[Thanos]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Thanos Thanos:

After the Iraq debacle, which set this ISIS nonsense off in the first place

The fundamentalism behind ISIS has been brewing for a very long time. Kitchener had to deal with it in Khartoum and the Austrians had to deal with it at the gates of Vienna. It's nothing new or recent.

Correct but the flawed and fantastical thinking that led to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, who successfully kept the lid on the jihadists for decades, and replacing him with that absolute joke of a civilian, was a colossal and thoroughly catastrophic mistake that did nothing but empower the Al Qaeda and then ISIS types. There's no coming back from those disastrous decisions that really deserve to be seen as the worst foreign policy debacle in United States history, worse and more far-ranging than anything that had to do with the Vietnam war.

We also have to reconsider the ongoing hostility with Iran. As someone pointed out earlier the worst of the activities seems to be coming from the Sunni side of Islam. Not that there's much good about the Shi'ite side but they don't seem to be as uniformly insane as the Sunnis are. If that means having some kind of détente with the Iranians and Syrians in order to put the kibosh on Sunni jihadism then so be it. No different than having to temporarily holding our noses and allying with Stalin in order to get rid of the Third Reich.

[Public_Domain]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

If you take up with our avowed enemies then you can stand with them when the time for accounting inevitably comes about. I hope you find comfort in your god Karl Marx when the executioner lets slip the trapdoor of the gallows beneath your feet.

Right, well you have a good one then.

[BartSimpson]

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/bruce- ... cre/print/

$1:

Western Sleepwalkers and the Paris Massacre

Posted By Bruce Thornton On January 12, 2015 @ 12:54 am

----

The jihadist murderers are dead, after killing five more Parisians, but many Westerners, long drugged by bad ideas and received wisdom, continue to sleepwalk through the war against jihadism. This means that after all the brave words and feel-good marches, little significant action will be taken to prevent such atrocities from happening again.

In the absence of clear thinking and recognition of fact, responses to this latest example of Muslim violence reflect ideological fever dreams. “Nothing to do with the Muslim religion,” as French president François Holland said of the attacks, is a perennial favorite. Such apologists invoke shopworn Marxist bromides like colonialism, or postmodern magical thinking like “Orientalism,” the two-bit Foucauldian invention of Egyptian-American literary critic and fabulist Edward Said. This was the tack taken by an American historian of Egypt who told a New York Times reporter that Islam was “’just a veneer’” for [jihadist] anger at the dysfunctional Arab states left behind by colonial powers and the ‘Orientalist’ condescension many Arabs still feel from the West.”

For many apologists, though, it’s just easier to call the jihadists “crazy.” Here’s Vox’s Ezra Klein, long-time purveyor of progressive orthodoxy, opining on the Paris murders. He fingers “the madness of the perpetrators, who did something horrible and evil that almost no human beings anywhere ever do, and the condemnation doesn’t need to be any more complex than saying unprovoked mass slaughter is wrong.”

This repeats Jimmy Carter’s mistake about the Ayatollah Khomeini, whom he called a “crazy man.” But jihadists are not insane, and their violence cannot be dismissed so simply. They are proud Muslims, adherents of a 14-centuries-old faith that conquered its way to one of history’s largest empires, the warriors before whom a now dominant, arrogant West once trembled. Their faith preaches that Allah wills the whole world to be united under the rule of Islam and its illiberal, totalitarian law code. Those who resist and refuse to convert are defying Allah; they are the enemies of Islam, the denizens of the “House of War” who endanger the spiritual wellbeing of the faithful in the “House of Islam.” As such, the infidels are the legitimate objects of Muslim violence, conquest, enslavement, and dominance, an aggression recorded on every page of history. If you want contemporary evidence for the reality of jihad, look around the world today, where Muslim violence is endemic, and accompanied by theological arguments drawn straight from Islamic scripture, theology, and jurisprudence.

So contra Klein, the Paris jihadists didn’t do something “that almost no human beings anywhere ever do.” As we speak, plenty of Muslim human beings every day in Nigeria, Libya, Syria, northern Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen, to name a few venues of jihadist violence, are doing “horrible” things like murder, torture, beheadings, rape, sex-slavery, crucifixion, and all the other atrocities that are also copiously documented in the history of Islamic conquest and occupation. As a brave Egyptian critic of Islam, Ahmed Harqan, asked recently, “What has ISIS done that Muhammad did not do?” Thus it’s no coincidence that of the 7 global conflicts costing at least 1000 lives a year, 6 involve Muslims.

Yet progressive orthodoxy dismisses this evidence as Islamophobic bigotry. Unable to deny the reality of theologically inspired Muslim violence daily filling the international news, they resort to blaming Western historical crimes, or scapegoating Israel. Another tack is to invoke the tu quoque fallacy, charging that Hebraism and Christianity are just as violent as Islam.

This argument took off after 9/11 and has persisted among the jihad deniers. Historian of religion Philip Jenkins claimed, “The Islamic scriptures [about war] in the Quran were actually far less bloody and less violent than those in the Bible.” Rabid anti-Zionist and apologist for terrorists Richard Falk played the moral equivalence card: “The Great Terror War has so far been conducted as a collision of absolutes, a meeting ground of opposed fundamentalists.” Atheist gadfly Richard Dawkins complained about “fundamentalist” Christians who “fuel their tanks at the same holy gas station” as Muslim terrorists. Similarly, a few years ago, Salon ran a headline asking, “What’s the difference between Palin and Muslim fundamentalists? Lipstick.” This specious moral equivalence descended into the absurd after the attacks in Paris, when a guest on MSNBC equated “Islamic extremism,” which murders thousands a week, with preacher Jerry Falwell’s 1988 unsuccessful libel suit against Hustler magazine.

But even right-thinking people slip into this species of apologetics. A writer at Pajamas Media, in an otherwise perceptive analysis, wrote this as well: “Unfortunately, this civilizational friction between the west and Islam has ebbed and flowed across the centuries. It is nothing new. Islam threatened the gates of Vienna and the Crusades reached the Holy Land.” This smacks of the “cycle of violence” trope usually used against Israel. What it ignores is the fact that someone started the violence by serially invading and conquering the lands of others, and enslaving and oppressing their people. The siege of Vienna in 1683 was the last in a long history of Islamic military aggression against Europe and the centuries-long occupation of Western lands; the Crusades were an attempt to liberate from oppressive occupiers a land that had been Christian for centuries before being invaded by the armies of Islam.

Most important, however, is the simple fact that the violence in the Old Testament is, as Raymond Ibrahim points out, descriptive, not prescriptive. It reflects the brutal reality of its times, not a theology binding the faithful for all times. As for the New Testament, the only violent verses apologists can dredge up, as a New York Times article did last week, come from the apocalyptic predictions of Revelations, or these words of Christ from Matthew: “I come not to bring peace, but a sword.” Grade-school catechumens know that this is a metaphor, not a call to jihad, like the Koranic verses instructing Muslims to “slay the idolaters wherever you find them,” or to “fight those who do not believe in Allah,” or to “kill them wherever you find them.”

The whitewashing of Islam’s violent prescriptions serves another fantasy, the idea that there are vast majorities of “moderate” Muslims whose “religion of peace and tolerance” has been “highjacked” by a tiny number of “extremists.” Yet most who make this case just assert it, rather than providing empirical evidence. Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, for example, quoted one of the Danish cartoonists who had to go into hiding after being attacked at his home for drawing one of the infamous Mohammed cartoons. He is hoping for “a reaction from the moderate majority of Muslims against this attack [in Paris].” Noonan then responds, “That majority actually exists, and should step forward.” This call to moderate Muslims was also made in the Wall Street Journal by French public intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy: “Those whose faith is Islam must proclaim very loudly, very often and in great numbers their rejection of this corrupt and abject form of theocratic passion.”

But we’ve been waiting ever since 9/11 for moderate Muslims to “step forward” and “proclaim very loudly” that the jihadists have distorted their faith. A few apologists, brave critics, and duplicitous spin-doctors have spoken out, but the Muslim masses globally have been mostly silent. Of course, many Muslims have no desire to follow Islam’s precepts about waging jihad, and just want to live their lives in peace. But there have not been mass marches protesting those who murder in their name and who allegedly “corrupt,” as Eric Holder said in Paris, Islamic theology. Perhaps last Sunday’s rally of over a million Parisians will turn out to be an exception, assuming it included significant numbers of Muslims. But will there be any follow-through after the emotional high passes? Or will this moment of multicultural brotherhood dissipate, as it did following France’s 1998 World’s Cup soccer victory, when a million Parisians gathered in celebration?

This silence of the Muslim masses about jihadist terror has been the case for over a decade of such attacks. In 2004 after the brutal murder of Theo van Gogh in the streets of Amsterdam––another attack on free speech––only a handful of Dutch Muslims attended a public rally and memorial service. In the intervening years, after similar attacks––like the murder of 7 French Jews and soldiers in 2012, or the 3 Jews massacred in Brussels in 2014––we have not seen the kind of public, unequivocal, unqualified, mass condemnations of the jihadists one would expect if the latter were a fringe whose beliefs are so alien to traditional Islam.

What we have seen are thousands of Muslims celebrating in the streets after 9/11. We have seen riots and murders in response to Westerners exercising the right to free speech. We have seen rallies against Israel in which nakedly genocidal rhetoric is indulged––“Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas” is a favorite–– and temples attacked, as happened during Israel’s war against Hamas last summer. And we have seen polls consistently demonstrate that significant numbers of Muslims, including large majorities in the Middle East, continue to support an illiberal, intolerant shari’a law that codifies the attitudes and beliefs justifying such violence.

Our ancestors for centuries acknowledged the true nature of Islam, a simple fact proven by 1000 years of Muslim aggression. Alexis de Tocqueville, one of our most brilliant political philosophers, wrote in 1838, “Jihad, Holy war, is an obligation for all believers. … The state of war is the natural state with regard to infidels … [T]hese doctrines of which the practical outcome is obvious are found on every page and in almost every word of the Koran … The violent tendencies of the Koran are so striking that I cannot understand how any man with good sense could miss them.”

But that was when our leaders and intellectuals, schooled by history and experience, their minds not blinded by fashionable self-loathing and incoherent cultural relativism, were “men of good sense.” Our leaders today have slipped into delusional dreams, in which people like Tocqueville or Winston Churchill––who in 1897 said, “Civilization is face to face with militant Mohammedanism”––are dismissed as ignorant bigots and racists who lack our superior knowledge and morality. Meanwhile, the bodies of jihadism’s victims continue to pile up, and Iran’s genocidal theocracy closes in on a nuclear weapon. And many in the West continue to sleepwalk through it all.

[Public_Domain]

Bart, it would seem that your frustration isn't that Islamic radicals killed a bunch of left-wingers, but that they beat you to the punch.

[N_Fiddledog]

$1:

Paris attacks boost support for Dutch anti-Islam populist Wilders



(Reuters) - Support for the anti-Islamic Freedom Party of Dutch populist Geert Wilders has jumped to its highest level in more than a year after the Islamist militant attacks in Paris...

If elections were held now, his party would be the single largest in the Netherlands, with 31 seats in the 150-member parliament, more than twice as many as it won in the last elections, according to a Sunday poll...

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/01/1 ... AB20150111

[Public_Domain]

The Paris crowd when "Imagine" by John Lennon plays:

[N_Fiddledog]

Yeah, well...you know the French. They thought Jerry Lewis was funny. They voted for a Communist last election. How'd that one work out for you, French Fries?

There's hope for them though. They also sang The Marsellaise, and Marine Le Pen is rising in the polls, just like Wilders in the Netherlands.

Still...here's another "imagine' for you. Imagine they still refuse to get it until it's too late and we have to go over there and save their Francais derrieres...AGAIN.

Hint...you already 'gave peace a chance' France. Didn't work. Time to clean out the no-go zones.

[ShepherdsDog]

Thanos Thanos:

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Thanos Thanos:

After the Iraq debacle, which set this ISIS nonsense off in the first place

The fundamentalism behind ISIS has been brewing for a very long time. Kitchener had to deal with it in Khartoum and the Austrians had to deal with it at the gates of Vienna. It's nothing new or recent.

Correct but the flawed and fantastical thinking that led to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, who successfully kept the lid on the jihadists for decades, and replacing him with that absolute joke of a civilian, was a colossal and thoroughly catastrophic mistake that did nothing but empower the Al Qaeda and then ISIS types. There's no coming back from those disastrous decisions that really deserve to be seen as the worst foreign policy debacle in United States history, worse and more far-ranging than anything that had to do with the Vietnam war.

We also have to reconsider the ongoing hostility with Iran. As someone pointed out earlier the worst of the activities seems to be coming from the Sunni side of Islam. Not that there's much good about the Shi'ite side but they don't seem to be as uniformly insane as the Sunnis are. If that means having some kind of détente with the Iranians and Syrians in order to put the kibosh on Sunni jihadism then so be it. No different than having to temporarily holding our noses and allying with Stalin in order to get rid of the Third Reich.

basically the people in that part of the world are left with choosing who will do the least damage to them, not who will be the best for them. Hussein, Kudaffy, Mubarak and Assad are all the lesser of all potential evils. Under their rule, there was at least a form of stability and protection of minority rights. Women could go to school, take part in governing and hold about any job, schools, hospitals and modern infrastructure were built and there was a growing and prosperous middle class. The religious nutbars were crushed and contained. We(the West fucked up royally and we're going to pay the price until secular strongmen arise in the ME and North Africa.

[BartSimpson]

Public_Domain Public_Domain:

Bart, it would seem that your frustration isn't that Islamic radicals killed a bunch of left-wingers, but that they beat you to the punch.

What an idiot you are to think that I'd want to see anyone murdered over some cartoons.

You're doubly an idiot because why would I celebrate the deaths of people who pissed off the goat-humpers more than they bother me?

And you're three times an idiot because since last week I am now a subscriber to Charlie Hebdo because my subscription is a piece of pig shit right in the eye of islam!

http://www.amazon.com/Charlie-Hebdo/dp/B00007LMFU/

[Public_Domain]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

What an idiot you are to think that I'd want to see anyone murdered over some cartoons.

It's more solid than most of the reasons you tend to come up with for the death of your compatriots.

$1:

You're doubly an idiot because why would I celebrate the deaths of people who pissed off the goat-humpers more than they bother me?

And you're three times an idiot because since last week I am now a subscriber to Charlie Hebdo because my subscription is a piece of pig shit right in the eye of islam!

http://www.amazon.com/Charlie-Hebdo/dp/B00007LMFU/

Surely you are aware that Charlie Hebdo spends far more time lampooning the likes of you than they bother with Islam. They attack religion, so I ask, if you'd like to subscribe to atheistic anarcho-communist stuff, would you like me to send you a list?

[N_Fiddledog]

$1:

Left Wing Values Are Hindering Our Response to Islamic Extremism


Following recent events in Paris, huge crowds joined a rally in the French capital to…do what exactly? To pledge their support for free speech? To show solidarity with the Jewish people? Or simply to express their horror at such depravity? Are they calling for change, beyond an end to the killing? If so, how many of their cosy assumptions are they willing to sacrifice to put things right?

The murdered journalists and illustrators of Charlie Hebdo were not conventional victims, in the sense of being members of a designated identity group. Nor were they friends of the modern Left, in that they scorned liberal poseurs with a penchant for censorship. They could be rude and puerile, but they understood that the right to free speech trumps the ‘right’ not to be offended.

Freedom is a tricky concept for a people accustomed to thinking of it as a bully’s charter and trading it for the empty promise of security. In an age of clicktivism and Big Government, doing the right thing is not a question of exercising your autonomy; it’s about big, dumb public gestures that we can applaud or decry to register our moral worth.

In such a climate, freedom doesn’t count for much, because it’s irrelevant to conspicuous acts of compassion that everyone can get behind. Nowadays, there’s little kudos to be won from defending the right to disparage others, but there’s plenty to be had from calling for the disparagers to be silenced. The good guys are no longer those who defend your right to speak your mind, but those who want to stop you calling a spade a spade – even if it’s being used to bash your head in.

For the time being, the hashtag activists are behind the champions of free speech, but if you’re looking for long-term commitment, don’t hold your breath. After all, these are many of the same bozos who were tweeting their support for Gaza a few months back, so it’s hard to take their sudden concern for the Jews and liberty-lovers of Paris too seriously. As soon as they are asked to choose between freedom and their cherished worldview, they’ll revert to playing George to the racist mob’s dragon.

Contrary to what they may think, freedom is not a racket that lets the strong exploit the weak; it’s what enables people to learn the practices instrumental to a tolerable way of life. Without being at liberty to determine what works and what doesn’t, to thrash out ideas and discover new ways of doing things, we would be at the mercy of zealots. Which is increasingly the case today...

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/01 ... extremism/

[Thanos]

Public_Domain Public_Domain:

Surely you are aware that Charlie Hebdo spends far more time lampooning the likes of you than they bother with Islam. They attack religion, so I ask, if you'd like to subscribe to atheistic anarcho-communist stuff, would you like me to send you a list?

Christians don't like the Hebdo stuff but they almost universally are non-violent when they're targeted by that kind of satire. As awful as they are even Westboro Baptist doesn't engage in violence against their cultural enemies. Even Anders Breivik did his atrocity more in the name of preserving European secular heritage and culture far more than for the sake of some renewed and violent Christianity. Tim McVeigh's violence, and the rest of the patriot/militia/sovereign citizen clowns, happens because they're wrapped up in insane big government conspiracies; what they do has a tinge of some really badly interpreted white supremacist Christianity to it but, as opposed to Islam, their violence is almost entirely political in nature. Same with the Jews who, except when being attacked by Muslims, are uniformly non-violent towards practically everyone else on the planet. No one else but the Muslims are out there killing specifically because 'god wants us to'.

As Bill Maher says all religion is fucked up, it's just that right now Islam is by-and-large a million times more fucked up than the rest of them put together. Like Sam Harris hinted at, it's really kind of dumb to be worrying about the fucking idiot Christian who blew up the abortion clinic back in 1984 when Muslims are flying jetliners into office towers and setting schoolgirls on fire.

[BartSimpson]

Public_Domain Public_Domain:

Surely you are aware that Charlie Hebdo spends far more time lampooning the likes of you than they bother with Islam.

Of course I am. Yet you propose that I would give $184 to people I'd just as soon see dead.

You don't get it, do you?

If you were to burn a Bible right in front of me the only thing I'd likely do is ask you to keep the fire contained so it doesn't get out of control.

I can always get another Bible. (Edit: For that matter I have one of those New Agey feminist revisionist Bibles I'd be happy to send to you if only you promise to burn it!)

Try that with a moslem and their little book of horrors and the result, I guarantee you, will be somewhat different.

(The leftist hypocrisy here is that you can burn a Bible in Canada and no one will care. Burn the ravings of the moonbat from Medina and it's a HATE CRIME!!! Wah, wah.)

Charlie can mock me and Christianity all they want. It's not like we haven't heard it all by now.

But the fact that they get under the skin of the woglodytes warms the very cockles of my heart.

That's worth the price of brunch at the Mark Hopkins.

[Thanos]

The videos on YouTube of bros shooting and burning Korans are all uniformly hilarious. I'd post one here but I don't want to get banned or cause some hypersensitive Muslim to track down and shoot Trevor or something.

[BartSimpson]

Thanos Thanos:

The videos on YouTube of bros shooting and burning Korans are all uniformly hilarious. I'd post one here but I don't want to get banned or cause some hypersensitive Muslim to track down and shoot Trevor or something.

You can always post the link.