Paris terrorist attacks

[Sprout]

That last comment will never grow old, or lose any impact.
However, it's important to remember that advances in Science and Technology have provided the weapons used in any modern agenda, theistic preference or otherwise.

Science and Religion are not mutually exclusive, as evidenced by their combined impact in the field of sheer horror. If we continue to divide people based on personal beliefs that are used as an excuse for sociopaths to commit atrocities, but continue ever onward to the extinction event through hubris, soon enough we'll no longer worry about Kalashnikov wielding grunts in the face of Thermonuclear Missiles controlled by those who may genuinely believe them to be an acceptable means of forever altering the future of this planet.

 

[Vurtual]

Bummer: Of course you could argue that we have propped up dictators.
But have we ? If the leaders of those countries suddenly started investing in hospitals, roads and schools would we stop buying their oil ?
Of course not.

No, we'd probably just bomb the shit out of them (i seem to remember iraq had lots of roads schools and hospitals once), do a coup, or (more likely these days) destabilise them with a proxy army of terrorists. We don't want them using their oil wealth on their people when there's weapons to sell. There are endless examples of this sort of thing happening around the world: Mossadeq in Iran, Allende in Chile, Lumumba in Congo, Aristede in Haiti, Nasser etc etc (read any chomsky or bill blum for the usual list).

In the 20th century the british nurtured radical islamic movements throughout the middle east as an ally against any chances of democracy forming and interfering with the wealth extraction (eg very involved with the growth of the muslim brotherhood (which wasn't as relatively 'moderate' back then)); the americans took over later for similar reasons - this is all pretty much on record (see Mark Curtis).

I'm not for a second saying no blame resides with the locals themselves, or that everything wrong is our fault, but you can't judge the inherent ability of the arab world to progress by the regimes it's got when the west's thumb is so firmly on the scales. Neoimperialism is more subtle than the old type but it's hard to deny its impact.

If you haven't heard of it, look into the Safari Club to see how the Saudi use of terror was a way for american intelligence to outsource it's dirty operations when it got too hot at home in the wake of watergate, starting with afghanistan and continuing on - i've no reason to believe this collaboration isn't still going.

...

Good article by Nafeez Ahmed about turkey's links with ISIS: https://medium.com/insurge-intellig...lamic-state-s-backers-d24db3a24a40#.ac1n6qc3o