Paris shootings

[josephpalazzo]

ISIS claims responsibility for Paris attacks, threatens more violence

[josephpalazzo]

CNN reports 158 killed.

Paris attacks

[pr126]

Meanwhile panic at Gatwick Airport (UK)

Gatwick North Terminal has been evacuated after a terror scare involving a 'suspicious article', with bomb disposal experts called to the scene and one eyewitness reporting that there will be a 'controlled explosion'.

Meanwhile, travellers at the South Terminal are being prevented from leaving as police deal with the incident, according to Twitter users on the scene.

Witnesses said that armed police arrested a man at the North Terminal with a 'grenade in a bag' and screamed 'get down, get down' before they restrained him.

[pr126]

Paris terrorist shooting: Man arrested in Bavaria by German police 'linked to French capital attacks'

A man arrested with firearms in his car by German police is being linked to the Paris terrorist attacks.

The arrest of a 51-year-old man in Bavaria last week could be connected to the explosions and shootings in the French capital.

Public broadcaster Bayrischer Rundfunk said German authorities informed French officials about the arrest of the man near the German-Austrian border on November 5. It did not provide a source for its information.

Bavarian state police spokesman Ludwig Waldinger confirmed that firearms, explosives and hand grenades were found.

Mr Waldinger said: "We are providing no further information at this point."

[pr126]

And so the hate speech begins: Let Paris be the end of the right’s violent language toward activists

In a still developing situation, the city of Paris, France, is under attack by terrorists armed with guns and explosives. Many dozens of people have been killed. A still undetermined number of people have been wounded. The terrorists took dozens of hostages in a concert hall. French police and military forces have been deployed. There is mayhem and blood in the streets of Paris.

President Obama has correctly described this day’s horrific events as “an attack on all of humanity and the universal values we share.”

Terrorism is politically motivated violence against a vulnerable population that is designed to intimidate, sow fear, create panic and alter public policy.

Terrorism is serious business that kills people, breaks bodies and alters lives.

It is not a game.

In the United States, the right-wing media and movement conservatives have for decades consistently used eliminationist and other violent rhetoric to describe liberals, progressives and other people with whom they disagree. As was seen in the recent attacks on a Charleston-area black church, and other violence by right-wing anti-government militias, such rhetoric does not float in the ether of the public discourse, harmless and unacknowledged. No, it does in fact lead to action.

In recent months, the right-wing media has used language such as “terrorism” and “violent,” or that the latter is “targeting police for murder” to describe the Black Lives Matter movement. Such bombastic and ugly screedsâ€"which are wholly unfounded, with no basis in empirical realityâ€"have also been used by right-wing opinion leaders to describe the African-American students who are fighting against racism at Yale and the University of Missouri.

There are many examples of this type of incendiary rhetoric from conservatives and their sympathizers.

A few examples.

Bill O’Reilly has declared “war” on Black Lives Matter and in doing so described them as a type of contemporary Ku Klux Klan (KKK). At its height of popularity in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the KKK was America’s largest terrorist organization. It was responsible for the murders of thousands of African-Americans. In contrast to the KKK, Black Lives Matter is a group dedicated to protecting the human rights of all people against state-sponsored violence and police thuggery and murder.

Ben Carson, in his designated role as a black conservative whose primary purpose is to disparage black Americans and to excuse-make for white racism, recently told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly that the black and brown students who are advocating for their full rights and respect at Yale University are ushering in “anarchy” and “this is just raw emotion and people just being manipulated, I think in many of these cases, by outside forces who wish to create disturbances.”

Likewise, Fox News has repeatedly described the student protesters at Yale and Missouri using the same language. O’Reilly has even gone so far as to suggest that Black Lives Matter and the students who are protesting racist treatment are part of a cabal that is engaging in “fascist” behavior and “running wild” against white people. Trumping his allusions to “fascism,” on his October 22, 2015 episode of his TV show, Bill O’Reilly even made the absurd claim that Black Lives Matter is akin to the “Nazis.”

These are implicit threats and overtures to violence as racial authoritarian fascists are a clear and present danger to democracy and freedom. Thus, they must be eliminated by any means necessary.

Other critics of the student activists at Yale University and Missouri such as The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf have even made the absurd claim that so-called “safe spaces” are being “weaponized” by student activists in order to deny free speech.

Terrorism has been practiced in the United States. It was used by a Herrenvolk white settler society built upon the genocide of First Nations peoples and the enslavement of African-Americans to control, intimidate, and murder non-whites. The decades of Jim and Jane Crow white supremacy were also a form of State-sponsored terrorism as well. Political violence continues in the present where in too many of America’s communities, police and other security forces kill with impunity, force the black and brown poor into a state of “custodial citizenship”, and act in a thuggish and illegal way towards the country’s most vulnerable citizens.

Black Lives Matter stands against such violence. The student protesters at Yale and Missouri who are fighting for fairness and justice stand against violence. Liberals and progressives as a matter of principle, a belief in the Common Good, and a humane society stand against violence.

Despite what the right-wing media, Bill O’Reilly, and the opinion leaders in the White Right routinely bloviate, those groups and individuals are not terrorists.

Real terrorists have killed people in the streets of Paris. The right-wing media needs to take note of that fact and moderate their rhetoric and abusive language accordingly.

Given the American right-wing’s casual habit of using violent language to describe their foes, and to gin up fear and anxiety among the movement conservative base, the Fox News’ right-wing echo chamber and its elites should be ashamed given the death and destruction that terrorism actually reaps in practice.

There you go, nothing to do with Islam.
It's that awful right wing violent rhetoric.
Beyond parody.

[josephpalazzo]

It's a tragedy, especially in the US, that both the Right and the Left keep on accusing each other when they should unite against this threat. Sad.

[pr126]

It's a tragedy, especially in the US, that both the Right and the Left keep on accusing each other when they should unite against this threat. Sad.

They are accusing each other but never Islam.

[pr126]

I wonder who will be the first Western politician to assert that these attacks have nothing to do with Islam?

[josephpalazzo]

They are accusing each other but never Islam.

They're too busy swinging mud at each other; meanwhile, the terrorists are plotting their next move...

[SGOS]

Even if the percentage of violent Muslims is small, which it doesn't appear to be given the strength of ISIS itself, the immigration of such impossibly high numbers, includes that percentage of violent Muslims who hitch a ride posing as peace loving victims.  The migrants end up bringing with them the very violence they are trying to flee, and the global exportation of Islamic violence is increased.

If Islam is a peaceful as its apologists viewing it from afar through westernized rose colored glasses would have us believe, it would seem that the migrants would have little or no reason to flee from that part of their religion that supposedly represents a miniscule minority of "just a few bad apples."  But here the victims come in unmanageable numbers.

Observations from the field indicate a closer evaluation of the contradiction of a peaceful Islam with a violent Islam should be considered.  There appears there might be a logical contradiction between the meme and reality.

The original invasion of Iraq was based on a flawed understanding of culture.  Or at least, the propaganda instilled in us a vision of a society thirsting for freedom, but in reality, it turned out to be just a turning of the tables of power, rather than an effort at cooperation.  We misjudged then, and it seems that many of us may still carry a cultural blind spot when it comes to our preferred vision of Islam.

[Mr.Obvious]

128 dead already and 80 critical so the count could go up...
Shit that hits closer to home shouldn't affect you more... but it does.
Fuck IS, Fuck 'em... I'm so goddamn pissed.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

It's very possible that there are some extremely cynical people who are willing to have others killed for the sole purpose of garnering more support for more war and with war comes profit.
ISIS can claim whatever it wants, but nothing is ever so cut and dry or black and white.  The easy explanation is the 'other people' or this religion or that religion, but with every conflict follow the money.
Does anyone really think that a few hundred lives matter to someone who stands to gain billions, perhaps trillions of dollars?
Yes, I do think there are people that cynical.

[TomFoolery]

It's a tragedy, especially in the US, that both the Right and the Left keep on accusing each other when they should unite against this threat. Sad.

I feel like they're going to get lost in issues more than directly blaming one another, which is even worse. The last thing that's going to make ANY of this better is:

- This wouldn't have happened if people in that restaurant/concert hall/stadium had guns. You know, because if people in the Twin Towers or on the airplanes had had guns, 9/11 wouldn't have happened...
- This wouldn't have happened if immigrants weren't allowed in the country.
- This wouldn't have happened if I were president... looking at you Donald Trump/Ben Carson

[pr126]

@ AllPurposeAtheist

So religion (Islam) is just a ruse, a convenient excuse to make trillions to some unidentified (I presume you mean American)  cabal.

Not taking into account the history of Islam, that conquered, murdered, enslaved, destroyed civilizations centuries before that greedy cabal existed.

So why is then that the USA is $18 trillions in the red?

[SGOS]

I'm sure the gun industry is making money off this, but I'm reluctant to place the blame entirely at their feet.  They are no doubt benefiting from the conflict.  It is a great way to make lots of profit, and the gun industry is very much a product of capitalism.  But I doubt that violent Islam can be explained by the gun lobby.  I tend to look at the instructions in the Koran first.