The Scary News and Politics Open Thread
Ok this is where you stick the serious stuff this week(see post below for more details). This isn’t just a weekend thread so do make use of it all week.
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Filed in: Current affairs
Filed in: Current affairs
I’m going to avoid reading politics today… at least until the evening
I’ll tell ya who’s scary (and messed up in the head)… this goddamn mother-in-law and her husband!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=452270&in_page_id=1770
Look at this. Shabina Begumji back in the news. I’d like 5 minutes with this girl on religious talk.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=453002&in_page_id=1770
Oh and did youse see that pole on whether Scotland should be independent or not? Look at my face :\
Poll*
The site for ICAHK has been getting a lot of attention when we were the first to have information in English on the ‘honour’ stoning of Du’a Khalil Aswad in Bashika, near Mosul back on the 7th April. The videos of this (there are many, all recorded on mobile phones) are circulating the web and are hideous and vile. Police are clearly present and clearly taking no action.
A political blog I’m rather fond of at the moment.
http://redmistblog.blogspot.com/
I love RM’s blog as well depite his Stalinism.
George Galloway has been threatening us all with hell and damnation.
http://modies.blogspot.com/2007/05/people-losing-their-damn-minds-20.html
Reid is going to resign as home secretary! Party time!
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2073828,00.html
*things can only get better…*
I notice GG didn’t specify which god he believes in (or rather which god believes in GG.)
And Sarkozy has won the French elections
I though GG was God!
Sarkozy wins! Aha
Yet another reason to be glad one is not French.
Oh for fucks sake j0nz is back. I’ll give him £5 for a lapdance if he promises not to speak.
ten times as big as a man!
BBC 1 8:30 tonight:
White Fright: Vivian White reports from a northern town about the increasing separation between Muslim Asians and whites and why they are being driven apart by religion, culture and language
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/6631541.stm
Wow a programme about Muslims and it’s not on Channel 4? WhatEVER next!
leon, don’t be so cynical. Channel 4 probably have something coming up soon, an epic drama documentary or something.
Sarkozy is Keyser Soze!!
The videos of this (there are many, all recorded on mobile phones) are circulating the web and are hideous and vile.
I just spent a pleasant bank holiday afternoon reading The Execution Channel
The book’s premise comes down to this:
What if terrorism were shown to work sufficiently well to be worth adopting by those _with_ power instead of those without it? If it became a tactic of first resort, instead of desperation?
Whta happens when it is the government, not just the rebels, making those terror videos?
Soru,
Then you and I are totally fucked. There are no sides anymore. I take it the teaser is Saddam Hussein?
well, Orwell wrote 1984 as a warning, Saddam and his kind took it as a ‘how to’ manual.
In a way, tEC is the polar opposite of 1984, which was about totalitarian control of information. In tEC, the internet is an information anarchy. No suppression is possible, you can only add noise to the signal, never shut someone up.
That means persuasion, inspiration and consent are dead, leaving only more primitive means of rule. You don’t ask what you can do for your country: you fear what your country could do to you.
What if terrorism were shown to work sufficiently well to be worth adopting by those _with_ power instead of those without it? If it became a tactic of first resort, instead of desperation?
But it is used by those in power! Look at the CIA backed death squads in latin America throughout the 80s, the puppet totalitarian arab regimes supported by the US, East Timor, Israel’s terrorist attrocities in Lebanon last year, in fact,Israel’s whole occupation of Palestine, the examples are multifold.
those _with_ power instead of those without it?
Well, in addition to the United States, Anas seems to have missed out Pakistan’s overt funding of terrorist groups in Kashmir; Iran’s own funding of Hizballah and the funding that Hamas gets from various sources.
The Mujahadeen in Afghanistan were funded by the CIA too when the Soviet Union invaded there… so the same people crying about US intervention now would have supported it in the past.
Of course, these groups all eventually become puppets because the people running them want power and want to hold on to it. The Khalistanis in Punjab were supported by Pakistan too.
An interesting anecdote I read a while back. The US military for a long time when funding Mujahadeen groups in Afghanistan would not give them stinger missiles to take down Soviet helicopters and planes. It wanted to slowly bleed Soviet forces so it deprived the Mujahadeen of the best equipment until it decided the time was ripe to finish off the Soviets. When it did supply them with Stingers, the Soviet administration collapsed and they beat a retreat.
Anas,
The problem with a strong and introverted state, such as the USA, is that it allows it’s foreign policy to be conducted by an elite. Given that they believe themselves to be perfect, they cannot envisage a situation where folk acting on their behalf would do wrong. So they just deny it to themselves. The history of Latin America is frankly the model for PNAC.
Sunny is right that there are other actors. There are consequences when government money is used for subversion.
For instance, the silence of our government, and for that matter the MCB, on the subject of a religious takeover of UK mosques funded by Saudi cash is a point that needs airing, but does not happen. To what extent is the Al Yamani deal compromising reaction to a fifth column in the UK? I would be surprised if it were not , at least, a factor.
And so it goes.
But it is used by those in power!
I think you are somewhat confusing the moral and political definitions of terrorism, a terrorist act versus a terrorist strategy.
Not every bad thing, every atrocity, is terrorism. Terrorism, in the narrow definition, is ‘propaganda of the deed’: covertly killing civilians as a way of influencing their thoughts. This is different from covertly killing soldiers, killing civilians for military or personal reasons, and so on.
When the examples you use are terrorism, or a close cousin, they are in circumstances, like Afghanistan, where those doing it were locally weak, outnumbered a thousand to one, whatever the global situaion.
But yes, thinking about it, the chilling point of the book was not that such things became newly possible, but the way the alternatives no longer seemed viable.
Perhaps any form of government where being proven to have personally killed a political opponent is considered a cause for removal from office is just a short-term anomaly, a passing phase.
From Wikipedia:
Few words are as politically or emotionally charged as terrorism. A 1988 study by the US Army[1] counted 109 definitions of terrorism that covered a total of 22 different definitional elements. Terrorism expert Walter Laqueur in 1999 also has counted over 100 definitions and concludes that the “only general characteristic generally agreed upon is that terrorism involves violence and the threat of violence”.
Terrorism basically is the use of violence or threat of violence to achieve a political aim — there is no special get out clause for states or groups we identify with or support, nor does its definition specifically mention blowing yourself up or hijacking planes, as someone like Jagdeep seems to think. And it is a perfect way to describe for example America’s use of force in Nicuragua in the 80s, or Israel’s bombing of Lebanon last year.
covertly killing civilians as a way of influencing their thoughts.
Killing people is certainly one way of influencing their thoughts
Well, in addition to the United States, Anas seems to have missed out Pakistan’s overt funding of terrorist groups in Kashmir; Iran’s own funding of Hizballah and the funding that Hamas gets from various sources.
Well, I did say there were more examples, and the US is the most powerful agent there currently is after all.
Well, I did say there were more examples, and the US is the most powerful agent there currently is after all.
Sure, but strength does not always equate to influence… otherwise Iraq would not be in such a mess right now, and Kashmir would not be such an intractable problem.
counted over 100 definitions
That’s precisely how this stuff works. In 1984, which was based on stuff Stalin did for real, there would be one photo in the archive, which would be changed based on the current political line.
tEC updates that to modern technology: you don’t change the photo, you just add 50 different new ones, so noone can tell which is which.
The result is noone can make moral or political judgements based on sound information; everyone knows that everything they are told is bullshit. The only rational response is apathy, which only gets punctured when some agent of the state comes along and personally threatens to break your life.
The same applies to the meaning of words as it does to facts: throw out enough chaff, enough different definitions and confusions, and any idea of justice, legitimacy, right, wrong gets lost inside the resulting cloud.
Which leaves only the instinctive stuff, the us and the them, the snarl, the joy of the kill.
My sick news of the week. Poor woman, loses baby, oh poor thing.
Stupid woman. Left baby. Lost baby.
You don’t leave kids in a room in a strange country and fuck off to a restaurant
Oh, and stupid man too, re: the father
Kismet – Exactly. And these pople are doctors (in fact one is a psychiatrist), who are licensed to give people advice!
pople should read people.
anyone else falling in love with Shambo?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_west/6637359.stm
I’m not too up on Hinduism, but they would seem to have a better grip of the principles of PR than most religions