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tl:dr 100 pages: 1) People are fucking poor and hungry (extreme wealth inequalities) 2) Salafi/Wahhabi (Saudi) funding of islamism 3) Antediluvian hatred between people (it goes, way, way, way farther back than Sykes-Picot)
tl:dr 100 pages: 1) People are fucking poor and hungry (extreme wealth inequalities) 2) Salafi/Wahhabi (Saudi) funding of islamism 3) Antediluvian hatred between people (it goes, way, way, way farther back than Sykes-Picot)
Thanks, will read after work. :-) It was surprising. From what I've read, people living for a long time in dictatorships are quite intolerant and hateful. (There were quite a bit of intolerance in East Germany after 1989, too. And examples from Eastern Europe are well known.) If/when the Arab world get rid of the dictators controlling the media and education gets better, they should become more "normal". Or maybe I a…
I recommend to read Raphael Patai's classic "The Arab mind" to try to understand. Don't drink the NYT koolaid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Arab_Mind
I will nevertheless read it.
I recommend to read Raphael Patai's classic "The Arab mind" to try to understand. Don't drink the NYT koolaid.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like most of modern history: America's fault most recently, but Europe's fault originally.
When Europe dominated the Middle East (and Africa), it was a pretty safe place. Certainly there was hope. Now the entire region is going down the sink. Maybe the problem instead is that Europe _LEFT_ ?
tl:dr 100 pages: 1) People are fucking poor and hungry (extreme wealth inequalities) 2) Salafi/Wahhabi (Saudi) funding of islamism 3) Antediluvian hatred between people (it goes, way, way, way farther back than Sykes-Picot)
It seems they are missing an important factor, namely 4) the personal, cultural and economical impairment due to the religion of Islam. Nobody has time to thrive when they have to pray five times a day, when almost every thought and action is dictated by an old book and when half of their human potential is hidden in cloth bags.
Furthermore, I think maximizing for "human potential" is a red herring -- the inevitable end-result is exercising control over a given population to exploit their human potential and TBH that sounds revolting. We should be given the freedom to live our lives out regardless of someone else's small and personal ambitions, including dedicating our lives to practicing Islam.
I haven't read the article yet but from the introduction I sense a narrative that the current situation is due to the 'illegitimate' second war in Irak? So it's Amerika's fault as usual?
Where do those spare 'k's come from in America and Iraq?
He's Dutch though.
The 'Arab World' was never together. Ever.
All of the 'Anti-American Imperialism' kids here should remember that the bulk of the 'Arab World' is 'Arab By The Sword'.
Arabic is spoken across North Africa, in particular because of Arab Colonialism of the 9th-12th centuries.
Not since then has the 'Arab World' been anything resembling 'together'.
The Turks kept them (and there was not much of them) under the thumb, after that the Europeans tried to maintain some degree of balance, now the Americans.
The most recent and damaging decision by the US was Obama's withdrawl of troops in Iraq. Of course, invading in the first place - but Obama simply by virtue of having 10K soldiers sitting on a base 'behind the wire' doing nothing, could have kept forcing Malaki to play nice with the Sunnis. The moment Obama withdrew, Malaki purged Iraq of Sunnis, and the Sunni tribes decided that ISIS was 'less worse' than their own government and there you have it.
As far as Syria ... this is a function of the 'Arab Spring' more than anything, and I don't think anyone can say anyone else is directly responsible for that. Other than the standard: Assad, Saudis, Iran etc...
Once things stabilize in Syria, maybe things can start to settle down.
Ha ha ha ... ha ... The 'Arab World' was never together. Ever. All of the 'Anti-American Imperialism' kids here should remember that the bulk of the 'Arab World' is 'Arab By The Sword'. Arabic is spoken across North Africa, in particular because of Arab Colonialism of the 9th-12th centuries. Not since then has the 'Arab World' been anything resembling 'together'. The Turks kept them (and there was not much of them) u…