Re: Seymour M. Hersh · Military to Military: US intelligence sharing in the Syrian war · LRB 7 January 2016

[ish mailian]

The Hipster Islamists are huge here in the US too. Especially in NYC, in
Brooklyn and Queens. Huge. Not sure how dangerous they are.

On Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 7:03 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <
lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:

>
> *> How do you explain the fascination that a completely barbaric and
> savage organization like the Islamic State holds for many young Muslim
> people living in Europe?*
>
> There has been a good deal of careful study of the phenomenon, by Scott
> Atran among others. The appeal seems to be primarily among young people who
> live under conditions of repression and humiliation, with little hope and
> little opportunity, and who seek some goal in life that offers dignity and
> self-realization; in this case, establishing a utopian Islamic state rising
> in opposition to centuries of subjugation and destruction by Western
> imperial power. In addition, there appears to be a good deal of peer
> pressure - members of the same soccer club, and so on. The sharply
> sectarian nature of the regional conflicts no doubt is also a factor - not
> just "defending Islam" but defending it from Shiite apostates. It's a very
> ugly and dangerous scene. <
>
> This is not wrong but incomplete. For many young Muslim people living in
> Europe, among them also converts, fundamentalism is a powerful pop culture.
> Jihad is the new cool! And that's a big problem.
>
>
> On 22.12.2015 12:23, ish mailian wrote:
>
> The Empire of Chaos: An Interview With Noam Chomsky
>
> http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/33519-the-empire-of-chaos-an-interview-with-noam-chomsky
>
> On Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 6:18 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Complicated that America is, so many competing interests, so many people
>> with power, with a card to play. In The Consequentialist essay we can see
>> how competing ideas clash in the white house, how differences may be set up
>> along factional lines that run deep into who and what people are, that, for
>> example, members of the decision making staff even take gendered political
>> stances that, while seemingly stereotypical, and therefore, easily
>> dismissed as such, are factional factors  that we need to understand if we
>> are to understand how the politics operates.
>>
>> In the Cole book, Charles Wilson, merely a congressmen, is shown to have
>> a big impact. The film has brought this to the public. But read Cole and
>> you learn of hundreds of players, minor players by most measures, but
>> significant policy drivers, movers and shakers. And we never hear of them
>> because they are never made the subject of a Hollywood film and because
>> they were never elected to any office.
>>
>> There are people in the US government that supported the Arab Spring.
>> Some are significant voices in the Obama Administrations. Some have left
>> the Administration and are still working on that project, others are still
>> there. Some have been working with and for several US Presidents to promote
>> democracy in the Middle East and elsewhere. Some are zealots. Some are
>> realists. There are others that think them fools, idiots, or bit players.
>>
>> This is America. It's a messy system, not so easily described by terms
>> like plutocracy or oligarchy or democracy or whatever.
>>
>> But Joseph has a goof point. And obvious one to anyone who has studied
>> America's policies abroad and at home, and the two are linked in
>> significant ways: the US is fearful of democracy, as Chomsky points out, at
>> home and abroad.
>>
>> But this is not news. Democracy is frightening to those who have an
>> interest in maintaining and increasing power, the multinationals, as
>> Chomsky says, for example, but far more important elements are fear
>> democracy, the establishment, the democractic party, the republicans....the
>> list in long (want a list?).
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 4:03 AM, Mark Kohut < <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>> mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> well, the truth is ultimately credible no matter how much we disbelieve
>>> it.
>>>
>>> Sent from my iPad
>>>
>>> > On Dec 21, 2015, at 9:07 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > It is not credible to me that Obama has supported the Arab spring. His
>>> support for the military in Egypt seems to bring that into question along
>>> with the silence about the crackdowns in Turkey, the general behavior of
>>> Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, India etc.. Please, Ishmalian, no long lectures
>>> about realpolitik and how naive I am to think that leaders can exhibit
>>> humane and democratic values.
>>> >
>>> > The
>>> >> On Dec 21, 2015, at 3:57 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> Obama himself seemed to place (too much) hope in the unfolding of the
>>> >> spirit of the Arab Spring in Syria....
>>> >>
>>> >> On Mon, Dec 21, 2015 at 11:49 AM, Peter M. Fitzpatrick
>>> >> <petopoet at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >>>    Excellent, if not alarming, reporting on the quagmire. There are
>>> times,
>>> >>> (Tito, Saddam Hussein, and yes, Assad) seem to be "acceptable"
>>> dictators
>>> >>> that hold back the forces of civil war and massive bloodshed that
>>> follows
>>> >>> their removal. Always a deal with the devil, I guess, just a
>>> question of
>>> >>> which is worse, removal or letting them be. I think most Americans
>>> had vague
>>> >>> notions of another manifestation of the "Arab Spring" taking place
>>> in Syria
>>> >>> a few years ago, unaware of the Isil and other terroristic forces
>>> waiting to
>>> >>> fill in the vacuum and re-instate oppression with Wahhabi and worse
>>> >>> Islamism. Everything I read here only solidifies my opposition to
>>> what
>>> >>> Republican candidates are touting as the solution to Isil. We have
>>> been
>>> >>> drawn into these third world conflicts before, i.e. Viet Nam, only
>>> to pay a
>>> >>> high cost for little result.
>>> >>>
>>> >>> -Pete
>>> >>>
>>> >>>> On Sun, Dec 20, 2015 at 8:17 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>> He's back.
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>> http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-military
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>> Sent from my iPad
>>> >>>> -
>>> >>>> Pynchon-l / <http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l>
>>> http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>> >>>
>>> >>>
>>> >> -
>>> >> Pynchon-l / <http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l>
>>> http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>> >
>>> > -
>>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20151223/6c1cb59d/attachment.html>