ISIS Threatens Life of Twitter Founder After Thousands of Account Suspensions 533
Patrick O'Neill writes After a wave of account bannings that marks Twitter's most aggressive move ever against ISIS, new images circulated from militants shows founder Jack Dorsey in crosshairs with the caption "Twitter, you started this war." The famously tech-savy ISIS has met a number of defeats on American-built social media recently with sites like Twitter and YouTube banning the group's efforts in unprecedented numbers.
Jerri (Score:2, Interesting)
wonder if this is why YouTube never blocked or removed ISIS' videos.
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We've been bombing them since September.
But thanks for playing anyway.
Re:Jerri (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with groups like ISIS (and Vietnam for that matter) is simple. We cannot play by the rules and expect to win against an enemy that has no rules. ISIS exists because we destabilized Iraq by getting rid of Saddam. Yes he was a murderous dictator but that is the only way to keep that place in order. There are plenty of people who committed worse crimes than Saddam and yet we did nothing.
Re:Jerri (Score:4, Interesting)
The area is fucked. It's been fucked for centuries and we aren't going to fix it in a decade or even two. We have to let go sometime because this isn't going to end with ISIS. After they are gone it'll be another batch of shitheads even crazier. I can see it ending with Israel tossing Nukes right and left. Armageddon anyone?
Re:Jerri (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing is different this time though.
ISIS is dumb.
And because of that they are actually losing. No really. They are trying to use media and social media to prevent this image of them as this scary and violent group, but it's both backfiring, turning everyone against them, and a mask for for their losses.
They're aren't fighting an asymmetrical battle. They have essentially discarded or ignored the basic playbook of the past few decades. They are attempting to engage us in traditional and conventional methods, rather than an insurgency, which is why we, and the Jordanians and Kurds, are beating them back soundly. ISIS hasn't made or kept any gains since late September, when they lost their initial momentum the had built up through surprise and the time it took us to organize a response.
But then ISIS also isn't like the other militant groups in the past.
This is a group of True Believers.
They truly believe they are the inheritors of the caliphate, and that their victory is assured by God. And that belief has lead them to (so far) forgo an insurgency and instead fight conventional battles, conventional battles in the open in which they are getting stomped, because they are utterly assured of their eventual victory. And then there's the apocalyptic aspect of their beliefs. And that they are so violent and crazy that even Al Qaeda doesn't want anything to do with them; that they are alienating all their potential allies, turning friends into enemies (which is one BIG reason why we need to keep the RWNJ's from getting their way and turning this into a "war on islam" instead of a "war on extremists"...ISIS WANTS it to be a war on Islam).
This group may eventually realize that they are going to fall apart and be destroyed unless they change their tactics.
But again, as a group of True Believers who doesn't accept the potential to lose as a real possibility, that change may not happen.
http://www.vox.com/2015/2/23/8... [vox.com]
Re:Jerri (Score:4, Insightful)
Good points. But I don't think they are "dumb" per se, they are just True Believers as you point out. Their early military successes against weak and disorganized opponents left them in the position of actually having to rule the areas they conquered, becoming the de facto government. And as nearly every rebel group that has achieved success has discovered, it's far easier to throw bombs (literally and figuratively) against the powers that be than to take up that mantle and actually be responsible for keeping the lights on and maintaining order.
Historically, the successful revolutionaries have been those who moderated their stances enough to comport with practical realities. Take for example the Soviets in the 1919-1922 period, who hired former Tsarist military specialists to run large parts of the Red Army because they knew they couldn't do it themselves. And while Lenin and Zinoviev loved to lob crazy policies out of the Kremlin at the countryside, they learned to temper some of the most radical ones to maintain the support of the peasant population which didn't really give a rip about the "workers' paradise."
Look at ISIS and the Taliban in Afghanistan in contrast - with their "we will stick to our crazy-ass policies no matter what" attitude - and you see the seeds planted for failure. ISIS is a destructive movement but is ultimately doomed to fail as a functioning state because they are True Believers. What we should all really worry about is if ISIS gets a charismatic leader who is willing to bend a bit to keep people happy - many in Iraq and Syria (except for the Kurds) might actually find that preferable to the dysfunctional governments they already have in their respective countries.
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...and Saddam existed because we put him there to fight a proxy cold war against Russian-backed Iran.
http://www.democraticundergrou... [democratic...ground.com]
ISIS exists because we need another set of boogeymen to stir shit up with neighboring Syria and Iran on our behalf.
http://scgnews.com/the-covert-... [scgnews.com]
We read a lot about how ISIS somehow keeps getting access to US-funded weapons sent to the region to help Libyan rebels topple Qaddafi or the Iraqi army "keep the peace". They'll get their Twitter feeds back again when we need th
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We cannot play by the rules and expect to win against an enemy that has no rules.
Yes, we can. It's just a matter of changing the rules, just as we do on a daily basis.
Re:Jerri (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that ones of those rules we follow is "go in guns blazing".
You want to stop ISIS? Fix the Middle-East's economy. Give people stable, productive jobs. That alone will slash recruitment simply by giving most of their local recruits a better option, one they currently *do* *not* *have*. Most of the local ISIS recruits are in ISIS simply because it pays. Not well, but better than nothing. Same goes for al-Shabaab and al-Quaeda and Boko Haram and pretty much every terrorist group operating from a third-world country.
You want to make sure ISIS doesn't come back the next time a depression hits? Build schools, staff them - an educated populace won't fall for the simple rhetoric of the mob-leader. Build mosques, staff them with liberal imams, to dilute the message of the bad ones. Build infrastructure so they can actually communicate with the rest of the world. Bring them up to a modern level, just to give them something to lose, if they fall again - most of them see ISIS as a viable cause because they don't really have anything to lose.
A military solution - ANY military solution, up to and including "nuke the entire subcontinent into glass" - is at best temporary. In a good solution, the military will only be used as a stopgap to make it safe enough to implement the real solution.
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You want to stop ISIS? Fix the Middle-East's economy. Give people stable, productive jobs.
Which is why ISIS is getting so many recruits from Western countries...
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They aren't getting many recruits from Western countries. They're getting *prominent* recruits.
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Sadam was much easier to contain than a bunch of anonymous rebels.
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I thought I detected <sarcasm> tags around it. Or maybe there's a grease spot on my glasses.
Re:Jerri (Score:5, Insightful)
Because we are TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE!
Indeed, instead of containing them we should just go in guns blazing, because that's always the best way to counter problematic ideologies. It always works out so well. It's also easy for the armchair general to send soldiers to die for whatever cause they deem worthy.
Re: Jerri (Score:5, Informative)
If you really want to understand the connection between ISIS, Afghanistan and Saudi Wahabism that makes this all a little bit less mysterious, have a look at Adam Curtis' film "Bitter Lake". It's an bit of an eye opener to put it mildly.
The Saudis are the fount of all discontent in the middle east. And oil which is why the US lets them literally get away with murder.
Watch the film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
As to the comments about the liberal left, keep in mind one of Curtis previous fils, "The Power of ightmares" explored the tight iterlatationshpi between the new American right and Islamist fundamentalists. They are in fact one in the same.
Re: Jerri (Score:4, Informative)
See what happened in Paris and Denmark. People from Europe travel to Syria and Iraq to fight with ISIS, get training and AK47s, and then come back to Europe to kill the infidels.
Omar El-Hussein, the Copenhagen shooter, never went to Syria nor Iraq, never received any terrorist training, and didn't use an AK47, nor is there any evidence he ever communicated with terrorist organisations.
He did use a C7 rifle stolen from a member of the Danish national guard, but apparently had no weapons training. He did spend a couple of years in the Middle East years ago, but his radicalization appears to have happened primarily while he was incarcerated in Denmark.
typical anonymous coward (Score:2)
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Airstrikes, anyone?
And let's be honest here--if we had boots on the ground and weren't merely dropping bombs on them, you'd be bitching about "not our fight" or similar because OMG OBAMA is BLACK OH NOEZ.
Cheers,
A pinko liberal socialist
Re:Jerri (Score:5, Insightful)
because the bush administration did so well with the "jump in guns blazing" routine
which, btw, led to the creation of ISIS
much like the economic crisis of 2008, also miraculously blamed on obama, conservatives have this stunning routine where they fuck up, and liberals are at fault for it somehow with creative loopy psychological projection
btw, the economy was fixed under obama, much like he is also trying to fix the mess created by neocon chickenhawks in the middle east, like an adult
while all the hot headed children do their best to start a war, waste money and lives, and make things worse. you and those like you (hi, netanyu, you protocol disrespecting fuck, you've permanently damaged us-israeli relations for a little temporary macho chest thumping) think more war in the middle east will actually fix things. because you geniuses haven't learned from the last half dozen decades what messing around in the middle east actually leads to
oh, and a small tip for you:
"pinko" expired as an effective insult in the cold war era, which ended 25 years ago, which might be the last time you had a coherent thought on the topic you inject your ignorant belligerence into
Re:Jerri (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Jerri (Score:4, Interesting)
I will agree that Obama is doing the same thing to the Middle East that he did to the U.S. economy. And, if what Obama is doing is fixing these things I'll take broken.
Re:This should be upmodded (Score:5, Interesting)
While it is true that if Saddam Hussein was still in power in Iraq ISIS would not have arisen, it is also true that Obama would probably have done the same thing to Saddam which he did to Gaddafi, Mubarak, and attempted to do to Assad. That is, he would have attempted to overthrow Saddam and replace him with instability.
His failure to create instability in Egypt is a reflection of the desires of the Egyptian people rather than any indication of positive action by the Obama Administration. BTW, I am not arguing that the Obama Administration INTENDED to destabilize the Middle East, just that their policies directly resulted in that happening. I do not know what the Obama Administration intended, but I cannot imagine what they would have done differently if they intended to disable the Middle East.
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What you mean is he should have imperialistically intervened in a grassroots campaign to overthrow a dictator and helped that dictator suppress the wants and needs of the people. Neocons like you are disgusting people.
It's time America stopped trying to play the worlds cops. These conflicts have LONG been simmering. It only ends badly when we get involved. Freedom isn't free, if these countries and people really want freedom they are going to have to shed blood and kill the fuckers that are in the way. Only
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What you mean is he should have imperialistically intervened in a grassroots campaign to overthrow a dictator and helped that dictator suppress the wants and needs of the people.
So, it was OK for him to imperialistically intervene to bomb that dictator's security forces in order to allow a group inimical to U.S. interests to overthrow said dictator and suppress the wants and needs of the people. If we had stayed out of Libya, Gaddafi would still be in power there and ISIS would likely have never acquired the weapons it needed to rise to power.
Re:Jerri (Score:5, Informative)
oh i see, it's more of this "al gore flew on a gas guzzling jet airplane once, therefore he is a hypocrite, therefore climate change is not a problem" ignorant bullshit
moral ineptitude
"i knew a guy once who got away with a crime... therefore this guy right here should get away with murder too, it's only fair"
hey genius: "two wrongs don't make a right"
ever hear of it?
do you know what that means, morally?
it means that just because you can criticize democrats for something, anything, it doesn't mean suddenly all republican crimes now magically disappear
the fact that everyone fucks up doesn't mean actual criminal douchebags are immune. i jaywalk, you point out that horrible crime of mine, and now the fact you killed someone is excused because we both committed crimes? this is what you call right and wrong?
real morality: you criticize the democrats of what they *specifically* do wrong, and you criticize the republicans for what they *specifically* do wrong, and you keep your criticism proportional to the crime, and you don't equate minor bullshit with a major outrage
imagine fucking that: actual valid moral reasoning
Re: Jerri (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it was bush that set the terms for the Iraq pull out of newly independent and soverigen country of Iraq.
Obama wasn't stupid enough to force an issue where if he left troops in Iraq against the sovereign wishes of Iraq those troops would be subjected to Iraq and international war crime laws.
Of course republicans don't care about such issues as sovereign countries having rights too.
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Bush signed the withdrawl order, not Obama. That's the reason people keep bringing it up. Discount history all you want.
Had we refused to leave on the withdrawal date we would have been the center of the largest civilian uprising ever. The entire country would have turned against us. The Iraqi's are uniformly against ANY foreign troops on their soil. After a 10 year occupation and millions dead I hardly blame them.
Here's something else to consider. ISIS is an end of the world cult. They believe there is goi
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Obama can't force the Iraqi's duly elected government to sign an agreement they won't sign without using force and forcibly removing said elected government that we supported. How hard is it for you to fucking understand that. They did NOT want us there anymore, and there is NOTHING anyone could have done to keep that going short of military force against the Iraqi government. Maybe we should have pulled another Bush and dissolved the existing government and watched the who
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Yep, That is why anyone that is not aggressively paying off all the debt they have right now is a complete and utter fool.
I have friends that are buying new cars, etc... They are morons, raging morons... "but it's 1.2% ITS FREE MONEY!" they forget the loan origination fees they pay or are tacked on the loan... Oh that $35,000 car loan has a $1900 set of "fees" on it.... But we dont count that as part of the interest rate...
If you are having a time of prosperity, PAY DOWN ALL YOUR FUCKING DEBT! Becaus
Re:Jerri (Score:4, Interesting)
Banks need heavy regulation put back on them. I also suggest we have a Bank police that goes around tazing executives at random if we even think they are thinking of anything "clever"
I would settle for not bailing them out.
Re:Jerri (Score:4, Informative)
So I'm guessing that you're not aware that we've been bombing them since September.
Re:Bombs? (Score:5, Insightful)
What if he just dropped money, and the terrorists bought TVs and sat around getting high on all that good hash, watching cartoons, instead of terrorizing.
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They've destroyed 6000 old artefacts. They'll destroy the TVs too.
Re:Bombs? (Score:5, Interesting)
What if he just dropped money, and the terrorists bought TVs and sat around getting high on all that good hash, watching cartoons, instead of terrorizing.
A thought just occurred to me. It seems to me we may have been going at this all wrong. We keep on dropping bombs on them and they keep going more batshit insane with rage. What would happen if instead we started a black market to funnel liquor, cocaine, meth, and heroine into ISIS controlled territory? If we got their soldiers more interested in getting high and/or drunk would this effectively crush their will to fight?
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Not likely. It isn't like simply making that stuff available makes a user out of you.
These guys are brainwashed into killing people with rusty, dull knives, they can certainly be brainwashed into not buying some smack.
What will actually happen is that the "targets" will collect the drugs and then sell them back to the West to make more money to kill more people.
These guys are already high on something completely different.
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No. We need to send sugar. Everyone knows, first you get the sugar...
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I wonder, would the people screaming loudest to get involved yet again in that neighborhood be so loud if we tried to fund a war the proper way, with tax increases and belt tightening? Would you make personal sacrifices like pay cuts, st
Whinging about free press... (Score:4, Insightful)
The irony of this is so sad.
Attacking people who believe in free press and then threatening those that deny it to you on their own platform makes me both sad and happy at the same time.
What a confused, sad group of people.
Pathetic much? (Score:5, Funny)
Freedom of speech (Score:3)
Religion is not a valid argument for anything.
Sadly though many westerners also depend on religion, so they don't make that argument.
So instead: oppression.
A unique business opportunity .. (Score:3)
Re:Last straw? (Score:5, Insightful)
if they aren't stopped now, you'll be fighting them in your streets someday
Precisely the argument used to rationalize the war in Vietnam.
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And basically every military action from 9/11 to today.
Re:Last straw? (Score:5, Insightful)
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But that was te phony war(Sep 1939-May 1940): the English helped the French man the Maginot line, but not anything else. In May, Hitler then really started the war and overran Belgium, Holland and France.
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The US Quit the war in Vietnam. Big difference.
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The US Quit the war in Vietnam. Big difference.
For really small values of Big. Ask the people of Vietnam who won.
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"Lost" and "Won" are very relative things when it comes to wars. The US bogged down and drained the communists in Vietnam. It did not achieve total military victory, no, but not did it did it lose the big-picture fight (the cold war) in the end either.
The heads of several other South East Asian states (Singapore, Malysia) have stated that US presence in Vietnam did state that US action in Vietnam did reduce communist influence. Eliminate, no. Reduce, yes. The US did win die Cold war without much of a shooti
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If they begin to become an existential threat to the US, we have a big nuclear arsenal to keep them off our shores.
But they aren't even close right now. The challenge is to defeat them without killing tons of people in "collateral damage" that ends up turning people into militants who weren't before.
Re:Last straw? (Score:5, Insightful)
The challenge is to defeat them without killing tons of people ...
Before we try to defeat them, maybe we should think about what will replace them. The reason we have ISIS is because we defeated Saddam Hussein without thinking much about what would come next. The rationale at the time was that whatever replaced him couldn't possibly be worse. Well, that was wrong.
Re:Last straw? (Score:5, Interesting)
Finally, someone uses their brain. Sure, we could send a big army over there and stomp them into the ground. But then what?
And if anyone thinks Saddam's dead-enders were a big headache, what do you suppose a bunch of religious zealots will be?
Cue Mencken on problems and solutions.
Re:Last straw? (Score:5, Informative)
The reason we have ISIS is that we were in such a rush to leave IRAQ we didn't bother to finish stabilizing the situation.
Seeing as Vietnam has been mentioned, I'll point out the exact same thing happened there. The war was brought to an acceptable conclusion and we pulled out before stability had been achieved. The cost that time was 4million dead Vietnamese and Cambodians. What do you think it will be this time around ?
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That's part of it. The other parts were talking tough about Assad in Syria (and not DOING anything), and killing Khadaffi in Libya.
Vietnam: Crashmarik is exactly correct. The United States _won_ the war in Vietnam. The North Vietnamese were powerless, and the US left. But then the Soviets spent 2 years giving the North everything they needed, and then the North attacked again. The Dems in the Senate banned any additional military aid to the South. The South fell to the communists.
That's one of t
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"'You know you never defeated us on the battlefield,' said the American colonel. The North Vietnamese colonel pondered this remark a moment. 'That may be so,' he replied, 'but it is also irrelevant.'"
-- Colonel Harry G. Summers Jr. and Colonel Tu, April 1975, described in the book On Strategy.
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The situation in Iraq could never be stabilised without essentially destroying part of the population. Successive decisions by external powers have weakened the various states that exist in that region. If the countries that surrounded Iraq had been strong enough to control their own borders and internationally integrated enough to not want to risk economic backlash by extending their borders we perhaps could have seen another Yugoslavia civil war and break up as a best possible outcome.
But instead Iraq w
Re:Last straw? (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason we have ISIS is because we defeated Saddam Hussein without thinking much about what would come next.
Not true. There were people talking in front of the UN audience, warning exactly what would come next in 2003 [wikisource.org].
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@hcs_$reboot: "Not true. There were people talking in front of the UN audience, warning exactly what would come next in 2003."
I think what ShanghaiBill meant is that no one in the Bush administration did much thinking, if indeed they were capable of rational introspection.
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I heard one theory that ISIS is really a creation of Bashar al-Assad. Before ISIS was around, the West was all for regime change in Syria. Now we are effectively supporting the dictatorship in Syria.
Re:Last straw? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Fighting them in the streets? What silly notion is this? Are you trying to run for the Republican nomination or something?
Speaking of the Republican nomination I have to laugh that the Chicken hawk Commander-in-Chief wannabes when asked what they would do against ISIS list specifics pretty much right along the lines that which Obama is currently pursuing.
Re:Last straw? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well then you must have missed the speeches and questions asked of the candidates at the recent CPAC.
BTW the Afghanistan and Iraq war price tag topped 6 Trillion dollars! Wars started by the last presidency. And the same crowd is now asking for another war! And you talk about deficits... LOL.
Re:Last straw? (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny how short your memory is. The last 10 years of fighting in foreign countries has worked out real well for us, hasn't it.
I think we'd have a much better chance fighting ISIS on our own turf than invading yet another Arab country that we could never hold and win.
Paying it forward. (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason for the short term memory is that for the average voter the last two wars cost them personally _nothing_ and were if anything entertainment. Now if the president came out and said we are going to mobilize again to fight ISIS and a new 2015 tax of $200/person will be levied to pay for the war you would see a change of heart in minute.
Re:Last straw? (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably not. His head is too far up Mohammed's ass to see the real world.
According to the Wikipedia article on the subject [wikipedia.org], as of "15 January 2015, it was reported that over 16,000 airstrikes had been carried out by the Coalition". Please note that this coalition consists of both a backbone of U.S. military power, and surrounding Islam-majority states like Jordan, which the Obama administration has coaxed into the war.
Let me repeat that, in case you appear to misread it. 16,000 airstrikes
I'm not exactly sure how anyone can say we're not "stopping them". Indeed, about the only thing they can really do at this point is make snuff videos of idiots who wander into the region.
But go back to watching your wall-to-wall CPAC coverage and FOX lies. That seems to be what you prefer. No actual facts seem likely to persuade you.
Re:Last straw? (Score:5, Insightful)
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What I really can't understand is why young girls are leaving Europe to go and be with these guys in Syria. They don't get to fight, that is forbidden except in the most desperate of circumstances. Instead they get to be sex toys and baby factories for beaded losers with poor personal hygiene, who will eventually die and quickly forget about them while indulging in their 72 virgins.
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This is how out of touch a growing number of RWNJs are:
"Growing Number Of Conservatives Seem Utterly Unaware That Obama Is Attacking ISIS"
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/... [rightwingwatch.org]
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Oh, wait, did you mean the airstrikes were IMPROVING our safety? ROFL WAFL!
It has allowed the Kurds to take back some territory. Without it, ISIS would have continued to expand their territory, and become a greater threat.
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Indeed evil will eventually turn on itself.
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How will Europe stop Isis? Double down on appeasement?
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Appeasement? Where have they engaged in "appeasement"?
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Oh yes, that's so very relevant. *eyeroll*
Re:Last straw? (Score:5, Insightful)
People always bring up Neville Chamberlain and his "peace in our time" speech - let me ask you this: what would you have done in his stead?
Go to war? Kick Germany's butt? Yeah, lets put Nazi aggression in its place, teach them a lesson.
Ok. Go to war with what? in 1938 we didn't have an effective army or airforce, our only real might was in the Royal Navy. Which works wonders for stopping land based aggression. Our airforce was still largely made up of older designs, especially the Hawker Hurricane which was a design based on a biplane... It would be a few years yet until we had an airforce of any real capability.
So he tried a different approach - it was well recognised even back then that Germany had been royally screwed over by the agreements at the end of the first world war, so perhaps some appeasement was in order to try and placate that issue - was Germany just taking back what should never have been taken from it in the first place?
Of course we went to war anyway, and under Chamberlains watch - and guess what happened on our first outing? We got our butts kicked and sand kicked in our face. We lost 40,000 troops to German prison camps and got thrown off the continent at Dunkirk.
And that was after we had stepped up our war footing. Imagine what it would have been like if we didn't have have Neville Chamberlains two years to get to a point where we were able to just about ensure that Nazi Germany didn't take the British Isles as well as the continent...
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Actually France and the UK both had a better Army and Air Force than Germany in 1938. They were in even better position than in 1936 when the allowed Germany to re occupy the Rhineland. Of course WWII might have been avoided if the UK and France had listened to the US and tried to create a just peace. Instead they threatened to not pay back the loans they took out...
BTW France and the UK never did repay the loans for WWI. They thought that the US was being greedy. I guess 116,000 American lives plus the bil
Re:Last straw? (Score:4, Interesting)
Taking on the 1938 German army would have been a relative cakewalk. The problem with Dunkirk (wasn't that a great victory?) is that the British stayed on the defensive, and by definition it's impossible to win whilst playing defense.
Add the Czechs and their surprisingly good army, and the Little Maginot Line (the Germans tested the fortifications after invading and found them shockingly sound) , and 1938 Germany has big problems. Its army gets bogged down in Czechoslovakia while the British drive for Berlin.
People always bring up this "educated, balanced" riposte to Chamberlain's infamous act. It's bullshit. Let's put the dagger in the back of this theory once and for all: you know who Chamberlain saw fit NOT to invite to the Munich conference? The Czechs! He gave them the middle finger and handed them a fait accompli. Don't even get me started about the great betrayal of Poland, a nation Britain was pledged to defend and yet did fuck-all to help. Fuck Chamberlain and fuck appeasement.
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Scapegoat the Greeks, and double down on austerity.
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Nonsense. Germany was zero threat to the US. The Japanese threatened our naval power in the Pacific, but were never the slightest threat against the homeland. What should the US have done? Act as the hired mercenaries of Europe?
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They are half a world away from the States. Why not let European countries, who are practically next door, take care of them?
"Here are the countries most concerned about ISIS" http://www.dailydot.com/politi... [dailydot.com] (Google Trends)
linked from summery link http://www.dailydot.com/tags/i... [dailydot.com] listing any news story they printed over ISIS.
"It is worth pointing out, however, that Brazil’s outsized interest most likely stems not from a concern with the terrorist group but from a fascination with the 27-year-old actress Ísis Valverde, who appears under the country's "related searches."
Re:Oh dear me, so frightening. (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually he had better fear for his life.
But it's nice of them to tell everyone it's hitting them where it hurts.
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Maybe offer some charitable donation to an anti-ISIS charity. Make them stew in their feckless rage.
Good idea! My suggestion is to donate to charities involved in girls education and micro-loans to women. Hit Daesh right where it hurts: empower women.
Re: Oh dear me, so frightening. (Score:4, Insightful)
> Women are already empowered enough.
In the USA, it's gotten profoundly better in my lifetime, but even here it is hardly complete.
Empowering women also leads to lower birth rates and reduces poverty profoundly. One of the biggest reasons that ISIS, al Quaeda, and other fundamentalist groups grow is that they offer poor, disenfranchised people, especially unemployed young men. It's a vicious cycle of violence and poverty, and it _cannot break_ without control of birth rates, becuase there is _no work_ for these young men. Their only hope of prosperity, whether physical or spiritual, becomes the gang and tribal groups because if they do not join, the gangs and fanatics will _take_ their money, their turf, and eventually their lives.
Re:I don't think Obama is really paying attention (Score:5, Insightful)
He says they just need a job, but a majority had jobs before becoming radicalized. They often have college too. So to come out and say it's not faith based, when clearly they tie everything to their perverted version of Islam, either means he thinks we are not paying attention, or he's not.
Or he is smarter and more strategic than you are. By refusing to acknowledge ISIS as 'real' Islam he takes away ISIS primary claim to legitimacy and hands that legitimacy to the moderate Muslims (ie Jordan) that will join in the fight against ISIS.
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Re:I don't think Obama is really paying attention (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone who has a lot of business interests in the Middle East and especially Jordan I think that you will find that the Jordanians hate what ISIS/IS/??? are doing.
They might have some internal tribal rivalries but they are united in wanting to keep their relatively liberal society out of the hands of the likes of IS/ISIS.
There is also a lot of belief that if IS attaches Jordan then Israel will see that as a direct threat to them and join in to fight alongside the Anti-IS fighters.
My friends in Kuwait are divided about 'would this be a good thing or not?'.
On one hand Yes because Israel are helping the Liberal Muslims fight the extremists
On the other hand, No because this is a conflict that is mostly Muslim on Muslim.
If you are commenting from the relative safety of the US then until you have lived and travelled around the Region as I have for the past 20+ years you can't even begin to understand how complex it is in terms of relationships etc.
Re:I don't think Obama is really paying attention (Score:4, Insightful)
That's like saying the KKK, Westboro Baptist Church, Jehovah's Witnesses, (insert dangerous cult here) aren't "real" Christians. They still believe they are, it doesn't matter what the rest of the world thinks about them, as long as they believe they are doing the right thing.
The problem with Islam is that unlike Christianity they are loosely unified in their belief systems. They in large lines won't call each other out for the hypocrisy or violence. Most Islamists, even the 'moderates' will, if nothing else, quietly avert their eyes when it comes to their interpretation of the Prophet and the Koran. There are some pockets of progressive Islamists that will call out against the violence but they won't go as far as to say that the Koran is incorrect.
Christians have progressed far enough where the progressive Christians will say that the Bible is on occasion incorrect, moderates will say it's allegorical while all but the staunchest of conservatives will say that it's up to God or government to do the punishing. Doesn't mean that the Christian faith is any 'better', it's just slightly better adjusted so as not to upset the majority of people although they still want to take over the world as much as ISIS does (look at how much they have been pushing creationism and anti-science in the last decade)
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That's like saying the KKK, Westboro Baptist Church, Jehovah's Witnesses, (insert dangerous cult here) aren't "real" Christians.
Well there are plenty of Christians who would make that exact claim! Most Evangelical for instance will be happy to tell you the JW's are not "real" Christians.
But that is not the point here. We are not fighting a war against any of those groups and Obama position is purely strategic. You need to know your enemy and this approach strikes directly at the image ISMS has made for themselves and throws water on the ISIS tactic of eliciting a religious war and invoking the crusader and other such rubbish.
Re:I don't think Obama is really paying attention (Score:4, Insightful)
Christians don't want to take over the world for the same reason that corporations don't want to take over the US, the same reason that Rupert Murdoch doesn't want to take over News Corp or Fox.
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Or he is smarter and more strategic than you are. By refusing to acknowledge ISIS as 'real' Islam he takes away ISIS primary claim to legitimacy and hands that legitimacy to the moderate Muslims (ie Jordan) that will join in the fight against ISIS.
Do you really think that an organization of many thousands of people which slaughters other Muslims for being insufficiently Muslim will give a rat's ass whether or not a politician in the US considers them to be sufficiently Muslim? Obama can no more "take away" their embrace of fundamental Islam than he can turned to by millions of other Muslims as an authority on whether they are legitimately following the Koran. What nonsense, to even suggest such a thing.
People like the Jordanians will demonstrate
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Great subversion of what was said. When I or others call out the KKK for not being Christian, it's not the KKK's opinion or believe I or others give a rat's ass about. The point is to public and loudly denounce them when others don't either out of fear, lack of a voice, or mer
Re:I don't think Obama is really paying attention (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you really think that an organization of many thousands of people which slaughters other Muslims for being insufficiently Muslim will give a rat's ass whether or not a politician in the US considers them to be sufficiently Muslim?
Probably not, but ISIS is not the audience. Everyone else is. Ponder it a bit more.
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WE need that freedom. An implacable enemy that we're at war with, not so much. Turning off ISIS tweets just a small operation in that war. Compare it, if you wish, to kidnappings and beheadings.
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They're perfectly free to express themselves. We're in no way obligated to provide them a platform.
Let them build their own Twitter, with blackjack and hookers.
Re: ISIS sucks (Score:2)
Can i have the rabbit? Oh and the lettuce....I named him lenny
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We're all in ISIS' gunsights. It's just a question of who's first
That isn't entirely false, in that they'd be more than happy continue their merry little campaign unto victory or death; but it's a fairly shoddy version of true.
ISIS are a bunch of sociopathically bad neighbors; but their ambition to 'caliphate'(which implies and requires acquisition and effective control and administration of territory) makes them rather more locally focused than an outfit like Al Quaeda. As does their (admittedly gruesome) enthusiasm for settling local grudge matches with Shia and var