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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: 0.001s | source
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djfm ◴[14 Nov 15 01:12 UTC] No.10563795[source]▶
I live in Paris and was spending the night in the middle of the hot zone. I was a few hundred meters from the Bataclan but fortunately the area I was in was spared. I tried to get a Uber but they were unavailable, "State of emergency, please stay home", the app said. I took a city bike home, rode about 10kms and barely saw anyone in the streets all the way home. It was really, really weird. I'm awfully sad that people can be proud of having killed a hundred innocents. I'm not afraid, I'm just terribly sad. Please stop this pointless killing.
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bedhead ◴[14 Nov 15 01:21 UTC] No.10563844[source]▶
You are trying to rationalize with people who are irrational. They don't reconcile. It sucks. It's depressing.
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rquantz ◴[14 Nov 15 01:31 UTC] No.10563887[source]▶
Terrorism is usually a rational act. It is terrible, but it has political goals. This, for instance, may be aimed at ending the European involvement in Syria and their taking in refugees.
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clock_tower ◴[14 Nov 15 01:51 UTC] No.10563972[source]▶
It used to be rational, rather. The classic terrorists of the '70s wanted "a lot of people talking but not a lot of people dead" -- and also wanted to survive the experience. The new breed of terrorism in the '80s and '90s was different from those; the IRA, the PLO, and various state-sponsored terrorists in that period had/have more in common with each other, despite their obvious differences, than any have with al-Qaida and ISIS, which aim for suicide missions with high body counts.

This particular operation is either ISIS-conducted or ISIS-oriented vigilanteism; whichever it is, backing down in Syria will only embolden them. (Or rather, embolden those like them; I don't imagine that very many of the specific attackers here are going to have particularly many opportunities to do this again in the future.)

ISIS is specifically out for either world empire or apocalyptic defeat (see http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isi... ); tactical concessions will work about as well as they did with the Nazis and the Communists -- or even less well than that, since neither Naziism nor Communism believed that success was a sign that Divine Providence was smiling on them.

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1. asasasasasas ◴[14 Nov 15 02:19 UTC] No.10564091{3}[source]▶
> ISIS is specifically out for either world empire or apocalyptic defeat

Which is why (in my understanding) ISIS does not do attacks on foreign soil. Their idea is to re-establish a caliphate (ei Islamic empire, which existed from around the time of Mohamed for centuries). ISIS would probably be okay with those that cannot join the jihad in Syria conducting a terrorist attack on their home turf, but would not actively plan one.

All I'm saying is I would not be surprised if this isn't specifically ISIS.

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2. clock_tower ◴[14 Nov 15 02:29 UTC] No.10564133[source]▶
They've inspired a lot of lone-wolf and copycat attacks, though, and I think they endorse the idea that if you can't get to Syria, you can at least kill people at home. I doubt that ISIS' actual government had anything to do with this, but the attackers were clearly thinking of ISIS -- "For Syria!" and all that.
3. mercurial ◴[14 Nov 15 14:21 UTC] No.10565746[source]▶
Putting pressure on countries being part of the offensive against them is definitely in their interest, which is why it came to no surprise at all when it turned out that they were behind the attack.