12 killed in shooting at satirical newspaper office in Paris

Yes, I've just heard. This was a separate attack.

The scarcity of info on the news ticker led me to think it was related to yesterday's attack on Charlie Hebdo.

 

I don't think anyone actually thinks the Cheese eating surrender mokey stereotype of the French is remotely true, but we poke fun at that because poking fun of the true failings of developed nations tends to take a rather depressing turn.

I mean, if you wanted a proper riposte you could just mention UKIP.

 

By weak government, I meant our president. Seriously, he has no weight and is not even taken seriously by his citizens. Of course we have the strength to fight back, but I not sure that Lex Talionis is the solution.

 

Is this terrorism, or just vigilanteism? They specifically targeted a group in response to a perceived 'crime' against Allah committed by that group. In my eyes terrorism is more along the line of deliberately hitting targets at random to maximise fear among the general populous.

Obviously, in this case there have been some 'collateral' victims this morning, but without knowing anything about it my guess would be that today's killings were because the pair are now on the run.

 

Sure, this is more a planned mass murder. Charb was the target, they knew the date and time of the press meeting, and thus knew they would all be there. It's not random hitting, it's a murder done by seriously mad people with a "religious" excuse.

Edit: Sorry if all doesn't make sense, I'm french and talking about serious thing is still very hard for me.

 

If it was purely an attack on the magazine as "punishment" for things they had done, then they wouldn't have executed the wounded gendarme who was lying on the ground.

 

Having killed targeted individuals in front of a cop, I don't think killing that cop turns it in to a 'terrorist attack'. It just reinforces the case for saying they might not be very nice people.

 

So still, as with the killing of Lee Rigby you don't think there is a problem with Islamisist-inspired terrorism. Just some minor mental-health care issues?

 

There has to be something wrong within the culture if people are feeling obliged enough to translate its teachings into such violence so regularly; something is definitely going wrong and sweeping it as individual cases is I think unfair dealing more with the symptoms rather than the cause - why is such radicalisation happening? whats triggering this so easily in muslims?

Why is this not happening so regularly for Hindus, Christians and Sikhs? - Surely they have equal amounts of "nut jobs" within their religions too - why are they not killing in the name of religion? - Possibly because the teachings are not so ambiguous that they promote violence in the name of religion.

If anything this will piss the french people off even more and make them even more opposed to Islam.

 

Tribute to the Charlie Hebdo from La Presse (Montréal, Canada).


*Kill the freedom of speech: Never !


*A weapon of mass destruction?

*When we hear the word 'satire' we fire.

 

Would that be a no true scotsman? How do you know these people are not firm in their religion? Who decides what a 'real muslim' is?

Also for those who condemn the killings there are many numbers who remain silent and/or celebrate it.

 

I think that any mental health issues that lead to someone hacking someone to death in the street is hardly a 'minor' mental health issue. I also think that trivialising an opinion that you don't agree with is hardly a sound argument for your own.

Terrorism is a complicated thing. The motivations can be several (because people are complex, like):

• Some people become terrorists because basically they are narcissistic psychopaths: they like feeling powerful by being able to inspire fear in people and have the power of life and death over them. They are a minority, and you can recognise them by the fact that they rarely put themselves at risk.
• Some have a fundamental lack of self-esteem, identity and self-directedness. They feel empty and adrift, and look for a leader (see above) and ideology (which can include religion, but may also be political or just be-nice-to-animals PETA stuff) to give them meaning and direction. They become zealots without perspective who will do anything "for the cause". They will even one-up each other in this. This is a sizeable majority of "useful idiots". You can recognise them as the ones who kill themselves or get killed most often.
• Some feel deeply brutalised, whether it is by civil war or deprivation or discrimination or other trauma. Their rage has to be channelled somewhere, and a scapegoat is easily found. It's the West, it's global corporations, it's the infidels, it's the Protestants, it's the Blacks (cf. Ku Klux Klan). This minority has nothing left to lose so will readily kill themselves or get killed.
• Some are freedom fighters, but the other side calls them terrorists. They can be recognised by being less given to extreme behaviour. The problem is that the first three groups are often amongst them so distinctions can get blurry very fast. This is what we're seeing in Syria.

A nice example of group 2 is the young, stupid Asian males (and sometimes young females) flocking to Syria to join ISIS. They don't speak the language, they don't like the local food and they complain in Twitter that they can't get pizza and can't find anywhere to charge their iPad. And when it turns out that fighting involves physical hardhip getting shot at, they are most dismayed and want to run home.

Lee Rigby's killers? Confirmed mental health cases (we know their mental health history), with a sprinkling of group 2 and 3.

Now, your question probably is: How come that Islam seems to lend itself so neatly to subversion to extremist ideology and behaviour? But that would be a very culture-biased view. If you were a Protestant living in N. Ireland in the 70's-80's you'd probably be asking the same about Catholicism. If you were living in 1950's Punjab, you'd be wondering the same about Hinduism or Islam, depending on which faith you were. If you were a negro living in the early 20th Century Southern US, you'd be wondering just what the hell is wrong with those White people.

For the West to be dicking about in the Middle East since the 1950's, on the back of a colonial history, and cap it off with some invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and not expect some backlash from that is frankly moronically naïve. Of course this will manifest itself as an adversarial Them vs. Us dynamic focusing on group differences: cultural and religious (the US is also proudly Christian, after all). Of course extremists will use religion as a vehicle for mobilising the useful idiots. Paisley was a clergyman too. It's such an old trope I'm surprised you think of this as something unique.

Terrorism or extremism is not about Islam. It's not even about religion as such. You are looking at a modulator, not the causal factors.

 

Of course there are some sick individuals who celebrate it, but I'd argue it is no different than employees in childrens homes supposedly run on principles of christianity, some will have condemned what they witnessed, some will have remained silent and unfortunately some will have celebrated.

But just because some sick individuals there used kids for cheap labour, beat them black and blue, raped and sometimes even murdered them doesn't mean christianity is to blame for it, no matter how large the number of supposedly christian abusers.

And I'll take the liberty to treat islam the same way, I'll condemn the individuals responsible and not the religion as a whole.

 

Northern Ireland: it's the Catholics.
India: it's the Hindus. It's the Muslims. It's the Buddhists.
Palestine/Israel: it's the Jews. It's the Muslims.
Lebanon: it's the Muslims. It's the Christians.
Norway: it's the Christians (Breijvik)
The US: it's definitely the Christians. Most of the terrorist activity in recent years has not come from Muslims, but from a combination of radical Christianists, white supremacists and far-right militia groups.

Just because this is happening on your doorstep doesn't mean it's the only game in town.

 

funny thing is - the troubles started after the uk troops went into protect the Catholics.... but that's for a different time (isn't politics and blatant nationalism a great thing)

 

Yeah, a bit like we overthrew Saddam Hussein to protect the Iraqi. And invaded Afghanistan to liberate the Afghans.

 

Canada: It's Hockey.

 

nothing like that actually - if you know anything of the history of NI.

 

Nazi Germany was predominantly Christian values so following the trend of Muslim = Terrorist therefore a Christian = Nazi.

You can't blame everything on the actions of a few if you want to blame anyone, blame the ridiculous media coverage and bigotry.

 

I'm just glad that in the universal arena of the Internet there aren't any divisive group dynamics like that.