I don't think this needs to become an anti-religious thing. Plenty of people would say that religion saved their lives or made other positive impacts.

the real problem is fundamentalism, and not just religious fundamentalism

I mean the "religion" that kills the most civilians violently right now is american exceptionalism, which I think it's fair to describe as fundamentalism if not religious

I hate when people quote you and agree with you because it looks like they disagree with you but they don't.

you can reverse + and - frags by pressing the opposite button my friend

The IRA's attacks were against legitimate targets. ISIS's are not.
You can't compare bombing a financial center to shooting up a football stadium.
The two are in no way comparable.

what the fuck was legitimate about the IRA you mongoloid?

Jesus Christ.

Prayers and blessings go out to all of France. Those attacks and their coordination are on a level comparable to 9/11 here in the U.S. I can't even begin to imagine what those effected must be going through right now.

"The 1977 edition of the Green Book, an induction and training manual used by the IRA, describes the strategy of the "Long War" in these terms:

A war of attrition against enemy personnel [British Army] based on causing as many deaths as possible so as to create a demand from their [the British] people at home for their withdrawal.
A bombing campaign aimed at making the enemy's financial interests in our country unprofitable while at the same time curbing long term investment in our country.
To make the Six Counties... ungovernable except by colonial military rule.
To sustain the war and gain support for its ends by National and International propaganda and publicity campaigns.
By defending the war of liberation by punishing criminals, collaborators and informers.[79]"

Destroying infrastructure and causing financial harm to your enemies is a legitimate strategy that every military employs. Whether you do it with a IED or a fighter plane makes little difference.

EXACTLY!

The response needs to be how we responded to 9/11. Hopefully the French can stop being pussies and start to fight.

Radical Islam does not respect treaties, borders, or anything civilized. They only respect force and force is the ONLY way to deal with these people.

The time has long past to pull the gloves off our collective military power and allow them to do the job that needs to be done.

Are we talking about the destruction of the World Trade Centers here?

Like, I know you're getting at the bombings of London's financial center and I listen to Only Our Rivers Run Free on a daily basis but you're completely negating the fact that the IRA did in fact kill many many civilians and no matter whether or not you agree with their cause those attacks were unacceptable by any international standards on military doctrine.

Can you compare bombing a financial center with flying a pair of airplanes into one?

The trade centers were not a legitimate target because they were not part of a larger strategy. Militarily speaking there was no point.

War is messy. Guerrilla war is even messier. Munitions factories are ran by civilians and destroying one would cause a lot of civilian casualties. Are you going to tell me a munitions factory isn't a legitimate target? The goal in these attacks was not to cause civilian casualties. It was to destroy as much financial infrastructure as possible with minimal resources.

Suggested reading
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/1937/guerrilla-warfare/

I was terrified to come out of a scrim and hear this news, I have a friend in Paris that seems to be ok but was very close to the theatre that was bombed

This is definitely not the time to say something negative about France.

Please.

Who are we giving nuclear weapons away to?

You're citing their fucking propaganda you uneducated prat

This is maybe Frances greatest security threat in history POST WWII (thanks matt) and there is still drama surrounding it on TF.TV

SMH

*Post WWII

I'm not really sure how the border patrol was in france before this but it really pisses my off that terrible people like whoever did this, are going to cause France to make it way harder for inoccent people to enter france, just like the US did after 9/11.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown jonestown religious following / cult, almost 1000 deaths and theres a few stories about christian people bombing planned parenthood. dont just target islam for being a toxic religion

http://i.imgur.com/17WPjUu.png

yeah please dont just blame islam for terrorism

.

can we not

unsourced image, shows racist opinion, used to win an argument on the internet

just needs a :-) and an unflattering family photo under that image and it'll be like I'm back on facebook

Only if you use the United State's legal definition of terrorism, which only allows for non-state actors to be perpetrators of terrorism regardless of the act itself

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_terrorism

There is absolutely zero unified definition of terrorism because each individual/state/international governing body has a point of view and an agenda and will attempt to define it in means that exclude those they support from the definition

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Yazidi_communities_bombings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_Rex_fire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beslan_school_siege
Please see if you can find any examples of terrorism attacks that have more fatality's. Also what is racist about facts?

Add colonialism to that and you get a pretty good ground for growing extremism and hate of western civilization.

Why are we still arguing about this? Why does the racial background or religion matter when it comes to terrorism? A terrorist is a terrorist, whether they're black or white, whether they're muslim or christian. Their race or religion don't impact how many people they kill or how they do it. They're terrorists. They're incredibly fucked up people with very radical beliefs and the means to do whatever they need to do to see those beliefs set in place. If you think that a terrorist is defined as a person of Arab descent that's from the Middle East, then you're a moron.

Some quotes from this wiki page that are apt:

"There is no general consensus on the definition of terrorism. The difficulty of defining terrorism lies in the risk it entails of taking positions. The political value of the term currently prevails over its legal one. Left to its political meaning, terrorism easily falls prey to change that suits the interests of particular states at particular times. The Taliban and Osama bin Laden were once called freedom fighters (mujahideen) and backed by the CIA when they were resisting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Now they are on top of the international terrorist lists. Today, the United Nations views Palestinians as freedom fighters, struggling against the unlawful occupation of their land by Israel, and engaged in a long-established legitimate resistance, yet Israel regards them as terrorists. Israel also brands the Hizbullah of Lebanon as a terrorist group, whereas most of the international community regards it as a legitimate resistance group, fighting Israel's occupation of Southern Lebanon. In fact, the successful ousting of Israeli forces from most of the South by the Hizbollah in 2000 made Lebanon the only Arab country to actually defeat the Israeli army. The repercussion of the current preponderance of the political over the legal value of terrorism is costly, leaving the war against terrorism selective, incomplete and ineffective." ~Sami Zeidan

"There are multiple ways of defining terrorism, and all are subjective. Most define terrorism as "the use or threat of serious violence" to advance some kind of "cause". Some state clearly the kinds of group ("sub-national", "non-state") or cause (political, ideological, religious) to which they refer. Others merely rely on the instinct of most people when confronted with innocent civilians being killed or maimed by men armed with explosives, firearms or other weapons. None is satisfactory, and grave problems with the use of the term persist. Terrorism is after all, a tactic. The term "war on terrorism" is thus effectively nonsensical. As there is no space here to explore this involved and difficult debate, my preference is, on the whole, for the less loaded term "Militancy". This is not an attempt to condone such actions, merely to analyse them in a clearer way." ~Jason Burke

"Despite the shifting and contested meaning of "terrorism" over time, the peculiar semantic power of the term, beyond its literal signification, is its capacity to stigmatize, delegitimize, denigrate, and dehumanize those at whom it is directed, including political opponents. The term is ideologically and politically loaded; pejorative; implies moral, social, and value judgment; and is "slippery and much-abused." In the absence of a definition of terrorism, the struggle over the representation of a violent act is a struggle over its legitimacy. The more confused a concept, the more it lends itself to opportunistic appropriation." ~Ben Saul