The French regime again showing its ugly authoritarian and statist face with these draconian bills. It wasn't enough for them to put environmentalists under house arrest and subject innocent people to humiliating mandatory reporting to different police stations 3 times a day or obligatory curfew for certain people or neighborhoods without any judicial oversight. [0]
I knew it from the beginning that they would abuse the State of Emergency decree and turn the lives of people esp minorities into a living hell.
I'm genuinely more afraid of the people who are afraid right now than I am of the people who they think I should be afraid of. The anti-Muslim rhetoric (e.g. yelling "All Muslims are terrorists" at town meetings) scares the hell out of me. How easily could that attitude be shifted towards any arbitrary group with just one or two tragic events?
On one hand, it's unquestionable that radical Islam is an aggressor that is funding and directing terror attacks.
On the other hand, Muslims are people too, and it is extremely unjust to punish all Muslims for the actions of a radical sect. I think that Europe is in danger of lurching rightward and tempting the return of ethno-religious cleansing. Fascism is not pretty, and the danger for Europeans is real.
it's unquestionable that radical Islam is an aggressor
Sure, but why stop there instead of going just a tiny bit deeper and identifying the money layer? You'll find it has a lot less to do with religion and a lot more to do with efforts by the House of Saud to maintain an increasingly dubious hold on worldly power. You'll also find a rat's nest of illiberal interests from nominally liberal countries with an interest in their survival. Thus, the broader desire to deflect attention from the very dark and concentrated heart of this to a much more diffuse and amorphous target like "radical islam".
Every time you're tempted to say "radical Islam" try saying "Saudi Arabia" instead. More often than not, you'll find you've hit on the more accurate term.
Make no mistake Iran is a dangerous state too and Shiite Islam can be weaponized too and could prove much more lethal than Sunni Islam given that religious Shiites usually follow their "Pope" or Supreme Leader blindly.
Just imagine an army of 500 mln or so that can be mobilized with a single fiery speech or declaration. Actually, that kind of empire or army is the wildest wet dream that Sunni radicals could have.
That's a hypothetical with a significant number of non-trivial barriers to realization, not an actual situation with a long a well-documented history. You've also missed the larger point, which has to do with the deeply cynical and reckless policies of Western elites with regard to the KSA.
Finally, your numbers are absurd. 500 million? Shia? In round numbers, you're off by...a lot. ~180 million is closer to the mark, and the idea that this entire population, very young and old included, is one speech away from becoming a ferocious army is beyond insane.
I'm sorry, but the way you combined deep ignorance and wild speculation with plain bad information was ugly enough. Finishing your remarks with a needless bit of vulgarity puts them way over the top.
Seriously, this is the kind of garbage you expect to find at Trump rallies, not HN.
Yes, this is my perspective as well, but for ease of conversation I didn't mention it here-- people get very upset.
But take it a step further. Who funds Saudi Arabia, and why? Who backs radical Sunnis, and why? Who backs the radical Shia? Geopolitical problems have many causes and symptoms which can grow into entire pathologies in their own right when they get really out of control, as the West's idiotic power struggle with Russia in the Middle East has.
Who funds Saudi Arabia? Nobody "funds" Saudi Arabia. It's a sovereign nation with massive reserves of oil and independent wealth, not some Silicon Valley start up. To the extent that the money comes from somewhere, it comes from all of us, because we need to get to work and gas costs money.
The point is that the US has its own set of deeply vested interests in these markets, and they're more than willing to tolerate what the Saudis are doing to underwrite jihadi terrorism and the Wahhabi strain of Islam that animates it if the alternative involves seriously consideration of changes to the way the developed world produces and consumes the energy it depends on.
> the ugly truth is that communal punishment is the only form of punishment that truly works
I appreciate from your other comments that your views are nuanced, but posting something this glib about something this horrific crosses the line here.
> I appreciate from your other comments that your views are nuanced, but posting something this glib about something this horrific crosses the line here.
Here's the thing. Eventually, Islamic extremism WILL disappear. Today, tomorrow, or in 100 years. The only question is how that happens.
My wife is Muslim (and dark-skinned). I married her in an Islamic ceremony (meaning I became Muslim, at least in the eyes of some Islamic authority). Her family all have Muslim names. Our children will be visibly non-white.
We're also secular, and like to do secular things. I'd love to go to Europe with her, we both have family there, and I'd love for the world to be a place where she isn't discriminated against (and she HAS experienced racism here, in Canada), either by the state, by ignorant red-necks, or by other Muslims.
The fact is, every time terrorist attacks happen, she feels it. The looks at work, the comments on Facebook. I don't remember people talking about 'deporting all the Muslims' in Canada until very recently. We (as in myself, my wife and family) have a stake in this. She didn't choose to be Muslim, but she does suffer consequences today. And she knows it can get worse. Some of her family have converted to another religion and changed their names - she's considered it as well. It would be nice if abandoning your birth identity wasn't something you even had to consider.
Anyhow, either extremism is rooted out now, or it'll be rooted out later. It'll likely be more painful later...
I appreciate all of that, but calling for communal punishment with a bogus claim that it's the only thing that will work (something you can't possibly know) still crosses the line here.
It shouldn't be hard to see why. Imagine reading HN and hearing your fellow users call for you to be punished for crimes you are at least as aghast at, and personally more likely to suffer from, than the rest of the HN population is.
Well today Trump called for all Muslim travel to the US to halt. My wife and I travel to the US every year. If Trump gets elected, we won't be able to.
So 'collective punishment' is already happening.
All this bullshit is already affecting our lives. We're not part of any Muslim community, but my wife has a Muslim name, and public photos exist of my Muslim wedding. My wife's been told to leave the country by a red-neck. I've seen confederate flags flying here (in Canada...). Up until recent events, Canada's been pretty tolerant. Now it's anything but. It's getting harder to play down terrorist attacks as simply an 'aberration' or an 'isolated incident'.
I'm being real, talking about real things. France woke up to the FN leading the elections. Hollande closing down a few Mosques and banning religious symbols is small potatoes compared to could happen in the not to distant future... Maybe I'm sensationalist and too controversial. I prefer the socialist dream to the conservative dream. But right now we're headed towards a bleak future...
Eh, could you hold that thought for a moment? We're busy with our collective punishment programme of Christians, they should've stopped Breivik because hey, all Christians exchange terrorist plans and knew it was coming but they didn't warn the police! The only way we can convince them to warn the police next time is to punish them collectively this time, these Christians just don't care otherwise...
Can you see how silly your reasoning is or do you want more jokes?
Collective punishment is a stupid, barbaric, medieval idea we've fortunately gotten rid of. You're suggesting guilt by association, it's on the level of ridiculous ideas you'd expect from groups like IS.
First of all, Breivik himself stated he's not a Christian, claiming allegiance to Odin.
Second, if someone knew of his plans and didn't turn him in, they're guilty of complicity under current laws in most western countries.
Third, far-right groups are regularly 'punished' (ie. Prosecuted under various laws) for the actions of their members, even if it doesn't comprise all their members. As are gang members, etc...
Harboring, aiding and abetting criminals is punished in our society as a crime. Why not aiding and abetting extremism?
Laws exist to prosecute those that help support, aide and abet terrorists and they are frequently used against people in the aftermath of an attack. You seem to either think that all Muslims are guilty of aiding and abetting so should all be prosecuted or that these laws are not being used against Muslims who had prior knowledge of these attacks.
> First of all, Breivik himself stated he's not a Christian, claiming allegiance to Odin.
I was mostly using Breivik as a joke, I don't care for his beliefs as they have no root in reality. But for the record, Breivik has said a lot of things, indeed that he was not a religious man, indeed allegiance to Odin, but also statements like 'I consider myself to be 100 percent Christian.' He contradicted himself on many different occasions, but it'd be myopic to say he has never identified himself as a Christian. Again though, I don't care and certainly don't see him as a Christian terrorist, I was just using it for material for my joke to show how silly your reasoning is.
Anyway, on to more important things. You bring up aiding and abetting multiple times and then end your post. I don't see your point. Well I do but it's so wrong that I'm left wondering if you were trying to make another point.
The point you're making is 'sometimes people who indirectly are responsible for a crime, get convinced'. And that's true, and that's good. If you drive a getaway car for a bank robber or murderer, you're responsible.
Now, how that in any way reflects on the responsibility of say my father, who stays awake at night because he can't sleep, saddened about the loss of innocent life due to the recent terrorist attacks (I'm not making up a sob story here, take it how you want it), a man who happens to be a muslim, is beyond me. He has zero connection with these attacks, never condoned it, never supported it, never saw any indication it happened. He's simply a decent muslim, in no way different from any other, who let his own son grow up an atheist without ever making a fuss. Your idea to punish him by mere association on the basis of his religious beliefs, is again, something you'd expect from the terrorists you're so against. Further, it strengthens the very strategy that IS has, which is to recruit a billion muslims by scaring the world into resorting to medieval instruments like collective punishment of muslims you suggest, creating systems of apartheid based on religious beliefs, and pitting people like my dad against people like myself.
Collective punishment is a very distinct idea. It's not punishing the crime of aiding and abetting which is a normal and useful part of virtually every justice system on earth. Collective punishment is specifically punishing those with innocent associations. How you can not see the difference is beyond me. Next when a man does something, all men must be punished. When a black person does something, all blacks must be punished. When a computer engineer does something, all engineers must be punished. It's like I'm talking to a child with all due respect, defending collective punishment is an idea silly beyond reason. Some of the worst atrocities have happened under the guise of collective punishment and the world has created laws against it for this very reason.
Lastly I'll finish with this, and I hope you'll be convinced then. Because you must see the irony... to punish innocent people, merely because they're associated under an umbrella (a very wide umbrella, amongst which one may find many differences) of islamic faith, is to do exactly what some terrorists have done in the past... Terrorists have attacked and punished innocent people in the west, merely for their association with the west, whose governments have been responsible for various atrocities in the world. They have collectively punished and murdered innocent people on the basis of this association, including ordinary folks who resisted these atrocities, voted and marched against them, as well as punished kids who had no say in the matter. That's collective punishment, it's insane, it's immoral, and you're a supporter. I hate to throw a terrorist-supporter card on the table, but you're asking for one.
> You bring up aiding and abetting multiple times and then end your post. I don't see your point.
When the authorities recently raided various domiciles and Mosques in France, they found a bunch of weapons. Including some stashed in a Mosque. They found extremist propaganda. Some of the Paris attackers were known to police ("fiche S").
Up until now, they let these people be. Maybe they assumed they wouldn't actually carry out their radical desires. It's hard to believe no one in their community knew about their radicalism. They were given a chance to sort it out themselves. The west has been tolerant enough of those with divergent beliefs, assuming that they'll eventually assimilate.
> Now, how that in any way reflects on the responsibility of say my father, who stays awake at night because he can't sleep, saddened about the loss of innocent life due to the recent terrorist attacks (I'm not making up a sob story here, take it how you want it), a man who happens to be a muslim, is beyond me.
Is his son a terrorist? Is his brother? To be honest, I have no doubt he'd be even more upset if you were.
And I don't think he should be punished. What is 'fair' and 'just' in life is different than reality. Is it fair that innocent French people died in the Bataclan? Is it fair that Muslims died in the Bataclan (because there WERE Muslim names on the list of the dead). Is it fair that most of ISIS' victims are Muslims? Is it fair that Saudi Arabia is beheading and dropping bombs on Shias?
Today, just now, Donald Trump called for no Muslims to be allowed into the US. Is that fair? Yesterday, the Front National had a very strong result in France, and they propose much of the same (if not worse).
I'm calling for some sort of responsibility on the part of Muslims for people who become radicalised within their communities. Maybe some of my posts are controversial and maybe I use too much hyperbole. Maybe I'm too cynical about the world.
But the rise of the FN, and other extreme-right parties does have a precedent in history. It is history repeating itself. What comes after is worse...
Call it a conspiracy theory or what not but the rise of the far right looks manufactured to me. There are some really important people want RW stooges in positions of power for their future plans and they know very well how to make them appealing to the electorate by making their opponents look soft on issues of security and law & order. All it would take just to turn a blind eye to ISIS till the threat gets out of hand and then let one or two attacks pass through for the maximum impact on the unwary public.
Which is why many of my wife's family have changed their names, and given their children non-Muslim names.
On the flip side, my wife has also had other Muslims judge her for being too secular...
BTW, Arab-Christians are a thing, they're not named Mohammed, Ali or Abu Bakr... 'Muslim' names are distinct from 'Arab' names (ie. Are names of Islamic saints).
Do you really think that the bigots, angry mob or lowlifes would be capable of telling a secular Arabic name from an Islamic or Christian one?
Good luck with that! Try convince them first that "Syed" the first name of the Muslim terrorist who carried out the San Bernandino attack is a secular name and not Islamic one then we can talk about your "Final Solution" for the Muslims.
Well Saeed (or Said, Syed, etc...) WAS one of Mohamed's companions...
And I'm well aware of the bigots, who attack Sikhs for what Muslims do, and attack Jews because, well, Jews...
I don't know if you follow politics, but the far right is rising in Europe. Those bigots and idiots are raising their voice. Every time there's an attack by Muslims, those idiots gain more votes... A decade ago the FN was a joke. Today there's a real chance the next French President comes from the FN.
The former means "Lord" or "Master" and the latter means "Happy" or "Gay". They're perfectly secular names.
The religious names are Mohammad's aliases plus the Big Four figures in Sunni Islam and the other big figures in Shiite Islam.
Other than these, the rest are non Islamic names. If some low level Mohammad's companion was called سعيد, this doesn't change the fact that it's a secular name.
To be honest with you, the whole thing looks so ridiculous because ( عمر Omar, فاطمة Fatima ) are considered religious but some Latinos are called Omar or Fatima. Maybe we should drop the whole thing.
> Today there's a real chance the next French President comes from the FN.
Let them have this experiment. If they're so bigoted and extreme to their own detriment, I wouldn't stop them. Let them learn by experience not to be guided by fear or populist demagoguery.
> Right now, Muslims won't turn in their neighbors and children to the authorities if they're radicalized.
In Turkey, we've seen on TV or heard of many families turning in their children many many times. In fact, the suicide-bomber-brothers who killed upwards of a hundred victims in Ankara were reported to be islamic state militants multiple times by their parents. They've reported them many times to different authorities.
Death of a hundred people may be alien to French, but it is not alien to us. It's middle east, both killers and the victims are often muslims. And muslims themselves are the ones that suffer the most from this radicalism.
> Since extremist sects recruit from within moderate sects, the moderates need to be more diligent in truly eliminating the extremist element. That means more consequences to the community. Which is unfair, but it's either that or the rise of the 'Sixth Reich' in a generation because right now, we're just kicking the can down the road.
It's not easy for the moderate muslim to avoid extremism. And I speak as an irreligious agnostic. Fact is that if they are not in Turkey, they are either in direct contact with war, or a subject of a kingdom. And then there's Iran. And Turkey is not the most serene place either. Here, the west is to blame. They drew these borders in the middle east after WWI, they spoiled them in the 20th century. Now if this "Sixth Reich", if I understand you correctly, is a threaten of genocide, I will not be shocked. That is the best possible fruit of the western canon, which is built on the extermination of the other and national pride, with the motto "it's not sin if we do it".
A hundred people died in Paris, and all EU now wants to taste muslim blood. That's mundane here in middle east. The most serene of the countries has at least two wars at the border. Isis bombs mosques, kills people for being of a different sect of islam; and it rapes children, enslaves women, steals immigrants' goods here, in the middle east. Before it was Saddam, etc. But the fact is that since WWI there has been a power that killed innocent people here. Neither France nor any other europeans are in real danger. All that happened was a side effect of what they did, how they messed up the life here, always for imperial affairs.
I may go on, but I'll finish here. You're not the europe that built the Roman Empires, you're the europe that made them suffer and die. You're no more good than islamist terrorists. The world is a bad place because of your empire building games.
> In Turkey, we've seen on TV or heard of many families turning in their children many many times.
And that's why there's still hope for Turkey.
> In fact, the suicide-bomber-brothers who killed upwards of a hundred victims in Ankara were reported to be islamic state militants multiple times by their parents. They've reported them many times to different authorities.
Well, plenty of people do think that Erdogan is strongly sympathetic to ISIS...
> Here, the west is to blame.
Can blame all you want, but what's done is done. Canada (or rather British territories in North America) was once at war with the Americans. We were at war with the Germans (twice). We got over it.
> The world is a bad place because of your empire building games.
Don't pretend the Islamic world didn't participate in the same. How many cultures were destroyed by Islamic conquests? Remember, Turkey wasn't always Turkish. Istanbul wasn't always Istanbul.
If the West is so vengeful, why IS Istanbul still Istanbul?
> Well, plenty of people do think that Erdogan is strongly sympathetic to ISIS.
I do not believe that he has emotions. It's all money and power, IMO. And he is as representative of his people as Hitler is of today's Germans. And it's not that Europe is enemies with him.
> Can blame all you want, but what's done is done.
Then you should have the same approach to terrorist attacks too. See, ideas have the bad side effect of applying to a wider spectrum than you intend.
> Canada (or rather British territories in North America) was once at war with the Americans. We were at war with the Germans (twice). We got over it.
You got over it helping each other. You didn't exterminate Germans for the bad they did. Revenge will not bring peace. It'll bring more revenge.
> Don't pretend the Islamic world didn't participate in the [empire building games.]
I'm not a muslim, and I do not have any sympathy for any religion or empire. The world progresses, and what I do not like is the pride that people try to hold on to. My words should boil down to "we are different faces of the same evil". In the end, West has had more chance to mess it up than the muslims, and they've never ceased to do so. Where are the native americans?
> If the West is so vengeful, why IS Istanbul still Istanbul?
It is Istanbul now. Who knows what'll happen tomorrow?
> I do not believe that he has emotions. It's all money and power, IMO.
If it's all money and power, he's throwing his lot in with the wrong players IMO.
> Then you should have the same approach to terrorist attacks too.
I would be glad to think the same of terrorist attacks. Unfortunately they're an almost daily occurrence.
> You didn't exterminate Germans for the bad they did. Revenge will not bring peace. It'll bring more revenge.
Yes it will. And if we did nothing today, Islamists would still be seeking revenge tomorrow.
> It is Istanbul now. Who knows what'll happen tomorrow?
Here's 2 predictions.
Option 1: Erdogan gets voted out, and it returns to be a vibrant world capital.
Option 2: Erdogan stays the course, pisses enough people off that NATO sells him out to the Russians who, along with the Greeks, would love to 'liberate' Constantinople...
> I would be glad to think the same of terrorist attacks. Unfortunately they're an almost daily occurrence.
Not in the Europe. That's our problem.
> Yes it will. And if we did nothing today, Islamists would still be seeking revenge tomorrow.
To whom? From whom does the west want revenge. This is the question. And apparently there are some people who'd say from all muslims, or from all arabs. You, and the other guy who responded me seem to be of that ilk. There are muslims like you, who seek a revenge from the whole non-muslim. We call these fundamentalist, radicals, etc. These are identical to you, with the difference of possessing less power. I hope all the people I refer here die painful deaths, that you wish upon innocents.
> I hope all the people I refer here die painful deaths
:0
You're not making a great case here...
> that you wish upon innocents
Show me where I've wished bodily harm to people who are innocent. Hopefully what you're saying is a language misunderstanding, I do tend to use some flowery language when writing in English...
Let's not forget that the Roman Empire was not without its atrocities in the name of the Greater Good.
Bad often has to be done so that More Bad for More People won't happen.
And before we catigate Europe, let's not forget that there are a substantial number of sectarian and ethnic minority/majority tensions even inside of the Muslim governed world. No one is without blood on their hands.
I concur. I just picked the side of the rather-under-represented. Neither am I a Rome or Ancient Greece fan.
> Bad often has to be done so that More Bad for More People won't happen.
Bad will always bring more bad with it. You can try to kill all the muslims, you'll end up with another terrorist sect, just from a different religion. Or you'll terrorise other moderate muslims, should you not be able to kill them all, and make them into terrorists. A vicious cycle of violence is only broken via virtue.
Eh, we'll agree to disagree there. Find me some good in this world that isn't backed by bad somewhere in history, and I'll show you a situation where pacifist lives could have been saved with a more aggressive approach.
On the gripping hand... what if ISIS is completely a western-security-state construction (yes, warning: CT ahead)?
The authorities control all the discussion, they sift through (or plant) the evidence, and it's possible that the ISIS was indirectly funded directly from large western governments.
I'm talking about his "if Islamists acquired nuclear weapons, a nuclear first strike against Middle East countries would be the only way to protect the Western Way Of Life."
Interesting. That's strikingly similar to the idea, held by many in the US, that the new nuclear weapons should be utilized against Soviet ASAP, before they had the chance to build their own. Even Bertrand Russell advocated for this.
That someone I hold as a model in so much could display such levels of collective madness is one of those things I use to remind myself, of how fickle we are.
Except I'm not advocating genocide. Just pointing out that, if more tolerable solutions don't work, and it does become a perceived choice of 'us' vs 'them', people will choose themselves 10/10 times.
"Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear."
-- Bertrand Russell
But if you think this is something, wait until Le Pen comes to power.
It's not just France either. Authoritarianism is rife in much of the rest of Europe, and the rest of the world, for that matter.
France is a particularly interesting case, however. As on the one hand they're the land of Voltaire, of the French Revolution, of the ideals of "liberté, égalité, fraternité", and on the other of authoritarianism, colonialism, and xenophobia.
> Authoritarianism is rife in much of the rest of Europe, and the rest of the world, for that matter.
Europe's recent trend towards democracy was never really more than a trend. Democracy requires peace to flourish, without it people are going to value strongman leadership. Europe has only very recently shook off the threat of war. Nobody expects another great war, but it still takes a few hundred years before democratic institutions become robust enough to resist all the different ways the area can slide back into tyranny. Europe is not yet one polity, but they're moving in that direction.
Once people start thinking of themselves as European first, and French / German / Italian / etc. second, that's when you know Europe is really ready for democracy. It takes a while. It wasn't that long ago that United States citizens thought of themselves as citizens of their state first, then of the Union, the civil war cured us of that defect.
Perhaps Europe needs one more war to draw them together. Maybe a few of them. With luck those wars won't have to be martial in nature.
Dont make me laugh. The revolutionaries were talking about fraternity while chopping heads by the 100 000s. Study your History my friend. France has always had an authoritarian face.
>The Paris massacre of 1961 was a massacre in Paris on 17 October 1961, during the Algerian War (1954–62). Under orders from the head of the Parisian police, Maurice Papon, the French National Police attacked a demonstration of some 30,000 pro-National Liberation Front (FLN) Algerians.
>After 37 years of denial, in 1998 the French government acknowledged 40 deaths, although there are estimates of over 200.
>Many demonstrators died when they were violently herded by police into the River Seine, with some thrown from bridges after being beaten unconscious. Other demonstrators were killed within the courtyard of the Paris police headquarters after being arrested and delivered there in police buses.
The police found more than 300 illegal weapons during their searches. People that were put under house arrests have a file on them because of their links with terrorists or terrorist organizations. I don't feel the government is abusing the state of emergency, I just feel they should have done all this before the attacks.
Hey people, I have a file on GrumpyBen, can someone please lock him up as he is deemed a threat to public safety?
Joking aside, if activists committed any crime, you follow the legal procedures and challenge them in a court of law before a judge and let the defendants present their case in a free trial and see if any of the charges you brought against them sticks, otherwise shut up and leave them alone because if you start allowing police to hand out sentences without legal recourse to challenge these arbitrary punishments, you'll descend slowly into a police state and horrific society to live within.
I don't find your "joke" very funny at all, in the aftermath of almost 200 terrorist deaths (in the west) in November alone. GrumpyBen's prescription is not fun and anti-liberty, but so is living in a society being preyed upon by violent groups within it.
First, it wasn't a joke. Second, we were discussing putting environment activists under arbitrary house arrest not terrorists or terrorism. Your anger at the tragic death should be directed at the terrorists or the security apparatus which failed miserably to protect people in the "west" and not at me or the activists.
Try next time to read the comments first before jumping into the discussion.
your silly faux-incitement "joking" (your words) strikes the wrong tone in this literally deadly-serious subject matter, and if it potentially offends sensibilities then I'm sorry, but pointing that out to you can be constructive.
I agree with you and that's actually the case here. If these activists think their house arrest is unfair, they can complain to an administrative judge that will look into their case.
You have to get a verdict first in order to detain them and not let them do the job for you and make them go through hardships for a redress and emergency laws are not just or fair to entertain them .
This is temporary, the country is in "state of emergency", that gives the government and the police special powers to reestablish order. I think that was justified after the attacks but I would oppose it if the government wants to extend it past 3 months.
Like those pesky ecologists that endanger the state by stopping economic growth and slowing down job creation at the cost of increased pollution, right?
They're not ecologists, they're anti-globalization anarchists that protested against a new airport by destroying shops in downtown Nantes. They recently threw at the police candles that people left at the memorial for the Paris attacks. I consider myself an ecologist but I have no sympathy for these people.
And yet, they're still not ISIS terrorists. The state of emergency was used to stop public discourse and dissent - both anarchists and non-anarchists were banned from attending marches during the Paris climate summit.
The police had to protect the COP21 and the visit from more than 150 head of states. They also have to protect administrations, newspaper offices, jewish organizations and others potential terrorist targets. There's just not enough police forces to handle all this, plus marches and anarchist protests
Not having proper resources isn't a reason to infringe upon the freedoms of the people. If the police can't handle their work, then they should just ignore less important crimes and focus their efforts on the stuff that matters. Otherwise the French government could use a lack of resources as an excuse to silence whoever they want. With a justification like that, they could make arrests for thought-crime.
Who's more of a threat to the public - random candle-throwing anarchists, or the heads of state of the biggest and most militarised and industrialised nations in the world?
Terrorists are terrorists regardless of affiliation. ISIS doesn't have organized operations in the west it just takes credit for lone acts.
By and large its not clear ISIS actually wants people to commit terror attacks in the west since it gets potentially useful recruits killed not fighting for territory in the middle East (note they are big on how you should definitely move to the ISIS territories).
People who commit crimes should be fined or arrested. These are preventive house arrests for crimes that they might commit in the future. You really don't see the problem with this?
They also banned alcohol sales at night in some places for the same simple reason: the police has better things to do right now than dealing with drunk people or anarchists
They are known violent protestors. I don't care much about the freedom of "environmentalists" that protest against capitalism by burning down stores. Especially while the country is in state of emergency.
A mere file? In the US, when a suspected terrorist is held by US state security and they are not a US citizen, every non-citizen in their social graph (family, friends, even known acquaintances) who aren't already being held are deported immediately.
I learned about it reading a long article about the Boston Marathon Bombing in the New Yorker a couple of months after the incident occurred. It shocked me, but when the reporter asked the INS/ICE offices about it they said it was "standard procedure".
Isn't this absolutely terrifying? People being rounded up, house arrest, cities locked down, violence against immigrants. It's a very bad look, and it's especially hard to criticize the response in the wake of the attacks.
Rather than fight and complain piecemeal in response to government oversteps in their attempts to stop terror, dissenters need to formulate a concrete affirmative plan for dealing with terror while maintaining civil liberties and privacy. I'm not sure exactly what this plan would look like, but without something organized to push for, the government is going to keep getting their way and making everyone less free.
I think it has nothing to do with political side anymore. Just irrational reaction to fear from the public, and over-exploitation of that fear to gain more power from the government.
It's not pretty to watch.
[edit] Fear is irrational by definition, I'm not judging on that, and understand why people are afraid.
> I think it has nothing to do with political side anymore.
Really? I find this conclusion a little baffling, to be frank. Without saying which side of the political spectrum is more "correct", one can hardly deny that the right includes stronger reactions to perceived threats, practically by definition.
You can see it in the rhetoric, the policies, the constituents, etc of both parties. Even now, I would be surprised if policies like these were seeing equal amounts of dissent from the right and from the left (note that this is a different axis than liberal/conservative).
The mainstream left in France mainly the Socialists are as awful when it comes to individual liberties as their peers in the center right.
A good deal of French people love the nanny state and their government to meddle into their private business and run their lives but they have their differences on how to achieve that and which flavor to pick.
France doesn't consider anything. If you speak French, just read the original article on lemonde. It's just a wish list from people working in police and gendarmerie.
Etabli mardi 1er décembre par la direction des libertés publiques
et des affaires juridiques (DLPAJ), il recense toutes les mesures
de police administrative que les policiers et les gendarmes
souhaiteraient voir passer dans le cadre des deux projets de loi
en cours d’élaboration, l’un sur l’état d’urgence et l’autre sur
la lutte antiterroriste.
Even if it was an official proposition from government, there were no guarantee this will go through the legislative process. Parliamentary members do not follow systematically the government and even when they do, many laws are partially or completely blocked by "conseil constitutionnel".
Does the French public complain that "nothing gets passed" like the Australian public does? I am a massive fan of that system. It has stopped dangerous legislation from being passed. Not all of it, and not enough, but some, and that's better than none.
A lot of people don't understand this about the American system. It's not supposed to be easy to push through new law. It's supposed to be so difficult that only law that reflects wide consensus can get through, under the theory that this will prevent bad or dangerous laws from going on the books. If there's a problem in the system now, it's that people have stopped trying to reach that consensus, not that the process is slow when it's being actively pursued.
But without the right to protest, it's going to be complex for citizens to express their disapproval of these ideas. A massive part of the population doesn't even understand the extend of such a thing anyway, so yes... I would worry about it getting voted by the parliament.
Created by the DLPAJ on December 1st, the report contains all the police measures that the police (and maybe French military, "gendarme"?) wish to see included in two bills currently being debated: one on the state of emergency and the other on anti-terrorism.
The "Gendarmerie" is a part of the military that operates police duties. Although the concept was originally French, you can find a similar thing in a a lot of continental european countries (the Carabinieri in Italy, the Guarda Nacional Republicana in Portugal, the Guardia Civil in Spain, Internal Troops/National Guard in Ukraine, ...).
In France, generally speaking, the Police National is in charges of cities and large metropolitan areas, and the Gendarmerie is seen in rural areas. They live in barracks, and are weird in that they answer both to the ministry of interior and to the ministry of defense.
I think we should really investigate the writers of these two new pieces of legislation. These people are a bigger threat for all our values than all the terrorists of the world. The only good answer to terrorism is to not surrender freedom.
The cynical view is that these people are simply using the attacks as a way to push through legislation that they wanted to push through regardless. Politicians like these are just opportunists and would use any hot button issue to get their way because they know that's the easiest way to railroad through their pet laws. It's easy to get people to vote against their own interest, all you need is fear.
There are many such tricks, another is to bring the important stuff up for vote in the last little bit before a session closes and to waste as much of the session prior to that by debating some inane point of some un-important issue at great length leaving insufficient time to debate the important stuff.
It's all tricks and psychology, reason has little to do with it.
>It’s true that many governments have been set up during
such storms; but in those cases it was the governments
themselves that destroyed the state. Usurpers always create
or select times of disturbance and public fear to get destructive laws passed—laws that the people would never have adopted when they were thinking coolly. One of the surest ways of distinguishing a legislator’s work from a tyrant’s is through the question: When did he choose to act?
The cynical view is that these people are simply using the attacks as a way to push through legislation that they wanted to push through regardless.
I agree. However, I believe the reason for this is more legislative laziness than anything else.
In the wake of a terrorist attack, the public demands that laws be changed to make them safer. The executive's law enforcement and intelligence agencies typically have a wish list that they repeatedly ask the legislature to enact, because it would make their jobs easier. The legislature, under tremendous pressure to do anything and fast, does not attempt to really analyze the legislation, but rather uses every parliamentary trick to rush it through.
The executive uses these expanded powers to check off national security goals it already had in mind (see e.g. the hundreds of arrests during the French state of emergency.)
The end result is threefold:
First the executive is emboldened to at least look like they're increasing security at home and abroad. At its worst, it either draws the nation into a war on territory chosen by the terrorists (see e.g. Afghanistan, the rock upon which the Soviet military machine shattered), or needless wars of choice which drain economic and military effectiveness (see e.g. Iraq)
Second, the country experiences an economic shock far out proportion to the actual attack, due to the fear of the populace, which directly and indirectly depresses multiple sectors of the economy.
Third, the country produces highly visible, although not necessarily highly effective, responses at the expense of sacrifice of civil liberties and personal convenience.
What's more is that terrorists count on this reaction.
They know that the costs of the response will vastly outweigh the actual damage of the attack.These particular non-state actors are deemed "terrorists" for a reason. Because their most powerful weapons are not airliners, or bombs, or assault rifles.
Their most powerful weapon is fear.
They use that fear to cause nations to make poor decisions, then exploit those decisions to advance their causes. The only solution which I can devise is simply not let fear arbitrate our decisions.
We must announce, as one voice, that we are no longer afraid.
"In the wake of a terrorist attack, the public demands that laws be changed to make them safer" = false. The public never said that. You can watch any public rally condemning any terrorist attack and you will never see: "we want more laws and tighter filters and controls everywhere and higher and more taxes spent on security and defense". That's what the government says that "the public wants". In reality most of the public just asks themselves why the authorities are so lazy and or incompetent to use the tools and the powers they already have and why so many terrorists were already known to the special services which so often "fail to recognize the danger or act". And I bet a lot of people start to ask themselves why these terrorists blame the UK, French and US governments and armies for invading their lands but they keep attacking UK, French and US civilians which, is obvious by now, are incapable of controlling their governments and armies at all. It's the governments and the armies who try to "destroy ISIS" not the civilians, wouldn't make sense for ISIS to attack governments instead of civilians ?
The "public" is not the people at rallies, not even what people in the street and cafes are saying, but the tally of the vote at the next election, and politicians act accordingly.
As you can see from the first round of the regional elections, the French "public" overwhelmingly voted for more.
"they act accordingly" by doing exactly what suits the power structure and their campaign sponsors best and the public never really wants.. what a convenient response.
Typically the kind of things that makes me thing democracy as it is is broken. It's a self-sustaining low-hanging-fruit race. I wish I knew how to tweak it back into sense.
The Kurds in Rojava have adopted Murray Bookchin's decentralised and democratic system of “libertarian municipalism” which prevents this kind of opportunistic authoritarianism. Hopefully Turkey's dictator doesn't destroy them and we can see what real democracy looks like.
If your level of representation at national level is a single vote every few years, then the average adult is going to get perhaps 10-20 chances to express an opinion at that level in their entire lives. Western governments probably have more departments than that at any given time.
In any party political system, where your choices even when you do get to express an opinion are limited to perhaps half a dozen candidates and only 1-3 with any real chance of winning, the amount of real information you can convey to government about your preferences through voting in national elections is minuscule.
Consequently, as we see in practice, national elections are mostly dominated by a very small number of very high profile issues, and people vote for the candidate or party that most closely matches their views on their top priorities. One of these is almost always the economy. There might be another that is the political hot potato of the day, perhaps immigration or trade union relations or the fate of some popular public service.
On top of this, once a representative has been elected, in many cases they can then hold office for a full term regardless of their future actions, even if they deviate dramatically from what they said to get elected in the first place.
In this sense, our current forms of representative democracy typically are broken, because there is very little one can do as a citizen to express a nuanced view. Often you will get a choice of least-of-evils from your own perspective and that's it for another 4-6 years.
In order to overcome this, there are a few different things that I imagine would help, but they would all need fundamental changes to existing political systems.
Firstly, an elected representative could have reason to fear being unelected again if they lose the support of their electorate for too long. There is a balance to be found between protecting representatives who take decisions that are unpopular in the short term but genuinely in the long term interests of their electorate and forcing out a representative who says one thing before the election but then does another or takes an unexpected and unwelcome position on some particular issue after they've entered office. However, no politician would ever feel so safe in their position that they could do whatever they wanted without care for any consequences to their own career and influence for several more years.
Secondly, the electorate could have a mechanism to impose its will on specific issues in isolation. For example, if memory serves, a few places do have a binding referendum mechanism where the administration of the day cannot overrule the will of the people once confirmed by a referendum. Again this would presumably have to be used in moderation to be effective, but it would allow the people to express views on, say, environmental and energy policies, or the legalisation or otherwise of recreational drugs, or the legitimacy or otherwise of security measures that infringe on other freedoms. Perhaps the most valuable role of this kind of mechanism would be to highlight a subject that isn't quite a top priority in national elections, and thus to drive greater public awareness of the underlying issue and to promote associated debate.
Thirdly, a written constitution and a strong constitutional court could provide another way to mitigate opportunist or short-termist legislation that would other infringe on basic principles. Like the other two measures, this ultimately comes down to forcing an administration that wants to move the goalposts a long way to achieve and retain the positive support of a large proportion of the electorate on that specific issue for a significant period of time before the changes can become established in law. Of course, as we have seen in various countries, this can work well or not well depending on the effectiveness and independence of the constitutional court, so any such measures need adequate safeguards to ensure as much impartiality as possible.
The pyramidal structure annoy me very much. I don't want to align with someone on a big trendy issue. A nation is a system, with organs, I want problems to be assessed on each, fixes proposed, and then applied. And I fear that in reality, no amount of discussion may convey what they are thinking, what they will do and how it has a chance to solve problems.
It's all far too shallow and blurry. Hence the need to rally people on a fad argument, sad.
I'm gonna go on a limb here and say that ISIS is suspiciously the perfect enemy for our leaders. It just happens that ISIS attacks our enemy (Assad) and the more we "fight" it, the more powerful we get because we have reasons to increase the "defense" spending and the more they attack "us" (they never really attack the leaders personally), the longer we can stay in power (see Hollande's support ratings after attacks), we can pass sensible legislation, keep the internal dissent low and we never run the risk of a clear and complete defeat like it would happen with a real enemy like China or Russia. It's the best enemy you can get (so much better than USSR) no wonder the west supported it's creation and are quite annoyed when Russia wants to destroy them too.
globalresearch.ca/newly-declassified-u-s-government-documents-the-west-supported-the-creation-of-isis/5451640
I'd say it really isn't. The region involved is already rife with conflict and IS is not without supporters who also happen to be our allies. If it were the 'perfect enemy' then no such conflicts of interest would exist.
> "In the wake of a terrorist attack, the public demands that laws be changed to make them safer" = false.
Well, that may be a subtle difference in interpretation but the general opinion is that we are 'unsafe' and that 'something should be done'.
Opposition parties in various countries have definitely used these attacks to create an impression that 'something could have been done' and that if they were in the driving seat 'something would have been done'. Incumbents are scared of losing voters due to being seen as 'doing nothing' and so will resort to doing 'something' just to stave off the inevitable (admitting that they don't know what to do, and neither does the opposition, mostly because there isn't a whole lot they can do to begin with that does not involve a change of course for the next 30 years and an admission that they royally messed up during the last 30 years).
The public don't ask for it, they don't know what tor is, they ask for it to never happen again, than the politics turn to the secret services and ask them what they want, no surprise here at their answer, the politics don't have to accept any of that, but the internet is quick to victimize itself.
> In the wake of a terrorist attack, the public demands that laws be changed to make them safer.
Ah, but therein lies a little problem: we probably can't be made safer and eventually this will become obvious to the general population as well. Terrorists have it super easy in soft bellied countries like the west. We have but two choices: change our societies drastically for the worse or accept the fact that complete safety and societies such as the ones that we live in are mutually incompatible.
Unfortunately, when this dos become obvious to the general public the rhetoric will change from "we need this to keep you safe" to "we need this to minimize the danger to you". You can already see the shift in the talk after the recent attacks as the governments are trying to get ahead of this curve.
[W]e probably can't be made safer and eventually this will become obvious to the general population as well...
Exactly. How can you stop a few individuals from shooting up public spaces, especially in the United States? For that matter, how would you stop a pair of family members from carrying out attacks with homemade bombs?
We have but two choices: change our societies drastically for the worse or accept the fact that complete safety and societies such as the ones that we live in are mutually incompatible.
Agreed.
If we win this conflict, but sacrifice who we are in the process, then we are no better than those whom we fight.
The slightly less cynical view is that they know that the next time something happens they know that - if encryption is involved, they will be absolutely pilloried by the popular press, opposition etc. for "not doing everything that can be done".
It takes a certain determination to stand up to that kind of threat.
Whether encryption is or is not involved is immaterial, we already know that you can pull off attacks like these without it, so you may assume that it is also possible pulling off attacks like these with it. That law does nothing at all to prevent future attacks and the popular press being clueless isn't news either.
> The slightly less cynical view is that they know that the next time something happens they know that - if encryption is involved, they will be absolutely pilloried by the popular press, opposition etc. for "not doing everything that can be done".
And the slightly more cynical view is that they are using the attacks to push through legislation that they wanted for other reasons AND they're using a story of hypothetical public opinion after hypothetical future events to make themselves seem more sympathetic.
And this is also not this is "doing everything that can be done." The Paris attackers didn't even use encryption and the attacks were not prevented, so there's a lot more things that they'd need to do before banning Tor and open wifi would even make a difference. So they'd still open to criticism from the same angle; score one for cynicism.
Instead of having the conspirationnist view maybe you could have the simplest one, that politics don't want another attack like that and asked the secret services what tool they would need and secret services being secret service they told them they wanted to be capable to tap everywhere. It is the role of the elected politics to be reasonable about that and say no to the stupid and impossible demands.
I don't subscribe to that view. There is enough misery in the world that you can always find a suitable event without having to concoct your own. All it takes is the press to magnify an event out of proportion and voila: instant crisis.
That's food for thought. Gut feeling: yes, ability to articulate: none. So I could be wrong on that because I have no data to support it. At a minimum it implies a harder problem to do a roll-back (if conspiracy were detected a roll-back would be easier). So I do think there are differences that are significant.
If one believes in democratic change, then I suppose that yes, exposing the conspiracy would cause it to be eradicated. So in effect, characterizing something as a conspiracy is perhaps taking an easy way out. Less easy than the simplistic "us vs them" narrative, but a shortcut nonetheless.
I'm just sympathetic to the viewpoint because it feels as if it is at least coming from the right place, especially as the damage from the attack is purposely amplified by the government organ of mainstream media.
There absolutely is a mutually beneficial interchange between 'terrorists', 'the media' and 'authorities'. Each gets something out of the others existence and would have a much harder time getting their advantages without this assistance. That's also why this whole cycle is so hard to break.
For contrast: during war time there is a blanket ban on reporting 'bad news', successful attacks on ones own troops by the opponent because that is demoralizing or something to that effect. But if it really were demoralizing how come during peace time we amplify attacks way out of proportion? You'd expect that if the media being told to shut their traps would be to the advantage of those governing that this would be a fairly small thing to arrange. Instead we have the opposite, every instance of an individual event gets blown way out of proportion to push those buttons of powerful emotions.
There is enough evidence that, while not directly performing attacks, they have considered doing such and engage in behaviors that encourage such attacks. For example, look at the FBI radicalizing individuals and convince them to carry out attacks. Even though the FBI works to make the actual attack a fake, they have created a dangerous individual who may switch to carrying out an attack. And this isn't even considering the things the CIA has done. I see no reason why the US would be alone in these horrors.
>Similar false flag tactics were also employed during the Algerian civil war, starting in the middle of 1994. Death squads composed of Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS) security forces disguised themselves as Islamist terrorists and committed false flag terror attacks.
God, I can't wait until you find out about Operation Gladio...
Conspiracy theories are comforting, in a way, because they project the belief that somebody is in control. The truth is far more terrifying: no one is in control.
His point is that even though false flag operations are a thing there is no evidence that these are false flag operations. The simplest explanation is that what you're looking at is real, any conspiracy theory would require an enormous departure from the facts as we know them today.
The second part of his point is that by positing a conspiracy theory you are presenting a view that there is an overarching plan to all this, whereas the reality is more like a bunch of headless chickens trying to run in three directions at once.
I do not know if it is insane in general, but in the case of french political responsible, I would not bet on conspiracy theories: most of their acts seem to exhibit a complete lack of anticipation.
We see the same impulse in the U.S. and across the world: whenever something bad happens, people call out for something to be done, regardless of whether that something would have helped, or if its negative effects outweigh its positive effects.
We see it with encryption. Yes, encryption can be and is used by bad people for evil ends, but it is also used by good people for good ends; encryption is simply the means. It's a human right to speak privately. Law enforcement can still investigate, can still use different powers to eavesdrop and compel parties to speech to reveal that speech; but it has no right to be party to private speech. Yes, bad things will not be detected as a result, but it's worth it.
We see it with arms control. Yes, weapons can be and are used by bad people to kill innocents; but they are also used by good people to defend themselves, whether from crime or tyranny. It is a human right to be armed. Law enforcement and the military can still use their superior numbers and training to overwhelm a foe, but they have no right to claim a monopoly on arms. Yes, innocents will die, but innocents will also live.
We see it with the war on some drugs. Yes, some people will take certain drugs and commit crimes; but other people will take those same drugs and enjoy a pleasant mental state. Law enforcement can still arrest criminals, but it has no right to arrest folks who haven't harmed anyone. It's a human right to alter one's mental state. The tradeoff is worth it.
The thing is, you have to take this attitude toward all things: religion; drugs; weapons; encryption; speech in general. Once you start to carve out exceptions and exclusions to liberty, you'll end up losing ever-more liberty. It happens faster than one might imagine.
All this because 130 people were killed. What would they do to prevent the 4600 people killed in road accidents in France last year? Or the 49000 people killed by alcohol [in 2009]?
From a political standpoint, terrorist attacks are first and foremost attacks against THE STATE not the citizenry and that's why you see the Establishment is up in arms every time such a tragedy occurs because they know that the terrorists are challenging their authority and jeopardizing their power in the land.
The Establishment really don't care about road fatalities or substance abuse related deaths of the populace. They only care about their wealth and power.
I think that's a pretty sharp observation. The powerlessness of the state to prevent these attacks translates into a perceived weakness, effectively showing that those that are nominally in control of keeping 'us' safe have oversold their ability to do that.
Well, many individual people, not just "states", fear terrorists more than car accidents and while it's statistically irrational given the number of fatalities due to each cause at a normal year, there is something rational about it.
Someone killing a hundred people who would gladly kill a hundred million if they could, and who's presumably constantly looking for a way to do it, is more frightening than a car accident, because there can't be a huge sudden increase in the rate of car accidents, but there can be and there more than once was a huge sudden increase in the amount of people killed by enemy combatants.
(Whether you think terror could ever escalate into a full-blown war is another question, and many don't think that, or they think that it is the common countermeasures against terror that result in full-blown wars rather than terror itself, etc. My only point is if it's legitimate to fear paperclip maximizers because they're "strong AI" and always achieve their goals, it should be legitimate to fear dead-people-like-you maximizers because they're a form of wetware intelligence with a good track record of achieving its goals, and they specifically want to kill you, rather than it being a likely subgoal of "make more paperclips". From a citizen's point of view, the state is equally powerless against terror and car accidents, and still the dead-people-like-you maximizer is way more frightening for many and it's not stupid to think that.)
They only way that that could conceivably happen is if terrorists gain hold of either nuclear weapons or biological weapons.
The scariest link there - I've said this before, but there is no harm in repeating it - is that Pakistan probably has both, we're sure about their nukes and we strongly suspect they have a BW unit.
IS gaining a foothold in Pakistan gives them potential access to weapons of a totally different grade than the ones that they have today.
If that should happen and these weapons would be brought to a readiness level associated with an imminent attack or if - which I hope we'll be able to avoid but which you can't rule out entirely - an attack with such weapons would be carried out the degree and scope of response will be such that the map of the regions involved will be totally redrawn.
As soon as terrorists cross the line where all-out war against them is justified and the cost to society is one we are willing to bear (and we're far from that, right now the most people can be seen to support is to drop some bombs from a high altitude) it will be 'game over' in a relatively short time with respect to the first level of confrontation and after that we will have a repeat of the aftermath of the Iraq war but on a much larger chunk of the globe.
The world is a tinderbox and way too many idiots have matches.
Don't you think Pakistan has shown these facilities to the US Government? I believe the US is ready to destroy them, or surgically invade, if IS were poised to gain access to them.
Well, it certainly makes the argument less persuasive because it doesn't fit with all the other parts. I think my original version is better.
In seriousness - actually comets are a lot like car accidents (if you believe that comets aren't actively trying to kill you), the only difference is the probability distribution (and you used the comet example because of the higher variance.)
Unlike those things, the success of an intelligent being trying to kill you cannot and should not be thought of as a probability distribution. It's not like a coin being tossed, in that a coin doesn't tend to get better at falling on one side or the other (nor do car accidents or comets get better at killing you, so they are more like coin tosses.)
It matters whether there's intelligence behind the cause or not; I'm surprised at how hard this point is to make at a forum occupied mostly by programmers.
That's the kind of insight you'd get when you hang around these people, you get the chance to know them very well and what they really think and not what they want you to think of them.
I acknowledge that there are different strains of them but deep down they're the same who only care about consolidating their power and accumulating more wealth.
Also, a lot of them share a very perverse idea of the concept of "Monopoly on Violence" pertaining to the state in modern political philosophy that they get to do whatever they like with people if they cross the line but here's the catch that where that line is drawn is left for everyone to decide.
So, when an unintentional terrorist attack occurs within their "realm", they freak out because they feel that this privilege to subjugate or coerce people is challenged or worse it's about to be used against them and then and only then you get to see the ugly face of them and who they really are.
- With car accidents people say it's inevitable, even though it's incorrect;
- With alcohol they say they're guilty;
- With 200 non-smoker deaths every fortnight in France, it is had the same properties as terrorism: people are innocent, taken away at random, and the risk increases during leisure time.
And we don't do a minute of silence for the fallen.
And as far as I know, they did not use any encryption anyway, so I don't even see the point here, it's totally unrelated. Should we ban unencrypted connections then since that's what they used ?
And even if they did, these are low tech attacks. Trying to stop people from shooting others (or knifing, or bombing) is essentially impossible, from a technological standpoint. It's like 9/11. How much money and work does that _really_ require? Is there anyone that doesn't think they and a group of friends could not have done the same thing?
[Well, with current tech anyways. A hyperintelligent AI with on-demand wormhole mastery could probably pull it off.]
Exactly, and they committed crimes using cars ! I mean, it can't just be a coincidence, in the previous Charlie Hebdo attacks, the guys also used a car to escape from there ! If we ban cars, then no more attacks, it cannot be any simpler than that !
They didn't use encryption for 1 SMS, the "start now" SMS they send with an anonymous pre-payed card. All tactical discussion go trough encrypted channels like the Telegram app or this one they made : https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVn3xjpWEAEO0FF.jpg
Yes, they used plain SMS, but that's irrelevant. What matters for the policy makers is the propaganda.
A Belgian minister saw a PS4 console in a terrorist's room and concluded that the bad guys used the encrypted PS4 messaging system to communicate. The newspapers ran with it and this is the official narrative even today.
Guess who gets more funding to intercept more encrypted communication? And not just in France. Italy is joining the fun too, with the postal police getting new "terror watch" units that snoop on even more stuff to keep us safe.
Humans are not logical animals when it comes to the judgement of risk of harm. Sadly, the only way to counter this (public awareness campaigns, education) are not happening, in fact the reverse is happening: media hysteria about terrorist attacks, actual and 'potential', governments releasing information on, e.g., 'what to do in a hostage situation', which only exacerbate the effect of the terror campaign.
People have a tendency to brush those deaths off as "your own fault", or one off accidents. The media hyperinflation of events doesn't help either. It's actually really interesting to look at studies measuring people's relative evaluations of risk. One tidbit is that back around 9/11 and for a long while thereafter people believed that flying was more dangerous than driving, despite that being very untrue.
I recall that people took the car more, and the plane less, in the aftermath of 9/11. At least partly due to the inconvenience caused by the new security measures at the airports.
5 years later, this increase in road traffic was estimated to kill as many people as were originally dead in the twin towers. Just because people chose the car a bit more, and the plane a bit less.
Their chart is slightly different from mine, in that they're counting deaths per vehicle mile rather than deaths per passenger mile, which greatly favors cars because of their lower passenger capacity.
"You know what I've noticed? Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan". But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!"
There are huge numbers of laws in place to try and minimise road deaths, including compulsory licensing of people found competent to drive, speed limits, compulsory periodic testing of cars for roadworthiness. So you know the answer to the first part of your question.
Sure - but to really crack down on road deaths, how about declaring a state of emergency that prevents anyone from driving at all? If you understand why that would be stupid, you'll understand why trying to introduce the GFW of China to France is a bad idea.
The WHO puts global road traffic deaths at around 1 million, so if autonomous cars reduces that by a factor of 50, which seems likely, they'd kill less than terrorism.
> There are huge numbers of laws in place to try and minimise road deaths, including compulsory licensing of people found competent to drive, speed limits, compulsory periodic testing of cars for roadworthiness.
Now if only we could apply the same rigour to the process of bringing new human beings into the world.
Please predict how many people could die from a terrorist outrage - the kind that a terrorist might dream of in their sickest moments?
No, it would hardly be convenient but if you insist, you can remove yourself from the possibility (or lessen the chances) of death by traffic or alcohol.
Does anyone seriously doubt that the following, even if fabricated (no reason to suppose it is) does not represent such a fantasy in some minds.
"The ISIS laptop contains a 19-page document in Arabic on how to develop biological weapons and how to weaponize the bubonic plague from infected animals. “The advantage of biological weapons is that they do not cost a lot of money, while the human casualties can be huge,” the document states.”
Please predict how many people could die from a terrorist outrage - the kind that a terrorist might dream of in their sickest moments?
Hardly convenient but you can remove the possibility of death by traffic or alcohol.
Does anyone seriously doubt that the following, even if fabricated (no reason to suppose it is) does not represent such a fantasy.
"The ISIS laptop contains a 19-page document in Arabic on how to develop biological weapons and how to weaponize the bubonic plague from infected animals. “The advantage of biological weapons is that they do not cost a lot of money, while the human casualties can be huge,” the document states.”
Wrong questions. You need to ask: What is the benefit of being able to use Tor? What is the benefit of communicating privately with the help of encryption?
It affects you even if you never use Tor and never use encryption, because you still have to pay for all that infrastructure. You still have the risk of France becoming a police state. You still have the barriers to entry for new start-ups having to comply with onerous regulations. And you won't even be any safer.
What is more ridiculous is that shared public wifi would become critical in the event of a major terror attack (on scale with 9/11). We have already seen the use of social media to allow families and friends to connect after a disaster occurs. Given the fragility of mobile data networks under heavy load, public wifi could become the only option for mass communications. The French government will only be handicapping its people when they need help most.
I think we need a mesh topology at the network layer in order to really have reliable networks in an emergency. TCP/IP, in my opinion, is an engine that centralizes power: Which leads to choke points and single points of failure for critical systems. This is especially true for most end nodes: I'm out of luck if Comcast goes down.
You tell the public you're banning something they don't really use? Fine. You tell the public you're doubling police forces in a time of strong anti-police sentiment? Good luck in the next election.
I have 0 faith in governments both for understanding and acting properly in the information age. They have time and again acted bad, and seem to not even understand the medium with they try to regulate.
In the information age, power does not lie with the one who has the guns. I hope everyone reading this takes some time to research how to encrypt your communication & how to use bitcoin.
I also hope we will see more user-friendly ways to communicate securely (BitMessage is an awesome solution for this)
>For the past 3500 years of the Western world, the effects of media–whether it’s speech, writing, printing, photography, radio or television–have been systematically overlooked by social observers. Even in today’s revolutionary electronic age, scholars evidence few signs of modifying this traditional stance of ostrich-like disregard.
>Because all media, from the phonetic alphabet to the computer, are extensions of man that cause deep and lasting changes in him and transform his environment. Such an extension is an intensification, an amplification of an organ, sense or function, and whenever it takes place, the central nervous system appears to institute a self-protective numbing of the affected area, insulating and anesthetizing it from conscious awareness of what’s happening to it. It’s a process rather like that which occurs to the body under shock or stress conditions, or to the mind in line with the Freudian concept of repression. I call this peculiar form of self-hypnosis Narcissus narcosis, a syndrome whereby man remains as unaware of the psychic and social effects of his new technology as a fish of the water it swims in. As a result, precisely at the point where a new media-induced environment becomes all pervasive and transmogrifies our sensory balance, it also becomes invisible.
>This problem is doubly acute today because man must, as a simple survival strategy, become aware of what is happening to him, despite the attendant pain of such comprehension. The fact that he has not done so in this age of electronics is what has made this also the age of anxiety, which in turn has been transformed into its Doppelganger–the therapeutically reactive age of anomie and apathy. But despite our self protective escape mechanisms, the total-field awareness engendered by electronic media is enabling us–indeed, compelling us–to grope toward a consciousness of the unconscious, toward a realization that technology is an extension of our own bodies.
""Terrorism" comes from the French word terrorisme, and originally referred specifically to state terrorism as practiced by the French government during the 1793–1794 Reign of terror."
I can't quite tell if you're a troll or merely have a really hard time understanding that France is actually in a very complex position here.
This entire thread is so depressingly misinformed about the country that I don't have the heart to correct people.
Namely people are quick to forget that France is in fact in a state of emergency and that conditions do change when that's pulled. It doesn't mean we should lie down and accept anything and everything, but forgetting what's actually going on makes everything worse.
There are serious issues with the current french government but they have nothing to do with "the left" or "the right", as if those things ever mattered. They have to do with how NIH and technologically impaired France is and that hasn't changed since the minitel.
Yes, our government is going full r-tard. I fail to see the difference right now, between the "left" and the far right to which the left loves pointing fingers at. With the state of emergency, the left is behaving exactly like fascists.
Now imagine the left voting all these anti-freedom laws, suspending (some) human rights (as it is the case now), and in 2 years, the far right coming into power and using the laws the left voted for their own benefits.
I've been thinking this for some time lately, that while the notion of radical right is known and avoided in the modern world, the radical left is actually more harmful :
- it's not that known to deal with it, since if you raise questions, you're labeled as right,
The U.K. is already far beyond illiberal, but I can’t see Germany going this way. They’ve long been on the right side of the Internet, and I doubt they’ll have any need to do otherwise anytime soon.
Lets see how this tune will change if Paris repeats itself there.
But nah, it's not that there's a large foreign population inside their country without future prospects. Oh wait, that's already happening, thanks to Angela.
It is not the first time France has done things like this. In the 90s, France outlawed encryption completely, with prison sentence for breaking the ban. As tools like ssh became common, this became less and less practical. For example the supercomputer center at my university had to develop a one time password scheme for the French users (printed out and sent to them by mail), since ssh was strictly forbidden there.
For the crypto ban, I was unable to find reputable references. I found only one from the Register, which I consider less than reputable (and the article in question is quite inaccurate, for example they managed to call Minister of Finance at the time, Dominique Strauss-Kahn Domenica, and refer to him as "she"). The factual content seems to be right otherwise, and 1999 is about the right timeframe.
As you can see, you could be sentenced to 6 months of jail and fined nearly $90000 for using encryption.
The one-time password telnet demon was developed at a university in Scandinavia before the ban ended in the second part of the 90s. This was a solution they weren't proud of, so naturally there wasn't written anything down about it, but it was considered better than pure telnet and it kept French users out of trouble (I hesitate to say the right side of the law, given its stupidity).
My family and I had planned to move to France in the next few years, partly in order to educate our daughter in French. Given the state's behaviour, we will be reconsidering that move. Where are the liberte, egalite and fraternite in these proposals? We can observe the exact opposite of all of these ideals: France has become a total hypocrisy.
No, that's only sharing the password and that's done by the users, not necessarily by the owner. To share WiFi you have to own a hotspot, turn it on, give the password to somebody.
However I see your point: what if a company network (think a small shop) is shared with its employees and the password goes to their friends and they can connect from a car in the parking lot? _optout suffix for every network in France?
Or coffee shops were you get password printed on a bill after you order something, the same with hotels and motels, you get wifi password after registering for a room.
I've read that the radical Muslim attacks were sponsored by Russia. In the absence of the Big Picture it's hard to understand Political Science and who are the main Actors on the spheres of influence.
All that Russia wanted was to divide their enemy.
New propaganda but the trick is old.
no book of religion pushes people to grab a knife or a gun to harm others; crazy leaders do and unstable and uneducated people follow.
yet, even if we discard that previous point : forbidding religions would be exactly the same as creating one and pointing "believers" as enemies of "non believers" ... triggering more of what you try to stop
general education and broad tolerance between cultures (either religious or not) is quite probably the only way to move towards non violence and peace ...
If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or your daughter or the wife you embrace or your friend who is as your own soul entices you secretly, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods,’ which neither you nor your fathers have known,
some of the gods of the peoples who are around you, whether near you or far off from you, from the one end of the earth to the other,
you shall not yield to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him, nor shall you conceal him.
But you shall kill him. Your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people.
---
Of course, no sane priest or rabbi would ever endorse such words today. Nevertheless, they are written there for all to see and misapply.
Granted, I have taken the quote out of context. But so do religious fanatics.
> Granted, I have taken the quote out of context. But so do religious fanatics.
You can't hand-wave this sort of thing away, since anyone can make the Bible say anything they want by selectively quoting it. You are doing more harm than good here.
The Old Testament law was set up to create a theocracy. Many infractions of the law were punishable by death. Contrast that to Jesus' teaching:
"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:43-8)
But of course, you'll need to understand the context in which Jesus is teaching to understand all of what he's saying in Matthew 5 and during his whole ministry.
In the very same chapter he addresses the law and says that he did not come to abolish it but to fulfill it. That statement has been a great point of contention through the ages as well.
Did I just make things worse by pulling a couple verses out of context? At least the ones I quoted don't advocate homicide.
As far as radical clerics/rabbis/priests/etc, religious leaders worth anything should encourage the congregation to look to the original texts rather than relying only on their words as final truth.
> But of course, you'll need to understand the context in which Jesus is teaching to understand all of what he's saying in Matthew 5 and during his whole ministry.
The problem right here : context. If the teachings of the Bible (or the Quran) are bound to a specific context then they shouldn't be worshiped like some universal and perfect teachings. Following these teachings then means following moral values that were only valid 2000 or 1300 years ago, in a specific context. Obviously one cannot live in a modern society while following the Bible or the Koran to the letter. While (most) Christians acknowledge that fact, irregardless of their beliefs in a creator, that's not the case of every religious group.
That's basically my problem with religion. It's a travesty, it exploits the need for spirituality every man has by trying to impose some random moral values dictated by a "superior being" nobody but a prophet has access to, without even trying to satisfy that need for spirituality at first place (since we know nothing about that being except the fact that he is "our creator"). And since men are not omniscient of course these moral values are bound to the context in which they were chosen. Religion is not faith in (a) god, but more like faith in the teachings of a man that says he has seen god.
I think your issue is quite deeper than that. Even if God revealed Himself to all humanity or more than one person, there would still be disbelievers. Humans were created that way, and God knows that obviously. We are inherently obtuse creatures when it comes to belief.
How many people should God reveal Himself to in order for others to believe in His existence? 2? 10? 10000? Would people still believe that revelation 100 years later? 1000 years later? How would the revelation take place? God just appears in the sky? Or personally to every human?
Keep in mind that exposure to a supernatural being is a difficult thing to handle for our tiny brains. Or perhaps it flies over our heads, like when you stand among a group of ants.
You might say why doesn't God just appear regularly? That would defeat the purpose of belief. It would be too easy then. Furthermore, I'd wager that we would not have developed as a species. Why try to understand the orbits of the planets when God will just appear in a few weeks? Is there a point anymore?
I guess my point is that the "why personal revelation" argument is a tough nut to crack. If you believe in God, then the answer is simply God knows more. If not, you might need to approach the issue in a more rational manner, instead of just scratch the surface and then dismiss religion entirely.
> no book of religion pushes people to grab a knife or a gun to harm others; crazy leaders do and unstable and uneducated people follow.
There are calls to violence for the sake of Islam in the Quran. These verses are among the last to be revealed and thereby are considered to overrule earlier verses (the concept of abrogation in Islam is known as "naskh"[2]). This is in stark contrast to Christianity, where Jesus abrogated the Old Covenant (i.e. the Jewish laws that contain most of the barbarism that people love to quote) with the New Covenant (hence the names). This view has been held in Christianity pretty much from its inception and is what the vast majority of Christians believe[3].
Two oft-cited examples from the Quran:
>And when the sacred months have passed, then kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they should repent, establish prayer, and give zakah, let them [go] on their way. Indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.[0]
>Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture - [fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled.
That's assuming that the western gv's opponent is crazy groups. What if they were only red herrings? What if the real opponent were their own, law abiding citizens?
The greater public is not going to know that. However Tor does have obfsproxy:
> obfsproxy is a tool that attempts to circumvent censorship, by transforming the Tor traffic between the client and the bridge. This way, censors, who usually monitor traffic between the client and the bridge, will see innocent-looking transformed traffic instead of the actual Tor traffic.
Right, but my point was that the whole point of this legislation would be to prevent terrorists from using Tor. In reality, it would do nothing to stop them. Whoever really wants to have a way of communicating over an encrypted channel will always find a method of bypassing measures like this.
Europe is doing all it can to produce a new Hitler. The anti-Muslim rhetoric can be insane at times, but it's no lie that the imports are from a very different culture and are unlikely to assimilate to a more western one, especially when they outbreed their western counterparts.
What concerns me is that all this money and rage will be spent in reaction to these tragic events that kill either less than 100, around 100, or around 3000 people tops. Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and disease routinely kill far more and yet suggesting we devote effort to solve the engineering challenges of controlling our planet gets tossed aside as just as crazy as the suggestion that it's possible to control immigration with a wall.
Hitler's only two failings were genocide on an ethnic group and going on a land war against Russia in winter. If the new one doesn't try to kill off European citizens and doesn't declare war on Russia, I fail to see the problem. The current crop of politicians will never solve our problems and say what you want about him, but Hitler got things done.
Honestly I'm fed up with the French bashing. I'm not responsible for what happened in WW2 where you and I didn't even exist. Are you 100% sure you wouldn't raise a white flag when far away from your keyboard and shells exploding around you ?
Now for the present situation, like most democratic country on earth we are at the mercy of a small political elite that will do whatever it wants since they are in power and when we vote them out their twins from the other branch of the unique party apply the same politic with minor cosmetic change.
While I'm disappointed in the French governments reaction (which is stupid). I think you should refrain from making prejudiced comments (especially since a) it's a stupid statement if you study France's military history b) other countries behaved equally stupidly in the face of Terrorism).
I stopped "supporting France" after the Charlie Hebdo attack the moment I saw they were abusing that public support to push for more censorship and surveillance.
Now they're looking at extending the emergency powers with very little oversight (by definition) indefinitely, all because the people showed "support" when the attacks happened.
So I'm done playing their sick game. I hope more people (from France especially) will start thinking the same way before it's too late.
EDIT: Relevant ruling from the European Court of Human Rights vs Russia's mass surveillance program:
> The Court noted that interception of communications pursued the legitimate aims of the protection
of national security and public safety, the prevention of crime and the protection of the economic
well-being of the country. However, in view of the risk that a system of secret surveillance set up to
protect national security might undermine or even destroy democracy under the cloak of defending
it.
France, just like the U.S. after 9/11, claimed high and mighty that they must "protect their liberties". You can't protect your liberties by killing them. You would think this should be common sense, but apparently it isn't in today's political climate in our "democracies".
French guy here.
Our government members are totally not looking to protect our liberties.
Since the terrorists attacks on Nov13, more than 2500 police raids, at any hour in day or night, have taken place. Most of the time, they found nothing. La Quadrature du Net, a frnech association for online civil rights, tried to list some of the abuse here : https://wiki.laquadrature.net/%C3%89tat_urgence/Recensement (link in french).
When our Assembly voted the extension of emergency state, our Prime Minister Manuel Valls told the Assembly "We know this law does not conform to our constitution, but [the governement] asks you not to seize the Constitutional Coucil and vote it". Six people refused to vote it. Among them, 3 were members of prime minister's party, and they have been publicly summoned to the party's siege on december 16, just after the local elections, "to explain themselves and receive intern sanctions".
France is no longer a democratic country, that's why so many people voted for Marine LePen's party last sunday. A lot of people are juste bored or frustrated by our politics, so they are seeking for some people able to change that. Even if that means electing a Nazi leader.
"Democratic" and "liberal" are not synonyms. They often go together, but they don't have to: there is indeed such a thing as an "illiberal democracy" [0], and a bunch of them exist already (e.g. Singapore, Russia). France is still democratic, though it's taken a serious turn towards illiberal recently.
We could say "Oh, this means there were almost 10 illegal weapons at every raid", but, they were not evenly distributed, just like raiding every house in a dodgy estate will turn up a lot of illegal items, but most of them will be centered in a small % of properties, so, yeah, for 2500 raids, most of them will have returned nothing.
Not almost 10 illegal weapons at every raid. More than 10 raids for every illegal weapon.
Otherwise I agree with you they're likely not to have been evenly distributed, so you can assume there were far more than 10 raids for every raids that produced one or more weapons.
Just because the Nazis called themselves National Socialists doesn't make them socialists. Communists and socialists were the first the Nazis sent to concentration camps.
Abolishing capital income, confiscation of war profits, nationalization of all trusts, a generous increase in old age pensions, communalization of large stores, nationalization and redistribution of farmland and nationalization of schools.
Whether this meets your definition of "socialism" is mainly a function of how narrowly you define the word. But they were certainly a very economically left wing party.
I think that argument is pretty weak. Many of the millions that the Soviets sent to the gulags were socialists and communists, but that action doesn't make the Soviets or those they imprisoned and murdered not-communist or not-socialist.
Communists and socialists have a long histories of bloody internecine conflicts.
You'd have to be somewhat detached from the historical record to seriously suggest that all of these, or even a majority, were the result of socialism.
So essentially Hitler considered himself to be/pretended in his speeches to be a socialist, although not a Marxist socialist, but one who rejects big banking (read: DEM JEWS!1!).
>Socialism is a social and economic system characterised by social ownership and democratic control of the means of production
Given that the Nazis privatized a lot of publicly owned companies such as the Deutsche Bank and the Deutsche Reichsbahn, I don't think the Nazis were socialists.
The socialist component in the Nazi ideology was almost entirely economical and not social. Nazis on social issues were as nationalistic and minorities-hating as any far-right group if not worse.
It's just that some RW people love to distort the reality to score cheap political points.
I used to like the Nolan chart too, but recently I've been thinking that even 2 axes is overfitting.
Politics is so complicated that only a very simple model has predictive value, even with huge variance. I think a single axis order-disorder is the best we can do to talk in general terms.
IIRC at the convention that wrote the constitution there were about 5 axis involved. I can't remember what they were though. Any insight on it would be appreciated.
I knew it from the beginning that they would abuse the State of Emergency decree and turn the lives of people esp minorities into a living hell.
[0]: https://wiki.laquadrature.net/%C3%89tat_urgence/Recensement# ((FR))