Terrorist Attack in Paris (Split from News)

[la dame en noir]

I'm just very upset about this. I had to message my own friend who has family in Beirut because no one cared to talk to her about it or mention it. NO ONE mentioned it. How does it hit close to home for everyone? There isn't anything fair about it. If people scream "we're all human, all lives matter" but are the same ones telling people to stfu and worry about ONE country. That's when I get heated. This whole world is doomed and I'm not just saying this to be a superstitious person.

[Lustful Bride]

I'm just very upset about this. I had to message my own friend who has family in Beirut because no one cared to talk to her about it or mention it. NO ONE mentioned it. How does it hit close to home for everyone? There isn't anything fair about it. If people scream "we're all human, all lives matter" but are the same ones telling people to stfu and worry about ONE country. That's when I get heated. This whole world is doomed and I'm not just saying this to be a superstitious person.

That's life sadly. ITs all one confusing shade of gray that will drive a person completely mad if they try and make sense of it. The only thing to do is to help your fellow get back on their feet after life beats them down. We are all fellow travelers heading to the end. The future gets scarier everyday but together we can at least make this world livable. Its a naiive view yes, but nothing was ever accomplished by being pessimistic.

Kind of went on a weird tangent and not 100% sure what I was trying to go for. I'm sorry about your friend's family and I hope they are safe. And that the scum who did this have a deep pit in hell waiting for them where for all eternity they feel nothing but the pain they inflicted upon others and are reminded of it for every single second of their punishment.

[la dame en noir]

I'm not upset at you. Just wanted to share my frustrations.

[Lustful Bride]

I'm not upset at you. Just wanted to share my frustrations.

Its fine, these are hard times, and keeping our feelings inside only hurts ourselves. Its good to release them every now and again.
But our anger should be more directed to the murderers who are building the bombs and using them to kill civilians. Monsters like that have no humanity, and they need to be destroyed.

[Cycle]

But our anger should be more directed to the murderers who are building the bombs and using them to kill civilians. Monsters like that have no humanity, and they need to be destroyed.

la dame en noir feels what she feels.  She has not expressed them in a way that is harmful to others.  I think we should respect her feelings, even if we feel otherwise.  I don't think we should be telling her how to feel or what to feel.

[Lustful Bride]

la dame en noir feels what she feels.  She has not expressed them in a way that is harmful to others.  I think we should respect her feelings, even if we feel otherwise.  I don't think we should be telling her how to feel or what to feel.

Very well.  :-)  was just offering it up.

[Vekseid]

I'm just very upset about this. I had to message my own friend who has family in Beirut because no one cared to talk to her about it or mention it. NO ONE mentioned it. How does it hit close to home for everyone? There isn't anything fair about it. If people scream "we're all human, all lives matter" but are the same ones telling people to stfu and worry about ONE country. That's when I get heated. This whole world is doomed and I'm not just saying this to be a superstitious person.

For what it's worth, I've seen updates about the situation in Nigeria regularly and heard about Beirut about half an hour after I heard about Paris. If you are referring to this attack in Kenya, I heard of it too.

Some of it additionally has to do with the statement from ISIS and President Hollande's statements.

Finally, focusing on the worst of the world is a particularly nasty form of poison. Earth is an immense place, and every day more than a thousand people lose their lives to violence alone. You could dedicate your life to naming each one.

To me, it says something else entirely that someone could actually do such a thing.

[Lustful Bride]

Heres an interesting thought: Do terrorist attacks actually work?

I mean, attacks like these, 9-11, the Boston marathon bombing, Charlie Hebdo, the countless attacks in the Mideast, Africa and elsewhere. They are designed to instill total fear in the populace, destabilize, damage the economy and get governments to capitulate. But so far all these terrorist attacks have succeeded is in getting people waving their own flags harder and going to the nearest recruiting station to enlist and fight the people who commit these acts.

They get a populace riled up and wanting justice, I don't think these tactics actually work, I mean, not in the longrun.

[la dame en noir]

For what it's worth, I've seen updates about the situation in Nigeria regularly and heard about Beirut about half an hour after I heard about Paris. If you are referring to this attack in Kenya, I heard of it too.

Some of it additionally has to do with the statement from ISIS and President Hollande's statements.

Finally, focusing on the worst of the world is a particularly nasty form of poison. Earth is an immense place, and every day more than a thousand people lose their lives to violence alone. You could dedicate your life to naming each one.

To me, it says something else entirely that someone could actually do such a thing.

I don't get to hear as much as I would like about other countries and the terror they live through everyday. I'm mostly hurt because I've seen so many people try to showcase one issue over the other. There have been tweets were people were literally telling black American students to get over it because Paris is more important.

It should never be a fight about which life matters more and people should understand that.

[Lustful Bride]

There have been tweets were people were literally telling black American students to get over it because Paris is more important.

But that right there tells you that it would come from the typical bigoted idiots who start shit for the sake of starting it. "Look for the helpers". Look for the people actually trying to give support and advice...but the internet has a bad habit of only showing the worst. Ive lost count of how many times ive been insulted and talked down to as an American, a Christian and a woman...it honestly makes humanity look like the worse thing to ever crawl out of the primordial muck.

But remember that those are only the worst people. There just aren't enough of the good people out there opening up and speaking out. Plus there's always the people who say shit just to cause flame wars and because they are scared little shits who still live in their parents basement.  :-)

[Cycle]

There have been tweets were people were literally telling black American students to get over it because Paris is more important.

I frequently see this tactic employed and I find it wholly unpersuasive.  Just because something worse exists doesn't mean something bad isn't bad--or that bad thing doesn't deserve attention.  It is like arguing that people shouldn't be upset or trying to do anything to prevent thefts because murders occur.  Obviously, such an argument is ludicrous. 

So yes, we absolutely should try to stop ISIS from pulling off another attack like this one and help the Parisians.  But we can, and should, also be trying to mitigate the racism ingrained in Mizzou culture.

[Drake Valentine]

The saddest part of all of this is that the U.S Trained and Funded I.S.I.S

[Lustful Bride]

The saddest part of all of this is that the U.S Trained and Funded I.S.I.S

No, that was the Taliban, though back when so many were united under the Mujahideen some of them were probably what made ISIS now.

Edit: Though at this point there are so many factions and groups its hard to keep track.

[Drake Valentine]

No, that was the Taliban, though back when so many were united under the Mujahideen some of them were probably what made ISIS now.

Edit: Though at this point there are so many factions and groups its hard to keep track.

http://www.truthandaction.org/us-trained-isis-forces-jordan-base/

http://www.alternet.org/world/how-isis-ended-stocked-american-weapons / http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/06/04/Fog-War-US-Has-Armed-ISIS

and

youtube video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3CRWcR4U5o

Just saying.

[Lustful Bride]

http://www.truthandaction.org/us-trained-isis-forces-jordan-base/

http://www.alternet.org/world/how-isis-ended-stocked-american-weapons / http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/06/04/Fog-War-US-Has-Armed-ISIS

and

youtube video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3CRWcR4U5o

Just saying.

Welp, fuck. All the more reason to blow them to bits then. Gotta clean up our own mess.

And its not like they are actually sane enough/ actually give a damn, to open a dialogue with and go "Hey stop raping, pillaging and beheading"

[gaggedLouise]

Apparently there had been indications before to the Paris police that there could be a current threat. A 51-year old man who has been in police custody in Germany for ten days was caught in his car in Bavaria, near the Austrian-German border, on November 5; in the trunk of his car there were explosives and several heavy guns. The GPS settings in his on-board computer were set for a route to Paris. The German police alerted their French colleagues that something big might be afoot in the capital. The guy said he was planning to make a torist trip to Paris and take a look at the Eiffel tower. He is refusing to answer any questions about what else he may have been planning in Paris, and says he had no idea of the luggage found in the back of the car.  ::)

Also, there may have been plans to attack the famed Moulin Rouge cabaret hall. The ISIS statement, which would have been written in advance, mentions actions in the 10th, 11th and 18th arrondissements (city districts) of Paris, but there was no attack in the 18th, in northern Paris, where Moulin Rouge (and some other possible targets - it's the Montmartre and the area around it) are located. In a supposed getaway car which was found in a suburb, there were several Kalashnikov assault guns and packets of unused munitions; this again gives the impression that something more had been planned.

[Lustful Bride]

My god, so many people are being played and they don't even realize.

On other sites I frequent there's a rush of islamaphobia and just...endless slurs everywhere. These people don't even realize that by doing this they are just giving ISIS and other similar groups a perfect recruiting tool and way to justify their attacks to the average grunt on the ground. They can just point online and say "Do you see? They preach about 'equality' but it is a lie, in truth they hate us and want to kill us all. So we should kill them first."

People are being played like puppets and gladly accepting their strings.

[Oniya]

I'm going to just avoid Facebook for a week.  I left a parting shot on my wall - two Mr. Rogers quotes and two music videos (Winds of Change and Land of Confusion).  I fully expect one 'unfriending' to occur, and I'm not even going to miss them.

[gaggedLouise]

France is responding with airstrikes on a number of sompounds and "governement" buildings in Raqqa, the ISIS capital.

[White Wolf]

France is responding with airstrikes on a number of sompounds and "governement" buildings in Raqqa, the ISIS capital.

Am I alone in feeling a sense of...emptiness at that news? I keep up with current events and I've been aware that ISIS is on the run on the ground war (Russian airstrikes have allowed the Syrian army to rip ISIS from Aleppo while, simultaneously, the Kurds have pushed ISIS off their lucrative oil fields in the north - ISIS is very much on the retreat as we speak), and any steps to hasten their inevitably downfall are, definitely, a good thing.

But what Lustful Bride says haunts me - true indeed, all over social media people are reacting to this latest round of airstrikes with "Yeah! Payback time!" and "Kill the subhuman filth!" and any variation on those basic themes. Like I think I said before, isn't the point of us being the Western democracies that we're BETTER than terrorists? Aren't we fighting terrorism BECAUSE they don't value human life and kill indiscriminately? So when we shed our mask and reveal that at heart, we are no different..what's the point?

By that I'm not even implying France shouldn't continue its campaign in Syria - I'm not criticising governments; rather, the people. Us, Westerners. We seem to be so ready to condemn anybody we view as a "terrorist" and yet, clearly, we don't actually know what the word is supposed to mean/our own views really aren't that different when we get down to it.

ISIS thinks we're subhuman, so they kill us. We think Muslims are subhuman, so we kill them. That's not a high moral ground - that's a dogfight.

I guess I'm just so disappointed in people's reaction to all this horror. Some naive part of me still believed we were better than all this. Ugh.

[Lustful Bride]

Am I alone in feeling a sense of...emptiness at that news? I keep up with current events and I've been aware that ISIS is on the run on the ground war (Russian airstrikes have allowed the Syrian army to rip ISIS from Aleppo while, simultaneously, the Kurds have pushed ISIS off their lucrative oil fields in the north - ISIS is very much on the retreat as we speak), and any steps to hasten their inevitably downfall are, definitely, a good thing.

But what Lustful Bride says haunts me - true indeed, all over social media people are reacting to this latest round of airstrikes with "Yeah! Payback time!" and "Kill the subhuman filth!" and any variation on those basic themes. Like I think I said before, isn't the point of us being the Western democracies that we're BETTER than terrorists? Aren't we fighting terrorism BECAUSE they don't value human life and kill indiscriminately? So when we shed our mask and reveal that at heart, we are no different..what's the point?

By that I'm not even implying France shouldn't continue its campaign in Syria - I'm not criticising governments; rather, the people. Us, Westerners. We seem to be so ready to condemn anybody we view as a "terrorist" and yet, clearly, we don't actually know what the word is supposed to mean/our own views really aren't that different when we get down to it.

ISIS thinks we're subhuman, so they kill us. We think Muslims are subhuman, so we kill them. That's not a high moral ground - that's a dogfight.

I guess I'm just so disappointed in people's reaction to all this horror. Some naive part of me still believed we were better than all this. Ugh.

That's just the endless cycle of violence and retribution. But theres a big wrench in your small rant there.

The civilian casualties that are caused by our strikes are accidental, an unfortunate side effect of dropping a bomb on an enemy who refuses to come out and fight like real soldiers, and is accustomed to using human shields.

When ISIS kills civilians, that's because it is one of their goals, their modus operandi, a tool they use and delight in.

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

Plus a lot of times our planes have been returning with undropped bombs because Isis refuses to move too far from civies and areas of high noncombatant populations.

I'm looking for the article that said that but that was about 3 months ago and I cant find it now @_@

Not that we are really saints (that's a concept I think has been lost to humanity lately) but we are certainly not to the levels of ISIS and other such groups.


Edit: Also people are still dealing with a fresh wound and tensions are still high. Not to mention, well its the internet and you always see the absolute uglirest parts of humanity. I once saw a person insulting someone for writing a prayer online for a friend who died of cancer, and focusing solely on the Christianity part and not the fact that he was harassing someone grieving of the the loss of a friend. Fucking hate some of these people on the internet sometimes, think its made us worse socially than before.

[gaggedLouise]

The ISIS top command are no dumb guys, so they must have known before they launched the Paris attacks that this kind of response was a likely one. It's a classic way to retaliate, isn't it? and France has been responding with speed and precision in this way in the past. I'm fairly sure that ISIS' leading guys and senior officers were in their bunkers before the bombing began. The peoople up on the ground and inside those buoildings - men, women and possibly children, and ordinary soldiers - were left to die and suffer.

Even if the Paris group had managed to take out president Hollande - he would have been their number one target at the football stadium, but that attack went down the drain - it's likely that the crisis cabinet and the vice president would have responded with air strikes on Raqqa. The leaders of that outfit simply wouldn't care, they see their men as expendables in something like this. Hell, it's exactly like in that song by Genesis I linked to earlier in this thread: "Some of you are going to die / Martyrs of course to the freedom that I shall provide!" - just substitute free space given to their state for "freedom" and it's the same.  >:(

In the long run though, ISIS isn't the kind of adversary one can topple with just airstrikes, and they're obviously very dangerous. They are unlike any other kind of rogue movement in modern history, aren't they? To get rid of them and make way for something better will likely take a ground war...and it can't wait for like five years while they are given a long wndow of time to strike deeper roots in the region, kill and sell more people and become even more of a serious menace. I do think there will be a point sometime when the real big boys get into some kind of ground war with them, and that could mean both France, the US and even Iran. Perhaps even Russia. They all see ISIS as a threat, and the Iraqi army is inadequate, poorly led and won't have any chance to do much against those well-trained fanatics.

[White Wolf]

Lustful Bride, I probably caused more confusion than intended by saying "We think Muslims are subhuman, so kill them." I was in no way speaking about civilian casualties of Western operations; my point was rather that I was speaking from the (espoused) point of view of the kind of social media tough-guys I'm grinding my teeth at. My only point was, these people call terrorists subhuman for being vicious animals, and then talk like vicious animals themselves in how to deal with them. The hypocrisy really and truly devastates me.

When it comes to civilian casualties that cannot, unfortunately, be avoided. It's going to happen one way or another, no matter what we do. The objective, as you said, is to minimise that as much as possible.

[Lustful Bride]

Lustful Bride, I probably caused more confusion than intended by saying "We think Muslims are subhuman, so kill them." I was in no way speaking about civilian casualties of Western operations; my point was rather that I was speaking from the (espoused) point of view of the kind of social media tough-guys I'm grinding my teeth at. My only point was, these people call terrorists subhuman for being vicious animals, and then talk like vicious animals themselves in how to deal with them. The hypocrisy really and truly devastates me.

When it comes to civilian casualties that cannot, unfortunately, be avoided. It's going to happen one way or another, no matter what we do. The objective, as you said, is to minimise that as much as possible.

Social media tough guys...perfect way to describe them. I know so many fuck wads on youtube and countless other sites who will never miss a chance to spew insults at someone over race, religion, sex, politics, but the moment they would be faced with someone in real life they would probably shit themselves. But enough about them, they get too much attention as is.

[Drake Valentine]

I believe sound retaliation is the proper course of action for any to take.

For instance, if they wouldn't go around randomly terrorizing people who are minding their own business and going about their daily lives, than they would likely have nothing to worry about.

Instead, they simply choose to piss on others way of living, of course their actions are going to warrant a lot of hate and desired revenge.

The thing that still bothers me is I can't even begin to understand why we(US) were training and helping them before all this. I would of assumed government learned their lesson down Bin Laden path, since we(US) were responsible for his training as well and look what it caused; but now it seemed like a great idea to give plenty of military teaching to an entire group who have similar religious views(or probably same) as Bin Laden.

Views that they aim to use and justify as a bloody crusade.

There is honestly no helping these people. These are people that use child soldiers, strap bombs to children, sell girls as sex slaves, and of course have no courtesy or care for proper warfare tactics given how they aim their assaults to civilians with their 'holy war.' These are people that thrive in warcrimes, if you can even classify them(ones responsible) as 'people' at all.

What really needs to be done is something to get the message across for them to settle down and leave people alone with their shenanigans.

I am sure a few carpet bombings would likely lead to their inevitable downfall, rip their city apart, but that in itself isn't one of the best moves as it will likely still catch and kill civilians.

I say pull a Black Jack Pershing on the terrorists and see how well they may decide to keep up their behavior.