Frenchwoman and her three daughters seriously hurt in a French alpine resort stabbing, done by a man of Moroccan origin, with a record of petty crime. The daughters are aged 8 to 14 and the youngest is very severely hurt. Let's hope they all make a full recovery. If this **** doesn't stop soon mindless reprisals will start to be taken, and they won't be limited by national borders. Being incredibly selfish, I really hope that the rest of my life isn't shaped by this vileness.
Perhaps political parties should have a 'Who's Gonna Stand Against The Leader In A Leadership Contest' Contest first?
As you may have noticed, I'm not short of an opinion or idea or two, and I don't mind sharing them. But I have nothing on this, except stuff which will punish the innocent along with the guilty. I really do think that a tiny minority of people will start taking the law into their own hands soon, in a very random way.
As Spock was prone to say,"the needs of the many far outweigh the needs of the few". As unpalatable as it would likely be to most people, perhaps the only answer is one that disadvantages a relative minority of innocents for the benefit of the significantly larger majority? If one were blessed with a time machine and the power to reverse significant world events that have happened post-911 what would one change? For instance: - Would you have overthrown Saddam? - Would you have overthrow Gaddhafi? - Would you have tried to destabilise the Assad regime? - What could you have done to stop Public Enemy No. 1 from morphing from the Taliban to Al Qaeda to ISIS? These despotic regimes were undoubtedly brutal, particularly to certain of their peoples, but we know now for a fact that they acted as a buffer between Europe and mass migration and provided some containment of certain undesirables. We also know that destabilising these regions has created refugee crises, caused conflicts that have without doubt killed many more people than the despots would have themselves, and put many ordinary Europeans directly onto the front line of a war not of their making. Meanwhile the Blairs of this world remain safely behind their bodyguarded speaking engagement lecterns, counting coin earned directly from the deaths of others. Sickening.
Hand on heart Ubes I would have done those things with the dictators. And probably regretted it instantly. And I suspect we will be having the same discussion soon with Erdogan. We have ****ed it up royally but the alternative seems to be building a big wall around ourselves or them and pretending it's none of our business. In some ways that is attractive, but I don't think the world works like that, least of all now. Turning off the Internet and mobile networks might help though.
A wall gets my vote, Stan. As you rightly say, we have fudged it up royally, but my fear is that we never learn. It caused more harm than good when we removed Saddam. It caused more harm than good when Gaddhafi was removed. And yes, the rhetoric is building about Erdogan. It's ****.
Yes, but he's building his for Mexicans to sit down and lean against, so they can take a siesta in their ponchos and sombreros.
We may end up with mass segregation of Muslims and non Muslims. I think this is what ubes was alluding to earlier. I'm sure he'll correct me if I'm wrong. Maybe it's the only way to stop the madness.
This might sound like a load of namby pamby hippy bollocks but I'll chuck it in the mix anyway. Building walls won't work - you don't know who you're trapping in with you. I dare say the lone gunmen that lock themselves in schools are little different in mentality from ISIS recruits ISIS gets the headlines because it manages to inspire foolish belief to the most destructive ends but there are disenfranchised people from all nations and backgrounds. It just takes a seed of something evil with a promise of eternal rewards or even 15 minutes of fame to fester and grow into something evil. There's nothing more desparate than living every day without any hope and feeling on the outside. At that point any hope or belief even in the most implausible dreams, ideals or goals would seem better than none at all. Belonging can be as simple as feeling part of a football forum, being inspired by a pass time or feeling like an integral part of society. Unless you believe that terrorists are born as such then there's a line, a point of no return that gets reached before someone is truly lost. Until that point, instead of isolating more and more people why don't we try to demonstrate that society is something to want to be part of? There's not much realistically we can do but extra smiles, politeness and conversations with people might be a start (and with strangers because the effect is lessened on people you know). We spend a lot of time bigging up western culture and society but it does fail some people and we don't particularly try to improve it. If it's an exclusive group for those one side of a wall (including those on any race who are still isolated enough to latch onto any violent cause) when it gets built than those on the other side then it doesn't sound all that glowing a reference and not something I'd really want to be part of. I'll stop now and let the wishy washy liberal feedback commence.
I sincerely hope it doesn't come to that Col, but I can imagine it. Dreading the reaction to a couple of these lone nutter attacks here, which I fear is inevitable.
Good effort Matt and I get where you're coming from, but I don't think any of that applies to the blokes who planted a car bomb outside Tiger Tiger in London. They then went on to attack Glasgow airport and they were doctors.
