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President Obama has run into harsh criticism, both at home and abroad, for not attending this week’s Paris protest march or sending a high-level substitute in his place. French and European leaders, meanwhile, have won widespread praise for their aggressive and bold stand against jihadists.

Yet it’s the European reaction that plays right into Al Qaeda’s hands, and the Americans who are actually taking the wiser approach by not turning the Paris terror attacks into a giant battle for civilization—and Charlie Hebdo into a rallying cry for free speech. It was hardly a surprise that the group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula appeared eager to claim responsibility Wednesday for the attacks. But for Al Qaeda, a triumph isn’t complete until it gets a reaction.

And, wow, did it ever get a reaction in Europe—precisely the wrong kind.

Since the 9/11 attacks, Western governments–the United States included–have struggled to grasp the challenge posed by al Qaeda’s strategy. They still seem all-too-mystified about how to respond and extinguish the enduring appeal that al Qaeda’s ideology seems to have for young Muslims. The world’s most infamous terrorist group—at least until Islamic State burst on to the scene last year—has in turn spent decades trying to figure out how to instigate a global Muslim rebellion against the West. It has always relied on a sort of geopolitical judo, using its enemies’ strength against them by making them prove its own worldview.

This strategy has succeeded to a greater degree among Muslim communities in Europe compared to the United States. In Europe, in general, Al Qaeda has found it easier to win over angry young European Muslims—as has the Islamic State—because it has found a pliable audience and exploited it. The most effective way to convince a target audience to buy into a rhetorical vision is to echo and respond to their grievances. In other words, use their existing complaints to make them sign up to your plan to fix things. Globally, al Qaeda’s problem has always been that although average Muslims have many long-standing complaints about Western foreign policy—such as support for Israel and Arab dictatorships—the vast majority were not ready to subscribe to its remedy of war and harsh religious law.

In response, Al Qaeda has sought to overcome this lack of interest among Muslims by trying to polarize Muslim and Western views, and here is where it has had a great deal of success in Europe, far less so in the United States. The Muslim underclass in many of these European countries is already polarized, and the over-the-top reaction to the Charlie Hebdo killings is only exacerbating that trend. The idea, as stated in the jihadi strategy document “Management of Savagery,” is to “transform societies into two opposing groups, igniting a violent battle between them whose end is either victory or martyrdom.” The best way to make sure the intended audience understands the justification for the attack is to make the attack itself self-explanatory, the strategists behind the document say. Clearly, the targeting of Charlie Hebdo, a magazine well known for printing images that many, if not most, Muslims would find offensive, but were seen as part of a cherished European tradition of free expression, fit very comfortably in this strategy.

True to Al Qaeda’s methodology, the attack is sharpening differences between communities and isolating European Muslims from their countrymen. Thanks to the efforts of European leaders and opinion makers to show solidarity with Charlie Hebdo by embracing its humor—and the now-ubiquitous “Je Suis Charlie” slogan—many mainstream Muslims are resentful about the impossible choice they are being forced into: To demonstrate they do not support murder, they must show support for images they find offensive. Demands that European Muslims condemn the attacks serve to make many feel that they are seen as guilty until they prove themselves innocent. The focus on freedom of speech also re-opens simmering accusations from Muslim Europeans of double standards; in the days after the Hebdo attacks, a notorious French comedian known for his anti-Semitic comments, Dieudonne, was actually arrested for posting an offensive comment on his Facebook page. Overall, the direction of the public debate plays directly into Al Qaeda’s narrative that Muslims cannot live in the West without demeaning themselves. Meanwhile, the increase in anti-Muslim violence in the wake of the attacks reinforces the idea that Muslims are in danger and under siege.

Even Pope Francis has weighed in, oddly enough, on the side of offended Muslims and against the lionization of Charlie Hebdo. “You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others,” the pope said on Thursday, giving voice to seething Muslim resentment.

More worrying is the messaging being directed towards young, criminalized Muslims. While the attack was still underway, television channels around the world played images of the Kouachi brothers—the two terrorists who broke into the Charlie Hebdo offices—getting out of a car, moving along a street and shooting dead an injured policeman. News anchors described them in terms verging on awe, mentioning frequently that they seemed “highly trained” and “skilled in military tactics.” Such coverage glamorizes an act to an audience that is excited by the idea of instant recognition and adulation. According to one account of the hostage drama at the kosher market in Paris after the Hebdo killings, while the standoff was going on the gunman, Amedy Coulibaly, spent a lot of his time monitoring what was being said about him in the media—and grew very angry that new channels were not reporting that he had killed people.

Thus, the Charlie Hebdo attacks highlight what many people have suspected while witnessing the spectacle of hundreds, possibly thousands, of young Muslim Europeans flocking to the battlefields of Syria and Iraq: Al Qaeda has managed to find a receptive audience in the continent’s Muslim underclass, with their angry sense of disenfranchisement from broader European society.

There is more to the article at the link above, with details the author's experience with Islamic Extremist group recruiting camps and strategies.

Either way, I found the article interesting, though not sure whether I entirely agree with the points he made (Though there are parts I can side with).

Cheat just announced it in the Official! Septagon Skype Group.

We will be getting Penguin Party instead.

Story

Pope Francis has said there are limits to freedom of expression and that in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris “one cannot make fun of faith”. On a plane from Sri Lanka to the Philippines, the largest catholic majority country in Asia, the pope said freedom of speech is a fundamental human right but “every religion has its dignity”.

Asked about the attack that killed 12 people at the offices of Charlie Hebdo - targeted because it had printed depictions of the prophet Muhammad - he said: “One cannot provoke, one cannot insult other people’s faith, one cannot make fun of faith.

“There is a limit. Every religion has its dignity ... in freedom of expression there are limits.”

He gestured to Alberto Gasparri, who organises papal trips and was standing by his side, and added: “If my good friend Dr Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch. It’s normal. It’s normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others.”

Cautioning against provocation he said the right to liberty of expression came with the obligation to speak for “the common good.”

Thoughts on the comments?

Here[

Pupils and teachers have returned for the first time to the school in the Pakistani city of Peshawar where more than 150 people were killed last month.

A ceremony was held to remember the victims of the Taliban attack on 16 December.

Schools across Pakistan are re-opening after an extended break prompted by the massacre.

US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in the country on Monday to discuss the campaign against extremism.

He is meeting Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to make the case for a more robust effort against all militant groups.

The Pakistani government has made changes after the attack last month - it has scrapped a moratorium on executions and has moved to establish military courts to try terrorism cases.

But US officials travelling with Mr Kerry have said they want to ensure there is a "real and sustained effort" against militants threatening not just Pakistan but also Afghanistan and India.

Pakistan's National Security Adviser Sartaj Aziz welcomed Mr Kerry's visit on Monday and suggested that he would be visiting the school that was attacked in Peshawar. The state department has not confirmed Mr Kerry's itinerary.

Seven Taliban attackers wearing bomb vests cut through a wire fence to gain entry to the Army Public School in Peshawar on 16 December.

They went from class to class, killing 152 people - 133 of them children - and injuring more than 120. All seven gunmen were killed.

"When they entered the halls, their fingers were on the triggers," said Munawar Hussain, a teacher who survived the attack.

Mr Hussain told the BBC that the attackers had aimed at their heads. He only narrowly escaped being shot by hiding under a table.

"Today I was very emotional," he said on his first day back at school.

Many of his pupils will never return. "They are missing, I felt their absence," he added.

The Taliban said the attack - the group's deadliest in Pakistan - was in response to a government offensive in North Waziristan and the nearby Khyber area that began in June 2014.

The school killings were condemned across the world, with US President Barack Obama saying terrorists had "once again shown their depravity". The Afghan Taliban also criticised the attack.

It's been a difficult day for many of the children and teachers who survived the Taliban attack.

Some had mixed feelings about going back to the school where they witnessed the massacre. Yet, most of them put on a brave face as they arrived at the school.

At the morning assembly, the mood was sombre. A ceremony was held to remember those who lost their lives, and students and parents were greeted by Pakistan's powerful army chief, Raheel Shareef.

He tried to reassure them that the government would do everything to protect their school.

After today's symbolic reopening of the school, classes are expected to resume from Tuesday.

Parts of the school have been repaired and repainted. But the main auditorium hall where most of the children were massacred remains closed.

But across the country, parents remain apprehensive about sending their children back to school.

In a country where fear stalks virtually every aspect of public life, something as simple as going to school has now become an act of courage and bravery.

Meanwhile, Pakistan's spy chief Razwan Akhtar met Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Sunday, during the intelligence chief's third trip to the country in recent months.

The meetings indicate more co-operation between the two countries which have frequently criticised each other on responses to tackling the flow of militants across their porous shared border.

Security has been stepped up at schools across the country since the attack.

The government has ordered institutions to do more to protect schoolchildren and audits have been carried out on hundreds of schools since 16 December, according to Pakistani media.

The school is near a military complex in Peshawar and many of the pupils that attend are the children of military personnel.

The city, close to the Afghan border, has seen some of the worst of the violence during the Taliban insurgency in recent years.

If anything, this is one of the instances that does make me question my beliefs regarding extremism (Which I know many of you feel is ridiculous) - especially after images that came from the attacks (One is spoilered below, due to being graphic).


No, I will not condemn the religion, nor the billion who practice it. But the monsters who use that religion to murder hundreds of children - they don't deserve to live.

I'm in that mood

Discuss, debate, while I run to the store.

On their Facebook

Oh, and Kevin Spacey won Best Actor for his role.

So....

If you were to, say, kill a Pidgey/Psyduck in the Pokemon world and eat it as food....does that count as murder? Are there rights to protect Pokemon? Do they have a PETA organization?

We must work to eradicate this infestation of penis lovers. Execute Order 69.

Not only are we going to work against Obama's EO, but also against those who came here as children (Illegally, but without a choice), and not prioritize violence illegals

WASHINGTON -- House Republicans are set to vote next week on a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security that will be coupled with a number of hard-line conservative measures going after President Barack Obama's central immigration policies. The bill is likely to set up a weekslong fight between Republicans and the president that could risk shutting down DHS at the end of next month.

The $39.7 billion DHS funding package was introduced on Friday, and will be coupled next week with amendments limiting the president's immigration authorities. One amendment is expected to block Obama's recently announced executive actions on immigration, which could give work authorization to up to 5 million people who are in the country illegally. Members said the legislation would also halt the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, which protects undocumented young people who came to the U.S. as children.

Along with those measures, members said the amendments would reinstate the controversial Secure Communities immigration enforcement program, which DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson announced would be ended late last year due to pushback from state and local officials. The package is also expected to do away with most of the "Morton Memos," guidance from Immigration and Customs Enforcement that instructs agents to focus deportation efforts on immigrants who are perceived as more dangerous or who have recently crossed the border illegally.

GOP members huddled on Friday morning to discuss the plan before it was introduced. The package pleased conservatives in the House, but is likely doomed in the Senate. Even if it passed in the upper chamber, though, the bill would almost certainly get a veto from the president.

Republicans said they were aware that their bill will face opposition from Obama and Democrats, but wanted to stake out their position early in the DHS funding process.

"We're starting from a conservative standpoint as opposed to negotiating with the Senate before we even pass a bill," Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), whose immigration bill will be partially integrated into the funding measures, told reporters after the House GOP conference meeting. "So we're starting from a very conservative aspect on this."

The bill could lose some GOP members, though likely not many. Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.) said he was "not happy with the current status of the bill," pointing specifically to the DACA provision.

"We've got to deal with immigration -- immigration as a whole, reforming our system across the nation," said Denham, who has opposed previous bills to end DACA. "Just picking on the children that came here through no fault of their own, I think, is the wrong way to start."

Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.), who supports the plan, said only a small group of House Republicans had expressed concern about the bill. He noted that all of the issues raised had been about the DACA provisions, not the strength of the bill overall. Almost everyone else is on board, he said.

"This is as close to 100 percent as we've ever gotten on a tough issue like this," Salmon said.

Moving forward with a DHS funding bill so early in the new Congress will allow ample time for negotiations, which could prevent a department shutdown. Some Republicans said that after Wednesday's terrorist attack in France, it would be the wrong move to threaten shutting down the Homeland Security department over the immigration issue.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said during a Thursday press conference that he does not expect that to happen, and that his conference would move forward with efforts to block Obama's executive actions on immigration.

"I don't believe that the funding of the department is, in fact, at risk," he said. "What is at risk is the rule of law and the sanctity of America's constitution. The president has taken actions that are beyond the scope of his ability and Congress cannot just sit here and look the other way."

Boehner, when asked whether House Republicans would ever pass a DHS funding bill that did not stop Obama's immigration actions, didn't give a yes or no answer.

There are "a lot of options available to us," he said. "When we pass our bill, we'll see what the Senate can do with it and then we'll act."

Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) said Friday that he had told fellow GOP members during the conference meeting that they needed to begin thinking about what the next step would be, once the Senate likely rejects the House bill. He said they will discuss the matter at a GOP retreat next week, which will take place after the vote on DHS funding.

Republicans, Labrador said, needed to "draw a line in the sand so the president understands he's putting the nation's national security at risk and he's putting illegal immigration ahead of people that are here legally."

Labrador said the most vital aspect for a final funding bill will be to go after the executive actions that the president announced late last year.

"It doesn't have to have all of these measures, but I think we need to roll back what [Obama] did in November," Labrador said.

Let me emphasize my point:

The Federal Government DOES NOT have the resources to arrest, put on trial, and deport (at a minimum) the 11 million estimated illegal immigrants in our country.

So, lets prioritize those who are violent, non-beneficial to society, or here solely to cause problems, and make it easier for those who had no choice in their coming here, or have been beneficial to American society, to become legal!

Emphasized enough?

Would you be devastated if we nuked your forum?

Buzzfeed is needed for such a laughable story

A decree Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed on Dec. 29 could ban transgender people from driving cars, along with others diagnosed with a long list of “disorders of sexual preference.”

The provision is part of a broad document outlining the medical conditions that disqualify people from driving or impose limitations on their driving rights. The list of “contraindications” to operating a vehicle includes blindness and epilepsy. But it also references a set of “mental and behavioral disorders” as defined by the World Health Organization, which include “gender identity disorders” such as “transsexualism” and “dual-role transvestism.” The order also encompasses “disorders of sexual preference,” including “sadomasochism,” “paedophilia,” and “exhibitionism.”

This provision seems to be a small step in the Russian government’s ongoing campaign against LGBT people, which began with the adoption of the so-called “homosexual propaganda” ban in 2013. The new rule, which implements a law titled “On Road Safety,” relies on the World Health Organization’s most recent manual for classifying illnesses, formally known as the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, commonly called the ICD-10.

The decree states that the listed mental and behavioral disorders can preclude driving if they are “chronic and prolonged,” with “serious” or “frequently exacerbated” symptoms. It covers a wide range of conditions on the IDC-10’s list of mental and behavioral disorders, including dementia, schizophrenia and mood disorders, but excludes others such as eating disorders, certain sleep disorders and nymphomania.

The ICD-10 does not classify homosexuality as a “disorder of sexual preference,” however, though someone who wishes to change their sexual orientation or gender identity “because of associated psychological and behavioural disorders” can be diagnosed as having a condition called “egodystonic sexual orientation.” Russian authorities often enforce provisions in a way that is much broader than a strict interpretation would allow, however, and this is unlikely to matter if officials seek to use this rule to prevent gays, lesbians, and bisexuals from driving.

The Association of Russian Lawyers for Human Rights said the decree “demonstrates bias against certain individuals and groups of citizens, as well as significantly restricting the rights and freedoms of citizens as a whole.”

gg Russia

Since several users have requested more communication as to what the site staff has been doing, figured it would be best to give you an update as to where we are with the update to the rules.

As of tonight, after a few weeks of discussion, the draft of the new rules has been created and further discussion will continue over the next couple of days. Overall, the rules are slightly more relaxed than what we have now, but not to an extreme degree.

We'll keep you posted until their release.

Obviously, free means coming from taxes

President Barack Obama announced his proposal Thursday to provide two years of free community college tuition to American students who maintain good grades.

“Put simply, what I’d like to do is to see the first two years of community college free for everyone who’s willing to work for it,” Obama said in a video filmed Wednesday aboard Air Force One and posted to Facebook. He made the announcement as part of his pre-State of the Union tour and will formally lay out the proposal Friday in a speech in Tennessee.

The White House estimated it would save the average community college student $3,800 annually and said it could benefit millions.

inb4 "He's destroying our country with communism!"