BATHIK

Thought it would be interesting:

11 point guidelines for journalists working on IS territory:

http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/isis-releases-11point-guide-for-journalists--lkyMOuuhHl

For most of those 1400 years "civilization" wasn't aware it was at war with Islam, though.

And it wasn't, it's the modern day crusaders who signed us all up. Ten years ago everyone thought Bush was mad, now it's "Go America" all over again. Memories are short and people never learn.

So anti-globalists are fascist?

All hail the mighty dollar to subjugate them all into one and only true religion of freedom and democracy, with extreme prejudice, if necessary.

Has this poster gone totally mad? Rhetorical question, no need to answer.

Terrorists who happen to be Christian are not attempting to impose a theocracy..

True, but maybe this inability to stand up for its values is what cost Christianity its dominant role in Western societies.

People naturally flock to power. Governments attract them with displays of military might and readiness to bomb anyone who gets in the way, and Islamists attract them sa dare devil rebels. What do Christians have to offer?

I bet the guy in these beheading videos does it to affirm his ultimate masculinity rather than to do any actual harm to the UK and the US. Killing a few people doesn't even register on ME violence map, he doesn't do that for the numbers but for the adrenaline high he gets from cutting people's heads of with his own hands and letting the whole world watch it.

Ironically for a religious person, he does it to enjoy the taste of "ultimate freedom" and inconvenient obedience to God will not be allowed to get in his way.

There are plenty of such sickos on the other side, too, just the means of expression are different.

On an unrelated note - in the first episode of the new season of Homeland there's an interesting number - after 9/11 the US had seven people on its "kill list", now it's two thousand. It sounds about right. What would be the number ten years from now?

@ BATHIK

I meant Muslims who are currently taking over Europe. We've got to make them listen of they'll start cutting people's heads off right in the center of London. They are just one step away already.

Maybe you missed the news, but it has already happened in London. Making them listen, is of no use. They are capable of listening, what they are not capable of is understanding that they have moved to Western Countries and should abide by those Countries rules and laws.

I didn't follow up on that. The throat was slit, no actual beheading yet, and it was done by a London native, not an immigrant. Right?

As I was saying - people turn to extremism as a response to failures of their local "democratic" governments. Some just rioted and looted shops, others turned to imams. Same disease, different symptom.

Immigrants come to Europe for the money, they don't care much about local rules, laws, or culture and don't feel that they should - not the principled kind of crowd.

deleted double post

BRICs main goal is not high growth and world domination, it's relative independence from IMF, World Bank, petrodollar. and the US, so their performance should be judged by that, not by debt fueled dreams sold by the Wall Street. They never meant to live up to those, they consciously rejected them.

The less who listen ?

Muslims ? We already know that

I meant Muslims who are currently taking over Europe. We've got to make them listen of they'll start cutting people's heads off right in the center of London. They are just one step away already.

Not in schools, not in mass media. But in Mosques. And in the family home.

Agree, but why do "white" people are far less successful at protecting their kids from the influence of government education and mass media?

Maybe it's not the exposure but the message itself that is not as compelling as what they hear from imams. Lots of "white" people do not believe a word our governments say as a a matter of principle, too. But then sh*t happens and everybody unites around governments and "democracy" as if they learned nothing. Muslims in these cases, I suppose, seek shelter in their mosques, not in Obama leadership speeches.

I guess what I want to say is that success of Islam feeds on failures of western democracy and Islamic extremism is only a symptom of a far bigger, fundamental problem. We've got to deal with symptoms, too, but unless the root cause is addressed they would just keep popping up like late stage cancer.

Re. Schism in Islamic world - it's not very relevant to the rise of IS. Sure, Iraqi Sunnis felt they didn't get a fair deal from post-invasion governments but so far it's the other Sunnis that volunteered to fight them while Shia Iran is watching from the sidelines. That schism has been overshadowed by a thousand years of tribal and colonial history and is driven by today's global politics.

If you guys are correct about some Brits having no idea what democracy and human rights are maybe you should call the UK a failed state and bomb the h*ll out of it for spreading dangerous Islamic propaganda.

Or maybe it's just you don't make any sense to your opponents. They see your democracy, listen to your speeches, and choose Islam and sharia instead.

But of course it's a lot easier to blame everything on the enemies rather than admit your own failures.

Or maybe it's the all pervading PC that allows Islamic extremists to preach freely while liberals divide themselves into two opposing camps - those who allow everything as a matter of ideology and those who want Muslim blood at all costs. None of these approaches seem to work.

Here's an observation - the louder you scream about evils of Islam the less they listen. I could offer you the example of red rhetoric here failing to convince anyone but themselves, but it's not the right forum to discuss Thai based case studies.

.. they are brainwashed by the cult of the Prophet, a cult of violence, hatred, oppression of women, gays and other faiths, and death.

They grew up in the West where none of these things are ever taught to people. Not in schools, not in mass media. They know democracy and its liberties through first hand experience and I don't think they are not lost to "cults", as you would make us believe.

I've read that Salon article, it's the crappiest piece of journalism I've seen in a while, doesn't even try to live to its headline.

It offers zero support for it, zero evidence that Li works of Chinese government when he writes his articles and gives his talks. At most it states "It’s a question that many critics of China ask as well" and that's it. First you ask a question and they put it into headline as if it's a fact. Now THAT is a pure propaganda trick.

I'm not going to read 4,200 word rebuttal, forget about it. Salon didn't even give a link and not quoted a single argument against Li's presentation.

Eric is involved in politics and has worked for the government before. Maybe not at the time of the talk, but he is a politician. Whatever that means in China. Maybe you'll like this article better:

http://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/25/04/2014/why-democracy-still-wins-critique-eric-x-li’s-“-tale-two-political-systems”

..

As outsiders have noticed, Li is clearly anti-democratic. The type of person politicians in Russia (and other non-democratic nations) love.

Okay, so the first attempt to discredit Li as a paid hack working for Chinese government failed. Even according to Salon it's rather the other way around - Chinese use HIS talks and articles for their propaganda attempts.

As for globalpolicyjourna's criticism - everything can be criticized, with or without merit, effort along doesn't mean anything.

In this case the critic, Huang, tries to discredit data used by Li because it didn't come about in a democratic way, and insists that democracy naturally stops corruption. That's so 1990s.

It might stop a certain kind of corruption, like petty bribery by low ranking officials, but real money is stolen at the top, often as government policies, by people who dictate laws themselves, the infamous 1 percenters. Democracy is proven to be helpless against them, be in Washington, City of London, or Thai government house.

Meanwhile there could be hundreds of western WOMEN who went to join jihad with IS.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-29507410

They make a conscious, well informed choice. Who should be held responsible for that?

These people, men and women alike, simply slip through the fingers of anti-Islam demagoguery which fails to convince anyone but the demagogues themselves.

I've read that Salon article, it's the crappiest piece of journalism I've seen in a while, doesn't even try to live to its headline.

It offers zero support for it, zero evidence that Li works of Chinese government when he writes his articles and gives his talks. At most it states "It’s a question that many critics of China ask as well" and that's it. First you ask a question and they put it into headline as if it's a fact. Now THAT is a pure propaganda trick.

I'm not going to read 4,200 word rebuttal, forget about it. Salon didn't even give a link and not quoted a single argument against Li's presentation.

I remembered this TED talk from last year, it's an eye opening story of real China, not the one ad nauseam portrayed in these threads:

https://www.ted.com/talks/eric_x_li_a_tale_of_two_political_systems

If you don't have time to sit and watch there's a transcript on that page but the speaker is engaging enough, time well spent.

That is true, they might pick up a few bad habits from the West, but generally they are not set on world domination in a traditional sense.

Edit: Well, even the idea of "top dog" is not as axiomatic as we assume. Asian power structures are different, they arrange it so that everyone feels a "top dog" within his given domain.

The country with the strongest economy and the strongest military always leads the world

Really? Always? Any examples to clarify what it means? How about "country with the strongest military creates most enemies", which is the opposite of leadership?

that is just what your communist buddies in China aspire to.

They have quietly inserted themselves everywhere in Asia and Africa and no one sees them as comparable to Western imperial powers. Their influence and desire to control things is well below of what is expected and people always complain that they are not "leading" enough, it's just not their style.

This "leadership" bravado lasted only until Chinese told him to get lost and stay our of HK business. Now he is "following closely", not leading anymore.

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-tells-china-minister-u-closely-following-hong-225114498.html

The future of the civilization will be multipolar, globalization had its chance and people didn't like it very much, or rather didn't like that one country had a firm grip on how it goes for the rest of the world.

Economies will remain tightly integrated, of course, but connections between them will become too numerous and independent to control from one center of power.

That will become world's natural failsafe mechanism rather than relying on the mercy of one single watchdog.

Petrodollar will not last forever, not when there's global demand for alternatives.

School year finally started in Donbass and one of Donetsk schools was shelled during the very first lesson. No children were hurt but several adults were torn to pieces in front of their eyes.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29439743

At the bus stop shown in BBC video eight people were killed, there are gruesome images and video on the internet of the aftermath.

Ukrainians, as usual, say it was rebels who turned their Grads against their own, duh.

These war crimes will never reach international courts while various "champions of freedom" still believe that international justice is a real thing.

In the meantime there's confusion in the media regarding mass graves reported by a guy who accompanied OSCE mission there. Official statement form OSCE is brief but it's there, and still this guy is discredited like there's no tomorrow. The graves, however, are real, filled with real people, on the territory recently taken from Ukrainians army, or rather their national guard battalions.

http://www.rferl.org/content/ukraine-unspun-osce-probe-murders-gang-rapes-mass-graves/26615896.html

From official OSCE statement:

The ‘military police’ of ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’ (‘DPR’) told the SMM that three unmarked graves allegedly containing multiple bodies had been found; two of them were located in a coal mine Komunar near the village Nyzhnia Krynka (35km north-east of Donetsk) and one inside the village. The SMM proceeded to the scene and saw in the coal mine two areas located fifty metres apart, each containing two human bodies. All four corpses were in the process of decomposition. The SMM also saw eight 9mm Makarov pistol cartridges approximately five meters away from the bodies. Near the road on the edge of the village, the SMM observed a pile of earth resembling a grave which had a stick with a plaque, written in Russian and containing the names (or in one case – initials) of five individuals. The plaque indicated that the individuals died on 27.08.2014. On top of the plaque there was another inscription saying: ‘Died for Putin’s lies’. Neither in the coal mine nor in the village did the SMM see any forensic experts. COMMENT: The SMM cannot provide a forensic assessment of the sites.

http://www.osce.org/ukraine-smm/124216

Existence of conspiracy theories and doom and gloom scenarios has never stopped real crises from happening, and those always strike out of the blue.

There are certain fundamental imbalances in western economies that are bound to manifest one way or another, just like crazy loans did in 2008 or crazy loans here did in 1997.

There's a serious disconnect between recovery on the Wall street and that of population in general, for example. Or the unpredictable effects of the QE, or the fact that since 2008 all over the world the economies lived on a series of jump starts that never quite started the engines. There's also the Chinese bubble getting ready to blow. There's also a strive to diversify countries' egg baskets away from total dollar dependencies and a real demand for dollar alternatives. There's also a lack of faith in liberal democracy and US leadership, and a lack of leadership itself.

The world is primed for some kind of revolution.

They still print what, 40 billion a month?

According to this they've already dumped nearly a billion in the sand there, which is peanuts comparing to how much "wealth" they can simply print out (topped at 85 bil per month, afaik):

http://www.csbaonline.org/publications/2014/09/estimating-the-cost-of-operations-against-isil/

And they say it all makes perfect economic sense and karma will never become a b*tch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13L6pwjKsX0

They misspelled BengHazi in this video when they said it's only eight letters to learn but showed seven, at 16 second mark.