Enough. Please. Today is not the day for semantic debates.
7 Likes
Because many (perhaps the majority) of the road deaths were due to individual carelessness which most people, rightly or wrongly, do not think they are subject to. There are a lot of things one can do to not be on that list (not driving drunk or otherwise distracted, keeping oneâs car in good repair, taking a defensive driving course).
Likewise, there are a lot of things one can do to avoid being a victim of ISIS. The surest bet would be to move to a country with which ISIS has no grievances (since their grievances go back to the Spanish reconquista, the list of such countries is probably short, but do the best you can). Other suggestions:
Stay away from large groups of people celebrating events or holidays with which ISIS might take offense.
Stay away from controversial art exhibitions, offices of media companies with which ISIS might take offense, and for the FSMâs sake stay well, well away from synagogues.
Men might consider growing beards if they donât have one already.
Women should avoid inflammatory gestures such as: wearing provocative clothing, going with head uncovered, attending school, or driving.
Gay people - not much I can suggest that will help. Enjoy your neck while youâve got it.
And always keep in mind as suggested above -
Remember that whenever any innocent person, anywhere in the world, is killed, if you only consider it deeply enough, you can figure out a reason why the USA or Europe bears the responsibility.
7 Likes
In the case of the roads, there are many safety systems and laws in place to control the number of accidents. If it becomes clear that there were road deaths that could have been prevented by reasonable measures, or that these measures were circumvented, people do get pretty angry about that. If someone uses their vehicle as a weapon or kills people while drunk or driving recklessly, itâs taken seriously. If there are poor conditions on the roads, additional safety measures are put in place and if thereâs a really major traffic accident, it will probably be in the news. Aside from this, there are reports in the news with statistics of traffic accidents, but just not daily coverage of the background stuff that happens through human error because of the sheer number of driving hours spent on French roads.
Partly due to these efforts, road deaths in France have fallen from 18,000 in 1972 to 3250 in 2013. Iâd say thatâs taking it pretty seriously. In contrast, this is the worst year of terrorism for France since WWII, mainly by an organisation that has caused incredible devastation in other parts of the world and has become legendary for its brutality, in addition to creating a huge refugee crisis. The two really arenât comparable at all, even though 150 is a lower number than 3250. There were a total of 665 murders in France in 2012, so unlike in the US, terrorism represents a significant proportion of the total homicide rate in France this year. Itâs not that it should consume all of our attention, but it is a really big deal.
Definitely - I donât envy policy makers at the moment, and I am worried about xenophobia and overreaction. We will probably be hosting a refugee from Afghanistan from next month, and we have ties to a number of people in Europe and the Middle East who could be affected by this. At the end of the day, these actions were committed by a very small fraction of the Muslim population and this says nothing about Muslims as a group, in Europe or elsewhere - but it will affect them.
5 Likes
This is what worries me. The French do not have a reputation for behaving nicely in their foreign wars, as per Vietnam and Algeria. This is, after all, the country that formulated the doctrine of attaque a lâoutrance - that the way to deal with an attack is an immediate counter-attack.
Thereâs likely to be a lot of dead civilians in IS-controlled areas over this.
5 Likes
Too many countries, too many weapons, too much religion.
In my opinion, terrorism can never be completely eradicated.
The cycle of violence is seated deeply into the culture of the world, and I donât see how it can be stopped.
2 Likes
Iâve been thinking about this. What is the useful response to a terrorist act? If you do nothing, they attack again. If you go all out war, then they caused you to terrorist yourself. If you do something middle of the road, you might get mediocre results.
Thereâs responding and then thereâs reacting. Reacting is putting troops everywhere. Responding is tightening borders and being very careful about who passes. And even that can get turned into security theater. So there has to be some way to respond appropriately to these things that actually gets results.
2 Likes
Paris is the city of the Enlightenment, of the University of Paris and the Schoolmen, of Queneau and Sartre. Rather than plead for God to listen to prayers, Parisians will be analysing what has happened from very possible angle, using just about every ology known to man. They will be having semantic debatesâŠit is time to marshal the power of the intellect against terrorism, as well as military power.
I sympathise with your comment but disagree; today is the day for debate and reflection. We know who has claimed responsibility; we have read their rant about attacking the city of âperversionsâ and killing âcrusadersâ (it is available in the French press if you want to read it.) We need to think out a proper response now, before the hotheads do a Twin Towers (and invade a country which had nothing to do with the attacks (Afghanistan) while failing to address relations with the country the attackers came from (Saudi).)
The tactic of the US right is to try to oversimplify issues and turn them to soundbites; Trump and Carson are exemplars of this. This has to be resisted if the tragedies of the Middle East are not going simply to be repeated over and over.
Over the world as a whole, and especially in the West and Japan, violence is reducing. Relative to population, the Mongol invasions were probably the most lethal wars ever. We must not get too pessimistic. We have had three big empires since 1945; one has collapsed; and yet there was no third world war. That is an improvement over every previous period of history.
12 Likes
The US State Department sent James Taylor over to France after the Charlie Hebdo massacre to sing âYouâve Got A Friendâ.
I guess we can now take that off the list of possible response strategies.
3 Likes
Law enforcement is the useful response. Cops catch a lot more bad guys than soldiers. Also, as badly as our police are behaving these days, it still beats the hell out of martial law.
7 Likes
Totally correct. For the last two administrations, weâve been doing the equivalent of killing off the street corner pushers and numbers runners, while calling the Capones and Gottis our âalliesâ.
8 Likes
âSarkozy nâest quâun vieux conâ (Parisian taxi driver, to me.)
In Gargantua et Pantagruel (mid 1500s) Rabelais argues that the best possible walls for the City of Paris would be made of the reproductive equipment of the women of Paris because they can stand up to any amount of punishment. (I have bowdlerised this summary quite a lot.)
After 1870 and the German invasion, the idea of âfluctuat nec mergiturâ became a national obsession, as in the Battle of Verdun in WW1. The reason that PĂ©tain got such harsh treatment after WW2 was because he came to terms with the Germans, even though from a strategic point of view he had no option. He was accused of loving the French people more than France, the nation.
The defeat at Dien Bien Phu had such an effect on the national military establishment that for many years it could only be alluded to indirectly, or by its initials (dibipi).
This is why I worry over how the French establishment will react unless reined in by its intellectuals. The temptation to confuse IS with the Germans and the Viet Minh and to take revenge on every insult to French arms since 1869 is going to be pretty strong. It was the French revenge on Germany after WW1 that went some way to sowing the seed for WW2.
[edit - Hollande has just said âLa France est forte et, mĂȘme si elle peut ĂȘtre blessĂ©e, elle se lĂšve toujours. Rien ne pourra lâĂ©teindreâ Fluctuat nec mergitur indeed.]
4 Likes
Politicians have to make public statements and policy but they should also attempt to talk to terrorists privately out of the public eye. They refuse to do this as it apparently legitimises the terrorists. The disengagement of the terrorists results from the breakdown of or the inability to initiate (in the case of immigrants) discussion and communication in the first place. Governments should be finding a way to talk. It worked in Northern Ireland and Colombia.
5 Likes
What do you think they should talk about?
1 Like
It wasnât a request in general. It was specific.
Carry on as you will.
4 Likes
Peace.
There will always be discussion about objectives and strategy within any terrorist organisation. There will be disagreements between those who want simply to consolidate their gains while others will want to continue the struggle. This gives outsiders (a friendly third party) a potential way in. They will eventually split anyway as all terrorist groups do.
The real problem is do you go for a slow war of attrition or a blitzkrieg while you wait to force the issue?
Also bribing one side and paying them off to shop their mates never goes amiss. No one said it has to be pretty.
3 Likes
Yeah, I need a break too and Iâm one of the hugest semantical violators on here. Today is not a good day for debates between the professor and the madman.
4 Likes
Yes, Neoliberal Global Capitalism really is a horribly destructive and murderous religion. One of the horrible things it does: it encourages us to reduce people with complicated and often legitimate grievances to mere mindless âterrorists.â
9 Likes
Actually. Thank you for saying that. This is horrible, but that was my thought, too.
Right, but just imagine being a Muslim in Europe right now. Security state doesnât begin to describe whatâs going to happen to them.
Thanks for this too. People forget that the primary victims of this sort of violence has been people in the middle east.
Just in general, the King of Jordan made comments about world war three recently. Heâs looking kind of right.
You really donât think that the past decade of war in the middle east, a war of choice we brought, and our decades of power plays in the region that have brought to power dictators who are quite brutal have anything to do with it? Also, oil? The west has brought down literally every single secular leader in the region. People there see modernity (at least secularism) as major failure and itâs hard to blame them for believing that.
14 Likes
How do you know most believe god approved it?
5 Likes
