Attacks in Paris

it occurs to me that, dreadful and shocking though the atrocities in France are, the life - and death - of westerners is somehow of greater value and importance than that of others. We should also remember the bombings and shootings of innocent people in countries a bit further away. We are all human beings after all, and we should not forget it.

We do remember them, and have just had a thread where we talked about them.

Good post POGS.

I think between the two of them POGS and Luckygirl have just about summed it up for me, especially POGS' comments about NATO and the list of three requirements or conditions from Luckygirl.

Thank you Anya, POGS and Luckygirl - for such measured and succinct responses - well thought out, well written and, I'm sure - well received by many on here.

"We are all groping in the dark trying to find a civilised way of dealing with IS"
I'm not. I can think of several ways of dealing with the evil bastard.

First find your "bastard" petra.

Very good post Luckygirl.
But when we have had a thread before[I cant remember if I started it or not, I think I did], about
^ and it is through our intelligence services that we will defeat them.^
there were very few people, if I remember correctly, who would shop their family member to the police if they thought they were up to all sorts.
In my opinion, unless people would do that, it is going to make it that much harder, and that much slower to catch them.

David Cameron is talking about the legality of military action now on the BBC news.

Watch Camerons 'Statement on the G20 and Paris Attacks' in Parliament yesterday if you want to know what has been said by both the ' Cameron and the Opposition Benches' if you are interested. It was yesterday.

Interesting stuff if you like to keep up with the truth and like to work things out for yourself and not rely on commentators/ spin/ political bias.

DC is quite entitled to go ahead off his own bat, regardless what parliament think about it. Wonder if he would?

No I doubt it .

I think the work has to be done on the Labour benches to gain enough votes but there is too much argy bargy going on between them at the moment so he would probably not get the support.

It is still the case this should be a UN backed coalition and it is getting closer but not quick enough. Only then might enough Labour MP's and Tory rebels back the fight into Syria.

Cameron would be defeated at the moment and without support he will have to let others do it without full UK support.

stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news/john-pilger-the-root-causes-of-terrorism-and-what-we-can-do-about-it

Have you been on a retreat as well, durhamjen?

Thought we'd been rather link-free recently...

djen you're back!! are you OK?

Hello Jen, nice to see you back, I have missed your links but I forgive you - John Pilger

I think this is a bit different, though.
That was blatant interference in a foreign country, whereas this is becoming more widespread than just Syria and Iraq.
Who can blame the French, the Russians, for not wanting to sit idly on their hands?

On the same website, John Prescott talks about how we never learn from history. Pilger shows the parallels. He is not just talking about US invasions of foreign countries. Isn't it that it only seems different because it is closer to us?

For those who really have missed my links.

stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news/don-t-attack-syria-says-tony-blair-s-deputy-prime-minister-john-prescott

"the greater the hostility toward Muslims in Europe and the deeper the West becomes involved in military action in the Middle East, the closer ISIS comes to its goal of creating and managing chaos." Paris: The War ISIS Wants
"What many in the international community regard as acts of senseless, horrific violence are to ISIS’s followers part of an exalted campaign of purification through sacrificial killing and self-immolation. This is the purposeful violence that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State’s self-anointed Caliph, has called “the volcanoes of Jihad”—creating an international jihadi archipelago that will eventually unite to destroy the present world to create a new-old world of universal justice and peace under the Prophet’s banner. "

Durhamjen!!! You're back!!
Have you been away or just offline?

Neither, thanks for asking, Alea. Just thought I ought to get to bed earlier for a while.
Being a pacifist, I did not see any point in joining in some conversations. I see no point in arguing about the best way to kill people.

"I’ve been called a lot of things in the past few days, many of them deserved. “Leftie wanker”. “Islam apologist”. “Unfunny **.” I’ve also been called a “traitor” and even worse, “un-Australian.”

Here’s why I don’t think those last two apply.

Earlier this year I was invited to an Australia Day drinks function at the Australian High Commission in London. As the beer flowed and the lamingtons were passed around I found myself in deep conversation with a variety of governmental experts on The Middle East and in particular, Syria.

As this was a few weeks after the Charlie Hebdo attacks I took the opportunity to find out all I could about this so-called Islamic State group.

I learned a lot of things that night, but the one that stood out was this: Islamic State need recruits and they have two steps to get them.

1) Create an uprising against Muslims in the West by carrying out attacks in the name of Allah.
2) Then when young Muslims feel rejected by Western society, make ISIS look like a cool alternative.

Please remember, this was all expressed to me by officials of both the Australian and British Governments.

It seemed to me that a good way of combatting this would be 1) be nice to non-ISIS related Muslims (ie the vast majority of Muslims) and 2) make ISIS look like idiots.

I ran this past my friends at the High Commission, who agreed that this was indeed a good thing to do."

This is by Adam Hills, on The Last Leg.
It's not the humour that is important, but what he was told by high ranking officials in both the UK and Australian government.

Talk of World War III and a global caliphate, whether here or in the knee-jerk media, seems disproportionate. Of course beheadings, bombs and mayhem are atrocious, horrifying and even frightening. However, I can't help wondering if the underlying plan to this awful event might have been a mistaken belief that France would duplicate Spain's reaction in the days after the Madrid bombings and withdraw from military participation against IS.

I think too that we should remember that IS is not a state, whatever it wants to call itself. It is a well-funded terrorist organisation, but does not have the resources to become a state or caliphate. Hence comparions with Nazi Germany really don't wash. It also has a habit of claiming responsibility for every act of lunatic violence across the globe, whether committed by freelance Islamist extremists sympathetic to the cause or by others with absolutely no connection to Islamic extremism thus "enhancing" estimates of its membership and reach.

However, I can't help wondering if the underlying plan to this awful event might have been a mistaken belief that France would duplicate Spain's reaction in the days after the Madrid bombings and withdraw from military participation against IS.

I disagree, absent. I don't believe the IS organisation is that naive.

I do agree that comparisons with Nazi Germany aren't helpful or realistic though.

We knew we were at war with Germany, one country, but with Syria we could be talking of war with the middle east