The ISIS threat to Europe

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

14 minutes ago, blandy said:

That's different to how I see it. I think Europe is absolutely not shifting to the right. I think it's polarising to both the left and the right. The same thing to an extent seems to be happening in America. There's (at least) 2 different things going on. There's a move to the left which is basically down to the economy and unfairness and inequality and cronyism and elites stitching things up and ordinary people paying for the bankers misdeeds.

Then because of war and terrorism there's a move to the right, a fear of foreigners, muslims, minorities and people seemingly wanting to have "control". The terrorism acts as a recruiting agent for the right wing extremists and to a degree so does the poverty and inequality as they use immigrants (or indeed the EU) as  the thing to blame for the poverty, when neither is true, but it makes an easy target.

I agree that Europe is becoming more and more polarized but in my pessimistic world view I think the right & wealthy elite have elections more or less sown up for the near future and save some populist lefties breaking through, policy in EU countries will largely remain the same: protect the system and shift blame to the Other. Now, I don't think many governments actually want to punish those they blame to win elections, discrimination tends to be a bit more insidious now (a denied visa here, a stop and search there...) but they may find they have no choice when anger grows and people demand change and the only change they think will help is to, you guessed it, send the Other home etc.

 

[StanBalaban]

IMO the media can play huge part in galvansing Europe and the US. The victims of these attack in Nice and the Bataclan have been from of all ages, races and religions. Completely indiscriminate.

As many have said our nations are polarised in opinions so there's always going to be a numbskull faction that will seek revenge / live in fear / use as an excuse for violence on any brown person. It would be a start if the news coverage made the point that all walks of life have been caught up in these attacks whilst going about their every day lives in France.

We won't have any hope of finding a solution in the Middle East without looking to find harmony within our own shores first. The media and press have a huge role and responsibility to take the higher ground and report the facts, without editorialising the content and pandering to the ignorant and working up the already fearful, but I guess that doesn't get as many viewers or readers.  

[BOF]

Just ... staggering.

 

(SFW)

 

For once, I'm lost for words

Posted by Jonathan O'Connor on Friday, July 15, 2016

 

[penguin]

I think (hope), although she's put it across extremely poorly, that's she's trying to say how it's put into perspective how pointless going and buying a load of nice things seems in the aftermath of such a tragedy. 

[Chindie]

It's a fight of many fronts that needs to be made.

The Islamic faith has to, en masse, fight a harder, brutal philosophical war to sects of it's faith that are essentially evil. It needs to intellectually engage the imams and 'prophets' that espouse this line of thought, and it has to inspire the young men out there to turn away from that life. It may also need to get some angels to conveniently edit the uneditable word of God... When you have comparatively sane people believing even comparatively minor things that are mad, because God's book says so, you probably need to do something about it. The same is true to other books of insanity. Only the other week this forum was home to talk of judging people because they are different, whereas the modern and life loving approach has to be 'that guys different, and that's fine. Nothing to do with me, isn't hurting anyone, leave him be in every regard'.

The West has a careful part to play adjusting it's relationship and actions with the Middle East. We can't disengage entirely, that world is gone. But we also have to learn the lessons of meddling in the recent past. The West has the might to push things and that has to be carefully wielded to get the Middle East working again. Having a no-man's land in Iraq and Syria helped give ISIS it's foothold, and the West helped make that no man's land and then let it get worse, for instance. Our reliance on the House of Saud needs to be changed.

And so on. Work must be done at home, balance engaging Islam, particularly young men, and neutering it - faith schools are bad, of all creeds, do away with them, etc etc etc.

There's no easy answer, there's no amount of words be they condemnation or understanding from any quarter that is going to change this. There is a problem in the Islamic world, and the West has essentially spent decades enabling it, and nobody has committed to the generations of work it needs to fix it. In any quarter. And until that happens at best you kick the can down the road. Eventually you're going to catch up. You need to bin the can.

[Jon]

7 hours ago, BOF said:

Just ... staggering.

 

(SFW)

 what a lovely individual. 

[Jareth]

3 hours ago, chakal said:

You didn't write a word about victims, but you FEEL SAD for muslims in Birmingham??? Some of you there are really acting like lambs to the slaughter. Wake up.
 

Wake up to what exactly? 

[Paddywhack]

I just found out the terrorist was male.

As a male myself I'd like to let people know that I condemn acts like this.

[dont_do_it_doug.]

Uber cancelled it's free ice cream offer today out of respect...

Ummm, what?

[darrenm]

30 minutes ago, Paddywhack said:

I just found out the terrorist was male.

As a male myself I'd like to let people know that I condemn acts like this.

That all very well but what is the male community doing to stop these acts?

[choffer]

31 minutes ago, Paddywhack said:

I just found out the terrorist was male.

As a male myself I'd like to let people know that I condemn acts like this.

One lone voice. Where's the all-male groups coming out and doing likewise?

[maqroll]

5 hours ago, StefanAVFC said:

It's a grim circle at the moment.

Radicalised people commit atrocities in the name of Islam -> Attacked country retaliates -> Innocent people lose lives ->  More people radicalised -> Radicalised people commit atrocities in the name of Islam

This is the quagmire in a nutshell. The West needs to take a very hard look at our actions in the ME and NA. Our look the other way policy towards the Zionist regime isn't helping matters either. We need to pull our forces out of there and bring pressure to bear on the Saudis, Jordan and Egypt to take up the fight in our stead. The only western presence there should be humanitarian. A hardline stance against Israel's continuing settlement expansion and apartheid policy should be the second step, but sadly, it's unlikely to happen anytime soon, with May and Clinton/Trump, and probably Le Pen coming into power. Where there's a will there's a way, but we lack the collective will, and we are ruled by **** idiots.

[Awol]

The Israeli-Palestinian issue needs solving for its own sake (easier said than done), but will make precisely zero difference to the broader Middle East conflict, jihadism or the terror threat in the west. 

Palestine is a flag of convenience, not a causus belli. 

It's all well and good saying the regional powers need to get together to defeat terrorism, the fact is those groups are proxies for the same regional powers to fight out ideological & geopolitical/strategic rivalries. 

UK MP's directly accused Saudi of covertly finding ISIS this week but the Magic Kingdom are hardly alone on that score among the Sunni States.

Meanwhile Iran owns Hamas and Hezbollah, it's deployed Al Quds force and many smaller Shia Militias in Iraq and elsewhere.  

The point is you can't separate these things out, they are like hydra heads all going back (directly or otherwise) to opposing root regimes. 

Meanwhile the MENA region is getting worse not better (including Egypt & Turkey) and while we could try and wash our collective hands of it - as we largely did with Syria - the outcomes won't be any better than that disaster.  Even the countries that look stable, aren't.

[maqroll]

1 minute ago, Awol said:

It's all well and good saying the regional powers need to get together to defeat terrorism, the fact is those groups are proxies for the same regional powers to fight out ideological & geopolitical/strategic rivalries.

As long as they know the West will spend the money and lives to fight ISIS, they won't. Their sectarian problem is theirs alone to solve, not ours, we need to GTFOT. 

And seeing as most of the terrorist attacks in Europe are committed by European born people, we need to find a way to better integrate these people into society and not drop them into ghettos and say "good luck". 

Violent jihad is an easy option that give a hopeless life "meaning". We need to provide them with a better alternative. 

[AshVilla]

Another terrorist which had his ID on him when he got killed

I know its irrelevant but i just find it strange

[Chindie]

52 minutes ago, AshVilla said:

Another terrorist which had his ID on him when he got killed

I know its irrelevant but i just find it strange

Is it unusual for someone to carry a driving licence? Or a bank card?

That's how they identified him.

[villakram]

1 hour ago, AshVilla said:

Another terrorist which had his ID on him when he got killed

I know its irrelevant but i just find it strange

well at least it wasn't ejected from a passenger plane, that hit a skyscraper at ~500mph and detonated in a huge fireball, and then proceeded to land perfectly intact on a a sidewalk down below. 

[chakal]

9 hours ago, Xann said:

Yeah. Many of us went to school with them, Hindus and Jews too, and grew up together as friends.

Thick, ignorant or divisive people tar them all with the same brush.

I understand this, but i find it very inappropriate to feel sad for muslims in Birmingham (which didn't have anything to do with attacks), when thoughts and compassion should be with families of victims.
 

[chakal]

2 hours ago, maqroll said:

As long as they know the West will spend the money and lives to fight ISIS, they won't. Their sectarian problem is theirs alone to solve, not ours, we need to GTFOT.

And seeing as most of the terrorist attacks in Europe are committed by European born people, we need to find a way to better integrate these people into society and not drop them into ghettos and say "good luck".

Violent jihad is an easy option that give a hopeless life "meaning". We need to provide them with a better alternative.

the case is they very often don't want to integrate and be part of "our" society

 

Edited July 15, 2016 by chakal

[Genie]

1 hour ago, Chindie said:

Is it unusual for someone to carry a driving licence? Or a bank card?

That's how they identified him.

In general not, but given what he was about to do you'd expect he'd want to try at least to go unknown and leave his ID at home...