The first piece in an on-going personal exploration of radical Islam in Jordan.
Over the next few months, I'll be posting a several part investigation into radical Islam in Jordanian society. Most of this will come from a lengthy background essay of mine on the topic. The series will culminate with a report during the mid-summer when I return from a Tufts University Joint Research Project, in coordination with the United States Service Academies at West Point, Annapolis, and Colorado Springs, on this very matter. We will be interviewing college students, government officials, and similar sources to ascertain a better picture of what is going on in Jordan today. I don't have the slightest clue where our investigation will lead us, but suffice it to say, it should be very interesting indeed. Here then, is part one.
Jordan has a long history of supporting Western interests and cooperating on matters of war and peace, especially in the post 9/11 environment. Jordan has been an invaluable ally and bastion of moderation in a region which is increasingly seeing polarization between autocratic regimes and jihadist opposition. While the Jordanian Monarchy exercises more control over Jordanian society than we would find to be democratic, the traditional American foreign policy calculation has been that the Hashemites are worth supporting because they favor American interests in the region. Consequently, it’s worth examining the society the Hashemites have created and seeing if in fact the Hashemite have fostered a society which is worth such vast levels of U.S. support.
In examining the success of the U.S.-Jordanian relationship, one of the most important factors to consider is the radicalization of the Jordanian population itself. If Islamism has taken hold in Jordan, despite the Monarchy’s pro-Western orientation, that would present cause for serious concern. On the surface, this appears not to be the case. The Jordanian political arena ostensibly is more stable than that of, for example, Egypt, and jihadist violence by domestic political parties seems minimal. How Jordan has avoided the widespread political violence which has engulfed so many Middle Eastern states is one of the most important comparative questions of today. Unlike most of the “moderate” Arab states, Jordan has sought to include the Islamist opposition within mainstream society. As in many Arab states, the Islamist opposition in Jordan is the Muslim Brotherhood. The Jordanian chapter of the organization was formed in 1945 and from the beginning, the Jordanian Brotherhood renounced violence as a tool to institute Islamist society. The Brotherhood has enjoyed a curious relationship with the Monarchy, in which the Brotherhood historically has been able to criticize the King—even severely at times—while it has stayed within the bounds of political opposition and has not directly challenged the legitimacy of the Monarchy.
The Jordanian Brotherhood began with a focus on social issues that allowed it to advocate for Islamist policies while posing no threat to the Monarchy. As the Brotherhood gained grassroots support throughout Jordan, it was able to gradually increase the scope of its priorities to include issues such as the Palestinian question and the Monarchy’s pro-Western agenda. As the Brotherhood increased the scope of its issues, it also increased the scope of its operations. The Monarchy has traditionally allowed the Brotherhood to run candidates for elected office, and the Brotherhood has also taken to reaching out to civil society groups such as labor and professional organizations in order to expand its reach. The Brotherhood now commonly runs its members for the boards of different labor organizations in an attempt to cut across traditional cleavages in Jordanian society and expand its member base. In fact, professional and labor organizations have become some of the Brotherhood’s most important outlets for dissent. The government generally tolerates this circuitous method of political criticism and allows for alternative opinions to be expressed so long as they do not cross the line and leave the realm of the loyal opposition. As a result, the Jordanian Brotherhood and its political offshoot, the Islamic Action Front (IAF) have traditionally stayed within the regime’s defined boundaries and seldom ventured beyond the line of what is commonly acknowledged as acceptable behavior.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
The Jordanian Question: Part 1
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Al Qaeda's Newst Recruiter
California Senator Dianne Feinstein recently sponsored an amendment to the 2008 Defense Authorization Bill which would close down the Defense Department’s detention center in Guantanamo Bay and prohibit the practice of rendition, in which prisoners are shipped to states whose interrogation techniques are more, well, direct. The effect of the Feinstein Amendment would be to integrate jihadist detainees into the federal prison system where they would receive further legal protections. Presumably, the good folks at the American Bar Association would rush to the defense of these misunderstood individuals and put up a spirited legal defense in the name of the rule of law.
What in fact the Feinstein Amendment shows is that a significant portion of the American legislative community is dangerously ignorant to even the most fundamental aspects of counter-insurgency warfare. If the Feinstein Amendment passes—which, fortunately, it likely will not—al Qaeda and other jihadist groups would be irreparably strengthened in what would be a cataclysmic abdication of all semblance of rational policy.
Reasonable minds can differ on subjects such as Guantanamo Bay and the legal status of jihadist detainees. The legal community, while misguided, can be patriotic while insisting that greater access to legal resources be provided to detainees. What is not patriotic, nor rational, is granting al Qaeda unhindered access to the ideal recruitment demographic on a permanent basis. The unwavering lesson of every insurgency in history is that prison is the ideal recruitment ground for insurgent factions. Prisoners are necessarily in constant communication with each other, and all it takes is one radical to evangelize the message of radicalism amongst a population which is already at odds with the government.
Simply put, there is no better recruiting ground than prison. Every insurgency—from the IRA famously training and conducting exercises behind British prison bars in full defiance of powerless guards, to the terrible school of French Indo-China, to the FLN radicalizing common Algerian criminals against the French, has directly utilized the unparalleled access that prison provides to convert and radicalize its target demographic. If you put members of terrorist cells in standard prisons, they will recruit more followers. There’s no gray area here: either we want to contribute further to the propagation of jihadist ideology or we wish to isolate the Islamist prophets of doom from the general population—especially the segments which would most receptive to these ideas.
The genius of Guantanamo Bay is that it segregates insurgents from the rest of prison population. Individuals in Guantanamo (with the few inevitable exceptions) are already radicalized and consequently no harm is done in detaining them. However, the minute that radical population is mixed with common inmates, the jihadists will have scored a tremendous victory on a scale far greater than September 11th ever was. If one purposely set out to loose a counter-insurgency, the absolute first thing one would do would be to provide guerrillas the human resources that are the sinews of any insurgency. Senator Feinstein, has, unwittingly, proposed this very thing.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Good night, funny mouse.
You heard about the Mickey Mouse knockoff that they were showing on Palestinian kids' TV?
A giant black-and-white rodent — named "Farfour," or "butterfly," but unmistakably a Mickey ripoff — does his high-pitched preaching against the U.S. and Israel on a children's show run each Friday on Al-Aqsa TV, a station run by Hamas. The militant group, sworn to Israel's destruction, shares power in the Palestinian government. "You and I are laying the foundation for a world led by Islamists," Farfour squeaked on a recent episode of the show, which is titled, "Tomorrow's Pioneers." "We will return the Islamic community to its former greatness, and liberate Jerusalem, God willing, liberate Iraq, God willing, and liberate all the countries of the Muslims invaded by the murderers."
Yeah, that one.
Well, he's dead now, murdered by those evil Zionist oppressors.
Hamas TV on Friday broadcast what it said was the last episode of a weekly children's show featuring "Farfur," a Mickey Mouse look-alike who had made worldwide headlines for preaching Islamic domination and armed struggle to youngsters. In the final skit, Farfur was beaten to death by an actor posing as an Israeli official trying to buy Farfur's land. At one point, Farfur called the Israeli a "terrorist." "Farfour was martyred while defending his land," said Sara, the teen presenter. He was killed "by the killers of children," she added.
Wonderful.
That is all kinds of messed up, right there.
My theory on what happened: Disney's legendary legal department must have caught up with these guys, and they just decided to cease and desist themselves.
Friday, June 29, 2007
What can Brown do for you?
Earlier today, British officials discovered two parked cars filled with explosives in the heart of London. The devises were set to be trigged by cell phone and were placed in high traffic areas such as outside a nightclub. Government sources so far have pegged “international elements” to be responsible for the car bombs.
And so Gordon Brown faces his first great crisis only three days into office as Prime Minister. Two years ago, Tony Blair acted with steadfast resolve and moral clarity when his country was rocked by jihadist terrorism. Today, Gordon Brown must set the stage for how his government—and indeed the United Kingdom as a whole—will react to the forces of jihad in the post-Blair era.
Mr. Brown faces quite a challenge. The Muslim population of the UK is amongst the most radical in the world. According to the left-leaning Guardian periodical, Muslims in the UK are the most anti-western in Europe, and a full ¾ of the Islamic population of Great Britain blames jihadist activity on western disrespect of Islam.
Britain’s liberal immigration laws have allowed radical clerics to preach the doctrines of jihad in London mosques and now the country finds itself swamped with a radicalized population where it is easy to walk into any movie store in Islamic communities and purchase propaganda DVDs from al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups.
Under the leadership of Tony Blair, the United Kingdom was a steadfast ally against radical Islam despite its internal crisis. The attempted bombings of today are clearly a test to challenge the fortitude of Mr. Brown. Gordon Brown is a capable minister and a decent man—but he must meet the challenge presented to him head on and wage war with the forces that have attempted time and again to destroy everything that his society is predicated upon.
The response of the Brown government will be a clear indicator of how the UK will act years into the future. The British people will either retain their stubborn pride and finish the fight or they will slink silently back into the darkness. This is Gordon Brown’s moment. How he chooses to respond is up to him, but he would do well to remember the words of Ronald Reagan:
“During the dark days of the Second World War, when this island was incandescent with courage, Winston Churchill exclaimed about Britain's adversaries, ‘What kind of people do they think we are?’ Well, Britain's adversaries found out what extraordinary people the British are. But all the democracies paid a terrible price for allowing the dictators to underestimate us. We dare not make that mistake again. So, let us ask ourselves, ‘What kind of people do we think we are?’ And let us answer, "Free people, worthy of freedom and determined not only to remain so but to help others gain their freedom as well.”
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
We are all jigsaw men.
I remember, in my misspent youth, reading the short story The Jigsaw Man, by Larry Niven. It concerns a future in which organ transplantation is cheap and easy, thanks to the Organ Banks. Where do the Organ Banks get their organs? From criminals convicted of capital crimes. Unfortunately, thanks to supply and demand, there are not enough criminals to keep up, which causes the politicians to keep redefining "capital crimes" downwards.
The protagonist in The Jigsaw Man has been convicted of repeated speeding violations.
I haven't read the story in years and don't remember how it ends, but I do know that I never thought we'd be debating the ethics of involuntary organ donation in real life, any more than I thought we'd be discussing the best way to defend civilization from religious crackpots who live in the desert guarding a precious and scarce resource. But here we are.
The authoritarian maniacs running China today have long been suppressing Falun Gong. Allegations of torture and various human rights abuses are well documented.
But this is just sick.
On 9 March 2006, allegations were made of organ harvesting on living Falun Gong practitioners at the Sujiatun detention compound, an alleged labor camp and part of the China Traditional Medicine Thrombosis Treatment Center, [1] a joint-venture with Malaysian healthcare company Contry Heights Health Sanctuary and subject to oversight beyond local Chinese authority, located in Shenyang City, Liaoning province. According to at least two witnesses interviewed by The Epoch Times, internal organs of living Falun Gong practitioners have been harvested and sold to the black market, and the bodies have been cremated in the hospital's boiler room. The witnesses make allegations of nobody coming out of the camp alive, as well as six thousand practitioners being held captive at the hospital since 2001, two-thirds of whom have died to date. According to these sources, removed organs include hearts, kidneys, livers and cornea.
Now, NTD, the New York based Chinese language television network, reports Rav Elyashiv's opposition to organ harvesting, even when the patient's life is in danger.
For giggles, listen to the anchor mispronounce "Elyashiv" and "Sharei Tzedek". Highly amusing- probably the same reaction the anchor would have if she heard me pronounce "moo goo gai pan".
Anyway, my point: China is evil.
H/T The Yeshiva World.
Friday, June 01, 2007
Eruv Rav to get his day in court.
A Williamsburg rabbi is facing assault charges for his role in a scuffle that started because of a dispute he had with another Jew regarding the issue of an Eruv in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn.
Rabbi Sh. Greenbaum will appear in Brooklyn Criminal Court for allegedly striking 19-year-old E. Klein in the face, when Klein walked down Bedford Avenue with his kippah in his hand, believing that the Eruv in Williamsburg is kosher, but which the rabbi believes it is not. The attackers pummeled Klein while yelling "you are not a Jew!" according to court documents.
Through a translator, Greenbaum, 44, said he notice Kleins head was uncovered so he asked him to put his kippah on, in a nice way. "I would never hurt somebody. I would never return a punch," he said.
Klein was also charged with a lesser assault on another participant in the brawl.
This blogger hopes they hang Greenbaum from the eruv by his peyos. This guy is a rosha gomur.
H/T Vos Iz Neias. Check out the comments. My favorite:
Well, I guess Moshiach won't be coming this week.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Gunboat Diplomacy!
It's the most efficient kind of diplomacy, after all. Lots quicker than dressing up in striped pans and handing around little bits of chocolate wrapped in gold foil during embassy receptions while that annoying string music they always play in movies during fancy shmancy black tie receptions plays in the background (you know the music... dah dah dah dah DAH! Dah dah... dah dah...)
(Irrelevant tangent: this came up in a Google search for "those songs they always play in movies".)
Look, I'm just some moron with a moronblog, not someone who's opinion actually matters. I don't have the jorb of coming up with a good, solid, workable strategery to deal with that evil little troll in Tehran who is busily trying to get nukes and is crazy enough to use them if he ever got his evil little claws on them. I do know that one good thing, at least, has come out of the Iraq mess.
People know that the current Administration is crazy enough to actually go to war with anyone who pisses them off sufficiently.
They aren't, of course, not really. (Shhhh. Keep that little tidbit to yourself.) But speaking softly and carrying the big stick only works if people think you really might take the big stick and start getting all LAPD on a country. People know the difference between a promise and an empty threat. If Clinton or Carter told someone "behave or I'll bomb your country", no one took them seriously, and for good reason. But when, say, Ray-Gun spit in the eye of the Evil Empire and told them that the United States of gosh-darn America was no longer taking no guff from nobody, people listened, because the crazy senile old whackadoo was really seriously gonna push the button and laugh while he did it.
Is this the ideal way to conduct international intercourse? No, of course not. But if, for example, Denmark began a nuclear program, we could talk to them, reason with them, buy furniture and cellphones from them. You can reason with the sane. The insane sometimes will listen only to a tazer.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Shock Report: Goyim may actually be human beings, new study suggests. Satmer not convinced.
A Conservative Rabbi from Minnesota has come up with what he calls a "hechsher tzedek", a certification testifying to the company's commitment to social justice issues.
Now, I've said it before and I'll say it again- hearing "justice" from a liberal is like hearing "freedom" from a conservative, a code word meaning you aren't going to get any. And The Forward is the one hyping this, and their beef (ha!) with Rubashkin is well known, as is PETA's.
Now, as an evil neocon, I support the abuse of workers and the torture of animals and burning orphanages and so forth. Also, most if not all of the meat in my freezer is from Rubashkin- they are, after all, the largest kosher meat company in the US. But, as much as I hate hippies (and Rabbi Morris Allen seems like a prime example of the type), he might have a point.
I am an alarm installer, and I do a lot of installations and maintenance work for a lot of Jewish owned businesses in New Jersey and New York. Many if not most employ illegal immigrants, and treat them like dirt. I know they get paid peanuts and get abused constantly.
How do I know this?
I never quite learned the trick of treating certain people differently, I guess. I know you are supposed to treat your social inferiors a certain way, your peers another way, and your social betters yet another way, but I've never been able to pull this off.
That's right. I talk to Mexicans like they're human beings, not like they're horses who have unaccountably learned to talk and wear clothes but are still fit for nothing but drudgery.
I get told things most employers never hear.
This hechsher tzedek may not be a bad idea after all. Maybe a movement in the heimishe velt to learn how to treat other people like human beings btzelem Elokim (see this post) is something that is sorely needed.
H/T Y-Love
Monday, May 14, 2007
Candidate number 368923560: Mike Bloomberg
Mayor Mike is planning on spending a cool one billion- $1,000,000,000- to guarantee a Democratic win, by running as a third party independent. Chuck Hagel is cheering him on. That's not my joke, it's Ace's. And Newt Gingrich is mulling his candidacy.
At this point, is there a white, Christian, middle aged male with (as Dave Barry sez) two dark suits who has not been indicted recently not running? At this pace I may just throw my hat intot he ring myself.
Heh. There's a thought. Our first blogger-President. With an all blogger Cabinet. Tee hee.
Well, for Secretary of State, I'd get Mark Steyn- he knows how to talk to those furriners, being one himself. Glenn Reynolds will be Attorney General and Frank J will be Secretary of War (one of my platforms will be to rename the Department of Defense, because everyone knows that the best defense is a good offense).
Secretary of Education will be Ahitoricality. Secretary of the Interior will be Lileks. Rubin can be the Secretary of Commerce- he's in advertising, he must know how to get the furriners to buy our stuff, which is what the Secretary of commerce does as far as I can tell. Secretary of the Treasury will be whoever runs AdSense.
Did I leave anyone out? Want to nominate a blogger to fill a position? Comments!
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Jewish KosKid Quits Kos Over Anti Jewish, I Mean Anti Zionist Moonbatism
But now (i.e. for the past 25 years or so) that the Neocons have decided to support Israel (because its a democracy, not for any moral reason), the Left has embraced antizionism as a policy... and this leads to rhetoric that sounds, to Jews, indistinguishable from the most violent rabid strains of antisemitism.
This is interesting:
 clipped from newsbusters.org
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Wednesday, May 09, 2007
The Lion in Winter
Later this summer, Tony Blair will resign as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and his beleaguered Labor Party will be inherited by Gordon Brown, a current financial chancellor in the Blair government and in all likelihood, Blair’s successor as Prime Minister as well. The end of Blair’s decade in office seems an appropriate time to reflect upon the lasting significance of the man who brought Labor in from the wilderness and proved to be perhaps the most enduring champion of the trans-Atlantic alliance since Dwight Eisenhower.
Tony Blair entered office in 1997 with a sweeping public mandate to reform the British welfare state and restore Britain’s faltering economy. Blair’s vision was to transform Labor (and consequently Britain itself) from a demoralized socialist wreck into a genuinely pro-American party which stood for justice abroad and economic freedom at home. Blair’s domestic agenda was a resounding success. “New Labor,” as Blair calls his party, is here to stay and the days of former party leader Ramsey McDonald advocating the socialization of the means of production are gone for good. Blair’s legacy, however, will ultimately be judged on the success or failure of his support for nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Heart-wrenchingly, the British public has turned against its former champion. With his nation discontented with slow progress in Iraq, the Prime Minister has become the object of vitriolic scorn and animosity on a scale not even paralleled in the United States with the current administration. As Blair’s approval ratings have plummeted, so have Labor’s, and the opposition Conservatives stand poised to assume control after the next election cycle. The only chance for Labor seems to be an early exit for Blair followed by frantic action from presumably Gordon Brown to win back over former Labor supporters who left the party because of Mr. Blair.
The resurgence of David Cameron’s Conservatives is disenchanting from an American perspective principally because Cameron’s party is not conservative in any sense of the word. Cameron is a slick politician who has forsaken the traditional Tory policy of pro-Americanism and moved towards a generic anything-but-Labor platform. Cameron has gone as far as to indicate that he would move the U.K. away from the United States politically and his support for American action in the Middle East is unreliable to say the least.
The best chance for the trans-Atlantic alliance to be preserved is probably for Gordon Brown and Labor to retain power. While Brown is certainly not as vocal about his American sympathies as Mr. Blair, Mr. Brown is a reliable ally and is a moderate supporter of a continued British presence in Iraq. Unfortunately, this muted position is the best America can help for out of its long-time strongest and most important ally.
What Blair’s exit demonstrates more clearly than anything is that Britain is no longer the rock of Europe. After three and a half centuries of leading the Western world, Great Britain has finally settled into a long slumber. While after the Victorians Great Britain had seemingly found a balance between projecting power and shunning colonialism, the Second World War caused Great Britain to fully retreat from its imperial past and settle into its role as a second rate world power. The status quo of the Thatcher-Blair era was a waning Britain struggling to exercise what influence it had left as it sought to support Washington in strategic areas across the globe. However, even this minimized approach seems likely to meet its own end as the trans-Atlantic alliance’s last great champion makes his exit.
With Britain now seemingly in perpetual retreat, it is more important than ever for American policy makers to look elsewhere to forge lasting and meaningful alliances. While Europe has always dominated global politics, the strategic scene has, for the past quarter century, been shifting towards the Orient and in particular the Pacific Rim. Japan is the most likely candidate to replace Great Britain as our foremost ally, and so long as we finally liberate Japan from the burdensome post-WWII restrictions placed upon its military, the Japanese will be able to project power deep into Asia and safeguard a liberal order on the high seas just as Great Britain did throughout its history. Coupled with a strong bi-lateral alliance with Japan, a strategic partnership with India would not only balance a growing China, but provide a reliable trading partner without the double-edged sword of doing business with the Devil. In short, a new Pacific entente is in order, fully integrating growing Japanese self-confidence, India’s immense population and economic potential, and of course the hard power of an American Carrier Battle Group.
As American policymakers look towards the brave new world of the future, they would do well to keep in mind the strategic implications of the Blair administration’s fall from power. With Great Britain on the defensive, new strategic partnerships will have to be forged and while Great Britain will always remain a sentimental and ideological ally of the United States, hard power has shifted decisively to the Pacific Rim. The future of the world rests with the burgeoning powers of Japan and India, and perhaps if we are less fortunate, with China as well. While the twilight of British power is surely lamentable, if history teaches us anything, it is that self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly. We as a people cannot meet the challenges of the 21st century with the strategic partnerships of the 20th.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Alas, poor Boris, we knew you-hey, put that vodka down!
Lets poor some Stolichnaya on the curb for homies up in heaven.
 clipped from sinisterdan.wordpress.com
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Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Happy May Day!
Ebay has quite a collection of KGB memorabilia for sale. Get this stuff while you can.
Here is a repost of my "A Jaywalking Primer, or, Dividing the Spoils of the Cold War", from April 7th, 2004. Enjoy.
I went to shopping in the Park Slope neighborhood today. Park Slope and the surrounding neighborhoods of Sunset Park, Fort Greene, and East New York is a fascinating case of shifting demographics. Just a decade ago, the area was under the control of the Brooklyn chapter of the Drug Dealers' Union, along with their affiliates, the Hookers Union local 452, The International Brotherhood of Thieves, Carjackers, Muggers, and Pickpockets (IBTCMP) and the gang banger's franchise of Murder, Inc. In other words, the neighborhood was fun and interesting. Then the white people moved in.
Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against white people. Heck, I'm white myself, or Jewish, which is close enough. "White People" is what we call the people who call themselves "hipsters". You know, Midwestern-born the latte drinking, health food eating, goateed jerks who wear Buddy Holly type glasses and listen to jazz. They are ignorant of the most basic aspects of life in the city.
Say, for example, something as simple as crossing the street. These morons will stride to the nearest crosswalk, wait for the light to change, carefully look both ways, and proceed across the street at a leisurely pace, all the while blathering about the cultural diversity of the urban experience. This in the city that invented jaywalking and has since elevated it to an art form. I or any other Brooklynite worth his rat poison will cross between two parked cars I will wait for a break in the traffic and walk briskly to the double yellow line. I will watch the car coming the other way. Provided the driver is not in a homicidal mood (by no means a given), he or she will speed up, traffic conditions permitting, causing a gap in the flow of traffic. Noting this, I will shift my weight to my left leg a raise my right. When the car's mirror passes me, I will step with my right leg and begin walking. Timed correctly, I will reach a gap between two parked cars on the other side before the next car can turn me into a greasy spot on the pavement and a forty five second spot on the five o'clock news. See? Like I said, it's an art form. That is, if a native is driving. If a white person is driving, there really is no telling what they'll do. Sometimes, they'll slow to a crawl, causing cars behind them to drive into oncoming traffic in an attempt to pass (and narrowly missing me standing on the double yellow line, if I'm lucky). Sometimes they will panic stop, causing horrific traffic pileups. Sometimes they will gesture violently to the effect of "I'm from out of town! Take my wallet and my car keys, just let me live"! Or so I assume.
Anyway, Park Slope. There is a weekly flea market in the yard of the local public school. One can purchase hilarious neckties from the fifties, ridiculous buttons from the sixties (Make love, not war!), horrible clothing from the seventies, and horrible and ridiculous Danish furniture from the nineties. There is enough gaudy costume jewelry to bebauble every prostitute to ever work in this city going back to Tammany Hall. There are always elderly Russians Soviet era gewgaws- campaign ribbons and medals from the Great Patriotic War, tie clasps and cufflinks bearing Lenin's ugly mug, and various coins and bills.
It was at one such stall that I got into a bidding war with a soft spoken Asian guy over a Soviet tanker unit patch. "But why?" his girlfriend wanted to know. "I guess I just have a Soviet militaria fetish (the magazines and websites of which I shall leave to your imagination). I ended up paying six dollars for the patch and six dollars for a set of cool looking shoulder boards. The dealer alleged that the shoulder boards were that of a police senior sergeant, which I am still attempting to verify. The guy event threw in an officer's belt, which has a cool looking buckle. The belt itself, however, is made of the awful thin plastic-looking leather we failed to make wallets out of in summer camp. The Asian guy bought a less elaborate set of shoulder boards and an awful- looking Sam Browne belt, also police, in white patent leather. It would have been rejected out of hand by any self respecting crossing guard (oxymoron alert) in America on account of its comical appearance. The fellow, clearly delighted at the sale, promised to have better stuff next week. "You like officer coat, yes? Maybe hat?" He solemnly shook hands with the Asian dude and me, and we walked away with our purchases.
It occurred to me that what we had here was nothing less than the spoils of our victory in the fight against International Communism (European Division). The guy walked away with twenty six dollars between us and was clearly thrilled to be dumping the useless garbage on us. The powerful, terrifying Soviet military was nothing but junk. That's right, comrade. The revolution is over, and the bourgeoisie won. I was surrounded with elderly men desperate enough for my greenbacks to supplement their Social Security checks to part with their hard earned "Proletariat of the Week" medals and old, yellowing Ché posters (although the people selling the Ché posters were all aging American leftists). Taste the ash-heap of history, tavoritch.
It is always prudent, while doing a sack dance in the end zone, to make sure the other members of your team aren't setting fire to the stadium, defenestrating the announcers, and raping the cheerleaders. In the next stall over, there was an Author Andersen travel coffee mug. The woman selling it said I was the first person all day to recognize Enron's old accounting firm. It was labeled five dollars, but she let me have it for four. Then, with the mug of capitalism at its most rapacious sharing a shopping bag with the uniforms of the police state so total in it's totalitarianism that it simply collapsed under its own weight, I went home. I had a coffee while looking up my new purchases on EBay. The belt was selling for six dollars, but there were no buyers. The tanker patch was selling for four. I couldn't find the shoulder patch at all. The bastard had ripped me off. Maybe he was getting the hang of this capitalism thing after all. So there's hope for the Russians. At least I have the mug.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Lights Out in the Middle East
On the eve of the First World War, Lord Edward Grey observed that “[t]he lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.” To Lord Grey, World War I was the result of decades of indirect competition between rival nations. The tensions and feuds resulting from the natural clashing of the European powers from the mid 19th century on eventually culminated in the most apocalyptic war the world had ever seen. As British Foreign Secretary, Lord Grey was savvy enough to do all that was in his power to protect his nation’s interests in the coming holocaust—but even he realized that all that was left was to make the best out of a catastrophic situation.
Lord Grey realized, unlike so many of his generation, that the new war would not be a quick and pleasant affair. Grey saw that the conflict could not be concluded until the underlying disputes between the great nations of Europe were resolved—even if it meant four years of literal apocalypse across the fields and forests of Europe. The fundamental conflict between blocs of nations had reached such a point that one side would necessarily destroy the other before it was all over.
Today in the Middle East, if we are not quite facing an analogous situation, we are fast approaching a similar point of no return. The fundamental conflict pervading the Middle East is the clash between liberalism and Islamic Fascism, just as there was a fundamental conflict between Western liberalism and Prussian militarism during the First World War. However, wars are seldom fought over purely ideological matters. The imminent threat in the Middle East is not the long term clash of values but the immediate clash of religions and the nations which finance them.
Traditionally in the Middle East, power has always lain with Sunni Islam. The Sunnis won favorable terms from the British and the French after the colonial period and the Sunnis now control the ostensible U.S. “allies” in the region: Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt. These traditional Sunni powers are threatened by the growing power of a newly strengthened Iran. In many ways, the story of the past decade in the Middle East has been the spread of Iranian influence throughout the region, just as the specter of German unity created many of the geo-political fault lines in the decades proceeding World War I.
With Iraq’s large Shiite population freed from an oppressive Sunni minority, Iraq is now up for grabs ethnically and religiously. This power vacuum has created a battleground for the competing strands of Islam to fight it out for supremacy. Because of Iraq’s central location, a victory for either Iranian-backed Shiite death squads or Saudi-financed jihadists might permanently tip the balance of power in the region. A widespread regional war between Sunnis and Shiites—amounting to a proxy war between the conservative Gulf States and Iran—would not only have catastrophic effects on the global economy and regional stability (the gas lines of the 1970’s would for example, would look trivial in comparison) but would exponentially increase the threat of terrorism. Both branches of Islam would be trying to show that they are chosen heirs of Mohammed and would consequently wish to destroy as many American and Israeli targets as possible in order to gain bragging rights within the Middle Eastern community. It would amount to a very deadly PR war in which Al Qaeda (a Sunni organization) has already won the first round with its famous attacks on 9/11.
The only way possible to avoid such a bleak future is to regain stability in Iraq. In order to do that, we need more troops on the ground to get the job done. If the administration has the courage to request roughly 45,000 more troops and Congress is able to put partisan politics aside in order to avert the single greatest foreign policy calamity in American history, we may yet avoid wholesale slaughter in the region. However, the point is fast approaching where we will no longer have any control over events in the most strategic region on earth. Europe paid the price of global war on an unintelligible level twice during the 20th century. If we do not get our act together very quickly, future generations to come will be paying the price for our abdication of responsibility, principle, and ultimately humanity in the Middle East.
Friday, September 15, 2006
Ned Lamont and Iraq
Ned Lamont’s victory in last month’s Democratic Primary is only the most recent success for the growing anti-war faction. This coalition’s only real common bond seems to be an intrinsic and complete loathing of President Bush and those associated with him. Unfortunately, this hatred has focused itself on an unlikely victim, Senator Joseph Lieberman, who was defeated by Lamont in the Democratic Primary last August. While Senator Lieberman is running on an independent ticket in November and will probably be reelected, Lamont’s victory is a disturbing harbinger of things to come.
Lamont’s essential campaign message is that Senator Lieberman does not accurately represent the people of Connecticut—solely because of the Senator’s support for the Iraq war and his perceived closeness to the administration. Essentially, Lamont is getting Connecticut voters to vote against President Bush by voting against Joe Lieberman. Not only is this a decidedly poor way to choose between candidates for political office, it is indicative of the fundamental danger of Lamont’s siren song. The problem is that Lamont and his wing of the Democratic Party have, in their hatred of President Bush, transcended all levels of political competition and embraced a sort of self-delusional nihilism that is predicated upon sheer contempt for one man. This does not make for good political philosophy, and more importantly, it does not make for good governance.
In 1964, Republican voters endorsed Arizona conservative Barry Goldwater as their party’s candidate for President over the Northeastern liberal Nelson Rockefeller. The primary marked a genuine ideological shift, with Republicans almost universally embracing conservatism to the exclusion of the leftover remnants of the progressive Republican titans such as Rockefeller. While Goldwater lost the election of 1964 to Lyndon Johnson, his campaign helped pave the way for Ronald Reagan and the resurgence of conservatism in the second half of the twentieth century. It was the defining moment of the Republican Party and forced Republicans to permanently commit to a conservative agenda.
Forty years later, Mr. Lamont’s supporters no doubt hope to pull off such a revolutionary party movement, with the ultimate goal being a Democratic Party united on an anti-war ticket. Unfortunately, unlike the Goldwater partisans, Lamont does not have a coherent ideological message. Lamont simply wants to eliminate all traces of George W. Bush from government, no matter whom he destroys in order to accomplish this. It is this nihilistic nature of the Lamont campaign that makes it so dangerous. Like any demagogue, Lamont has his own popular appeal. He can offer Connecticut voters what they seem to want—a purging of the pro-Bush faction. Regardless of one’s feelings about the President, an honest account of the possible consequences of a widespread victory for men like Ned Lamont is in order.
Most obviously, a Senator Lamont would vote to “redeploy” (he means retreat) out of Iraq. With potential Democratic takeovers in the House and Senate, the possibility of such a vote is quite real. Blinded by their fundamental hatred of an American President and the war that has come to define his Presidency, Lamont and his cohorts would orchestrate the single greatest foreign policy catastrophe in American history. The withdrawal of American forces from Iraq before a stable and secure Iraqi democracy was created would sentence the Iraqi people to endless sectarian strife. Moreover, the Shiites would look towards a new state sponsor to provide support for their government—and choose their Shiite brothers in Iran. Thusly, Iraq would become a proxy state of the world’s foremost sponsor of terrorism and would provide integral resources and arms for the world’s most dangerous terrorist groups such as Hezbollah. Essentially, Iraq would become another Afghanistan pre-liberation in 2001, and in ten or so years, we’d have to go back in to clear out a Taliban-style government. We can get the job done in Iraq now or we can pay the price for a generation.
Certainly, the administration needs to do more to improve the situation on the ground. While many strategic decisions have proven incorrect, the fog of war does not allow for perfect wars. However, one must keep in mind that Americans have always faced adversity. If not for a Christmas miracle at Trenton, Washington’s Continental Army never would have made it to the endgame outside Yorktown. Lincoln was one afternoon in July 1863 away from losing the Civil War, and Eisenhower nearly declared defeat after the first several waves at Omaha Beach. American military history is filled with catastrophic setbacks that we were always able—and more importantly, willing—to overcome. In comparison, the blunders seen in Iraq are rather insignificant and are easily surmounted—if we just have the will to wage a war for our own survival against the forces of global jihad. Unfortunately, men like Ned Lamont will never understand this and will do whatever they see necessary to take a ceremonial slap at the President.
At the close of the Boer War, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle remarked, “The deepest instincts of the nation told it that it must fight and win, or forever abdicate its position in the world. Through dark days which brought out the virtues of our [nation] as nothing has done in our generation, we struggled grimly on until the light had fully broken once again.” Are we willing to struggle grimly on?
Monday, May 22, 2006
Welcome to the United States of North America, can I take your order?
Now, this is surprising.
Apparently, 10% of Mexican citizens live in the United States.
Allow that to sink in, shall we?
Imagine two million, five hundred thousand Americans moving to, say, Brazil.
That is a large portion of the population.So large, in fact, that I say its useless to fight it.From now on, lets call ourselves The United States of North America. We should send the Army into Mexico City and Ottawa, force them to pull down the statues of national heroes, and install a Starbucks every fifteen feet. Because, hey, I like coffee, and, hey, who's going to stop us?
Mexicans will approve of the plan, because now all Mexicans will be eligible for free healthcare, welfare, Social Security, a public school system with the highest levels of edutainment in the world, and Paris Hilton. They will have equality under the law and a law worth being equal under. They will be part of the greatest, richest, most powerful nation the planet has ever known. They will have four channels of MTV, two channels of VH1, and innumerable HBO affiliates.
Yes, I know America, officially speaking, has no national healthcare system. But we have a de facto national healthcare system in that it is illegal to turn anyone away from an emergency room due to lack of insurance. I've seen people go to an ER for aspirin, a toothache, a splinter. So, we have all the benefits of a free healthcare system- free healthcare- and none of many horrible drawbacks- beurocracy and that whole "planned economy takes away the incentive to work better" thing.
Now, the benefits to Canadians may be harder to see. But, hey, come on, they're Canadians. Just tell them "next Olympics, you can have black people play for your team in basketball! You may even find out what it feels like to win a gold medal!" (For you Non Americans out there wondering what it feels like to have your national team win a gold medal in Olympic Basketball, allow me to share the following with you: it feels freakin' sweet).
If they still object, just point behind them and say, "look, a moose! and he is carrying a sign saying "Cnadaada suX0rs" in English but not in French!
Meese can't spell very well, so the Canadians will totally believe this. Also, the French Canadians, or Quobecoises (motto: Even we can't spell that word, and we made it up in 1967) get seriously cheesed off (frommaged sur plus dans) when someone dares speak English, but after many decades of fierce negotiation, they grudgingly allowed the English speaking Canadians to print signs in English, assuming matching text is printed in French. And then they must wrestle a Maple Leaf Monster. While juggling hockey pucks.
Which leads me back to my point, which I'll recall as soon as I scan up a few lines in the text.
Meese? That can't be right. Meeses, maybe.
Oh, yeah, my point is, just tell the Canadians that if they join the United States of North America, we will immediately deport all the French Canadians to Mars and distribute a free can of spray paint to every teenager ages 14-17 who promises to spray paint over any bit of printed French visible in public.They'll rush to join.
We'll get the Mexicans to make the spray paint. They work cheap.
Sunday, March 26, 2006
New To You: Tuesday, September 07, 2004
Here is my review of Fahrenheit 911, written before I started blogging, and posted on my old blog. If you haven’t read it, its new to you.
Chainik Hocker reviews Fahrenheit 911
Note: I first wrote this review in early July, about three days after the movie came out, and was hoping to sell it to somebody somewhere. Nobody bought it or was even willing to publish it for free. So I saved it on my hard drive and forgot about it. I just dug it up now. Here it is.
I must start this review with a caveat. Not only am I a Republican- an Orthodox Jewish Republican- an Orthodox Jewish Republican who has lost friends and relatives to Arab terror in New York and Israel- but I am also a huge Michael Moore fan.
I first discovered Roger and Me on cable when I was sixteen, and have since read all his books and seen all his movies. The man is both a genius and funny as hell. However, he has moved from his populist, mildly socialist Roger and Me (force GM to keep jobs in Flint!) to the more extremist Downsize This! (nationalize GM!) to the crackpot lefty Dude, Where’s My Country? (capitalizt GM exploits the proletariat!). Which brings us to Fahrenheit 911.
I was extremely reluctant to contribute my $8.50 to Moore’s coffers. However, I remembered all his criticisms of capitalism and realized that he probably wouldn’t want me to go to a theater (owned by Lowe’s), having purchased my ticket online (with my computer from Dell and an operating system from Microsoft), purchase a soda (Coca Cola Corporation) having traveled in my Ford automobile (powered by gas from Exxon). This one trip to see a movie would put money in the pockets of a lot of big powerful corporations. So instead I walked around the corner from my apartment and bought a pirated DVD for five bucks.
The movie is a well crafted, deliberately paced, beautifully written piece of crap. The plot, as far as I could tell, went as follows. First Al Gore is elected President of the United States. Then George Bush’s cousin, working for Fox News, tells everybody that Dubya won after all. All the African Americans in the country have their votes discounted. The US Senate doesn’t care.
Dubya is a lazy guy who spends much of the summer of 2001 on vacation. It is implied that Gore wouldn’t have taken a vacation (although he would have needed a tune-up and an oil change after 5,000 miles).
Then Osama Bin Laden crashes four planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It turns out that Dubya’s father, Bush the Elder, knows Saudi Arabians from Saudi Arabia. He has even done business with Saudi Arabians and has visited Saudi Arabia. Also, Dubya may have known a guy who knew Osama’s father. Both the Bushes know the Saudi Arabian ambassador, who is from Saudi Arabia. Osama Bin Laden is from Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is very rich and it owns precisely 7% of the United States. Saudi Arabia gave Dubya 150 billion dollars. You get paid about 400 thousand dollars a year to be President. 150 billion dollars is more money than 400 thousand.
After the WTC incident, Dubya got real mad. So mad that he invaded Afghanistan, an innocent country that had never done anything wrong to us. They were run by some real evil guys named ‘Taliban’ with funny beards and bad teeth who didn’t respect women’s rights. Also, Dubya was real good friends with the Taliban. We have proof in the form of a trip that a Taliban representative took a trip to Texas in 1997 and met with the Governor, who was Bush. Donald Rumsfeld bombed the heck out of Afghanistan, but most of the Taliban got away. He did manage to kill a whole bunch of innocent civilians, though. Then Bush decided to invade Iraq, just for the hell of it. More innocent civilians were killed. Also some American soldiers. Many American soldiers are from poor neighborhoods.
The military actually has people who go around to poor neighborhoods and encourages people to join. There is an interview with a mutinous Marine (whose first name, not that it matters, is Mohammed) who announces his intentions to go AWOL rather than return to Iraq.
Some rather gruesome shots of dead and dieing Arabs are shown. We follow an unidentified Army unit on Xmas eve arresting an Iraqi for reasons we are never told. The man’s relatives are, not surprisingly, annoyed at this. Cut to an interview of the mother of an American soldier killed in Iraq. Cut to an Iraqi kid screaming and bleeding from a head wound. Cut to American mother sobbing in front of the White House. Cut to American soldiers under attack. Some of the men have been hit. There is much shouting, running back and forth, camera jiggling, bleeding, gunshots. Cut to Iraqi with arm mostly off and bleeding all over the place. Cut to explosions, confusion, yelling, the President playing golf. The army has been brought to its knees. Fade to black.
In his terrifyingly bland, Midwestern, nose-first voice, Moore narrates our national descent into hell. Iraq is Vietnam with sand and camels. He plays six-degrees-of-separation between Bush and Osama, so convincingly that we want to leave the theater and burn George at the stake for being the twenty first hijacker. The battle scenes leave us astonished there are any Marines left alive. The powerful scene with the grieving mother causes many an eye to tear up and many a stomach to turn. The shots of bleeding and broken Iraqis looked like someone stuffed their sister’s dolls in a blender, poured in some dirt and a lot of tomato juice, and pushed puree with the cover off, and splashed the result all over the street, with extra yelling and running around. This is bullshit. This is sickening. There is no excuse for this kind of barbarism.
Burn down the White House. Hang all Republicans from light poles. Then the credits roll and you come to your senses.
Something was bothering me. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. This is why, when one views a documentary on current American politics, one does so in the company of a Canadian or other some such foreigner- to provide a sense of perspective. The Canadian I was watching the film with came up with the biggest problem of the film, which proves my point. “What was the deal” he said “where they had the Senators with the kids who weren’t in the army?”
See, Mr. Moore pointed out that many legislators in this country, including those who approved the war in Iraq, don’t have children in the military. He pulled a classic Moore stunt by going around to Congressmen with military-age sons and handing out recruiting literature. The results are, predictably funny… but there’s something wrong with this picture.
What?
During Vietnam, we had the draft. If called to serve, you damn well went into the army, whether you wanted to or not (in theory). However, now the Charlie Chaplin of the Iraq-as-Nam metaphor slips on the banana peel of logic. We have an all volunteer force nowadays. And nobody, mutinous Marine notwithstanding, is in the military involuntarily. Yes, it is possible that some joined for the benefits and not because they expected to have to actually fight. However, they did sign up of their own free will.
This is, at most, a minor quibble. However I believe it is indicative of Mr. Moore’s attempt to reclaim sixties style political activism, even if it means twisting an Iraq until it fits into a Nam-shaped hole. For most liberals today (although I hear they’re calling themselves “progressives” now, and I for one thing it’s great that they finally have the guts to show there true colors by calling themselves what Communists used to call them- although the Communists were being sarcastic and the lefties seem not to be kidding), the sixties never ended. So thrilled are they by finally being able to have everybody chant the same thing at the demonstrations that they did forty years ago, (namely, “Stop the War!!!”) they will gladly protest any damn thing. Bush? He’s a Republican, isn’t he? Booo!!! Stem cell research? The Right is against it? Yay stem cell research!!! War? Booo war!!!
This kind of knee-jerk politics has replaced careful thought and deliberate decision, followed by a knee jerk reaction. Well, my knees don’t work all that well, and I can’t jerk them. I can sit down and think about stuff, and I can remember that we did not start this damn war. We did not start this war, but we will damn well finish it. We don’t have a choice. And I don't give a crap about Michael Moore any longer.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
To download or not to download.
That is the question.
Weather tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous CD prices, or to take arms against a sea of Britney Spears wannabes, and, by downloading emo songs, make fun of them?
We’ve all heard the debate over the ethics and morality of downloading music.
Music Industry Side: We like money, and if you don’t pay for the album, we get less money. Therefore, we are going to put you little hippy bastards in jail.
Artist Side: Look, after my producers, lawyers, accountants, agents, personal trainers, and astrologers get done stealing whatever money I make from this new album, there is barely any money left over for me as it is. I need the cash- drugs don’t grow on trees, man. Don’t download music.
Consumer Side: Downloading music is not just morally and ethically correct, but we are all obligated to download music in order to teach the recording industry a lesson- that lesson being, stop with all your capitalist money trip, man.
Me personally, I was the king of Limewire, but I recently decided that it just wasn’t right. I deleted Limewire and about eleven gigs of downloaded music off my laptop. You really cannot make the argument that downloading music isn’t stealing.
Mordechai Ben David, Hasidic recording artist and the genius behind “Let my People Go”, “Jerusalem is Not for Sale”, and “Just One Shabbos”, has a different approach- he asks people, nicely, not to download music.
Here’s the video.
H/T Yeshivaworld.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Freedom of Speech is the Freedom to Disagree.
Now, a lot has been said about freedom of speech in regards to the Danish cartoons, and the Muslim world’s opinion about it.
Now, before you get involved in an argument, you have to understand all sides involved.
There are a few factions in the fight:
American Conservatives (o.k. The Ones With The Guns): who believe that there are a few silly, bad, or evil people, and if they can identify and shoot these people, the rest of the Muslim world will start watching Britney Spears videos, drinking Coors Light, and listening to the Black Eyed Peas. TOWTGs believe that all, or nearly all, humans, want to make a little money, have a little religion, and have a lot of fun. The problem, to TOWTGs, is that a few maniacs usually take over a given region and force everyone to do their bidding; then you have to send in GI Joe to kill COBRA. And the villagers will rejoice.
This is Pollyannaish at best.
American Liberals (Michael Moore and Howard Dean, i.e. Hippy Moonbats): who believe that Satan sent Karl Rove to destroy mankind. Karl Rove can't be elected because the Secret Service checks all Presidential candidates' feet for cloven hooves, so he and his fellow demon, Dick Cheney, got a patsy to be President: George Dubya Bush, who is both a retard barely capable of functioning at a third grade level and an evil genius capable of knocking down levees with his mind. Halliburton, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hell, with branches in Dis, Pandemonium, and Austin, offered Dick Cheney a dollar for every innocent Iraq civilian murdered by the US military-industrial complex. So Donald Rumsfeld blew up the World Trade Center so Chimpy McBushit could invade Iraq. Plus, oil.
Delusional.
Europeans (i.e. Euroweenies) believe that those silly American cowboys are really dumb for trying to be heroes, but, whatever. What scares the crepe suzettes out of the Euroweenies are those violent psychopaths living in huge numbers all over Europe, usually with no jobs due to flaccid, impotent economic policies set by the EU. So the Euroweenies say whatever is least likely to get their embassies burned down, because those nutjobs are effin' scary.
Gutless, and ultimately counterproductive.
Israel (i.e. The Zionist Entity): A bunch of middle class, college educated Saudis murdered a bunch of Americans on 9/11 leading to America’s latest incursion into Middle Eastern politics, so of course Israel is at fault. Israel has been fighting Islamofascist terrorism for almost four generations now, and they are getting sick and tired of it. They've tried ignoring the terrorists, shooting the terrorists, talking to the terrorists, blowing up the terrorists, negotiating with the terrorists, launching missiles at the terrorists, giving land to the terrorists, and siccing Bill Clinton on the terrorists. Currently, the policy in TZE is to create Palestinian State weather the Palestinians want one or not. The Israelis carved out a big chunk of their territory (including some of the most advanced agricultural facilities in the country; too bad the Palestinians can't seem to make it work- that thing about "making the desert bloom" wasn't propaganda, guys. And the price of kosher lettuce is up about 30%, if you can even find it for sale.) with the intent of sealing it the hell off- give the Palis guns and some money, build a big freaking wall around it, and let them make their own damn state.
A triumph of hope over experience.
And finally, ladies and gentlemen, we have.................
The Muslims, a.k.a. the Islamofascists, a.k.a. the Terrorists, a.k.a. the violent nutfudge psychopathic maniacs.
What to say, really, that hasn’t been said before?
How about this: in the United States, as in any free society, you have the right to believe as you wish.
So does everyone around you.
If everyone has the right to believe as they wish, it follows logically, then, that people have the right to disagree with you.
In a free society, you, and everyone around you, have the right to free speech.
That is, you have the right to not only disagree with me, but the right to express this disagreement in print or on your blog or by walking up and down the street with a sandwich board.
David Irving is currently serving a three year prison sentence in Austria for denying the Holocaust. David Irving is a jerk and I sincerely hope he burns in Hell. But David Irving has the right to say anything he wants to. Freedom of speech means the freedom to be wrong, too.
In a free society, you have the right to worship as you wish, and so does everyone around you.
You can disagree, argue, denounce, make fun of or spoof anyone’s religion, just as anyone can do the same to yours.
Therefore, let us conclude that people in free societies divide the world into two parts: Me and Everyone Else.
If Everyone Else doesn’t physically harm Me, I honestly don’t care what they say, or believe, or worship, or write, or blog. Let them make fun of Me. I have the right to make fun of Everyone Else if I want.
Although, as a practical matter, members of free societies usually approach the matter of religion with respect and common courtesy. I’m not a Scientologist, but if you are, fine by me.
The Islamofascist world also, it would seem, divides the world into two parts: Us and Them.
Fine. Believe what you will, sir. Its no skin off my nose.
However, they seem to think that we are obligated to follow their rules, to believe as they do.
Respect I’ll give you, but obedience goes to far.
I do not accept dhimmitude. I do not accept Sharia law.
Publishing sacrilegious images may not have been a very politic move… but rioting and burning down embassies is not the proper response. It is the response of the barbarian.
And you just can’t negotiate with barbarians.
