Atheist blogger hacked to death with machetes.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/atheis...h-with-machetes-in-dhaka-bangladesh-1.2975077

So.... yeah.

Workplace violence, obviously.

Read about this the other day - take a third world nation, fold in heapings of a backwards religion, add a dash of fruitcake preachers, bake for several years and then add a dusting of opposing viewpoints and you get a steaming violence cake. Not a new recipe.

The West really needs to start to invest in these nations, not only to ideologically attack Islamists, but economically make them too comfy to turn to terrorism and also to offset Putin's current plan to buy everyone up so they STFU when he decides to expand Russian territory.

I'd rather we read about a Bangla obesity epidemic and chronic lack of exercise than machete wielding arsewipes.

ISIS are expanding across North Africa and the ME, Putin is about to have a new Med base (Cyprus) a mile away from a NATO members (UK), he's taking an interest in Greece and is helping fund the French National Front - he's buying EU member votes to damage attempts at sanctions, something the US cannot do on it's own.

Two existential threats to the West.

Yeah, we need to be getting our arses in gear, and no, simply increasingly military spending won't work.

I'm unclear on how shoveling money to the fundie psychos is going to work any better.

I didn't say that did I?

Unless you think that an entire nation can be defined by its worst elements?

I think that its worst elements can't be ignored.

Agreed, and economically destroying their future pool of resources not only isn't ignoring them, it's ensuring that they simply won't exist in future and we can focus on less beheady problems.

Well, you can't economically destroy them by dumping money on them, can you.

And, again, I'm not saying that am I?

Actually, yeah, you did. Let's review:

Care to revise?

Not at all, firstly that isn't "dumping money on them", secondly if they've not turned to terrorism they're hardly the "worst elements" are they?

The idea is to invest in the nation, as stated in my first post, to bring them closer to Western standards. We're a bunch of lazy swines, which is why those proclaiming we'll see a revolution have a time to wait, as long as we get our beer, sex, and movies, we're not going to be taking to streets or listening to frutcake preachers. Only the real believers will go down that route, because the average person realises beer and blow jobs beats a vest full of semtex.

Update the ME and similar areas, and suddenly that fertile ground of candidates dries up into fields of very deaf ears.

How paternalistic is that? Shouldn't they improve their own lot? And, just as importantly, won't they see any outside attempt as unwelcome foreign interference? Here's the better idea: Secure the borders, tighten the Visa system, and then leave them alone.

Keep them out and leave them alone.

Ideally they'd improve their own lot, but we don't live in the 18th century any more. Much as I hate the term "global village", it is appropriate, and short of turning into a police state you'll never secure your borders enough, and even then you've too much coastal and border areas to adequately stop any determined person getting in. How much has been spent on stopping drugs entering the US? How's that working out for you? They're building fucking submarines, and I doubt they're that ethical they'd not sell one to Islamists.

Or if they manage to take Pakistan and acquire nukes. Sure, you can retaliate, but better not to have it happen in the first bloody place.

Modern technology means they're a global problem, that's just a consequence of progress, no one ever promised it came with only upsides.

And "unwelcome foreign influence" is rolling up in tanks, not investing in infrastructure, not helping set up business. There are few who hate being enriched.

And, more to the point, this is exactly what Russia is doing now. And China. Your worldview is basically the US rolling on it's back and hoping the Russians and Chinese will tickle it's belly, and desperately hoping no one decided it'd be a jolly good idea to infiltrate the US and cause some trouble.

Good luck with that.

So we should funnel money out of a country on the economic brink so that their corrupt governments can funnel it to the militants? That's not only ineffective, it's counterproductive. What we should do now is what we should've been doing for the last 50 years -- staying the hell out and giving none of them anything.

I've always maintained that giving up the Empire so easily was a mistake. Too many nations weren't ready to deal with things themselves.

You know, when @gul was winding you up over Twain I hadn't quite realised he was simply arguing along your lines of "logic"

Person says: "we should go down to the mall"
Castle hears: "lets go burn some shops"
Castle replies: "No, the hell is wrong with you"

I say: "we should invest in some nations which will cause us problems down the line"
Castle hears: "we should fund terrorists groups"

There really are no words.

There were a lot of reasons we did that, few of them noble, but yes, the Empire could have morphed into a much more active Commonwealth than we have. Most of the old imperial lands are in places of great resource, and in areas that would benefit from the kind of systems we used to be so good at.

Just imagine the economic powerhouse Africa could be, and just imagine the benefits the UK could have reaped from such foresight.

Absolutely. I'm not arguing for a sustained empire, but rather, like you say, a working commonwealth where independence doesn't come until we know that such countries are economically sustainable and culturally literate to the extent that former colonies like Canada and Australia became. If anything it was irresponsible of us just to hand over the keys to nations when they were in such an underdeveloped state and now condemn from afar when it all goes to shit. I do appreciate that this might conflict with the drive for independence from citizens of those countries if we still ran them, but in my view if you claim territory as your own then you have a moral obligation to it's in a fit and workable state if you give it up, and furthermore an obligation to your own citizens back home in Blighty to ensure that as much is done as possible for the national interest, neither of which has really been achieved.

The problem is that the UK was in no position to retain it. The US could have stepped in, but the concept of overt colonialism is anathema ot our national psyche. We aren't willing to do it unless faced with an existential threat, so the problems fester until they reach that stage, and nobody does a damn thing.

Ecky has the right idea, but how do we make that argument to the Castle's of the world, who don't even want to give a hand up to a poor family living across the street?

Because Castle is the poor family.

I'm not sure he's representative of the people we need to convince, mainly as those kind of people don't understand the concept of investment, which is really what it is. The returns may not be entirely, or transparently, fiscal, but they're there.

It is the non-fiscal returns that matter, and are particularly hard to convince people on why. When somebody has a political philosophy based entirely on the thought that his own failings are not because he sucks but because of taxes, that person isn't ever going to accept the possibility that we're all in this together.

And self-loathing, at that.

Chup had to be kidding, or ironic, or whatever. All the Third World loving liberals will just have more ammo
to blame western super powers for their ills and deficiencies.
Anyway the US pretty much engages in economic colonialism now.

Wait I almost forgot - "leave the machete - take the curry."

Nope, not at all. I've made it clear many times that a lot of my views are conservative. We just tend not to discuss those topics often here. I've long been of the view that the Empire was good for a great many things for these countries, and I make no apology for it.

You'd expect 9/11 and the following war to be fairly convincing - had the West invested in Afghanistan after Russia pulled out we could have had a functioning nation not willing to give succour to OBL or the time of day to the Taliban, and a nation to act as a zone between the West, Russia and ME.

Instead we got another failed nation drawing in the crazies and ended up pissing billions away invading the place, billions more chasing AQ and it's offshoots around the world.

By all accounts Charlie Wilson was frustrated as hell he could raise enough money to chase Russia out the place, but not a damn penny to make the the country viable.

Is there a background check or 'waiting period' for those machetes? Just askin'.

Don't go all Marie Harf on us. If Syria had been richer then ISIS would just have better weapons. Poverty is not the cause of Islamic radicalism, an apocalyptic Islamic narrative is. Bin Laden came from one of the wealthiest families in Saudi Arabia, and Jihad Johnny has an IT degree and comes from a wealthy London family.

Poverty is a resource pool for the smarter ones. I suspect the Venn diagram for 'University Graduates' and 'Suicide Bombers' doesn't have much of an overlap, meanwhile the 'Poverty' and 'Suicide Bombers' one does.

It's a fairly time honoured layout, the smart ones lead, the less smart ones bleed.

Remove the poverty and the OBL's and Jihad Johnny's will still exist, they're just going to find a much shallower pond to fish for useful idiots and a few years down the line be pretty much regarded in the same light as the God Hates Fags crowd.