…
Paris is under seige — Multiple terrorists arrived with AK 47s and bombs strapped to themselves in six separate attacks. The latest toll is 153 127 dead, and France has closed its borders. Our thoughts go out to the victims of these pointless atrocities, to all of their friends and families, and to all of France, in shock.
The Bataclan concert hall was attacked and people taken hostage, “at least 112” killed. A SWAT team arrived and over 100 hostages were released. A suicide bomber attacked the Stade de France (the national stadium). President Holland had to be evacuated. There are gun attacks as well. There are reports of 14 people killed by gunshot at Le Petit Cambodge, a Cambodian restaurant.
Information from the CNN live update page.
Sky news Paris ‘bloodbath’ kills at least 160
UPDATE: Islamic State (ISIL) have claimed responsibility.
UPDATE: Death toll appears to be 127 plus 200+ injured, 99 critically.
Graphic sad stories in The Telegraph are rolling in.
With between forty and fifty thousand people converging on Paris in two weeks to start the UNFCCC COP21 meeting the obvious question is security and safety of everyone. WattsUp points out some journalists are asking if Paris will still host the climate talks. I find it hard to believe that massive conference-junket would be changed now, though some attendees will be feeling very anxious and some will drop out. Security will obviously be ramped up, but if every restaurant is a target, how safe can safe be? I expect the leaders could be closeted away in a secret location — the rest of the conference was mostly a cabaret. Given the size of the “theatre” and the heavy media presence that would be much more difficult to manage.
Anthony Watts so aptly quotes Obama, April 2015: “There is no greater threat to our planet than climate change”
I know this is a hot topic, please keep comments constructive and bear in mind this is primarily a science blog with volunteer moderators.
UPDATE: From The Wall St Journal / Australian
But today’s shootings and explosions across Paris illustrate the difficulty authorities in France and elsewhere face in containing a diffuse but deadly terror threat.
They also underscore the security challenge France will face when a global summit on climate change begins at the end of the month. The government this week decided to restore border checks during the summit, the first time it has taken that step in years. Over 100 world leaders are expected to attend the opening of the summit.
* The headline originally said “over 150 killed” but was revised 10 hours later to reflect updated numbers.
Security in Paris in top tourist areas and known trouble area is very good. These attacks were in less well known areas. I expect the suicide bombers targeted the football game as guns would not get through especially with the President in attendance. You have to wonder if the big current meeting about Syria, far more important than the Global Warming games, was the real target of this.
As Tony Abbott says, a death cult but more importantly an armageddon cult using brutal murder of civilians to prod countries in to the battle to end all battles, a battle they expect to win. That is why they provoked Jordan, Japan, the US, France, Russia and the UK with videos of brutal murders. The death cult wants this huge battle in Syria, so it is all about generating outrage, like the kindergarten slaughter in Beslan or the plane bombings in the Ukraine or recently over Saudi or the Opera house slaughter in Moscow or the bombing of the Boston Marathon or even our own televised murder in a chocolate shop.
Only Tony Abbott can deal with this. Our do nothing apologist Malcolm will want to talk to people and counter the rhetoric of the Islamic extremists at Friday prayers. He should read more about muslim extremists and why they think death and suicide bombers are a great idea.
—
Commenters please bear in mind that
no group has claimed responsibility. UPDATE: ISIS have. thanks Peter. — Jo542
I am happy for this comment to go into moderation. The subject is extreme and I do not care if the comment is not published but this is not going to go away by wishing it away.
370
I concur with your angst TdeF, if you used the “I” or “M” word that’s probably what set off the auto filter, I propose we use ‘[snip, 18C]’ for the name that shall not be spoken.
Remember Jo runs a science blog and despite what slander the left MSM has flung at Jo and David they simply are not the right wing nutjobs that is alluded to, and as such don’t care to taint the strong essential scientific work already undertaken by them.
381
There is no true freedom of speech in Australia.
743
When it comes to free speech, as my old German mother used to say “wer das Kreuz hat segnet sich”.
I would be happy to see something like a 1000 year penalty period imposed on warmists to repay them for their suppression of science, but I’m a big softy when it comes to free speech. Most people would just prefer permanent prohibition of ideas which differ from theirs.
And if they’ve got the power to do it, just remember, wer das Kreuz hat segnet sich.
(Approximately- “the one holding the cross blesses himself ” – but it’s much more poetic in German. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a much better translation than mine.)
180
Maybe:
blessed are those who are persecuted
Buddhism has a similar concept.
It may hurt to hear what they are saying, but we can grow from that experience.
KK
120
That’s only the ones who are persecuted for righteousness’s sake. It’s OK to persecute the warmists- they won’t be blessed for it, nor will they inherit the kingdom of heaven.
122
Am I outraged? Yes
Am I shocked? No – it is just another example of what this brand of zealotry has been doing for centuries.
Zealots are evil regardless of their flavour because they believe they have the moral right to impose their version of reality on everyone else. These particular zealots are just more direct in their violence as opposed to collectivists that use bureaucrats to cause the deaths of others.
210
But somehow, Keith, the persecuted don’t feel so blessed. Do they? They just suffer as did so many in Paris yesterday.
Whether it’s the heavy hand of government imposing regulations and prohibitions or terrorists, they just suffer.
60
Gnome,
Since you use the Bible as an authority let us all note that it’s not OK to persecute anyone. We may prosecute those who commit violations of our laws and we may conduct war against those who make war on us. But we may not persecute anyone, no matter who it is.
To persecute is to give up our own right to be free of persecution. “As you meet out, so shall you receive.”
70
Roy the whole thing is a tragedy.
My apologies to Gnome because he started out with a quote about free speech and I think I might have led into a change of emphasis to include physical persecution.
Looking at the tv reports last night was disturbing because Europe opened its doors and money bins to help and are now paying a huge price.
There will be a lot of social disorder before this is settled.
Politicians have no right to give away the work and effort of those who elect them in the manner adopted by so many pollies these days.
I think Europe is about to change.
KK
70
Only the “Lefties”could do this and not see anything wrong with it.
20
We do not even know one way or the other if the shooters were among those who entered as refugees. According to news I’ve seen, at least one of them came into France by way of Greece with a legitimate passport and visa. Or at least one that was good enough to not get challenged.
As for the policy you mention. It appears that Jo doesn’t want it discussed in any detail on her blog. I don’t know for sure but a comment of mine went into moderation that I thought was innocuous enough to satisfy anyone.
The thing is a great tragedy and when I saw news of it on TV I was livid with anger at those who did it. And that’s about all I know at this point.
10
I note you’re a pretty keen censor yourself Jo, whenever someone touches a nerve on this blog they are quickly “moderated”. My comments are often removed because of some inconvenient facts even though they have been perfectly reasonable and not in any way ad hominem. Probably like this one will be. Free speech? Not here.
461
Sure FIN, that’s why we’ve published 299 (count them) of your petty, repetitive comments eh. Most of your material is like this one above: hijacking the top of the thread for your own narcissistic glory, cowardly anonymous (you don’t even stand by your own words) and irrelevant. Even though you have no point, are not a victim of censorship, let alone terrorism, you are OK to use the deaths of innocents to try to score a PR point. Says it all.
If you had evidence, you’d start your own blog.
814
Ouch Jo!
Somebody make sure there’s a Safe Space for FIN to hide in until he stops sucking his thumb.
261
Sad.
Controlled.
Drone.
FIN
The End.
163
I hope so.
91
So called “free speech” should have some limits; very clear ones such as “shouting fire in a theatre”, hate speech – clearly defined again such as advocating violence against identifiable groups & genocide etc, and anything else could be settled in the courts under the libel and slander laws. Of course, I would also rely on common sense but as my late father used to say “common sense is never common”; and I add neither is common courtesy.
71
Sometimes a little courtesy can go a long way in avoiding conflict. But the terrorists appear to lack any concept of courtesy.
100
Maybe because they lack a “Brain”
10
Jo, no freedom of speech in America either. Our country and Constitution are suffering. Our university campuses are suffering the greatest fascist & communist activities that we have ever seen and our national government is condoning and encouraging it for political gain of the radical leftists.
40
The BBC headline I read stated: Paris attack.
Paris didn’t attack. It was [snip, 18C]. Thanks for the word that won’t get me moderated!
[Yes it will. Please do not use it.] AZ
262
I have been listening to the BBC news for over an hour and not once has the Voldemart word been uttered.
I almost surprised the BBC has not yet found someone prepared to justify this horrific attack on ‘the victims of climate change’.
Unfortunately, it would be too much to expect the Parisites to have the decency to cancel their pointless and expensive jamboree later this month, in recognition of the fact the world is facing some very real problems, as opposed to the imaginary ones they are promoting.
In reality, the name Paris reminds us we now have two dangerous groups who share the same ideal of returning humanity to the lifestyles endured in medieval times, through their shared obsessions in deeply flawed beliefs.
300
Think of the massive security that will be sucked up to look after the climate glitterati.
Security that could be better used protecting the French people.
But as we know about the climate glitterati… THEY JUST DON’T CARE!
181
Yes, you’re right – they’d actually just started deploying thousands more police around Paris in preparation for COP (out) 21. There’s a pun there somewhere…
As it is, I live in what is still seen as the Jewish area of paris, and there are armed soldiers out the front of the synagogue, and positioned along various streets in the area. The same thing applies to the touristy areas of Paris. The metro system is considered to be a military asset, and routinely has squads of armed soldiers patrolling it, along with the police, the transport security people (also armed). (There is something very funny about seeing a FAMAS-wielding soldier momentarily defeated by a stubborn ticket turnstile…).
The 10th and 11th arrondissements are not ‘touristy’, and not known for their religious affiliations. I’ve seen more police routinely wandering the streets all over Paris than I ever did in any city in Australia, but, sadly, as with other things (think ATMs, service stations, taxis…), there never seem to be any around when you really need them. (though I do not know what sort of response time there was from the police during these attacks, so I am not passing judgement here)
90
I was just having a conversation with a friend about that term and what does it mean.
What do you mean, specifically, when you use the term “right wing nut job”?
Thanks
10
ISIS have now claimed responsibility. So this is now known to be a terrorist atack by Islamic fundamentalists. The way things are in Europe we will be very fortunate if this is the last such attacks in European countries. It is going to be very hard to contain the anger of the Europeans, who no doubt, are beginning to realise that the left wing multiculturism that has been foisted on them is not going to bring the idilic outcome that Merkle and others promised.
It is very sad.
500
I see the I word has got me into moderation, for the first time. Sorry about that, but the facts are now being published.
290
Small correction, Peter. The media are claiming that it was ISIS, because that word has become the media code for anybody bad, who does not worship like us.
The real terrorist group, from the Eastern end of the Mediteranean goes by the name of ISIL, where the “L” stands for Levant. See: http://www.luventicus.org/asia/levant/map.html
190
Thank you, RW. I stand corrected. Actually I don’t care what they are called – I know what they are!
120
I confess I’m not clear about any difference between ISIS and ISIL. I’m no wiser after following your link.
But I am pleased to call them DAESH, because apparently the name “delegitimises the organisation, mocks them, and thus drives them to threaten taking violent retribution on anyone who uses it.”
I use this as my source for this claim :
https://www.freewordcentre.com/blog/2015/02/daesh-isis-media-alice-guthrie/
Go thou and do likewise 🙂
100
The ‘S’ comes from Al-Shams, which is Arabic for the Levant. So both versions of the acronym are the same. But some Western outlets translate the ‘S’ as Syria, which is not entirely correct.
Obama likes to use ISIL, because it confirms that ISIS claims rights over Israel as well as Syria. And Obama would do anything to undermine Israel.
110
Leo,
There is no difference. They are one and the same. Like many other groups they began calling themselves one thing and then changed to calling themselves a new name. That is all that happened.
By way of protest (a very small and insignificant protest) I have refused to call them ISIL thus refusing to grant them the legitimacy they so dearly want. I wish everyone would do the same — they are not legitimate when they commit atrocities of the kind we all have seen.
120
@Leo,
I read something along the same lines. Apparently calling them [snipped, 18C] really, really pisses them off.
I have found my new “Word of the Day” and will endeavor to use when ever, where ever I can.
[Please do not use it. Thanks.] AZ
50
I think the following piece in The Age is well worth reading. Written by a Frenchman who has lived in Oz for 2 decades and raised his kids here:
http://www.theage.com.au/world/paris-attacks-frances-homegrown-terrorists-product-of-poverty-and-prejudice-20151115-gkzm8s.html
This is going to happen again and again (in France) unless they can reverse the situation which took decades to establish. I think there is no easy solution.
30
Bulldust
That’s an excellent article; it has good perspective on the world today.
Sadly the ideas put by that author relate not only to the French Immigrants post WW11 but to Australia as well.
We have a reasonably well educated young population with nowhere to go and a fantastic drinking culture to fill the gap.
Since the social security epidemic that began in Australia in the mid 1970s there has been an increased reliance on buying votes with
“government money” even if they have to borrow to keep going.
The only thing that will save Australia and France from the situation is to have politicians who plan and implement measures which keep
everybody contributing to the community in a very disciplined way.
Our governments could make jobs but don’t have the political guts to make the changes.
They would lose votes.
We are in a bind. It may be good to be on the dole but only for a few months.
As your article clearly shows, everybody wants to be part of the community and contribute.
We have all been let down by politicians with no guts, no vision, no ability and no real interest in anything but getting re-elected as
many times as it takes to qualify for their Parliamentary Superannuation.
Unfortunately you have hit on the solution to many of the world’s problems but it will take politicians of gigantic intellect to bring
us back to centre where everybody contributes and feels better for it.
KK
00
Only a few hours earlier our Malcolm was distancing himself from Tony Abbott’s advice on illegal migrants given in his Margaret Thatcher Lecture speech 2 1/2 weeks ago, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
490
This is terrible and I absolutely despise terrorists of any ilk, but, I have to admit I am surprised that they did not delay 2 weeks so as to have a larger international impact when the “climate conference” is on. Regardless, it is long past time for all responsible people to stand together against terrorism.
60
Any innocents killed in cowardly attacks is a tragic unnecessary loss, my heartfelt sorrow goes out to those that fell and endured.
This could possibly be the start or catalyst of direct warfare in the cities and homes of those that thought open fighting was confined to other countries, hopefully the almost suicidal rush in embracing an open borders ideal will be quickly discarded, unfortunately the thousands of young, fit, of fighting age men that make up 80% of these “poor” refugees will not be so enthusiastic to leave after reaching their objective, good luck Europe.
350
Tragic circumstances – my condolences are extended to the French people.
One hope is that this results in a more true context being given to the real, big-ticket threats facing our planet. Climate change certainly needs to be moved to a much lower place on that list.
361
Correction:
Much, much, lower.
110
Clear off the list entirely, never to be seen again.
100
This is tragic. Maybe now the world will see what’s really important. People or mythical threats of the end of the world.
Wake up world, see what is happening, unless action is taken now it’s going to get worse – and I don’t mean climate change.
492
So Ms Red thumb, 160 dead and many more injured is not Tragic hey, and literally millions of unchecked people flooding across Europe is not going to facilitate more attacks by these nutcases?
Not very bright are you Ms Red Thumb?
411
I guess you struck a very sensitive nerve, Bob. I wonder at someone who can’t tolerate a statement of the truth such as yours. I really do not understand that mindset.
112
I wonder what “They”will do when the people we can’t mention,come for them,as they will.
10
bobl
Don’t forget it is only a little over a week ago that the Russian plane was bought down ( almost certainly by a bomb).
It is interesting the difference in the media coverage. So as others have said, ISSIS is after high media coverage so the security people would have to be thinking the next attack ( which will happen) would be in a very public built up area.
180
@Ross
Maybe so. It will be interesting to see what the Europeans (French) do. Especially in the face of COP21.
However, the response of the French and the Russians will be two completely different things. Most of the people on the plane where Russians. When it is proved it was a bomb and deliberate, I have little doubt those responsible will be reduced to a thin red paste.
40
I believe Al Gore had to call off his 24hour Goreathon re 0.04% of CO2 in the atmosphere when confronted by the elephant in the room:
http://www.thewrap.com/paris-attacks-al-gore-cancels-24-hour-eiffel-tower-climate-telethon-out-of-solidarity/
Makes Tony Abbotts policies on both strike a chord of realism.
381
Now is the time to be asking gore what is the greatest threat, and if it is global warming, why he responded to the lesser threat by suspending his warnings of the greater threat.
Of course he’s only a pollie, so he will say something stupid which will fall into the classification of “plausible deniability”. That’s worked ever since Kissinger took the “plausible” out of it.
172
I don’t know the real reasons, so I am merely speculating, but Gore strikes me as the type of person who made a very public point of cancelling this simply to draw attention to his cause.
As others have said, those with their snouts in the COP-21 trough, and those who variously hate humanity, and/or ‘Western’ countries, are likely to be undeterred from their regressive crusade by recent events.
100
Just how can you comment on something like this, and remain within the confines of political correctness.
Can you imagine something like this happening during the COP21? It would be unmitigated disaster on a number of fronts.
It would distract from the conference mainly, and this happening now probably will anyway.
I wonder now if some delegations are thinking again about attending, and for safety reasons, I can now see some of the security organisations asking for smaller delegations and tighter security measures.
It’s a terrible thing to happen, I know, and the UN is probably right now working on what this means for their Conference.
Even so, I cannot imagine those terrorist organisations actually planning something like this for the the time during the conference, and I might even guess that this was timed for around now, because at the time of the conference, then security would be infinitely tighter on every front.
Tony.
[“Just how can you comment on something like this, and remain within the confines of political correctness.”
You managed it very well and with one of the most thoughtful comments. I can’t help commending you for your restraint and attention to the relevance to cop21.] AZ
422
It doesn’t work like that. It clearly doesn’t matter to these people who gets killed. While the faithful will be tightly ensconced in their dragnet fortified compound with half the french military busy protecting them who is going to protect the rest of the french people. The publicity will be just as great.
260
Actually as we have seen, especially in Beslan, the innocent and the helpless are the best victims to provoke outrage. An unarmed musician in the UK. Extremists know the West puts a high price on innocents, women and children, so they are targets. Japan has reacted to the slaughter of their people without sending troops. Jordan too. What animal burns people alive, except to provoke a reaction. Don’t forget Je Suis Charlie, a strange idea because it is already forgotten.
This is not going away without strong action but not necessarily military action. As John Howard and Tony Abbott said, we will determine who comes to our country and when. The coincidence with the mass invasion of Europe is no accident. It is an undeclared war on the West and on their standard of living and way of life and beliefs. This was turned around by Charles Martel at Poitiers, by the Polish knights at the walls of Vienna and in the Caucuses by the Kazars and by Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain. It is one thing to open your doors to strangers, another to betray that generosity.
While the world worries about a non problem in Global Not Warming and dysfunctional climate models, an ancient war has resurfaced. Talk is not enough and no problem will be solved by the apologists of the ABC or Malcolm Rudd. Poverty is the fundamental problem and coal is the answer and research on how to cope when the coal runs out, which it will quickly. Wind and solar are rubbish. Poverty drives all these extremists. The simplest solutions to the world’s problems are cheap energy and quality of life, the two things Warmists are against.
392
TdeF – Well stated,I agree wholeheartedly with what you have said:-
End the poverty and misery and make people’s lives worth living-then they will be happy and many of the problems of war will simply go away!
Geoff W Sydney
30
Well said Dude ,except we have possibly centuries of coal , otherwise bang on !
10
Whilst I agree with most of your post,I think our coal reserves are around 300 years or so.Running out of coal is a long way off.
10
Tony, I thought the same. Given this flagrant terrorist attack and the hiatus that will eventuate, the UN are very likely to retain the focus of their Cylopean eye on their pre eminent
socialclimate Agenda, pathologically denying their prima facie raison d’être. And therein lies the progenitor to some or perhaps much of this true catastrophe, that and the misplaced, misinformed misguided US POTUS and His administration who have signaled recurrently where there real interests lie – the modeled weather of wishful thinking. Meanwhile, the MSM in NZ are presently predicting a “right wing” backlash…God Bless those who lost their lives abruptly and unnecessarily at the hands of evil.
120
There is an easy and obvious solution …..Cancel the ‘CON21’ ….it is nothing more than a big con and massive waste of money anyway .
Let’s see if they will risk themselves for their beliefs of greed .
My guess is that the BS will be that thick that no terrorist could get near it .
100
Someone else had your concern, Tony.
20
This is a real concern. This is not just terrorism, this is an act of of war, and we could be on the brink of WW-III.
190
No, WWIII would be over in 20 minutes. Syria alone would be atomized in 5 and the provocation of the nuclear armed Russians has been the worst. I count three or four plane loads of people and more. Volgograd in 2013.
This is very deliberate and calculated provocation and you have to think about why they are doing it and where and what they expect to happen and what you want politicians to do. Ten times that number drowned in the Timor sea and the Greens and Labor disowned the problem. It is always left to the so called conservatives to sort out the mess.
You have to think the $1Bn a day for years fighting nothing would be better spent fixing real problems of social justice and raising standards of living for a world of poor people, not having them change countries. No one kills themselves or others unless they have nothing to lose.
230
Maybe even the biggest extremists realize that going the nuclear option would render any victory the masters over lands uninhabitable or at risk of soon becoming so.
I feel that with self preservation foremost WW-111 could be carried out with conventional weapons, however there’s no accounting for insanity.
70
It depends on how such weapons are used. Hiroshima and Nagasaki now thriving populations. While it’s far from the best-case scenario; one that isn’t guaranteed to defeat an enemy like ISIS or other crime gang; let’s not deny the physical evidence.
Russia is reputed to have 150,000 troops ready to deploy on the ground in the Middle East. Such a war, indeed any war, cannot be won without boots on the ground, taking big risks to flush out remnants of an enemy that doesn’t “play” by any rules at all. The disruptors do not understand the rule of law. Indeed, the peaceful population that they “control” may never have experienced the rule of law, having been subjected to tribal conflict, arbitrary rules under the sword, sometimes motivated by religious fanatics.
The UN hasn’t solved a problem of this nature in its entire existence; it’s merely aggravated the situation, sometime disarming its own peacekeeping troops and adding them to the potential, easy target count. Nor have NATO been successful in such conflicts; and the “EU forces” have been a joke in almost every deployment against an “asymmetric”, disruptive force.
They have all failed. Either because the rapid obliteration of an enemy wasn’t the objective or because the priority back home wasn’t to get too much bad press from soldiers returning home in body bags. A few can be explained as extraordinarily brave heroes or unfortunate accidents but casualty counts like those on the beaches of Normandy in June 1944 are not acceptable in the comfort of the “home theatre” of the world’s prosperous poor.
Not until their comfort zones are directly disrupted through external attack or by enemies within. Then they shed their inculcated Make Love, Not War attitude because they have an enemy that has brought home a theatre of war.
Deliberate, decisive and immediate action must be taken against perpetrators to make them harmless. The only way to prevent a small ugly problem from growing into a bigger one is to solve it as quickly as possible.
Where there is no rule of law and the actions threaten to force the locals to flee across borders, then we must not dawdle and respect the niceties of sovereignty. If operating in a foreign sovereign nation that is unable/unwilling to deal with the problem itself, then any actions by foreigners must of course be restricted to making the threat harmless. It must never be used as a wedge for e.g. colonialism or regime change unless the threat originates from the regime.
210
+1
60
Bernd,
Cannot the west put 150,000 troops into the fight? Or twice that many? How about thrice that many? Yes, we could do it. We lack only the will to do it.
To this day Russia cannot withstand the U.S. military and neither can the terrorists. It is only the lack of will that prevents us from destroying the terror threat. It will be a tough job with large casualty numbers. But some things are worth the risk of death and we better take the required action and its risk and do it sooner rather than later. Every day’s delay makes the terrorists stronger and the job of defeating them harder.
I ask everyone: Is the current situation preferable to a war? I think not. Do we have the guts to do it? I think not on that point too. So we will continue to be attacked until we do have the will to do the job. And considering recent history, the death toll will be as much our fault as that of the terrorists.
“The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one…” is attributed to Ernest Hemingway or at least he used it but may not be its author. It doesn’t matter. What matters is this. Which are we?
90
The West could collectively put boots on the ground but it won’t because the people running those countries tend to have been given everything that they wanted without really struggling. They were lauded for participation; sometimes just for attendance. They have been ‘trained” to submit to avoid conflict.
There’s isn’t just the unwillingness accept the political pain of their own people returning home in body bags. Militaries, for the most part, don’t have the training, intelligence structures, weapons and command that enable them to engage effectively in an asymmetric war.
The comparison of militaries is beside the point; this is an asymmetric struggle: ISIS is no military enemy. People like Putin understand the differences better than any “military hawks” advising the West. The battlefield isn’t a territory; it’s in the minds of the people. The enemy may be hiding in the minds of the people that soldiers would perceive as non-combatant. The US doesn’t appear to have learnt that lesson from its experience in Vietnam.
Moreover, the West has confused objectives. Its involvement in Syria and surroundings is largely because it wants regime change in Syria. It doesn’t like Assad because of the way that he rules. But instead of being honest and directly dealing with it themselves; they support(ed) gangs and criminals also opposed to Assad, without considering that those opponents of Assad are destabilising forces with global influence. What’s the point of replacing a secular totalitarian with a religious despot? Perhaps they believed despot to be more corruptible. The US doesn’t appear to have learnt a necessary lesson from its prior support of Osama bin Laden.
40
I am suspicious that ultimately , a military monster of arms manufacture is being prolonged , simply for continued big profits .
Like all conflicts , there will be much going on that we can only guess at .
We ,the general public ,are mostly kept in the dark and fed BS …..the mushroom treatment !
10
Bernd,
And so it was at the beginning of WWII. There may be differences in the situation but you start from where you are and build what you need. It’s inconceivable to me that we cannot find an effective strategy backed up by effective tactics that will rid us of this terror threat. You may be right about the current details but I say again, all we really lack is the will to do the job. After 9/11 we were told it would be a long fight. It has turned into an infinite fight because we’ve not taken it seriously.
We better start taking it seriously. Otherwise there will be more of the same.
20
Mises Institute has an article on The Long History of French Military Intervention in the Middle East and Africa.
France will pursue its own interests first; then, if they can be bothered; they’ll consider how it might look to others. France, contrary to its European facade, doesn’t and won’t wait for approval before taking any actions that is pleases.
What’s not mentioned is France’s nuclear capabilities that include dozens of TN81 warheads carried by supersonic cruise missle for the last 100 km or so after being dropped from a Mirage “fighter”. Fifteen to thirty kilotons of TNT equivalent in each warhead; i.e. Hiroshima scale.
Consider that in the light of what’s in the linked article.
00
9/11 closed the door on “sanity in war”.
80
Agreed – just slimy cowardice in the face of a real problem, where the realpolitik calculation needed was how to minimise the damage, since some damage could not be avoided
It also seems to me that these attacks in Paris are timed as they are because world attention is on that city with its’ imminent greenery – publicity is much heightened now, the shock and horror is even sharper. That these thugs think in this fashion is undoubted; the telephone intercepts of the instruction flow between the Pakistani handlers and the firepower in the Mumbai massacre showed that in perfect clarity
130
No TDef.
These are not the poor or the disenfrachised, these are psychopaths. Savages, utterly devoid of any respect for the sanctity of life. They don’t care who they kill, infidels or Martyrs it all the same, they’re dead just different labels on the coffins.
This is not about poverty, war rarely is, it’s about POWER, power over others.
That’s not to say that I don’t agree with using green funding to build coal powered electricity systems across the planet. I do, it would be a boon for mankind but it won’t stop the psychopaths that want to remake the world in their own image, it wont stop the lust for power. This is why Bob Brown’s one world government for all earthians must never come to pass. Where exactly do you go when your one world government is ruled by psychopaths?
300
Lebanon also got attacked a few days earlier, also claimed by ISIL.
Just to show how topsy turvy the world is today, and that yesterday’s revolutionary becomes tomorrow’s conservative, have a read of this BBC article. If you had read the following three paragraphs 15 years ago you would think it was a joke by a news parody web site like The Onion. (my bold)
Hezbollah lecturing ISIL on how to avoid killing innocent people. You can’t make it up!
90
I billion per day ?……….And the rest !
4 Billion per day , 1.5 Trillion per year ,I heard !
And El Presidente O’Bummer claims that CAGW is a bigger problem that terrorism .
I wonder what the families of 153 dead (so far)and 100’s injured, have to say about that ?
101
” No one kills themselves or others unless they have nothing to lose.”
Not entirely correct. I spent a number of years in the military on the sharp end against terrorists and while you are partially correct, the indoctrination of those who are the willing tools of their leaders in this doesn’t depend on whether they have “nothing to lose”. In fact today we are seeing more “middle class” terrorist recruits than from poverty etc. The real issues are complex and far beyond “social justice” (a code for do things my way)and basic economics. It was observed years ago that revolutions always come from the middle class not the poor, as the poor are too busy trying to get by in the business of living while the middle class is terrified of losing what it has.
120
Not quite true, TdeF. There are youngsters brought up by decent, hard-working parents, who have proper food and clothing, housing and schools, but have been induced by certain ‘religious’ leaders to go off to fight ‘religious’ wars. Why are so many of the ‘refugees’ young, well-dressed single men? They are doing a disservice to genuine refugees.
40
“bobl”,
I concur with you.
It is now a case of either them or us.
Kill or be killed.
The Treasonous Leftist Politicians are the ones to blame for all this as they have deliberately allowed terrorists to come into our societies who only have a one goal of murdering or subjugating us.
192
I didn’t say that Angry, I only mean to say that we cannot assume that all ideologies of the world are compatible with western values. The idea that we should accept immigrants from all areas of the world equally with few checks is extremely naive, it has never in history been so, and the flirtation with multiculturalism has essentially failed. We should be picky about who we take.
Soon the west will be so infiltrated that it’ll be almost impossible to fight a war with this ideology unless we segregate the populations by ethnicity. Racially profile if you like. Politically incorrect but probably unavoidable if a war does break out.
150
There is only one enemy that I can see and it would be pretty easy to “Isolate”that enemy and wouldn’t cost much money.Simply withdraw welfare payments to them and watch them leave in droves.
10
As ISIL/ISIS is not a legitimate state, it is hard to see how (politically under the treaty) NATO will be involved. In practical terms, NATO is already involved but will it translate to full on offensive operations? (as it should)
50
I have said a few times that Paris will be an extremely dangerous place this December.
Prime targets.
I would not be surprised it this is a pre-attack to gauge the response.
No-one with a sane mind would go to Paris this December.
Nothing much has changed in that respect.
152
My condolences to those French patriots who died because their fellow French, many of whom also died, voted in a traitorous government that is putting on trial Marine Le Pen, the woman leading in polling for the next French President, because she wants to protect her country.
Again, my heartfelt condolences to all the non-traitorous French who died and for their loved ones.
291
This has nothing to do with I or M. I is a peaceful R.
61
I hope you don’t truly believe that.
50
I’m having a bad sarc/ day.
100
Leave out the /sarc. ?
Regardless [snip, 18C] has a lot of explaining to do where tolerance is concerned.
90
I have no tolerance for people who are intolerant.
121
Huh?
40
When individuals voluntarily suspend or surrender their reasoning in favour of ‘belief’, there is little to chose between them and insensate infected animals. In the case of the latter however, thankfully there are effective measures to deal quickly and mercifully with them. Think rabid dogs.
100
Everyone seems to be having a bad /sarc day.
40
I’ve usually considered sarcasm as ‘cruel mockery’. Those that personify the evil they inflict on the helpless epitomise ‘sarcasm’. Those dressed in black brandishing their AK47’s epitomise the sarcastic response toward civilised society.
In this case, I am not using the UN definition of ‘civil society‘.
‘Civil society’ is quite distinct from ‘civilised society’. The conflation is deliberate, as it is with UN pre-defined ‘climate change‘.
50
Huh?
30
RW @ #10.2.1… as that would be appeasement, which is also proved not to work.
30
That is a difficult request. You have raised a topic that is not primarily amenable to science.
Okay, everybody out. For this topic, bail out of joannenova.com and head on over to The Cat.
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2015/11/14/
Unconstructive comments are welcomed there.
100
Jo didn’t say that we couldn’t discuss the Political Science, or the Military Science, around this subject.
Like, for example, how come they all had AK47’s? Are they easy to find in Europe, these days? And who fed and watered these people, and where? How was it logistically planned and executed?
The more I think about it, the more it looks like a military operation. The question then, becomes by whom? ISIL (to give it the correct initials) has not shown the ability to mount a well coordinated operation, such as this one, before. They tend to be much more opportunistic.
141
Could not agree more
71
“Gun Futures”are looking real good,at the moment.
00
I think I’m permanently barred from comment there because I had the temerity to heap some derision on one of their favourite ancients. I felt he had it coming, but perhaps he is a big donor or something and any ignorant comment is good enough when it comes from a man with loose money. I can’t complain though- they will get nothing from me.
40
Well, I still like you gnome. You can be my friend, if you like.
60
It can only last until you attract my ire!
40
Sliced bread is the best thing since unconditional love.
20
Actually, sliced bread was advertised as “The best thing since wrapped bread.”
so now you know.
Or even perhaps you already knew.
But I find it comforting to know.
40
\__ http://i.imgur.com/n6pdQ4Y.gif
20
Things like this make my blood boil. I’m still angry at the Twin Towers attack.
If I was a politician I would so definitely act impulsively and to the detriment of every country who ever hosted these creatures.
100
Just heard about it twenty minutes ago.
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/11/on-sea-levels-nsw-councils-told-to-take-scientific-approach-not-ipcc-predictions/#comment-1763985
Governments worldwide must now stand up and be counted.
France has opened its’ doors to the group at the heart of the matter and for their troubles have been badly treated.
There is no sense to this.
In terms of the unipcccc Conference, it will be relegated to its rightful level of importance but sadly at great cost.
KK
80
Ironic that it has happened on the eve of the meeting to find a solution for most pressing issue for the world today.
On the other hand, it’s not a matter of if, but when this is repeated everywhere, including Australia.
What is really the most pressing issue for the world today?
121
Poverty, and the lack of access to clean water and power for cooking.
Simple. Fix that, and there would be a great deal less violence in the world.
The problem is, that focusing on that, looses politicians votes at home.
131
While what you suggest is absolutely an imperative for a humanity that values life, it’s something that every leftist will fight tooth and nail to prevent because it involves technology that they abhor.
The issue with IS is something completely different.
90
Yes, provide energy and you will fix some of the breeding grounds but lust for power over others is never completely gone. The lessons of history are many, and it shows unequivocally that many a mighty civilization has fallen.
WW-I and WW-II did not come out of the impoverished third world.
100
Politicians don’t have to lose their integrity in pursuit of the vote. Some do which means they lose their raison d’être but we should be able to weed them out. We can’t because there are those who hide this from us.
On Paris. Such a stunning city. Reeks of culture, so beautiful and majestic, almost Roman. No surprise to me they chose attack them, again and again. They, like that nightclub are soft targets, forever trusting and idealistic, possibly too insular. I just hope we all have the guts to defeat this evil, I don’t want my daughters growing up in a world where we can’t.
70
It’s that old loaded question “what causes terrorism?” as though there is any single cause.
Poverty is frequently an exacerbating factor. But that cannot explain the Red Army Faction of 1970s/1980s Germany whose active members could hardly claim to be poverty-stricken by any developing country standard, despite inequality and warmongering within capitalism being their group’s main motivational ideology. People who aren’t really in poverty can still blow up police stations and newspapers in perceived solidarity with those who are in real poverty.
Ideology and the psychology of group membership can be sufficient for terrorism without poverty.
Oh, and the money and gear to do the job of course.
Besides, you can’t solve poverty or you’ll ruin their business.
60
Abbott is right.
192
Have you noticed how quiet the Australian Greens Party have been whenever there has been a M…. terrorist attack of this nature resulting in the death of innocent citizens e.g. the recent Martin Place terrorist attack. On the other hand the Green’s pollies are very vocal if there is any environmental impact on some of our magnificent Aussie faunas e.g. the Carnaby’s cockatoo. And the Greens are also very vocal about illegal immigrants being held in our detention centres. Distorted priorities?
120
The Green/Left criticised Abbott for his strong action against terrorism at home and abroad, but he has been vindicated.
Anyone who believes god is great should be put into a large concentration camp in the middle of Australia where they will be told the truth.
Many would never get released from this incarceration, preferring a life of ignorance over enlightenment.
60
…and the devil’s not too hot at the moment either.
‘Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who was in Berlin on his way to the G20 Leaders Summit in Turkey, described the attacks as an assault on all humanity and “the work of the devil”.
Malcolm Turnbull
50
Only a few hours before Turnbull was trying to distance himself from Abbotts speech comments and was praising Merkel’s long tenure in power.
It would appear Turnbull has Gore’s bad timing “disease”. Not only has Abbott been proved correct but I think Merkel is history , politically. Before yesterday there were reports of her popularity polls dropping 26 points but also rumblings in her own party of a potential over throw. The Paris attacks will finish her.
40
There appears to be no challenges to the leader, but that could change very quickly.
‘Merkel, the daughter of a Protestant pastor who grew up behind communist East Germany’s fortified border, has appeared driven by a mixture of her trademark pragmatism and moral purpose. She argues that it’s not feasible to seal off Germany or Europe in the Internet age.’
Breitbart
30
This is a great source of up to the minute info regarding the muslim terrorist attack in Paris……..
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3317776/Paris-attack-sees-150-dead-Eagles-Death-Metal-concert-hostages-killed.html#reader-comments
“The terrorists shouted ‘Allah Akbar’ and ‘this is for Syria’ as they burst in and opened fire, eyewitnesses have said”
101
Were you being sardonic ?
30
Quotes By Barack Obama About Islam……..
#1 “The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam”
#2 “The sweetest sound I know is the Muslim call to prayer”
#3 “We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world “” including in my own country.”
#4 “As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam.”
#5 “Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance.”
#6 “Islam has always been part of America”
#7 “we will encourage more Americans to study in Muslim communities”
#8 “These rituals remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings.”
#9 “America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”
#10 “I made clear that America is not — and never will be — at war with Islam.”
#11 “Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism — it is an important part of promoting peace.”
#12 “So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed”…
20 Quotes By Barack Obama About Christianity
#1 “Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation”
#2 “We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation.”
#3 “Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith?”…
#15 “You got into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
#16 “In our household, the Bible, the Koran and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology”
#17 “On Easter or Christmas Day, my mother might drag me to church, just as she dragged me to the Buddhist temple, the Chinese New Year celebration, the Shinto shrine, and ancient Hawaiian burial sites.”…
ALL THIS FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE US, SUPPOSEDLY THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD.
GOD HELP US !
244
Sometimes you really have to wonder about the tolerance of the traditionally owned for the traditional traders. Does Obama see himself as one of the latter just because his middle name is Hussein?
90
That’s interesting. Because I have those, or similar, books as well. Unfortunately they are in English, so concepts are sometimes lost in the translation.
But, I believe that you have to read widely to understand other cultures, and the people who create them, so that you do not become bigotted, and narrow minded.
141
Angry,
Did you see the president’s press conference? He seemed almost bored, canned responses, certainly no rage about an attack on the heart of western society. Oh,ho-hum we’ve seen it all before. Just like disgracefully chewing gum at the D-Day memorial.
More than a hundred people died Mr President, what if one was your wife or daughter?
160
Yes I saw it too. It’s very odd. It’s as though he couldn’t care less.
110
He is bored, he’s given up. He promised so much which he couldn’t deliver. The American system is so watertight and deliberately so. They will never have a despot. I’d love to have a beer with him but his politics suck. Amen
60
“More than a hundred people died Mr President, what if one was your wife or daughter?”
Obama, the gormless twit, thinks .0004 carbon(sic) causes his daughter’s asthma, as he smokes around her.
110
Many ‘climate change’ activists see themselves as heroes campaigning to save the world as we know. However some have been known to advocate or fantasize about terrorist actions themselves.
Instead I would love to see climate alarmists show some real heroism in Paris by campaigning against those who are responsible for these terrorist attacks; campaigning against those who claim to be acting on behalf of their archaic religion and ‘prophet’.
Let them campaign for secular democratic governments and against any religion which justifies violence and has misogyny and intolerance of others at its root.
Climate alarmists may not realise it, but they are operating from the same playbook as these terrorist, they just aren’t up to the same chapter.
Climate alarmists try to shut down debate and criticism. Rather than debate those they disagree with using facts and empirical evidence, they prefer to denounce the morality of their opponents.
Climate alarmists often use violent protests to frustrate and defeat industry and projects with which they disagree. They have certainly been threatening huge demonstrations at the Paris Climate talks.
They have claimed that alleged human induced climate change is contributing to global terrorism thus passing the blame for terrorism to the West, rather than to the actual terrorists and their belief system.
Some climate activist leaders have called for the suspension of democracy to achieve their goals. James Lovelock also made that suggestion here.
Other climate activists have suggested that ‘climate deniers’ such as Jo Nova should be executed. The late Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was alleged to have said of global warming skeptics, “This is treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors.” The penalty for treason is death.
Climate activists are also recruiting young disillusioned individuals:
“Through the Internet, [16 year old] Dakota discovered Deep Green Resistance (DGR), a group founded in 2011 that calls for “decisive ecological warfare” against industrialization. On its website, DGR says that, “Individual cells rarely have the numbers or logistics to engage in multiple simultaneous actions at different locations.” Thus, it must fall to “paramilitary groups” to “disrupt” entities that are destroying the environment.”
And who could forget the 10:10 campaign videos showing those people who don’t go along with climate alarmists being blown up at the press of a button – including school children?
So it would be really wonderful to have climate alarmists prove they do not support terrorist activities by demonstrating against the religious radicals who actually represent the greatest threat to humanity in Paris, rather than pursuing their already invalidated theories of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming and the punative actions they support which would harm the poorest in the world.
222
After all the Paris attacks Turncoat Turnbull thinks that it is just business as usual and nothing to be concerned about !
“3.25PM: PM Malcolm Turnbull says Australia’s terrorist alert level will remain as is”
Seriously !
What WILL it take to make him wake up to the obvious threat?
91
I think our alert level is already fairly high. Has the threat increased?
62
No it hasn’t been increased from the level of HIGH that’s been in place for a long time now. Just heard it on TV.
71
It will take a similar attack on our soil. That’s the backward thinking of politicians today.
90
Sigh…….you don’t raise a terror threat level because of what happens in Europe
63
Meanwhile Turncoat Turnbull to tell Germany of the joys of taking in 800,000 illegal MUSLIM immigrants in one year….
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/turnbull_to_tell_germany_of_the_joys_of_taking_in_800000_illegal_immigrants/
I’m sure the citizens of Paris would disagree !
With him as PM it is only a matter of time before something like this happens in Australia given his gutless approach to the terrorist problem the politicians have imported into Australia.
[The article you reference refers to ‘illegal immigrants’ not ‘Muslim immigrants’, though acknowledges that most are Muslim. We should also acknowledge that most of those being killed by ISIS in Syria and Iraq are also Muslim. It is Islamic radicals, who advocate terrorism, and who are terrorists that we should be concerned about. – Mod]
101
Sorry, political correctness.
Can’t mention the M word…..
60
You leave the Methodists out of this please
70
Statement of the bleeding obvious … and quite useless in practical terms
How are we to tell who the radicals are until they let loose ?
I’m quite sure the “radicals” in Paris didn’t telegraph their barbarous intent
I know we can’t tell beforehand – but pious statements of the obvious are just plain irritating, and insulting of our intelligence
20
While we must all support our agencies in their efforts to flush out the baddies, the fact remains that Australia’s security Agencies want a closer connection with Muslim communities in the hope they will tell us what the hell is going on, because our Agencies don’t have a clue. Oh, they claim they have thwarted many attacks, yet not one of Australia’s active terrorists’ were on any Agency’s current watch list.
While they are doing a good job, it would be foolish of us to become so complacent that we expect to be protected by our government.
10
“We should also acknowledge that most of those being killed by ISIS in Syria and Iraq are also Mu$lim” -Mod.
Indeed, but, where are the mu$lims of varying “moderate” speaking out against the crime?
The silence is deafening.
120
From what I have read, a lot of the victims are Christians and a million Christians have fled Iraq. Similarly in the attacks on the 6% of Coptic Christians in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East and in Aceh province in Indonesia and in Northern Nigeria. Then you add the persecution of all minorities and religions which are not of people of the book, the slave classes. It is not just Sunni on Shiite or v.v.
However Pickering makes a point that a lot of this attacks come on Friday straight from the Mosque fired up by hate preachers. The Paris attack too was on a Friday night. The involvement of mosques as active in this cannot be ignored, whether Melbourne or Paris.
80
I take the JN Mod’s point that a minority of radicals are the problem, not the whole religion.
The puzzle I and many others would like to resolve is, given what’s written in the Qu’ran, and given how many M_slims are in the world, why don’t events like Paris 2015 Attacks and Martin Place happen every week of the year? Whatever process is preventing M_slims from carrying out the wording of their holy text precisely as written is an extant inhibitory process we should support and accelerate so that less radicals are created.
Amidst all this heated demand for reprisals there is a chance of a “hearts and minds” solution because we are already living in a world where the “moderation” process has largely succeeded.
30
When I say “precisely”, here are some quotes I saw on social media recently.
10
It is very difficult to make a comment about this deadly terrorist attack on innocents without inadvertently activating some “politically correct” trip wire that brings down the wrath of the craven gods of the left’s current censorious ideology.
bobl @ #7 has repeated a comment I made some weeks ago on another of Jo’s blog post articles.
Each war is different, often very different to the last war in the way it is fought as well the circumstances surrounding the start of that war and the unforeseen consequences that begin to show up long before the fighting and killing is finished.
But in every war the transgressor comes much better prepared both materially and psychologically and ideologically than those they seek to oppress.
And so we see that occurring once again.
It has been what appears to the west to be a long slow build up to a war over the last couple of decades that has been created by the hard line islamic fundamentalists against they perceive as apostates and Kafirs, the unbelievers the Christian and to the hard line islamics, the Crusaders of the west .
Within islam is where the most vicious fighting is taking place and has done so for 900 years past
The worst of these apostates of course being the Sunni or Shias depending on which branch of islam you belong too.
The west are of course are Kafirs of the first order so must also be forced to bow to the entire and absolute precepts of the Islamic beliefs and ideology.
Modern wars of the past century have shown that in war material it takes about three years for an industrialised country to get fully up to speed in the production of war material, in its recruitment and training of its manpower and in its intelligence capabilities and in its population’s psychological shift to an acceptance for the need to fight as its very existence may be threatened.
I suspect the same conditions still apply even to this very different form of warfare which uses Fifth columns, the enemy within to try and destabilise a society and to demoralise that same society so making it much easier to take over, conquer and subjugate and then systematically destroy and reshape the remnants into the new world order of the victors.
Nothing different there than was carried out by the Allies and the Soviets in their respective spheres at the end of WW2 and a commonality at the end of all wars with a clear cut victor.
Events in Iraq, syria and the middle east, Russian meddling first in the Caucus, then in Ukraine and now in the ME plus the massive influx of so called refugees, a lot of whom are anything but of middle eastern or african racial characteristics,but all of whom apparently were wealthy enough to pay gouging prices for passages on non sea worthy boats to cross the Med to Europe has started to generate a serious backlash in Europe particularly when a few nations such as Germany under Merkel refused totally to try and restrict the inflow of some hundreds of thousands of these so called “refugees”.
Consequently there is a fast rising hardline right wind political movement beginning to gain political ground in western Europe’s main democracies along with a growing trend towards both fencing off national boundaries to control the flows of peoples which an open border policy was mandated as a required part of being a member of the EU. In short the free flow of peoples as in the USA and Europe visioned as the European version of the global dominate power, the USA but with a population of 500 million instead of the USA’s 370 millions and the economic clout to go with that larger population.
Sweden, Switzerland [ not an EU member but ! ] now the UK almost there along with many other supposedly central members of the EU, all bringing in border controls and / or like the UK now giving serious consideration towards leaving the EU and clawing back their own independence as a nation so as to take away the control of their destiny from a hubris laden arrogant, unresponsive, unelected Brussels bureacracy and bring it back into the hands of its own people.
Making predictions is difficult , especially about the future;
Neils Bohr.
The war we in the west of European ancestry are already in or about to enter with rabid and ultra conservative islamism will likely last at least a full generation , some two or three decades if we are lucky. But it is more likely to last a couple of generations.
The west has some tools to fight what is both a material, ideological and religion based war, the very worst and most vicious of wars as history shows innumerable time but there are many, many more weapons both material and ideologically and psychologically still to be developed and brought to the battle field.
The French terrorist attack will likely and rapidly lead to the imposition of heavy border controls right across Europe.
It may well lead to the UK, an island nation which has huge advantages as history has again shown, to leave the EU and go its own way.
Other nations such as Poland which is defying many EU dictates might reduce it’s EU commitment even further .
The islamic refugee sympathetic Merkel in Germany is now very near the end of her reign as chancellor after this latest bout of fundamentalist Islamic created european terrorism
Even if the islamic fundamentalist terror is defeated and destroyed that won’t be the end of it.
When it comes to tolerance of another’s religion the old wounds take generations to heal.
Northern Ireland where the Catholics and Protestants fought and killed for at least three or four generations even after Britain had left Ireland forever with Irish Independence in proclaimed in 1922.
More personally, my forbearers arrived in South Australia from north Germany in 1850
My father was the third [ I think ] Australian born generation but he spoke fluent german, so much so he was the subject of a German language study by a Melbourne University group to trace location and village origins of german ancestry settlers from the original German dialects.
Yet as a boy I remember him arguing with some of his equally Germanic ancestry friends the sins of the Catholics over and against the Protestants.
Understandable in a way as those north germans left to escape religious persecution and the drafting into the armies for the wars of the 18th century.
It is only in my fourth Australian born generation that those religion based debates and arguments no longer are even heard any more let alone countenanced by the newest and next generation.
So I do think that we have already entered another world war, one that the implications of it being a religion based war on the initiators side does not bear thinking about of the consequences if we of the west and together with the other 6 billions of world’s non islamics ever lose this war.
And it is a war that might well go on for another, perhaps another two generations at least until either one or the other or both of the combatants are exhausted and either defeated or destroyed as a power upon the Earth for generations to come.
It is a war that we in the west are ill prepared for and it will take another decade to bring our war machine in all its complexity up to speed to fight this newest version of the age old religion based type of war, the most vicious and nastiest and deadliest type of war of them all as history has repeatedly shown us and a war that might easily have not just two combatants but perhaps a multiplicity of shifting loyalty combatants as the various religions and sects and ideologies and their adherents shift and change their affiliations for any number of reasons that can appear when the Earth is at war amongst its nations.
————–
And just a comment on “red thumb”.
In a discussion of this gravity and when a wholly responsible and pertinent question or comment is made about the COP21 carnivale in Paris and the effect of this terrorism attack on that climate change carnivale, the giving of a Red Thumb, not just once but for a number of posts has to indicate an unbelievable shallowness of intellect and a complete divorcing of any sense of empathy with the victims and the European peoples along with an apparent demonstrated fanatical devotion to the climate cult to the dereliction of any sense of responsibility to any others than Red Thumbs own shallow selfish self.
245
ROM.
Yes and no.
Yes, we are on the brink or maybe within WWIII or more exactly Crusades Mk II. It is instructive to look at the nations of the world. Most of the Moderate advance nations of the world, of the Christian or M faith are former colonies of the West (England, France or Portugal). Those nations raised much of the world out of savagery or feudalism into advanced political systems separating religion and politics, not just democracies either, they did this by building cultures that had respect for others rights, others property. China probably survives because it preserves a modicrum of property ownership.
Many of the troublespots in the world were either not colonies of the big colonial powers or were abandoned before a tolerant culture was implanted which takes of the order of 200 years. When we win wars in places like Afghanistan and Iraq we no longer stick around to suppress the bullies and implant those tolerant respectful cultures
I wonder whether another round of colonialism is needed.
101
How about just an effective UN which is supposed to help maintain world peace? Instead they are busy chasing causes which ‘safely’ allow them to grow their bureaucracy.
110
How about no Unelected Nutters (U.N.) ?
40
Good perspective
50
Rom
Another fascinating, thoughtful piece.
KK
50
Well thought out and articulated ROM
20
For those who have read the Qur’an, this is no surprise. All this is explicitly covered in the Qur’an as directives for the faithful from Allah to apply to non-believers. Unfortunately we are dealing not with a religion but an organised fourteen hundred year old terrorist plan.
250
My condolences to those French patriots who died because of French political stupidity and their blind faith in the EU project.
Does the French population, and all in EU now realize that their open-door policy to refugees is mad and dangerous?
Does the EU populous now understand that the corrupting ideas of the EU that says ‘give us your money, your guns and the responsibility for personal safety’ does not work in the real world?
Personal safety is the right of the individual.
Do the politician now understand that allowing the Middle-East the decay into violent chaos will spread it’s infection to all? Without a concerted effort to reduce conflict and contain these violent extremist (and their communication channels) then no one will be safe. Action to quell and contain must be of primary importance.
Can all the world now note how ineffective the UN is? The UN’s lack is the direct outcome of not assessing important problems correctly, and the underlying idea that these elites only do good.
[Immigration policy cannot be directly blamed. Russia has not had a policy of allowing mass immigration of any sort and certainly not from The Middle east. Yet their passenger plane was attacked. The reason given was their support for the Assad Regime in Syria. So we can’t simply point to immigration policy. The ineffectiveness of the UN in this matter, particularly while they continue such focus on climate alarmism is very relevant – Mod]
130
Well said tomo
60
But it wasn’t in the middle of Moscow when the bomb was planted
Such a straw man comment from the Mod
111
@ianl8888
I’m just putting up my hand here as the red thumber.
Although I support respect for mods even if they’re wrong, in this case he’s not wrong. I found your comment particularly unsupportable, as it’s a straw man argument accusing another of a straw man argument.
Your comment didn’t critique the argument the mod made, but that the facts weren’t different.
32
“Red thumb” anyone you like, as often as you like; be offended as often as you like. It has no import for me
But the rest of your post is circular BS. I suggest you cure this with precision in language, a learned skill
It’s also obvious that the topic for this thread encourages splatter comment, so I’ll leave it alone
There is no answer to this barbarity that has reason as a foundation. Emotional response goes in every direction at once
40
Thank-you for your comments Mod, I, in part, agree. However to get closer to my intended meaning the word ‘refugee’ needs to be replaced with ‘migrants’ or ‘unassessed migrants’.
I do feel that the open-door policy to migrants, and especially those entering by nefarious means, are free to travel to all parts of the EU is wrong – certainly while the conflicts in the Middle-East/North Africa continue unabated. It is the primary duty of government to keep its own people safe, and the compassionate demands of the migrants should be secondary to that!
As far as I see it, Russia’s problems are in large part caused by the indigenous Muslim population, coupled to Russia’s resent history, as well as the influence external radical forces.
That is to say the difference between Russia and the EU is that Russia’s problem are mostly internal (with outside influences) and contrasts with the EU’s problem — that is the allowing inherently Middle-East terrorism to migrate in and influencing a minority of indigenous Muslims.
I acknowledge neither country/region has a sane policy for these conflicts; relying as they do on quick fixes, arms exports, and posturing, and as such I feel these types of outages will become more common in Westernized (and Westernizing) nations as those conflicts fester.
80
France clearly has intelligence failures and/or failure to “quarantine” immigrants long enough to properly assess them.
Frnce also has 750+ “sensetive zones” that Gendrames fear to go….
30
Will Obama now reverse his decision not to co-operate with Putin in destroying IS everywhere? Hollande of France has just stated “We’re going to lead a war which will be pitiless..”. Hmmm. Lead a war on their own? It’s time all nations of the word worked together and declared a world war against IS and affiliated groups before things get really out of control and thousands more innocent people are murdered. This is not going away. A lot more evil will happen if the leaders of the world do not put aside their prejudices and work together. Oh by the way. If some in the left keep pretending there is no problem and it’s all overstated, or worse still keep excusing the Islamic terrorist [snipped – Mod]
110
This is one of those wonderful photos where you have to wonder what Putin and Obama have just said to each other.
http://i.imgur.com/aW6jT2O.jpg
10
Probably Putin told Obama join me in the fight against IS or get out of my way because you are doing more harm than good. Note too that US is still refusing to share intelligence with Russia yet the Free Syrian Army who happen to be in opposition to the current Syrian regime is helping Russia to attack only IS sites. Obama is more concerned with global warming than with IS. That proves he’s such a fool.
40
How can we get some good from this tragedy and all the other related tragedies in just the last few years?
Wouldn’t it be great
If the UN concentrated on relieving the suffering and poverty around the world, removing the driver of this disaster?
If we could have conferences involving 100 heads of state which addressed real problems?
If the Left of politics actually cared instead of pretending to care? Did they care about the 1200 drowned people trying to get to Australia. As activist Green Senator Sarah Hansen Young said, “accidents happen”
If the $1Bn a day spent on a non fix to a non problem was directed wisely. For example consider putting the 220,000 windmills in Africa and the Middle East instead of some of the wealthiest countries on earth who don’t need them because they already have coal, oil, gas and nuclear.
If the Greens would stop pushing real pollution to China, like rare earths and eliminating all manufacturing at the same time on the pretext of reducing CO2 ‘pollution’.
If we spent just a little on real energy alternatives like nuclear, fusion, thorium and fuel cells and new energy storage, not crazy shaman fantasies like sun and wind.
If people were told by NASA and the CSIRO and the Royal Society and the University of East Anglia that science tells us CO2 is the very stuff of all life on earth, that all life is made from CO2 and H2O and it is not pollution.
If the Left stopped trying to get rid of coal, oil and gas and used this precious but limited gift to create a real future for mankind.
If Green politicians cared more about their constituents instead of themselves and their own backyard.
If there was an end to the visceral and unexplained Green and Left hatred of Israel which fuels the disaster.
If we could just learn from this and take some of these Global Warming trillions and do real good, not play fantasy science.
You could tell me I’m dreamin’.
140
Unfortunately the people at the top are well protected from ALL of the rubbish they dump on us.
They don’t care.
100
Good list of “ifs” and most of us could add lots more but unfortunately the culprits at the moment are too numerous and well entrenched in positions of power and authority with the media on their side. When the pain threshold is reached for the public there will be a strong rise against those oppressors. This always happens throughout history. So in the long run, no you are not dreaming; you are more like prophesying – just be patient.
60
meanwhile, the courting of India continues.
Press Trust of India: India, UK strike 3.2 billion pound deal on energy, climate change
not everyone is impressed though:
13 Nov: SolarPowerPortal: Liam Stoker: UK-India climate change deal laden with hypocrisy
Lightsource’s contract to develop 3GW of solar – more than two-times what it has developed in the UK to date – represents a huge coup for the company. It will plough £2 billion of its own investment into the country, in the process securing 300 jobs in the UK and forging links that it will hope go far beyond this deal’s five-year term.
It’s also a major deal for Lightsource to secure given what’s occurring in its domestic market. David Cameron’s party has made it abundantly clear it does not want any more ground-mount solar in the UK…
http://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/editors_blog/uk_india_climate_change_deal_laden_with_hypocrisy_1237
PDF: 4 pages: UK Govt: India-UK Joint Statement on Energy and Climate Change
8. The two Prime Ministers emphasised the importance of climate finance and of developed countries honouring their commitment to mobilise jointly US$100bn a year by 2020 from a wide variety of sources, both public and private, in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation. The UK and India recognised the crucial role of predictable and enhanced public and private climate finance, to support mitigation and adaptation actions in developing countries. They also recognised the role of climate finance in helping the deployment and development of environmentally sound technologies and research and development addressing barriers to bring about a shift in investment to help achieve the objective of the Convention…
11. The two Prime Ministers recognised the importance of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in providing a comprehensive assessment of climate change based on available science. They highlighted the importance of an increased focus on solutions to climate change and agreed to work together to support the Indian and UK Co-Chairs of IPCC Working Group III as they lead the work on assessing options for mitigating climate change in the IPCC’s 6th Assessment Cycle…
21. …In particular they welcomed Lightsource’s plans to invest ***£2 billion in India, building over 3 GW of solar electricity infrastructure including through a partnership with Srei Infrastructure Finance Limited, and the recent announcement that UK technology company Intelligent Energy has signed an agreement to acquire the energy management business of Indian company GTL to provide efficient, clean and economical energy to 27,400 telecoms towers in India, with a total contract value of ***£1.2 billion over ten years…
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/476689/India-UK_Joint_Statement_on_energy_and_climate_change.pdf
51
As I mentioned above, there’s no real way to comment within the guidelines of political correctness, and no matter what you think in the privacy of your own thoughts, you dare not actually say it, in virtually any company.
It seems to me that over so many years, the Christian religion has accepted secularism, and can relatively easily cohabit with that secularism.
It also seems that some of the other religions (for want of a more acceptable descriptor) have also made the decision to also accept that a secular following is also acceptable.
Now, while there are some outliers in virtually every one of those religious followings, they are in a tiny minority. It seems to me that with ([snip, 18C]) there is no acceptance of secularism, no matter how much some of their leaders would like to say to any media. (in a public setting at least, just saying it for the cameras, while in private, it could possibly be entirely different)
Until secularism becomes acceptable within this group, then we will just have to put up with all this.
Tony.
90
There are plenty of exceptions to your rule Tony. I have travelled in many [islamic-majorit] countries and not only are there places where secularism is accepted, but hedonism tolerated. Tourist resort destinations in particular. I have also been at ‘private clubs’ in Indonesia and Malaysia when many people cut work early to attend Friday Prayers, only to find the clubs full of senior politicians, bureaucrats, military and police enjoying ‘[non-islamic]’ activities. So there are a large group who have accepted secularism, but as you say, perhaps not publicly.
Ahem. Can we make it clear that the V who shall not be named refers to “islamic extremists” only – Jo
[I may have exceeded what you would do with regard to that word, Jo. And if so, you can slap my hand. But its association is a little too strong and gives me a bad feeling. I’m not a fan of dodging one rule with a substitute word that means the same thing either.] AZ
110
Makes you wonder how many ‘undesirables elements’ are flooding into the EU with the refugees ,posing as refugees ?
Seems coincidental to say the least , that first we have the biggest migration since WW2 and soon after Paris has its worst Terrorist Attack since WW2 also .
Also of coincidence is of how there are such high numbers of international press and senior level political figures already in Paris , no doubt already there for the Paris Pre-Pre-Enlightenment Hajj weeks before it even begins !
Maybe they should stop wasting trillions on CAGW delusions and concentrate serious efforts on this terrorist problem and many other serious issues that no one disputes !
But , what gets priority ,is whatever is the biggest money grab .
It seems ISIS and gang don’t have any distractions from their cause , unlike our half hearted attempts against them .
Wonder if TurnBull is Still feeling the love ?
I see Andrew Bolt has Tony Abbott on his show on Sunday , our serious Ex PM ,instead of the waffler true b’lver PM we have now …..Should be an interesting interview .
Also seems like the strong anti-gun laws don’t work too well either …..Apparently criminals and terrorists don’t care to obey …..just the good and innocent are disarmed ….dddaaaarrrr !
More leftist stupidity ….. the 120 in the theater never had a chance .
You can’t out run a bullet .
If your enemy is armed , then you have to ,too . it’s that simple , at least until the threat is extinguished .
101
Blood spattered witnesses to one of the attacks have stated that the [snipped in favor of] shooters they saw doing the shooting ‘spoke French with ‘native’ French accents’.
That does not preclude the possibility of various terrorist groups dispersing some of their people throughout europe, courtesy of the cover provided by the large number of people on the move, but the home-grown [snip] element should not be overlooked.
[Editorial discretion has been applied.] AZ
40
ISIS smuggler: ‘We will use refugee crisis to infiltrate West’
http://www.wnd.com/2015/09/isis-smuggler-we-will-use-refugee-crisis-to-infiltrate-west/
21
For a terrorist , it would seem an obvious and easy method of infiltration .
Just walk in with your hat in your hands and claim persecution .
Does this thought not occur to the geniuses singing ‘kumbayah’ , all are welcome ?
If you want to drop a bomb ,once per week ,to be seen to be doing something against isis , you need to close your borders and absolutely scrutinize anybody you do let in .
Or ,you invite more of just what happened !
And here we are in Australia doing just that …..I hope we are to scrutinize well our 12,000 permanent citizen offerings , or we may be sorry if we don’t .
I fear that all we are doing is poking the bear by the casual dropping of one bomb per week,to be good little international citizens ,but doing so is just presenting ourselves as a target rich environment whilst militarily achieving nothing except for the aggravation of the enemy .
Does anybody seriously think that what happened in Paris cannot happen here ?
10
wicked big oil fights “LITTLE KIDS” aka JAMES HANSEN, with help from NGOs:
13 Nov: MSNBC: Tony Dokoupil: Big Oil joins legal fight against little kids over climate change
The unusual case began back in August when a group of “youth plaintiffs” (ages 8 to 19) sued the federal government, arguing that weak action on climate change is a violation of their right to life, liberty and property. They demanded that President Obama act more swiftly to slash the emissions that cause global warming. They sued for themselves but also for “future generations,” a group whose “guardian” is listed as ***James Hansen, the former chief climate scientist for NASA.
The case is seen as an unlikely winner, long on symbolism and short on precedent. But the fossil fuel industry isn’t taking any chances.
On Thursday, representatives of ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Koch Industries, and hundreds of other users, producers and refiners of fossil fuel filed a joint motion to intervene…
The plaintiffs were organized by Our Children’s Trust, an Oregon-based nonprofit that has spearheaded climate-related lawsuits in all 50 states. The action was filed by Earth Guardians, a Colorado-based nonprofit that hopes to bring atmospheric carbon levels down to 350 parts per million, the maximum level that scientists consider to be safe…
“The science is clear,” Hansen, a climate researcher who headed NASA’s Goddard’s Institute for Space Studies for more than 30 years, said in a statement Thursday. He first warned Congress of global warming in 1988 and now his granddaughter is one of the plaintiffs…
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/big-oil-joins-legal-fight-little-kids-over-climate-change
assisting those poor little kids:
Earth Guardians’ website – Partners: Solutions COP21
Solutions COP21 will be hosting a six-day Climate Experience event in Paris featuring a youth empowerment workshop and performance by the Earth Guardians. Crew leaders and other young solutionaries will work together to create solutions-based events and campaigns.
UICEF
UNICEF has officially partnered with the Earth Guardians to create a video series highlighting the international work that Earth Guardian crews are doing and the work of the global youth movement in general
COP21paris.org website: 2 July: Climate Action (UNEP) and Solutions COP21 Partner to Amplify Climate Innovation During Paris Summit
Solutions COP21 are the organisers of the largest exhibition showcase of scientific and educational innovations, to take place during COP21 at the Grand Palais in Paris, which will make climate solutions visible on a very large scale, with 50,000 visitors expected over 7 days…
61
19 Aug: Watchdog.org: Rob Nikolewski: Using kids to file environmental lawsuits: Fair or exploitative?
Eugene, Ore.-based Our Children’s Trust has been one of the driving forces behind a series of lawsuits in various states with children acting as plaintiffs, some as young as 8 years old…
“This step towards having kids (file lawsuits) is just a way to make it more emotional and more political and less challenging to where the science is,” said Jim Steele, an ecologist and self-described climate skeptic who spent 25 years as the director of the San Francisco State University Sierra Nevada Field Campus, considered one of California’s leading environmental education centers.
“To me, you’re not trying to prove the science one way or the other,” Steele said. “You’re trying to push a political agenda and get people to be liable to what I think is fear-mongering.”…
Just last week, a group of 21 kids — 11 from Oregon and 10 from other states — filed a lawsuit against President Obama and the federal government…
One of the plaintiffs is the granddaughter of James Hansen, former director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and an outspoken environmental advocate who in 2009 said, “Climate change is analogous to Lincoln and slavery or Churchill and Nazism: it’s not the kind of thing where you can compromise.”
Hansen wrote a 32-page legal declaration in favor of the lawsuit…
Steele said he taught high school and middle school courses during his time at San Francisco State.
“Most of these kids just don’t have the experiential background to really argue this in any kind of way,” Steele said. “To push them as some kind of real experts on this issue or (as if) they should be listened to carefully is political drama more than anything. These kids know what’s being spoon-fed to them. And if you look at the (global warming) hiatus from the last 18 years, none of these kids have experienced global warming. They have all these fears that different people will push to them.”…
http://watchdog.org/234254/kids-environmental-lawsuits/
51
btw these fake child lawsuits get maximum, favourable MSM coverage. the “renowned” Bill Moyers had Our Children’s Trust for his final broadcast program, sounds like it wasn’t their first appearance on his show:
VIDEO: 25mins: 3 Jan: NakedCapitalism: Bill Moyers’ Last Show: Our Children’s Trust Climate Litigation
His final show looks forward in an important way, to the efforts of a young group of climate change activists called Our Children’s Trust to use well-settled case law as the basis for suing governments for their failure to ***combat (CLIMATE?) change…
MOYERS: We end our broadcast series on an encouraging word from the emerging generation.
Remember Kelsey Juliana from Eugene, Oregon? She’s 18 years old, and co-plaintiff in a lawsuit spearheaded by the organization Our Children’s Trust, which claims that Oregon is not doing all it can to slow down global warming and protect the future. It’s one of several such suits around the country based on the doctrine of public trust, which goes back to ancient Rome…
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/01/bill-moyers-last-show-childrens-trust-climate-litigation.html
51
I can’t, and wouldn’t speak for all French people, just the ones I know and care about. the concept of ‘Je suit Charlie’ is not forgotten, and while some call French, and particular, Parisians, “arrogant”, all I see is pride in their country, and in their heritage, and a sense of fair play.
Going out to buy some bread, and have a coffee this morning, I deliberately took a longer walk around my area of Paris to see if I could sense anything different in the feel of the place. I was pleased to see people just doing what people do – walking dogs, jogging, parents trying to control children on bicycles and skateboards, and all those ‘human’ things which transcend political boundaries.
I am in equal measures, saddened, and angered by these events. I think my friends/colleagues are OK, but I am still not 100% sure about them all. Time will tell, I guess.
I also refuse to be subdued, and controlled by the cowards who committed these atrocities.
(I also look forward to pulling out all the stops (staying within the realms of legality, of course) when it comes to “social justice warriors” who will try to legitimise these attacks in some perverted, self aggrandising, and disgusting way, as they did with the Charlie Hebdo attacks – such commentary is nothing more than ‘collaboration with the enemy’ as far as I am concerned. Free speech is for everyone, and I do not seek to silence them, I just wish to respond with overwhelming rational and reasoned condemnation)
130
Very interested to hear from people in France. Thank you James. We would hate to see the French subdued.
80
Spot on James. It was only a few days ago when I first used the term “social justice warriors” who really are appeasers of today, similar to those lead by Chamberlain prior to Hitler starting his reign of terror. This time it’s different though. The enemy has little power and it should be a relatively simple task to rid ourselves of IS in the middle east provided we all worked together instead of stumbling over each other with Russia and America at odds with each other. They need to stop acting like children and unite against a common enemy. As for the social justice warriors living among us, I would allow them to be exposed and the public will see they are the enemy also. I did suggest one cause of action, not too harsh, but I was part-moderated. So I won’t bother repeating it again.
40
Well said.
20
It was fantastic to view and hear the people leaving the national stadium when the terrorist attack there was underway all singing the French national anthem.
30
For something less serious and depressing, I recommend this vaguely related, but funny (to me) article.
(Also, Jo, 10000 apologies for being a spelling pedant, but it’s the Bataclan concert hall, not Batacan)
Fixed. Apologies. — Jo
60
I just came back from seeing the latest James Bond movie Spectre, apart from the fantastic action we noticed a definite swipe at globalism, one world government and support for democracy with some British patriotism thrown in, it was quite heartening.
I also noticed comments above using my suggested ‘[snip, 18C]’ tactic, here to help guys, here to help. 🙂
80
I noticed that too Yonnie.
Think of the effect this movie will have on young minds.
The right to have politicians who are not corrupted by powerful external forces.
70
Exactly KK, the young must relearn there will always be corrupt people but they have the democratic power to weed those out to give them the best government that will enact the wishes of the majority vote.
60
There seems to many comments here that all make the basic mistake of linking terrorist attacks with religion. The real driver for all these attacks is simply the proxy wars carried out by governments.
33
“France declares State of Emergency “
After the Charlie Hebdo murders, one would think that the French government would do something more to protect its citizens.
Now we have yet another incident in which many innocents have been murdered.
France has declared a state of emergency (unheard of in modern times) and there are now “No Go” areas… 🙁
Honestly ! how can any ordinary French citizen trust their Government to protect them ?
Condolences (yet again) to all those who lost family and/or friends in the Paris attack … 🙁 🙁
60
I agree up to a point. Though it is always easy for any of us to say ‘why wasn’t more done?’ after the fact. There has to be a limit to which people can continue their lives and not be under surveillance, searched, or deemed to be harassed, but agencies involved in tracking/locating legitimate threats must also be given some powers which will inevitably encroach on the freedoms of the individual. I for one, am not skilled enough, or knowledgable enough to pretend to know how to balance those needs.
Having said that, Beijing has metal detectors and bag x-rays at every train and metro station, as do other cities (Saint Petersburg comes to mind), which seems feasible in theory, although given the sheer number, and physical limits (some stations are tiny, and get amazingly crowded with the current standard ticketing/turnstile system), maybe not a practical solution in Paris…
I just saw a French chap interviewed – a former director (or similar) of some sort of french intelligence agency (I missed the name, sorry), and he said something along the lines of:
‘we knew there would be more attacks, we planned for scenarios involving 2-3 locations, not for 6, and we are shocked by the magnitude of these attacks.’
‘It is difficult even for security services to locate and track people who have been trained not to be found’.
‘The targets , the locations, and the level of coordination indicates an extremely well planned attack by people in France, with assistance from overseas’.
60
James, you make an excellent point , and I agree it is now simply not possible to stop this type of violence , especially when the extremists are inside the door of Europe.
A truly catastrophic mistake has been made by the heads of the European Governments in their quest to emulate the U.S., by trying to make it a “United States of Europe” and to instill in everyone living in Europe with this thing called “multiculturism”.
Europe is not America, the people and culture are completely different !
Added to this , the free passage accord “Shengen” is an example of a total lack of understanding of “peoples” and “culture” now inhabiting Europe…
What is interesting is that some of the terrorists were actually “born” in France, which to me seems a very long time to be harboring hatred for the people you live with.
If I were French , I would be asking those in government, “what have you allowed to be done to my country ?” my safety and that of my family and friends is gone ….!
It is truly an appalling betrayal, and it is deeply saddening,
It is very much like the Global Alarmists of today, who would see us all go to hell for their idealistic self indulgences.
my apologies for the number exclamation marks… 😮
00
I never thought I would have said this but yes T Heller is correct if the French would allow the people to carry guns this would not happen. Probably the same will occur in Australia. Otherwise the population at large are sitting ducks
61
having an armed citizenry will not help and would likely increase casualties cause by amateurs who have zero training or experience.
34
Perhaps I should have stated above, that this is my professional opinion, having carried arms for over 30 years in the service of my country (including CT operations). Arming the general public is a really bad idea, it has been proven time and again that the untrained amateur causes more problems than they can solve. (Set aside the asinine hollywood storylines)
40
Bill, while I don’t concur with your argument in total, I must admit that it is a sound argument in favour of military conscription as is the case in Switzerland. Conscription has been in place sufficiently long that nearly everyone under 40 has the requisite training. I guess that is why a Swiss law makes gun ownership mandatory in the home.
10
There is no mandatory firearms ownership in Switzerland; what they do have is that each reservist is required to keep and maintain his/her issued weapon (properly secured) along with his personal kit in a state of readiness. They don’t keep them loaded in the home or carry them about the community. I spent 18 months on an exchange posting in Geneva, it was an eye opener and very interesting. The Swiss have excellent troops and police, and the will to use them properly.
20
I stand corrected. I’m sure that you realise that my comment was essentially tacit approval of your comment that firearms in the hands of the unfit are a danger. I was simply pointing out that the Swiss appear to have an answer to that issue, and it isn’t legislation ascertaining that only outlaws carry guns.
20
Sorry Bill,but you only have to look at the countries who have the right to carry a gun.There gun crime is “Almost”non existent.A couple of weeks ago after the latest “School”shooting in the good old USA,we here in Queensland,had 4″Armed Holdups”that day.Just remember,John Howard took our firearms off us,at the Behest of the UN.Almost all “Gun”owners,know the responsibility that comes with being “Licenced To Carry”and are well trained in the use of these weapons.You can’t protect yourself when the enemy are armed and you aren’t.
00
what the hell is a “school”.
Sorry Clive… what was the number of armed holdups on the day in question in the state that had the “school” shooting. Always good to produce proper comparative evidence lest you look foolish.
00
stats… rate per 100,000 people of armed robbery in Oregon 61, QLD 14.1 in 2014 from government data.
Note that I didn’t look up other robbery types but think about it, if you were desperate enough to commit robbery in a place where everyone carries a gun, would you do it without using a gun yourself? The fact that guns are involved on both sides explains other statistics to do with death or injury during robberies. You can look that one up Clive, although I doubt you are the type to be skeptical about your own assumptions, but as a clue to the trend, in QLD there are almost none in a 5 year period.
00
Eliza.
Here in Australia we want politicians to remove guns from the community.
22
KK,
Here in Australia SOME want politicians to remove guns from the community.
At the moment all that has happened is that responsible people have no guns. Criminals have vast numbers of guns and always will have. I have slowly been coming to the conclusion as I age that I would really like to have a gun and train to use it properly so I can protect myself in my own home.
70
Sorry KK , i missed your 2nd comment that I highly agree with .
A properly trained public with weapons ,people with no criminal record and some mental screening would be a good thing , not chaos !
The terrorist likely target are innocent unsuspecting and unarmed general public …..never SAS headquarters or Police S.W.A.T teams for example .
The answer of course needs no explanation .
The public should have never been disarmed because of one or two nuts .
Now we are vulnerable .
We need defensive weapons , not invasive laws and more draconian limits on our freedoms .
We want real freedom …..not to be FreeDumbed Down , and become a ‘Terrorist Turkey Shoot’.
31
Hi Egor
This is my second post. The other one you refer to was probably that of Retired now.
My ideal society is one where we have trustworthy politicians and policing.
I do believe that any person living in an isolated situation is probably crazy not to have a firearm for protection under the current failure of government to protect us.
On balance though I still want my ideal society where politicians are held to account and NOBODY but authorized police in towns and cities can carry a gun.
I have been touched by two mass shootings in the US (Virginia Tech and Connecticut) where in one case a relative and in the other, friends, were marginally involved.
Should Australasian bear arms at the same level as occurs in the USA I could see many unnecessary deaths and all for what?
KK
20
Agreed. Interesting how hollywood and american myths seem to overrule rational thought on this issue. Anyone (sane) who has ever used a weapon to take a life certainly does not support the “wild west” nonsense some want to make “normal”.
20
Bill
Some months ago I spent nearly an hour talking to a senior NSW police officer who was involved in support for the entry team at the Lindt cafe siege.
We spoke in general terms of the pressure of being involved in policing and the depression that results.
He then went on to talk about one of the entry team and personal experience with that person.
It would be inappropriate to talk in detail but from our discussion I was reminded that even these hardened assault personnel have their limits. Very dangerous and life changing experience.
Police pay a large price to defend us in situations like the Lindt siege and do not need the added worry of having randomly armed citizens taking the law into their own hands.
Politicians get lazy and we need to be on to them to uphold standards of law enforcement that make it unnecessary for Joe average to carry a gun.
I consider myself to be a reasonably responsible person but hate to think what I might do when pushed to the limit in some situation where I am carrying a gun.
KK
30
Who is WE ?
The Leftists and the Appeasers are the advocates for a FreeDumbed down public .
The kid that shot the police accountant was taken out because he attacked an armed police station .
Imagine if the same kid attacked a shopping center , where nobody can defend themselves .
Or are we supposed to go to a gun fight with not even a knife ?
Maybe Pontificator Jones can have a Q&BS session over that with his biased leftist panel and cheer squad audience , which no doubt we will be subjected to on Monday night’s AlpgreensBC main propaganda show .
40
Correct !
Your citizens are not defended by by disarmament .
That is just leftist stupidity !
It only disarms the good people !
And further emboldens the criminals and terrorists .
The concert for example was a turkey shoot ….they never had a chance .
Even with say 10% armed ,the terrorists would have not attempted that assault .
31
I am not a leftist.
KK
31
I wrote this on Scott Morrison’s Facebook page:
“Tell Waffle Turnbull, Abbott was right (as usual) when he called it a DEATH CULT. We need a person of strength to be our country’s leader. As Churchill said after Chamberlain’s appeasement efforts:
‘You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war.””
I got 12 likes 🙂
220
Good Comments John ,
We are becoming a nation of Appeasers thanks to the growing Marxist mindset of to say and do the ‘politically correct’, rather than exercise true freedom and true freedom of speech !
We have been systematically FreeDumbed Down !
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-NOTn9nEc3W0/VjBSyZzR1WI/AAAAAAAAptc/XpvrYAnyts4/w696-h595-no/Putin%2Bon%2BIslam.jpg
http://www.quotehd.com/imagequotes/authors1/winston-churchill-statesman-an-appeaser-is-one-who-feeds-a-crocodile.jpg
40
14 Nov: InternationalBusinessTimes: France To Go Ahead With Climate Change Summit: Source
(Reporting by Emmanuel Jarry; writing by Leigh Thomas; Editing by Andrew Callus)
PARIS (Reuters) – The French government plans to go ahead with a climate change summit it is due to host at the end of the month, a senior French diplomatic source said on Saturday, the day after a wave of deadly attacks in France’s capital.
Asked whether the high-profile meeting could be put off, the venue changed or canceled, the source told Reuters “that is in no way under consideration”, but added that security could be boosted…
http://www.ibtimes.com/france-go-ahead-climate-change-summit-source-2184592
41
Canada hosted the G7 a few years ago at a cost of one billion. Most of that was for security. French forces are going to be tied up for weeks/months now. Does France have the resources to put on the COP 21 now? This type of event takes major planning and resources. I think they are going to have to cancel or post phone.
70
And as we recall, John, the lefty fruitbats whine moaned and dripped over the cost and the alleged loss of their precious “rights” when they rioted.
41
our dissent is worth more than your development!
14 Nov: Reuters: Andrew MacAskill: Greenpeace India to appeal against order to close over alleged fraud
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has declared economic development a priority and his government has cracked down on non-governmental organisations it says are trying to hamper projects on social and environmental grounds.
“We remain committed to upholding our right to dissent,” Greenpeace said in a statement. “Greenpeace cannot – and will not – be silenced in this way.”…
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/11/14/uk-india-greenpeace-appeal-idUKKCN0T30OU20151114
more deals!
13 Nov: Reuters: Britain, India sign over 9 billion pounds in deals despite protests
By Kylie MacLellan and Lisa Barrington
“We want to become your number one partner for supporting the finance needed for this ambitious plan, making London the world’s centre for offshore rupee trading,” Cameron told him during a news conference, adding that plans were in place to issue more than 1 billion pounds in bonds…
The British government listed more than 20 deals and collaborations, including a 1.3 billion-pound investment by Vodafone…
Before the visit, diplomats said the Indian leader was keen to buy 20 more BAE Systems Hawk trainer aircraft to be made in Bengaluru.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/11/13/uk-britain-india-idUKKCN0T100920151113
41
Mark Styne
This is what we’re going to be talking about when the mullahs nuke us.
61
The site is this steynonline
70
Thanks Lucky. Don’t know how I got that wrong.
10
Hi all,
Just get there to forward to you that, as of 13h here in France, there is already a statement from Nicolas Hulot, special emissary of the President François Hollande for the protection of the planet.
Here’s the link (in French).
Allow me to translate it to you (in italic, the journalist; in normal text, Nicols Hulot):
Will the COP21 be cancelled?
– At this very moment, we obviously can’t state anything on that precise point. But I believe it should really not be cancelled, that would be a form of surrender! It is not meant to expose the participants to terrorist dangers: it seems to me that the Bourget [where the COP21 will be held] is an isolated place, easier to secure than if it would occur in the heart of Paris.
But will the heads of the various nations, François Hollande in particular, be able to focus on climate issues?
– I hope so! It has to be understood that the issue of climate warming is not just an environmental problem: it is very directly associated to the issues of national security and terrorism. So yes, the COP21 must be maintained, precisely because of the attacks! When millions of people have to flee from their lands because of droughts, floods or typhoons, this worsen inequalities and exclusions in countries where terrorism fare the best [note: literally, the expression used is “make their honey” and, in French, it may also suggest that terrorism gets its main vitality from such places]. The struggles of accessibility to ressources and energy are the ferments of tomorrow’s wars, in the East as in the West.
So, more than ever, the climate remains a central issue?
– Yes, we must use (emphasis mine -I’m flabbergasted, the attacks have just happened!) these tragic events to forget our insignificant disagreements and focus on the essential. The essential, it’s the future of mankind. Look at the war in Syria: we know that if the climate issue does not, obviously, explain everything, it has contributed to it [note: based on some testimonies of survivors of the attack on the Bataclan, the attackers appeared to have yelled some stuff about how France should not intervene in Syria and that it is payback time]. By fleeing from lands now rendered barren from the droughts between 2007 and 2011, the inhabitants in north Syria have created tensions that explain in part the syrian conflict.
60
Oh, I see ‘November 15’ on my comment.
Here in France, note we still are on November 14!
50
Ah. I missed one news.
Laurent Fabius, our Foreign Affairs minister, have already expressed his views this morning.
The COP21 will be maintained. The participation of some people may be in question as, for instance, the heads of various nations for the summit of November 30. But, overall, it seems things will go as planned.
It is quite incredible to witness the use of the past perfect tense rather than the compound past so soon after the tragic events of yesterday. Maybe it reads better in English, I don’t know.
Specifically (emphasis mine):
Doubts had been raised about the happening of the world conference on climate that ought to take place at the Bourget (Seine-Saint-Denis) from November 30 to December 11, after the attacks perpetrated in Paris, Friday 13 November, that have resulted in the death of at least 128 people and numerous wounded ones.
(link)
When I read that, I had a bit of a cognitive dissonance. It felt like the doubts happened so remotely in the past. I had to check the date of the article to be sure…
70
“Doubts had been raised…”
No doubt the situation is France is tense right now but it reads like the doubters have been dealt with.
40
In fact, I read in a newspaper that a poll has been opened just after the attacks about whether the COP21 should proceed as planned or be cancelled.
We should do a bit of a search to find more about that poll but I believe it was quite open. By that I mean ‘to everyone’.
Also it appeared to me the poll was opened by the very newspaper I read so I’m sure the author commenting on doubts, being a journalist, quickly knew about that poll.
Still, she is pretty unspecific about the doubts (and I think it is meant to be that way) so it is hard to say there’s a connection there.
But if there is, the tone of her comment about the doubts and the speed at which the comment itself happened reveals a clear intention, in my eyes at least.
It is, yet again in the climate issue, meant to crush any attempt to open discussions in unwelcomed directions. Before the attacks, it felt like that the matter was settled and stuff like the COP21 would just happen.
The attacks have legitimately taken the spotlight. We are probably witnessing here very swift and agile positionning to be sure that the taking of such light does not cast a shadow on their problem.
It may seem far-fetched but recall that’s the problem when you talk about an overwhelming consensus (not just in science but in society overall). Such a poll would not only have provided a way to discordant voices to be heard.
First, the longer the poll would be there, like installed, the more extrem and insensitive the alarmists would have appeared when shutting it down. But more importantly, by the very apparition of such discordant voices, the poll could have remembered to many, many people that the ones behind the COP21 are not speaking for society.
They are not our representants. They are people who have invited our representants to deal with a seemingly huge problem. They now are facing a situation where a clearly more important problem appeared, so much more important that it has the potential to change any short term agenda, like the very happening of the summit of the COP21 in two weeks.
I believe Jo was right when she said it would not take much now to overthrow the persuasive power of the alarmists. They have said too much incoherent stuff and the science behind is too shaky.
Now, I’m also convinced in situations like the COP21, they walk an extremely thin, razor-like line.
Hulot is spot on when he talks about surrendering. Climate change is not publicized as an important issue. You should see the situation of the newspapers in France: no critical spirit, just total propaganda.
Currently, one journal is pretty unambiguous about it. It titled something like: How to save the planet? or Now is the time to save the planet. And you should be aware than practically no number has ever been given in France about how much we already have spent on that issue. Things are always presented as if nothing has really been done.
So the situation is critical. Climate change is presented as the top one problem of mankind. And the future of how we tackle that problem will be decided in less than two weeks, at least perceptually, for the public.
If the COP21 should be diminished because of the recent events, that could point out the climate issue is not that much of a big deal to our representants. Like, as long as they have no more pressing matters, they are just nice about it and try to make some efforts. The minute their duties call, they just pass by.
I’m sure that would be unbearable to alarmists.
20
Disgusting, he’s trying to use the terrorist attacks to justify the AGW nonsense and political action for a non-problem.
72
>>Thomas
>>By fleeing from lands now rendered barren from the droughts
>>between 2007 and 2011, the inhabitants in north Syria have
>>created tensions that explain in part the syrian conflict.
Nonsense, there was an identical uprising in 1982, which was put down by Assad’s father in exactly the same manner. Are you saying this was caused by AGW to?
I did write a long essay about the reasons for the Syrian conflict, but it was deleted. But in short this is a sectarian conflict that goes back 1,300 years. As such, it has absolutely NOTHING to do with modern climate or modern politics.
Ralph
30
Hey, easy on Thomas, as I read it he is quoting this Nicols Hulot climate twerp in France.
20
Thanks Andy.
I see Ralph has reacted in another comment about the conflict and I’m sure he is knowledgeable in this matter. I must confess seeing people speaking in an expert voice about a problem while clearly lacking real expertise is something I find very annoying so I understand Ralph here.
Ralph, no offense taken. I knew when I added my note about the claims of attackers about Syria that I had probably misplaced it. Because it is so long, it is unclear that the following text was back to the translation of Nicolas Hulot and not my own opinion.
Sorry about the confusion!
20
Dear Ralph,
I would like to read your essay if you happen to still have a copy of it.
But even without it, I could tell in a glance that the conflict clearly has its roots and main fuel in other factors than the climate.
This is just a classic way to go from the “protectors of Earth” it appears. Bring your two cents on an issue, recall the climate is also there and point out that solving the issues about it will/could/may improve the overall situation.
Al Gore said it quite some time ago: there’s no wrong in over-representing the importance of some facts so as to increase concerns in the audience.
From here, Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace, shortened it the best: “It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”
Now, I believe we also have here an invitation. This is probably why the “will/could/may” part is unclear. The “protectors” couldn’t care less about what they are implying. They don’t seek clarity in causal relationships about the climate. They seek massive support (as their heavy and insane reliance on the notion of consensus as the end of all debates shows).
This is yet another behavior that had been acknowledged by Timothy Wirth (President of the UN Foundation) or Christine Stewart (a former Canadian Minister of the Environment).
Here’s their respective quotes:
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue.
Even if the theory of global warming is wrong,
we will be doing the right thing in terms of
economic and environmental policy.”
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony…
climate change provides the greatest opportunity to
bring about justice and equality in the world.”
20
Sure. It is not very long. Do you have a facebooks page I can post it on. JNova does not want it here.
00
I do.
But I’m unsure what to give you as I don’t use Facebook for myself.
Is it working with that link?
https://www.facebook.com/thomas.krauss.94
00
I firmly disagree that the appropriate response is to go to war with DAESH.
I support ‘ungentlemanly warfare’ instead.
I’m no pacifist, and it’s not that they proclaim they want this war, or that some among them are deliberately trying to provoke it, though both those things are true.
It’s mainly because that would be repeating the mistakes that lead to the creation of ISIS.
I’d prefer to bring the populace to overthrow DAESH, rather than spend blood and lives doing it ourselves. Here’s some of the things that should be done:
I would require of Iraq that they stop financially supporting DAESH. This includes:
– change the design of their currency,
– end bank transfers to individuals in regions controlled by DAESH, and
– actively prosecute those who provide financial aid.
At the same time I’d have Western Governments forge local currency in vast amounts. I’d drop it in by drone, with notes attached saying in the recipients’ language, (Arabic I presume), “a gift from your friends in Australia to help you fight DAESH.”
Send the equivalent of an average month’s wages. Most Australians are oblivious to the difference between money and value. I presume the average Iraqi or Syrian is equally unclear. Enough ‘money’ will be released into circulation that hyperinflation will result. There will be more reliance upon the ‘gifts’ as food and ordinary items become unaffordable without them. Whether ISIS tolerates it, taxes it or attempts to confiscate it, the interests of the ‘administration’ and the people will be increasingly opposed.
If a meal costs a thousand dollars, your job pays you a hundred dollars, Australia gives you ten thousand (admittedly counterfeit, but indistinguishable from the original) dollars, and the Government tries to take it away from you, then you and the ‘Government’ will be seriously opposed.
The purchasing power of ISIS’s financial reserves will be inflated away.
Include surplus money in a few percent of the drops. (Increase the temptation to withhold from ISIS.) Put a few dollars less in a very few of them. The confiscators will want what they think is ‘the full amount’. Someone with such a package must fight ISIS or die.
Include quotes from Islamic courts sentencing (in absentia) named ISIS members to prison or other punishment for rape, homicide, theft and other offences for which they are guilty. The double-think between DAESH’s claim they have a religious obligation to participate, and their upbringing’s religious condemnation of this will wedge the people and DAESH further apart.
Include a few quotes from IS leaders about how wonderful living in the Caliphate will be. Free health care better than they have in
England, etc. Let them contrast the promise and the reality.
Some packages should have photos of electric light, television, computers, cars, movies, anything that local cultural experts believe will make individuals mourn the good old days and want to actively free themselves.
Use drones to reduce genuine income for DAESH; bomb oil wells, refineries and factories. Don’t bomb indiscriminately as in the Blitz, the individuals who live would come to consider themselves protected by God.
Probably we can win by force of arms, though that approach will require the slaughter of millions, most of them innocent.
But in fighting an ideology, its far preferable that it be repudiated by those its aimed at instead of exterminated by book burnings, genocides and oppression.
There’s more ‘ungentlemanly warfare’that should already be in place. But that’s the way we should go.
50
When Barack Obama claims that climate change is a greater threat than terrorism he is correct, because he is using climate change as state sponsored terrorism against his own people. What else could you call it when in order to circumvent democracy he has radicalized government institutions and scientific bodies such as the EPA and NOAA ,subverted the young through the education system by creating a false grass roots movement ( astro turfing ) turning kids that are members of student unions into anti fossil fuel jihadists , and calling for action against anyone that is even slightly skeptical of the religion , and it has become a religion hasn’t it, and every religion has its fanatics
71
I still have doubts COP21 can go ahead in any meaningful way. This is a terrible blow to the people of France, heart felt to the families but the cost to France is much greater.
-Borders are now closed. when re opened will it be back to free movement or more likely border checks, at least for now?? This is going to need a lot of security personal either way
-I understand French security is already tight but you cannot just hire someone off the street. Even soldiers will need some training to do security. The current forces must be strained to the max right now.
-The security requirements for COP21 has to be massive.
-Trade is and is going to be effected, this will for sure have a large effect on the Frances economy
-Tourism must be affected also
-France already has around 12 % unemployment
-European (and French) banks are already having trouble. Many European countries including France have debt troubles
-There is a recession about every 7 years going back to biblical times
-The influx of refuges is a huge strain on the economy already
-This has to have an effect on peoples behaviour. There will for a while be less people going out, spending will be down.
Between sovereign debt, refuges, and now this, Europe looks be heading into a deep recession and the return of the sovereign debt crisis ( anyone read Martin Armstrong). Even if COP 21 goes ahead in a reduced form, the leaders of the world may find themselves too busy to deal with whatever great proclamation is extruded.
50
I don’t know whether to scream or just cry at this atrocity. I keep asking myself, how can we all be so complacent and not have taken some decisive action against the terrorists before now. I have a list of terrorist actions, just against America and on American soil, that goes all the way back to 1972 and it’s a long list. Yet we do nothing but talk, complain and wring our hands over the corpses of the dead. The president says, “We stand with France,” but will we act with France? Will France even act?
How have we become so defenseless against anyone, any threat, whoever and wherever they may be? How?
I’m going to take a chance and link to that list. If I end up stuck in moderation, so be it. I’ll just repeat this comment without the link.
Jo, I apologize if this isn’t acceptable to link on this topic.
70
It’s odd that in Paris this year,
From the U.N. the whole world will hear,
That to praise CO2,
Is completely taboo,
And the threat that all mankind must fear.
110
A few years ago, before the era of QE & another ratcheting up of the grip on the world by the City & the Street, when AlGorism & 10:10 was all the paranoid rage: Jo put up a blog article on the Lunatic push for Palm Oil for fuel ( short cycle carbon) in the rain forest in Indonesia.
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/11/unintended-consequences-greens-protect-coal-deposits-and-destroy-rainforest/
Then as now, I humbly stand in awe of the frank erudition of many luminaries who bring so much horsepower & knowledge to the discussion here.
After a couple of “tinnies from the hill” ( & seeing Richard Courtney in the crowd); I put out a query about the economics of GTL/ coal > gas> liquid as a real world alternative to not only the lunacy of Palm Oil, Corn & Cane Alcohol etc. but to the economic stranglehold of the current sources of liquid hydrocarbons.
Richard replied:-
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/11/unintended-consequences-greens-protect-coal-deposits-and-destroy-rainforest/#comment-133702
IMHO, that stranglehold is not only the grip of the Oil Producing nations ( & cultures) but ALSO the same Seven Sisters / Global Banking Organizations ( JPM GS etc), the Creatures of the City.
We, the cattle, the worker bees, the cannon fodder, the useful idiots are being propagandized, frightened, cajoled & selectively informed & deceived & “guided” by SO many self-righteous Judas Goats .
Now for the Tin Hat Questions:-
How much of “The Arab Spring” & all its preceding decade & ½ of warfare in Iraq & Afghanistan is really about getting a bit of plumbing through Syria & Turkey to Western Europe to compete with Russian Gas?
Who would be the real beneficiaries?
How long before all the QE destroys the current $US backed Fiat Money Global Economy?
Will there be any such thing as National Sovereignty when all this (orchestrated?) cycle of Global Madness is over?
Tin Hat off, now back to Home & Away & Malcolm’s Benevolent Banker smile…………..
40
Nonsense, there was an identical uprising in 1982, which was put down by Assad’s father in exactly the same manner. Are you saying this was caused by a gas pipeline too?
I did write a long essay about the reasons for the Syrian conflict, but it was deleted. But in short this is a sectarian conflict that goes back 1,300 years. As such, it has absolutely NOTHING to do with modern climate or modern politics.
Ralph
40
Nonsense perhaps, but there are other arguments:-
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-10/competing-gas-pipelines-are-fueling-syrian-war-migrant-crisis
00
My guess about this atrocity is that it will cause the trickle of people voting for ALA to turn into a flood.
60
100% correct.
00
I am not a religious person , but my parents installed a moral behavior or standard into my upbringing , it taught me to to respect religious belief’s of others , even though i should make up my own mind ‘ i should respect the believes of others that i disagree with , but its not easy , and i have a moral code to live by that makes it very difficult to respect the religious views of others, even though i know most of them mean well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkZ1T-sKLPM
40
She has a long litany of what has gone wrong in the world, all of it true. And yet those who’re willing to use force can drive the rest of us in front of them like animals as they ravage the landscape behind us. I listened to some of the statements of those who escaped the attacks in Paris and they were, right down to the very last one, in mortal fear of the overwhelming force they faced.
So what is to be done if not to fight back? It isn’t a religious issue. It isn’t a moral issue. It’s an issue of defense against mortal danger.
30
Why is Australia continuing to take members of the death cult from the UNHCR for resettlement in Australia?
During the great wars people from enemy countries were placed in detention for the duration of the war. Right now we have police on high alert and surveillance of people suspected of being potential terrorist at a high cost to taxpayers, a heavily burdened welfare system that supports the majority of the resettled people, many of whom display their unwillingness to assimilate and some are even openly hostile towards Australians who are not of their beliefs, and now governments believing that they need to pay more taxpayer’s money to try and redirect extremists who are turned into radicals by their community leaders and families. Political correctness over the top nonsense.
90
It is noticeable in Oz that when a terrorist incident occurs and police carry out raids on the homes of suspects, they often return to locations that have already been raided on previous occasions. Obviously the occupants have already done something to arouse the suspicions of the authorities.
I think the time has come to put political correctness and civil liberties aside for the greater good. I think the time has come to put people suspected of terrorist activities into some sort detention.
Wether we like it or not, the whole world is currently involved in a war against terror and, as Dennis points out above, in previous wars detention was used as a “safety measure”.
90
Can’t see security being a problem here. If I had a say in Isil. I’d far rather have the west hang itself than waste time trying to stop them!!!
30
Right now the Commonwealth of Australia is on high alert because of the threats of terrorism detected by the intelligence services and police forces, and there are a large number of people in prison for acts of terrorism and/or planning terrorism. There are many who have left Australia to join ISIS forces in Syria and elsewhere. One Australian citizen caught recently, Habib, was one returned by US Military after being captured with the enemy and taken as a prisoner of war many years ago.
Australia has legislated tougher anti-terrorism laws, to cancel Australian passports of dual passport holders caught fighting illegally overseas and many other measures taken (Abbott Government).
I believe that Australians are being kept secure at present. But as I posted above, why accept any more.
50
Unfortunately,we already have about 300,000 of these “Radical”in OZ.How are we,the people,supposed to know who these “Radicals”are.Unless they are carrying a knife,a vest for blowing oneself up,or “Firearm”we will not know who the enemy is.
By the way,for those who say “Leave It to the Police”I don’t have the confidence that the “Police”will be up to the job.After the “Lindt Cafe”episode(ask anyone with firearms experience about 62 rounds being fired for one armed person)That was”Ridiculous”Just because the Govt.say they are the”Experts”doesn’t make it so.
00
Ground troops under the UN flag seems inevitable to clear out Syria and rebuild it, so that the millions of refugees in Jordan and Europe can return home.
40
What makes you think they’d want to return home after a few years on European Social Security and National Health schemes?
20
I doubt the Paris planet-saving conference will be a specific target for ISIS. If your enemy is Western civilisation and you see them in the process of hamstringing their own economies through some fanciful pagan self-flagellation, you’re hardly going to put any obstacles in their way.
As the saying goes “never interrupt your enemy when they are making a strategic mistake”.
40
I would hardly call the ISIL/ISIS fanatics rational.
20
Bill, I would hardly call the CAGW True b’lver Crowd ….’Rational’ !
Both say “it is unacceptable to be Infidels / Non believers(skeptics)
Both are anti democracy and anti capitalism .
One says Infidels must die …the other says infidels (skeptics) should be imprisoned .
Both originate from medieval religions !
Our anti – terrorist efforts have achieved nothing …..our CAGW squandering of trillions has achieved nothing …..and yet we continue as usual with both .
El Presidente O’Bummer said ” Climate change is a bigger threat than Terrorism ”
He pulled the troops out of Iraq prematurely and created ISIS and friends .
O’Bummer has caused more problems through Anti-terrorist incompetence and CAGW true b’lverism than any previous .
Mr Nobel Peace Prize “I’m really good at killing people” El Presidente O’Bummer (quote/unquote)
How can anybody claim that CAGW is a bigger global threat than Terrorism after viewing this graph >>
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/clip_image002_thumb1.jpg?w=597&h=279
Maybe if we stopped dropping one bomb per week on their heads , they might mellow out !
Either go in hard and finish them ,or get out of there , instead of aggravating them with one bomb per week .
And this CAGW money grabbing totalitarian medievalism needs to be put to the sword !
31
100% correct Rodski .
They must be laughing at our stupidity !
The CAGW True B’lver crowd is doing more to cripple our way of life than any terrorist movement could hope to achieve .
Our Paris Pre-Enlightenment is more in line with their beliefs …..Both Medieval in origin .
The terrorists say “attack the Infidels “…..the CAGW True’B’lvers say “imprison the infidels (sceptics)”……I don’t see a lot of difference here .
Both are loony-religion based
40
I guess on the other hand there will be so many representatives from the “crusader” nations and their allies, all in one place, that it may be too good an opportunity to miss.
40
Absolutely agree with your footnote.
30
They say when you corner a rat they will fight to the death. The downing of the Russian civilian aircraft and now this atrocity in Paris, means the gloves are off. A pivotal moment in history.
Earlier this month the French sent in their big ship, which must have got up the nose of the terrorists.
http://www.ibtimes.co.in/france-deploy-its-largest-warship-charles-de-gaulle-syria-fight-isis-653485
30
Name the faith that inspired this evil attack in Paris….
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_name_the_faith_that_inspired_this_evil/
Hint, it starts with the letter I….
30
[SNIP 18C] now threatening journalists……..
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2015/10/real-backlash/
50
Great Article from Quadrant .
No wonder Bolt and others are off-side !
10
The biggest threat is in pandering …..
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/mirandadevine/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/the_biggest_threat_is_in_pandering_to_islam/
20
Sweden in flames: As gangs of migrants riot for five nights running… the Utopian boats of a multicultural success story turn to ashes
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2330247/Sweden-flames-As-gangs-migrants-riot-nights-running–Utopian-boats-multicultural-success-story-turn-ashes.html
71
What ?
No Kumbayah ? Or Group Hugs ?
Where are the Leftists when you need them ?
31
Angry
This has been overshadowed by the deaths in Paris but is extremely disturbing.
Europe is facing a crisis.
30
Angry
This was two years ago!
10
What is the problem?
These are quotes from their holy book.
I’m not just making this up.
Get one and see for yourself if you don’t believe me……
31
.
>>What is the problem?
>>These are quotes from their holy book.
Indeed, I have 500 of those quotes. And there is not a newspaper in the Western world that will print them. Funny, isn’t it, how the Western media refuses to print these messages of peace from the ‘Religion of Peace’.
Who is pulling the censorship strings here?
Ralph
30
“There is no greater threat to our planet than climate change”
Is that why Obama needs 300 security officers, to protect him from rising sea levels.
70
600 secret service , not to mention the 18 ton ‘Beast’ he gets around in .
Real popular Dude !
And the only thing on the rise is the BS level , of which he is the master .
40
thankfully the terrorist attacks in london are rare now but a look back over the ages is quite surprising-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_London
10
Merkel has blood on her hands.
Time for her to go.
20
Peace for Paris symbol that went viral in Zakaria – Kerry interview fireplace!!
WTF
Please check this out and share… very creepy.
https://atokenmanblog.wordpress.com/2015/11/14/je-suis-isis/
10
Not a day after the massacre in Paris the US democratic debates kicked off in Iowa. Within a few minutes Bernie Sanders was linking the Paris atrocities to…you guessed it…Climate Change.
How anyone can be so duplicitous is beyond me. Even politicians, who I abhore as a rule, are usually a tad more circumspect so close to such a tragedy. To twist reality this way just makes me sick.
This meme was created by a NYT article from March which drew a fantastical long bow claiming that a warming climate is responsible for war and aggression in the Middle-East.
Secretary of State John Kerry has since repeated the idea, adding that AGW is the greatest threat to mankind.
So where do we go from here?
Climate Change is the cause of ALL evils….yet no one can point to any evidence that such a case exists.
[snipped, 18C]
10
Here is a report from my man on the ground in Paris.
The Rebel is the only unfettered news media in Canada.
10