Yeah, IYHO is right. If the Pussy Riot trial proves anything its how underprepared most commentators and pundits are when delving into Russia. There is no country with a more complex and unacknowledged history. We berate Russians for Stalinism when they were its greatest victims. We berate Putin for corruption when he built his political resume on fighting it. Authoritarian as he may be, he is at about 67% approval right now with a 5% economic growth rate for the first half of 2012 + oil prices staying north of $100 a barrel. He is likely to stay popular for a while. Get over it. If he were by some chance removed, it would be the most undemocratic thing to happen to Russians since the Soviet Union. If the West wants to enact real change in the world it will man up and tear down the trans-national corporate lobby systems that run their governments. But "democracy" isn't really what's at stake here, is it?
Nice generalization, bro. The people of the world have the right to political self-determination whether religiously based or otherwise. I think most libruhls, toothless as they may be, would agree with that. Depict political Islam how you like cause here is a radical thought: ITS NONE OF OUR BUSINESS.
And, yes, insurgencies are a reaction to oppression and occupation. That's kinda how it works. Whether Algeria or Iraq, the struggle is a nationalist one first and foremost, religious zeal is simply what gives a large portion of fighters their opiate.
I understand how intoxicating it must be to read amplified notions of perception and sentiment but please, do yourself a favor and read Michael Stuermer's "Putin and the Rise of Russia". You well then understand that, though a strong arm politician whose policy is in desperate need of economic diversification, he is only a threat to the interests of the West. Oh how easily people forget the drunken incompetence of Yeltsin and the mafia state that existed under him...
This guy again. He'll do anything to convince us the elephant in the room isn't there. I actually do wish you had your way and Assange was extradited to the US. They would then either a) be forced to put him on trial, where it would be laughable to see how they frame his "crimes" of publishing already leaked documents or b) they would detain him indefinitely, further eroding US credibility in terms of its disdain for due process. This is the same school of thought that advocates military intervention in the Middle East as if empire overreach isn't what extremists are shooting for.
As you say, it's not just offensive but the grossly incorrect babble of those who refuse to understand. Iraq's insurgency was a nationalist one against a foreign occupier as was that of the Afghan Mujaheddin again the USSR. When the French were still fighting to retain French Algeria, and all the torture and execution that went with it, they invoked anti-communist mantras. When in 1991 a French-backed and newly independent Algeria fought it's own uprising, it cited Islamic fundamentalism as the enemy. Yet, by most rational non-pejorative accounts, these struggles were personal and nationalist before they were anything else.
One thing Doug leaves out here when defusing the myth of extremism is the simple fact that the most suicide bombings are carried out by the Tamil Tigers, a secular Marxist NATIONALIST group.
Seems the real assumption is that we have a right to go after anyone we publicly label as a threat. Though I suppose that analyzing potential ulterior motives is tin foil hat business, right?
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Yeah, IYHO is right. If the Pussy Riot trial proves anything its how underprepared most commentators and pundits are when delving into Russia. There is no country with a more complex and unacknowledged history. We berate Russians for Stalinism when they were its greatest victims. We berate Putin for corruption when he built his political resume on fighting it. Authoritarian as he may be, he is at about 67% approval right now with a 5% economic growth rate for the first half of 2012 + oil prices staying north of $100 a barrel. He is likely to stay popular for a while. Get over it. If he were by some chance removed, it would be the most undemocratic thing to happen to Russians since the Soviet Union. If the West wants to enact real change in the world it will man up and tear down the trans-national corporate lobby systems that run their governments. But "democracy" isn't really what's at stake here, is it?
Nice generalization, bro. The people of the world have the right to political self-determination whether religiously based or otherwise. I think most libruhls, toothless as they may be, would agree with that. Depict political Islam how you like cause here is a radical thought: ITS NONE OF OUR BUSINESS.
And, yes, insurgencies are a reaction to oppression and occupation. That's kinda how it works. Whether Algeria or Iraq, the struggle is a nationalist one first and foremost, religious zeal is simply what gives a large portion of fighters their opiate.
I understand how intoxicating it must be to read amplified notions of perception and sentiment but please, do yourself a favor and read Michael Stuermer's "Putin and the Rise of Russia". You well then understand that, though a strong arm politician whose policy is in desperate need of economic diversification, he is only a threat to the interests of the West. Oh how easily people forget the drunken incompetence of Yeltsin and the mafia state that existed under him...
This guy again. He'll do anything to convince us the elephant in the room isn't there. I actually do wish you had your way and Assange was extradited to the US. They would then either a) be forced to put him on trial, where it would be laughable to see how they frame his "crimes" of publishing already leaked documents or b) they would detain him indefinitely, further eroding US credibility in terms of its disdain for due process. This is the same school of thought that advocates military intervention in the Middle East as if empire overreach isn't what extremists are shooting for.
As you say, it's not just offensive but the grossly incorrect babble of those who refuse to understand. Iraq's insurgency was a nationalist one against a foreign occupier as was that of the Afghan Mujaheddin again the USSR. When the French were still fighting to retain French Algeria, and all the torture and execution that went with it, they invoked anti-communist mantras. When in 1991 a French-backed and newly independent Algeria fought it's own uprising, it cited Islamic fundamentalism as the enemy. Yet, by most rational non-pejorative accounts, these struggles were personal and nationalist before they were anything else.
One thing Doug leaves out here when defusing the myth of extremism is the simple fact that the most suicide bombings are carried out by the Tamil Tigers, a secular Marxist NATIONALIST group.
Seems the real assumption is that we have a right to go after anyone we publicly label as a threat. Though I suppose that analyzing potential ulterior motives is tin foil hat business, right?