Sects and worse

Having noticed reading about death and intrigue in the promised land a few days ago, I now notice the second read of the three read set, set a little to the north, in what used to be called the Levant. 'Isis and the new Sunni revolution', the work of another journalist, Patrick Cockburn. Easier going than the first read, almost a read rather than a skim.

But another depressing tale of bloody terrorism. More depressing in that there is a lot more bloodshed, a lot more recently. Oddly less depressing in some way, perhaps because it is not the work of a small numbers of people who should have known better, rather the product of hundreds of years of misrule and deprivation.

Glimmers of hope in that some of those who thought it a good idea to promote what has turned out to be no better than anarchic, sectarian violence & atrocity are now seeing the error of their ways, that there are worse things in the world than praying while wearing the wrong colour tie or while facing in the wrong direction, and are trying to put the genie back into the bottle. Maybe some of the oil money that has been poured into weaponry and wahabi madrasas will now make it to more useful ends.

An interesting chapter on the interactions between whatever it is that is happening on the ground, the war correspondents, the press & media more generally and the internet, with the advent of this last coming across as something of a mixed blessing. On balance probably a force for good, but a good that is partly balanced by its unmediated use for the propagation of lies and worse. One example of which was a video clip purporting to be a Levantine atrocity perpetrated by one or other of the factions there, but which was actually a re-purposed clip from the drug wars of Mexico.

Perhaps a lesson nearer home would be for our politicians to close down their twitter accounts. Off the cuff remarks of not more than 250 charecters are unlikely to be a useful contribution to public debate.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/death-and-intrigue-in-promised-land.html.