The War ISIS Wants
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It's important to note that ISIS, al Qaeda, al nusra etc. are Sunni movements and are bitterly opposed to Shi'ism. The rise of Shi'a political power, led by Iran since 1980, poses a huge ideological threat.
What we're seeing today is a tiny group of very clever, highly motivated people, patiently watching for opportunities to sow chaos because they believe it will tip the scales eventually toward a Caliphate. They are hugely aided by technology and by the West's earnest desire to integrate the East.
However, I believe the ISIS is doomed to failure. There are only so many young people willing to sacrifice everything for fanatic dreams of afterlife fulfillment as payment for promises of improving the here-now. Most youth, in other words, aren't that stupid. ISIS is siphoning off a certain kind of malcontents who make good fodder for the cannons, but history has shown that this approach is not sustainable. The Muslim world is already showing signs of backlash against the constant images of extreme violence, and reformists continue to call for tolerance and dialogue as the only true solution to territorial and ideological differences.
Whether the Levant succumbs to unending civil war for the next few decades, or is ultimately dominated by a set of secular dictatorships that suppress the jihadists, or can they achieve peaceful multiplayer democracy--these are questions to which no one has the answers.
To your comments I would like to add: the Russians invading Afghanistan, the CIA arming and training of all kind of "rebels", the invasion of Irak, the protection of the House of Saud by the EUA, the interest of Israel in being the only strong nation in the area, the support of dictatorial regimens (and their removal) by the "western powers", etc..
It's almost impossible to solve a problem without understanding it. And this is not a simple problem.
At the same time CIA wanted to destabilize the region, to kick the currently Russia-friendly government out (and as a consequence kick Russia out of its pretty much only naval base in the region). So they kept funneling funds, training and weapons to the "moderate" rebels.
Of course all those weapons (along with many left behind in Iraq), and all those "moderate" rebels switched to ISIS. Now you can either say CIA is stupid or malicious. Stupid because despite the $100B in funding, they couldn't foresee it and it was a surprise, or it was pretty much the plan.
One can say, at the end of the day what are they (and many other military and intelligence) branches will do if is there is no new threat to worry about. "No drones or SIGINT targets, no promotions and paychecks". Both for military industrial complex and the government employees alike.
Either way I find it interesting how this was spun as a surprise to the media: "We had no idea why ISIS grew so fast, and managed to occupy so much territory. Not really sure how they got those modern tank killer missiles they keep making videos with...".
"Defense Intelligence $80.1 billion[12] 3.3% Because of classified nature, budget is an estimate and may not be the actual figure"
Something makes me doubt another $20B into the intelligence budget would have changed the outcome for the better.
More sauce:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/1...
https://en.zamanalwsl.net/readNews.php?id=5696 (translated)
http://www.wnd.com/2015/02/u-s-backed-syrian-group-joins-isl...
> This smacks of conspiracy claptrap that adds nothing of substance to the discussion.
Well, did you have anything to discuss, or just wanted sauce? Because I am not sure "src pls!" replies add much to the discussion.
I understand your decision to reply with snark to a snarky comment, but in this instance, "src pls!" does in fact add to the discussion.
For example it could have been "Well I think the budget is a bit off, CIA itself doesn't get that money, did you mean the total intelligence budget".
Or "Agreed, do you have any sources for the fighters who switched side? that would be interesting to see".
Imagine you are sitting by the fire and discussing something, and someone just chimes with "src pls", "srs pls", I wouldn't consider them contributing to the discussion, rather derailing it.
So I agree, source would help here, did provide sources but responded snarky to give the person asking for them a hint (not so subtle, perhaps) that in general that is not a constructive way to hold a conversation.
Secondly, I asked for source to support the claim that "all rebels switched to ISIS", but apparently you don't have that and are just of the opinion that that is what has occurred.
They get really agitated and say we're not Wahabbis we're just true muslims.
One interesting theory I read is that 19th Century Islam was forced to confront the reality that they had declined while Europe had soared.
In the ensuing conflict of ideas the one that won out was the thesis that the Islamic world had declined because they had gotten out of touch with the true values of Islam as practised by those at the time of the prophet.
Hence Salafism - Literally a return to the time of the prophet. Francis Fukuyama was laughed at for claiming the end of history a few years ago as he believed Western Democracy had achieved an eternal triumph.
What are we then to make of these people who believe that the end of history happened more than a thousand years ago ?
In the world of Fukuyama et al, rather than a basic religious worldview with precise tenets, is there a solid framework of meaningfully defining/determining good/triumph/progress? How/why does it matter in the long run whether or not a bunch of Amoeba get transformed into more complicated organisms, or hot elementary particles end up forming heavy atoms and structures, or killing and chaos spreads among the humans a la world war II? From a materialistic/nihilistic standpoint, everything -- or nothing, for that matter -- can be viewed as triumph or end of some (part of) history (or not).
Islam in the 19th century was no more and no less than what it was before, but the Muslims were (and still are) trying to come to terms with the colonial destructions and ensuing effects.
Fukuyama said that Capitalist Democracy was the pinnacle of civilisation.
In the same way Salafi / Wahabbi ideology says that we must as much as possible live like the prophet and his contemporaries. Any innovation is derided as Bida/Heretical.
So its not possible to reform certain laws in response to changing circumstances. Eg: Women can inherit only half of what men do. Now I'm not justifying this but this might have been pragmatic (socially acceptable??) for a time where women were subjugated and men were often the sole breadwinners for the entire family.
However in the 21st century noone can really argue that its relevant. But if anyone tries to reform laws such as these you'll have the Wahabbis and Salafis going ape and branding everyone heretics.
There was a cleric in my part of the country who had a very unorthodox interpretation of the scriptures. He was a brilliant orator and a scholar who could hold his fort against the traditionalists. He began gaining a lot of followers however one day he just disappeared and was never found again.
The ideas related to the roles, responsibilities and respectability of the individuals are different in the Islamic creed. Yes, a woman gets half from her father (her husband owes her, legally), and she is exempt from the basic responsibility to become the breadwinner. Any Muslim is meant to respect and care for his/her mother more than the father. Historically many Muslim women were scholars (https://archive.org/download/AlMuhaddithat/al%20-%20Muhaddit...) and rich (in the old Muslim heritage, many of the large endowments for public welfare are known to be from women). Besides, a merely demographically Muslim territory may not embody much of the Islamic ideals though.
In the other part, I was referring to the epistemological basis regarding the concepts of triumph/progress; in particular, in a framework where basically, "we are from nowhere, we are going to nowhere and we are here for nothing", nothing really signifies anything.
Thanks.
You're right but woman not being a breadwinner is no longer the social reality today. So do we change the law or go back to the old ways ?
> I cant reply directly as HN has blockedit.
Yes, you can reply directly. Beyond a certain depth HN may not show a reply link when you view the whole thread, but you can still directly reply by clicking the direct link to the specific comment (the one that has the "5 minutes ago" or whatever the time interval is), and then the reply box will be shown.
I think this is intended to make people think before replying to a very deeply nested comment as a way of curbing unproductive Ping-Pong discussions, but it seems mostly to get people to post lateral replies (that is, replies attached to a comment somewhere upthread from the comment they actually respond to), invariably complaining about the inability to reply directly, which is worse for the flow of discussion than if they just posted direct replies.
I presume you mean "latest" here? The term "last" implies that Christianity and Judaism are no longer practiced today...
They were the last to be visited by god, and had the most-recent prophet, according to whom their mortal leaders speak ex-cathedra. Mormonism is even growing faster than Islam. It is the ultimate(1) Abrahamic religion.
Mormonism is even truly a religion of peace. Its leader was under persecution at the time and he does not speak out for killing and injustice.
1) Judging all religions objectively by the same standard of proof.
That point reminds me though of a particular set of standards employed by an academic on that very topic: http://www.islamreligion.com/articles/528/viewall/miraculous...
Thus we know mormon leadership speak ex-cathedra because Smith said so, and so forth. Where things conflict however, like Mohammed's statement that he's the last prophet, obviously he's wrong because Joseph Smith, etc, meet the same criteria.
Going by the truth revealed in each document, Mormon's are the closest to god - the latest, most direct, pipeline to the divine. It's essentially religious science.
Once you meet the rigorous standards of 1) writing it down and 2) claiming to override all previous prophets, yes. I'd count you. (However, this will void your membership in the CotFSM.)
Until then though, Mormonism, FTW.
I don't claim to know much of mormonism; however the conflicts in such notions as 'ultimate', 'objective' here are difficult to reconcile: mormonism conflicts with Vatican/pope with respect to the core of any religious thoughts, namely, the identity of God; hence it is quite strange to insist on a notion of non-conflicting ideas, which is both logically impossible and non-existent. If mormonism was not correcting some ideas, which necessarily implies that there are conflicts, why Mr. Smith bothered to bring mormonism in the first place? Isn't it redundant, as long as it is not claiming to fix something (=>conflict)?
And if you concede the possibility of other valid new prophets and religious claims possible in the future following this Mr. Smith, how can you even choose to use the word "ultimate"? You see the logical contradiction there is too glaring to work out, no? Please make sure that the reasoning remains reasonably sound. Thanks and bye.
And I only mean ultimate, now. Compared to the other religions we could be squabbling over. In a future religion, god could be all that + offer you a pony. We'll never know. But for now, of the choices, they're all obvious losers compared to Mormonism. Literally, you could upgrade a catholic or a muslim by giving them Mormonism.
As for Smith's motivations, who's saying he wasn't fixing things. He just didn't feel the need to get all stabby and make killing a sacrament.
And it conflicts nothing - it tells it how it is. The pope is god's voice, there's no conflict. Perhaps the pope is the missing element in islam. As the ultimate religion we can only assume it has not just a point, but a great one.
Fukuyama himself considered capitalist democracy to be the End of History, so yes.
Besides, I was coming from a philosophical perspective to the point where the basis of the things transcend the transient notions; that is, from a materialistic viewpoint (which I presume is Fukuyama's and many of the fellows' here), how/why does having an oligarchy or a corporate tyranny or a state with social welfare somewhere at some point in time is any more significant than some predator somewhere making some species extinct or some big wave scattering across in the ocean a million year ago or after (or any other event, such as a massacre by some of the humans, in the universe, for that matter).
I had considered you to be asking about Fukuyama's views. In my views, history doesn't have an end, except possibly for everyone dying out.
>Besides, I was coming from a philosophical perspective to the point where the basis of the things transcend the transient notions;
The what now?
>how/why does having an oligarchy or a corporate tyranny or a state with social welfare somewhere at some point in time is any more significant than some predator somewhere making some species extinct or some big wave scattering across in the ocean a million year ago or after
It's significant to the people living through it! How's that supposed to not count as significant?
Startups seem to be pretty good at convincing a never-ending stream of youth to surrender 500% productivity now in exchange for (usually lies about) riches in the future.
"Yeah, it's linkedfacebox, you know, a super cool startup and everybody there just works through the night because we're all so dedicated to the cause. Gotta keep crushing it so the founders can get a few billion dollars richer otherwise they won't let me cash out my 0.0001% for $3 million."
humans have limited psychological reactions to things. The "believe in a cause" bucket uses the same manipulation tools no matter if you're a startup, a cult, a thousand year old religion, or a radicalized intentional hate group with a persecution complex. You set up an enemy ("the others" / "the adversary", "disruption"), you rally your troops to beat the enemy at all costs (sacrifice yourself/your time/your health for the greater good and you will be rewarded), then perpetuate cycles of wins/losses to reinforce belief and dedication to externalized, and personally abdicated, leadership.
I know this is pretty far fetched, but at the end, I feel both have the same kind of appeal :
Stay where you are and remain an anonymous cog in the machine, or move to a place, where you will endure hardship, but where in the end you can change the world and you will create a legacy.
And in both case, the reality is less rosy. This is a kind of an archetypal "Call to Adventure", but it might have another name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_war | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_modernity
A half-century ago, very little of what was happening in the Middle East had anything to do with Islam. Most of the leadership in the region was secular; some states were quite democratic.
Egypt is one of the most conservative places today, chafes under the yoke of a secular government, wants to be Islamist. A half-century ago under Nasser, Egypt was the source of secularism in the region and was pulling other Middle Eastern nations towards its secular nationalism. Similarly, Iran was extremely secular in the 50s, and remained so under the Shah; many secular elements were instrumental in pulling him down.
Both of these poles were toppled by American efforts. Egypt was slowly pulled towards the Washington Consensus by buying the government, which became increasingly repressive. The same result was achieved in Iran with a coup that toppled the democratic government. In both of these places the reaction to a repressive secular regime had a strong Islamist component (both Shia and Sunni).
It wasn't just in government that this reversal happened; the primary popular resistance organizations during the 20th century were also secular. The PLO, PFLP, and so on were all secular Marxist organisations, and young radicals fighting against American hegemony, the same space ISIS has colonised now, would not have given a fig for jihad. It was the failure of these organisations to provide the liberation sought that led to the eventual rise of Islamist alternatives, like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and al-Qaeda.
Contemporary Sunni jihadi ideology, in fact, had its origins in Egypt in the 60s thanks to people like Hassan al-Banna and Sayed Qutb, who developed much of the thinking that fueled al-Qaeda ideologically. This was a modern development, a reaction to the spread of secular thought and colonialism; it is not a continuous expression of Islam.
Finally, let's not forget the active American support of conservative religious Saudi Arabia, to the tune of billions in military hardware and ironclad political alliance, as well as the arming of the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviets, both of which were signal events in fanning the flames of radical Sunni Islamism.
Anyway, we are in danger that this narrative and others similar becomes the only explanation in the mainstream media, instead of only a factor that probably is not very relevant. After all, the majority of Muslims don't believe that they should go to war with other countries.
This is not to say, that I agree with what the west is doing. I think "what goes around, comes around" applies here very well...
This way of thinking of "us vs. them" in a global scale. After all Europe and the States have his own domestic terrorist too.
You have convinced me that religion is important here. I will think about it.
Did you convinced somebody before about anything in an Internet forum? ;-)
Look no further than hate-motivated crimes against people of color, transgendered people, and non-heterosexual people - often backed up with violent rhetoric based on Christianity.
Does that mean the ideology of Christianity itself has failed to modernize?
A key difference between al Qaeda, which could broadly be defined as trying to "tip the scales eventually toward a Caliphate" whilst battling for certain populist causes and ISIS is that the latter considers itself to be a Caliphate, and is actively pushing for the Islamic equivalent of Armageddon. That means it isn't going to calm down, but it also means that its claims to legitimacy based on fulfilment of prophecies about unification of territories are more readily defeated by military means than other jihadists' claims to be defending the Muslim world from infidels.
Edit: see also this user's point and linked article https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10581489
I agree. The fact that ISIS effectively seeks to become a nation state makes fighting them a lot more straight forward. It's very difficult to fight an insurgency or terrorist group which is not interested in holding territory and blends in with the population. It's pretty straight forward to bomb, lay siege to, or generally bleed a group which needs to have government buildings, infrastructure, police, logistics etc. The fact that their legitimacy is primarily based on continuous expansion is also great, as defeat creates a highly negative feedback loop for them making recruitment more difficult.
From what I've been told and read, they've already established a Caliphate. The primary driver of having a Caliphate is that ISIS must control territory, without controlling territory, there is no Caliphate - correct?
This was one of the best explanations I've read about why ISIS is doing what it is doing:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isi...
If it loses its grip on its territory in Syria and Iraq, it will cease to be a caliphate. Caliphates cannot exist as underground movements, because territorial authority is a requirement: take away its command of territory, and all those oaths of allegiance are no longer binding.
Hitting them with bombs can only achieve so much and should be just one step in many to understand this phenomenon. I do think that this attack in particular has seen so universal condemnation, (largely because France is not regarded as a major invading force like the US or NATO are), that it's actually going to hurt ISIS reputation, probably fatally. OTOH destroying them doesn't seem to be the end of the story...
Condemnation doesn't work. What does work is a combination of excellent police work in routing out cells of recruiters and operators, and precise, devastating bombing raids followed by boots on the ground to protect and empower the civilians, most of whom would never support these psychopaths by choice.
If Iraq had a fully capable military(instead of the partially capable one they have now), ISIS would never have spread into the country. For all the problems the US and its allies created in Iraq, the country was comparatively much more stable, and for the most part people got on with their lives.
I think they are seeking both selective (that is, among non-Muslims) and poorly focused (at Muslims in general, rather than focused on Daesh in particular) condemnation, rather than "universal condemnation". And they seek that specifically so that the Muslims, who are the population they target to establish dominion over in the form of a Caliphate, will see non-Muslims as a threat (because Muslims become seen by non-Muslims as a threat) against whom Daesh is the only defense, and that the cost of accepting the dominion that Daesh offers is lower than the cost of being outside of it (they also want Muslims to be afraid of defying Daesh, which also makes the cost of accepting dominion less than the cost of rejecting it.)
Contemporary radical Islam is brewing just for one (young) generation and is result of applying western individual freedom and reason to principles of Islam.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/18b/reason_as_memetic_immune_disorde...
Yup, and that's just what ISIS is trying to do -- everyone in the world, convert to radical Sunni Islam and follow ISIS or die.
To heck with the details: The US, France, Germany, England, all of NATO has a right to defend themselves.
With the ISIS ideology, they will be trying to kill everyone else, infidels, as long as there is just one ISIS person left.
At this point it is not enough to stop the ISIS killings. Instead, we must stop the ability of ISIS to do harm outside of their area.
Sure, taking the desert area of ISIS and wiping it clean is not reasonable, but neither is ISIS.
I don't want to kill them. I especially don't want to hurt the girls and young women, especially the ones they have made into sex slaves. I don't even want to hurt their flocks and camels.
But I want to stop ISIS now and forever in the future. I don't want to spend even one drop of NATO blood. I don't want to spend even one US penny more than necessary. But I want ISIS stopped. We are not obligated to put up with their wacko nonsense. It is our responsibility that they be stopped. If they had any responsibility or deserved any from us, then they would long since have stopped their wacko, medieval nonsense. Since they have not stopped and have no sense of responsibility, we need just to stop them.
Stop them from the air. Take out their leaders and their oil infrastructure. Occupy their oil areas and take the oil. For the rest of the area, we might for a while try to send them back to tents, flocks, and camels cooking their food with camel dung. I I suspect it won't work, that all they have is what their radical clerics tell them, and those clerics will stop only when dead.
Basically they have a wacko, violent, ugly, stupid medieval culture enabled by oil money and nothing else, are 1000 years out of date, with no hope of moving ahead the needed several hundred years. No hope.
And their nuke threat is real. Time to stop them.
I've seen some footage from Sinjar after it was retaken by the Kurds: not a single building was left standing. It's hard to imagine anyone still living there.
Armies are good at breaking down nation-states by destroying the opposing military and means of production. Putting the middle east aside, as it's still happening, I think the history of the 20th century aptly demonstrates that organized military force isn't effective in defeating revolutionary movements. The Vietnamese were successful in ejecting France and the US, the Irish were able to defeat the British Empire, the Yugoslavians were successful against the Germans.
The Germans pretty much did what you suggest NATO is capable of, given the will. They executed hostages in reprisal. They blew up towns and burned crops. They rounded up partisan leaders and hung them on the roadside. Again, didn't really work. From a humanist perspective, I don't think that is the type of conduct NATO countries aspire to.
You don't stop revolutionary movements by blowing stuff up. You have to undermine the base of ideology or grievances.
You're mistaken [0][1][2].
[0] http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/nato_countries.htm [1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_states_of_NATO
(2) France has something they label the 'force de frappe', which, though vastly reduced could turn a relatively large area of desert into a parking lot overnight, so even if they are part of NATO they don't actually need it to respond on an extremely high casualty level if the French get pissed off enough. Fortunately, France is one of the more levelheaded nuclear powers and has - to date - not even put that option on the table. But I would not take that as a given or forever.
France is a NATO member, and has been the whole time NATO has existed. It withdrew from some NATO structures (e.g., the integrated military command) in 1966, but rejoined the integrated military command in 2009.
Page
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/16/why-nato-probably-wont-help-f...
clearly claims that France is a member of NATO.
> You have to undermine the base of ideology or grievances.
Would be nice. That would be the nice way. For Viet Nam, my position was, and remains, just come home. And now the US and Viet Nam get along fine. We could have gotten along fine starting as soon as the Japanese left -- Viet Nam liked us then, we got rid of the Japanese who had taken over their country and they had helped downed US pilots, and could have liked us continually and more and more to the present. I never did understand why Ho, a dishwasher from Paris, was so eager to get free dinners in Moscow and Peking just to torque off the US.
What you said about Germany did work for a while, and what defeated Germany was mostly just the US, especially the US Eighth air force with B-17s leveling German cities, ones that were at all connected with war production and likely more.
But ISIS is no longer a "revolutionary movement" and, instead, is essentially a nation state. So, I don't recommend occupying them and hanging their leaders from lamp posts. I don't want diplomacy, negotiations, surrender, unconditional surrender, or treaties. We can't settle for their promising to stop their nonsense or even stopping their nonsense. And I don't want to try to occupy them like W did -- that would cost US blood and treasure, and not one drop of blood and not one dime more treasure than it takes to defend the US.
Instead, given their strong culture and many very clear statements, we have to make sure they are no longer able in any sense to pursue their nonsense. At this point, I will pay attention their capabilities, not their statements or behavior, and want to make sure they have no capabilities to inflict harm outside their territories. Sure, in part that would mean that no one, except maybe some boys under 6 or some girls under 10, from the ISIS area is ever permitted to leave.
They are eager to die and to kill us. We can help them die, and without dying ourselves. We don't have to be ashamed of helping them die the way they want.
In particular they must not have the resources or ability to get a nuke bomb. Essentially they have to be sent back to tents, flocks, and camels, tightly controlled, with their oil taken, and that's at least. The only safe way to remove a boot on their necks and just forget about them is, basically, to kill all of them. It's come to that -- they make that fully clear in all their propaganda. So be it.
They would love to light off a nuke in NY harbor, and I'm just 70 miles from there. 'Nuff for me -- defend ourselves.
The only serious tool they have is our reluctance to kill their civilians, which are really just their children and most of their women. They have that tool only due to our extreme, nearly suicidal, generosity. We don't owe them that.
I'm sure that in WWII the US killed a lot of really nice, wonderful civilian people in both Japan and Germany. But, we had to win the war, and we did. And Japan and Germany had killed a lot of really nice, wonderful civilians before we did.
"Nuke" -- ISIS said the wrong word. There are no extenuating grievances, history, or considerations. It's back to tents, flocks, and camels right away or, and likely soon, just "wipe the desert clean".
Saddam said the wrong word -- nuke. ISIS is really slow at learning and really fast to forget.
W was a total fumble bumble, but his sense of responsibility as POTUS to defend the US was correct. I'm sure the next POTUS, either Hillary or any of the Repub candidates, will also take that responsibility seriously. I don't like Hillary, but she is not stupid; I very much don't like Hillary, but she is likely the best informed and brightest in the race; I believe and very much hope she loses, but I am fairly confident that, as part of being a responsible POTUS, and I am sure she has plenty of pride for that, she would be ready, willing, able, and eager to tell the USAF to level the ISIS areas -- wipe the desert clean.
ISIS wants to take their magic carpet ride to Allah, and it's about certain they will. I'm very sorry the ISIS area innocent women and children have to go along for the ride.
A threat of a nuke in a US harbor -- we need to make sure we don't have to worry about that at all, and we can, and I believe that we should and will.
"We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud"; I didn't, and don't, think that statement was appropriate when C. Rice said it, but I believe it's appropriate now. We don't want to wait; the Paris attack was enough for a Pearl Harbor wake up call.
For the ISIS areas, France is fully capable of wiping "the desert clean" in an afternoon -- they better do it.
Source: http://media.clarionproject.org/files/islamic-state/islamic-... - (WARNING: shocking images, including severed heads - on top of the shocking text)
No, their goal is to place Muslims in a situation where the fear of hatred from the West against Muslims (which Daesh kindles by provocative attacks on the West designed to get the West to blame, and retaliate against, Muslims generally) and fear of the consequences of defying Daesh (which Daesh creates by violent attacks on those Muslims who defy them) leave Muslims to perceive accepting the dominion of Daesh as the least bad option open to them. That's how the Caliphate is formed and grows.
Over 50% of the population in many Muslim majority states believe that terrorism is at least 'rarely', and over 5% (, which is a large number of people,) believe it is justified 'often'.[1] There are obviously a large number of Muslims who do not support ISIS (probably a great majority, given sectarian and other considerations), but ISIS is not the only extremist Islamist organization in conflict with western values and/or governments.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_attitudes_towards_terro...
A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument which was not advanced by that opponent.
Your reply to the parent poster was "So you are proposing that the French should respond to having over a hundred of their fellow citizens killed, and hundreds more injured by loving the supporters and leaders of ISIS?".
I was correcting you because you suggested that the parent was "proposing that the French..." and leaving the absurdity of the proposition to be its own refutation, when in fact the whole statement was "an argument which was not advanced by [the parent poster]".
Let us be clear that you can still desire to know what the parent was proposing the French do while also attacking his original position with a straw man arguemnt, which is exactly what occurred.
The idea here is that all people are the same, and all you need to do is shoehorn enough to keep the economy going. Beyond the complete lack of humanity in the outlook that we are like barrels of brent, it's simply wrong. If this was the case, the entire world would already look like Europe and there would be no waves of migration.
It's also bizarrely narcissistic to think that ISIS care about how Europeans feel about Islam or how Muslims are treated since according to OP they will be replacing locals anyway.
Indeed. And there seems, to me, to be something nihilistic in the idea that Europeans should simply let immigrants replace them. Maybe instead, European nations should look into instituting domestic policies that encourage the population to maintain a healthy replacement rate.
The article appears to be implying that Western nations should not make war against Daesh because "that's what they want." Well, the status quo of surveillance, arrests, and half-hearted airstrikes isn't stopping them. There seems something profoundly suciidally nihilistic in the idea that Europe should simply do nothing different and simply be more and more welcoming as attacks happen in an attempt to appease extremists until at last Europe is no longer populated by Europeans.
On the timescale of centuries and millenia, it's amazing how little has changed in the past thousand years. This could be just another couple chapters in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. (Which, for those who don't know, covers mostly in later chapters the European nations and the various Muslim empires.)
So, 18 months maternity/paternity leave, 180€ per month per child you have, plus tax breaks, plus better credit rating, plus 12 more sick days a year, plus subsidized kindergarten and daycare (with guaranteed daycare place from age 3 on), cheap whole-day school for children, and after-school care for them, is not enough?
What else are we supposed to do? Seriously? We have all this, and still birth rates below 1.2 children in Germany. Seriously.
Todays generation has less job security than the generation before.
Todays generation does not have a secured pension (like the generation before had).
It is expected of todays generation to be a life-long learner (if you are not, your economic value drops immediately and if your job gets terminated you fall back to the same support someone receives, who has never worked in their life before).
Affordable housing has decreased.
It is expected of both parents to work (tell me again why I should have children, if I rarely see them?).
Pressure on children has increased as there is less time at school and less time at Uni to learn the same things (do I really want to do this to my possible future children?).
Especially for women having a child still is very bad for your career. Also if you have a fixed-term contract (which there is an increasing number of, your maternity employment protection is severely limited).
Of course this is just an anecdote, but at least in my circle of friends, those with secured government jobs are the ones having the most children. I would love to see some large-scale data on this subject.
You're competing with jobs here, and you ask if 180€ a month is sufficient? And then you're surprised that women prefer to stay in the workforce?
So not only does 180€/month not substitute for a second salary, it doesn't substitute for the permanent hit to the second wage-earner's career caused by raising children.
The economic message is clear: raising children is intended to be a low-paid, part-time job done on top of a full-time career for economically non-valuable warm-fuzzies.
By the way, in Germany usually you are guaranteed to get back into your old job after the 18 months of maternity leave.
Artificial wombs. Group day-care. Have women donate eggs, men donate sperm and combine them randomly. Make it the duty of every person to be a parent to 2 to 3 children with fines for not doing their part until they hit 30/40 years of age. The babies will be born never knowing their biological parents. Then they're sent to child-raising facilities, either government or private, which are subject to strict regulation against mistreatment and indoctrination. Only the mega-rich, or very rural will afford/choose to have babies the usual way.
This seems to be the only choice in a society where everyone has to work 40 hours per week to secure a living for him/herself. If you had guaranteed basic income that can cover the cost of children, people could leave their position for one to two years, maybe do contracting work from home on the side. You will need very strict laws against discriminating against those who chose to have children. Or, you know, make making children a specialised industry like everything else.
It does however seem that the flow of the economy, the fact that no one is willing to slow down for anything, and everything needed to be finished yesterday, certainly hinders people from things such as having children. Companies simply see a mother on maternity leave as an employee that isn't producing, as cold as that sounds. It's sad how emotionless companies can be when they're focused solely on the dollar signs...
Fortunately, I'm pretty sure we'll run out of resources long before our greed for growth pushes us that far.
Edit: of course companies are emotionless. They aren't people. You should view any company of more than about 200 people as a super-organism. Every actor in the company acts in their own best interest, while kept in check by the people on top. The emergent behaviour is one of calculated exploitation.
and this phenomenon is not limited to white people, i.e. japan, korea, singapore, taiwan.
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e...
My fiancee's pregnant coworker was told (we live in the USA, unfortunately) that she would have six weeks of unpaid leave after giving birth, followed by two weeks of short-term disability insurance, and then she could return to work or lose her job. This is for a salaried, postdoctoral scientist at a biotechnology company. In a related matter, the same HR employee who explained that policy says that he opposes the very idea of paternity leave -- and he's a male homosexual.
Likewise, the largest wage gap between men and women isn't actually a gap between men and women, it's a gap between men and mothers.
It takes two incomes to support a household these days, and yet society punishes women for childbearing as if it only took one. What did they expect would happen under these conditions, that people would stop responding to economic incentives "because babies"?
society doesn't 'punish' you for having children, having children is simply an expense somebody has to pay for, and nobody wants to do it.
you clearly don't want to pay the opportunity cost, as evidenced by your post, so what makes you think the employer wants to do it either? or the taxpayer?
Myself and my fiancee don't have children yet. However, you may kinda want us in society's gene pool. After all, I've got a damned resilient immune system, she's wonderfully empathetic, and we're both ferociously clever and hardworking individuals who valued our educations and actually want to contribute to society. Hell, we're even proud of paying our taxes, we both volunteer for things in our spare time, and we consider time spent on civic or community affairs to be well-spent.
I'd be fine paying the "opportunity cost" myself, but you see, I'm not the one with the uterus. Really, if we could get by and support a kid on one income per couple, we could easily just make some sacrifices of Nice Things, but we can't. Yes, we actually are stuck between living as fiscally responsible adults in the Dual Income No Kids class, and the precarity of the so-called "middle class" nowadays, in which one layoff or unexpected medical emergency can throw the whole family into poverty.
It's become: housing, children (with the entailed college funds, housing cost of good public schools, etc.), responsible preparation for a rainy day -- pick any two.
Elizabeth Warren was lecturing people about this a decade ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GHg3GAeQ1Y
It reminds me of this fable:
I agree the article spends a lot of time implying what we shouldn't do and not much time at all saying what might make for effective policies, but it's hardly advocating Islamising Europe either.
I took two things away from the article. One is that the kind of pretty much deliberate social and economic marginalization of Muslim minorities in France is a terrible mistake. You can have a pluralistic egalitarian society without insisting that everyone has to dress, talk and behave exactly like white western Europeans all the time. Having an Imperial legacy and historic connections with extensive regions of the wider world isn't compatible with being culturally allergic to anyone who looks or acts foreign. We in Europe need to build strong cultural bridges connecting us to the Muslim minorities in our midst that are now also Europeans and deserve respect and support. I may take flak for this, because it turns my stomach to imply that France has any responsibility for the recent attacks, but frankly the French state is not doing it's job.
The second lesson is regarding our foreign policy in the Middle East. Keeping out of Syria and letting whatever happens just happen hasn't worked. The result has been a breeding ground for radicalization and chaos that has exacerbated the situation in Iraq, and lead to the biggest Refugee crisis Europe has seen since WW2. The Iraq war was awful and the political pressure to withdraw and 'bring the troops home' intense, but doing so was a horrible mistake. Once you're in, you're in for better or worse. We can't wash our hands of these conflicts and expect that the resulting mess will stay put and not affect us.
As a corollary, I think that our consistent policy that none of the borders in the Middle east are up for negotiation is a mistake. If the Sunni, Shia and Kurd regions of Iraq want to be separate states, they should have the freedom to do so. Trying to insist that the Sunni minority had to stay welded to a larger hostile Shia population was just asking for unending trouble. Partition isn't always the right answer, but in some situations it needs to be an option.
What state would be good example? What is good measure for succes here?
That would require blaspheming against the Austerity Gods.
> The idea here is that all people are the same, and all you need to do is shoehorn enough to keep the economy going.
Maybe it's time to start thinking why people who end up living in the West are unwilling to reproduce, despite having the highest standard of living ever available to humans.
Solving the underpopulation problem by constant import of uneducated masses from all over the world is going to cost more and more, both in terms of the peta-man-hours needed to teach them functioning in new reality (language barrier for a start) and in terms of things going wrong when the former fails.
I mean, what are these guys supposed to do here? Join the rat race, stop reproducing and replace themselves with who-knows-whom 100 years down the line? Despise this culcure and blow stuff up? Something else?
We know why, it's just an inconvenient truth. More women are choosing careers over having more children.
To maintain a stable population, each woman has to have an average of two children. But that's the average; many will be infertile or homosexual or never find a mate or choose to never have children or only have one. So a great many would have to have more than two children to balance the average; many of our parents had five, six, seven, eight siblings because their mother's entire life consisted of raising children.
It's not easy for a family to raise five or more children while both parents work full time, so hardly anybody does that and the average falls below the population replacement rate. That's the why.
How to fix that without going back to the Old Ways is not a trivial problem.
Anecdotally, my other half would love to have children but I want to delay it right now because of finances. We live in the south-east of England so this is how things look:-
We have a nice 2 bedroom terrace that costs £500,000. I earn a good living but we're hardly living in luxury. The bank of mum and dad aren't rich, thus I struggle to pay that down. This could perhaps be attributed to woman joining the workforce, a lack of building, and a political lanscape that setup property as invesments.
She wants children to go to private school that may cost £9000-£30000 per year, with an oppertunity cost of upto £2,000,000 per child. This can probably be attributed to the nigh on impossibility to get your kids into a good performing state school and grammer schools being given the shaft after our parents had their turn.
She wants them to have a dad, but Men are afraid of commitment due to the litigious nature of break-ups which screw them over. I'm not saying Dads shouldn't pay for their kids, just they shouldn't be paying £4,000,000 for an ex-wife to keep the advantages of marriage whilst the man no longer gets anything in return
There's probably many more problems because the birthrate is fairly low right around Europe but these are some pretty big negatives for middle class men to commit to having children, at least not until they have their lot in life, which means there's less time to have more than 1-2.
The problem is that it's not just one problem. Almost everything is set up to economically discourage two-income families from having more children. After everything you've mentioned, the second income financially disqualifies you from many childcare and other benefits available to single-income families while progressive taxation, sold as targeting the wealthy, instead swallows the money a middle income family could have used to pay for those things out of pocket.
And after the government has laid claim to most of the second income, what's left becomes the baseline for the cost of living. More families now have two incomes so it takes two incomes to afford a home in a good school district.
It seems what is needed but not present is a strong lobby for middle class families. Everyone pays lip service because they're a large voting block, but where is the equivalent of the AARP or NRA for families with children?
NRA is a narrow, single-issue lobby, not a general lobby for interests of a broad demographic (which even "middle-class families with children" is.)
And, really, everyone pays sort of vague lip service because its a large demographic, but no more than that because its not a large voting bloc. Particularly, its not a group that has a common set of policy preferences and consistently votes predominantly based on that shared set of preferences.
Its not like there aren't lobbying organizations that promote themselves as promoting the interests of "families with children"; but none of them really represents the majority of that demographic, because there is no clear voting bloc to represent.
Some are political or philsophical that would take too long to explain here but I suppose one big reason is that I just flat-out do not like being around children.
There are no economic or personal incentives that would change my mind on this matter and from what I understand, the number of people thinking this way (the not wanting kids in general part, not the not liking them part) has gradually increased over the years as living standards have improved and more people are able to fulfill other goals and personal ambitions.
Not "despite", but "because".
In an agricultural society, you need lots of children because you need a lot of hands working the farm. If you're dirt-poor in an industrial society, you need lots of children so they can all work in factories to earn money for the family. In any society with a high infant mortality rate, you need to have even more children because you can expect a lot of them to die young.
In the modern West, we're not subsistence farmers or dirt-poor factory workers, and almost all of our kids survive to adulthood. We don't have lots of children because we don't need to have lots of children.
With SS, Medicare (in the US), etc. even though you won't live in luxury, you at least have some kind of income coming in in your retirement years.
"Also [Hitler] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all "progressive" thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain... Hitler, because in his joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don't only want comfort, safety, short working hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense, they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades... Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people "I offer you a good time," Hitler has said to them "I offer you struggle, danger and death," and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet."
Replace Hitler with ISIS, and the point still stands. In fact, it is made even emotionally stronger now that it is religious. Is there an alternative? Can capitalist democracy provide any greater meaning in life?
ISIS does not rely on free choice, it relies on brainwashing kids since from the get-go. That's really not the same.
On the other hand I would like to see this study that shows that increase in the level of education and occupation doesn't do much. I suspect the issue is more subtle: in that many immigrants coming from the former colonies of France don't really identify as French (even after a couple generations) and don't fully accept the so-called 'republican values'.
The fact that many of Portuguese origin are converting to radical Islam seems to me as a further symptom that the power of Jihadism actually stems from socio-economical marginalization.
Jihadism provides these youth a sense of purpose. We failed at this. Now they fight for what is sold to them as (and they firmly believe to be) a high spiritual purpose instead of doing the jobs nobody wants to do and living a dull life in poor suburbs being treated like shit while watching rich white people enjoy loads of money on TV. In essence.
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Your argument smells a lot like the self-made-man American myth. Just because some have made it out of poverty, often in different conditions than these, doesn't mean we don't have to fight poverty because everyone who is smart enough will pull herself out of it by her bootstraps (and I'm not talking just about material poverty).
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Shouldn't be in the interest of the majority to make sure that minorities are not marginalized?
Imagine if 25% of American kids said they could relate to the Sandy Hook shooter, wouldn't that be worrying? Regardless of whether they'd be out to kill as well.
It's hard to imagine any effective strategy that doesn't involve killing people in Syria. It's disgusting, necessary, and -- I willingly admit -- not sufficient.
I disagree, one is actually described in the article:
"[For] the youth of the nation are closer to the innate nature [of humans] on account of the rebelliousness within them."
Do you think capitalism/democracy/whatever mix we have in the West does a good job of preventing these people fighting for "Jihad"?
We don't really give young people (say ages 15-25, before males are fully emotionally developed) a chance to "rebel safely". We don't even have a definition of what it could be! I'll just leave it here, there are many options where to go from there, I think.
It actually reminds of "drug education" we had in high school. The guy was a social worker who worked with people on drugs, gave them clean syringes, put them on methadone, etc. His idea basically was, it's perfectly cool if you want to try it, but it's better to understand the risks and wait a little bit, until you grow older. I think it was very sane approach (and very counter-intuitive to people who support war on drugs and "say no" and similar things). Maybe the same should be done with weapons and war, and if someone still wants to try the war, send him as a journalist to war zone.
Recently I had another related weird idea: Someone should write a sci-fi story about a society which puts its youths through a very strict, military like institution. It would then be revealed that the whole purpose of the institution is to make young people rebel against authority, in a safe environment. That would be akin to a successful graduation exam, because the society would believe that those people who do that are going to be the best citizens.
(You can also read my earlier comment on the topic here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10572797)
I quite like your story concept but I think the realistic plotline would have many of the most successful kids at defying the rules doing so because they have no scruples whatsoever about throwing their classmates under the bus to get their way, whilst even the relatively sane rebels might feel inclined to celebrate their graduation by continuing to altogether reject the system.
(By the way, if you think I'm diminishing the tragedy of these deaths, aren't you diminishing the tragedy that are road fatalities?)
At any sign of serious ground military actions, all that ISIS fighter have to do is to hide in their civilian population. And that will be Fallujah all over again.
This is the reason why currently no one consider seriously to send ground troops.
I swear this is the late 1930's all over again. "Surely Herr Hitler will get tired of invading countries before he gets to France. Surely military action will only anger him more..."
You can tell me we learned our lesson during WWII, but that's just a proclamation of faith.
We can discriminate Daesh and Muslims, and that only shows the monsters they say we are. We can bomb Daesh, which only encourages more to join their cause. Worst case, we can nuke the whole area of Iraq and Syria where Daesh has power, and that would only show every Muslim in the world that we are intolerant of Islam.
This is a war of ideology, and that war cannot be fought with guns and bombs. It has to start from the ground, with 'militant moderate Muslims' willing to show people another way; one that does not involve in slavery, beheadings, suicide bombings, and crucifixion. Weaponry has its place to keep the borders of that state in its place, given that we know their religious orders are of limitless expansion and no regard for state boundaries.
If history repeated itself, we would be wise to intervene faster instead of twiddling our thumbs on the sidelines. And we'd know that waging any kind of ideological war would be futile. It's almost certainly too late to solve the problem with anything other than military action.
Let's keep things in perspective here. Yes, the rest of the world was too complacent about the rise of the Nazis and Hitler, but that's not the last time we've had to deal with this sort of thing.
Red Army Faction (and Baader-Meinhof), Action Directe, the PIRA, the Corleonesi faction of the Sicilian Mafia, the FSLN, and the Basque ETA are all terrorist groups that essentially no longer exist or have mutated into legitimate political parties.
Still more recently than Hitler was neo-Nazism, which, while it still exists in pockets, has lost almost all of the coordinated criminal/terrorist organizations which existed in post-war Europe.
Suggesting that the narrative of ideological warfare went from the Crusades to WWII to ISIS with no breaks in between and meriting only a single response (military action) is historically naive.
In any case it would depend on whether a post WWIII and independent(ish) Syria, much like the post WWII Germany, makes the prudent decision to outlaw and taboo the fanaticism that got it into that situation in the first place.
That why I said mostly. However I still think Russia/East Germany is way closer than France or US/Syria or Iraq.
Other than that Germany was not the only European power that kept suffering the consequences of WWII well into the '80s.
The article suggests the military conquest is the key of Daesh attractiveness. But similarly, its military loss will be its demise. Lost territory and decimated ranks will make it a lot less exciting to the recruits.
Harder wars have been fought and won before.
What do you think of this piece by Maajid Nawaz?
Why Not Calling ISIS “Islamic” Hurts Muslim Reformers: http://jrbenjamin.com/2015/03/06/maajid-nawaz-why-not-callin...
The sad reality is that it is both quintessentially Islamic, and a state. If we refuse to acknowledge the reality of the situation today, we have no chance of destroying it in the future.
I concur it's advantageous they are positioning themselves as a state though. It immediately translates their military defeats into social and political ones.
Problem with this is that the most prominent moderate Islamist organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, was utterly smashed by the military counter-coup in Egypt. To many Islamists, it seemed to prove that a political route to power was untenable.
Though I agree that we have to bridge the gap. The us vs. them rhetoric is toxic.
Indeed. However, it is "Western culture vs ISIS". The other part is that it's also "Other Muslims vs ISIS" along with "Muslim countries vs ISIS". ISIS dictates that they are indeed bent for world domination, as much absurd as that seems.
But ISIS acts like Anonymous with a country. Yeah, you can nuke the land and kill millions of people. But they're still going to be in Europe, North America, Asia, and everywhere else... and the extreme tactics will only encourage more to join the cause.
I disagree. If they have a unfettered region to recruit from, they can and will recruit. For one thing, recruits have a place to go. More than that, they also have a place to trade and traffic weapons, drugs and oil from. They have a place to plan global attacks from.
Taking away a safe heaven makes it harder for them to do business. Right?
Major points:
Unless you have the right connections, go to the right schools, have the right French names, it's very difficult to get a good job. Even more so if you come from banlieues. With no job prospects and isolation from mainstream society, some Muslim youths retreat to religion and out of those, some discover and/or led to radical ideologies.
If you read the article, you'll see that there are some Muslims who are trying to rescue these youths. I feel this could be part of an actually solution. Since Muslim youth won't trust outsiders at all, the government can provide Muslim community leaders some resources to intervene in the lives of youths that are going down the wrong paths from crime to radicalization.
Also, they can consider setting up programs for parents to identify the signs of radicalization and educate them about how to intervene and de-escalate. Apparently, a father of one of the Paris attackers even went all the way to Syria to persuade his son to come home. Even after offering him a plan where he didn't have to go to prison but could resettle in Algeria and try to rebuild his life, the son refused. After a certain point in the radicalization process, there seems to be a point of no return.
Clearly, just bombing ISIS is not going to work when the majority of these terrorists lived in Europe.
By the way this is the exact situation that American after 9/11 swore would never happen again - a safe haven for global terrorism to be planned and launched from. That one is on Obama, though with Iraq Bush made that option incredibly difficult.
Well, no. Bush had a glorious, golden opportunity in the wake of 9/11 to turn this huge wave of international goodwill into something that could have actually made the world a safer place.
Instead, he did precisely what the terrorists hoped he would do - Bush not only invaded Afghanistan, he lied the country into a breathtakingly stupid and pointless war with Iraq, single-handedly destabilizing the entire region and creating the ideal climate for terrorism to flourish.
The fact that Obama hasn't been able to put the toothpaste back in the tube doesn't mean that it's all his fault - it just means he was unable to clean up the global catastrophe that Bush created in eight years.
This is not a get out of jail free card for inaction, but a reminder that just pushing an issue does not create positive action by itself. At this point any action that Obama takes will be resisted by US politicians, perhaps leading to a worse outcome than the status quo.
1. http://www.vox.com/2014/5/20/5732208/the-green-lantern-theor...
Are superior entities typically confounded by inferior entities in high-stakes games? I ask this having been humbled myself thinking myself superior once upon a time.
Or is it that the superior entities are pretending to be confounded to achieve domestic goals? If I were a megalomaniac, I know what I'd do.
Conclusively, most religion is moronic and extreme religion is extremely moronic. It's going to get much worse before it gets better and probably not better in our lifetimes or at least this decade.
If Paris was horrible, imagine what they could do in the USA where guns are super easy to collect. They could wipe out entire malls in an afternoon.
And on the other side of the equation, American cops are trigger happy, their SWAT-team-equivalents are swimming in drug war forfeiture slush, combined with military surplus purchase programs, and the citizenry itself has a decent quantity of concealed pistol carriers.
Shooters on foot could kill a lot of people in that first 30 minutes, but after that, the easy targets are all gone, and the retaliation force is on its way to "arrest" your shooters. It doesn't take all afternoon to [opportunistically grab some unpaid merchandise and] scramble for the exits.
Making Americans fear shopping malls is a tactical wrong move. We have already turned against them, mostly. You have to know the culture better. You have to make us fear our own cars and roads. If we stop driving on a daily basis, the whole country collapses.
But with over 30k highway deaths per year occurring already, in the absence of any malice, that's a steep uphill battle. It'd be like putting additional poisons in a carton of tobacco cigarettes.
The recent horrific criminal acts in Paris have connections with France's colonial past with Algeria (https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/reflections-on-the-recent-pari...). And Daesh, the brutal group implicated, has its genesis in other brutalities, not unlike other similar affairs in the past (http://johnpilger.com/articles/from-pol-pot-to-isis-anything...). In different settings with reduced level of invasions and imposed/incited sufferings, such as in Malaysia, things have remained at least as decent as any other.
Religion -- all religion -- is so obviously nonsense, and yet the human race goes on and on and on, having endless tortured discussions about the earthly consequences of religious tenets, with a straight face.
How can we even begin to address these problems when all religious viewpoints are considered with an air of seriousness and profundity? On what ground do we (non-"holy warriors") stand when we say their viewpoint is wrong? None, so long as any religious viewpoint is taken seriously.
There is only one proper response to this and that is to make damn sure that I laugh religious people out of the room whenever possible.
Let us stop playing games and acknowledge that so long as grownups are considering religious viewpoints alongside secular ones when making important decisions, we will get absolutely nowhere.
The point is, "their reality" is manifestly, obviously wrong.
Bases for belief are weird, even when they are not based on religion. Many mentalities are based on absolutes, it seems you have replaced god with no-god.
I don't think the anti-theist mindset is particularly useful. You cannot use facts to change someone's mind, especially where facts were not used in the first place.
Religion is a largely emotional experience to most people; denying them that experience is just hurtful, not constructive.
Supernatural claims made by religions are not among those. Those are just self-evidently false.
I'm not denying anyone anything. I'm just saying that the supernatural claims made by religions are obviously false. I don't really care if anyone's feelings are hurt by that.
I think the best course of actin would be to leave ISIS alone from military perspective.
Then airdrop food, water and medical supplies to the area. Not discriminating between fighters and civilians. Smother them.
Then give the civilians living in that area a way to voice their grievances. So that Muslim people in Egypt and France could feel sympathy for ordinary human beings trapped in that area. "How can you treat our fellow Muslims so bad?"
Now ISIS should be busy stopping people from messaging the outer world. And stopping people from drinking filthy crusader water. They would have to spend their energy enforcing a totalitarian state. It's difficult for them to explain how there is holy war when the enemy is being so nice.
> "If a tourist resort that the Crusaders patronize…is hit, all of the tourist resorts in all of the states of the world will have to be secured by the work of additional forces, which are double the ordinary amount, and a huge increase in spending."
That is huge misunderstanding by the author. That is absolutely standard military tactic at least as old as Sun Tzu art of war. The idea is to force enemy to spend more money than you are spending. Security state is just meaningless side effect for ISIS point of view.
First of all Daesh are a bunch of psychopaths and a far greater threat and problem to people like me. Their every move has been against not just non-Muslims or moderate Muslims but also and even more so against mainstream and all major currents of Sunni Islam. If people are interested, I can provide specific sources to support this assertion.
From the Muslim world side, we have a huge mess. I wanted to put in my two cents for Westerners trying to understand WTH is going on with the Muslim world. Basically, the Assad regime, nominally "secular, progressive" tyrants such as the Egyptian and Algerian militaries or Kurdish marxist armies, numerous "radical" Sunni and Shia groups have all been at fault since they could not agree on a set of principles on which disagreeing parties could come to peace. The long Iraqi civil war brutalised already damaged societies. This produced the sort of psychopaths such as Zarqawi and Baghdadi and numerous others. Also, even otherwise somewhat moderate Sunnis have been driven into ISIS's arms and somewhat moderate Nusayrites and Shi'ites have been driven into Ass'ads arms because they don't see another option. The biggest problem now is that while many people are disgusted by all this, there is so much blame to go around that one can be completely justified in blaming everyone else. So the problem is that people sympathetic to Assad (old-style socialists, Shi'ites etc.) sit there blaming the Saudis, Turks and the "West" for the supporting rebels who they say are all Daesh. On the other hand, Assad has killed and driven out many times more refugees than Daesh, and many Syrians and Sunnis find it hypocritical and self-serving to support Assad like Putin is doing while neglecting the plight of the Syrian population being hammered both from Assad and Daesh. The conspiracy theorist streak finds it easy to blame the US, without trying to eliminate the local actors who are instruments of said conspiracy, if they really believe there is one.
Unless all sides are brave enough to not only fight for their principles but more importantly admit their own mistakes it is hard to fix this. But this requires some trust, which only gets harder to find the more precarious your own situation becomes.
I mean yes, that poses a problem. But the solution isn't to antagonize encryption. Should we all send our letters without envelopes? Why are people ready and willing to do that online and not offline when the same information is FAR more likely to be intercepted by crazy criminals? How much potential exposure does your data get via snail mail versus Internet transmission?
Ignoring any sort of conspiracy theories I think despite the subtlety it is still blatantly obvious that politicians are immediately taking advantage of the situation, associating negativity (terrorism) with encryption.
It is a VERY dangerous time because emotions of people can be swayed in any direction now. It is the same phenomenon observed when the Patriot Act was enacted.
Discussions and discourse are discouraged because it isn't considered moral to talk about these things less than a week after these horrifying attacks. NOW is the time to stab the pro-encryption arguments right in the heart, charged with emotion, in a subtle and covert way.
But others are looking for something else. They look at the materialist view (where all we are is a collection of atoms created by random chance, obeying the laws of physics and biochemistry and neurology, and where it's very difficult to find any real (non-arbitrary) meaning in life), and they find it empty - empty in a way that more material prosperity won't fix.
And they look at Christianity in Europe, and too often they find it to be dead - full of unreality and dust.
Their cry is in essence the same as the hippies in the 1960s: "Your society isn't giving us adequate answers. It's not enough to satisfy our hearts."
* * *
Leaping into the woods, he looked to the left and to the right. He soon saw the two giants. They were lying asleep under a tree, snoring until the branches bent up and down. The little tailor, not lazy, filled both pockets with stones and climbed the tree. Once in the middle of the tree, he slid out on a branch until he was seated right above the sleepers. Then he dropped one stone after another onto one of the giant's chest. For a long time the giant did not feel anything, but finally he woke up, shoved his companion, and said, "Why are you hitting me?"
"You are dreaming," said the other one. "I am not hitting you."
They fell asleep again, and the tailor threw a stone at the second one.
"What is this?" said the other one. "Why are you throwing things at me?"
"I am not throwing anything at you," answered the first one, grumbling.
They quarreled for a while, but because they were tired, they made peace, and they both closed their eyes again. Then the little tailor began his game again. Choosing his largest stone, he threw it at the first giant with all his strength, hitting him in the chest.
"That is too mean!" shouted the giant, then jumped up like a madman and pushed his companion against the tree, until it shook. The other one paid him back in kind, and they became so angry that they pulled up trees and struck at each other until finally, at the same time, they both fell to the ground dead.
Then the little tailor jumped down. "It is fortunate," he said, "that they did not pull up the tree where I was sitting, or I would have had to jump into another one like a squirrel. But people like me are nimble."
Drawing his sword, he gave each one a few good blows to the chest, then went back to the horsemen and said, "The work is done. I finished off both of them, but it was hard.
* * *
From The Brave Little Tailor by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Despite these astonishing numbers, it still has nothing to do with religion, right? Downvote me to hell, but if a quarter of certain group openly supports mass-killers, I have a very serious reason to be afraid of them and avoid at all cost.
EDIT: formatting
We use EI, EIIL or more recently Daesh.
The only people who had any idea of what was talked about where those reading the English language media.
My guess is that people aither thought about something else, or not wanting to be caught being ignorant stated a random opinion.
Basically the question used two denomination for Daesh, none of which being widely used by the media... Add to that people too proud to admit their ignorance, and you have the recipe for a totally worthless poll...
The polling organisation is reputable, but the detail that they and the Russian state media organisation they conducted it for provided is scant: http://www.icmunlimited.com/media-centre/press/isis-poll-for...
Similar polls of almost-exclusively Muslim, mainly Sunni and generally anti-West Gaza have found a much more negative opinions of ISIS
In his view, even if the citizens of western countries can enjoy freedom and a good life, the actions of their governments in other countries are not so wonderful. The word "hypocrite" was mentioned. I had some problems to refute this reasoning.
I think that we can condemn terrorism and be against the instauration of caliphates without give up critical thinking. After all, that should be one of the most important Western values.
As you quoted yourself, this is among all creeds, not among muslims. France has larger muslim population than germany or GB that were in the same survey, yet this still does not explain the huge difference in youths actually supporting daesh. So, its fair to say that french youth in general is disillusioned. Also note that this was before charlie hebdo and the recent attack, not sure how the non-muslim french would respond now.
The banlieues are often referenced , but were the terrorists from the banlieues? the whole thing seems to be orchestrated from belgium.
The French economy is moribund, growth is nil, youth unemployment rates are over 25%, and lots of them are sitting around unemployed or in dead-end jobs - while their parents hold much cushier jobs with some of the world's best labor protections (or most-notorious, depending on your perspective). It's not shocking.
I'd argue this "French economy" argument is pretty weak under scrutiny.
An ICM poll on behalf of the Russian news agency Rossiya Segodnya tested the awareness of the group ISIS (previously known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant), in three European nations; Great Britain, France and Germany. The poll revealed that overall 2% and 7% say they are very favourable and somewhat favourable towards ISIS but a greater 26% and 43% are somewhat unfavourable and very unfavourable towards ISIS.
Not only they didn't break it down betwene religions, but I'm not even sure how NYT themselves extracted their "1/4 youths support ISIS" claim from this data.
OTOH, have a look at this link originally posted by imaginenore in some other thread:
http://www.pewresearch.org/files/old-assets/pdf/muslim-ameri...
It's very likely that most people that answered misidentified the faction that was talked about.
Here's why the ISIS plans won't work as the article describes how ISIS is planning:
ISIS has basically five things going for them:
(1) A lot of oil money, (2) a lot of desert no one wants to try to live in, (3) a lot of young men without much to do except live off the oil money, (4) a totally, world-class, grand-champion, one of a kind wacko leader -- calling that guy a wacko is an insult to all the ordinary wackos there have ever been, and (5) by far the most important of the 5, the humanitarian desire of the Western countries to avoid civilian casualties.
But ISIS doesn't "avoid civilian casualties", and the Western countries have a very long and/or significant history of not avoiding civilian casualties. That is, still, now, if the West wants, then it can also quit avoiding civilian casualties.
E.g., the US military fought hard and brilliantly, and took casualties and deaths, fighting in Fallujah, but there was a much faster, safer, cheaper, and easier way -- just level Fallujah from the air. The US could easily have done that in time from a day, an afternoon, an hour, or a millisecond -- literally. Why not? Avoid civilian casualties.
Mean? ISIS mean? In the list of world class mean countries, if want to call ISIS a country, ISIS isn't mean. ISIS is crude, medieval, stupid.
For world class mean, the all time, unique, unchallenged grand champion, and may I have the envelope, please, yes, here it is, the US. Way, way back in honorable mention is a four way tie -- Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Stalinist Russia, and Mao's China.
Why US #1 on mean? The bomb, the atom bomb, used over Japan. Setting that aside, the B-29 and the fire bombing of Japanese cities. Setting that aside, the B-17 and the bombing of German cities including the fire storms where much of the civilian population was converted into burning torches -- shortest way to put it. Horror that can only be tolerated from 20,000 feet up or higher. The best thing those German people had going for them was that they could die only once and, on a night of a fire storm, hopefully, likely quickly. One of the worst horrors in the history of the planet.
For more, and more recently, in a 6 week air campaign and a 100 hour ground campaign, General Schwarzkopf brought to unconditional surrender Saddam's army, the fourth largest army in the world, with 7 million men under arms. Mean? IIRC the US had more casualties (but not deaths) from recreation, e.g., softball, than from enemy action. Soon the Iraqi air force got the message that it was not smart to fly at all (US AWACS could see them and send in F-15s) so would fly just to get away, low, slow, and to ditch in Iran.
Mean? General Schwarzkopf was asked what happened to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers in the desert next to Saudi Arabia. The answer: "They are still there."
Mean? When a US A-10 flew over the Iraqi troops, they rushed out with white flags. What one or a few A-10s did to the escaping Iraqi troops on the road from Kuwait City back to Iraq -- turned the whole crowded road into teeth, hair, eyes, blood, guts, big pieces made into small ones, and fires, all in just a few A-10 passes -- so shocked the world that Bush 41 rushed to stop such actions. The A-10 is one mean machine -- reduce really big pieces of metal to small ones in a few seconds. And the A-10 is long out of date -- the US has much meaner machines now.
In Gulf War I, it went on this way, our tanks against theirs, our planes against theirs, and especially our F-117 stealth bomber against their radar and anti-aircraft artillery and missiles -- the F-117 flew through Saddam's exploding defenses, bright enough to light up the night sky, and literally never got even a single scratch. Why? The sky is a really big place; shooting blind gives really small chance of hitting anything; and against the F-117 Iraq was shooting blind. The F-117? From the Lockheed Skunk Works -- bright guys out there.
We, here in the US, have GPS, surveillance satellites, smart bombs, cruise missiles, drones, the B-2, the F-22, the M1-A1 tank, aircraft carriers (so difficult to do well the US has about all there are in the world), submarines, both attack and missile firing, etc.
Mean? The US is mean, unique, world-class mean.
Net, without (5), that is, the determination of the US to avoid civilian casualties, the US could "wipe the desert clean" (from an Indiana Jones movie?) of ISIS in a day, much faster if we were in a hurry. E.g., all within about 30 minutes of the ISIS areas, several US SSBNs, each with about 16 missiles, each missile with several warheads, each warhead with, IIRC, ballpark 330 KT of exploding fusion energy.
The US has been willing to kill enemy civilians in the past and can be again in the future. So far, the US is still being a nice guy -- we just blew up some ISIS oil trucks, but first we dropped leaflets telling the civilians to get out of the way.
France? "They are a funny race", but they are no joke: Great wine, cheese, bread, food, really pretty, world class feminine young women, great art, and more. And, in pure and applied mathematics, both physical and medical science, philosophy, etc. France has a very long history of world-class excellence. Since WWII, some of the best mathematicians have been French -- e.g., Bourbaki. My favorite is J. Neveu.
In technical excellence, the French are no joke. They are darned good at making both airplanes and working with nuclear materials, both the electricity generating kind and the exploding kind.
Net, anytime France wants to be "merciless" to ISIS, France can wipe the desert clean of ISIS in an hour.
France is a member of NATO. Maybe that old organization looks like a comedy act, but without firing a single serious shot it's kept the peace in Europe since 1945 or so. Other members include Germany and England and, of course, the US.
Basically, ISIS attacked NATO; definitely a Darwin award on the way. As from Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping tiger and fill him with a terrible resolve." Yup.
If NATO were a country, then it would be by a wide margin the meanest in the solar system.
ISIS can't make glass or matches but attacked NATO? Did I mention wacko?
As soon as, as in no more than a day, the West is willing to kill ISIS civilians, there will be no more ISIS -- in the ISIS areas no more buildings, oil infrastructure, vehicles, tents, camels, flocks, or people. None. The desert wiped clean. The West has killed plenty of civilians before and can do it again, especially against an enemy eager to kill civilians.
For me, IIRC ISIS has said that they intend to get a nuke bomb and explode it against the US. They would likely aim for Wall Street, and I'm just 70 miles north of there. They could hurt me. 'Nuff for me -- wipe the desert clean.
You can try to negotiate and they will kill your ambassadors. You can try to ignore them and they will slaughter your innocent civilians. You can try to attack them and they will hide amongst their civilians.
What do you do.
When they openly tell you they want to nuke you out of existence, it is a matter of survival for not just you but for your civilization what do you do?
You have a button to kill the threat now or you can wait for them to get the button to kill you and you know they will have no hesitation to press it.