The local youth don’t know what they are missing out on. What’s the golden syrup that draws the future jihadists away from our lovely, caring and all inclusive culture? Of the estimated 30000 Isis army about a thousand or more are alleged to have come from Western countries. The videos and the beheadings in Syria are supposed to have been done by someone with an English accent. Perhaps even an English national. Claims were made that the identity of him is known. Many countries are scrambling their fighter jets. We are daily shown TV images of pin point accurate bombs honing in on enemy targets with plumes of black smoke radiating dangerously close towards us on the comfy couch, accompanied by a shot of a pulverised, disintegrating enemy(real people).We almost end up clapping or at least hope for an encore.
If those figures are correct, it means about 10% of all the Isis forces are from Europe, America and Australia. That sad video made by a woman undercover in Syria, of a French youth on the phone to his crying mum back home in France, telling her that he wants to stay in Syria and fight. “I am not coming home”, he said
The reason given is that of being ‘radicalised’. The young people are being radicalised! It almost sounds as if there is some Voodoo going on. You know, feathers and chicken heads besmirched with demonic dancing around funereal fires. There must be hypnotic Isis practitioners out in the suburbs casting strange spells on our youth. Oh, that’s the explanation! Yes, we see now. Yes, that’s why! Nothing more? Is that all there is to it? The magic of radicalisation? How simplistic, but that word is being used to explain the hard to swallow fact that many of our young feel attracted away from our much revered system of consumerism and capitalism. How can that be?. Let’s cancel their passports; teach them a lesson.
http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2014/09/dutch_cancel_49_jihadist_passp.php
Isn’t that a bit easy? Surely there must be better explanations offering more thought out and credible reasons why so many are drawn to fight in far away sandy and risky countries. I don’t know either but I am now old and often in repose mood, not yet listless. I well remember, as if yesterday, not being like that. My main aim in life was always to savour the new and skirt and flirt the adventurous, avoid the staid cemented-in, like the plague. I have been reasonably successful in that and wasn’t ever tempted to become a lawyer, a quantity surveyor or actuarial expert with a sound grounding in so much nothingness. Not the stooped-over office chair for me. I too might have been tempted to join an Isis!
I do remember the opposition to the Vietnam war. Young boy-like soldiers laughingly saying goodbye to wives, mothers, girlfriends. Many never to return but in bitter graves under moonless skies. There were escapes for youth then, with protests by students, energetic rock throwing by their professors. America and its allies capitulated. The war lost.
But now, nothing but a numb acceptance of everything that is imposed, unquestioningly and obediently. Dreadful things happening under the guise of ‘humanitarian concerns.’ The killing fields of our detention camps. The 15% unemployment rates of the young. It must be having an effect on our youths. Is despair rampant?
Perhaps this disillusion felt by youth has spread to the Western world as a whole. Has capitalism and consumerism run its course?
Don’t we give back what is given to us?
Is that perhaps one reason for some of the youth to be attracted to Isis.
Is that the radicalisation? I don’t know.
What do you think?
Tags: America, Europe, French, Isis, jihadist, Syria, Vietnam, voodoo
October 1, 2014 at 11:24 pm |
Cut funding to public schools and TAFE colleges, increase fees for university, do nothing to generate jobs for the young, make them live on nothing for 6 months after leaving a second-rate education. What have they got to be disenfranchised about?
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October 2, 2014 at 3:24 am |
Yes, ‘the living on nothing for six months’ is now seen as ‘a breach of Human Rights’. Breaking international laws by this Government is nothing new. They just seem to get away with it.
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October 1, 2014 at 11:53 pm |
What a mess . . .
Will come back when I have something more succinct to say. You might be waiting some time.
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October 2, 2014 at 10:28 pm |
What a mess alright. Who would have thought retirement would include the contemplation of beheadings. Normal retirees stand for hours in freezing rivers casting lines, catching trout!
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October 2, 2014 at 2:06 am |
I think it is a psychological thing.These kids are not getting the right parenting and some are probably coming from poverty. But for sure these kids are deeply mixed up
I could write an entire page about this but I don’t have the energy nor do I want to dominate your blog.
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October 2, 2014 at 3:22 am |
petspeople: Feel free to write an entire page. You write a good letter.
Some of the parents whose kids had fled and gone to fight with Isis and got killed, interviewed on TV were devastated, overwrought with grief and immense sadness.
I don’t think it is just bad parenting. Perhaps a type of ‘Foreign Legion’ involvement and a feeling of being ‘accepted’ and suffering a despair of ‘nothing to lose’.
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October 2, 2014 at 3:52 am |
3 Billion cut from welfare spending, including disability payments. No cutting of military spending though or keeping our boat people in detention, ( resulting from military spending)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-02/parliament-passes-revised-welfare-legislation/5784972
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October 2, 2014 at 10:49 am |
“Young boy-like soldiers laughingly saying goodbye to wives, mothers, girlfriends” ???? I trust this is you being flippant. I worked on a University student newspaper at that time, when Aid to the NLF was all the go. And EVERYONE loathed and detested conscription.
Honestly, Gerard – there are some topics where your humour can be misplaced, mate. I put it to you that this is one of ’em; but of course you can tell me to go fly a kite.
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October 2, 2014 at 11:24 am |
Yes indeed. But soldiers are superbly primed well before and send to war ( and their possible death) as cheerful and optimistic as possible. Conscription was totally different. Of course it was loathed. Show me footage of soldiers ready to be send to war protesting or struggling to be put on-board. Like lambs to the slaughter comes to my mind.
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October 2, 2014 at 4:26 pm |
Interesting, Gerard. I’ve never understood jumping off the edge onto far right or far left camps, or any type of fanaticism, for that matter. But I do understand protesting and the role that youth have in demanding change. In my next two blogs I travel back in time to UC Berkeley in the mid 60s where I was a student. This weekend marks the 50th anniversary of Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement. –Curt
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October 2, 2014 at 10:30 pm |
I look forward to that Curt. You always take us on fascinating journeys.
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October 2, 2014 at 7:22 pm |
What do I think? I think it’s time we paid attention instead of going our merry ways. Today’s WSJ claims that China considers “Putin the Great”. I shudder to think about those 2 enormous countries against all the Western world.
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October 2, 2014 at 10:56 pm |
Yes, but China seems to be only interested in doing ‘business’. That’s one way of winning.
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October 2, 2014 at 9:50 pm |
Perfect choice of song for the subject.
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October 2, 2014 at 10:31 pm |
Yes, an she sings without jigging around the stage that so amny feel obliged to do now-a-days.
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October 2, 2014 at 9:51 pm |
Western society has been at war with their youth for a long, long time.
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October 2, 2014 at 10:32 pm |
Even so, look what is happening in HK? The might of numbers and unity of purpose.
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October 2, 2014 at 11:08 pm |
As far as I can see, ISIS offers the same connection and belonging to disaffected youth that street gangs have offered for the last 50-60 years. The only difference is that nominally middle class kids are getting drawn in because the 2008 economic crash has essentially destroyed the middle class, and no one under 35 can count on having a permanent job or career any longer.
Then we have the additional problems that US, British and Israeli intelligence, Saudi Arabia and Qatar play a major role in financing these extremist operations and making them attractive to disaffected youth.
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