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There is a contradiction there Marc. The western girls going to be brides have been brought up in the UK. They have been lured into believing the jihad is exciting. I'm sure the reality is nothing like that but they have the western sense of all wilful teenagers but hell bent on a cause however flawed. They will find far less freedom once there, whatever they say to recruit others.What you observe of western culture is hard not to agree with. When I see young people, drunk and disheveled making a nuisance of themselves every weekend, the importance given to 'celebrity' and the absolute junk in the press, I despair too.
I read a couple of articles recently (I have an American psychologist friend) regarding the Arab psyche and comparing the shame culture it's long so a link would be better if your interested I'll find it.
I entirely accept that the grass is far from greener in the caliphate, but if they were as traditional as you suggested, they would not disobey their parents. Of course propaganda plays a huge role in enticing them.
No I perhaps didn't make that clear. They are brought up as tradionally as they can be but they must have seen the freediom of their school friends. But they are too young and stupid to realise what they are getting into. It's excitement - at that age they think they know it all.
I think the fundamental drive is a discontent with the values of their parents.
also it's hard to counter the narrative of a litany of death and neo-colonialism visited upon some Muslim countries, because it's basically true. What is new about ISIS is they offer a practical vision of unifying Muslims in the form of the Caliphate. Osama talked about it, but ISIS have delivered it, no matter how ephemeral its existence
Technically Daesh have united some Sunni. They've almost certainly killed more Shia than they have westerners
I think part of the problem is the West refusing to stand up for its own values, especially those of the enlightenment. We see it in the UK on an almost daily basis - the erosion of free speech, mass surveillance programs going through parliament, and our freedoms being ridden over roughshod.
There is a crisis of confidence in the West of who we are and where we're going.
When freedom is under attack, the answer is more freedom, not mass spying or monitoring emails on an industrial scale.
R.M.F wrote: "When freedom is under attack, the answer is more freedom, not mass spying or monitoring emails on an industrial scale. "But that is a sell well above the capability of most of our politicians.
Jim wrote: "Just a thought brought on by over exposure to Facebook :-(https://jandbvwebster.wordpress.com/2..."
Very nice column, Jim.
Excellent piece, Jim.
I see that Anonymous have announced they are to attack ISIS.I suspect that they be more effective than our government.
Almost certainly, not having to obey any rules, or be answerable to any higher authority or democratic accountability and not particularly caring who they hurt, they'll be far more effective.If the Americans bomb the wrong place and people end up dead or in hospital it's all over facebook, if Anonymous then shut off the electricity to that hospital so people will die,who will ever notice?
The one sure rule about power is that those who want it are almost never fit to be allowed to have it :-(
Actually i was thinking more that Anonymous will be able to shut down ISIS Social media (openly operated, incidentally via a webhosting company in the US!) and attack their internet usage which is what sustains them
The problem is who do you appeal to if they shut down your server by mistake, or disrupt stuff so much that your connection fails?Or some clown shuts down the web page of a Balti curry house because they got some letters mixed up in a strange name?
Power without responsibility is the prerogative of the harlot
I see the strategy of bombing a few camels from 30,000 feet continues unabated...
well that's the French industrial interest with Gitanes to the fore then
Marc wrote: "well that's the French industrial interest with Gitanes to the fore then"LOL
Anonymous also said the same thing about the Mexican drug cartels... which mounted to absolutely nothing at all.
Marc wrote: "well that's the French industrial interest with Gitanes to the fore then":P
Michael Cargill wrote: "Anonymous also said the same thing about the Mexican drug cartels... which mounted to absolutely nothing at all."They have a good PR wing, I'll grant them that.
Apparently, Canada is pulling out of the bombing.I need to read up on that today.
Patti (baconater) wrote: "Apparently, Canada is pulling out of the bombing.I need to read up on that today."
I believe the new Prime Minister stated that they would do that should they be elected.
Yes. I'll be impressed if he follows though now.
A politician doing what he promised: our lot will be vilifying him shortly
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Geoff (G. Robbins) (merda constat variat altitudo)
(last edited Nov 18, 2015 01:05AM)
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Will wrote: "A politician doing what he promised: our lot will be vilifying him shortly"Outrageous! I will write to the Telegraph.
They will be at the front of the queue, Geoff.carefully unrelated in today's news -
A) Cameron presses case for more airstrikes
B) Shares in Defence industries rise in value.
what happens if and when the IS falls? Their fighters will successfully go underground and blend back in among the populations of Syria & Iraq as the original Sunni insurgents did in Iraq. They will lay low until whatever version of radical Islam rises to replace ISIS, no doubt even more extreme and cruel in its methods and objectives, and these guys will return to swell its ranks.
Actually the alternative is that if Daesh falls the locals who know these people hunt them down. Remember the vast majority of people killed by ISIS have been local people who were the wrong sort of Muslim, or not good enough Muslims, or who said the wrong thing at the wrong time.These people are going to remember. An ex Daesh fighter is going to have a pretty low life expectancy in Syria/Iraq if their caliphate falls.
As for bombing, remember that there are men and women on the ground fighting against Daesh. The bombing is largely co-ordinated with them and is aimed at reinforcements moving up, supply convoys, and the usual rear echelon stuff that we've used air power to take out reasonably successfully since about 1918.
Using air power in close support is difficult and really depends a lot on the ability of the forward controllers. Kurds etc aren't really that well trained, and we don't apparently send our own men down, so close support seems to be limited to drones.
I wish that were true Jim. If it were, then the resistance and internal pressure on IS from the people it rules over in its most cruel fashion should have caused it to fall way prior to the aerial bombardment campaign. Most people want and pray for a quite life, to be left alone to get on with it. I don't think there will be any serious reprisals and score settling. And if there were, they'd probably hop over to Libya and join in the mess there. Which they may do anyway.
Looks like cheap flights on Air France coming soon.
Remember that a lot of the fighting is being done in Syria and Iraq by what we would consider Tribal militias. Daesh is effectively involved in blood feuds with a lot of those tribes now. They won't forget and they'll settle for a quiet life after they've settled scores.Ironically Libya too is tribally based, with loyalties to the tribe/clan/group being more important than the concept of statehood. (The fact that people still talk about 'Arab' Nationalism, rather than Iraqi Nationalism says a lot).
Daesh survives through terror and posing as the shield of the Sunni. It's probably one reason why foreign fighters are so important, because local recruiting may not be easy. You can get conscripts, you can get people you chain to truck bombs because otherwise their families die, but the area they control isn't particularly heavily populated.
The original growth spurt in ISIS came from those tribes in Iraq and yes their inability to shield them has cost them support. But if they manage to keep the Sunni V Shia narrative going, they can always bring the Sunni militants back on side to some extent. I still believe there won't be all that much score-settling, but they'll bide their time until the next metamorphosis
Marc wrote: "I won't fly anyway. Not since 9/11"I really can't...
No. Never mind. It's not worth the effort of typing.
Jim wrote: "Remember that a lot of the fighting is being done in Syria and Iraq by what we would consider Tribal militias. Daesh is effectively involved in blood feuds with a lot of those tribes now. They won'..."How does tribal stuff in Nigeria fit in with what's happening there?
Patti (baconater) wrote: "Marc wrote: "I won't fly anyway. Not since 9/11"I really can't...
No. Never mind. It's not worth the effort of typing."
yeah yeah flying is safer than crossing the road and all that. No one said it was rational
I'd never refer to you as 'it', Marc. :D
It's okay if you did, penguins are hard to sex
Now we need a penguin sex thread.
Patti (baconater) wrote: "How does tribal stuff in Nigeria fit in with what's happening there? ..."
Talking to Nigerian friends of mine, the clan system works differently in the north. I suspect the level of corruption is probably similar throughout Nigeria but according to what I've been told, in the North it is linked more to patronage within the clan. So the money will be appropriated by the senior person within the clan and they will run an almost Republican Roman system of patronage where you turn up at your patron's home and you'll get the money you need in return you're expected to support him etc.
Obviously Islam is part of this but may be incidental, in that they were different peoples before Islam arrived. I'm not sure how it fits in with Boko Haram but with that system the leader of the insurgency would effectively substitute for the clan chief, handing out slave girls, loot, weaponry to his supporters.
My experience is that tribal patronage is endemic in great swathes of West Africa. Insurgency leaders are most likely tribal leaders. I'm sure monetary and power gain is a great or even greater desire than any religious fervour.
Patti (baconater) wrote: "My experience is that tribal patronage is endemic in great swathes of West Africa. Insurgency leaders are most likely tribal leaders. I'm sure monetary and power gain is a great or even greater des..."I believe this is a worldwide phenomenon. It's just, we don't call it "tribal" in "advanced" societies. Kinda like we don't refer to what's happening in the central United States as "desertification." To quote a former US Secretary of the Interior who was briefed about desertification in the US Midwest, "Desertification happens in Africa, not here."
what about the low level civil war running throughout certain US inner cities? Don't seem to talk about that either
Marc wrote: "what about the low level civil war running throughout certain US inner cities? Don't seem to talk about that either"There are so many conflicts/violence/etc. here that it's difficult to know specifically to what you're referring.
Patti (baconater) wrote: "My experience is that tribal patronage is endemic in great swathes of West Africa. Insurgency leaders are most likely tribal leaders. I'm sure monetary and power gain is a great or even greater des..."Just told by a friend from the area that the previous Minister of Defence in Nigeria is under arrest. Apparently the $2 billion extra given to the army to fight Boko Haram? He pocketed the lot
Yes, Jim. I read about that a couple days ago. He must have not kicked back enough to the president.Speaking of arrests,
http://en.apa.az/xeber_general_prosec...
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France particular struggles with this, as it mandatorily teaches the Holocaust in schools, which today's Muslim youth see as favouring a Jewish "narrative" over theirs. Augmented by something like the Hijab ban. Muslim youth have made it increasingly hard for French teachers to teach the Holocaust as not applicable to them and the whole thing is in danger of fostering further problems and division.