Cutting Journalists Throats for ISIS

Over the weekend, there were two assasinations of publishers in Bangladesh, which is so far away that we forget anyone lives there.  [see Ellen Barry, 2 Publishers Stabbed in Bangladesh as Attacks Rise, New York Times, 1 Nov. 2015].  This is how ISIS operates and one of the reasons hundreds of thousands run away from places they occupy.  There is no freedom of the press, ala Charlie Hebdo.  The penalty for publishing things they don't like is severe.

The two publishers had republished works of Avijit Roy, killed eight months ago, because they didn't like his denouncement of religious extremism.   How anyone could be killed because reprinted works of someone else is far beyond us, yet it is consistent with controlling information disseminated by the world's publishers.  We should never forget Salman Rushdie, a modern day example, along with these two men trying to do their job.

These radical Muslims are not acting alone when they kill someone thousands of miles away, because of his written words.  This isn't just about religious extremism.  The Russians do the same thing by beating up reporters who don't follow guidance.  The Chinese use social and political jabs, or jail if those don't work.  The Iranians, Turks, Saudis, Pakistanis and Egyptians have all had go-arounds with their press and local publishers.  They control what is said about a variety of different subjects, especially about the performance of specific government representatives.

This is a way to keep power by controlling what people hear about a government or group.  In the Internet age, the Chinese started this with censorship of Google.  They wanted Google to control search results in China, but they also wanted them to control it in the U.S. where they had no business melding.  Google backed away and declared  a principle few countries recognize - the free and open exchange of ideas between individuals in many countries.  There are no religious affiliations that matter to this.  ISIS learns how to do it by watching the leaders of the countries around them, who are far more subtle, using the tools of the Internet to find and silence their critics.  The methods are different but the results are the same.