Entries Tagged 'anti-totalitarianism' ↓
June 24th, 2008 — America at war, Enlightenment values, Islamism, anti-totalitarianism, apologists, arrogant assholes, common sense, cultural Islamism, culture war, debating politics, extreme partisanship, extreme political correctness, ideology wars, liberal "thinking", liberal opinion, name-calling, partisanship, trial by media, witch-hunting
Don’t you hate it when David Brooks uses his New York Times perch to remind his readers that life is full of unexpected turns, expecially ones that reflect well on BushHitler?
Bush is a stubborn man. Well, without that stubbornness, that unwillingness to accept defeat on his watch, he never would have bucked the opposition to the surge.
Bush is an outrageously self-confident man. Well, without that self-confidence he never would have overruled his generals. … The additional fact is that Bush, who made such bad calls early in the war, made a courageous and astute decision in 2006. More than a year on, the surge has produced large, if tenuous, gains. Violence is down sharply. Daily life has improved. Iraqi security forces have been given time to become a more effective fighting force. The Iraqi government is showing signs of strength and even glimmers of impartiality. Iraq has moved from being a failed state to, as Vali Nasr of the Council on Foreign Relations has put it, merely a fragile one.
The whole episode is a reminder that history is a complicated thing. The traits that lead to disaster in certain circumstances are the very ones that come in handy in others. The people who seem so smart at some moments seem incredibly foolish in others.
Yep. (This also applies to Brooks, by the way, who referred to the Iraq war as “a disaster” many times during what he now refers to as “the dark days of 2006.”) He’s not humble enough to acknowledge his own previous cocksureness and foolishness. But he’s out there on the cutting edge of what should be opinion right now. We’ll see how it plays.
Brooks sets the stage:
The cocksure war supporters learned this humbling lesson [about orthodox thinking] during the dark days of 2006. And now the cocksure surge opponents, drunk on their own vindication, will get to enjoy their season of humility. They have already gone through the stages of intellectual denial. First, they simply disbelieved that the surge and the Petraeus strategy was doing any good. Then they accused people who noticed progress in Iraq of duplicity and derangement. Then they acknowledged military, but not political, progress. Lately they have skipped over to the argument that Iraq is progressing so well that the U.S. forces can quickly come home.
But before long, the more honest among the surge opponents will concede that Bush, that supposed dolt, actually got one right. Some brave souls might even concede that if the U.S. had withdrawn in the depths of the chaos, the world would be in worse shape today.
It’s unlikely that there will be many such souls, but count me among those who grudgingly (grudgingly because we are of a certain [anti-Vietnam War] age) admit that Bush’s stubbornness has, on balance, been a good thing for America in the immediate wake of 9/11. Many of America’s cocksure enemies have stood down in the wake of Bush’s cowboy-like cocksure aggressiveness. Bush himself has said he regrets the language he used; I didn’t hear him say that he regrets his “going on offense” against America’s enemies, as indeed he shouldn’t.
Something else has been gained in these long seven years. Brooks doesn’t mention it, but I will:L Islamism now has many respectable enemies—including several of Britain’s most famous public intellectuals and novelists.
The New York Times doesn’t quite approve of such heterodox thoughts as this one expressed by Ian McEwan, the author of Atonement:
“As soon as a writer expresses an opinion against Islamism, immediately someone on the left leaps to his feet and claims that because the majority of Muslims are dark skinned, he who criticizes it is racist.” He added: “This is logically absurd and morally unacceptable. Martin is not a racist. And I myself despise Islamism, because it wants to create a society that I detest, based on religious belief, on a text, on lack of freedom for women, intolerance towards homosexuality and so on — we know it well.”
The Independent, a British paper, referred to McEwan’s words as
an astonishingly strong attack on Islamism
and pointed out that these words could,
in today’s febrile legalistic climate, lay him open to being investigated for a “hate crime”.
Despite adding to the “febrile” climate surrounding this issue, at least the Independent is honest enough to give a full airing to McEwan’s views, which I reprint here with some emphasis [e.a.]:
McEwan – author of On Chesil Beach and the acclaimed Atonement and Enduring Love – has spoken on the issue of Islamism before, telling The New York Times last December: “All religions make very big claims about the world, and it should be possible in an open society to dispute them. It should be possible to say, ‘I find some ideas in Islam questionable’ without being called a racist.”
But his words in the Corriere interview are far stronger, although they do fall short of the invective deployed by Martin Amis. He has said “the Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order”, and told The Independent’s columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a Muslim, in an open letter: “Islamism, in most of its manifestations, not only wants to kill me – it wants to kill you.”
McEwan’s interviewer pointed out that there exist equally hard-line schools of thought within Christianity, for example in the United States. “I find them equally absurd,” McEwan replied. “I don’t like these medieval visions of the world according to which God is coming to save the faithful and to damn the others. But those American Christians don’t want to kill anyone in my city, that’s the difference.”
But McEwan’s specific irritation is reserved for those who find ideological grounds to condemn his and Amis’s views. “When you ask a novelist or a poet about his vision regarding an aspect of the world, you don’t get the response of a politician or a sociologist, but even if you don’t like what he says you have to accept it, you can’t react with defamation. Martin is not a racist, and neither am I.”
Thank you, Ian McEwan. And may others join you in perpetrating the “hate crime” of speaking out in favor of freedom of expression, even (perhaps especially) when your ideas are out of favor with “expert and elite opinion” [Brooks's phrase].
March 30th, 2008 — anti-totalitarianism, free speech
Just for the record, I wanted to preserve what’s on Google News at the moment in reaction to the Geert Wilders’s nasty provocation (but, I fear, a necessary inoculation) and challenge to Islamists to back off:
Dr M: United Muslim boycott is the way to ‘punish’ Holland
Malaysia Star, Malaysia - 1 hour ago
KUALA LUMPUR: Muslims can only effectively take action against the Dutch for releasing a film that puts Islam in a bad light if they unite and boycott Dutch …
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Fitna “could be a film by the Mujahideen”
EuropeNews, Denmark - 2 hours ago
Preeeeeee-cisely. The formerly UK-based jihadist hits the nail on the head: for all the rage from Muslims about how Fitna “links Islam with violence,” that … |
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Dutch Muslims show tolerance to Islam film
Washington Times, DC - 4 hours ago
By Leander Schaerlaeckens Associated Press Mohammed Rabbae, a prominent Dutch-Moroccan leader and chairman of the National Moroccan Council, urged Muslims … |
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News in brief
The Observer, UK - 4 hours ago
Liveleak.com, the British website that posted an anti-Koran film by Dutch politician Geert Wilders has removed the film after threats to its staff. … |
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Arabs Denounce Dutch Anti-Islam Film
The Associated Press - 5 hours ago
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Islamic and Arab leaders denounced a Dutch film Saturday that portrays Islam as a ticking time bomb aimed at the West, … |
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An insult to Islam and our intelligence
GulfNews, United Arab Emirates - 7 hours ago
The anti-Islam film by Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders has drawn widespread international criticism and has also been roundly criticised by the … |
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Egypt: Dutch anti Islam film repulsive
PRESS TV, Iran - 7 hours ago
Egypt says that the anti-Islam film of Dutch MP Geert Wilders was revolting and calls for legislation that would ban offenses against religion. … |
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Dutch businessmen warn Geert Wilders
PRESS TV, Iran - 7 hours ago
Dutch businessmen warn Geert Wilders if his anti Islamic movie provokes an economic embargo against Netherlands he may be sued in court. in an interview … |
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The flood gates have opened
Kuwait Times, Kuwait - 8 hours ago
By Ahmad Al-Khaled, Staff writer The anti-Islam film by right wing Dutch MP Geert Wilders hit the Internet on Thursday and the protests have already begun. … |
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Parliament denounces Dutch anti-Islamic film
Yemen News Agency, Yemen - 9 hours ago
SANA’A, March 29 (Saba)- The Parliament denounced in its session held on Saturday a film produced by the Dutch Parliament member Geert Wilders that abuses … |
For me, this is the frontline in the “war on terror”: preserving our right—certainly in our own countries, but it should be the right of people everywhere—to say what’s on our minds. Even if it’s offensive.
As Bill Clinton said in another context the other day:
‘I Don’t Give a Rip About All This Name-Calling….Let’s Just Saddle Up and Have an Argument’
March 22nd, 2008 — America at war, Islamism, anti-totalitarianism, counterterrorism, crass and vulgar, demagogues, global culture war, global political correctness, how we live now, information war, jihadism, tyranny
It’s not a bad idea, and Ross Douthat gets that part:
[N]early every pronouncement from Osama bin Laden or his imitators contains something that might be laughable, if it weren’t in deadly earnest.
There’s the incessant nostalgia for the Crusades, heavy-handed enough to embarrass Sir Walter Scott, and the Risk-board view of geopolitics, epitomized by the oft-cited aspiration to reconquer “Al-Andalus” (known to most of us as “Spain”) for Islam. There’s the blinkered understanding of American politics, as when Bin Laden criticized George H.W. Bush for “installing” his sons as governors of Texas and Florida, and seemed to suggest (depending on the translation) that he might make a separate peace with any American state that didn’t vote for George W. Bush. And of course, there’s the consistency with which Al Qaeda and its fellow travelers greet perceived insults to Islam with threats and actions that seem designed to, well, vindicate the offending parties.
When a Danish newspaper published cartoons portraying Muhammad as an assassin and a terrorist, Islamists responded to these outrageous insinuations by inciting their co-believers to … assassination and terrorism. When the Pope stirred up controversy by suggesting that Islam might be less compatible with reason and philosophy than Christianity, he was answered with a burst of (no doubt rigorously reasoned) acts of violence committed on behalf of the faith he had insulted. Now, just in time with Easter, he’s been answered with al Qaeda’s idea of inter-religious dialogue as well.
But ridiculing this by ridiculing in-earnest and exquisitely effective Nazi propaganda, as Douthat does, seriously misses the mark:
If Hitler’s Germany hadn’t turned Europe into a charnel house, many of the elements of National Socialism — the clumsy anti-Semitic propaganda, the philosophical pretensions, the ranting speeches, even the uniforms — would seem almost deliberately comic, like bits and pieces from a Monty Python sketch.
This could only be written by someone who absorbed the evils of Nazism via pop culture, and who therefore has a limp response to it. He suggests that OBL should go ahead an make Pope Benedict’s day:
Here’s hoping that His Holiness enjoys a quiet chuckle while he puts the Swiss Guards on high alert. There’s nothing wrong with laughing at evil, so long as your bodyguards are packing heat.
Something tells me that the West will need to do a little more than “pack heat” against OBL and those he continues to inspire. But I do salute the effort to look for a handle on OBL that makes the threat he poses accessible to those he is intimidating through his demagoguery.
In other counterterrorism news, today the New York Times writes about the Dutch anti-Islamist provocateur Geert Wilders [e.a.]:
Of the Netherlands’ 16.5 million residents, a million are either Muslim or of Muslim descent. Many of them are so-called guest workers from Morocco, Turkey and other Islamic countries who came here decades ago to work in factories and stayed to raise families of their own.
Occasionally, conflicts arise between mainstream Dutch society — which supports gay marriage and legalized prostitution, for instance — and the often more conservative Muslim minority, and Mr. Wilders has successfully mined the unease between them.
This somehow leaves the impression that Wilders is someone acting for his own (political) benefit. And later on, the Times writer spells out [e.a.]:
Since no one has actually seen Mr. Wilders’s film, some here have started wondering if it is as fake as his hair color, a clever publicity stunt devised to prove his point that Islam and freedom of speech cannot coexist.
Mr. Wilders disabuses him of the notion:
“I get in so much trouble, both privately and politically, that if I would do it for publicity reasons, I would be a fool,” he said.
It’s pretty obvious to me that Wilders is doing it for publicity reasons—that is, to publicize the dangers of Islamist extremism to Western societies.
If that makes him a fool, let there be more such brave “fools.”
March 20th, 2008 — Islamism, anti-totalitarianism, counterterrorism, global culture war, global political correctness
A new message from Osama bin Laden puts Europe on notice again, and as Reuters reports the story, “security analysts and officials” don’t seem particularly alarmed.
LONDON (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden’s latest message shows that he sees Europe as fertile soil for al Qaeda, especially at a time of tension between free speech and Muslim values, but is unlikely to signal an imminent attack.
Security analysts and officials say there is no evidence that bin Laden’s statements contain coded instructions to al Qaeda operatives and he has no track record of delivering warnings immediately before an attack.
No biggie, Reuters suggests, but notes a new twist:
But Wednesday’s message was striking in its focus on Europe as opposed to the United States, whose President George W. Bush earned only a passing reference as “your oppressive ally who … is about to depart the White House”.
It’s hard to see why Reuters is surprised by OBL’s stated target, considering that his new grievance is specifically against Europeans:
In the latest message, issued on the Prophet’s birthday, bin Laden said the [Mohammed] cartoons were “part of a new crusade in which the Pope of the Vatican had a significant role”.
The reference was part of a familiar bin Laden strategy to paint Islam and Western, Christian-rooted societies as being in a state of war with its origins dating back to the Middle Ages.
One European security official explained Al Qaeda’s tactic according to Al Qaeda’s mind-set [e.a.]:
“It’s the logic of the crusade. The Pope, in the imagination of the Islamists, may appear as the head of the crusade, which is clearly absurd but may have meaning for some Muslims and the Islamists. I do think it may indicate the Pope is a target,” said Claude Moniquet, head of the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center.
He said the Pope’s presence in Rome was one factor making Italy a target for al Qaeda. Other European countries in its sights included Denmark, because of the cartoons row, and the Netherlands, where right-wing politician Geert Wilders is set to release a video next week that is expected to condemn the Koran.
By the “logic of the crusade,” OBL targets anyone who displeases his perverted notion of Islamic justice. This is the Al Qaeda ideology: global vigilantism in the name of Allah.
But OBL has his vulnerabilities, as Wretchard notes:
The rule of thumb in a fistfight is when you land a blow which makes your opponent yell, hit him there again. And the louder he yells the more you hit him in that particular area. Osama Bin Laden has just said “ouch”.
And here’s one of the things that hurts [e.a.]:
What makes the Mohammed Cartoon attack on radical Islam so potent that Bin Laden himself must oppose it, is two things. First, anyone can make fun of radical Islam. Second, the Cartoons are aimed at the weakest point of the Jihad: its sources of authority. …
The real message of organized nihilism is that “everything is permitted” except to make fun of nihilism itself. Every act is lawful in radical Islam: to bomb markets, kill children, lie, cheat and steal. Everything: except to publish the Mohammed Cartoons.
Are we in the West going to let OBL or Al Qaeda write the rules about what is and is not permissible to say in public in our societies?
Stay tuned.***
—————–
*** As long as American commentators like Joe Klein continue to misunderstand the nature of the threat and to make absurd claims—such as the assertion that there is a distinction between Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and the “real” Al Qaeda—we’re not going to get too far:
As it now stands, McCain believes that Iraq, where 150,000 U.S. troops are chasing after 3,500 Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia terrorists, is the “central front” in the war against terrorism–and he is on the record opposed to taking military action against the real Al Qaeda, which is actively working to destabilize Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and may be planning the next 9/11 in the mountains of Waziristan.
The next 9/11 is not the only thing threatening the West. One day perhaps more people threatened by Al Qaeda and other fanatical Islamists will understand that.
Visit the Georgetown Bookshop site to order your poster.
March 20th, 2008 — Islamism, anti-totalitarianism, counterterrorism, ideology wars
Whether the Dutch politician Geert Wilders stumbled into this tactic or meticulously planned the maneuver, he seems to have found a way to challenge both Islamist extremists (of all denominations: Sunni and Shia) and complacent Westerners, who seem not only willing but eager to give up the freedoms their forebears fought to attain for us all.
Der Spiegel describes how one man has been able to spark a “global panic.”
In late November 2007, Wilders announced that he was working on a film that would depict “the intolerant and fascist nature of the Koran.” Spokespeople from the Dutch interior and justice ministries expressed their concern about the project, but they also stressed that they had no power to dissuade the parliamentarian from going through with his plan or to prevent the film from being broadcast.
Since then, a film that no one has seen and of which no one can say that it will ever exist has become a daily topic of discussion and speculation in the Netherlands. Wilders is fueling the debate by occasionally announcing how far along the project is.
Predictably, this roused the ire of those it was intended to provoke—first of all the Dutch establishmen:
This triggered a panic in the Netherlands that could only be likened to the dread leading up to a massive storm. The Dutch ambassador in Malaysia warned that protests could lead to “dozens of deaths.” Dutch ambassadors in Islamic countries were instructed to increase security measures and distance themselves from the Wilders film, while counterterrorism experts at home began making preparations for the day of the broadcast. …
In early March, a few hundred Afghans demonstrated against the Wilders film in the northern Afghani city of Mazar-e-Sharif, where they burned Dutch flags and called for the withdrawal of Dutch NATO units from Afghanistan. This prompted NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer to express his concern that broadcasting the film could have an “impact” on the troops stationed in Afghanistan.
It was when the fear had spread from the Netherlands and into the heart of the EU that Wilders struck his first rhetorical blow [e.a.]:
[T]he Dutch foreign minister asked the EU to support the Dutch position. He said that the Dutch believe in freedom of expression, but are against portraying all Muslims as extremists. At the same time, the “terror alarm” in the Netherlands was raised to its second-highest level. The government of Prime Minister Jan-Peter Balkenende appealed to Wilders to abandon his plan to broadcast the film. On the one hand, Balkenende said, “constitutional freedoms must be defended, while extremism and terrorism must be fought.” On the other hand, he continued, “we must consider the consequences of our actions and may not endanger the things that are valuable to us all.”
Wilders reaction was clear. “The cabinet is falling onto its knees before Islam and capitulating,” he said, characterizing Balkenende as “an anxious man who has chosen the side of the Taliban.”
But the fear of Islamist retaliation—blowback—had taken hold in the EU [e.a.]:
Hans Gert Pöttering, the president of the European Parliament … called upon the media to impose a “code of behavior” on itself and not to publish anything that could be perceived as “derogatory” by members of religious groups. He also warned the Dutch not to “make a contribution to violence because of our freedom.” These clear words of appeasement, which the chief EU parliamentarian directed against the victims and not the perpetrators of violence, urging the former to be on their best behavior, were – as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote — the result of “anticipated fear” and sounded “dangerously like self-censorship.”
Wilders, who lives with around-the-clock protection because Islamist websites have called for his beheading, hasn’t yet released his film, and the internet is the only channel left open to him. Nevertheless, he has achieved one goal [e.a.]:
The truth is that the “provocateur” has already achieved his goal. Wilders has managed to portray the Dutch and the Europeans as cowards, shouting “we capitulate!” before the battle has even begun. …
They behave as if they want to protect the members of all religions against insults and abuse, all the while overlooking the fact that it is usually the members of one religion who respond aggressively whenever they are accused of having a propensity for violence.
Wilders could not have achieved more if his film had been shown.
Indeed.
And I note that Osama Bin Laden—remember him?—has been inserted into the global conversation again. This time he’s threatening the Europeans:
Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden denounced the publication of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad and warned Europe that retaliation would follow in an audio message released late Wednesday.
Even if the message is canned, as all the reports suggest, it’s a timely reminder.
Whatever you think of him and his methods, Geert Wilders has exposed the West’s vulnerability to (and seeming desire to capitulate to) blackmail through Islamist-extremist terrorism.
March 7th, 2008 — anti-totalitarianism, freedom
Today, George W. Bush sounded like the leader of the free world:
This [humanitarian] assistance is easing burdens for many Cuban families. But the sad fact is that life will not improve for the Cuban people until their system of government changes. It will not improve by exchanging one dictator for another. It will not improve if we prop up the same tyranny for the false promise of so-called stability.
As I told the Cuban people last October, a new day for Cuba will come. And we will know when it’s here. We will know it’s here when jailers go to the cells where Cuban prisoners of conscience are held and set them free….Until that day comes, the United States will continue to shine a bright and revealing light on Cuba’s abuses. We will continue to tell the stories of Cuba’s people, even when a lot of the world doesn’t want to hear them. And we will carry this refrain in our hearts: Viva Cuba Libre.
( Contentions)
February 10th, 2008 — Enlightenment values, abject appeasement, anti-totalitarianism
The Archbishop of Canterbury gets the Pope “he’s too nuanced for you all” Benedict defense:
Christina Rees said: “I am angry and frustrated at the way he has been treated. He has been vilified. Nobody is responding to what he said at the lecture, which was highly nuanced and complex, and delivered to a sophisticated audience.”
…
The Bishop of Gloucester, the Right Rev Michael Perham, said he felt the remarks had been taken out of context and should be studied more carefully. “The archbishop did not advocate the adoption of sharia law. What he did plead was for an understanding of it … He doesn’t deal in soundbites, but in careful rather scholarly discussion. That doesn’t easily transfer into popular news coverage, so he gets himself into trouble with people who get a distorted picture of what he is saying.”
All the more reason for (professional) death to come to the Archbishop.
You’re living in our real world, punk. In this world, when the media tries you and finds you wanting, you’re out—on this side of the Pond, at least. We’ll see what comes of you on your home turf.
February 10th, 2008 — Enlightenment values, abject appeasement, anglosphere, anti-totalitarianism, dazed and confused, democracy, deranged detachment, extreme political correctness, extreme self-criticism, global culture war, global political correctness, liberal "thinking", media
The Daily Mail attacks the British Olympic Association for its ourtrageous coddling of the Chinese with a vivid reminder of Britain’s shame and dishonor in the run-up to World War II:
National disgrace: In a picture from a German archive never before published in Britain, the England football team give Nazi salutes in Berlin in 1938 [e.a.]
Here are the facts, from the Mail:
British Olympic chiefs are to force athletes to sign a contract promising not to speak out about China’s appalling human rights record – or face being banned from travelling to Beijing.
The controversial clause has been inserted into athletes’ contracts for the first time and forbids them from making any political comment about countries staging the Olympic Games.
It is contained in a 32-page document that will be presented to all those who reach the qualifying standard and are chosen for the team.
From the moment they sign up, the competitors – likely to include the Queen’s granddaughter Zara Phillips and world record holder Paula Radcliffe – will be effectively gagged from commenting on China’s politics, human rights abuses or illegal occupation of Tibet.
Here’s the argument against, from David Mellor, also writing in the Mail:
The Chinese have no right to a free ride this summer. And it isn’t just because China isn’t a democracy or that basic human rights and fundamental freedoms are denied to its citizens.
China is a menace to the civilised world for many other reasons, ranging from its support for renegade regimes such as the government of Sudan, who used Chinese weaponry to commit the Darfur massacres, to its shameless emergence as the number one polluter.
The Chinese deserve as much criticism over their contributions to global warming as over their suppression of human rights.
Long live the British tabloid media!
February 10th, 2008 — Enlightenment values, abject appeasement, anglosphere, anti-totalitarianism, anti-tribalism, cluelessness, culture war, dazed and confused, democracy, deranged detachment, extreme political correctness
[reposted to correct a typo in the title]
Will sharia come to Britain? The notion certainly has a lot of people up in arms.
Ali Eteraz makes the case against (in case you need to hear it).
As for me, I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon. For one thing—though it’s not PC to bring this up, but it does reflect reality—there most certainly is a supernationalist streak in Britain, most obviously represented by its soccer hooligans. Potentially violent, uncontrollable “Islamophobia” is a real concern among this demographic, and it is not to be ignored.
Perhaps it was those, er, “blokes” who the otherwise sharia-loving (and enemy of culture) Tariq Ramadan was thinking of when he nixed the Archbishop’s idea:
“These kinds of statements [about the addition of sharia in Britain] just feed the fears of fellow citizens. I really think we, as Muslims, need to come up with something that we abide by the common law and within these latitudes there are possibilities for us to be faithful to Islamic principles.”
For another thing, on one side of the front page of its website, the Daily Mail tears to shreds the sharia-embracing Archbishop of Canterbury:
Officials at Lambeth Palace told the BBC Dr Williams was in a “state of shock” and “completely overwhelmed” by the scale of the row.
It was said that he could not believe the fury of the reaction.
On the other side of its front page, the Daily Mail goes about its business, advertising its other typical features:
Femail
Bedraggled and bra-less: Britney back to her old tricks after hospital release
A spell in a psychiatric hospital seems to have done little to change Britney’s lifestyle - or her dress sense
Cheek to Cheeky…the girls bare all for a good cause
Cheeky Girl Gabriela Irimia has never much cared for the twinset-and-pearls image of an MP’s consort - but this pose with her identical twin sister Monica - is risque by even her raunchy standards
Rehab star Amy is all smiles after getting her teeth fixed ahead of Grammy performance tonight
Amy Winehouse is all smiles these days after finally being granted a US visa - and getting her teeth fixed
‘Sadistic Wife Swap nearly cost me my sanity’ says TV presenter Anna Courtenay
On last week’s Channel 4 show Wife Swap, businesswoman Anna Courtenay, 42, was seen trading her privileged expat life in Marbella for nine days with another family on an ‘eco-friendly’ tugboat. She was not prepared for the lengths to which producers were prepared to go in the name of entertainment
When the Mail is forced to clean up its lurid act, let me know. Likewise, satellite TV in Europe (which is a mixture of lecturing imams and soft-core pornography). Then I’ll get nervous about sharia.
In the meantime, I take comfort from the sensible attacks on the mental defective masquerading as the Archbishop of Canterbury:
The most damaging attack came from the Pakistan-born Bishop of Rochester, the Right Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali.
He said it would be “simply impossible” to bring sharia law into British law “without fundamentally affecting its integrity”.
Sharia “would be in tension with the English legal tradition on questions like monogamy, provisions for divorce, the rights of women, custody of children, laws of inheritance and of evidence.
“This is not to mention the relation of freedom of belief and of expression to provisions for blasphemy and apostasy.”
January 9th, 2008 — anti-totalitarianism
Censorship, inhibition of free thought, and intimidation of writers are once again the order of the day since Ahmadinejad took office in 2005, according to the Observer:
After the 1979 Islamic revolution, the government imposed strict rules on book publishing. Since then, the Ministry of Culture has been charged to vet all books before publication, mainly for erotic and religious transgressions. All books, including fiction, are required to conform to Islamic law.
Iranian literature showed brief signs of resurgence during the cultural thaw that took place when Mohammad Khatami became President in 1997. Khatami created a more open cultural atmosphere by allowing a huge number of books to be published. But the literary spring of Khatami’s era was fleeting.
A new regime of censorship began when Ahmadinejad took office. The cultural ministry imposed rules requiring renewed permits for previously published books. As a result, many books have been deemed unsuitable for publication or reprinting.
Many world classics, contemporary novels and dozens of international bestsellers have been banned, including a Farsi translation of Dostoevsky’s masterpiece The Gambler, Tracy Chevalier’s bestseller Girl With a Pearl Earring, William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and some books by Virginia Woolf, Marguerite Duras, Dan Brown and Woody Allen.
Next time you hear from a whippersnapper that Iran isn’t a totalitarian country, it’s only “repressive,” please remember that the Iranian government controls what can and cannot be published. That, dear readers, is evil, because it suppresses the human rights of individuals to freedom of thought, regardless of what you call it.
Listen to the punishment meted out to one writer who crossed the hard-line censors [e.a.]:
The novelist Yaghoub Yadali was recently illegally imprisoned for 40 days by the government for several passages from his novel Mores of Unrest, a book which had ministry permission. He was eventually charged with dissemination of falsehood and sentenced to three months’ imprisonment, as well as being required to write three mandatory articles.
Chilling.
This led to an outcry among many Iranian writers, who believe that the government is invading the imagination.
Yes, and that is the ultimate punishment—something out of science fiction—to have the government prescribe what you can and cannot write, or must or must not write, or can or cannot think.
It’s possible for people to resist this, of course. People have, and do. But why should they have to? Totalitarianism is very cruel. Not many can resist. Eventually, most go into hibernation, like this man:
‘It’s almost nine months since my translation of Kurt Vonnegut’s A Man Without a Country was given to the ministry. Since then we have had no response,’ says Mojtaba Pourmohsen, whose interview with Saghi Ghahraman, an Iranian lesbian poet based in Canada, published in Shargh Daily, became an excuse for the government to close down the most prominent reformist paper of the country. ‘I’m too tired now. I have no energy to go on with literature in Iran.
There’s a slim ray of hope, though—due to the technological revolution:
Reza Ghassemi, an important Iranian novelist based in France, recently published his new novel, The Abracadabra Murmured by Lambs, on the internet in a free ebook PDF format instead of facing government censorship and the formal permission procedure. His enovel has been reviewed and welcomed by the huge Iranian blog community much more warmly than if it had been published on paper.
Change happens slowly, but enlightenment will win the day … I hope.
December 30th, 2007 — Enlightenment values, anti-totalitarianism, global culture war
Benazir Bhutto’s 19-year-old son, Bilawal, has been named to succeed her:
Acting in accordance with Benazir Bhutto’s last wishes, her Pakistan People’s Party today named her teen-age son and her husband as its leaders.
Young Bilawal seems to have taken in certain Enlightenment ideas with his mother’s milk [e.a.]:
Phillippa Neal, 19, lives in the same on-campus housing as Bilawal. She says he was not accompanied by any security at Oxford. According to Neal, Bilawal posted a statement from his mother the day of her assassination, which read: “You can imprison a man but not an idea. You can exile a man but not an idea. You can kill a man but not an idea. — Benazir Bhutto.” The day of the assassination his Facebook status read: “Well behaved women rarely make history.” Neal is not sure whether that quote was portentious [sic] or posted after Benazir’s assassination.
During the meeting at which the Pakistan People’s Party succession announcement was made,
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, a tall and composed Oxford student, took the center chair at the news conference at the Bhutto family enclave as he read the announcement that the party would contest the coming election.
“The long and historic struggle for democracy will continue with renewed vigor,” he said. “My mother always said democracy was the best revenge.”
Bilawal sounds like a worthy heir to a worthy cause.
Long may he live.
December 6th, 2007 — Iran, anti-totalitarianism
Wherever you come down on the endlessly intriguing question of what the hell is going on with Iran and the NIE, there’s a much more fundamental point about Iran that we shouldn’t overlook.
Jeffrey Herf addresses this question. Writing in Germany, Herf asks: “Where Are the Anti-Fascists?”
Occasionally one hears reassuring voices on both sides of the Atlantic. They say that Ahmadinejad is not the real seat of power in Tehran, or that he is simply making such threats to mobilize his supporters at home against domestic opponents, or that if he did possess nuclear weapons, he would certainly not be so crazy at to use them against a state such as Israel with its own nuclear deterrent. While I have heard such arguments from political scientists in the United States, many of whom tend to dismiss the causal significance of ideological fanaticism in international affairs, such reassuring tones sound particularly peculiar when voiced in this country. To put it mildly, German politics and intellectual life is not famous for sunny optimism. …
Why do those who live in a country that was destroyed by the actions of a fanatic in power assume that Germany was unique, and that another country outside Europe could not produce a fanatic of a very different sort, and that Ahmadinejad does not really mean what he says?
[e.a.]
Indeed, Benjamin Netanyahu (who’s been awfully quiet, by the way—have you noticed? what’s up with that?) made exactly this point about Iran a year ago:
“Believe [Ahmadinejad] and stop him,”
No one believed bin Laden either back in the early 1990s, when he was making all kinds of threats against the United States.
Given what we know now—that bin Laden meant every word he said—why would anyone rational choose not to believe Iran’s malign intentions, which it boasts about?
August 8th, 2007 — America at war, Enlightenment values, anti-totalitarianism, betrayal, careerists, demagogues, human behavior, movies, power
I love Milos Forman. His best movies are breathtaking. And even his worst movies are a hundred times more interesting and entertaining than most of what passes for highbrow mainstream entertainment. That said, Goya’s Ghosts is a mess—didactic where it should be satirical, melodramatic where it should be dramatic, stingy where it should be generous. As I said: a big mess.
That’s a damn shame, because, as Cinematical notes, it’s got some really stirring moments on a subject of hot contemporary debate—
Javier Bardem embodies one of Forman’s favorite fool-archetypes here: the true believer who is double-blind in thinking that the system he loves loves him back and that his earnestness in upholding it will produce rewards down the road. Bardem plays Brother Lorenzo, a Catholic priest who argues passionately for the grisly torture of the Inquisition in the opening scene, as the other priests sit quietly and imbibe his passionate commitment to the cause instead of daring to debate any of his points. It’s only later, when an unlikely turn of events sees him having dinner in the home of a man suspected of being a “Judiazier” that he’s asked to give any kind of thoughtful defense to his beliefs. ‘How could there be any value in a confession given under extreme physical torture?,’ Brother Lorenzo is asked, to which he replies that God grants the innocent the ability to withstand the torture and not utter false statements, but allows the guilty to perjure themselves. A few minutes later, he’s singing a completely different tune.
And Time magazine puts it in perspective:
[T]he entire film is less an exercise in historicism (though the portrait of the painter is accurate enough, as is the depiction of historical events, the story is pure fiction) than it is an elaborate analogy with our own times. This is quite understandable — Forman lost his parents to the Nazi concentration camps and came of age in Communist-ruled Czechoslovakia, and he has long needed to address the issues that shaped his life in a movie. Goya’s Ghosts is not entirely successful in doing so. …
[I]t has about it a kind of messy passion that is quite fascinating. It obviously means a great deal to its auteur, and that passion grants the film a felt and wayward life not usually granted historical epics.
That judgment applies particularly to Bardem’s performance as the loathsome Lorenzo. In the beginning, as he volunteers to lead the newly revived Inquisition, he is all soft-voiced reason. He is polite to the point of obsequiousness, not only to his church superiors, but even to the people he torments. Creepy, well-met and utterly corrupt, and when the French invade he simply disappears — only to reappear later as, of all things, a Voltairian rationalist, married, with children, and growing rich as an enforcer for Spain’s occupiers. He is, in his way, also a perfect modernist, blowing blandly and prosperously with the winds of change. As long as there is power and status to be had, he does not care who he must serve to obtain those boons. By analogy, Goya’s Ghosts has much to say, largely through this character, about such current issues as torture, terror and the fact that some people can profit hugely by making up ideological justifications for the anarchy they loose upon the world.
The reviewier, Phil Bray, concludes his political takeaway thus:
If you find yourself thinking about, say, Abu Ghraib while you’re watching this movie, that’s OK with Forman and Carriere.
That’s true, as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough, because the film isn’t about politics. It’s about human nature—about how even the apolitical among us (and most people are apoliticial) are ensnared, and potentially enslaved, by the pathologically political people who live among us: the seekers of power and privilege and those who serve and/or cozy up to them … regardless of their political persuasion. Right or left, it doesn’t matter. Potentially, power corrupts us all.
In the movie, “There shall be no liberty for the enemies of liberty!” is the cry of the secular republicans against those who would stand in the way of their revolution: monarchs, cardinals, clerks, lawyers, bankers, newspapermen, merchants—everyone with a stake in the system.
Goya’s Ghosts is a failed film, but its 75-year-old director has got something to say, if you’ve got the time and the curiosity to listen.
June 8th, 2007 — anti-totalitarianism
Posted: Sun, 03 Jun 2007
Bush, bloodied and battered here at home, will nevertheless make a stand for the freedom agenda when he goes to Prague next week to speak before the Conference on Democracy and Security. Featured attendees are former Russian gulag prisoner Natan Sharansky and onetime political prisoner (and then prime minister) of Czechoslovakia Vaclav Havel:
[Bush] He may never have a more perfect opportunity to restate the case for moral clarity in the conduct of international relations — and to explain why linking those relations to the advance of democracy and civil rights is a prerequisite to lasting peace and security. …
In the 1970s and 1980s, “realists” believed in appeasing Moscow and ignoring dissidents, whom they saw as too weak to make a difference. They didn’t understand that the best way to undermine a totalitarian regime is to weaken the control it exerts over its subjects — and the best way to do that is to amplify the voices from within calling for freedom and democracy.
President Reagan, who did understand, labeled the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and put Moscow’s treatment of dissidents and refuseniks high on the international agenda. The Kremlin eventually caved under the pressure that resulted.
What worked in the Cold War will work in the conflict with radical Islam, Sharansky insists, if only the free world will support the beleaguered human rights and democracy advocates in Iran and the Arab world. “If President Bush will say clearly to democratic dissidents in the Middle East, ‘You are our partners, and we are going to work through you’ — that would strengthen their position tremendously.”
Our strongest weapon against the global jihad, says Sharansky, is that people prefer to live in freedom, not fear. “Help those people who are fighting for it from within,” he pleads. “That is the most important thing.”
Yes it is. Although democracy is far superior (because it is the fairest, to the most people) to any other system of government known to man, people across the globe should come to that realization on their own…if they can We cannot and should not impose our way of life—which works so well for us—on others.
But we can and should support those people living in police states, under constant scrutiny by totalitarian regimes, who are working to overthrow their cruel masters so that they too may live in freedom. Like us, they deserve the human right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.
And spare a thought for peace activist Ali Shakeri, scholars Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh, and journalist Parnaz Azima. And for Ingrid Betancourt and Clara Rojas.
Let your conscience be your guide. Think anti-totalitarianism, not anti-Bushism.
May 30th, 2007 — Enlightenment values, anti-totalitarianism, blogosphere, brave new world, cultural shift, free speech, freedom, journalism, media, news, news analysis, political speech
In an interview, Andrew Breitbart describes the real impact of the digital revolution:
The Internet has created raw immediacy and raw connectedness to anything and everything.
It seems that if you’ve ever felt constrained by the bureaucracies of the world — whether it be government or corporations — it seems that now any individual can do anything that they set their mind to. A person can create a Web site that looks as if it’s a multinational corporation. You can go to GM.com or you can go to MG’s blog, and MG’s blog is 10 times more compelling. You can pretty much do anything. You can start your own T-shirt company, you can cultivate an audience, you can create a business from scratch. ….
Yep. It’s pretty goddamn cool. Not to mention that it’s a bonanza for us news junkies who’ve got something to say:
I’m a news addict, news aficionado …
The idea now, on the Internet, that I can read everything that’s being read inside the major newsrooms in the country — I’d pay top dollar for that, back in the day. And now it’s all there.
You know that you’re seeing the same exact information that the Dan Rathers, the Peter Jennings, the Tom Brokaws of the world are seeing. You’re like, “Wait a second. Why did you choose that to be the No. 1 story?” And you start gaining a level of confidence that there’s a conventional wisdom out there, set by people with a very parochial sensibility.
Given that anything’s possible on the Internet, you kind of feel motivated to say, “Let me have my say on this. Let me try and counteract the effect of there being a machinery that creates conventional wisdom without taking into consideration alternative viewpoints.” …
That pretty much describes my experience, and the long, long road I’ve traveled on the Internet, of which I’ve been an officianado aficionado since 1993, when I signed up for my first Pipeline (a local NYC ISP) account, up until today, when I mark sixteen months as a blogger (averaging four link-and content-rich posts a day).
Once, in response to a post by Jeff Jarvis on the topic of who we bloggers are, I left the following comment:
We are longtime thinkers and readers and writers who went to the same schools as MSMers (No insult intended. Some of my best friends are MSMers.) but decided to pursue careers and professions other than journalism. We make our living doing other things, but we continue to read and to be engaged by the dynamic world around us and by the world of ideas. We like to read. We like to write. We like to make fun of what we observe in public life, like in MST3K. We like to debate. We understand rhetoric. We know how to check facts and sources.
It’s not journalism, though–few of us are out there bearing witness or interviewing people or acquiring other primary-source material (although with the advent of podcasting and various blogging consortia, that may be changing).
It’s…I dunno. Maybe blogging is “opinion reporting.”
We’re different from journalists, because we seek to mix it up with our readers. We’re looking for conversation and debate. We want to be involved in the intellectual/cultural life of our country (such as it is). Some of us are tired of shouting back at the talking heads on TV and NPR and at editorial writers and columnists. We have areas of expertise and opinions, too.
The blogosphere is where thinking people go to debate the politics of the day, the ideas of public intellectuals, and the opinions of paid opinion writers. It’s where the national conversation is taking place. Be there or be square.
Here’s more from that inspiring Breitbart interview:
Q: You create your own news wire.
A: There are people who can go out there and become a creme brulee blog and obsess on creme brulee and have strong opinions on creme brulee, and which is the best type of creme brulee. They can fight against the creme caramelle people who don’t have the hardened sugar top. And eventually, people who like creme brulee will migrate to this place and that person will become the creme brulee spokesperson. And then maybe a dessert company finds this person, says, “You know more about this than our president does,” and hire them for $75,000 a year.
It seems that there’s been, across the board, a democratizing of everything. It seems that the American spirit of freedom is being exported. In a MacLuhanesque way, the medium is the message. The freedoms that we see online in this country — there’s no taxation of it — all these things have all benefitted from the growth of the Internet.
It’s very difficult to sell to totalitarianism in the Internet age. Do you want a free Internet? Do you want absolute control of your Internet life, or do you want to put that in the control of others? And I think that if people were to start taking away your freedoms online, you’d see a bloody revolution.
Q: People would fight for their online freedom.
A: Right. To many people, it’s everything. I think people take it for granted. I think people should be jumping up on top of their beds, thanking God every single day that this thing was invented.
Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but it’s pretty goddamn cool. And it’s definitely liberating.
April 14th, 2007 — anti-totalitarianism, free speech
Through gritted teeth I offer the following offensive defense of free speech:
Naturally, there are a lot more where that came from.
You didn’t really think this was the end of offensive speech, did you? Good. Because we First Amendment absolutists haven’t yet begun to fight.
April 10th, 2007 — anti-totalitarianism, blogosphere, free speech
I’m with Jeff Jarvis.
If you’re looking for politesse for the sake of good manners, move on.
This blog is dedicated to the truth as I see it. My intent is to share and to inspire you to think. In service of the truth, I will be as vulgar, offensive, nasty, mean, curt, and blasphemous as I please.
Fuck all the New Puritans. Together, we bloggers and First Amendment absolutists will bury you.
March 21st, 2007 — Jews, activism, anti-semitism, anti-totalitarianism
The World Zionist Organization jumps into the viral war of words between Ahmadinejad and the Jews.
Click here for details.
March 15th, 2007 — America at war, Islamism, anti-totalitarianism, jihadism, just war
Andrew Sullivan posted one of Thomas Mallon’s provocative questions the other day:
“Are American writers, artists, and thinkers truly prepared to admit that Islamofascism is a real, and even imminent, threat to everything they are accustomed to thinking, saying, and creating?”
I would say the answer is no, judging by the “response” Sullivan received and posted, which referred exclusively to the threat from Islamist-fueled terrorist-generated random violence.
Our societies, cultures and economies are just too strong to be even mildly shaken by this lame bullshit. Just because some gaggle of religious lunatics manages to kill a bunch of westerners once every 6 months, does anyone really believe that “everything we are accustomed to thinking, saying and creating” is under threat? I call bullshit.
The threat of Islamofascism is not the same thing as the threat from Islamist terrorism and nukes. This is Islamofascism, and it’s taking place in Britain, while everyone is sleeping or drugged on our wonderful, pleasurable escapist way of life:
Freedom of speech row as talk on Islamic extremists is banned
A leading university has been accused of “selling out” academic freedom of speech by scrapping a talk on links between the Nazis and Islamic anti-semitism after allegedly receiving emails from Muslims protesting about the event.
Matthias Küntzel, a German author and political scientist who specialises in the threat of Islamic fundamentalism, was told yesterday by the University of Leeds that a talk scheduled for yesterday evening, and a two-day workshop, on Hitler’s Legacy: Islamic Anti-semitism in the Middle East, had been cancelled because of security fears.
Let me repeat myself in case I wasn’t clear—and in case Sullivan and his lazy reader didn’t get what Mallon meant when he said [e.a.] that Islamofascism is “a real, and even imminent, threat to everything they are accustomed to thinking, saying, and creating.”
Islamofascism doesn’t manifest itself primarily as the desire to nuke us, though that would be good for them, too, I suppose. It manifests itself as the threat to shut down our way of life, preferably by persuading us that we are “insulting Islam” when we exercise our hard-won freedom of speech.
I don’t know about you, but that makes me feel like doing nothing but insulting Islam from morning to night, every day, seven days a week.
March 15th, 2007 — America at war, Islamism, anti-totalitarianism, jihadism
(edited for clarity)
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in a confession in which he also likened himself to George Washington, says that in addition to planning 9/11 and Bali and a long string of other atrocities that shocked the conscience of civilized people everywhere, he butchered Daniel Pearl.
“I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan,” Mohammed is quoted as saying in a transcript of a military hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, released by the Pentagon.
“For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head,” he added.
Before Mohammed did it, Daniel Pearl gave him the finger:
Judea Pearl: ‘We have to defeat the hatred that took Danny’s life’
Rest in peace, Daniel Pearl.
March 9th, 2007 — anti-totalitarianism, extreme political correctness
Ignore the privileged white male intellectual dons like Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash, who preach shit from their comfortable university platforms and the pages of Western papers and magazines.
Support the Muslim women around the world who are being abused by their own people every day.
In Pakistan, there is a rape every 2 hours, and there is gang rape every 8 hours. Many of the gang rapes are ordered by tribal councils.
Stop the madness.
Ignore Western “intellectuals” who want you to be complicit in this sickness, because it belongs to someone else’s “culture.”
Gang rape, stoning, and chopping off limbs are not “culture.”
Watch Barbara Plett’s report on the BBC.
Battle against Pakistan rape
