What are we to make of this lot?
A comically amateurish anti-Islam propaganda film, made by some bloke in America who claimed to be Jewish and have financial backing from the Jewish business community, but who in fact turned out to be a Coptic Christian immigrant from Egypt, on parole following a string of fraud and drug convictions. I mean, why didn’t he just title his film How To Piss Off The Adherents Of Every Abrahamic Religion In One Fell Swoop?
This hasn’t stopped the usual suspects from waving their righteous banners and generally holding up traffic. In Sydney yesterday, violent clashes between Islamic protesters and Riot Squad police resulted in a number of arrests and six policemen being injured. Today, there is a heavy police guard outside the U.S. consulate in Sydney—the same place where, eleven years ago almost to the day, I placed my condolence card on the small mountain of cards and flowers in the foyer, following yet more violence by murderous dickheads claiming to be doing the work of Allah.
All this follows the far more serious events in North Africa, where even more violent extremists have killed the U.S. ambassador to Tripoli. And am I the only one to have noticed that, during this lead-up to the American presidential election, the usual “Death to America” placards are absent from the rampaging mobs? No burning effigies of Obama? Beneath the surface of this seemingly blind and spontaneous hatred, there is clearly a coldly calculated agenda at work.
Charming.
LibertyGibbert’s series on religion will get around to Islam eventually. It should be noted that many moderate Muslims have shown up in the media denouncing the violence. That is all very well and good, but as these folks appear have no control at all over the nut cases, their words are more than a bit empty. Several of the placards being waved yesterday said it plainly: We Love Osama.
I very much hope they get their opportunity to meet him again soon.
Be Responsible - Be Free! 
It was the Libyan ambassador they tortured and sodomized before they lynched him, there is no such thing as moderate Islam the structure and strictures of the religion do not permit a warm fluffy Islam. Sorry Ozboy we are in a clash of civilizations but we first have to get rid of the traitors in our midst first. War is coming and it’s going to be brutal and nasty.
Thanks for that K – Libyan ambassador Chris Stevens it was, duly amended. I got crossed wires thinking about the bloke that made that film.
As for moderate Islam, sorry mate but you’ve got it wrong. I’ve met far too many of them in my travels, worked with them and befriended them. That’s not to say you’re wrong about the clash of civilizations, because that is precisely what we are in today, and the clash has nothing to do with religion. It’s about an ideology regarding the nature of man – a free agent, versus a tool of the State. Those who espouse the latter hide behind religion as and when it suits them, like in Libya and Egypt today – Oz
You confuse people being people rather than people being nutters because their good book whatever it is says so Ozboy. Most muslims 90% probably sort of pay lip service to it’s message because they have families jobs etc, however 10% are total nutters and with a global population of 1.5 billion muslims that’s 150 million nutters on a good day they can stir about 40% of the nice ones to do their bidding. That’s 750 million who hate us. I like my rights to be free to say what I will so fuck em. It really is them or us it has come down to that again.
You are seriously wrong about moderation, muslims are only moderate while they are in the minority in a country once in charge moderation goes out the Window, Egypt and Libya were once majority Christian ask yourself what happened. What happened to the Zoarastrians in Iran again once the major faith. All are now persecuted. You are fooling yourself.
I was raised in the Irish Catholic tradition. Yet I would strongly object to anyone linking me to the IRA atrocities of the 1970s and 80s.
Same goes for most Muzzies I know. And what’s more, I’m not just talking about people born into Muslim families and who don’t take their faith too seriously. I’m talking about people who are devout and practice their faith assiduously. They are sickened by the violence of the nutters.
Once again, it’s not about one faith versus another. You yourself have – quite rightly – decried that particular red herring on this blog. It’s about freedom versus enslavement. And by that yardstick we should evaluate all faiths, or interpretations thereof – Oz
Ozboy the entire creed of Islam is false a desert bandit on desert mushrooms guilty of multiple crimes is a guide to how you should live life? I’m sorry it’s gotten past the we all should hold each others plonkers and sing kumbaya stage. If they are such nice these people you know they should reject Islam.
And Christianity. And Judaism. And Hinduism, Confucianism, Shinto, Baha’i, Raelianism, Scientology…
Yes, on reflection. They should – Oz
I see the limbering up has begun already 😉
I deliberately didn’t put a link in my comment on the last post, there are plenty of reasoned critiques of the religion of peace, out there, and they’re easy enough to find.
for films which were used as the pretext for a mob of statist (or even state employed) thugs kicking crap out of an ambassador, I’d certainly recommend Edvins Snore’s soviet story http://www.sovietstory.com/
Snore (pronounced snorie) is a Latvian, and, after the film was released, the Latvian ambassador to Moscow had the crap kicked out of him by an bunch of presumably state employed thugs. So far the ambassador’s plane hasn’t crashed, and Snore accepts that he probably won’t live for very long, or die a natural death (although under hyperactive statism, democide is often described as “natural causes”).
regarding the poor effort which the present fuss is supposedly over; the statists in coloured shirts have been deployed to give the film’s maker a knock in the wee small hours, with the lamestream news media present, of course.
Instapundit has a discussion of the incentives involved, versus the now none existent first ammendment to the US constitution. http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/150781/ (h/t Firehand).
cont:
I agree with Oz, this is only incidentally about religion, the much wider question is one of taking personal responsibility for our actions, and the guises under which abandonment of self control is supposedly excused.
In my own opinion, it never is excusable.
I hadn’t realized just how “eighties” that song and videa was, what’s with the plastic film on the studio floor, and did the late Laura like girls too?
oh well.
“you take my self control”
ok in the words of a song, but, in real life, it indicates a big problem with interpersonal boundaries. I’m the only one who can control whether or not I “loose it”.
I’m sure there’s a lot of mileage in teasing out the “human action” aspects of using “chosen means” (riot and murder) to achieve “ends”, which in this case appears to be extending the obsessive compulsive prescriptions found in a book, over people who don’t accept otherwise accept it. Another “end” would appear to be revenge against the supposed collective “big satan” .
I’ve been working late the past few nights, and have flicked around some of the blogs when I’ve got home, to see what angles people have viewed the events from.
there was an interesting parody posted on the anti jihad blog “gates of vienna” (I’ll not link to it) describing riots and car-b-cues by Catholics in Italy after a film portraying a woman using a cross to play with herself was shown.
The point being made by the parody, was that the idea of Roman Catholics “loosing their self control” over a “blasphemy” appears totally ludicrous to us, but a bunch of muzzies or for that matter, lefties, rioting over a simillar “provocation” (and it is only the “provocee” who gets to decide what “provocation” might consist of), doesn’t.
Why?
I’ll cut this short as I’ve got an invite for sunday lunch.
I think the difference is the emphasis on self determination and individual responsibility, coupled with the open ended requirement in christianity for self improvement
versus
Collectivism, the idea of pre-determination and hence learned helplessness, the ideas of evils inflicted upon us, that our own failings are down to others, the ideas of prescriptive obsessive rules coercively applied, which leave no room for personal choice and responsibility for those choices.
It applies both to some (?most) forms of ‘slam and to the lefties too. I’ll try to develop some of the ideas in later comments.
I’m not alone in spotting the collectivist simillarities between the religion of peace and hyperactive statism. In the mid 90s Chris Harman wrote a book titled “prophet and Proletariat”, and about that time, lefty think tanks became all warm and fluffy towards the religion of peace.
according to some interpretations (including some by some more outspoken and less libertarian Lutonians than me; the EDL, actually, their piece was quite well thought through, even if it does appear quite conspiracy theory like) the lefties saw in rioting muzzies, the violent passion and zeal that their own proletarians lacked; the muzzies could be the vanguard of the proletariate, history’s “midwife” of progress, and somehow the lefties would end up on top, doing the dictating
I’ve seen that tried before – in the Iranian revolution, and we know how that worked out:
same chaos of centrally planned statist incalculability, same hyper active prescriptive police state, same grinding poverty – but with mullahs rather than komrades at the head
Oz: Re K’s comment about what to reject. He’s right. I don’t share your moral equivalence. And Confucianism?
Amanda , that caught my eye too.
On the one hand , superstitious theism; and on the other, an atheistic philososphy or code of conduct. There is a world of difference between them , isn’t there?
Theism has no difficulty theorising (?) the legitimacy of its violence ; I think a Baha’i would have to transgress in order to do the same.
But then theism has also given us Manifest Destiny?
The Quakers too, if they hold to their principals, would keep\ to the non aggression principal, however too many of them are currently all to keen to try to use statist violence.
Their central principal “that of G-d in every man”, is also potentially very dangerous, as it can easily pervert to pantheism (every man is a god), and from there, Antimonian heresy (I am god, therefore I cannot sin, therefore I will demonstrate my freedom from sin by committing the most hideous of sins with impunity) is not far away.
Such was the path of the various “Diggers” and “Ranters” religious communist cults in the 16th century, Rothbard describes them better than I can : http://mises.org/daily/5986/Early-Christian-Communism
same with the millennial communism, http://mises.org/daily/6046/Millennial-Communism
In the second piece, Rothbard describes the danger of bringing the day of judgement to Earth.
Does anyone else find it strange that worshippers of a supposedly omnipresent omniscient and omnipotent deity
should get so upset and so violent towards anyone “offending” that deity
Surely if it is all knowing and all powerful, it is well able to do its own work and defend itself? and surely it cannot be that thin skinned?
Why, if it is omniscient, did it change its mind so frequently in the book?
why did it take such an interest in its messenger’s (who was supposedly born with a deformed dick) bed partners?
but then after all of the mind changing, it supposedly left the book as its final word to man*? (which is why the other muzzies don’t like the B’hais claiming to be a new form of muzzie)
___________________________________________________________________-
* the word to women, is not about fine wines and lots of virgins, but promises of “dates and figs”, sorry if you’re not into fruit girls, but that’s all that was on offer.
It’s an arresting thought that the world is divided into those who reject every single religion, and those who reject every single religion except one. So to suggest the rejection of religion, is merely to state the reality that exists everywhere, and has always existed.
That’s if you treat a religious faith seriously and in its entirety, and not as some kind of smorgasbord where you can pick and choose the bits you like, and leave behind the rest. Viewed this way, the “moderate Muslims” I referred to above aren’t really Muslims at all. They have embraced the ethics that underpin all the Abrahamic religions, and our present-day system of laws. These ethics pre-date both Christianity and Islam, as a brief look at Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica will demonstrate.
And yet, I have had many Muslims tell me – Indonesians mostly, but also Malaysians, Turks and Pakistanis – how their faith has made them better people, more compassionate, self-disciplined and so on. Pretty much what you would likely hear from a committed Christian, Jew or Hindu. And it was the Islamic lands, during the centuries of the Dark Ages, that bore the torch of human enlightenment and learning, and gave the world some of the finest expressions of art, architecture, mathematics and science it has ever known. Moral equivalence? You betcha.
Just about anywhere you look in the world, there is strife between religious moderates and extremists. This should be a really big hint that it isn’t about the strictures of any one religion at all. Furthermore, I suspect this is the reason why so many of the really vicious wars of the last millenium haven’t been between Religion 1 and Religion 2 – who regard each other as heathen who don’t know any better – but rather, between Religion 1(a) and Religion 1(b) – who regard one another as apostates, whom God/Yaweh/Allah/Krishna/Cthulu commands them to slay without mercy.
Libertarianism, of course is fine with all religions, and upholds freedom of worship. So long as you don’t use religion as an excuse to trample over the liberty of anyone else. The Founding Fathers of the United States got it right, and used their Constitution to quarantine the State from any religious influence. Many of them held private religious views that the mainstream church would have considered heretical – Thomas Jefferson literally cut and pasted his own Bible, leaving out all the supernatural bits. A smorgasbord indeed! Benjamin Franklin, born of Puritan parents, classified himself as a deist, and believed organized religion was necessary to keep the populace moral (but not himself, of course – he seldom attended church). I particularly like this quote of his, in a letter he wrote in 1790:
Amen to that.
Ozboy…..”And it was the Islamic lands, during the centuries of the Dark Ages, that bore the torch of human enlightenment and learning, and gave the world some of the finest expressions of art, architecture, mathematics and science it has ever known. ”
No it the torch of enlightenment was borne by Christians and Jews living in Islamic lands and was kept aflame in the Byzantine empire. Muslims have been noted for their mono maniacal focus on the fact they only need the one book for everything and everything else is toilet paper. Only in a few places for brief periods have you found all three religions being tolerant and learning flourishing either under a Caliph or King but it never lasted.
As for knowledge being transferred to the West it was mainly through Byzantium and as the place looked doomed a lot of scholars fled to Italy and jump started the renaissance.
I’m not big on the history of Byzantium, but my understanding is that many of the early Caliphs drew scholars from across the known world, including Europe. They insisted on Arabic as the language of court, but were otherwise tolerant of Christian and Jewish scholars in their midst. The first sea navigation from Africa to India was achieved in 1498 by Vasco da Gama with the aid of Arab navigator Ahmad ibn Mājid, who wrote an encyclopædia of navigation that was used for generations, as one example I’m aware of – Oz
I am much less tolerant of religious belief systems than Oxboy. Living and working amongst people who are predominately muslim or hindu I can confirm that most are impervious to the theological extremes and are no more inclined to civic violence and social unrest than the average devout methodist.
But all religions, {yes fb even confuscianism!} are presenting as sources of absolute certain answers to problems of personal and social morality and behaviour. They are predicated on submission to {divine} authority, and emphasise the importance of adhering to tradition. Often to the point of opposing any change even to changing circumstances. Thats the problem with confuscian philosophy, it erects stability as a greater social value than justice, equality or progress.
All these belief systems are effective at stabilising social structures, but usually at the expense of individual choice and diversity. All favour the authoritarian mindset, which for most followers is deference to tradition and legitimate religious authority. Any attack on the legitimacy of that Authority is inevitably seen as a gross and very serious attack on the basic ethical principles by which those believers live. It is not that they are defending the honour of their deity when they react violently to perceived blasphemy. They are reacting to a very personal attack on the legitimacy for their moral beliefs.
There is a significant proportion of the population that easily and happily adopt the authoritarian mindset as followers. Altemeyer has done a lot of work on this and has a free little book about research into the sort of personality who becomes a fanatical follower within any authoritarian system. Worth a read if you are interested in what sort of personality becomes a fundamentalist or dogmatist.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
Oz,
I think at least one caliph was won over by aristotelian logic, but his successors favoured the back to basics lobby.
Rather than preserving classical philosophy logic and reasoning, I think a better description would be that they played with it, rejected it for political reasons, but didn’t get round to burning it all.
they’re working on that in Timbuktu as I write.
The places where arts and philosophy took place were on the fringes of the caliphate, where Moslems were in a decided minority, places Like Spain, and even those places, the practitioners almost invariably ended up in serious trouble and had to apologise and or recant.
We can argue about the reasons why, but the moslem bits of the world, either failled to develop, or actually went backwards for around 800 years.
Even now, can you name a familiar brand or company or innovation from a Moslem country? Emirates airline perhaps, with its Irish chief exec, and Boeing and Airbus planes
Do you hear of bright scholars going to study at a uni in a moslem country?
apart from dysfunctional petro economies, that is it, whether because of their religion or inspite of it, Countries with a Moslem majority are almost all backward slums.
How many hundred million readers of arabic are there?
Spain and Italy (populations c55M and 60M respectively) each translate more books into their languages each year than have been translated into arabic in the last 800 years.
many of those points were made in a speech to moslem political leaders by the prime minister of Malaysia in December 2005
My Copies of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s books are out on loan, so I can’t cross check
Her figures from the Netherlands showed moslems having the highest per capita rates of arrest, incarceration, welfare dependency and unemployment, they had the highest levels of school drop out, the lowest representation in higher education.
It didn’t matter what country they were from, the classification “moslem” under competed any other classification of religion, race or nation of origin.
Ayaan goes on at length (she has a Fatwa on her, the letter setting it out was pinned to Theo van Gogh’s freshly murdered body – with a knife) about her experiences of moslems she had dealt with, having unrealistically high expectations of entitlement, a sense of superiority because they were moslems, and a great sense of grievance that they were not being asked (without any qualifications or need to actually work) to do the prestigious jobs.
This was seen as being due to unreasonable prejudice and victimization – not due to laziness and lack of ability, and it bred huge resentment.
Oz,
I think that you are over estimating the number of Christians, and under representing the number of Deists amongst the Founding Fathers of America.
In Britain (and the Commonwealth) and America, Christianity had pretty much died out, until the post millennialist protestant revival on the second half of the 19th century (the Methodists were a major force within that movement).
Suddenly from the Deist idea of God being the “watchmaker” who created the universe and natural law, and left us to figure things out, we had a bunch of moral busybodies, trying to make the world sin free, so jesus could come back and reward them – and they saw the state as “God’s tool of redemption”
Once they’d captured the political parties and state power, the religion thing seemed to fade, they were just raging statists.
We can thank them for alcohol prohibition, drugs prohibition, statist indoctrination camps (schools), and such little joys as the fashion for circumcision (in the hope of stopping teenagers from committing the sin of Onan).
Fortunately, Rome remained apart from that movement. Unfortunately, the commies have now taken over several Roman orders – in the name of “liberation theology”
Doncha just hate coercion?
On the subject of Methodists.
It is often said that the British Labour Party owes more to Methodism than to Marxism.
I think the closest thing to a “methodist country” is Fiji, it has the highest per capita number of Methodists.
Coupled with a racially based national identity (only ethnic “Fijians” (comprising both Melanesian and Polynesian islanders) can refer to themselves as “Fijian” those of other origins can’t) , communism of land, and rule by decree, the place is a basket case.
I think Kiwi land is now the preferred destination for bright ambitious “Big Fellas” as well as the Fiji citizens of “other” origins.
“I think Kiwi land is now the preferred destination for bright ambitious “Big Fellas” as well as the Fiji citizens of “other” origins.”
FB can confirm that live goat sales are booming.
Izen, you’re getting to the guts of it here:-
” stability as a greater social value than justice, equality or progress.”
This might be the only legitimate and tolerable raison d’être of all religion, whether they require an element of faith(superstitious belief) or not; deference to authority or not; adherence to tradition or not.
We might agree that some degree of social stability has been a useful survival strategy so far; it is of course possible that in the near future, a total withdrawal by the individual from a chaotic society is a useful survival stategy also for the times.
Farmer braun might argue that he has always been free to pursue his own version of the Tao : possibly best described as Confusionism 🙂
And in spite of his outrageously heretical views on the central tenets of Roman Catholicism, FB has yet to be excommunicated.
Of course this freedom comes at a price which is not unreasonable; viz. that one does not promote various heresies publicly, thus threatening the stability of the status quo, with the exception that one may currently express one’s private views on certain radical libertarian blogs.
In general, shit-stirring is frowned upon. But we can all enjoy a subversive chuckle.
I’m pretty sure the right to shit-stir is buried in our Constitutions somewhere – Oz
Throwing over the money lenders tables in the temple courtyard is probably no a good strategy for getting to enjoy quality time with the grand kids,
and I’m singularly ill equipped in both the charisma and psycopath departments, to do what a certain kiddy fiddler did, putting the status quo to the sword.
Whether I genuinely would reject coercing others, if I found myself in a position to do it, or whether my disliking of coercion is a sour grapes rationalization to save my ego from the hurt of realizing I’ll never be in the position to boss others around, and they wouldn’t listen to me anyway, who knows?
I am attracted by the strategies of the Agorists
and, despite “constitutionalists” being min-archists (mini statists) and hence implicitly approving of “some” statist violence, I really enjoyed reading the parts of this book, which covered events within my lifetime http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=327258
FB,
Live!
Would they be for the kitchen, or the bedroom?
I’m guessing that it doesn’t do to ask too many questions of a paying customer.
I’ve got to say, old ewe prices used to spike for Ramadan, Now Moslem entrepreneurs have bought farms to keep the critters on ready for the peak times, and the price of old ewes is now buoyant all year around.
On the subject of Moderate Moslems,
One of the regular commenters over on the Mises dailies, is married to a Moslem girl. He takes his non aggression principal and his libertarianism very, very seriously.
I haven’t asked about religious observance, but clearly, her view of her faith must have been compatible with her marrying outside of the faith, and her views must have been compatible with the non aggression principal too.
They’re both still alive, so her family must have been ok with it too.
The many dangers of forgetting about individuals and trying to think in fallacious aggregates.
As I understand it, Koranic law permits a Muslim woman to marry a Christian – but not a Jew (update – Gargle says otherwise). In fact, a geology classmate of mine settled in Indonesia and married a local girl. She ended up leaving him… go figure – Oz
The Koran is reckoned to be of less importance in terms of doctrine than the sunna (law) and the hadith (plural; they are witness accounts of the man’s life and deeds), although different sects disagree on which hadith are accepted and which are not.
you also need to be careful with the book. later dated chapters abrogate earlier ones – but in the traditional arrangement of the book, the chapters are arranged according to length, not date, so you might skim into it, and find the softer fluffier chapters from his time in Mecca, rather than the sword, fire and no forgivness later ones, from an embittered old dictator in Medina.
What your link shows is an example of taqiya
which roughly means, telling the kaffirs (heathens) what they want to hear, rather than the truth, and it is a practice encouraged in the book
Taqiya is a thorny subject, anyone can tell you half truths or mislead, if they see it as an acceptable means to an end, it certainly isn’t a moslem monopoly
and even if encouraged to misleed, by sura saying that it is lawful or even desirable, there is the reality, that the people you are dealing with, will very quickly distrust you if the inconsistencies of lying come to light;
lying can very quickly become totally counter productive.
Oz, did you see the news that a group in Iran has renewed the fatwa on Rushdie?
seems they’re looking to distract attention from the upcoming war with Israel, and the expected mining of the straits of Hormuz. apparently there are big naval build-ups going on just outside the Persian Gulf.
get your oil tanks topped up.
I’m pretty sure the right to shit-stir is buried in our Constitutions somewhere – Oz
which is as reliable a safeguard of shit stirring as constitutions are a safeguard against an ever expanding leviathan
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-theory-and-practice-of-islamic-rage.html
Vive la resistance.
Perhaps I ought to point out at this juncture that LibertyGibbert, whose commentary derives almost exclusively from the Anglosphere, has a small but persistent readership throughout the Muslim world; the regulars mostly from south-east Asia, but also the subcontinent, the Middle East and North Africa. From my statistics page:
I wonder what they are making of this discussion? I suspect there may be somewhat more bemusement than outrage.
Phew, no readers showing up in Fiji, so hopefully I’ve avoided a methodist Fatwa.
Only a handful of hits from Fiji, no regulars. So breathe easy. For now – Oz 😆
Kitler,
excellent video.
It really makes the interpersonal boundaries point clearly, with the battered wife illustration:
She mustn’t say something that violent hubby might get upset at, as “she’d be making him hurt her”
A post by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/09/16/ayaan-hirsi-ali-on-the-islamists-final-stand.html
Don’t trust anyone who won’t eat a bacon butty.
Sorry, forgot to h/t Firehand for the link to Ayaan’s post
“Will they never cease looking for ever more ingenious ways of apologizing for free speech?” Ayaan.
It is clear that Islam and democracy with it’s attendant free speech are incompatible so you can have one but not the other. So the muslims in the west have a choice democracy or sod off back to the Islamic country of their choice.
90% would pick democracy I’d say.
But I’ve been thinking a bit more about your comments regarding moderate Islam. Blind Freddy can see that many aspects of Sharia law are absolutely incompatible with personal liberty. One criticism often levelled at Islam is that it has had no “reformation”, leaving indistinguishable the elements of Islamic faith and cultural practices that date back to the seventh century A.D., and which should have been left there. How else can you explain a society that condones “honour killings”, can sentence women to be raped and thieves to be mutilated, and embraces the routine mutilation of young girls? I daresay those who I have been referring to as moderates would love to find a way to ditch all of that, and leave prayer, spirituality and a moral code as the core of their faith. But as I said at the top, and it’s my own main criticism of Islam, that the moderates have no control over the fundamentalists. They have to find a way to do so, if Islam is to have any future in the third millenium – Oz
“Will of a majority” does not morally justify anything
if it did, you would have to respect such exercises of “will of a majority” as gang rapes and lynchings.
Islam fits into the general category of overly prescriptive and hence extremely violently coercive political systems, right allong with the various socialisms.
Far better allow people to make their own decisions about which foot to set off to go to the bog with, and which foot to set off to leave the bog.
Talk about obsessive compulsive, not even dear leader went quite that far
here’s the picture book version of floppy freddy hayek’s road to serfdom
http://mises.org/books/TRTS/
” But as I said at the top, and it’s my own main criticism of Islam, that the moderates have no control over the fundamentalists. They have to find a way to do so, if Islam is to have any future in the third millenium – Oz”
Ditto, libertarians finding ways of freeing ourselves from the coercive clutches of the statists
it’s a coercion V/s liberty thing
Post I put on James’s just now (or tried to: the devotees of free speech there have held it back for ‘moderation’):
Folks: About Obama. According to an agency that keeps track of these things, Obama has attended the daily morning security briefing in the White House for less than half the time. That is, on its face, disgraceful and inexcusable.
Note also, however, that George W. Bush attended his security morning briefings every day, with the exception of four missed days, in his entire time as president (that is TWO TERMS, folks). George Bush knew the value of learning about what is happening in the world, and attending to America’s security.
Well guess what? A little-reported story is that the Libyan Ruling Council got wind of the Salafi planned attack and informed the White House, THREE days before it happened. That’s right, three days before. And what did Obama do? What did H. Clinton do? That’s right: NOTHING. And four innocent good Americans died horribly and unspeakably as a result.
Can you imagine what the press would be doing, what people would say, if a Republican president had allowed this to happen on his watch? After having been tipped off? Yes, you know what would happen.
And yet… for our Celebrity President… crickets….
The victims in Libya deserve justice. They deserved life. They deserved, while serving on the front lines of civilization, our government’s support. And they did not get it.
This is beyond any ‘gaffe’ (so-called) that Romney could ever make.
He could make a thousand ‘gaffes’, as far as I am concerned, and he would still be fitter for the presidency than the man of dubious loyalty who sits there now.
And here is my other post, to follow it up. Note that my avatar till the election at least will be the face of Mitt Romney. I am no panty-waisted lily-livered half-hearted namby-pamby equivocator. I believe that the Republicans are the Last Best Hope for this world, the whole of it, through and through; I believe that the conservative classical liberal vision is the authentic Enlightenment view of human life and therefore the most accurate and the most conducive to human happiness; and I believe that our enemies want not to negotiate but to eliminate us. For all this I have evidence sufficient to convince me. I am a Warrior for Liberty. And if need be, as I swore when I became an American citizen in a private ceremony in Chicago (conducted by the top official there who himself was the descendant of English immigrants from the 17th century): I would bear arms (though it would destroy my every happiness) in defence of my country. And my country, ultimately, is Freedom.
————-
Swanky Yanky
8 minutes ago
I’d just like to say to my fellow countrymen:
Do you know how lucky we would be to have a caring, knowledgable, freedom-friendly man such as Romney to be our president?
I would love him no matter what the other contender.
But when I see Obama — the first affirmative-action president, a ‘community organizer’ read Chicago don’t-look-closely don’t-ask-questions hustler, a political shyster if ever there was one, with deeply unsavoury friends* — who sent back the bust of Winston Churchill to England in a fit of irrational and unfounded disgust — who does not understand in any way the very basis of our Constitution and our country — who wants America, i.e. innocent Americans, at home and abroad, to suffer a humiliating ‘bloody nose’ (actually it’s much worse than that: read the news):
I have to ask:
Why would anyone is his or her right mind vote for the current president?
*Weather Underground leaders, for example
Ozboy it should be noted that Cat Stevens aka Yusuf Islam when he converted ended up following a very strict type of Islam it was only decades later that when talking to other Muslims he found out that singing wasn’t banned by Islam. The scariest bunch in Islam currently are the Wahabists as they follow an ultra conservative of Islam.
I see gay marriage has been rejected by the Oz parliament.
Doesn’t mean too much at this stage, especially since the states are currently going it alone, and are effectively sending the whole thing to the unelected High Court; both sides are being simultaneously pragmatic and cynical; that is, they are both chasing the “gay vote”, which tends to lean left – but not as far as some people think. So they don’t want to create the impression they are implacably opposed. Abbott himself, as a conservative Catholic, has at least nailed his own colours to the mast – something Gillard was extremely reluctant to do. But the wiggle room is that his parliamentary party has several prominent voices pushing for a conscience vote. Labor are more evenly split, but as the Right faction hold most of the real power, it’s unlikely to ever become party policy.
On the other hand, both major parties recognize the consequences of allowing the genie out of the bottle, though neither will say so out loud. In fact, the one parliamentarian who did, Opposition Parliamentary Secretary Cory Bernardi, was today forced to resign his position (though not his seat) over it – for saying it as crudely as he did, or saying it at all, I’m not sure.
In all this, gays hoping for some joy from the parliament are the chief victims; not because parliament won’t give them what they want, but because parliament keeps them hanging, yet doesn’t have the guts to tell them no straight out, and explain their reasons. A farce that’s due to go on for some time yet – Oz
@- Ozboy
“But as I said at the top, and it’s my own main criticism of Islam, that the moderates have no control over the fundamentalists. They have to find a way to do so, if Islam is to have any future in the third millenium – Oz”
I am sure that the irony is not lost on you that as Islam is one of the least hierarchal religions that does not have the tradition of organised religious institutions with popes, cardinals, bishops priests etc it has no inherent control structure that could be applied from the top. What you are calling for is exactly the sort of authoritarian system that a libertarian would usually be arguing against.
Not exactly Izen – when I said “control”, I wasn’t speaking of a hierarchical theocracy a la RC, but rather a bottom-up bit of people power – Oz
@- Amanda
I admire your loyalty, but its a hopeless cause. Mitt was selected as GOP candidate because he was seen as the least radical of the Reps and therefore most likely to take votes from Obama amongst the undecided who would be repelled by the extreme positions of many others in the right of the party.
47% comments have pretty much destroyed that advantage.
Ozboy so you are saying australian politics hinges on a small fraction of your population less than 3%, which indicates you have reached the end game in your democracy and it’s tyranny by the minority and since you can sub divide any polity into many sub factions you’re screwed. You might as well go sharia now. Because minority rights include the greentards, vegetarians, islam etc etc. All wanting their share of the pie. To get their votes your major parties will bow to their wishes over that of the majority who can now be ignored.
Also don’t quote polls ate me saying the majority approve of this because as you know all polls are preloaded with questions designed to give the answer you wish to hear or are undertaken in say the gayest part of Australia wherever that is to get the result. It’s like asking San Francisco if they approve of manadatory homosexuality.
On a typical, cold, grey S F day, human warmth of either gender would probably be welcome
😉
so would a trip a few miles inland or over the bridge, to places where the sun shines.
on the subject of caliphornia (or getting kaliphornicated)
There may not be quite the institutional superstructure of say the church of Rome, or the general assembly of the Church of Scotland
(it’s easier to shout “eff the Pope” in full, then run for your life, and stand a chance of getting away, that it is to shout “eff the moderator of the general assembly of the church of Scotland” and still have time to run, before getting your delicate bits kicked to pulp; which explains why, despite football club bankruptcy, there will always be more Rangers supporters than Celtic supporters)
There are hierarchies, and chains of very strong influence, with common or garden Mullahs at the interface with the mundanes, through various ranks of those learned in the law and scriptures, through sheiks etc, to the likes of Ayatollahs in the shi’ite sects, and a Caliph over the whole of the ummah.
Although more decentralised than the Roman church, it is not an anarchic “starfish” like the Friends (quakers) are.
Kitler: “politics hinges on a small fraction of your population – less than 3%, – it’s tyranny by the minority . . . ”
FB: the question is , is a limited tyranny by the minority preferable to an absolute tyranny by the majority, which seems always to result in swings from individual- responsibility parties to state -dependency parties, and in the long run , no progress at all; it just becomes a see-saw?
We in Godzone have proportional representation , which results in a few crumbs being thrown to the minority parties which are needed to get a confidence -and -supply agreement with the larger party that forms the coalition government. We can get steady progress in a desirable direction but at a slower rate than if there was a single majority party in government.
We used to have a first-past-the-post system which resulted in wild swings in policy whenever the government changed. We got sick of that, and the extremes which resulted.
Flat out at work until the weekend folks. I’ll pop my head in occasionally. Drinks on the house while I’m gone. Kitler, you’re behind the bar. Ciao.
Kitler behind the bar? Jeez Wayne, what are the rest of us going to drink?
Izen:
I don’t have a lot of time right now because I am an American patriot with a mission.
But I will post this by way of reply to you, the same reply I gave to one Daniel Maris on The Spectator (UK).
What can I say, Daniel? You get sidetracked, like most warmed-over socialists (sorry mate, but I must call it as I see it) by details that — cough — happen to be facts, and miss the big picture.
The big picture is that Romney believes in our Constitution. He believes in America, the land of the free and the home of the brave. Obama doesn’t. Obama is a statist transnationalist who would like to see America get a bloody nose. And he is the president.
Report is that the White House was tipped off by the Libyan Ruling Council about the savagery about to be visited on the embassy three days before it happened. And what did Obama do? That’s right. Nothing.
Think about it.
Then come back and whinge to me about some ‘gaffe’ stating a truth about who pays income tax in this country.
———
ROMNEY FOR PRESIDENT!
P. S. to Izen and whoever is reading: I don’t know whether you have heard Romney’s life story or what Bain Capital helped fund or how he has personally helped more poor people and struggling people and aspiring people in America achieve their goals or overcome pain than any bleeding-heart Obama has ever done. But you should know it before you spout about him.
And of course, never forget that the mainline media is completely in the tank for the Democrat, as always.
farmerbraun I was barman once at my student union so there will be plenty to drink and free to all my good friends including Izen who can have the funny green syrupy stuff on the top shelf.
You are looking at a man of many talents, pool boy, butcher, geologist, bouncer and computer nerd and part time Wotanist and druid.
I love ya for it, K, but you left something out: Son of the Revolution (see the Jukebox if you will).
Oh, and you forgot Deputy God Emperor ; )
@- farmerbraun
“We used to have a first-past-the-post system which resulted in wild swings in policy whenever the government changed. We got sick of that, and the extremes which resulted.”
Sounds like you had what Ozboy wants for the muslims. A reaction against extremism by activist hardline moderates.
The gay marriage issue actually affects a VERY small number so it is an ideal political tribal flag. One side can get credit with its supporters by backing legal recognition, the other side get credit for opposing change. And both sides benefit from the status quo.
{pint of creme de menthe please kitler…}
Gees Izen Billy Connolly did a joke about the Pope and a pint of crème de menthe…
BTW is not “hardline moderates” a rank contradiction in terms? But I take your point, and that is indeed what I would like to see – Oz
Oh great, now the U.S. bloody State Department has issued a travel warning to American citizens visiting Australia:
http://www.smh.com.au/national/us-warning-for-citizens-20120920-268w1.html
@- Ozboy
Thats the joke/sketch I was referencing. I wondered whether anyone would remember it !
Aye; we’re showing our age – Oz 😮
Hughie Green; now there’s a blast from the past (wasn’t he supposedly the real grandad of Bob Geldof’s kids?).
Italy abandoned PR, after the Christian Democraps, who had never been out of government since the end of WWii, collapsed in a sea of corruption scandals.
Silvio Berlusconi put together a new party of the centre right, using untainted individuals – the response of the communist journalists and judges in trying long and hard to slime Berlusconi, gives a sense of their rage at the man. Italy had the largest communist party outside of the USSR.
In the last Italian general election, no hard left nor hard right politicians were elected.
While it is impossible to draw general conclusions from a single complex (and un-repeatable) historical event, I think with first past the post, people are less tempted to add lunatics to their list.
Large political parties are themselves “coalitions”. The mistake arizes when we grant politicians the right to coerce us
I’d better re-phrase the last paragraph;
When we acquiesce to being bossed around and coerced by politicians, bureaucrats and their lackies.
Freedom of expression.
This is certainly odious, but is it crimminal? and if so, why?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9555202/Man-arrested-over-Manchester-shootings-Facebook-praise.html
Andrew Bolt today linked to this survey about moderate versus fundamental Islam.
Can’t comment about Egypt, but the figures for Indonesia are way too high. Probably says more about where the survey was conducted.
Larry Pickering’s take on this issue here. A bit more pessimistic than me, but there ya go.
Called in on a friend last night. Friend is into “Private Eye” satirical magazine.
Under a heading of “facts and figures”
28, the number of countries in the World where there have been protests (mostly violent) about the film.
10, the number of people in the world who saw the film at its only public showing.
Let us not over-egg the religious aspect of these protests. The moves by Bernanke (QE 1 , QE2, and now QE to infinity) are a disaster for most of mankind.
His manipultions are good for only one class of people; the top 1%.
People in the US seem to be unaware that this move by the Fed was a declaration
of war .
Blowback is inevitable (if you fondly hold the view that it is not occurring as
we speak).
Outside of the US there is a view that Ben Bernanke should be arraigned for
crimes against the world’s middle-class, working -class and the poor especially.
Ben Bernanke is an advocate for the rich and he is extremely dangerous. He says
that he will print money until unemployment falls.
If anyone thinks that there is a direct link between employment growth, and
relieving banks of their most toxic “assets” , then that person is demented.
The banks are being bailed out by the public rather than having to write off the
losses from their terrible mistakes in lending in the sub-prime, ninja, and
other non-prime mortgage markets.
Let’s be clear; the Fed is declaring war on the rest of the world. This is the
most beggar-thy-neighbour policy since Hitler paid for Romanian oil with cuckoo
clocks.
The US has invited retaliation and this will surely follow if the US continues
to abandon the international economy.
Eventually every other country will have to adopt protectionist measures, but
there is nothing which can protect aginst the tide of Bernake -induced
inflation.
FB a lot of people in the USA also realize that Ben “onanist” Bernanke is going to destroy the USA economy and the guess is they should happen around March or April next year as hyper inflation takes off. The government has been buying lots of ammo and flack jackets for a lot of civil servants and departments who should not need them like Education, mobile armoured check points etc etc. They are planning for the inevitable unrest that this ar se hole will generate.
They knew it was inevitably coming Kitler , and so did you and a few others.
The last clause should read ;
“. . . there is nothing which can protect against the tide of Bernanke -induced
inflation.”
I have a scan of a $100,000,000,000 bank note as the background to my computer screen, I actually had $180,000,000,500 in notes on loan, a loan of over twice the size of the European bailout of Ireland, in my shirt pocket.
It was of course worth much less than 2 squares of toilet tissue, even in its native Zimbabwe. I’ve not yet had hold of a $100,000,000,000,000 note, but there are scans of them around.
Keynes, in one of his genuinely useful moments (even he had the occasional one) noted that hyper inflation is the public’s way to claw back its resources from the state, by devaluing the government’s paper, faster than they can print it.
A little understanding of the theory of money and what characteristics make a commodity good to use as a medium of exchange, will go a long, long way, in helping us to keep our families and communities safe and peaceful if the SHTF.
From an Agorist (non agressive, revolutionary free market anarchist) perspective, those toys which the tax slaves have had to fund; would make very nice goods for exchange.
The state does not produce anything useful, it can only steal,
when its legal tender is worthless, it must try to steal bulky goods, like food and fuel.
Those things are bulky and widely spread out – its employees will want food and fuel, if their wages are worthless, they will go home and barter for the goods they need.
If they have any sense, they’ll steal whatever they think they can use in barter, before they leave the office.
Keep your goats dry FB!
they’ll exchange for lead and brass if you want some.
Good quality tools (eg “snap on”) are quite good for holding value and for exchange.
Ian, “Good quality tools (eg “SnapOn”) are quite good for holding value and for exchange”
Oh Good! Mr M used to be a SnapOn Tools dealer so we’ve got quite a few knocking about. Could come in handy.
“The simple are meat for slaughter, to be used when they are useful in causing trouble for the opposing power, and to be sacrificed when they are no longer of use.”
The Name of the Rose
On topic (just FYI): please do have a look if you can at the comment by Victor Davis Hanson on ‘The Corner’ of National Review Online (scroll down as needed: his remarks are dated September 23, 7:07 p.m.):
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner
Orkneylad: Who said ‘All flesh is grass to be mown down…’?
Mind you, it is the human drive to be more than grass that has made us what we are. Some of us, anyway. Otherwise I look around and think, ‘Yep, the stupid did inherit the Earth, and always shall’.
Test
Muslims….Threw rocks at me in Morocco….Which is an unusual way to encourage tourists I thought.
Muslims….My Muslim doctor has been a great help to my family, old and young, beyond the call of duty, and she also is a good and generous employer to my wife who is her bookkeeper. …Celebrates christian festivals as well as muslim…(“why not?”)
Muslims….My old neighbour and friend Jehal, a fugitive student from Iran. Unusual perhaps in not being a practising muslim. Nonetheless lived by a very different culture, and blamed America for all that was wrong in the world. Seemed not to understand why I could not agree on this point. He was not driven to this view by religion.
Muslims….My friend that worked in Saudi Arabia for a military aircraft company, was joined by his wife, who worked as a teacher for local children. Was somewhat surprised to be told, in a matter of fact way, that she should be thrown on a fire and burned, when she said she was a christian, by an otherwise kind enough muslim woman who had invited her to her house…..(It didn’t seem to be a joke.)….They both had to leave in a hurry, a while later (They have never said why.)
Muslims….I met in Egypt. Didn’t understand that England, and Britain, were both the same country.
Muslims….Muslim friend of my friend working in Suadi. An educated man, but had never heard of Darwins theory…..Thought it absurdly funny.
The shoebat, make the claim that the film maker was partner in crime with a Copt hating Muslim con man who has terror links; and he happens to be shoebat’s first cousin.
Was the film made by muzzies with the intention of putting pressure on our freedom of speech?
The commies used to work that way, Hitler had German troops in Polish uniforms attack a German radio station, Stalin shelled a russian town, so he could blame it on the Finns, according to Litvinienko, the former KGB were blowing up apartment blocks in Moscow to provide pretext for the Chechen wars. There is plenty of precedent for such false flags.
http://www.shoebat.com/2012/09/27/innocence-of-muslims-film-was-made-by-terrorists-2/
H/T firehand
Hi Fen,
I can claim a similler range of experiences with Moslems;
The ones I was at school with were hardly devout, only one (a bahai at that!) fasted for Ramadan, about half of them ate bacon and pork sausages, one had to ask a Christian Arab to help him remember his prayers. That was a long time ago, the thing which screwed some of those guys up was the Lebanese civil war, and a few years later the Iran Iraq war.
One guy I was at college with returned from his summer holidays with his new wife, she was 9 years old. There was quite a panic in the British parliament over that one!
A guy who I did a fair bit of work with in Africa, had done 20 years or so in the emirates and the Yemens.
He got out after
1) spending a year in prison after a moslem was injured in a workplace accident. a hydraulic pipe had blown off and hit the guy, so my colleague, as an infidel, had to stay in prison, incase the guy died and his relatives wanted vengence – technically he was being blamed for the accident.
2) too many bricks through the windscreen – it really was getting unsafe to have European features colouring and clothing.
http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/category/death-of-ambassador-steven-and-us-illusions/