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VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris attacks

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Re: VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris attacks

#651

Post by gotchange »

pluma wrote: post #139
Grue3 wrote: post #61

Isn't current Syrian government also guilty of perpetrating acts of genocide against its own populace? This person is quick to denounce the other side, but Assad's forces have killed thousands of civilians as well. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Syria

Better the devil you know. The reason we (i.e. "The West") left Saddam in place until the US needed an easy target after 9/11 is that despite being a dictator and mass-murderer, his reign kept Iraq relatively stable. As soon as he was taken out of the equation other forces began to fight for dominance and now we have a huge mess on our hands that's arguably worse than where we started. The same is true for most of th…

It seems a recurrent theme for all the "Arab Spring" skeptics to focus only on the failures of the movement like in Libya or Syria and ignore the success stories like Tunisia.

I must admit that the US and allies abandoned Libya after toppling Ghaddafi and not helping Libyans with nation rebuilding after that. Add to that, the intervention by regional players in Libya complicated the situation and made things worse for the ordinary people.

Re: VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris attacks

#652

Post by jacquesm »

Ygg2 wrote: post #640
toyg wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when we did nothing "We" didn't do "nothing". Countries like France, Israel, US, Turkey and Saudi Arabia spent years destabilising Assad and funding those "opposition groups" that eventually started the civil war. Syria originally was a USSR satellite with ambitions of regional hegemony (they basically ruled Lebanon and deeply influenced Jordan), so they had to be beaten into submission. However, there was never a…

> "Our" best ally in the region is an absolutist monarchy running an Islamist totalitarian regime Reminds me of that Adam Curtis documentary Bitter Lake[1]. I wonder if Oil Countries are the real reason these terrorist keep appearing again and again. I bet the moment world gets rid of oil, is the day Islamic terrorist stop appearing. [1] http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2hdcji

They're not 'the real reason' but it is definitely a contributing reason. The people doing the most to get us out of this mess are working on electric cars.

Re: VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris attacks

#653

Post by sumedh »

AndyKelley wrote: post #186
jacquesm wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And therein lies the rub no? If we concentrate on the words in a book that will never disappear how do you propose we get out of this mess? And if Christianity could - to some extent - overcome the limitations of the bible how can we assist Islam? Surely not by attempting to polarize.

Why not? How about we fork the Qur'an like it were source code, delete the parts about killing people for their beliefs, add in some more commandments such as "don't rape, don't discriminate, be nice to everybody. It's ok if you don't literally believe that Allah exists." etc etc. Then we can rename it to Islam2 or Progressive Islam, or something like that. Everybody wins. I'm pretty sure that's already been done wit…

> How about we fork the Qur'an like it were source code

That is the problem. Muslims believe that Quran is the word of God. When you say that it needs to be changed then it means God was wrong which is not possible.

Re: VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris attacks

#654

Post by Jtsummers »

drumdance wrote: post #643
Jtsummers wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Young people join ISIS not because they are "evil" (what, are they Darth Vader?). They join because ISIS makes a compelling case that the world would be a better place if it was rid of western domination. I will not speak about young people joining ISIS, but I've known people who joined or wanted to join the military strictly to kill. These folks exist. You give them a strong ideological or philosophical reason to…

How do you explain the women joining ISIS?

I'm not going to attempt to explain it all. What I wrote about only explains some of the people joining.

And women can desire to kill too. Or see conservative Christian women in the US (where I am) choosing to deliberately set aside careers and other "modern" or "masculine" things for their beliefs.

I can't explain that either, seems bizarre to me to deliberately reduce your agency, but some people think it's the thing to do.

Re: VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris attacks

#655

Post by wordbank »

jordanpg wrote: post #574
ue_ wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All religions are silly ridiculous relics. Let's stop talking about them. You can't actually reliably say this without first going through every religion and telling us how ridiculous you find it. But I'm not really bothered about every religion. Out of interest, what's ridiculous about Buddhism, and how are you going to quantify the ridiculousness? Your argument doesn't work as well with Buddhism. It works to an ex…

Litmus test: does it make any supernatural claims? Yes? Silly, ridiculous relic. Buddhism? Yes. Silly, ridiculous relic. Please don't bore us with the usual equivocating about how Buddhism is different, and complex, highly personal, etc. Are there helpful aspects to Buddhist beliefs? Maybe. But it's still Bronze Age philosophy with plenty of supernatural claptrap mixed in. I'm not aware of any useful aspects of Buddh…

I'm very intrigued to hear about your Golden Age philosophies or at least some Silver Age ones.

Because the core ideas of Buddhism are the only ones that can be applied directly to your behavioural patterns. They are practical, they are purely logic. I don't know what's the "supernatural claptrap" you're talking about, probably you picked the wrong school to study it and got distracted.

In my opinion other philosophies (especially European schools) are mostly a wordplay without an applied part.

Re: VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris attacks

#656

Post by jacquesm »

Ygg2 wrote: post #637
jacquesm wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize I hope that you are condemning the migrants to the crisis as well. And they're the ones losing big time, Europe not so much.

I guess in a way I am, but I do feel sympathy for them losing their homes/loved ones in this whole fiasco. I'm mad this whole thing is happening tbh. But EU is IMO losing just as much. The borders are being redrawn between states, there is palpable tension between EU members(Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia). And weren't abolition of state borders and prevention of another Hitler the motivation behind EU? If so, it…

We're totally on the same page here. Which is one of the reasons why I'm advocating restraint and attacking root causes rather than perceived symptoms. That will only worsen things (and quickly so).

> And weren't abolition of state borders and prevention of another Hitler the motivation behind EU?

That never was openly stated afaik but it would seem to be that the architects of the EU had as one of their main driving forces the fact that they wanted to re-structure the EU in such a way to avoid another war. The problem with their approach is that they did many things without sufficient buy-in of the residents and on top of that started out by setting up all kinds of irrational schemes inside the EU to funnel money to their pet special interests. If they could have waited a few decades with tricks like that it probably would have worked a lot better.

The major issue that I see with a really unified EU is that the divergence of cultures within the EU is enormous, much more so than say the Americas, where a strong federal government was the result of a large group of people uniting behind a single good cause. And even then - in spite of that much more homogeneous culture - they had to have it out in a civil war to beat the remainder into submission (and that war was a war of ideology as much as it was a war over money and power).

> If so, its failing apart (not a syntax error, figure of speech).

Unfortunately, yes, it looks that way. The Euro is quite fragile, the intra-communion tension at record high levels since the previous world-war.

Separatists may get emboldened by all this, the refugees are so much kindling on a fire that is already smoldering. It will take some really smart people with the long view to repair this.

Re: VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris attacks

#657

Post by eneveu »

marnett wrote: post #602
justboxing wrote: post #581

Gaeme Wood over at the Atlantic has a riveting piece on "What ISIS really wants". Best long form investigative journalism I've read in nearly a decade. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isi... (Warning: It's really long, but answers a whole lot of questions that a whole lot of westerners, outsiders have about that group, the region, their funding, recruiting, idealogy and why they still haven't…

thank you for sharing this. i have been listening to it for the past hour and it really is a brilliant piece.

How did you listen to it? Are you using some text-to-speech software? I didn't find a link to download an audio version of the article.

Re: VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris attacks

#658

Post by the_af »

hueving wrote: post #562
woah wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a silly viewpoint. I say this not out of some white-guilt self flagellation, but because if we hold these silly Star Wars level beliefs about Islamic extremism, we will not be able to effectively fight them. Young people join ISIS not because they are "evil" (what, are they Darth Vader?). They join because ISIS makes a compelling case that the world would be a better place if it was rid of western domination.…

>They join because ISIS makes a compelling case that the world would be a better place if it was rid of western domination. Bullshit. The people who are destroying ancient statues and slaughtering other Muslims didn't sign up for some grand scheme of bringing down the west after a reasoned argument. They signed up because they are violent psychopaths and they were given an avenue to do all of the fucked up things tha…

> They signed up because they are violent psychopaths and they were given an avenue to do all of the fucked up things that struck their fancy.

If they signed up because of this, boy I wouldn't want to be in their shoes once they realize their mistake! Judging by everything I read, ISIS rulers enforce a strict Sharia law, with patrols making sure everyone is using the correct dress code.

I've also seen a documentary with a woman going undercover into ISIS-held territory (I think it was by the BBC) which claimed that Jihadists that break the "law" get killed, and that in fact ISIS welcomes any reports of misbehavior of their troops and punishes them hardly. ISIS seems to be ruling their territory with an iron hand, it's definitely not the land of do as you please and kill whom you fancy.

Re: VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris attacks

#659

Post by tareqak »

crusso wrote: post #388
NotSammyHagar wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We define away the problem. White people shooting others is not usually considered terrorism (such as a mass shooting committed by a white person). Terrorism is used to label actions by people you don't like. Some politicians even make statements calling the president a terrorist because he does something they don't like. We don't call it terrorism when the American government kidnapped people, took them to other cou…

White people shooting others is not usually considered terrorism If those white people were part of a religious movement indiscriminately targeting the larger society, then of course they would be labeled "terrorists". Do you have an example of where I'm wrong? calling the president a terrorist If you'll recall, the White House referred to the GOP as suicide bombers over debt ceiling negotiations. That's political po…

The Charleston shooting of 2015 comes to mind as the perfect example [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston_church_shooting

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Confederate_flag_controve...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Confederate_flag_controve...

Edit: spacing

Re: VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris attacks

#660

Post by jacquesm »

AndyKelley wrote: post #613
jacquesm wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free, the council of Nicosia was a similar attempt at making Christianity more internally consistent and in a way the Bible itself already was a re-write, think of it as Judaism 2.0 and it starts to make a lot more sense. But typically such a movement originates from within the religion and I highly doubt it can be imposed from outside. Note that most religious text are 'tamper proof' in that they contain little…

> A bit further down that road and we'll be burning books. I'm not calling for aggressively imposing a structure change upon people, I'm calling for people who call themselves moderates or progressives to formally recognize their progressiveness by explicitly altering their holy text.

> I'm not calling for aggressively imposing a structure change upon people,

Ok, than how do you propose to go about this? Telling the united Muslim population of the world they need to change their holy book is tantamount to telling the Roman Catholics to restructure their religion without the Pope. It won't happen.

Putting conditions like that on the table is to redraw the lines in terms that the other party will find un-acceptable right from the get-go, and will show nothing but our ignorance about their personal relation with God. That's not going to end well if there is a reaction at all.

> I'm calling for people who call themselves moderates or progressives to formally recognize their progressiveness by explicitly altering their holy text.

Even moderates and progressives are not going to change that text. They will happily ignore the pieces of the text they don't personally agree with, but if you force them to re-write the text they just might switch the other way and become more literal about that interpretation because a very large chunk of their identity is under threat.

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