That didn't take long: Conflict News @Conflicts 60m60 minutes ago BREAKING: 9 airstrikes on #ISIS stronghold of #Raqqa. Power outage across the whole city. Warplanes still flying in the sky - @Raqqa_SL Conflict News @Conflicts 13m13 minutes ago UPDATE: So far 30 airstrikes have pounded #ISIS stronghold of #Raqqa. No end in sight. Conflict News @Conflicts 4m4 minutes ago BREAKING: #US is providing intelligence to #France for strikes on #ISIS in #Syria - @WSJ
Part of me has to think that the US is way more than happy to provide France with the intelligence they need to go pound the shit out of ISIS. While some people may question the US's involvement with Syria/ISIS/ISIL before the Paris bombings, I don't think anyone can question France's retaliation.
Most Muslims are in South or Southeast Asia, and yet we rarely hear about those places as "hotbeds of terrorism." I've been looking up every terrorist attack in/by Indonesians (which has the world's largest muslim population, both as a percentage and a total number), and they mostly seem only tenuously correlated with radical Islam. What this suggests to me is that it's primarily a Middle East problem, and only secondarily an Islam problem. And if we acknowledge that it's a Middle East problem, we should also acknowledge the role that the US has played in the region, and continues to play. I'm not so naive as to assume that we shouldn't have a presence there, but our financial and military support doesn't always exactly fall along ethical lines. As for the polls that purport to show that Muslims support Sharia Law, if you follow a little bit deeper and go to the actual Pew study, you find this: "Overwhelming percentages of Muslims in many countries want Islamic law (sharia) to be the official law of the land, according to a worldwide survey by the Pew Research Center. But many supporters of sharia say it should apply only to their country’s Muslim population. Moreover, Muslims are not equally comfortable with all aspects of sharia: While most favor using religious law in family and property disputes, fewer support the application of severe punishments – such as whippings or cutting off hands – in criminal cases. The survey also shows that Muslims differ widely in how they interpret certain aspects of sharia, including whether divorce and family planning are morally acceptable." I bet if you asked a majority of Americans whether "Christian values" should guide our lawmaking, you'd get similar numbers. So much so, in fact, that we have basically zero chance of electing a non-Christian in the next 20-24 years, we make our lawmakers swear in on a bible, and they had to inject God into our pledge of allegiance to make sure we got it.
That sounds great on paper, but its too late for them to solve it. ISIS now too powerful, has too much money, and is big enough to be an existential threat to a lot of the smaller, more moderate Islamic tribes in the area. Thats the thing with crazy groups. You either have to contain them early and destroy them, or they get out of control like wild fire. As big a shithead as Saddam Hussein was, he knew what kind of people he was dealing with. As for Anonymous "declaring war" on ISIS. Its funny that a group that wears the mask of a religious extremist are vowing to fight religious extremism.
These four locations cover a vast percentage of the population of South and Southeast Asia: -These guys are based out of the Southern islands in the Phillipines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Sayyaf -They think these guys are based out of the Western end (Bandah Aceh) of Sumatra, they are trying to separate from Indonesia currently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jemaah_Islamiyah -India is fighting insurgencies in the North (Kashmiri Groups) and South (Tamil Nadu), The 2005 attack was quite notable and it made the cable network news cycle for a week: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_India -The majority of Western China, where the Uighurs can be found, apparently wants to separate from China and there have been plenty of attacks. There isn't a lot published about these attacks usually because China keeps a pretty tight lid on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_China Sadly you are probably right. It is unfortunate when the 3 viable options are: Allow radicalism to flourish, support despotism in a region or full-on, blood and treasure intensive military occupation. All three are by-products of current Western "diplomacy".
Interesting article: What I Learned Interviewing ISIS Prisoners. The part which I found most distressing:
"Growing up a Sunni Arab was no fun after US involvement." That's because the Sunnis were the minority rulers (Roughly 20% of the country was Sunni) and once Hussein was no longer in power the majority Shia took power after years of being dominated and terrorized by the Sunnis. That's not exactly our fault.
Actually, let me rephrase that...it is our fault. We supported Hussein during the Iran/Iraq war under "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" fallacy. We really do need to keep our noses out of the internal conflicts over there because it always comes back to bite us in the ass.
I'm not going to argue it or defend it. Take what you want out of the article. The one thing I am certain of is the solution must come from within the arab world. That area has been and probably always will be completely fractured. It was a bunch of warring tribes and minor kingdoms before Muhammed. It was a bunch of warring caliphates who allowed the Christians to keep coming for over a century in the crusades. WWI it was a bunch of warring tribes who couldn't ban together without intervention to push out the Turks. Now it is the oil kingdoms and a bunch of warring factions, most still carrying out a millennium old blood feud. Whatever other reasons people wish to place, be they economical, religious, or educational, all are valid.
Yeah, I agree 100%. They've been at it so long no one knows how it started or what they're even fighting about, it just the way it's always been. We need to pull out completely. Eventually one of them will probably lob a nuke and the problem will be solved once and for all.
My money is on a dirty bomb of some sort. Cobalt or cesium attached to an explosive. Maaayyybbbeee some plutonium pellets from Iran's power plant production. That would have to be an inside job like something from the show 24. I still think they would irradiate themselves to death before they get the chance to hurt others. Getting a legit nuclear warhead and a missile with which to launch is unrealistic. You will need something in the 10-20 kiloton range to make an effect and the chances of them killing themselves with it during the explosion is really high. They would need a massive sponsor like Iran or Saudi Arabia to help them. That is unlikely.
https://np.reddit.com/r/humanism/co..._had_one_of_the_best_responses_to_the/cx2d85p My new favorite Reddit post. Also, all these states refusing Syrian immigrants...correct me if I am wrong, but that's just political theater, right? The states can't refuse them if the Feds don't. Aside from the racist and frankly, cowardly tactic it's not a real thing they can enact, right? One interesting theory I read was that the Middle East stands to lose the most as a result of global warming because vast tracts of land are becoming too hot to farm, forcing those poor farmers and their families into cities. When they arrive as essentially unwelcome immigrants that have few economic opportunities, they are then more easily recruited into organizations like Isis. I saw something similar in areas of Central America where the environmental impact was contributing in a semi-direct way to gang violence in the major cities. Hard to isolate those variables scientifically but it seems plausible and scary.
I've resisted posting on the subject, but let me say this: I am the son of an immigrant. The US needs to stop being the cool kid that got into the club (despite not being cool enough) and trying to exclude everyone. Our strength, morality and vision of freedom demands that we accept people from everywhere else. To many, we are the last hope for freedom that exists in this crazy world. That is who we are. To deny that is to deny ourselves. I'll climb down off my soapbox now.
That's halfway accurate. yes, the states can refuse to cooperate and make life difficult, but, if whatever housing they are refusing to provide is government subsidized then, more likely than not, the bulk of the State's housing subsidies come from HUD and that's biting the hand that feeds you. On top of that, these aren't illegal immigrants. They would be legal residents of the United States and, as such, are entitled to the full range of Constitutional protections as a garden variety citizen including all of the fair housing laws and the freedom from discrimination based on national origin. In the case of our current idiot-in-chief Jindal, he's doing anything to resuscitate a long dead and always hopeless presidential campaign, so yes it is all political theater.
Someone posted this on Fark: "If you see Islamophobic or refugee bashing posts on Facebook or social media, please remind the commenters that they are enabling ISIS. Former ISIS hostage Nicholas Henin, who spent 10 months as a hostage of Jihadi John says that ISIS checks social media and schedule their lives around it like a group of thirteen-year old suburb spawn, and they want to send a few messages. One, that Muslims can't co-exist with other people; two, the Western world views Muslims as sub-human; and, lastly, that if you flee ISIS, there's nowhere you can go they can't get you. Those pictures and stories of refugees being welcomed in Germany were sanitized and attempted to scrub like a mention of Tiannamen Square on Weibo. ISIS can't frickin' stand that, and they're getting their asses kicked in Syria, so they have to try and take attention away from what we're doing there." I'm on the fence about allowing the immigrants in (even though the perpetrators were basically evil Belgians), but I prefer to think along the lines that this is not who we are as Americans. Those attempting to score political points are no better than those who push for an ideological purity. That is dangerous.
One word in response to you and to that idiot Reddit post: Rotherham. How many children need to be raped before you decide that mass immigration of Muslims to Western countries is a bad idea? Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt.
Idealism is what gets people killed, and it's what got this situation of control in the first place. People need to wake the fuck up.
That is not fair. Every culture in the world has those who would enslave and rape another. It took years for that German fruitcake to be found out, it took years for the ones in America to slip up and be caught. Eastern Europeans smuggle thousands of sex slaves; hell, Germans and Brits are the biggest child sex vacationers to Thailand. I am not a fan of Pakistani politics or their culture at large, but that's a big brush you just painted them with. Shall we go over the laundry list of humanitarian atrocities Americans perpetrated over the years? School shootings alone should have closed off American immigration to Canada and Europe.
Yes, but we are American, and therefore have to deal with the Jerry Sanduskys we already have. There's no need to import more. And if Canada or Europe wants to shut the border to us, that's perfectly fine by me, and well within their rights. They don't have an obligation to take anyone in, from Americans to Zambians, and we don't either. Just asking: What events would falsify the belief in open borders that is on display here? At what cost (and pick a cost in anything) do you say, "Y'know, this isn't worth it"? Because of course there are costs.