For all the conspiracy theorists and people crying "who will they go after next": All that's happening here is a non-profit is buying ads for common ISIS-related search terms and displaying anti-ISIS advertisements. You know, exactly like millions of people use Google ads for politics, selling things, etc. They're even getting external funding from donors to buy the ads. It astounds me that anyone could be against this. How are ads ok for selling your shitty SaaS product but they are not ok for convincing people not to murder one another?
Google's approach presumes that Islamic terrorism is driven by ignorant people.
They will link to media from outside the viewer's filter bubble, so the ignorant Daesh recruit would become educated and choose another path.
But is ignorance really the root cause? Researchers found that Islamist radicals are disproportionately well educated, and frequently have an engineering background.
Using rigorous methods and several new datasets, they explain
the link between educational discipline and type of radicalism
by looking at two key factors: the social mobility (or lack thereof)
for engineers in the Muslim world, and a particular mindset
seeking order and hierarchy that is found more frequently among
engineers. Engineers' presence in some extremist groups and not
others, the authors argue, is a proxy for individual traits
that may account for the much larger question of selective
recruitment to radical activism.
If prospective terrorists are already well educated, will linking to alternative viewpoints tell them anything they didn't already know?
> But is ignorance really the root cause? Researchers found that Islamist radicals are disproportionately well educated, and frequently have an engineering background.
Yes, ignorance is the root cause (well.. technically speaking there is never a "root cause" since you can always ask another round of whys). The problem is that smart and well-educated people can become ignorant.
The studies of these people also found that they are typically big believers in conspiracy theories. And I think that's the crux.
Conspiracy theory is like a cancer of the mind. When you believe in some conspiracy theory, then everything that other people are saying, or evidence they provide, is categorized as invalid, with reasoning that either those people are part of conspiracy itself or hapless masses brainwashed by the conspirators. So effectively, you decided to discount all external inputs on the matter (in other words, you chose to be ignorant).
The ingenious part is that it's not strictly irrational. Even if you close your mind to external evidence, rationality can have its field day, you can still work things out through logic. (And for sure, external inputs can be confusing and look inconsistent too.) It's like in a logic system which is inconsistent - anything can be proven within it, and that limits seeing its own inconsistency. (Luckily, the diversity of possible opinions of conspiracy theorists significantly limits spread of their theories.)
I have seen very smart and educated people fall prey on this. Libertarians, AGW deniers.. They tend to argue on rational/logic grounds rather than look out for the evidence. I think we should teach people, if your theory requires conspiracy of more than, say, 10k people, then it's a giant red flag and you should by all means reconsider the evidence.
There is plenty of evidence that would put the US as the "bad guy" from a Muslim perspective, it doesn't need one to play logic games in a vacuum to create a conspiracy. The support of "friendly" dictators, oppressive monarchies, and military coups that align with US interests, and the absolute backing the US gives Israel over any other Middle Eastern country. The last thing you want is people getting educated about that. There's no crazy conspiracy needed to show that the US does not have the best interests of the Arab world citizenry at heart.
And that figure of 10 000 people can't keep a conspiracy secret is predicated on the idea that it's some kind of active plot, when just having conflicting ideals and values can produce all the hallmarks of a conspiracy without any of the members necessarily being consciously aware. Cf studies on name blind hiring and diversity, where none of the recruiters would feel that they were racist/sexist/etc, but the end result would look very similar to there being a recruiter wide conspiracy against certain groups.
This is true, but that's not what I call "conspiracy theory". To see the difference, take Chomsky (or Assange, to an extent) as a good example. They are very critical to U.S. foreign policy, yet they never claim something without evidence (they don't claim for example that 9/11 was inside job), and as such they are not conspiracy theorists.
The problem with people that have conspiracy theories is that they ultimately defend same or worse atrocities, but done by some other party or even themselves.
> And that figure of 10 000 people can't keep a conspiracy secret is predicated on the idea that it's some kind of active plot
It's just a rule of thumb, where you should set a canary and deeply rethink your beliefs and evidence you have for them. You see, in order to maintain belief in conspiracy theory, you have to categorize all contradicting evidence as coming from either co-conspirators, or people who are "naive" and somehow manipulated. This means that over time, number of people that have to be involved in conspiracy will grow.
Of course there can be conspiracies of 10k people or more (e.g. NSA), but they are very difficult to keep secret in practice (there was on average one whistle-blower per 2 years on NSA spy programs). There can also be situations that look like conspiracies on the surface, as you correctly state, but those don't have the property that they can actively suppress dissent (which is required to sustain belief in conspiracy theory, to reject the contradictory evidence).
Yep. Unfortunately, in some respects, we are the bad guys, our foreign policy is unjust and evil, and billions of people, including a tiny fraction who turn to terrorism, do have quite understandable grievances. Is there a peaceful way for them to get us to change what we're doing? Not that I'm aware of.
Da, it's like a meme that multiplies and refuses to die and then cuts off oxygen to the acceptable thoughts. I'm not a physician, but I suppose a "cancer of the mind" is a sort of 'mental illness'?
Thankfully there is a body of solid research into this phenomena -- Psychopathological mechanisms of dissent -- thanks to the good comrade doctors in Soviet Union [1]. I am sure we can come up with standardized tests to identify this type of mentally ill.
> I'm not a physician, but I suppose a "cancer of the mind" is a sort of 'mental illness'?
No, it's a metaphor. :-) I mean if unchecked, then conspiracy theory will consume all your rational thinking about some issue and maybe affect other issues.
Nothing against irony, but you should first understand that "belief in conspiracy theory" is not about having a particular (contrarian) belief, it's solely about how you process evidence. As I explain above, Chomsky is a dissident (or contrarian), but not a conspiracy theorist.
Edit: I should probably also point out that there can be conspiracy theorists within the government as well, that is, not dissenters. Near the end of the cold war, there were people in U.S. government who believed that Russians have invisible nuclear submarines in all oceans, and I am pretty sure there were similar nuts in the USSR as well.
I agree with your comment, but I can think of one example, depicted in a recently-released Oliver Stone film, that is a counter-argument against your last statement.
The most unfortunate thing about conspiracy theorists is that they can occasionally turn out to be right.
> The most unfortunate thing about conspiracy theorists is that they can occasionally turn out to be right.
Well, them being correct from time to time doesn't justify the method they use (pure logic ignoring empirical evidence). What I call "conspiracy theory" is an unproven claim, or something for which there is contradictory evidence. Once proven, it's simply a "conspiracy", and there is nothing wrong with belief in existence of (proven) conspiracies.
Libertarians.... I'll agree that being a libertarian can sometimes be less than pragmatic, but I hardly think it's the same level as a conspiracy theorists or climate change deniers.
Probably not the best choice of word, but I have seen a friend (smart programmer coworker, he studied physics) going (over couple years) from relatively harmless libertarian beliefs through disagreement with U.S. foreign policy and agreement with Ron Paul to being 9/11 truther and eventually believing that U.S. army is causing global warming. Just because he didn't like the government... So, be careful, it can afflict lot of people, not just Muslims.
Uh, don't the people who buy shitty SaaS products also tend to be well-educated? Do poorly-educated people tend to have a strong need for A/B optimization tools?
The only difference is that in normal ads you provide ads to people who are looking for such product. While here you are trying to do the opposite. For example, I am searching for Drone because I really love them and decided that I want to buy one. What google ad will make me not want it ?
To further your point, there are a number of studies that show how exposing political partisans to opposing viewpoints (and people on the other side) usually pushes them further into their own camp.
True. Hate to say it but anyone who regularly reads and follows the Quran is likely to be more extreme. The book draws a clear demarcation between believers and nonbelievers and has a hosstile attitude to the latter.
have you read original quran to come to that conclusion. I have many muslim friends. We are very close and they have no hostile attitudes to non-muslims. From where I am, well educated people who are not muslims have converted to muslim and joined isis whereas 99.999% of born and brought up as muslims in this area have not.
There's a large difference between being well-educated and exposed to many political views; it's perfectly possible to be an engineer and ignorant of politics.
You're right, but there's more to it. This is a complex issue that when people talk about candidly most often provokes violent reactions.
I give you an example: I live in a country that has suffered a bloody civil war that involved Islamist radicals. After a certain time, there were people from the intelligence community, the military, and eye witnesses that came forward telling that security forces committed acts of violence disguised as Islamist radicals. This is an old recipe (false flag). The rationale is that other states and local population started to worry about the situation and pushed the local government to negotiate, so the armed forces allegedly burned any legitimacy of the Islamist factions committing things that would so badly damage their image, they'd dictate the name of the game.
There was a debate called "Who kills who?" (i.e: who's really committing this?) and the other old recipe was used: calling the people who ask such questions conspirationist and pointing at their tin foil hats (as if nobody ever used false flag tactics and it was impossible for it to have been the case). Whoever even hints that the government had something to do with that would provoke a dismissive reaction and called a traitor for even acknowledging the possibility or failing to assert the impossibility of the government's involvement.
The very act of not climbing on roofs and saying you're against something tags you as a sympathetic and/or a terrorist, even if you're truly against and adopting a neutral posture for the sake of intellectual debate and trying to have a cold, clinical, approach. You're expected to dance and jump and scream to prove you're against terrorism, or you're a terrorist. Similar to the masquerade in the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, or waving flags to show your patriotism. Gung ho and motto.
Now, I'm not very qualified in these matters and I'm not a Statecraft guru, but the same people who are called terrorists in an armed conflict and are bombed in a certain geographic location (say Syria), are called allies and armed in another geographic location (say Libya). Sometimes some people are terrorist in a location, but other terrorists in the same location aren't considered terrorists. Where do people get the idea that Jabhat Annusra is different from Daech and where do they think Daech comes from? They all have a black flag and it may look the same for most people. Can be confusing.
As the saying goes, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter", and it's pertinent it came from the POTUS because if I'm not mistaken, the United States Declaration of Independence is, technically, an act of treason and terrorism against the Crown.
Again, most of the people who'll read that will probably be outraged and think I'm sympathetic or that I don't know what I'm talking about when they've never actually seen a terrorist or been in a terrorist attack. I've outlived half a dozen bombs were on my butt more than I'd have liked (but I had it good, it beats being dead). We've seen what humans are made of inside. I mean "inside" literally. So if there's someone who'd fit the posturing anti-terrorist cliché like a glove, I'd come close. From my experience, though, it's the people who know the least who have the most clear cut opinions on that. It's simple from the outside. They even have more clear cut opinions than the people actively involved, as we speak, in counter-terrorism or intelligence who are more nuanced and think in terms of leverage, positions, weakness, operations, incentives, allegiance, practicality, etc. (This is why many in the Military for instance roll their eyes when they're greeted by too enthusiastic a display of patriotism and "thank you for your service" or just can't understand why on Earth someone is posturing as a tough guy and calling for "killing them all" from the comfort of a sofa).
For the average citizen, a bomb is the end of the world and sets terror. For the entities involved, it's a message. They reason in colder terms that use armed factions as a means to achieve a political goal. States do it to each other, too.
So what's a terrorist? Well, what's a douchebag? For most people, it's someone who doesn't do exactly what we want them to do. For the British, Americans were terrorists. For the U.S., Nelson Mandela was on a terrorist watch list until 2008. What's a terrorist attack? A bomb? Sabotage? Disruption? Killing? All in the playbook of every single Army through covert operations/Intelligence services of every single Nation. These are the things they have covert operations and special forces for. Everyone is a terrorist to someone and all of them think they're the good guys. If you accept that one is true to their cause and think they're justified and that people have different causes, it only makes sense that conflict is bound to happen sooner or later.
Now, this is just one guy on Hacker News who's lived in a country and who could be a terrorist for all we know. But you read books written by U.S. former Intelligence Officers who have decades of experience on the subject. People who know what they're talking about and who've tracked AQ operatives for a long time. They understand the rules of the game. They point out that the discourse politicians have is very far from the truth, but it's the kind of discourse that's easier to sell. Scheuer for instance points out that terrorists attack the U.S. not because they hate freedom, but mostly because of the U.S. foreign policy. Someone can accuse me of knowing jack about this, but the guy who tracked UBL knows at least something about the topic.
We get back to where you're right. The role of Engineers. Engineers are a special breed. I like to joke that if God exists, Engineers are the closest creation to it for he just made an MVP that seriously lacked features (and maybe funding, YC didn't exist back then), and Engineers took it from there.
When the conflict started here, there were a lot of Engineers who took part in it in the start. There were a lot of EE majors, some ChemE and CS majors and they constituted the backbone of the early days. They knew exactly why they were doing it, the stakes, the arguments, etc. It was political and they were the armed branch. Then things got really nasty and the quality of the recruits degraded to the brainwashed who left school in 3rd grade and were in it because, well, they don't know and their recruiter told them there were virgins in paradise (USMC recruiters sell it with sex workers in Thailand to the ones who seem in need. They also sell it for patriotism). I think Engineers got in because they felt they have what it takes to do things.
But here's something funny. Here's an article with an interesting infographic that illustrates the backgrounds of the Intelligence Community in the U.S. pre and post 9/11.
I haven't read Engineers of Jihad, but Michael Scheuer touches on that in his books and you're saying the same thing: many of these people aren't the ignorant dudes the media make them to be, although their soldiers are for the most part. Many former Intelligence officers direct our attention to why these things are happening.
There's a quote I liked from Mankiw's "Principles of Microeconomics": "People respond to incentives, the rest is commentary".
>As the saying goes, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter", and it's pertinent it came from the POTUS because if I'm not mistaken, the United States Declaration of Independence is, technically, an act of treason and terrorism against the Crown.
No, a terrorist is a terrorist.
What ISIS and many other terrorist organizations do in the world are is terrorism, crucify, behead and stone people is terrorism, shooting up nightclubs and blowing up restaurants is terrorism, relativism has no place here.
If you ask why Nelson Mandela was on the terrorism watch list well like it or not it was deserved, Mandela wasn't Gandhi (in fact even Gandhi wasn't Gandhi) he had blood on his hands and he supported both political and violent protest of the apartheid regime. Understanding the cause of certain acts does not equate to relativism, support, or acceptance of the reasoning behind them and the people who perpetrated them.
As for your experience I would assume from your name that you are Algerian fits both the name and the overall background of the story of a civil war with heavy involvement islamic terrorist organizations.
And while I sympathize with your experience I don't think you have the whole picture either, while you did made some points against basically "arm chair generals" you also fall into the same logical fallacy, living through a conflict rarely provides you with considerable insight into the local and global geopolitics of it.
The Algerian civil war (which technically is still going on to some extent even tho it's even blow LIC signatures currently) was a messy one, there weren't sides, the islamic organizations fought each other as much as they fought the government.
Overall the civil war was a good examples of the risks of throwing elections into the pits of new democracies especially those which have large portions of the population with antithetical views to democracy and towards of the ruling party.
As far as the false flag operations I would not go so far and claim that with certainty, Algeria is a case study for many intelligence and military organizations in the world and I've had to study it quite well during my military service.
There were pretty nasty things that have been committed by all sides and plenty of things that you can describe as terrorism both by the "pro-government/socialist/centric" (e.g. the YFA) forces and by the islamic organizations.
But not every bloody act was an act of terrorism, and more importantly when terrorism is evaluated the intent is important, when bomb dropped from a jet drops hits a market by accident that isn't terrorism even if the initial result is the same as driving a mini-van filled with nitrite and gasoline into the same market, the intent behind the act and how you capitalize on are important for making a distinction.
Terrorism has a definition which is the use of violence and fear in order to further your political goals, and often unlike it is being described it's not a tool of last resort but the first thing you grab when the situation doesn't go your way.
just because your idea of gandhi doesn't match gandhi in real life, you cannot just say "even gandhi wasn't gandhi". Mandela and Gandhi were just humans fighting for equal rights for the oppressed. As a programmer, once you think about the rights one enjoys as a white and feels the double standard a non-white experiences trying to have that same right -when you think about it abstractly as rights of humans, anyone who can empathize will feel rage at the double standards that still exists. You have to go back nearly 50 years and think the standards that existed at the time. When I think that way, I think Mandela and Gandhi were incredibly brave. Because Walking the Walk and Talking the Talk is entirely different.
How did the ISIS come into existence. It is the end result of USA and other western countries that tried to arm people to revolt violently against an existing government. That government might be monarchy/dictatorship. But that is no reason for USA to arm people against that government. Those who take up arms are those inherently leaning towards a violent side. Internal politics of other countries shouldn't be meddled with. The people of a country should struggle and push through reforms to a better government. But once violent extremists rooting for the cause has been armed, as the first blood spills there is no reason anymore to both sides. I badly want to beat up all war mongers in the world.
These stupid plans are all treating symptoms instead of treating the root cause of terrorism.
>just because your idea of gandhi doesn't match gandhi in real life, you cannot just say "even gandhi wasn't gandhi". Mandela and Gandhi were just humans fighting for equal rights for the oppressed. As a programmer, once you think about the rights one enjoys as a white and feels the double standard a non-white experiences trying to have that same right -when you think about it abstractly as rights of humans, anyone who can empathize will feel rage at the double standards that still exists. You have to go back nearly 50 years and think the standards that existed at the time. When I think that way, I think Mandela and Gandhi were incredibly brave. Because Walking the Walk and Talking the Talk is entirely different.
I think you misunderstood my point, the point was that even Gandhi wasn't a pure pacifist (not that there is anything wrong with that, it is what it is).
Overall there were good reasons why Mandela would be on a terrorist watch list regardless how you feel about him, his ideals, or his actions.
[moral relativism leads to moral bankruptcy]
>How did the ISIS come into existence. It is the end result of USA and other western countries that tried to arm people to revolt violently against an existing government.
That is gross oversimplification of the situation, if you want to talk about root causes then a situational power vacuum isn't a root cause.
>But that is no reason for USA to arm people against that government. Those who take up arms are those inherently leaning towards a violent side. Internal politics of other countries shouldn't be meddled with.
The US did not arm ISIS directly, they did support various other factions in some cases even rival ones.
>Internal politics of other countries shouldn't be meddled with.
Countries meddle in the inner politics of other countries all the time, that's how politics work there are different forms of meddling from statements to actions but everyone meddles this is how the world works.
Apartheid fell because of meddling, the Berlin wall fell because of meddling, not every result is positive and not every result is immediately understood.
>The people of a country should struggle and push through reforms to a better government. But once violent extremists rooting for the cause has been armed, as the first blood spills there is no reason anymore to both sides.
You have again gross misconception about "people", "nations" and various other concepts that simply do not exist in major parts of the world.
Nationalism is still in its infancy in the middle east you would find more people in Germany who can recognize the Afghan flag than in Afghanistan.
Government and democratic institutions simply do not exist, democracy is more than election, infact elections have nothing to do with democracy they are just a slightly less violent form of conflict resolution and decision making.
Fair courts, transparency, free press, and many other institutions and concepts do not exist, many of these reforms that the people want to push are not "reforms" in any way shape and form as far as modern social democratic value goes.
Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood did quite a bit of "reforms" in Egypt after the election, it didn't however brought the country any closer to democracy.
Erdogan is doing a lot of "reforms" in Turkey these days which threaten to pull turkey effectively back 200 years, one can hear the buzzing hum of Kemal Ataturk spinning in this grave from across the bosphorus.
>I badly want to beat up all war mongers in the world.
Isn't that ironic.
Overall what disturbs me the most is the cognitive dissonance that some people have, the west grew to what it is today from the bloodiest period in history, there aren't really shortcuts in life, you can't expect the world to catch up without bloodshed.
Blaming everything on colonialism and foreign policy holds very little water when in fact it's simply the violent birth of nations and peoples, since you can't isolate them because the Truman Show isn't real and you aren't alone on the planet you have to pick sides and try to push them towards better ideals.
Violence is part of human nature, warmongering is a red herring.
Also people seem to have pretty short memory, WW2 wasn't that long ago, racial segregation wasn't that long ago, N. Ireland was pretty much yesterday and terrorist attacks across continental Europe were fairly frequent until the late 80's early 90's, people seem to forget the Red Brigades, ASALA, 17N, Abu Nidal and the likes, guess they have worse marketing than ISIS.
If you think USA is actually trying to bring democracy, then its not me who is naive. Democracy is not the only way. Just because an outsider drew and created a border and calling it a nation doesn't make it a country.
Colonialism was just taking away other people's resources and treating those people like shit while at it. If UK would have created institutions for welfare and development of people and treated them on par with their citizens, then as those people see that as a step closer to better living than as some foreigners that were killing their own, there wouldn't have been any freedom movements and UK would have been biggest country on earth. Am not blaiming anyone. Just trying to point out that nothing good comes out of violence. If we take away the power to kill other person, then eventually they will find a way to live alongside eachother. With a gun you can kill someone in just one second. If there were no gun and no advanced training in killing, then killing becomes messy and bloody and there wont be as many killings.
>You have again gross misconception about "people", "nations" and various other concepts that simply do not exist in major parts of the world.
I do not have any such misconceptions. You can't meddle and force them to live your way at flip of a button. Tribes have their own form of government. Some are good. As long as they are not isolated, they will evolve to better forms of governing. It may take some time, but it eventually they will discover a better form of government and gradually implement it. Take UK for example. They were just normal humans like anyone else. No outsider brought democracy to UK. If it were bought to them forcefully by outsider by overthrowing their king/queen, and throwing away all government structures UK had at that point, and then install someone else as their new head, then UK too would be a bloody mess like libya or syria
>No, a terrorist is a terrorist. What ISIS and many other terrorist organizations do in the world are is terrorism, crucify, behead and stone people is terrorism, shooting up nightclubs and blowing up restaurants is terrorism, relativism has no place here.
Good. What about states that backup these groups? This is basically a high-school where every girl calls the other "slut" for doing exactly what she herself does. If any other state does it, it's terrorism. But if I overthrow regimes, invade sovereign countries with bogus reasons, financing and training militias overseas, etc. it's freedom and democracy.
With which mental mechanism someone could truly think they are righteous doing that, but others are not? One cannot have the luxury of sloppiness here: if you are okay with your Government doing that all over the world, just for the sake of being rational, you have to accept the possibility of retaliation. It doesn't mean you like it. It just means that you understand what's at stake and don't act surprised not knowing why someone is attacking you.
>And while I sympathize with your experience I don't think you have the whole picture either
Never claimed I did, and actually claimed I didn't.
>While you did made some points against basically "arm chair generals" you also fall into the same logical fallacy, living through a conflict rarely provides you with considerable insight into the local and global geopolitics of it.
On the contrary. Sorry I haven't expressed myself very well: I was saying that most people have clear cut opinions about it while being distant. Then said that if there was someone who'd fit the posturing anti-terrorist cliché, I'd come close to that cliché. I meant that I don't buy into thinking I get the whole picture. That was to say that despite being close to the thing, I don't claim to understand everything the way most people who are not close to it seem to think they do. Contrary to what a lot of people post online after a bomb: "OMG! I can't believe it! I was there a year ago" and somehow become subject matter expert just because something happened somewhere they visited a year ago.
>Overall the civil war was a good examples of the risks of throwing elections into the pits of new democracies especially those which have large portions of the population with antithetical views to democracy and towards of the ruling party.
And that is something typical to say. It's a luxury I can afford today, too. Some people said that back in the day. Intellectuals/jurists, etc. "Why not let the Islamists win the elections and we'll win next time?".
The others warned: There will be no next time. The Islamists are telling you explicitly* that the first thing they will do after winning the elections is cancel the constitution ("No constitution, no charter" aiming for whatever they consider "Sharia") and never have an election again and submit everyone to whatever messed up religious views they had.
It's 2016 and it's a nice conversation, but just for the sake of argument: would you really be willing to be so democratic with someone who's telling you exactly what he's going to do and the way he's going to impact your life. They'd probably kill you if you didn't show up at a mosque five times a day, rape your daughter and wife, etc. And you can't oust them or vote.
It is the difficult questions those in Government, as good or bad were they, had to deal with.
This situation was the result of very poor management and a harsh economic context. I remember food lines (for a limited choice of items in number and choice) and rations. I didn't suffer from that really and I can't imagine how the people lived. It was at that time the joke went around that you'd gain more knowing a cashier at a store than a Government official.
The most organized will win the elections. Islamists are known to be extremely well organized. You can see that in Egypt, and you could see it here at that time. They target sensitive domains: education, welfare, religion, health. They gave money to that. Money the government didn't give. There was a void and they filled it.
There was only one political party, the others weren't allowed, but the Islamists maneuvered not as a party but as a hive (from mosques, etc). The Government let them be because they were afraid of the "real" political entities (Socialists, Labor, etc) wanting to become official so they used this to counter that. When the decision was made to finally open up, who had already a shop on the street? Who has been giving away food and helping others all that time? Who had a popular base? Who knows that people will vote for them because they were on the streets every single day? Who was "nice" to people when the Government was absent? It wasn't Islamist radicals who voted. Even people who didn't have anything to do with religion voted just to screw with a Government they didn't like because now they could in a "it couldn't be worse than that" mentality.
It just happened to be the Islamists but it could have been anyone who had that level of organization and done what they did. They'd have the support of the people just for a change of the daily misery. Of course after that everyone showed their true colors and people understood that it in fact could be worse.
>Terrorism has a definition which is the use of violence and fear in order to further your political goals
Isn't that the definition of war?
>and often unlike it is being described it's not a tool of last resort but the first thing you grab when the situation doesn't go your way.
This assumes that the other entity acknowledges your way in the first place, something people almost never do when they have a dominant position. People tend to be nicer when they have an incentive to be, like when they're in a position of weakness or fear, or have more to lose than you.
For the record, I don't claim to be right or something. I'm just asking questions and formulate what seems to make sense and am delighted reading about others' points of views.
>Good. What about states that backup these groups? This is basically a high-school where every girl calls the other "slut" for doing exactly what she herself does. If any other state does it, it's terrorism. But if I overthrow regimes, invade sovereign countries with bogus reasons, financing and training militias overseas, etc. it's freedom and democracy.
With which mental mechanism someone could truly think they are righteous doing that, but others are not? One cannot have the luxury of sloppiness here: if you are okay with your Government doing that all over the world, just for the sake of being rational, you have to accept the possibility of retaliation. It doesn't mean you like it. It just means that you understand what's at stake and don't act surprised not knowing why someone is attacking you.
this was the point i was trying to get to, but pulled myself into some other argument and forgot it. It took many years of reading to see through all the propaganda noise in news to finally get to this conclusion. Me and dad occasionally discuss politics. He doesn't follow international politics much and he still likes obama.
To be clear, this is not the first nor will it be the last time Google's "Jigsaw" has gotten involved in politics. It's CEO, Jared Cohen, worked for Hillary Clinton at the State department, and once at Google, had emailed back and forth with her about Google helping encourage revolution in Syria. I don't want to see a Trump White House, but I am also sad that if Clinton wins, Google's influence in the White House will continue, or expand.
Considering Google's width of influence and overall power, it should be looked at as an international threat, because we have no way of knowing what they'll use that power for next. Anti-brainwashing is great, until you realize it's not much different than straight-up brainwashing. Google is proud to admit it uses manipulative tactics to subconsciously trick it's own employees into eating healther. Again, laudable goal, questionable moral ethics.
I actually had an extended argument with a Googler here on HN earlier this week about Google's apparent happiness to manipulate people's views to suit it's goals.
Google doesn't hide the fact that it puts snacks that are bad for you in a ranked order and makes healthier snacks easier and more convenient to get to on lower shelves. They also label healthy stuff green ink, bad stuff red ink, and semi-ok stuff yellow. How is this any different than planners designing buildings to encourage exercise, or personal interactions?
There's nothing immoral about this, and everyone is told about it, but we know people don't always read the labels, but actually sorting healthy to unhealthy by convenience, leverages the laziness of most people into eating healthy. If I have to bend over to the lowest shelf to eat a Snickers, but a banana or apple is right in front of me, maybe I'll eat that?
There is nothing immoral or unethical about, and it publicly know.
If you provide any range of snacks for employees, like any store or restaurant, you face a decision on how to order the food. Most restaurants and stores optimize their menus or shelves to hawk stuff that has the highest margin and least cost.
If Google instead sorts their snacks according to say, popularity in the market, and puts all the Kit Kat or Snickers bars on the front shelf, then isn't that immoral? Lining the pockets of corporations that promote unhealthy disease causing foods, getting people addicted to sugar, and subconsciously steering them towards junk food? By "doing nothing" or "doing what was always done before" you are in fact, doing something knowingly bad that will harm health.
I'd say it's even MORE unethical to 'default' to putting the snacks in order of demand or popularity.
Google has also been trying to use data science internally to correct unconscious bias in promotions and interviews. Everyone is made aware of this, it's not a Milgram Experiment. Perhaps we should continue to let people rank resumes based on visible metadata like applicant name, even though we know it biases the reviewer -- even people who are progressive and even women are prone to this biasing effect. We could do nothing, or we could try to change the result -- and people will cry unethical, social engineering and manipulation.
You've been doing anti-Google rants for years, almost a daily obsession, but it doesn't seem like you've toured their offices even once. Maybe you should take a look at how the cafes and microkitchens actually work.
I've toured Mountain View and spent some time at the San Francisco office, FWIW. I doubt anyone would let me in the door these days though. ;)
The cafeteria in Google San Francisco started my obsession with dried apple chips. ...I ate all of the ones that cafeteria had. And bought more at a local convenience store after I left for the day. I may or may not have recently bought approximately twenty bags of apple chips at one time. The brand of apple chips sold in California is way better than the ones sold here.
Also, as with anything in politics, it's easy to justify truly horrific things using noble-sounding arguments. For example, who wouldn't want to protect civilians? No-one, which is why when Clinton's State Department and the UK government used it to justify catastrophic military intervention in Libya few questioned it. Yet according to recent committee report, the threat was questionable and the groups we supported dangerous: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/14/mps-deliver-da... It wouldn't take much of a slide down the slippery slope at all for Google to back those groups, or their Syrian equivalent, in the name of stopping murder - or for them to discredit claims that the groups we're backing are killing civilians.
> I don't want to see a Trump White House, but I am also sad that if Clinton wins, Google's influence in the White House will continue, or expand.
It doesn't matter who the next president will be. Google will still have it's role to play in the govt. Isn't their guy responsible for search part of a Pentagon? initiative or something?
Much of Google's partnership with the executive branch (of which the Pentagon is a part) is likely due to their close relationship with the Obama administration. Whether or not they'll be able to arrange the same deals with an opposing party's staff is anyone's guess. Money definitely talks to both parties though, and Google makes it rain in politics.
You describe white house influence at Google, then express concerns about Google influence. Looks like you are either willing to vilify Google or to launder the white House. What interests could possibly motivate Google in Syria ?
I must say that I agree both with you and the "conspiracy theorists". On the one hand, targeting ads at potential ISIS recruits is arguably benign compared to most advertising, as you say. On the other hand, the fact that a company such as Google potentially has such unprecedented influence on people's thoughts, at all (not necessarily in this specific case), is terrifying.
I'm not entirely sure why Google's power appears so salient in this case, compared to the general case of online tracking and targeted ads, as well as control over search result ordering. I suspect it's because:
a) supporting ISIS is a political position (if a crazy one), rather than just a product, so it makes it easier for people to extrapolate to influencing people with slightly more mainstream political opinions
b) the article claims that the targeted ads are actually relatively effective in this case.
I'm not implying that Google is currently abusing its power, and perhaps naively, I actually trust it to a non-zero extent, unlike, say Facebook, but there definitely is scope for abuse.
I get ads about converting to Islam and Christianity and I also got a few political ads. I don't see it as abuse. It's an ad. I'll think for myself whether I agree with its message or not.
Whatever scope of "abuse" is possible with Google is also possible with any other form of media that has advertising.
But we already know who they will go after next. From the article:
> And this month, along with the London-based startup Moonshot Countering Violent Extremism and the US-based Gen Next Foundation, Jigsaw plans to relaunch the program in a second phase that will focus its method on North American extremists, applying the method to both potential ISIS recruits and violent white supremacists.
I think the difference is that it's illegal to advertise to promote a contrary view of a terror group. If you pay for ads to counter the anti-ISIS ads, that's material support for terrorism.
In my humble opinion, this is a bad idea. ISIS is an ephemeral problem in the world. One does not simply become a mujahideen convert from a YouTube session. More often than not, a lot of these guys and girls have lingering emotional baggage due to family life, education, their personal measure of success in life (or lack thereof), etc. What would impress me is if Google attacked the source of the problem once a for all. For ISIS to be eradicated, there has to be a fundamental paradigm shift in the way these people see the world. That means providing funds for schooling, education, access to internet and more importantly, free access to information.
Attempting to shape information into one that fits a certain narrative is what gave birth to ISIS. Why makes Jigsaw think this would work?
Why do you say that? Islamic extremism has been around for decades. ISIS is just one permutation.
>One does not become a mujahedin convert from one YouTube session
It is well documented that US citizens have binge watched extremist propaganda on YouTube and then murdered people. Ever hear of the Boston Marathon bombers? Heavily influenced by YouTube. Another example is Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez. There are many more.
>Google should...providing funds for schooling, education
Do you realize that many of these guys are highly educated and even obtain in advanced degrees at respected institutions?
>Attempting to shape information into one that fits a certain narrative is what gave birth to ISIS
No - I think what you are suggesting is that bad foreign policy or the middle eastern wars created ISIS. Just because bad communication and policy happened before doesn't not mean that good communication should not happen going forward.
People are dying in significant part due to ideologies. Google's approach sounds like it's well worth a shot.
Wrong emphasis I think. Extremism of any form seems to be part of the human condition. Religious zealotry is just one form and is not restricted to any one specific religion.
Rather than reply to each commenter saying violent extremism is unrelated to religion, I will simply leave this list of islamic terror attacks in the past 30 days.
"Religious zealotry is just one form" I don't think the comment you are replying to was saying all extremists are religious or all religions have extremists.
Peoples extremism can be totally unrelated to their religious beliefs. I'm sure there were agnostics fighting for and against the IRA, they were extremists that were agnostic. Even tho agnostics are the least likely to ever go to war over their religious beliefs it doesn't mean that they can find other reasons.
> funds for schooling, education, access to internet and more importantly, free access to information
The ISIS recruits from western democracies had all of these things. In some cases they're recruited digitally. I'm glad someone is willing to fight the rhetorical battle with something other than bombast and saber rattling.
At least here, in Europe, the people who got recruited had already all of it. If western social system is not enough for the youth not to get recruited, I don't know what is.
That's the problem with current crisis. Politicians really don't know how to tackle this problem, because no one from our culture room really understands the problem and locals are sick and tired of hearing we need to be nicer, give more money, more time. They already have the possibilities one can ever touch in their hine countries.
>> Politicians really don't know how to tackle this problem, because no one from our culture room really understands the problem....
- ah but that is not entirely true! politicians do know what to do, but it is a tricky path. 》 move away from the Saudis & their cohorts in gulf arab countries. ISIS, AQ, AL Shahab etc are all ideological offshoots of Salafist/Wahhabist nexus. Counter this at the root (financially/ideologically/politically) and almost certain that 90% of the so called islamist extremism would flicker out.
this is going to be a multi year / multi pronged approach, and would need co-ordinated efforts by all kinds of actors (i.e. western + muslim governments, NGOs, religious groups etc). also a stellar idea would be to start giving more support to pluralistic streams of Islam i.e. Sufi, Ismaili, (some of the) Hanafi & like-minded faiths.
That's a very narrow minded historic view of "extremism" in Islam.
It is not centered around Salafism/Wahhabism even if it seems like so today. If you look at Afghanistan then before AQ/Taliban and Salafism moved in the "extremism/terrorism" started with Shia groups like the Hazara attacking the socialists in Afghanistan, when the soviets stepped in and cleared them out it left power vacuum that drew in the Salafists and the flavor of Islam changed (Afghanistan was far from religious, it was tribal and illiterate people couldn't read the quran and mosques outside of the major cities were rare than wells).
Israel's operations against Sunni groups in Lebanon and their alliance with the Christian Lebanese government and later on with the SLA left a power vacuum for groups like AMAL and later Hezbollah form which were Shia.
The "ratio" of Shia to Sunni groups can be attributed to the power struggle between Sunni and Shia Islam and between Saudi Arabia and Iran but 90% of the extremist organizations in the world won't die out if you focus on Wahhabism alone, you would only bolster their "opposition".
There are nearly 100 Shia militias in Syria and Iraq today, they are fighting ISIS but they aren't "the good guys", neither are the Huties or Hezbollah.
Separating yourself from other people isn't exactly a path to good friendly stable longterm relationships.
Currently the West is building relationships and trying to influence these countries. You can see it succeeding with Saudi Arabia, in that Women are allowed to work there now. That's still a long way off from where we would like them to be but it shows that the strategy is working, it just takes time.
You just can't change people's values that quickly, it takes generations for that to happen.
If you want to accelerate that to a timeline that is measured in years, you're going to have to start what amounts to WWIII and occupy the middle east or make sure there's nothing left to occupy afterwards.
He's talking about the guys who go to Syria to fight for ISIS, they are primarily 2nd and 3rd generation "immigrants" and fresh converts.
You have everything from football stars to college students dropping everything to go fight for ISIS.
The mechanism is analogous to the problem with cults and violent radicals in the 19[67]0s. There is working psychology for treating it, but it doesn't work 100%. It was
called "deprogramming" back then. We had in school warnings about cults as a preventative measure.
And I bet you a lot of them also at some point felt unhappy or felt a sense of misalignment with the ideals of their host nation, despite benefiting from the spoils of a western democracy. Some of them are brought up with the belief they're living in someone elses' world -- an unwelcomed guest that people have to 'handle' or or deal with.
This is the proper (and highly unpopular) course of action. There has to be a fix for this with a process to make the assimilation process that's palatable for both sides of the culture.
>There has to be a fix for this with a process to make the assimilation process that's palatable for both sides of the culture.
I'm not sure what "2 sides of the culture" are there, but if a person immigrates to France they should assimilate to the French culture, this is what assimilation means.
There aren't really really 2 sides here, there is only one, and yes take it or leave while might sound harsh is pretty much the way to go because at some point you hit the tolerance paradox.
>And I bet you a lot of them also at some point felt unhappy or felt a sense of misalignment with the ideals of their host nation.
Well that's clearly a problem that should be addressed through education, not through "compromise".
>Some of them are brought up with the belief they're living in someone elses' world -- an unwelcomed guest that people have to 'handle' or or deal with.
Then again you fix that problem through education and cultural assimilation, if some one is being brought up and thought things which are antithetical to the worldview of the culture they live within it it's a problem.
Moral relativism doesn't work in the real world, we had no problems telling South Africa that Apartheid was bad, no one was making an argument that it was their culture.
If certain institutions are breeding ideals that are contrary to western ideals and values you deal with them on a case by case basis.
If you'll read "A Peace to End All Peace" it should become obvious that it was a near-inevitability. Most or many of the nations of the former Ottoman Empire were made up out of whole cloth by colonial powers in the region. These were often fronted by a "he might be a bastard but he's our bastard" strongman.
Now that those regimes have been either bombed out of existence, by invasion or have collapsed under their own weight ( or both ), there's a power vacuum.
There is a documentary I can't quite place now about the case of Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki. It involves someone who who lives in ... Canada? who does deprogramming of foreign-born Jihadis. This is analogous to deprogramming cult members.
In their defence: that's the whole point of AdWords, so it's not like this isn't already being done. It really is a creepy idea though not to mention antithetical to Western ideals. Furthermore the suggestion in the article that the "potential recruits" be arrested is incredibly disturbing.
Google's thing is 'tech', and they control the worlds biggest websites, so they're doing that _they_ can uniquely do. There are plenty of other people, organisations, and governments with money that can be spent on 'education'
This is so obviously the solution to the problem that it seems to be a conscious decision to propagate rather than eradicate terrorism.
Bomb them into oblivion torture them and leave them in the durt. Yes this will make them love the west.
Give them food, infrastructure, jobs, education? What?!?! That's crazy how could that ever help counter anti western propaganda? Just look at how easy it is to control 300 million fat lazy cable TV watching Americans. And how hard it is to control a handful of dirt poor ruined demoralized youths with no possible future (or the other way around).
This pattern has played out over and over, so many times and so many places it's just a known fact. Yet we'll spend a billion dollars on bombs and bullshit and not a dime to redirect the generations who are ripe for terrorist recruiters
I'd imagine all these pro-privacy guys cheering right now, shouting "we told you where this is going!" if only it wouldn't be so terrifying and not funny at all. First they collect your personal data to show you ads, and people don't mind, because why not? Then they monopolize the market more and more, and basically all your data ends up in their hands, making them know you literally better than yourself do (as you don't normally quantify your life and are not watching over yourself really well). And people don't mind again, because "I have nothing to hide". Then they are officially profiling their clients to use the data for political purposes. First this might be ads, then some more. And people won't mind again, because it's unacceptable for USA citizen not to hate ISIS (but it doesn't really matter what is the most iconic black sheep at the moment). Then (at the moment, actually, but just in China[1] for now) the most used social network is running "citizen loyalty bonus-points" program. And people are accepting still, because it's all so cool and nice and what not.
And even though it might seem terrifying to some, I don't think "the people" will ever actually regret this: the "acceptable norm" will just become narrower and narrower, and everything else will be treated as a criminal offense, a sickness that must be cured.
It makes me think that this is just how life goes, the natural way an organism evolves. But the thought of it makes me feel sick anyway.
Information control is an extremely important aspect of real power, including military success. Most will not believe me, but I will say it anyway: the popular media, even in the United States, is full of war propaganda (in the traditional sense).
Google has a direct tap into minds via search. This is problematic because their virtual monopoly means they dominate information control and shaping. This means Google can shape reality and is the most powerful war propaganda tool ever deployed. Of course it is also generally indispensible in other ways, which is the problem.
This seems to be just one more instance of ISIS providing a very valuable service to western powers. In this case giving a "sympathetic" target for testing out search based propaganda/information switching techniques. No one could argue that this plan is bad or dangerous. They are stopping ISIS! But wait till you search for info on Ed Snowden and get "counter" articles shoved down your throat. And then the FBI shows up.
It really is interesting how many objectives ISIS has helped advance for US powers and how difficult it has been for us to actually hit one of their camps with a missle. Russians seem to be able to do it no problem, but then they have different global agendas from us.
Yep, and Assad was against the Qatar turkey natural gas pipe line. Which would hurt Russia, so on the one hand we want Assad out so the pipeline could be built but on the other hand we don't want stability in the region so we hem and haw and refuse to take decisive action in the conflict. iSIS is very helpful in this aim. Russia gets screwed. Middle East gets screwed, we get a new reason for tons of defense/anti-terrorism funding. This whole thing seems to be working out pretty well!
Seriously it's all out there clear as day. They don't even bother trying to hide.
I may be reading unwritten lines, but is Google selling its advertising platform to the US Government as a way to show targeted people anti-ISIS messaging?
ISIS makes pretty sophisticated use of media now. So I would not be surprised. The whole thing is threaded together by fancy cell phones in the same way that the printing press was used in the European Protestant Reformation.
I don't actually mind using any method to fight ISIS or other terror groups, but the part that gets me is fighting them in one place and using them to further our goals in another place.
When can we start seeing ads targeting Americans with links to the disastrous effects of "regime changes" and invasion of countries to effect "democratic change"?
Honestly, such projects keep me shivering at night. This time it is ISIS, next time it is an anti-google activist group, a political movement or what ever. If anyone should have such power, it should be the government and not a private actor. Even then it is very brave new world like. And then they even extend it to giving notice of persons who might be sympesizing with ISIS: thoughtcrime, more or less. I am avare that almost everybody is doing similar things on the net but still, this is alarming
Slippery slope arguments are pretty much a corollary of Godwin's law when it comes to internet debates. We can't regulate guns right? because first it'll be a 3 day waiting period, then it'll be infinity, and next we'll have the Stasi with jackboots on our necks?
Let's convict people based on what they actually do, not what they could do.
You have the power to do the same thing, far less effectively (because less money and less knowledge of AdWords), for as long as Google choose to permit you to. That's not the same power as Google have at all.
I agree. It can potentially affect people in ways corporate want them to think.
If google results are biased on some fresh field I'm mot accustomed to, I may feel that's the majority's thinking.
And ISIS related researchers may be flagged to be a potential terrorist candidate.
This is good. I hope Google puts this book (which the author has made freely available now) [1] also in their results.
This way, if a relatively highly educated person (e.g. a person with university degree) searches something related to ISIS, gets a chance to read this eye-opening book about the roots of the evil ideology of Islam, which is what ISIS is based on.
More important thing to note here is that with Islam we are facing similar problems as the problems faced by the Europeans during the times of Copernicus, Bruno, Galileo when there was a reign of the church and Bible through kings. Fortunately and due to the enormous sacrifices and efforts made by many humans at that time, the west has successfully defeated the vice regime of Christianity and Church [2].
So we must understand that currently the biggest threat to the western freedom loving society is from the vicious ideology of Islam which is at crossroads with the modern liberal western civilized world. There is a great threat also from the pseudo-liberals who are practicing double standards when it comes to the issue of critical study of Islam. These pseudo-liberal Islam apologists (whether bought and paid for or not) are hunting down any thoughtful and legitimate criticism of Islam, its prophet Muhammad and its scriptures from the public discourses. They are using various types of pressure tactics for this. For example, they are labeling any criticism of Islam as racist attacks on Muslims or as Islamophobia or as right wing acts. The freedom lovers, liberals and humanists must understand this threat posed by the vicious ideology of mainstream Islam. These views by Bill Maher and Sam Harris may help understand this point in a better way. [3], [4], [5]
Should we be against Muslims? No, we must distinguish between Islam as ideology and Muslims as victims of this vicious ideology.
In fact, it should be noted that the fight must be with Islam and not with general Muslim population and that the fight must be on the ideological front.
