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Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

(www.nytimes.com)
623 points franzb | 3 comments | 14 Nov 15 00:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.687s | source
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po1nter ◴[14 Nov 15 00:34 UTC] No.10563599[source]▶
According to iTele there are now 118 dead.

Edit: Now it's up to 140. What a sad day :(

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toyg ◴[14 Nov 15 00:42 UTC] No.10563630[source]▶
Reworded to avoid offence (hopefully): deaths are not irrelevant, but their exact precise number is irrelevant. What matters is the scale of the security failure, compounded by the fact that they suffered a similar one less than a year ago and they were currently on high-alert (because they've only just started bombing Syria).

The knowledge that a network could carry out such a widespread and well-coordinated attack without being preempted, in a situation of maximum alert, will heavy on the minds of any French citizen regardless of whether victims were 118 or 119. Basically, the French security system has been revealed as completely ineffective. That is a huge problem.

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sosborn ◴[14 Nov 15 00:53 UTC] No.10563681[source]▶
> Basically, the French security system has been revealed as completely ineffective.

How can a country possibly prevent these things while still maintaining a free society?

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1. toyg ◴[14 Nov 15 00:58 UTC] No.10563712[source]▶
By making the secret services work for their money on real problems, instead of fretting about tapping media pirates and suchlike. By having a foreign policy that does not rely on military intervention at the drop of a hat. By not starting fires all over the place. The list is long and well-known.
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2. S4M ◴[14 Nov 15 01:17 UTC] No.10563824[source]▶
I don't think any secret service could prevent any isolated individual to make at home, say, Molotov cocktails, and throw them by car in a crowd.
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3. toyg ◴[14 Nov 15 01:38 UTC] No.10563922[source]▶
But these weren't isolated individuals. This was an organised network with grenades and assault rifles and the training to handle them.

This is not a Breivik, or a "Shoe Bomber" Reid; this is '70s-style, organised, cross-border terrorism -- the sort of which "we" were supposed to be good at handling by now.