Some perspective on the Paris attacks — this is an attack on our way of life — we need to reinvent ourselves — let’s change the world !
The events of this week should also be analyzed through a macro-economic framework. The sponsors and financiers of the barbaric terrorists in Paris are Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other oil sheikdoms. These are the same forces that are working to crash the price of oil to prevent the US and Canada from weaning themselves from Middle Eastern oil via tar sands and fracking. It’s high time to recognize that sponsoring and protecting the Saudis has been a HUGE historical and strategic error. The 9/11 Commission should release documents that make clear the direct financing of Attah and his cohorts by members of the Saudi royal family. Let’s remember that on Sep 12, all of the Saudi royals present on US soil were allowed to leave even as the US airspace was in lockdown. It’s sad that these dark forces have managed to enroll many strata of US and other countries in defending 17th century Wahabi fundamentalism, we see the result in Paris…
The larger point is the sick trade-off the West has made for decades: protect fundamentalist Saudis in exchange for cheap oil. The same Saudis are under assault from darker forces whose goal it is to take over Mecca. This was Ben Laden’s stated objective: take over their Holy Land from the corrupt Saudi “royal family”. The Saudis have been funding Al Qaeda, Daesh and all of the Sunni terrorists since before 2001 in order to “buy” time and peace of mind, all the while we look away…. —
The Paris attacks need to be analyzed with the same framework as our totalitarian, sectarian enemies. We in the West have been lulled back into complacency since 9/11 and have not dealt with the root of the issue. But as David Troy just pointed out, we need to expand our minds. If we take a few steps back, the current conflict that our enemies are trying to accelerate with these spectacular attacks (and we are nowhere near done with them) is to show that the Emperor has no clothes ie our so-called advanced civilization leaves too many “global cohort of underemployed, oversexed, and mostly undereducated young men who feel marginalized, bored, and anxious for their future” as ably put by David Troy. The battle with our enemies is also a battle of ideas. They are able to radicalize these young men (and women) by turning the tables and showing the dearth of meaning that our modern, consumer-centric societies yield. They are able to tap into the spiritual realm which has been deserted by secular societies. Having ably analyzed our weak points they are also using post-colonial guilt and multiculturalism to impose the Sharia in the UK for example, a sure tipping point.
We MUST ask ourselves how to FUNDAMENTALLY rework our global economic and political construct. We cannot be a giant corporate-driven society where the individual is reduced to a consumer. We stand on the shoulders of the few thousand hunter gatherers of millennia ago who defied the odds and survived, we cannot and must not be cogs in the system. We could be at the beginning of a much larger and deadlier conflict which would surely demand a rebirth of the global community of political and economic leaders. If there’s anything we can learn from the past 3 decades it’s that voter apathy+special interests+byzantine legal systems make for a complex world where the struggle to live in peace is great. Just as on 9/11 the West had started to question itself we must self-analyze and reinvent the democratic, secular societies we cherish before they disappear.
One of the fights that I support and that warms my heart is what Lawrence Lessig is doing in the US with Rootstrikers to rid big money from politics.
Let’s be bold, dream big and change the world, it can be done, it has been done before ! Lastly, I would be interested to know what our tech billionaires think about all of this….
