Discussion for article #237010
Is it wrong that I want all of ISIL’s follower’s dead? Because I do.
This outdoes anything Paddy Chayesky satirized in Network (cf. Mao Tse Tung Hour and the Ecumenical Liberation Army). IS has jumped the shark.
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Slick and compelling ads for barbarism are limited in their effectiveness by the level of enlightenment in a society.
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Somehow, that’s really not comforting. Enlightment has been on a regression path ever since Reagan was elected.
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Not just since Reagan. If this is true, that would mean that the Nixon years were marked by a growth in enlightenment.
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As Gary Brecher recently pointed out, Sunnis as a rule, have remarkably low enthusiasm for joining ISIS. I believe a better way to look at ISIS is as a successful pirate organization. They aren’t really there to get infrastructure operating beyond what it takes to get oil and gas out.
Ching Shih, a Chinese pirate engaged in opium trade, provides one of the most successful models for a pirate organization. By this measure, ISIS is still amateur hour.
The last sentence in the Wiki is striking.
Once she held the fleet’s leadership position, Ching Shih started the task of uniting the fleet by issuing a code of laws. (The Neumann translation of The History of Pirates Who Infested the China Sea claims that it was Cheung Pao Tsai that issued the code. Yuan Yung-lun says that Cheung issued his own code of three regulations, called san-t’iao, for his own fleet, but these are not known to exist in a written form. The code was very strict and according to Richard Glasspoole, strictly enforced.
First, anyone giving their own orders (ones that did not come down from Ching Shih) or disobeying those of a superior were beheaded on the spot.
Second, no one was to steal from the public fund or any villagers that supplied the pirates.
Third, all goods taken as booty had to be presented for group inspection. The booty was registered by a purser and then distributed by the fleet leader. The original seizer received twenty percent and the rest was placed into the public fund.
Fourth, actual money was turned over to the squadron leader, who only gave a small amount back to the seizer, so the rest could be used to purchase supplies for unsuccessful ships. According to Philip Maughan, the punishment for a first-time offense of withholding booty was severe whipping of the back. Large amounts of withheld treasure or subsequent offenses carried the death penalty.
Ching Shih’s code had special rules for female captives. Standard practice was to release women, but J.L. Turner witnessed differently. Usually the pirates made their most beautiful captives their concubines or wives. If a pirate took a wife he had to be faithful to her. The ones deemed unattractive were released and any remaining were ransomed. Pirates that raped female captives were put to death, but if pirates had consensual sex with captives, the pirate was beheaded and the woman he was with had cannonballs attached to her legs and was chucked off the side of the boat.
Violations of other parts of the code were punished with flogging, clapping in irons, or quartering. Deserters or those who had left without official permission had their ears chopped off, and then were paraded around their squadron. Glasspoole concluded that the code “gave rise to a force that was intrepid in attack, desperate in defense, and unyielding even when outnumbered.”
Motivation to work every day to change that.
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