Of the 189 739 unique killings, only 4877 were…

Fixed it for you :- ).

When Putin is sounding like the reasonable person you know things are truly FUBAR'd.

But he does make the point that if you hand weapons to folks there is a good chance they'll do something bad with them.

And in religious news the Pope gave a speech* saying…

Professor Robert Patman, Head of the Department of Politics at Otago University, international security analyst Paul Buchanan, and lecturer in security studies at Massey University, Tim Wood, join Wallace to talk about whether military action is enough to defeat the jihadists.

That's quite the stinker, given that…

The double down irony burn is that Governors have no legal power to "refuse" anyone legally in the United States shit. It's empty posturing, though I can't help…

To them, a red state is a good state...

On top of that, the French Govt used Algeria as a nuclear testing ground before the days of Mururoa Atoll.

Understood. While there are other online accounts of Czechoslovakian cold war era NATO calibre ammunition surfacing, some with detailed info on precisely which factory in the former CSSR produced it, I have…

One inference seemed to be they’ve already gone through the motions of carving up the Syrian map. Fascinating viewing.

In retrospect there seems to have been far more trade with the Eastern…

Also, “cut off Saudi Arabia” is a rather naive and simplistic answer when we take a look at [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry#World.27s_largest_arms_exporters|who…

After the shooting down of Korean Airlines flight 007 in 1983 Aeroflot was banned from flying into the US, with the situation to be reviewed after twelve months. Three months later, when the furore had faded,…

Apparently Qatar, Kuwait & Saudi Arabia are big donors/ supporters of radical Islamists.

Although Saudi Arabia has given $100m (£60m) to the UN anti-terror programme and the country’s grand mufti has denounced Isis as “enemy number one”,…

It could correspond to “You don’t scare me” or “It don’t scare me”
(with a vernacular invariant verb stylistically appropriate to the original).
Further informal reduction (also in keeping with the original’s…

Commentators should stop issuing “pejorative demands” to Muslim leaders to condemn terrorism each time it occurs, the government frontbencher Christopher Pyne said during a Q&A program dominated by discussion of the Paris attacks.

Pyne was responding to a question…

Disgusted, Von Sponeck resigned as UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator in Iraq. His predecessor, Denis Halliday, an equally distinguished senior UN official, had also resigned. “I was instructed,” Halliday said, “to implement a policy that satisfies the definition of genocide: a deliberate policy…

Civil rights autor James Baldwin put it best: "There is no bigger danger to society than a man…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/24/muslim-scholars-islamic-state_n_5878038.html

1. It is forbidden in Islam to issue fatwas without all the necessary learning requirements. Even then fatwas must follow Islamic legal theory as defined in the Classical texts. It is also forbidden to cite a portion of a…

http://www.lettertobaghdadi.com/

This is what it says:

In response to the recent atrocities happening in Iraq and Syria, a large group of our esteemed…

The photo caption reads ;
"A man attaches a banner, which translates as "Don't scare me", to…

What is incrontrovertible is that from when the first protests began on February 5th there was a 5 week period leading up to March 18th where protesters weren’t being shot at.…

I'm pretty sure peace is winning, it is just not winning all the time.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/12/the_world_is_not_falling_apart_the_trend_lines_reveal_an_increasingly_peaceful.html

http://i.imgur.com/O210dBz.jpg

Not even close. We're always going to have a period of feeling shocked and scared after any such event, but in perspective it's not even in the same ball park as quite small conventional…

yeah doh!

Also note that is not an exhaustive list of the fuck ups in that region, more an attempt to highlight the futility of saying
"it's all because of this, if we just fix this then it will be all right"

The solutions to the…

There weren't any border changes in the area after WW2. Did you mean WW1 (after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the partition of the region into British and French spheres of influence)? http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/documents/maps-in-time.pdf

I can understand why people would want some kind of immediate military response but I tend to agree the current slow but steady strategy of assisting local groups to deal with ISIS seems to be…

Instead of victory or death – it seems like many of them want to die in a holy war.

Jon Snow writes in…

Too late, war was declared 5, 10, 50, 500 years ago.

This isn't good vs bad, this is peace vs war. And war is winning.

The Decider back then, doing domestic damage control in his stocking feet.

And yet even if Isis did mean this night of slaughter to be a declaration of war, that does not mean France – or the rest of the world – needs to return the compliment. And a compliment it would be. To declare war against Isis is…

I don't. The terrorist atrocities are so horrific, and the media coverage so extensive, that it can feel that way. It is hard to say "this is bad, that was worse". It sounds callous,…

http://i.stuff.co.nz/world/paris-attacks/74060047/french-jets-attack-islamic-state-stronghold-of-raqqa

"The raid ... including 10 fighter jets, was launched simultaneously from the United Arab Emirates and Jordan. Twenty bombs were dropped," the defence ministry said in a statement.

The operation, carried out in coordination with US forces, struck a command centre, recruitment centre for jihadists,…

Well, yes – when we were in Europe three years back, I always (securely) carried my passport because it’s the only internationally recognized…

Yes it is, and [[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/15/why-syrian-refugee-passport-found-at-paris-attack-scene-must-be-treated-with-caution?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other|here’s a…

Given that the French have been bombing ISIS in Iraq since September…

and handy to leave one at the scene to stir up French sentiment against recent refugees.

ETA: I have checked with the francophones…

This one reads: “The people who died tonight were out living, drinking, singing. They didn’t know they had declared war.”

I think it's appropriate to be wary about…

There's certainly been a bit of selectivity in how Facebook responds to these kind of events.

Strange, considering that it appears to have a huge and highly sophisticated user base in the Arab world.…

Black Cat bounce?
I have to say I find it a mixed graphic message – I get the Eiffel Tower making a peace symbol – though I am of an age that first sees the CND symbol …
– but…

Bothered our household too....

I'm told there is a bit of a fightback against the French Flag overlay on fb...

There is talk counteracting the promoted narrative.

Irfan Yusuf is also worth reading, when he gets round to writing stuff. No Twitter presence so far, but he's probably not missing much.

If most of the perpetrators turn out to be French-born or naturalised, then there are parallels with the London 7/7 bombings a decade ago. Londoners, being what they were, still by and large kept calm. And…

I found these reflections from across the Tasman by [[http://hageba2a.blogspot.co.nz/2015/11/the-mourning-after-in-australia-i-met.html?spref=tw&m=1| Ghassan Hage…

Merkel is in serious political trouble on the refugee issue and a majority of German public opinion has shifted decisively against her refugee policies. It seems she is far to nice to refugees for many Germans taste…

I expect President Le…

https://news.vice.com/article/why-the-islamic-state-attacked-paris-and-what-happens-next

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLUDJlx5jEc

It would definitely be worth trying first. The alternative has certainly had a pretty good shot, and here's the result – pretty much no progress whatsoever made despite all the military force…

There is a simple solution but it requires humility…

Closer to my point certainly. These things are generally the result of a perfect storm of conditions.…

I just follow the Guardian [Jan 2012].

Alas, not in every case. When coverage of an unfolding drama ceases to be fair and turns into a propaganda weapon, inconvenient facts get suppressed. So it is with the results of a recent YouGov Siraj poll…

"Architect" may imply a degree of foresight and planning that wasn't actually present, but it…

Are you hinting at a conspiracy? No.

In 2011, the Assad regime cracked down brutally…

So Assad’s incumbent administration designed a civil war to potentially oust itself and decimate its country while allowing…

“When you look at Paris, toughest gun laws in the world, nobody had guns but the bad guys,” the Republican presidential candidate said during an appearance in Texas, in remarks broadcast…

Fair point. I grabbed it from Twitter and thought the credit would come through with it.

I know it's never going to happen, but I'd love to see Hollande and Angela Merkel (who's far…

As police worked to identify the seven militants, all of whom died in the attacks, Molins also confirmed that at least one of the fighters, identified by his fingerprints, was a French national from the Paris…