What we know for sure is the imperialist countries have been robbing and oppressing Africa and the Middle East for centuries. And when we say imperialism, we are defining that as a system where the industrialized countries steal the human and material resources from the technologically underdeveloped countries in a way that prevents the poor countries from ever being able to climb out from the subservient position. For example, cocoa is the natural resources that produces chocolate. In Ghana, the cocoa industry is controlled by foreign multi-national corporations based in the U.S., Britain, France, etc. The cocoa is extracted through an extremely exploitative process where the people are paid next to nothing to extract it and are provided conditions to work in that breed disease and death. The cocoa is developed by the capitalist countries into chocolate products which are then sold back to Ghana (and the rest of the world) at high prices. This is how the imbalanced system of imperialism works, not just for cocoa, but for every product you will encounter, enjoy, and benefit from this weekend. Then, on top of that, when that system isn't good enough for those pirates, the imperialists have a history of just outright stealing the lands where either the resources are housed, or where they believe they can achieve a political, economic, or militarily strategic advantage. In the Middle East this occurred when the European powers seized lands within the Ottoman Empire after World War I and divided those lands as they saw fit, much the same way they divided Africa during the 1884 Berlin Conference. This has been the norm for the last 100 years. Imperialism manipulating lands and people for it's own ends regardless of the devastating impact their actions have on the peoples who inhabit those lands. So, in 1990, Saddam Hussein uses the weaponry supplied to him by the imperialists (to use against Iran in the 1980s) to attempt to reclaim Kuwait which was separated from Iraq in the Ottoman Empire land grab. Since Saddam had then outlived his usefulness to imperialism, they turned their rage onto him and the imperialist war against Iraq began. Meanwhile, Afghanistan was being governed by the Taliban which was a group of hardcore folks who emerged to leadership in that country with the full support of imperialism which supported them in defeating the Soviet-backed socialist leaning regime in Kabul. Twenty years later, Saddam is dead and gone and Iraq and Afghanistan have been devastated by two decades of imperialist bombings and war. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and millions displaced. Lawlessness in both countries is the order of the day and upwards of 60% of all heroin currently in the U.S. comes from Afghanistan (even your lying FBI confirms that).
The same sad story of destruction is true when you look at Libya. Formally the most developing country in Africa, Libya was the place most people in Africa wanted to get to and believe it or not, Khadafy was the most popular man in Africa. Why? Because his government built the Waswa Dam project which was supplying potable water to people in the Sahara desert, a feat the imperialists said would never happen. On top of that, Libya was making advances in medicine, health care, and education that no one anywhere else in Africa needed to envy because the Libyans were more than happy to share their advances with the rest of the continent. Then, on top of that, Khadafy had the audacity to propose the creation of an African currency backed by Libyan gold as a method of pursuing Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Ture's dream of Pan-African independence in Africa. Of course, imperialism's answer to this was to unite under NATO and bomb Libya into submission, killing Khadafy and anyone who supported the Jamihiriya. Today, Libya is in the same chaotic situation as Iraq and Afghanistan. You can add Sudan, Somalia, Syria, and other places to this list. And the imperialist culprits are not just the U.S. and zionist israel, although they are certainly ring leaders, but Britain, and yes - France - have been willing players in this wanton destruction as joyful partners in the imperialist North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
So with so much of the world blasted into chaos and disarray even a middle school student would have little difficulty concluding that the conditions of despair and desperation would produce groups like al-Queade and ISIS. For decades, the imperialists have given them nothing except weapons and destruction while stealing everything they have. So, these people don't have the capacity to strike back at imperialism in the systematic and major way imperialism attacks them, so the only way they can strike back is a bomb here, a shooting attack there. You don't have to like it, but you do have to recognize why it's happening. You do have to acknowledge how it started and why it continues. Look at it the way Malcolm X articulated it back in 1963 when he was discussing the reasons behind John F. Kennedy's assassination. Malcolm talked about how Kennedy's administration had sanctioned violence against Cuba and the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, and the Congo's democratically elected Prime Minister two years before. Malcolm characterized Kennedy's death as a case of "the chickens coming home to roost." While so it is in Paris yesterday. France is an imperialist country that to this day forces (through economic cohersion) former African colonies like Senegal, Mali, and Bourkina Faso to pay taxes for France's colonial subjugation of those countries. France's brutal exploitation of African countries like Guinea and Algeria is well documented and the corrupt practice of requiring those poor countries to pay taxes to France who was enriched by exploiting them, is a war crime.
So, you won't see any tears coming from too many people about what happened in France yesterday from anyone who knows this gruesome history. The capitalist media will continue to trumpet that "terrorism was inflicted on the innocent French people", but he truth is the people of France are accomplices to the suffering of people in Africa and the Middle East and their unwillingness to recognize that, and do something about it, unfortunately places them in a situation where they may be targeted by folks who feel they have no other recourse - if they are indeed responsible for the carnage. The same is true for people in the U.S. Your selfishness and cowardice is not something that the bulk of people in the world are not aware of. Immgrants and religions can continue to be blamed, but it is really you who is guilty. What hypocrisy. You want to cry out against "terrorism" when you feel you, or people you identify with, are targeted, yet you say nothing about actual terrorists living on your dime in Florida (Luis Posada Carilles, Orlando Bosch, etc.) because those terrorists committed terrorism against the (ill-rationally) hated Cuban Revolution. You say and do nothing against your own sons, brothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, sisters, mothers, neighbors, co-workers, and friends who promote the ideas and actions of terrorist groups like the ku klux klan and neo-nazis. And these groups have a record of terrorist attacks that make ISIS seem like Saturday cartoons. ISIS would have to decapitate thousands of more people to be in the kkk's ballpark since decapitations and castrations are the klan's trademark.
The senseless violence is the violence carried out by imperialism. The violence against the Cubans. The creation of AFROCOM e.g 100 military bases throughout Africa, especially around Somalia and East Africa. The violence in Iraq, Syra, Libya, Afghanistan. This is all senseless violence. The violence you saw yesterday is either someone's desperate attempt to strike back or something else that we don't yet know about. Whatever it is, its time for people living in the imperialist countries to get your heads out of your asses and start paying attention to what's happening around the world in your name. The you is all of the imperialist countries - the U.S., France, Britain, Germany, so-called israel, Canada, etc. There are very few pieces of ammo floating around that you didn't pay for. There are no chemical weapons that you didn't finance. Most of the weapons of violence and destruction operational around the world you supported being produced and placed into circulation. The instability in Somalia, Sudan, Chad, Congo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and the millions of people displaced from all those places, you had a hand in supporting all of that. In other words, if you really want to see what a terrorist looks like, look in the mirror.