In the news

France is undoubtedly being targeted because it has been carrying out airstrikes in Syria, and for it to be goaded into further military action by these terror attacks is a huge mistake. I suspect that since the Commons voted against airstrikes, the UK is relatively safe for now, but should it engage in military action again (and Cameron seems to be trying to talk tough), we are likely to see renewed terror attacks here.

The wider background is quite simple. What we have been doing for decades now is to destabilise the Near East and Middle East, largely by divide-and-rule, following the formal abandonment of colonialism, which continues to exist informally. The illusion of European (and US American) cultural and economic dominance is founded on a centuries-old slowing down of the economic development of areas like China and India, which have taken said centuries to begin catching up (and China is now engaging in de facto colonialism, especially in Africa).

The wars waged in the Near East since the colonial period and the subsequent establishment of a permanent crisis point in the conflict between Israel and its surrounding states, as well as client wars incited in the wake of the energy crises of the 1970s found their culmination (so far) in the horrible war in Iraq and the shockwaves that followed it, including civil wars in numerous countries in the region.

Apart from water and coal, Europe is relatively resource-poor but has nonetheless developed far higher land values than these other places owing to a temperate climate and geological stability, which lend themselves to investment in land (and hence economic development) more than many other places, necessitating the importing of resources and exporting of products.

All of this has caused a rising worldwide sense of injustice and an increase in guerilla activity, leading to hundreds of small conflicts, simmering or open, as well as the current horror of the war in Syria, destroying one of the world's great cultural treasure-houses (and I don't mean by that the historic buildings of Palmyra and Aleppo, but the people and their culture). As is often said (and has to be repeated), none of it has anything to do with Islam, but is simply political fightback against over-dominance and exploitation. Bombs thrown on a wedding party in Afghanistan are no more just than the retaliatory attacks. Part of standard guerilla tactics is obviously to launch unpredictable offensives in places where it is not expected to fully exploit the sense of shock and revulsion that results from them.

The West has so far seemingly done nothing effective to bring stability back to the region and help establish legitimate, stable governments. How could it after decades of dividing people there or reigniting long-simmering conflicts? The tremendous evil that George W Bush's cronies did to remove Saddam Hussein (probably because he knew too much about them) is going to remain a touchstone for world politics for a long time. Stability, of course, while it can stop civil wars and render them dormant again, is usually achieved at the expense of corrupt deals with an area's strongmen (rarely women), and can lead back to the same old divide-and-rule scenario as before. Ironically, troubled Egypt is now more stable again under a military dictatorship following a coup, although it goes without saying that human rights abuses continue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5OkhDmeJW8