Paris Attack 11/13/2015

Yesterday, President Obama said one of his reasons for not identifying Islamic Terrorists as Islamic (he won't say Radical Islam, has altered official anti-terrorist training documentation to remove all references to Islamic Terrorism, and forbidden his administration from putting the words Islam, Islamic, or Muslim in conjunction with the word terrorism) is that identifying this particular source of terror would ramp up recruitment by ISIS.

Recruitment from what source?

So far, we know that ISIS has recruited from Islam - tens of thousands of Muslims from all over the world.
Obama just said that Islam has nothing to do with terrorism and is a religion of peace that believes in compassion and love for all mankind.

So he and like-thinkers say that if you call Radical Islamic Terrorism what it is, then large numbers of Muslims (who we are told only worship peace and love mankind) will suddenly forget everything we're told they believe in and be lured to ISIS with promises that they'll be able to behead little children, gang-rape little girls, behead bound captives and massacre entire villages of people.

I'm confused by this "logic."

Why would anyone raised to believe in peace and belonging to a religion that is all about peace be attracted to a group that gives them the opportunity to leave their loving religious community of compassion to torture & kill innocent people in the most heinous ways?

And how has ISIS recruited tens of thousands of adherents to the religion-of-peace from all over the world?

If the "rewards" of becoming an evil genocidal killer only appeal to psychotics who are mentally unbalanced or individuals who did too many drugs, then why hasn't ISIS recruited similar large numbers from all other religions (since mental illness is not limited to any one group of people)? Yet we don't know of too many Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Shintos, Baha'is, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, or Taoists being recruited by ISIS because of the promise to become a mass murderer.

We might also say it's a cultural thing --- ISIS has nothing to do with the ideology of Islam, they just happen to be attracting disenfranchised youth from poverty-stricken, third-world countries (and if these young people maybe just had jobs, there'd be no terrorism?)

But that is NOT the case - ISIS is attracting and recruiting tens of thousands of Muslims from all over the world, even from the U.S. (one of the most prosperous, well-educated countries on Earth with the highest standard of living).

So that theory is shot.

So what's the common denominator since ISIS isn't attracting any people from any other religions with the seduction that their members will be able to murder & maybe, after enough genocide, rule the world?

If Islam is a religion of peace that does NOT have any beliefs of supremacy through conquest, then WHY are tens of thousands of Muslims from all over the world streaming to join ISIS?

How are these Muslims being recruited in such numbers when we are told Islamic Terror groups have absolutely nothing to do with Islam, they are universally hated by Muslims and everything they do is completely antithetical to the teachings of Islam?

If Islam is about peace, how are groups like ISIS attracting even a few Muslims, no less tens of thousands from all over the world?

Not that this has anything to do with the discussion. But the reason these people are so pissed off is they live in the desert with no hope of advancing their lives at all. So they turn to the only thing they know which is religion. When religion is your sole purpose and outlet in life that spells big trouble. Over here we have so many other outlets and choices in life so we don't focus on religion as much, it doesn't strangle us. In that way I feel bad for them, a lot of them are just a product of their environment, lost from the beginning never had a chance. I wish we could like build basketball courts or libraries over there. It's a shame.

Also I don't understand why they don't just kill themselves. If they believe what they believe so much that they aren't afraid to die and would prefer it. What the hell sense does it make to bomb the people that want to live and enjoy life. Just kill yourself, you get what you want we get what we want. Win Win. Makes too much sense I guess.

I am really hoping for a hostile alien invasion so the whole world can have a common enemy instead of each other! Ha anyways that's my silly rant.

__________________
I came here to do two things, drink some beer and kick some ass, looks like we are almost outta beer - Dazed and Confused

101 Favorite Movies (2019)

And, if not a hostile alien invasion, maybe just one with a stern warning?
(Do you think Radical Islamic Terrorists would even heed it?)

Klaatu barada nikto!

I don't know if I should laugh or cry. This post demonstrates such a total lack of understanding of the situation that I don't even know where to begin or what to say. On the one hand I don't want to insult you or boost my own ego. I genuinely want to help. But on the other hand I feel like if I say go google "The Decline of Morality" or read about the Crusades, or read the idiot's guide to religion, that you'll take that as me insulting your intelligence. I don't know... just go do those three things. Or watch a documentary on religious fanaticism or something.

I think it's very hard for non-religious people to understand the minds of religious people. Let me just talk about the whole suicide thing. From their perspective, sure it's better to die and go to heaven then to live on the Earth. The reason they don't just blow their brains out is because serving their god while alive on the Earth will actually yield eternal rewards in heaven, so before they die they want to please their god and earn those rewards that will last forever. Not to mention that most people belonging to any religious group are nominal, not devout. So they don't even really know that much about their own religion, and they pretty much just believe it in a vague sense because they were born and raised with it being brainwashed into them, but they're more preoccupied with their life. Either way Muslims don't see Westerners as people who just want to enjoy their life, they see them as evil godless savages who want to corrupt the world and who need to be killed in order to make the world a better place. Or something more along those lines. The other day I was just talking with someone about a stir caused by a recent news paper article. A Western woman in Afganistan was sitting on a patio drinking a beer and wearing a short skirt, and the way the Muslims looked at that was as it confirming their greatest fears about how the West will corrupt their society. They see such things as drinking alcohol and women wearing "sexy" clothing as utter abominations.

Are you starting to get the picture? Anyway, please just take a deeper look at the issue. I'm not trying to be rude or insult you or anything, but you're lack of understanding is actually pretty shocking. The war between the Islamic world and the Western world has been going on for over a thousand years. These terrorist attacks are really just a continuation of the Crusades. And it's never going to stop. We may defeat ISIS, but after one war ends another begins. There will never be global peace.

Another desperate attack going on in Paris right now (by the remaining terrorists). Already three people dead...

Reports keep changing - first I heard three cops "shot" - on CNN I heard one cop "shot".

But this just in: French police have engaged in a firefight and have the mastermind of the Paris attack pinned down in an apartment (or building) in a Paris suburb.

My guess is that they probably will not be able to take this guy alive as he'll probably kill himself rather than surrender or be captured (either just shoot himself, or if he has explosives, try to take some cops with him.)

The Koran says you can fight back if you are attacked. Perfectly normal - we do exactly the same thing and we claim to be peaceful.

The issue then becomes that ISIS is using that and saying that the west is at war with Islam so all of the people joining think they are following the Koran. They are wrong obviously but let's be honest, after things like the Iraq War it is probably not that hard to sell it. Apart from that there will also just be a fair number of naturally violent people that exist in all societies and this gives them focus ... and I'm sure there are a lot that are simply idiots. We hear a lot that a large number of people who join quite quickly realise they have f***ed up but then can't escape. I have heard that this is the experience in the UK with a reasonable number of returning extremists being shocked by what they have seen and have actually been de-radicalised

Now, there are about 30,000 people who have joined ISIS from foreign countries but most are from the Middle East - less than 5,000 from the west. Considering that the US actually has very low numbers of people joining relative to their population then your government is probably on the right path in that regard. I think the US has had about the same number as Australia.

For all your criticism of Obama your country is obviously doing something right.

Anyway, those 5000 people are a serious problem - especially when you take into account that that is just the number that have gone to Syria - obviously lots of supporters haven't. If we work out how to stop the next 5000 from being radicalised then maybe we have some hope and given that the US is doing this reasonably well, perhaps Obama's focus on language is important. My understanding is that the people working in the field of de-radicalisation believe things like this are important but I haven't looked into it too much.

Better to try something than wait for WWIII to start. Our government, which is conservative, is basically doing the same thing with their use of language.

__________________
Top 133 Favourite Films

Asia/Pacific Top 100

Klaatu barada ni... *COUGH* *COUGH*

I wish there was time to respond to all the points of your excellent post, Sane, but alas the hour grows late. (Damn raid on the mastermind on the news is keeping me up all night!)

As to the ISIS recruits who get there and realize they've messed up...
I know there are a lot of total idiots out there, but seriously? They've never watched the news? Never seen an article or video or ANYTHING about the group they're going to join? How can that be? They must have wanted to go join after at least looking at ISIS magazines or web sites, yes? ISIS prides itself on its graphic photos of beheadings, mass graves, little girls for sale, filmed torture, dismemberment, crucifixions and executions too heinous to describe. How can anyone going to join them not know what they do?

I've heard those reports too, it's just hard to believe. Sounds like anyone who's intelligent enough to negotiate travel overseas could also be that stupid or uninformed. It's probably more a case of Islamic zealotry that drives them, then when they get there and see the actual blood and children's severed heads on spits (or if they're female, get raped a few times,) they realize what fundamental Islam is really about and lose the stomach for it.


So let me just understand this view about saying the words "Radical Islam"...
If I or anyone utters these words, then large numbers of completely peaceful Muslims who happen to hear it will suddenly disavow all their religion's teachings of peace and rush to join ISIS so they can become mass murders? (That's basically what Obama and other apologists are saying.)

Is it like a "Manchurian Candidate" type thing where, when the secret code words are uttered, peaceful Muslims suddenly lose their independent conscious will and must kill? (I'm being sarcastic with that last part, of course).

If I was a moderate Muslim, such a concept would be offensive to me as it assumes that my people are some kind of hypersensitive, weak-willed robots, driven only by uncontrolled emotion, erroneously placed rage & unable to engage in any form of critical analysis.
I'm going to turn my back on my morality and ethics that I've held all my life to become a genocidal, child-murdering terrorist & rapist because I heard some politician say "Radical Islam" when referring to a group that is literally called the "Islamic State," or 100 other terrorist groups that have "Muslim" or other Islamic references in their names?
That's an offensive and insulting concept.

Even Middle Eastern leaders who are Muslim themselves refer to terrorists as belonging to "Radical Islam." So the apologists with their silly, condescending and offensive PC theories about semantics are full of it!

For people who say we must respect Muslims, let's start by respecting their intelligence rather than inferring that they'll become candidates for ISIS recruitment simply from hearing the words "Radical Islam" when referring to terrorist groups like the Islamic State.

Just stop and think about the actual situation rather than trying to find reasons to criticise Obama. There are no answers to be found in partisan politics. Should I go into what a great job Bush did? Have we found those WMDs yet? No, it's unhelpful. Let's actually try to find what we can do to help.

This isn't that hard - Moderate Muslims aren't joining ISIS. It is mostly people that are susceptible to their crap thanks to a variety of reasons - probably often social and economic. If recruiters get their hands on those people they then use the words of politicians and others to say "they don't want you here, you will never be part of this society, Muslims and non-believers can't live together, look at America, every time Obama mentions Islam he calls us criminals, and terrorists, there is a war on Islam, you need to make a choice, a country that doesn't want you here or IS where you will be with your people. Here look at these photos of our Islamic paradise ..." Or something like that I would imagine.

The most famous Australian fighting for ISIS had a history of drug use and depression. He worked as security for strip clubs. Basically just an all round loser ... and then a recruiter got hold of him. ISIS aren't recruiting the best of the best ...

These are people - not a book or a religion. People kill each other every day and make horrendously bad choices. The people being recruited are weak and easily manipulated ... weak and easily manipulated people exist. They are real. At least Obama is trying to do something - just like our leader and those of many countries. Pretty sure they are taking advice from people who know much better than you and I. They aren't using inclusive language just to annoy you

iraqis have turned to ISIS too , and iraq has lots of oil and is potentially rich . plus the land near its two great rivers ( tigris and euphrates ) is fertile too .

that is just the census figure . census figures of most countries always give lower numbers of muslims in order not to alarm you . actually muslims in france have probably crossed the 10 percent mark .

This is one of the reasons why 'just leaving them to it' won't be allowed to happen. As I said, the markets rule and there's no way we're going to let them have control of all those resources. Obviously we shouldn't let them because of what they'd do with it, but the fact that it'll stop us having access to it would be more than reason enough.

__________________
5-time MoFo Award winner.

No, they are actually using that language just to annoy him. And the right is insisting they use other language just to annoy the hell out of me. All of this has been politicized to the point of no return. The language semantics that our politicians and media are playing right now couldn't help what is going on in the world less and people should be as annoyed by it as I am and stop feeding into it.

As far as Isis goes I truly believe that both parties think they are doing what's right. It really isn't any different than the debate we have on crime in this country. One side thinks it is a socioeconomic issue and feels the best way to help it is to find ways to nurture the nature of what is going on so we can prevent more people from wanting to join these zealots. They are correct.

The other side thinks the best way to snuff out these zealots is to hit them as hard and as fast as we can to squash what is going on at this moment. They are also correct.

If we can ever find a way in the Western world to balance the right and left side of our brain there is no telling how effective we can be. As it is we are never going to get rid of terrorism all together. If we believe there is only one head to this snake we haven't been paying attention the last fifteen years, let alone paying any attention to the history of the Middle East since the world began.

I believe we have three countries right now who are very invested in seeing Isis defeated and it will happen despite what we call them and despite what we call the war, situation, conflict, church meeting, etc.

I will now crawl back into my corner and watch you guys bash your head against the wall from a distance.

__________________
Letterboxd

Isn't number of Muslims a secret in France? Because by French constitution all people living in France are French and all religious stuff is forbidden in public (cross as much as any Muslim clothes)?

__________________
“By definition, you have to live until you die. Better to make that life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be.”

That reminds me of my plan number two: (which can be used along with plan number one)

There's a lack of diversity in much of the middle east, especially in the poorer rural (desert areas). The people there tend to stay within their own communities which are made up of similar peoples. Unlike many westerns who live in a multi-cultured metropolitan environment with a rich and diverse media...the middle easterns don't have much contact with a varied population of other: (races, creeds, religions, world view points). So they are prone to be more pissed off at an enemy they don't really know (us westerns), all they have is their religion. History has shown the poorer you are the more ignorant you tend to be and the more you turn to extreme religious ideas.

I often have thought the best way of defeating terrorism in the middle east is through cultural assimilation. The more the west can dump western style images and values into the media they watch over there, the more they will start thinking like us. The more they can see that their religious jihad is something out of the stone age and modern people don't act that...the less extremist ideas they will have. Think of how gay rights too off in America, it increased by awareness through exposure to positive gay people on tv shows and positive media image. We need to bombard them with western style media and values. Assimilate them.

So, if Moderate Muslims aren't joining ISIS, but ISIS is recruiting tens of thousands of Muslims from all over the world, then this reinforces the fact that there are a whole lot of non-moderate "radical" Muslims in the world.

How does a religion that is allegedly all about peace and teaches only love, forgiveness, compassion and respect for life produce these levels of "radical" terrorists?

And if the answer is just misinterpretation by religious extremists or some form of warped zealotry, then why don't we see global terrorist movements and non-stop massacres all over the world from the dozen or so other major-sized religions on the planet?

Could the answer lie not in the politically-correct apologist explanations which are all easily refuted, but in the fact that there is something inherently wrong in an ideology that has as its most basic tenet: kill the infidel?

No other religion has a prevailing and eternal objective to subjugate or kill everybody else who believes differently as the basis of it's religious philosophy.

So could such a philosophical foundation based on the political idea of total supremacy on Earth through genocide perhaps be part of the problem and maybe at least part of an explanation for why there are so many Muslims who want to do exactly what their religion, many of their leaders, many of their Imams, many of their mosques, their scriptures, and their prophet instructs them to do?

And lets remember, ISIS is just one Islamic Terror group of about 100 other Islamic Terror groups that each have thousands of members ready to kill in the name of their religion (which we are told is peaceful). Not to mention there are entire countries made of radical fundamentalist Islamic extremists.

Citizen are you serious with your plan 2?? until I think you are, I won't respond

This is an interesting article by a former IS hostage which explains better what I was saying yesterday about IS wanting us to retaliate to give them more fuel for their zealotry

http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...-paris-attacks

also

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...s-9896629.html

That wasn't meant as a joke, yes I was serious....It would take another generation for young Islamic males in the middle east to grow up with more media/internet exposure to western culture before they might adopt a more global liberal view. I'm not saying that is the only thing that can be done, but it would be a step in the right direction.

Even if we have to spend millions on a satellite to get that information to them. I'm not sure why you would be opposed to that plan 2? as it's more in line with the 'hug a refugee' plan that will supposedly show ISIS that we're good people in the west.