This is my last comment for the year as we are off to spend Hogmanay as the guests of an Ambassador in Paris. Out of deference to my family, who have had the brunt of it these last few days, I am definitely not taking the laptop, so I will no longer be able to take part in the popular new bloodsport of proving your loyalty to the SNP by being nasty to Craig Murray.
My parting thought is that, as every year of my entire life, it has been a disastrous one for the Palestinians. Yet more land occupied, settlements built, homes destroyed, olive trees uprooted, shipping vessels sunk and yet another murderous onslaught on Gaza.
I warmly recommend this rare public appearance by Col. Larry Wilkerson, ex-Chief of Staff to Colin Powell and a fellow recipient of the Sam Adams Award for Integrity. His brief musings here on Israel and Syria come from a deep store of knowledge and a razor-sharp intellect.
Do have a wonderful celebration. The future will be good. We are closer to a transformational change in society than you may realise.
“And yet while continuing to be wildly inaccurate.”
Facts please. Or shut up.
“And in between using phrases which make no sense. “Find another straw man, Clark. That one has been burnt out already” – I mean, what? This wouldn’t pass the Turing test.”
Do you know what a straw man is? Do you know what burning a straw man is – metaphorically speaking? Do you understand the concept of setting up a false argument and destroying it as if it were mine?
I’m done with you. You and your Islamophile friends are the internal enemy of the UK, and in Aust, facilitating a cultural revolution that you cannot conceive is taking place because of your inability to understand the exponential function.
This is for the others, not for you and Clark –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vII-GxsrR2c
Hi Jemand
When did concern with Islamic terrorism begin?
I mean, like in a really really big scary way.
And why weren’t they scaring us before?
Thanks.
Jemand, an ideology can’t hate. People can and do sometimes hate. I don’t “support” Islam; what makes you think I do?
OK, you’re not for mindless slaughter; good. I repeat; what do you propose be done about this problem that you apparently perceive?
Herbie, contemporaneously, it started around WWI/WWII. You know the history. British and French. European Jews got serious about Zionism. Americans did a deal with the Sauds. Modern tech, communications. To summarise it, the Middle East was a hornets nest, and the West shook it up. Now that says something bad about the West, not something good about hornets.
But historically, Islam has made it’s way in good time over the last 1500 years and it leaves few stories about how it conquered the many lands whose native populations succumbed.
Tech
Unfortunately for you, you cannot make TonyM’s Hitch quote mean other than it means by reference to other works by Hitchens.
Here’s the full text:
http://articles.latimes.com/2001/may/20/books/bk-144/2
When he says:
“These are, however, the now-undisputed findings of all historians and experts on the subject. And if they are sound, then it means that much “eyewitness” testimony is wrong. It necessarily changes our attitude toward the everyday complicity of average Germans. It also means that much of the evidence presented and accepted at Nuremburg was spurious. Of course, we knew some of this already–”
That’s precisely what he means.
No qualification. None whatsoever.
Technicolour
Many thanks for the links to the late Great Hitch who spoke so much sense on Irving and Nazi Germany as on so much else – I think that one point that needs to be made clear is that anti-Semitism in much of Europe was not something that started with the Nazis – it was there under Bismarck, it existed in France as witnessed by the Dreyfus affair, and there were a number of pogroms/forced emigrations/ethnic cleansings that took place in the Russian empire even through to the early 1900s.
Jemand, sorry. I meant, could you please answer Clark’s question, rather than pretending that everyone has frequently accused you of wanting to commit genocide. Given that we imagine that we accept, for the time being, your contention that all people who happen to have been born into the Islamic religion, are extremists, and therefore a threat, what is it you would particularly like to see happen to combat this threat? What would you do to a five year old Muslim?
Jemand, I’ve already watched the video about exponential growth. Thank goodness, prosperity, education and women’s rights, the human population is no longer growing exponentially, in fact the growth rate is decreasing – the population is still rising, but it looks like it will level off.
Is this somehow connected to your concerns about Islam?
Oh dear, I think I see where this is going…
In fact, just chill, Jemand. It’s being silly. The fear and panic does not come from the ‘threat’ of Islam; you are not really terrified about being overwhelmed by hordes of screaming infidels. It’s something else – who do you hang out with?
Yes, if YOU say so Clark. Absurd.
You use that old bullshit argument regarding majority versus minority. How does that change anything? If 49% were maniacs and 51% peaceable, does it suddenly change when 51% are maniacs and 49% are not?
The fact is, the majority are held captive by the minority. Just like the majority of Germans were NOT Nazis and yet history showed us, yet again, you don’t need a majority to take power. Whether the majority of muslims are either indifferent, powerless or peaceable is completely irrelevant. The fact that the Quran is the ultimate authority that prescribes a course of action IS relevant.
Using your logic, we can say that the vast majority of drink drivers do not cause accidents on the road. Therefore, everybody have one for the road.
The majority of psychopaths don’t murder people, so let’s continue to elect them to high office.
The majority of people who have unprotected sex don’t get AIDS, so let’s stop using condoms.
The majority of people aren’t burglars, so let’s stop locking our houses and cars.
I now understand why you quit Uni, Clark. You just ain’t up to the task of thinking things through.
Jemand
They weren’t an issue until 2001. The planning was done in the 1990s.
Rather embarrassingly now, one of our most vociferous anti-muslims wrote a book called Londinistan about how all these muslim radicals were given sanctuary in London.
She didn’t realise that they were being trained and recruiting during that period to go forth and become the great new bogeyman, replacing the Soviet union.
Don’t panic. It’s all under control. Even ISIS.
“Jemand, an ideology can’t hate. People can and do sometimes hate. I don’t “support” Islam; what makes you think I do?”
Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.
‘Yawn’
I’m now going to imagine that all Christians are like the ones who hand around abortion clinics with guns, or George and Jeb Bush – curses, I’m surrounded by them.
Must feel odd, if you really thought like that. Banal, actually: you’re painting over the joyful variety in humanity with a dark, tarred brush. It would be like refusing to see the colours in a bowl of fruit.
Technicolour, please don’t refer to any children as Muslim or as being of any religion. One has to be adult before choosing a religion. I wasn’t a five year old Jehovah’s Witless. I was a five year old with a Witless adoptive mother.
Habbabkuk @ 10.07 pm. As with Balotelli’s inadvertent racism and Suarez’s accidental cannibalism , I don’t think you intended (even while relishing) the homophobic associations of “posing”. Can you, nevertheless, please tease out for me what “posing as a Clerk” implies? Do you think I am pretending to be a clerk in legal chambers, handing out briefs to distinguished QC’s, such as yourself? If so, you’re spot on: that’s just the role I have attempted to adopt, encouraged by your exchanges with Clark. [Ah! Light dawns: am I missing a homophonic pun here?]
My question, as you might have noticed – please do read my exam paper @ 7.50 pm – was: is the proposed legislation “coherent, not…open to abuse or misinterpretation by those implementing its provisions; and … as far as possible [does] not excessively compromise fundamental civil liberties or the UK’s international and bilateral treaty obligations”?
Am I correct in taking your response – which I hoped would cover all of Part 1, Chapter 2. not just the sections to which I drew your attention – as meaning that you see no way to improve this part of the legislation? A few analytical comments on why the legislation is fit for purpose would be more convincing than just having the Habbabkuk blanket of approval flung over it like Duchy branding.
Keep on board. We are talking about legislation which is either serious or pre-election (party and party-leader) political posturing; or a mixture of both. Even if you are not an MP (though you could be – avatars are metamorphic), your seal of approval means that you are investing your reputation in this legislation: “Investments may rise or fall”. So, surprise me with a response that raises the value of your stock on this exchange.
“Given that we imagine that we accept, for the time being, your contention that all people who happen to have been born into the Islamic religion, are extremists, and therefore a threat, what is it you would particularly like to see happen to combat this threat? What would you do to a five year old Muslim?”
I never made any such claim. Please post a link to where I stated that ALL PEOPLE etc.
Making stuff up is not the same thing as facts.
Jemand, I see where you’re trying to go, but I think you should take a basic course in Islamic studies. Because it is a baggy, old religion, which has had time to grow and develop, and which therefore contains many of the apparently contradictory and ambiguous elements which one finds in human nature. This is not true of the Nazi party: there was no room for ambiguity. There was not a “you should support the Jews, who are people of the Book” proclamation in Nazi party propaganda, as there is in the Koran. There is no evidence that the Nazi regime included demands that you help a stranger, or your neighbour, that you must not kill children, or any civilian, that the taking of one life was equivalent to the killing of everyone. All of which are in the Koran, and backed up in Hadiths.
Jemand, it’s true, guns don’t kill people. I live on a farm these days. Twenty people with guns walk past my house every Thursday, off to shoot pheasants. Those guns still haven’t killed me.
What do you propose be done? And what’s with the exponential growth video?
“In fact, just chill, Jemand. It’s being silly. The fear and panic does not come from the ‘threat’ of Islam; you are not really terrified about being overwhelmed by hordes of screaming infidels. It’s something else – who do you hang out with?”
You are kidding, right? You’re pulling some bullshit social welfare officer, amateur psychology on me? Who mentioned “hordes of screaming infidels”[sic]?
Look, Technicolour, you don’t have a kid – it’s obvious. I do. Clearly, you wouldn’t mind if your country is eventually dominated in every respect by Islam. But I think you would aggressively object to it becoming a fascist state.
I don’t think that the UK will become an Islamic state. It’s simple really. The security services will not allow that to happen. Now, are you able to imagine how they would operate – bearing in mind that the comparatively small demographic of muslims is only around 5% and has excited the counter-insurgency that you witness today.
Can you imagine how it will pan out? Everyone shaking hands, saying sorry, and pretending that there is no social transformation?
“Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman has found the origins of evil
Bauman argues that the West’s great efforts to civilize other peoples are what gave rise to the violence against the ‘alien.'”
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/.premium-1.562128
Always relevant and ahead of the game, eh.
“Banal, actually: you’re painting over the joyful variety in humanity with a dark, tarred brush. It would be like refusing to see the colours in a bowl of fruit.”
Yes, that’s right. The history of Islamification is “joyful variety in humanity”.
I wouldn’t describe a bloody battlefield as joyful. Why do you delude yourself so?
‘Now, are you able to imagine how they would operate – bearing in mind that the comparatively small demographic of muslims is only around 5% and has excited the counter-insurgency that you witness today.’
again – garbled stuff. It doesn’t actually work, using facts in your own argument which destroy it?
“The history of Islamification is “joyful variety in humanity”.
Ah, a good excuse for Rumi (13th century Persian poet, Sufi and Islamic scholar):
A Moment Of Happiness
A moment of happiness,
you and I sitting on the verandah,
apparently two, but one in soul, you and I.
We feel the flowing water of life here,
you and I, with the garden’s beauty
and the birds singing.
The stars will be watching us,
and we will show them
what it is to be a thin crescent moon.
You and I unselfed, will be together,
indifferent to idle speculation, you and I.
The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar
as we laugh together, you and I.
In one form upon this earth,
and in another form in a timeless sweet land.
“Jemand, I see where you’re trying to go, but I think you should take a basic course in Islamic studies.”
I think you should stop thinking you know so much about Islam when you only know what various imams have stated as part of their PR. Have you heard about abbrogation? Look it up because quite clearly you haven’t read anything more than a non-muslim friendly brochure on Islam.
“Because it is a baggy, old religion, which has had time to grow and develop, and which therefore contains many of the apparently contradictory and ambiguous elements which one finds in human nature.”
That doesn’t inspire confidence. The ambiguous elements? You mean when it says “Go and slay” it actually means “Go and do not slay”?
Why don’t you just listen to muslims who know a whole lot more about their own religion than you do? Or do you know more than they?
Islam has not “grown and develop[ed]” in the 1500 years that it has existed. Muslims TVs have developed, but the Quran is exactly the same. Indeed, it cannot be reformed because how can you perfect God’s words when they are already perfect? Islam is NOT science and it is not open to interpretation where edicts are already clear. A muslim colleague of mine confirmed to me that the original Arabic text of the Quran is very clear for Arabs to read and understand, not to be confused with European languages. I wouldn’t be surprised if Islam retarded the development of the language.
“This is not true of the Nazi party: there was no room for ambiguity. There was not a “you should support the Jews, who are people of the Book” proclamation in Nazi party propaganda, as there is in the Koran.”
More nonsense. Read the Quran yourself.
“There is no evidence that the Nazi regime included demands that you help a stranger, or your neighbour, that you must not kill children, or any civilian, that the taking of one life was equivalent to the killing of everyone. All of which are in the Koran, and backed up in Hadiths.”
Wrong again! When the Quran speaks of a person, it means a MUSLIM MAN. If the person is not a MUSLIM, then it explicitly states Christian, Jew, pagan, unbeliever etc. If the person is not a MAN, then it explicitly states that it is a woman.
Stop pushing Islamic PR for kaffirs.
“Those who believe, those who are Jews, and the Christians and Sabaeans, all who believe in Allah and the Last Day and act rightly, will have their reward with their Lord. They will feel no fear and will know no sorrow. (Koran: Surat al-Baqara, 62)
?
Jemand: “Muslim TVs have developed”. ? Televisions? Transvestites? I don’t know what you’re on about. And what’s this “counter-insurgency”?
I think the pushback on gun ownership is misplaced. Mental preparedness must take precedence. Personal rreponsibility is key. Anything else is reppressive.
Poetry won’t save you Technicolour. You are a collaborator, whether by intent or stupidity. You and your friends have enabled this course and if you do not take measures to stop it, then it will end very badly for everyone, including innocent, nominal muslims.
jemand, there are Muslims fighting for this country, as normal soldiers.
Have you ever had a conviction to fight for someone, truly your paranoia is not only childish but tabloid, fear and angst shittering stuff, eh. I’ve been to Bradford and saw Mullahs raise 750.000 in less than an hour, but your soul may rot in hell, it was for a school and its twin school.
The strange rituals, the fact that I was there on behalf of a candidate and had to take my shoes off for the service was just one part.
I was challenged with looks and words but I was in their midsts, in their centre of power that day, the whole Ribble valley was represented for this charity, and that my friend, is the larger , much larger majority of Muslims in this country, whatever your twisted links aim to achieve.
Have you served any cause? ever?
Most gun owners don’t commit firearm offences and yet we would never want liberal gun ownership laws in our own countries. See the pattern?