France, Russia, Turkey

My most recent post on this blog was written just as the terror attacks in Paris were being reported in the national press.  I decided not to write about these attacks at the time, however, as I had already decided to write about student finance, and because I felt it proper to learn more about the terror attacks before writing about them.

One of the first questions which occurred to me was whether or not the attacks were a false flag.  The attacks may have been - as is widely reported - the work of Islamic terrorists linked to ISIS.  They may also have been - as the columnist Peter Hitchens has suggested - the  work of Islamic terrorists unconnected with ISIS.  The atrocities might have been the work of the French government, just as the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers was almost certainly the work of the United States government. Another possibility is that the attacks were an elaborate hoax with nobody actually dead, as happened with the Sandy Hook school shooting.

I watched some videos on Youtube which argued for the Paris attacks as being a hoax, but found them lacking substance, and so I will proceed in the belief that the attacks were indeed the work of Muslims, although I will concede that Peter Hitchens might well be correct about there being no link to ISIS.

The President of France has used the terror attacks to justify air strikes against ISIS positions in Syria, which reminds me of the Renaissance writer Niccolo Machiavelli who argued that a prince who is unpopular at home should start a war.

Russia has already been attacking ISIS positions for some time, and recently suffered the loss of an aircraft shot down by the Turkish army for allegedly violating its airspace.  It is widely reported that the Russian aircraft would have been in Turkish airspace for maybe ten seconds at most, whereas the Turkish government has claimed that the Russian jet was in its airspace for around five minutes during which time several warning were issued.

Some commentators have even gone so far as to argue that this incident could trigger World War Three, but I will believe that when I see it.

The facts as I understand it are that ISIS is funded in large part by oil revenues.  Oil companies are expected not to buy from ISIS however, and so ISIS sends much of its oil in tankers into Turkey, where it can be sold on the international market as if it had been sourced in Turkey.  In other words, it appears that the Turkish authorities are helping to fund ISIS.

Predictably, Turkey objects to the destruction of ISIS oil tankers in Russian air strikes, and so it has been argued that they decided to hit back by taking out a Russian military aircraft.  Obviously, however, the loss of just one aeroplane makes little difference to the Russian bombing campaign, which leads me to conclude that either the Turkish government is planning to shoot down yet more Russian aircraft, or else that the Turkish government is in fact telling the truth about the five minute violation of airspace.

Related previous posts include:
The insanity of a war without frontiers
A war against ISIS would be savage and pointless