Why Palmyra's ruins are so important
latimes.com
latimes.com
Unfortunately the Cambodians don't make any money directly off of Ankor Wat, but the tourism and interest it brings their country will probably help them more in the long run, even if they are only viewed as a window on the past.
The thing ISIS did to the Yezidis.. the children, the female ones. It would kill your insides and want to set the world on fire.
In fact, it wasn't just ISIS, but their Sunni muslim neighbours. As soon as they heard ISIS were nearby, they started killing their Yezidi neighbours, raping their daughters on the streets. There were mattresses and used condoms lying on the streets when the HPG (Yezidi militia) came back to Sinjar... grim scenes.
It wasn't 3 or 4, but systematic abuse on thousands.
Christians (Assyrians) weren't spared either, but not as many as 7000 Yezidis females captive since last summer. The male children are being used as human shields and sucide bombers. The female (down to the age of 6) are being sold on sex-slave markets.
Edit: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/05/22...
"They commit rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution and other acts of extreme brutality. We heard one case of a 20-year-old girl who was burned alive because she refused to perform an extreme sex act. We learned of many other sadistic sexual acts. We struggled to understand the mentality of people who commit such crimes."
Set the world on fire.
One can only hope it ends in exactly the same way : 5 more Israels in the middle east. A Yezidi one. An Assyrian one. A Shi'a one.
You can say whatever you want to say but this islam is an ideology which is centrally focused on it's supposed superiority and the focus is the reason for this superiority : that allah will guarantee military victory. Walk near any large station in a large Western European city and you can find out for yourself (if you look the least bit dark you will find out even if you don't want to, they'll walk up to you and ask). Paris - Gare du Nord, Brussels North, Amsterdam, ... you should go to Syria and fight and kill. Feign minimal intrest and you get to find out more. Why - because allah will make you win and we'll finally punish the infidels, and everybody you hate. They'll provide a wife, and openly talk about their "attitude" to captured women - what allah "allows". The main counterargument you hear on that street - it's not a way to victory, it's a way to death.
I don't know about if this is similar in America. Does anyone have similar experiences in, say, New York ? Given where the recruitment happens in Western Europe and how successful it is in these western states, I find it extremely difficult to believe that this ISIS will remain confined to the middle east. I am terrified what will happen in Western Europe in the large cities if ISIS appears to become more successful.
This ideology needs to die, if we are to have peace.
What's happening is that they are making propaganda to the uneducated people who "have nothing to lose". They tell them to go carry weapons, fight for glory, and they'll be rewarded with Heaven. Pretty good deal to get out of their circumstances, right?
The fact remains though that what they preach is not of Islam.
Yes and so is everything else muslims do. For instance, there is a death penalty for muslims who choose not to live under islamic rule. And the only thing that qualifies as islamic rule, of course, is a state ruled by a caliph. [1] And no, the law does not mention the case that there is no islamic state. So sharia quite literally states all muslims should kill eachother. For some reason this is not happening. So every muslim on the planet today has committed a sin in islam, punishable by death. Or to take another issue. There is not a single mention of a headscarf anywhere in either the quran or the hadith. It says to wear loose fitting clothes, the actual word used compares the clothes to being inside a tent. Now look around, do young muslim girls wear loose fitting clothes ?
I am making a somewhat disingenuous argument, but the point is that your argument is disingenuous as well, and for the same reason : when comparing reality with a set of laws, reality is found lacking. This goes for ISIS and for every other law, principle, design, guideline, ... on our little blue ball in the dark.
So your argument is wrong. Of course they don't follow islam perfectly, nobody does and everybody knows. The real reason is "goes without saying", of course, means that you're merely pointing out that there is massive social pressure on this board, and in this country, to agree with that assessment. That I am a racist if I think otherwise. But this is a bullshit argument. It is true, because it would be a socially very, VERY uncomfortable situation if it wasn't true ... which of course doesn't change the fact that it's utterly wrong.
So in short, it doesn't go without saying at all. How much does it really match the religion's instructions ? I would argue it matches it pretty well. They've got a caliph and are waging war against anyone and everyone else, just like their prophet did. That is the basic problem with islamic terrorism : the terrorists, while not 100% perfectly right about their ideology, have a very good point. Islamic ideology glorifies this war of the prophet against the Roman Empire, and the Jewish and other states bordering it, and describes it as a war that can and should only end with total worldwide victory of the religion.
This is what muslims are teaching their children (I hope we can at least agree on those basic facts). And like every other sane person on this planet, their children don't believe them. I didn't believe my parents when they talked about this sort of shit, and I've had a few talks with my daughter where she made it very clear she doesn't believe me either. But when they get excluded out of our society, hide in their religion for it's the only thing that hasn't completely rejected them yet (keep in mind that islamic marriages are arranged. If you have no money, no amount of good looks or talking can help you). And then these people who look like clerics read to them from the exact same books their parents are telling them to live by ... and those books say to fight and kill and you'll be rewarded. Those are the books their parents talked about when they were toddlers sitting on daddy's knee, when they were happy and provided for. Now they're criminals who failed with nothing to lose ... and these clerics read from those books, and those books say to fight and kill ...
The reason this works is the ideology. And I don't care how uncomfortable that basic piece of information makes anyone. Fighting the people who are already lost is a loser's game. You must prevent, so to speak, toddlers from being raised with those books anywhere nearby.
And given how this is escalating, it is a matter of time until we all agree on that point. The big question is, how many people need to die before we agree ? As I said, I have kids and find this "let's ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist" attitude EXTREMELY unacceptable.
And yes, this will cost me a lot of karma on this board. Fuck social pressure. I hope everyone who lowers the integer next to my name on an internet server feels really good about themselves and the actions they took.
[1] https://themuslimissue.wordpress.com/2015/01/02/hijra-in-rev... talks about this issue
> For some reason this is not happening.
Maybe something for you to research and find out why (hint, because Islam preserves life, and its goal is not to kill left and right, like how you're trying to make it seem to be). The death penalty in Islam is very, very strict, applicable to only a couple of situations, and can only be done by the government. Even then, people are encouraged to forgive if they are in a position to do that.
> There is not a single mention of a headscarf anywhere in either the quran or the hadith.
If you're looking for the literal word "headscarf" then yes (at least for the Quran). However, covering up (what is known as the headscarf today) is required in Islam. There is not enough space here to discuss this issue, it is sufficient to know that the Muslim women during the time of the Prophet Peace be upon him, practiced this.
> For instance, there is a death penalty for muslims who choose not to live under islamic rule.
I would like to see the source of that claim.
> And no, the law does not mention the case that there is no islamic state.
Just because there is no Caliphite state today, does not mean that there are no Islamic states. Nowhere in the sources is it stated that a Caliphite system is the exclusive way to have an Islamic state. In one Hadith, the Prophet Peace be upon him mentioned that the Caliphite period after him will be 30 years, then it will turn into kingdoms. There are dozens of Hadiths that tell people to have patience, and not to overthrow their governments, even if those governments are messing around with some religious rulings (e.g. delaying prayers until after their time). There are only two cases where it is permissible to overthrow the ruling government, none of which apply to any of the countries of the so called Arab Spring today.
We also have Hadiths that describe people with mentalities similar to what we see in ISIS today. One of these Hadiths calls such people the dogs of Hell fire.
> That I am a racist if I think otherwise.
I don't see what racism has to do with any of this. You're free to believe what you want, but it seems that the vast majority of what you believe about this topic is based on either no evidence at all, or on deliberately misconstrued "interpretations", which can be easily dismissed by a learned individual.
> How much does it really match the religion's instructions ?
It goes against it 100%. The Prophet Peace be upon him told us not to overthrow our rulers, regardless of how bad they get. They have absolutely no religious basis to their actions; none of the nearby countries recognize them as a legitimate government; we have Hadiths describing people like them.
> Islamic ideology glorifies this war of the prophet against the Roman Empire, and the Jewish and other states bordering it...
He did not wage war for the sake of waging war. This is another misconstrued view you have of Islamic history. In ALL of the wars that happened during his time, it was to either fend off an attacking enemy, or it was after a peace treaty was broken by the other party.
> and describes it as a war that can and should only end with total worldwide victory of the religion.
> keep in mind that islamic marriages are arranged
Again, more uncited claims. Arranged (i.e. forced) marriages are against Islamic teachings. Them happening in Muslim countries does not mean these practices were derived from the religion (basic correlation vs. causation fallacy).
That being said, I don't disagree that there are many misconceptions that are spread in the Islamic world, about certain rulings or teachings, that in fact, are not from Islam. It is important to educate people about what is and isn't from Islam.
Many of them have diseases and share victims. Majority didn't use condoms given the reports from the refugee camps.
So far most of the US gear goes to ISIS. You'd think I'd be over-exaggerating, but just last weekend US equipment (eg Humvees) that went to the Shia militia also known as Iraq "army" (ISF) was left while back while they abandoned Ramadi so ISIS could get in. Not the first time the Iraqi "army" does that.
The Peshmerga desperately need Anti-Tank/IED gear. So far they are relying on MILANs from Germany. They have enough trained soldiers and experienced soldiers from old wars to tackle ISIS, but they are working with some really old weapons. I've seen snipers using old ww2 rifles. No joke.
From what I understand there is a bill at congress (pushed by the Republicans) to arm the Peshmerga (Kurdistan) directly instead of relying on Baghdad (HAH!) to give the the kurds their 10% share. Not sure if it has passed yet.
Essentially the Iraqi "Army" has failed, the only thing that is stable in Iraq is the "Gold Division", essentially their Special Forces. They are pretty effective at holding ISIS at bay, but have endured heavy casualties because of the Militia/Army incompetence.
The Shia militia can't hold their grounds... except when it comes to abusing Sunni civilians.
Iraq doesn't exist anymore. It's now Iran... the US is arming Iran 馃槀. Let that sink in.
Aside from some very specialized troops (combat controllers and maybe some other SOF; high level logistics people to interface with the rest of the supply chain; some trainers and advisors) you could probably equip the Kurdish forces with modern weapons to good effect.
The biggest issue is bypassing the Iraqi central government basically admits that Iraq is/was/will always be a failure, and guarantees it. This might cause both Iran and KSA to intervene in the territory. This could lead to escalation; I'd personally be willing to accept the status quo in Syria if the alternative is a regional war.
You know, it was only when really forced to deal with things that we intervened with the Nazis. They were decent business partners otherwise.
The US went into WW II because of Pearl Harbor. We didn't go in after Hitler had invaded most of Europe. We did send war supplies but didn't send troops. The urgency was when Japan committed a formal and very humiliating act of war. So that's probably not a great example of the US treating things with urgency.
ISIS is odious, but given that we create the conditions for their existence due to previous rash military action, it would be wise to get a proper multilateral response with a full commitment and some actual hope to actually manage the aftermath with some chance of not having another horrifying group fill the power vacuum once we've stopped bombing. Realistically it's a hideous situation where if we grind ISIS into the dirt, we'll be elevating Iran's power in the region even more when we already got rid of Saddam's regime and replaced him with an Iranian puppet.
They will not be a reliable ally against ISIS.
1. The Iraqi army is not Shiite, it is overwhelmingly Sunni and especially in places like Ramadi. This extends to the upper military command as well[0], including the Minister of Defense.
2. The Peshmerga have more than enough weapons and have been given all the weapons they could handle. What you should be more concerned about is the Kurdistan Democratic Party refusing to arm the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan Peshmerga, and arresting Yezidis (the people that ultranationalists such as yourself exploit) who try to seek arms from the Iraqi central government.
3.The bill pushed at congress has nothing to do with arming the Peshmerga, it instead has to do with violating Iraq's sovereignty (which Sunni politicians, including the governor of Anbar[1] and Iraqi separatists[2], are against), arming American-vetted militias independently and without the approval or consultation of the Iraqi government, and also refusing to arm the Iraqi government on the basis that it is exclusionary. This is all based on the fantasy that your type (the liars, the ultranationalists, the sectarianists) try to sell to the uninformed that Iraq is not providing arms to non-Shiites, which is a blatant lie. Baghdad is providing more than enough arms to every group in Iraq, and any honest observer of Iraq has the same conclusion. The Sunni forces from Ramadi also argue that the local government (read: democratically elected Sunni representatives) were witholding weapons and ammunition, of which there is plenty[3]. This includes Reidar Visser, a Norwegian historian of Iraq commenting that what the republicans are seeking is essentially a restoration of a Sunni dictatorship[4].
4. The Iraqi army has not failed. The liberation of Diyala, the liberation of Samarra, the liberation of the Baghdad belts, the liberation of various areas in Salahideen, and so on.
5. Any area the Shiite militias have entered has been held, including Diyala, Baghdad belts, various parts of Anbar, Tikrit, and so on. There has been no abuse of Sunni civilians that can be attributed to anything other than isolated incidents, and it is the Sunni civilians and politicians who call for the Shiite militias to enter their areas and provinces. Unlike yourself, it seems that outside of the Kurdish nationalists and ISIS supporters, the Iraqi people are not racist or sectarianists.
6. Iraq does exist. It is not Iran, and neither the Iraqis or Iranians want it to be that way. The US is not arming Iran, so stop with your nonsense. There is an Iranian part of Iraq, it is called Kurdistan. This is where much of the economy is dependent on Iran, the locals are an Iranic people, speak an Iranian language, and the majority of their arms come from Iran.
The problem with you ultranationalists is that while trying to make yourself victims, you come across as the most vile, oppressive, racist and overwhelmingly sectarian idiots in the region. Keep your lies to Twitter, stop trying to force it to spill into places like Hacker News.
Edit: and just for full disclosure, I am an Iraqi-born Mandaean[5] whose entire ethnoreligious group (save for a few hundred people) has been robbed, killed and ethnically cleansed from Iraq. I am not Christian, I am not Shiite, I am not Sunni, I am not an Assyrian, I am not an Arab, I am not a Kurd, I own no land in Iraq and have no role to play in Iraqi politics.
[0] https://twitter.com/IAlsodani/status/599199851079933953, https://twitter.com/IAlsodani/status/599448705012506624, https://twitter.com/IAlsodani/status/599449216474288128
[1] https://twitter.com/Sohaib_Alrawi/status/592754103358464001
[2] https://twitter.com/reidarvisser/status/594467244224155649
[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt0opjDXgTc
[4] https://twitter.com/reidarvisser/status/593493534696673280
http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/04/07/398004441/a...
1. Are those names real?
2. Were Shiites responsible?[0]
3. Were they civilians?
4. Have they been abused?
5. Have they been released?
Linking to an allegation from early April as evidence of oppression, when the alleged group themselves deny it, isn't evidence. Feel free to link to any formal complaints or follow up articles. It's been six weeks since that article and eight weeks since the incident, so I'm sure there is a follow up by now if anything came from it.
If it did happen as described, and the missing were abused or murdered, then I hope the people responsible are punished. Until then, all we have are unsubstantiated allegations which don't appear to have been followed up.
Also, from my understanding, what I've heard from people that are there is that small arms and especially antiarmor weapons are what is needed (some volunteer fighters are having to trade cash for weapons). ISIS has a hell of a lot of American equipment via IA (Iraqi Army) forces. IA is fighting, but they have had to withdraw from some areas against the quick offense of ISIS, which has resulted in powerful equipment captured. The Jordanian pilot they recently murdered was shot down with a MANPADS from a stockpile they captured some months before. ISIS has M1 Abrams. As an (American) infantry veteran, this is the fact that concerns me the most: There are not a lot of things that can kill an Abrams. We are going to need a lot more air support, and it's going to take a committed ground force to stop their advance, let alone push them into retreat and defeat.
Probably what they need most is a committed ground force. We need another Iraq War, with hundreds of thousands or millions of people on the ground, fighting ISIS in the streets. Unfortunately, Dubya already blew through the Iraq War we need. I saw earlier today that 57% of Americans support ground forces in Iraq to fight ISIS. 1) ISIS almost certainly wouldn't exist if Saddam was still around (i.e. it's our fault). 2) So many people are so tired of war, that even in the face of this pure fucking evil, it will be hard to convince the public to start another one.
That being said, if we don't destroy ISIS, it will be a defining force of evil in the 21st century. They will not stop in Syria or Iraq. They will move into and attack Europe and the Americas. It is a global problem that needs to be destroyed.
This does not take boots on the ground. This can be done with drone strikes, supported from aircraft carriers locally and with pilots in the Las Vegas desert.
This is our mess, and we should be required to clean it up.
EDIT: Also, as a US citizen, how could one be prevented from being renditioned against one's will back to the US by US military forces if in Syria or Iraq fighting against ISIS as a volunteer. Just curious.
It's too late for that. They are here to stay just like the mollahs in Iran or the Talibans in Afghanistan. Most people in the west are fed up with western military involvement in the middle east anyway, rightfully so.
All it would take to clear this up would be a letter of marque.
That said, we saw the same concern and destruction of historical artifacts with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Of course, I wouldn't dare say a single definition is unequivocally better or something, but there are models.
I think a large part of the world lacks even baseline education and stability that would be required to make a principled choice on morality. And then (specially in that region) there are complicated matters such as religious fanaticism and ethical rivalry -- things which hopelessly lack even self-consistency in the scientific sense.
Nevertheless, the potential damage is insignificant compared to the human losses under both Assad's regime and ISIS.
[0] https://www.dropbox.com/s/mc7jofyfhb36ozb/palmyra.jpg?dl=0
Politics aside this would be a devastating cultural loss for all of humanity.
By playing petty and pointless political games we're about to lose things we have no hopes to ever have back. Will people learn? These days I think the only way for humanity to save face is to die off entirely.
Misanthropy and careless childish avocation of destruction rather than constructive aims is the macro issue here.
Maybe we can learn from history and rather than brutishly lash out in anger or fear we could attempt to build new bridges least we forget why the old bridges failed.
The West is so morally compromised here that it's hard to imagine that we could credibly (in the eyes of non-ISIS players in the region) take action against them, but that does not mean that destroying ISIS is not the right thing to do in theory. It just means that we probably can't do it. That's not a defense of ISIS though, it's an indictment of many decades of utterly stupid and short-sighted policy in the Middle East.
The set of dominoes and destabilization of that entire region really probably could have been prevented. When economies collapse and people are hungry and desperate that doesn't really help encourage stability or sanity.
You can't stop a few hundred (or a thousand) guys with AK47 with pickups when your solders have M1 tanks?
http://www.cfr.org/world/cultural-terrorism-wahhabi-islam/p5...
This isn't some "tiny" minority, they are over 100 of millions of supporters and people who approve of the doctrine that allows sex-slavery and killing apostates. In fact, according to Pew Research as of 2013, the numbers reach up to approx. 800 000 000 muslims who think that honour killings are justified amongst other things.
As an ex-muslim (much like an ex-smoker) I am rather biased, but here it is http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religi...
Add to that the fact that 50% or more of those muslims will protect the 1% extremists from the police force in all but the most offensive cases.
Let's face facts here : islam is a religion that was created in a massive war, that is on occasion blamed for starting the dark ages by cutting off all sea based trade in Western Europe and more than half of land based trade. The ideology internalized war during it's formation period. Hell, in the hadith you find plenty of references why the early caliphs "chose" islam, and the reason was they were at war. The religion survived only because it could convince large amounts of people to fight anyone else around them. Further in it's history it spread by war and it is absolutely unique in the sheer amount of genocides that just happened to take place just at the edge of islam, at the point where it was spreading. The biggest slaughter in history, the Mongol conquest of India, with the lower end of death toll estimates at over 3 times the WWII total death toll (over 30 times bigger than the holocaust), and may have killed half a billion (close to 100 holocausts), was an islamic expansion war.
And I wouldn't worry about them going to the middle east - or anywhere - that's temporary. This will spread, and the time will come when the fight is simply local.
THAT is the contention.
Wow.. That's incredible considering that the WORLD population in 1200-1300 was only 400m people. In fact, it's so incredible, I think I'm going to need to see some references.
And of course, death tolls are a guessing game, as are population figures. So yes there are legitimate arguments about these figures.
I don't think even Will Durant would toss around numbers like that. And 50% of Muslims sheltering extremists is a totally indefensible number. Maybe after the whole country had been subjected to sustained modern propaganda techniques of the sort we have not yet seen any Islamist regime deploy.
Humanity dying off is much much worse than ancient ruins being destroyed. Ancient ruins don't mean anything if there aren't any people around to experience them.
I have a slightly different theory - assholes will be assholes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/science/no-time-for-bullie...
http://csis.org/publication/defeat-ramadi-time-transparency-...
And since you mentioned the Marine Economic Defense Zone (otherwise known as the Exclusive Economic Zone), this is presumably what entitled a Coast Guard cutter to board my sailboat about 3 NM off the coast of Bimini in international waters? You all forced me to reduce speed to 3 knots and spent two hours searching my boat. So long in fact that you made me arrive in Miami after dark. You all kept telling me that it was a safety search (flares, life jackets, etc.), but we all know you were looking for illegal immigrants, drugs, and guns. And you found none. But you did endanger myself and my girlfriend. And for the record, my girlfriend attended the Coast Guard Academy in 1984.
I'm glad you were or are in the Coast Guard. I know you would have done your best to rescue me if I'd triggered my EPIRB. We're not debating that. But I do believe that the US military was essentially deployed to protect BP's image in the Gulf although there's an idiom that goes something like, 'never ascribe to malice that which can otherwise be ascribed to stupidity'. So maybe all that just happened because of the same incompetence that gave us Michael Brown as FEMA director for Katrina. It's not like I claim we have a functional federal government.
It's not a matter of "what" the government values, it's "where".