VERY OFF TOPIC. . . Immigration in Europe. .

[M61A1]

Islam has been effective in reaching out to vast numbers of poor middle eastern kids in a way that Christianity hasn't done since Roman times. You can't bomb an idea so what can the west really do? Give these kids the pathway to a decent job, a nice house and a happy family. But that's not how capitalism works, you have to have a large pool of idle labor to keep wages low and demand high.

Treat them like a cancer.......you don't see doctors telling you that you need to be sympathetic to your cancers needs. It is unfortunate, but the only way to sort this crap out, is to completely destroy it, forget that Christian crap about turning the other cheek, and not lowering ourselves to their level. Like a cancer, if it is not completely destroyed, it will destroy us.

 

Islam does not "reach out" to children, like any religion, it brainwashes them.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

how did that work out in Afghanistan and Iraq?

 

 

[M61A1]

how did that work out in Afghanistan and Iraq?

It will work exceptionally if we forget the bleeding hearts and do the job properly.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

Always the bleeding hearts, the military always have an excuse.

 

 

[M61A1]

Always the bleeding hearts, the military always have an excuse.

To quote the internet......" can't tell if trolling or just really stupid"

 

 

[fly_tornado]

Mick, are you and the ADF going to show the Americans how to win a war?

 

 

[Bruce]

A guy I knew well was working in the middle-east as an agricultural adviser, and he had a bright and happy local as his assistant. Well one day the local came in and acted like a zombie and he stayed that way. His boss, my mate, eventually found out what had happened.

 

The local had gone home and interrupted his approximately 10 year-old son and daughter curiously inspecting each other. Well he didn't know what to do so he went to the mosque to ask for guidance. The result was that the son was beheaded and the daughter stoned.

 

All these people are younger than me and I guess still in the workforce. The country was Saudi Arabia.

 

I say the Japanese are right not to let them in, even though I agree most of them are lovely people.

 

 

[M61A1]

Mick, are you and the ADF going to show the Americans how to win a war?

A two year old could show the Americans how to win a war.

 

Any war needs to be fought without the silly legal and ethical restraints we put on ourselves.

 

The enemy is clearly amoral, unethical and ruthless, they will not be beaten unless we apply the same rules.

 

Enough trolling for one day FT, you can't be that stupid.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

Mick I'm sorry I interrupted your delusion that the ADF is relevant.

 

I always loved how the ADF made Howard wear his helmet crooked, it always made him look incompetent

 

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[kgwilson]

The west has created a rod for its own back IMHO. Back in the 70s I travelled safely through lots of Muslim countries including Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan & Pakistan. The people in general were friendly & hospitable. The Afghanis in particular were wonderful hosts. After the Shah of Iran got the boot the West began losing influence everywhere but the real problem was, that's where all the oil was. Internally in these countries there was always conflict and a strong man often emerged to keep the factions (e.g Sunni & Shi-ite) apart. Hussein did this for years until he go too confident & invaded Kuwait & it all went downhill from there.

 

But no we had to go in & impose "democracy" where a dictatorship worked. It spawned Al Queda & dozens of other splinter groups with IS emerging as the dominant group after the invasion of Iraq on false pretenses & also as revenge for 9/11. We are still trying to prop up the West imposed Afghani government. What a total waste of time. They may not like the Taliban but they absolutely despise the West. No-one has ever been successful there. The Poms got a bloody nose 2 centuries ago, the Russians as well in the late 70s & now the West. We still didn't learn. We had to go & support the rebels against Assad & what a sh1tbox that has turned out to be.

 

In the meantime after the imperialists got the boot we got all guilty about our past & decided that they could come & live at our place if they wanted to. Most were happily just doing that till the Shah went west but our antics have steadily turned the entire Muslim populace in the Middle East & North Africa against us with many using the Koran literally as justification. But still we are humanitarian & the mass migration from Syria has given Europe its biggest headache since Hitler. Now the Frogs are saying there will be "No Mercy". What are they going to do? Round up the 10 or 20 million Muslims & put them in concentration camps with a hitler style "Final Solution", deport them all back to where they came from & put a big wall up from the mediterranean to the baltic with a "Europe is closed" sign.

 

I don't know the answer but I know it isn't to persevere with the current scenario. It seems at least one of the Paris Bombers was a Syrian refugee who arrived from Greece only last month. You can't always believe the TV news but some of the Border debacles showed a lot of young fit men in the crowd.

 

The downhill spiral continues.

 

 

[Kyle Communications]

Putin and his tactical nukes maybe employed sooner than later

 

 

[Marty_d]

One problem is that the West can't get proper human intelligence. You would think that if someone preaches hatred and jihad that it wouldn't be too hard to locate them and put 2 in the head, but obviously they haven't got the human resources to do this.

 

Drone strikes are ok when you're 100% confident that the vehicle contains your target plus some combatants, but as the MSF hospital debacle proves, sitting back and throwing in high explosives is not the answer to every problem.

 

 

[Birdseye]

The USA and it's CIA have a lot to answer for. That is not just a glib statement, but based on observations made over many years.

 

 

[Happyflyer]

The USA and it's CIA have a lot to answer for. That is not just a glib statement, but based on observations made over many years.

And you could add the colonialism of the English, drawing lines on maps, creating countries, not taking into account ancient lands and religious and tribal boundaries. A recipe for instability when they were eventually kick out.

 

 

[willedoo]

I would tend to think the mess in the Middle East has been caused by many things combined over decades of time, rather than a bunch of hardliners reading a particular book.

 

Some possible contenders:

 

Oil.

 

The post colonial hangover, with the carved-up drawn boundries.

 

The need to maintain the U.S. Dollar as the prime currency.

 

Richard Nixon's legacy of trading oil in the above.

 

Saddam's suggestion to drop the U.S. Dollar and trade oil in Euros.

 

Gaddafi's promotion of the African Gold Dina for all oil trading in the region.

 

Geo-strategic and economic goals promoted as as a high moral ground push for 'democracy'.

 

Economic and social inequality within the region.

 

Two superpower dogs fighting over the same bone.

 

The burning desire to keep to keep the other power out of the region.

 

Religious differences.

 

More oil.

 

More U.S. Dollars.

 

The greed of certain regional players.

 

Manipulation of that greed by large powers.

 

Containment.

 

And again more oil.

 

And then there's Israel, but I don't want to open that can of worms. There's probably a lot more that could be added to the list if anyone can enlighten me further.

 

Cheers, Willie.

 

 

[Ultralights]

A death cult has declared war on the West

 

Whatever this is, it is not a clash of civilisations. The concept of "civilisation" scarcely comes into it. Nor is it a struggle between competing sets of values, or a religious war, or a battle with an alien culture. There is no debate here – as there was in the Cold War – about how it is best for men to live: the enemy has stated explicitly that it does not revere life at all. On the contrary, it is in love with self-inflicted death, which it sees as the highest moral achievement.

 

 

 

Civilians are not collateral damage in this campaign: their deaths are the whole point.

 

 

 

This is not even war in any comprehensible sense. Where are the demands, the negotiable limits, or the intelligible objectives?

 

 

 

 

A bullet hole adjacent to the La Belle Equipe cafe in Paris. Photo: Andrew Meares

 

 

 

It is not the modern world versus medievalism, or the secular enlightenment trying to deal with fundamentalist religion. It isn't anything that can be encompassed in the vocabulary of coherent, systematic thought in which we are now accustomed to describe the world. This is just insanity.

 

 

 

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There is no point now arguing about the historical or theological roots, about correct or incorrect interpretations of the Koran or even the social role of Islamic leadership. When the lucid try to impose logic on behaviour that is pathological, they will be driven into a dead end – or waste time coming to blows among themselves on matters that are no longer relevant.

 

 

 

What we are faced with is a virulent and highly contagious madness, a hysterical death cult which has, almost by accident, fallen on the fertile ground of global circumstances: chaos in the Middle East, confusion and lack of resolve in the West and the awakening of a ruthless, opportunistic power base in the East.

 

 

 

 

Le Carillon in Paris on Saturday. Photo: Andrew Meares

 

 

 

But there is no time any more for international recriminations or parochial introspection. The old enmities and suspicions – between the West and Russia, Turkey and the Kurds – are going to have to be put aside in the name of one unified, relentless effort to stamp out an epidemic of murderous lunacy.

 

 

 

Civilians are not collateral damage in this campaign: their deaths are the whole point. This time there isn't even the "logic" of the Charlie Hebdo attacks whose pretext was the blasphemous depiction of the Prophet. Just the slaughter of random innocents, many of whom may have been Muslims themselves, carried out for the sheer nihilistic thrill of it. It is that thrill – the brief absolute power of anarchic terror – that is going to have to be forcibly suppressed with all the weapons at our disposal.

 

 

 

Francois Holland declared that France would provide "a merciless response to [these] ISIL barbarians". But the question remains: how do you respond to unreason? All the things that make an enemy – however evil and malign – predictable, analysable, and intelligible are missing here. The actions make no sense in any terms that are within common understanding.

 

 

 

The prospect of free, unchecked movement between EU countries was one of the great attractions of those thousands of people who arrived at the un-policed external borders. Once having set foot on European soil it is possible to move from one end of the Schengen zone to another, to become effectively untraceable, seeking out the most favourable circumstances in any country at any moment.

 

 

 

It is an economic migrant's dream, which may be no bad thing, but it is also an open field for terrorists – a thought which obviously occurred to Hollande when, on Friday night, he closed the French borders, presumably indefinitely. The wire services are reporting as I write that a Syrian passport was found on the body of one of the terrorists. If this turns out to be true, it is going to raise fresh controversy about the EU policy on migration – even about the accommodation of Syrian refugees who had been considered one of the most unambiguously deserving categories of asylum-seekers in the current wave.

 

 

 

France and its attitude towards Islam are already being analysed and dissected for all they are worth. Is it the willingness of the country to become involved in action in the regions claimed by Islamic State that has incited this terrible vindictiveness? Or the enforced secularism of the society in which such a large Muslim minority lives in alienation from national civic norms?

 

 

 

 

Armed police guard the Bataclan Theatre after Friday's terrorist attack. Photo: Getty Images

 

 

 

Was it the French military intervention in Libya, or the banning of the burka that was responsible for this havoc? Maybe none – or all – of the above. But none of this speculation is to the point. France has the honourable and consistent foreign policy that it has. It is a proudly secular republic which made the decision to separate civil life from religious observance several centuries ago for what it believed then – and believes now – to be historically sound reasons.

 

 

 

And what is the alternative that is being demanded? Sharia law? The subjection of women? An end to liberal democracy? Are any of these things even within the bounds of consideration? What could be accomplished by national self-doubt or criticism at this point, when there is not even a reasonable basis for discussion with the enemy?

 

 

 

If there is any need to argue about these matters, it should come at some other time. This debate cannot be conducted at the point of a gun held by a madman. Whatever the attitudes of France's authorities, whatever mistakes might have been made in the assimilation of North African or Middle Eastern minorities, the French people did not deserve this, just as Americans did not deserve 9/11.

 

 

 

It is wicked and irresponsible to suggest otherwise. The indiscriminate mass murder of civilians must put an end to that. The sane people of the world – even when their ultimate objectives differ or conflict – will need to join together now to stamp out, by whatever means are necessary, a threat to all varieties of civilised life.

 

 

[Spooks]

And you could add the colonialism of the English, drawing lines on maps, creating countries, not taking into account ancient lands and religious and tribal boundaries. A recipe for instability when they were eventually kick out.

This trouble is from way before the British Empire. ISIS are determined to reclaim lands in Spain, France etc from the days when the Moors were the global power

 

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/597254/ISIS-Map-Europe-Terror-Organisation-Andrew-Hosken-Caliphate-Abu-Musab-al-Zarqawi

 

I posted a link earlier where their twenty (I think) year plan was set out and we've played into their hands at each step.

 

http://www.spiegel.de/international/the-future-of-terrorism-what-al-qaida-really-wants-a-369448.html

 

I feel the biggest problem is a result of the West feeling a guilt complex over WW2. We have this urge to liberate oppressed people and be a global police force but don't seem to realise that oppression is the only way that peace is maintained in some countries. I don't think we can compare Western values to the Middle East until an updated version of the Quran (similar to revisions of the bible e.g Old Testament, New Testament) becomes mainstream.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

@Ultralights only one man can keep us safe...

 

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[Birdseye]

And you could add the colonialism of the English, drawing lines on maps, creating countries, not taking into account ancient lands and religious and tribal boundaries. A recipe for instability when they were eventually kick out.

I was thinking more of the past 30 or so years, but yes you are historically correct.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

social media brings out the raw emotions of people

 

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[Yenn]

I always loved how the ADF made Howard wear his helmet crooked, it always made him look incompetent.

 

What do you mean it makes him look incompetent. He was incompetent and in my opinion one of the worst ever PMs of Australia. Unless the US told him what to do he was lost. He missed a great chance with the MV Tampa fiasco. Should have charged them with piracy, but gave in to the invaders.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

but putting the helmet on sideways really showed how little the ADF thought of him.

 

 

[M61A1]

social media brings out the raw emotions of people

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From Sickipedia...

 

"Batman, we need your help in Paris immediately."

 

"Worry not, Commissioner, I've already changed my Facebook profile picture."

 

 

[eightyknots]

I always loved how the ADF made Howard wear his helmet crooked, it always made him look incompetent.What do you mean it makes him look incompetent. He was incompetent and in my opinion one of the worst ever PMs of Australia. Unless the US told him what to do he was lost. He missed a great chance with the MV Tampa fiasco. Should have charged them with piracy, but gave in to the invaders.

I always have two questions about this:

 

1 Why did they ask John Howard to wear his helmet at such a strange angle?

 

2 If John Howard looked around he would have noticed that he was the only one doing it, so why did he do it?

 

 

[fly_tornado]