The United States, long accused of taking an incremental approach to the struggle, is under growing political pressure at home and abroad to do more and it is expected to examine ways to intensify the campaign, including through expanded air power. US officials say Washington will look in particular to European and Arab allies to step up their military participation in the war in Iraq and Syria.

It remains far from clear whether Paris and Washington would be willing to radically expand the scope of their current military engagement, given a deep aversion to getting dragged into a large-scale ground war in the Middle East. But President Barack Obama has been committing more to the fight in recent months, and lawmakers and counter-terrorism experts see the Paris attacks strengthening arguments for additional military might. Islamic State claimed responsibility for Friday's attacks, which killed 129 people in Paris, in the worst bloodshed in France since the end of World War Two.

In the past two weeks, there have been other major Islamic State-claimed attacks. Two explosions in suicide attacks in a Shi'ite Muslim district of southern Beirut in Lebanon killed 43, and 224 died when a Russian aircraft crashed in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

'What is true is that from the start, our goal has been first to contain and we have contained them,' Obama said in the interview. 'They have not gained ground in Iraq, and in Syria they’ll come in, they’ll leave, but you don’t see this systemic march by ISIL across the terrain.'

Since Friday's attacks in Paris, several social media users, including Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, have criticized the comments made by Obama, who set off for the two-day Group of 20 summit in Antalya, Turkey, on Saturday. 'President Obama said "ISIL continues to shrink" in an interview just hours before the horrible attack in Paris. He is just so bad! CHANGE,' Trump wrote on Twitter. Obama said in his interview that aired on Friday that he had been unable to 'completely decapitate ISIS'. 'What we have not yet been able to do is to completely decapitate their command and control structures,' he said.

'We’ve made some progress in trying to reduce the flow of foreign fighters, and part of our goal has to be to recruit more effective Sunni partners in Iraq to really go on offense rather than simply engage in defense.'

A senior administration official explained the connection between Obama's comments and Friday's attack on Paris to CNN. 'We, including the President, have said from beginning the fight against ISIL that it would be long and have both good and bad days,' the official said. ISIS has quickly grown during the Obama administration, from an organization the president once called al Qaeda's 'JV (junior varsity) team' to the force that it is today.

“I don’t think any sensible person would disagree that the invasion of Iraq led to the massive instability we’re seeing right now,” Sanders said. Sanders and O’Malley went on to discuss the consequences of regime change that Washington has enforced. “If you look at history… you will find that… these invasions, these toppling of governments, regime changes, have unintended consequences. I would say that on this issue I’m a little bit more conservative than the Secretary, and I am not a big fan of regime changes,” Sanders said.

“It’s not just about getting rid of a single dictator,” said the former Maryland governor, O’Malley. “It is about understanding the secondary and third consequences that fall next,” he added, emphasizing the need for better intelligence and planning on the ground in the Middle East.

Possibly believable evidence will be presented that the Paris attacks were real terrorist attacks. However, what do refugees have to gain from making themselves unwelcome with acts of violence committed against the host country, and where do refugees in France obtain automatic weapons and bombs? Indeed, where would the French themselves obtain them?

The millions of refugees from Washington’s wars who are overrunning Europe are bringing to the forefront of European politics the anti-EU nationalists parties, such as Pegida in Germany, Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party, and Marine Le Pen’s National Front Party in France. These anti-EU political parties are also anti-immigrant political parties. The latest French poll shows that, as a result of the refugees from Washington’s wars, Marine Le Pen has come out on top of the candidates for the next French presidential election.

By supporting for 14 years Washington’s neoconservative wars for US hegemony over the Middle East, establishment European governments eroded their electoral support. European peoples want to be French, German, Dutch, Italian, Hungarian, Czech, British. They do not want their countries to be a diverse Tower of Babel created by millions of refugees from Washington’s wars.

To remain a nationality unto themselves is what Pegida, Farage, and Le Pen offer the voters. Realizing its vulnerability, it is entirely possible that the French Establishment made a decision to protect its hold on power with a false flag attack that would allow the Establishment to close France’s borders and, thereby, deprive Marine Le Pen of her main political issue.

"Recognition of a Palestinian state by France would be a grave mistake," Netanyahu said, according to AFP. "The State of Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people, the only state that we have, and the Palestinians demanding a state do not want to recognize the right to have a state for the Jewish people," Netanyahu told members of Jews who immigrated from France.

Following Sweden's official decision and symbolic votes in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain, the European Parliament is expected to vote on a draft resolution that would recognize a Palestinian state.

And the problem will get a lot worse. In 2015, Germany will bring in at least half a million “migrants.” Only now that it’s too late does Germany appear to be regretting its decision to open the gates. The “migrants” are already running — and ruining — major cities. The police in Hamburg have “capitulated” to Muslim gangs that “outnumber and overwhelm them,” and Muslim rapists, also operating in gangs, are waging sexual jihad [Polizei kapituliert vor kriminellen Flüchtlinge, Die Welt, November 30, 2014].

The Gatestone Institute, an organization which tracks this kind of crime, has published a shocking report about the tragic fate of the homeland of Schiller, Beethoven and Goethe. More than 1,000 “unaccompanied minor migrants” teem on Hamburg’s streets. Feral gangs use any perceived slight to fight cops and other gangs.

Unsurprisingly, the Germans won’t deport these criminals because they are “minors” and because they fear accusations of racism. Indeed, the insanity runs so deep the government in Hamburg is seizing vacant commercial property to house them [Hamburg to seize commercial property to house migrants, BBC,October 2, 2015]. Hostile ethnic tribes are now dividing up what used to be German territory.

In Stuttgart, Gambian drug dealers run the criminal underground. In Dresden, Algerians, Moroccans and Tunisians control the Wiener Platz, the large public square at the train station. An article at Bild complained these immigrants engage in drug dealing and pickpocketing, “usually with impunity. Police raids on the square have become a game of whack-a-mole, with a never-ending number of migrants replacing those who have been arrested.”

The change would happen as a result of conservative and Christian political parties gaining more votes caused by the increased refugee influx and the ongoing economic crisis. In addition, during the Greek debt crisis, Merkel didn't act tough enough towards Greece, infuriating a number of conservative politicians in the German parliament, Stratfor said.

"This view would keep several Central and Eastern European nations from entering the Eurozone… Moreover, because crises in the Eurozone periphery are far from over, the possibility of Greece and others leaving the euro cannot be ruled out," the Stratfor report said. Small changes will likely start happening in 2016, but a significant political transition of the EU's main powerhouse will definitely be felt after the German election in 2017.

In light of the EU's military policy, Washington should encourage the EU to "defend itself," says the author, an expert in an influential US think tank. While "Internationale Politik" is raising fundamental questions, NATO is opening a debate on a new "southern strategy." Since Russia is expanding its naval presence in the Mediterranean and establishing new military bases in Syria, the Mediterranean "is a contested space," according to NATO circles.

The deployment of drones in Sicily has been announced, along with plans to intensify cooperation with the countries of the region. "Advisers" are already active in Tunisia, Jordan and Iraq and should also be sent to Libya as soon as possible. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has announced that the debate will be continued at the meeting of NATO foreign ministers, scheduled for early December.

Wolfgang Schäuble, the finance minister, warned that Germany was facing an “avalanche” of refugees set off by a “careless skier”. And Thomas de Maiziere, the interior minister, twice acted unilaterally to introduce stricter controls on Syrian asylum-seekers without informing Mrs Merkel.

But other guests on the television show were dismissive of the possibility of an internal party coup against the chancellor. “Anyone who tries to overthrow some one like her will destroy himself,” Karl-Rudolf Korte, a political scientist at the University of Duisberg-Essen, said, adding that she was protected by an “armour of popularity”. But he added: “The situation is not flattering for the chancellor, a loss of power is quite evident”.

Mrs Merkel came under intense questioning in a special half-hour interview on ZDF television entitiled What Now, Mrs Merkel? on Friday evening. In the interview, she vowed to continue her “open-door” refugee policy: “It is our principle to help people in need,” the German chancellor said. “We need to show the freedoms we enjoy in practice and help those in need.”

"God, honour, homeland," chanted the protesters as they marched under a sea of red-and-white Polish flags. Demonstrators trampled and burned a European Union flag at one point, while a banner added to the anti-EU theme with the slogan "EU macht frei" ("Work makes you free" in German), a reference to the slogan over the gates at Auschwitz.

"Yesterday it was Moscow, today it's Brussels which takes away our freedom," chanted one group of protesters. Other banners read "Great Catholic Poland" and "Stop Islamisation". Poland is returning to conservative rule after eight years of centrist government, following the Law and Justice (PiS) party's landslide election victory last month on a platform playing strongly on fears over the European migrant crisis.

But there was fresh discord in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government after it emerged Thomas de Maiziere, the interior minister, had ordered the measure without consulting colleagues. It is the second time Mr de Maiziere has been accused of acting unilaterally in less than a week. Mrs Merkel’s office had to intervene at the weekend to block an earlier unauthorised attempt by him to limit asylum for Syrians.

There is no indication that Mrs Merkel disapproves of the latest measure, but her coalition partners complained they were not even informed. Privately, government officials expect as few as 3 per cent of the Syrian refugees in the country can be deported under the rules.

Most of those arriving in Germany have never registered in other countries, meaning there is no evidence of where they first entered the EU. And a longstanding German court ruling means the country cannot deport refugees to Greece, where the majority of Syrians first arrive, because of poor conditions for asylum-seekers there. The Austrian government welcomed the move as a “return to sense”.

The smallest was of magnitude 4.4, and the two largest both measured magnitude 6.9. We have also seen dozens of volcanoes erupt recently, including the incredibly dangerous Mt Popocatepetl in Mexico. Fortunately we have not seen a major disaster that kills thousands of people yet, but many believe that all of this shaking is leading up to one. In addition, the weather all over the world continues to get freakier and freakier.

Just today, Yemen was hit by a second major tropical cyclone in less than a week. Any one of these strange disasters in isolation may not seem like that big of a deal, but when you start putting all of the pieces together it starts to become clear that something really significant is taking place.

Meanwhile, as I have written about previously, scientists tell us that the entire universe is “slowly dying“. Apparently the universe is only producing about half as much energy as it once did, and over time the level of energy being produced continues to fade. Most of us just take for granted that our planet, our sun and our universe will remain stable and behave normally. But what if we have entered a time when things start to change dramatically?

The New York Police Department said officers from its Counterterrorism Response Command and other special units were deployed in areas frequented by tourists, and at the French Consulate in Manhattan.

"Teams have been dispatched to crowded areas around the city out of an abundance of caution to provide police presence and public reassurance as we follow the developing situation overseas," the NYPD said in a statement.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said police were on heightened alert at all of the agency's bridges, tunnels and rail facilities, as well as at the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. It said it was increasing patrols and checking of buses and trains and passengers' bags.

US Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said in a statement that "we know of no specific or credible threats of an attack on the US homeland of the type that occurred in Paris tonight."

The National Basketball Association, which had 11 games on the schedule Friday night, said it was increasing security at each of the venues. The most popular sport, American football, would not have any games until Sunday as previously scheduled. "Security at our games is always at a heightened state of alert," National Football League spokesman Brian McCarthy said.