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ISIS Is Only A Metastase – Not The Original Cancer

Politics / ISIS Islamic State Aug 29, 2014 - 10:52 AM GMT

By: Andrew_McKillop

Politics

Obama Says Extract The Cancer of ISIS
President Obama is not an oncologist but a golfer and a politician when he is off the golf links, so we don't have to treat his diagnosis as definitive. For metastases to appear there is obligatorily a deep-seated, primary, primitive or original cancer either still present today or no longer present but active in the form of metastases. Each of these can in turn generate a new deep-seated cancer, oncologists tell us, but the process is in no way 100% predictable.


What are called secondary or metastasic cancers usually spring from or at least closely relate to primary, deep or primitive cancers. The primary cancer may disappear, through treatment or due to other biomedical factors and processes including aging, but the metastases can continue. They can be almost harmless, or dangerous and life-threatening. Sometimes they can be treated so as to make them disappear for 10 or 15 years or longer – for a person of 70 years age diagnosed with secondary cancer this can mean their life expectancy extends beyond 85 years.

That is well above the average life expectancy in most developed countries, and two times the life expectancy of people in many low income countries. At least some cancers can therefore be hailed as “largely under control” and possibly on the way to complete control, but this omits the often nearly lifelong residence of metastases, whether they are life-threatening or not. Predicting how they evolve or do not evolve, and treating them is very far from being an exact science.

Millenarian cults like ISIS can be called cultural metastasic processes, but where is the deep original cancer? One potential cause is the 21st century cult of Unknowing in western societies which is now worldwide, in different metastasic forms. This can be likened to a deep or primitive cancer. It generates cultural metastases on a regular but unpredictable basis that, like cancers in the human body, can lie semi-dormant for long periods. On occasions and under certain circumstances, the metastases will break out.

When The Kraken Wakes
Making the comparison more useful, cancer science or oncology identifies many types of primitive cancer able to stay dormant for long periods and later potentialize themselves, decades after an initial contact with carcinogens. The trigger factor and cause may have disappeared between times, for decades, before the new and deep primary cancer develops, usually making it totally impossible to treat the initial causes. Therefore, pursuing the analogy we should not be surprised that culture-change events welling up and hitting western society – say in 1968 or 1973 or 1980 or later – could stay dormant for decades, before acting.

We should also not be surprised that what I call the process of Unknowing is possibly only a metastasic event and its original or primitive causes may be life-threatening, but completely unknown.

What we can be sure of with the “ISIS phenomenon” is that it is a cultural metastase of Islam, and for some Western politicians and philosophers the Muslim religion is itself the deep or primitive cancer.  Put another way, there is no way we can treat this original cancer, and like president Obama said, Middle Eastern societies will have to “extract the cancer themselves”. This is a nice theory, if we know what is the original cancer, but if we cannot yet diagnose the exact causes and ramifications of this cancer's metastases we are in trouble. 

Unknowing reflects the analogy of doctors bent over the western body-politic finding apparent cultural metastases, and declarng “Yes, we have heard about Dumbing Down but we believe that more education can fix it!”. Other medical professionals treating the body-politic can identify a massive “deficit of democracy” in the world, including the western countries, but may prescribe electronic referendums as a possible palliative or even the cure. And so on, but today we have ISIS.

ISIS is Nihilist
Obama said that ISIS has “nihilist ideology”. For centuries, philosophers worldwide have wrestled with causality and the “paradox of primitive or original causes”. The cancer of doubt leads to constant human attempts to create short cuts to the founding causes of our existence – but never with outright and total success. The epistemological quest for certainty is always present in the human mind.

In other words, doubt is hard-wired into the public mind and society, but no religion will accept doctrinal doubt, and the Islamic faith is no different from the others. If epistemological certainty means identifying and knowing all the trajectories and processes of causality which intersect at a specific point in space-time, to create an event, the battle or game is however lost – even in science - from the moment the start whistle blows.

Youth revolt is a metastase of doubt-in-society. Nihilism itself, usually credited to Friedrich Nietzsche as its “founding father”  was developed by Nietzsche following events like the Russian youth revolt of the 1860s – very similar to the US Beat Generation of the 1950s. Youth had rejected all and every one of the values held by the older generation – including taboos on random violence for violence's sake.

The cancer of social doubt engenders the metastase of youth revolt. The ISIS rank and file of young males is mostly below 35 years age and in all senses of the word is revolting. They are nihilistic metastases of a social and cultural cancer. The proposed US cancer therapy – bombing – is of course classic but also of course is very, very stupid.

Nihilism and the Apocalypse run hand in glove. The second is religious and the first is a metastase.

Apocalypse demands daily atrocities in The Final War opposing the good and the bad. No neutral ground is possible. ISIS executes this command with daily atrocities, most recently focusing a truly random selection of the 13 major and loosely-Sunni tribes of northern Iraq. At present, the Shamaar and Shittaheit tribes are especially focused for daily executions by bullet, crucifixion, decapitation, burning, stoning or burial while still alive in the ground.

The nihilist degeneracy of ISIS is on show every day. In the case of the Shamaar, with an estimated 3 million members in northern and central Iraq and over 1.5 million in Saudi Arabia and 500 000 in Syria according to Wikipedia, its crime was its origin. Its descent from the legendary Hatim Al-Tayy, a Christian Arab who converted to Islam and was renowned for his generosity and hospitality,

Cancers and their metastases are mean and dirty. They are both diseases.

By Andrew McKillop

Contact: xtran9@gmail.com

Former chief policy analyst, Division A Policy, DG XVII Energy, European Commission. Andrew McKillop Biographic Highlights

Co-author 'The Doomsday Machine', Palgrave Macmillan USA, 2012

Andrew McKillop has more than 30 years experience in the energy, economic and finance domains. Trained at London UK’s University College, he has had specially long experience of energy policy, project administration and the development and financing of alternate energy. This included his role of in-house Expert on Policy and Programming at the DG XVII-Energy of the European Commission, Director of Information of the OAPEC technology transfer subsidiary, AREC and researcher for UN agencies including the ILO.

© 2014 Copyright Andrew McKillop - All Rights Reserved Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisor.

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