Paris Attacks
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I have invited members to go beyond condemnation to perhaps suggest a more positive response to the attackI have raised the possibility of inviting a member of the Workers Party of Iran to perhaps talk on Marxist materialism and muslim apostasy…What other ideas have members got ?Increase our arabic/urdu/turkish language literature?Do a small pamphlet on the Islam religion ? We do have articles on its attitude towards banking that we could expand upon.A formal debate with a representative of a mosque?Apart from the first proposal, my imagination isn't that particularly good so again, what do fellow mwmbers suggest we do, bearing in mind Einstein's comment …doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is a sign of insanity. What fresh ideas have we got?
Not sure what is off topic so it is difficult to keep on topicCant see anything off topic so how do we avoid being off topic? perhaps clarification mod?
An article that demonstrates the many double-standards people possess but especially the media http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/11/beirut-paris-attacks-151115075935564.html
robbo203 wrote:I was referring to the Muslim population in France. My suspicion is that they're now more likely to want to strongly disassociate themselves completely from the likes of ISIS post Paris, rather than court more yet Islamophobia which is not in their interest. The statement from the British Council of Muslims seems to bear this out . In this sense the ISIS strategy is counter productive in that it is likely to reduce the pool of potential supporters among Muslims in western countries with Muslims themselves taking the initiative in this regard in coming out against ISIS in blunt forthright terms.More proof of thishttp://mashable.com/2014/09/22/notinmyname-muslims-anti-isis-social-media-campaign/?utm_campaign=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial&utm_cid=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=dlvr.it#cFkPrPbliiq6
Some quick theories.1) The 'spectacular' is militarilly weak, going for the maximum prize, a bloodbath in a football stadium, wasted three personnel that must be in short supply. think of how much damage those shoter teams could have inflicted if they:a) Tried to stay mobile and alive.b) went out in waves, days apart.The likeliest conclusion is that it's a PR stunt by the relatively weak Rape/Murder gang in Iraq and Syria. 2) Thinking in terms of their medieval economics: these gangs live on surplus (not surplus value), humans are a disposible resource: they're lack of effective reach and capacity to control means they have to fall back on medieval means: the spectacular destruction of human bodies (cf. Foucault's studies of how medievalism moves from control to discipline, because, after all, a feudal king is relatively weak, He only has the capacity to kill).3) Think Mafia, think respect, the economics of respect and fear. This isn't guerilla war, this is business. 4) At most the relative autonomous ideologues (especially outside IS proper, and who have a proximate aim of striking at their own society, have gone off on their own. this wasn't a strategic strike, but an indisciplined expression of nihilism).5) Military set-backs, and apparent low actual battle field moral may mean that this is more about shoring up their own core support, evem if at the expense of isolating them furtehr 'no one likes us, and we don't care'. It also makes it even harder for defectors, since they can spread the word that no-one will accept their surrender now.
Juan Cole makes a more interesting analogy:
Quote:I would argue that Daesh is analogous to the pirate enclaves of the early modern period. Al-Raqqa, Palmyra, Mosul, Falluja and Ramadi function for it as desert ports, as Tortuga and Port Royal did for pirates in the Caribbean and St. Mary’s on Madagascar did for pirates in the Indian Ocean. It is easy to be misled by the organization’s language of “state.” It is a militia of some 25,000 fighters who conduct raids. They don’t actually do much governing of the places they dominate, and mainly extract resources from them. Tribal raiding states in it for the loot have been common in Middle Eastern history, as with Nadir Shah in the eighteenth century. Looting one city pays for the raid that lets you loot the next. They even make the people who want to emigrate and escape their rule pay a sort of exit ransom.We need to make this point loudly, I think : IS is a business, just a business. All this talk of 'they hate our freedom' is just part of the same smoke screen they use to befuddle their recruits.
Quote:To some extent, the attack was expected to attract men and money, just as a pirate raid of the past would have. Pirate raids often involved forms of brutality and the infliction of humiliation on the adversary. These actions intended to make royal navies chary of frontally attacking the pirates. Likely the Paris attacks also were intended to function as the Madrid bombings of 2004 did, pushing a country out of the Middle East (Spain got out of Iraq after that).Don't believe the hype.http://www.juancole.com/2015/11/modern-raiding-pirate.htmlI'd suggest that Cole is slightly incorrect about teh emedy, after all, it suggests really we could buy some of their adherents off to Police the place. More importantly, cutting off the oil money would work a thousand times better than bombing them mercilessly.
Young Master Smeet wrote:Some quick theories. ….These read like US underestimates of the Vietnamese in the 60s.Whatever happened then, when the 'militarily weak' weakened themselves militarily even further, and instead of 'staying alive', they got the overwhelming majority killed in action.The 'Tet Offensive', which was a military disaster for the Vietnamese.These wars are political wars, and a focus military issues always misses the point.The main political reality is that the capitalist powers of the US, UK, France and Russia constantly destroy the societies of the Middle East, and have been doing so, sometimes by themselves, sometimes by indigenous proxies, constantly since WW2. This societal destruction in the name of oil is the key political issue.The source of the instability, and thus the solution, lies in the US, UK, France and Russia, not in Syria.The source of the instability will always replenish ISIS (merely the current manifestation of the problem), no matter how many 'weak Rape/Murder gangs' are bombed.
YMS wrote:More importantly, cutting off the oil money would work a thousand times better than bombing them mercilessly.'Cutting off the oil money' to the Western banks is the only solution. You're trying to solve a problem by attacking the appearances rather than the sources.The problem is 'Western Government Terrorism', not 'medieval businesses'.
Lbird,pragmatically, you're right, the solution is political, not military. Obviously, our optimum solution is socialis revolution, in the meantime the interest of workers is not being killed in the name of profit, so our more general duty is to restrain military machinations where we spot them. In this case, where the bastards are talking up the threat (quick quote from a conversation overheard in the street, "they'll be coming here next").But, my point was, within capitalism, there are choices and options of a non-military variety, that the workers movement can and should support to prevent more and more war.
Young Master Smeet wrote:Lbird,pragmatically, you're right, the solution is political, not military. ….But, my point was, within capitalism, there are choices and options of a non-military variety, that the workers movement can and should support to prevent more and more war.But how can the 'solution' of 'cutting funds to ISIS' work, if the 'problem' is 'the funds available to the Western Powers'?Shutting down ISIS will merely displace the 'problem' to other groups.It's like using a mallet in a fairground to hit a puppet that pops up, now from one hole, now from another. It's never ending.Why pretend to workers that it is a 'solution', even a temporary one?The choice, if we're serious, is socialism, not capitalism.'Within capitalism', all so-called 'choices' lead to the deaths of workers. You seem to be suggesting that as long as 'Western' workers think that they are safe, that's all we should focus on, and simply ignore the destruction of the societies that workers live in, in the Middle East.I don't think you are suggesting this, but I think that you haven't thought it through enough.Our audience is the workers of the world, not simply 'British/US' workers.
Lbird, you're conflating two paragraphs. the solution is political, and it is world socialism.In the meantime… we can point out that military action is not the only one available within the logic of capitalism, and the priority is saving the lives of people in the region.
As for some motivation in Iraq of some ISIS fighters.http://www.thenation.com/article/what-i-discovered-from-interviewing-isis-prisoners/
Jeremy Corbyn's take on this:http://labourlist.org/2015/11/jeremy-corbyn-calls-for-political-settlement-to-end-syria-conflict/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LabourListLatestPosts+%28LabourList%29and one from our blog:http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/neither-god-nor-state.html
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