Discussion for article #232019
Funny how these attacks will impair the ability of people to detect irony. One thing the French and Americas share is that we luvs us some irony, but it died here for years after 9/11 and now it’s in abeyance in France.
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Took the words out of my mouth. The hypocrisy involved here is staggering, but the attack was on the MSM’s own, so it will be carefully as though some speech should be universally lauded and treated as sacrosanct, while other speech is justifiably subject to jackbooted fascism.
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“including four minors”
At the risk of punning: how that kind of hysterical overreach isn’t leaving people speechless is beyond me.
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Aside from the obvious free speech conflicts, did anyone even pause to think if this was a practical way to stop terrorism? Someone expresses sympathy with the terrorists and you throw them in jail? What’s the next step? You convict them, throw them in prison for some number of years, and then what are they good for? They won’t be able to get a decent job. But there will be one employer waiting for them - jihad.
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Sounds like a slippery slope. The quickest way for people to show their disdain for certain media is to stop buying it. Obviously, there are alot of French who enjoy it, however.
Does this crackdown mean the terrorists have won in France?
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What is clear is that the people in charge - governments, politicians, FBI, CIA - do not possess the level of sophistication that is required to reduce terrorism. War, torture, jailing people for their opinions, discrimination…all of their responses seem geared toward sowing discord, marginalizing certain groups of people, and actually creating more terrorists. We are doomed.
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This makes the White House’s decision not to join France’s rally seem like good foresight. Do we really want to be associated with an anti-Islamic crackdown on free speech? That looks like what this is turning into.
As the crackdown in France ensues, AQAP will get more recruits, just as they planned.
We in the US prefer our anti-Islamic crackdowns to be more surreptitious and applicable to all citizens, you know, like warrantless domestic spying. Here, we allow people to say what they please, but when they do, they’re being monitored and it’s treated as evidence against them.
And because here in the Ewe Ess of Aye people on the terrorist watch list can buy as many assault weapons as Saudi Arabia can afford, we have to have a police force with military hardware and an attitude of an occupying force in our own communities to protect us from all those uppity unarmed black teenagers.
i have become a firm believer that capitalism is not a long-term economic solution for our species. marx understood so much about human nature and need; he even pointed out, capitalism carries the seeds of its own destruction, which I believe we have been seeing the beginnings of these last few years. however, i think he got one point regarding religion wrong. his quote was, ‘religion is the opium of the people’. i believe it would be more accurate to say ‘religion is the angel dust of the people’. people are getting whipped up into a religious frenzy, and it’s going to be near impossible to stop them from creating more harm than good. this vilification of a single religious group can only end up with a cycle of violence with a positive-feedback loop. what france is doing with these arrests plays into that seemingly drug-induced frenzy of hatred and fear. this cannot and will not end well.
You would almost think that the government had this whole apparatus ready to go.