Paris: You Don’t Want to Read This

This is a republished copy. The original story is here:

http://wemeantwell.com/blog/2015/11/14/paris-you-dont-want-t...

> Where people are not economically well off, these will happen, people are terrorists for a reason and it wasn't because their life was great.

That's false, there is absolutely no correlation between being poor and wanting to slaughter thousands of innocents. One simple example : Bin Laden who comes from a filthy rich background. He never lacked on something in his life , his family was ultra rich, yet he created and financed a terrorist organization.

There is however an absolute causation between giving loads of money to folks in KSA who spread an hateful ideology like Wahhabism and terrorism.

I'm absolutely sick about this b-llsh-t explanation that just paint the poor as potential terrorists just because they are poor. No. No.

> Our strategy in Iran (and Cuba) is actually the best one we have going.

It's funny you talk about Cuba because , it contradicts what you just said. There should have been cubans terrorists blowing themselves up in the streets of USA because of they've been forced into poverty thanks to US blockade for 60 years. In 60 years it never happened. And the reason why is that they don't subscribe to a specific ideology and culture.

Possibly, but Bin Laden wasn't the one with the bomb strapped on. He was more akin to a king sending peasants to die.

It is a fact though that lower economical areas have more crime and less opportunity. It would be harder to recruit the foot soldiers. It will always be the plebs that have the power to continue or end it, and one way they might choose to end it is because they have a comfortable life.

Look at Brazil, the inequality there, on the lower end human life means nothing. In conditions like that crime, terror, desperation will make people do anything to survive.

While I agree this ideology is different, most strong ideologies arise out of a lack of economic options.

If suddenly your house got bombed, members of your family died, and you lost the ability to survive economically, you'd probably survive however you can even if that means blowing something up for money for your family. People aren't born suicide bombers or terrorists, the environment around them forms that.

I am simply saying one known way to win hearts and minds is to help economically and give options to people susceptible to it. I am not saying poor people are terrorists, I am saying terrorism (or at least desperation crime) can grow in lower economical areas for recruiting more easily, and the only way to combat that is with better economics and opportunity. The same happens in inner cities with gangs, high unemployment etc. [1][2]

Equally decisive in determining crime rates are the more invisible barriers to crime set up by social norms and social cohesion. Indeed, one of the most robust statistical patterns known is that crime rates tend to go up with rising economic inequality, which itself tends to go along with erosion of social trust.

[1] http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-01-06/want-to-fig...

[2] http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/crimwage.htm

> Look at Brazil, the inequality there, on the lower end human life means nothing. In conditions like that crime, terror, desperation will make people do anything to survive.

For god's sake France is not Brazil ! In France one earns more money doing nothing living on welfare than the minimum wage in Portugal, and the cost of living is not that higher, so no, please stop.

> Possibly, but Bin Laden wasn't the one with the bomb strapped on.

Exactly, and the poor folk in middle wasn't the one blowing himself up in that theater. Someone who has never experienced true poverty did kill 100+ people. Someone born in France who got free healthcare, free college, and a ton of welfare paid by hardworking people blew himself up. So the poverty argument is B-LLSH-T .

The very idea that any foreigner living thousands miles away could better understand and solve complex problem local people struggling for decades(even centuries) makes me sick. So does the idea that any rational organisation would commit to decades long nation-building projects.

No matter how wealthy the rest of the world combined, we just don't have enough resource (including political capital to support long term commitment) to solve the mid-east problem, let alone various calculations every participating countries might entertains.