Rayvin

Agreed but you can only argue the points in front of you.

I'm actually pretty confused now... I think the semantics are what we're stumbling over. Let's break it down further in the hope of resolving this because I'm now 99% certain that we agree. ISIS were established by someone who believes in Islamic supremacy. I agree. However, ISIS would have gotten nowhere near power or influence though, if we hadn't barged into Iraq under false pretenses and wiped out everything that was stopping them develop. So when you say we didn't create ISIS, you mean that a Jihadist nutjob created ISIS. And when I say we did, I mean they would never have come to be had we not given them the exact conditions they required to start seizing power, and that if we hadn't done this, we wouldn't now be having to deal with them - even though the guy who established them would still have had his views. Do we agree on that? Yes we should. Or rather, we should continue to let them be oppressively ruled if all we're going to do is open the door to something worse by failing to finish the job we started. If a foreign power invaded our country, took out all forms of government and otherwise bombed us back to the stone age, we'd probably all be at the mercy of the right wing neo-nazis. I don't think the Arab experience is a unique one based on their culture. I don't even know why you'd want me to say they aren't ready for democracy... it's no odds to me whether they're ready for it or not. The point is, they don't have it now, and their situation is worse than when we invaded. I'm not wedded to the idea of democracy being the one true way of governance though, so maybe I'm abnormal in this respect.

Imagine if something similar had happened with us and the mackems. They'd be incandescent with rage to this day. Maybe Spurs are just the London mackems

This is fair. I'm not sure it's the be all and end all of the issue, but I can see why these points would be serious issues for many Muslims.

I'm saying that you can't create meaningful political change in a country by charging in and wiping out all established power structures, and then running away before establishing anything close to an organised system of governance.

That's great and all, but I'm talking about ISIS - the current and most established political force behind jihadi terrorism. That was born out of Al Qaeda in Iraq. I know that they didn't start jihadism, but my initial point was that 1) we didn't start it, and 2) we made it a lot worse. By creating ISIS. You're trying to argue something I'm not arguing. I'm arguing that our foreign policy made jihadism worse, and enabled them much greater political clout and control, and that ISIS proves this. You're trying to make it sound like I'm saying ISIS were the first on the scene in terrorism; I'm not.

How is that different to what I said? Unless you mean the bit about us creating ISIS. We did. ISIS isn't the ideology, they're just an armed political movement. We absolutely did not create the ideology, but our negligence absolutely did create ISIS, the organised and armed wing of the ideology - which would have never have gotten off the ground had we left certain dictators to it.

I think HF covered that pretty well above. I'm very happy to call it exactly what it is - the massacring of innocent civilians. I'm not trying to justify it. You can't justify it. What you can do though, is look at the underlying factors. You seem to think religion alone is enough to persuade otherwise sane people to blow themselves and other people up. That just doesn't wash for me. If that was all it took, we'd have a fuckton more suicide bombings.

I'm gonna press this, sorry - you know that we created ISIS, right? They filled the power vacuum we left behind following our destructive middle eastern foreign policy. So can we agree on the following - i) these people who hate us on principle do exist and they exist irrespective of what we do or say and ii) they wouldn't have anywhere near as much ammunition against us, as many people in support, and as much operational freedom in the MIddle East, without our disastrous foreign policy? Surely on a rational level, we can all agree on this point? I mean, it's not like we've been fending off terrorism in this country for the centuries that Islam has been in place, is it? It's very much only in the last 20 years, isn't it?

And how did ISIS come to be...? I'm not disagreeing with any of the above, just saying that they wouldn't be in the position they are without everything we did leading up to it.

Cultural Marxism has a lot to answer for in distracting the left from the more important aspects of its political awareness. I suspect Parky would agree here since the term also encompasses feminism. Anyway I basically agree with the caveat that it is actually the West's fault, IMO, that these people are in our countries and blowing us up, and that they'd likely be content to hate us from afar if we weren't meddling. That doesn't mean I hate the West. It just means I think we have the capacity for extreme stupidity in our international politics.

Aye, that's the trajectory exactly. Brilliant. Although it was probably the same on here. Or would have been if Pardew was someone we ever thought could improve players.

Ok thanks, was just gonna post a fairly confused response. I thought your other point about Islam and democracy was interesting though; Indonesia is the closest we get. Although they're technically secular, they have a very large Muslim majority. That's probably something all Islamic countries could aspire to over time.

Oh dear. You'd think a simple bit of Googling...

Started watching this off the back of these comments. Am hooked.

...Yeah I have to read some of this It's willful ignorance otherwise. Thanks lads.

Yeah he's hard work actually, on the reading front. I keep having to stop to look up terms and so on. I'll get there eventually.

I'll make have to make a list Thanks though, I think it'd be genuinely interesting to explore this stuff.

Thanks for that Parky, I'll start educating myself.

I have a book from Slavoj Zizek that I'm working through presently, but he's not really a 'meaning of life' philosopher so much as a political/social one. Anyway, I should read more of what these people say I guess. The Greeks it is.

I'll admit to not being up on my philosophers, I'll have to give it a look. You reckon starting with Sartre then?

I remember that video as well... it's a fucking weird cult Scientology, but it has its fingers all over the place at the moment.

People always strive for meaning, and I think we have less of that now than we've had at any previous point in our existence. Can we cope with the void, is the question?