France is on a 3 day period of Mourning.

The feeling of utter repulsion to the scenes being shown in the media is unbelievable. All thoughts and prayers go to the families of all injured and deceased. Will the mindless killing ever stop? - history will say not. It is apparent that no one is really safe anywhere or doing anything, travelling on a bus in London, underground, watching a band or enjoying a meal. Words can not say enough...... peace to all

 

You know what? My very old and late long gone dad (not English btw) always said that there is going to be angst between black and white some day. He was a very hard working quiet man and kept himself to himself. It's coming full circle to what he said

 

As long as there are arms dealers and banks there will be war.

We are not fighting a country, we are fighting an ideology. Take revenge. It solves nothing in the end. Kill as many as you like, they want to die. Attack one place and they will appear in another. These organisations are like the Hydra. Multi-headed and spread across the globe. Conventional warfare will not work.

It seems to me that apart from sitting down and talking (which they won't do) the only way to stop them is to cut off their funding. Easier said than done unfortunatey.

 

This is an intelligence war as much as anything but we do need to consider stronger European border controls as the Germans now want us to do. The French Government admitted that they have been "lax and naive" and I'm afraid we're the same.
The French response was to launch their heaviest bombing raid against the Isis capital of Raqqa, our respons so far has been for the police to arrest a woman for posting an alleged racial slur against muslims on Facebook - glad to see we've got our priorities right!

 

Yes Steve, an intelligence war and one that won't be won by bombing even if that may go some way to satisfying a need for punishment. It's an incredibly complex situation which has no easy solution and becomes more complex the more you look at it. Warped ideology, power, money, poverty, ignorance, fear, discrimination, radicalisation.

I'm not sure that tightening borders is going to make a lot of difference either. Everything I'm hearing and reading at the moment suggests there are plenty of home-grown jihadists who want to do damage.

One thing we must not do is to give in to fear and change the way we live or lose our humanity (even if those that attack us seem to have lost theirs).

 

Quite frankly people need to stop focusing on the differences between one and another and focus on the fact that at the end of the day, when it boils down to it we are all one and the same!

We all want to live the happiest, most peaceful and prosperous lives we can and we all want our children to be brought up in a safe and peaceful world and to succeed in their endeavours.

Granted I know we will never manage to achieve this unless somehow ALL of the 'teachers' of the 'ideals' are eradicated, which is impossible. Hatred is taught.....somehow we need to stop the teaching. It started from somewhere, perhaps there is a possibility we can stop it.

Unfortunately in such a connected world, it is all too easy to spread anything you wish around the globe and just as easy to remain anonymous.

I have to say I think the late, great, Bill Hicks summed it up the best at the end of most of his shows:

"The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and down, around and around, it has thrills and chills, and it's very brightly coloured, and it's very loud, and it's fun for a while. Many people have been on the ride a long time, and they begin to wonder, "Hey, is this real, or is this just a ride?" And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and say, "Hey, don't worry; don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride." And we … kill those people. "Shut him up! I've got a lot invested in this ride, shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry, look at my big bank account, and my family. This has to be real." It's just a ride. But we always kill the good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok … But it doesn't matter, because it's just a ride. And we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defences each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.”

As with most of the world - thoughts go out to France.

 

This forum and it's members are really a fine bunch. We can lark around, help each other with problems and generally have a site of great value. The intelligent comments recently demonstrated make me proud to be a member. There really is no other forum of the same caliber.

 

Condolences to all affected by this latest act of terror.

 

On the plus side, FINALLY the west seems to be united as one against this sort of atrocity..........maybe one day we can actually get somewhere towards stopping this sort of thing and actually leave a world to our children/grandchildren etc which doesn't end up resembling the post apocalyptic wasteland of the Terminator / Mad Max movies!

 

I just love the French, no pussyfooting around like the Brit government listening to Europe and giving the terrorist scum their rights. Take em out and waste no more time and money on them I say. We just took back one of them from Guatenamo and he was in all the papers.............for all the wrong reasons.
( I was always a hater of the French, remember the times when they burned our meat over there, BUT, I went there two years ago to see my grandfathers grave at Pozieres,he died in 1916 fighting for us,( my partner and I are going back next year on the centenary to pay our respects) and found the French to be really nice people and the country and roads were amazing. I have always had big respect for the way they are so patriotic and wish we were the same over in the UK.

 

I agree with Biglad, this is a war that must be fought on many levels but I don't agree that bombing is going to do anything except satiate some knee jerk blood lust. It's not worked in the past and there's no reason to think it will work now. Yes you'll kill a few of them but also probably kill a lot of civilians and give their propaganda machine more ammunition.

Cut their funding channels, use cyber attacks, improve detection of those people who are likely to mount attacks. I hear today all of those approaches are being looked at which is good but I find this rush to bomb and kill profoundly depressing.

 

Agreed! I hope Anonymous actually manage to achieve something from their planned 'attacks'!

It's a very fine balance and I for one would not fancy being in charge anywhere right now, it's ultimately a lose lose situation, whatever action you do or don't take will be wrong according to one group of people or another......you only need to look at all of the backlash from the US States who have stated that they aren't going to accept any Syrian refuges until it's resolved!

I have to agree with SprintDave - MUCH respect to Hollande for having the balls to basically stick two fingers up as IS and go straight back at them with more force than they had! If they had have launched the attack in this country we'd still be debating having a meeting to have a meeting about having the meeting to maybe consider having a meeting about taking some course of action.........which would probably just involve sending a strongly worded letter asking them nicely not to do it again and offering to invite them to the Parliamentary Christmas Party if they play nicely with the other children!