Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Yes, we need one anyway.

17 (21.8%)

No, we should take that elsewhere and keep this thread as-is.

27 (34.6%)

I don't care, let's see what happens.

34 (43.6%)

Total Members Voted: 75

[Helgoland]

I'd hardly call Bremen a megacity

[Loud Whispers]

Amusingly, there are also rumours, that bin Laden had a large stockpile of american porn ... and the CIA confiscated it for themselves.

Wouldn't be surprised. Reminds me of that time where the Americans drank soda to avoid offending Afghans whilst the French drank beer with them

[scrdest]

Comparing GNP with religion is problematic, because it is comparing peoples and not people. Inside a given people, the typical situation is ususally, that atheists are more left-wing and christians or other religions are more right-wing. If you compare german countries, you see, that southern "redneck" countries (Bayern) are wealthy and faithfull, while east german countries (Brandenburg) or megacities (Bremen) are poor and mostly atheist, and the western countries (Rheinland-Pfalz) are inbetween.

It is also interesting, if you look at the biographies of international terrorists. Many, of them are cosmopolitans, who travel the world or study abroad. Al Quaida terrorists like Mohammed Atta or Osama bin Laden were Arab cosmopolitans who lived in may different countries, and had good relationships to the USA - bin Laden was even trained in an american terror-camp. They were exactly that kind of persons, that the economist want as immigrants. The dangerous cosmopolitan islamism from Al Quaida comes from Arabia, while justified local islamism from Hisbolla comes from people in Libanon or Palestine, who just defend themselves against Israel.

Amusingly, there are also rumours, that bin Laden had a large stockpile of american porn ... and the CIA confiscated it for themselves.

It doesn't matter. There's already variability and outliers; some regions will be more affluent simply by virtue of natural resources or positioning, and even still some middle-class Afghans (ferex) would kill to be poor in Germany.

Interesting point about the biographies; though I think a crucial point is that those are the leaders, largely. Of course they're going to be more refined than Bombvest McGee, that's what makes them the leaders and not an asshole with a beat up AK-47 in some hole.

[Nick K]

The Guardian has posted an article about ISIS' views on refugees: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/15/why-syrian-refugee-passport-found-at-paris-attack-scene-must-be-treated-with-caution. Apparently IS seriously dislikes refugees fleeing to Europe as it undermines their narrative of IS being a refuge for muslims, so before jumping to conclusions it may be worth considering that ISIS might be deliberately trying to stir up anger against the refugees.
As for the Egyptian passport that some of the more right-wing papers claimed was "found on the body of a bomber", it turns out to belong to a critically injured victim. He's in hospital with horrific injuries and the Daily Mail is smearing him as a terrorist just because of his nationality. Not cool.

According to the guardian, which is the prime source for emotional feel good pieces on what ISIS is not saying.

You post a lot of links to sites like Breitbart which are known for their right-wing political slant. If you expect people to follow and consider the links you post, then isn't it a little hypocritical to dismiss this one because it comes from a left-wing paper? It's not like the Guardian is an extremist conspiracy theory site - you might not agree with their political slant, but they're still a mainstream news souce.

I assume you're talking about IS being anti-refugee, and not the egypt passport thing. The Guardian have a few different sources, but the most prominent seems to be this article on jihadology.com which lists a dozen video messages put out by IS in September. The jihadology site is a personal one run by some guy called Aaron Zelin, who also works for a think tank called The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. I don't know what WINEP's political slant is as I've only read their wikipedia page, but apparently they've been criticised for being close to the pro-israel lobby. It's difficult to know if they're an unbiased source or not, but I wouldn't generally expect someone who works for a pro-Israel think tank to be especially tolerant of actual Islamists.

Really though, the message I'm trying to say is just that instead of immediately jumping to conclusions we should give the investigators time to find out who the killers actually were. Surely we'll have proper names and identities before too long. Then we'll actually know if the refugees were involved rather than making assumptions based on scanty evidence.

Edit:

Spoiler: They've been saying what they've intended to do for a long, long time (click to show/hide)

What's the source for this? Just posting an image of some text doesn't really show if it's a solid unbiased academic source, or some right-wing paper with a certain political slant, or an extreme-right conspiracy theory group.

Did you read the Guardian article though? This sort of quote actually supports their conclusions. Their article concludes that the shorter distances would make it impossible to have an Australian-style policy of successfully stopping migrants from entering Europe. Right now the system encourages them to find their way to Europe, which is dangerous for them, and then cross it on their own while the huge numbers at points of entry mean services are overwhelmed and there aren't much in the way of checks.
I'll quote directly what the Guardian suggests as a solution:

Instead, a more logical response would be to create an organised system of mass-resettlement from the Middle East itself.

This would not satisfy Europe’s populists: it would formalise rather than end the continent’s biggest wave of mass migration since the second world war. But it would enable Europe to screen refugees before they arrive; work out who they are and where they’re from; and decide where they should go, and when they should get there. If such a process can be completed for a large enough group of people, and in a swift enough fashion, it would help deter a majority of refugees from traipsing through Europe in the current chaotic way. It would also give European governments a better chance of weeding out potential bombers – a fact that some Syrian refugees have acknowledged themselves.

Now, this would be a nightmare for the racists, whose real concern isn't actually "Islamism" but rather that immigration means seeing more brown people on the streets. It would mean that returning militants could be more easily identified before they enter Europe though. After all, the terrorists your quote talks about aren't real refugees. They aren't Syrians. They're European citizens who've joined IS to murder victims in Syria and are coming back to Europe to murder more over here. Most of them should be known to the security services, so the problem with them coming back into Europe isn't that refugees are a horde of bloodthirsty murderers, it's that there are too many of them coming in too disorganised a way for border staff to properly check who they actually are.

[k33n]

Now, this would be a nightmare for the racists, whose real concern isn't actually "Islamism"

Do you dare claim that a concern about the actual global insurgency happening in modern history is racist? Why would you put that in quotes? You know that Islamism is the term used by people living in muslim majority countries?

[Loud Whispers]

You post a lot of links to sites like Breitbart which are known for their right-wing political slant. If you expect people to follow and consider the links you post, then isn't it a little hypocritical to dismiss this one because it comes from a left-wing paper? It's not like the Guardian is an extremist conspiracy theory site - you might not agree with their political slant, but they're still a mainstream news souce.

If you actually looked at where my links are from, most are from the BBC, primary sources, government statistics, the Independent - I myself have posted more from the Guardian than Breitbart.
I'm not dismissing the Guardian on this because it is left-wing, I am dismissing it because it is the prime source for emotional feel good pieces on what ISIS is not saying. I would do the same if you had quoted the Daily Mail for what ISIS was saying.

I assume you're talking about IS being anti-refugee, and not the egypt passport thing. The Guardian have a few different sources, but the most prominent seems to be this article on jihadology.com which lists a dozen video messages put out by IS in September. The jihadology site is a personal one run by some guy called Aaron Zelin, who also works for a think tank called The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. I don't know what WINEP's political slant is as I've only read their wikipedia page, but apparently they've been criticised for being close to the pro-israel lobby. It's difficult to know if they're an unbiased source or not, but I wouldn't generally expect someone who works for a pro-Israel think tank to be especially tolerant of actual Islamists.

Pro-Israel thinktank from a website called jihadology. Sounds about as reliable as posting from thereligionofpeace.

Really though, the message I'm trying to say is just that instead of immediately jumping to conclusions we should give the investigators time to find out who the killers actually were. Surely we'll have proper names and identities before too long. Then we'll actually know if the refugees were involved rather than making assumptions based on scanty evidence.

We've already found ISIS fighters returning home and we've found them amongst refugees this is nothing new.

What's the source for this? Just posting an image of some text doesn't really show if it's a solid unbiased academic source, or some right-wing paper with a certain political slant, or an extreme-right conspiracy theory group.

It's not an academic piece, it's not some right-wing paper, it's not an extreme-right conspiracy theory group (I don't understand why Americans turn this issue of extremism into a bizarre paradigm where the left are supposed to deny it exists and the right are supposed to say shariah law ate your baby). It's from ISIS

Did you read the Guardian article though? This sort of quote actually supports their conclusions. Their article concludes that the shorter distances would make it impossible to have an Australian-style policy of successfully stopping migrants from entering Europe. Right now the system encourages them to find their way to Europe, which is dangerous for them, and then cross it on their own while the huge numbers at points of entry mean services are overwhelmed and there aren't much in the way of checks.

In Italy they intercepted 190,000 people on the boats and instead of returning them to North Africa brought them to Italy. Europe had border control, they were just deliberately removed. I said it before that the continental Europeans had a time window to act and if they didn't it would come to a point where by the time the wanted to, it would be out of their control. Maybe that time is now? I think so. But still, actions can be taken even now. Never too late for damage control.

I'll quote directly what the Guardian suggests as a solution:

Instead, a more logical response would be to create an organised system of mass-resettlement from the Middle East itself.

This would not satisfy Europe’s populists: it would formalise rather than end the continent’s biggest wave of mass migration since the second world war. But it would enable Europe to screen refugees before they arrive; work out who they are and where they’re from; and decide where they should go, and when they should get there. If such a process can be completed for a large enough group of people, and in a swift enough fashion, it would help deter a majority of refugees from traipsing through Europe in the current chaotic way. It would also give European governments a better chance of weeding out potential bombers – a fact that some Syrian refugees have acknowledged themselves.

Now, this would be a nightmare for the racists, whose real concern isn't actually "Islamism" but rather that immigration means seeing more brown people on the streets. It would mean that returning militants could be more easily identified before they enter Europe though. After all, the terrorists your quote talks about aren't real refugees. They aren't Syrians. They're European citizens who've joined IS to murder victims in Syria and are coming back to Europe to murder more over here. Most of them should be known to the security services, so the problem with them coming back into Europe isn't that refugees are a horde of bloodthirsty murderers, it's that there are too many of them coming in too disorganised a way for border staff to properly check who they actually are.

...

There is no way of talking about this reasonably. Everyone has an enemy profile, a stereotype. No, you can't be concerned about security, displacement, resources or Islamism, it's just racism against brown people 
It's very unhelpful to have such a kneejerk reaction that your leg bones poke through your ribcage. Germany and Sweden called any who wanted borders reinstated literally Nazis and now look, they have taken in far more people than they could handle and have been forced to reinstate borders anyways.

_____
You know I was going to post, but I just caught this.

They aren't Syrians. They're European citizens who've joined IS to murder victims in Syria and are coming back to Europe to murder more over here. Most of them should be known to the security services, so the problem with them coming back into Europe isn't that refugees are a horde of bloodthirsty murderers, it's that there are too many of them coming in too disorganised a way for border staff to properly check who they actually are.

I've been trying to say this and oh fuck it. bla bla bla fox news bla bla bla immigrants bla gex bla
Facts don't matter, nothing matters, what matters is what your political affiliation is, that's all that matters literally everything else you can tell from someone's political affiliation alone.

[Strife26]

Amusingly, there are also rumours, that bin Laden had a large stockpile of american porn ... and the CIA confiscated it for themselves.

That's not a rumor, that's a fact, and also one that's not remotely surprising. The amount of porn that takes up most Islamist hard drives boggles the mind.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It's not surprising at all. All humans are the same on the inside, no matter what we tell the world. All the fanaticism and ideology in the world will do nothing to change that.

[LordBucket]

Also: 'trolling' is not 'someone is disagreeing with me!'. You've made a big fucking claim that a) Terrorism IS largely retaliatory, and b) that CIA says so.

You can type this stuff into a google search box as well as I can. Let me quote Reelya at you:

It's kinda tiring when people go "citation needed" for very well documented historical stuff or stuff that can be looked up in a few minutes. Now, if you're not educated about a topic, don't comment or object to information other people are providing, unless and until you've done the research yourself.

"I'm ignorant so everything you say is wrong!" is both lazy and boring. Every time someone mentions some well-known historical event, it's not up to them to write a encyclopedic post "this topic, for dummies". If you don't know about something, it's not the fault of other people for mentioning it. Now, it is your fault for starting an argument about a topic which you're not prepared to do even basic research. don't do this, it's basically saying "i'm going to object, but it's not on me to know what I'm talking about because you didn't provide citations".

That was totally directed as you, dude.

a) Terrorism IS largely retaliatory

This should be completely obvious to anyone paying attention. You cannot expect decades of foreign intervention and toppling of governments and military invasions and funding of insurrectionist groups and rape and torture camps to go without consequence. Even if one lacks that common sense, the people who do this stuff regularly and routinely make formal statements explaining why they do what they do.

Here's five years worth of quotes from bin laden explaining the stuff they do is retaliiatory.

Here's a wikipedia summary of al queda's officially stated motives for the 911 attacks: retaliation for Iraq sanctions, US support of Israel and US occupation and military bases near Mecca.

Here's a statement made by the underwear bomber:

"“I had an agreement with at least one person to attack the United States in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel and in retaliation of the killing of innocent and civilian Muslim populations in Palestine, especially in the blockade of Gaza, and in retaliation for the killing of innocent and civilian Muslim populations in Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and beyond, most of them women, children, and noncombatants."

When somebody tries to blow something up and then tells you that they did it to retaliate against something that you actually did do and that did adversely affect them, is it really such a stretch think that maybe, just maybe...their motivations are in fact what they claim they are?

and b) that CIA says so.

Again...dude...don't waste my time. You can type stuff into a google search box as well as i can.

CNN interview of Michael Scheuer, 22 year CIA intelligence officer

4:03 - 4:22

INTERVIEWER: "You lead CTA's unit that tracked Osama Bin Ladin 1996 to 1999, and you believe that much like that situation, America's involvement in Libya could prove to be a recruiting tool for extremists. Why?

MICHAEL: "Oh, it's absolutely a recruiting tool. It's the American-led west attacking a muslim country that has oil."


https://theintercept.com/2015/06/06/cia-director-john-brennan-admits-killing-people-countries-might-make-want-kill-us/

"CIA Director John Brennan Admits U.S. Foreign Policy Could Spur Terrorism"

"BRENNAN: I think the president has tried to make sure that we’re able to push the envelope when we can to protect this country. But we have to recognize that sometimes our engagement and direct involvement will stimulate and spur additional threats to our national security interests."


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/11/ron-paul-911_n_3910391.html

"We're supposed to believe that the perpetrators of 9/11 hated us for our freedom and goodness. In fact, that crime was blowback for decades of US intervention in the Middle East. And the last thing we needed was the government's response: more wars, a stepped-up police and surveillance state, and drones.

"“I think there's an influence,” Paul told CBS' “Face the Nation.” “That's exactly what the 9/11 Commission said. That's what the DoD has said. That's also what the CIA has said. That's what a lot of researchers have said.”"

So here you have a US Congressman on national television citing the CIA as having said that acts of terrorism have been retaliatory. It was all over the news for like a week.


Interview given by a CIA Analyst discussing US drone strikes

1:42 - 1:50 in the video

"...the problem here, of course, is that these drone strikes, and everyone knows this, create more terrorists, so the war will keep going on"[/i]



Yes. Everyone knows this. Why are you acting like it's some big huge suprise?

[Nick K]

Now, this would be a nightmare for the racists, whose real concern isn't actually "Islamism"

Do you dare claim that a concern about the actual global insurgency happening in modern history is racist? Why would you put that in quotes? You know that Islamism is the term used by people living in muslim majority countries?

You misunderstand. I'm not saying that everyone concerned about terrorism is racist, I'm saying that at least in the UK racists tend to use concern about "Islamism" as an excuse to make their racist views look politically acceptable. That's why I put Islamism in quotes, because the racists use it as a meaningless attack word to justify hatred against people who are not actually Islamists. We've seen members of groups like the EDL who claim to be anti-Islamist attack Hindus, Sikhs and moderate Muslims. Anti-Islamism is just an excuse for them - what they actually want is to get rid of non-whites.

To explain for the Americans - in the US racist groups like the KKK tend to target black people, probably because they're your biggest non-white minority. In many European countries there are large non-white minorities from countries that are predominantly Muslim and so racists tend to especially direct their hatred at them.

What is an Islamist? My understanding of the word is that it means someone who believes that countries should be run along Islamic religious lines - basically an Islamic theocracy.
Thing is though that in the West this is a minority view. Most Muslims you meet here, even very devout ones, don't believe that their personal religious beliefs should dictate how the state is run. To direct hatred against all Muslims because of Islamists would be like directing hatred at all Christians because of those fundamentalist extremists who campaign to have laws based on the Bible.

It's normal to hate Islamist extremists and want our governments to fight them. I agree entirely. However I don't agree with extreme-right racists who want to use an Islamist minority to justify repression against all Muslims.

Pro-Israel thinktank from a website called jihadology. Sounds about as reliable as posting from thereligionofpeace.

I had a quick google and the guy who runs jhadology has written articles for places like the Washington Post and the BBC: for example http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28560449
It does look like he's some sort of recognised expert on the subject, and the article in question is mostly a summary of ISIS public statements, with links to pages that show the video clips. I don't know if he's scrupulously neutral, but I don't think it's fair to dismiss him as a crank.

What's the source for this? Just posting an image of some text doesn't really show if it's a solid unbiased academic source, or some right-wing paper with a certain political slant, or an extreme-right conspiracy theory group.

It's not an academic piece, it's not some right-wing paper, it's not an extreme-right conspiracy theory group (I don't understand why Americans turn this issue of extremism into a bizarre paradigm where the left are supposed to deny it exists and the right are supposed to say shariah law ate your baby). It's from ISIS

Okay, I'll take your word for it, although as it refers to "The Islamic State" in the third person I trust you can see that it isn't obvious at a casual reading as an ISIS statement. I'm not an American by the way - by "extreme-right consipiracy theory" I'm talking about the kind of rubbish you see neo-nazis or extreme-right groups like the EDL talking about. You know, the apocalyptic predictions about how we need to get rid of Muslims or they'll overthrow the UK and make us live in a Muslim state.

There is no way of talking about this reasonably. Everyone has an enemy profile, a stereotype. No, you can't be concerned about security, displacement, resources or Islamism, it's just racism against brown people 

It can be difficult to identify the racists who're using fear of terrorism as an excuse to justify actions against non-whites compared to people who are legitimately concerned. I hope you won't deny that both exist.

Consider the BNP, a group which is widely viewed as racist and which until a legal challenge in 2010 only allowed "indigenous British people" to be members. Of course by "indigenous" they meant white - English types descended from Saxon or Norman immigrants weren't excluded. The BNP is something I hope we can probably all agree is racist, but I've read their manifesto around election time before, and they skirt very carefully around the issue of race. A few elections back I had a look through it and the only reference I could find was saying that they wanted to repatriate immigrants and the descendants of immigrants.

For me, the obvious difference tends to be the conclusions. The racists tend to go to extreme conclusions. You know: Close the borders completely. Crack down on all Muslims in our countries. Let them drown in the med or send them back to Syria where IS can torture them.

Personally, my conclusion would be that we need organisation to the immigration. Set up a system where people have at least some background checks on entering Europe, are given a chance to make an new life in Europe if they're legitimately fleeing persecution, sent back home if they're from a safe country and just looking for work or arrested if they're known to be affiliated with IS.

[smjjames]

As much as I support the Israeli peoples right to exist and not be genocided and/or nuked, I feel like supporting Israel has become a political liability recently. Especially when things escalated over there not that long ago.

When they did that offensive in Gaza and started bombing there, politicians seemed to start distancing themselves, but NOPE. Such is the power of the lobbyists though

You'd be hard pressed to find a politician who wants to distance the US from Israel because it'd be political suicide to do so.

[LordBucket]

I feel like supporting Israel has become a political liability recently.

Recently?

[Wolfhunter107]

Looks like the French just launched an Airstrike on Raqqa.

[smjjames]

I feel like supporting Israel has become a political liability recently.

Recently?

Realtively recently, mainly since 2000, and I kind of meant starting to become a bit of a liability, though over time.

[Sheb]

More than one. Not sure how effective they're going to be without some form of ground support.