Iraq falling apart

[biffvernon]

Indeed. And I think similar attitudes prevailed when 'Christians' invaded parts of Africa. See for example http://www.yale.edu/gsp/colonial/belgian_congo/

(There's quite a long list of genocides caused by other than Muslims on that webpage.)

Or consider this picture that popped up on my facebook timeline a few minute ago:

[Little John]

I was listening to something on the radio yesterday about someone who conned absurd amounts of money out of perfectly ordinary people on the premise that good things would happen if they sent her money in envelopes that would be hung on a trees in the DODGY TAX AVOIDERS Rainforest. They must have been crazy. About as crazy as all the billions of other people who believe in untrue stuff.

Nevertheless, I do think it worth pointing out that the vast majority of folk who follow the Islamic faith are decent, peaceful folk and should not be lumped in with the psychopaths.

Whilst an underlying irrationality provides the shared foundation for both, there is a vast chasm of difference between a foolish belief in some bullshit about money hanging on Amazonian trees and believing in a monotheistic Abrahamic deity to the extent that one is willing to kill one's fellow humans purely because they do not also believe it or because they are unwilling to modify their actions in order to accommodate one's own belief.

This is more complicated than a simplistic dichotomy of all followers of Islam are monsters versus all followers of Islam are peace loving victims.

[UndercoverElephant]

Sometime between the arrival of Europeans in North America 1620 plus or minus a decade or two and 1870 the majority opinion of the new arrivals became that "The only good Indian was a dead Indian").

This has absolutely nothing to do with the current debate about Islam.

[Bear in mind my job is teaching people to forage for wild food, and I have more than a small soft spot for hunter-gatherers]

Requoted from Jared Diamond's "The Third Chimpanzee".

The immediate objectives are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements. It will be essential to ruin their crops in the ground and prevent their planting more.

If it be the Design and Providence to Extirpate these savages in order to make room for the Cultivators of the Earth, it seems not improbable that Rum may be the appointed means.

This unfortunate race, whom we had been taking so much pains to save and to civilise, have by their unexpected desertion and ferocious barabarities justified extermination and now await our decision on their fate.

What is the right of the huntsman to the forest of a thousand miles over which he has accidentally ranged in quest of prey?

Is one of the fairest portions of the globe to remain in a state of nature, the haunt of a few wretched savages, when it seems destined by the Creator to give supprt to a large population and to be the seat of civilisation?

Anyone who thinks history could have played out much differently is kidding themselves. It doesn't matter how you dress it up - how you do the politics. One way or another, the North American continent was going to be swallowed up by modern agriculture and industrialisation. It was never going to be left, like most of the south island of New Zealand, in a state of nature.

ISLAM is something else entirely.

[vtsnowedin]

Sometime between the arrival of Europeans in North America 1620 plus or minus a decade or two and 1870 the majority opinion of the new arrivals became that "The only good Indian was a dead Indian").

This has absolutely nothing to do with the current debate about Islam.

[Bear in mind my job is teaching people to forage for wild food, and I have more than a small soft spot for hunter-gatherers]

Requoted from Jared Diamond's "The Third Chimpanzee".

The immediate objectives are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements. It will be essential to ruin their crops in the ground and prevent their planting more.

If it be the Design and Providence to Extirpate these savages in order to make room for the Cultivators of the Earth, it seems not improbable that Rum may be the appointed means.

This unfortunate race, whom we had been taking so much pains to save and to civilise, have by their unexpected desertion and ferocious barabarities justified extermination and now await our decision on their fate.

What is the right of the huntsman to the forest of a thousand miles over which he has accidentally ranged in quest of prey?

Is one of the fairest portions of the globe to remain in a state of nature, the haunt of a few wretched savages, when it seems destined by the Creator to give supprt to a large population and to be the seat of civilisation?

Anyone who thinks history could have played out much differently is kidding themselves. It doesn't matter how you dress it up - how you do the politics. One way or another, the North American continent was going to be swallowed up by modern agriculture and industrialisation. It was never going to be left, like most of the south island of New Zealand, in a state of nature.

ISLAM is something else entirely.

You back me up over and over again but then draw a different conclusion?
How is Islam different? Would the world not be better off if they were all gone? This is not PC ,I know, so we are just examining the possibilities, not asserting a path forward. Looking for a better outcome that might be embraced by the Islamic leadership.

[biffvernon]

Would the world not be better off if they were all gone?

I think so. Belief in anything that is untrue seems to come with attendant risk of bad consequences. When folk depart from rationality, the future becomes unpredictable.

[UndercoverElephant]

Sometime between the arrival of Europeans in North America 1620 plus or minus a decade or two and 1870 the majority opinion of the new arrivals became that "The only good Indian was a dead Indian").

This has absolutely nothing to do with the current debate about Islam.

[Bear in mind my job is teaching people to forage for wild food, and I have more than a small soft spot for hunter-gatherers]

Requoted from Jared Diamond's "The Third Chimpanzee".

The immediate objectives are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements. It will be essential to ruin their crops in the ground and prevent their planting more.

If it be the Design and Providence to Extirpate these savages in order to make room for the Cultivators of the Earth, it seems not improbable that Rum may be the appointed means.

This unfortunate race, whom we had been taking so much pains to save and to civilise, have by their unexpected desertion and ferocious barabarities justified extermination and now await our decision on their fate.

What is the right of the huntsman to the forest of a thousand miles over which he has accidentally ranged in quest of prey?

Is one of the fairest portions of the globe to remain in a state of nature, the haunt of a few wretched savages, when it seems destined by the Creator to give supprt to a large population and to be the seat of civilisation?

Anyone who thinks history could have played out much differently is kidding themselves. It doesn't matter how you dress it up - how you do the politics. One way or another, the North American continent was going to be swallowed up by modern agriculture and industrialisation. It was never going to be left, like most of the south island of New Zealand, in a state of nature.

ISLAM is something else entirely.

You back me up over and over again but then draw a different conclusion?
How is Islam different?

Islam is different because it is a religion, not a "pre-civilised" way of living.

Would the world not be better off if they were all gone?

Yes, and in that sense there is a similarity. It's just that that is where the similarities end.

[Little John]

At the risk of stating the bleeding obvious, I think we should clarify that what we mean when we say it would be better if "they" were gone (followers of fundamentalist religions), is that it would be better if "it" was gone (fundamentalist religion).

Yes?

I detest fundamentalist Islam as much as I detest fundamentalist Christianity. I also recognise that fundamentalist Islam has a much stronger hold on the wider Islamic diaspora than does fundamentalist Christianity on the wider Christian diaspora and that makes it particularly dangerous. But, the principle stand in both instances. I would also note that fundamentalism does not always need to take an overt religious form. The fundamentalist, anti-human, free-market, neo-con culture of places like the USA, for instance, is just as dangerous and, in terms of material damage it has already wreaked on other countries as well as the rest of life on earth, far more so.

Underneath all of the fundamentalist religion and other cultural deformities, though, people are just people. As times are getting tougher, I see scapegoats being formed and I'm worried because history informs where that leads.

[vtsnowedin]

Underneath all of the fundamentalist religion and other cultural deformities, though, people are just people. As times are getting tougher, I see scapegoats being formed and I'm worried because history informs where that leads.

Yes it is quite worrisome. Millions of innocent people have died over the centuries in the name of god of one sort or another. Now with modern weaponry there is the potential to kill billions more.

[biffvernon]

I detest fundamentalist Islam as much as I detest fundamentalist Christianity. I also recognise that fundamentalist Islam has a much stronger hold on the wider Islamic diaspora than does fundamentalist Christianity on the wider Christian diaspora and that makes it particularly dangerous. But, the principle stand in both instances. I would also note that fundamentalism does not always need to take an overt religious form. The fundamentalist, anti-human, free-market, neo-con culture of places like the USA, for instance, is just as dangerous and, in terms of material damage it has already wreaked on other countries as well as the rest of life on earth, far more so.

Underneath all of the fundamentalist religion and other cultural deformities, though, people are just people. As times are getting tougher, I see scapegoats being formed and I'm worried because history informs where that leads.

Couldn't agree more. We must always be wary of creating scapegoats.

[mr brightside]

I feel we are living in interesting times again, but the bulk of the Western world hasn't noticed yet.

Libyan oil exports zero
Syrian oil exports zero
Egypt oil imports rising
Brazilian oil imports rising
Iranian oil exports constrained
Russian oil production plateaued
Iraqi oil exports looking very likely to collapse
Chinese demand rising almost as fast as ever.

Nigeria and Sudan are not looking too healthy either.

The company i work for is recruiting engineers to work in the oil fields near Basra in the south, one lot went out last year and they are still there. In the initial presentation i asked what they'd do in the event of regime change, the american chap said after all the work they'd done in the last 10yrs he couldn't see that being a threat to the operation. Basically, it took a long time to get hold of it and they aren't letting go. I could see the south splitting from the middle/north, with american interests being protected accordingly in the south. As for the rest of it i don't know.

[RenewableCandy]

An insurance company were doing a bit of a job fair locally and I went along. Turns out they do (among other things, like insuring satellites and oil tankers) "kidnap-and-ransom" policies. It was a bit of an eye-opener!

[madibe]

So comments on our recent UK Jihadists?

These are 'intelligent' UK citizens. How do we square that circle? It goes to show the power of Islamic sentiment - or does it show something else?

We are not talking small numbers - it is estimated that 500 young followers of Islam have left this country to fight in Syria and Iraq.

And begs the question. What is more important to them - being UK citizens (mostly since birth) or fighting for an 'ideal' overseas, that in fact they have no physical connection to.

This must mean that the power of Islamic fervour is an overriding force. Or are they just messed up? And if so, why?

[Little John]

If I was brought up in a part of the world where my race and culture was only a generation or so old in terms of residence in that country. That is to say, the original immigrants to that country were my parents or grandparents. Thus, my cultural and emotional connection to the "home" country was still relatively strong due to my parents/grandparents still having full contact with relatives back home;

If my country of residence's culture was in direct opposition to some of my ethic groups cultural norms and values and, furthermore, the indigenous mainstream culture was, in many ways, hostile to my own ethnic minority culture;

If my country of residence was undergoing a major economic upheaval such that this was affecting my own life chances and so depriving me of any economic hope for the future;

If my cou8ntry of residence was part of a larger identifiable geopolitical diaspora that regularly engaged in military adventures in my ethnic groups home country of origin such that the people I still culturally identified with were dying in vast numbers;

I might be inclined to go and fight.

If I'm not mistaken, Europeans, from a number of different countries, went to fight the fascists in he Spanish civil war. Were they "messed up"?

Now, of course, throw religion into the mix, and it all hits a new level. We only have to look across the water to Northern Island to see that. But, the point is, the religion is an addendum to the process. An important addendum. But an addendum, nonetheless.

This is all about land and resources. It always has been. It why our county's forces are there and it's why there are fighting us and each other.

[AndySir]

If I'm not mistaken, Europeans, from a number of different countries, went to fight the fascists in he Spanish civil war. Were they "messed up"?

That thought has occurred to me on a few occasions - whether in another culture joining ISIS might be romanticised in the same manner as walking out one midsummer morning. It was a terribly photogenic terrorist on their publicity.

[biffvernon]

If I'm not mistaken, Europeans, from a number of different countries, went to fight the fascists in he Spanish civil war. Were they "messed up"?

My grandfather was involved in organising the International Brigade. His view was that had it been supported by governments such as the UK's the second world war might have been avoided. My mother was in Spain in 1936 and saw what happened.