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This on the heels of the German government under-reporting the amount of rapes and sexual assaults that occurred last New Years Eve, and now we know the horrific toll is at least 1200 women were assaulted by nearly 2000 men, most of whom were foreign nationals.

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And it was only a month ago that innocent people were slaughtered in a bar in Florida, not to mention the brutal attacks in Iraq, Pakistan and elsewhere.

When is enough enough? Do we keep erasing lines in the sand and burying the dead, pretending these are just isolated acts and not part of a greater movement? Were the British citizens who voted for the Brexit uneducated bigots as so many commentators have disdainfully poo-pooed, or were these voters' fears about immigration and what is happening in Europe valid?

Just asking questions.

Am I turning this into an immigration debate? Are there valid arguments to be made given the current circumstances? I don't know. But I will say that what's been done up to this point has failed miserably. All I know is that a Tunisian gentleman decided to kill 80 French men, women and children on the day celebrating French independence. I doubt it was coincidental.

Any mass loss of life is of course horrifying but the manner in which this was done...so brutal, and I read he drove over a mile through the crowd. Absolutely disgusting. 
My pained heart is with Nice and France which is really having a god awful time. 

Hope the reaction isn't too knee jerk, because for lack of better words, that is what these monsters want. To have us abandon what we pride ourselves on, our Western culture, to wall off and to fight...extremists often want a war, they believe in the clash of civilizations and welcome the fight. They want to die, they want us to keep the cycle going, constantly creating new terrorists as we kill them. This situation is so complex and global, IDK...how is walling off gunna stop it? There is always a way, and in exchange for this not making us any safer will be millions of poor people left trapped/sent back to places with little opportunity, and threatened themselves by these ugly people. Ya know, the very reasons they are fleeing. 

Absolutely not a coincidence, I'm sure. 

Stand strong. They are hitting when they expect it'll rattle the country's psyche the most. 

Like, to actually fight it, no. Now that the system of attack, to call it that way, has been brought down to the ground, to the most common, to using trucks which none can monitor, the only thing remaining is pre-attack subject intelligence, which has as we have seen proved quite difficult to undertake (or to quickly act upon). 

And if we go in stronger force against targets in the middle east, we radicalize more of them. 

If we discriminate, isolate, ghetto-ate foreigners, we radicalize them, and others abroad. 

This is unwinnable. 

The reasons things are done aren't as complicated as it may seem. A lot of it has to do with not only resource extraction but also to force countries into pegging the US dollar as the global currency as well as making them take out loans from institutions such as the IMF so that they can become endebted.

The whole Islam fearmongering is a total sham. The faction of the financial markets that have ties to Wall Street are nothing more than a crime syndicate who creates and trains terrorist cells to carry out attacks when governments have the gall to create policies with their financial hegemonic ambitions.

You're right about Russia but this was manufactured by the US after WW2. The Soviet Union were our allies but then we suddenly needed an enemy to continue the profitable war economy and we have been at war with someone somewhere every since. The fact is the so-called cabalistic forces of the world have been creating these wars and skirmishes in order to manufacture and profit off of the sales of weaponry to both sides. In effect our 'democracies' if you will were hijacked long ago and we are now seeing through the veil of deceipt as we enter a new age of information overload. 

Correct. You are right on here. I have been keeping up with this all and have been to Russia and studied the language as well. It's a fascinating culture but there is many more reasons why the West fears it. Putin claims, for example, that they have video footage from a successful spy operation that proves the 9-11 was a government controlled event and they are threatening to release this as well as other info they have obtained from their satellites etc. As well, the former USSR was paramount in its scientific discoveries regarding healing technolgies that could render much of the medical and pharmaceutical industry as we know it completely null and void. It is quite the interesting unfolding saga. Also the Brexit thing seems to be a power play by the monarchy to tie the UK to the Chinese Yuan so that London can jump onto the next big thing which is the rise of the Chinese Empire which will soon be the next great super power dwarfing us all. Better start learning Mandarin everyone!

I agree. That's why i'm not really talking about this specifically. I would call any form of harm to others a terrorist attack but you're right indeed to point out that this may have absolutely no political ties and simply a crazed mentall ill individual who just had a little too much petrol poured onto his burner. Very sad. I would like to emphasize that as we discuss these arcane political things that we should keep all of those innocent victims and the friends and families of those who lost their lives for know reasons deep in our hearts and not forget the main focus of our discussion. For me, it's just not difficult to pinpoint even the mental health of petty criminals to the decisions being made at the highest of world order levels. It is connected even if it seems random

It is more or less the view that most people outside the Western world who are not sold on America have formed.  When I say sold, I mean blindly in love with/evangelizing its merits unsolicited.  Yeah, we have those sorts here.  But that apart, basically there is anger that America with its pre-eminent position as the world superpower - something even Russia now acknowledges - does not do what it takes to bring this to a halt.  I mean, surely now that it's beginning to cause havoc in Europe, it's about time.  Just how do they justify supporting Saudi to themselves?  Frankly I find the cynicism of the establishment mind boggling.  So many lives being lost and so much dangerous destablisation only because the establishment knowingly looks the other way.  And I don't mean to single out America; I don't believe things would be different with some of the other powerful nations like say Russia or China in the same position and to be frank I believe it would probably be much worse.  

That is really it in the end.  It makes no sense and trying to make sense out of it is futile.

Blaming it on American Imperialism is cute, perhaps even valid but the root causes are way more complicated that just flippant commentary and conspiracy theories. History books are meant to be read, or else repeated catastrophes will occur.   

What a Grand Delusion, Neo. I am hoping the next blue pill you take is a Thorazine to help control your seizures. Although your ability to connect dots and detect patterns would make John Nash blush, and is certainly entertaining (in a gawking at a car crash sort of way), the sort of conspiracy you are suggesting has so many moving parts and so many confidences and so many harmonious and equitable working relationships between dramatically disparate groups over such a long period of time that it defies human nature utterly.

Occam's Razor, however, would suggest a more elegant and simple solution: religious fundamentalism that incorporates both governmental and judicial law, and an all-encompassing cultural matrix that has never left the Middle Ages. In a historical context, the popes of the early medieval period, culminating in the reign of Innocent III, almost achieved the sort of all-encompassing cultural, religious and political matrix that fundamentalist Muslims are still attempting a thousand years past the period when something like that would actually work.

Rather than who, it's a what.  It's the oil.  I feel there is a correlation between shale gas coming on the market and leading to the collapse of crude oil - which was really intended to bleed Russia to death - and the Saudi retaliation.  They have really ramped up the violence because they sense they are going to run out of money.  They cannot afford to play the waiting game anymore.  Hence the difference between the modus operandi of the sly, sneaky Al Qaeda and the grandiose Caliphate of the IS.  It's a war cry to mobilise Muslims on their side and the invoking of Jihad is intended to coerce them into complying.  So coming to Jihad..

I do not know if the Rothschilds were around or involved in the Third Battle of Panipat.  Anyway, the Afghan emperor Ahmed Shah Abdali invoked Jihad to get Sujad-ud-Daula, a Maratha ally, on his side.  That, among other things, tipped the scales in his favour in a battle he won.  So Jihad is practically as old as Muslim civilization.  Now, mind I have serious reservations or should I say criticisms regarding the way the Western powers have handled the Gulf in the post war years.  I dare not speak about the creation of Israel in particular which is endlessly justified whereas the mere uprooting of a mosque in India invited severe condemnation from international human rights agencies.  I am not justifying the latter, just pointing out the hypocrisy in this.  But for all that, we cannot say the Muslim tiger's stripes were only painted over on their hide by an international conspiracy.  There is a fundamentalist strain in their religion.  To be fair, there is in most if not all religions but it is particularly militant today in Islam compared to other religions.  A good friend of mine, a Muslim and a peaceful one at that, said an eye for an eye may make the world blind but it would also make it equal .  I had to completely part ways on that one.  

As I see it, most Western civilians seem to wish for peace even as their govts seem to be hell bent on following the exact opposite course and creating weird-ass justifications for it so that they may continue to occupy the moral high ground.  In contrast, there is more 'unity' and 'alignment' between the people and the rulers in the Islamic world.  Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing I can't tell.  We can only watch from the sidelines (and get mercilessly dragged into the conflict from time to time) as the centuries old clash of civilisations continues to this day, albeit in different hues. 

This brings up a pertinent point.  France signed a big arms deal with Saudi only last year.  In the 80s too, it was USA which initially encouraged Saddam until he got too big for their comfort.  In effect, arming the very source of terror they claim to be fighting.