Sadly, every punch we send them validates their cause. We punch... they punch back, we punch harder... they punch back harder. Bombs don't discriminate! I can see and understand why these people are mad as hell, the biggest cause of this uprising was Bush handling of the Iraq war was a disaster. We will be dealing with the issues and uneasy within Iraq for decades to come. This upraising can also be the down fall of republican party.
I disagree with most of this but I'm too plastered to be erudite. I learned a cool word the other day: disquition. Look it up and then help me figure out how I lived to be 41 fucking years old without knowing this word, considering how I write. There's a disqution against this piece in my head somewhere. It's probably for the best that it's drowning in Jim Beam. Roflcopter. Chrome doesn't know that word either. That's because it's disquisition. Fuckin' A this job makes me drink a lot
Okay, I threw it a life preserver. Begin, Dee Squition. 1) So I'm not going to pick this whole thing apart like that because that's lame but I will say that anecdotal studies (such as It's Complicated by danah boyd, who uses no caps in her name) aren't really evidence-based, they're narrative-based and that narrative tends to emphasize the point that the researcher wants to make. "Dozens of interviews" makes you a journalist, not a statistician. 2) I've noticed a lot more press recently explaining the appeal of ISIS, the ideology of ISIS, the history of ISIS, the material support of ISIS. I think it's unfair to say "there is little recognition of its genuine appeal, and even less of the joy it engenders. " More accurately, I'd say that the world is currently going "huh, holy shit. People are still joining ISIS. What the fuck is going on?" 3) 80 years ago all the Kool Kidz were running off to join the Spanish Civil War. Prior to that, people were fuckin' in love with the Bolsheviks. It's not at all unusual for disaffected youth to fall in with counterculture. I can't be the only dude who remembers how many kidz went Fundie when they went off to college? There's this big "who the fuck am I" period between 15 and 30 that cults feed on. Religion welcomes it. Shit, all those tables at Freshman Orientation live for it. And hey - 4) waywardsamurai - drop a beat about all the bullshit associated with being a black muslim in Boulder so we can pepper that on top of growing up in the ghetto in Paris. It's bullshit being muslim right now. Somehow you became the bad guy. Funny thing - nobody held "christians" to account when David Koresh went batshit. 1.6 billion muslims in the world and about 1.6 billion of them have no interest in joining ISIS. Stupid thing is a lot of them are bodily running from ISIS but we've decided they're terrorists. You think that's disaffecting? 5) But that doesn't make it potent. That doesn't make it successful. That doesn't make it strategically advantageous. Why is it that clever people will talk about holy shit ISIS but they aren't even vaguely holy shit Boko Haram? - Bernard Fucking Lewis, whipping-boy of every Islamic writer Look - we give the Saudis shit-tons of money for shit-tons of oil so they can buy shit-tons of guns with it. And they chop the hands off people who steal and stone adulterers to death and shit. Oh, but they don't have terrorists! Except, you know, 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers and shit. But fuckadoodledoo! ISIS! World-changing! 6) So sure. Preamble with Robspierre. Whip out Hobbes, follow up with Darwin, pull Terence The Slave out of your ass then flip in a little bit about pressure cookers, even though the Boston Bombers were Chechnynan and didn't give the first fuck about ISIS. Then wander into Burke and Hitler (?) (!). It won't change the fact that a bunch of angry dudes in the wasteland with Premiere and a sociopathic streak are a geopolitical tragedy, not a "world-altering revolution." Muthafuckin' followers of ibn Taymiyyah have wanted the goddamn Caliphate since the Ottomans fell. Wanting something doesn't make it any more or less likely. something something Sumer. Sweet jesus christ, this is Argument By the Tome.To understand the revolution, my research team has conducted dozens of structured interviews and behavioural experiments with youth in Paris, London and Barcelona, as well as with captured ISIS fighters in Iraq and members of Jabhat al-Nusra (Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria).
“Imagine if the Ku Klux Klan or Aryan Nation obtained total control of Texas and had at its disposal all the oil revenues, and used this money to establish a network of well-endowed schools and colleges all over Christendom peddling their particular brand of Christianity. This is what the Saudis have done with Wahhabism. The oil money has enabled them to spread this fanatical, destructive form of Islam all over the Muslim world and among Muslims in the west. Without oil and the creation of the Saudi kingdom, Wahhabism would have remained a lunatic fringe in a marginal country.”
That was a pretty bomb-ass rant, I like this drunkbl00 guy. I'll just add on a little. Christianity isn't on the up and up anymore here in American, but 71% still identify as Christian. And I'll bet most of them can't even find more than a few differences between Catholics and Protestants. And when shit went down in Waco TX, every Christian told themselves that the Branch Davidians weren't actually Christian, that's just what they called themselves. I guess that's fair, so it'd be fair to afford the peaceful Muslim majority the same privilege. Media bombards us with the term "Muslim/Islam" every day, and 99.9% of the time no attempt is made at distinguishing between Sunni and Shia or educating the consumer in any meaningful fashion on the subject. Gotta be succinct to squeeze in more commercial time, right? So now you're telling me there's a third sect, Wahahsomethin', that's related to Sunni Islam through... oh hold on, I just got a facebook alert. My main point is, just like so many other issues, one large part of the problem is ignorance/lack of education, which forms a pretty powerful positive feedback loop with mass media reinforcement/disasterbation. Despite America's reputation as a cultural melting pot, apparently there just isn't enough mixing going on quickly enough to combat the heightened Islamophobia we're seeing. Here's some recent data. It's still troubling that 10% of any large population would support something as barbaric as ISIS. But from what I understand, Wahhabism in the US is largely policed against by the huge majority of peaceful American Muslims. Just goes to show you can use a religious text to justify whatever atrocities you'd like, and maybe even gain some supporters, if you're clever about it. Anyone reading this comment already knew that. As always, any corrections are appreciated. Oh and a couple of hours ago I grabbed BBQ with the fam, and the joint we ate at had Fox News on every screen, with the headline "Prayers to Mother Teresa Result in Miracle", as a Catholic priest is interviewed in the background. My sister's Aussie boyfriend just flew in a couple days ago, and it's only his second time stateside, so I made sure he turned around and saw that. My parents didn't think it was strange at all, so the subject was immediately changed to how badass Mother Teresa actually was.It's bullshit being muslim right now. Somehow you became the bad guy. Funny thing - nobody held "christians" to account when David Koresh went batshit.
Just for you, I got plastered again so that I could respond in the proper spirit. Actually, that's a lie. I got plastered BECAUSE THIS SHOW SUCKS SO HARD- Anyway. Disquitioning again: I first heard about Edward Said back when he died. NPR was all bent outta shape about it, while all the Rethuglicans were spitting on his grave because apparently you aren't somebody in the conservative intelligentsia until you shit on Edward Said. Then more than ten years later, Audible was doing one of those "buy a shitload of stuff for $5 sales" and Orientalism was one of them, and I figured I ought to read it. It took me maybe six months to get around to it, and then oh my god it took like 3 months just to get through it. Orientalism is byzantine enough to make Name of the Rose read like Da Vinci Code. BUT I'm incredibly glad I read it. It has shaped a lot of my thinking of late. And his message is pretty simple, and basically backed up by a bunch of dry facts in extremely ornate language. The central tenet - the only tenet - of Orientalism is this: Westerners do not study the Middle East except to (A) determine how the West is superior (B) determine how the East is corrupt and (C) reinforce the dominant paradigm that the Middle East is best served by being a vassal state to the great powers of Europe. And it was clearly pretty goddamn influential, and its influence hasn't gone far enough yet. Said points out that the way we regard "the orient" is pretty much the way white folx regarded black folx until Martin Luther King, and he's right. At the core of it, all this confusion over ISIS comes down to "why are these darkies being such a problem." No attempt is made at discussing the fundamental tenets of Islam because we really want to just be told why we're better. Look - fundies gonna fund. Western power structures and Eastern philosophies are gonna clash, plain and simple, but the patronizing and paternal approach we take to the "middle east" ain't helping. At some point, goddamn Middle America is going to have to wake up and wrap their heads around the majority religion of the world. They're going to have to acknowledge that everything we know about the time before the Renaissance is largely known because of people who say "salaam aleikum" to each other. They're going to have to understand that there's a billion gajillion people whose prophet was human but whose words were godlike and that covering your head and not eating pork doesn't make you a terrorist. I just hope we do it in time.
Relevant Free Market Terrorism I'd like to point out that it did take until 2011 for these guys to figure this one out: "In 2011, Campus Crusade for Christ in the United States changed its name to Cru, a shortening of 'Crusade', since many members already refer to it as Cru for short, and also due partially to avoiding the negative connotation of crusade from the historical, bloody Crusades (particularly to Muslim communities) and that much of the organization's work was no longer limited to college campuses.[2]" That quote might be one of those sentences providing a glimpse into the wars of information being waged on Wikipedia. The "since many members already refer to it as 'Cru' " clause was particularly curious. Yeah man. Me too. :/At some point, goddamn Middle America is going to have to wake up and wrap their heads around the majority religion of the world. I just hope we do it in time.
It's funny - at my school, all their signs said "CCC." There'd be a bunch of white kids, most of them leaning towards the redneck persuasion, holding up these signs saying "CCC" and chanting about abortion or some shit. We figured it was because they didn't have the sack to write KKK. "Know another great book?" sober me says. "Tamim Ansary's 'Destiny Disrupted.' Ansary says he was prompted to write the book back when he used to write textbooks for 'a major American publisher' and it took all the fight he had in him to get the publisher to put in a chapter about Islam. He never got it; the best he was ever able to do was a single chapter covering the Byzantines and Islam." God, that's a wearing literary affectation. Anyway. The book covers the history of the world as if the perspective that matters is that perspective that got one third of a chapter. I shit you not - the first 5 Caliphs make for a more engaging story than fuckin' Star Wars. You wanna see how big our blind spot is? And in that history, the Crusades don't really fucking matter. They don't. From a "middle world" perspective the Crusaders were a bunch of barbarians that poked into the periphery three times over the course of a hundred years and left without leaving any cultural impact. The overwhelming majority of the Muslim world never saw a Crusader, never fought a Crusader, never broke bread with a Crusader, never traded spices with a Crusader. The Crusaders were slightly less important to Islam than the Visigoths were to Rome, assuming the Visigoths never made it to within 500 miles of the capital. Islam cares about the Mongols, who basically shattered their divine hegemony and let the fundies take over the narrative. The Mongols overran real territory and killed a bunch of people, changed the power structure and rearranged history. Know what I didn't know? Before the Mongols, the Turks weren't Turkish. Muthafuckin' Turks, Huns, Cathars, Parthians - they all be Mongols. And "Rome" was Byzantium, which didn't fucking fall, but kept right on truckin', no cultural dislocation, no tragedy, no collapse, until Fourteen Fucking Fifty Three. How's that for perspective? "Yeah, you run the world now but that whole 'and then Nero played a fiddle and all civilization plunged into darkness until the Renaissance' line is total BS. Actually, the Empire moved east, left your ancestors behind and your clans spent a thousand years eating mice and berries until you figured out three-field rotation and horse collars. The rest of the world, meanwhile, figured out all that science that your peepz appropriated once they'd created an economy that functioned primarily on raiding." Tell you what. It sure fucks with "manifest destiny" and the Monroe Doctrine. Why is the West so exceptionalist? Because we're dicks.
That second one's going to have red squiggly lines under it for a while. Probably forever.
Reminds me of a word a coworker shared with me, "procrastibate." -you have work to do but you'd rather put it off and....