Could it have been an unplanned explosion, like during a test run? Admitting to an accident like that would be not permitted, even internally the ruling fears will create the wildest stories to save faces & necks. It's sometimes hard to say with these things who the intended audience exactly was.

The FBI shows how it is done: manipulating individuals and groups who are "easily impressionable" to enable terrorist acts, including but not limited to providing intelligence, weapons and ideas. This small scale demonstration explains all you need to know about Muslim terrorism of recent decade and their various enablers. And all for simple goals: money, promotion, power trips and geopolitical concerns.

One could also see easily some kind of morally bankrupt "agents" from one or the other nation state become tempted to enable some "easily impressionable" folks to put the Twin Towers and air planes in their head. Such thing will be hard to prove since one already has willing confessions and motive. Why look further?

The suspicion then rises that we've gotten nothing but "handled" incidents since around the world. A new "tool" in the larger sicko game. Near perfect conspiracy because it needs only a little push here and there, hardly strings attached. Sometimes not even that any more. Just watch the fire burn at some point.

Main problem is that at some point, everyone gets in on the same game.

Good article. Terrorism is not just a bug but actually a feature of any rising "semi-fascist statism" or any system of out-of-bounds control being exercised. In the case of militant, revolutionary Islam, it's clearly alway rising in response. First decades of Western sponsored or accepted brutal repression, replaced after its (induced or accelerated) collapse then followed by various global systems of surveillance, tagging and systematic death raining from the sky. It's not really different from the earlier state only there's more room to move around (as Saddam just took out you and everyone you knew just to make sure).

There's also some kind of delay in place: hateful ideologies take decades to develop and start to combust with certain added elements thrown into the mix (eg Gulf and Libyan wars). Unwinding the wars or occupation is just a first step. It won't put the genii back into the bottle that easily. For now we still will have to suffer the consequences of older, more terrible mistakes. There's no good way to avoid it but at least we could try to become honest about it. That's where real change can begin.

Well, the reasons Israel sees Ba'athism and the Iranian state as both bigger enemies than any chaotic, extremist Sunni militant group has to do with recognizing any nationalist ideology as being the more potent adversary, able to actually create and maintain states, advance interest, gain allies on the international platform and create some kind of legitimacy. The same has been clear in Israel's stance toward Hezbollah and PLO as bigger problems than even Hamas, which remained contained and always on the verge of inner disintegration and with a lack of international traction (despite attempts to overcome this, every time they might: Israel acts). Divide and conquer: but don't forget to destroy anything that's not that easy to divide.

JR: "As long as we are invading the world, we are inviting the world to invade us: it’s as simple as that."

It's not exactly that simple considering how many "invaders" are actually not born or raised in countries invaded or occupied by Western countries, in many cases they didn't even visit any. In my view, that's an important thing. What we're looking at is people looking for a cause, something to identify with because some shared element like faith or a sense of repression or injustice. Underneath that all we often can see disenfranchised, alienated people. But that is to be expected in a more or less bankrupt, alienating "postmodern" civil society. What I predict therefore is that violent attacks will remain, aimed at shocking or destabilizing what is perceived as a controlling structure, a system of muted, remote violence voted in again by consumers each four years. They're perhaps not here yet but once the centralized control and oversight in domestic and consumer affairs will become more extreme, a more clear reaction will surely follow. It's not a bug, more like a feature of a system trying to become closed. It's not different from the control attempted over the Middle East.

" but when one country drops bombs in another country they make it more likely that someone is going to attack them in their own country."

True enough. But in the case of this attack in Paris it might not apply! The terrorists appear to be mostly French citizens of multiple ethnic-transnational backgrounds with many of them living in Belgium. So even to some degree "their country" was bombed, it was also by their other country!

It seems, like so many Islamic terrorists, that one takes up the cause or associates with a land but only because of a principle applied, some link with history, some link to end of times but mostly as training grounds to get battle hardened and "jacked up".

So no, it's not "their" country under attack. They're over here because they already were?

So would it be feasible to call the military posturing of the US, "alliances" or competitors a question of moving the pieces in place for when the economic downturn will puncture the modern credit balloon? And that when it happens one can utter the word "claim" and control the harsh transitions to ones own advantage at many locations?

There might have been Libyan weaponry involved like

- S-200 (SA-5 Gammon,), predecessor to S-300, range 300 km
- S-125 (SA-3 Goa), range 35 km
- 2K12 Kub ( SA-6 Gainful), predecessor to BUK, range 24 km
<a href="http://(http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b96_1446309895)" target="_blank">(http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b96_1446309895)

Interesting note, the S-200 was involved in accidental downing of Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 by Ukraine in 2001.

My own guess from the list would be S-125 as candidate. using HE warhead. Common for Egypt & Libyan former operators, can reach 59,000 ft & is more mobile than others.

You're right Rick, I was thinking exactly the same. Such a hurried conclusion that it would have to be some mechanical failure! This could be done to buy some time of course, as at this stage it might not be very good for the stability of Russia or Egypt to unleash too quickly the strong emotions which come with any more sinister scenario.

In terms of timing and area, the IS remains a viable option. But if it would have been done by SAM, it's certainly possible to conceive of motives for certain politic forces inside Russia or elsewhere to have enabled the event, since it would have dual purpose: increase appetite for any domestic sell of the war and to change the political terms of the MH17 blame game as it appears as the reverse of that event.

It remains a dangerous event altogether, in both cases of sabotage and that of a direct attack. Generally frictions inside the societies of all the involved countries increase and stability decreases. Which can be used to push for more war and more restricting government oversight but just as well for its opposite: more protest, violence and fractioning. It all depends who is able to capitalize on it first.

But lets not forget that coincidental tragic events do happen, even when it seems against the odds. There have been too many examples of that in history, sometimes tragically misunderstood.

It makes me wonder if some Taliban misdirection has been at work here. What was the main purpose of the rather pointless Kunduz "conquest" by the Taliban anyway? My guess is that they play with the over-reliance on "intelligence" which ends up too easy being distorted by anyone slightly more clever than the average US intelligence analysis. Which is likely more than 80% of the world population by now...