ISIL Hypocrites

 

His words reached the Islamic State group, which in a video three days later accused Japan of donating money “to kill our women and children” and threatened to kill two Japanese men it held as hostages.

 

Really?  How do the folks pulling the strings at ISIL define "our women and children" - considering the fact that they're killing and raping women and children themselves?  Who's paying to house, clothe, feed and arm the militants doing such atrocious deeds?  Who's paying to recruit Westerners to move to the Middle East to rape and kill local women and children? 

 

ISIL's message to Japan isn't "leave our women and children alone."  It's "don't piss in our sandbox."

 

If you mess with their authority, after all, you pay the price.  And they've got an army of brainwashed converts who will do whatever their told and actually think it's in the name of Allah.

 

They're acting like they think they're an empire.  Who would they have picked up that idea from?

 

"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

 

Jut a little reminder to all the Empire-builders out there.  History is not a morality play; we're not actors, nor playwrights.  To assume otherwise, well - that always ends in tragedy.

 

 

Loyalty, Consequence

 

Frustration among opposition MPs was evident, in the face of Conservative backbenchers suggesting they’re insufficiently behind the troops for asking those questions.

 

“This isn’t about who can say that they support the troops more than the other,” NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar said.

 

“This is about our job as parliamentarians . . . . We’re trying to get some honest answers and some transparency. What’s the cost of the war? You know, we went down this path in Afghanistan when we slept-walked into Kandahar without having a defined mission, without proper parliamentary oversight.”

 

Backbenchers playing politics; it's one of their stronger wedge files, after all, and they know damned well what their leader expects of them.  You need to present a united front and stay on message, reduce your target profile.  Then, hit 'em with everything you've got.

 

When I told one of the advisers to Justin Trudeau why I supported the International effort against ISIS/ISIL – and when I pointed out that I agreed with right-wing extremist warmongers like Barack Obama, Lloyd Axworthy and Bob Rae – I was told Messrs. Axworthy, Rae et al. were “traitors” to the party, because they’d disagreed with the leader. That’s a quote.

 

You're either with us, or you're against us.  If you're against us, you're out.  You don't belong.  If you are seriously enough against us to be a threat, or at least an obstacle, expect no mercy.  It's how empires work, am I right?

 

I'm not done yet.

 

So, Dipper folk, we are therefore enemies. As with Conservatives, I will do my level best to step on your throat. I will hit you, over and over. I will rip your face off, if you give me half a chance.

 

Are you loyal to the Party?  Are you loyal to the Government?  Are you with us?  Are you in?  Stakes are high and we need everything you have to fight this battle against these enemies of ours.

Asked to explain why Canadian soldiers now find themselves forced to defend themselves against firefights, Gen. Lawson said the fight is changing. Kurds are now taking the skills passed on by Canada and “putting pressure” on Islamic State militants.

Escalation?  Unintended consequences?  Catching flies by arming Saddams?  Think too much and you get stuck in analysis paralysis when what matters is acting now.  Stopping the threat in front of you.  We need to stop them at all costs.  At all costs.

Don't ask these things of the troops, the people who are fighting real wars, with real weapons and fatal consequences.  They know that it's not about them. 

 

It's too bad those they fight for have forgotten what it is we're supposed to be loyal to - and what the consequences are when we aren't.

 

 

 

What the FARC! ISIL Does K&R

 

"I say to you people of the Islamic State, Kenji is not your enemy. Please release him," she said.

 

The Islamists linked their $200 million ransom demand to the amount Abe said he would earmark to help countries dealing with the influx of refugees fleeing fighting between IS and regular forces.

 

 

The folks behind ISIL claim to be apocalyptic ideologues pursuing a pure vision of Islam that punishes the evil West for it's past and present discretions in the Middle East.

 

It's all righteous and holy, you see.  Divine retribution, that kind of thing.  All about the vision.

 

Yet what we have here is clearly a case of K&R, thinly veiled as part of their ideology in the flimsiest bit of spin.

 

Japan is donating money to the countries helping people victimized by ISIL.  They can't do that, it's like supporting the devil in the devil's efforts to save the physical coils of infidels or whatnot!  They must pay!

 

Except payment here isn't about retribution, it's about cash money.  There's nothing ideological about this - it's a fundraising expedition, pure and simple.  K&R, kidnap and ransom, with the beheading threats being just a fear tactic in their Always Be Closing mentality.

 

It's what FARC did, too.  When there was a lack of ready resources for Communist rebellion in Colombia from the collapsed USSR, FARC found ways to make their own cash.  Eventually, all that remained was a gang funded by extortion.

 

ISIL already gets a ton of money in donations.  Now they're looking for even more.  Where's it going to?  Funding media campaigns that put Western-born terrorists in Youtube videos?  It's not okay to depict people in art, lest they gain super-human status, but elevating converts is okay?

 

Or is the money going to digital espionage?  The buying of weapons?  Fueling evangelical campaigns in other countries?

 

How much is going to the reduction of poverty and the improvement of the quality of life for the people needing to flee ISIL territory for their lives?  Have the ISIL brass not chosen to neglect two of the pillars of Islam?  Where's the charity?  Where's the struggle against anger, against intolerance?

 

Is ISIL not rapidly turning into what those who left their homelands to join up were trying to escape - a totalitarian regime that's sacrificing belief for cash and causing the suffering of the innocent?

 

It makes me think Black Widow:

 

When I first joined S.H.I.E.L.D., I thought it was going straight. But I guess I just traded in the KGB for HYDRA."

 

So much for becoming powerful in the name of Allah; ISIL's Western converts have simply chosen to be pawns in someone else's game.

 

 

Less Calling than Justification

 

 

 

“I had no criminal record. I was a bright student and maintained a strong GPA in university. So how could one of your people end up in my place? And why is it that your own people are the ones turning against you at home? The answer is that we have accepted the true call of the prophets and messengers of God.”

 

He told Canadians to convert to Islam.

 

Let's go with this a bit.  When "al-Canadi" (ie, John Maguire) sais "it's your own people turning against you at home," he may kinda have a loose thread similar to a point.  "Our own people" assumedly meaning Canadians, and "turning on" meaning a rejection in part or whole of something we see as part of our Canadian fabric, there's lots of that - look at voter turnout rates as an example. 

 

Or the calls for an overhaul of our structure of governance (like Open Data) or economic model (shared economy).  There are a lot of beefs out there with things that aren't working, ranging from education to infrastructure repair.  Hell, I recently heard a finance guy calling for revolution.

 

None of these folk are rushing to the Middle East to oppress locals in the name of Islam, though, are they?  Much less attacking domestic targets.  If anything, we're trying to increase political transparency, not help catalyze a police state in response to terrorism.

 

Which, naturally, is the goal of ISIL and any other terrorist organization.  They'd love to see Canada become a hermit state, and love it even more if we collapsed into a civil war.

 

But that's not what Maguire is pitching as his motivation.  No, he's heard "the call" and is inviting Canadians (through petulant videos) to convert to Islam, or at least the version he's twigged on to.

 

What Islam has to do with trying to invade Turkey and oppressing locals is beyond me, but then I know that what ISIL is doing isn't really Islam.  It's barbarism, given name to justify it as something else.

 

And that's the rub, right there.  Whether it's ISIL seeking to destabilize others with violence or Maguire calling on other people to become like him, both approaches have zero-sum, apocalyptic end-games.

 

ISIL wants legitimacy, they've got the faux-Islam thing, but they're also expansionist.  Whatever the rhetoric, it's less a matter of their elite thinking about the end of days, so much as feeling like they're bringing the kingdom of heaven themselves, setting themselves up with the divine right to rule by force.

 

Recruits like Maguire are pushing for conversion; they want the world to take on their world-view.

 

What the common thread?

 

It's justification.  It's absolution through elimination of the Other.

 

If I, say, use a homophobic slur, or slap a child, or shoot an unarmed black youth, and I'm the only one who does the mean thing, then I'm a bad person.  If more and more people do it as well, though, then I was just ahead of the curve, wasn't I?

 

This is the truth that probably goes unnoticed by the Maguires of the world as much as it does by any people or organizations that justify inhuman acts of oppression in any form by saying "that's the way the world works."

 

The world might be a greedy, violent, short-sighted place, but it's also dynamic.  Extinction is written into the mainframe of our ecosystem. 

 

We like to think we're better than that, don't we?  In some way superior to the rest of the animal kingdom out there?  Civilized, rational actors, etc.?  Are we not therefore able of being more than our genetic blueprints?  Of being more than the selection of the fittest?

 

Maybe.  A lot of folk don't bother thinking that far ahead; they stop at the justification bit, declare themselves "histories actors" and whittle away their humanity, delving into the heart of darkness within. 

 

Canada has, at least in our popular myth, always tried to be more than this, the dominance game.  Instead of justifying bad behaviour through destroying or converting others, we've tried to build a state of plurality where diversity of opinion is seen as a strength, not a weakness.  By empowering different points of view, we're that much closer to the truth, to more sustainable solutions, etc. 

 

We're not trying to convert others; we're trying to grow something greater than the sum of its parts. 

 

We can make the conscious choice to own our actions and reactions rather than justify them.  It's a harder road than putting self-interest first and dehumanizing others or insisting they have to be like us to be human. 

 

To do so is to submit to something greater than oneself, or one's tribe.  It's to think of open-endings and of growth rather than of Armageddon and ends justifying means.

 

Not that there's anything new in this.  We might just be due for a reminder.