How the Arab World Came Apart • Hacker News Board

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#231

Post by acqq » Thu, Aug 11, 2016, 2:56 PM UTC

spriggan3 wrote: post #113

hellrich wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar punishments are prescribed by the Old Testament, so not specific to Islam. Luckily religion was replaced as a moral and especially legal guideline in "the West" thanks to the Enlightenment and the French revolution.

> Similar punishments are prescribed by the Old Testament, so not specific to Islam. Saying that is ignoring the hadiths and the sharia which describe in great details all the aspects of the life of a Muslim. There is no such thing with Christianity. There are no "christian tribunals" describe by the bible. Islam is closer to Judaism in that aspect. The bible doesn't cover in great details all the aspects of life of…

The parallel (but in the opposite direction) with the New, potentially peacefuler(1) Testament replacing the older, bloodier one, in Islam is that the "newer" Quran verses (and in the same book specifically proclaimed to be "more true" even if "all are true") are actually those calling for Jihad and the "unbelievers" (original: Kafirs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kafir or mushriks, depending on the verse) to be "slayed" (and variants). The original term for the "newer verses are more true" principle (also known as abrogation) is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naskh_(tafsir)

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1) but still, regretfully, threatening with the "hell" for ever and ever for the "sinners," judgement day and the stuff

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#232

Post by tim333 » Thu, Aug 11, 2016, 2:58 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #136

intended wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> infrastructure for AC-based indoor living in the entire region and beyond Thats a huge amount of constant power and infrastructure, which is just not going to be built. Easier to build an underground city with high ceilings and taking advantage of physics than managing to give AC to everyone in the region, which is to say both options are extremely difficult and require pre-existing infrastructure. And this still d…

> underground city with high ceilings and taking advantage of physics Ancient Iranian architecture was quite close to that, which you may be alluding to: http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Architecture/wind.htm What people will do? Well, same as everywhere else, everything from agriculture to software. It's more a question of how many of them the local agriculture can support. The number of people who've fled Syria is mor…

Or there's solar powered aircon https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/wall-split-type-Energ...

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#233

Post by DanielBMarkham » Thu, Aug 11, 2016, 2:59 PM UTC

jcranmer wrote: post #216

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #2

So far this is good. There's a lot of depth. One nit: " Much as the United States Army and white settlers did with Indian tribes in the conquest of the American West, so the British and French and Italians proved adept at pitting these groups against one another, bestowing favors — weapons or food or sinecures — to one faction in return for fighting another. The great difference, of course, is that in the American We…

The problem with blaming Sykes-Picot for everything is that almost none of the modern borders are due to that agreement (well, the Jordan-Syria border does seem to match up, but that's it). More likely a better explanation lies in the importation of the Western idea of a nation-state (that a country should be coterminus with cultural boundaries), which tends to strongly reject the idea that countries can have multipl…

Thank you. Much-needed context.

This rabbit hole goes down deep. Too much for HN. There's a lot of ground to cover: gates of Vienna, and the fall of Constantinople, the Second Crusade, and so on.

As one can imagine, depending on where you choose to focus, you can fall back on western meddling or not. Sadly, this is the case for most arguments in the Mideast. Some things never change.

Suffice it to say that we could continue. For some time. It's a mixed bag, and nobody is either entirely innocent or entirely culpable. Simplifications -- even those in comment threads like ours -- invariably give the wrong impression.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#234

Post by k__ » Thu, Aug 11, 2016, 3:00 PM UTC

nickik wrote: post #211

k__ wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the west and especially the US have anything from stability? I think they also would do, what they did to the "arab world" to Russia or China if they could. The parts of the world that advance faster can dictate more rules, so everyone needs to get ahead. One way to ensure that this is the case is to slow other parts down.

Yes, stability would be good for them and everybody. War and fighting is not good for business in general. The instability we see is definitely not a function of design. If you have studied any of it you will quickly realise that this is situation that has many actors that act based on their own interest and absolutely nobody has control over it. Those that attempt to control it usually end up creating a hole host of…

But if they throw people into war, they have control.

I mean, yes these people are now uncontrollable, but they also in a state of chaos that prevents them from getting so advanced that they would be a real problem for first world countries on a global scale.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#235

Post by allendoerfer » Thu, Aug 11, 2016, 3:02 PM UTC

tdkl wrote: post #87

jcbeard wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The invasion of Iraq was stupid. It was likely illegal, based on false pretenses, and well....shouldn't have happened. The invasions initial execution was beautiful (first few days). The US Military performed splendidly. The follow through (driven by political leaders) was idiotic. Stupid decisions like not listening to his generals (Bush), disbanding the Iraqi security forces (Paul Bremer), and the odd focus on turn…

> (sounds like somebody that's running for president this year) Someone else running for president this year has pledged that the first act of her address would be removing Assad. Which brings us back at the beginning of stupid actions.

> Someone else running for president this year has pledged that the first act of her address would be removing Assad.

Great plan, weren't there all these terrorists cutting of heads and stuff, making him look like an angel. Also there is this tiny problem of Russian troops fighting for Assad, which could interfere with the otherwise genius plan.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#236

Post by mytddu » Thu, Aug 11, 2016, 3:02 PM UTC

jcbeard wrote: post #76

sevenless wrote: post #13

The NYTimes itself is also a considerable part of the reason, considering Judith Miller, Friedman, Krauthammer and many others propagandized hard for invading Iraq.

The invasion of Iraq was stupid. It was likely illegal, based on false pretenses, and well....shouldn't have happened. The invasions initial execution was beautiful (first few days). The US Military performed splendidly. The follow through (driven by political leaders) was idiotic. Stupid decisions like not listening to his generals (Bush), disbanding the Iraqi security forces (Paul Bremer), and the odd focus on turn…

> The invasions initial execution was beautiful (first few days)

The initial "Shock and Awe" campaign in Baghdad killed an estimated 6,600+ civilians. [1]

It's stated purpose was to "impose this overwhelming level of Shock and Awe against an adversary on an immediate or sufficiently timely basis to paralyze its will to carry on ... [to] seize control of the environment and paralyze or so overload an adversary's perceptions and understanding of events that the enemy would be incapable of resistance at the tactical and strategic levels."

That is to say, it was terrorism. And what's even more disgusting is that Americans watched it on TV like fireworks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_and_awe#Casualties

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#237

Post by AsyncAwait » Thu, Aug 11, 2016, 3:04 PM UTC

joosters wrote: post #116

jasode wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Long piece, [...] This piece may be fun to get through your flight, Yes, it's ~43000 words and at 250wpm, it would be a 3 hour read! I think I'll wait to collect some more opinions/tldrs like yours before reading it myself. Three hours would be a terrible waste of time on a substandard article. Open question: Are there better articles on the topic that use that would use that finite reading time better?

Is there a decent way to save the article as a PDF to read later, say on an ipad? I tried Safari's 'Export as PDF' but the formatting is too mangled. Safari can also save as a single 'web archive' file but I can't get that file to open on my ipad. Firefox has a save option of 'Web page, complete', but you end up with lots of files, impractical to move around to other devices. Printing as a PDF also mangles the format…

http://www.printfriendly.com

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#238

Post by jcranmer » Thu, Aug 11, 2016, 3:05 PM UTC

douche wrote: post #54

return0 wrote: post #38

Long piece , but it fails in that it does not give a coherent message. Pieces of stories here and there are not history. First of all , lets stop calling it Arab Spring. If anything it's the arab Autumn of civil wars, where all arabs are united only in their resentment of the west. Secondly, let's talk about people, their souls, aspirations, and culture instead of political history. Given that these states were built…

Before they were western protectorates, they were Ottoman protectorates. It's been a mess for a long, long time. Once the oil runs out, or we move beyond oil, the whole region will be relegated to the kind of backwater it became after the advent of world-wide oceanic shipping in the age of sail and the overland trade routes were superseded.

The Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire were not protectorates, they were full provinces of the Ottoman Empire and as much a core part of the empire as the Balkans or Anatolia. The regions of Tunisia, Algeria, and Tripolitania were largely closer to independent vassal or client states; Egypt was effectively an autonomous fief, particularly during the 19th century (by WWI it was more a part of the British Empire than the Ottoman Empire). Crimea and Hungary were always tributaries rather than full vassals.

In general, the Arabs were happy subjects of the Ottoman Empire until around 1900-1914, when the CUP's political program attempted to marginalize the Arabs; even then, the Arab Revolt was a very narrow revolt with support almost exclusively from the Hejaz (western Saudi Arabia in modern terms) Prior to that, the Ottoman Empire was generally very supportive of the Arab cultural expression. While the governors of the Syrian and Egyptian provinces tended to be problematic from the point of view of the Sultan, the populations of those provinces were far less prone to revolt than Anatolia.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#239

Post by paulmd » Thu, Aug 11, 2016, 3:07 PM UTC

douche wrote: post #151

danielbln wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the choice is between war hawk and unpredictable megalomaniac. Sophie's choice of US politics...

The unpredictable megalomaniac is at heart an isolationist, though. I can't ever recall anyone else in my lifetime expressing the desire to step back from NATO and reduce overseas commitments.

Trump's offer to Kasich (as confirmed by Kasich himself) was that he would be the quote 'most powerful VP in history', in charge of both domestic and foreign policy, while Trump would be in charge of 'making America great again'. So the other poster is exactly right, Trump doesn't have anything at heart beyond self-aggrandizement.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/07/politics/john-kasich-donald-tr...

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/07/20/trump_repo...

You might reasonably expect that Pence was made a similar offer. If that's how it played out, you could probably expect a relatively vanilla foreign policy from Pence.

The problem is there's no guarantee that's how it would play out; Trump is narcissistic and unstable. He might actually intend to do that until Pence does something he doesn't like, and then Trump takes the reins back.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#240

Post by cmdrfred » Thu, Aug 11, 2016, 3:08 PM UTC

j03m1 wrote: post #135

cmdrfred wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She has to pay for the campaign/Clinton foundation donations somehow. Mark my words a vote for Hillary is a vote for war.[0] [0] https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/04/01/19496/defense-con...

Is it me or does 400k seems like pennies for the defense industry? Didn't she get 200k to do a talk at goldman? Does 400k really in debt these pols so much? How much media does 400k even buy?

Keep in mind its at least 400k, it does not include money given to PAC's or given directly to the DNC to get her elected via the victory for Hillary fund[0], also her foundation takes many questionable donations[1]. Add to that favors, like donating to allies campaigns, speaking fees, board postions and revolving door type jobs for friends.

[0] http://www.npr.org/2015/12/23/460762853/how-hillary-clinton-... [1] http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/08/another-day-an...