Journey in the Dark
The really pernicious thing about political correctness is that often completely fake. It was recently reported that the FBI was building crime maps based on the distribution of Muslims because they found the correlations useful to detect certain kinds of crimes. Now it turns out that the NYPD has been tracking Muslims who change their names on the not entirely fanciful idea that they are up to no good.
Since August, an Associated Press investigation has revealed a vast NYPD intelligence-collecting effort targeting Muslims following the terror attacks of September 2001. Police have conducted surveillance of entire Muslim neighborhoods, chronicling daily life including where people eat, pray and get their hair cut. Police infiltrated dozens of mosques and Muslim student groups and investigated hundreds more.
Monitoring name changes illustrates how the threat of terrorism now casts suspicion over what historically has been part of America’s story. For centuries, foreigners have changed their names in New York, often to lose any stigma attached with their surname.
The Roosevelts were once the van Rosenvelts. Fashion designer Ralph Lauren was born Ralph Lifshitz. Donald Trump’s grandfather changed the family name from Drumpf.
We all remember the touching scenes from the 1940s movies when someone called Antonio turns to his buddies in the landing craft before the hitting the beach and says “if I get it, remember to bury as me as Tony, I’m an American now!” But today when Daood Gilani becomes David Coleman Headley the NYPD have been apt to take a different view. “David” isn’t fixing to become American. He’s a-fixing on killing some. Not that there isn’t something in this, though it is complicated: the NYPD has apparently gotten Muslims ex-militants to admit that they’ve changed their names to “lay low” or to increase their chances of getting a job.
Given this background it was ironical that an administration appointee, Department of Homeland Security Advisory Council member Mohamed Elibiary, may have tried to infer a pattern of Islamophobia in Texas in order to provide a source for a left-wing magazine hit piece on Rick Perry. Patrick Poole of PJMedia reported that Elibiary went on a fishing expedition, came up with nothing and had his article rejected by the left-wing outlet into the bargain.
Texas Department of Public Safety officials are asking questions following a report that Department of Homeland Security Advisory Council member Mohamed Elibiary may have been given access to a sensitive database of state and local intelligence reports, and then allegedly shopped some of those materials to a media outlet. He allegedly used the documents to claim the department was promoting “Islamophobia” — claims that the media outlet ultimately rejected. They declined to do the story.
Now Perry must be a bigot because he’s from Texas. But the FBI and the NYPD are only doing their job. Why? Because that’s how Central Casting has decreed it works. Given the real behavior of the NYPD and the FBI, one might be forgiven for thinking that the way the game is actually played is that any agency can be as “Islamophobic” as necessary as long as it doesn’t look that way.
It is the non-PC appearance of an act, not the act in itself, that is the crime. Guantanamo, bad but extraordinary rendition, good. Handling Korans without gloves, bad but zapping people dead in countries in which no state of war exists by drone, good. War, bad but kinetic military action, good. A world without nuclear weapons, bad but an Iran with nukes … well let’s talk about it. And so forth and so on. Our cultural has performed the ultimate trick: it has created stereotypes about stereotypes.
The importance given to spin was underscored by secret government meetings that were held to convey the impression of transparency. “The meeting’s purpose was to train Freedom of Information Act officers from federal agencies how to respond to FOIA requests, including tips on resolving disputes over what government documents can be made public.” One bright idea was to create a two-track government, one meeting for the record and another one for keeps. The other brainwave was to create a license to lie.
A longtime internal policy that allowed Justice Department officials to deny the existence of sensitive information could become the law of the land — in effect a license to lie — if a newly proposed rule becomes federal regulation in the coming weeks.
The proposed rule directs federal law enforcement agencies, after personnel have determined that documents are too delicate to be released, to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests “as if the excluded records did not exist.”
The whole point is not to be transparent but to make the rubes think that government is transparent. One might wonder what other lies are in the works, but if the public simply wanted the truth, shouldn’t they just ask the President? After all he wouldn’t lie to the American people, now would he?
When I wrote the Three Conjectures years ago, it was premised on the argument that a politically correct system would simply paper over problems until things got out of hand and then it would act with extreme prejudice overnight. Like the Soviet Union, a politically correct polity would announce things were getting much better each year until it collapsed. Multiculturalism will be working just great right up to the eve of the day when they announce the wholesale destruction of the Muslim world or the mass deportation of immigrants back to their home countries.
That is of course, an extreme example, but it is characteristic of how systems in denial work. Such systems have two tracks: the one for public consumption and the one for internal consumption. The version for public consumption is based on the “noble lie” and the version for internal guidance is based on secret and classified memoranda. It is an extremely dangerous method of governance which assumes that the Guardians, or the Philosopher-Kings — someone at any rate — will eventually be reasonable, even in a system where reason is secret. Ayn Rand once likened the method of the “noble lie” to “the theory of the Nazi ruling elite”.
The better approach would be to let it all hang out and let the sunlight of fact disinfect the debate. Western societies should frankly admit that Islam poses a problem and engage the public in open discussion over what should be done. Maybe the idea will be openly refuted and we shall all, by exposure to the evidence, admit to error where it exists; maybe we will all realize that things are worse than we thought. However that may be, the results are likely to be far more rational and humane than a politically correct approach which denies all difficulty up until the moment when the whole thing blows up.
The first step would be to demolish all unnecessary hate speech codes; the second to identify radical and violent doctrines (and not the inoffensive ones) as an ideological enemy and see where that goes. Those who are afraid of an open process should ask themselves why the alternative is better. If they believe a system of dual-track government and sanctioned lying is superior because our sensitive souls are spared the sight of the truth, then what is the reason? But we may need a disaster to convince ourselves that the truth after all, will set us free.
In fairness to the bureaucracy, many of these “noble lies” were crafted to facilitate the conduct of diplomacy or adopted as realpolitik expedients. How could one do business with the Saudis unless one were prepared to put the best construction on their national ideology? But now the reverse problem emerges. The Arab Spring is bringing down all the “partners for peace” and the challenge is now how to represent Islamic thugs in the “freedom fighting” ranks as true democrats. Perhaps this calls for yet another “noble lie”. And then why not another, and another?
But sooner or later the truth has an uncomfortable way of wriggling free. Like a spring, the more you push it down the harder it will recoil on the day it escapes. And while policy may survive the odd tactical falsehood, it can never be fundamentally based on a baldfaced lie. While we may withstand the odd carnivorous bloom in the garden, letting a forests of fibs spread wildly through the landscape is probably a bad idea. There is a public policy benefit to conforming plans with some semblance of reality. Too far into the depths of darkness and one can never find one’s way back.
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“The better approach would be to let it all hang out and let the sunlight of fact disinfect the debate. Western societies should frankly admit that Islam poses a problem and engage the public in open discussion over what should be done.”
Agreed 100%. So may we start with PJM itself? I’ve been banned by Totten, and some PJM editor, possibly Brian Preston, regularly spikes my comments at this site as well, which are almost always severely critical of Islam. I may sometimes use charged language about what I honestly see as heinousness of Islam, and it’s utter unsuitability in the West. I believe its anti-freedom, anti-human, violence loving, “infidel” hating, is a cancerous ideology which guarantees horrendous consequences if we suffer it to persist. I try to support my position with facts, reasonable analysis, and common sense. I see what I see, learn what I learn, and make the inferences that make sense to me. Yet somehow this falls so far beyond the pale that my opinions cannot be published snider increasing numbers of writers at this sight.
Those are the same people who held out hope or even cheered when the Arab Spring began, while I predicted exactly what we see: the complete takeover by Islamic Fascists. These banners are the same people who compare The Jihad mini state to “the Israel of the Balkans”, a comparison so lewd in its ignorance, that I cannot comprehend how such obscenity is allowed while opinions such as mine are banned.
I believe Islam, and the society of Muslims poses a mortal threat to my civilization, but that heresy cannot even be entertained by many, even at this site. Instead, the pious will take great pains to seek out ephemeral examples of Muslim so-called “moderation”, and excoriate anyone who says otherwise.
Early on, in a cowardly act, PJM expelled Baron Bodissey and the site Gates of Vienna, because of its associations with the English Defense League. Since then, GoV and Jihadwatch have waged a very lonely vigil, a rear-guard defense really, against the steady onslaught of wide and deep Islamic Jihad. And pious hypocrites still retail their inane tomfoolery about Islam at this site, and poisonously pronounce the Nazi-like nature of anyone who pronounces anathema on the Religion of Peace.
Ezra Levant gets sued, Geert Wilders gets threatened, cartoonists get threatened into silence, and Fjordman, a magnificent and brilliant writer, gets slandered by the Muslims and their multicultural abettors, and smeared with the violence of the mass murderer of Norway.
I’m still waiting for this site to even mention the attempted annihilation of Fjordman, who has been driven underground, and his life destroyed… All I hear at PJM is crickets.
I remember Fjordman, and remain baffled as to why his writing was considered “hateful.” But then, being direct, clear-eyed and uncompromising in one’s writing is considered “hateful” by both the objects of that writing and those cowards who are afraid to have said “objects” get all riled up.
Remember that Wretchard himself was attacked here at BC by a troll after the Norway massacre. The imbecile who trolled implied that W. was one of those responsible for that violence.
Well I can only answer for myself. Whiskey and I disagree for example, but his link is visible in the sidebar.
W. New ground broken? This is the first time, IIRC, that you have offered an actual course of action….as you know I tend to focus on solutions more than bloviation. Good on ya.
Morty. I disagree. I have on this very site offered a course of action IRT Islam. I haven’t ranted and raved…that is preaching to the choir…but I have offered options.
Humorous Anecdote. Ex used to say “First know thyself, then trick thyself” Her way of ignoring harsh reality…wonder if she still thinks that a way?
ta
1 mort, What do you propose when 4.8 billion people aren’t someone else’s religion (perhaps even yours), and most of the 2 billion people who are that religion don’t practice it *just right* as the one true God commanded so clearly and everyone knows…?
I should add that the incomparable writing of Wretchard is the main reason I still come to this site. I almost always agree with what he writes, and often learn tremendously from his insight and analysis. It is also a delight to follow the vibrant dialogue always in his comments section. Unlike those I criticize above, whose comments threads are dominated by a wildenprness of fawning admirers,and yes-men, (similar to the execrable Charles Johnson), theres always something witty and enlightening to read under the BC banner. Even when I rarely disagree with the proprietor, I have never found Wretchard to be the kind of brittle egoist that bans commenters and suppresses differing arguments. BC towers above this site in every regard.
Oh great… the verbosity and grandiosity of hammering the meme of “Transparency” was just a ruse to do and operate by the exact opposite system, with built in deception as the bedrock of it’s foundation. To create a happy horse manure narrative while conspiring to keep whatever the real truth, not to mention what actions and directions are taken, secreet from the public. Sounds like the veritable Sorcerers Apprentice, or a Frankenstein’s monster. the evil twin, the Bad Seed.
The real premise, is that these Oli’garks of the ruling class will tell you that “a government that rules by consent of the governed” ended long ago, more than a century ago, how? Nobody really knows anymore. My head is still spinning from the conspiracy thread, but “a government ruled by the consent of the governed” can be undermined by any un-checked (governmental) abuse(s), however small, until you reach the point where everyone wants to get in on the act, and there’s no need to show anymore how the end justifies the means (the end of “rule by consent of the governed), it just is, so get used to it. No more means, no more ends, no more history. We’re in charge and you are not. History is what we say it is, how it serves our purposes.
“The government does not rule “by the consent of the governed”, so why would you or do you persist in demanding it?” …they would tell you, off the record.
That’s exactly where pragmatism will land you.
A volatile combination of Murphy’s Law, The Peter Principle, temptation, no ethical standards nor the study of them anymore, and shear incompetence.
7. gaffe, You can often trust first generation conspirators and revolutionaries. It’s their replacements who are more troublesome. Take 1776 for example….
If they believe a system of dual-track government and sanctioned lying is any superior because our sensitive souls are spared the sight of the truth, then what is the reason?
Why, to avoid accountability and to provide plausible deniability when the rulers need to do so to save their precious hides and reputations. Most modern politicians have to indulge in Orwellian doublethink to get and stay where they are. Its a sad commentary on our modern world but its true. All but the most sociopathic of them understand at some level that they are not truly gods walking upon the planet but frauds whose incompetence may one day shine forth for all to see. That is their ultimate terror: the consequences of having everyone see what they really are with all the veils of illusion ripped away. The consequences.
I hate to violate Godwin’s law here but the current ruling class does indeed share Hitler’s attitude: if the common people are unable to live up to the aspirations that the ruling class expects of them and that will keep the ruling class in power and status they deserve no mercy whatsoever and are therefore worthy of extermination.
Failing to meet the expectations of the Ruling Class is the ultimate sin for which there is and can never be any forgiveness.
It is a sad and dangerous thing when having narcissistic and/or sociopathic tendencies seems to be a prerequisite for obtaining public office.
How did we get here? Is there some way back home?
Are they monitoring Arab or Persian Muslims who Americanize their names or American Muslims who Islamisize their names?
Re: “While we may withstand the odd carnivorous bloom in the garden, letting a forests of fibs wildly through the landscape is probably a bad idea. There is a public policy benefit to conforming plans with some semblance of reality. Too far into the depths of darkness and one can never find one’s way back.”
This statement dovetails nicely with the preceding thread. Conspiricism and the depths of darkness are closely related. The former can lead to the latter; the latter can contain the former. Of course every now and then a conspiracy really does occur; just as a stopped clock is right twice daily and just as, sooner or later, someone predicting the end of the world will be right.
Talnik…
It surely must be both.
They are also monitoring social media — which is all for the good.
Roger Kimball makes no bones whereas the threat posed by islam itself is concerned. He doesn’t curb his language, doesn’t minimize it, doesn’t soften it to make it more palatable to the faint hearted, the weak of knee.
It’s a dangerous murderous tribal political operating system, and he treats it as such.
http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2011/10/26/obama-gaddafi-and-the-world-ahead/
http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2011/10/23/hillary-clinton-tells-a-joke/#comments
http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/
13. Gaffe Prices / Roger Kimball makes no bones whereas the threat posed by islam itself is concerned.
Indeed. See also the Canadian columnist David Warren (at David Warren online).
I hope they monitor guys born in Hawaii who later adopt Muslim names.
I have to say, that Dubya took some emergency measures, including Gitmo, which were easy to forgive under the circumstances, even praiseworthy, but which do tend to linger on without resolution. Ongoing national security measures now point back to Dubya for justification. This is seldom valid, probably never valid. One should be very, very skeptical about government claims of urgent, overriding needs for secrecy. Even though they are, occassionally, true, and then can be of overwhelming importance. Nobody said it was easy.
Still, the villification by the left of any and all acts of the right, is truly disgusting. There is, of course, some echoes of that going the other way. But it seems really more a practice, if not a dogma, by the left, to fail to extend the benefit of the doubt to the opposition.
And so much for their “liberal” self-image.
We know the archetype, the high-pitched, fast-talking (nearly hysterical) voice, usually with large vocabulary and long sentence length, yet also spittle-flying, ad-hominem, and paranoid projection about any opposition being extreme, right-wing, ill-informed and ill-intentioned. It is a type. No doubt some people *aspire* to it, and one could extend the description and define sub-types to three decimal places of diagnostic categories. If one had the stomach for it. But that very objectification of the opposition is part of the syndrome, and personally I don’t care for it.
If you want to see one brave woman who sticks it to radical Islam, check out Ann Barnhardt’s videos on Youtube.
Totten visits all sorts of garden spots in the Middle East so I don’t blame him for tip-toeing around. If he doesn’t toe the line one of the members of the religion of peace are likely to saw off his head with a rusty butcher knife.
This from Drudge –
“One of the things about Herman Cain is, I think that he makes that white Republican base of the party feel okay, feel like they are not racist because they can like this guy,” Finney said. “I think he giving that base a free pass. And I think they like him because they think he’s a black man who knows his place. I know that’s harsh, but that’s how it sure seems to me.”
If you are for anything that the DemZi Party is against you are labeled a racist. That is par for the course for the party of former slave owners. Calling someone a racist is how Democrats voice their urge of calling someone a n!ggar. It means the same thing, it is, ironically, just as racist.
Secrets while in a state of war are the norm. Lies during peace time have become the norm, just ask Eric Holder.
I do not think it is right to say that “all Muslims are bad” or even that “all of Islam is bad”. Anyone who has lived among Muslims has found there are good and bad among them just like anywhere else, and that while some cultures are better than others, there is some wisdom to be found everywhere.
But that is not to say that Islam is “the religion of peace”. And since many Muslims are themselves aware of where the difficulties lie, the PC approach which sees Islam not even as it views itself, but through some kind of academic, PC prism will come across as hokey. Michael Totten tells the story of how in Bosnia, where Muslim women routinely wear shorts and bikinis at the beach, a UN team managed to appear with an interpreter recruited in London, completely covered in a burka. The locals gazed at this idealized Muslim like she was a visitor from another planet. She was not a Muslim woman, at least as they knew it, but rather some UN bureaucrat’s idea of a Muslim woman. It reminds me of a scene where Chris Tucker offers Jackie Chan some of his cup-of-noodles to make him feel like he was right at home.
When we buy into Islam’s “noble lies” even when the Muslims themselves don’t believe it, it does no credit to us. How did Ayn Rand put it in the 50s? Those who went along with the Soviet lie that it was the “worker’s paradise” would only convince the Soviets that we either pulling their leg or that they were dealing with fools.
Civility can be manifested by two people on different sides of an argument, but never between a liar and his mark. It is often better to frankly differ than hypocritically agree. More respect is preserved in the former than in the latter.
Political correctness will have the eventual effect of convincing all Muslims that Westerners are perfidious liars. And we see this effect already. The more political correctness is shown the more sullen and resentful Muslim militants become. As Emerson put it, “The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.” The more PC the elites sound, the less it is believed.
But it would be a mistake to think all non-Muslims are liars. That charge only applies to the fraudulent elites, in whose defense one can say that they’ve been doing it for so long that they’ve forgotten how not to; and have reached the point where the ability to lie convincingly — to spin with facility — is confused with moral uprightness.
Multiculturalism will be working just great right up to the eve of the night when they announce the wholesale destruction of the Muslim world or the mass deportation of immigrants back to their home countries.
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I have long said on this site that when the european abandoned christianity they abandoned their memory. When they rechristianize their memory will come back and they will kick out the Moslems.
I’m reading in Christian circles that in the big cities in Europe — there is a resurgence of eveangelical christianity.
The actual expulsion of Moslems from Europe is still decades away.
Martin Luther posted his points on the Church in Worms in about 1518. The furthest advance north of the the turks came in 1532 when they arrived at the Gates of Vienna.
Is this a tragedy or comedy? 20 years from now the push of cheap fresh water into the deserts of the world including the deserts of North Africa–will be well under way. Those countries will need people to fill the newly green spaces. They will come from Moslem enclaves of Europe.
To those born and forced into the exclusive political culture of islam, they have my sympathies, but only up to a point. At some point, we are responsible for what we hold most dear, and more importantly, what we choose to do, and how we do it. This is where the political left and the (political) islamists have everything in common,and their political objectives pool- they don’t want the responsibility (of a system such as ours that was created to have checks (to power) and balances, they don’t want the consequences (of a system such as ours which would hold them to a equal application of the law toward all, nor any checks and balances). If we can be forced (by political correctness) or coerced into passive dhmmitude, then they will lay off us, but for how long? What have we given up, in the process?
Morton,
I do think PJM still has a soft spot for the neocons with their ‘Kosovo — our good Islamic state (Orthodox Slavs, or hell, Orthodox Greeks = always bad or in the wrong), bombing Iran is always the solution to bloody, long costly unpopular nation building in Iraq/Afghanistan’ biases. There’s a tendency to avoid unpleasant topics like Ron Paul or the Fed, though in Wretchard’s defense he’s the most open minded when it comes to the comments that I’ve seen.
The 08/08/08 war when all too many PJMers joined by the likes of Frank Gaffney (whom I’ve had the mispleasure of meeting), Hugh Hewitt and Max Boot were calling for Russian blood was an excellent example — the minority POV, that Misha the Tie Eater was a lousy ‘ally’ and Soros protege, started to gain traction over several days during that conflict while the initial neocon-whipped hysteria died down.
Ultimately, 99% of hardcore Ron Paul supporters DO NOT want to see the U.S. retreat from the world in humiliation. The point is sooner or later our completely unsustainable fiscal/monetary situation is going to crash headlong into the fixation of a considerable part of the conservative coalition on maintaining the Military Industrial Complex at all costs (i.e. as in Rush’s flippant ‘the MIC keeps me free’ comments) and maintaining ‘allies’ whom we pay to defend who’re perfectly capable of defending themselves. I for one would love to see a true throwdown smackdown where the Pauls confront the RINO Grahams and McCains who never saw a war they didn’t like at least since the late 1990s, but the MIC whores among the Rs always manage to slither away from such a fight and Fox will never televise it.
How did we get here?
It is human nature to keep on producing wealth (through work and free trade) until the next generation feels guilty and builds a post-modern edifice of lies and wishful thinking (Social justice and Keynesianism.) For a while, the excess wealth (by the way, I am in favor of excess wealth) protects the liberals from their self-deception.
Eventually, they kill the goose and some amount of economic ruin follows. Until the reality of the difficulty of survival once again rears its head.
This will also turn out to be true for Muslims, who are temporarily insulated from reality by petro dollars.
+1 for Josh on Hawaiians
The article I saw said that the NYPD monitors ALL people who change their names, not just Muslims. But a girl who changes her name from say, Barbara Kline to Barbi Benton, may simply have a career change in mind, rather than mayhem, to use a purely hypothetical example.
However, if keeping watch on name changers also disadvantages Muslims who want to fly under the radar or newly converted Muslims who used to be named John Smith or Fred Jones and have extreme views, why then, it becomes un-PC simply because it does exactly what such surveillance is supposed to do. Just as the 2nd Amendment disadvantages both criminals and people living in certain cultural circumstances, it becomes un-PC as well because a high percentage of those so disadvantaged are of a certain race.
“It is the non-PC appearance of an act, not the act in itself, that is the crime.”
“The other brainwave was to create a license to lie.”
Today as I sat waiting in a restaurant I read some of the NY Times. And there was an interesting little item relative to Obama’s “We will never take a dime from a lobbyist.” It turns out that most of Obama’s top bundlers of campaign donations work for lobbying firms. In some cases they are even the chief of the DC office for their lobbying firm. But NONE of them have registered as lobbyists with the government and thus, officially, they are NOT lobbyists. This is like saying a guy is not a bank robber because he only hits credit unions.
The idiotic attempt to demonize ALL Muslims is stuck on stupid, hacks like the bigot Robert Spencer are just out to make money and spread hate.
America has productive defense and commercial relationships with many millions of Muslims in Turkey–a loyal NATO member, as well as Indonesia, India, UAE, KSA, Jordan, Morocco, Dubai, Bahrain, Qatar etc, etc.
Those who flip burghers for a living may not understand this
–but the American Military, Intelligence, Commerce and Trade do understand the value of these relationships and General Petraeus D/CIA very much understands this reality.
The crazy nonsense promoted by bigots — genocide etc is not just stupid — it creates blow back.
Look at history
–the publicity of the Morgenthau Plan at the end of WW2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan
–a plan to starve, kill and enslave the post war German population
–actually prolonged the war and caused a great many Allied deaths.
Fortunately Churchill and Truman both told Morgenthau that he was crazy and stupid–fired him and then implemented the Marshal Plan instead.
Stalin was very enthusiastic about the Morgenthau Plan
Revenge and hatred is a pagan value–not a Christian value or practice.
Bao@5: …the 2 billion people who are that religion [Muslim]…
The number I had in mind was 1.2 billion, and that was a high-end estimate, so I looked and found this summary. Estimates range from just under 1 billion to 1.2 billion (CAIR) to a high of 1.57 billion (Pew.)
Also this, which puts some numbers to a commonly acknowledged trend line:
Islam is growing about 2.9% per year. This is faster than the total world population which increases about 2.3% annually. It is thus attracting a progressively larger percentage of the world’s population.
And this:
Number of Muslims in the U.S.
Nobody knows.
#21 Mr. X – indeed. The PJM catechism, just like the MSM catechism, goes “Iran is the world’s foremost sponsor of terror”, and Saudi Arabia inexplicably gets a pass. Is that “Neocon”? I’m not sure, but Ledeen, Rubin, and others here at PJM endlessly parrot that propaganda. Of course Iran is a global menace, but so is Saudi Arabia, along with all the other Sunni Arab hatred factories. Which is worse? Like Wretchard says, let’s have a debate. This isnt settled science, though the PJM team would like to say it is.
An argument can certainly be made that the Sunnis, who already have the “Islamic Bomb”, or more accurately, the Sunni Islamic Bomb via Pakistan, and who are responsible for most of the sedition being conducted by Mosques in America, and who sponsor everything from Al Qaida to Al Jazeera, are the more grievous threat to America. Sunni Pakistan, proliferated the nukes to Iran we’re so worried about now (and rightly). But why does the Islam which proliferated nukes to Libya, NoKo, and Iran not far worse than the Shiites who are playing catchup?
And as I said, Al Qaida is still sponsored by Sunnis in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, etc. What gives? We are also imperilled by Sunni Muslim ownership of Western media, media willing and eager to whitewash Islam probably because of this, is a Sunni Arab affair. On our own soil, 99% of the Mosques preaching and recruiting for terror, and 99% of the imams employed in them are payed for by the Saudis. Prison Da’wa (Muslim proselytizing) and College Da’wa is all Sunni, conducted by Muslim Brotherhood front groups such as C.A.I.R., Organization of Islamic Students, etc. I believe every single “homegraown” terror attack (and foailed attack) on US soil since 9/11 was conducted by Sunni Muslims, often Arab, but all Sunni. Those treacherous moles and agents “supervising” our government are mostly Arab, Arabist, Sunni Muslims waging effective Jihad from within.
Certainly Iran is a more vocal enemy of Israel, but Hamas is a Sunni Jihad group, funded by Arabs, not Persian Shiites. But it is true, that most Western analysts seem to buy hook line and sinker the notion that Iran poses the higher threat. Any fair discussion of this topic would inevitably require examination of a possible correlation between the nostrum that “Iran is the foremost sponsor of global terror” and Iran’s direct threat to Israel. The threat is genuine, but the pious poseurs who pretend to speak for American interests while repeating that may or may not be honest brokers. And at PJM, that is exactly the kind of unmentionable linkage which will definitely get you banned. PJM is free to do as it wishes, but it deserves to be challenged when it acts hypocritically in this and other matters regarding the threat we all face from the cancer of Islam.
We return to the Ethics Question. Do you tell your partner? Any garment manufacturer knows that a good accountant is one who can keep three sets of books: one for you, one for your partner, and one for the government.
Is there a logical contradiction in wretchard‘s last paragraph?
If “the more you push it down the harder it will recoil on the day it escapes” is true then can Too far into the depths of darkness and one can never find one’s way back” also be true? The idea behind the Roussean project is that human nature, and therefore the reality that humans perceive and change by their actions, is malleable. Apply the right external pressure and the spring will bend so as to never go flying off in the wrong direction again. Robespierre called the new direction Virtue and the scientific application of pressure to mold human nature he called Terror. The lies, like the deaths, are tactical necessities undertaken for the best and most dispassionate of reasons. As I noted on an earlier thread we tell the puppy that it is really for his own good.
God bless the NYPD for keeping lists. They should keep all they want. Keep ‘em, sort ‘em, analyze ‘em, do whatever it is with them they think they need to do. Those that don’t like the practice should prepare the groundwork for their own law enforcement administration career and change things from within. That way they can respond to the public when their own idiotic weak-kneed policies grandly fail.
We are talking about “public” information here. What is it about “public” that’s so hard to understand? It’s not a secret. It’s not private. It’s public.
Never discuss religion, politics, and line fences, says the old advice.
Well, sometimes we have to. Right now, our culture is so confused about what we can, and cannot, say about religion, sexual preference, and a host of other things, (politics not the least) that I am not surprised communication seems to be truly breaking down.
As for religion: Mormons believe some pretty–shall we say–different things than other “Christians” believe, but it is not PC to question whether Mormons are Christian. Look at the preacher who introduced Perry, and who later said he thought Mormonism is a cult.
Not to compare Mormons to Muslims, of course, but if we can’t all (in a totally friendly and neighborly way) say Mormons are usually fine folks and honest and hardworking, and all that, and their religion is born and bred in the good ol’ US or A, and is as American as pecan pie, but they aren’t Christians in any traditional definition of the term–and have the Mormons say, “Quite right, quite true, that.” –If we can’t be up front about something simple as that, how in all get-out can we expect our elites to be honest about Islam?
As for how dangerous Islam is, how indoctrinated its people are, and so on–remember old Abu Nuwas–a famous Baghdad poet from Islam’s glory days. He is still published, read, and praised–but he was a total pederast, and quite iconoclastic too, re: Islam. Islam, indeed, has more homosexuality pound for pound than ANY other human culture. Yet it is officially a death sentence to practice it.
Islam has been lots of things in lots of regions over the centuries, since the lads in the Abbasid dynasty in Baghdad created it in the 8th century. Yet it has a few never-ending programs that have been running from its beginning to today. War against the non-Muslims is the CENTRAL program. And now the oil money has given the Wahhabis, those die-hard programmers who keep that program running–the upper hand. We must discriminate between the different Muslim types and regions and so on, if we are to be fair. Yet we must be honest about Islam’s central program–which is to force the world to submit to it.
Nothing, nothing at all ever about dealing with Islam will be easy, simple, or quickly dealt with.
An Préachán
*OMG! Wretchard (#18) Islam is ALL BAD! Islam preaches Death there is NO LIFE taught in Islam, You have Fanatical Death Cult and Luke warm followers, Fanatical are the ones Murdering everyone else and Luke Warm are the ones that only participate when it is happening around them, they’re the ones that you see standing in the crowds throwing the second, third, fourth, etc. stone after the Fanatical throws the first, the Luke warm followers are the ones that Murder they’re daughters after the fanatical tells them that is the only way to recover their honor, the Luke warm ones are the ones that leave the land of ummah to get away from the Fanatical ones but will in a group act and do as the fanatical ones command them too, while yelling “Allah Akbar”! There is also the disadvantaged Fanatical luke warm follower, their the handi capped (Mental, physical, etc.) that are used as Homicide Bombers by the fanatical followers.
* OMG stands for “Obama Must Go” and not the vain use of God’s name…
The adage “Perception is 110% of reality” taken to it’s logical conclusion. Remember boys and girls, spinning lies and bullshit is the fastest and easiest way to get ahead.
The United States of Argentina – Winning
CharlesWhite – Islam itself is not bad it just produces failed states and poverty, like communism but you bow down to Allah instead of Dear Leader. The end result is the same however, oppression, injustice and a destitute starving population like Libya and Egypt.
The burger flippers seem to dominate this site.
The D/CIA has implemented American policy re the Muslim World–Trade and Commerce.
Those who flip burgers may not understand our Military, Commercial, Trade relationships with nations that happen to be Muslim profit America.
W, I read your essay today as an expansion of yesterday’s essay about dealing with real or imagined conspiracies into the realm of dealing with government secrecy in a functioning democracy.
With regard to the FOIA issue, you said “The whole point is not to be transparent but to make the rubes think that government is transparent.”
And, if we recall John Kennedy’s words — “The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we as a people are inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings” — then you are exactly right on target.
But there is another side to the issue, illustrated by Gandalf’s order to Frodo at the start of their quest – “Keep it secret. Keep it safe.”
From the perspective of this other side, the national security side, the proposed FOIA “license to lie” might be justified — in some cases — as simply a transfer of critical information to a deeper level of secrecy. The transfer completely removes the information from an adversary’s “known unknown” domain. It becomes an “unknown unknown” to them. Gandalf would approve.
The balance between the requirement for the populace be fully informed in a functioning democracy and the requirements for secrecy in defense and diplomacy is an ongoing issue which has been debated since our nation’s founding.
As a society, we have traditionally tolerated secrets in two categories — an individual’s private matters and national security. The loss of government transparency due to defense requirements during the long cold war and now to the continuing threat from Jihadist terrorism has, however, grown to such a level as to be a serious concern, which you highlighted very effectively.
It seems to me that, since maintaining a balance between transparency and security depends most of all on the basic character of those we entrust with our secrets, then the most immediate thing that we can do as citizens is to remind ourselves to look very carefully at the character of those campaigning for public office in this political season, not just at their stands on issues.
34. ScenA, Locking up secrets is no longer reliable due to technology. You can drown out the truth with noise, but for a website like Wikileaks… one of its many goals was to moderate the inevitable – ie. total openness. If Assange didn’t do it first, then a more hostile entity would have.
Wretchard @ #18: Part of our problem is that we tend to say “Muslim” when we should be saying “Arab”, or “Persian” or “Pakistani”. While Islam is a common thread among these, they are rather seperate cultural matrixes.
While Iran is a problem, rmember that Islam was introduced there by Arab conquest. That is the Iranian paradox. There is more pro-American support there among the general populace than in any mideast country besides Israel. Yet, it is the Iranian government that has the most serious anti-American capabilities. This is part of their desire to get back at those Arab so and so who overran them so long ago.
Pakistani Muslims resent the fact that they used to rule the Indian sub-sontinent, then got put in their place and lost some territory to boot. Vengeful envy is what motivates them.
Arabia remains the heartland of Islam because that is where it started. A lot of Arab tribes preferred banditry, piracy and slave-trading to earning a living. Islam gave them theological license to continue. That is why Arabia remains the theo-cultural key terrain of the war.
So forth and so on. What we are up against is NOT monolithic but there remains a common thread. We gotta figure out how to proceed accordingly.
The film industry that became Hollywood – as a completely random example of a template – was established early on by people who wanted to make movies. They may have been many of them rascals, with morals more in tune with the stereotypical theatrical types than with the bedrock culture of mainstream America. But they damn well wanted to tell stories, and wanted those stories to resonate with the mainstream culture, even though they themselves may have been closer to outlaw than stolid citizens. They aspired to creating culture, even if they came from backgrounds considered “nyekulturny” – uncouth and disreputable.
The companies they established, which I late in life learned were mostly owned by East Coast theater chains, grew quickly and produced in the first generation an amazing body of films that will stand up to the scrutiny and judgment of history. But to keep going, they needed to hire lawyers, accountants, administrators and such who were trained and constitutionally habituated to caution, self-preservation, and extreme circumspection RATHER than the brash, exuberant risk taking that made for good theater and story. More to the point, they were hired away from the more conservative industries, and otherwise mostly lacked any particular interest in motion pictures, except possibly for the dark side of celebrity.
So the industry became increasingly populated, then ultimately dominated by folks who were there looking for the security of a protected, salaried job, where they collected a paycheck and benefits, regardless of the fortunes of the enterpreneurs who’d risked everything to establish the industry.
That seems to describe pretty much every damned industry in this country.
Am I being too cynical?
(I acknowledge of course that this is a drastic simplification…)
35 B. The leaks so far seem to be at a fairly low security level, which has not been well protected in my opinion. You simply cannot extrapolate from what we have seen so far to such a broad claim.
In my experience, important national security stuff is well guarded. Has been and continues to be. Plus I note that one of the more effective ways to guard the really good stuff is to simply remove it entirely from view, as the proposed FOIA law would do. Secrets are targets. But “unknown unknowns” are mysteries
I was in a discussion with a British person once who refused to believe, knowing my background and location, that my family was not active in supporting the IRA. Nothing would convince him otherwise, and he remained convinced of my personal connection to the Troubles, while I dismissed anything he had to say thereafter as the ravings of a provincial twit.
It gave me a bit of insight into the plight of moderate Muslims. I am secure enough to denounce any and all of my dumbass brethren who blow things up, but I am not convinced that just anyone, anywhere, can do that. And so I think we, this country, should be a divisive force in the matter, not by opposing the people, or the religion, but the exposed underbelly of cultural Islam that competes with American law and customs. In other words, not who they are, but what they do. Yes, historically, immigrants have changed their names to a version less ethnic and more suited to America. But changing from John Lake to Muhammed Al-Qaadawi is something relatively new, and I suspect that many Muslims would understand if not prefer that we at least keep an eye on that when it happens.
Victor – “our Military, Commercial, Trade relationships with nations that happen to be Muslim profit America.”
Tell that to anyone who was working on the upper floors of the WTC on 9/11/2001. Oh wait… you can’t.
We need Arab oil. We don’t need Arabs, nor do we need the other followers of the filthy, perverted, misogynist death cult they follow, nor do we need the cult itself. And the sooner the decision makers in the West realise that, the less likely we are to have to bring the Third Conjecture into play.
And, Victor, regarding Israel which you hate so much – well, today’s Israel is a powerhouse of innovation and technological advance punching well above its weight. Jews hold more Nobel Prizes than the whole of the Ummah. Granted, that isn’t difficult; the only one I can think of right now is the ridiculous Peace Prize given to Arafat.
Thanks, Fletcher. Victor is a lying tool. He claims to be an American and prattles cynically on about “Christian” values but in fact is a paid shill for Turkish Islamists, of which he is one.
Each person on the “useful idiot” left tell lies to themselves to rationalize their ideology. They’ve made the political personal, the economic personal, and now even the scientific personal. Their ideology is part of their identity. Information either feeds their prejudices or fires their anger and their is an extreme “selection bias” in the information they will pay attention to. PC is what happens in their own heads before they impose it on the world.
This is only true of the idealists in the movement, not the sociopaths. Still, it is hard to tell which is more dangerous.
Oh well, whatever, I’m sure we can extract all the wisdom to be found from islam, and forgo what doesn’t amount to wisdom, if we want to, in a free society. I do know this. St Thomas Aquinas became familiar with both Aristotle and the Spanish muslim philosoph Averroes in the thirteenth century. The then recent re-discovery of Aristotle’s writings (in the west), previously lost to the west, had been translated back into latin from arabic texts, and informed many of Averroes writings, and Aquinas was well read in both.
This, the thirteenth century, was a period in Spanish history when muslim conquest was over, and muslims, christians and Jews in Spain coexisted and collaborated in thought. But a resurgent extemist fanatical puritan movement swept islam again, and all, I repeat ALL of Averroes writings were consigned to the flames by these muslim fanatics. I sometimes wonder if the vatican still has copies of all the original Averroes writings in their possession, but have still pretended that these writings are long gone, given that these writings would be considered to be of a pagan source, and given what Aquinas has accomplished vis a vis his work on Aristotle’s texts. What a world of good they would do right now, if the writings of Averroes could be brought to light again, in the current context of the present day.
http://www.songsouponsea.com/Promenade/CourtB1.html
http://www.songsouponsea.com/Promenade/LizardE.html
Victor swings between rants telling people how to be Christian and raving about “burger flippers.”
His credibility is shot. Wish that our host could restore Tocque and the Ignore feature.
By the way, when I was at the Pentagon I got a FOIA request that I had to lie to respond to.
Someone wanted to know if, as rumor had it, on a certain Shuttle mission the astronauts floting outside the Shuttle used handheld cameras to photograph Chelyabinsk, a Soviet industrial complex in the Ural Mountains.
The reason they gave for this request was they were “investigating NASA’s support of military intelligence efforts.”
The first thing I had to do was find out what a Chelyabinsk was. The second thing was to find out what the open literature said about that Shuttle mission. A trip to the Pentagon library solved those problems.
The third problem was how to lie.
Well, any idiot could realize that when the Shuttle became the only launch vehicle the US would use in the future that NASA would be supporting national intelligence efforts. Aside from that, anyone who had any brains at all would recognize that we had better ways of getting imagery of the USSR than a guy hanging out the back door of a Shuttle with a Brownie Hawkeye camera. So the people who filed the FOIA lost all credibility with me from step 1; I had no respect for them. (Note: first thing and most important to do when filing a FOIA is to not look stupid.)
But at that point the National Reconnaissance Office officially Did Not Exist. I called them up and told them about the FOIA; they said Okay and I never heard from them on the subject again. And then I wrote a response to the FOIA saying we had no information on the subject, which was quite true.
Note that there is in reality No Such Thing as a FOIA request. You CANNOT request “information” from the Federal Government. You can only request documents, and you have to describe what documents you want and then figure out who has them.
We also got a FOIA from someone wanting “all the plans for the Space Shuttle.” Well, in the first place it’s a NASA vehicle so he looked very stupid by asking the wrong agency. And in the second place, yagottabekiddinme!
GP #7 says ““a government ruled by the consent of the governed” can be undermined by any un-checked (governmental) abuse(s), however small, until you reach the point where everyone wants to get in on the act, and there’s no need to show anymore how the end justifies the means (the end of “rule by consent of the governed), it just is, so get used to it. ”
This possibility underscores the absolute need for a transparent “rule of law” in a democracy. Recently, government (and this administration, in particular) has taken to ignoring or twisting the law to suit its own purposes. We all know of many blatant examples of this and have discussed them on this forum. The big question is, how do we force the all-powerful government to act within the rule of law itself?
Got bored.
Jumped to bottom.
I Repeat. Islam needs a new narrative, (no, not subjugation, not genocide, simply a new narrative)
Re-repeat Islam needs a new narrative.
duh
You only have to go to another thread of PJ Media to see what the Grand Mufti of Egypt is now saying about Christians — and what effect his words are having on the Coptic Christians.
Top Muslim Declares All Christians ‘Infidels’
Quoting the Quran (correctly) may be fueling the recent slaughter of Christians in Egypt.
http://pjmedia.com/blog/top-muslim-declares-all-christians-%e2%80%98infidels%e2%80%99/
For what it’s worth:
Mask of Peace
…..
Walid al-Kubaisi, an Iraqi-born Norwegian journalist, produced and hosted the documentary for Norway television. It has never been shown on American TV.
World Domination
Al-Kubaisi said Brotherhood leaders told him they have a plan to take over Norway and the rest of Europe as a part of bringing the whole world under Islam.
…..
The other thorny issue in re Muslim-inspired terrorist threats is isolating the rhetoric from the reality. The public voice of radical Muslims is reminiscent of old time bullies; in this country mafioso from the 1920′s. Some cultural maturation is in order and I have to believe there exists Muslim leaders/scholars/theologians somewhere who understand that the modern world is not going to be ruled by a single “anything.” That kind of Big Man rhetorical bombast is like a cultural appendix – should have withered away years ago. No, I don’t take “the loud voices” seriously. They are obviously unaware at whose discretion they are given access to a microphone.
Also agree with Dave upthread that the more compelling divisors are ethnic and cultural and historical rather than religious.
@ #46, Hangtown Bob, I should have written- “…that it reaches the point where almost everyone wants to get in on the act”.
There’s an old saying, “You can elect an honest man to office, you just can’t keep him there.”
When accountability is restored, and the national government in D.C. concerns itself with the only government action mandated by the constitution, namely, defense of the republic, therefore re-federalizing that government in D.C.- it is going to be difficult.