Attacks in Paris

Looking forward, Bruce, rather than backward, I have highlighted your two, very valid points.

In your opinion, what is the "root cause" and (far more importantly) how would you set about tackling it ?

Also, in your opinion, what is the reason "why" there is a problem .

Finally, who are the "real powers of this world" ?

Please note, I have avoided asking your opinion as to "who" is the problem.

Perhaps others would offer their opinion as to the root cause and (far more importantly) how it might be resolved.

" Root" races are always in Conflict - it is its nature. If you feel that you are more than that - show an example."

Hi Kev.

I do love your cut through stance on this, and you are right it goes back a millenium this and actually the more you read about it, the more difficult it gets to see a remotely obvious solution.

I do find the honourable gentleman Mr Corbyns retoric on the subject of Jihadi John strangely amusing. In fact I would quite happily have paid for a one-way ticket for him to personally go and arrest John himself. It could prove the old saying wrong, that ' You cannot put an old head on a young mans shoulders' ! Doh Peter

Solidarite

You misunderstood my post Joerand. I was referring to the building / development process of the European Union and the current discussion over here in Europe as to whether the Schengen Agreement can be maintained long term in the face of the large number of refugees coming into Europe. This was what George eluded to, if I am not mistaken.

Unfortunately the US have not been very good at learning from past mistakes, nor have they moved forward in the best manner on numerous past occasions, the fall out from the Iraq war included.

Bruce, I  second your unsparing assessment completely and find it encouraging to hear an American owe up to his countries responsibilities. It's probably fair to say that most Europeans share that view. 

Best

tp

Bruce ain't an American AFAIK tp. I think he was commenting on Blair's duping the UK into the war in Iraq with good ole GW.

Indeed - and I doubt there are that many Americans living in North Yorkshire who enjoy playing cricket in the rain.

I share Bruce's sentiments though.

In 2011 the President of the United States of America declared that Syria was a threat for the security and interests of USA.

I thought: here we go again!

And suddenly isis appears on tvs and newspapers while nobody in the streets knew that it was already "working" in the area and its primary goals were Sirya gevernement and iran defeat.

USA fought 2 wars in Irak and one in Afghanistan is still on.

I thought: well they got Saddam and Osama. They will close the match against isis in a couple of weeks.

No way.

Then i started watching carefully the images taken to isis "troops" and i started wondering how and where all those brand new 4X4 trucks came from.

And i started wondering who organized and feed such an immense LOGISTIC net of fuel, food. ammos, spares while they do not even have a solid air support.

They got Saddam and Osama so they will be able to trace the routes of the tankers that take away all that oil from occupied fields that somebody somewhere buy.

No way.

Not to mention the black market of stolen pieces of art somebody else again buy.

An "army" of PAID bent tramps with no air force support, no satellites, no intelligence.......

Suddenly Syria and Irak ask for russian help and russian analysts declare that isis can be put on knees in about 30 days.

Russia, which is the only one legitimate foreing force on Syria ground, start bombing the so called sysrian rebels and isis positions and suddenly hundreds of the tramps above start running away leaving the front and weapons.

Suddenly the Ukranian mess goes into an escalation and turn into a real war that nobody knows a thing about and while USA keeps on feeding ukranian "governement" and Chevron makes an offer to buy the state gas pipes recently privatized.

Germany sends weapons to Kurds.

Hollande bombs isis then goes to Moscow with Merkel.

Germany and France got punished.

Volkswagen tells you nothing?

I think that what happened yesterday was another warning to europe (so called) and it will be not the last.

I think to understand the resentment i hear and read even here.

Please do not make the mistake to define all Muslims nazis because that's exactly the thing some want you to think.

The effect they wanted to get.

Think instead of the nazi battalions (hundreds and hundreds) that are fighting on ukranian ground against Russia and that are feeded by the governement which has been bought by another country.

Please turn your head from south to east.

To Ukraine, Latvia and Poland.

Who knows something about nazis in Latvia?

Because if some talk about third world war well it started there and nuclear choice is not so far as somebody could think.

David Icke had it right from the beginning.

You are right on every point Gianluigi...

Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey are funding ISIS, and the USA/NATO refuse to bomb ISIS supply lines and oil fields or freeze the assets of those who buy oil from ISIS. The USA/NATO insist Assad must go, while Putin maintains the Syrian people should be the ones to choose who governs Syria. Russia has done more in the past few weeks to degrade ISIS than the USA/NATO has done since 2012. Go figure. US foreign policy is the real problem in the ME/Levant/North Africa.

But you won't read any of this in the MSM...

BBM 

Moderated Post:  I have made a couple of small edits.  You know why...

Whatever the old historical causes and tribal and religious hatred, whatever the more recent political mistakes of some Western governments, we have to deal with the situation as it is today.  These barbarians are hell bent on bringing death and terror to innocent civilians in the West and they are not interested in negotiations or political solutions.  They understand only the currency that they seek to meat out to others: violence and death.  Academic debates, hand-wringing and ‘statements’ about our resolve etc will not deter them. So I think I’m with Kevin-W on this. 

The Western governments, including Russia if willing, need to put to one side their political differences, disputes and national ‘agendas’ and act as one to exterminate this menace. And I mean exterminate.  If there was the strength of resolve of western governments to do this sufficient troops and military might could be mustered to clean this up in months. It wouldn’t be pretty but it could be effective.

I know that's a reaction probably influenced by an emotional reaction to these awful events but I sense that these barbarians prey on the tolerance and measured actions of the democracies and maybe we now need to act with ruthless single-mindedness using the huge military and economic resources at our disposal.   

M

My point about Jihadi John was not that he shouldn't have been killed, but rather (a) in the big picture it affects essentially nothing, so why gloat about it, and (b) no sooner does this clown (BHO) bask in the sun of accomplishing essentially nothing and proclaims ISL/ISIS "under control" and they pull off the biggest coordinated terror attack since 9/11 the very next day. 

And as for this suddenly increased refugee stream.  Why the sudden massive increase now?  (Well, Libya is pretty obvious.  Send your thank you cards to The White House, Washington, D.C.; you can send one to NATO HQ also...although that is pretty redundant.)  Why not 2 years ago?  Whatever you want to say about the ISIS crew; the are vile, despicable, and evil, but they are NOT stupid.  Why wouldn't they take advantage of this wave of humanity to gain a foothold in the EU?  Assuming they are availing themselves of the opportunity (and I cannot see why they wouldn't) I am sure they would comprise a very small percentage of the total mass immigrating.  But to pretend that this is not something that they can see as an opportunity. Well, like I said, they are not stupid, and to think they wouldn't use it is pretty naive.

I personally have met a family of Syrian refugees who have fled to Moscow two years ago.  The woman wasn't running from Assad, nor was she even running from ISIS (who wasn't as big a player then.)  She was getting herself and her daughters away from US drones and "moderate rebels" that were shooting and blowing things up in the region where she lived.  She didn't want to leave, but sanity and safety dictated that she had to.  Any loving parent would have given the chance.

Syria is all about the US wanting a gas pipeline from Qatar to Turkey, and blocking the pipeline from Iran through Iraq through Syria.  I don't think the timing of arming "moderate rebels" (another total line of bullsh*t exposed by the recent Russian air attacks) back in 2013 was a coincidence. It happened right when these pipeline deals were squashed and made, respectively.

And of course this is all geared towards hamstringing Russia.  Pretty much everything the US State Department does is about Russia.  If curing cancer or ending world hunger would help Russia, you can rest assured the US would be against it.  And we have gone over 15 years of active meddling in the ME region with nary a single demonstrable success. 

And as for Russia, they had better brace themselves for similar activity as seen in Paris, because it is pretty obvious they have gone and pissed ISIS off.  Of course the DC crowd won't care too much if 100+ Slavs get killed - they only got what was coming to them.

Kevin asks for a solution?  Best I can come up with (and it is far from a perfect answer) is (a) pull militarily out of the middle east, (b) tell Western companies who are there they are free to continue to do business there at their own risk, and (c) severely curtail and limit immigration from those countries until there is some level of stabiltiy in the region. 

But I know this can't really happen, because it would leave WAY too much of the world's total fossil fuel resources in the hands of countries that we have been sh*tting on (and let's face it, the world still runs on hydrocarbons), and the US oil lobby would never allow it...and Israel would have a fit.  And the vacuum we have created is simply a disaster; many innocent brown people will die (and have already), which just doesn't seem to bother a lot of folks as it does when white people die.

Very sad and interesting times we live in.  When will it go nuclear?  I am afraid in one way or another it is only a matter of time.  Way too many arseholes running things on all sides to think we can dodge that bullet forever.

re your first point, I haven't seen any signs of gloating over here.

Cameron and Obama both used it to make the point about how effective they have been in combating ISIS...only to have it shoved up their ass the next day.  Damn fools. Jihadi John vs 129 (at this present count) Parisians.  Good trade.  (Sarcasm.)

Not only are they ineffective, but it is their policy that has caused them to be in the position they are.

I'm surprised BHO doesn't need shoulder surgery as much time as he spends patting himself on the back.  OTOH, Bush was too stupid to find his back.

Perhaps the Muslim community could speak out like this more often.

https://www.facebook.com/TheBr...eos/313288765548660/

tp,

I think I got your post. I used the specific statement from you above only as a prompt for my response and purposely removed your name from the quote as I didn't think it represented your overall intent. My point being there will never be an end of the road to human conflict. Hopefully, the pavement will get smoother over time, but bombs keep putting potholes in the way.

What the above comments seem conveniently to ignore is that, as was suspected right from the start, the attacks were probably perpretated by French citizens.

It may be a war - but you need soldiers to fight a war, and there's an endless supply of young, disaffected, crazy, potential soldiers in Europe - who don't even understand what it's all about, who couldn't care less about what happened in the 6th or 10th century... but who are prepared to kill and maim young innocents.

That will have to be addressed as well - and that's not "hand-wringing", as some of you suggest, it's just being pragmatic.

How to stop the alienation and disaffection? (I'm not being funny, clever or sarcastic).

Chris

Saw this to-day and thought it needed saying too.

Well, Chris, perhaps making sure that everyone has a stake in our society is one way to start. I am aware that this may appear naive to some who will brand me and people like me as "bleeding hearts"...

And, BigH47, yes, it does need saying - I'm not good at all at "praying", but I get the meaning.

Not to me.

C.

Whilst a laudable aim, unfortunately you can't eliminate those problems: Here's just one of the reasons...

In any society there will always be some people who have the potential to express ASPDs (e.g. psychopathy or sociopathy).

Some of these won't show anti-social behaviour patterns and some will, but all of them will feel alienated.

Some of those who do show anti-social behaviour patterns will always be disafected no matter what the circumstances.

Some of those who do show anti-social behaviour patterns will show them in a violent manner.

They just need a trigger and a path to follow and they will go to extreme behaviour without conscience or other constraint.

Rather than attempting to completely stop the alienation and disaffection of individuals in society (which I believe is impossible to achieve as shown above), we need to minimise it's effects.  Where that approach fails, we still need to be able to contain the resultant anti-social behaviour patterns.

The assumption is that certain groups 'want' whatever our society is offering. Islamic State do not waste ammunition blowing up ancient monuments because they don't want tourists to come, it's about an intolerant ideology. Whether there is any connection between disaffection and the killings remains to be seen.

Well said.  To solve the problem we need to consider both sides.