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> One told German public broadcaster NDR that he was sent to Mosul with a letter on behalf of Ericsson seeking permission from the terror group for them to cont

by cbg0 5y ago

> One told German public broadcaster NDR that he was sent to Mosul with a letter on behalf of Ericsson seeking permission from the terror group for them to continue working there. Some people have zero self preservation. I wouldn't go deliver something to a terrorist group for any amount of money.

princeb 5y ago
it's a company like ericsson. if this person didn't have too much an idea of the world i can imagine he'd just think negotiating with what the US calls "terrorists" is just BAU in this part of the world. i mean, i can imagine large swathes of human habitation where society is organized around deadly force. literally one country exists right at the border, where cartels manage the economy.
deleted 5y ago
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throwaway0a5e 5y ago
If you're doing infrastructure for the old regime and you're not particularly attached to the old regime and a new regime shows up it's completely normal to send some reps to figure out if the project is to be continued and the details thereof. Obviously there are situational judgement calls that can't be captured by slinging stupid internet rules of thumb around but this is Ericson we're talking about. They're providing basic infrastructure stuff that anyone seeking to run a state needs. That's a pretty neutral thing to be involved in. It's not like they are a defense contractor who were supplying the people shooting at the new regime a week ago. And in this case it was a local contractor so that adds a potential layer of baggage.
- titoCA321 5y ago
  > The contractor was kept under house arrest, and claimed that the Ericsson manager then stopped answering his calls. "He abandoned me, he turned off the phone and disappeared." In some organizations it's also typical to throw the contractor and underlings under the bus when the project turns to sh*t.
  - krisoft 5y ago
    That was the perception of the employee. Clearly the whole thing is way out of normal, but what do you expect from the manager when they are informed that one of their employees are taken hostage? Become a trained hostage negotiator and one-man-army? Later the article says: > But the report says that one of the company's partners "made arrangements" with IS to secure his release and let the company continue its work in Mosul. So no, the person wasn't abandoned. There is a lot of questions about the manager's conduct before the kidnapping. How the heck did things end up there? But first thing I would expect from the manager after the kidnapping is to find a professional to handle the situation. And the professional very well might advice the manager to cut communications.
    - toss1 5y ago
      What do I expect from the manager? Not to become a hostage negotiator darmy, but to hand the phone and the matter off to a proper hostage negotiator and army. Not to just forking ghost the guy.
    - posterboy 5y ago
      > There is a lot of questions about the manager's conduct before the kidnapping. How the heck did things end up there? Ali's brother runs with the crew and will keep an eye out, something like that I imagine.
- JoeyBananas 5y ago
  > but this is Ericson we're talking about. They're providing basic infrastructure stuff that anyone seeking to run a state needs. That's a pretty neutral thing to be involved in. I totally disagree that Ericsson could be considered a neutral party as a foreign corporation doing business in Iraq. There is nothing neutral about doing business with a hostile foreign government. That's just not normal in any way. It's not like they had never heard of ISIS and were oblivious to all the Sharia law and violence going on in Iraq.
- kodah 5y ago
  ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban are not "regimes" and I'd like to caution you away from normalizing terrorist groups as political entities. It has been known to vendors that operate in those areas who terrorists are and what tactics they employ. There is no "neutrality" to these groups. This is all common intel that vendors would have and obviously intel someone in their legal department bothered to read.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    >ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban are not "regimes" and I'd like to caution you away from normalizing terrorist groups as political entities. It has been known to vendors that operate in those areas who terrorists are and what tactics they employ. There is no "neutrality" to these groups Oh piss off with the rhetoric. The Taliban did and does run Afghanistan. For a brief moment Isis was running parts of Iraq and Syria. Both are trying to perform typical state administrative functions (courts and rule of law, taxes, defense, controlling borders, etc). One way just way more violent and way less successful than the other. Neutrality is not a foriegn concept in the middle east. They just have way different concepts of "non-neutrality by association, group membership and history" than most of the west does. Edit: What constitutes a state or government of a state doesn't change because we don't like the specific policy decisions of said state or government or because said government maintains power through a level of violence we consider unacceptable.
    - kodah 5y ago
      This is an odd take. I was in Afghanistan for a total of a year. The Taliban courts that you're talking about executed a woman for having two forced relationships between two rival men, they would extract young men from their homes and make them into forced fighters, they enslaved local populaces for poppy season, just to name a few. Kidnapping and ransom is like a side business to them.
      - logifail 5y ago
        > they would extract young men from their homes and make them into forced fighters Yesterday a senior German politician floated the idea of reintroducing (or, more accurately, "reactivating") compulsory military service. It previously ran from 1956 until 2011.[0] As someone else has already pointed out, pretty much all of this stuff can be viewed as shades of grey. Apart from the facts that war is awful, and that that despite that, certain people are happy to get rich from it. [0] https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/killing-time-for-conscripts-german-military-service-is-battle-against-boredom-a-702665.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/killing-time-fo... see also https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-military-and-political-disaster-the-calamitous-errors-of-germany-s-russia-policy-a-c8b9818e-4bc2-4eb2-ac55-39e5790b29b2 https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-military-and-...
- lazide 5y ago
  Doing business with someone implicitly supports them. There is no way around that. As an infrastructure provider, it makes it tough because pulling out of a country is going to harm normal folks at least as much, if not more, than whoever is in charge you are refusing to do business with. But that doesn’t mean providing critical infrastructure services to literal terrorists is ok.
causi 5y ago
You could possibly make an argument for some groups considered terror groups for actions against governments, but ISIS throws gay people off building and puts civilians in cages before burning them alive. You must feel for the unaffiliated residents but there's no way I'd set foot there for any reason.
- stickfigure 5y ago
  Negotiate over zoom. With the video off. Using a VPN.
  - toss1 5y ago
    NO You just forking do not negotiate (except for the release of hostages, while ensuring that all other potential hostages are moved out of harm's way). If you do, you can expect nothing but a continuously escalating stream of demands. It is a fool's game - the only winning move is to not play.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      It is like nuclear power plant construction projects, that way.
      - toss1 5y ago
        Yup, at least for standard-type plants, only way to win is not play. I'm hoping that newer designs designed from the start to be inherently safe, and often smaller and more modular, and/or using different elements such as Thorium, will result in designs that can win, but they do seem to have stalled a bit
octopoc 5y ago
Reminds of one time I was interviewing someone and I asked why he had left his previous job. He said they were building a device to block cell phone usage in prisons, and the inmates figured out who was making the hardware and slipped word out to their enforcers outside the prison with the name of the manufacturer. Soon all the employees started getting death threats. So, he quit.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  I am always shocked to learn just how porous prisons are and why nothing seems to be done about that.
  - AniseAbyss 5y ago
    After watching some documentaries about foreign prisons it often seems that the jail is run by the inmates and that the guards are just there to make sure nobody escapes.
    - vkou 5y ago
      It's not ran by the inmates, the guards just have a small source of side income if they 'bend' the rules.
      - MattGaiser 5y ago
        If the inmates employ the guards, they are running it then. Why are inmates allowed currency?
        lazide 5y ago
        They usually aren’t allowed direct currency. But if they are trading and have a means to reach the outside (guards or visitors), that is rarely a major barrier. If they’re pimping, arranging ‘free visits’ for guards is one way. having a designated money guy outside who handles payments and they just need to authorize so and so to get $10k, that kind of thing, is another. And once you have guards on the payroll, the rules generally have a lot more flexibility.
Rd6n6 5y ago
> Some people have zero self preservation. I wouldn't go deliver something to a terrorist group for any amount of money. Is this victim blaming, or am I misreading it?
- Supermancho 5y ago
  In some cases, a victim is to blame. There are even awards for this sort of thing.
- zdragnar 5y ago
  Self preservation is a concept which extends beyond scenarios with a victim and a perpetrator. Don't pet feral animals. Don't run with scissors. Don't wear a fur coat in the desert. Don't drink bottles labelled "poison". So, it should reasonably follow: Don't hand yourself over to violent, hostile people.
- 55555 5y ago
  "She shouldn't have worn such a short skirt" is not quite "He shouldn't have gone unarmed and alone to a meeting with ISIS in ISIS-held territory."
  - vmception 5y ago
    relevant exhibit for anyone that is merely avoiding victim blaming because they were told not to, without addressing why victim blaming is often based in mythology: https://today.tamu.edu/2019/11/19/what-were-you-wearing-exhibit-explores-sexual-violence-myth/ https://today.tamu.edu/2019/11/19/what-were-you-wearing-exhi... so, in human interactions, its always the person that does the harmful, nonconsensual and/or illegal action that should have the focus
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  The victim is not to first to be blamed, but the result is predictable and avoidable.
- netcan 5y ago
  Yes, but no. You need the ability to distinguish between a bad social cliche like "short skirt, asking for it" and this.
deleted 5y ago
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deleted 5y ago
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yelling_cat 5y ago
There aren't many reasonable use cases for sending a fax these days but this is definitely one.

by cbg0 5y ago

princeb 5y ago

it's a company like ericsson. if this person didn't have too much an idea of the world i can imagine he'd just think negotiating with what the US calls "terrorists" is just BAU in this part of the world. i mean, i can imagine large swathes of human habitation where society is organized around deadly force. literally one country exists right at the border, where cartels manage the economy.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

If you're doing infrastructure for the old regime and you're not particularly attached to the old regime and a new regime shows up it's completely normal to send some reps to figure out if the project is to be continued and the details thereof. Obviously there are situational judgement calls that can't be captured by slinging stupid internet rules of thumb around but this is Ericson we're talking about. They're providing basic infrastructure stuff that anyone seeking to run a state needs. That's a pretty neutral thing to be involved in. It's not like they are a defense contractor who were supplying the people shooting at the new regime a week ago. And in this case it was a local contractor so that adds a potential layer of baggage.

titoCA321 5y ago
> The contractor was kept under house arrest, and claimed that the Ericsson manager then stopped answering his calls. "He abandoned me, he turned off the phone and disappeared." In some organizations it's also typical to throw the contractor and underlings under the bus when the project turns to sh*t.
- krisoft 5y ago
  That was the perception of the employee. Clearly the whole thing is way out of normal, but what do you expect from the manager when they are informed that one of their employees are taken hostage? Become a trained hostage negotiator and one-man-army? Later the article says: > But the report says that one of the company's partners "made arrangements" with IS to secure his release and let the company continue its work in Mosul. So no, the person wasn't abandoned. There is a lot of questions about the manager's conduct before the kidnapping. How the heck did things end up there? But first thing I would expect from the manager after the kidnapping is to find a professional to handle the situation. And the professional very well might advice the manager to cut communications.
  - toss1 5y ago
    What do I expect from the manager? Not to become a hostage negotiator darmy, but to hand the phone and the matter off to a proper hostage negotiator and army. Not to just forking ghost the guy.
  - posterboy 5y ago
    > There is a lot of questions about the manager's conduct before the kidnapping. How the heck did things end up there? Ali's brother runs with the crew and will keep an eye out, something like that I imagine.
JoeyBananas 5y ago
> but this is Ericson we're talking about. They're providing basic infrastructure stuff that anyone seeking to run a state needs. That's a pretty neutral thing to be involved in. I totally disagree that Ericsson could be considered a neutral party as a foreign corporation doing business in Iraq. There is nothing neutral about doing business with a hostile foreign government. That's just not normal in any way. It's not like they had never heard of ISIS and were oblivious to all the Sharia law and violence going on in Iraq.
kodah 5y ago
ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban are not "regimes" and I'd like to caution you away from normalizing terrorist groups as political entities. It has been known to vendors that operate in those areas who terrorists are and what tactics they employ. There is no "neutrality" to these groups. This is all common intel that vendors would have and obviously intel someone in their legal department bothered to read.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  >ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban are not "regimes" and I'd like to caution you away from normalizing terrorist groups as political entities. It has been known to vendors that operate in those areas who terrorists are and what tactics they employ. There is no "neutrality" to these groups Oh piss off with the rhetoric. The Taliban did and does run Afghanistan. For a brief moment Isis was running parts of Iraq and Syria. Both are trying to perform typical state administrative functions (courts and rule of law, taxes, defense, controlling borders, etc). One way just way more violent and way less successful than the other. Neutrality is not a foriegn concept in the middle east. They just have way different concepts of "non-neutrality by association, group membership and history" than most of the west does. Edit: What constitutes a state or government of a state doesn't change because we don't like the specific policy decisions of said state or government or because said government maintains power through a level of violence we consider unacceptable.
  - kodah 5y ago
    This is an odd take. I was in Afghanistan for a total of a year. The Taliban courts that you're talking about executed a woman for having two forced relationships between two rival men, they would extract young men from their homes and make them into forced fighters, they enslaved local populaces for poppy season, just to name a few. Kidnapping and ransom is like a side business to them.
    - logifail 5y ago
      > they would extract young men from their homes and make them into forced fighters Yesterday a senior German politician floated the idea of reintroducing (or, more accurately, "reactivating") compulsory military service. It previously ran from 1956 until 2011.[0] As someone else has already pointed out, pretty much all of this stuff can be viewed as shades of grey. Apart from the facts that war is awful, and that that despite that, certain people are happy to get rich from it. [0] https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/killing-time-for-conscripts-german-military-service-is-battle-against-boredom-a-702665.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/killing-time-fo... see also https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-military-and-political-disaster-the-calamitous-errors-of-germany-s-russia-policy-a-c8b9818e-4bc2-4eb2-ac55-39e5790b29b2 https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-military-and-...
lazide 5y ago
Doing business with someone implicitly supports them. There is no way around that. As an infrastructure provider, it makes it tough because pulling out of a country is going to harm normal folks at least as much, if not more, than whoever is in charge you are refusing to do business with. But that doesn’t mean providing critical infrastructure services to literal terrorists is ok.

causi 5y ago

You could possibly make an argument for some groups considered terror groups for actions against governments, but ISIS throws gay people off building and puts civilians in cages before burning them alive. You must feel for the unaffiliated residents but there's no way I'd set foot there for any reason.

stickfigure 5y ago
Negotiate over zoom. With the video off. Using a VPN.
- toss1 5y ago
  NO You just forking do not negotiate (except for the release of hostages, while ensuring that all other potential hostages are moved out of harm's way). If you do, you can expect nothing but a continuously escalating stream of demands. It is a fool's game - the only winning move is to not play.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    It is like nuclear power plant construction projects, that way.
    - toss1 5y ago
      Yup, at least for standard-type plants, only way to win is not play. I'm hoping that newer designs designed from the start to be inherently safe, and often smaller and more modular, and/or using different elements such as Thorium, will result in designs that can win, but they do seem to have stalled a bit

octopoc 5y ago

Reminds of one time I was interviewing someone and I asked why he had left his previous job. He said they were building a device to block cell phone usage in prisons, and the inmates figured out who was making the hardware and slipped word out to their enforcers outside the prison with the name of the manufacturer. Soon all the employees started getting death threats. So, he quit.

MattGaiser 5y ago
I am always shocked to learn just how porous prisons are and why nothing seems to be done about that.
- AniseAbyss 5y ago
  After watching some documentaries about foreign prisons it often seems that the jail is run by the inmates and that the guards are just there to make sure nobody escapes.
  - vkou 5y ago
    It's not ran by the inmates, the guards just have a small source of side income if they 'bend' the rules.
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      If the inmates employ the guards, they are running it then. Why are inmates allowed currency?
      - lazide 5y ago
        They usually aren’t allowed direct currency. But if they are trading and have a means to reach the outside (guards or visitors), that is rarely a major barrier. If they’re pimping, arranging ‘free visits’ for guards is one way. having a designated money guy outside who handles payments and they just need to authorize so and so to get $10k, that kind of thing, is another. And once you have guards on the payroll, the rules generally have a lot more flexibility.

Rd6n6 5y ago

> Some people have zero self preservation. I wouldn't go deliver something to a terrorist group for any amount of money. Is this victim blaming, or am I misreading it?

Supermancho 5y ago
In some cases, a victim is to blame. There are even awards for this sort of thing.
zdragnar 5y ago
Self preservation is a concept which extends beyond scenarios with a victim and a perpetrator. Don't pet feral animals. Don't run with scissors. Don't wear a fur coat in the desert. Don't drink bottles labelled "poison". So, it should reasonably follow: Don't hand yourself over to violent, hostile people.
55555 5y ago
"She shouldn't have worn such a short skirt" is not quite "He shouldn't have gone unarmed and alone to a meeting with ISIS in ISIS-held territory."
- vmception 5y ago
  relevant exhibit for anyone that is merely avoiding victim blaming because they were told not to, without addressing why victim blaming is often based in mythology: https://today.tamu.edu/2019/11/19/what-were-you-wearing-exhibit-explores-sexual-violence-myth/ https://today.tamu.edu/2019/11/19/what-were-you-wearing-exhi... so, in human interactions, its always the person that does the harmful, nonconsensual and/or illegal action that should have the focus
MattGaiser 5y ago
The victim is not to first to be blamed, but the result is predictable and avoidable.
netcan 5y ago
Yes, but no. You need the ability to distinguish between a bad social cliche like "short skirt, asking for it" and this.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

yelling_cat 5y ago

There aren't many reasonable use cases for sending a fax these days but this is definitely one.