The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant Megathread

[Berkut]

This is the kind of story that makes shit like the "White man's burden" not seem so fucking racist after all.

At some point can't we just say "You know what? Your fucking culture sucks, and I do NOT have to respect it".

I've been saying this for years..  Now imagine immigrants from the same barbarian cultures coming in droves in our own countries; imagine the problems in a few years.  And yet when I mention this I get derided by Malthus and others as a racist and a bigot. 
G.

Immigration is the best thing that can happen for people from what we see as dis-funcitonal cultures.

Being afraid of them and what they bring is basically admitting that your own culture cannot stand the competition, and will fail to overcome the fucked up mess they bring with them. I don't know if that is racist, but it is rather xenophobic.

Personally, I am *very* confident that there is no chance in hell that these idiotic, sexist, fucked up cultures have a prayer in hell of surviving exposure to Western culture in the long run, much less being dumped INTO western culture ala immigration. I could not care less about these people in my country because I know by moving here they've already doomed the more fucked up parts of their own culture to extinction.

[Malthus]

I am with you on that part at least Grallon.  Don't bring stuff our culture finds evil here man.  If you want to do honor killings and FGM stay at home.

Grallon is against them comming to the West at all, not just against them comming to the West and doing evil stuff. Everyone agrees on the latter bit, or at least, everyone here.

I'm confident enough in the attractions of Western civilization that, to my mind, those comming here are very likely to adopt it - at least when it comes to issues of morality. If one of them comes here and rapes a little girl, throw 'em in jail.

[Valmy]

Hmmm. I think you are setting up a false choice. There options are not "force it" and do nothing.

The choice is to use our resources helping people who want our help, and helping people who do not.  Seems more useful to help a society that will embrace it than one that will eventually march down to our woman's shelter and murder everybody inside.

[Malthus]

Hmmm. I think you are setting up a false choice. There options are not "force it" and do nothing.

The choice is to use our resources helping people who want our help, and helping people who do not.  Seems more useful to help a society that will embrace it than one that will eventually march down to our woman's shelter and murder everybody inside.

The idea here is that some in this society want our help, and some others want to oppress people for accepting it. Not sure why we should be deferring to the latter. Seems it hands the oppressors an easy victory, if we characterise them as the voice of their society. 

[derspiess]

Hmmm. I think you are setting up a false choice. There options are not "force it" and do nothing.

We can influence it, assist it, repress it, divert it, etc., etc. There are a ridiculously huge number of variables that go into cultural perspective, the idea that external forces cannot exert on influence on it is clearly not accurate.

The question is whether (and how) we can most influence it in a positive direction, and at what cost.

I'm pretty skeptical that there's much good we can do without incurring a huge backlash that hurts the people we want to help or turns them against us.  I still want us to help Israel and the Kurds, but for the rest in that region let them sort things out themselves.  And if they want to kick out the more liberal-minded, educated, assimilable among them we will take them off their hands.

[Grallon]

I'm confident enough in the attractions of Western civilization that, to my mind, those coming here are very likely to adopt it - at least when it comes to issues of morality. If one of them comes here and rapes a little girl, throw 'em in jail.

There has been enough cases of non integration, here and in Europe, to make me less than confident.  And these cases are increasing in numbers.  Please refer to the school boards in Britain being overrun by Muslim fundamentalists, the cities in France where police won't even go to apply the law, etc.  And that isn't counting on all those already living here who are now, as we speak, fighting the jihad abroad.  When they return we'll have militias of veterans, fully trained in terrorist methods, ready to strike from within.

The more of that scum you allow in the more they'll congregate and when they have the numbers they'll be hunting you down for being a Jew and me for being a homo.

No indeed Muslims should be quarantined in their own shit hole countries and prevented from spreading their cultural disease abroad.  Let them slaughter each other all they want so long as it's not here.

Oh well there is no one as blind as he who doesn't wish to see.



G.

[Razgovory]

I am with you on that part at least Grallon.  Don't bring stuff our culture finds evil here man.  If you want to do honor killings and FGM stay at home.

Grallon is against them comming to the West at all, not just against them comming to the West and doing evil stuff. Everyone agrees on the latter bit, or at least, everyone here.

I'm confident enough in the attractions of Western civilization that, to my mind, those comming here are very likely to adopt it - at least when it comes to issues of morality. If one of them comes here and rapes a little girl, throw 'em in jail.

I think he's also against other Westerners coming into his country.  Or people from other parts of his own country.

[Tamas]

There would have been Disziplin and Ordnung!

[The Brain]

They want to be assholes more than we want to help them. Contest decided.

[garbon]

Please refer to the school boards in Britain being overrun by Muslim fundamentalists

Is this in reference to this fake plot?

http://languish.org/forums/index.php/topic,11331.0.html

[Sheilbh]

The letter and the plot are fake. There's some pretty alarming evidence that it was happening-ish though.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

This is the kind of story that makes shit like the "White man's burden" not seem so fucking racist after all.

At some point can't we just say "You know what? Your fucking culture sucks, and I do NOT have to respect it".

I've been saying this for years..  Now imagine immigrants from the same barbarian cultures coming in droves in our own countries; imagine the problems in a few years.  And yet when I mention this I get derided by Malthus and others as a racist and a bigot. 
G.

Immigration is the best thing that can happen for people from what we see as dis-funcitonal cultures.

Being afraid of them and what they bring is basically admitting that your own culture cannot stand the competition, and will fail to overcome the fucked up mess they bring with them. I don't know if that is racist, but it is rather xenophobic.

Personally, I am *very* confident that there is no chance in hell that these idiotic, sexist, fucked up cultures have a prayer in hell of surviving exposure to Western culture in the long run, much less being dumped INTO western culture ala immigration. I could not care less about these people in my country because I know by moving here they've already doomed the more fucked up parts of their own culture to extinction.

it's not going to be resolved without a lot of bloodletting in Europe. Not with the way things appear to be going atm.

[Josquius]

There has been enough cases of non integration, here and in Europe, to make me less than confident.  And these cases are increasing in numbers.  Please refer to the school boards in Britain being overrun by Muslim fundamentalists, the cities in France where police won't even go to apply the law, etc.  And that isn't counting on all those already living here who are now, as we speak, fighting the jihad abroad.  When they return we'll have militias of veterans, fully trained in terrorist methods, ready to strike from within.

The more of that scum you allow in the more they'll congregate and when they have the numbers they'll be hunting you down for being a Jew and me for being a homo.

No indeed Muslims should be quarantined in their own shit hole countries and prevented from spreading their cultural disease abroad.  Let them slaughter each other all they want so long as it's not here.

Oh well there is no one as blind as he who doesn't wish to see.

The muslims who cause trouble, create "No go areas" and that sort of thing and the muslims who run off to play jihad in the middle east/plot the same at home are very different people.
The general trouble makers tend to actually be pretty well integrated people with very western lifestyles. Their grandparents were brought over in the 50s and 60s to work in the factories but then in the 80s the factories were closed down and all opportunity in the towns where they live dried up.  The issues afflicting them and their hostility to authority are much the same as you'll find in similar areas of mass unemployment that are generally home to other ethnicities. Amplified somewhat by a belief in a racist/anti-muslim system.
The devout muslims tend not to be any trouble at all. They tend to be pretty hard working and professional people. Until a small number of them flip into jihad jihad dakka dakka insanity you never head anything of them.
Interestingly a lot of the devout and extremist muslims are outgrowths of the integrated muslims. Their act of rebellion against the integrated ways of their parents that provide nothing for muslims is to look back to the imagined truly islamic ways of their great grandparents.

[Sheilbh]

They're far more linked though. The kids you describe as general troublemakers can become jihadis.

It's an ideology that can provide answers and a total world view which can be attractive to someone who's had issues with authority, are unemployed and so on. They can belong in an extreme Islamic group. It provides identity, another family and an explanation for the way things are for them and everyone else. It's a bit like an ideological gang.

I'd guess that it's almost rarer for the traditional devout to flip out than the troublemakers.

[citizen k]

ISIS hands Kurds first defeat and seizes Kurdish territory:

Islamic State grabs Iraqi dam, oilfield in victory over Kurds
Reuters
By Ahmed Rasheed and Raheem Salman

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Islamic State fighters seized control of Iraq's biggest dam, an oilfield and three more towns on Sunday after inflicting their first major defeat on Kurdish forces since sweeping through the region in June.

Capture of the Mosul Dam after an offensive of barely 24 hours could give the Sunni militants the ability to flood major Iraqi cities or withhold water from farms, sharply raising the stakes in their bid to topple Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite-led government.

"The terrorist gangs of the Islamic State have taken control of Mosul Dam after the withdrawal of Kurdish forces without a fight," said Iraqi state television.

The swift defeat of Kurdish "peshmerga" troops dealt a sharp blow to one of the only fighting forces in Iraq that until now had stood firm against the Sunni Islamist fighters who aim to redraw borders of the Middle East.

The Islamic State, which sees Iraq's majority Shi'ites as apostates who deserve to be killed, also seized the Ain Zalah oil field - adding to four others already under its control which provide funding for operations - and three towns.

Initially strong Kurdish resistance evaporated after the start of an offensive to take the town of Zumar. The Islamists then hoisted their black flags there, a ritual that often has preceded mass executions of their captured opponents and the imposition of an ideology even al-Qaeda finds excessive.

The group, which has declared a caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria to rule over all Muslims, poses the biggest challenge to the stability of OPEC member Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. On Sunday its members were also involved in fighting in a border town far away in Lebanon, a sign of its ambitions across the frontiers of the Middle East.

It controls cities in Iraq's Tigris and Euphrates valleys north and west of Baghdad, and a swathe of Syria stretching from the Iraqi border in the east to Aleppo in the northwest.

Iraq's Kurds, who rule themselves in a northern enclave guarded by the "peshmerga" units, had expanded areas under their control in recent weeks while avoiding direct confrontation with the Islamic State, even as Iraqi central government troops fled.

But the towns lost on Sunday were in territory the Kurds had held for many years, undermining any suggestion that the Islamic State's advance has helped the Kurdish cause. The latest gains have placed Islamic State fighters near Dohuk Province, one of three in the autonomous Kurdish region.

Since thousands of U.S.-trained Iraqi soldiers fled the Islamic State offensive, the Kurdish fighters were seen alongside Shi'ite militia to the south as the main lines of defense against the militants, who vow to march on Baghdad.

By calling into question the effectiveness of the Kurdish fighters, Sunday's advances may increase pressure on bickering Iraqi leaders to form a power-sharing government capable of countering the Islamic State.

LITTLE RESISTANCE

Two people who live near Mosul dam told Reuters Kurdish troops had loaded their vehicles with belongings including air conditioners and fled.

Islamic State fighters attacked Zumar from three directions in pick-up trucks mounted with weapons, defeating Kurdish forces which had poured reinforcements into the town, witnesses said.

The Islamic State later also seized the town of Sinjar, where witnesses said residents had fled after Kurdish fighters put up little resistance.

On its Twitter site, the Islamic State posted a picture of one of its masked fighters holding up a pistol and sitting at the abandoned desk of the mayor of Sinjar. Behind him was the image of a famous Kurdish guerrilla leader.

In a statement on its website, the Islamic State said it had killed scores of peshmerga, the Kurdish fighters whose name means "those who confront death". "Hundreds fled leaving vehicles and a huge number of weapons and munitions and the brothers control many areas," the Islamic State statement said. "The fighters arrived in the border triangle between Iraq, Syria and Turkey."

The Islamic State has systematically blown up Shi'ite mosques and shrines in territory it has seized, fuelling levels of sectarian violence unseen since the very worst weeks of Iraq's 2006-2007 civil war.

The group, which shortened its name after June's offensive from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), has stalled in its drive to reach Baghdad, halting just before the town of Samarra, 100 km (62 miles) north of the capital.

The Islamic State has been trying to consolidate its gains, setting its sights on strategic towns near oil fields, as well as border crossings with Syria so that it can move easily back and forth and transport supplies.

It has capitalized on Sunni disenchantment with Maliki by winning support or at least tolerance from some more moderate Sunni communities in Iraq that had fought against al Qaeda during the U.S. "surge" offensive of 2006-2007.

Maliki's opponents say the prime minister, a Shi'ite Islamist who is negotiating to try to stay in power for a third term after an inconclusive parliamentary election in April, is to blame for galvanizing the insurgency by excluding Sunnis from power. Kurdish leaders have also called for Maliki to step down to create a more inclusive government in Baghdad.

INDEPENDENT STATE

The Kurds have long dreamed of their own independent state, an aspiration that has angered Maliki, who has frequently clashed with the non-Arab Kurds over budgets, land and oil.

After the Islamic State offensive began in June, Kurdish forces seized two oil fields in northern Iraq and took over operations from a state-run oil company, complicating the task of trying to hold the country together.

In July, the Kurdish political bloc ended participation in Iraq's national government in protest against Maliki's accusation that Kurds were allowing "terrorists" to stay in Arbil, capital of their semi-autonomous region.

In another move certain to infuriate the Baghdad government, the Kurdish region is pressing Washington for sophisticated weapons it says Kurdish fighters need to push back the Islamist militants, Kurdish and U.S. officials said.

But Maliki needs the Kurds, who gained experience fighting Saddam Hussein's forces, to help defend his country from the Islamic State, whose leader al-Baghdadi has a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head.

The Islamic State's ambitions have alarmed other Arab states who fear their success could embolden militants region-wide.

Islamic State fighters were among militants who clashed with Lebanese forces overnight in and around Lebanon's border town of Arsal. At least 10 Lebanese soldiers and an unknown number of militants and civilians died in the fighting, security officials said.

On Friday, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah urged regional leaders and religious scholars to prevent Islam from being hijacked by militants. Sunni Saudi Arabia considers the Islamic State a terrorist organization, but Maliki and other Iraqi Shi'ites blame it for sustaining Sunni militancy by backing other sectarian groups.