Latest French Attacks: updates (in English)

[GravitySucks]

No. I know a woman who was in the Arndale shopping centre in Manchester when the PIRA detonated a bomb outside in the street. She and her daughter were covered in broken glass. How would a gun have helped her?

SV is right. Your brain IS muddled.

[SredniVashtar]

We used to have a rather good mental health infrastructure here in the US...it was dismantled by both on the right and left....we have to establish a better system...we used to deem mental health as a public safety issue, which it really is...

What happened in Rwanda is fact...it was gangs armed with machetes that did most of the killing...intent is more powerful than any single type of weapon...

You (rather nimbly, if I may say so) sidestepped the real issue here. I don't think the US is facing a problem of marauding bands of the mentally ill swinging machetes around. But they do face a problem of lone young men, usually, taking high-powered weapons and using them to fire on vulnerable crowds of people. I think saying that 'intent is more powerful' amounts to nothing more than the sort of perfumed phrase the gun lobby trots out to shore up their position, but I don't think it is actually true. Killing someone with a machete requires a kind of terrifying commitment that these weird loners may not have, who are brainwashed on video games. It's simpler to point and shoot than to carve someone up, and requires much less effort, physical and emotional.

[chefist]

You (rather nimbly, if I may say so) sidestepped the real issue here. I don't think the US is facing a problem of marauding bands of the mentally ill swinging machetes around. But they do face a problem of lone young men, usually, taking high-powered weapons and using them to fire on vulnerable crowds of people. I think saying that 'intent is more powerful' amounts to nothing more than the sort of perfumed phrase the gun lobby trots out to shore up their position, but I don't think it is actually true. Killing someone with a machete requires a kind of terrifying commitment that these weird loners may not have, who are brainwashed on video games. It's simpler to point and shoot than to carve someone up, and requires much less effort, physical and emotional.

Mass shootings in the US account for less than one percent of gun related murders...removing guns from law abiding citizens would not effectively lower the murder rate...most murders are gang and crime related...

[GravitySucks]

Mass shootings in the US account for less than one percent of gun related murders...removing guns from law abiding citizens would not effectively lower the murder rate...most murders are gang and crime related...

It's more like .001%. They just make the news. On any given weekend in Chicago there are 4-10 gun deaths and 20-40 wounded. Mostly black on black crime that is gang related. In a city with the toughest gun laws in the country. Because #blacklivesmatter unless you are black and in a gang.

[chefist]

It's more like .001%. They just make the news. On any given weekend in Chicago there are 4-10 gun deaths and 20-40 wounded. Mostly black on black crime that is gang related. In a city with the toughest gun laws in the country. Because #blacklivesmatter unless you are black and in a gang.

Sad but true...

Meanwhile in Israel...

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/10/23/world-view-israelis-line-up-to-buy-guns-as-palestinian-violence-increases/

[SredniVashtar]

Mass shootings in the US account for less than one percent of gun related murders...removing guns from law abiding citizens would not effectively lower the murder rate...most murders are gang and crime related...

It isn't a numbers game. I was accused of being a leftist earlier, and now you are using squirrelly NRA rhetoric against me! Statistically, school shootings, for example, might be a drop in the ocean compared to gang/drug murders, but they are still a reality, and there is a potential solution (or partial solution) that would mean that the lives of innocent young people could be spared. That sounds a bit like, what they call in philosophy, consequentialism, where you can justify isolated heinous acts because they are not significant at a larger level

[pyewacket]

New details - search for 8th assailant.

PARIS â€" The investigation into the Paris terrorist attacks unfurled across Europe on Sunday, as the authorities sought a suspected eighth assailant who might have fled after taking part in the three-hour massacre, which killed at least 129 people.

A French official who was briefed on the investigation but was not authorized to speak publicly said the authorities were looking for a man from the Paris region. Officials had initially described eight attackers, but on Saturday night said that only seven attackers had died â€" six by blowing themselves up and one in a shootout with police.

The carefully coordinated attacks on Friday night, which President François Hollande says are the work of the Islamic State, increasingly appear to have involved extensive planning, sophisticated weapons and people from several nations.

Critical, if sparse, details about four of the attackers came into view on Sunday.

One attacker â€" nationality not yet known â€" evidently posed as a Syrian migrant. The Serbian newspaper Blic published a photograph of a passport page, which identified its holder as Ahmad al-Mohammad, 25, a native of Idlib, Syria. He passed through the Greek island of Leros on Oct. 3 and the Serbian border town of Presevo on Oct. 7, officials in those countries said. It was not clear whether the passport was authentic; the civil war that has sent millions of Syrians fleeing and fueled the rise of the Islamic State has also created a large black market for forged Syrian passports.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/16/world/europe/paris-terror-attack.html

[chefist]

It isn't a numbers game. I was accused of being a leftist earlier, and now you are using squirrelly NRA rhetoric against me! Statistically, school shootings, for example, might be a drop in the ocean compared to gang/drug murders, but they are still a reality, and there is a potential solution (or partial solution) that would mean that the lives of innocent young people could be spared. That sounds a bit like, what they call in philosophy, consequentialism, where you can justify isolated heinous acts because they are not significant at a larger level

I feel horrible for those poor people that were murdered by those mentally unstable wack jobs...but I won't relinquish my right to protect myself and my daughter...

You also justify the "play dead" or "run" victims at the hands of terrorists as the price to pay for gun control as it is in the "public good"...

I'm waiting for the first French politician to announce, "thank God for our gun control laws or more innocent people would have died in the terrorist attack."  Somehow I don't think we'll hear that statement...

[pyewacket]

From the Mirror:

Paris attacks terrorist suspect Ahmed Almuhamed 'was rescued near Greece after his refugee boat sunk'

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/paris-attacks-terrorist-suspect-ahmed-6836199

[Yorkshire pud]

I feel horrible for those poor people that were murdered by those mentally unstable wack jobs...but I won't relinquish my right to protect myself and my daughter...

You also justify the "play dead" or "run" victims at the hands of terrorists as the price to pay for gun control as it is in the "public good"...

I'm waiting for the first French politician to announce, "thank God for our gun control laws or more innocent people would have died in the terrorist attack."  Somehow I don't think we'll hear that statement...

Nor will you hear "Sadly, we had many dozen well intentioned by woefully ill trained and confused armed audience members shoot indiscriminately at who they thought were the gunmen; this resulted in many more losing their life than was probably expected, but at least the ones who died were heroes, as were the unarmed ones who got caught in the crossfire; We now talk to Bob Fuckyeah who wasn't hit but shot a bystander..."

[chefist]

Nor will you hear "Sadly, we had many dozen well intentioned by woefully ill trained and confused armed audience members shoot indiscriminately at who they thought were the gunmen; this resulted in many more losing their life than was probably expected, but at least the ones who died were heroes, as were the unarmed ones who got caught in the crossfire; We now talk to Bob Fuckyeah who wasn't hit but shot a bystander..."

Looks like more and more Jews in Israel are looking for alternatives to "play dead" and "run"...

Ah, new UK gun control catch phrase, "Play Dead or Run!" I'll pass that along to the Democratic Party here in the states...I'm sure they'll latch right on to it!

[Yorkshire pud]

Looks like more and more Jews in Israel are looking for alternatives to "play dead" and "run"...

Ah, new UK gun control catch phrase, "Play Dead or Run!" I'll pass that along to the Democratic Party here in the states...I'm sure they'll latch right on to it!

Fuck yeah! 

[chefist]

Fuck yeah! 

  The one who probably should not have a gun is Hillary...I wonder how soon it will be before she catches Bill with an intern in a White House broom closet! 

[mikuthing01]

It's more like .001%. They just make the news. On any given weekend in Chicago there are 4-10 gun deaths and 20-40 wounded. Mostly black on black crime that is gang related. In a city with the toughest gun laws in the country. Because #blacklivesmatter unless you are black and in a gang.

I live in a rural area but i have to go to the city to buy things from box stores. 10 years ago it was a relatively safe place but then we got a big influx of displaced blacks from Chicago. Now white people are getting to experience what the knock out game is. And shootings are very common it happens several times a week there were three shootings yesterday which broke a new record. And instead of staying in the "chicago" area of town it stretched into the busy shopping areas. Guns are not the problem because these blacks do not have Illinois FOID card they are ineligible to even own a gun. Gun control would do nothing to prevent these people from shooting each other and once good people were disarmed they would be next.

[pyewacket]

LONG BEACH, Calif. (November 14, 2015) â€" California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) student Nohemi Gonzalez, 23, was killed during the attacks in and around Paris on November 13. Gonzalez, from El Monte, Calif., was a senior studying design. She was in Paris attending Strate College of Design during a semester abroad program. Specific details of her passing are not available at this time. The university will hold a vigil at 4 pm on Sunday to mourn Gonzalez’s passing and to grieve for all the victims of the atrocious attack. More information about the vigil will be shared as details are finalized.

http://web.csulb.edu/sites/newsatthebeach/2015/11/cal-state-long-beach-student-killed-in-paris-attacks/

[Eddie Coyle]

  Abdeslam Salah wanted for role in Paris attacks.

   Jainist or Wiccan?

[pyewacket]

This is only the beginning.

It happened because the Islamic State, the latest version of the Islamo-apocalypytic movement, has decided that Western democracies, representing the “Infidel” world, are no longer prepared to fight even to preserve their comfortable lives. The Paris attacks came on the first day of the Muslim lunar month of Safar, which coincides with the anniversary of Prophet Mohammed’s first successful “ghazva” (raid) against the “infidel” at Safwan in 623 AD.

Islamic State is already referring to the Paris attacks as another “ghazva,” promising many more. The aim is to terrorize all mankind into submitting to the diktats of The Only True Faith.

This is how Sheikh Abu-Bakr Naji, the late theoretician of the Sunni version of the Islamo-apocalyptic movement, put it: “No one should feel safe without submitting, and those who refuse to submit must pay a high price. The aim of our movement is to turn the world into a series of wildernesses in which only those under our rule enjoy security.”

http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/11/15/ny-post-the-jihadis-master-plan-to-break-us/

[VtaGeezer]

Ten French bombers just struck ISIS Hq, an ammo depot, and recruitment.training center in Raqqah.  CentCom ought to be infront of a Congressional committee tomorrow explaining how it is that these targets exist after 12,000 airstrikes. WTF...over!

[chefist]

Ten French bombers just struck ISIS Hq, an ammo depot, and recruitment.training center in Raqqah.  CentCom ought to be infront of a Congressional committee tomorrow explaining how it is that these targets exist after 12,000 airstrikes. WTF...over!

Good point... Glad they are fighting back!

[VtaGeezer]

Good point... Glad they are fighting back!

France has been part of the phony coalition since September.  This is just kabuki for us rubes.  ISIS probably put up signs "Drop Bombs Here Please"  We should cut out the defense industry middle man and just drop $100 bills...at least that might get some jihadis to desert to spend it in Dubai. 

[chefist]

France has been part of the phony coalition since September.  This is just kabuki for us rubes.  ISIS probably put up signs "Drop Bombs Here Please"  We should cut out the defense industry middle man and just drop $100 bills...at least that might get some jihadis to desert to spend it in Dubai.

Good reference to "the phony war" ...

[bateman]

This is only the beginning.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/11/15/ny-post-the-jihadis-master-plan-to-break-us/

The aim is to terrorize all mankind into submitting to the diktats of The Only True Faith.

Thanks for this. This comports with the Graeme Wood piece in which he reports:

Choudary and his students provided detailed descriptions of how the Islamic State must conduct its foreign policy, now that it is a caliphate. It has already taken up what Islamic law refers to as “offensive jihad,” the forcible expansion into countries that are ruled by non-Muslims. “Hitherto, we were just defending ourselves,” Choudary said; without a caliphate, offensive jihad is an inapplicable concept. But the waging of war to expand the caliphate is an essential duty of the caliph.

Choudary took pains to present the laws of war under which the Islamic State operates as policies of mercy rather than of brutality. He told me the state has an obligation to terrorize its enemiesâ€"a holy order to scare the shit out of them with beheadings and crucifixions and enslavement of women and children, because doing so hastens victory and avoids prolonged conflict.

Initially I thought this might "just" be an affiliate group pledging allegiance to ISIS, but it seems now that it was actually centrally planned.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/15/world/europe/strategy-shift-for-isis-inflicting-terror-in-distant-lands.html

[SciFiAuthor]

I don't think these guys are necessarily sober either. That's part of my point; you might be in a situation where they are as scared as the hostages, and making some pre-meditated attack before you know what the situation is could escalate things too quickly, and you end up throwing away the only card you have. It's too easy to dream up a scenario where the hostages rise up as one, armed and angry, and overthrow their captors, but you are going to need a lot of luck for that to work, and a lot of trained personnel to hold it all together, otherwise it's a turkey shoot for the guys with the guns. It's not a sign of weakness to take a moment to appraise the situation before reacting. There are so many variables in something like this that going Bruce Willis at the first sign of trouble would almost certainly prove to be the very worst of all possible bad ideas.

The trouble here is that I don't this could have gotten any worse than it was no matter the scenario. People either escaped early on through luck or they were shot. Any scenario would be preferable to the complete bloodbath that occurred, even a shootout because even if that went wrong, which it likely would I agree, and friendly fire was rampant you would still have terrorists dodging bullets instead of firing them with deadly efficiency into a trapped, packed crowd. Terrorist chaos buys time for other people to get lucky and find a way out.

It's also evident that France's gun laws did not prevent 8 terrorists from getting ahold of Kalashnikovs. If a country is going to write laws, then those laws need to work. It's that simple. In this case, they obviously did not and people determined to commit an atrocity were able to do so despite a full suite of strict gun control laws. This also was the case for the Charlie Hebdo killers. Obviously, you can get fully automatic weapons in France if you want them and have a motive to do so.

The US is in a far worse position, we cannot ever enact European-style gun laws for the simple reason that we have so many guns and so many people unwilling to give them up that you might as well throw half the country in prison from the outset because they're just not going to comply. Guns cannot be eliminated from American society, it is impossible. So the next best thing is to be pragmatic and look at why people shoot other people and focus on the related underlying problems at fault. We're not so good at that, and we're terrible at keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill. We're also terrible at addressing the gang/drug culture. To this day we haven't really even figured out unequivocally why it even exists much less formulated a strategy on how to defeat it. Much like ISIS actually.

[bateman]

Not sure if this has been posted yet, but German police intercepted this charming fellow on the 5th.

Also secreted about the car behind panels were eight Kalashnikov assault rifles with ammunition, several handguns, two hand grenades, and 200 grams of TNT, reports Bayerischer Rundfunk.

The car wasn’t only being driven west. Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann has confirmed that based on “the data of the man’s [GPS] navigation system, and his cell phone there is strong evidence that the man wanted to go to France”. German media have reported he specifically had Paris programmed into his sat-nav.

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/11/14/german-police-check-found-car-eight-ak-47s-grenades-tnt-paris-programmed-satnav/

[albrecht]

You (rather nimbly, if I may say so) sidestepped the real issue here. I don't think the US is facing a problem of marauding bands of the mentally ill swinging machetes around. But they do face a problem of lone young men, usually, taking high-powered weapons and using them to fire on vulnerable crowds of people. I think saying that 'intent is more powerful' amounts to nothing more than the sort of perfumed phrase the gun lobby trots out to shore up their position, but I don't think it is actually true. Killing someone with a machete requires a kind of terrifying commitment that these weird loners may not have, who are brainwashed on video games. It's simpler to point and shoot than to carve someone up, and requires much less effort, physical and emotional.

No, but we do have machete attacks fairly frequently (as do some other countries.) Happens, sadly, all the time a simply web search will show you. Often associated with gangs, especially those from certain countries, but not always. Sometimes, like that crazy guy at the New Orleans airport, just done by crazy guys.

[Uncle Duke]

Ten French bombers just struck ISIS Hq, an ammo depot, and recruitment.training center in Raqqah.  CentCom ought to be infront of a Congressional committee tomorrow explaining how it is that these targets exist after 12,000 airstrikes. WTF...over!

Looks like land-based fighter-bombers out of UAE and Jordan, apparently De Gaulle is still en route.  The Syrian military has warned France they will attack the De Gaulle if the carrier launches strikes into Syria.  If the Syrians are stupid enough to do that, the French would reasonably be expected to hit Syrian military air and missile bases.  Would the Russian fighters, including very capable Su-30s, currently based In Syria try to intervene if that happens?

[pyewacket]

Here's another take by a Mexican politician.

“As much as this may irritate some, it is profoundly hypocritical to be outraged by the massacre in Paris yet play dumb with the ones in Mexico,” Fernandez Norona said through his Twitter account Friday night.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/14/hold-politician-calls-mexicans-hypocrites-for-paris-outrage-while-remaining-silent-for-mexicos-massacres/

[albrecht]

Here's another take by a Mexican politician.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/14/hold-politician-calls-mexicans-hypocrites-for-paris-outrage-while-remaining-silent-for-mexicos-massacres/

About all they have in common is that both the Muslim terrorists and criminals and the Mexican terrorists and criminals can both walk across our open-border or arrive via other methods and even get 'fast-tracked' into the US by this President and likely get free (at least temporary) transportation, housing, EBT cards, public education, and free legal aide for themselves or their brood.

[chefist]

Looks like land-based fighter-bombers out of UAE and Jordan, apparently De Gaulle is still en route.  The Syrian military has warned France they will attack the De Gaulle if the carrier launches strikes into Syria.  If the Syrians are stupid enough to do that, the French would reasonably be expected to hit Syrian military air and missile bases.  Would the Russian fighters, including very capable Su-30s, currently based In Syria try to intervene if that happens?

France should take an aggressive stance...if Syria is making this claim, then they are granting tacid approval to ISIS to attack France .

[albrecht]

France should take an aggressive stance...if Syria is making this claim, then they are granting tacid approval to ISIS to attack France .

I think France should use its military to clean out some of those suburbs and Muslim areas at home and patrol their borders and waters for 'refugees' and other invaders. Let the Russians and Assad take out ISIS in the Syria, as that won't escalate a dispute between our countries and Assad apparently has already told Russia to help out.
France can help out in Africa, where Muslims are also running rampant, and has familiarity with operating there and in parts of the ISIS caliphate that is not in Syrian territory.