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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsChris Hedges - We have engineered the rage of the dispossessed (warning - may scare some)
Broken pens were placed in a pool of simulated blood Friday outside the French Consulate in Istanbul in memory of the victims of the shooting at the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. AP/Emrah Gurel
The terrorist attack in France that took place at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo was not about free speech. It was not about radical Islam. It did not illustrate the fictitious clash of civilizations. [font color = red]It was a harbinger of an emerging dystopia where the wretched of the earth, deprived of resources to survive, devoid of hope, brutally controlled, belittled and mocked by the privileged who live in the splendor and indolence of the industrial West, lash out in nihilistic fury.[/font]
.............
Shortly after the attacks of 9/11, while living in Paris and working as a reporter for The New York Times, I went to La Cité des 4,000, a gray housing project where North African immigrants lived in apartments with bricked-up windows. Trash littered the stairwells. Spray-painted slogans denounced the French government as fascist. Members of the three major gangs sold cocaine and hashish in the parking lots amid the burned-out hulks of several cars. A few young men threw stones at me. They chanted “Fuck the United States! Fuck the United States! Fuck the United States!” and “Osama bin Laden! Osama bin Laden! Osama bin Laden!” By the door of an elderly Jewish woman’s apartment someone had spray-painted “Death to the Jews,” which she had whitewashed out.
.................
“You want us to weep for the Americans when they bomb and kill Palestinians and Iraqis every day?” Mohaam Abak, a Moroccan immigrant sitting with two friends on a bench told me during my 2001 visit to La Cité des 4,000. “We want more Americans to die so they can begin to see what it feels like.”
“America declared war on Muslims a long time ago,” said Laala Teula, an Algerian immigrant who worked for many years as a railroad mechanic. “This is just the response.”
It is dangerous to ignore this rage. But it is even more dangerous to refuse to examine and understand its origins. [font color = red]It did not arise from the Quran or Islam. It arose from mass despair, from palpable conditions of poverty, along with the West’s imperial violence, capitalist exploitation and hubris. As the resources of the world diminish, especially with the onslaught of climate change,[/font] the message we send to the unfortunate of the earth is stark and unequivocal: We have everything and if you try to take anything away from us we will kill you. The message the dispossessed send back is also stark and unequivocal. It was delivered in Paris.
.............
more blowback:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/a_message_from_the_dispossessed_20150111
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He speaks words that most are too frightened to.
upaloopa
(11,417 posts)99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)This voice is SO important, SO vitally needed to be heard, SO 'invisible' to the M$M.
Chris is indeed pointing here to the ONLY way out of the 'terrorist maze' that the 1%
has engineered to enslave the miserable masses.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)Bush/Cheney's illegal war has caused so much harm to the whole world that it's difficult to calculate. They have caused justifiable hatred for this country which placed it in terrible danger.
IF our Government had the courage to start prosecuting these war criminals, it would demonstrate that it is not America. But we have decided not to do that.
heaven05
(18,124 posts)Iraqi war by bushco...I asked myself, how many generations of terrorists will this tragic imperialist adventure of PNAC create? 2015: answer: enough for the next 100 years and beyond. Harm? A word that doesn't even begin to explain this tragedy for the world.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)while, but we decided to do nothing about it. So there is no hope of stopping the War Machine at this point. It would take replacing nearly every member of Congress and the Senate and putting someone who is so tough no one dares to cross him/her before we can even begin to start reversing the damage.
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)but then acting all sanctimonious trying to condemn other
nations or groups who embrace terrorism & torture.
It just doesn't wash anymore. I can understand in a way
why people just don't want to look at this square in the face,
because it's so butt-ugly; which is why I so much appreciate
Hedges.
Thanks for checking in Sabrina1.
KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)in the Middle East who benefit from this mess.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)Scratch a radical Sunni faction and the Saudi money spills out. With friends like the Saudis no one needs enemies.
KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)
uppityperson
(115,677 posts)
BainsBane
(53,035 posts)People seem to think if only religion were abolished, none of this would be happening. Religion is not the cause but rather an ideology that they draw upon to express and justify their rage. Although doubtless a very important factor, I don't believe that poverty alone explains it. Imperialism, dependent economic development, decline of the Soviet Union and shifting geopolitical relations, and decades of Western support for brutal regimes in the region all play a role. If someone could wave a magic wand and make religion disappear, all that would change is the ideology that provides a language to express rage. The conflicts themselves would not disappear.
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)
Brigid
(17,621 posts)Some of them can't even cope with a garden-variety Methodist like myself. The sight of the church I attend, situated on a busy corner and visible to all, would probably send them into paroxysms of rage. 
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)as far as religions go, and have had periods of no religion as well.
My take away is to just not take it (or myself) all that seriously anymore,
keep my sense of humor and such. If some people benefit from their
religion (i.e. become more happy balanced generous people), then what's
not to like about it, for THEM.
And the deal all around the table needs to be that we all tolerate each
other. That's not really all that complicated.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)Tolerance is a great idea, I'm not really against tolerance, it sounds fine...well in principle...at least some of the time...oh...maybe...
It is certainly something of a buzzword in times of trouble. Perhaps especially in times of trouble.
Peace! Peace! When there is no peace. Don't you know?
On inspection, in too many of those troubled times tolerance is requested as a righteous sounding means of getting the people who don't have a fair deal and who are finally getting noisy and rude about it to quiet down and quit acting out.
Tolerance yes, we need that. But perhaps also a whole lot more empathy.
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)
Live and Learn
(12,769 posts)
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Like pretty much all terrorists of recent years, they weren't from the poor and dispossessed huddled masses; they were fairly well off.
ND-Dem
(4,571 posts)The Kouachi brothers were reportedly abandoned by their Algerian parents at a very early age, Le Parisien stated. They were placed in foster care in the eastern city of Rennes before moving back to Paris...Describing Cherif, his lawyer of the time, Vincent Ollivier, told Le Parisien: “A loser, a delivery boy in a cap who smokes hashish and delivers pizzas to buy his drugs...
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/perspective/profiles/2015/01/08/Paris-attacks-What-do-we-know-about-the-Kouachi-brothers-.html
Recursion
(56,582 posts)They lived in the 19th, in their own apartments (the older brother lived with his wife), which means they weren't living in one of the barrios like Pantin (roughly, it's like living in Brooklyn rather than Flushing or Jamaica). They had enough money to travel pretty extensively. The younger brother had had a rap album produced with some limited success. Coulibaly was worried about getting laid off from his job, apparently, so there's that. These were children of immigrants (though the brothers were orphaned early -- a sad and probably significant part of this story) who had economically integrated into their country -- which is basically the template for the "Western-grown" terrorist.
ND-Dem
(4,571 posts)Last edited Mon Jan 12, 2015, 02:11 AM - Edit history (2)
of prison. The brothers grew up "in care" which was equivalent to growing up in foster care in the states. They weren't just "orphaned" -- their parents *abandoned* them.
The 19th arrondissement:
The 19th arondissement is not for the faint of heart or for tourists who have never been to Paris. It is OK for seasoned travelers. The Boston Globe article posted on Trip Advisor talks about a narrow swath of the 19th that is in the northern half of the arondissement, but go south and the area can become very seedy very fast. Still, it's Paris and the streets are jam-packed with small green grocers, electronics shops, Chinese restaurants, pastry shops etc., however these are all average...
Last but not least, be aware that this is a heavily immigrant area of Paris. There are shops here (and shop owners and their wives and children) from Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and many other countries. That makes this both an interesting 'hood for the spices, nuts, teas, dates, figs and other delicacies you will find, but it also means that on Friday night you can expect a very loud live band playing Middle Eastern music for teens late into the night.
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Travel-g187147-d589089/Paris:France:19th.Arrondissement.html
The 19th Arrondissement is one of the most fascinating and complicated districts of Paris — one of the largest, youngest, poorest, most racially diverse — and the most criminal. The size of Grenoble or Reims, with nearly 190,000 people, the district, on the northeast edge of Paris, is split into at least three territories, with at least two large mini-ghettos, or cités, run by their own gangs of youths, who spar along the borders and sometimes clash with the Jews. And it borders some of Paris’s poorest suburbs.
“It’s less about anti-Semitism than fights among gangs of youths, who create alliances of one district against another,” Mr. Chahrine said, noting the influence of American movies on the styles and habits of the gangs. “This idea of identity of territory starts with economic reasons. This is the youngest and poorest arrondissement in Paris, with a lot of unemployment, and that explains a lot.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/world/europe/24paris.html?oref=slogin
Coulibaly was born in 1982 in the Paris suburb of Juvisy-sur-Orge as the only boy in a family of 10 children. He was a former employee of a Coca-Cola factory in Gigny, in France’s Burgundy region.
http://www.ibtimes.com/who-amedy-coulibaly-paris-kosher-deli-gunman-once-worked-coca-cola-was-close-kouachi-1779242
“They grew more alienated in recent years,” AP reported, “surrounded by secular Western culture and by what many Muslims see as a subtle bigotry among the French against Arabs.”
“There’s no work here,” one told an uncle. “… Life is tough.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/01/08/how-a-suspected-charlie-hebdo-gunman-turned-into-a-professional-jihadist/
Please link me to this information about their middle class lives.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)You just linked to it yourself. They were living in the gentrifying 19th, not Saint-Denis or Pantin. They had steady jobs and could afford international travel.
ND-Dem
(4,571 posts)Its skyline was crowded with the sort of high-rises the Associated Press described as “public housing slums that breed violence and crime.” Kouachi was listless and didn’t adhere strictly to many Islamic precepts. “He drank, smoked pot, slept with his girlfriend and delivered pizzas for a living,” the Tribune-Review paraphrased Ollivier as saying. In those years, he worked a series of dead-end jobs — as a pizza deliveryman, a supermarket clerk, a fishmonger — and spent a lot of time listening to rap music.
And the guy you described as working 'for coca-cola' worked in a Coca-Cola *factory* -- in another city, at some point in the past.
they didn't have 'steady jobs,' they had a series of dead-end jobs.
At least one of the suspects, Cherif Kouachi, is known to police with a lengthy criminal record...
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/01/07/cherif-kouachi-said-kouach-charlie-hebdo_n_6433006.html
The 19th Arrondissement is one of the most fascinating and complicated districts of Paris — one of the largest, youngest, poorest, most racially diverse — and the most criminal. The size of Grenoble or Reims, with nearly 190,000 people, the district, on the northeast edge of Paris, is split into at least three territories, with at least two large mini-ghettos, or cités, run by their own gangs of youths, who spar along the borders and sometimes clash with the Jews. And it borders some of Paris’s poorest suburbs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/world/europe/24paris.html?oref=slogin
Kouachi's lawyer Vincent Ollivier said at the time that his client's profile was more "pot-smoker from the projects than an Islamist."
http://www.kcra.com/paris-terrorist-attack-who-are-the-suspects/30589408
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Compare the worst part of the 19th to Saint-Denis.
ND-Dem
(4,571 posts)saying is something like "seattle's old central district wasn't as bad as the old south Bronx, therefore people living in the central district were middle class"
it's bull. you haven't linked a single one of your claims to any evidence, which is further evidence that your claims are bull. there are multiple reports of the brothers being not "middle class."
ND-Dem
(4,571 posts)I saw inside their flat once and there were just mattresses on the floor, very little furniture.’ Said married Soumya Bouarfa in Paris in March 2012.
The couple have two children and lived on the first floor of a tower block in the city of Reims in north- eastern France.
Kadir Sahroli, 76, who has lived in the building for 34 years, said: ‘He was always very kindly towards me.
‘We would pass each other in front of the building. He said hello.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2900941/Who-Charlie-Hebdo-gunmen-Islamic-fanatics-claimed-Al-Qaeda-Yemen-shooting-12-dead.html#ixzz3OadWFPxG
polly7
(20,582 posts)NO excuse for their brutal murdering rampage, but they were definitely not living comfortably in French society.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)They didn't live in the barrio Hedges profiled in Saint-Denis. They lived in the 19th.
ND-Dem
(4,571 posts)And now since you haven't seen fit to offer a single shred of evidence for any of your claims, I'm done with you.
Seems like you're spinning events for reasons of your own.
They were poor and not living comfortably. That explains it, give these poor souls a pass for expected behaviour for being deprived of enough comfort. 
polly7
(20,582 posts)I give no one a pass for murder.
PotatoChip
(3,186 posts)
Response to Recursion (Reply #7)
Recursion This message was self-deleted by its author.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)even if they have enough to need to charge their phone in an airport lounge periodically. A wealthy alcoholic in the depths of real trouble comes to mind, even if they have money - still can be helpless and looking for something...
Here they were thuggish murderers. (a better label than that used in the newspapers, I think) but also with a wretched, unhappy human spirit, a spirit looking for solace. People confuse that with religion, and I don't mean it that way, but I think it is something that everyone has, and it can be nurtured, and it can be manipulated if it is weak. Other folks have more academic names for it, I'm pretty sure.
Bottoming out of that spirit is not always negative if there is something there to grab onto, and it can lead to amazing things. But it can lead to twisted, destructive behavior, such as a car wreck that wipes out a family, or what we just saw.
Lots of pain out there of all kinds. Maybe if some would try to take the edge off of it somehow, instead of continually poking at the wounds, we could ease this.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)But in a country that lacks the language for that that America has developed by having such a fucked up relationship with gun violence.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)on.
Here, some of thousands upon thousands of adults, not just these folks but domestically, ready to become radicalized at any given time. And then a little training (they do it themselves, don't foist it off on taxpayers like we have allowed corporations to do) and there's a new murdering thug.
The cultures are so angry such a person simply hides in the noise.
We could change ourselves, which would make them stand out more, but that's hardly worth betting on.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)That's the biggest and most destructive lie I think that came out of Columbine (and there were several). Harris was popular, well-liked, and had a girlfriend.
Columbine was not the "revenge of the disaffected".
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)PotatoChip
(3,186 posts)*snip*
The dozen or so friends, mainly unemployed or in small jobs, were involved in petty crime, theft, drugs, trafficking. But then they met a young charismatic guru figure at a local mosque.
*snip*
Chérif Kouachi was born in 1980 in Paris’s diverse 10th arrondissement, which stretches from the Place de la République to the Gare du Nord. He was one of five children of Algerian immigrant parents. A source who knew Chérif Kouachi at the time of his first arrest on his way to catch the flight to Damascus in 2005 told the Guardian: “He was abandoned very young; it’s not clear if his parents couldn’t look after the children or if his parents died. But he was put in care homes early – before the age of 10.” The care homes were far from Paris and his childhood was described as chaotic. When he reached 18 he returned to the north-east of Paris with his elder brother. He had a sports education qualification, but a poor school record and no other family support. When he became involved in the Buttes-Chaumont group of friends he was back in Paris but living precariously.
“He was living almost like a homeless person, staying with someone but it was more of a mattress on the floor than a real home. He was very clearly marginalised.[
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/12/-sp-charlie-hebdo-attackers-kids-france-radicalised-pari
Skittles
(153,169 posts)and I don't condone it being used as an excuse for executing innocent people in response - I CALL BULLSHIT ON BOTH
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)just clearly seeing the cause.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)variety of excuses for what they were doing and even seemed confused about some of it. They were angry. But was the pic of Mohammed or their hatred of Jews the only thing they are angry about? I doubt it. Most of us are angry today. And most of us are angry about the economy. Why should they be any different?
But the real point of Hedges article is that the rich are going to see this kind of anger expressed toward them more often because of their greed and hatred. This was just a preview of what is to come. Individual action that strikes out at corporations and their stockholders with unexpected swiftness. It will be aimed at whoever is close enough to attack. It will not come from the poorest because they do not have the means to do this - most of us do not own guns. Can't afford them. - It will come from the people who recognize what has been done to them - the former middle class and even from the upper class who see their lives as a dead end.
When people like Hedges and Pope Francis speak out they are speaking for the poor but they are also telling the rich that things have gone too far. That violence is waiting just outside the door. Wake up, 1%, and start helping to fix it.
Brigid
(17,621 posts)Last edited Mon Jan 12, 2015, 12:01 PM - Edit history (1)
That the peasants storming the Bastille could not have said exactly what they were so angry about if they had been asked; they only knew that they could stand no more.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)
BobbyBoring
(1,965 posts)When Louie and Marie had spent all the cake money on Versailles and shoes!
fadedrose
(10,044 posts)We hardly ever hear about lone-wolf millionaires and billionaires going into progressive newspapers and magazines and shooting up the place.
And they must get tired of being blamed for the poor not having enough to live on.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)fadedrose
(10,044 posts)
Martin Eden
(12,870 posts)Recursion
(56,582 posts)They weren't in the crowded immigrant-heavy suburban communes; they had stable jobs and lived in the 19th. They grew up in foster care and never lived in one of those barrios.
bbgrunt
(5,281 posts)don't matter when rage becomes generalized. There is enough generalized rage in the world today to spark a conflagration. And religious extremism and political extremism fan the flames.
Old Codger
(4,205 posts)At history some you will see that we have in fact been fighting some Muslims for a lot longer than most people realize. read up on the Barbary pirates and see how thy used to capture ships and hold them for ransom and how we and other countries paid those ransoms for quite a long time until we had had enough and went after them.. We have paid ransom and negotiated with terrorists in the past
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/jefferson_papers/mtjprece.html
edited to add link
ND-Dem
(4,571 posts)Old Codger
(4,205 posts)The link I included.
When Jefferson became president in 1801 he refused to accede to Tripoli's demands for an immediate payment of $225,000 and an annual payment of $25,000. The pasha of Tripoli then declared war on the United States. Although as secretary of state and vice president he had opposed developing an American navy capable of anything more than coastal defense, President Jefferson dispatched a squadron of naval vessels to the Mediterranean. As he declared in his first annual message to Congress: "To this state of general peace with which we have been blessed, one only exception exists. Tripoli, the least considerable of the Barbary States, had come forward with demands unfounded either in right or in compact, and had permitted itself to denounce war, on our failure to comply before a given day. The style of the demand admitted but one answer. I sent a small squadron of frigates into the Mediterranean. . . ."
The American show of force quickly awed Tunis and Algiers into breaking their alliance with Tripoli. The humiliating loss of the frigate Philadelphia and the capture of her captain and crew in Tripoli in 1803, criticism from his political opponents, and even opposition within his own cabinet did not deter Jefferson from his chosen course during four years of war. The aggressive action of Commodore Edward Preble (1803-4) forced Morocco out of the fight and his five bombardments of Tripoli restored some order to the Mediterranean. However, it was not until 1805, when an American fleet under Commodore John Rogers and a land force raised by an American naval agent to the Barbary powers, Captain William Eaton, threatened to capture Tripoli and install the brother of Tripoli's pasha on the throne, that a treaty brought an end to the hostilities. Negotiated by Tobias Lear, former secretary to President Washington and now consul general in Algiers, the treaty of 1805 still required the United States to pay a ransom of $60,000 for each of the sailors held by the dey of Algiers, and so it went without Senatorial consent until April 1806. Nevertheless, Jefferson was able to report in his sixth annual message to Congress in December 1806 that in addition to the successful completion of the Lewis and Clark expedition, "The states on the coast of Barbary seem generally disposed at present to respect our peace and friendship."
In fact, it was not until the second war with Algiers, in 1815, that naval victories by Commodores William Bainbridge and Stephen Decatur led to treaties ending all tribute payments by the United States. European nations continued annual payments until the 1830s. However, international piracy in Atlantic and Mediterranean waters declined during this time under pressure from the Euro-American nations, who no longer viewed pirate states as mere annoyances during peacetime and potential allies during war.
ND-Dem
(4,571 posts)that case -- but that fact has no bearing on any political situation today. And neither do your comments about "our" supposed history of bad relations with muslims.
You really think I was talking about you and me personally having fought the muslims at the Barbary coast... LOL you are funny
ND-Dem
(4,571 posts)the Muslim world. And you've cherry picked an example from the foundation of the country, at a time when "we" were enemies of Britain even.
No idea what the point of bringing up the Barbary pirates would be otherwise.
Response to ND-Dem (Reply #22)
NuclearDem This message was self-deleted by its author.
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)fingrin
(120 posts)People woke up and grew some balls.
I look forward to the day people rise up and say #IamCharlie and I condemn all violence including violence perpetrated in our name against Muslims.
Now that would be true "Free speech"
KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)re-centers it. A very important piece.
This one should stay at the top of the forum and be widely read and commented upon.
DonCoquixote
(13,616 posts)"“It is a sad state of affairs when Liberty means the freedom to insult, demean and mock people’s most sacred concepts,” the Islamic scholar Hamza Yusuf, an American who lives in California, told me in an email. “In some Latin countries people are acquitted for murders where the defendant’s mother was slandered by the one he murdered. I saw this in Spain many years ago. It’s no excuse for murder, but it explains things in terms of honor, which no longer means anything in the West. Ireland is a western country that still retains some of that, and it was the Irish dueling laws that were used in Kentucky, the last State in the Union to make dueling outlawed. Dueling was once very prominent in the West when honor meant something deep in the soul of men. Now we are not allowed to feel insulted by anything other than a racial slur, which means less to a deeply religious person than an attack on his or her religion. Muslim countries are still governed, as you well know, by shame and honor codes. Religion is the big one. I was saddened by the ‘I’m Charlie’ tweets and posters, because while I’m definitely not in sympathy with those misguided fools [the gunmen who invaded the newspaper], I have no feeling of solidarity with mockers.”"
Mockers are the reason you can be in California with your nice scholar job. Many times the ones mocked will cry slander, only for truth to reveal that yes, the actual offense was done, from paedophile priests to racist rants to sex harassment. The people that fought hard against anti islamic bigots often were mockers, those experience at mocking the "most sacred concepts" Christians had about you being an enemy because you were Muslim! And those "shame" and "honor" codes are often used to preserve sins and as well as graces, especially when it comes to women. I am saddened that while you can indeed piint out that Charlie had flaws, you still harbor romance for systems that used the gun,sword and fist to givern "honor" which when examined, often turned out to be NOT worthy of keeping, because it was used to keep people in their place.
reddread
(6,896 posts)is outrage in the service of mockery racism?
Everyone takes a risk of some sort when you offend someone.
Offend the wrong person the wrong way, and anything could happen.
seveneyes
(4,631 posts)I hear the roar of the big machine
Two worlds and in between
Hot metal and methedrine
I hear your empire down
malaise
(269,054 posts)Truth frightens corporations big time
Scuba
(53,475 posts)
LWolf
(46,179 posts)
randome
(34,845 posts)Those poor, unfortunate ISIS killers. Just down-trodden malcontents? 
[hr][font color="blue"][center]TECT in the name of the Representative approves of this post.[/center][/font][hr]
JackInGreen
(2,975 posts)we (the west, etc) have sown the seeds for the extremism. The chickens coming home to roost overall, with the satiric comics in question being an excuse.
At least, I hope so.
If the lessons is 'Don't make fun of people (in this case, an image sacrosanct deity) or you deserve to get shot because it contributes to the cultural divide that has created this morass to begin with'......then I'm not sure I can be on board, any career I've got in comedy is shot unless I'm ONLY going to make fun of the people 'they' (whichever they is loudest or most oppressed) say I can....and really?
Fuck that.
randome
(34,845 posts)The more the two worlds merge, the more bumpy a ride we're going to have until things finally settle down. Now if the Eastern hemisphere had more leaders willing to fight for freedom instead of subjugation, we might have a different outcome.
But those 'leaders' are playing their own game, exasperating already existing problems.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]TECT in the name of the Representative approves of this post.[/center][/font][hr]
KansDem
(28,498 posts)Just some things...
But of course, this was our reaction to the president's family friends and business partners flying airliners into our tallest buildings.
randome
(34,845 posts)And some innocents were sometimes caught up in the process. Much to our shame.
And that causes ISIS to rampage across the Middle East maiming and slaughtering schoolgirls? I don't get it.
We should have left them alone to do their torturing and killing 'off the books', so to speak.
The path this debate is taking is interesting. We promote the idea that cartoons didn't cause the murders, only the murderers are responsible. With which I agree. But it's another thing when there's a chance to blame our own government for those same murders.
I still say the murderers are responsible for their actions, no one else.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]All things in moderation, including moderation.[/center][/font][hr]
Unknown Beatle
(2,672 posts)If the US had never muddled into the affairs of Iraq and not gone to war with them, ISIS would have never existed. As a result, well, you know the rest.
kpete
(71,996 posts)we NEED to see those pictures again
― Henry David Thoreau
chervilant
(8,267 posts)We have engineered the rage of the dispossessed. The evil of predatory global capitalism and empire has spawned the evil of terrorism. And rather than understand the roots of that rage and attempt to ameliorate it, we have built sophisticated mechanisms of security and surveillance, passed laws that permit the targeted assassinations and torture of the weak, and amassed modern armies and the machines of industrial warfare to dominate the world by force. This is not about justice. It is not about the war on terror. It is not about liberty or democracy. It is not about the freedom of expression. It is about the mad scramble by the privileged to survive at the expense of the poor. And the poor know it.
Our species' hubris is astonishing. Conflating power with economic wealth is the framework within which injustice breeds contempt.
kpete
(71,996 posts)And rather than understand the roots of that rage and attempt to ameliorate it, we have built sophisticated mechanisms of security and surveillance, passed laws that permit the targeted assassinations and torture of the weak, and amassed modern armies and the machines of industrial warfare to dominate the world by force.
that is the part that struck me too
peace,kp
chervilant
(8,267 posts)and very much appreciate you as a contributing member of this forum.
raouldukelives
(5,178 posts)BlueJazz
(25,348 posts).... psychopaths. Until you've been around these types of people, you don't truly see the world as it is.
I have no extreme hate of them...anymore than I would hate a Werewolf (if such a thing existed)
They can't help what they are. You can't "Talk" to them, plead with them, reason with them or change them with love or hate or whatever.
They are truly a flaw in the makeup of a kind, caring, logical Society.
There's only one way to deal with them. I shant not speak of the actions that need to happen.
oberliner
(58,724 posts)And that is saying a lot.
KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)Do you disagree that the attack was a 'harbinger' or do you disagree that there is an 'emerging dystopia'? Or perhaps both?
Adrahil
(13,340 posts)It's not like you're going to get the industrialized nations (and it's not just the west anymore) to start exporting wealth to these nations. After all, the 99% here don't actually control all that much of the wealth. And the nations of the middle east have their own despots that control most of what wealth they do have.
It's one thing to identify a problem (this isn't even close to the first time I'm seen this cause identified), but..... now what?
KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)we helped rebuild Germany. Granted there is no USSR forcing our hand. But I'm not sure there's any necessary reason why the industrialized nations couldn't start 'exporting wealth' per se.
Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)staggerleem
(469 posts)I'm probably gonna get myself in trouble with this statement, but if the disadvantaged of this world truly feel the need to lash out, they need to select better targets. In most cases, I think you'll find that when the satirists of the world point their pencils at various forms of hypocrisy, they are, for the most part, trying to HELP the downtrodden.
If you need to strike out at your oppressors, don't attack the cartoonists. Maybe try a Lobby Shop ... one that works for for Big Finance, or Big Pharma, or Big Ag, or Big ANY-Freakin'-THING. That's a group that has some REAL responsibility for your lot in life.
I'll be honest - I work for a small, privately held Electronics firm. We do some DOD work, as do many, if not most, of our customers. I could FAR better understand an attack on MY place of business than an attack on a building full of people whose job is to try to spread a little truth through laughter.
BobbyBoring
(1,965 posts)Start with K St. then on to Wall! I won't shed a tear.
Chemisse
(30,813 posts)Just calling them the 'bad guys' and beefing up security is not going to solve the problem.
I'm not sure I agree with this piece. I think it is more about oppression than poverty, although poverty can be the result of oppression.
But the idea that we can respond by trying to understand where all the anger is coming from, is very important. Until we address the root causes, we will just get more of the same.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)They were born in France. They had stable jobs. They didn't live in the neighborhood the article profiles, but in the much more upwardly mobile 19th arrondissement of Paris.
If you're looking for a new case of sans culottes, they aren't here.
Chemisse
(30,813 posts)There is a reason they are promoting attacks such as this, and it's not because they are bored on a Saturday night.
kpete
(71,996 posts)Just calling them the 'bad guys' and beefing up security is not going to solve the problem.
history of the world
peace,
kp
cali
(114,904 posts)and it is about western intervention. And the legacy of colonization. It is about a clash of cultures, about poverty and disenfranchisement. It's also about the Sunni/Shia schism.
Hedges is wrong. It's not mostly about poverty. Many of those most active in jihadi movements aren't impoverished.
In any case, the responsibility for heinous actions lies with those perpetrating them- whether that's bush or Islamic terrorists.
Understanding the context of such events as the ones that unfolded in Paris last week, is important. It's at least as important to place the ultimate responsibility on those who commit such acts.
PotatoChip
(3,186 posts)I think this piece is an attempt to more fully explore what motivates radicalization. An attempt to point out that which many here in the west will not publicly acknowledge.
I also agree that the ultimate responsibility falls on those who commit these heinous crimes. I think Hedges would too.
adirondacker
(2,921 posts)fundamentalism...
It was posted in good reads by another DUer...
http://blogs.mediapart.fr/blog/olivier-tonneau/110115/charlie-hebdo-letter-my-british-friends
Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)At my age one of the things I hope to live long enough see is banksters swinging from lamp posts.
KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)to V.I. Lenin speaking to one of colleagues at the 1923 Comintern.
geretogo
(1,281 posts)Those who have don't give a damn about those who don't have since they own and rule the country
for the enrichment of themselves . A day of reckoning is coming to the U.S.A. before long .
m-lekktor
(3,675 posts)his daddy is a preacher and he resents atheists who speak out about their atheism, he thinks religion is innocuous/good etc, so o I do believe his overheated rantings on this issue are full of shit. Hedges is a drama queen.
PotatoChip
(3,186 posts)MindPilot
(12,693 posts)Hedges is just another "but" trying his best to make it not about religion.
PotatoChip
(3,186 posts)Do you truly believe the author of such a book is trying to defend extremists of any religion?
Luminous Animal
(27,310 posts)In an interview in Salon.
A lot of the book is devoted to making this comparison between Christian and what some call secular fundamentalists, but you are pretty hands off when it comes to fundamentalist Islam.
HEDGES: The only reason I go after Christian fundamentalists and New Atheists is because they’re here and I’m an American. Fundamentalism — whether it’s Hindu fundamentalism or Jewish fundamentalism or Christian fundamentalism or Islamic fundamentalism — is the same disease. Karen Armstrong has explained that brilliantly. Fundamentalists, no matter what their religious coloring — bear far more in common with each other than they do with more enlightened members of their own religious communities. I’m an enemy of fundamentalism, period. And if I’m not going after Islamic fundamentalism in this book, it’s because what I’ve tried to do is talk about these two very dangerous ideological strains within American society, although the New Atheists are peddling this under the guise of enlightenment and reason and science in the same way that the Christian right tries to peddle it as a form of Christianity.
grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)
ymetca
(1,182 posts)Hedges' article is thought-provoking, and there is probably a lot of "truthiness" to it. Yet I can't help thinking in terms of the "adolescence of humanity". That this is a stage in our species' planetary dominance wherein we have to come to terms with our decrepit ideologies of hierarchical social control and dominance and submission games.
We can see the lunacy of the Egyptian pyramids, but we cannot see the idiocy of our own skyscrapers. Maybe that's why there is so much "post-apocalyptic" zombie-fication in films these days. We know our old empires are all crumbling, but we as yet have nothing coherent arising from their ruins. No Star Trek future seems just over the horizon. We're just all lost down here at the bottom of a gravity well, stuck in Cthulhu's underworld with no way out. Jungian psychology-wise, that is. Nothing is literal, of course, except my own personal, inevitable demise. It is hard enough for an individual to come to terms with that one, let alone a society built on "I got mine and that is all that matters."
We're living, perhaps, in the fabled Kali-yuga. The lowest ebb of the arc of divine consciousness into matter. Or perhaps we are living in the New Aeon of Horus, as Aleister Crowley once fantasized. Or, as Timothy Leary suggested in his opus The Game of Life, a transition phase between our terrestrial and post-terrestrial existence as a species.
I like to think these things, since I have no way of knowing how it will all turn out. Everyone goes to paradise. Everyone is forgiven in the end. And life ultimately makes certain that nothing is truly lost. I'll try to hold on to these thoughts. I'll try, but I doubt I will always succeed.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)The truth hurts. And it hurts bad. And if we want progress for humanity, it needs be told.
Cosmic Kitten
(3,498 posts)When it comes to "radical Islam"
are the extremists all Sunni?
ISIS, al qaeda, 9/11 were all Sunni, right?
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)if so many middle and upper-middle class youth from all corners of the earth weren't running off to join ISIS...
