We need targeted surveillance and by that I mean something that many will vehemently disagree with. Before you down vote, please make the effort to read to the end and then down vote!
If I was a doctor and my patient had cancer in his foot, then if try to treat the foot to get rid of the cancer. I would also pay particularly close attention to the leg connected to that foot, to make sure that the cancer did not spread throughout the entire body.
With that in mind, I believe that our only choice, assuming we want our free and open societies to remain as they are, is to monitor all Muslims living in Europe who have the potential to be radicalised and turned cancerous. Warrant, judge, monitor.
We could try and close all the borders (they are porous) or we can make pointless suggestions, like we should kick all immigrants out of our countries, but the fact remains that the attackers in London and Paris earlier in the year (and I'm betting last night too) are second or third generation immigrants who were born in the west.
Since 9/11 the security services have tried to crack down on radicalization within the internal Muslim communities, by expelling radical clerics, but the internet allows the radicalization of the very young and marginalised youth (mostly boys), to continue. This isn't surprising considering the racism against immigrants in the ghettoes of Paris, and the exclusion of these youths from French society. First came the riots in 2005, and now something much more sinister has arrived.
Or societies are desperately trying not to impose draconian rules of monitoring on a religious group, but as it stands I see little choice in the matter.
Also Germany is facing a firestorm. Within the large numbers of genuine refugees, are Syrian fighters from both sides. Some are most likely disillusioned by the brutality of ISIS, and some are coming to watch the world burn. We desperately need to know who these people are and urgently before they disappear into the masses.
We also need to understand ISIS and what they are trying to do. Wikileaks recently published a document [1] that outlines their goals and they are simple. They want to achieve the Islamic State with pure Sharia Law. Moderate Muslims (aka "the greyzone") either have to join, or be burnt in the war with all other Kafir (that has been prophesied). They need the west to turn against their Muslim communities forcing them back to fighting and into the open arms of ISIS. They want those new immigrants in Germany to be excluded, treated like dogs, so that they either return to the middle east and (re)join the perverted form of Islam that is preached by IS.
Now you can see the dilemma that the west faces. On the one hand, logic dictates that they need to closely monitor the youths in Europe who are getting radicalised over the internet, but they can't single out a religious group without a severe backlash. The alternative is to monitor everyone on the internet, because in doing that you get to watch the small part that you are interested in, without appearing to religiously persecuting Muslims.
Finally, there is a twitter account [2] that follows radical militia fighters from Syria and the middle East. A large number of which are now posting photos of them in Europe now. We need to find them now.
[1] ISIS strategy in France: Provoke a crackdown on Muslims to "Eliminate the Grayzone" https://t.co/8fb8BbKOG2 #ParisAttacks #AttaquesParis
Draconian measures targeted against large ethnic groups has been historically unsuccessful in Europe. It also grievously violates the core principles of an open and liberal society, which are presumably what we are supposed to be defending. Vehemently disagreeing with your opinion is a crucial necessity for anyone who stands for democracy and liberty.
Do you have an alternative? All I see is naïve suggestions.
As I see it we have several options:
1. We accept the fact that we will have more terror attacks in major European cities as a given. We such it up and we continue to live in a free and liberal society.
2. We accept total surveillance of our society. As the technology becomes more honed, terror attacks might be easier to prevent before they start.
3. We accept targeted surveillance of those groups that are most likely to end up radicalised and commit terror attacks.
I strongly vote for #1. The attack, while tragic, was small-scale, and should not be treated as anything else as organized crime. Have the police find all responsible and bring them to justice. Anything else is basically doing what the terrorists want you to do - overreact.
We should learn from the mistakes of the United States: two long, bloody and expensive wars, bombing third country and terrorizing fourth, mass surveillance and transportation security theatre - all tallying up to orders of magnitude more innocent deaths than caused by 9/11 attacks, which themselves amounted to something around 3-4 month's worth of traffic-related deaths in the US.
Traffic deaths do not provide a useful scale here. They are typically not intentional and everyone understands that you take risks when you ride in an automobile.
An act of terrorism, even if it causes no casualties, is cause for great concern because innocent civilians are being deliberately targeted.
I think this is a fantastic comment and I completely agree with it. If we are willing to accept thousands of dead people so we get to work on time, we should well accept thousands of dead people for our core liberties and beliefs.
Its difficult to think this clearly when shocked by an unusual circumstance but its the better way to live.
As a person part of this society you speak of, I disagree. Every life is sacred, and even as a full-on anarcho-capitalist I will agree that a ridiculous police-state is justified to defend the individuals within our society. I say that because that is the path we have chosen, by virtue of having a state. Otherwise, we're essentially rehashing the old "the good of the many outweighs the needs of the few".
> Otherwise, we're essentially rehashing the old "the good of the many outweighs the needs of the few".
As we should be, because it's the only reasonable and self-consistent moral philosophy you can have! Of course, in real life you need to plug in some numbers and do some math - it's not a binary problem.
If you really believe every life is sacred and "a ridiculous police-state is justified to defend the individuals within our society", then why haven't we banned cars yet? And jailed all the drivers? As a group, they kill people. They kill a lot more than any terrorist attack ever.
I support that future too. Because "good of the many" who won't have to die in an accident "outweights the need of the few" who want to enjoy themselves on public roads.
I would be interested to see what you would think of this, your statement, if you were holding the dismembered body of your father, mother, sib,ing or loved one in your arms. Dead.
Our free societies do not no
Eed to change. Theirs do. And the solution is very simple. The problem is nobody has the balls and determination to do it.
There's a fundamental incompatibiliti between ideologies and behavior. Being poor, uneducated and without a job isn't a driver. Poor, uneducated and unemployed people in the wort ghetto's in western countries haven't historically translated their circumstances into "let's use automatic weapons to organize a multi-headed attack, kill ourselves and a bunch of people". No, there's only one ideology on the planet with a radicalized extreme minority that supports and promotes this kind of behavior.
To use the priot poster's analogy, let's stop blaming the cancer on the patient. We are not the problem. They are. And those who support them.
We sit idly while watching whole societies who behave like animals. Women in muslim countries walk around u der tents and are stoned to death. People are beheaded. Brutality and cave-men behaviour abounds. And we are supposed to respect it because it is religion? As a scientist this whole concept is revolting. Religion, a collective stone age dellusion that infects the minds of billions of people. It deserves no respect whatsoever. None. In that sense we are at fault.
We don't have to change. The delusional stone age brutal inhuman apes pushing around nonsense have to. The world needs to unite against them, not respect their bullshit religion and ideology.
> I would be interested to see what you would think of this, your statement, if you were holding the dismembered body of your father, mother, sib,ing or loved one in your arms. Dead.
I pray that I would have enough presence of mind to not be overcome by grief and be able to utter the same statement as I did now.
People who are now holding their dead are a fraction of a fraction of percent in Europe. I feel for them, we all do, and personally I think I'd let them react in any way they want. But the rest of us were not affected directly. We have a responsibility to stay focused and stay sane if we want to get through it with a society that is worth preserving. Or with a society at all.
No amount of pain dealt by attackers justifies retaliating against innocent people who had absolutely nothing to do with it. And yes, I understand the clash of cultures narrative. I worry about it too. But even if the terror attacks were directly related to immigration, which I'm betting they are not, turning aggressive because of it would still be one of the worst possible things to do.
> The delusional stone age brutal inhuman apes pushing around nonsense have to. The world needs to unite against them, not respect their bullshit religion and ideology.
Their ideology may have problems, but that was totally, 100% uncalled for. It's below standard of dignity I'd expect from a civilized human being. And please don't blame individuals for what is a systemic problem.
> People who are now holding their dead are a fraction of a fraction of percent in Europe
See, that, right there, is the problem. As well as the obvious way in which other commenters seem to have interpreted my post through their obviously distorted lens.
On the first point, these people are not numbers. They are human beings. They are someone's father, mother, child or sibling. That's where cold statistics fail us. Nobody should tolerate the idea of people being killed by the hundreds every so often in a theater or futbol field and argue that they are "a fraction of a fraction of percent". Sorry, that's just sick.
On the other point. It's interesting that I did not say "let's kill them all". All I said was "The world needs to unite against them, not respect their bullshit religion and ideology." and that was obviously taken by many to mean "let's kill them all". And that is NOT what I said or even implied.
The world truly needs to unite against "them". And "them" means the "crazy as fuck radicalized segment of the Muslim religion". It does NOT mean all Muslim's, the vast majority of whom are normal folks who just want to live a good life and would not hurt anyone any more than the average Christian, Jew or whatever.
Some posters went as far as to ask why I want revenge (with the implication being killing them).
This interpretation of my comment reveals the poster's world view more than anything else.
I did not propose revenge or killing? THEY are seeing this. Not I. I did not say any such thing.
I happen to think the world needs to unite against them (the radical crazies) and segregate them. Give them a chunk of space --a country-- where they can be as fucking crazy as they want. Let them be and maybe we talk to them again in 200 years.
During that time they don't get to benefit from anything the rest of the world has to offer. They get to exist within their own sick rules and enjoy anything they can create. They think women ought not be educated? Fine. They don't get to buy iPhones and computers and cars. Why? Because they are also designed and built by highly educated and capable women and if their ideology looks at them almost as animals then they should not benefit from anything women create anywhere in the world.
In other words, let them live any way they want and under whatever sick rules they want to live under IN THEIR OWN LAND.
And, yes, they don't get to move into any Western country without first proving, way beyond any doubt, they can live by our rules and our social conventions.
And, no, we --meaning nobody-- buys their oil. They can choke on it.
It's really interesting to read a comment where the justification, to paraphrase, is something akin to "the dead are a small percentage of the population". This terrorism problem is much larger than that. And it is the START of a MUCH, MUCH bigger thing. My heritage is one that saw multiple millions of people murdered in a genocide. Genocides don't start with a memo distributed to millions saying "OK, let's do it today". No, crazy sick crap like that starts slowly and grows to a boil, expands and gets out of control.
Some people, like me, today and for a few years are screaming "we have to deal with this now". Others are making ignorant comparisons with the rate of automobile accidents, etc.
The problem with this logic is that automobile accidents are a matter of statistics and probability. There is no intent behind it.
Terrorism has actually changed our world and terrorists would detonate a nuclear bomb in a large city if they ever get their hands of one.
The probability of car accidents in Europe or the US killing six million people in one event or even in one year is exactly zero. The probability of a terrorist group killing millions somewhere is a number greater than zero. That is a huge difference and anyone who does not understand this and insists on comparing to statistics on death by smoking, driving, police shootings or falling off ladders really needs to slow down and think hard about this.
Some of us are looking at this with a degree of desperation because we see what could and is likely to happen if the West does not react with determination. Calling someone's father, mother sibling an insignificant percentage of the population as a justification for not acting to stop this as soon as humanly possible is to, effectively, say it is OK to one day wake up to news on CNN that a nuclear bomb was detonated somewhere in Europe and millions of lives were lost.
Will that convince you? Is that what it will take for you to fully grok what's been going on and where we are headed? That would be sad.
> On the first point, these people are not numbers. They are human beings. They are someone's father, mother, child or sibling.
Right off the bat you lead with a red herring appeal to emotion, you've already left the realm of reasoned debate by starting off a logical fallacy. This is the premise of your argument, it is fallacious, you cannot build a rational argument on a fallacious premise.
> That's where cold statistics fail us. Nobody should tolerate the idea of people being killed by the hundreds every so often in a theater or futbol field and argue that they are "a fraction of a fraction of percent". Sorry, that's just sick.
It's not sick, it's realistic and rational; statistics aren't failing us, they're showing you the truth that your emotions are blinding you to, that this simply isn't a big problem compared to all the other ways people die in far greater numbers. More people die in mass from plane crashes. Here's the CDC's top 10 leading causes of death in the US.
It is quite clear in context, that terrorism just isn't a real problem, it's not even in an order of magnitude of the realm of a real problem, certainly not one worth destroying liberty for.
> The problem with this logic is that automobile accidents are a matter of statistics and probability. There is no intent behind it.
That's not a problem with the logic, it's a problem with your emotions caring about intent so much that you ignore how few people are affected. Your reaction is emotional and wildly out of proportion with the size of the problem. Terrorism only changes the world because of the inappropriate reactions of emotionally driven people who happily give up freedoms to power hungry people totally willing to have more control over the populace. The problem isn't terrorism, the problem is your reaction to it, which is the goal of terrorism. By being so emotional, you are quite literally letting the terrorist win as this is their goal. If you want to beat terrorism, stop being terrorized, suppress your emotions, and use reason instead; that's how you beat terrorism.
Terrorism is simply crime, you cannot eradicate crime and your attempts to do so make the world worse for those who currently enjoy freedom. It is the actions of those like you, in your attempts to "protect" people, that makes terrorism worse. As long as there are people, there will be terrorism, accept it, stop overreacting to it, and you'll see it's not the big problem your emotions make it out to be.
Perhaps you mean Christians? There are a bunch, such as the Lord's Resistance Army (now operating in Sudan) as well as a bunch who have carried out actions in mainland US. In the US the main threat is from either Christian or right wing extremist groups.
Any belief system theistic or not can become fanatical and violent as soon as it's followers become obsessed and decide that the end justifies the means. The 20th century saw quite a few atheistic or at least non religious political ideologies behaving no better than this.
Radical Islam today seems to be doing all the same things that radical fascists and Marxists did in the 20th century.
And radical drivers are a greater threat to Europeans than Muslims are, since they do "become obsessed" (with the right to drive like they like regardless what the law says) and "decide that the end" (getting to the red light 2 seconds faster) "justifies the means" (speeding), killing a lot more of people in the process than terror attacks ever did.
The point is, there are many other groups we could focus on and be much more productive with it. Hell, "radical Islam" probaly has the feature that if we elected to ignore it instead of messing with it abroad and radicalizing people even further, it'd probably eventually go away.
But either way, it's a job for the police to deal with, and it does not call for the general population to start retaliating on innocent people who sorta, kinda look a little similar to the radical branch of a radical branch of a foreign religion.
Is this really true? I don't argue that home grown fanatics are not a threat, but I don't see a current organized systemic effort from them to do much of anything other than squawk on the net.
The lone nut shooter epidemic is something else. It's not ideological. Seems to be more of a mental health issue.
Your stigmatising language around mental illness means I'm unable to answer this question and stay within HN rules. Just remember that many of those people didn't have signs of mental illness and were not known to MH services; and that people with mental illness are more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators of violence.
But the US has had doctors killed and medical clinics bombed by Christian groups. Anti-abortionist protesters try to deny women their reproductive rights and regularly threaten doctors and nurses and admin staff at medical clinics. (This is a war crime if a state does it.)
> At the same time, the United States also faces significant challenges from domestic terrorists. In fact, between 1980 and 2000, the FBI recorded 335 incidents or suspected incidents of terrorism in this country. Of these, 247 were attributed to domestic terrorists, while 88 were determined to be international in nature.
Oh, please. Airports have turned to shit because of the groups you quoted. Right? And the beheadings, that's those crazy Buddhists right? No, it's the NRA guys with their ridiculous guns. Yeah, it's them. Dammit.
Please. Let's get real. We know the elephant in the room. It's not "Mother Theresa Gone Wild".
You and everyone else fully understand the problem. Let's stop pretending it's something else.
Airports turned to shit because of a particular group of people - namely, politicians of the United States of America. This is an example of totally uncalled for overreaction that by itself probably did more economic damage than all the terrorist attacks in the US combined.
How would you propose to protect the millions of passengers who fly every day from terrorists?
I am not challenging you. I simply want to know what you are thinking because it sounds like you may have thought this through to some depth. You obviously think politicians made the wrong decision (which isn't hard to believe) and might have a better solution than the crap we've had to deal with since 9/11.
What alternatives did these politicians have and ignored? What else could they have done?
I don't think anyone, including myself, likes what air travel has become. Yet, I am not sure I could have come up with a better solution. If terrorism disappeared for ten years perhaps we could go back to the kind of hassle free experience air travel used to be.
> What alternatives did these politicians have and ignored? What else could they have done?
They've ignored the most important alternative that is unfortunately often forgotten or seen as weeknes - that you can also do nothing. Or at least do only things that make some sense.
Airports aren't really more secure than they were before 9/11. I'd argue they're even less secure against terrorist attack, because if you wanted to maximize the damage to people, you just go and bomb the security line. You've got hundreds of people tightly packed in a closed space there.
The reality is, terrorism (or generally, politically-motivated murder of civilians) simply doesn't happen often enough that we should care. It's also by definition pretty much completely unpredictable, because the attacker has freedom to pick their target and spend as much time on preparations as they want. Arm the population? Terrorists will use remote-detonated bombs or suicide vests. Turn all airports into high-security facilities? Terrorists will attack at security checkpoints, or just switch to bombing buses instead. If they wanted, they'd murdered us by the thousands already. The reason it doesn't happen is that humans generally just don't go blowing themselves up and/or killing random people.
Also, keep in mind that causalties in terror attacks are only collateral damage, and not the goal. The reason for such attacks is to push the harmed society into the state of panic, at which point they'll start overreacting and doing stupid things to themselves and others.
So in the hypothetical more rational world, what could have politicians done?
- Leave the airports be vs. starting the security theatre industry. Not to say all air travel security is bad; pilot cabin doors are an improvement, though after that last catastrophe in Europe you could say it's an double-edged... shield.
- Don't start two wars vs. starting two wars. This definitely made more terrorists, not to mention it killed about three orders of magnitude more innocent people than 9/11 itself.
- Don't terrorize Pakistan vs. drone-strinking the living shit out of civilians there. This definitely created more potential terrorists.
- Shut the fuck up about it in media. Ok, so the towers fell, it's a tragedy. We should mourn the dead, clean up the mess, redirect funds to investigate and bring to justice people responsible, but otherwise there's nothing to see here.
- Redirect the saved money to other programs. 'gnaritas posted a helpful CDC "top 10 causes of death in the US" list. Any money spent towards fixing any of the items on this list is much better spent than directing it towards "war on terror".
Nonsense. If we didn't have greater security for air travel aircraft would rain from the skies. And the sheer devastation to global economies would have no imaginable measure. Is security perfect? Far from it. But it is far better than doing nothing.
I think you might be blind to a whole layer of the infrastructure because you never have visibility into it. I do. I own a company that conducts business internationally. Passenger aircraft don't just carry passengers. Before the extensive security measures implemented progressively after 9-11 taking down a plane with cargo would have almost been child's play. Today, not so. I don't know how much you travel. If you do, be thankful there are people who did their best to ensure someone isn't shipping an incendiary device on the same plane you and your family happen to be on.
The business of attempting to create equivalency between deaths due to smoking or heat disease and terrorism is simply laughable at best. There is no equivalence and nothing prevents anyone from addressing them as the separate and unrelated problems they are.
> If we didn't have greater security for air travel aircraft would rain from the skies.
Did something changed fundamentally about human condition after 9/11? Planes didn't generally get attacked before, and they didn't generally get attacked after. There were a few incidents on both sides of 9/11. I don't see any reason to attribute things going as they always have been to security theatre erected around the 9/11 events.
> I think you might be blind to a whole layer of the infrastructure because you never have visibility into it.
I might be. Please share some details then, I'm always eager to learn something new and reevaluate my opinions.
> Today, not so. I don't know how much you travel. If you do, be thankful there are people who did their best to ensure someone isn't shipping an incendiary device on the same plane you and your family happen to be on.
I do travel enough, mostly on business. I am very thankful to all people ensuring my safety in air and on the ground. But I do question a lot of the efforts that were introduced as a reaction to events of 9/11.
Well, I'll just say there are at least two kinds of people in this world, those who tend to see things for what they are (not 100% of the time but often enough) and those we need reality to really hit them hard before they finally understand.
I see a lot of people on HN, you and @gnaritas included, living in that second camp. Refusing to see reality for what it is and insisting the emperor has beautiful clothes. I imagine you and @gnaritas as people who would dismiss all the mounting evidence as the Nazi's prepared to kill millions of Jews, including openly stating they were going to perfect the techniques used by the Turks to kill a couple million Armenians during the first world war.
Report after report came out of these regions for both Genocides. Images, telegraphs all all sorts of evidence of what was coming and what was happening. There were those who screamed bloody murder and saw the mounting evidence for what it was: A path to genocide. And, of course, there were those who said shit like "Oh, never mind the Armenians" or "Never mind the Jews", "more people die in car accidents every year, what they hell are you people crying about". And millions died.
I am not going to continue going back and forth with people who refuse to see reality for what it is. We --the World-- are not headed for a good place. We could be headed for something truly horrific.
Creating equivalence with car accidents and cancer and arguing from a position of insanely ridiculous minutiae in the face of attacks, threats videos, beheading, suicide bombers, mass killings and the terrorists themselves getting on the internet and social media to tell all of us EXACTLY what their intentions ares. Well, my friend, this is just insisting to be blind to a reality that is out there in plain sight for all to see.
I fear people like you simply refuse to understand even after six million people perish in a Genocide. I would love to be able to interview some of the people who dismissed the mounting evidence for the first and second genocides of the 20th century. I wonder what the people who ignored the images and telegraphs thought of themselves years later as they realized what happened and how they refused to accept reality.
So, that's it. I don't know where this is headed but it looks worst with ever turn. I hope world leaders take action and stop this snowball from hell from leading us in a direction none of us wants to even consider. I am not going to argue with you any more because we obviously don't see eye to eye.
I truly hope you never get the evidence you need to convince you that you are being blind and you are looking at this the wrong way. And I say that sincerely because that day will not be a good day for humanity.
>> I would be interested to see what you would think of this, your statement, if you were holding the dismembered body of your father, mother, sib,ing or loved one in your arms. Dead.
If that person died in some other unlikely way, I could use the same statement to argue that my grief entitles me to a state sponsored solution that should not be evaluated strategically, or on the basis of actual utility. Do you want an optimal outcome for everyone, or just revenge at any price?
> We don't have to change. The delusional stone age brutal inhuman apes pushing around nonsense have to. The world needs to unite against them, not respect their bullshit religion and ideology.
That it is itself a brutal stone age tribal point of view, you have become what you claim to despise.
That is too funny for laughs in the context of this tragedy. You are actually defending a group of people who would be happy to detonate a nuclear weapon in your city if they could, today.
No, I'm saying you're just like them. You'd be happy to do the same to them, you're as tribal and brutal as they are.
> We are not the problem. They are.
Exactly the same position they claim, and the same position every group who wants to wipe out another groups claims.
No one who derives their morality from a old book has any claim on reason and Muslims aren't any more right or wrong than every other religion out there; they're all equally insane with varying levels of violence.
The problem isn't terrorists, it isn't Islam, it isn't Muslims; the problem, as it always has been, is religion and tribalism.
> the same position every group who wants to wipe out another groups claims.
I have no clue where you read that I want to "wipe them out".
That's interesting. If you read my other comments you'll see I have zero interest in wiping them out. For some reason people like to read "kill them all" when someone says we need to deal with them once and for all.
I don't want to kill them, I want to never have them be a part of our world by means of segregation. Total segregation. They obviously hate the western way of life. OK, well, wish granted!
In other words, give them a place to live where they can live by whatever rules they care to live by and be as crazy as they want to be. They --the crazy's-- don't get to live in Paris, New York, Munich or Tokyo. The get to live in their own little part of the world and we sever all contact with them --in or out-- for 200 years. They don't get to benefit from anything the western world and cultures they so despise has to offer and we don't buy anything from them, including their oil. Closed borders, have a great time with your crazy ideology, live long and prosper. Done.
I don't want to kill them. We don't need to. I want to give them exactly what they want: A place and the isolation to live by their rules. We just need them to not be a part of our society in any way.
> For some reason people like to read "kill them all" when someone says we need to deal with them once and for all.
Yes, because that's what "once and for all" means. If you didn't intend that, then my bad, but it's the common interpretation of the phrase.
> I don't want to kill them, I want to never have them be a part of our world by means of segregation. Total segregation.
That's simply not realistic at all.
> In other words, give them a place to live where they can live by whatever rules they care to live by and be as crazy as they want to be.
They already have that in the middle east, we just keep going in and killing them because we're warmongers and we think our economic interests are more important than their lives.
> They --the crazy's-- don't get to live in Paris, New York, Munich or Tokyo.
That's also not realistic, who gets to define "they", you're just pulling some McCarthyism all over again.
Your proposed solution quite simply just isn't realistic, we live in a global society now, the economy of all nations is linked, we need to find ways to get along, not find ways to isolate which will only lead to more wars, more terrorism, and more death.
> Yes, because that's what "once and for all" means.
No it isn't. Maybe to you it is. In what universe does "once and for all" mean "kill them all"?
> That's simply not realistic at all.
It is if the world unites against them. It's actually really simple. The problem is we don't have any leaders who would have the intestinal fortitude to make this happen.
Stop buying anything from them. Stop all flights to and from their country or countries. Unplug the internet routers. Unplug any phone lines in and out, don't allowed packetized communications back and forth, or both. Do not allow financial transactions with the rest of the world, etc.
Easy, no. Does it requires balls. Yup. Does it require absolute unity from the major countries in the world, including Russia and China? Without a doubt. Possible. Yes. Probable? Nearly zero. But it isn't impossible.
Pressure needs to be applied in a major way so that they (their civilization) will wake up and realize they have far, far more to lose than we do. Either they clean-up their act or they get exactly what they've been asking for. They get to live by their twisted rules and ideology without any western intervention or the need interact with us in any way, a people and ideology they hate so much.
We don't need them. And they don't want to accept peaceful coexistence with us. So, why do we have such a hard-on to have a relationship with them? Let. Them. Be. Maybe in 200 years they'll develop a civilization.
'gnaritas not defending them but points out that the way you expressed your opinion suggests you have the same hatred in you that makes terrorist radicals a problem. If we accept this attitude, it'll mean that we have already destroyed ourselves and terrorists have won.
> the way you expressed your opinion suggests you have the same hatred in you
Can you please give me an example? Hatred? I think some of you are reading whatever it is you want to read into a comment rather than what is being said. I never said I want to kill them. Anywhere. I actually want to leave them alone, literally. I fail to see any hatred in that at all. I think you guys have completely distorted what I've written and replaced it with a twisted interpretation. Please read it again. And this:
These ideologies don't belong in the western world. They hate us. So give them exactly what they want: Let them live by their rules within their own kingdom and without any western contact or influence.
What this means is: No planes, trains or automobiles from the west. No medicine from the west. No iphones or computers from the west. They think women should not be educated, so they don't get to benefit from anything from the west where women with even a high school education might have been involved in any capacity. And we don't buy anything from them, including oil. They get their own chunk of land with a beautiful wall around it (let's get Trump on that) and we sever all contact and trade with them for 200 years. They can have a fucking riot of a time with their crazy ideology and they cease to be a part of the western world. It will be like we don't exists to them and they don't exist to us.
I don't want to kill them. I want to give them total freedom to live as they wish to live and have them enjoy total isolation from the cultures they so highly despise.
> The delusional stone age brutal inhuman apes pushing around nonsense have to.
"They're stone-age apes, so LET'S BEHAVE EXACTLY LIKE THEM, ganging up and kicking the crap out of them with the biggest club we can find." What a superior, enlightened approach! We shall begin preparations henceforth. Oh wait, we're already bombing "them" back into the Stone Age...
> LET'S BEHAVE EXACTLY LIKE THEM
> bombing "them" back into the Stone Age
This is YOUR view and lens, not mine.
Where did I say that? Please quote. 'Cause I did not. Read my other long comment on what I think should happen.
In a nutshell, I think we need to leave them alone. Give them a chunk of land big enough for them to have a great time under their own rules and let them be for 200 years. But they do NOT get to enjoy anything from the Western world or travel/move/interact with us. If we are shit, well, then, they get to live within their own little fantasy all they want and leave us the fuck alone.
0. We should try to counter the radical ideology by allowing everyone to air their grievances in public without condemning or shouting down those we disagree with. Debate should be welcomed and encouraged not stifled and stigmatised otherwise those with extremist views will still be able to seek out the impressionable and monopolise the narrative they hear.
As I see it this is the most important solution. Trying to catch people just as they are about to commit an atrocity doesn't go anywhere to help solving the root problem. Extremists have been using secure lines of communication for a while and will continue to do so regardless of whether is is decreed legal or illegal and this is to say nothing of offline communication.
You may prevent some fraction of the attempts, but many will be successful and all we will be doing is treating the symptoms whilst probably severely aggravating the cause. No one has their privacy routinely violated and feels more sympathetic to those violating those rights.
We have been involved in a battle of ideas and we need to start formulating a response on this front. Everything else is secondary.
I always wonder why I never see this one on lists of choices:
5. Stop killing large numbers of Muslim people in the Middle East every week and see if that doesn't make them less likely to kill comparatively small numbers of people in Western cities every couple of years.
> “I’m going to ask you this question that people asked after 9/11, because I don’t think we still know the answer: Why do they hate us?” [said Maher] ...
> “That’s not what terrorists say,” said Maher. When you capture one, or when they leave a note, you know what they say? Because you’re in Muslim lands. I have a crazy idea: Why don’t we get out of Muslim lands?”
> “But bombing them over there is what is causing the Paris thing to happen! That connection needs to be made. We don’t have to be bombing them there,” said Maher, before discussing how the U.S. military should vacate the Middle East and let other Middle East countries take on the fight against ISIS.
I agree completely, but you can't put this genie back in the bottle. What is your solution given the current status quo?
Say that we leave them to themselves. The USA abandons all of its based on "Muslim lands". They decide to leave us in peace after we apologise profusely and offer reparations for the damage we've done?
They aren't doing this for retribution for our acts in the middle East. You've missed the point of ISIS.
They want all non-Muslims who don't want Sharia Law dead. Attacking us is designed to provoke us to alienate the "grey zone" Muslims who have integrated in the west and are moderate, sensible and peaceful. If those moderates don't join IS then they are going to also get killed.
These guys are following an "actual" prophesy. They are trying to make it come true.
Check out the wikileaks article via my tweet earlier and you'll realise that we have very little chance of preventing further terrorist attacks assuming we continue our current course.
Leaving the Muslim lands and making reparations is not going to help the situation at all. It may help or children's children, but it won't solve the "now" problem.
West is a enemy against which they can unite all other arabs. If west is not an enemy, they cannot unite and will fight each other, e.g. sunnite vs shiite like they have been doing last thousand years.
> They want all non-Muslims who don't want Sharia Law dead
This is a good example of a western propaganda. Sure, there are radical people who say so but they do not have mass support to realise this plan and not everyone thinks so.
> Leaving the Muslim lands and making reparations is not going to help the situation at all
Why don't we try? In the meantime we can take other measures to protect ourselves too.
Anyhow it works relatively nicely here in Finland. We only take part in UN operations as peacekeepers. And we don't have radicalized Muslims doing strikes in Finland. But for some reason Finnish Muslim radicals still travel to Syrian and join ISIS.
I don't think Levant will be peaceful in my lifetime unless Israel magically disappears from the map.
To me "power projection" in itself is morally very questionable. Even without terrorist attacks. Unfortunately modern geopolitics is more Machiavellian than Machiavelli himself was.
It's not just morally questionable, it's outright wrong.
Unfortunately trying to stop genocide with violence and failing miserably is even more wrong. On the other hand using supposed genocide as excuse to forward geopolitical interests would also be wrong.
Given how Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq wars have turned out, I'm not in favor of meddling. Given how nobody gave single fuck about Khmer rouge, I don't believe in genuine good will in geopolitics. So I'm not giving my permission to anybody to conduct air strikes in Syria, but they won't ask me either. Only air strike that gets my approval is dropping several tonnes of polyurethane to Dabiq.
Because it is better to let your own terrorist grow the biggest terrorist owned zone, and build an enormous army full of cash ? This is exactly what create this big projection power that make successful terrorist attack in France.
There is 6000 europeans terrorists in Syria; 1000-2000 french, letting them settle there give them fantastical capabilities to recruit more, and project more power on european countries with trained terrorists.
Nobody ever said that the invasion of Iraq was to stop a genocide. In my opinion it was mainly revenge for 9/11, even if the association of Saddam Hussein with terrorism is murky at best.
I didn't try to do that. I just think that conflict fueling unrest more than anything else. And it's lot easier to imagine Israel to disappear than to imagine half of Islamic world to disappear.
> I just think that conflict fueling unrest more than anything else.
Despite the attention it receives, Israel is actually a pretty localized issue. It has very little to do with the biggest conflicts in the Middle East.
If Israel weren't around, Syria would still be destabilized and we would still have ISIS.
Also, your rhetoric around wiping Israel off the map kind of gives your agenda away.
> If Israel weren't around, Syria would still be destabilized and we would still have ISIS.
Are you sure?
According to the founding father of Zionism Theodore Herzl, “the area of the Jewish State stretches: “From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.” According to Rabbi Fischmann, “The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon.”
When viewed in the current context, the war on Iraq, the 2006 war on Lebanon, the 2011 war on Libya, the ongoing war on Syria and Iraq, the war in Yemen, the process of regime change in Egypt, must be understood in relation to the Zionist Plan for the Middle East. The latter consists in weakening and eventually fracturing neighboring Arab states as part of an Israeli expansionist project.
The Zionist project supports the Jewish settlement movement. More broadly it involves a policy of excluding Palestinians from Palestine leading to the eventual annexation of both the West Bank and Gaza to the State of Israel.
According to Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya in a 2011 Global Research article, The Yinon Plan was a continuation of Britain’s colonial design in the Middle East:
“[The Yinon plan] is an Israeli strategic plan to ensure Israeli regional superiority. It insists and stipulates that Israel must reconfigure its geo-political environment through the balkanization of the surrounding Arab states into smaller and weaker states.
I got the idea of wiping Israel off the map from PLO "peace suggestion". I'm not going to pick a side in that stuff. I'm just extremely cynical that there would ever be peace.
> The French military has carried out its first airstrikes against ISIS in Syria, according to a statement from the office of France's presidency.
> The country had announced earlier this month that it would expand its aerial campaign against ISIS in Iraq -- which it began a year ago -- to include the militant group's positions in Syria.
They want to fulfill a prophesy. Everyone be who is not IS is to be killed. That includes moderate Muslims that don't join IS. Read the wikileaks article linked above.
I think it's naive to think that IS exists in some sort of vacuum, rather than within a context of ongoing conflicts between the Western and the muslim world.
That'll just make things worse, I'm afraid. "Disarm" in this context probably includes a very large occupation force, and would be seen as a defacto invasion of their lands.
Really, the only way (in my opinion) to stop this now and de-escalate the hatred, is to segregate via mass deportations and pull-backs of expats. It's not a "pretty" thing to suggest, and I'd even argue against it on moral grounds as it'll include complete innocents.
No, I don't know what to do. Presumably neither of us are experts in counterterrorism or experienced in military strategy, which technically makes both of us naïve.
I disagree that draconian monitoring of Muslims in general is accurately described as "targeted surveillance." Targeted surveillance means intelligence gathering on specific individuals or groups of individuals, not entire religious-ethnic populations.
I also see no a priori reason why broadening the scope of surveillance to require monitoring of more than 50 million peaceful citizens would be an effective use of intelligence resources.
I could come up with some naïve suggestion of my own, but they would probably be too radical for the leaders of the Western world to consider. Western diplomatic apology for illegal wars and terrorism in the Middle East could be one part.
For a hopefully less naïve perspective, I'll link to this interview with professor Chomsky.
Surveillance is not going to fix the issue. If we want to have fewer terrorist attacks, we have to prevent radicalisation by fixing the social issues that cause it. If we continue to do nothing, the problems will get worse, and surveillance will be futile.
Fixing social issues is not easy. Masses of youths without education or perspective, racism, increasing segregation between the middle and lower classes can't be fixed with simple methods.
Where do we start? I'd suggest starting with schools. Make sure that kids go to school. Send social workers to schools, that talk to students. Offer courses in the native language of migrant children, to make sure they are not left behind and drop out early. Make sure that every student has a grown up at school that they can talk to, that they relate to.
Next, housing. Rents in most european cities are skyrocketing. I assume that this is caused by the current low interests rates, which lead to more and more people to use real estate as an investment. Low interest rates also make credit cheap, increasing the amount people can pay for housing, again increasing prices. This means that even the middle class is struggling to afford housing, and people working low income jobs have to live in very low quality housing, in poor areas. Fixing this is probably not easy, and probably requires a number of unpopular measures like rent control, or subsidised housing (for example you could require real estate developers to offer a percentage of affordable appartements when they apply for a permit to construct a new building).
Also, jobs. I really don't know how to fix this. A starting point would probably be to require minimum wages even for contract employees, or better to outlaw the current practices of hiring people as "independent contractors" instead of proper employees.
Anyway, these are just some suggestions. Note that all these measures are about helping people, rather than harassing them. Happy people don't become terrorists, and happy people don't need to be put under surveillance.
I'm just wondering where the radical Hindu, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, Jewish, Baha'ist Shinto, and Atheist terrorists have got to? Don't they have social issues as well? Or are the media hiding their activities?
The minimum wage disproportionately affects low-income minority populations. So if that's your goal, go for it!
Employers understandably cream off the top (as they see it) applicants and the rest can go spend their lives unemployed.
To really hurt them, why not increase the minimum wage yet again.
We have plenty of radical christians. We just don't call them "radical christians", we call them "far right extremists". The media aren't hiding their activities. You might recall Anders Breivik or the "Döner" murders, but there are also regular smaller scale right wing terrorist attacks (eg someone setting fire to a refugee home a while back in Styria, Austria). We don't perceive this threat as dangerous, since the attacks are probably unconnected acts of individuals, and for some reason we don't see right wing networks spreading facist propaganda quite as threatening as islamic hate propaganda.
Also, my comment concerning wage was not about raising minimum wages as much as ensuring that people are actually paid minimum wages. Most of the unemployed people I know aren't actually unemployed; they just have very irregular jobs (no contract, no insurance, irregular hours, etc)
You mean so that they go to engineering school?
Terrorist organizations have long recognized that engineering departments are fertile ground for recruitment and have concentrated their efforts there. A 2005 report from British intelligence noted that Islamic extremists were frequenting college campuses, looking for 'inquisitive' students who might be susceptible to their message. In particular, the report noted, they targeted engineers."
2. and 3. play into the terrorists' hands perfectly: they transform our society from a free, liberal one to a fascist surveillance state. When the choice is a lack of freedom ruled over by ISIS or a lack of freedom ruled over by our current leaders, it's a meaningless choice. 1. is the only option that doesn't ultimately destroy our way of life.
"Do you have an alternative? All I see is naïve suggestions."
Another option is to recolonize.
Failed (or failing) states like Syria and Egypt and Iraq become permanent vassal states and their populations are ruled in-place (as they were in the past).
I am not suggesting this course, but it should be included in this list, for completeness' sake.
Interestingly, it does solve the refugee crisis...
From my point of view we can't fight terrorism by war or massive surveillance. It's a matter of culture, if everyone knew about the beauty of life, and all good things that she provide, this would not happen.
Your culture allows you to link your actions to different kind of emotions, and especially the one which make you unable to hurt anyone else. This is the way religions (all of them) were spreading peace, way before the internet, when the only culture you add access to was the holy book in the nearest temple. That's what is making us different than these emotionsless animals who are manipulated to kill people and themselves.
So to stop this we need to share more values, more principles, with more people. Values and principles are carried by culture. Now think about the huge amount of free culture that governments and industries are trying to stop, to reduce and to slow down. All these torrents and files shamefully shared from all over the world, this could be the answer.
Legalising piracy and encouraging people to share more, will make the culture spread faster and reduce the number "lost" people, on the long term, or maybe even on the short term with a good old internet buzz. Let's show them how we live and how we think and how good it is.
You say like terrorists are some evil beings that just hate all the living people. But what if they are just ISIS soldiers whose objective is to force a country withdraw the army from their territory using all possible means? What if terrorists' friends or relatives died from US and european bombs? In their eyes you a just a liar bombing their cities while taking how you cannot hurt anyone else.
I cannot believe there are people who don't understand such a simple thing. You are probably brainwashed by western media.
You're asking for more ideas and this is something I've had to painstakingly talk to people about all day, so here's a shot at this.
First of all, identify the problem. Why are there terrorist attacks? Saying "religious nuttery" achieves nothing. Nuttery always exists but is in majority not enough to push people to suicide bombings. Terrorist attacks exist because of political power and influence. They're efficient, because we let them be efficient.
Compare it to the drug trade. [Cartels|terrorist cults] thrive because there is [money|power] to be made. Going after the [cartels|terrorists] is not enough long term. [Jailing|Discriminating against] [potheads|muslims] only serves to worsen the situation for them, pushing them even further out of society, but does nothing to solve the problem. Criminalizing the components such as [drugs|encryption] only makes the problem worse for your citizens, doesn't affect the bad guys. You need to take care of the problem at the root by removing the bad guys' incentives.
In the case of terrorist cults, religion is a mask. It's just whatever's currently marginalizing people as much as possible. You see, marginalized people make for excellent subjects. Just like any other cult, they prey on the weak. They prey on the ones who are feeling alone, those feeling rejected by everybody even their own country. Those who have nowhere else to go find a place they're taken care of, where they're cheaply promised great rewards (in the afterlife) and where they can find a purpose. Not just that, but somewhere they can take revenge on the country that hates them.
"Muslim" terrorists know quite well that their attacks only make the lives of muslims worse. They only serve to get them more subjects so they can get even more political power.
So you want an idea? You take care of that problem. You start teaching others about how those cults really work - know your enemy. You make people understand that more hatred, more blood, are exactly what the terrorists want. That's why we call them terrorists: Politics through terror.
Education. Teaching to be more critical of media - media has complete control over the narrative through most mediums, and as long as some media outlets stand to gain from instilling fear of your neighbour, they'll keep doing it and readers will not be any less impressionable for it.
I dunno, maybe it'll make a difference. Maybe it won't. I want to believe it will, but today, as a French person, I have seen more xenophobia than I care to admit. I'm hating humanity pretty badly right now. HN has been the only place where I've found mostly reasonable reactions.
It's completely possible that the message sent here was not aimed to anybody living in France.
It's also likely that certain large portion of French are not going to be satisfied unless something drastic is done. To them it's not about the problem, it is about feelings and identity.
So this can't be solved entirely. Best thing to mitigate the problem would be a knee-jerk reaction that does least amount of damage. Because in democracy you will have that knee-jerk, sooner or later.
> Best thing to mitigate the problem would be a knee-jerk reaction that does least amount of damage. Because in democracy you will have that knee-jerk, sooner or later.
That's an interesting take on it, and I don't really disagree with it. Maybe I hate that I don't disagree with it though. I hate having to settle for something. :/
I hate it too :/. But it makes sense. A valve to relieve pressure - in some direction that isn't destructive, or doesn't contribute to further radicalization, creating a feedback loop.
Functional democracy is as intelligent as average voter is. Hopefully education can make the world better place. But it's going to take a long time to do it.
If the attackers are saying that, their real message is probably "Look, the French are not safe. We are capable of revenge." to other ISIS fighters in Syria. Morale of your own troops is of paramount importance in a war.
I think France, or any nation for that matter has very poor track record of backing down military operations after terrorist attack.
Except these don't appear to be a political terrorist group, like the ones we have in Europe. This is jihad, blind violence, without targeting political figures. If you ask the bombers why they do it they 'll barely be able to answer beyond some religious nonsense. If you ask the ones who sent them to bomb, i bet you will find a mixture of vague anti-westernism , anti-semitism etc. Whoever is funding them does not have a world-changing plan other than general disorder. Even if ISIS had a UN-recognized state, they wouldn't be able to keep it functioning for a single day.
It's easy to be a terrorist nowadays, because it's hard to come up with solutions to fix the broken arab world. It probably doesn't take huge funding to do the things they do. Is there a viable political agenda behind them? If there was, arabs wouldn't be fleeing the area in droves.
It is in my own not politically correct opinion (I expect to be downvoted for this) not blind at all. It is targeted against freedom of expression and also against feminism, which they see as immoral. It is targeted towards freedom of expression because of the dogmas regarding the depiction of their own religious figures, and that is intimately related to their religion. And all that happens because they went to other countries, but entirely rejecting other cultures, and their own culture includes trying to convert the entire world to Islam.
This is also a consequence of the Mongols and the Sack of Baghdad in 1258. Before this, Islam was the enlightened culture that preserved Greek discoveries and it was truly the religion of peace. After it, they became much more orthodox and rejected the science they helped preserve.
It truly saddens me every time I write several paragraphs trying to get across the point about islam being used as a tool by people who couldn't give a shit about the religion. Neither on the attacker's side nor on the defending governments' sides.
I have not stated what I think of religions anywhere in my posts, because it is not relevant - and I'd wager you would be surprised about my answer should you ask.
What you do see is this being a religious attack, when it is quite clearly a political one. I'm honestly not sure anymore how someone who thinks through the mentality these people have can come to the conclusion that the logic makes sense.
It's just so easy for people to just say "Pah, there's no logic, these people are irrational and crazy and they hate us". But that's bullshit. Everybody is driven by their own set of logic and in the majority of cases, they're easily manipulated by those that are more experienced or stand to gain more than them. This is a fact we have to face: There are horrors being done, and there are reasons behind the horrors being done.
So please, I won't try to convince you - instead, think this through yourself:
1. Do these attacks serve a religious goal? If so, which?
2. What are the social consequences on islam and muslims as a result of such attacks?
Are they predictable? Are they known by the perpetrators?
3. What happens as a result of those consequences? Who is affected?
Who is most negatively affected?
4. Based on your answers on 2 & 3, can you tell who stands to gain the most out of it?
5. Does your answer to 1 still make sense in the context of your answers to 2, 3 & 4?
Please cite your sources. I appreciate what you're trying to say, but I've been dealing with this for the past 19 hours and you're putting words in the mouths of attackers who are dead or have not been caught.
> Even if ISIS had a UN-recognized state, they wouldn't be able to keep it functioning for a single day.
Do you know why we say "know your enemy"? Because the worst thing you can do when facing a threat is underestimate it. You don't want to be caught off-guard. Statistically if you read this site you are familiar with computer security. Think, how does downplaying and underestimating threats work out, in the itsec world?
> It's easy to be a terrorist nowadays, because it's hard to come up with solutions to fix the broken arab world.
These are two very faintly related points. They're certainly not cause & consequence.
This might be a war operation. It is very effective to sacrifice eight soldiers to make the whole army retreat. And other countries might be scared too and withdraw their troops.
> If you ask the ones who sent them to bomb, i bet you will find a mixture of vague anti-westernism , anti-semitism etc.
France is in a war against IS. So they fight with their enemy.
> it's hard to come up with solutions to fix the broken arab world
What about restraining from using force? Using diplomatic and economic measures?
"You don't see the world as it is, you see it as you are." -- Krishna Saagar
With all the information now available regarding mass surveillance, the only ways to believe it is an effective deterrent to terrorism are ignorance and obstinacy.
In practice, #3 is already done by almost all countries, though usually HUMINT is far more granular than just "lol infiltrate the minorities," because that's too general to be any of usefulness.
#2 wouldn't get rid of terrorism. Instead, it would make the state the terrorist.
Reality is far more complicated. No single solution could possibly work. Your suggestions (that people 'accept' your perspective as their reality) are equally naive.
No offense generally means "I'm about to be a cunt and expect you to suck it up." You aren't being a cunt but you completely failed to address any arguments. All you've got are assertions.
1 is the correct answer. Beyond that, you say "more" as if there are many. You have a better chance of being killed by lightening, stop promoting terror as a major fear, it is not.
Do a risk analysis. Terror attacks (and most other high-profile murders) are tragic and scary, but in terms of death count, statistically insignificant.
Adopt absolute surveillance, ban all guns, etc etc and you might save a very small number of people each year, but you've paid a lot to do that.
Well it kinda did, in early 2000's there would be one suicide bombing on average per week, after 2 fairly brutal military operations, and erecting a huge fence and checkpoints it pretty much stopped.
One can argue what was more effective the military operations that dismantled the infrastructure* or the fence but no one in their right mind in Israeli politics would wage on either.
It doesn't help them to stop the current run of violence with the knife attacks for sure, but many of the perpetrators in recent attacks actually were either Israeli residents (Palestinians with an ILR type permit) or even citizens so wall or no wall they could get to their targets in any case.
* Suicide bombings unlike many people think aren't a simple lone-wolf/small group type of operation, they are a very sophisticated and well funded operation.
The bombers are pre-selected usually by a close family member (uncle, older brother, cousin in most cases), they are groomed, then put into a program not unlike a one that the CIA would use to break a prisoner to get them to turn, they are brought to the brink programmed to disregard their own life.
The family of the bomber would usually be paid out up to 100,000$ coming from Gulf state patrons, in many cases they would be whisked away to Europe or other countries by NGO's that claimed that they were at risk for retaliation, one British NGO was "caught" processing paperwork for a family with the justification that under Israeli law their house will be demolished due to the attack prior to the attack actually taken place (this was discovered by NGO Watch IIRC several years after the event).
> We could try and close all the borders... or... kick all immigrants out of our countries
mbrock said:
> Draconian measures... historically unsuccessful... [establishing those measures] also grievously violates the core principles of an open and liberal society... Vehemently disagreeing with your opinion is a crucial necessity for anyone who stands for democracy and liberty.
Dolores12 said:
> It is actually succesful in Israel.
Mbrock, I beg you to engage the argument. This is the debate we should be having. There can't be double standards. Either closing borders and kicking out immigrants "grievously violates the principles of democracy and freedom" [1] or they don't. Which is it?
[1] In which case the U.S. supports a State that "grievously violates the principles of democracy and freedom" and we should stop supporting them immediately.
People who share a certain ideology aren't an "ethnic" group. We do exactly the same with nazis.
Whether those measures are effective or desirable is up for debate, but the constant attempt to shut down that debate by playing the ethnic/race card is extremely counterproductive.
Your comment tells more about your identity than anything else. Not that there is nothing really wrong with that.
Democratic state could take any stance on the subject. Probably one that is easy to sell to people. This stuff comes interesting when we have democracy and liberty fighting against each other. Which do you choose?
My identity isn't particularly relevant to these foundational principles. I could be a committed nihilist or an anti-liberal ideologue and still explain how draconian ethnic surveillance violates the principles of an open liberal society.
Whether an open liberal society is ultimately good or worth maintaining is something I don't bring into the debate at this point. Since it is essential to the core values of the French republic, disputing it seems pretty futile.
If "democratic" has any real meaning, a democratic state can not take any stance on the subject: it can't take an anti-democratic stance, because that would be a contradiction in terms. Of course democracy is endangered by terrorism in exactly the way that people point out constantly: it undermines the basic security and "social fabric" that allows for democracy.
Democracy, equality before the law and freedom of speech need each other to work. To me it seems self evident and I assumed it to be no-brainer to large majority of HN.
I thought that we we're discussing here a situation where freedom and democracy might be conflicted. If they cannot be conflicted, then we have to assume that people of democratic nation are unable to ever vote for ethnic surveillance. Which seems unrealistic assumption.
> Or societies are desperately trying not to impose draconian rules of monitoring on a religious group, but as it stands I see little choice in the matter.
Try harder. You don't maintain liberty by destroying it.
> is to monitor all Muslims
No, that is not a solution. You are responding with fear to the fact that the world is a dangerous place. Fear is not a place from which to make decisions. Terrorist attacks are barely worth replying to, they kill very few people and simply don't matter; they are something for police to deal with, no laws need changed, no big actions need taken, ignore them, they are statistical noise. Cars and lightening are far more dangerous.
You don't need to target anyone, you don't need to monitor anyone. Terrorism is a fake problem, it kills barely anyone and is little more than statistical noise. There are so many bigger actual problems to solve and no one is proposing tossing liberty out the window to solve them. You are arguing from emotion, not reason; this is nothing more than a simple crime, let the police handle it and forget about it. You can't "fix" terrorism and it is naive to attempt to do so.
Mass surveillance is in fact a worse crime than terrorism, maybe we should jail you and all those who support it as you are the far bigger threat to liberty. Terrorism poses no threat to liberty, people like you do. Your ideas if enacted are far more dangerous to a free society than all the terrorists of the last 20 years combined.
is there some way you've imagined to pull that off without monitoring everybody? perhaps a survey where people can indicate how likely they are to follow radical Islam on a scale of 1-5.
"We, the West, overthrew Saddam by violence. We overthrew Gaddafi by violence. We are trying to overthrow Assad by violence. Harsh regimes all — but far less draconian than our Saudi allies, and other tyrannies around the world. What has been the result of these interventions? A hell on earth, one that grows wider and more virulent year after year.
Without the American crime of aggressive war against Iraq — which, by the measurements used by Western governments themselves, left more than a million innocent people dead — there would be no ISIS, no “Al Qaeda in Iraq.” Without the Saudi and Western funding and arming of an amalgam of extremist Sunni groups across the Middle East, used as proxies to strike at Iran and its allies, there would be no ISIS. Let’s go back further. Without the direct, extensive and deliberate creation by the United States and its Saudi ally of a world-wide movement of armed Sunni extremists during the Carter and Reagan administrations, there would have been no “War on Terror” — and no terrorist attacks in Paris tonight.
Again, let’s be as clear as possible: the hellish world we live in today is the result of deliberate policies and actions undertaken by the United States and its allies over the past decades. It was Washington that led and/or supported the quashing of secular political resistance across the Middle East, in order to bring recalcitrant leaders like Nasser to heel and to back corrupt and brutal dictators who would advance the US agenda of political domination and resource exploitation.
The open history of the last half-century is very clear in this regard. Going all the way back to the overthrow of the democratic government of Iran in 1953, the United States has deliberately and consciously pushed the most extreme sectarian groups in order to undermine a broader-based secular resistance to its domination agenda.
Why bring up this “ancient history” when fresh blood is running in the streets of Paris? Because that blood would not be running if not for this ancient history; and because the reaction to this latest reverberations of Washington’s decades-long, bipartisan cultivation of religious extremism will certainly be more bloodshed, more repression and more violent intervention. Which will, in turn, inevitably, produce yet more atrocities and upheaval as we are seeing in Paris tonight.
"
You understand how bayesian reasoning works, right? There are probably between three and six million muslims in France alone. Whatever monitoring you're doing, you're proposing to find on the order of a few hundred people, if that. False positives (which, remember: we cannot distinguish from actual positives) would end up targeting orders of magnitude more innocent people than guilty.
Worse, by breaking the compact of a free and just society with respect to a single religious group (cough), you're basically doing the terrorists' jobs for them - you end up marginalizing and disenfranchising huge swaths of your population (remember again: millions of people in France alone). Even if one is not not ethically and morally appalled by your proposal, the problem remains: your proposal would probably contribute more to radicalization than any other single action the terrorists themselves could take.
It is at a time like this when we most need to stick to the principles of a free, just, and open society. We need to re-affirm those, and I say that as an American who has lived through the post-911 transition into a security society. Learn from our mistakes: we've gone and made people more radical, spent more civilian and military lives, because as a nation we somehow thought we could fix the "muslim problem" through fighting and surveillance. Neither worked.
What will (eventually) work is working toward a nation and a world where all people are free and equal. Sure, there may still be attacks against such a nation, but that's what police are for (when the police are also just and equal). Furthermore, it's a lot harder to radicalize people when they live in a safe and just society that pays attention to them. I'm not surprised at all, given how non-muslim westerners have treated the religion and people, that we are seeing radicalized people.
And aaaaalso, this bears mentioning although it's kind of tangential. Not all muslims are brown. Not all muslims speak bad english / french. Consider all the work Imperial Japan did to wipe out christianity (you can't tell a religion by looking at someone), and all they did was make it stronger and drive it underground.
Consider: in the US, actually, the biggest terrorist threats come from white people. White people of the white-supremacy and militant-anti-abortion camps are responsible for far more terrorist attacks on US soil than ISIS and al-qaeda combined. We, as a nation, just don't really like to talk about surveiling all white people. It'd be ridiculous, a fact we understand instinctively because the white narrative is the non-marginalized one.
Not to disagree with your point about Bayesian reasoning but would you care to cite some source for your assertion about the relative dangers of white-supremacy groups and their ilk versus Islamic terror groups? 9/11 alone killed 2996 people [1] including hijackers and there's little question Al Qaeda/ISIS adherents would have killed many more if they could have. It was certainly not for lack of trying.
Sorry for the delay, I've been AFK all day. My assertion (which it, for the most part is) is not based necessarily on body count (which is an important statistic, but not the totality of terrorist goals, which are to assert dominance and terrorize).
Consider the number of mass shootings that have occurred in the US this year (294 as of 10/1)[0]. Not all of them are acts of terror, but a surprising number could be considered as such. High-profile mass killings (like the Umpqua college one) are often carried out by young white men who wish to assert their dominance over a culture they feel doesn't respect them. As a rule, I'm probably better off being wary of young white men than young black or brown men (gets to the prior probability problem in GPs post).
Consider the broad response to the recent college student protests at Mizzou and across the country. I know of threedifferent arrests for making death threats on yikyak - these are also terrorist acts. They are acts carried out by people aiming to inspire terror in their victims. [1], [2]. While we're on that subject, take a look at what happens to anyone targeted by gamergate activists. I haven't compiled the statistics on death threats targeting people like Randi Lee Harper and Anita Sarkeesian, but I'm sure we can call that terrorism as well.
Consider attacks made against abortion clinics. I'll just leave the wikipedia article here. [3] Again: violence enacted with the intent to suppress behavior with which the perpetrators disagree. Terrorism.
Think about the astounding number of racial hate crimes committed in the US. Not all of them are specifically terrorist, but a large percentage of them are committed in order to suppress and terrorize a people. I mean, just google black church bombings, or for that matter look to our not-so-distant history of lynchings.
We do ourselves a disservice as a people if we only consider as terrorism the big-bomb, large-attack events. There's more to terrorism, and our homegrown terrorism which (speaking perhaps over-broadly here) grows out of sense of white, male, christian entitlement and superiority being perpetuated through violence is something to which we (as USians) often turn a blind eye. We should own our past and do better in the future.
While I agree that everyone has that potential in theory, it is much more likely for radicalization to occur among certain groups, third-generation muslim immigrants in particular. And perhaps in a broader sense targeting people in particular socio-economic groups might also be useful (jobless, young, low education,etc.).
The way I see it, targeted surveillance of these at-risk groups should be possible, and specifically in relation to terrorism or extremism in general it might even be effective. There are volumes of studies on how radicalization occurs, or how cults work, and what problems are caused by jobless young men disconnected from society around them (both by upbringing and through various forms of racism/classism, hidden or otherwise). The process is not exactly mysterious.
That said, I get the impression that there's a huge gap between what researchers know about these processes, and how this is used by police, 'neighborhood watchers', and schools, and possibly even intelligence agencies.
I'll also add that regardless of how effective targeted surveillance might be, on a 'gut' level I feel uncomfortable with this scenario and would not be in favor of it. I can't quite articulate why at this point, but personally I'd still prefer not significantly changing our way of life over the, so far, infrequent terrorist attacks. Perhaps the best answer is to simply not let it phase us and continue with life. Most other solutions feel like (partly) playing into the hands of terrorists. But I don't think that's a realistic option, sadly, and perhaps it's easy for me to say these things without having felt the effects of such terrorist attacks personally.
It's not the targeted survielence as such, but the consequences of institutionalize the process by which you select who should be monitored.
It's one thing to monitor an individual you have good reasons to suspect are involved with a serious crime. Another to start monitoring people based on some vague selection criteria based on probability.
I see two scary implementations of such a process
1. Machine Learning. Some algorithm monitoring as much data as possible ("it's not survielence no human is watching...") will select people to suspect. Lots of hard to diagnose false positives will get their life's destroyed.
2. Some arbitration process where people decide who to suspect. Even more false positives, and frankly miss use of power for political reasons.
In both scenarios people will also start to become very anxious about having dissenting opinions, or non standard interests in fear of getting "flagged" by one of the above mechanisms.
In the end the system won't be used to create a free world but as another weapon to wield by those happen to have the most influence at any given moment.
You choice of wording suggests a different meaning from what, I hope, you intended. You say "all Muslims living in Europe who have the potential to be radicalised" - this sounds very much like "all Muslims ... have the potential to be radicalised". Hopefully, what you actually mean is "monitor any Muslim with the potential to be radicalised" - i.e. monitor a tiny number of Muslims, not all of them!
I know that, literally, that's the meaning of what they wrote. But this is an emotive issue. Anyone reading it quickly can easily misunderstand the intent; judging by the downvotes, many did. It would be wise, in such a case, to be as unambiguous as possible.
I was quoting the relevant part. Or rather, the irrelevant part. I don't see why only Muslims that have the potential to be radicalized should be monitored.
You ignore the long history of terrorist actions in Europe, with some animal rights groups, some left wing groups, some extreme right wing individuals, some nationalist / separatist groups, etc etc.
Comité régional d'action viticole (CRAV, Regional Committee for Viticultural Action), or sometimes Comité d'action viticole (CAV, Committee for Viticultural Action) is a French group of radical wine producers. It has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks including dynamiting grocery stores, a winery, the agriculture ministry offices in two cities, burning a car at another, hijacking a tanker, and destroying large quantities of non-French wine.
Please note: Radicalization is not a unique trait to Islam or even religion.
Also see: Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols, and Ted Kaczynski. (American examples because that's what I'm most familiar with)
It makes no sense whatsoever to concentrate on Muslims over every other group on the planet. And no, it isn't more likely for radicalization to occur among Muslims.
What I see is that no amount of monitoring of the more radicalized elements of society will alter the deep and profound civilizational changes that are taking place in Europe.
This seems to be about the end of an era and the beginning of a whole new one. And nothing seems able to alter that course of History.
But I don't think we will see anything that doesn't have some kind of historical precedent. The thing is that nation state is changing. It is fundamental construct of European democracy and way of life. The options seem to be EU getting more power or EU disintegrating and current nation states finding new form. Both in identity and borders. New migration period vs. formation of Austrian empire. Speed of change can of course vary.
Neither seems nice. I never guessed I'd find myself to be conservative.
I have argued since 2000 that terrorism is a problem of TECHNOLOGY. Technology enables small groups of people that previously were unable to do much damage to do a lot more. And that will only increasez
If you read what I said back then, I said that I see mass surveillance as the inevitable outcome of that. All the political correctness in our countries isn't going to stop this reaction, and its attendant overreactiona, like McCarthy era anticommunist activities.
What I didn't realize back then was the role of computers to sift through massive stores of data, and identify patterns that may or may not be true. The computers will then be used by the few to control the many, using existing systems like voting and jury trials by using parallel construction and reputational attacks (see the revealed NSA slide about that).
We are constructing a zoo in which we humans will live, let's hope the computers running it are programmed to give us enough freedom to enjoy our lives. However, just like a zoo animal can't cause a lot of damage, so each individual human will be watched in the future. The right to privacy is not going to be killed by facebook, but by responses to terrorism.
With the very notable exception of 911, that's simply not true.
The Madrid bombings, the various India and E. Africa attacks, the French attacks from earlier this year and yesterday-all of these could have been carried out with almost exactly the same with planning a century ago, or with ease a half century ago.
9/11 was the only one of all those attacks that truly used technology in a new and frighteningly innovative way. And almost no one thinks that will happen again, because every plane passenger in the world knows that unopposed Islamic radical hijackings are a death sentence, and so will without exception revolt en masse, even if it causes the plane to go down (indeed, there's significant evidence that passengers had adapted to this terrifying reality within an hour of the initial attacks, i.e. United Flight 93).
It's your opinion. As much as I disagree with it it was a well written and we'll thought out post, and as such it is very much against the HN guidelines for you to be downvoted this way.
If I was a doctor and my patient had cancer in his foot, then if try to treat the foot to get rid of the cancer. I would also pay particularly close attention to the leg connected to that foot, to make sure that the cancer did not spread throughout the entire body.
With that in mind, I believe that our only choice, assuming we want our free and open societies to remain as they are, is to monitor all Muslims living in Europe who have the potential to be radicalised and turned cancerous. Warrant, judge, monitor.
We could try and close all the borders (they are porous) or we can make pointless suggestions, like we should kick all immigrants out of our countries, but the fact remains that the attackers in London and Paris earlier in the year (and I'm betting last night too) are second or third generation immigrants who were born in the west.
Since 9/11 the security services have tried to crack down on radicalization within the internal Muslim communities, by expelling radical clerics, but the internet allows the radicalization of the very young and marginalised youth (mostly boys), to continue. This isn't surprising considering the racism against immigrants in the ghettoes of Paris, and the exclusion of these youths from French society. First came the riots in 2005, and now something much more sinister has arrived.
Or societies are desperately trying not to impose draconian rules of monitoring on a religious group, but as it stands I see little choice in the matter.
Also Germany is facing a firestorm. Within the large numbers of genuine refugees, are Syrian fighters from both sides. Some are most likely disillusioned by the brutality of ISIS, and some are coming to watch the world burn. We desperately need to know who these people are and urgently before they disappear into the masses.
We also need to understand ISIS and what they are trying to do. Wikileaks recently published a document [1] that outlines their goals and they are simple. They want to achieve the Islamic State with pure Sharia Law. Moderate Muslims (aka "the greyzone") either have to join, or be burnt in the war with all other Kafir (that has been prophesied). They need the west to turn against their Muslim communities forcing them back to fighting and into the open arms of ISIS. They want those new immigrants in Germany to be excluded, treated like dogs, so that they either return to the middle east and (re)join the perverted form of Islam that is preached by IS.
Now you can see the dilemma that the west faces. On the one hand, logic dictates that they need to closely monitor the youths in Europe who are getting radicalised over the internet, but they can't single out a religious group without a severe backlash. The alternative is to monitor everyone on the internet, because in doing that you get to watch the small part that you are interested in, without appearing to religiously persecuting Muslims.
Finally, there is a twitter account [2] that follows radical militia fighters from Syria and the middle East. A large number of which are now posting photos of them in Europe now. We need to find them now.
[1] ISIS strategy in France: Provoke a crackdown on Muslims to "Eliminate the Grayzone" https://t.co/8fb8BbKOG2 #ParisAttacks #AttaquesParis
[2] https://mobile.twitter.com/EU_MilitiaWatch/