One constantly repeated theme by RWDB commenters in the wake of the London atrocities was summed up in this statement – part of a comment by EP:
I think the majority of Muslims should put some more critical distance between themselves and al-Qaeda.
Specifically, I want to see every decent Imam issuing an fatwa against Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and terrorism.
This demand, in RWDBland where there are only black and white and never shades of grey, then quickly becomes a standard by which individual Muslims or Islamic leaders can be condemned, as in this comment by Rob or innumerable posts by Tim Blair.
I don’t know what the direction of causality is (and you have to avoid post ergo propter hoc thinking here), but either RWDB bloggers are echoing right-wing op/ed writers or the other way round. Either way, the great individualists of the Right seem to operate in a very co-ordinated collective way.
One of the things most praised about blogging is that people can instantly link to evidence. But how does that work in practice? The RWDBs set up a criterion – Islamic leaders must condemn terrorism – and then engage in something of a competition with each other to find links to stories or websites where unrepresentative Islamic leaders don’t behave in the way they demand. What’s completely ignored in this argument by linking is that such figures as Sheikh Omran are on the fringes of Islamic sentiment in Australia. But apparently proceeding on the principle that a link is as good as a wink to a blind bat, any news story or website that seems to support the a priori position of the blogger or commenter is supposed to be a knock-down argument.
Never mind the fact that Islam is an incredibly diverse faith, with all sorts of different varieties nationally and spiritually. If I were to assert that all Christians are Republican loonies, I’d be jumped on immediately – and rightly so. But RWDBs have no trouble making the most gross generalisations based on the most unrepresentative pieces of “evidence”.
It’s exactly the same scenario as in the controversy over good news from Iraq, where Arthur Chrenkoff claimed to be presenting a balanced picture, highlighting reports sourced from dubious and biassed propaganda to suggest that everything in Iraq was going much more swimmingly than the media presented. Never mind the context of the presuppositions that go into the reporting by Western journalists, and the balance of evidence on how well things are going in Iraq.
One link does not an argument make, if it’s not representative of the broad picture. And it’s odd that the RWDBs, so fond of presenting the “good news” from Iraq, don’t trouble themselves to jump into comments threads or rush to put up a post when Australian Islamic leaders do condemn terrorism.
Just in – news for EP. 100 Imams in the UK met last week and a fatwa is now being drafted to make clear that suicide bombers place themselves outside Islam, and that Muslims have a moral duty to cooperate with police to apprehend perpetrators and prevent future attacks. This is what EP asked for. Will he be happy with this good news, I wonder?
If Muslims are so keen to turn in anyone who preaches violence, why is it that the first time we find out about things like this is from newspaper reports?
All those hundreds of thousands of Muslims eager to cooperate with the police, and not one of them knew about these bookshops openly selling Jihad literature in Sydney and Melbourne?
Bullshit.
This is why mere words from Islamic leaders cannot be trusted. When we start finding out about these bookshops because the local imam reported them to the police — instead of hearing weak denials after they were publicised — then those “community leaders” may have some credibility.
any news story or website that seems to support the a priori position of the blogger or commenter is supposed to be a knock-down argument.
I understand as well, EP, that the NSW police determined that selling the books in question broke no laws.
So, EP, you’d like to see “the majority of Muslims should put some more critical distance between themselves and al-Qaeda”, but when they do, you refuse to believe them?
Maybe your initial comment was just a debating point, then?
The local Dymocks sells books by Karl Marx, EP, an author you’ve previously alleged to have written genocidal theory.
Go on, the terrorist hotline operators are waiting.
Try responding to my point, Mark.
If the majority of Muslims are so keen to banish extremists from their midst, why are investigative reporters having to do the footwork in finding even such obvious examples as the several bookshops mentioned above?
This is why I don’t believe the feel-good statements of some leaders, such as the single news story that supports your a priori position to which you linked.
Muslims are taught by their religion to use lies and deception as a tactic. This is called taqqiyah.
This is why mere words count for nothing. Only action, by way of binding religious condemnations of terrorism and active cooperation with authorities, will have meaning.
The selling of books preaching religious hatred is definitely illegal in Victoria — where it was discovered about two weeks ago.
What action has the Bracks government taken? None at all, I suspect. They only prosecute Christians.
There were several others, EP. My surprise was that the RWDB fraternity didn’t immediately link to a single story that appeared to comply with what they asked for. I could also elaborate on it by looking at survey evidence of what Muslims actually believe. But you’d accuse me of relying on “advocacy research” I imagine. So I thought I’d use the trusty RWDB criterion of a single link and see if it’s a knock down argument against RWDBs.
Apparently not.
You still haven’t replied to my point about the bookshops, Mark. Why didn’t the “moderate Muslims” dob them in?
And that single story you linked to does not constitute the action I demanded — it’s just a bloke talking about doing stuff. Not actually doing it.
I do understand that the intellectual Left has a problem distinguishing between talk and action. But I don’t think it’s an insuperable barrier to understanding.
The Religious and Racial Toleration Act does not make the Government and its agencies into thought police – as you are suggesting.
Should a group which finds the books offensive where to make a complaint to the Equal Opportunity Commission then action would be taken. But we don’t have police peeking through ourr bookshops, churches or Mosques searching for racial/religous intolerance.
Another example of the outright lies and distorations around this progressive legislation.
Because I’m not particularly convinced that the discussion of bookshops is relevant to the points I am trying to make in the post, EP.
If you read the article, the Imams in question talk about what they’ve said to their congregations. That’s action, I think. I don’t know that you don’t have a problem distinguishing between talk that has an effect and mere rhetoric.
I do note that you have now raised the bar (a typical RWDB rhetorical move) and you’re unsatisfied with condemnations, you want individual denunciations.
To which I respond with a link:
Do, please, read the whole article.
It’s probably true that we are selective. You follow the links, you follow your fingers, you follow your curiosity. The left does this as well, I should think.
For example, google takes me to an Australian islamic website here. I don’t know how representative it is. I look around the site; I find much that I read there dubious, if not abhorrent, but is it typical? I gather the organisation in question foregathers at the largest mosque in Sydney, so I assume it’s not too fringe. I read the article, I note it leads off with a long quote from Chomsky, so I may be moved to comment – possibly – on how extreme Islamists in Australia use radical writers like Chomsky as their authorities.
I’m sorry if that upsets you, but I don’t see that it’s unreasonable.
The same goes with persons said to be ‘authorities’ on Islam. I’ve read a couple of Bernard Lewis’ books, and they seem to make sense to me. He’s often touted as ‘the west’s leading authority on Islam’, but how reliable are those that so cite him? Are they RWDBs too? Problems, problems. All you can do is call it as you see it – which is what you do as well, I suspect.
EP,
most muslims don’t believe in the wahhabist type of Islam which I am betting is the basis for these books.
Banning the books is stupid. Does anyone think you can’t get this stuf over the net?
Rubbish, Chris.
The Victorian Equal Opportunity Commission actively solicited three Muslims to attend the Christian event, and to make a complaint afterwards.
Therefore, if the EOC is to be seen as fair, it should heve actively solicited Jews and Christians to visit the Muslim bookshop , and to make a complaint afterwards.
The fact that the EOC was proactive in one case, and not the other, demonstrates
(1) that the Victorian government is, in fact acting in the role of thought police;
(2) that in fulfilling this role, the government is acting based on religious discrimination.
You could look at the way that Lewis’ works have been received and criticised within the academic community, Rob, and why he’s touted as such. Normally it’s indeed by people with a right-wing agenda to push. His career got a great boost out of s11 – he was pretty much forgotten as a scholar because of his bias and many inaccuracies before then. But I imagine Windschuttle’s not scouring over his footnotes.
Your “a text is a text is a text” argument betrays the typical textualism and postmodern relativism that is destroying civilisation as we know it, one RWDB comment at a time! Truth!
EP is unwilling to engage with what the post talks about, and instead repeats his tired lines, yet again. Yawn. Do something useful with your life, EP, and go visit a fundie bookshop and see if you can find some books that incite religious hatred. Do your duty as a citizen, friend! How many people have you denounced lately!
So, Mark, you’ve pointed me to yet another Muslim leader saying that he’s against terrorism. Without action, such words are meaningless.
And I can understand why you wouldn’t want to take on my point about radical bookshops — since it destroys your argument.
And I should mention that your misrepresentation of Arthur Chrenkoff and his work is in perfect lock-step with the rest of the leftist hive-mind — so obviously he’s having a very positive effect.
I suggest you read this article and the attached fact sheet before peddling your continued distortions.
The Equal Opportunity Commission also has some good information.
But how much of the criticism of Lewis is itself ideologically motivated? I don’t know that either.
I’m dense today, and your second para went right over my head.
Where would EP be without his continued distortions? Blissfully silent.
I know – tilting at windmills is a little hobby….
Rob, you’re a postmodernist. Any text has the same truth value to you, it seems, regardless of how representative it is. That’s what I was saying.
I’d imagine most mainstream Muslims aren’t hanging around radical bookshops, just like most white dudes aren’t hanging around in those Anarchist’s bookshops you find in most cities.
No, Kim, I am a very modified and mitigated postmodernist. Variant texts definitely do not have the same value to me.
I refer you, EP, to today’s thread on national ID cards, and the stoush cutting across all known ideological lines.
Leftist hive mind? You’re commenting on a blog that hosts more criticism of Left parties and ideas than you’d find anywhere. When I see criticism of Right parties and ideas on your blog, I’ll take you more seriously.
Oh, and action too, not just words…
Then, Rob, I’d expect you to do some research on Bernard Lewis and judge for yourself, and work out some criteria for judging whether your link is representative, rather than just assume because they support your political views, they must be. That’s the point of the post.
Chris, do you deny that the EOC deliberately soliocited Muslims to attend the Catch The Fire Ministries talk?
Chris do you claim that the EOC has taken any action at all regarding the sale of literature inciting religious hatred at the Brunswick mosque?
Try answering the questions before you slither off to your “fact sheets”.
Chris Anderson,
you are kidding aren’t you.
You believe the Uniting denomination can put out a fact sheet particularly as they were up to their armpits in the case.
Taks a look at what the two dannys said or mainly one Danny and then see if it comppatible with that ‘fact’ sheet!
Evading the point of the post yet again, EP. Selective replies are also a RWDB standard. Why not take up Liam’s criticisms?
I can tell yr rattled as yr spelling is deteriorating. “soliocited” indeed! Cretan! (Another knock down RWDB tactic – looky, he made a typo! We don’t need to take anything he says seriously!)…
“Either way, the great individualists of the Right seem to operate in a very co-ordinated collective way.”
It’s a fairly obvious example of mob behaviour as in “a mob of individualists”.
You know they’re done when they’re down to ad-homs.
You know they?Äôre done when they?Äôre down to ad-homs.
Hehe!
So you and Rob are planning to retract and publicly apologise to cs? And admit that yr ad-hominem arguments were nothing of the sort?
Ad-homs, and red herrings.
You only dislike herrings because they’re popular in Sweden, EP.
Can I ask a mild and uncontroversial question? If anyone followed the link I posted to the Call of Islam website, did they find anything there that gave them cause for unease? (Sigh – another RWDB rhetorical trick: yeah, right.)
Lutefisk is a crime against Nature.
Oh please. The EOCV cannot solicit complaints – read the act.
The EOCV does not make judgements, impose outcomes or award compensation.
Under the Act the right to religous discussion is upheld. Villification is not reasonable religous discussion, nor is selectiove quoting from religous tracts.
Oh, another thing – Truthfullness is a defence against an action in VCAT. If the Catch the Fire Ministries were only telling the truth, why did they lose????
..and what have I said to or about Chris that requires an apology? I just made a joke somewhere about the Cretan thing.
Mark’s just spinning shit. Check out Update V:
http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/comments/bus_attack_was_suicide_bomber/
If you took the time to do some basic checking, you’ll find Tim Blair often provides space for moderate Muslim voices.
Yeah, another RWDB rhetorical trick, Rob. It’s called – instilling a sense of solidarity as “us” versus that evil Other. You know, if only us white Christian folks actually had a look at what those alien Muslims were saying, we’d quickly come to see that George W. Bush was right all along. Hey – there’s a website. The Iraq War was right all along!
Of course, there are Islamic websites that are a worry. So?
Your next step will be to argue that this is a war to the death for the very survival of our civilisation and all of us should immediately fall in lockstep behind our Great White Leaders. After all, Bush wasn’t elected. God put him there in 2000.
Chris ,Truth isn’t a defence, read the judgement,
Danny N quoted extensivley both from the koran and the hadiths
More power to Tim Blair, then, Gilbert.
If only the EPs and observas of the world followed suit.
Well, Mark, a moderate muslim voice commented here the other day (Maryam) and EP told her she couldn’t possibly be a muslim because her beliefs didn’t match his beliefs of what her beliefs should be. There’s no pleasing some people!
Come on, Kim. Those are about the wildest extrapolations I’ve ever seen.
EP seems to know a lot more about Muslim beliefs than Catholic belief!
Come on, Kim. Those are about the wildest extrapolations I?Äôve ever seen.
Try harder, Rob. I bet you could find a comment or two by observa to link to!
Rob, the particular article you linked seems to be a typical Chomskyite screed.
More interesting to me are the back issues of the magazine, with articles such as this:
The newer issues have toned down the overt Islamist militancy, after some articles calling for separatism and jihad were publicised in the wake of 911.
Why should I (find a comment or two….)? I said on one of the other threads that observa was out of line and was coming up with some pretty repellant stuff.
Mark, didn’t you name Blair in your original post as an exemplar of what you complain about?
Chris: The VCOE did, in fact, solicit complaints — regardless of what the ACt says. And the majority of the “offences” of CTF Ministries were in relation to actual quotes from the Koran as well as to some fairly well extablished facts.
The Victorian legislation and its enforcement authorities exist for the suppression of politically incorrect thought. That is all they have ever been meant to do.
Coz they’d be wilder extrapolations, Rob.
But I’m sure yr too busy composing yr latest comment to tell us all about how the Left has lost the battle of history RWDB rhetorical move #57889.
Indeed I did, Gilbert. On the basis of a number of recent posts on the front page. As I said, if tim’s view isn’t as monolithic as that of his epigones, then I’m pleased to hear that.
Yes, Kim, us lefties are already dead but don’t know it, according to Rob.
No, I’ve done that one to death, Kim (for now). But I don’t think you are engaging with the issue at all, if I may say so with respect (politeness, another RWDB ploy).
I think if we went back and looked, Rob, we’d find such comments tend to be posted during the wee hours.
Yes, a bit of a giveaway, Mark. tired and/or emotional.
VCOE? Whats that?
The judgement is here, here and here
Why don’t we all read it and come to our own conclusions, not those lines fed to you like littel trouts at a trout farm!
One man’s ad-hom is another man’s cheap shot.
Personally I prefer the explanation of “mob behaviour” – i.e. an emergent behaviour which sometimes occurs in crowds and in the “cybercrowd” that comprises the blogosphere – over any conspiracy theory along the lines of “These alleged individualists are secretly sending messages to each other on MSN behind our backs”.
Another possibility, derived from evolutionary psychology, is that there’s a lot of people out there whose optic nerves have more direct neural connections to their fingers so that what they read on the screen can be transmitted straight to the computer keyboard without overloading the cognitive centres of the brain.
Nah, it’s a mob thing.
Gummo, I wasn’t intending to suggest a conspiracy – just a lack of originality in adopting the argument of the week and a certain predictability in the rhetorical moves in comments threads.
On the other hand, the second explanation…
Doesn’t this apply with equal force to the left, though? When I wonder around Surfdom, Daily Kos, DU, stuff like that, I see all the same cohering themes, hooks, triggers, angles and arguments. The political blogosphere is polarised, is all.
(Moderate reasonableness – another RWDB ploy.)
Mark,
No accusation of conspiracy theorism was intended. I was just canvassing possible explanations. My own preferred explanation is that we are looking at a form of mob psychology, it’s just that it’s occuring through the wonderful new medium of the internet rather than in the traditional “angry crowd runs amok” form that we’re more familiar with.
Damn, that’s far too earnest. I’m out of here.
Chris, I’m not interested in reading the censors’ long-winded justifications for their acts of repression.
I’m interested in the facts.
And the facts are that Christians who criticise Islam are persecuted by the Victorian Government, while Muslims who incite violence against Jews and Christians are ignored by the Victorian Government.
That’s discriminatory thought policing, no matter how you try to dress it up with legalities.
It applies to the American blogosphere, I think, Rob, but less so to the Australian left blogosphere – such as it is.
No doubt there’s something in that, Gummo, though it’s also hierarchical – as in the minor RWDB blogger who gets super excited when Tim Blair links to one of their posts, and picks up their argument.
Odd you should say that, Mark, in the commentary to a thread where you faithfully echo Tim Dunlop’s unjustified condemnation of Chrenkoff.
That’s one of the better ripostes in this thread, EP. Though I do agree with Tim on this one, I don’t always agree with Tim and when he’s actively posting, there’s more often than not little overlap between the subject matter on the two sites.
Perhaps not on everything, but I do notice distinct patterns of commentary arising in both the left and right blogospheres.
I go with the “emergent behaviour” theory.
Justice Higgins is a censor? Or is it you are afraid that if you actually, well you know, informed yourself then you might actually have to think?
You’re the one who is buying the official government story hook, line and sinker, Chris.
If you tried actually thinking, you’d realise that “censor” is an appropriate term for one who performs the function of censorship — that is, deciding that certain expression is forbidden and subject to penalty.
Meanwhile, muslim boys in Sydney public high schools touch up their female teachers as they walk by, call them sluts, then cry “racist” when confronted, and graffiti scratched into desks by muslim public schoolgirls state “all blondes are whores” and so on.
These kids probably aren’t ideal suicide bomber candidates – they are however, the sons and daughters of ‘moderate’ muslims in our community.
ID cards and banning a couple of hate books aren’t going to solve these issues.
And there’s no obnoxious behaviour or sexual harrassment in low socio-economic status public schools by White “Christian” boys, jo-anne?
I doubt that the “racist” response is anything but a cynical one. The issue should be the behaviour not the background.
EP, how does this fit in (the austlii.edu.au middle case posted by Chris, thanks) with your theories of who is persecuting who?:
”At an early stage of the proceedings there were three applications by various parties to intervene, namely the Uniting Church of Australia, the Catholic Church and the Board of Imams of Victoria. All three sought to intervene to the extent of placing written submissions before the Tribunal in support of the complaint. The Uniting Church stated that it wished to intervene lest there be a public perception that the conduct, which is the subject of the complaint, is being held out as consistent with Christian beliefs and ideals and that the Church wishes to express support for the complainant in its attempt to protect the right of the Islamic community not to be vilified on the grounds of religious belief or activity. The Catholic Church sought to intervene on the basis that it is committed to social harmony between all segments of society and would not wish to see the attitudes espoused by the Respondents become an acceptable part of the Australian scene, which is characteristically tolerant and open. ”
jo-anne, you’ll get into trouble for that around here. There are some set responses: it never happened; or, it’s an invention of the RW media; or, it’s an unreliable personal anecdote; or, it’s an attempt to demonise the alien Other.
Actually, I just responded differently, Rob. I doubt that this is a matter of cultural difference. I think that there’s appalling behaviour by boys in lots of schools with a similar socio-economic background – and sexual and other harrassment of teachers.
The key is to deal with the behaviours.
Having said that, it would be counter-productive were teachers and/or the Education Department not to do so vigorously if they were afraid of being accused of racism. But I doubt that’s a real issue.
Peter, the elite of the Uniting denomination is merely playing out their pagan philosophy that all roads lead to God.
Have a look at some of the witnesses they are in a similar group!
What Mark said.
graffiti scratched into desks by muslim public schoolgirls state “all blondes are whores”
Lordy, I used to dislike all the blonde princesses at my school. I might just have scratched similar graffiti on a desk when I was 16. That didn’t mean that I did this because I was a Catholic, or an American (both of which things I am).
It meant that I was a brunette chick who wasn’t cool in the eyes of boys.
you?Äôll get into trouble for that around here
RWDB rhetorical move #67890 – these lefties won’t tolerate that!
I replied to jo-anne before I read Rob’s attempt at crystal ball peering.
Mark, why does ‘Sydney public high schools’ equate to ‘low socio-economic status’?
I’m making the assumption based on the fact that there aren’t too many Muslims living on the North Shore or Eastern Suburbs, Rob, so the high schools in question are likely to be in such areas. Otherwise the comment wouldn’t be made.
The Eastern suburbs, for instance, are very Anglo and Jewish.
That is, logically, the comment must refer to those Sydney high schools with large numbers of Muslim students rather than to those with a different demographic, and the former are those in socio-economically disadvantaged areas.
Maybe we should ask jo-anne, unless you’ve frightened her off (#67891).
I don’t think that’s what Mark is trying to do, Rob, you’re just engaging in another set of RWDB stereotypes about women being easily frightened by argument and lefties being scary
I also point out that her comment conflates ethnicity and religion. There can be blonde Muslims, you know. Who was it who commented that religious bigotry is now the acceptable face of racism? It was in response to Galloway’s comments, as I recall.
NB: Mention of Galloway will now produce another set of standard RWDB reactions.
Peter, what was the basis of the Board of Imams’ intervention? You didn’t quote that (unless I blinked and missed it).
Since we’re being all meta and all…
Anyway, I’m off to have dinner. Just responding in advance to RWDB claims about “not responding to an argument means you’ve conceded”. Lefties have lives. Just saying…
Hey, Kim, easy on the RWDB sterotypes. Mark frightens me sometimes, you know. So do you.
Yes, me too, Kim, then to do some reading.
The point being Rob what the Catholic Church and the Uniting Church did. (RWDB avoid the telling point #153624 registered TM)
But I’m just interested, Peter, is all. What was the basis of their intervention?
Ps – don’t worry, Rob, on less meta threads, we’ll preserve the fiction that RWDB comments are inspired by genuine desire to engage rather than enjoying beating lefties around the head with rhetorical tricks and sophistry
Go read it then Rob, be interested.
ps – Rob, I’m no more frightening than a Harry Potter book. Make of that what you will. We’re all pussycats round here, remember?
I thought I’d seen some pretty nasty desk graffitti at my Sydney Public High School. But then I enrolled in a sandstone university…
I’ll make a note to use that epithet in the next week, by the way. You Sydneypublichighschool!
And the rest, as they say, Liam is history!
Almost to 100 comments in 3 hours. That deserves a mention.
I assumed you had the relevant thing in front of you, Peter, that’s why I asked.
‘Rhetorical tricks and sophistry’ is what I would call, well, arguing.
Said the Sophist to Plato.
Though I do share Rob’s curiosity as to whether you can expand on that, Peter.
Righteo – off to have dinner and then to read some Hayek.
That was neat, exactly 100 comments in exactly 3 hours. (Different order of meta).
Hayek. How unimaginative of me, it must be the hive mind controlling.
This should be the 100th unless it’s moderated.
Bugger.
Ha! Beat you to it again, Liam
Rob – RWDB trick #078605 – imply that only RWDB comments get moderated!
Mark, I didn’t see any section explaining the Immam’s intervention, it might well be in another part.
Unless you were asking abt #153624? No mechanics out there? That’s the firing order of a well known ”red motor”
#82671 – that leftwing bloggers reserve significant milestones to themselves. Just joking – #43763.
OK, Peter, I’ve done the work myself (RWDB ploy # 2). It’s a quote directly following from what you posted.
“The Board of Imams also sought a limited right to intervene and it described itself as having been for 20 years the head spiritual body for Muslims in Victoria and to make submissions on behalf of those who it represents.”
Not that it says a lot. All three interventions were refused.
Clearly EP is having another anxiety day. Leave him alone you lot. It’s cruel to taunt a defenceless creature.
Or steal its sperm.
Yes, EP’s not been on form today. Let’s send him some lefty love.
I doubt that this is a matter of cultural difference. I think that there?Äôs appalling behaviour by boys in lots of schools with a similar socio-economic background – and sexual and other harrassment of teachers.
Jo-Anne’s original comment referred to racist behaviour by both Muslim boys and Muslim girls.
The fact that you responded by citing only bad behaviour by boys reveals your innate sexism.
This holds true for the vast majority of the purveyors of political correctness: beneath their veneer of equalism lies a deep layer of discrimination.
I’m doing quite well, Kim.
It’s you who is reduced to weak ad-homs, Bill Posters to mindless crap, and Mark to gratuitous sexism.
How about some substantial posts in this thread?
That’s better, EP, good to see you back with the usual generalisations about THE LEFT. That love sharin’ must have worked.
Ok, back to BB noms now.
Uh, Kim, I didn’t evenmention “the left” in my last two posts.
Maybe it’s time you cleaned your glasses.
”a deep layer of discrimination.”
Really EP, how about the RWBD purveying of one size fits all ”Islofacism”
Alright, EP. jo-anne’s comment clearly signalled that she regarded the behaviour by these boys (are they “Muslim” or Lebanese? or what? – who makes comments about “Christian kids at Public High Schools”?) as more serious and that’s what Mark responded to.
I have no doubt that the girls’ response is conditioned by the sexist standards of our culture which holds blonde white girls to be the standard of female beauty.
And I was trying to be nice to you, EP, not ad-hominem snark
Well, that would be a change, Kim. Clarification accepted.
No probs, EP.
I still don’t see much of substance coming back at the RWDBs here except overstatements (e.g. ‘wild extrapolations’) and conspiracy theories, as elegantly articulated by Mark in his headline post.
And Kim, do you think it’s a possibility that ‘blonde’ could simply be (racist) shorthand for Caucasian female? That’s what I took to be the point of jo-anne’s reference.
Who knows what Jo-Anne meant? She didn’t even provide a single link.
I wouldn’t like to hear her defence of the evidence when the weblog Windschuttles come investigating.
…of course personally, I’d prefer a properly annotated reference to an academic article, book or book section, if you please, none of these newfangled hyperlinks.
What, a link to graffiti on a desk in a school somewhere in Sydney? Even RWDBs can’t do that. Maybe she just saw it, or heard about it (unreliable personal anecdote).
Oh hayek,
I missed all the fun because of my ad -homerin is laminton or hadith gone away.
Laminton? You’ve totally lost me there, Homer.
I got as far as ‘Homer in Islam into nor’ then gave up.
Rob, when I was writing my honours thesis I was tempted to cite one of the funnier bits of desk graffitti in the Fisher Library as evidence of popular misunderstaning of ethnic, foreign-language and multicultural media.
You’ll be happy to know that I resisted the temptation and cited only reliable and scholarly works.
1Anonymous. Desk Graffitti. 2002. Fisher Library, Camperdown, Sydney. Level Four, about five rows along from the back.
Oh! first gravatars die and now the <sup> tag? The humanity!
Leftie Strategem #1:
All instances of Islamic fascism/woman hatred/mass murder can be ignored…
…because a fatuous comparison can be made with:
Andrew Bolt/Republicans/Christians/the Crusaders/Howard family members/Charlton Heston’s cold dead hands/Hillsong worshippers/Amanda Vanstone/Captain America/Karl Rove/Oil/Franco/Andrew Bolt/George Bush’s pickup truck/Tony Abbott/Oil/Gitmo/Andrew Bolt/Leviticus/Filipino Good Friday flagellators/Margaret Thatcher/blondes I used to hate/Andrew Bolt/Miranda Devine/JR Ewing/Oil/Roswell/Fred Nile/Jock Ewing/Piers Ackerman’s cocaine usage/the Ku Klux Klan/the subservience of Miss Ellie/the Elders of Zion/Oil/Donald Rumsfeld/Israel/Condie Rice/Andrew Bolt/News Limited/Oil/Tim Blair etc.
Just in – news for EP. 100 Imams in the UK met last week and a fatwa is now being drafted to make clear that suicide bombers place themselves outside Islam, and that Muslims have a moral duty to cooperate with police to apprehend perpetrators and prevent future attacks. This is what EP asked for. Will he be happy with this good news, I wonder?
All instances of Islamic fascism/woman hatred/mass murder can be ignored
And who’s doing that, pray tell, C.L.? THE LEFT or can you point to any actually existing commenter?
RWDB strategem #7806 – always target straw-LEFTIEs and use the term “Islamofacism” as much as possible in order to make fatuous comparisons.
C.L. strategem #1 – overindulge in hyperbole in comments.
Where’s the originator of THE LEFT anyway? I miss good old Fyodor.
Nobody indulges Homercles in his pun battles any more.
yeah what happened to Fyodor? he hasn’t been on catallaxy or quiggin’s either
liam
i’d engage homer in a pun battle if he’d made any
But more seriously, I don’t think this post has really achieved what it set out to do, which was to do us (RWDBs) over. We just split up, as we always do, into right and left. That’s fine, the blogosphere polarises like that, it’s healthy, people debate things, no-one convinces anyone, hopefully nobody’s feelings get hurt. We fire our toy cannons across the valley and generally enjoy the fun.
Meanwhile, out in the real world, there are people who really want to kill us. Not to ameliorate poverty, not to ratify Kyoto. They want to kill us because of what we are: liberal, humanist, secular, libertarian. They hate and despise the things we are proudest of: freedom from the tyrannising clutch of prescriptive religion, indifference to sexual preference, freedom and power to women – that kind of stuff, the stuff we ought to be proud of. They’ll have none of it. They want to kill us for it, and they’re doing it.
They’re the real RWDBs, you idiots (no offence). That’s why they blow people up in trains. Why can’t you see it?
Is that your job application for the vacancy soon to arise from Karl Rove’s um… troubles, Rob?
freedom from the tyrannising clutch of prescriptive religion, indifference to sexual preference, freedom and power to women
Yep – those are the sort of things RWDB bloggers are always defending!
Anyway, where’s EP? Going through the draft of the fatwa he asked for to see if he can find a loophole?
But more seriously, I don?Äôt think this post has really achieved what it set out to do, which was to do us (RWDBs) over.
You’re projecting, Rob. I can’t be bothered finding the comment you made the other night about mention of something or someone being useful to annoy the Left but it struck me at the time. People used to claim that the Ozblogosphere was the only place where the right and left talked to each other. That may be the case with exceptional members of the Right like some Catallaxy bloggers and commenters, but it’s certainly not when people enter into debate just to score points, as I believe most RWDBs do. I’d prefer to see some acknowledgement of the rules of evidence, a bit more individuality and occasional departures from the party line from RWDBs – that was the intent of the post. But I don’t know that that’s realistic.
Oh, and a willingess to concede occasionally that you might not have got the better of the argument, and that your interlocutor might have a point. I could also, if I could be bothered, find numerous examples of triumphalist comments on your part, Rob, where without reviewing the arguments and adjudicating on their merits, you claim that the RWDBs are “winning” the thread. Really, what is the point if that’s the point? I wonder sometimes?
Certainly, the blogosphere does not resemble the idealised public sphere that some claim it does. There’s a point of disagreement with Tim Dunlop for you, EP.
By the way, Rob, your other theme is to claim that we’re always polarised. It replaced your earlier insistence that this was an echo chamber, which became untenable even for those living in a faith-based community. We’re not always polarised, as Liam pointed out with regard to the ID card debate. Are you?
Mark, The Independent’s report which you cited refers to niggling doubts and I wonder if they are related to earlier repports that 22 Imams condemned the bombings but stopped short of condeming all suicide bombings in Iraq and Israel. It seems to fit. Although I wonder how anyone can justify the death of the 100 or Iraqi innocent civilians who died in recent days.
Waleed Aly of the ICV who sometimes writes reasonable pieces in The Age, and sometimes goes for some twisted reasoning gave this take on Omrans’ recent comments on the ABC here which ends:
Yep there’s diversity.
As for hate filled books, I’ve lost track on what everyone is arguing about on this thread. I remember reading press articles with excerpts from Islamic books from a Victorian bookshop maybe a couple of years ago (some time when I first started blogging) and I can’t remember too much fuss about it then. You know, much as I don’t like them, I am nevertheless reticent about banning them. Those who write the stuff are responsible for it. But everyone still has the choice to believe or reject it….
Imagine if a few people in your church decided that the copies of the Australian Hymn Book were not to their liking, and they nicked ‘em all and replaced them with David Koresh’s drivel. Imagine they did this on a regular basis.
When I was involved in a university Islamic society committee we did have a problem with literature As quickly as we would remove this Saudi-funded rubbish out of our University Islamic society library, it would find its way right back in again. The extremely expensive, we-paid-for-them-ourselves, good books would then get stolen presumably by those advocating the Wahhabi-Salafi cult, and we would be back at square one.
This was *despite* a clear prohibition on stealing from an Islamic perspective, and all books being accountable to the student union (because we were using student union funds to buy the good books) and the potential for our funding to be cut because we couldn’t account for our good books that went missing.
To then find magazines like Nidatul-Islam (Salafi rubbish which is hosted at islam.org.au oh I WISH we could get that domain name back from the cult) sitting on our bookshelves. It’s enough to make you tear your hijab off.
It only takes a small minority of students to do this, and the whole student organisation gets tainted with fundamentalism if ever an Andrew Bolt decided to wander in on a day when we hadn’t been as vigilent as usual.
Keep fighting the good fight Marayam. Good luck.
EP: What Catch the Fire did with the Qur’an quotes was about as reputable as selecting Jesus’ statements where he tells people he came to bring a sword, and that his followers should hate their parents, and then demonstrate on the basis of those selective verses, that all Christians are sword-wielding, destroyers of the family. Furthermore they did it in a climate of arousing fear and hatred of Muslims at a time when we seriously have to worry about our mosques being firebombed, and our women being attacked because they are visibly Muslim.
Furthermore the EOC did not solicite a case, and I know *because I was there* at the ICV Women’s meeting when the upcoming CTF meeting came up.
Yeah, and who funds the Wahhabi stuff, Messrs Les RWDBs, those great friends of freedom and the Bush family, the Saudi regime!
The whole purpose of this post was to set me and EP up. It hasn’t succeeded. You – and Kim – have not responded to any of the substantive points made against you, just disappeared in a cloud of rhetorical vapour. On this occasion, I reckon it’s game, set and match.
But this is your blog, and I’m being presumptuous, and you should just tell me to bugger off.
But we’re too nice for that, Rob. Purrrrrrrr.
Anyway, you’ve just done it again. A lot of substantive points have been made. You dismiss anything you don’t like as “rhetoric” while at an earlier point in the thread you were claiming that rhetoric and sophistry were argument.
You must think we have very short memories, Rob.
Liam – oh man do I wish some of that oil money would come our way *sigh*… the books I would buy for our library.
In my most charitable moments, Rob, I think yr well aware of all this, and just playing a game in postmodern irony.
Since Fyodor’s not around, I will state that if I were a beauty queen, I’d argue that wasabi is more palatable than wahhabi. Thud!
Boom boom!
You are a beauty if not a queen, Kim, so I assume that what you’re offering us is your wish for world peace, yeah?
EP and Rob, it wouldn’t be the same without you, whether you think you’re winning or losing. I miss your winking cat gravatar, EP, and I can’t look at the neighbourhood moggies without thinking of it.
…
Maryam, excuse me for misspelling your name. I do hope you get some decent books. Perhaps you could consider submitting requests on behalf of the Society to the university librarian, for books and articles to be held there beyond the reach of thieving hands, and then compiling an index?
Thx, Maryam
Yeah, Mark, I must be still thinking about the bikini contest on NCIS last night.
To murder a T.S. Eliot quote, “I come to bring peace, but not as Angelina Jolie knows it”.
You’re in fine form, Kimbo, since that quote is from Murder in the Cathedral.
Liam and Maryam, never underestimate the goodness that is the librarian. When I found out that I had a significant allocation to buy books to resource my now late and lamented QUT subject “Virgins, Saints & Sinners: Explorations in the Sociology of Religion” I set out to buy quite a few books on Islam, including some on women & Islam, only to find that the lovely librarian had got there first. “I just felt after s11 that we should have these books on our shelves”, she said.
Well, do you want to respond to this, Kim?
Mark’s response was limited to another snarl about RWDBs.
That’s okay Liam – those pesky vowels
Actually our Arts library has quite a fine selection of books on Islam – they sort of have to because we have an Islamic studies department.
Our problem was our own little run library in the prayer room, and the material that would ‘magically’ appear on the shelves in the prayer room itself. I think the only way to really solve the problem would be to have the library under lock and key (which takes all the fun out of it), or as you say: have it managed by real librarians. Whatever happened to respecting the property of others??? Imagine the moral struggle: “must not steal… must not steal… but they have a book here that tells us we shouldn’t hate Jews…. arggggggggggggghhh (as Wahhabi brain implodes).”
Sure, Rob. It’s a misapprehension of the reasons why terrorism arises and straight out of the “clash of civilisations” narrative. I wish we were libertarian, secular and humanist by the way, but this Manichaean view of things tends to bring out latent authoritarianism in our society.
I also agree with Mark that I don’t see too many of the same people who claim that there’s some sort of desire to eliminate us for “who we are” (which really is silly, and apocalyptically silly at that) defending things like the rights of women, or indifference to sexual preference.
Bush’s self-reinvention as a feminist champion against the Taliban must rank as one of the most egregious pieces of hypocritical spin ever.
And I have no idea what the Kyoto protocol has to do with any of this.
Hahahah, yeah can you imagine what the terrorists would have done, if Bush et.al. *had* actually ensured that women in Afghanistan might never fear sexism again.
Exactly, Maryam. In fact if you read some of the attempts by people like Gerry Falwell and the likes to say something nice about Islam, they normally say stuff like “well they know how to keep down those uppity women and don’t have nasty feminists lurking in their faith”. The big thing that will change the dynamic of religion and world politics – in the longer term – is the rise of feminism in the East – not just in the Islamic world but also within Orthodoxy. Now there’s something to hope for, and feel good about.
Amen to that!!
EP of course won’t welcome the Swedenisation of the world
Yes, it amazes me that people in the West cant see that “Islam” is a massive, complex community, riven by factions – completley opposed to one another in some cases – schisms, moderates, radicals, the fringe crazies, the conservatives, the progressives, the completely indifferent, the secular etc etc. Just like the West. Might be to acknowledge their humanity I suppose.
One things clear to me: If those who just want to simplify, hate and vilify Islam win in the West, we are all screwed. Its one hundred years of war. What do they expect will happen? Will all Muslims suddenly realise the error of their ways & become good materialist Christians? Not going to happen, obviously. Zero chance of success. So where’s it all heading, other than to a permanent clash of civilisations? Nowhere.
So, you can butt your head against that wall until it bleeds, or come up with something useful to say and do about extremism. Behind the scenes, of course, even our most allegedly hard-arse governments actually realise this (the crypto-xenophobic culture war is strictly for domestic vote gathering among the intellectually challenged); and while sheepishly following the US blindly into coincidentally oil rich hotspots, also do far smarter things like quietly fund moderate Islamic NGOs in Indonesia, eg. We need to build on those strategies… or the Whackos in their hardline Madrassahs are going to have a field day.
I think your second and third paragraphs actually cancel each other out.
There’s probably not much point continuing this, though. There’s a degree of paranoia and delusion on the right, I’ll admit that. But there’s something even worse on the left: disconnectedness. It’s as though what were happening in the world were not really happening, as if the trains hadn’t been blown up in London, as if the WTC towers had not been attacked, as if the bombing in Bali hadn’t happened, as if bin Laden had never issued his fatwa. It’s like the pre-war Britain that Orwell described so well: we have no enemy, and even if we do, it’s all our own fault, so we have no moral right to fight it.
I don’t think we do or can talk to each other (right and left). Our world views are too different, too contradictory. Still, shouting across the chasm can be fun, I guess.
Happy dreams.
Rob, does it not occur to you that in the same way that terrorism is not a movement but a technique, pluralism itself is not just something to be defended but a means with which to defend it?
By all means keep talking about enemies. The rest of us will keep trying our best to build a civil society.
I suppose that’s what I mean, liam, in a confused kind of way. Terror will come to Australia some day, probably soon, and I wonder if even that will be enough to shake us (you?) from our torpor, and our civil society will be convulsed, and even then there will be those who say we have no enemies, even as, remorseless, evil and unforgiving, they kill as many of us as they can, as they did in London, in Madrid, in Bali and in New York and Washington. People like Kim will just say we are stereotyping them, and Brian will say we have to try to understand.
” suppose that?Äôs what I mean, liam, in a confused kind of way. Terror will come to Australia some day, probably soon, and I wonder if even that will be enough to shake us (you?) from our torpor ..”
here’s where I part company from you Rob, the topor that should be shaken out is this torpor that says it’s worth going all the way with US imperial designs for the sake of our historical alliance. stuff the Americans and the Iraqis, leave the latter to their civil wars, pull out now, disengage from the Middle east and let them sort out their own business, is what the London bombings tell me. what happens there is not worth anything here.
The problem and solution cancel each other out? hopefully!
In the spirit of cross-chasm shouting, there’s is something to what you say about ‘the left’ Rob. A lot of this is relatively new, and both sides are probably still working it out. I just know you cant back a major faith into a corner – you’ve got to be working with the moderates. happily, they are still the great majority. I fear that will shrink with too much, how should I put, unconstructive ‘connectedness’ with reflex and uncritical fear, xenophobia, prejudice.
Actually Kim, the employment and openness to the counsel of women was a biographical hallmark of George W. Bush prior to his presidency.
Maryam: your comment about Afghanistan really is a disgrace. Western soldiers are dead in large numbers because of what the Coalition has tried, and is trying, to do for that country. It’s fine to fetishise ghoulish dress and subservience in a comfortable, civilised Western country. But there weren’t too many of your “Hahahahs” when Islamic fanatics were shot-gun blasting women’s heads off in Khabul soccer stadiums a few years ago. Your co-religionists didn’t do a god-damned thing to stop it.
Dr Mahatir – I suppose he’s persona non grata too now, according to the post-London zeitgiest of improvised moderation – as I say, Dr Mahatir, he gave one of the best reported all-Islam speeches in recent years. He targeted the Jews and the importance of beating them, to the glee of his audience. (Famous black & white footage exists of similar meetings held 65 years ago). The good doctor didn’t mention women in Afghanistan.
And I’d be happy to donate a copy of The Female Eunuch to your library, by the way.
That might be true, Jason, but for better or worse, we’re there now, we’re in the cross-hairs. I didn’t agree with the commitment to Iraq, but the government did it; and the people endorsed it. We’re stuck, the die is cast. We take deadly force to them; they will surely take it to us, if or when they see the opportunity. How do we respond, at that moment? Prevaricating, with Kim, over ‘us’ and ‘them’? I hope not. I hope we’ll respond with the full force of every instrument that we can command.
More confused comment than usual, C.L. There’s a long history of Christian anti-semitism, too, you know. Your friend and mine, Papa Roncalli, took certain prayers out of the Easter liturgy as you must know. So it wasn’t even just a matter of individuals, but something that was enshrined in Church ideology (though there needs to be a distinction made between Christian anti-Judaism and modern anti-Semitism if we’re going to be historically accurate and sensitive to the nuances – but I guess that’s a bit outside the black and white RWDB style of comment).
Islam traditionally was free of anti-Semitism. Perhaps because Jews and Muslims in Spain for instance both suffered similar fates (mass conversion, mass murder, expulsion) though the phenomenon predates this. Indeed, the bombings in Istanbul highlighted the fact that there were still Jewish communities quite happily co-existing with Islam majorities – as historically there were in Iraq.
A lot of what can be (rightly) critiqued about Islamic attitudes to Jews today stems from the double whammy of British/American policy in Israel/Palestine for the last 88 years, and extremist forms of Islamism and the Wahhabi sectarianism – the former aided and abetted by the US until recently and the latter still aided and abetted by US support for the Saudi regime, despite all the talk of “spreading freedom and democracy” – is it surprising that a lot of Arabs (Christian Arabs too!) are sceptical about Condi’s promises?
What are you seeking to prove with your talk of Mahathir?
And as for Afghanistan, Clinton and the oil companies didn’t display much concern for women’s rights or the evils of the Taliban when they were talking about the Taliban as a regime they could (literally) do business with in 1996. To suggest that the motivation for the war in Afghanistan (which much of THE LEFT supported) was the liberation of the Afghani people is absurd.
Who spent the whole of the 2000 election campaign decrying “nation-building”?
Here’s some unsolicited advice, Rob. Get some more sleep.
I’m not “prevaricating” – whatever you mean by that. I’m with Jason. “Us” doesn’t have to include the US. Australia has no business in Iraq then or now.
Do that and I’ll donate some copies of Damned Whores And God’s Police to the JPII Reference Centre at Sydney Uni, CL.
Interesting, too, Rob, how you get a few comments seeking to engage with you, and you reach for the “us” and “them” rhetoric and the post of the tough-minded realist, and generally re-polarise the discussion.
Putting my charitable hat on, I’ll assume yr just overtired and shirty and not just looking for a stoush for its own sake.
Your update noted, Mark. UK imams say mass murder is a Bad Thing.
A Galileo moment.
I meant to write “the pose” but I guess “the post” serves the purpose.
“are you serious”, C.L., says she in her best BB voice?
Liam, budding Opus Dei acolytes will tighten their chilices and steal them, lest Cardinal Pell’s
Inquisitorschaplains see such “hate books” on their godly shelves.It’s always best to understand your adversaries, Rob, don’t you think?
In this instance the attack on New York clearly didn’t go for maximum kill-rates. Could there have been something symbolic about what the people in the buildings did on a daily basis?
Accidentally got two blockquotes. I’m going to bed!
Fixed, Brian.
Australia joined the US in the Iraq invasion because of the alliance. It was a perfectly legitimate thing for the Australian government to do, subject to the judgement of the people. Saying ‘Australia has no business in Iraq then or now’ is a supreme irrelevancy. Australia is there now; it’s what the government decided, and the people endorsed. The fact has certain consequences. As a community we have to deal with them, including the likelihood of a terrorist attack on Australia. Our options are likely to be, on the one hand: defeat, surrender, retreat. On the other, reprisal, retribution, revenge. Where’s the left, and where’s the right? You choose. It’s that elemental.
Thankyou Mark. What would I do…
Yes, I’m to bed too, Brian. Or maybe to watch the sbs movie which I just turned on to see cute German gayboys kissing. And other outrages on Western civilisation (either that or wonderful things that Rob will defend with all his full force…)
Night!
That’s just crap, Kim. Sorry and all, but it is.
You missed a few options there Rob…. but, yawnnn, tis bedtime….
I don’t know, Rob, a few comments above, you were claiming that “they” wanted to kill “us” among other reasons because of our “indifference to sexual preference”, an attitude – which as Kim noted – it would be nice if more of “us” shared.
As to Australia and Iraq, most of the “Coalition of the Willing” have left without the sky falling in. Imagine a scenario where after severe Republican setbacks in the 06 midterm Senate elections, the US exits from Iraq with a lot of rhetoric about “self-determination” and Iraqis protecting Iraqi freedoms. There’s clearly debate at the moment about exit strategies within the Republican counsels, and not just in public statements by Senators and Congressmen. There are reports that serious planning is going on in the British MoD for leaving in 06.
Would you brand this “cutting and running” or “appeasement”? Would you suggest that Australia as a combatant has a moral duty to go it alone in Iraq?
Of course not. And it’s a choice you may have to make down the track. 50/50 chance at this point I’d say.
Anyway, I’ve had my hot bath and it’s also time for me to snuggle up in bed on a cold night.
Well, it’s been a fun thread. I’m sorry I lost most of my intellectual respect for Kim somewhere along the way, but she probably returned the compliment sometime before I paid it.
And Mark, the sexual preference thing was merely a reference to the success of the western liberal project. That’s what Islamists detest and despise ‘us’ for, above anything else. The fact I support it is one of the reasons I detest and despise ‘them’.
I’m not sure why, Rob, there are few people more deserving of intellectual respect than Kim. She may make the odd flippant comment, or enjoy a stoush, but that doesn’t negate the fact that she is very intelligent and astute.
Where we perhaps differ, is whether the Western liberal project has been as successful as you think. I’d love to see liberalism held to its claims, as I’ve said more than once in the past.
Thanks, Mark, that’s very kind, and more than I deserve, I’m sure.
Rob, well, I guess that you can’t please all the people all the time. I’m sorry that I didn’t tempt you into discussing Jacques Tourneur’s horror oeuvre but people can’t seem to resist fixating on threads having to do with Islam.
I’m definitely off to bed now, sbs movie was a bit dull. I’m taking T.S. Eliot with me
More contrived than usual Mark. Dr Mahatir and his 55 world Islamic leaders applauded the idea of Israel’s ouster because of Catholic ecclesiology?
Right.
And I didn’t speak of causus bellum in toto, vis-a-vis Afghanistan. Maryam was – I stand by the opinion – making light of what has been done for the betterment of her co-religionsists.
Liam: Catholic institutions of learning stock the whole range of books on feminism: seminaries, universities, convents, the lot. Summers’ book wouldn’t attract so much as an eye-roll. Not even by the ASIO agents who I’m sure are staking out the JPII Reference Centre even as we speak.
Brian’s theory was popularised by Ward Churchill as the ‘little Eichmanns’ thesis.
No wonder everyone’s bailing.
Good night.
Be nice to Kim, Rob. Deary me.
“Maryam was – I stand by the opinion – making light of what has been done for the betterment of her co-religionsists.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m more than happy to see the Taliban gone, but the country has largely fallen back into the hands of tribal war-lords. Bush and Howard couldn’t care less about Afghani women, and its an insult *to them* to pretend otherwise.
On another note – woke up to fun Nelson’s abolishing accountability in the Australia Research Council. I laughed! Another scheme of public money hopelessly politicised. They just dont really get democracy, so they? They seem to think it means “we politicians personally decide where every dollar goes”. No Brendan, that’s called ‘corruption’. In fact, you are meant to steward and defend transprent insitutions which distribuute public moneys indepednently of politcal conmsiderations, fairly, and on merit, according to policy – not arbitrary case by case review by politicians. This is called apprehended bias – even if you do manage the occasional correct call.
This government, from a accountability point of view, is utterly risible. I just chuckle at them now. They’re in their trahsing the joint! Will our system of public admin ever recover? They remind me so much of those litle new right commandos you’d get in student union politics – whose sole aim and raison d’etre is “fucking over” their perceived enemies.
Our whole nation is run by those with the mentality of 19 year olds in charge of a new toy.
You know, I wondered who those silent men were standing outside the JPII centre on Broadway opposite Victoria Park, with notebooks and serious looks on their faces, but I assumed they were just clients of King’s Court.
</Sydney-centric joke>
I’m glad to hear that Catholic institutions of learning are still up to speed on feminism, CL. Certainly I love reading Eureka Street, and most of the still-practicing Catholics I’ve shared a university with have been very clever, well read and interesting people. On the other hand, Fr de Stoop of the JPII Reference Centre seems to have decidedly anti-feminist ambitions for his job:
Geez, I’ve gone so far off topic it’s not funny. Sorry everyone.
You know, I wondered who those silent men were standing outside the JPII centre on Broadway opposite Victoria Park, with notebooks and serious looks on their faces, but I assumed they were just clients of King?Äôs Court.
Perhaps they were Microsoft agents surveilling Mac users. We’ve got them on the run!
I always wondered how the nice religious folks felt being so close to King’s Court. (And what was with that weird duck thing it had going on?)
Stiff competition, hey?
Lordy, it’s a young *cool* priest!
I think I like the old bloke down at the bottom of the page better:
I don’t know about Vivaldi, Kim, but sleeping and short stories do the trick for me.
I think the downhill bike riding is extremely unseemly for a young man of the cloth.
I think that young men of the cloth ought rather to jump in and make the 200th comment instead of bloggers.
It’s nice to see that the London imams are taking up my suggestion.
Their condemnation of the London bombers appears pretty unequivocal on the face of it.
However, we need to watch for loopholes, as Mark said. Do they condemn all bombings of civilians, or only those specific ones? What is the exact meaning of the term translated as “civilian” in the original Arabic? Some authorities say that Islam doesn’t recognise the concept of “civilians”.
It looks like a step forward, but we do need to scrutinise it carefully.
I’d like to aologise to Mark for stamping up and down his blog yesterday shouting at people.
It’s cool, Rob.
“Meanwhile, out in the real world, there are people who really want to kill us. Not to ameliorate poverty, not to ratify Kyoto. They want to kill us because of what we are”
Isn’t it funny how many Muslims could equally use this phrase about Australia and the US.
You left out ‘liberal, humanist, secular, libertarian’, Mindy, which was the whole point.
That would be because I was being a smart arse Rob.
this has all been shia folly.
though the situation is pure shiite, RWDBs always try to look at the sunni side of the street
Aha, I knew someone’d jam with Homer. Let’s Iraq and roll.
I don’t saddam with anyone.
I think just in(hus)sein as anyone is between Iraq and a hard place
Iran.
As Slatts points out, one of The Age’s genteel lefties has a sea-change and comes out of denial here http://theage.com.au/news/pamela-bone/time-to-set-some-limits/2005/07/17/1121538863185.html
I hope she’s not been thinking what this bloke’s been thinking here
http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=15711&mode=print
Allah be praised, she’ll be completely relaxed and comfortable with her multiculti views again, now that 100 true Muslims have issued a fatwah against those homicidal, suicidal Muslims.
Some more advice to the ‘multiculturalism at any cost’ brigade here it seems http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=55782
“They are a disease like AIDS and you can’t cure them with Panadol,”
OTOH perhaps its a case of another ‘top shelf’ import by the multiculturalists being corrupted by those evil corporate bosses at Coles or Woolies http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=6011
Where’s Robert Stary when you really need him eh?
Some wake up advice for intelligent lefty lesbians here http://www.icjs-online.org/index.php?eid=308&ICJS=2394&article=425
Interesting link, observa. I wonder what Kim makes of it.
VCAT:
“12. In the course of argument the Tribunal asked Mr. Perkins to indicate where in the constitution does it state that people are entitled to express themselves freely according to their own consciousness in respect of religious matters. He was not able to do so. That clearly is because there is no such provision. While the common law will not restrict such expressions of opinion (subject to certain exceptions) there is simply no affirmative statement in the constitution of the right to express oneself freely according to his or her own views in respect of political and religious matters.”
“Why don?Äôt we all read it and come to our own conclusions, not those lines fed to you like littel trouts at a trout farm!”
Many of us already have come to our own conclusions about where VCAT are really coming from.
I make of it that Islam also discriminates against lesbians. There’s a bigger argument to be had here about the place of liberal Muslims in Islam, but I doubt that’s the reason why the link’s been drawn to my attention on this occasion.
wow, when did Hilaly become a ‘moderate’?
good on him anyway as per his sentiments, he’s obviously seen the writing on the wall.
though i don’t agree with people being deported solely on the basis of their opinions or ‘hate literature’ of any kind being banned.
Some fundie Christian bookshops might be in trouble if that were the case. It’s funny how the same people who froth at the mouth about legislation that has been used to target inflammatory Christian pastors’ ludicrous hate speech join the cheer squad when it’s Islamic hate literature that’s in question. Some very part time defenders of free speech around the place, I think – good on you, Jason, for your consistency!
In case you missed the 730 report tonight, this is, I think, a pretty important and telling piece of research. Robert Pape, a US academic, has investigated 400 suicide bombers over the last 20 years, including the 70 Al-Qaeda ones since 9/11 – the subject of his book. Basically, his research suggests religious goals dont get people to kill themselves. Its the presence of foreign troops on what they consider ‘their land’. A couple of things from the Kerry interview that aren’t in the written story:
- more than half of the 450 suicide bombers he investigated were in fact secular.
-despite Hezbollah’s dual goals of an Islamic state and an end to occupation: there have been no suicide bombs since Israeli troops left. Lebanon is not an Islamic state. No one dies for the former goal, in other words.
- you need ‘presence of foreign combat forces plus a religious difference’ to recruit suicide bombers. The latter alone wont do it.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200507/s1412631.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2005/s1412642.htm
LE
yup, makes perfect sense to me. I used to fall for the ‘they hate us’ meme back in the days of S11 but not anymore.
Pape is just rehashing the old “it’s all our fault” meme.
(1) Not all Islamist terrorists are suicide bombers. There are also shooters, non-suicide bombers, head-hackers and what have you.
(2) Islamist terrorism in Thailand, the Philippines, Sudan, and many other areas is not a response to foreign military presence in Islamic territory; it is an effort to expand Islamic territory.
Basically he uses a narrow filter to define his information in order to justify his preconceived political objective.
And here’s the ‘American Conservative’ interview with Pape, which I think is a better interview than those ABC links.
http://www.amconmag.com/2005_07_18/article.html
And yes EP – he’s talking about suicide bombers. He doesnt put forward a view on other forms.
Back in this comment I was trying to indicate to Rob that the terrorist attacks in New York were not seeking a maximum kill-rate. It seemed to me likely that the selection of the buildings had something to do with what they were used for.
This comment then brought forth from C.L. the following:
So there I was, neatly labelled and pigeon-holed.
Having never heard of Ward Churchill?Äôs ‘little Eichmanns?Äô thesis I googled and can now report that I wish to disassociate myself from such a thesis. The similarity between any views I expressed and Ward Churchill?Äôs post S11 blast are quite superficial.
It?Äôs probably worth a separate post to do it full justice, but I don?Äôt have time. I?Äôll just make a couple of points which should make the difference clear.
Churchill is a native American and a tenured professor in Colorado specialising in American Indian studies. As this 1995 interview with David Barsamian shows, however, Churchill takes a keen interest in the covert activities of American intelligence agencies, both at home and abroad, and goes as far as to term the USA a police state.
All in all he is a very angry man. His post-S11 blast goes so far as to suggest that the workers in the World Trade Centre were working on the infrastructure of American economic domination. Hence, like Eichmann, although they were not at the business end of the death-dealing organisation, they were guilty nevertheless and hence fair game in a ‘war?Äô.
I think this is taking things way too far.
For one thing, I don?Äôt accept Bush?Äôs ‘war on terror?Äô characterisation. It is false, at best a metaphor. The problem is that Bush uses it to legitimatise acts of war.
Secondly, American corporations don?Äôt kill people as their core business.
Third, whatever harm American corporations may do the workers in the World Trade Centre can?Äôt be termed little Eichmanns. In most instances the chain of causation and responsibility would be very circuitous and remote, if in fact it existed at all.
Churchill?Äôs piece is filled with anger and hate, intemperate in the extreme. I regard such statements as verbal violence of absolutely no utility in changing anyone?Äôs mind. Quite the reverse.
It was quite predictable that it would bring forth open letters like this one along with calls for Churchill to be tried for sedition and sacked from his position.
I think the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre buildings can reasonably be thought of as representing the American military-industrial complex. In striking them, however, it is ridiculous to think the al-Qaeda hoped to disable the military-industrial complex. The action was, I?Äôm inclined to think, symbolic and tactical.
As to the purpose of the attacks, it is really difficult to be certain. It is possible that bin Laden hoped the attacks would be to World War III what Sarajevo was to WW I. As time goes by the view put by Robert Pape on the 7.30 Report (outlined by Lefty Elitist above) that it was in the first instance about occupied territory looks more and more plausible.
This does not preclude a religious overlay or infusion into their thinking.
Nor does it preclude the existence of religious nutters acting alone or different groups with other agendas.
You beat me to it, UM. I mean, “Lefty”…
‘Some very part time defenders of free speech around the place, I think ..’
I for one would certainly not call for these books to be banned. On the contrary, I think it’s a very good thing that the opinions are published and are out there. It helps us know what we’re dealing with and what we’re up against.
‘Basically, his research suggests religious goals dont get people to kill themselves. Its the presence of foreign troops on what they consider ‘their land?Äô.’
I must follow you links, Lefty E., but my feeling is that suicide bombings are basically used because they are very effective tactically, especially in Israel. They have maximum impact – shock horror value, especially if the perpetrator is young – and are guaranteed to garner maximum publicity. They also have low overheads – the IRA learned the hard way that you have to hide a terrorist in a safe haven for years, sometimes, to avoid the pursuing security services, which is very costly. And of course, since the bomber kills him or herself in the process, not only is no post-event maintenance and security overhead, they can’t be captured and interrogated. It safeguards the terrorist network that launches them. From a terrorist’s point of view, they are the ideal tool. They lose their ‘useful’ fools (there’s always plenty more), but keep the real operatives – planners, forgers, smugglers, bomb-makers, etc – safe.
It’s a very low cost, very high yield kind of operation for the people that deal in terrorism. No wonder it appeals.
Rob, I think you’re basically right in your description of the suicide bomber process. Pape said on the radio the other day (Phillip Adams, I think) that suicide bombing is 12 times more effective in terms of killing people. So even though suicide bombers represent a small minority of incidents they yield over 50% of the deaths.
There is a disagreement, though, over the psychological nature of suicide bombers. Pape stresses that they are perfectly sane, productive members of society, with incomes higher than average in their communities and everything to live for.
From what I’ve heard this often characterises people who commit suicide in advanced industrial countries, leaving aside bombing.
Waleed Aly has put forward a ‘cult psychology’ thesis. This would involve a psychological weakness that is hidden from those close to the person concerned – similar to the youth suicide problem.
To me it’s worth thinking about. If true, you can develop appropriate defence strategies. Such strategies are longer term, difficult to implement and unlikely to be 100% effective. They would still be an advance on just calling the bombers fools.
Brian, I agree that the ‘cultic’ explanation bears thinking about. People do allow themselves to be brainwashed into committing monstrous acts that seem, to their disbelieving friends, to be totally out of character. But hidden character is the characteristic of the psychotic. The people that use them – the cultivated psychotics, in other contexts the Rajneeshees, the Children of God, the victims of Jonestown – on the other hand, whether it’s Hamas, or PIJ, are generally cold, calculating strategists who calculate to a millisecond the advantages they can gain (derailment of peace talks, etc.) by having one of their living bombs self-detonate in a crowd of schoolchildren, in such a place, and at such a moment. And they can, after all, always rely on the western liberal press to do at least half of their work for them (viz:’They were so deperate they had no other choice’. Bollocks.)
Rob – yes, Pape agrees with your point, part of what he calls the strategic logic of the bombings. These guys are just ordinance to their recruiters – its more about killing than dying.
I guess the other point he makes is the one I emphasised in the first post – how do they recruit them? He’s saying occupation and nationalism are the critical factor; religous difference is secondary (but still important)
The didtinction between religious and strategic objectives may be an attempt to impose Western ideas on a non-Western phenomenon.
Our society distinguishes between the Church and the State. Radical Islam does not.
So to the Islamist, religious and strategic motives are one and the same thing.
His point, EP, is that noone is blowing themsleves up for ‘radical Islam’ without the necessary condition of foreign occupation.
The Pakistani-descended UK citizens in London blew themselves up. Is the UK occupying Pakistan?
My point is that distinctions such as Pape makes are irrelevant. All the Islamists regard themselves as part of the Jihad.
Ill be interested in what Pape has to say about the latest example EP. I agree – it doesn’t immediately seem to fit with his argument. Is it an exception that proves a rule? Or maybe a form or Pan-Islamic nationalism – the occupation of the spiritual homeland of Mecca? I dont know, but I do know AL Qaeda spends a lot of time talking about the foreign occupation of the Saudi peninsula – but we only ever hear about the religous side of it in the soundgrab.
Persaonally, I find it pretty compelling though that no Iranian, or Sudanese has ever, as far as we know, been a suicide bomber. Doesnt fit with the “its religious war” explanation. Its also helps explain why France, to date, hasnt suffered atatcks despite its ultra hardline on public religious practices. Under the “they hate us” thesis you would expect France to be a frontline target.
“There?Äôs a bigger argument to be had here about the place of liberal Muslims in Islam, but I doubt that?Äôs the reason why the link?Äôs been drawn to my attention on this occasion.”
Kim, I drew your attention to to a particular Muslim woman’s criticism of Islam, because I would share her view as would many non-Muslims. Would it matter if she were married with kids? Not really, her words stand by themselves. She may of course favour homosexual marriage being given the social imprimatur of heterosexual marriage, unlike me who would be opposed to that. She doesn’t state her position on that. Nevertheless I would concur with her critique and views on religious vilification laws. I certainly wouldn’t want her charged under Bracks laws, if say she was lecturing here and her ridicule upset Sheik Omran and Co. Nevertheless I do think some books should be stamped ‘Not for sale or profit’, although the material remains uncensored. You can’t effectively censor obnoxious material and it’s a slippery slope anyway, as dopey Bracks is finding. The Islamic bookstore could give it away, but if moderate Muslims, Jews or Christians want to avail themselves of it regularly and use it to start their BBQs, so much the better.
My stance is that moderate Islam has to make a loud and strong stand against fundamentalism, because if it hides behind a code of silence, it will reap the inevitable backlash. London appears to have initiated that response now if this is anything to go by here
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=3292
That is to be applauded and supported.
LE and EP – and the IRA and Fretlin did not resort to suicide bombings either. Nor did most (any?) of the anti-colonial movements in Asia and Africa. Even in the Middle East, until relatively recently, the Palestinians used it mainly as a military tactic. For example, the suicide truck bomber than blew up the US Marine compound in Beirut in the mid-1980′s. That was ‘conventional’ suicide bombing, if you like – it ws the only way of successfully attacking a heavily fortified and defended military target. The current wave of attacks in Israel are quite different, as are the bombings in Iraq, where the insurgents/terrorists seem to have adopted a variant of Bush’s own ‘shock and awe’ tactics.
Rob, it was extensively used in the Algerian struggle for independence.
Pape told Phillip Adams that the greatest users of suicide bombing in recent times are the Tamil in Sri Lanka. I don’t know much about them, but they are said to be secular Marxists.
PA last night interviewed one Dennis Tourish, an Irish academic working in Scotland who specialises in cults. He has co-authored a book on political cults. First up he reckons the London bombings have everything to do with Iraq. I think the agenda of those who set them up is more important than the origins of the bombers.
He says the cult model fits perfectly. The victims (bombers) are not mad, just a little vulnerable. He was emphasising that the first step down the track to being a suicide bomber is probably a very small one. Those who manipulate them offer them certainty, a ‘higher’ cause etc. Once having taken one small step, the second step is easier and a momentum is established that can lead to a willingness to kill oneself in an amazingly short space of time.
Sounds plausible Brian. Im no hardline “Papist” (sorry) – indeed I think he might need to think about the latest episode being more complex than his other cases (although, it has to be said, Musharaf is pretty cosy with the US). There’s also a touch of some sort of Columbine pathology about this last attack.
But on general note: seeing Howard fend off a victim’s sugestion that Iraq might have been involved suddenly woke me up to the complete and utter nudity of the Emporer. For f*cks sake – why dont they just come oout and say “of course its linked to Iraq. A 10 year old could work that one out. But we believe is worth fighting for reason x, y & z”. Id disagree with them, sure, but at least we wouldnt have to put up with this flimsy, self-serving shadow play; the patriotically correct, wholly absurd contention that the laws of cause and effect were abolished after 9/11.
But of course – to suggest idiocy has descended on our leaders is to be too genereous. They know full well the coaltion is being targeted … Its just cover, so they dont have to squirm when ordinary folk like us get blown up, while they cruise around with maximum security.
I, Lefty Elitist, piss on them.
Yeah, I’m trying to work out which are these countries where terrorism strikes with no relation to the policy of the governments concerned. Haven’t noticed too many attacks on Canada and New Zealand, for instance. The former of which, at any rate, has a sizeable Islamic population.
You don’t do things by halves do you LE? That’s one for the quotations book in the pool room.
Or France. Or Germany (and few have as sizeable an Islamic population as these two).
Lets face it, the ‘attack on Western values’ thesis is about as credible as flat earth.
On that note, Im going to watch (or is it surf?) cricket.
*Grins*
Yes, Cut Price Comrade, weeing on them as we speak.
You’re dead right about cause and effect, Lefty E. Howard’s live on channel 9 “reminding” us that s11 took place before the War on Iraq. Of course it fucking did – it was the pretext for the War on Iraq. And s11 might have had just a bit to do with American policy.
Who the fuck swallows this utter bullshit?
How are bombings in London supposed to be relevant to an attempt to “influence” Australian government policy? This spin is so full of holes, it’s dripping.
And who the fuck in Britain cares what John Howard thinks anyway? He’s probably miffed that Blair didn’t invite him to the Cabinet meeting. Pathetic, small-minded lying shit.
Cricket better be back on sbs, or I can’t be responsible for what will happen to my tv if I keep watching Howard trying to make domestic political capital in London.
Excuse me, John, (sorry for weeing on your trousers just now); but weren’t the S11 crazies primarily Saudis, pissed, inter alia, at the US occupation of their country?
And that’s different to recent attacks, how?