WIP

Okay, maybe he's not dumb in the Dubya sense of the word, but he is deliberately willfully ignorant if his Bridgegate alibi had any connection with the truth. I was especially thinking of the lineup at the 2012 GOP Beauty Pageant, and wondering what 2016 has in store.

I guess the main risk is that you can have a battle-hardened, well trained terrorist to deal with if they come back home! That point was made by more than a few military analysts of those early crude videos that showed the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris. From the video feed after they left the building, they calmly returned back to their car....one calmly shot and killed a policeman moving towards the area (likely heard the shots but was unaware of the situation) and went back to the car and left the scene. The typical terrorist attacks have been someone with a gun that's all nerves and has little if any weapons training. The Canadian and other governments seem to be allowing people to join foreign wars that they agree with (for now). But, what happens after Canadians who've run off to fight with the Kurds against ISIS, bring all of their weapons and killing experience back home for a different battle? Someone coming from a war scene is already experienced at using the weapons, and more importantly - at using weapons to kill! This is something that the west has to consider with all of their returning veterans from Iraq, Afghanistan, and in France's case - West Africa. Some of the vets may have other issues and want to take part in their own private wars...Timothy McVeigh if anyone recalls. Some of the bomb-disposal personnel learn a great deal about how to make a bomb. And prior to the Boston Bombings, there was an unnoticed story from the west coast, about a backpack bomb that was noticed and disposed of prior to detonating at a MLK rally. It later turned out that the bomb had been made and armed by an Iraq vet who joined up with a right wing white supremacist militia. With all the alarm about foreign Muslim terrorists, the greater threat may come from disgruntled veterans of war who want to fight new wars after they've come home!

I think most Ontarians understand that Harper's priority is and always has been Alberta and....well, what they call oil. Oil is a curse to every country that becomes dependent on oil revenues, as it artificially inflates the local currency's value and the rest of the economy becomes an extension of the oil industry. But, it looks like OPEC's price war and the global lack of demand for more oil, has thrown the monkey wrench into Harper's strategy.

In May of 2013, for the first time in at least 3.8 million.....possibly even 16 million years, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels broke past the 400ppm mark. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography records of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels show that Jan. 1 was the first day of the new year above that concentration, followed by Jan. 3 and Jan. 7. Daily averages have continued at this level or higher through Jan. 9, though they could continue to dance up and down around that mark due to day-to-day variations caused by weather systems. But even with those fluctuations, 2015 will likely see many months above 400 ppm, possibly starting with the very first month of the year. “My guess at this point is that January 2015 will be very slightly above 400 ppm, but it's too early to tell for sure,” Ralph Keeling, the scientist in charge of the CO2 monitoring project atop Hawaii’s Mauna Loa, said in an email. Keeling’s father, Charles, began the project in 1958. The graph that shows the decades-long rise in CO2 is eponymously called the Keeling Curve. The 400 ppm mark was first passed on May 9, 2013. In 2014, it happened two months earlier, in March. The average CO2 concentrations for March, April and June 2014 were all above 400 ppm, the first time that has been recorded. The peak CO2 measurement of 2014 was just shy of 402 ppm in May. At the Mauna Loa Observatory on the Big Island of Hawaii, back in the 1950's, a young atmospheric scientist named Charles Keeling started a project to measure CO2 and keep weekly records. It was not expected to be of great importance aside from providing a basic understanding of how much gas levels varied in the atmosphere from region to region, and whether CO2 levels varied much from place to place and over time. What they discovered was that there wasn't much geographic difference from other areas measuring CO2, but they did notice a slow upward progression of rising Co2 levels from year to year....when they began, atmospheric CO2 levels were averaging around 315ppm, but what's most alarming, is that the rate of increase has been rising as the decades progress. Our planet has many positive and negative feedback effects, which alternatively, force more carbon into the atmosphere and sequester carbon back into the oceans and rock layers - especially along mountain ranges. The problem for a creature that has the capacity to move the dials and push up carbon dioxide levels, beginning with setting fires for various purposes and using wood for heating - is that high concentrations of atmospheric CO2 that had previously only occurred during periods of excessive volcanic activity, are detrimental for life as a whole and lead to cascading effects of species dieoffs, until the much slower carbon sequestration effects of rock weathering can bring CO2 levels back to levels that are idea for the majority of life in the biosphere. Over the ages, it has been noticed that, as rock analysis of ancient gas levels have become more reliable, that CO2 levels have gradually declined over time. At first, when there were no oxygen-breathing life forms and only anaerobic bacteria, the planet was rich in both carbon dioxide and methane. But, over time, the Sun has grown hotter and thrown off more energy, and flourishing of life on Earth has depended on sequestering more and more carbon. So, for most of the last 20 or more million years, atmospheric CO2 levels stayed below 300! That is an important point to keep in mind, as we break through the 400 barrier permanently. We, as a species, have never had to live on a 400ppm CO2 planet. One where sea levels are much higher, most of the world's ice is melted, except for the eastern ice sheets of the Antarctic. And, what's most important is that, in the past, the increases to Co2 caused by planetary changes, occurred at much slower rates than what we've done since the Industrial Era began 150 years ago, and carbon levels were about 280ppm. The changes, just from what we've put up there now....never mind what we are going to add over coming decades and what we can expect (1 degree C) from the latent heating effects still stored in the oceans, will take centuries or longer to realize their full effects. Yet, here we are in 2015, with no real plausible efforts being made to stop carbon production, let alone find ways to reduce CO2 levels. This is a point where I differ with Waldo - because I don't see the big green business crowd pushing their windmills and solar panels sales as any kind of permanent solution to climate change! Real change is not going to come without addressing global population level increases, and more importantly, the modern system of capitalist economics which rewards short term thinking rather than long term planning, and delivers most of the benefits to a small greedy and powerful elite at the top of the money pyramid, while everyone further down the line, works harder and harder in an effort to buy more stuff and imitate the extravagant lifestyles of our perceived betters. Dialing back consumer-driven capitalism is going to be even harder now than it was a half century ago at the beginning of the TV age! A number of recent psychology studies are finding that the same pernicious effects seen in excessive TV viewing over the years...increased narcissism and materialism, are enhanced by all of our new hand held toys - "smart" phones, laptops, Ipads etc.. The modern environmental movements look more like shallow attempts to pretend to be dealing with a problem that others defer right from the start by denying it even exists! So, is the future a struggle between global warming deniers and global warming pretenders who think having a solar panel or an electric car means they've done their part to fix Planet Earth!

And not only can so much be done with oil, so much is necessary to be done by oil in the modern post-WWII industrial economy. In brief, the system of global agribusiness that produces most of our food doesn't function without reliance on oil-based fertilizers. Though we don't really know how much of the shift from traditional family farms to Big Ag really improved productivity. It would be hard to go back now. Same thing with all of the crap today that's made with plastics. Since we know that dumping stored carbon from the Earth back into the atmosphere is endangering our/ and most other complex lifeforms survival, a sensible species of animals would have already been planning ahead to the era where it is no longer cheap and ecologically viable to use carbon for energy sources, and save what's left of the oil for the essentials......but, we don't seem to be too good at long term planning....at least us moderns who thought we could use technology to control nature....looks like we've really backed ourselves into a corner that's going to be hard for us or future generations to get out of!

Right. I couldn't help noticing that the OP doesn't even offer any kind of analysis or attempt to refute that Star editorial....the message is they are biased against the Conservative Party, therefore it's wrong whatever it says! No doubt the Sun chain has played at least a small part in re-shaping Canadian politics in the last couple of decades. They not only wanted to shift the balance of economic power west, they wanted political power to come from B.C./Alberta also. And, after turning Canada into a petrostate, the Harper tories are in the same dilemma as Russia, Venezuela, Iran and so many other nations that allowed the oil industry (dirty oil in our case) to overrun the entire economy! If anyone out west takes a trip through Ontario and Quebec lately, they are going to find even more factory closures, and the only replacements for young blue collar workers are these little fly-by-night operations that populate new business or industrial parks - they pay their non-union workers near minimum wage and after they run out of government grants and tax concessions, they will no doubt, close their doors and run off to the next district which offers the best public giveaways. This is how Ontario (under three different political parties) had been trying to fight the effects of globalization over the last 30 years, which really intensified when all that tar sands crud was taken seriously as oil exports. Like every other petrostate, our dollar inflates and it's goodbye to what's left of real manufacturing! For many reasons, I see cheap oil as more curse than blessing, but at least the grinding down of tar sands operations will end the western conservative dynasty that Harper thought he was putting in place!

That's not much of an exaggeration! It's been noted from a wide variety of sources, that newspapers as a whole, started dumbing down for the reading level of their subscribers years ago...at least as far back as the 70's. So, all newspapers have been dumbed down ever since the age of television led people to watch more/ read less. The Sun group just went one step further by copying the Newscorpse strategy: dumb it down a little further than the others....play to a mostly male, xenophobic audience with lots of flag-waving....over-emphasize sports coverage as if it's real news.....and throw lots of sexual imagery at these sexually frustrated/conflicted guys with the page 3 girl and every, absolutely every bikini shot you can find - same thing works on TV for Murdoch & co.: combine sexual repression with sexual arousal, and you got your conservative audience on a string! The problem with the establishment liberal broadsheets, like the Star and the Globe & Mail, is that they are trying to convince their audience through reason and logic, while the Sun goes straight to negative emotions and doles out any facts on a limited basis.

With Rob Ford, the corporate right in Canada showed that they like their politicians Big, Dumb and Belligerent, just like their U.S. examples: I notice a trend towards selecting dumb cheerleaders ever since Dubya was put up as a presidential candidate. But, then again, senile old Reagan would also qualify. There seems to be a trend towards having real power in the hands of people behind the scenes and telling the politician what to say and what to do. The last thing they want is a politician who thinks for himself, because he or she might stray off the reservation and stop following orders!

Well, on that issue of Jewish cartoons being censored, here's some flesh on the bones of the story I only heard about from a recent interview: Maurice Sinet, 86, who works under the pen name Sine in the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, faced charges of "inciting racial hatred" for a column he wrote in 2009. The piece sparked a slanging match among the Parisian intelligentsia and ended in his dismissal from the magazine. "L'affaire Sine" followed the engagement of Mr Sarkozy, 22, to Jessica Sebaoun-Darty, the Jewish heiress of an electronic goods chain. Commenting on an unfounded rumour that the president's son planned to convert to Judaism, Sine quipped: "He'll go a long way in life, that little lad." A high-profile political commentator slammed the column as linking prejudice about Jews and social success. Charlie Hebdo's editor, Philippe Val, asked Sinet to apologise but he refused in a very strictly manner. Mr Val's decision to fire Sine was backed by a group of eminent intellectuals, including the philosopher Bernard-Henry Lévy, but parts of the libertarian Left defended him, citing the right to free speech. As mocking young Mr Sarkozy converted to Judaism for money, Sine was accused of being Anti-Semitic and faced many preassures leading him to be fired from the weekly magazine. The same magazine published cartoons even insulting the Islam Prophet Muhammad and Muslims yet explained them as “freedom of speech.” Charlie Hebdo published cartoons about Prophet Jesus and Chiristianity, too, causing the magazine being sued 12 times by Catholic Chuch. http://www.worldbulletin.net/news/152585/charlie-hebdo-fired-cartoonist-for-anti-semitism-in-2009 And, the objection to the presentation of Charlie Hebdo as some sort of unprejudiced equal-opportunity offender was also called into question by that Hebdo editor of the time - Philippe Val, later being given a lucrative and high profile government appointment by Sarkozy.....perhaps as a reward...who knows; but it's a lie to claim to be an unbiased critic, so attacking religion without considering the context of who - what groups may belong to that religion, is a complete fraud! Catholicism in France takes a lot of crap because it is the religion of the majority of French and since the majority of French seem to view it largely as an antiquated historical relic, there's not much of a price to be paid for attacking the Catholic Church....since most French Catholics do it also. With Judaism, France has big problems, since they not only have a long, sordid history of persecution and ethnic cleansing (like the rest of continental Europe) France has never come clean about the degree to which the Vichy Nazi-collaborators during WWII worked with the Germans to round up Jews for exile to concentration camps, as well as war crimes within Franc. Perhaps it's not a whole lot different with Germany, Ukraine, Poland, Romania, and most other European nations aside from Holland, which collaborated with the Nazis during occupation. But, some occupied countries were more willing collaborators than others. And French governments ever since De gaulle, have operated under the premise of 'we're going to look forward, not backward' which we hear so much in recent years. That Sine case looks like an example of doing a shoulder-check before acting on first impulse. But, since they are so easy to vilify the religion of most of the immigrants at obscene levels, I'm sure they already calculated that the price to pay for offending Algerians is minimal! It's been mentioned a few times that the editor - Charb, drew this cartoon recently that roughly translates as 'still no attacks on France, with the terrorist in the picture proclaiming that he 'still has to the end of January.' Maybe it was the 24/7 police security he was provided by the Government, but it sure looked like he thought he wasn't in danger! In effect, his goading of potential terrorists not only killed him, but others who were working for him! My point is that the pundits jump right from 7/7 to this latest attack when they talk about terrorist attacks in Europe, and don't even think about the Norway Massacre.....that's what's telling! Beyond me how you turn that into a double standard.. you do realize that thanks to Snowden, his leaks compromised counter-intelligence operations across Europe and for all you know enabled this latest attack and more to come? The White House nor CIA and NSA officials have not produced one single example of where Edward Snowden's revelations have caused deaths or endangered anyone's safety! What the leaks endangered was the extraordinary powergrab by the NSA and private security apparatus...remember Snowden was working for a private contractor! And he had access to anyone, absolutely anyone's private information with a few clicks of the mouse at his computer. I have no doubt that one of the reasons why almost every Democrat and Republican politician in the U.S. is so averse to criticizing the abuses, the corruption and the ever-growing costs of the military apparatus is because they are already being blackmailed by their own security establishment! And, this is where free speech really serves a purpose that could benefit most people! Freedom to create obscene cartoons is at best - superfluous, and potentially corrosive, as some critics of Hebdo noted that pro-war propaganda prior to both world wars by nationalists and fascists on both sides, featured defamatory cartoons of their respective enemies and groups accused of being possible collaborators within their borders.

Right! But, what it also means is that journalists (print and TV/radio) are not as independent as they used to be! In the U.S. media universe, the Foxnews personalities have their third rails that they aren't allowed to cross, and the same thing is true for the so called liberals in MSNBC's night time lineup. In print journalism, liberal war critics like Robert Scheer (L.A. Times) were retired out the door for questioning the leadup to the Iraq Invasion, and ended up like former NY Times war correspondent - Chris Hedges, putting their editorials, books and commentaries on the internet for little if any monetary return. Something that younger journalists with children to care for and mortgages to pay off, can't afford to do! That's why I have that Chomsky quote on my signature line. I don't agree with everything Chomsky writes, but his point about how big commercial media constrains free speech into their accepted boundaries, is something that most people aren't even aware of, and don't know how to think outside of the acceptable liberal or conservative box!

Yes, there are all sorts of Muslims, just like Christians or any other religion, and they have all sorts of different ways of connecting their faiths with modernity and living today. We can hear all about the terrorist-supporting-misogynist Muslims up the yin yang here, but there are Muslim pacifists and Muslim feminist scholars - one I heard interviewed of late is trying to revive a history of female scholarship that began early in the Islamic Caliphate but was suppressed by Abu Bakr. And revived somewhat late in the Ottoman Empire by Turkish nationalists called "The Young Turks." I'll have to look into it more later. But, what I am finding recently seems to indicate that there were reform movements on a whole host of issues until the 20th century, and the Anglo/American Empire went to the reactionaries for allies against reformers they invariably considered too close to the Soviet Union and communism.

A couple of days ago, I heard part of an interview that featured Tariq Rammadan and some big time American cartoonist...for the New Yorker I think....anyway, Tariq made a comment about Charlie Hebdo's financial problems and claimed that it was near bankruptcy in 2011, and how that might have meshed with the increasing right wing leaning of the paper over the last 10 years - especially its increasing focus on mocking Islam and Muslim immigrants. Also mentioned, was that a former editor of the Paper took a high profile appointment by the President. It had been noted from a few sources, that Charlie Hebdo was no friend of the immigrants in France, only treating them as a subject to be mocked if they were mentioned at all. Likely a typical pattern of thinking in France. I can't find anything in English about Hebdo's financial issues, and in French, this source claims they were on the verge of bankruptcy when they created a special issue in 2011 titled "Sharia Hebdo," but I don't know the site or whether the story is authenticated. But, it would fit a pattern of going to extremes and sidling up to nationalist and extremists for financial gain. So much for free speech warriors!

I'll give you a couple of double standards, if they haven't been mentioned already: 1: I've heard two talking heads on the news in the last few days....one American, one French (and likely many others parroting them) that the Charlie Hebdo attacks are the worse terrorist attacks in Europe since the 7/7 subway bombings in London.....REALLY? Nobody heard of Anders Breivik and the massacre of over a hundred students in Norway? The only terrorism that's recognized by media and authorities is the terrorism committed by black and brown people! Everything else is disgruntled employees.....mentally ill....or revenge killings. Some terrorist attacks don't even make the MSM news cycle; such as the recent bombing of an NAACP office in Colorado Springs......I'll bet nobody here even heard the story! Maybe if someone got killed they'd mention it! Even so called "liberal" MSNBC didn't even mention the story until the FBI released a sketch of the suspect a couple of days ago. Now, tell me what the coverage would be if the RNC headquarters was bombed? 2: The French President and other leading voices are all singing the chorus of "Je suis Charlie" and claiming there are no limits to free speech and yet France is the same country that violated international law by trying to force the plane carrying the President of Bolivia down, all because the CIA told them that Edward Snowden might be on board! Snowden, Bradley Manning, John Kiriakou and other lesser known whistleblowers, are evidence that our surveillance state is fine with free speech that has no merit and no consequences for those in power. But, they sure as hell aren't going to allow free speech about anything important....like the size and scale of corruption at the top, where military, political and corporate leaders engage in massive corruption, unlimited surveillance, and loot the treasury of billions of dollars. That kind of free speech doesn't seem to be allowed!

They weren't on U.S. soil, and they did not get anything close to the attention of 9/11. U.S. involvement in Mid-East affairs is a long and sordid story involving money - lots and lots of money....because of the billions of dollars worth of oil lying underground there. But the standard Neocolonial approach used in Latin America and Asia of setting up the banana republic dictator who allows foreign exploitation, raised a lot more violent reaction from the locals than other regions of the world. Should be obvious that - if you want to run an empire with overwhelming military force, you might expect asymmetrical (terrorism) warfare from your opposition.

Your choice. Because one of the reasons why I gave up on the atheist/humanist activist crap is because I can see how it is entangled in the present status quo we have now. Maybe if I really believed we were on the right track regarding culture, economic and environmental progress, I would still be doing the (religion is the root of all evil, and Islam is the worst religion) bs.. But, I don't buy it anymore!

Yes, and there is so much that could be added to the pile, but the editorial that really jumped out at me today is from Robert Fisk at the UK-Independent, where, at the start of a long essay summarizing the history (never mentioned elsewhere) of France's imperial history in Algeria through to its present support of so called "moderate rebels" in Libya and Syria, and how it all connects with the Charlie Hebdo shootings, he adds: Maybe all newspaper and television reports should carry a “history corner”, a little reminder that nothing – absolutely zilch – happens without a past. That, in itself is the best suggestion I've read in months! Because I'm shocked every time I hear people discussing a whole range of issues, and they have no clue about any historical context as to how they got to the present situation in the first place. But, not only would the corporations running MSM not likely be in favour of a history corner, I doubt our political leaders would want an informed public either! Some more food for thought regarding this simplistic "this week in Islam" theme, comes from a blogger named Tony Cartalucci, who picks up a recent story from Deutschewelle which indicates the Turkey/ISIS connection is even deeper than being reluctant to help Kurds in their fight against them: It was reported recently that Germany’s broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) investigated what turned out to be hundreds of trucks a day carrying billions of dollars in supplies, flowing into Syria and directly into the hands of the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS). Turkey, a NATO member since 1952, has played a pivotal role in the destabilization and destruction of neighboring Syria. Since 2011, Turkey has allowed its territory to be used as a transit and staging point for sectarian terrorists flowing from around the world and into Syria in what could be described as a defacto NATO invasion by proxy. First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2014/12/17/isis-bloody-footprints-lead-from-nato-territory/............................................................ Contrary to Western propaganda, Al Qaeda was intentionally organized and directed by the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel to engage in a regional confrontation aimed at Iran and its powerful arc of influence. Exposed by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his 2007 article, “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” it was stated explicitly that (emphasis added): To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda. First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2014/12/17/isis-bloody-footprints-lead-from-nato-territory/ What looks suspicious to me about the ISIS phenomena, and how...in an age of global surveillance and U.S./allied military supremacy over most of the world, this ISIS group could start up and within a matter of weeks overrun half of Iraq and Syria. And what draws the most suspicion is that, among their long list of enemies and people to kill, they never seem to get around to mentioning either Israel or Saudi Arabia! Maybe that's part of later plans, and they recognize the collapse of Al Qaeda coincided with directly attacking Saudi Arabia and then reaching right into the United States as well. There certainly is a mountain of evidence that these evil jihadis were being at least indirectly supported by the U.S. and American allies in the Middle East, but it's not until they lash back and bite their masters' hand, that they get whacked! And, instead of learning their lesson, the policy planners in the White House, the State Dept. and Congress rush off to look for the new useful jihadis to use to attack other enemies.

Right now, our empire....yes, we are part of an empire...that's how we get all the oil and cheap slave-labour produced imports....has the world teetering on the edge of global economic and environmental collapse; while we are also overpopulated and exhausting the supply of non-renewable resources. So, who's to blame? Is it the Muslims, the communists, the environmentalists, or the collective authors of all religious texts, for the fact that in our brilliance, we built an empire based on exploitation of resources and human capital, and all this under the assumption of unlimited and unrestrained growth, while not recognizing that we live in a finite world with finite resources? So, who's the geniuses now? The secular humanism that is supposedly leading us towards an ever-improving techno-utopia, is instead pushing all the levers that are fomenting new and worsening conflicts as the system starts breaking down. And, we may never get the time to deal with these issues because the U.S. is either deliberately or stupidly pushing towards full scale war with Russia! We thought we at least dodged the bullet of nuclear annihilation with the end of the Cold War, and even that one is back and bigger than ever, and unlike years past, it never even makes the MSM news cycle anymore!

Well Mr. O'Keefe, I can't help noticing that you did not even address the Saudi/American connection!

Right! And, what burns my ass is I don't here any of the Neocon-supporting 'let's fight Muslim extremism' crowd addressing the fact that there wouldn't have been a retrenchment into Islamic fundamentalism in the first place if it wasn't for the arrangement that U.S. governments have had with Saudi Arabia! Saudi Arabia is an evangelical Muslim nation that spends a sizable portion of its oil revenues on 'spreading the faith' abroad in other Muslim nations and abroad. In Pakistan, the governments allowed their public education system to wither and die out almost completely and be replaced by free schooling from Saudi Arabian-trained teachers. So, who's to blame for the spread of Wahabbism? The last thing we need now is a bunch of stupid nitwits being herded and stampeded into another Neocon war against the Islamic terrorist nations, when it's America's no.2 friend in the region (if Israel can be considered a friend) that spreads Wahabbism and arms and trains their own surplus young men (a problem for polygamous societies) to go off and wage jihad. As long as the jihadis are attacking Russian, Iranian, Syrian, or other enemies, they are never called terrorists! It's only when America gets bitten in the ass by blowback, whenever the jihadis decide to attack western infidels, then there's a problem! *Same goes for France! Who never stopped meddling in West Africa, even after they gave up their colonies!

Actually, the chess pieces in Europe were already being moved into place for a war between rival colonial empires by the turn of the 20th century! All that was needed, was for someone to light the match, and voila! A throwing down of rival mutual defense treaties, and next thing you know it's "the war to end all wars.....at least in theory. Some historians have noted that the political classes and leading voices in the media of the time: books and newspapers, were writing many pieces along the theme of....the youth are getting "soft" and warfare is necessary to truly settle boundary, territory and trade disputes between nations. Imperialists were getting anxious about growing populist movements of utopian socialists and Marxists, attacking the new economic order of industrial capitalism, so there were some people who had gained a lot of wealth who were getting worried about losing all or some of their loot. What they didn't figure on, was that the war between English-French vs. German alliances would be an endless bloodbath that would ruin the old aristocracies and even bankrupt many of the nouveau riche in Europe! But, for the common people in England, France, Italy, Austria, Germany and Russia, the "Great War" was a slaughter that killed millions and made it much harder for the same backroom demagogues to engineer another war for a generation! But, the takeaway for me, is that something like the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand would have in no way precipitated WWI IF NOT for the fact that the leading demagogues were already planning for war and waiting for the match to strike! This time is slightly different in that the 'war' has already been ongoing, and began in third world Muslim-majority countries, and was only noticed in America and western nations after 9/11, is out of sight and out of mind to the vast majority of Americans, Canadians, Europeans etc., because there is only the other one percent of the population that is actually involved in fighting the wars! Just sayin....to everyone here, if you're going to bitch about the occasional Muslim terrorist attack in the west, you should be paying attention to what our governments are doing over there!

NO, I recall reading a few things over the years about this Charlie Hebdo collective in Paris, though I did not pay much attention or give it a lot of thought. In spite of all the spin we are getting on the news over the last 48 hours, they were not equal opportunity critics by a long shot! They targeted religion more than politics as general subject areas. This is a problem right from the start, because only in the simplistic, neatly bordered universe of new atheism, can religion be studied and critiqued in complete separation from politics and economic realities. Here is a summary of some of the worst and most offensive cartoons, and they are not only anti-Muslim, they also play into the racism and cultural xenophobia that so many French feel...pretty much constantly since they lost their empire: http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2015/01/in-the-wake-of-charlie-hebdo-free-speech-does-not-mean-freedom-from-criticism/ A favorite standup comic of mine - Jimmy Dore (used to be a regular on Comedy Central...does a weekly podcast show, made the observation a couple of years ago about his chosen livelihood, that the job of the standup comic who does political and social commentary, is to impugn and mock the priviledged and powerful/ not to attack the poor and the downtrodden...as an explanation for why the RNC never has enough money to book decent comedians for their events. In this analogy, the comic is the modern day equivalent of the court jester during the dark ages. At a time when everyone in the king's court was walking on egg shells worrying about offending the King; the Court Jester would entertain the King by subtle and not-so subtle mockery of him and other prominent nobility. From what I saw of Charlie Hebdo, their mission was the exact opposite: rigorously atheistic and anti-religion of all sorts, but focused on Islam in particular. And their jokes made no reference to France's abysmal situation of race relations and income disparities. Supposedly it can all be distilled down to abolishing someone's religion, as if that can be done without also abolishing their cultural heritage and identity! Sure, they paid a heavy price for inflaming tensions that have apparently been matched by Al Qaeda...because, let's not forget, that the goal of Al Qaeda and similar Islamic fascist movements is to prevent assimilation and prosperity of Muslims moving to western, non-Muslim nations. Their goal is to make the divide even sharper. So, in effect, the Islamic extremists and the anti-Islam nationalists have the same goals in mind!

I would never claim that Maher is a deep thinker about any subject! The only reason he doesn't hate Israel, is because he hates Muslims more (doesn't account for the Christian minority in Palestine though). His political thought has always been simplistic and self-serving; but he hates the Arabs so much, that his default setting is everything Israel does is wonderful......re: the 15 min. of lobbing softballs at Israeli President/war criminal - Benjamin Netanyahu:

I can't claim to be fully informed about the situation in France, but I am aware that: France has been a nation living in denial for at least half a century. Most French leaders claim that there are intrinsic French values that transcend race or religion...but in all the years since the end of WWII, they have never explained how this works, or how all of the French-speaking African immigrants to France could truly become integrated citizens of their nation. The trend in recent decades was for African immigrants to be sent either overtly or covertly to suburbs outside the main cities, and not to become part of the urban population. Add to this all of the immigrants who are Muslim, and its hard to see how any party in France, either on the left or the right, had any sort of plan to deal with immigration. It seems that like so many other nations in Europe - national identity can't be separated from origins, and new immigrants cannot be regarded as truly French and more than German Immigrants, Dutch and Swedish immigrants etc. It seems the French problem begins with their refusal to remove themselves from their last African colony in Algeria. There were many French living in Algeria (like the philosopher Albert Camus) and did not want to leave and return to France. And in the early 60's at least, Charles de Gaulle was claiming that Algerians and French were one and the same. I have to wonder how much of their current identity problems stem from never resolving what it means to be French. The Charlie Hebdo killing has to be taken in context of all that is happening there now. If you deliberately throw gasoline on the fire, you have to accept that you are putting your life and the lives of others at risk. Before you take any action, there should be some useful purpose behind it. I don't see what the useful value was for his cartoons, but I could see that there would be a lot of negatives. If the cause is improving the conditions for free speech in Muslim societies or women's rights and quality of life in Muslim lands, I don't see how these sorts of actions have any plan to achieve those goals.