Twitter Is Not Legally Responsible For The Rise of ISIS, Rules California District Court (theverge.com) 140
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: A lawsuit accusing Twitter of providing material support to ISIS has been dismissed by a California District Court. First filed in January, the lawsuit argued ISIS's persistent presence on Twitter constituted material support for the terror group, and sought to hold Twitter responsible for an ISIS-linked attack on that basis. Filed by the family of an American contractor named Lloyd Fields, the lawsuit sought damages from an ISIS-linked attack in Jordan that claimed Fields' life. The plaintiff's initial complaint alleged widespread fundraising and recruitment through the platform, attributing 30,000 foreign actors recruited through ISIS Twitter accounts in 2015 alone. The judge assigned to the case was ultimately not swayed by that reasoning, finding that the plaintiffs had not offered a convincing argument for holding Twitter liable. The plaintiff will have the chance to submit a modified version of the complaint within 20 days of the order, the second such modification ordered by the judge. The report adds: "Apart from the private nature of Direct Messaging, plaintiffs identify no other way in which their Direct Messaging theory seeks to treat Twitter as anything other than a publisher of information provided by another information content provider," the ruling reads. At the same time, even the private nature of Twitter's Direct Messaging feature "does not remove the transmission of such messages from the scope of publishing activity under section 230(c)(1)."
Another Case of Palsgraf (Score:5, Informative)
This is a pretty interesting example of classic legal concepts being applied to new technology. Anyone who says that the law is outmoded or needs to catch up, only needs to read this opinion.
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Two possibilities (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Run by delusional SJWs who refuse to ban people who support and praise the most unapologetically despicable quasi-state the modern world has ever seen (because any concession to Islamophobia would be worse.)
2. They are constantly being approached by three letter agencies who alternately beg and demand that they not ban these accounts so that the users can be traced, warrants can be generated (against anyone who likes or retweets them), closet jihadi sympathizers goaded into saying
Re:Two possibilities (Score:5, Interesting)
Or:
3. Twitter is such a massive service, with a continually growing user base, with so many tweets posted and so much data ingested; that to stop ISIS using it is an extraordinarily difficult problem that they haven't solved.
Imagine they tried to do it automatically. How do you program that AI? It has to distinguish between actual ISIS posts and accounts and actual people wishing to join ISIS versus: government types investigating ISIS, other terrorist groups claiming to be ISIS, people trolling by pretending to be ISIS, people trolling ISIS by pretending to want to join, people reporting on ISIS, people mocking ISIS, people discussing ISIS or news about ISIS, people into egyptology talking about the goddess Isis, Archer fans talking about the fictional ISIS, actual people named Isis, and so on, all without generating false positives and removing the posts or accounts of anyone besides the actual terrorist ISIS.
Block by IP address blocks that they believe are owned by ISIS? Laughable. I shouldn't need to say more.
Do it manually? Right off the bat, you need multilingual staff fluent in at least English and Arabic, plus probably French, Spanish, and Farsi. And not just academically fluent as in "I took classes in school"; but actually fluent and nuanced enough to understand the aforementioned differences and never have false positives. Those people don't come cheap, even if the task is simple and easy. They especially don't come cheap in the Bay Area, where they can probably get a better job doing software localization. But assuming you can find the talent pool of fluent multilingual willing to do the crap job of slogging through twitter looking for ISIS posts and accounts; twitter ingests half a billion tweets per DAY. I can't begin to imagine how many people it would take to screen all that; nor just how awful that job would be.
Re:Two possibilities (Score:5, Insightful)
To catch all kinds of euphemisms and hidden double entendres you'd need a native speaker who happens to have been in the area recently to pick up all neologisms too.
People like this aren't just expensive, they're simply near impossible to get.
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Is there some hidden double meaning there that we're missing?
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The problem is that every time you start censoring, people come up with clever ways to circumvent it. If you can no longer communicate openly, people start to develop codes. If you need proof thereof, ask anyone from the former East Bloc. For example I remember that "blue tiles" was East German code for west money. So anyone who was willing to part with something rare and sought after usually put an ad in the paper that he wanted to trade it for blue tiles.
Did you know that? Probably not, if you weren't fro
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"Imagine they tried to do it automatically. How do you program that AI? "
And if they were able to develop such an AI, it would be the greatest investigative weapon against terrorists the world has ever seen.
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"Imagine they tried to do it automatically. How do you program that AI? "
And if they were able to develop such an AI, it would be the greatest investigative weapon against terrorists the world has ever seen.
And, shortly thereafter, the greatest weapon for terrorists the world has ever seen.
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... all without generating false positives and removing the posts or accounts of anyone besides the actual terrorist ISIS. ...and never have false positives...
Where in the world did you get the requirement that there have to be exactly zero false positives?
Surely false positives are bad and should be avoided. But I venture that most people would find it an acceptable tradeoff if one in a million legitimate tweets gets rejected by filter. Systems don't have to be perfect to be usable. Heck, I bet that random network errors and other gremlins cause just as many failures anyway.
Even /. has a automatic spam filter that will trigger if you try to post a message with
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One has to ask why we apparently let the terrorist organizations use these services that run on networks used for commercial and public services, as it is clear they provide a low cost and wide coverage recruiting method. There seems to be too little discussion on strategies to keep them off the networks in the first place. This probably sounds naive, but come on, Twitter and Facebook are for-profit companies. It's not like a public infrastructure like a roadway that the terrorists are driving down. (Any l
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I would bet they could find enough native speakers of Arabic, if only those people didn't feel like their very lives might be threatened by exposure. I can think of at least a couple Saudi atheists who really would rather not live in a theocracy that wants them dead, and would help defeat it if they could do so without extreme risk.
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Twitter has not demonstrated a strong willingness to combat the problem. Given the severity of terrorism it is difficult to see Twitter's quietness on the issue in a positive light.
Except in the light of my #2 explanation. If you don't think that Twitter is in constant contact with every major three letter agency in America (and MI5, and MI6, and at least half of the intelligence agencies across the Middle East), then you haven't been paying attention.
I'm not necessarily claiming that their strategy is the best strategy they could be pursuing, but it's absurd to assume that Twitter is pursuing these policies (and leaving themselves vulnerable public controversy and lawsuits such a
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Given who they put onto their abuse council (whatever the fuck it's called) I'm fairly confident that (1) is a far higher factor than you give it credit for.
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Re: Another Case of Palsgraf (Score:1)
It's still the same: just like the railroad won't allow you to take grenades on the train, Twitter don't want dangerous lunatics on their service.
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This is a pretty interesting example of classic legal concepts being applied to new technology. Anyone who says that the law is outmoded or needs to catch up, only needs to read this opinion.
No, that's what's so maddening about law today. Even when the existing law covers the situation adequately, they often feel a need to make new laws. This is especially true when you reach the internet.
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I find it actually fascinating that "on the internet" didn't require its own precedents. Maybe judges do adapt eventually.
Really? (Score:3)
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Unfortunately, without either tone of voice or facial expressions, your message is quite ambiguous, but the straightforwards meaning being more likely than sarcasm. This is a characteristic of email, texting, etc. and is one reason emoji are so common.
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Following the general consensus, I'm sure the US Department of Defense has come to the same conclusion, and is re-directing their resources as we speak.
To anyone who lives / works near there: can you please look out the window & check if Twitter HQ is being bombed already? Thx for keeping us up to date!
Re: Really? (Score:1)
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Operation Human Shield?
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I thought the threat was that the US would bomb the Twitter HQ? Last time I checked the US at least nominally did give a shit about collateral damage, at least if it could damage some white guys.
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The US Department of Defence investigated the rise of ISIS, oh the dry whit. Perhaps those captured American weapons and munitions, plus videos of ISIS using American weapons and munitions, plus actual journalist investigatory efforts, plus the reports from other countries investigatory agencies, plus actual battles between DOD terrorists and CIA terrorist, would have been a big enough hint as to who was responsible for the rise of ISIS and not by bloody accident. Well, I guess that will be one really easy
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Reminds me of the old game of distraction while your pocket is being picked
So, let me see if I got this right... (Score:5, Insightful)
This guy is a police instructor, and goes to Jordan to train police in a part of the world that's not exactly known for being all rainbows and unicorn turds.
Well after there have already been many "green on blue" attacks where instructees have shot up the (American) instructors in the name of extremist Islam, it happens to him and he gets killed in just such an event.
His family doesn't go after the Jordanian police for not checking background information sufficiently, or taking other measures to watch for this kind of problem.
His family doesn't go after the contracting company that he worked for, for not protecting him sufficiently while there.
His family goes after...Twitter? Wow...let me JUST TAKE A WILD FUCKING GUESS why they went after Twitter...no, wait, I think I got it...
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Why assume they are not also suing those others?
Interesting logic. Maybe because they aren't suing other people, in all likelihood? I would believe that if they were, it would be covered in the news.
Let's go further...why assume they aren't covert members of ISIS, and this is all a clever plot to raise money for a terrorist organization without anyone knowing? Why assume that this isn't all something that is crafted in the media by the cabal of Jewish lesbian dentists in that vault somewhere in Switzerland that controls everything, and they're just wa
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"Besides, who cares about some mercenary civilian contractor from Oklahoma who gets his head cut off? Fuck 'em. Hey Jack, you don't want to get your head cut off? Stay the fuck in Oklahoma. They ain't cuttin' off heads in Oklahoma, far as I know."
Obama is responsible (Score:2, Interesting)
Let's be honest, Bush shouldn't have started the invasion in 2003. There were no WMDs, and things like banned missiles were actually being destroyed. Hans Blix actually praised Iraq for disarming themselves and destroying the missiles just before Bush started the invasion. However, over the next several years, things were eventually brought under control by the troop surge and paying Iraqi militia to provide security. Obama stopped those payments and undid what Bush had finally gotten right. And he's shown
Re:Obama is responsible (Score:5, Insightful)
While Bush & Obama both share the blame - Bush for toppling Saddam, who was busy curbing Shi'ites, and Obama for joining w/ the Sunni powers - the Saudis, the Turks, the Qataris in trying to topple Assad, the real responsibility for ISIS rise is in one place - Sunnis of both Iraq and Syria.
As I have mentioned on quite a few occasions, a country's main Islamizing forces come from the majority Muslim sect in that country. Which is Shi'ites in Iraq, and Sunnites in Syria. In Syria, the Sunnis previously rallied behind the Muslim Brotherhood, and after the civil war started, they rallied behind the various Sunnite militias that arose, be it the FSA, Khorasan Group, Ansar al Shariah... In Iraq, the Sunnis, who were previously content to rally behind Saddam, now had to rally behind someone given the rise of an Iran backed Shi'ite regime in Baghdad. That force was previously Zarqawi, and after his death, ISIS.
The thing to note about Islam is that it's not a 'live & let live' religion: everybody is expected to make everybody else follow 'true Islam', or whatever they think it is. So it's not enough to let all Muslims of different sects in any country co-exist happily - be it in Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, et al. They have to make everybody else acknowledge that fact, and hence, one has not just the bloodletting in Syria & Iraq, but also Sunnite on Shi'ite violence in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, et al. So after Iraq gets a 'democratically elected' government, the Shi'ites who dominate it have to enable their militias like the Mahdi Army and get into bed w/ Iran. On the other side, the Sunnis fight not merely for the right not to be persecuted by al Haidari or Assad, but to dominate the entire ummah, or Islamic world.
The end result is that what started as a movement for the persecuted Sunnites in Syria and later Iraq is now a worldwide Jihadist campaign to restore the caliphate. While any number of Muslims can curse them all they like, fact remains that ISIS as a caliphate resembles caliphates of the past, like the Abbasids. In the 9th and 10th centuries, when the Abbasids were the caliphate in Baghdad, Muslim contenders for power in Iran, Afghanistan, Turkestan, et al would lobby to get the Caliph to recognize each of them, and who the Caliph endorsed actually mattered. Compare that to just now. Different Jihadist movements, like Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, Jemiah Islamiah in Indonesia, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, affiliate groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, Boko Haram in North Africa all swear allegiance to ISIS. That's exactly how a Caliphate was supposed to work - a central group somewhere, and different Muslim armies worldwide doing everything they did in the name of Islam, and getting the official Islamic seal of approval from that central group.
The reason ISIS is where it is is b'cos there are enough Muslims in the entire population who take seriously Islamic injunctions to wage Jihad on Infidels. Whether they rally behind ISIS, al Qaeda, CAIR, HAMAS, al Quds, Taliban, et al or anyone else is really immaterial
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Very well put, relational history between the groups. If I had mod points
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The thing to note about Islam is that it's not a 'live & let live' religion: everybody is expected to make everybody else follow 'true Islam', ...
In Matth 28:19, all Christians are ordered to "go and make disciples of all nations, ..." - something that is thankfully shrugged off by most followers of Christianity, but it has in the past been taken as a carte blanche to go out and subdue ther rest of the world, from the innumerable, religious wars or trivia, the Crusades (the Christian term for Jihad), the European imperialism ("We have a duty to civilise the Heathens") etc etc. It is also well known to anybody with a moderately open mind, that by far
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The difference here is that Christianity went through a reformation - in fact quite a few - that reinterpreted a lot of the things you mentioned so that they are no longer applicable today. In fact, that's been around for more than a century - one did not see any religious wars in the 1900s. In Islam, however, such a re-interpretation is known as 'bida' or innovation, and is considered heretical. The laws that were laid out during the Abbasid caliphate are considered ironclad for all time and not open fo
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How is any of what you describe different from what went on in Christianity? Persecution of heretics in Christianity didn't stop with the Reformation - the followers of Luther, Calvin etc were even more intolerant of what they saw as heresy, than the Catholics. Except perhaps for the Quakers. Hell, if you go to some places in the US, where they take their version of the Gospel very serious indeed, then you won't meet much tolerance either, if you dissent from their "Truth". This is simply human nature - we
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What is different is that you only have a fringe that clings to the narrow views that you describe, among Christians. Not the case w/ Muslims
Pick a 'moderate' Muslim country, like Malaysia. There, you have a systematic discrimination in favor of Muslims (Malays) over non-Muslims (Chinese, Indians): it's called Bhumiputra. Although most people think of it as an ethnic discrimination against non-Malays, it includes for protection converts to Islam, Hui Chinese (who are Muslim) while excluding non-Muslim
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Religion is externalizing your internal hatred and bigotry. "It's not me that hates the Jews, the gays, the "sinner", but God does!"
Bullshit. You're trying to rationalize and externalize your very own irrational hate. Plain and simple.
Re:Obama is responsible (Score:4, Insightful)
Everything the other party does is BAD, and everything my party is GOOD! Even when those are the exact same things!
TAKE THAT, BUSH!
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As a German comedian put it, he was the boogeyman in the closet for the US. A convenient little whipping boy you could take out of the closet and spank a little whenever domestic problems grew. An intern complaining about you leaving white specs on her blouse? Open the closet and spank the whipping boy about. Approval ratings in the basement? Out comes the boogeyman! Saddam was cool with that. And you could rely on him. Say what you want, he was a reliable ally. From the 1980s right to the end.
And then Bush
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You are so fucking clueless. Absolutely disgusting
"We armed Iraq in the 1980s as they fought Iran,"
WE ARMED BOTH FUCKING SIDES ASSHOLE!
Raygun sold boatloads of military hardware to Iran in '81 for helping him get elected.
Hell, those assholes sold military hardware to everybody. Even OBL. All Illegal as hell by any law under the sun.
They literally made Al Queda and released it onto the world.
Fitting that the most recent Bush clusterfuck we had earned them all guilty convictions for war crimes and crim
Re: Obama is responsible (Score:1)
You're a partisan hack. Go back to watching Rachel Madcow.
No fucking shit that the Americans were happy to send arms to Iraq and Iran. Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who used chemical weapons on the Iranians and the Kurds. The American support helped strengthen his military and acquire the chemical weapons. And yes, Reagan and Bush 41 both helped arm Iraq. No shit.
And no fucking shit that the US helped arm and train what eventually became AQ. They intervened and tried to fight a proxy war against the
Re:Obama is responsible (Score:4, Informative)
People blame 'Raygun' and the CIA/USA for arming the Taliban and al Qaeda. Actually, wrong on both counts. During the Afghan war, the party that the US supported was a Pashto Jihadist group called Hizb ul Islami, led by Gulbuddin Heqmatyar, who is today considered by the US a terrorist. That was also the warlord of choice of General Zia ul Haq, the Pak president: the US at the time outsourced its policy on Afghanistan (in terms of whom to support) to Pakistan, and on the Middle East to Egypt (which influenced the US to take Iraq's side in the war, partly to rehabilitate themselves in the eyes of the Arabs who boycotted them after their peace treaty w/ Israel). Pakistan switched its support to the Taliban when Benazir Bhutto - that champion of women - came to power and hated everyone that Gen Zia supported (since he had hanged her father). But by then, the Soviets were already out of Afghanistan, and Pakistan wanted a client regime in Kabul, which the Taliban delivered.
As far as al Qaeda went, they got their support from not just renegade Saudis (since the Saudi royals hated them and were hot on them since they wanted to overthrow the monarchy in Riyadh) but from other Arab Jihadists from countries like the Emirates and Qatar. Remember, only 3 countries recognized the Taliban regime even though they had almost 100% control in Afghanistan - KSA, UAE and Pakistan.
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I'm actually more spot on than you realize, regarding raygun/OB/AlQaeda/ISIS/XYZ.
I don't question your "facts".
I present the facts that Raygun, making backroom deals with Islamic factions in Afganistan, partly to fuck with the soviets, partly for money & power .. afterward you renege on all promises .. and then publicly make your new "friends" now your most hated enemy ..
The fact that the US has been meddling in and outright fucking over many of the countries of the middle east for generations .. fo
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I more or less agree w/ you. I don't fully agree w/ what Reagan did then, but I do understand what he did. He determined that Communism was a greater threat than Islam, and that was something that could be validly argued. So he allied w/ Islamic forces from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia and helped make Afghanistan the Vietnam of the Soviets. Once the Cold War ended, it was legitimate for the US to withdraw from the region, but then, different countries, like Pakistan, Iran, et al all wanted their puppets to
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Trump will just say what he thinks will get him in the char and/or give him free advertising.
He probably would be a lot more cautious if his opponent was not hillary.
So Twitter supports ISIS and gets away with it? (Score:2)
Given Twitter's backing by Saudi Arabia, I'm not surprised.
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I heard something like 1/3rd-owned by Saudi interests. Anyone got actual data?
Don't worry (Score:2)
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Responsible For The Rise of ISIS? Answer: USA (Score:2, Interesting)
what i blame is (Score:3, Insightful)
https://www.thereligionofpeace... [thereligionofpeace.com]
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And technically back in the 80s Scientology was pretty aggressive about doing their best to make anyone who publicly disagreed with them's life a living hell.
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*Aum Shinrikyo
Cult is in the eye of the beholder. Apparently they were officially recognized as a "religious legal entity" in Japan.
idiosyncratic interpretations of elements of early Indian Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism along with Hinduism, taking Shiva as main image of worship and incorporating millennialist ideas from the Christian Book of Revelation, Yoga and the writings of Nostradamus.
Precedence for the pro-gun folks (Score:2)
This could mean a gun manufacturer is not liable for someone committing murder with their product, right?
Nixon shock is resposible (Score:1)
Since 1971 America is bullying Saudi Arabia to sell Oil exclusively in US Dollars;
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... [bloomberg.com]
Result is friction between The Muslim and The West;
http://qz.com/562128/isil-is-a... [qz.com]
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Re:Hillary is (Score:5, Insightful)
Leon Panetta, who was Obama’s defense secretary from July 2011 to February 2013, wrote in his 2014 book, “Worthy Fights,” that as the deadline neared “it was clear to me — and many others — that withdrawing all our forces would endanger the fragile stability” in Iraq. As a result, the Obama administration sought to keep 5,000 to 10,000 U.S. combat troops in Iraq, as Sullivan said in his statement.
But negotiations with Iraq broke down in October 2011 over the issue of whether U.S. troops would be shielded from criminal prosecution by Iraqi authorities. Panetta wrote that Maliki insisted that a new agreement providing immunity to U.S. forces “would have to be submitted to the Iraqi parliament for its approval,” which Panetta said “made reaching agreement very difficult.”
Yes, Bush punted and Obama didn't want to take away all reconstruction aid to force Iraq to capitulate. But cut to the chase.... BUSH negotiated and signed the force agreement that mandated troops be removed, and while his people HOPED it could be renegotiated, that doesn't absolve him from negotiating and signing it.
There's a lot of worthless fucking partisans out there who want to "misremember" that Bush got us into this whole fucking mess a long time before Obama was even thinking about being on the scene. I can't tell sometimes if they're all just natural born fucking liars, or their simply too fucking stupid to use their brains.
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Partisans are never to be believed. These are like sports fans, rooting for their team and booing the other team, even when both teams spend all the time on the field doing the same actions.
Re:Hillary is (Score:5, Insightful)
ISIS came from Al Qaeda In Iraq.
Al Qaeda In Iraq came to be because Bush The Lesser invaded Iraq and deposed its leader.
A leader who, while being a horrible person and general pile of evil, also tended to keep a lid on extremism in his country, albeit for self-serving reasons (they threated his own power).
The pull out came because of an agreement signed by Bush the Lesser's Administration, agreeing to pull out by a certain time in 2011.
The Obama administration actually tried to negotiate to stay longer , but was unable to reach an agreement with the Iraqi government.
This is because the Iraqi government wanted the American troops to be subject to Iraqi laws and law enforcement. .
The Obama Administration wisely said no to that condition, and therefore was compelled to adhere to the existing agreement, and pulled out.
The ensuing (actually it began before bush eevn left office) mismanagement of Iraq's defense and military btw is mostly due to the man installed in power by Bush the Lesser's administration, Maliki, started out as a moderate, but quickly became corrupt himself and began using his power (and the military) to silence or coerce his political rivals and enemies. He weakened the morale of the Iraqi troops we trained and armed, he misused them, and then when faced with an actual threat, the merging of elements in Syria with Al Qaeda In Iraq into what has become ISIS, they bailed.
Which has since causes the US to re-enter Iraq, with ever growing number of troops, begin bombing ISIS (for over 2 years now), and quite successfully. ISIS made some large initial gains because of momentum and the bailing of the Iraqi Army. However they have since been pushed back out of over half the territory they originally took.
So the point is this:
calling Obama the found of ISIS in the face of the campaign against ISIS, is like calling Obama a socialist at a time when the capitalist economy of the US has never been better: pure delusional BS. If Obama is a socialist, he is the worst socialist ever. Likewise, if he is the founder of ISIS, he is horrible at it, and was only made possible by the missteps and outright lies of the administration of Bush the Lesser, the man who actually is responsible for the rise of ISIS.
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ISIS came from Al Qaeda In Iraq.
Wrong. ISIS was founded by President Obama. I heard it on TV this morning from Donald Trump. Therefore it's true.
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If you want to keep backtracking on causation, one could possibly claim G.W. Bush was forced into Iraq because of Bill Clinton's and UN's mishandling of the
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If only SH had kept his damn army in Iraq
If only! Though maybe the US telling them they didn't particularly care if he squabbled with Kuwait or not influenced his decision..
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I'll tell you who is: George Bush, George W. Bush, and Dick Cheney. Destroying Iraq created the original power-vacuum in the Middle East that set off the domino effect of the Arab Spring. The so-called 'islamic state' assholes are just (attempting to) fill that vacuum.
Vote for Gary Johnson (or anyone who is NOT named 'Clinton' or 'Trump'). He won't win, but at least no one will be able to point a finger at you and say YOU are in part to blame for the fall of the United States.
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Arming Mujahideen fighters with String missiles (1982), Iran–Contra affair (1985), Operation Desert Shield (1990), Operation Desert Storm - Gulf War (1991)
You can go back even further and examine Arab-Israeli conflict and Egypt-Israel conflicts over Sinai peninsula. Basically the first day when British rule over the region ended, Jews declared a state of Israel, and Arabs (Egypt mostly) send forces into Israel. It's been a mess ever since, and the US did not cause this problem. We keep trying to fix t
Re: Hillary is (Score:1)
"Arming Mujahideen fighters with String missiles"
For when Silly String just doesn't get the message across.
Seriously though, you summed it up pretty well though I'd emphasize the effect of the Holocaust on the consequent take no prisoners attitude of the Palestine/Israeli Jews and, since the start of the Cold War, partisan US and Western support for Israel in preparing the ground for the rise of militant Islam.
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sorry, "Stinger" missiles. I'm a programmer and I probably type "String" a few dozen times a day. (also I don't proof-read my posts)
Yes, I think the West has a fair amount of responsibility in setting up the initial conditions. And the US and Russia having a proxy war through Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq probably contributed significantly to the instability of the region. But to me the real sharp downward slide was the end of World War I and the policy of the League of Nations (primarily composed of Western n
Re: Hillary is (Score:1)
That last bit seems to be a fundamental part of human nature: when two groups are in competition for a finite resource they will often resort to violence.
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Surely, the reason for this is obvious. In Kazakhstan - and all the ex Soviet Stans, where Islam (along w/ religion in general) was suppressed for 70+ years, preceded by Tsarist Russian suppression of Islam for much of the 19th century onwards - these countries, people are less Islamic, and are more or less where Russia is. Both economically and culturally. Whereas countries that have had minimal intervention by non-Islamic forces, such as Pakistan or Egypt, the people are more fanatical
I wonder how l
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Yeah, Muslims span a lot of races. The ones in the East Indies as well as the Indian subcontinent are of Indian descent. The ones in the Stans and Turkey are Turkic. The ones in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan are Iranian. The ones in the Middle East and North Africa are Arab. The ones in Bosnia, Kosovo and Albania are Slavs and Illyrians, while the Chechens, Tatars and others around them are Caucasian. And then there are Black Africans as well - like the ones in Darfur, Sudan, Chad, Niger and so on