Terror attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris

N&P: Discuss governments, nations, politics and recent related news here.

Moderators: Alyrium Denryle, Edi, K. A. Pital

Post Reply
User avatar
jwl
Jedi Master
Posts: 1137
Joined: 2013-01-02 04:31pm

Re: Terror attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris

Post by jwl »

Simon_Jester wrote:My impression of my position on the issue is this:

The problem was never that al-Awlaki was necessarily not a legitimate target.

My real problem was that the government never made a treason case against al-Awlaki prior to having him executed as a traitor. Which is essentially what the drone strike did. It represented the executive branch deciding that al-Awlaki was levying war against the US (i.e. treason), and having him killed via robot assassin, without benefit of trial.

No citizen of a democracy should be singled out for execution by the state and killed, without some formal procedure in which rules of evidence are honored and a record of the proceedings is realistically available to the public.

Or, more simply... no Star Chambers allowed.

Now, this is not to say al-Awlaki's actions did or did not rise to the level of building a treason case against him (or a murder case, or something else justifying his execution). The point is that a bunch of random guys from the CIA don't get to meet with the president in secret and compile a list of American citizens to be targeted for assassination without public oversight.
Was this because he was american? In which case, if britain or france or whatever decided to take him out with their own drones, would you be okay with that?
User avatar
Crown
NARF
Posts: 10615
Joined: 2002-07-11 11:45am
Location: In Transit ...

Re: Terror attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris

Post by Crown »

This is the thread that keeps on giving; one poster accuses me of being a right-wing-goose-stepping-brown-shirt-wearing-fucktard. And another thinks I'm a jihadist-enabling-living-in-denial-left-wing-door-matt ... What. The actual. FUCK :wtf:
Image
Η ζωή, η ζωή εδω τελειώνει!
"Science is one cold-hearted bitch with a 14" strap-on" - Masuka 'Dexter'
"Angela is not the woman you think she is Gabriel, she's done terrible things"
"So have I, and I'm going to do them all to you." - Sylar to Arthur 'Heroes'
AniThyng
Sith Devotee
Posts: 2777
Joined: 2003-09-08 12:47pm
Location: Took an arrow in the knee.
Contact:

Re: Terror attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris

Post by AniThyng »

Crown wrote:This is the thread that keeps on giving; one poster accuses me of being a right-wing-goose-stepping-brown-shirt-wearing-fucktard. And another thinks I'm a jihadist-enabling-living-in-denial-left-wing-door-matt ... What. The actual. FUCK :wtf:
Religious schism in a nutshell.
I do know how to spell
AniThyng is merely the name I gave to what became my favourite Baldur's Gate II mage character :P
User avatar
Crown
NARF
Posts: 10615
Joined: 2002-07-11 11:45am
Location: In Transit ...

Re: Terror attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris

Post by Crown »

AniThyng wrote:
Crown wrote:This is the thread that keeps on giving; one poster accuses me of being a right-wing-goose-stepping-brown-shirt-wearing-fucktard. And another thinks I'm a jihadist-enabling-living-in-denial-left-wing-door-matt ... What. The actual. FUCK :wtf:
Religious schism in a nutshell.
:mrgreen:

Well played. :wink:
Image
Η ζωή, η ζωή εδω τελειώνει!
"Science is one cold-hearted bitch with a 14" strap-on" - Masuka 'Dexter'
"Angela is not the woman you think she is Gabriel, she's done terrible things"
"So have I, and I'm going to do them all to you." - Sylar to Arthur 'Heroes'
User avatar
Thanas
Magister
Magister
Posts: 30779
Joined: 2004-06-26 07:49pm

Re: Terror attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris

Post by Thanas »

TheHammer wrote:On a related note, does anyone still want to try and take the position that Anwar Al-Awlaki wasn't a legitimate military target?
Yes, but let's keep this thing on track now.
Whoever says "education does not matter" can try ignorance
------------
A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what'? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! - Chief Judge Haywood
------------
My LPs
User avatar
Elheru Aran
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 13073
Joined: 2004-03-04 01:15am
Location: Georgia

Re: Terror attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris

Post by Elheru Aran »

As far as Boko Haram goes: Whatever the West has been doing, it is not enough. Boko Haram has been fairly indiscriminately slaughtering people across northern Nigeria for some time now.

Their latest assault may have killed as many as 2,000 people. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/j ... ga-nigeria

The government claims that only 150 were killed, but odds are pretty good that's propaganda BS.

We may be "training" troops or whatever in Nigeria, but frankly, the government and military there are doing sweet fuck-all to resolve the situation. Whether this is out of bureaucratic inertia, corruption, or cowardice, or some combination thereof (having lived there for 13 years I suspect it's all three), the fact of the matter is that they are not doing anything to resolve what is starting to look like a civil war-- an intensely lop-sided one. Remember those girls kidnapped from a school back in, oh, April or May? Still captive, if they haven't been sold into sex slavery by now.
It's a strange world. Let's keep it that way.
User avatar
Purple
Sith Acolyte
Posts: 5233
Joined: 2010-04-20 08:31am
Location: In a purple cube orbiting this planet. Hijacking satellites for an internet connection.

Re: Terror attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris

Post by Purple »

Out of curiosity, is BH purely a local problem or do they have the potential and pretense to try and internationalize like ISIL?
It has become clear to me in the previous days that any attempts at reconciliation and explanation with the community here has failed. I have tried my best. I really have. I pored my heart out trying. But it was all for nothing.

You win. There, I have said it.

Now there is only one thing left to do. Let us see if I can sum up the strength needed to end things once and for all.
User avatar
General Zod
Never Shuts Up
Posts: 29211
Joined: 2003-11-18 03:08pm
Location: The Clearance Rack
Contact:

Re: Terror attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris

Post by General Zod »

Purple wrote:Out of curiosity, is BH purely a local problem or do they have the potential and pretense to try and internationalize like ISIL?
Boko Haram operates in multiple countries already don't they? They just don't have much reach outside of Africa.
"It's you Americans. There's something about nipples you hate. If this were Germany, we'd be romping around naked on the stage here."
User avatar
Terralthra
Requiescat in Pace
Posts: 4741
Joined: 2007-10-05 09:55pm
Location: San Francisco, California, United States

Re: Terror attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris

Post by Terralthra »

I found this article to be fairly enlightening and well-written:
On Charlie Hebdo: A letter to my British friends, by Olivier Tonneau wrote:Dear friends,



Three days ago, a horrid assault was perpetrated against the French weekly Charlie Hebdo, who had published caricatures of Mohamed, by men who screamed that they had “avenged the prophet”. A wave of compassion followed but apparently died shortly afterward and all sorts of criticism started pouring down the web against Charlie Hebdo, who was described as islamophobic, racist and even sexist. Countless other comments stated that Muslims were being ostracized and finger-pointed. In the background lurked a view of France founded upon the “myth” of laïcité, defined as the strict restriction of religion to the private sphere, but rampantly islamophobic - with passing reference to the law banning the integral veil. One friend even mentioned a division of the French left on a presumed “Muslim question”.

As a Frenchman and a radical left militant at home and here in UK, I was puzzled and even shocked by these comments and would like, therefore, to give you a clear exposition of what my left-wing French position is on these matters.

Firstly, a few words on Charlie Hebdo, which was often “analyzed” in the British press on the sole basis, apparently, of a few selected cartoons. It might be worth knowing that the main target of Charlie Hebdo was the Front National and the Le Pen family. Next came crooks of all sorts, including bosses and politicians (incidentally, one of the victims of the shooting was an economist who ran a weekly column on the disasters caused by austerity policies in Greece). Finally, Charlie Hebdo was an opponent of all forms of organized religions, in the old-school anarchist sense: Ni Dieu, ni maître! They ridiculed the pope, orthodox Jews and Muslims in equal measure and with the same biting tone. They took ferocious stances against the bombings of Gaza. Even if their sense of humour was apparently inacceptable to English minds, please take my word for it: it fell well within the French tradition of satire – and after all was only intended for a French audience. It is only by reading or seeing it out of context that some cartoons appear as racist or islamophobic. Charlie Hebdo also continuously denounced the pledge of minorities and campaigned relentlessly for all illegal immigrants to be given permanent right of stay. I hope this helps you understand that if you belong to the radical left, you have lost precious friends and allies.

This being clear, the attack becomes all the more tragic and absurd: two young French Muslims of Arab descent have not assaulted the numerous extreme-right wing newspapers that exist in France (Minute, Valeurs Actuelles) who ceaselessly amalgamate Arabs, Muslims and fundamentalists, but the very newspaper that did the most to fight racism. And to me, the one question that this specific event raises is: how could these youth ever come to this level of confusion and madness? What feeds into fundamentalist fury? How can we fight it?

I think it would be scandalous to answer that Charlie Hebdo was in any way the cause of its own demise. It is true that some Muslims took offence at some of Charlie’s cartoons. Imams wrote in criticism of them. But the same Imams were on TV after the tragedy, expressing their horror and reminding everyone that words should be fought with words, and urging Muslims to attend Sunday’s rally in homage to Charlie Hebdo. As a militant in a party that is routinely vilified in the press, I don’t go shoot down the journalists whose words or pictures trigger my anger. It is a necessary consequence of freedom of expression that people might be offended by what you express: so what? Nobody dies of an offence.

Of course, freedom of speech has its limits. I was astonished to read from one of you that UK, as opposed to France, had laws forbidding incitement to racial hatred. Was it Charlie’s cartoons that convinced him that France had no such laws? Be reassured: it does. Only we do not conflate religion and race. We are the country of Voltaire and Diderot: religion is fair game. Atheists can point out its ridicules, and believers have to learn to take a joke and a pun. They are welcome to drown us in return with sermons about the superficiality of our materialistic, hedonistic lifestyles. I like it that way. Of course, the day when everybody confuses “Arab” with “Muslim” and “Muslim” with “fundamentalist”, then any criticism of the latter will backfire on the former. That is why we must keep the distinctions clear.

And to keep these distinctions clear, we must begin by facing the fact that fundamentalism is growing dangerously and killing viciously. Among its victims, the large majority are Muslims who would surely not want to be confused with their killers. So I return now to the question: what is the cause of the rise of fundamentalism?

A friend told me that it was “the West bombing Muslim countries”. I am deeply suspicious of a statement that includes two sweeping generalizations and is reminiscent of Samuel Huntington’s theory of the “clash of civilizations”: the western world vs. the Muslim world. The only difference between George W. Bush and a leftwing stance would be that whilst Bush sided with the western world, the leftwing activist sides with the Muslim world. But to reverse Huntington’s view is a perverse way of confirming it. So let us try to address the issue otherwise.

It is obvious that the rise of fundamentalism is intertwined with the complex series of tragedies that unfolded from colonialism to the present times, including the Israel/Palestine conflict. Yet I think we should recognize one thing. Just as the Christian religion caused an enormous lot of problems in the West for centuries, problems which were not always peacefully resolved, Islam has caused enormous problems in the Muslim world to a lot of people, too. Anywhere in the world, the space for individual rights has always had to be opened by rolling back religion a few miles. And this is something that the Muslim world has begun doing as early as the nineteenth-century, with difficulties not dissimilar to those experienced in the Christian world – for those who would like to explore the parallel, I recommend reading Sami Zubaida’s excellent book Beyond Islam.

Few people even know today that there was a period, beginning in the mid-ninetieth century to the mid-twentieth century, called the Nadha (Rebirth, or Renaissance), which saw a wide-ranging process of secularisation from Morocco to Turkey. Few people care to remember that, in the 1950s and 60s, women wearing the veil were a small minority in Tunis, Algiers and even Cairo. This does not mean that they were not Muslims, mind you. Just as in the West, where a lot of Christian girls started having sex before marriage or taking the pill, principles were evolving, with some inevitable tensions.

Much as it offends the Edward Saïd vision of cultures as bound to devour or be devoured, the Nadha was fuelled by ideas developed by European thinkers and enthusiastically endorsed by local students and intelligentsia – and before you accuse me of Western paternalism, let me stress two things. First, “ideas developed by European thinkers” are not “western ideas”. The anti-colonial movement referred to Marx, Freud and Robespierre, who had – and still have – fierce critics in the West. Second, at the very same time as the anti-colonial movement was drawing inspiration from the history of struggles in Europe, Claude Levy-Strauss was transforming the Western understanding of civilization by studying other cultures, just as Leibniz had extensively studied Chinese language, law and politics in his quest for Enlightenment. Peoples are neither homogeneous nor self-enclosed units: within peoples, people organize themselves and oppose themselves around principles and ideas.

It is on the ashes of the Nadha that fundamentalism as we know it emerged. I say “emerged”, because we should not be fooled by the fundamentalists who claim to restore Islam in its original purity. The ideology they promote – literal, violent, legalistic, narrow-minded, other-worldly – is a radical novelty in the history of Islam. It is the dramatic perversion of a culture. So how did such a perversion take place? This is where the story gets complex – more complex than that of the West vs. the Muslim world.

Anti-colonial movements in France’s former colonial empire (in Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco but also in Egypt) were secular (which of course does not mean that their members were atheists): they intended to create modern nation-states independent from the tutelage of Western exploiters. Thus in Algeria, the Front de Libération Nationale was fighting for the creation of a Democratic And Popular State of Algeria (note the distinctly communist touch). Yet the chaos that emerged during and after independence wars (for which the West clearly has a serious responsibility) provided an excellent opportunity for fanatics of all sorts, who had deeply resented the evolution of their countries, to return to prominence with a vengeance. Thus in Algeria, an extremist wing that had already subverted the FLN during the war eventually came into power after decades of political and economic instability, only to unleash atrocious violence. I have friends of Algerian origins who deeply resent to this day the fundamentalists who robbed them of their secular state and persecuted them to the point that they eventually migrated to France. I am not an expert on “the Muslim world” – if such generalization even makes sense – but I think a similar sort of process took place in many other countries.

So France is home today to many Arabs, some of them Muslims, who were chased away from their home country by fundamentalists as early as the 1960s. They were exposed to racism of course, especially in the workplace – it’s the story that goes back to the Middle Ages of workers who fear the threat of outsiders – and also bullied by the police and treated like second-class citizens. They fought for equality and justice, with the support of many on the left of the political spectrum, for instance during the 1983 Marche des beurs. Believe it or not, none of the protagonists of the march were making religious claims; they were not walking as Muslims but as French citizens who demanded that France truly provides them with Liberté, Egalité and Fraternité.

The spirit of the Marche des beurs is that of Charlie Hebdo: justice for all citizens, including migrants and minorities. Now let me fast forward. Last year, a film was produced, commemorating La Marche des beurs. The producers asked famous rappers to collectively record a promotional number. One of the rappers threw in the verse: “I demand a Fatwa on the dogs at Charlie Hebdo”. He also contrasted “our virtuous veiled girls” with “the make-up wearing sluts”. Yet there were many women in the Marche; none of them were taking a religious stance and few of them were wearing the veil. How could a secular movement for equality be rewritten in religious terms? This raises the question of the rise of fundamentalism in France.

Let us be clear: fundamentalism is not caused by immigration from Muslim countries. It is very easy to demonstrate this: Muslims migrated in France as early as the 1950s and the issue of fundamentalism only arose in the last fifteen years. Moreover, among the young men who enlist to fight for Daesh, many are actually disenfranchised white youth with no familial links to Islam. Fundamentalism is something new, that exercises a fascination on disenfranchised French youth in general – not on Muslims in general. In fact, the older generation of French Muslims is terrified by the phenomenon. After the killing of Charlie Hebdo, Imams demanded that the government take action against websites and networks propagating fanaticism.

That the emergence of fundamentalism is posing serious problems to Arabs also sheds an interesting light on the law banning the hijab – a law that is routinely mentioned as a proof of France’s anti-Muslim bias. I do not have a definite opinion on this law. I was, however, stunned when I read a very angry article by a writer I admire, Mohamed Kacimi. The son of an Algerian Imam, deeply attached to his Muslim culture yet also fiercely attached to secularism, Mohamed Kacimi lashed out angrily at white, middle-class opponents of the law, who focused on the freedom of Muslim women to dress as they please. They were not the ones, he said, who had their daughters in the suburbs called prostitutes, bullied and sometimes raped for the sole reason that they chose not to wear the veil – let us remember that many Muslim women do not consider wearing the veil as compulsory: again, we have here Muslims being persecuted by fundamentalists.

France has a long tradition of secular Islam, fully compatible with the laws of the Republic, but at war with fundamentalists. In the nineties, the Paris Imam was shot by fanatics whose violence he denounced; more recently, the Imam of Drancy, who expressed displeasure with Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons but firmly denounced the fatwa issued against them by Al Qaida, was himself condemned to death by the terrorist organization and is living under the protection of the police.

So the question is: how has a fraction of the French youth (of either white, black or Arabic origin) become so responsive to fundamentalism? The answer to this question cannot be directly traced back to “the West bombing Muslim countries”. I think it has primarily to do with the complete failure of the Republic to deliver on its promises of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. Here, there is an important point to make.

I often read in the English press, or hear from British friends, that French laïcité is a “foundational myth” – as if France lived under the illusion that religion could be eradicated once and for all. This has nothing to do with laïcité properly defined. Laïcité does not deny anybody the right to express their religious beliefs, but it aims to found society on a political contract that transcends religious beliefs which, as a result, become mere private affairs. The beurs who marched on Paris in 1983 were performing a laïc demonstration. They were not the only ones to demand that the Republic be true to its own principles. In a beautiful book titled La Démocratie de l’Abstention, two sociologists trace the heartbreaking story (at least it breaks my republican heart*) of how the French citizens who arrived from the former colonies vote massively: they are proud of their right to participate in democracy. They try to convince their children to do the same; but the latter are not interested. Decades of social segregation and economic discrimination has made it clear to them that the word ‘French’ on their passport is meaningless – there is no equality, no freedom and clearly no fraternity.

The process of disenfranchisement was gradual. Riots in the banlieues started erupting at the turn of the eighties, and gathered pace in the nineties. They had no religious subtext: they were expressions of anger at discrimination and police harassment. Yet the need to belong is a fundamental human need: if French youth of Arab descent could not feel that they belonged to France, what would they belong to? La Démocratie de l’abstention describes how the conflict between Israel and Palestine – which had been going on for decades already - suddenly caught the imagination of the youth: it was their Vietnam, their cause. They had found their brothers overseas. When, in the 2009 European elections, a bunch of crazed conspiracy theorists launched an anti-Semitic party which had strictly nothing to do with Europe or with the issues that these youth faced, they registered high votes in many suburbs. And as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself degenerated from a political conflict into a religious conflict, so did the French youth begin to read the world in religious terms.

Youth is the age of self-sacrifice and revolutionary dreams. In the sixties, young middle class Frenchmen who felt alienated from their conservative milieu idolized Mao’s cultural revolution – no less nihilist than Islamic fundamentalism –, dreamed of throwing bombs and sometimes did so. But this case is different. The middle-class Maoists belonged to a privileged class. They were highly educated. They had the intellectual, economic and social means to move out of their nihilist craze and back into the world. The disenfranchised, ostracized youth are an easy target for indoctrinators of all sorts. Their world-view becoming ever more schematic, they endorsed a West Vs Muslim grid that apparently made some of them incapable of recognizing that a newspaper such as Charlie Hebdo, who was standing with Palestine, for ethnic minorities, for equal rights and justice, was on their side – a precious ally: the sole fact that Charlie Hebdo had poked fun at their faith was enough to make them worthy of death.

And yet perhaps this narrative (which, be reassured, is nearing its end) helps you understand what Charlie Hebdo was trying to do. It was precisely trying to defend the republican ideals whereby it is not religion that determines your commitments but justice. It mocked not the religion that Muslims have quietly inherited from their fathers and forefathers, but the aggressive fundamentalism that demands that everybody defines themselves – ethically, politically, geographically – in religious terms. It stressed that a religion that lays a claim to ruling a society is dangerous and, yes, ridiculous, whichever religion it may be – Islam is no sacred cow.

To conclude. I firmly condemn the bombing of Middle-Eastern countries (or any country for that matter) by Western governments. I vote for political parties that condemn it, and I demonstrate against it. I was shocked when such demonstrations were outlawed by the French government – but happy when the same government recognized the Palestinian state. In these demonstrations, I walk with people of all colours, origins and religious creed – we take a political, not a religious stand. And I despair to think that a fraction of the population of my country refuses to regard me as their ally because I am no friend of religions. Being aware of the root causes of the madness that took hold of these young people, I detest politicians who have done nothing to resolve the deliquescence of the banlieues, to fight routine discrimination and control police persecutions. These issues play as big a part in my view in the rise of fundamentalism in the French youth as do events in the Middle East; that is why, had I been in France today, I do not know if I would have wanted to march together with Angela Merkel and David Cameron – much less with Netanyahu and outright Nazis such as Viktor Orban.

This is the difficult argument I am having with my French friends: we are all aware of the fact that the attack on Charlie Hebdo will be exploited by the Far right, and that our government will use it as an opportunity to create a false unanimity within a deeply divided society. We have already heard the prime minister Manuel Valls announce that France was “at war with Terror” – and it horrifies me to recognize the words used by George W. Bush. We are all trying to find the narrow path – defending the Republic against the twin threats of fundamentalism and fascism (and fundamentalism is a form of fascism). But I still believe that the best way to do this is to fight for our Republican ideals. Equality is meaningless in times of austerity. Liberty is but hypocrisy when elements of the French population are being routinely discriminated. But fraternity is lost when religion trumps politics as the structuring principle of a society. Charlie Hebdo promoted equality, liberty and fraternity – they were part of the solution, not the problem.



With all best wishes,



Olivier



* It was pointed out to me that, should this article be read by American friends, my use of "republican" might be misleading. By "republican", I do not mean anything to do with the North American party; I use the term in its French sense - the "république" referring to a secular and democratic Res Publica.
User avatar
Purple
Sith Acolyte
Posts: 5233
Joined: 2010-04-20 08:31am
Location: In a purple cube orbiting this planet. Hijacking satellites for an internet connection.

Re: Terror attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris

Post by Purple »

General Zod wrote:
Purple wrote:Out of curiosity, is BH purely a local problem or do they have the potential and pretense to try and internationalize like ISIL?
Boko Haram operates in multiple countries already don't they? They just don't have much reach outside of Africa.
But from what I understand they are basically rather small and weak compared to ISIS. They are basically like a 2nd league football team from Uzbekistan compared to the Real Madrid that is ISIS. I know, sucky analogy but it's late and it gets the point across.
It has become clear to me in the previous days that any attempts at reconciliation and explanation with the community here has failed. I have tried my best. I really have. I pored my heart out trying. But it was all for nothing.

You win. There, I have said it.

Now there is only one thing left to do. Let us see if I can sum up the strength needed to end things once and for all.
User avatar
Broomstick
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 28846
Joined: 2004-01-02 07:04pm
Location: Industrial armpit of the US Midwest

Re: Terror attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris

Post by Broomstick »

The Romulan Republic wrote:Jesus Christ. Are you suggesting that the West should nuke and gas Middle Eastern countries?
Absolutely not. That would be morally bankrupt and beyond the pale. My point is that WE see taking those weapons off the table as a sign of moral high ground and strength. A group like ISIL might see it as a weakness, because why wouldn't they use any weapon they can obtain to achieve their ends?

Or hadn't you noticed that poison gas WAS used in Syria? Not by a western power but by a more local one. Earlier still, poison gas was used against the Kurds in Iraq. Again, not by a western power but by a more local one. Based on that, I don't think we can assume our enemies in those areas are operating in the same moral system regarding what are and are not acceptable weapons.

However, IF some group did manage to pull off a significant gas attack in the west, or set off a nuke, I am not at all certain if the western prohibition against using NBC weapons would hold against that. That's NOT because I would advocate such a measure, but because the west can be just as barbaric as any other group when sufficiently provoked.
Simon_Jester wrote:
Broomstick wrote:What response is the west (and really, I'd like to come up with a better term than that) taking against Boko Haram? They asked on the internet to return those poor school girls abducted and made into slaves? Mostly, it seems that the response is "that's Nigeria's problem".
Well, what would you have us do? Exactly how many infantry regiments exist to be committed to rescue hostages taken in a civil war on another continent? This ties into a question I ask again a little later: Do you seriously expect the US to fight wars against every bunch of rebels on the planet?
No. In fact, I was opposed to going into Iraq after we had already gotten a war started in Afghanistan and pretty much every other US adventure since that.

I don't know what the “best” response is. What we have been doing these past 15 years or so does not seem to have done much. What we did before 9/11 (largely ignored attacks overseas) didn't work. I certainly don't advocate starting WWIII. So... what other response is there?
ISIL? What is being done isn't effective. The west is arming proxy fighters in the form of Iraqis and Kurds. Didn't we try the proxy fighting thing in Korea and Vietnam?
It depends on the proxies. It also depends on whether the other side has serious backers, and whether there are any regional powers with an incentive to limit the spread of the group we consider a threat. On this issue the Iranians are a backstop, as are the Israelis; both nations have their own reasons not to let a group like ISIL run out of control. Turkey ought to be such a backstop but that is perhaps problematic because ISIL is fighting a group they already hate for ethnic reasons.
I thought Turkey was working to some extent with the Kurds, or at least no longer hindering them as much, not because those two groups like each other but rather because ISIL is a common enemy of both.
ISIL has a stated goal of the Middle East first, the world next. Granted, right now they don't look capable but who would have thought a bunch of German thugs in the 1920's would wind up marching across Europe in the 1940's? Do I think that likely? No - because most groups of "terrorists", "rebels", or whatever other label you care to apply usually don't amount to anything. Once in awhile one does, though.
Does that mean we have to declare all-out war on every group of ragtag lunatics in the world, on the off chance that one of them is the next Nazi party?

Because no nation on Earth has the strength to do that.
I agree – that would be exhausting at best. But how do you distinguish between groups you can safely ignore and those you can't.

I find ISIL acquiring actual territory sliced out of Syria and Iraq to be disturbing. Of course, there's the question of whether or not they can HOLD that territory and set up a functional state that doesn't collapse in short order. At what point does the work sit up and take notice and say “no more”?
On top of that, we have whiners like Crown maintaining this is all about poor oppressed brown people standing up for themselves or some sort of post-colonial reckoning, which isn't helping... It's not - ISIL and Boko Haram don't give a fuck about skin color or race though they will use language of that sort if it further their cause. They're fighting a religious war. That's why they kill so many "fellow Muslims" for not being Muslim enough. A concept Crown obviously doesn't understand because he regards all religion as delusional fairy tales not to be taken seriously, rather than God's Own Truth.
Have you been reading our posts? Because Crown is doing the opposite of that. Now, most of what you say I could reasonably apply to, say, Metahive... attributing a position to the wrong person... not good.
Hmmm... yes, my apologies to Crown, you are correct I got posters mixed up there and that is my bad.
Which gets back to all of this being about competing ideologies. The thing is, while the "western world" is willing to tolerate other religions/cultures/customs/etc. even when those others act in a manner deemed offensive the Islamist extreme is NOT tolerant. For all the accusations of the west meddling in the affairs of others (much of which is true) the groups on the other side of this conflict have no interest in tolerance, their intention is to either convert or exterminate. Hence the mass graves, forced "conversions", and redemption through slavery bullshit. The west does have a lot of bad deeds to account for in the past, but no western power has lined people up and methodically shot them to death since WWII. Yet ISIL is doing that on a regular basis.
This has been going on in the Third World since World War Two and before. It's not that this is new, it's that in most of the world this never stopped happening. The exceptions are all areas with (for their times) strong, well-ordered governments and a (by local standards) prosperous economy. The Pax Romana comes to mind, as does modern Europe which achieves the same condition of relative peace by different and in my opinion better means.

The Middle East does not have this kind of peace. It cannot be imposed from outside without a massive "war of the continents" that will predictably kill many millions and which risks destroying that which we would wish to save.

And there's not a lot we can do to fix that, given that any worthwhile polity in the region that might establish such a peace has been methodically destroyed, often by our own efforts.
So... what is left? Simply ignore it all and let the killing go on? There seems to be no good answers here, anything chosen or not chosen leads to death and suffering for millions.
At what point does the west stop pulling punches? Because the brutal fact is that there are several nations that could literally obliterate ISIL and Boko Haram strongholds if so motivated. The fact we have weapons like nukes and gas and don't use them is seen as a weakness by the opposition, even if our restraint is laudable to our ethics.
First of all, I'm not sure "the opposition" thinks that way. Second of all, I am quite certain that NATO nuclear doctrine should not be governed by the fear of looking 'weak' to a bunch of jumped-up bandits in technicals. Thirdly, you're old enough to remember "we had to destroy the village in order to save it," right?

It's not just that it's unethical to fight a war in which you will predictably have to destroy that which you set out to save. It's pointless.
I agree – NATO (and any other) nuclear doctrine should not be governed by, as you put it, looking weak to jumped up bandits. I also agree it's pointless to destroy that which you wish to save, but surely you have heard the expression “kill them all and let god sort out his own”?

ISIL has forced people to convert to their brand of Islam and then killed them anyway. That strikes me as stupid, yet to them it (apparently) makes sense. Well, it makes sense form the standpoint of stealing their stuff and enslaving all the women and children, which is a style of victory looting that goes back as far as written history in that part of the world. Well, mixed motives in war is nothing new, either.

My concern is that if an NBC terror attack succeeds in the west the restraints may come off in a very ugly way. The west is just as capable of barbarity, war crimes, and horrific acts as any third world country even if the culture's morality usually acts as a brake.
Maybe the world decides to suffer the pinpricks for another 100 years. I don't know. The more I learn about history the more I realize my ability to predicts events is poor to nil.
The Middle Eastern insurgencies we face today are no more dangerous than the Communist insurgencies of fifty years ago. If anything they are less dangerous because they have no single, organized backer with substantial forces of their own.
As I said, most such groups don't endure long. Once in awhile, though, something more permanent congeals. I'm not sufficiently conversant with history to know what the differences between the two groups are, or what tips a group from "rag tag rabble-rousers" to "OMG - these guys are now in control in country X and expanding, this is a serious problem for everyone".
jwl wrote:With boko haram, the west are doing something, they're just not doing as much as they could. Britain and america are giving anti-guerrilla training to Nigerian troops, that should come in handy in the future.
I question if that's really going to be sufficient.
ISIL? What is being done isn't effective. The west is arming proxy fighters in the form of Iraqis and Kurds. Didn't we try the proxy fighting thing in Korea and Vietnam?
Didn't you notice half the world going in with bombs and stuff? Yeah, they have no ground troops and the attacks are highly restrained but this level of air assault will make it difficult for them to continue, in iraq at least.
I am pessimistic about air assaults actually stopping them. When have airborne bombing campaigns without boots on the ground actually worked to stop a conflict? If there's an example of that I'd very much like to know about it.
ISIL has a stated goal of the Middle East first, the world next. Granted, right now they don't look capable but who would have thought a bunch of German thugs in the 1920's would wind up marching across Europe in the 1940's? Do I think that likely? No - because most groups of "terrorists", "rebels", or whatever other label you care to apply usually don't amount to anything. Once in awhile one does, though.
The reason those german thugs got anywhere at all was because they switched tactics from violence to dirty politics then took advantage of germany's resources. Daash isn't interested in doing this.

To be fair, germany at the time didn't have a huge military power either because of the treaty of versailles, but they had a large industrial base to allow them to build one. Iraq doesn't have this, and militaries have moved on now from what they were like in WWII anyway.
So, basically, the bad guys these days are all Blitzkrieg and no politics and governance? That actually makes quite a bit of sense. I'm wondering of Germany's prior military capability, before the Treaty of Versailles, also made a difference? After all, there were still all those military guys from before then who still had the knowledge to make an effective military rather than having to start from scratch.
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. Leonard Nimoy.

Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy

Sam Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice
User avatar
Broomstick
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 28846
Joined: 2004-01-02 07:04pm
Location: Industrial armpit of the US Midwest

Re: Terror attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris

Post by Broomstick »

Elheru Aran wrote:As far as Boko Haram goes: Whatever the West has been doing, it is not enough. Boko Haram has been fairly indiscriminately slaughtering people across northern Nigeria for some time now.

Their latest assault may have killed as many as 2,000 people. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/j ... ga-nigeria

The government claims that only 150 were killed, but odds are pretty good that's propaganda BS.

We may be "training" troops or whatever in Nigeria, but frankly, the government and military there are doing sweet fuck-all to resolve the situation. Whether this is out of bureaucratic inertia, corruption, or cowardice, or some combination thereof (having lived there for 13 years I suspect it's all three), the fact of the matter is that they are not doing anything to resolve what is starting to look like a civil war-- an intensely lop-sided one. Remember those girls kidnapped from a school back in, oh, April or May? Still captive, if they haven't been sold into sex slavery by now.
There seems to be an unwritten rule that you can do whatever the fuck you want within your own borders and the world won't give a damn. For example: North Korea. Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Iraq gassing Kurds under Hussein. And so on.

The world didn't do a damn thing against Iraq until Iraq invaded Kuwait - Oh, no! It's spreading, STOP IT!!! (which might have been the right thing to do, but let's not divert into that debate, it's merely an example)

As long as Boko Haram stays within Nigeria (more or less - the rest of the world seems fuzzy about borders in Africa) I doubt much will be done by anyone outside Nigeria, at least not beyond what has been done. It's a "local" problem no matter how many suffer and die. If Boko Haram starts to spread, though, if it somehow jumps to the next level and starts seriously conquering more territory then the world (might) become more involved.

Who the hell had ever heard of ISIL before they sliced off a bit of Syria and Iraq for themselves? And still the world seems to consider the problem more local than not.

Everyone seems very reluctant to get involved - which most of the time probably is a good thing given how often foreign interventions wind up as a mess. What's the point the rest of the world SHOULD get involved?
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. Leonard Nimoy.

Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy

Sam Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice
AniThyng
Sith Devotee
Posts: 2777
Joined: 2003-09-08 12:47pm
Location: Took an arrow in the knee.
Contact:

Re: Terror attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris

Post by AniThyng »

Terralthra wrote:I found this article to be fairly enlightening and well-written:
On Charlie Hebdo: A letter to my British friends, by Olivier Tonneau wrote: That the emergence of fundamentalism is posing serious problems to Arabs also sheds an interesting light on the law banning the hijab – a law that is routinely mentioned as a proof of France’s anti-Muslim bias. I do not have a definite opinion on this law. I was, however, stunned when I read a very angry article by a writer I admire, Mohamed Kacimi. The son of an Algerian Imam, deeply attached to his Muslim culture yet also fiercely attached to secularism, Mohamed Kacimi lashed out angrily at white, middle-class opponents of the law, who focused on the freedom of Muslim women to dress as they please. They were not the ones, he said, who had their daughters in the suburbs called prostitutes, bullied and sometimes raped for the sole reason that they chose not to wear the veil – let us remember that many Muslim women do not consider wearing the veil as compulsory: again, we have here Muslims being persecuted by fundamentalists.
This particular paragraph strikes me as at the heart of what I'm trying to resolve myself - there clearly is a 'culture war' within muslim society itself - but how can we, as outsiders (insofar as I am a non-muslim in a muslim society) take sides in this? Either way has it's problems, and it's difficult enough that global Islam sees itself as the weakened party - oppressed by conservative/evangelical Christianity on one side, and secularism and liberalism on the other.
I do know how to spell
AniThyng is merely the name I gave to what became my favourite Baldur's Gate II mage character :P
AniThyng
Sith Devotee
Posts: 2777
Joined: 2003-09-08 12:47pm
Location: Took an arrow in the knee.
Contact:

Re: Terror attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris

Post by AniThyng »

Saudi Arabia to flog man 1,000 times for insulting religion on Facebook
Updated After Friday prayers at the Al-Jafali mosque in the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah, Raif Badawi will receive the first 50 lashes of his 1,000 stroke sentence for the crime of publishing blasphemy against Islam on Facebook.

In May, Badawi, a father of three, was sentenced to five years in prison, and will receive 1,000 lashes to be administered in public over the next 20 weeks using a seven-foot bamboo cane the width of a man's little finger. His misdeed: admitting on Facebook that he is an atheist, a supporter of women's rights, and saying: "The combination of the sword and the Quran are more dangerous than a nuclear bomb."

The court also gave Badawi an additional five years in prison, fined him one million Saudi Arabian riyals (about US$266,370), and banned him from traveling abroad for ten years after release – all for the crime of setting up a website called Liberal Saudi Network, on which members of the site posted similar views.

"The news that Raif Badawi's flogging will start tomorrow is shocking," said Philip Luther, Middle East and North Africa Director for Amnesty International, on Thursday.

"It is horrifying to think that such a vicious and cruel punishment should be imposed on someone who is guilty of nothing more than daring to create a public forum for discussion and peacefully exercising the right to freedom of expression."

The court order [PDF] for Badawi's case, obtained by the non-profit Center for Inquiry, accuses him of corrupting faith, criticizing the religious authorities in Saudi Arabia, and spreading sedition. This breaks Islamic scripture, specifically “sedition is far worse than murder” [Quran 2:191].

In light of the Charlie Hebdo atrocity earlier this week, you may think this is a case of bad timing by the Saudi authorities, but it's simply business as usual in the Middle Eastern monarchy – which is praised as the West's partner in The War Against Terror (TWAT).

In November, for example, Amnesty reports that three lawyers were sentenced to between five and eight years in prison, fined 1,25m Saudi Arabian riyals ($332,965), stripped of their licenses to practice law in the kingdom, and banned from traveling abroad for ten years after being released. Their crime was to tweet complaining that the court system had lost some of their files and that some verdicts by the Ministry of Justice were unfair.

Social network use is quite common in the Saudi kingdom, but also very risky. In 2012, the poet Hamza Kashgari fled the country after being charged with the capital offense of apostasy after tweeting an imaginary conversation between himself and Mohammed. He was arrested, then released after making an official apology.

Amnesty reports that the Saudi authorities began seriously cracking down on internet use in 2013, and security researchers have since spotted that the country flings around malware to track its critics inside and outside its borders.

In May 2013, the country's telco made the hilarious mistake of trying to recruit security guru Moxie Marlinspike to create a system for monitoring encrypted social networking applications for the Saudi government. Moxie, a dreadlocked anarchist with hardcore security skills, published the transcripts of the conversations online for all to see.

It's still possible that Badawi, 30, could be spared the flogging on Friday if international pressure is brought to bear on the government. But he is just one of a long list of cases where the Saudis have used religious law to crack down on anything approaching free speech online. ®
Update on January 8

The US State Department has issued a statement on Badawi's sentence and asked the Saudi government to show mercy.

"We are greatly concerned by reports that human rights activist Raif Badawi will start facing the inhumane punishment of a 1,000 lashes, in addition to serving a 10-year sentence in prison for exercising his rights to freedom of expression and religion," said spokesperson Jen Psaki.

"The United States Government calls on Saudi authorities to cancel this brutal punishment and to review Badawi’s case and sentence. The United States strongly opposes laws, including apostasy laws, that restrict the exercise of these freedoms, and urges all countries to uphold these rights in practice."

It remains to be seen if America's TWAT partner will heed the message.
Update on January 9

Agence France Press reports that the first installment of Badawi's sentence was carried out this morning. ®
Well, at least he'll still be alive at the end.
I do know how to spell
AniThyng is merely the name I gave to what became my favourite Baldur's Gate II mage character :P
User avatar
The Romulan Republic
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 21559
Joined: 2008-10-15 01:37am

Re: Terror attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris

Post by The Romulan Republic »

Broomstick wrote:My concern is that if an NBC terror attack succeeds in the west the restraints may come off in a very ugly way. The west is just as capable of barbarity, war crimes, and horrific acts as any third world country even if the culture's morality usually acts as a brake.
This at least I agree with. I more or less take it for granted that a successful nuclear attack by Islamic terrorists in the United States would result in nuking of one or more Muslim countries and American becoming a much more authoritarian state, possibly an outright dictatorship. At least if the President is a Republican (and quite possibly if they're not).
User avatar
Broomstick
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 28846
Joined: 2004-01-02 07:04pm
Location: Industrial armpit of the US Midwest

Re: Terror attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris

Post by Broomstick »

I don't think the political affiliation of the president would make one whit of difference under such a scenario.
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. Leonard Nimoy.

Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy

Sam Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice
Grumman
Jedi Council Member
Posts: 2488
Joined: 2011-12-10 09:13am

Re: Terror attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris

Post by Grumman »

Broomstick wrote:Everyone seems very reluctant to get involved - which most of the time probably is a good thing given how often foreign interventions wind up as a mess. What's the point the rest of the world SHOULD get involved?
As a bare minimum, an intervention should only be conducted on behalf of someone we know will appreciate it. When Saddam invaded Kuwait, we could say with reasonable certainty that Kuwait would be on our side or at least step aside to let us fight for them. Intervening in North Korea on behalf of the North Koreans is liable to end badly when we have no way of accurately determining whether they'll greet us as liberators or die futilely trying to protect/avenge their oppressors.
User avatar
salm
Rabid Monkey
Posts: 10296
Joined: 2002-09-09 08:25pm

Re: Terror attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris

Post by salm »

AniThyng wrote:
Terralthra wrote:I found this article to be fairly enlightening and well-written:
On Charlie Hebdo: A letter to my British friends, by Olivier Tonneau wrote: That the emergence of fundamentalism is posing serious problems to Arabs also sheds an interesting light on the law banning the hijab – a law that is routinely mentioned as a proof of France’s anti-Muslim bias. I do not have a definite opinion on this law. I was, however, stunned when I read a very angry article by a writer I admire, Mohamed Kacimi. The son of an Algerian Imam, deeply attached to his Muslim culture yet also fiercely attached to secularism, Mohamed Kacimi lashed out angrily at white, middle-class opponents of the law, who focused on the freedom of Muslim women to dress as they please. They were not the ones, he said, who had their daughters in the suburbs called prostitutes, bullied and sometimes raped for the sole reason that they chose not to wear the veil – let us remember that many Muslim women do not consider wearing the veil as compulsory: again, we have here Muslims being persecuted by fundamentalists.
This particular paragraph strikes me as at the heart of what I'm trying to resolve myself - there clearly is a 'culture war' within muslim society itself - but how can we, as outsiders (insofar as I am a non-muslim in a muslim society) take sides in this? Either way has it's problems, and it's difficult enough that global Islam sees itself as the weakened party - oppressed by conservative/evangelical Christianity on one side, and secularism and liberalism on the other.
You can create conditions within a society in which normal people feel welcome whereas extremists do not. If a large portion of your society doesn´t understand the difference between normal people and extremists, though, such conditions can not be created and you have to focus on educating the population on this matter.
And this, in a nutshell, is Europes problem. Too many people can not differentiate. It´s a problem trivial to notice but very difficult and time consuming do solve.
User avatar
Dark Hellion
Permanent n00b
Posts: 3554
Joined: 2002-08-25 07:56pm

Re: Terror attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris

Post by Dark Hellion »

Elheru Aran wrote:As far as Boko Haram goes: Whatever the West has been doing, it is not enough. Boko Haram has been fairly indiscriminately slaughtering people across northern Nigeria for some time now.
What exactly is the West supposed to do. I mean, Europe could call upon the US to killfuck a couple hundred thousand people and then criticize the US for somehow not only killfucking the correct bad people. We could give money and guns to Nigeria, which would promptly be sold to Boko Haram and other people the west hate.

This is the problem I have with many of these "we gotta do something" claims. There isn't a solution being proposed, just a problem being talked about and a subtle condemnation that somehow, someone (which is generally the US but often just generically the West) isn't doing enough to combat the nebulous problem being proposed.

It seems like a lot of progressives want a magic evil seeking bullet to be invented that can be used to kill bad people. Otherwise their only option is to bitch and moan.

I think this tendency is why an older realist like Broomstick is expressing such cynicism. Anyone who has interacted with Broom can tell you she is similarly minded to the board at large. But this inability of the left to come up with any actual suggestions to dealing with the actual problem makes you resort to either the conservative solution or the historical solutions of kill the fuck outta the enemy until they are irrelevant.

And lets face it, you would have to be either a saint or a liar to say you haven't had similarly cynical thoughts that perhaps we should show these medieval barbarians the reason the West is so "soft". Because the level of brutality that modern states wield required new words like megadeath and omnicide to be invented just to describe how utterly terrifying our ability to inflict death had become. And if they see our reluctance to use nuclear weapons as weakness to actual show them why we are hesitant to rain nuclear hellfire upon them by turning their little sand shitholes into glass.

It would seem that the tolerance of the West isn't simply for cultural differences. The tolerance for atrocity is also far higher, as long as the tragedy is elsewhere.
A teenage girl is just a teenage boy who can get laid.
-GTO

We're not just doing this for money; we're doing this for a shitload of money!
User avatar
Metahive
Sith Devotee
Posts: 2795
Joined: 2010-09-02 09:08am
Location: Little Korea in Big Germany

Re: Terror attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris

Post by Metahive »

Dark_Hellion wrote:It seems like a lot of progressives want a magic evil seeking bullet to be invented that can be used to kill bad people. Otherwise their only option is to bitch and moan.
Dude, the people who want something to be done about them Muslim Evildoers ain't left wing or progressives. Pegida, who "protest" against this stuff are far-right and so are the people who push for interventionism. Is Phil Robertson, the Duck Dynasty "star" who told on national television that ISIS must be converted or killed off left-wing? In fact, any of the left-wing people on this thread have talked against the sort of mindless actionism that comes up whenever an islamic terror attack happens.

Also, Simon and Broom, are you saying I'm gleefully rubbing my hands and relish at the thought of Middle Easterners murdering Westerners and justify it as vengeance for past wrongs? In that case I'm taking a page out of Crown's playbook and demand you to either put up evidence for that or retract and apologize.
People at birth are naturally good. Their natures are similar, but their habits make them different from each other.
-Sanzi Jing (Three Character Classic)

Saddam’s crime was so bad we literally spent decades looking for our dropped monocles before we could harumph up the gumption to address it
-User Indigo Jump on Pharyngula

O God, please don't let me die today, tomorrow would be so much better!
-Traditional Spathi morning prayer
User avatar
salm
Rabid Monkey
Posts: 10296
Joined: 2002-09-09 08:25pm

Re: Terror attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris

Post by salm »

And several European countries are using the attack to justify more surveillance and border controls while at the same time claming that we shouldn´t make the same mistakes as the US after 9/11.
Who could possibly have seen that comming...
AniThyng
Sith Devotee
Posts: 2777
Joined: 2003-09-08 12:47pm
Location: Took an arrow in the knee.
Contact:

Re: Terror attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris

Post by AniThyng »

salm wrote:And several European countries are using the attack to justify more surveillance and border controls while at the same time claming that we shouldn´t make the same mistakes as the US after 9/11.
Who could possibly have seen that comming...
Not sure which is worse, that or the attacks being used to justify harsh freedom of speech restrictions (so nobody except of course a particular group *cough* can make offensive statements).
I do know how to spell
AniThyng is merely the name I gave to what became my favourite Baldur's Gate II mage character :P
User avatar
jwl
Jedi Master
Posts: 1137
Joined: 2013-01-02 04:31pm

Re: Terror attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris

Post by jwl »

Broomstick wrote:
jwl wrote:With boko haram, the west are doing something, they're just not doing as much as they could. Britain and america are giving anti-guerrilla training to Nigerian troops, that should come in handy in the future.
I question if that's really going to be sufficient.
Well that really depends what you want it to be sufficient for. I do think that it will have some negative impact on boko haram, but yeah, if you want to get rid of them this is not how you go about it.
Didn't you notice half the world going in with bombs and stuff? Yeah, they have no ground troops and the attacks are highly restrained but this level of air assault will make it difficult for them to continue, in iraq at least.
I am pessimistic about air assaults actually stopping them. When have airborne bombing campaigns without boots on the ground actually worked to stop a conflict? If there's an example of that I'd very much like to know about it.[/quote]
Well it worked in libya. There was still warfare in libya afterwards but that was mainly because the west left once Tripoli fell. I doubt they are going to do the same thing in iraq, and it will be different in iraq because they will be maintaining a regime instead of destroying it, which should lead to a higher level of stability after daash get pushed back, especially since the previous incompetent intolerant leader has gone.
The reason those german thugs got anywhere at all was because they switched tactics from violence to dirty politics then took advantage of germany's resources. Daash isn't interested in doing this.

To be fair, germany at the time didn't have a huge military power either because of the treaty of versailles, but they had a large industrial base to allow them to build one. Iraq doesn't have this, and militaries have moved on now from what they were like in WWII anyway.
So, basically, the bad guys these days are all Blitzkrieg and no politics and governance? That actually makes quite a bit of sense. I'm wondering of Germany's prior military capability, before the Treaty of Versailles, also made a difference? After all, there were still all those military guys from before then who still had the knowledge to make an effective military rather than having to start from scratch.
Yeah, pretty much. And I imagine it did.
AniThyng wrote:Well, at least he'll still be alive at the end.
Is the guaranteed? Do they have a policy of stopping the lashes if he gets too weak?
Last edited by jwl on 2015-01-13 04:27am, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Metahive
Sith Devotee
Posts: 2795
Joined: 2010-09-02 09:08am
Location: Little Korea in Big Germany

Re: Terror attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris

Post by Metahive »

On second reading I see that I read it wrong, so ignore my demand, however:
Broomstick wrote:On top of that, we have whiners like [Metahive] maintaining this is all about poor oppressed brown people standing up for themselves or some sort of post-colonial reckoning, which isn't helping. It's not - ISIL and Boko Haram don't give a fuck about skin color or race though they will use language of that sort if it further their cause. They're fighting a religious war. That's why they kill so many "fellow Muslims" for not being Muslim enough. A concept [Metahive] obviously doesn't understand because he regards all religion as delusional fairy tales not to be taken seriously, rather than God's Own Truth.
Y'know what's funny? When the Troubles or the Thirty Years War or the Crusades are brought up as examples of Christians murdering in the name of Jesus, people are quick to point out that there's more to it than just religious fanatcism, that there were very complex socio-economical and geo-political reasons that played into it as well which can't be ignored and that simply blaming it all on Christiainity is wrong. And you know what? Those people are right. I know because I once belonged into the former camp. Then I actually studied material about the Thirty Years War, the situation in Ireland and the Crusades and changed my tune.

ISIS flies the "banner of the prophet" but it is undenniable that the reason they were making it as far as they did isn't because they were overly "righteous" or "faithful in the strength of their convictions", it's because they were able to capitalize on past grudges. In Iraq the Shi'ite government decided to pay its former Sunni overlords back for the oppression they suffered under the Sunni Saddam. When it came to Sunnis having to defend the Shi'ite government, the same government that was oppressing them, from the Sunnis of ISIS they either didn't fight or defected and that's why ISIS managed to get its greedy hands on so much western war-material. I also stress again that the Sunnite-Shi'ite split is primarily political, the biggest difference isn't in any religious doctrine but in the question of who was the true successor to Muhammad's position and the power and influence it brought with it. Also, ISIS is fighting with genocidal furor against the Kurds who are fellow Sunnis, so much for the implication of ethnicity having no part in this.
Also, why does Iraq have Kurds, Sunnites and Shi'ites so close together in one place who hate each other? Because the country is an artificial construct whose borders were drawn by the French and British at Versailles out of the remnants of the Ottoman Empire. So you can whine all you want about it, but this is yet another thing where Colonialism had its bloody hand in.

So what can we do about it here? Well, tell you what. Nothing. Nothing that has actually a realistic chance of improving the situation over there at least. If we suppress Islam and put Muslims under general suspicion, which will be the likely result if we follow yours, Simon's and Crown's suggestion of blaming it all primarily on Islam, it won't do a thing to ISIS or Boko Haram and instead drive more Muslims in Europe towards sympathy with Al-Quaeda and the like. I mean, what have they to lose when you already think they're deep down murderous fanatics and treat them accordingly?

I also have to laught at this whole "need to show strength", because all the pasts's "shows of strength" only made the situation worse and drove more people over there to fanaticism. Do you think the CIA shoving foodstuff up their asses is what they fear, the dronestrikes, the military interventions? No, they count on it, because they aren't stupid and know that when the West decides to "do something" more radical in the Middle East it's going to be a Bull in China Shop type of deal. Denmark, Sweden and France all decided to "do something" about the religious tensions in Germany 1618-1648 but all it helped do was making the war longer and more gruesome.

It's time we learn from history for a chance I think.
People at birth are naturally good. Their natures are similar, but their habits make them different from each other.
-Sanzi Jing (Three Character Classic)

Saddam’s crime was so bad we literally spent decades looking for our dropped monocles before we could harumph up the gumption to address it
-User Indigo Jump on Pharyngula

O God, please don't let me die today, tomorrow would be so much better!
-Traditional Spathi morning prayer
Simon_Jester
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 30165
Joined: 2009-05-23 07:29pm

Re: Terror attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris

Post by Simon_Jester »

Metahive:

Put this way. Other factors make various revolts and wars likely in the Middle East.

Islam, and fundamentalist Islam in particular, strongly influence the character of those revolts and wars. As in, what targets are considered valid, what tactics are embraced, what minorities are vulnerable to persecution.
Metahive wrote:
Dark_Hellion wrote:It seems like a lot of progressives want a magic evil seeking bullet to be invented that can be used to kill bad people. Otherwise their only option is to bitch and moan.
Dude, the people who want something to be done about them Muslim Evildoers ain't left wing or progressives. Pegida, who "protest" against this stuff are far-right and so are the people who push for interventionism. Is Phil Robertson, the Duck Dynasty "star" who told on national television that ISIS must be converted or killed off left-wing? In fact, any of the left-wing people on this thread have talked against the sort of mindless actionism that comes up whenever an islamic terror attack happens.
Once in a while a left-wing person tends to 'snap' in a sense and go "WHY AREN'T WE DOING SOMETHING ABOUT THIS!?" Usually in the immediate aftermath of some atrocity that triggers it. Some things, frankly, would do that to any person with a bit of strategic sense and desire to live in a peaceful society protected from violence.

In my honest opinion, there has to be something wrong with you to not want to, for example, be able to rescue a bunch of schoolgirls taken hostage. Or to prevent satirists from being murdered by terrorists, or to prevent religious minorities in northern Iraq from being murdered by armies of fanatics while the Iraqi army flees in terror. These are manifestly evil acts, and it would be desirable to stop these evils. This is not the result of jingoism, imperialism, racism, or anything- it's just that when we see people being abused horribly by fanatics, we want it to stop.

The problem with actually trying to do this boils down to our inability to police the rest of the world, and sometimes people forget that. It's a practical issue, though, not an ethical one.
Also, Simon and Broom, are you saying I'm gleefully rubbing my hands and relish at the thought of Middle Easterners murdering Westerners and justify it as vengeance for past wrongs? In that case I'm taking a page out of Crown's playbook and demand you to either put up evidence for that or retract and apologize.
Uh, no, I didn't say that. I don't think you're gleeful.

On the other hand, as I recall, you're awfully quick to present those past wrongs as justification and explanation for the status quo. Which I consider to be the moral equivalent of pointing to a child abuser and saying it's not really their fault because they were abused as a child too.
Dark Hellion wrote:It would seem that the tolerance of the West isn't simply for cultural differences. The tolerance for atrocity is also far higher, as long as the tragedy is elsewhere.
I wouldn't say that. I mean, atrocities just as large and horrible were tolerated in earlier times. The reason for 'tolerance' of such things is that as a practical matter, the people 'tolerating' them lack the means to solve the problem. At best, they could flail around and create an entirely new, destabilized situation in which different atrocities would occur.
This space dedicated to Vasily Arkhipov
Post Reply