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posted by n1 on Saturday November 14 2015, @01:00AM   Printer-friendly

France has declared a national state of emergency and has closed its borders after at least 40 people were killed in multiple shootings in Paris.

At least 15 people were killed near the Bataclan arts centre, where up to 60 people are being held hostage. Explosions and gunfire are reported.

Three people were killed in an attack near the Stade de France, with some reports suggesting a suicide blast.

Paris authorities have urged people to stay indoors.

Military personnel are being deployed across Paris.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/11/13/455943961/violence-reported-in-paris
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/13/world/paris-shooting/index.html

Update #1 [BBC updates]:

Scores of people have been killed in multiple gun and bomb attacks in Paris

At least 100 people are reported to have died inside the Bataclan concert hall in central Paris

Others died in attacks near the Stade de France, where France were playing Germany, and at restaurants

France has declared a national state of emergency and has closed its borders

Paris residents have been asked to stay indoors and military personnel are being deployed across the city

[...] Reuters. quoting an un-named official at Paris City Hall, says the current death toll in Paris is around 140.

Update #2:

According to the Paris prosecutor, of the four assailants who died during the sidge at the Bataclan, three committed suicide by detonating explosive vests. The prosecutor has warned that some of their accomplices may "still be on the loose".

[...] Here is what French president François Hollande told reporters outside the Bataclan concert hall just now: "To all those who have seen these awful things, I want to say we are going to lead a war which will be pitiless. Because when terrorists are capable of committing such atrocities they must be certain that they are facing a determined France, a united France, a France that is together and does not let itself be moved, even if today we express infinite sorrow."


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by linuxrocks123 on Saturday November 14 2015, @12:46AM

    by linuxrocks123 (2557) on Saturday November 14 2015, @12:46AM (#262921) Journal

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes [wikipedia.org]

    If we could segregate all people of different cultures, send them to different planets through wormholes, and then permanently close the wormholes so that interaction was no longer possible, maybe "everyone thinks exactly the same as everyone else, and considers everyone to be of the same tribe" would work okay ... in the short term.

    In the medium-to-long-term, it's still a shitty plan, because people naturally break themselves up into different tribes, and those tribes will go to war if the people making the decisions are mental midgets. The famous "chimp war" Jane Goodall observed was the result of a community breaking in two and the larger splinter group completely exterminating the smaller splinter group. This type of self-inflicted misery befalls humans as well when our leaders are as dumb as chimps. The only real solution is "make sure as few people as possible are mental midgets, especially those in leadership roles", where "not a mental midget" includes respecting all other people as full humans with the full complement of human rights. I guess you can call that philosophy multiculturalism if you want to.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Saturday November 14 2015, @03:36AM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Saturday November 14 2015, @03:36AM (#263024)

    includes respecting all other people as full humans with the full complement of human rights. I guess you can call that philosophy multiculturalism if you want to.

    That's not multiculturalism at all, it's entirely orthogonal. Human rights means treating people equally under the law and recognizing they have certain inalienable rights. This doesn't mean you have to cater to their cultural sensitivities or desires. It's entirely possible to respect human rights while having a system of government and laws which makes life unhappy for minorities, such as by mandating a particular language for official use, by mandating holidays the majority likes and ignoring the minority's wishes, etc. As long as the minorities have the same rights and there isn't some kind of segregationist system (separate restrooms, blatant discrimination, etc.) going on, then their human rights are being respected while multiculturalism is not.

    The problem with multiculturalism is that some cultures simply are incompatible with other cultures. A culture which demands its religion be forefront and in charge of the government is never going to get along with a culture which values secularism, for instance (nor will it ever get along with a culture where religion is officially suppressed, as in China).

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2015, @08:21AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2015, @08:21AM (#263129)

      If culture X demands that religeon be forefront,
      and culture Y (with different religeon) does as
      well, then they too can't get along. Such cultures
      simply can't get along with **anybody** else.

      Permanant containment is not a viable long-term
      solution to the problem. Attempting to do that
      will only prolong the extermination of the more
      wimpy culture. Only non-wimpy cultures survive.
      Hint: your's is wimpy if it prohibits genocide.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2015, @06:50PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2015, @06:50PM (#263383)

        In today's news: conflicting cultures conflict when inhabiting the same space, unless they're willing to resolve their conflicts, such as by sharing that space without imposing on each other; who'd have thunk it?

        Metaculture should be obvious, but we're quickly discarding everything we learned during the Enlightenment, and many other cultures never had those ideas in the first place (though one assumes they will arise at some point in more or less any culture that permits it).

      • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday November 16 2015, @01:22AM

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Monday November 16 2015, @01:22AM (#263811)

        Permanant containment is not a viable long-term solution to the problem. Attempting to do that will only prolong the extermination of the more wimpy culture.

        First off, why the hell are you writing in 80-character-wide lines? You look stupid doing so.

        Secondly, how the hell is permanent containment *not* a viable long-term solution? As long as everyone stays on their side of the border, there's not a problem if the cultures conflict. As long as the "wimpy" (i.e. refuses to commit genocide according to you) culture maintains a strong border and refuses to allow immigration from the place with an incompatible culture, there's no problem.