1- Yes, there is a number of Tunisians that went to Syria. As you have said per/capita it is a large number. There are around 10 Million Tunisians and from 3000 to 8000 fighting in Syria (depending on the source).
2- This is due to several factors: Post-revolution politics, poverty, mistrust in the state institutions and the police, and -most importantly- a previous government that is (allegedly) complicit.
3- There are no official numbers, the Tunisian government said that they have no idea on the exact number. Some Syrian/Turkish parties gave estimates (the numbers you read in the press) but they are not to be trusted to be objective or impartial.
4- If this "database" checks for first and second degree connections, then the entire country would be flagged.
And to be clear - I'm not 'blaming' anyone, I spent some time in Tunisia a couple of years ago. I'm just indicating that 'cultures' and 'centers of activity' and 'relationships' are important.
So 'I hear you' on that.
Still though - Tunisians tend to be great people, much more open minded and educated than, for example Algerians or Moroccans ... and the Tunisian government is not nearly as bad as others ... so it's still a paradox :)
Though it could actually be literacy, access to information, and basic financing which enables them to head out to war ... ironically. Certainly, Al Queda members were actually quite well educated, way more so than the average street Arab.
And indeed, I personally don't understand that paradox as well.
And some people would like that - which is sort of the problem with Xenophobia-with-added-statistics.
The trouble with using statistics to discriminate is that it gives people some sort of plausible deniability which they can offload into opaque computer programs ("Did my race give me a higher interest rate? Did my zipcode raise the rates for an educational loan?" ... and we can't know easily).
I'm pondering over how much of "Extreme Vetting" is black boxes like those - whether I'll even know if my code gets used in one.
FYI - the US and every country on the planet discriminates against every other nation by way of visas.
Why do you think Americans can travel to Canada without a visa and Venezuelans and Turks cannot?
Do you think Canada is just going to up and allow Turks to come to Canada without paperwork? No. Why? Because it's Turkey. Very different place than America.
By 'xenophobia' do you actually mean to say 'diversity'? :)
I do what I can to post international news and I try hard to mot make it just about negative things going on out in the larger world. Sometimes, those stories do get some small attention, but there is a serious diversity issue on many discussion boards in terms of what kinds of topics get attention, if that makes sense.
And I don't know if I am making myself clear, but I mean to say that there is a lot of prejudice, basically, often rooted in ignorance (and that ignorance is to some degree happenstance, but is also to some degree by choice). So thank you for commenting.
Well, it is called "Hacker News," after all. Perhaps this just isn't the right venue for discussion of that particular story. If so, that's OK. There are plenty of others.
That's true. But it is not called "American Hacker News." I do try to post international tech news when I can find a good article on the subject. They tend to get not anywhere near as much attention as American subjects.
Please don't try to justify this to me. The number three guy on the leaderboard is Dutch. The number four guy is Australian and lives in Great Britain. The number two guy is an American living in Japan. (And I think the current lead mod is Canadian in origin and Paul Graham himself is an immigrant from England.)
Programming does not only happen in the U.S. There is absolutely no justification whatsoever for the degree of bias on this forum in terms of what people are willing to read and discuss.
"...that might arise"? What have we been seeing the last year, when the winning presidential candidate proposed banning Muslims from entry to the US, and as recently as a few weeks ago (and well after the election) said with respect to a Muslim registry that "he would implement that [a registry], absolutely" [1].
Meanwhile, various of his surrogates have in recent days (all after the election) floated the idea that the Japanese internment supreme court decision (never struck down!) could be used to justify this registry.
And go check out his core followers at any of the usual hangouts, like Reddit and Breibart, and you'll hear much, much more extreme views on this issue.
1. http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/11/20/donal...
I was actually at the rally when he announced this. Trump wants a freeze on immigration from countries that are actively producing a large number of jihadis which, surprise, happens to be predominantly Muslim countries. The premise being, they need more scrutiny and we need time to implement such. Of course I'm sure this whole time he's just been pulling from George W's playbook, acting like an "every guy" who doesn't use big words and wants to appeal to populism.
This is a mountain out of a mole hill. You'd be better off eating less junk food and paying more attention while driving rather than concern yourself with these edge cases.
The problem is that terrorism leads to sectarianism, and sectarianism leads to civil war. Northern Ireland is an excellent example of this paradigm and it has been replicated in Syria.
Many people believe the same threat exists in Europe esp. France.
Sounds like a bunch of Richard Feynmans.
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/08/17/a-thorny-history...
>Fantino, then head of 31 Division, told North York’s committee on community, race and ethnic relations that, while blacks made up 6 per cent of the Jane-Finch population, they accounted for 82 per cent of robberies and muggings, 55 per cent of purse-snatchings and 51 per cent of drug offences in the previous year.
>The Star’s Royson James was apparently the only reporter present. He duly filed a story that appeared on the next day’s front page. All hell broke loose.
>Police in Ontario were forbidden to compile race-based crime statistics. Solicitor-General Joan Smith, responsible for law enforcement in the province, castigated Fantino for collecting and releasing data that “accomplishes nothing useful.” Black activist groups and social agencies condemned Fantino for fueling existing prejudices. Police chief Jack Marks insisted the force did not keep race stats.
But the Police are very aware of who is up to what.
Cops in Toronto work with various groups all day, every day, they know what is going on. They know when it's 'Asian gang' vs. 'Bikers' vs. 'Somalis' vs. 'Mafia' etc..
Somalis have formed an ad-hoc kind of organized crime syndicate, maybe somewhat similar to the Sicilian folks, but with totally different attitude towards violence, different operating methods. I don't think they control a lot of turf directly, but they coordinate across the country.
These things are evident even to many local residents. My folks live (lived) in Woodbridge, Ontario, which is the Italian area of Toronto, the cafe I used to go to was obviously a hangout and probably money laundering front for the Mafia. Networks are small you only have to know a few people and you get the notion pretty quick. I never felt afraid. Nor would if I were in in a similar situation owned by an Asian gang. But Somalis - I wouldn't go near a place like that.
Different cultures = different behaviour. That's actually what 'diversity' is :)
Finally ... I'm ashamed to say my 'source' on much of this is a 'distant relative', who is currently in jail, and 'very close' to organized crime.
Or rather, do you also know what the police think from some source other than your 'distant relative'? Or is the 'distant relative' the only source you have?
(I'm not sure what noun to use for your source there so I have stuck to matching your usage, my repeatedly using the quotes isn't sarcastic or anything like that)
Organized crime is very well understood by law enforcement.
Do you need 'statistics' to understand the difference between Google and Facebook culture?
Tunisian and Somali culture?
Or maybe if you visit and know Googlers and FBers, or if you visit Tunisia and/or know a lot of Somalis, you start to get the idea?
People in organized crime have jobs, just like those at Facebook. Their cultures are distinct, and generally known to those in the business, like cops, just as you would be familiar with FB culture if you visited or even knew just a few of them. There are no secrets there.
Are HN readers so completely socially inept that they have no grasp of the cultural attributes of our society? I don't think so :)
None of what I said is news to anybody.
Hint: organized crime is usually run something like this - the Italian Mafia imports most of the hard drugs, they sell it to the Bikers who have regional networks, and the Bikers push it into the street gangs and small time dealer networks. That would be East Coast mostly. West Coast, I'm less familiar because it's Asian cartels and I don't know if they use their own networks or bikers or both. This is Canada mind you.
Distribution territories for drugs are very tightly controlled, by various entities, and everybody in the business (including cops) knows who runs which territory, usually.
The Somalis don't have any of these layers sorted out, yet there is heavy involvement in drugs, I think they bring it in and distribute themselves, to specific communities. Which probably causes tension & violence. I'm not sure. But I am sure wherever they go, whatever layer they are at, they are facing 'competition' from an incumbent, and disputes are settled through violence or the credible threat of it, and sometimes a buyout/payoff between more 'friendly' parties, I don't think the Somalis fit into the nicely tuned Mafia/Biker relationships. They don't do 'sit downs', as it were, in the classical sense.
Again, this is all common knowledge in that line of work.
If you want to say stuff like Wherever there is a 'new' Somalian community, the crime (drugs and related) offenses are off the charts with over-representation. In Toronto - a big slice of the 'violent murder' pie is committed by Somalis - and they are near 0% of the actual population. in association with building a database of undesirables, maybe don't be stunned when people ask you to back up your anecdote with some data.
That it might be illegal to gather such data in Canada doesn't change the nature of your anecdote though.
If not, it seems we are discussing a third hand anecdote.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/why-so-many-som...
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/somali-canadian-s-dea...
'North Africa' I find to be not descriptive.
The best term would be 'Maghreb' - but nobody knows what that means.
M/E is an appropriate geopolitical designation.
Wrong my friend. Morocco and Algeria for example have more than 50% ethnic berbers [0]. Saying it's part of the middle east show your lack of knowledge of the region and its distinct culture.
They speak Arabic officially, they belong to the 'Arab league', they are Muslim (because of Arabic colonialization).
I'm 100% aware of what the Berbers are, save your insults for Reddit.
They were colonized by Arabs 1000 years ago, and they fit quite fundamentally into the Arab sphere of influence.
Obviously, they are all different, and 'more different' the further you get from the Gulf ... but most Arab countries are in fact, quite different as well.
Geopolitically - they are basically M/E countries. Our approach to them has nothing to do with 'the rest of Africa' and everything to do with the status of other M/E countries.
The question someone might ask here next is, "Sure, but who built it?"
If software engineers had a guild, we could, if this were deemed such an egregious offense (not saying it is, just following the logic of the submission), kick those people out of the guild.
What about another for states and counties? Where was Dylann Roof radicalized?
Also, having a database of many kinds of information is rational because it doesn't have the same fear factor as a database of Jews, and yet it has that same power -- if the political winds should ever blow in that direction.
Paradox: Tunisia is perhaps the most progressive of all the M/E Muslim countries, and yet they are the #1 M/E country in terms of Jihadis. They are overwhelmingly the greatest per/capita Jihadi producers in the world. By far. Tunisia is very small. Networks are very small. 95% chance that a young male Tunisian knows someone off to fight Jihad. This is very significant.
Somalia - is a stateless war-zone, people coming from their are massively over-represented in other kinds of crimes. Wherever there is a 'new' Somalian community, the crime (drugs and related) offenses are off the charts with over-representation. In Toronto - a big slice of the 'violent murder' pie is committed by Somalis - and they are near 0% of the actual population. Some social workers have observed that they simply have absolutely no respect for authority - it's meaningless to many of them. There is an overrepresentation among Somalis in terms of 'domestic' (i.e. host nation) violence, that's possibly 'terror' related.
Those are both good examples because it shows you how young men from completely different places, are radicalized for completely different reasons, and are associated with completely different kinds of violent people - and their nationality (read: culture) is definitely a correlating (or even predictive factor).
It's a moot point anyhow. The FBI has a database. You're probably in it. There's a tag on your file that might indicate the likelihood you'll be radicalized.
We have to be really quite careful of this kind of stuff, frankly, I'm more concerned about the 'populist anti-muslim sentiment' that might arise, as opposed to any kind of actual 'database' of muslims.
Anyhow - it's all moot. There will be no DB of Muslims.