#2
Dutch, aren't they? Or am I mistaken (I initially sent the link saying it was danish, what a dumb*ss)? If so, I think they understood a thing or two about the Master Religion.
#3
Dutch. They seem much more informed than your average merkin, but then I guess you would be if you had to live with them. The HP one was pretty good, too.
An editorial (a few days old) in the Arab News. A quick look through the Green Truth shows they are starting to strut...
Is it enough to boycott Danish butter and consider this weak step as victory over what was done toward Prophet Muhammad (PTUI peace be upon him)?
First of all, this is not the issue of victory for the Prophet because God has already protected His message. We are trying to get victory for our dignity and ourselves. God protected the Prophet until His message spread all over. The cartoons in the Danish newspaper were directed toward us and not toward the Prophet.
We do not need to issue letters of condemnation, but we do need to take some action. We need decisions made at the government level. We need to put the butter in the fire not inside the refrigerator. All Muslim countries should call upon their Danish ambassadors to tell the one thing only: To stop this mess in one week or else go home. The decision should be united in all Muslim countries and not the decision of one country. We do not need to use the language of diplomacy.
If we did not take serious actions to protect our dignity against the Danish then their ambassadors will be the first to despise us. They read their newspapers inside their embassies under diplomatic protection. If the response would be to boycott Danish butter, then this itself would be deserving of ridicule in a cartoon. We need instead to take an action that affects a countrys policy.
We want to tell them that we respect Moses and Jesus and all Prophets. We want them to stop this nonsense. We do not want to be known as the nation that stopped eating Danish butter. Why is it that when our dignity is offended our first reaction is to think about our stomachs?
#2
I, for one, have stopped buying: advanced electronics, fine arts, large scale consumer goods and automobiles either created or designed in Arab countries....
doesn't seem to be a real hardship for me, go figure
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/03/2006 0:25 Comments ||
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#3
We do not need to use the language of diplomacy.
Posted by: Rafael ||
02/03/2006 0:55 Comments ||
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#4
I, for one, have stopped buying: advanced electronics, fine arts, large scale consumer goods and automobiles either created or designed in Arab countries
Not much of hardship indeed, Frank G, since litte in the way of art, science, or industry has come out of the Arab world in in the last millennium. Little other than corpses, fatwas and seething.
As a group, Muslims are the biggest wussies on the planet. Here in the West, we have whiny little girls with thicker skins. The driving force behind all this seething and violence is a sense of inferiority caused by, not to put too fine a point on it, being inferior. By any measure of comparision, whether scientific research, economic production, human rights, art and literature or simply books translated, the Arab world lags behind the West. With no real accomplishments, all that remains is their religion and their 'dignity'. Hence, the violent over-reaction to the smallest perceived slight to either.
The author is correct that they need to do more than boycott butter. They need to throw off or outgrow a culture that may have been adapted to life in the desert in the 11th century but fails miserably in the modern world. Right now, their religion stands in their way.
#6
It's not aninferiority complex that drives muslims. Just the opposite. They have been taught all their lives that they are the apex of humanity and the infidels have no more value than a goat steak. Just like criminals (contrary to propaganda), they are driven by an exaggerated self worth. To even begin to win this war, the civilized world will have to treat them like the barbarians they are and stomp them hard at even the hint of them trying to assert any superiority over us.
Posted by: ed ||
02/03/2006 7:25 Comments ||
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#7
I keep hoping that this is a corner we've turned now with Europe. I for one, like Frank G, will now boycott all those fine goods coming from the ME. This has REALLY hit home with Neal Boortz (in "the ATL"), he really ranted yesterday about how we need to (even here in the US) smack them down and hard, each and every time they begin to feel superior in order to keep them in check. Went on and on about it! Oh, and hey, TW and Frank G, thanks for your kind/encouraging words about my newborn/future Rantburger! Good to hear the up and coming generations have some fine kids in them ("Generation Z?"). My daughter (just turned 2) already has some strong opinions and I don't think any guys will mess with her in the future!
Posted by: BA ||
02/03/2006 9:16 Comments ||
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#8
Superb BA. Neal Boortz (in "the ATL") may he thrive and prosper!
http://boortz.com/nuze/index.html
Excerpt:
Admit it, this turban/bomb thing could be the next big fashion hit on the Muslim street!
Muslim outrage huh. OK ... let's do a little historical review. Just some lowlights:
Muslims fly commercial airliners into buildings in New York City. No Muslim outrage.
Muslim officials block the exit where school girls are trying to escape a burning building because their faces were exposed. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims cut off the heads of three teenaged girls on their way to school in Indonesia. A Christian school. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims murder teachers trying to teach Muslim children in Iraq. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims murder over 80 tourists with car bombs outside cafes and hotels in Egypt. No Muslim outrage.
A Muslim attacks a missionary children's school in India. Kills six. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims slaughter hundreds of children and teachers in Beslan, Russia. Muslims shoot children in the back. No Muslim outrage.
Let's go way back. Muslims kidnap and kill athletes at the Munich Summer Olympics. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims fire rocket-propelled grenades into schools full of children in Israel. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims murder more than 50 commuters in attacks on London subways and busses. Over 700 are injured. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims massacre dozens of innocents at a Passover Seder. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims murder innocent vacationers in Bali. No Muslim outrage.
Muslim newspapers publish anti-Semitic cartoons. No Muslim outrage
Muslims are involved, on one side or the other, in almost every one of the 125+ shooting wars around the world. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims beat the charred bodies of Western civilians with their shoes, then hang them from a bridge. No Muslim outrage.
Newspapers in Denmark and Norway publish cartoons depicting Mohammed. Muslims are outragedd prosper!
#9
And that's Neal on a calm day, Besoeker. I mean, he left out many other attacks where Muslims showed NO outrage:
* 1993 bombing of WTC
* Barracks and Embassy (US) bombing in Beirut (80's)
* Embassy bombings in Kenya & Tanzania
* Saudi bombing of barracks
* Daily suicide bombings in Israel
* USS Cole bombing
* Spanish train bombing
* Attacks on African Muslims because they're not Arab in Sudan (heck, they sell 'em into slavery too).
And, on and on and on. But, hey, you just draw big Mo(tm) and you get a bounty on your head! How tolerant!
Posted by: BA ||
02/03/2006 9:43 Comments ||
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#10
Maybe the seething Muslims should expand their boycott to other products from non-Muslim countries. Wheat. Sugar. Beef. Cars. Electric motors. Air conditioners. De-salinization membranes. Printing presses (future Korans shall be hand-transcribed). What does that leave? Camels. Goats. And oil.
#13
I think we don't need to descend to their level. I want to come out of this conflict alive AND with our culture's best values as intact as we can manage.
#16
Let's take the high road and firebomb their cities.
Posted by: ed ||
02/03/2006 12:23 Comments ||
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#17
Another Butter Battle?
Paging Dr Seuss...
Posted by: SLO Jim ||
02/03/2006 13:20 Comments ||
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#18
Some tibits:
Whoever defames our prophet should be executed, said Ismail Hassan, 37, a tailor who marched through the pouring rain along with hundreds of others in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Bin Laden our beloved, Denmark must be blown up, protesters in Ramallah chanted.
An imam at the Omari Mosque in Gaza City told 9,000 worshippers that those behind them should have their heads cut off.
If they want a war of religions, we are ready, Hassan Sharaf, an imam in Nablus, said in his sermon.
In London, hundreds of demonstrators converged on Denmarks Embassy and burned the Danish flag. Women wearing headscarves chanted and held banners proclaiming: Kill the one who insults the Prophet.
Posted by: Rafael ||
02/03/2006 13:57 Comments ||
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#19
tidbits, that is. or possibly timbits, depending on your location.
Posted by: Rafael ||
02/03/2006 13:58 Comments ||
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#20
Took a long trip to a store that features lots of goods from all over the world, just to find some Danish cheese. Found some, but it's gonna take me freaking months to eat it, because I'm on a diet.
Also bought some persimmons marked as coming from Israel.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/03/2006 22:24 Comments ||
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Best-selling author and Muslim dissident Ibn Warraq argues that freedom of expression is our western heritage and we must defend it against attacks from totalitarian societies. If the west does not stand in solidarity with the Danish, he argues, then the Islamization of Europe will have begun in earnest.
The great British philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty, "Strange it is, that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free discussion, but object to their being 'pushed to an extreme'; not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case."
The cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten raise the most important question of our times: freedom of expression. Are we in the west going to cave into pressure from societies with a medieval mindset, or are we going to defend our most precious freedom -- freedom of expression, a freedom for which thousands of people sacrificed their lives?
A democracy cannot survive long without freedom of expression, the freedom to argue, to dissent, even to insult and offend. It is a freedom sorely lacking in the Islamic world, and without it Islam will remain unassailed in its dogmatic, fanatical, medieval fortress; ossified, totalitarian and intolerant. Without this fundamental freedom, Islam will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality; originality and truth.
Unless, we show some solidarity, unashamed, noisy, public solidarity with the Danish cartoonists, then the forces that are trying to impose on the Free West a totalitarian ideology will have won; the Islamization of Europe will have begun in earnest. Do not apologize.
This raises another more general problem: the inability of the West to defend itself intellectually and culturally. Be proud, do not apologize. Do we have to go on apologizing for the sins our fathers? Do we still have to apologize, for example, for the British Empire, when, in fact, the British presence in India led to the Indian Renaissance, resulted in famine relief, railways, roads and irrigation schemes, eradication of cholera, the civil service, the establishment of a universal educational system where none existed before, the institution of elected parliamentary democracy and the rule of law? What of the British architecture of Bombay and Calcutta? The British even gave back to the Indians their own past: it was European scholarship, archaeology and research that uncovered the greatness that was India; it was British government that did its best to save and conserve the monuments that were a witness to that past glory. British Imperialism preserved where earlier Islamic Imperialism destroyed thousands of Hindu temples.
On the world stage, should we really apologize for Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe? Mozart, Beethoven and Bach? Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Gogh, Breughel, Ter Borch? Galileo, Huygens, Copernicus, Newton and
Darwin? Penicillin and computers? The Olympic Games and Football? Human rights and parliamentary democracy? The west is the source of the liberating ideas of individual liberty, political democracy, the rule of law, human rights and cultural freedom. It is the west that has raised the status of women, fought against slavery, defended freedom of enquiry, expression and conscience. No, the west needs no lectures on the superior virtue of societies who keep their women in subjection, cut off their clitorises, stone them to death for alleged adultery, throw acid on their faces, or deny the human rights of those considered to belong to lower castes.
How can we expect immigrants to integrate into western society when they are at the same time being taught that the west is decadent, a den of iniquity, the source of all evil, racist, imperialist and to be despised? Why should they, in the words of the African-American writer James Baldwin, want to integrate into a sinking ship? Why do they all want to immigrate to the west and not Saudi Arabia? They should be taught about the centuries of struggle that resulted in the freedoms that they and everyone else for that matter, cherish, enjoy, and avail themselves of; of the individuals and groups who fought for these freedoms and who are despised and forgotten today; the freedoms that the much of the rest of world envies, admires and tries to emulate." When the Chinese students cried and died for democracy in Tiananmen Square (in 1989) , they brought with them not representations of Confucius or Buddha but a model of the Statue of Liberty."
Freedom of expression is our western heritage and we must defend it or it will die from totalitarian attacks. It is also much needed in the Islamic world. By defending our values, we are teaching the Islamic world a valuable lesson, we are helping them by submitting their cherished traditions to Enlightenment values.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, like the political leadership of Kentucky, has been taking the Fifth.
If you take the Fifth, do they have to stop torturing you right then under the new paradigm that says that we are in a permanent war, and when in war, torture and spying on any of them is legal if 1 in 260 million Americans says so?
Homeland Security was fresh off its success as a cumbersome bureaucracy in New Orleans when it was impolitely called the "new Gestapo" by one of the few Americans who are American enough to stand astride the abyss of fascism into which Osama bin Laden is about to plunge us and cry, "Halt!"
The only legitimate function of Congress in the days of the new monarchy is to take money from Peter and give it to Paul. And because congressional seniority has made U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, who used to be a real Republican, act like a pork-loving Democrat and given him leave to do so, Kentucky's Fifth District has been put in charge of protecting all the 434 districts when it comes to Homeland Security.
The Fifth District was originally designed to eliminate a Republican in Congress, but the state legislature proved as adept at gerrymandering as it is at trying to eliminate sexual perversion by making pervs live in tree tops 1,000 feet from other genitalia.
Now the Fifth is looking forward to the return of the good old days when our congressman just got people to mail us checks and we didn't have to have this Homeland Security albatross around our necks.
Homeland Security is a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. Never mind that the people in the Fifth are willing to sit by and let their own homeland be destroyed as surely as if bombed by jihad. We can play war games on strip jobs because they resemble the desert. The Fifth is controlled by oligarchs and tribal leaders, and we know how to deal with them.
We have more prisons in the Fifth than any other district on Earth and more coming. To fill them, we soon will have to start storing disenchanted Arabs who do not believe the Scriptures and who wonder why Israel can have nuclear bombs and Iran cannot.
Somebody named Elaine Shiber, the smartest person from Van Lear since Loretta Lynn, catalogued in a Herald-Leader commentary some of the terrorist acts committed as Zionists weary of genocide took up horrors on a lesser scale to have a place to alight.
It takes courage, as Shiber did, to inquire as to whether the outrage your enemy harbors is justified or not, and it takes courage to challenge the idea of Israel, with charges of anti-Semitism being the standard recompense for so doing.
But when you read what she reported and know that 40 times that much happened at the hands of Israel, you know why no Arab can have a nuclear weapon. They could be morally justified in using it.
So our vacant prison cells in the Fifth will feature Iranians and Syrians and the males of any other Arab nation that gathers enough strength to right old wrongs. We look forward to getting to beat them and pile them up nekkid.
Every now and then a Middle Easterner with a long beard is thought to have been buried in a rock tomb but is seen alive again by his disciples and records pep talks for them that are broadcast over countless mounts. We have vowed to kill all his followers, but their numbers are growing beyond our capacity to kill them.
After four years of fear and millions of words of printed analysis mostly designed to avoid the real reason we are in an undeclared war, only Shiber of Van Lear has presented facts underlying the outrage of our enemies.
I just read Mr. Larry Webster, esq.'s editorial ("Fifth is frying up Homeland Security bacon" 1/29/2006) on a website with an international audience. I would congratulate your newspaper, but unfortunately Mr. Webster's writings demonstrated such depths of ignorance as to confirm the sad stereotypes about Kentuckians held by the outside world. At least his spelling and grammar are faultless, but I've no doubt credit for that lies with your Op-Ed editor. As one small example, Mr. Webster does not seem to be aware that, despite having workable nuclear bombs since at least the 1970s, Israel has never used one. This compares to Iran, which has been pledged for decades to use theirs to wipe Israel off the map just as soon as they can be made functional, and in the meantime has financed and trained the terror groups Hizb'allah and Islamic Jihad in their attacks on Israeli civilians.
I do hope Mr. Webster, esq. better researches his clients' cases, rather than relying on the power of fact-free rhetoric.
Perhaps I oughtn't have written that, but such ignorant, bigotted nonsense made me feel a bit waspish.
Posted by: Mike ||
02/03/2006 12:42 Comments ||
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#5
Homeland Security was fresh off its success as a cumbersome bureaucracy in New Orleans when it was impolitely called the "new Gestapo" by one of the few Americans who are American enough to stand astride the abyss of fascism into which Osama bin Laden is about to plunge us and cry, "Halt!"
Geez, how many cliches, wrong ideas, and pathetic attempts at snark can you pack into one sentence?
#6
Mike, I don't do invective well I'm afraid (unlike you lot!), and I did want the editors to take my comment seriously, even if (most likely) they don't publish it. In Kentucky they're rightfully very sensitive to the "hillbilly" label (especially Lexington, which is bluegrass horse country), and this kind of egregious nonsense only reinforces such labels.
In the chaos that followed the worst natural disaster in American history, a forensic investigation has been taking place to find out what went wrong and why.
The BBC's Horizon programme has spoken to the scientists who are now confronting the real possibility that New Orleans may be the first of many cities worldwide to face extinction.
Modern day New Orleans was a city that defied the odds. Built on a mosquito-infested swamp squashed between two vast bodies of water in what is essentially a bowl, its very existence seemed proof of the triumph of engineering over nature.
But on the 29 August 2005 New Orleans took a hit from Hurricane Katrina and overnight was turned into a Venice from hell.
If you want New Orleans back you have to do some very fundamental things Shea Penland, University of New Orleans
The delicate flood system in New Orleans, which so many relied on to protect them was actually, year on year, adding to the risk of a catastrophe in the city.
Coastal Geologist Shea Penland from the University of New Orleans knows every inlet, every cove and every stretch of marsh that surrounds New Orleans.
He also knew that what had been thought of as wasteland for years were critical to the survival of the city. "The first line of defence isn't the levee in your backyard, the first line of defence is that marsh in your backyard and we're learning what that means."
Coastal loss
The Mississippi River had been controlled over the years to stop the annual floods with hundreds of miles of levees and dams. As a result sediments that were naturally brought down to replenish the land, were cut off.
Gradually Louisiana started to lose its coast and today it has the highest rate of coastal land loss in North America. An area the size of Wembley stadium is lost to the sea every 20 minutes.
New Orleans highlighted the fragile balance of living behind levees Professor Penland has no doubt about why the hurricane was so devastating: "What we see, just played out there in the summer 2005 hurricane season was the consequences of river control, living behind levees, living in a walled city where we have to pump water up hill to get it out. How long can you live in a bowl?
The loss of sediment to build up the land has led to another problem. Much of the city is below sea level and continual pumping has caused the ground to subside. Since 1878 the city has sunk by 4.6m (15ft), one of the highest rates of subsidence in the entire United States.
Geologist, Professor Harry Roberts has spent the last 20 years watching his city sink "When you pump the water out of those kinds of soils they start to collapse and more importantly the organic material oxidises and goes away so you've taken out one component of the soil, and all that adds up to subsidence.
Precious wetlands
At the earliest opportunity after Katrina had passed, Shea Penland chartered a seaplane to investigate the overnight loss to Louisiana's precious wetlands. What he discovered sounded like the death knoll for the city. In just one night, Louisiana had lost 3,885 hectares (15 sq miles) of wetlands, three quarters of its annual loss in 24 hours.
New Orleans' wetlands are crucial to its future survival, say scientists "If you want New Orleans back you have to do some very fundamental things", says Professor Penland. "You're going to have to bring the land back that protects the city from the ravages of hurricanes. If we don't incorporate that then the city will be faced with extinction. Local urban planners believe that the survival of the city is dependent on preserving its lowest lying areas, its devastated residential areas, as parkland.
Areas like the Lower Ninth Ward built 2.4m (8ft) below sea-level - and where hundreds of people died - may not be part of the city's future. Instead they could be turned into green spaces, serving both as buffers against future flood waters and as a reminder that nature sometimes should be left alone.
Future predictions
Even if some residential areas are not rebuilt, the city will still need hugely increased defences. In order to assess that task, engineers at Louisiana State University have investigated why the floods were so devastating.
By collecting residents eye-witness testimonies and stopped clocks from their flooded homes Professor Ivor Van Heerden and his team pieced together a timeline of the levee breaches.
Their initial results suggest the levees were breached while the waters were still rising. They found faulty design in the levees and weakness in the soils underneath.
According to Van Heerden: "The system wasn't even capable of withstanding a Category One hurricane".
To make New Orleans safe to withstand a Category Five hurricane, his proposal is for a vast barrier system stretching from Mississippi all the way to Texas. It could take 20 years to build but Van Heerden believes this is the only way to guarantee the safety of the city's people.
Without adequate protection, subsiding nearly an inch per year, with devastated wetlands and a disappearing coast the future looks dismal for New Orleans. The future of this sinking city is further compounded by the effects of global warming; rising sea-levels and an increased intensity of hurricanes.
"New Orleans' future is very hard to predict," says Van Heerden.
"The big unknown is global warming. If sea level rises come up by another metre in the next 50 to 60 years, if we see far more of these major hurricanes we could well reach a point where we see we need to abandon these cities like New Orleans."
Horizon: The Lost City of New Orleans will be shown on BBC One at 2100GMT on Thursday 2 February 2006.
#2
People speak of the disappearance of New Orleans as if this were a bad thing. If a hurricane doesn't smash it, at some point the Mississippi will jump, rechannel itself and the city will be a backwater.
Nothing is permanent. Man lives in the present and not geological time scales.
Posted by: Jim K ||
02/03/2006 11:53 Comments ||
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#3
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ponders extinction...
Posted by: SLO Jim ||
02/03/2006 13:16 Comments ||
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#5
Shows yet again that so-called "global warming" is actually about the Sun, i.e. the earth getting allegedly hotter and hotter without mankind being able to either control it andor determine the causeas. Ala DAY AFTER TOMORROW flick, "Solar Output is NORMAL" > ergo the Sun may, might, can, or will suddenly blow up, sub-ergo OWG,Communism
and Totalitarianism, etc. NOW, D*** YOU ALL.
There is an important law about power that is too often overlooked by rational and peace-loving people. Any form of power, from the most primitive to the most mind-boggling, is always amplified enormously when it falls into the hands of those whose behavior is wild, erratic, and unpredictable. A gun being waved back and forth by a maniac is far more disturbing to us than the gun in the holster of the policeman, though both weapons are equally capable of shooting us dead. And what is true of guns is far more true in the case of nukes.
That is why nuclear weapons in an Iran dominated by a figure like its current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad make us more nervous than nuclear weapons in the hands of the Swiss. Both could make big explosions; but the Iranian bomb would tend to keep us awake thinking in the night, while the Swiss atomic bomb would be as threatening as a cuckoo-clock This does not mean that Iran has to use the bomb; it doesn't. All Iran has to do to make people wonder if it might use it -- and many of us are already pondering that question, thanks to the disturbingly bellicose rhetoric of Ahmadinejad.
It is an immense form of power simply to make other people wonder if you might not do something bad and unpleasant to them. It can be done in the form of an explicit threat, as in "Israel should be wiped off the map," or it may be done by a strong personality, like Ahmadinejad, who gives off an aura of impulsiveness and self-willful independence: the kind of guy who lets nobody tell him what to do, and who is generally admired for this quality, especially by the poor and dispossessed who would love to be able to exercise that kind of self-assertion. That is the source of the populist appeal of such figures: they are living out the common man's fantasy of being able to defy the establishment. In Ahmadinejad's case, the establishment he is defying is America, Israel, and the West in general -- and the more vociferous his defiance, the greater becomes his populist base of appeal among those in the Muslim world who look upon us as their oppressors.
There are thinkers like Perry Anderson who have argued that all nations should possess nuclear weapons, as a kind of ace in the hole against being tyrannized by their stronger neighbors -- on this theory, just as guns were the great equalizers between individuals in a chaotic world, so nukes would be the great equalizer between nations, guiding them in the direction of peace out of a common recognition that wars with weaker countries would possibly result in their own nuclear destruction. Hence, in order to create the state of perpetual peace, it would only be necessary to provide each nation with enough nukes to wipe out any possible aggressor. This could be undertaken as a world project, with the technologically sophisticated nations building and then donating both nuclear weapons and systems of delivery to those who could not produce them on their own.
The fallacy in this theory is that even if all nations possessed nuclear weapons, those nations whose leaders were the most irrational and unpredictable would gain an enormous power leverage over those nations whose leaders were sane and sensible.
For example, what allowed Hitler to bluff both France and England so successfully during the period known as appeasement was not the might of the German Army, but the astonishing idea that Hitler might really want war -- and at a time everyone else in Europe, including Mussolini, shuddered at the very thought of another debacle like the Great War, whose memory was still all too vivid. In a world where everyone else is prepared to do anything to prevent a war, the man who makes other people believe he is willing to go to war automatically gains the advantage of being the party that must be appeased if war is to be avoided. In such a world, it is the erratic and the irrational whose power is amplified at the expense of the reasonable and the predictable.
Even in a world where every nation possessed the same nuclear arsenal, those nations with the most bellicose and unpredictable leaders would still have the power to blackmail other nations simply because they could convince the rest of the world that they were actually willing to do the unthinkable, and to risk nuclear war. The Swiss could not pull off such an act of blackmail, because no one would believe them capable of carrying out their threat; but the Iranians, under Ahmadinejad, could.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a populist demagogue of quite exceptional talent who has instinctively grasped the law of power that so many in the West have forgotten: Just as it is the squeaking wheel that gets the oil, it is the shrieking madman who gets his way.
Lee Harris is author of Civilization and Its Enemies.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/03/2006 14:50 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[7 views]
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#1
Any form of power, from the most primitive to the most mind-boggling, is always amplified enormously when it falls into the hands of those whose behavior is wild, erratic, and unpredictable.
This may sound like splitting hairs but erratic behavior usually lessons power. Certainly the level of threat is elevated. However, capricious conduct only encourages adversaries to be more acute to your actions as well as their own vulnerabilities. Furthermore, allies are more willing question motivations if youre perceived to be unpredictable.
#3
Once free America goes down, so goes the rest of the world - will say again the Spetzies and anti-US agendists have gotta know their own days are numbered once America is succesfully suborned or destroyed.
What's interesting is that Claude Monniquet's Esisc (a non-idiotarian belgian terror study group) sez that the whole thing is actually managed by the muslim brotherhood.
This could explain the delay between the publishing of the cartoons, without much protest at the time except a small demonstration by local muslims, and the current worldwide pious hysteria, especially if that time was needed to fabricate "proofs" to flare up the rubs.
Goal would be to both blackmail the West into "submission", and further the rift between the muslims and non-muslims (one of the big achievement of the MB in Europe is having achieved the creation of an "european muslim" identity, though re-islamization of the migrants and insisting on their non-assimilation).
The controversy over the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed is expanding, as more Muslims join the boycott and protests against Denmark and various European newspapers decide to publish the cartoons, mostly out of solidarity with Jyllands Posten and to make a strong political stand. One issue that puzzles many Danes is the timing of this outburst. The cartoons were published in September: Why have the protests erupted from Muslims worldwide only now? The person who knows the answer to this question is Ahmed Abdel Rahman Abu Laban, a man that the Washington Post has recently profiled as one of Denmark's most prominent imams.
Last November, Abu Laban, a 60-year-old Palestinian who had served as translator and assistant to top Gamaa Islamiya leader Talaal Fouad Qassimy during the mid-1990s and has been connected by Danish intelligence to other Islamists operating in the country, put together a delegation that traveled to the Middle East to discuss the issue of the cartoons with senior officials and prominent Islamic scholars. The delegation met with Arab League Secretary Amr Moussa, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Sheikh Mohammad Sayyed Tantawi, and Sunni Islams most influential scholar, Yusuf al Qaradawi. "We want to internationalize this issue so that the Danish government will realize that the cartoons were insulting, not only to Muslims in Denmark, but also to Muslims worldwide," said Abu Laban.
On its face, it would appear as if nothing were wrong. However, the Danish Muslim delegation showed much more than the 12 cartoons published by Jyllands Posten. In the booklet it presented during its tour of the Middle East, the delegation included other cartoons of Mohammed that were highly offensive, including one where the Prophet has a pig face. But these additional pictures were NOT published by the newspaper, but were completely fabricated by the delegation and inserted in the booklet (which has been obtained and made available to me by Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet). The delegation has claimed that the differentiation was made to their interlocutors, even though the claim has not been independently verified. In any case, the action was a deliberate malicious and irresponsible deed carried out by a notorious Islamist who in another situation had said that mockery against Mohamed deserves death penalty. And in a quintessential exercise in taqiya, Abu Laban has praised the boycott of Danish goods on al Jazeera, while condemning it on Danish TV.
#1
See? THIS is the real story. The muslims aren't outraged about the tame cartoons that were actually published, they're outraged about these fakes. Strangely, this story isn't getting any airtime (I wonder why).
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Is it enough to boycott Danish butter and consider this weak step as victory over what was done toward Prophet Muhammad (
