS Twitter accounts and are spamming ISIS members with "Never Gonna Give You Up".

Who says the state didn't know about their movements? The older Kouachi brother was in jail for 18 months prior to the Hebdo attacks for funneling fighters to Iraq. Immediately after the attack French authorities knew about their involvement but for some reason they were unable to prevent him from amassing shotguns, RPGs and assault rifles in the build up to the attacks. As a side note they also immediately knew that their 18 year old brother-in-law was driving the getaway car despite dozens of classmates seeing him in school during the shooting.

Why get rid of your Kouachis and Salahs if you can use them to full effect later on?

Irish gunner wrote:

y va marquer wrote:

IG do you think this kind of na na na post is actually contributing something to the discussion?

It's contributing to my amusement, and you've repeatedly told me to not take tolly discussions too seriously, so I'm not.

Poor judgement, very poor.
Not so keen on seeing how things that I have said are twisted or to see a lack of basic cop on being shown in a thread that's quite fraught at the moment.

jones wrote:

Why get rid of your Kouachis and Salahs if you can use them to full effect later on?

Don't you think it's a bit irresponsible to float theories like that without more to substantiate them? 

With IS actively seeking the same kulturkampf as right wing Europeans, the latter have no need to conspire in terrorism. 

It's a reality that these militant groupuscules are very hard to police. As that Schneier article pointed out, the suspects go on a very long watchlist, and very few of them accrue enough reasons to merit arrest before it's too late.

jones wrote:

arsedoc md wrote:

Beg to differ. Lived with Hindus, muslims, christians and buddhists. Nobody initiates violence just because of religion. Stating such things callously only offends peaceful people who go about their daily but have an important place for religion in their heart and lives. 
The violence comes mostly when there is powerplay in the picture. Fucked up leaders fuel it. 
Mocking religion in such a context is frankly pretty juvenile at this time when innocent people are dying due to these distortions of religion. 

Pretty much the essence of the essays I've been typing out on the last few pages. Agree especially with the mocking part; since when has it ever been a good idea to mock anyone?

It's not a person that's being mocked, it's an idea. This is exactly the problem - many religious types think that their ideas are extremely special because they involve a deity and consider criticism of those ideas to be some kind of personal attack. Why can we mock silly communist and fascist ideas but not religious ones? Perhaps people have an important place for those ideas "in their heart and lives" as well.

Religious sensitivities should not be a reason for restricting freedom of speech, because quite frankly you never know what someone may find offensive for completely irrational reasons. Consider that the Catholic Church found Galileo's heliocentrism to be extremely offensive. 

Hard to imagine anyone who's serious about anything coming out of a dialogue would resort to mocking. Difference between constructive dialogue and silly mocking- it's what juveniles do in school to score cheap points. Why mock communists or fascists either if that'll only lead them to be angry and loss of lives, when there could be other ways of speech and communication?
Invoking freedom of speech, - it's so very selective in the first world itself, - just so people can have cheap thrills out of mocking someone's faith...not sure very productive. If A says religious sensitivities shouldn't be a reason to restrict FOS, and B says that it should why should we listen to only A? That ain't democracy, is it now? Especially when B is clearly in the world majority.

Mocking by definition is to evoke fun and inferiority in the 'mockee'--strange to call it can be constructive and informative. Like saying terrorism could lead to great advances in security and safety

More crap in Mali unfolding. http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/20/africa/mali-shooting/index.html

mdgoonah41 wrote:

damn ive lost +4 rating, im not sure what ive said thats so controversial.

how am i ever going to get to +69 at this rate?

Go (micro)soft on their asses. (i'm bad at puns, sorry)

Burnwinter wrote:

jones wrote:

Why get rid of your Kouachis and Salahs if you can use them to full effect later on?

Don't you think it's a bit irresponsible to float theories like that without more to substantiate them? 

With IS actively seeking the same kulturkampf as right wing Europeans, the latter have no need to conspire in terrorism. 

It's a reality that these militant groupuscules are very hard to police. As that Schneier article pointed out, the suspects go on a very long watchlist, and very few of them accrue enough reasons to merit arrest before it's too late.

From my point of view it's as reasonable a theory as the official version that saw them identified within minutes of the killings taking place. Especially the teenage boy who according to the police was the driver; if that doesn't scream foul play I don't know what does.

As you know the truth behind large, paradigm shifting incidents like these often don't surface until many months, years or decades later; I'm not saying I know the actual events any better than anyone else but that it's sensible to stay critical of any reports coming from any of the parties involved.
Another example of this was how immediately after the Bataclan murders there were reports of the attackers screaming Allahuakbar and "This is for Syria", which were shortly afterwards refuted by every single witness of the attacks.

You're right in that the IS seeks the same clash of cultures that the right wing in the West is fanning the flames for, but that does not necessarily mean the latter will rely on the former to exacerbate the current toxic climate. The Soviets as an example were not exactly fond of the NATO member nations, but that didn't keep US generals from concocting deeply inhumane plans like Operation Northwoods either.

Regarding your last point; it is certainly true that these watchlists are very inefficient but at the same time the police in any Western country post-9/11 have never been hesitant to arrest anyone for the most miniscule of reasons if they were somewhat terror-related. I was 13 years old when I was arrested by the SEK for leaving a mosque which was suspected of housing Osama Bin Laden in 2003. After sitting with two broken ribs in a cell for four hours I was let go with no charges against me, in the aftermath I learned that an anonymous phone call was enough for the police to raid the mosque with tracking dogs and arrest fourteen people with no charges. Needless to say that Bin Laden never even left the Hindu Kush, let alone hid in a mosque in central Europe.

And that's comparatively innocuous compared to the hundreds of innocent men who were and are to this day detained in places like Guantanamo Bay, for ridiculous reasons like being related to combatants in the Middle East or similar. Again, not to say every state knows every movement of any subversive element in its own ranks, but more often than not there's more than enough reason to doubt the official version of events.

The French police were slow to release information regarding the attackers, two remain unidentified.

The early reports from the Bataclan were unofficial.

The truth behind this is more likely to be that the murderers were known to police, but were not being specifically tracked or under surveillance in the run up to the attack.
The suggestion that the security forces had any inkling that these men were plotting a killing spree and allowed them free rein to do so is pretty unbelievable.

The official version of events is not always the absolute truth but my instinct with regard to the Paris attacks is that intelligence and security were a good few steps behind the cell who went on the rampage last Friday.

I go by experience, not instinct. There have been cases sounding far less likely than the scenario outlined above, involving states actively encouraging and perpetrating terrorism against their own population.

People doubting authority reports on all sorts of events usually are ridiculed in the immediate aftermath, several years later when the story has been lived down you will still read about the actual plots in the background on wikipedia. I find it unbelievable how people can certainly rule out any scenario in a time where wikileaks release cables that refute official versions pretty much every week.

I'm not one for buying conspiracy theories in the aftermath of mass murders perpetrated by the morally bankrupt.
The suggestion that the attacks in Paris were actively encouraged by the French state sounds paranoid in the extreme to me.

I wasn't trying to convince you with my opinion, feel free to believe whatever you want.

I have to say though, for someone who complains about the rough tone some posts here have you sure don't pull no punches yourself. I'd appreciate you refraining from calling me paranoid, unbelievable and similar just because I happen to disagree with you.

I didn't personalise my post Jones,there is no "you" in there, no accusations.
I said the suggestion sounded paranoid, I believe it to be the case.

If I said "only an idiot would believe the official story" that would be an accusation without any "you" in it as well. If I believed that to be the case I still wouldn't include it in my posts because it's not helpful to the discussion.

Referring to a suggestion as paranoid is not the equivalent of implying somebody is an idiot.

This exchange is not doing this thread any good, I suggest we leave it here.
If you feel aggrieved Jones would you PM one of the other mods please and we'll see how they want to deal with this.

It's semantics and little else. A suggestion cannot be paranoid, people who make them are.

I don't feel aggrieved. I made a suggestion on how to improve the earlier discussion before it drifted off into this non-matter. Given the negative response I agree we should leave it here.

@[deleted]

When we talk about conspiracy we move from the structuring tendencies of society and the state to the analytics of risk and reward for individuals or for small cadres within the "deep state" …

In the case of prejudiced, heavy-handed policing in a racially polarised community there is little or no risk, which is why these behaviours become systematic, and why Darren Wilson becomes a millionaire cause célèbre rather than a pariah after shooting Mike Brown to death.

(Can I just say though, what you relate about your own experiences is a disgrace to the authorities.)

By contrast, if preparations for the horrific attacks in Paris were in any way known of, and allowed to progress by any French official it would be enough to tear careers apart and generate long jail terms and enormous public fear and loathing. The risks are very high.

Given what was in the balance for anyone in the position to enact such a criminal conspiracy, unless there's more substantial evidence, I think we'd be better off accepting in this case that jet fuel can melt steel beams.  

Another example of this was how immediately after the Bataclan murders there were reports of the attackers screaming Allahuakbar and "This is for Syria", which were shortly afterwards refuted by every single witness of the attacks.

This sort of critique I agree with—along with the instant skepticism about claims the attackers had entered France posing as refugees—but this is a case of embellishment by sociopathically racist journalists, rather than anything to do with plans made before the fact. In any case, as it turns out, if the attackers did not truly yell "God is great!" they might as well have done, since they were religious fanatics.