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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
I wonder if that matters to those whose loved ones died.

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Originally posted by romanlion:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
I wonder if that matters to those whose loved ones died.

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Oh I'd bet it does...

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Posted                          

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Originally posted by romanlion:

quote:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
I wonder if that matters to those whose loved ones died.

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Oh I'd bet it does...

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:

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Originally posted by romanlion:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
I wonder if that matters to those whose loved ones died.

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Oh I'd bet it does...

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My point, if I can make it simple enough, is that politicising this is a fairly despicable first reaction.

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Originally posted by Gee D:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:

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Originally posted by romanlion:

quote:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
I wonder if that matters to those whose loved ones died.

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Oh I'd bet it does...

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My point, if I can make it simple enough, is that politicising this is a fairly despicable first reaction.

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Is not the attack itself political? Nothing said here has politicised it further.

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Originally posted by RuthW:
Just for starters, it's going to make things all the more difficult for immigrants and asylum seekers, not to mention all the Muslims already living in the West.

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Originally posted by Barnabas62:
[...] Some form of martial law is probably necessary to curb further retaliation. [...]

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Originally posted by Barnabas62:
I'm not sure what the legal scope of the national state of emergency is, under French law.

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It means:

- movement of people can be prohibited at certain times and places as fixed by decree
- security areas with controlled access as fixed by decree
- anyone preventing the actions of law enforcement can be banned from a given territory;

The ability to order temporary closure of
- performance venues
- licenced premises/
- meeting venues of any nature

(source).

The state of emergency was last declared for Paris in 2005, this is the first time it's been declared for the entire nation.

If I was in Paris right now, I'd be wondering whether I'm going to be allowed to have church on Sunday.

It's too soon to process all the implications of this, but I fear domestic terrorism is likely to become the new normal. To be honest, I'm surprised we haven't seen anything like this sooner.

I grew up during the IRA's mainland terror campaign. That eventually ended through negotiation. Can/will this?

(I passed through Paris on Thursday and am still waiting for news of some friends living there. )

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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
I think (but am not sure) that due to the ethnic makeup of its population, France has a lot more people on its territory that have gone off to fight in Syria - and come back battle-hardened - than other neighbouring European countries. I strongly suspect the attacks will turn out to have been perpetrated by French nationals.

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Originally posted by Evensong:
But for what reason? What do they hope to achieve?

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Originally posted by Evensong:
But for what reason? What do they hope to achieve?

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The foot soldiers probably hope to achieve 15 minutes of fame and go out in a blaze of glory. I agree with mr cheesy that it is really hard to understand their thinking. Some of the people I meet in prison are in danger of being radicalised and it's one of my medium-term intellectual challenges to work out their worldview.

However I think it's a mistake to think the brains of the operation are mad. In all seriousness, some of them probably studied military strategy at Cambridge.

I think they are operating with a religiously inspired Middle Ages worldview but one that is pretty coherent. The depressing thing is that it is so far removed from the post-modern Western one that it's difficult to see how they can live alongside each other.

As I see it, their primary aim is to stop the West interfering with Ummah: territory they believe to be allotted to Muslims.

Thus anything that destabilises a country doing just that is a good thing in their eyes.

In terms of the timing, Paris is hosting the climate summit in just a few weeks, and the Euro 2016 soccer tournament next summer, so you can imagine the security nightmare all this must pose.

But perhaps more significantly, we have regional elections coming up with the first round in less than a month. The anti-immigration, pro-security far-right Front National is expected to do well and may even win control of a region. These attacks will polarise the debate and become the defining issue of the campaign. If the far right make big gains, immigrants will be further stigmatized and excluded, and be excellent recruits for jihad.

(Initial Facebook responses from some local Christians suggest they might vote along those lines )

[glad to hear from you LVER. You were indeed close to the action there]

[ 14. November 2015, 07:33: Message edited by: Eutychus ]

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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy

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Originally posted by Barnabas62:
I'm not sure how good Western intelligence is but if the locations of IS training camps are known, then I would have thought they would be immediate targets for drone attack.

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Originally posted by Evensong:
But for what reason? What do they hope to achieve?

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Originally posted by Barnabas62:
I think they move the training centres around, precisely for that reason. GCHQ and others are listening to the "chatter", trying to pin-point. It's ongoing.

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Originally posted by Evensong:
Why Paris?

Apparently witnesses at the Bataclan concert hall said the attackers there shouted, “this is for Syria,”

But France isn't the only country with airstrikes on Syria......

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
I would guess that if the Western Intelligence agencies knew the location of any ISIS trainig camps they would have already been attacked.

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Originally posted by Evangeline:

This 2012 article from the Guardian sums up the problem The Algerians still treated as 2nd class citizens

This in no way justifies massacres but provides some context as to why Islamist terrorist strikes might me more frequent in France than in other countries.

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Originally posted by chris stiles:

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Originally posted by Evangeline:

This 2012 article from the Guardian sums up the problem The Algerians still treated as 2nd class citizens

This in no way justifies massacres but provides some context as to why Islamist terrorist strikes might me more frequent in France than in other countries.

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There's another angle to this, in that it is possible that the terrorists targeted France precisely because these fault lines are known to exist in the hope that a much more extreme response is triggered, which leads to more alienation and so on.

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