France, and how we respond.

[dexeron]

Leaving public for two reasons. Firstly, it relates to the previous two posts (that I left public.) Secondly, the comments section below is worth reading, because it exemplifies exactly the attitude I'm warning about here.


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Why did I share the two posts immediately preceding this?

It's so tempting, in the wake of horrible tragedy, to simply accept the narrative we're being sold that lumps everyone even slightly different than us into an "other" category and blame them for all of our misfortune. It's easy to say: "we are at war with Islam" or to blame the refugees for these actions. Even some who would not go so far will still say: "ISIS is exploiting the refugee crisis, thus all refugees are suspect/the borders should be closed." It makes us want to think of the world in stark black/white terms - yet that is exactly what the terrorists want us to think. That is how they think: that the world is the stage for a conflict between "the West" and "Islam," and they want that war. They want the everyday Muslim to be marginalized and victimized by folks in the countries that they have wounded. They want mosques to be burned down (as just happened in Ontario.) They are in the minority, but they want to get more people onto their side, to see their way of thinking.

They want us to do their work for them.

The real world is, of course, far more complicated than some fantasy of "good" vs "evil." Yes, the actions of ISIS are evil, but too many who buy into this black/white mindset are unwilling to differentiate "ISIS" from "Muslim," or ask "Why aren't Muslims fighting or speaking out against ISIS" when so many Muslims are, every day, putting their lives on the line to do so. Understanding these complexities is vital to moving on to find real solutions to these problems, instead of continuing to follow policies that ultimately just further the cycle.

If you haven't already, please go down and read the previous two posts made to my journal, both shares of the words of another, but important words that discuss some of the facts of what's really going on in this ongoing conflict.

Let me close this by quoting yet another friend from Facebook. I won't link this one directly, or give his name, because he chose to keep the post restricted:

"Do not side with terrorists:

A friend posted an image saying that we are at war with Islam. This worries me, as I do NOT want to be on the same side as the tiny Salafist takfiri extremists who want the West to be at war with all of Islam. It is how they hope to take control of the average Muslim. Remember: DAESH, killer of too many fellow Muslims to count, ~wants~ the French and the rest of the West to react in anger and fear and wage war against all of Islam. Please do NOT promote what they want."

Understand who the enemy actually is. Fight the enemy, if it is required. But do not let their quest to make us give in to fear and hatred succeed. Do not do their work for them. Fight them first and foremost by refusing to follow their dance.

Comments

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

Lastly, here are links to two previous posts I made, both quoting my friend Tim Clancy, who is very knowledgeable about world politics and history, much more so than I am.

Here's his discussion on the specific nature of the threat: http://dexeron.livejournal.com/581616.html

And here's his discussion on what some Muslims are doing to fight the threat: http://dexeron.livejournal.com/581675.html


EDIT: I really need to quote something from that first link, because even if you disagree with everything I said above, this is a good practical reason of why not to simply say "Islam is the enemy:" it's simply impractical. To quote Clancy again:

"(1) Every *legitimate* problem solving method in the world seeks to reduce the scope of the problem by separating wheat from chaff, signal from noise. Almost every form of analysis is an attempt to isolate further, what is the root cause activity that is driving the negative behavior. Because once you find that smallest part...you can focus on it, put all your attention into that part and not defuse any effort by spreading it thin on the uninvolved.

It's a form of logic - given group A and group B, and group B is the root cause of behavior C - no matter how much effort you spend working to modify group A, you will not change group B and therefore not improve behavior C.

Everything bad you could say about Salafist-Takfiri I would accept and add a few more.

This very small subset of all Muslims is punching far above its weight and are a true manifestation of evil on this planet. So why waste our time and resources on the other 1.49B Muslims who *aren't* Salafist Takfiri? This is not about political correctness, this is about utility in target selection.

(2) I call this fractal segmentation and it's based off of statistical self similarity of fractional units, or more easily called "the coastline of britain problem". Stated simply as you increase the fidelity of your measure, and are able to read in ever smaller units of measurement, the figure you are studying literally changes in its shape,dimensions and measurement. The thought experiment which demonstrates this is if you imagine measuring the Coastline of Britain with a 200km stick, it will be one shape and have a distance of 2400km. But if you measure the Coastline of Britain with a 50km stick, it will have a very different shape, and a coastline distance of 3400km.

When someone says "Muslims are the problem" their 'stick' is 1.4B people large. The Salafist Takfiri measurement 'stick' is maybe a few million. The shape and nature of the problem generalists describe is very different than the actual shape and nature of the actual problem. The generalists rough blob of a measure is like looking at a 10,000 piece puzzle after you've spent the night in a mexican bar drinking the worm - it's fuzzy, hard to describe and not easy to work on. The Salafist Takfiri measurement is like picking up a single piece of the puzzle, with clarity, and saying "this...this is what we need to focus on."

In professional (private sector) analytics, the segmentation goes down to micro clusters of 10,000 people and in some cases gets down to the "protocol of one", measuring a problem a single individual at a time. This is fairly new because the computing and instrumentation power to do this simply wasn't available in the past."