It never ends...IS Militants Burn Three Iraqis Alive

[Rhinodawg]

Officials and eyewitnesses say Islamic State (IS) militants have burned at least three people alive in Iraq's western Anbar Province.

The victims, residents of an area near the town of Hit, some 200 kilometers west of Baghdad, were suspected of informing Iraqi security forces about the militants' movements.

Our correspondent says the militant group also accused the victims of encouraging people to join tribal forces who are fighting against IS.

Anbar officials said in a statement that one of the victims was a former police officer.

Residents of the area were reportedly forced to come to the site of the burning and watch the incident.

http://www.rferl.org/content/islamic-state-burns-iraqis-alive/26834091.html

[Rhinodawg]

1. Another Mother load of really bad ideas.

[JaneyVee]

2. Spreading Islam by killing Muslims.

I'm not convinced they are doing this for religious reasons.

[etherealtruth]

6. Sunni vs Shia Muslims

While I agree there is more to this (ethnic/tribal, economic, proxy) ... to dismiss the Sunni-Shia divide is to not understand the history and the depth of that divide. In a sense, there are two sides struggling for the control of Islam.

[JaneyVee]

9. True, sunnis and shias are, but I feel like ISIS is more like...

Hitler and the Nazi's; a genocide cult.

[randr]

3. They will do anything to get air time on Fox

Sick MFers

[greytdemocrat]

4. Not the only ones. nt

[bemildred]

5. You got it. nt

[Rhinodawg]

7. So they commit atrocties to get on Faux news ?

really?

[randr]

8. Seems to work

[closeupready]

10. There are a lot of competing theories about why the Aztec empire fell.

If I'm recalling this correctly, it was a puzzle for a long time because they had a vast empire and enormous power. But they committed some ghastly human rights abuses, including cannibalism and human sacrifice. Eventually, the scale of these abuses became so bad that there was a popular revolution - people realized they were going to be sacrificed, as would their own families, and they decided to put an end to it before that happened, since either way, they'd end up better off.

A similar type of social collapse helped lead to the fall of the Roman Empire.

I'm seeing parallels between those societies and the kind of thing in the story here.

[a la izquierda]

11. No, that's not at all accurate.

The Aztecs did not practice cannibalism on any kind of vast scale. It was ritualized and very controlled.
The Aztecs- as did every single group in Mesoamerica- practiced human sacrifice as part of a deeply spiritual and complicated set of religious beliefs.
The Aztecs were an empire of conquest. The Spanish exploited that.
The Spanish carried diseases that no indigenous people had immunity to (allies of the Spanish or not). These diseases severely weakened the Aztecs.
The Spanish arrived in the middle of the harvest. Aztec soldiers for the most part were part-time soldiers/part-time farmers.
Should I continued?

(I have a PhD in the history of indigenous cultures of Mexico, so I can go on and on.)

[closeupready]

12. Societies fall when people stop supporting them.

The reasons why members of society disenfranchise themselves are complicated, and I'll defer to your expertise with regard to the Aztecs.

And with that, this thread is basically a wrap for me. Cheers.