I don’t think anyone thinks that. That last part there. Not anyone in charge anyway.
There are those (many) who would like these things to just stop, but also those who would rather that they never do.
Completely agree.
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All three share a book, is my understanding. Some more than one. None of it has to exist outside of the text and peoples minds does it?
I am not so sure. I think people in Europe feel very unsettled. Our security, previously taken for granted, is no longer a given. I have friends (who mostly share y politics) and relations (some of whom don’t) in Hungary, Germany, UK, Holland, Italy and France and have spoken to them about politics, and the one thing that seems to be universal is the sense that things will never be the same. Uncertainty, normality for the vast majority of the world’s population, is now here to stay with us in Europe. Even conservatives’ reaction is just one of unsettlement (is there such a word).
In my experience, no one seriously thinks that the future can be steered, controlled.
And that is why the insidious, evil UK press are so dangerous. Because, they should elevate the discussion and create a genuine space for discourse, where multiple experiences, multiple realities, can be acknowledged and negotiated.
Instead they gang up on Jeremy Corbyn, a democratically elected leader (and a widely acknowledged nice guy) who hasn’t said anything deplorable, nor has he in any way been weasel or hypocritical, while beating thier breast about the noble English fight for democracy. It hasn’t yet occurred to them, that maybe the reason why Corbyn was elected, has to do with the sense of uncertainty, and that instead of choosing the certainty of despair and resignation, the people have chosen hope and the uncertainty of possibilities.
Watching this from the inside now, living in this cesspit of intellectual stupidity built on the pathetic rubble of an empire, I increasingly believe that the British were far more culpable in facilitating the rise of Hitler than the history books acknowledge. And it’s deja vue, and it’s not pretty.
Seriously, yesterday at 1am in the morning, when I arrived home, the BBC led with the terrorist attacks in Paris, tightly followed as second headline by what will Corbyn say, not say?
Really, the man is asleep (as all decent citizens should) went to bed oblivious (just like everyone else, except the perpetrators) and you are making a top headline of it. Because there is nothing more news worthy? in the UK?
P.s. this lies at the root of my utter cynicism regarding the press, at least the UK version of the same, and why fighting for press freedom without fighting for press responsibility feels so hollow.
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I’ll take a stab at it:
First, don’t do a single bloody thing to constrain any of your citizen’s freedoms, and make a speech to that effect, saying how your people won’t be cowed into paranoia like the snivelling yanks.
Second, investigate the fuck out of this atrocity, seeking anybody associated with it to face the music. Hopefully someone can be found.
Third, any military action needs to be multilateral, for fuck’s sake (remember the UN? Hugely relevant here). And any coalition should be led by locals, preferably Muslims, both Sunni and Shia.
Finally, the military shit needs to be eclipsed by a global effort to fix the Middle East: for a start, the US needs to tell Israel to STFU and stop picking on the Palestinians or start facing questions about the illicit nukes they’ve been allowed to pretend they don’t have, and then Arabs might have some sliver of respect for the West. The US also needs to stop playing favourites with bloody Saudi Arabia, big time. Get some actual democracy happening in the region, instead of propping one group up over the other. Shitloads of aid to repair all the damaged social infrastructure in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a huge and relentless propaganda campaign, tuned by locals, designed to bring Sunni and Shia together and diminish fundamentalism.
But it’ll probably just be more of the same old short-sighted shit, with spooks and the military scrambling to enlarge their budgets via the worst possible policies, based on fear and bullshit.
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Neither the IRA nor FARC had the goal of taking over their respective continents to install a radical theocracy.
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And what will it accomplish?
Osama bin Laden may have thought the attacks of 9/11/2001 were a great victory, but that’s not how it ultimately turned out for him. Innocent peaceful Muslims will face persecution in the West, and more bombs will fall from drones in the Middle East.
I’m not saying I approve, just that this seems to be how the world works: violence is met with violence, is met with more violence.
The problem with terrorism as a tactic is that fighting a war against the entirety of another culture (“the West”) is that you can’t really vanquish your foe on the battlefield when 1.) there is no defined battlefield, and 2.) your foe is hundreds of millions of people spread out across several continents.
All this is pretty obvious, but then it’s also pretty obvious that we’re all god’s children, and whatever ancient scripture you cite to justify killing will be contradicted by another verse in your holy book that says the opposite.
So it goes.
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Yeah but that is hardly news is it? It is not one of our favourite cities, and not one where even a thousand people murdered in one day would make a single western head of state publicly say that “we are crying with the victims” or landmarks being highlighted in the colours of the Lebanese flag. This double standard is really something to contemplate.
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Absolutely.
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I don’t know what ideas you have of Europe, but it is not some hick town where lynch mobs form on any opportunity.
Yes, these heinous acts will give a boost to unpalatable right wingers, no doubt about it. But I don’t see the general populace turning against Muslims, or them being persecuted by police. So let’s not mix up who the victims are right now: it is random people targeted by jihadi murderers, not Muslims being targeted by Europeans. If something like that should happen, I’ll be one of the first on the street to stand up against it, but right now it just does not happen.
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It’s both, positive feedback, you need the latter first though.
Thank you, that’s going to a lot of people I know.
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Just an observation:
Those beating the drum, laying the blame on religion are just as bad as those who are beating the drum, laying the blame on the brown Muslims of the Middle East (and mostly likely the Syrian refugees.)
It is a distinct faction responsible for the violence.
Not Syrians, et al. Not Arabs/Persians/Turks/Kurds/etc. Not Sunni/Shiite. Not Muslims. Not brown people. Not religious people.
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I don’t think it’s a double standard, it’s perfectly natural and reasonable for people to have a more immediate empathic reaction about bad things that happen closer to home, to people who are more like ourselves. Ask most people about the situation in Beirut and they’ll no doubt have similar views on the two.
Religion is the mechanism of Islamist terrorism, not its cause. If it weren’t for all the past Western imperialism, those religious people wouldn’t be mass murderers. They’d be peacefully at home committing no worse crime than the occasional stoning of an adulteress.
Or maybe, in the absence of imperialism, the area would have progressed further by now and the religious nuts would by now be reduced to peacefully protesting the fact that stonings are illegal now.
State of emergency. Not martial law. And I’m still willing to bet that US police will kill more people than the French police during those 12 days.
It’s the same in most places… but I think there are plenty of measures that would save many lives but that are not implemented because most people would think them too inconvenient or inappropriate for other reasons - 80km/h limit on all roads; enforcement by mandatory GPS-enabled black boxes in every car. People seem to be happy to sacrifice privacy and their convenience to the fight against terrorism, but the equivalent number of traffic deaths is not met with the same kind of extreme responses.
Now that is disgusting.
People who randomly murder civilians are not “people with complicated and often legitimate grievances”. There are people with legitimate grievances against France. But once you open fire on a concert hall, you lose all legitimacy.
Next, “Neoliberal Global Capitalism” is not a religion. When people start volunteering to blow themselves up for Capitalism, I might reconsider that.
Being “hounded into a corner” is not usually considered an excuse for mass murder. And the “corners” that various terrorist were in before they found their “lifeline” aren’t deep enough to justify murder, either. The Austrians who got caught trying to go to Syria to support the IS were not deliberately “hounded” into a corner, but they didn’t have it easy, either. But lots of people find themselves in “corners” and don’t have it easy.
You’re right in comparing religion to an offer of a lifeline, but it’s by far the most destructive lifeline available.
Well, I agree that saying “religion” doesn’t help much - stating a basic fact that should be obvious to everyone seldom does ;-). But what is factually wrong with this stereotype that you don’t want reinforced?
Yes. Shouldn’t I?
Would you apply the same rethoric to Nazi soldiers in WWII? Not the forcibly conscripted ones, but those who proudly volunteered right at the start of the war. Or those who volunteered for the special units that committed most of the crimes. Would you say that nationalism played no part, and that those people were just desparate?
Both “religion” and “patriotism” are dangerous ideas. They are harmless recreational drugs when used in small doses, they have some unpleasant side effects when taken in larger doses, and an overdose can be deadly. It’s wrong to lump in all the muslims with the tiny minority of madmen. Attacking “religious people” in general is also wrong, but quite harmless as we’re dealing with a very privileged group here. But downplaying the danger inherent in religion is wrong, too. In fact, I think religious people need to be aware of those dangers, otherwise they will end up as the substrate on which extremism can grow.
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While western intervention has certainly contributed to some the instability and strife, that area has been fraught with conflict for a very, very long time. The religion of the area has waxed and waned between progressive and enlightening, to fundamentalist and stifling.
Perhaps it would be a much better place had there been no western influence - but given the history of the past I doubt it. Though perhaps they wouldn’t be looking to lash out past their boarders - but again - given the history of the past, I doubt it.
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Edited title, again to reflect current status.
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Maybe that is the double standard. As somebody in the eastern US, how do I know that France is closer, or it’s people more like me, than Beirut and its people? Maybe there is a sense of immediate community between France and the rest of Europe, but I don’t think it is reasonable to assume for the average reactionary USian, who might not even be able to point at either on a map.
How people decide that Group X is “like me” involves some sort of standards, and they are worth thinking about.
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France is a long-standing ally of the US. Lebanon is not. It’s really that simple.
The article posted about the Lebanese who thinks that his life is worthless because the Beirut massacre isn’t publicized in the West is off-base. His life is valuable. But Lebanese news doesn’t make it to the US because of the first sentence in my post. Not because of some life-value-system.
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It is simple, but I think it is an oversimplification. What difference does the basis for this alliance make to the average person? What is their incentive to favor one or the other? This is one of the reasons I think that the decentralization of modern journalism is important, because people no longer need to have their news filtered through some big corporation to tell the gullible who their friends are supposed to be. Although it does still happen, to an extent.
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