Steady on the taunts of nihilism, Norman; your own contribution would seem distinctly competitive in that area! I assume that Janice, who can certainly answer well enough for herself, was both warning that to abandon Europe's inclusivist stance and to join the hyping up (here you seem to agree) of making 'war' will only make matters worse - both by doing more recruitment-inducing damage in the Middle East and by further undermining the civilised values which the free culture of Europe is meant to enshrine. I agree with her.
The root causes, as I'm sure from past posts of yours you also believe, lie in the aggressive hyping up of Western wars and surrogate wars over a very long period of time - perhaps culminating in the illegal war of aggression against Iraq. Until the West changes its foreign policies and begins to attempt to apologise for and repair the damage caused by its past, the future does indeed look bleak. On our Channel 4 news this last week (Thursday or Wednesday evening, I think - and you can catch it up on the net) there was a remarkably blunt and clear-sighted commentary provided by a refugee worker on one of the refugee deluged Balkan frontiers. Speaking initially of the refugee situation, he said, "This" he gestured to the refugee crush on the frontier barrier, "is what we deserve." That is of course a long, long way from the appalling events in Paris - and the even worse ones perpetrated against fellow Muslims in the Middle East on an apparently unending basis - but they are words, belonging to their own context, that have been haunting me this weekend.
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