Rolling MENA 2014 (Middle East)

Unfortunately, there are so many myopic partisan lenses through which we (in the West in general) view ISIS, it's very hard to get an undistorted clear view. Whatever the shortcomings of Wood's article, I think one of its strengths was to shake up and break out of some of those partisan blinders (worn by all parties).

xp

A willingness to behead or burn other human beings, solely on the basis that your victims have thoughts which displease God, may be distressingly common in human history, but it is a dysfunctional feature of the human brain we'd all be better off without. Calling it evil or insane may be imprecise terminology, but it isn't so wholly incorrect to be worthless. The difficulty is that it borrows its terms from a framework that is too strongly associated with the same kind of dysfunctional thinking.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/opinion/the-education-of-jihadi-john.html

Author of that nyt opinion article is the co-author Sam Harris refers to ("I’ve just written a short book with the Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz, Islam and the Future of Tolerance (Harvard University Press, June 2015)").

Rather a weak article, given that his direct experience of higher education referenced was twenty years ago and the government and universities have put a huge effort into tracking and combating campus extremism since - including MI5 and police infiltration. The idea that Islamists have been allowed to work ' unfettered' is curious, as is the lack of suggestions over what these fetters should look like. There are more interesting investigations on Westminster and its ongoing issues with campus extremists out there.

It's worth noting that Nawaz and his colleague Ed Hussein have been increasingly courting US funding, including from some pretty dodgy groups on the right, and attempted a weird partnership with British neo-nazi Tommy Robinson when the government cut their funding off in 2012.

I'm assuming because no-one in the UK is interested in this clown Anjem Choudary anymore that he (or his agent or whatever) is touting for business in the US.

I suppose a guy's got to make living.

Yep, his reinvention as a Fox talking head / expert on radical Islam / subject of serious intellectual analysis is bizarre. If ever a man was destined to spend the rest of his career handing out leaflets with his three followers outside Tottenham Hale tube station, I thought it would be him.

I suppose Fox is the lair of the idiot troll so where better, cf. Daniel Hannan.

wow the iranian journalist didn't like it?

― Mordy, Tuesday, March 3, 2015 10:39 AM (4 days ago)

...

― the late great, Sunday, March 8, 2015 7:20 AM (Yesterday)

late great otm

yr right i should evaluate the quote on its merits

A "dark, Strangelovian" speech, says Christiane Amanpour

certainly adds a lot

try to show some empathy

fyi iranian expats are some of the fiercest critics of the iranian regime

and in the case of iranian baha'i families like my own, some of israel's staunchest supporters

so it hurts me in my heart to hear you say something like that

you're right that it was a low blow and i should've focused on its silliness as a critique in the first place, esp as someone whose opinions morbz constantly insinuates only stem from my israel politics

"dark" - yes, bibi was making an argument that iran wants to use nuclear weapons against israel. pretty dark. "strangelovian," well not in the sense that he psychotically clanging for a war since he actually distanced himself from pushing for war in the speech, in the sense that he's is suggesting "nuclear war"? it was a superficial analysis. i was feeling cruel + mentioned her connection to a place she lived for many years but of course there are plenty of israeli natives - expat and native - who are as extreme as the biggest israel critic

where you have lived / were born obv has nothing (or everything - it's just too overdetermined) to do w/ what you believe

thank you for helping keep ilx a safe space ¯\(°_o)/¯

on a personal note i've visited the bahai temples in chicago + haifa and found them beautiful (and the little i learnt about their beliefs very inspiring)

you guys know this is just the Mordy propaganda thread, right?

go Bougie go

yr dumb

The Israeli navy opened fire on boats off the coast of the Gaza Strip on Saturday, killing one Palestinian fisherman, Gaza hospital officials said.

Citing security concerns, Israel keeps a naval blockade on Gaza, which is ruled by the Islamist Hamas movement, and has designated a six nautical-mile fishing zone off the enclave's coast....

Gaza hospital officials named the fisherman killed on Saturday as Tawfiq Abu Reyala, 34.

The Palestinians say the fishing zone is not big enough to supply the demands of Gaza's 1.8 million people, who are kept under a tight Israeli-Egyptian blockade.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/07/us-israel-palestinians-idUSKBN0M30HP20150307

what! there's a blockade on gaza???

kill a man who fishes, you kill him for life

fingers crossed Bibi loses this election

me too

Altho lol at "killed for life" xp

meanwhile, elsewhere

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/world/middleeast/iraq-syria-children-unicef-toll.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Around 14 million children are suffering hardship and trauma from the war in Syria and Iraq, the United Nations children’s agency said on Thursday,

Yeah, yeah I know, there's nothing we can do it about it, or we might just make things worse...Yeah I know that Iran and other countries nearby don't really care about this aspect of things either. Yeah I know, some will trace the problems all the way back to Western geographic line drawing and other colonial related items...

interesting israel election history

Islamic State leader accepts allegiance of Nigeria's Boko Haram

So far the self-declared caliphate has lost only about 20 percent of the territory it seized in Iraq — most of it in the north, to Kurdish pesh merga troops who have been supported by the United States, the Iraqi government and Iran, a senior defense official said. The main areas it has lost — most of Tikrit, territory southwest of Baghdad, some of the areas to the north of the Iraqi capital and the Kurdish city of Kobani in Syria — have been the focus of the overwhelming allied air campaign.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/14/world/middleeast/isis-still-on-the-attack-despite-internal-strife-and-heavy-losses.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Israeli politics are really confusing, but for people who think "Israelis" are a meaningful political category, or that Zionism is the same thing as Bibiism, it's worth paying attention to the fact that Netanyahu is running behind the center-left slate led by Yitzkhak Herzog and Tzipi Livni

http://www.timesofisrael.com/is-likud-about-to-lose-the-election/

http://www.jpost.com/Israel-Elections/Post-poll-Zionist-Union-extends-its-lead-over-Likud-393810

Of course, Israeli politics being really confusing, no one knows who will end up Prime Minister if Zionist Union holds on to their narrow lead. Everything will depend on which of the various fringe and splinter parties can be coaxed into a coalition.

yeah it seems like it'll be very hard for ZU to make a coalition, esp since they claim they won't caucus w/ arab slate (tho in the past arab slate has apportioned votes to a particular party w/out actually caucusing with them?), and that even if he gets fewer seats, bibi would have an easier time. but then i hear that rivlin wants a bipartisan govt, in which case it would be ZU + Likud (i don't know how they'd work out PMship) w/ Arab Slate potentially as opposition party.

as far i understand it ZU already wants to do a shared PMship between livni + herzog?

I do wonder what will be the reaction in the US GOP, for whom Netanyahu IS Israel, if he's rejected by the Israelis?

counterpunch types already saying a ZU government would just be putting a prettier face on the occupation aka the Rouhani gambit

telegraph made this nice graphic of recent polling:

http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/MobileSwitcher/v2/images/787-1426255145345080527.png

51 RW + 13 religious parties = 64 enough to form a government. hard to see what ZU can give religious parties to get them to caucus w/ them esp after they already trashed the service exemption.

(xxp) I don't know what their reaction will be but I'll be grinning from ear to ear.

i'd be shocked at this point if bibi wasn't in the new government (either as head, or some kind of bipartisan deal) - i don't see how the left can make a government without the RW

some interesting polling:

For Yedioth, its final poll before election day — in which the gap between the Zionist Union stands at four seats — dominates the front page. According to the survey, Isaac Herzog’s Zionist Union is projected to receive 26 seats, and Netanyahu’s Likud party 22. The Joint (Arab) List follows with 13 mandates, and Yesh Atid and the Jewish Home tie with 12 seats each. Kulanu receives eight Knesset seats, Shas gets seven, United Torah Judaism follows with six, and Yisrael Beytenu and Meretz get five seats. The Yachad party narrowly clears the electoral threshold with four seats. (Several other polls Thursday and Friday have broadly similar findings.)

The paper also quotes various other polls in its first pages. In one, carried out by Calcalist on Thursday, a majority of voters said the cost of living would strongly affect their voting choices (66.9%); most said the Palestinian issue would significantly factor into their decision (53.8%); and more than half said the cost of housing would drive their vote (51.6%).

Slightly less than half said high taxes would considerably affect their vote (47.9%), while 33% said foreign affairs would strongly sway them (and 36.9% said it would slightly influence them), while 32.3% said the Iranian threat was a significant factor, and 31.6% claimed it would influence their vote, but slightly.

Another cited survey, about Arab Israelis and the election, showed that voting rates among the population were projected to rise (61%, compared to 56% in 2013). The majority of Arab Israelis said economic issues should be the main focus of the Joint (Arab) List (77%), while a mere 16% said the Palestinian conflict should take precedence. A big majority also said the Arab list should join the coalition (71%) and most were “optimistic” about Jewish-Arab relations (64%, while 33% were “pessimistic”).

in those telegraph numbers, is kulanu left or right? kulanu/yesh atid/meretz have 26 combined in this ha'aretz roundup: http://www.haaretz.com/st/c/prod/eng/2015/elections/center/

probably being considered right since it's a likud offshoot but they might caucus w/ ZU so idk. a smart fan of mine from college ran simulations on the election and wrote about it here [kinda nate silvery]:
https://61mandates.wordpress.com/2015/03/15/a-cold-shower-before-the-elections/

i meant a smart friend* i don't know where fan came from

Livni no longer up for doing rotating PMship w/ Herzog

Bibi gettin kinda desperate

"No palestinian state if i'm reelected" he now says

not so different from his Palestinian state is "irrelevant" comment a week (or few?) ago but i guess more pointed

from 3/8

“Simply irrelevant” is how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described his former support for a demilitarized Palestinian state on Sunday.

“In the situation created in the Middle East, any territory that will be evacuated will be taken over by radical Islam and terrorist organizations supported by Iran,” Netanyahu said. “Therefore, there will not be any withdrawals or concessions. The matter is simply irrelevant.”

The prime minister’s statements came in response to questions about an article that appeared in the popular religious-Zionist pamphlet Olam Katan (“Small World”).

The article claimed that the Likud’s answer to a question as to its leader’s position on Palestinian statehood was: “The prime minister told the public that the Bar-Ilan speech [in which he advocated a demilitarized Palestinian state] is canceled. Netanyahu’s entire political biography is a fight against the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

what an ad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CzqrB7aQgs

those parents look very scared