Shootouts and explosions in Paris

[kosis]

My beef with Reza Aslan is that he doesn't go far enough. Being a recognizable voice, he would do wonders for the BDS movement in Palestine. He'd prefer to executive produce for shows like Dig, though.

 

[Sumac13]

FEDS APPROVE CITIZENSHIP FOR 15 FOREIGN TERRORISTS
HIDE HISTORIES FROM CONGRESS

At Least 15 US ‘Citizen Terrorists’ Are Also Legal Immigrants

3:05 PM 11/18/2015

Dozens of the U.S. citizens arrested in recent years on terror-related charges are immigrants admitted to the United States legally who later obtained citizenship.

More than 70 U.S. residents have been publicly arrested and charged with conspiring to help, attempting to help, or actually helping terror networks such as Islamic State in recent years. At least 15 of them received U.S. citizenship after being admitted to the country legally, including one of the Boston bombers. (RELATED: U.S. Refugee Chief Didn’t Know Boston Bombers Were Refugees)

Here are five examples.

Two immigrants from Pakistan who later applied for and received U.S. citizenship were convicted of plotting to detonate a bomb in New York City in 2012, and were sentenced to a combined 55 years in prison.

Federal prosecutors accused a Somalian immigrant who became a U.S. citizen of plotting to “go to a military base in Texas and kill three or four American soldiers execution style.” The man had trained with a terrorist group in Syria and was told to return to the U.S. and carry out an act of terror.

An immigrant brought by his family from Kuwait at a young age and later approved for U.S. citizenship killed four Marines in a shooting rampage at two military centers in Chattanooga, Tenn., in July.

A woman born in Saudi Arabia who obtained U.S. citizenship and taught pre-school in Queens, N.Y., was arrested on terror charges in April. She and a friend also living in Queens pledged allegiance to Islamic State and considered bombing a police funeral. FBI raids on their apartments turned up bomb-making materials, including propane tanks and a pressure cooker, in addition to bomb recipes and jihadi literature.

An immigrant from Ghana who obtained U.S. citizenship was arrested in June and charged with conspiring to support a terrorist group after investigators allegedly found he was plotting a terror attack on New York City landmarks in the name of Islamic State.

The Obama administration has ignored a request from Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and Jeff Sessions for detailed immigration histories of 72 U.S. residents arrested in the past year on terror-related charges.

You do realize there is a difference between a refugee and an immigrant? Given these folks were not refugees, it would seem that the screening process is working quite well.

 

[Notorious]

Yes I have kids, one was flying to Egypt the day the Russian plan was blown up and flew home the day of what happened in Paris. Of course I worry for my kids.

What happened to the people in Paris was tragic. And absolutely go after the people who did it. Kill them all. Not just the ones directly involved, anyone in ISIS is just as guilty as the ones who did it.

But it's flat out wrong to use that to attack, harrass, threaten innocent people just because they are from the same country. They fled that country to get away from ISIS and have suffered great loss at the hands of ISIS.

And it goes beyond the Syrian refugees. There is too much blanket hate in this country for anyone from the middle east and anyone muslim. It's disgusting. Blaming all muslims for ISIS is like blaming all Christians for the atrocities of the Ku Klux Klan.

Well if you take a look around this country it seems like most light skinned people are assumed to be Ku Klux Klan. They are certainly treated this way. Very few are calling BS on that.

Do you realize there are 1.2 Billion Muslims worldwide? They predict between 15 to 25 percent are radicalized. That's 180 million to 300 Million potential ISIS members. This is not a small pocket of people around the world. They control huge areas and span continents.

Are you ready for a war with soldiers that number the amount of total people in this country? That's what you are suggesting. Going after ISIS is basically the start of the next World War. This is not some small pocket of 20,000 people. There are 10's of millions of these guys alone in Syria and the surrounding countries.

This is not a send in a small ground force and wipe them out job. This is a we are prepared for war job. A war the likes of which none of us has ever lived through. In war against a fighting force larger than your own citizenry you're going to offend some people from these areas. War is not pretty or gracious my friend.

 

[Notorious]

But a lot of the criticisms were real risks. Refugee Jews came from Poland, much of Eastern Europe, and Germany. These guys tended to be Marxists, and at the time, that was viewed as a legitimate threat to America. Not to mention the other stuff the article mentioned,



fair



I don' know that it is much different right now. I'll get into this more later, but Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey have reached capacity. Rentier states just won't take them. And Europe -- sans Germany -- does not want them.



Agreed. But, I'm not sure a good portion of the current frustration is historical anti-Islam (I hate the word Islamophobia) bigotry.



Nobody knows for sure. Probably in the 10,000s to low 100,000s. The dilemma is a lot of those numbers, as we have discussed previously, are people working for ISIS because they need food/water/money and have few other choices.


A shit load.



A fuck ton,



A few reasons. First, Muslims in Indonesia and Eastern Europe want nothing to do with the Middle East. Second, the Arab Gulf states are prioritizing Assad falling over defeating ISIS. This is also why they aren't accepting refugees. It makes it easier to create frustration over Assad, and then easier to radicalize. Finally, as @King Stannis has talked about, a lot of the Arab armies are absolute shit. Don't forget, a lot of ISIS members were part of Saddam's (secular) Ba'ath party and have excellent weapons and mediocre military training.


Agreed.

10,000 to 100,000 people are going to control this much land? That's like 1 person for every acre at best. You're out of your mind. 1.2 Billion Muslims, 15-25% radicalized. Do the math. Last good estimate in 2014 was 200,000 and that number grew by 10's of thousands a month since then.

 

[spydy13]

10,000 to 100,000 people are controlling this much land? That's like 1 person for every acre at best. You're out of your mind. 1.2 Billion Muslims, 15-25% radicalized. Do the math.

Isis controls India (not to mention a bunch of other countries they don't control in that map)?

 

[Soda]

My beef with Reza Aslan is that he doesn't go far enough. Being a recognizable voice, he would do wonders for the BDS movement in Palestine. He'd prefer to executive produce for shows like Dig, though.

I don't think picking a side there would necessarily help his cause. You're asking him to condemn Israel and completely back Palestine; maybe he just doesn't feel that way.. In his mind, as a man educated in religion, the issues there may be more complex than where your family is from.

 

[Surge]

May sound stupid, but can someone simplistically break down why they hate western culture so much?

All I hear is that they hate us because their "Bible" says to rid the world of people who are not like minded, and they hate that we respect women. Is that it??

 

[Sumac13]

The fact that people on other fucking continents have to handle this shit is messed up.

If that is the case, other 'continents' could do their part and just butt out and not exacerbate the situation. And by handle it, you mean in a manner that suits us, the other continents. Because if things are not going in the direction we (the other continents) want, you know who will be intervening again. "Damn you. Can't you all just do what we want?! Why are you forcing us to intervene!" We don't seem very content to let other countries that we think we have a national interests in decide their own fate.

 

[Notorious]

Isis controls India (not to mention a bunch of other countries they don't control in that map)?

I clarified my statement. That is their planned map in 5 years. That is like the resident's of Lakewood hoping to take over the entire U.S. by 2020. According to most here. I don't buy it.


Up to 300 million radicalized Muslims worldwide.

 

[No Regard]

Yes I have kids, one was flying to Egypt the day the Russian plan was blown up and flew home the day of what happened in Paris. Of course I worry for my kids.

What happened to the people in Paris was tragic. And absolutely go after the people who did it. Kill them all. Not just the ones directly involved, anyone in ISIS is just as guilty as the ones who did it.

But it's flat out wrong to use that to attack, harrass, threaten innocent people just because they are from the same country. They fled that country to get away from ISIS and have suffered great loss at the hands of ISIS.

And it goes beyond the Syrian refugees. There is too much blanket hate in this country for anyone from the middle east and anyone muslim. It's disgusting. Blaming all muslims for ISIS is like blaming all Christians for the atrocities of the Ku Klux Klan.

Who exactly is blaming all muslims?
Who is to say that I can't blame Christianity for the atrocities of KKK?
And why can't I blame Christianity for the Inquisition that lead to the deaths of millions of innocent people?

Islam is being used as a political tool, and even if it wasn't, it must been okey to criticise this belief system. Religion is not above criticism. History has shown that organised religion is one of the greatest dangers against humanity. Yes, I understand that the overwhelming majority is good people wanting peaceful, quite lives, but at the same time I know that the silent majority only gives more power to the extreme minority.

Calling people racists or bigots because of their criticism of Islam is simple stereotyping, and it only leads to an unhealthy debate climate, where one half is threatened to silence, while the other half is only crying louder and more hateful.

Criticism is an essential part of Western science, isn't it? Nevertheless I'm being told over and over again that my criticism of Islam might hurt the feelings of some 1.6 billion people and I should therefore keep my mouth shut. Well how about the feelings of those who has to live under constant police protection because of their criticism of Islam? How about the feelings of the families to those slain because of some stupid cartoons?

 

[Sumac13]

May sound stupid, but can someone simplistically break down why they hate western culture so much?

All I hear is that they hate us because their "Bible" says to rid the world of people who are not like minded, and they hate that we respect women. Is that it??

I don't mean to be difficult, but who is 'they'? Muslims? Arabs? Arabic Muslims? The militants? Who?

 

[The Human Q-Tip]

But it's flat out wrong to use that to attack, harrass, threaten innocent people just because they are from the same country.

Agree completely. People who are here should not be treated like crap just because of their religion or national origin.

But I don't think that point extends to whether or not we should admit more people, who aren't yet here, from a very violence-plagued region.

 

[kosis]

I don't think picking a side there would necessarily help his cause. You're asking him to condemn Israel and completely back Palestine; maybe he just doesn't feel that way.. In his mind, as a man educated in religion, the issues there may be more complex than where your family is from.

Well that's not true. He's pretty fervent in his stance against the occupation. He just doesn't believe in the complete cultural boycott. Partly because he wants to make money from it.

 

[No Regard]

May sound stupid, but can someone simplistically break down why they hate western culture so much?

All I hear is that they hate us because their "Bible" says to rid the world of people who are not like minded, and they hate that we respect women. Is that it??

My personal theory is that the hate comes from the Western world dropping bombs in their heads and killing their wives and children for quite some time now, all in the name of Democracy and Freedom.

International politics is a joke. You have Obama talking about humanitarianism and human rights, while he at the same time approves sales of military equipment worth billions of dollars to some of the least humanitarian states in the world. You have NATO bombing the shit out of Libya in a "humanitarian intervention", completely destroying a well-functioning state, leaving it to be an anarchy of rapists and psycho killers.

ISIS was not created out of a vacuum. Their extremism is a reaction to something, and this something, sorry to say, is Western leaders taking thousands of innocent lives, directly through their own warfare and indirectly through their massive sales of weapons, while they at the same time have the guts to do this:


The world is so fucked up right now I don't even know where to start.

 

[The Human Q-Tip]

Who exactly is blaming all muslims?
And why can't I blame Christianity for the Inquisition that lead to the deaths of millions of innocent people?

This is a very fair point. First, criticizing a belief system, whether it be religious, philosophical, political, economic, whatever, is not the same thing as criticizing every person who holds that belief. Especially when almost everyone puts their own individual spin on broadly-labeled belief systems.

The Inquisition was fucked up. As was the selling of indulgencies, the rampant corruption, the forcible suppression/killing of "heretics", the wholesale murder of people during the Albigensian Crusade, the Crusades in the Baltics, etc. etc. etc. Not all Christians were bad people, and the practice of Christianity was certainly not always bad. But Christianity itself had a big fucking problem with violence and intolerance for a long time, and it's perfectly fair to call it out for that. Hell, the President even specifically cited to the Crusades and Christianity, but for some unfathomable reason refusal to draw a similar parallel today.