Thomas van Linge’s colorful, detailed maps showing which parties control which parts of Iraq, Libya and Syria are a hit whenever he posts them on Twitter. They have been cited on news stories in the Huffington Post, Lebanon’s Daily Star and Vox, as well as on the University of Texas at Austin’s website. But van Linge isn’t a policy expert and he’s never been to the region: In fact, he’s just a Dutch high school student who tracks the war on social media.
Quite amazing (van Linge’s work, obviously – not the subject matter!).
Well, knowing what they represent, *amazing* wouldn’t be the word I’d used.
Maybe *depressing*, *insulting*, *scandalous*, *indignant*, etc. would match much better what I see: the complete and absolute indifference of the self-so-called *free* world to the killings, rapes, mutilations, violations, sterilizations, destructions, abominations, etc. that ISIS is doing right now.
ISIS is, using a religious simile, the Devil, but the self-so-called *free* world would be its Prophet.
I’m part of the *free* world, and I simply can’t understand nor stand the *don’t do anything* position of my own country.
Sincerely, what my country is not doing is making me change my position from *fight for freedom and help them* to *using H-bomb, napalm, and virus to wipe them from the Earth right now*. Their *it’s not happening here* position is making me extremely radical and I’m starting to despise myself for that…
“Amazing” refers to the work of Thomas van Linge, not ISIS.
Oh, sure, our country should intervene (actually many western countries already do, in one way or another) because this practice has worked wonderfully through the years in Palestine, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and in many places in Africa. And we should bomb the areas because civil deaths never happen or are so low in numbers, almost fitting in one hand, that all the pain is totally justifiable while we push liberty around all corners of the world.
I don’t have any solution in hand, no one has, but I can’t see how putting more gasoline in that fire may help. Fact is, for years USA, Russia, England, France and some other countries have been overflowing the world with arms without much thought about it. We got the consequences of this.
Besides the current employed options, just give enough power to minorities so that they fight back, prevent large battles with buffer zones and try hard diplomatically to set people around a table, I don’t see much more that can be done.
Actually, there is, our countries should accept, facilitate and negotiate a mass exodus of anyone on that region that would like to pursue a different way of life. Hopefully, most people that would prefer to live on “traditional” faith/manner would stay there, live the way they want and be ignored by the rest of us until they change their view slowly. Zero chance of happening, anyway, as most of us would not tolerate the sacrifice we would have to do.
Edited 2015-06-16 21:40 UTC
Britain and France divided up the Ottoman Empire after WW1. They took no notice of traditional ethnic, religious or tribal boundaries. They installed corrupt pro-Western (minority) governments to run these artificial states. The current events in the Middle East are an indirect result of those past actions.
> They took no notice of traditional […]
Like in Africa, they used the old “divide and conquer” way of thinking, to divide groups, and they also used the “join enemy tribes” way of thinking 🙁
Someone wrote:
Germany and Belgium ruled Rwanda and Burundi in a colonial capacity. Germany used the strategy of divide and conquer by placing members of the already dominant Tutsi minority in positions of power. When Belgium took over colonial rule in 1916, the Tutsi and Hutu groups were rearranged according to race instead of occupation. Belgium defined “Tutsi” as anyone with more than ten cows or a long nose, while “Hutu” meant someone with less than ten cows and a broad nose. The socioeconomic divide between Tutsis and Hutus continued after independence and was a major factor in the Rwandan Genocide.
Edited 2015-06-17 12:23 UTC
This type of response is exactly what some people are playing at — don’t play into their hand. The agenda is polarization.
The best response is a growing awareness what is really at play, and who is playing. If Iraq and Syria were properly supported, ISIS could not exist.
Who takes notices and fight against, say, western countries crimes ?
The world we live in is a product of hundred years of injustice under western domination, do you think injustice produce peace and love ?