Iraqi Kurdish female guerilla.
2 days ago - 
10
10
Eupraxsophy
Secular humanist, freethinker, progressive, and bibliophile. I love living life, learning things, and meeting people.
Why Is Violent Crime So Rare In Iceland?
First - and arguably foremost - there is virtually no difference among upper, middle and lower classes in Iceland. And with that, tension between economic classes is non-existent, a rare occurrence for any country.
Björgvin SigurðssonSocial Democratic AllianceA study of the Icelandic class system done by a University of Missouri master’s student found only 1.1% of participants identified themselves as upper class, while 1.5% saw themselves as lower class.
The remaining 97% identified themselves as upper-middle class, lower-middle class, or working class.
On one of three visits to Althing, the Icelandic parliament, I met Bjorgvin Sigurdsson, former chairman of the parliamentary group of the Social Democratic Alliance. In his eyes - as well as those of many Icelanders I spoke with - equality was the biggest reason for the nation’s relative lack of crime.
“Here you can have the tycoon’s children go to school with everyone else,” Sigurdsson says, adding that the country’s social welfare and education systems promoted an egalitarian culture.
Crimes in Iceland - when they occur - usually do not involve firearms, though Icelanders own plenty of guns.
GunPolicy.org estimates there are approximately 90,000 guns in the country - in a country with just over 300,000 people.
The country ranks 15th in the world in terms of legal per capita gun ownership. However, acquiring a gun is not an easy process -steps to gun ownership include a medical examination and a written test.
Police are unarmed, too. The only officers permitted to carry firearms are on a special force called the Viking Squad, and they are seldom called out.
In addition, there are, comparatively speaking, few hard drugs in Iceland.
According to a 2012 UNODC report, use among 15-64-year-olds in Iceland of cocaine was 0.9%, of ecstasy 0.5%, and of amphetamines 0.7%.
There is also a tradition in Iceland of pre-empting crime issues before they arise, or stopping issues at the nascent stages before they can get worse.
Right now, police are cracking down on organised crime while members of the Icelandic parliament, Althingi, are considering laws that will aid in dismantling these networks.
When drugs seemed to be a burgeoning issue in the country, the parliament established a separate drug police and drug court. That was in 1973.
In the first 10 years of the court, roughly 90% of all cases were settled with a fine.
3 days ago - 9
9 
According to documents, this is an Ottoman official teasing starving Armenian children by showing them bread during the Armenian genocide, 1915.
One has to imagine what sort of person is capable of tormenting dying children. Of course this genocide, like all others, involved more than just a single individual.
Armenian Genocide
Yesterday, in 1915, Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and leaders in Istanbul, thus initiating one of the world’s first genocides. The Ottoman military began with the wholesale killing of able-bodied men, while women, children, and the infirm were marched into the Syrian desert to die. Massacres and rapes were indiscriminate of age or gender, and anywhere from 600,000 to 1.8 million Armenians were killed. Most overseas Armenian communities were founded around this time from fleeing refugees.
3 weeks ago - 3
3 If one comes away from the Boston bombings ready to single out a particular ethnic or religious group as a special domestic threat, be reminded that the majority of mass-killings in this country have been perpetrated by young, American-born white males. If we’re going to be wary of immigrants, Muslims, Chechens, Russians (who are often confused for Chechens), or some other minority group, we might as well fear about half the country. Of course, our minds are innately biased in favor of simple narratives, so it’s much easier and more reflexive to focus on a small and easily identifiable group — especially when one’s sense of safety is concerned. This is not an excuse of course, for its a visceral feeling that we must move past.
This image has been making the rounds on social media. Personally, I don’t think this trivializes the horror of the Boston bombings. Rather, it recognizes the fact that this heinous and tragic event, which has gripped the country for the past week, is part of daily existence for many people in the world. Imagine the carnage and terror of the marathon bombings being amplified and replicated regularly? What would our society be like?
The Barbarism of the Iraq War
Whether either is ever held to account for it, global opinion against the Iraq war is long settled – including in Britain, the US and Iraq. The invasion was a flagrant act of aggression against a broken-backed state, regarded as illegal by the overwhelming weight of international legal opinion.
The onslaught triggered a death toll which certainly runs into hundreds, rather than tens, of thousands: estimates range from the Iraq Body Count’s minimum of 173,271 up to 2012 (acknowledged to be an underestimate) through the Iraqi government and World Health Organisation’s 223,000 and Lancet survey’s 654,965 “excess deaths” in the first three years, to the ORB polling organisation’s estimate of more than a million.
1 month ago - 2
2 Abduction or Liberation?
Data from signatory countries show that the majority of abductors are mothers with primary or joint custody, and a majority of them report fleeing abuse. In short, many abductions are actually flights to safety, necessitated by the home countries’ failure to protect victims from domestic violence and child abuse. In these cases, rather than returning children to loving and safe parents, the convention actually reunifies children and mothers with their abusers.
Research by Jeffrey Edleson, the dean of the School of Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues shows that courts typically order children returned to fathers known to have physically abused the mother, even though such violence is an indicator of significant risk to children.
2 months ago - 2
2 The End of the Nation State?
These non-stateactors increasingly hold the tools of international power in their hands. Historically, technological revolutions — from farming to manufacturing, and industry to information — have catalyzed tensions over authority, as new communities seize opportunities for control. It is now happening again, allowing alternative authorities to flourish — and in some places, even directly challenge state sovereignty.
And yet mainstream international relations thinking continues to overemphasize military might and other traditional tools of state power. The prevailing literature on the evolution of governance, for instance, assumes a state-centric order and widely neglects the role of technology. Francis Fukuyama’s most recent volume, Origins of Political Order, is emblematic of these oversights: As it sweeps across the centuries, it presumes a constant quest for statehood even into the 21st century, ignoring the potential for novel forms of transnational communities. But now, as the current Information Revolution spreads around the world, aspirant communities are building economic and social capital, acquiring varying degrees of autonomy, and accruing authority in ways we have only begun to formally analyze.
All the traditional tools of state power — the monopoly over arms and violence, dominance over tools of communication, and external recognition of exclusive legitimacy — are eroding rapidly. As Tufts University’s Itamara Lochard has documented, the number of autonomous armed militias in the world vastly exceeds the number of sovereign nation-states by a factor of at least 10, the Internet is used more to challenge governments than reinforce their power, and transnational networks funnel resources and confer credibility on
2 months ago - 2
2 The Horrific Toll of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars
No one will ever know just how many Iraqis died in the wake of the US invasion of 2003. In a country with an estimated population of about 25 million at the time, a much-debated survey - the results of which were published in the British medical journal The Lancet - suggested more than 601,000 violent “excess deaths” had occurred by 2006. Another survey indicated that more than 1.2 million Iraqi civilians had died because of the war (and the various internal conflicts that flowed from it) as of 2007. The Associated Press tallied up records of 110,600 deaths by early 2009. An Iraqi family health survey fixed the number at 151,000 violent deathsby June 2006. Official documents made public by Wikileaks counted 109,000 deaths, including 66,081 civilian deaths, between 2004 and 2009. Iraq Body Count has tallied as many as 121,220 documented cases of violent civilian deaths alone.
Then there are those 3.2 million Iraqis who were internally displaced or fled the violence to other lands, only to find uncertainty and deprivation in places like Jordan, Iran, and now war-torn Syria. By 2011, 9 percent or more of Iraq’s women, as many as 1 million, were widows (a number that skyrocketed in the years after the US invasion). A recent survey found that 800,000 to 1 million Iraqi children had lost one or both parents, a figure that only grows with the continuing violence that the US unleashed but never stamped out.
Today, the country, which experienced an enormous brain drain of professionals, has a total of 200 social workers and psychiatrists to aid all those, armed and unarmed, who suffered every sort of horror and trauma (in just the last seven years, by comparison, the US Veterans Administration has hired 7,000 new mental health professionals to deal with Americans who have been psychologically scarred by war).
Many Afghans, too, would surely be able to relate to what Pham To and millions of Vietnamese war victims endured. For more than 30 years, Afghanistan has, with the rarest of exceptions, been at war. It all started with the 1979 Soviet invasion and Washington’s support for some of the most extreme of the Islamic militants who opposed the Russian occupation of the country.
The latest iteration of war there began with an invasion by US and allied forces in 2001, and has since claimed the lives of many thousands of civilians in roadside and aerial bombings, suicide attacks and helicopter attacks,night raids and outright massacres. Untold numbers of Afghans have also died of everything from lack of access to medical care (there are just two doctors for every 10,000 Afghans) to exposure, including shocking reports of children freezing to death in refugee camps last winter and again this year. They were among the hundreds of thousands of Afghans who have been internally displaced during the war. Millions more live as refugees outside the country, mostly in Iran and Pakistan. Of the women who remain in the country, up to 2 million are widows. In addition, there are now an estimated 2 million Afghan orphans. No wonder polling by Gallup this past summer found 96 percent of Afghans claiming they were either “suffering” or “struggling,” and just 4 percent “thriving”.
3 months ago - 110
110 | An interview with Gustave Gilbert and top Nazi leader Hermann Göring' during the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. The transcripts are published in Gilbert's book, The Nuremberg Diary (1947). | |
| Göring: | Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. |
| Gilbert: | There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars. |
| Göring: | Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country. |
My Enemy, Myself
Few people are malicious or evil for no good reason. Being evil for the sake of evil is a myth that applies only to the villains of childhood fairy tales or mainstream entertainment media. Humans are complicated creatures who seek to rationalize everything they do. What one person thinks is evil, another may find to be acceptable, if not good.
This applies most especially to war. Most large-scale conflicts are not chosen by their participants, but are the product of the petty squabbles and self-interests of a given society’s elites – for whose transgressions the poor and disenfranchised must overwhelmingly pay the price (both as fighters and victims of atrocity). People are cajoled and manipulated into fighting for the interests of others, albeit always under the pretext of something more admirable and idealist – the enemy is evil, the enemy is a threat, God has mandated that we do this, etc.
Even those who feel a genuine desire to fight and kill do so for complex reasons – again, no one puts their lives at risk simply because they feel like being evil. The human mind doesn’t work that way. This fact is most dramatically expressed by the work of Belgian-Tunisian photojournalist Karim Ben Khelifa, “My Enemy, Myself,” presented by Foreign Policy:
Who’s your enemy? Why fight? Over the course of three years, Belgian-Tunisian photojournalist Karim Ben Khelifa has traveled to both sides of the world’s longest-simmering conflicts to ask these pointed questions. What he heard from combatants in the Gaza Strip, the disputed Kashmir region along the India-Pakistan border, and tribally divided South Sudan captures the futility of wars that never end — and can’t be won. Tragically, bitter rivals are often fighting for the very same reasons.
Needless to say, I would find it both chilling and world-changing to speak to both sides of these intractable and long-fought conflicts. These are the nameless militants that most people see as little more than two-dimensional Hollywood-style goons. To hear them express thoughts and opinions – even seemingly altruistic ones – is to change everything we know about human nature.
Granted, I’m not saying that this justifies their violent and harmful actions, or that immorality doesn’t exist. My point is that evil is a complex phenomenon that reflects the equally complex nature of our minds, social relations, and conditions. And that’s what makes the struggle for a better world all the more daunting.
Below is just a small sample of these personal accounts (unfortunately, the corresponding photos cannot be saved or transferred by URL). I encourage you to read them all, as they may strongly impact the way you view both conflict and human nature in general.
Gaza:
My name is Abu Mohamed; I’m 45 years old. I am a member of the Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades. My enemy is the state of Israel and anyone who supports them. I joined the resistance when I was 16 years old. The Israelis stole our land; they took our country; they killed our children, wives, and families. The reason I am fighting is because Islam orders us to do so. I’ve seen a lot of my enemies; we continuously face them. I am not afraid; I feel honored and proud because I am Muslim and a Palestinian mujahid. I’m recovering part of my dignity, so all is good for me. We have very basic and simple weapons, yet we are facing one of the strongest armies in the world. Just being on your feet facing this army is already a victory, and we will never give up. In 20 years we will have absolute freedom for the Palestinians. Freedom is something very, very important for me; it is a dream in my life to see my country, a land free of our enemies and ruled by Islam.”
……
“My name is Adi; I’m 22 years old, and I’m an officer in the Israeli army. Anyone who tries to cross the border illegally to do bad things is an enemy. The reason that I am doing what I am doing is to protect my country, first and foremost against terrorism and secondly there is also a lot of drugs and other illegal things that have been smuggled across the border, just things that corrupt society. I have never met face to face with an enemy in my entire three years in the army. I think mostly my fears [are] that something happened to one of my soldiers. Freedom should be global, and I think once there is no more wars between people and no more violence, that is when people will be truly free. Terrorism is one of the worst things invented by humanity. It is just an insult to everything that separates us from animals; it is an insult to democracy and an insult to everything we try to be. I want to educate people; I want to be a big part of a change. I hope that being a teacher will be able to make people think differently, be more honest, be nicer to each other, and to be more respectful.”
Kashmir:
My name is Bilal Ahmed. I am 32 years old. I have been throwing stones since 1993 because India is constantly harassing us. My enemy is India. I am not afraid of anything except God. I haven’t killed anyone because I am a Muslim and Islam forbids us to harm innocent people. God has created every human being, and I have no right to go against God’s will. I fear only one thing — that is that we are not safe under the rule of India. Recently two sisters in Shopian were raped and martyred by Indian soldiers. Freedom from India would be a blessing for us. We are not terrorists; we are Muslims, and I wish from life to die for Islam.
……
“My name is Kashmir Singh; I am 40 years old. I am a policeman. I have joined the police forces 23 years ago to serve my country. My enemy is the one who breaks the law of my country. I have met my enemies face to face, and they do not scare me. We have been attacked by our enemies several times, and I killed many of them. If someone endangers us and the laws, we might have to kill him in order to protect us. Terrorism is harmful for everyone, and we will fight it until the end. In the next 20 years, India will grow to become the first country in the world. I wish peace and harmony for my life.
South Sudan:
My name is Bureth Akuer. I’m 33 years old. My tribe is the Murle. My enemy is the one who attacks me. The Lou Nuer have attacked me. The cause of the tribal war is food. As a Murle when I feel hungry, I go to the Lou Nuer land and take their food, but they won’t allow me to take it so they will attack me. This is why we fight. They did the same to us, and we had to defend ourselves. I did not kill any of my enemies because I had no weapons, but they killed three of my relatives. When they left, I followed them, but I didn’t have a gun to fight them. My heart was set on revenge, but I couldn’t take it. For me, freedom is to be able to grow food on your own land, have your own livestock. That is what I enjoy, and this is freedom for me. Violence is something I don’t really understand. Why is it happening? We are praying and asking God to let us live in peace together. Of course, it’s all about food, but we should find other ways to find food so that the violence stops. In 20 years to come, we should see improvements. We shouldn’t continue to take things by force. If we can’t do that, then the future will be dark and we will get stuck in this tribal war.
……
My name is Paulino Kueth; I’m 28 years old. I’m a member of the Lou Nuer. My enemies are the Murle. They designated themselves as our enemies. The problem is the cattle; the Murle come to steal it. The fighting is historical: They kill and we kill them in return. We can’t deny that we have also killed; people fought for so long now. People have suffered: Your cattle has been taken; your children are abducted; you are not allowed to work your land; you feel hunger and you go without food for a long period of time. All those things are the result of the conflict. Nobody has been solving the problem and addressing it until recently. People were not blaming the government, maybe because of the scarcity of the resources. Freedom is a situation that allows you to interact with people. If we can interact, you and I, it is because of freedom. Freedom is something that can help to find solution to solve a lot of problems like addressing hunger, the problem of fighting. Previously people were under the rule of north Sudan. We had no freedom because people were not interacting. We had no future plan, or to think of what might happen, but this time around we feel we have freedom. We are under our own rules. You can even think peace as a result of freedom. Violence is a situation where there is a lot of poverty, a lack of knowledge, no valuing of the importance of other human beings. That is why you have killings, but if you know that there is another human in front of you, you can’t simply kill another person. Therefore if people get together, sharing knowledge, they will value other human beings.
It’s interesting to see how almost every everyone that was interviewed seemed to have honest intentions. Their motivations and desires are scarcely different from our own, nor are they any different than their enemies – and that is what is most tragic. Imagine if these people actually sat down and had a conversation with their enemies? Imagine if they read one another’s accounts and exchanged their points of view? Would that make any difference? Or is war just that complicated.
My Enemy, Myself
Few people are malicious or evil for no good reason . Being evil for the sake of evil is a myth that applies only to the villains of childhood fairy tales or mainstream entertainment media. Humans are complicated creatures who seek to rationalize everything they do. What one person thinks is evil, another may find to be acceptable, if not good.
This applies most especially to war. Most large-scale conflicts are not chosen by their participants, but are the product of the petty squabbles and self-interests of a given society’s elites - for whose transgressions the poor and disenfranchised must overwhelmingly pay the price (both as fighters and victims of atrocity). People are cajoled and manipulated into fighting for the interests of others, albeit always under the pretext of something more admirable and idealist - the enemy is evil, the enemy is a threat, God has mandated that we do this, etc.
Even those who feel a genuine desire to fight and kill do so for complex reasons - again, no one puts their lives at risk simply because they feel like being evil. The human mind doesn’t work that way. This fact is most dramatically expressed by the work of Belgian-Tunisian photojournalist Karim Ben Khelifa, “My Enemy, Myself,” presented by Foreign Policy:
Who’s your enemy? Why fight? Over the course of three years, Belgian-Tunisian photojournalist Karim Ben Khelifa has traveled to both sides of the world’s longest-simmering conflicts to ask these pointed questions. What he heard from combatants in the Gaza Strip, the disputed Kashmir region along the India-Pakistan border, and tribally divided South Sudan captures the futility of wars that never end — and can’t be won. Tragically, bitter rivals are often fighting for the very same reasons.
Needless to say, I would find it both chilling and world-changing to speak to both sides of these intractable and long-fought conflicts. These are the nameless militants that most people see as little more than two-dimensional Hollywood-style goons. To hear them express thoughts and opinions - even seemingly altruistic ones - is to change everything we know about human nature.
Granted, I’m not saying that this justifies their violent and harmful actions, or that immorality doesn’t exist. My point is that evil is a complex phenomenon that reflects the equally complex nature of our minds, social relations, and conditions. And that’s what makes the struggle for a better world all the more daunting.
Below is just a small sample of these personal accounts (unfortunately, the corresponding photos cannot be saved or transferred by URL). I encourage you to read them all, as they may strongly impact the way you view both conflict and human nature in general.
Gaza:
My name is Abu Mohamed; I’m 45 years old. I am a member of the Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades. My enemy is the state of Israel and anyone who supports them. I joined the resistance when I was 16 years old. The Israelis stole our land; they took our country; they killed our children, wives, and families. The reason I am fighting is because Islam orders us to do so. I’ve seen a lot of my enemies; we continuously face them. I am not afraid; I feel honored and proud because I am Muslim and a Palestinian mujahid. I’m recovering part of my dignity, so all is good for me. We have very basic and simple weapons, yet we are facing one of the strongest armies in the world. Just being on your feet facing this army is already a victory, and we will never give up. In 20 years we will have absolute freedom for the Palestinians. Freedom is something very, very important for me; it is a dream in my life to see my country, a land free of our enemies and ruled by Islam.”
……
“My name is Adi; I’m 22 years old, and I’m an officer in the Israeli army. Anyone who tries to cross the border illegally to do bad things is an enemy. The reason that I am doing what I am doing is to protect my country, first and foremost against terrorism and secondly there is also a lot of drugs and other illegal things that have been smuggled across the border, just things that corrupt society. I have never met face to face with an enemy in my entire three years in the army. I think mostly my fears [are] that something happened to one of my soldiers. Freedom should be global, and I think once there is no more wars between people and no more violence, that is when people will be truly free. Terrorism is one of the worst things invented by humanity. It is just an insult to everything that separates us from animals; it is an insult to democracy and an insult to everything we try to be. I want to educate people; I want to be a big part of a change. I hope that being a teacher will be able to make people think differently, be more honest, be nicer to each other, and to be more respectful.”
Kashmir:
My name is Bilal Ahmed. I am 32 years old. I have been throwing stones since 1993 because India is constantly harassing us. My enemy is India. I am not afraid of anything except God. I haven’t killed anyone because I am a Muslim and Islam forbids us to harm innocent people. God has created every human being, and I have no right to go against God’s will. I fear only one thing — that is that we are not safe under the rule of India. Recently two sisters in Shopian were raped and martyred by Indian soldiers. Freedom from India would be a blessing for us. We are not terrorists; we are Muslims, and I wish from life to die for Islam.
……
“My name is Kashmir Singh; I am 40 years old. I am a policeman. I have joined the police forces 23 years ago to serve my country. My enemy is the one who breaks the law of my country. I have met my enemies face to face, and they do not scare me. We have been attacked by our enemies several times, and I killed many of them. If someone endangers us and the laws, we might have to kill him in order to protect us. Terrorism is harmful for everyone, and we will fight it until the end. In the next 20 years, India will grow to become the first country in the world. I wish peace and harmony for my life.
South Sudan:
My name is Bureth Akuer. I’m 33 years old. My tribe is the Murle. My enemy is the one who attacks me. The Lou Nuer have attacked me. The cause of the tribal war is food. As a Murle when I feel hungry, I go to the Lou Nuer land and take their food, but they won’t allow me to take it so they will attack me. This is why we fight. They did the same to us, and we had to defend ourselves. I did not kill any of my enemies because I had no weapons, but they killed three of my relatives. When they left, I followed them, but I didn’t have a gun to fight them. My heart was set on revenge, but I couldn’t take it. For me, freedom is to be able to grow food on your own land, have your own livestock. That is what I enjoy, and this is freedom for me. Violence is something I don’t really understand. Why is it happening? We are praying and asking God to let us live in peace together. Of course, it’s all about food, but we should find other ways to find food so that the violence stops. In 20 years to come, we should see improvements. We shouldn’t continue to take things by force. If we can’t do that, then the future will be dark and we will get stuck in this tribal war.
……
My name is Paulino Kueth; I’m 28 years old. I’m a member of the Lou Nuer. My enemies are the Murle. They designated themselves as our enemies. The problem is the cattle; the Murle come to steal it. The fighting is historical: They kill and we kill them in return. We can’t deny that we have also killed; people fought for so long now. People have suffered: Your cattle has been taken; your children are abducted; you are not allowed to work your land; you feel hunger and you go without food for a long period of time. All those things are the result of the conflict. Nobody has been solving the problem and addressing it until recently. People were not blaming the government, maybe because of the scarcity of the resources. Freedom is a situation that allows you to interact with people. If we can interact, you and I, it is because of freedom. Freedom is something that can help to find solution to solve a lot of problems like addressing hunger, the problem of fighting. Previously people were under the rule of north Sudan. We had no freedom because people were not interacting. We had no future plan, or to think of what might happen, but this time around we feel we have freedom. We are under our own rules. You can even think peace as a result of freedom. Violence is a situation where there is a lot of poverty, a lack of knowledge, no valuing of the importance of other human beings. That is why you have killings, but if you know that there is another human in front of you, you can’t simply kill another person. Therefore if people get together, sharing knowledge, they will value other human beings.
It’s interesting to see how almost every everyone that was interviewed seemed to have honest intentions. Their motivations and desires are scarcely different from our own, nor are they any different than their enemies - and that is what is most tragic. Imagine if these people actually sat down and had a conversation with their enemies? Imagine if they read one another’s accounts and exchanged their points of view? Would that make any difference? Or is war just that complicated.
Something that applies to any act of violence.
