Another day, another killing (split from US shootings topic)

[evil_ash_xero]

France bombed Libya (and some other African country, that name is eluding me). Africa, I know. But still the Muslim world.

And I'm aware of America's sins.

Also, I am decently educated on this. Not an expert, by any means. But I look into this all the time. And it's not off of TV.

[Eaglet]

Minty; You need to do some research of your own.
This is in relation to Sweden (if you know any swedish lol): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_tKO8nvkEo
This is more universal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTeD9JopsSM

[Wenchang]

In a very real sense immigration is used to bolster a nation's economy and to provide wealth to aging citizens usually. Merkel knows this very well and needs to secure votes and keep those pension points valid for when the oldsters cash in and around about now the baby-boomers are retiring - does that make much sense to you?

Even if we assume what you say is theoretically correct, it only applies if the immigrants are not themselves burdening the welfare systems as you define it. In many countries, say Sweden, this is a dubious prospect. Germany is not Europe. Much of Europe isn't doing so great economically(particularly southern Europe), they already have pretty high unemployment, especially among young people, and letting in a bunch of people willing to take low wages is not obviously a good thing(although it might be).

[MintyTheCat]

Ironically the US ecomony doesn't take that approach. Look up the capital attributed to migrants workers in America. The policies you will find more often than not is that migrants are wholely necessary to keep the systems that most developed countries together.

My advice to you is to do some reading and to get an education.

You will find the contribution of migrants and immigrants in the U.S.(that's without making any criticisms of any of these many studies that try to assess the positive impact of immigrants on the economy) of any kind is a pretty small fraction of GDP

Er, no - that is wrong.

Saudia Arabia would fall apart if it did not have immigrant workers and the same goes for Switzerland.
The idea here is that employers do not want to raise salaries and benefits and pretty much the way to do that is to allow people who basically have lower fiscal expectations.

In engineering and economics we speak of a transfer function which is:

H = Output / Input

If input is lower (pay less to workers etc.) then H increases and becomes more efficient as we get more out from the process.

Rules, benefits, social policies, education, health-care, etc, are all factors in this and they all influence the transfer.

A quick history lesson:

France, Holland, UK, Spain and Portugal all had colonies. From this you will find common wealth agreements that permit citizens of each power to relocate subject to rules and quotas.

Now, the UK as an example has had generations after generation of common wealth citizens reside in the UK for at least a hundred years. The issues is not ruled according to ideology but more over in terms of social policies and basically into integration.

The US, after all was a colony and was literally built on immigrants. As an idea, something like 30% of all Americans are derived from Germany alone - you are all immigrants unless you happen to be native American Indians that is.

[MintyTheCat]

Minty; You need to do some research of your own.
This is in relation to Sweden (if you know any swedish lol): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_tKO8nvkEo
This is more universal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTeD9JopsSM

As mentioned of a thread this week, I am aware of Sweden's policy change back in the 1950s and I am aware of the impact it has had. Largely the issue is numbers and integration policies.

This is not news to Swedes though.

I can follow swedish but I cannot speak it.

[Wenchang]

Saudia Arabia would fall apart if it did not have immigrant workers

Yeah, Saudi Arabia, a country that uses slave labor and where much of the domestic population does not have to work. Not exactly a star developmental model. I was talking about Western countries, which in my definition didn't include Saudi Arabia(incidentally Saudi Arabia isn't exactly keen on letting in Syrian refugees).

The idea here is that employers do not want to raise salaries and benefits and pretty much the way to do that is to allow people who basically have lower fiscal expectations.

The race to the bottom strategy. Of course it might work, but as I said earlier, for it to work based on your own ideas you have to assume things about immigrants. Like that they are unlikely to receive welfare payments for example. I'm not sure if such an assumption will hold for all European countries.

In engineering and economics we speak of a transfer function which is:

H = Output / Input

If input is lower (pay less to workers etc.) then H increases and becomes more efficient as we get more out from the process.

Rules, benefits, social policies, education, health-care, etc, are all factors in this and they all influence the transfer.

This works so long as you assume things like wages which you call inputs have no positive impact on output. If you treat them as variables that are totally independent. Again, from an economic perspective, this is a very dubious prospect to say the least. John Maynard Keynes certainly would not approve. Of course, deciding what's good or bad for the economy is arguably not simply a matter of what grows the economy, there's a reason for example people tend to use metrics like GDP per capita say, rather than the total size of output

A quick history lesson:

France, Holland, UK, Spain and Portugal all had colonies. From this you will find common wealth agreements that permit citizens of each power to relocate subject to rules and quotas.

Now, the UK as an example has had generations after generation of common wealth citizens reside in the UK for at least a hundred years. The issues is not ruled according to ideology but more over in terms of social policies and basically into integration.

The US, after all was a colony and was literally built on immigrants. As an idea, something like 30% of all Americans are derived from Germany alone - you are all immigrants unless you happen to be native American Indians that is.

I can't see much point to this unless you are trying to say something like the following: "Immigration was good for the U.S. when it was a British colony, therefore immigration is always good." It doesn't follow.

[MintyTheCat]

In a very real sense immigration is used to bolster a nation's economy and to provide wealth to aging citizens usually. Merkel knows this very well and needs to secure votes and keep those pension points valid for when the oldsters cash in and around about now the baby-boomers are retiring - does that make much sense to you?

Even if we assume what you say is theoretically correct, it only applies if the immigrants are not themselves burdening the welfare systems as you define it. In many countries, say Sweden, this is a dubious prospect. Germany is not Europe. Much of Europe isn't doing so great economically(particularly southern Europe), they already have pretty high unemployment, especially among young people, and letting in a bunch of people willing to take low wages is not obviously a good thing(although it might be).

That would be subject to perspective. I agree, for the man on the street who is a residing citizen it is not good news. I know this having lived in England I once had to recruit an Engineer and was given 20 CVs - 19 were Indian and one was from New-Zealand. I asked the HR lady if we could have some British CVs to which I was told "you cannot say that!". I dug my heals in and got British CVs. I recruited a British guy for the job.

I tell you businesses absolutely love cheap labour every time. Your Union's role is to protect residents workers foremost but then things get convoluted between policy and capital and then politics gets involved.

From the economy's perspective: low rate workers equals higher GDP. You can tax them the same, you can control welfare and benefits, etc. and you can even bar them from claiming any monetary welfare or otherwise. We have this policy in the EU now. Sure, any EU national can reside in any EU state as they choose but they are subjected to the same levels and types of welfare and benefits that they would receive in their home country.

That means that if you have no unemployment welfare provision in your home country you cannot claim any in the one you reside in.

Switzerland is even more extreme and gives anyone who is unemployed a deadline to find employment or will otherwise eject the worker from the country. This is also true in the UK with non-EU workers and I know it applies to Indian workers as an example.

So it is a win : win for the economy: we pay you less than the going rate when you work and when you do not work you may get no unemployment or health insurance and if you do not find another below the rate job we throw you out of the country.

That is great for the nation's economy.

[MintyTheCat]

@Wenchang:

I agree: Saudia Arabia would be the last place I would want to step foot on.
Slave Labour is the modus over there and it is not fit for westerners I would say.

Indeed, the race to the bottom.

Correct, the factors are inter-related. I used the Transfer function notion to illustrate and fully realise that this is a simplication and so should you

The point is that you cannot ban anyone who is not native to your nation or ban then if their faith does not match yours.
Well, you can do that but that, then would be living under a tyranny and I dare say that although some would be happy to live like that that I am not one of those people

Right I had better be off to bed as it is really late here.

Cheers, all.

[Wenchang]

The point is that you cannot ban anyone who is not native to your nation or ban then if their faith does not match yours. Well, you can do that but that, then would be living under a tyranny and I dare say that although some would be happy to live like that that I am not one of those people

I'm not sure the choice is merely between banning large groups of people or letting everyone in who makes it. In any case, I was quibbling with some of the economic assumptions you make, not about the desirability of immigrants in general. Of course I don't pretend arguments for or against immigration or migrant labor or similar issues are a simple matter of whether immigration is good or bad for the economy. I did feel compelled to point out some of the assumptions in your argument and state that I think you exaggerated the economic benefits of immigration in one post. I will however credit you for making a frank assessment of the economic benefits of immigration, whether or not I agree with that assessment.

My actual opinion on the economic impacts of immigrants, I sort of said it earlier, is that the impact is small. It probably increases growth(one would expect any increase in population to increase growth, unless there are countervailing factors), but probably by a puny amount. There may be other more specific benefits to having lower waged people working certain jobs. But the idea that immigrants are just essential for aging countries in Europe is not one I take very seriously. Plus, even if it were, there would still be a question of whether the particular immigrants attracted are able to meet whatever essential functions.

[Xyga]

So now they say it's more about 120 dead in total, like the one in Turkey some weeks ago.

Anyway our government shouldn't have sent troops anywhere, it makes our country a primary target of course.
Like we don't have enough problems.
Cunts.

Who's next in Europe ? The UK ? (well yeah you're in this too)

[MintyTheCat]

The point is that you cannot ban anyone who is not native to your nation or ban then if their faith does not match yours. Well, you can do that but that, then would be living under a tyranny and I dare say that although some would be happy to live like that that I am not one of those people

I'm not sure the choice is merely between banning large groups of people or letting everyone in who makes it. In any case, I was quibbling with some of the economic assumptions you make, not about the desirability of immigrants in general. Of course I don't pretend arguments for or against immigration or migrant labor or similar issues are a simple matter of whether immigration is good or bad for the economy. I did feel compelled to point out some of the assumptions in your argument and state that I think you exaggerated the economic benefits of immigration in one post. I will however credit you for making a frank assessment of the economic benefits of immigration, whether or not I agree with that assessment.

My actual opinion on the economic impacts of immigrants, I sort of said it earlier, is that the impact is small. It probably increases growth(one would expect any increase in population to increase growth, unless there are countervailing factors), but not by a whole lot. The idea that immigrants are just essential for aging countries in Europe is not one I take very seriously. Plus, even if it were, there would still be a question of whether the particular immigrants attracted are able to meet whatever essential functions.

I am actually against the mass influx of immigrants due to reasons of cohesion and requiring the host to adapt quickly which is Merkel's pipe-dream from where I am standing. I had regard for her until she did this.

But this is not why I took this tack. Moreover, I had contention with some of the posters' attacking muslims in general - and no, I am not one of them as I am not religious at all myself.

Quick and simple solutions are nice but you have to have the context and the experience to pull it off and what evil ash was proposing to my mind is wholely wrong and naive.

The Nazis targeted racial groups, then groups with an ideology, then groups with a certain physiology, then... and so on. As such, these types of games always work out the same way and we cannot permit that to play out given what some of us know from history.

[Domino]

National Front is going to get more support now.

[MintyTheCat]

So now they say it's more about 120 dead in total, like the one in Turkey some weeks ago.

Anyway our government shouldn't have sent troops anywhere, it makes our country a primary target of course.
Like we don't have enough problems.
Cunts.

Who's next in Europe ? The UK ? (well yeah you're in this too)

Well, that is the main problem in being part of NATO - you suit up when it not directly your interests and turf at stake.

UK has had many, many situations like this and so has Spain.

We are all in it and I shit myself every time I am in London and pass Russel Square and Tavistock Gardens. People died for some dickheaded reasons perpetrated by people who had lost their humanity and it didn't add up to anything.

[MintyTheCat]

National Front is going to get more support now.

All across Europe for many years now - which makes it less safe for everyone usually.

[Skykid]

China just woke up to this news. Absolutely terrible.

Like anyone's first instinct I'm instantly filled with rage, until I remind myself that these people are a product of western foreign policy and perhaps my anger should be directed elsewhere first.

Declassified docs

Putin explains how the US created ISIS

These claims are unsubstantiated by official media and are therefore officially conjecture, although it's absolutely all over google if you want to take a look. I'm not making claims to know the answers, but I do know terrorism doesn't come from thin air. These people need arming and funding to gain power, traction and support, the same as Black September in the Munich Olympics and so on.

I would like to hear your ideas about this, whatever they may be, but not rationalisation in support of the current western political paradigm, please god.

[Bananamatic]

DEUS VULT

[MintyTheCat]

Like anyone's first instinct I'm instantly filled with rage, until I remind myself that these people are a product of western foreign policy and perhaps my anger should be directed elsewhere first.

These claims are unsubstantiated by official media and are therefore officially conjecture, although it's absolutely all over google if you want to take a look. I'm not making claims to know the answers, but I do know terrorism doesn't come from thin air. These people need arming and funding to gain power, traction and support, the same as Black September in the Munich Olympics and so on.

I would like to hear your ideas about this, whatever they may be, but not rationalisation in support of the current western political paradigm, please god.

Essentially these situations are convoluted and shrouded.
Guerilla tactics and Terrorism function for expresses purposes.
It is often highly distributed and adopts a cellular structure with those who partake in it united through some common idea or desired outcome.

But what we do know is that some states fund this type of activity and yes, that is states who are against the West and states that are western.

One can surmise that so long as there is the difference of opinion and the wish to cause damage to ones perceived rivals/enemy for as long as the means are available through funds and intelligence that this will continue.

We can all disagree with any number of a nation's actions and policies but it is how each individual chooses to manifest their discordance.

In my experience people with extreme tendencies are part born that way but more over shaped by social context.
If you look at the means used by cults and terrorist groups to recruit and train people you find the use of techniques to steer individuals into certain types of action. Judgement is surpassed and in its place you see a more action - response behaviour.
The military and even the corporate world use similar methods as an aside.

The main emotion that is used here is that of fear. They tap into each individuals' fear and direct and develop that to fit the aims of their group and in this case terrorism.

Look back at any conflict and any nation that was under threat and usually radicalism appears. The more uncertain things are in any given country the more likely radicals will appear and in turn the more the population is open to the effects of radicalism.

What I notice here thus far apart from them being organised, coordinated and having military weapons is that they operated as a small group which matches the terrorist cell structure.
This is only the tip of the iceberg though as behind that lies networks and supply lines and indeed finance and intelligence.

Indeed, Black September was state funded.
The IRA were even at one stage found to be supplied with arms and I think I recall that Heroine was also seized (for quick capital to fund local operation with out a launder trail) by Gadafi with little more than the notion that

"An enemy of my enemy is a friend of mine"

kind of thing.

All very complex and we are getting into areas of espionage.

Look up Black Propaganda if you have any interest in symbols and methods used to influence a population's thinking.

[quash]

These upcoming elections are going to be a bloodbath.

I also couldn't help but be reminded of Baudrillard's take on modern terrorism, which is spot on.

[Wenchang]

Like anyone's first instinct I'm instantly filled with rage, until I remind myself that these people are a product of western foreign policy and perhaps my anger should be directed elsewhere first.

Seems like you're jumping to conclusions.

Declassified docs

Putin explains how the US created ISIS

These claims are unsubstantiated by official media and are therefore officially conjecture, although it's absolutely all over google if you want to take a look. I'm not making claims to know the answers, but I do know terrorism doesn't come from thin air. These people need arming and funding to gain power, traction and support, the same as Black September in the Munich Olympics and so on.

I would like to hear your ideas about this, whatever they may be, but not rationalisation in support of the current western political paradigm, please god.

What a crock. This is typical of conspiracy theorizing, the U.S. is secretly behind everything. Actually, considering the wonderful U.S. invasion of Iraq, there are plenty of weapons lying around for ISIS to get their hands on without need of outside funding. It's also not as if there aren't plenty of rich, oil producing countries in the region with a history of funding radical Sunni groups(or maybe they're just doing the U.S.' bidding too).

Also plots about the CIA funding Islamic groups are so 1980s anyway. The CIA stopped being an exciting institution for Noam Chomsky to write about three decades ago. The glory years of funding death squads in El Salvador are over(btw remember all those fanatical Catholic terrorists who attacked the U.S. after hundreds of years of invasions and interventions in Central America? More proof that terrorists are just responding to Western militarism), the best people can come up with the last decade are conspiracy theories about the U.S. trying to overthrow Hugo Chavez or something. The idea that ISIS was created by Western powers is dumb.

ISIS are a bunch of overhyped hicks anyhow, their military capability much exaggerated. I mean c'mon, at least say the CIA created al-Nusra Front or something, that's slightly less implausible(we probably have been funding them, whenever Western powers send funds to "moderates" they're likely to end up in the hands eventually of people who will make better use of the weapons). If they're the best the CIA could come up with to overthrow the Assad regime, the people working there must not be very bright. And it wasn't until 2012 that ISIS were created? That's news to me. You would think the dolts in the CIA would at least have hired a Syrian Sunni to lead the group, local populations tend not to be big fans of foreigners coming into their turf.

You know the Houthis, Boko Haram, Hezbollah, the PKK, all guerilla, resistance, and/or terrorist groups need funding too. Maybe the CIA is funding them all as well. Why not? I recommend not buying into conspiracy theories so easily.

[Xyga]

Anyway one thing's for sure: our cuntry, as many other in Europe, is way too lax on security considering the situation.

We always have the administration telling us on the news that the risks of terror attacks are higher than ever, but what actions do they take ?
Anyone can walk the streets everyday with a rifle and bombs hidden in a coat/bag and never get noticed.

We. all. know. it.

[Skykid]

What a crock. This is typical of conspiracy theorizing, the U.S. is secretly behind everything.

Tell it to Putin.

[caincan]

as french, i'm ashamed of this. and especially "our" leaders, cowards leaders, all in france is about hassling us with taxes & shame politics short views (and i'm polite, truth about these power games are certainly mean). in fact, they are just useful to elect them. they dont really solve problems in dirty areas just to be elected once again and prove we need them ..that means total non sense ... they knew many parts of these problems to come. i walked much the backdoor place of Bataclan years ago & can nearly feel the pain. so ashamed if was younger i would have quit this country or hoped of a "coup d'état" from the army..

[Xyga]

Yeah in France all of our leaders, political or business figures, are assholes only working for their personal ambitions (you could argue it's the same everywhere, but we believe ours are worse than average), or just incompetent imbeciles living their own fantasy while we struggle with impossibly high uneployment, prices, taxes, and ever-increasing daily problems.
Things happen for various reasons, and France having lost many of its 'pros' in many fields over the years is one of them; we are just not able to manage things and get along anymore, thus we are vulnerable. Again these attacks are no surprise to us.
The most depressing part is that we don't expect life to get better anytime soon, remember guys we're in the top 3 most depressed nations along with Greece and Japan.

[CIT]

Like anyone's first instinct I'm instantly filled with rage, until I remind myself that these people are a product of western foreign policy

A very, very, very oversimplified view of things.

There are a myriad of causes for Islamic terrorism, most of which have nothing directly to do with Western foreign policy.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

[neorichieb1971]

What exactly is the source of provocation here? Is this a spin off side story of the Charlie thing? Or something new?

Why France? Are they weak?

The news labels the terrorists as cowards but I am sure they are not cowardly people. Not as cowardly as using drone technology anyway. I bet deep down there is some kind of business the Western world wasn't invited to.

If these people said get out of Syria and they would leave us alone.. I think I would take it. I don't see why we need to be there apart from greed.

[evil_ash_xero]

The news labels the terrorists as cowards but I am sure they are not cowardly people. Not as cowardly as using drone technology anyway. I bet deep down there is some kind of business the Western world wasn't invited to.

You're victim blaming.

It's possible there wouldn't be as much violence, if the west wasn't involved in the Middle East (as I don't think it should be). But take a look at their home countries, and how...umm..peaceful, and wonderful they are. That is sarcasm.

I just don't think Europe should keep allowing these folks in, just out of sheer concern for it's own citizens.

If you don't, this is just going to get worse and worse.

Poland isn't going to be letting any refugees in. So, that's a start.

http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Pola ... cks-433027

There's this petition for the UK. I don't know if the higher ups will care, but it's getting a lot of signatures.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/107516

[Skykid]

Like anyone's first instinct I'm instantly filled with rage, until I remind myself that these people are a product of western foreign policy

A very, very, very oversimplified view of things.

There are a myriad of causes for Islamic terrorism, most of which have nothing directly to do with Western foreign policy.

I think you're misunderstanding the sentiment there, I wasn't generalising, I was talking about ISIS as a group. Radical Islamists of course have myriad reasons for being deranged lunatics, most importantly religion, but the climate, if you imagine we're talking about it in a greenhouse fashion, and extreme anti-muslim media propaganda included, it isn't surprising that this type of extremism is the response.

Young easily influenced Muslims living in the UK, for example, will feel marginalised to different degrees because the sentiment towards Muslims has become so negative and aggressive. Our news media has vilified them all for purposes of spin, gaining public support for foreign wars, and fear mongering, ever since 9/11, increasingly so. It isn't surprising to me that Jihadi John was British - case in point.

So consider what I was saying with much broader brushstrokes.

[Xyga]

Quite a diverse group from the first returns, about 8 individuals, including a caucasian, a know french extremist in his twenties, a woman (maybe), a Syrian refugee passport first seen by the Greek authorities in october, and an Egyptian passport.
Keep in mind deliberately leaving 'clues' on the crime scene is also a tactic.
A Belgian car wanted, and one man arrested in Germany.
The bomb technician is somewhere out there.

So, one of them was known by our counter-terrorism agencies, and they're saying now that they also knew concert halls were privileged targets, because in August they've arrested a French man who was coming home after fighting several months along ISIS's forces, and he revealed that part.
It could have been avoided, even more so than the Charlie shooting.

Are we weak ? Yes we are.

This is the issue with a cuntry run by ponies and bureaucrats: to protect us we only have individuals behind a desk who won't even begin to care about the danger and take preventive measures.
They're civil servants period.
Stupid government sending troops where it definitely shouldn't, and crippled police/CT services = guaranteed failure.

"Welcome to France people, if you're on vacation on our soil for your safety we recommend boarding transportations possibly along with US marines also on vacation.
If you go to any crowded public place please remember to write your will and leave a copy including the contact details of your relatives to the attendant."

Fuck this shit I've heard racist shit all day I'm tired, this is definitely what those fuckers are aiming to achieve; push us to go full ethnic/Huntington war.

"How shall we fuck off O Lord?"
"Go to Syria, or France"

[MintyTheCat]

Fuck this shit I've heard racist shit all day I'm tired, this is definitely what those fuckers are aiming to achieve; push us to go full ethnic/Huntington war.

I agree, this plays directly in the terrorist's hands if we permit that.

Remember that racism is a form of ignorance, which leads to fear and fear is what drives people.