I've been saying this for years. I know every goddamn one of these events is a psyop because they never target anyone important. Blowing up 1000 civilians will never have the impact of directly targeting the leaders and oligarchs who orchestrated the proxy wars in syria, iraq, egypt, libya etc etc etc etc.

Say your motive was profiting off endless war and you have a weary public... Fear is a hell of a drug.

Orrrr it's just really difficult to pull off? How many times were the IRA trying to range mortars to drop on #10 or hotels

Terrorism as it is sold to us is fake. There are articles posted here daily that show most foiled plots were initiated by intelligence agencies themselves. Islamic terrorists are responsible for 6% of American terror related deaths and only 0.7% of those in Europe! The threat of Al Qaeda/ISIS is not real.

A while back someone posted a stand up comedian entertaining the subject and he posited (if I remember correctly - can't find he clip) that if terrorism was real a jihadist manning a food stand could take out more infidels with a tainted product than any of these hysteria events ever manage.

As a counterpoint to your last point, the purpose of terrorism is to cause terror. By having these high profile attacks, they do that more effectively than poisonings.

poisonings would cause more terror than a random attack

Wouldn't people just assume it was like a food borne illness? And then the perpetrators will say HA! GOTCHA! it would make them look silly, poisoning food. What's scarier, the potential that you or your family could eat a meal that could kill you? Or knowing that you could be gunned down or blown up any moment. Though there are deadly poisons they are probably harder and riskier to come by then guns, having to set up a cart, pass whatever regulations and get licenses you need to vend food, and even then what if you don't eat it? Or don't eat enough? Or let it sit and the poison is less potent. Bullets and explosions make death a lot more certain.

What if it's an aquifer?

There is a psychological difference between killing someone with poison and killing someone with guns and explosives. Poison is by nature subtle. It slips in secretly it does not make a loud crash and bang. Np matter how many people you poison, it will not make a huge bang on TV. Walking into a cafe and seeing body parts strewn, lakes of blood, and people In shock and agony will never happen with poison. The point is to induce fear, it is half a show, half actual threat and violence. They could have coordinated all 8 attackers together instead of multiple smaller separate attacks, but the point is to cause CHAOS.

Its another case of the simplest answer being the right one. The politicians are the terrorists.

Targeting high security targets makes it a risk. Unsuspecting, defenseless people? Much more likely to succeed.

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In most cases these people are willing to die, and they do die. How does risk have any impact in that kind of situation?

It's not personal risk. Attacking a heavily defended or secured target has a much higher risk OF FAILURE than a rock concert.

Being willing to die and being willing to die meaninglessly are not the same thing.

Attack politicians and politicians become paranoid.

Attack the population and the population becomes paranoid.

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When a politician is killed, the population will be upset but they won't think that they could be a victim. When civilians are killed, they become paranoid because they know that they could be the victim.

And then they completely accept security measures which take away civil liberties. It's circular logic. The motive is clear because it's become an achieved objective. Who really benefits from the Patriot act?

I doubt ISIS gives a fuck about security measures taking away civil liberties. The point is to divide the population. They attack civilians, those civilians react irrationally, and they start persecuting Muslims. Those Muslims who are being persecuted are then a lot easier for ISIS to recruit.

You are missing the point. It's not Daesh. Anymore than it was Al qaeda on 911. It's a history of criminality, the criminality being our government. That is who has the most to gain, the motive. That is where the weapons are coming from. That is where the destabilization occurs from.

Not really, if terrywrists went around killing politicians, i'd be pretty chill given i'm not a politician.

But they're going around killing regular folk.

With politician killings there's usually a very good reason why that particular person was targeted. Whereas with these killings, they're just picking randoms.

Why would the terrorists attack themselves?

Terrorism, by definition means violence used with the intent of changing the mind set of a given population. They certainly accomplished that, French bombs were dropping before the bodies were even cold.

Why ISIS would want to influence a population to support a war against themselves is another question...

I had an extremely similar thought just after I'd heard. Obviously I was appalled by the violence, but I also thought, "what dunces."

Europe is being invaded and conquered by "refugees" without a single shot being fired. If the goal of ISIS really is to restore and expand the caliphate, then if you ask me, continued patience is the logical path to achievement. In another five years, their numbers, coupled with Europe's demographic implosion, well, they could just ELECT to adopt sharia. An attack like this seems sloppy and boneheaded. Everyone knows what the only outcome could be: the West would unleash hell in response. When the sleeping bear you awaken is France (pardon me, but the country with more white flags than any other), it proves the point. Even the blind can see the paradox in strategy.

They've waited a thousand years; why now, after all this precious cultivation, could they not wait a little longer?

One of the terrorists was turned away trying to enter the stadium where President Hollande was watching the soccer game against Germany. Who knows if they knew he was there though.

This is true. However I believe this is to simply install fear into the politicians themselves. Distract them. You have 100 people dead in your area which you are representing, that's a lot on your plate. Killing a politician means another just like them will pop up.

There has not been a real terrorist attack in America in half a century. We cower in fear from people that will NEVER harm us in any tangible way. The people that are likely to harm you? Social workers, Police Officers, Correctional Officers, Employers, Doctors, National Guard, other drivers or Gangsters not fucking terrorists from the Near East. Its so obvious that we're being taken by the balls in this War on Terror. We've killed millions across the world to avenge the deaths of less than 5,000 American citizens over a mutli-decade period. That is some fucking evil, bullshit right there. Anyone who calls for the bombings of nations that don't fucking have the ability to send missiles our way is a party to that evil.

I saw some chart that show the cost of the security states response to terrorism. Their goal is to bankrupt us.

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Strange, I agree. However, I'll play devil's advocate just to try to eliminate other possibilities.

Perhaps it's because of the lack of challenge in attacking random, unsecure places. A group of people in a cafe or a bar are an easy target compared to a politician that has security around them LOOKING for the kind of people looking at or studying a target as well as carrying out an attack.

Also, attacking random citizens really accomplishes the "Terror" aspect of terrorism quite well. If politicians, who are notoriously hated by 50% of the community and untrusted by almost all, is killed a random citizen might not associate or even care. When it's random, indiscriminate, and takes place in locations where any "average" person might go, then that has an entirely different feel to it by the general public.

Just some thoughts.

Edit: How did I get a downvote in less than 30 seconds?

To me fighting a political war by attacking non-political targets is just stupid.
And there are more targets than just rulers and serfs you know. What about army bases, police stations, political buildings or simply infrastructure needed to sustain a country, like power stations, water treatment plants, food production plants or transportation of goods.
That is if one really wanted to cripple a country, yet all these supposed terrorists manage to do is blow up or shoot crowds of nobodies.

Well...in conventional warfare you would be absolutely correct. All of those things you mentioned would be high level targets. If country A is fighting country B. However, that's not what we have here.

Just look at it from their (the "Terrorists") perspective. We have a small group of extremely motivated people who sneak into another country and are limited to hand-to-hand combat skills, sharp weapons, guns, rudimentary bombs, and their faith. That's all they have. They sneak into someone else's country and MIGHT be able to gather some of those things back.

They can attack those things you mentioned but, without a standing army to reinforce the damage they've done, it's just a one off attack. That doesn't really do any good strategically. What does? Well...these days it's publicity. They're the living breathing externalization of the phrase "There's no such thing as bad PR." They WANT the world to know that they're attacking. Notice how highly public these targets are? Notice they are the first to raise their hand when a jetliner goes down? Notice they hang their flag when they attack (this happened in Sydney, not sure about Paris)? They are intentionally doing things as publically as possible to draw attention to their cause and recruit others to it.

I suppose the part that I've never understood (and indeed what makes me curious and to keep coming back to /r/conspiracy) is WHY they do these things when they know full well how technologically advanced their enemy is with surveillance and weaponry. They know first world governments will not hesitate to eradicate them. So why do it this way? That's the part that continues to confuse me. Perhaps they know they'll all die but they're playing the long game of hoping that their sacrifice in the name of their god will eventually inspire enough people to rise against the "infidels".

I get that. But as you say, it just garners more hate towards them. And if that hate grows big enough, the entire population will support whatever the establishment wants.
Just look at how the Americans were after 9/11, foaming at the mouth ready to slaughter whoever. Or what happened to the Japanese after Pearl Harbour (camps and all that).

Its just that, this kind of "attention" dies pretty quickly and requires multiple continuous attacks to keep going, and it requires the full force of the media to grow to such levels in the first place.

Their reasoning confuses me as well, there seems to be no other goal than to satisfy their revenge. Its like hate has infected them to the point that all they are able to think and do is "kill kill kill".

That is if all these events are actually done by people from the regions they claim to be. Which i personally doubt, i just look at who benefits the most and go with that.

Mb because someone read what u wrote and downvoted? is that impossible in 30 sec?

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Probably better to upvote when someone answers your question and contributes directly to the conversation you started as opposed to simply trying to shut out things that you don't agree with. Just a thought.

Anyway, I don't see what's not to "agree" with about what I've said. Terrorists choose to attack civilian populations because of the reasons I described...they're pretty obvious.

AFAIC, the question isn't whether or not I'm right or wrong it's whether or not your theory that there may be something more sinister behind the reason that it ALWAYS seems to be civilian attacks has any merit.

yes in America during the Church shooting a politician who had just met with Hillary Clinton, the youngest lack senator in his state was killed by the white kid.

Except for the whole part where the bombers who detonated right by the stadium were trying to get into it and the French president was there. He was clearly a target.

They want to terrorize, not get nuked.

exactly, killing proles only scares the proles

Stop saying that. Do you want to give those terrible terrorists any great ideas?

First, the politicians are not the ones making the decisions. They are talking heads who work for the real decision makers. Often, they do not even read the bills they vote on. They do not write the bills they put forth...

Second, the goal of terrorist attacks is to show that government of the country is incompetent because it is unable to protect its citizens from attack. Another goal is to disrupt economic life in the country.

Politicians are hard targets with security and schedules that are not always public. Civilians are easy to find and easy to kill. You're assuming there is only one type of attack that is possible.

To see a terrorist attack targeting politicians family's look at what happened in Norway a few years back.

Terrorism by definition is the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims. You can't have that by killing off the puppet politicians that actually make the political change.