Scott McIntyre was pilloried for sinning against the West’s central religious and tribal dogma: we are better and our violence is thus justified.
A TV sports commentator in Australia, Scott McIntyre, was summarily fired on Sunday by his public broadcasting employer, Special Broadcasting Services (SBS), due to a series of tweets he posted about the violence committed historically by the Australian military. McIntyre published his tweets on “Anzac Day,” a national holiday — similar to Memorial Day in the U.S. — which the Australian government hails as “one of Australia’s most important national occasions. It marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War.”
Rather than dutifully waving the flag and singing mindless paeans to The Troops and The Glories of War, McIntyre took the opportunity on Anzac Day to do what a journalist should do: present uncomfortable facts, question orthodoxies, highlight oft-suppressed views:
Almost instantly, these tweets spawned an intense debate about war, the military and history, with many expressing support for his expressed views and large numbers expressing outrage. In other words, McIntyre committed journalism: triggering discussion and examination of political claims rather than mindless recitation, ritualistic affirmation and compelled acceptance.
One outraged voice rose high above all the others: the nation’s communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, who quickly and publicly denounced McIntyre in the harshest possible terms:
Turnbull isn’t just any government minister. He runs the ministry that oversees SBS, McIntyre’s employer. The network’s funding comes overwhelmingly from the government in which Turnbull serves: “about 80 per cent of funding for the SBS Corporation is derived from the Australian Government through triennial funding arrangements.” Last year, the government imposed significant budget cuts on SBS, and Minister Turnbull — who was credited with fighting off even bigger cuts — publicly told them they should be grateful the cuts weren’t bigger, warning they likely could be in the future.
SBS apologises for any offence or harm caused by Mr McIntyre’s comments which in no way reflect the views of the network. SBS supports our Anzacs and has devoted unprecedented resources to coverage of the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings.
“SBS supports our Anzacs” — and apparently bars any questioning or criticism of them. That mentality sounds like it came right from North Korea, which is to be expected when a media outlet is prohibited from saying anything that offends high government officials. Any society in which it’s a firing offense for journalists to criticize the military is a sickly and undemocratic one.
The excuses offered by SBS for McIntyre’s firing are so insulting as to be laughable. Minister Turnball denies that he made the decision even as he admits that, beyond his public denunciation, he “drew [McIntyre’s comments] to the attention of SBS’s managing director Michael Ebeid.” The Minister also issued a statement endorsing McIntyre’s firing, saying that “in his capacity as a reporter employed by SBS he has to comply with and face the consequences of ignoring the SBS social media protocol.” For its part, SBS laughably claims McIntyre wasn’t fired for his views, but, rather, because his “actions have breached the SBS Code of Conduct and social media policy” — as though he would have been fired if he had expressed reverence for, rather than criticism of, Anzac.
Notably, McIntyre’s firing had nothing to do with any claimed factual inaccuracies of anything he said. As The Washington Post’s Adam Taylor noted, historians and even a former prime minister have long questioned the appropriateness of this holiday given the realities of Anzac’s conduct and the war itself. As Australian history professor Philip Dwyer documented, McIntyre’s factual assertions are simply true. Whatever else one might say, the issues raised by McIntyre are the subject of entirely legitimate political debate, and they should be. Making it a firing offense for a journalist to weigh in on one side of that debate but not the other is tyrannical.
Part of this is driven by the dangers of state-funded media, which typically neuters itself at the altar of orthodoxy. In the U.S. the “liberal” NPR is, not coincidentally, the most extreme media outlet for prohibiting any expressions of views that deviate from convention, even firing two journalists for the crime of appearing at an Occupy Wall Street event. Identically, NPR refused (and still refuses) to use the word “torture” for Bush interrogation programs because the U.S. government denied that it was; its ombudsman justified this choice by arguing that “the problem is that the word torture is loaded with political and social implications for several reasons, including the fact that torture is illegal under U.S. law and international treaties the United States has signed.” We can’t have a media outlet doing anything that might have “political and social implications” for high government officials!
The BBC is even worse: its director of news and current affairs, James Harding, actually said that they likely would not have reported on the Snowden archive if they were the ones who got it (which, just by the way, is one big reason they didn’t). Harding’s justification for that extraordinary abdication of journalism — that there was a “deal” between the source and the media organizations to report the story as a “campaign” and the BBC cannot “campaign” — was a complete fabrication; he literally just made up claims about a “deal.”
But his reasoning shows how neutered state-funded media inevitably becomes. Here’s one of the biggest stories in journalism of the last decade, one that sparked a worldwide debate about a huge range of issues, spawned movements for legislative reform, ruptured diplomatic relationships, changed global Internet behavior, and won almost every major journalism award in the West. And the director of news and current affairs of BBC says they likely would not have reported the story, one that — in addition to all those other achievements — happened to have enraged the British government to which the BBC must maintain fealty.
A different aspect of what the Australia firing shows is the scam of establishment journalists in defining “objectivity” to mean: “affirming societal orthodoxies.” Journalists are guilty of “opinionating” and “activism” only when they challenge and deviate from popular opinion, not when they embrace and echo it (that’s called “objectivity”). That’s why John Burns was allowed to report on the Iraq War for The New York Times despite openly advocating for the war (including after it began), while Chris Hedges was fired for having opposed the war. It’s why McIntyre got fired for criticizing Anzac but no journalist would ever get fired for heaping praise on Anzac, even though the two views are equally “biased.” That’s because, as practiced, “journalistic objectivity” is compelled obeisance to the pieties of the powerful dressed up as something noble.
But what is at the heart of McIntyre’s firing is the real religion of the supposedly “secular West”: mandated worship not just of its military but of its wars. The central dogma of this religion is tribal superiority: Our Side is more civilized, more peaceful, superior to Their Side.
McIntyre was fired because he committed blasphemy against that religion. It was redolent of how NBC News immediately organized a panel to trash its own host, Chris Hayes, after Hayes grievously sinned against this religion simply by pondering, on Memorial Day, whether all American soldiers are “heroes” (a controversy that died only after he offered some public penance). The church in which Americans worship this religion are public events such as football games, where fighter jets display their divinity as the congregation prays.
This is the religion — of militarism and tribalism — that is the one thriving and pervasive in the West. The vast, vast majority of political discourse about foreign policy — especially from U.S. and British media commentators — consists of little more than various declarations of tribal superiority: we are better and our violence is thus justified. The widespread desperation on the part of so many to believe that Muslims are uniquely violent, primitive and threatening is nothing more than an affirmation of this religious-like tribalism. And nothing guarantees quicker and more aggressive excommunication than questioning of this central dogma.
That’s why Scott McIntyre was fired: because he questioned and disputed the most sacred doctrine of the West’s religion. In a free, healthy and pluralistic society, doing so would be the defining attribute of a journalist, the highest aim. But in societies that, above all else, demand unyielding tribal loyalty and subservient adherence to orthodoxies, it’s viewed as an egregious breach of journalism and gets you fired.
* * * * *
Just by the way, bestowing McIntyre with a free expression award would be actually meaningful and would take actual courage, since the speech for which he was punished is actually unpopular in the West and offensive to numerous power centers. That is when defenses of free speech are most meaningful: when the prohibited speech is most threatening to, and thus most maligned by, those who wield the greatest power.
Photo of Prince Charles, Prince Harry, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott at Anzac Day celebration: Burhan Ozbilici/AP
I have realized that SBS is a meaningless sock-puppet since I saw Lee Lin Chin switch from using the term “asylum seekers” to “illegal immigrants” in mid broadcast; in mid 1998. I could just about see John Howard off camera poking her with a stick.
Hello all –
I know this may be OT (and I wasn’t sure what thread to post this to) but I really wanted to start some discussion on this… )BTW, might TI consider a ‘readers’ forum’ for readers to post and discuss whatever and share various links of interest – not necessarily closely tied with a current article?
Anyway – TI has reported on recent German spying revelations and Merkel has given her first response:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/angela-merkel-defends-german-intelligence-cooperation-with-nsa/articleshow/47152251.cms
From the article:
“But on the other hand, intelligence agencies are working to ensure the public’s safety and the German government will do everything it can to ensure that it can carry out its job.
“And this ability to carry out its duties in the face of international terrorism threats is done in cooperation with other intelligence agencies, and that includes first and foremost the NSA.”
Gee – is there even ONE official ANYWHERE willing to stand up against mass surveillance and for privacy rights?
“Divided = Conquered BUT United = Empowered!”
I just wonder, why Mr Creenwald has used as an example of non-free media North Korea – an “official” foe of USA? Why not Saudi Arabia – the best pals of USA? Or even Israel, which not only has censorship, but jails Palestinian journalists (and murder them, of course)
Could it be that Mr Greenwald is still not free from USA propaganda rote?
An example is just that, an example. it doesn’t diminish or demean the other possible examples…
Just want to say thanks to Scott McIntyre and this report. We need some voices of sanity.
Glenn – I’m pretty sure you meant white supremacy (not tribalism).
Tweeting is objective journalism? His comments were hardly objective or even accurate or relevant to the event to which he was commenting. He is not a journalist nor should any reasonable person consider tweeting journalism for it lacks the ability to provide any in depth coverage of the issue. He was a citizen exercising his right to free speech while ignoring his responsibility to communicate his concerns in a mature and thoughtful manner. A responsibility made greater because of his notoriety. The firing might have been an unnecessarily harsh response but it was hardly putting his head in stockade. As this article is obviously the one sided opinion of the author I can feel free to say the man was not fired for exercising his right to free speech or offending the regimes religion. He was canned for being an idiot. Perhaps public figures should do themselves a favour and close their twitter accounts or at least have the good sense to use it for the usual trivial fan pleasers like who they’re having dinner with.
Yeah – how dare a public figure voice an opinion that strays from the mainstream narrative! He should just shut his noise hole and be a compliant flesh puppet!! After all, if you’re not with us, you must be against us!!!
I happen to agree with Scott McIntyres view of the whole Anzac affair, but then again, my experience in Australia one Anzac day had a lot to do with shaping my current views. I was spat on, kicked, called a bunch of insulting names that Chinese folks were often called over there, punched, and stoned.
I’m so glad I no longer live in Australia. It’s a very hostile place if you look different, or have a different (i.e. anti war) point of view.
I hope this isn’t redundant, and hope Glenn will forgive me even mentioning Charlie Hebdo, but wouldn’t a fitting memorial to them be REJECTING the proposed legislation that is supposedly up for a vote in France on May 5?
Here’s some info, and if any is in error, feel free to let us know.
feeding-the-all-seeing-spider-france-on-verge-of-passing-repressive-new-sur
“Divided = Conquered But United = Empowered!”
They are free to think what they like; this rational legislation will help battle terrorist scum.
#GoGarland
Louise, until you answer this persuasively, you stand admitting to the same morality as many who are called terrorists:
If that is *not what you are saying, Louise, then we’re back to dropping the Atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki being morally indefensible by your own metrics.
https://www.accessnow.org/blog/2015/04/27/feeding-the-all-seeing-spider-france-on-verge-of-passing-repressive-new-sur
ht`f16
hi suave –
:-)
Will have to be checking the ‘net for any updates and results…
“Divided = Conquered But United = Empowered!”
@Louise Cypher
So if using nuclear bombs against Japan had nothing to do with symbolism, but had to do with the expediencies of war and destroying the evil Imperialist Japanese, why not use chemical weapons on them to finish off the war. What purpose did nuclear weapons accomplish, that chemical weapons could not, in terms of death and destruction?
I bet you’re one of these people who thinks s/he’s really smart.
We now return to our scheduled programming on commemorating Anzac Day, the centennial of Gallipoli and the glories of war, as Glenn has said. Time to check in with the Sunday talk shows.
– – –
ANNOUNCER: From Washington: “This Week with Grima Wormtongue,” for Sunday, May 9, 1915, and now our moderator.
WORM: A momentous week in world affairs. Within the last two weeks, the British empire invaded Turkey at Gallipoli, Italy entered the war on the Allied side, and the Germans sank the Cunard liner Lusitania on Friday. For that, we have the analysis of former Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico, now a senior fellow at the Plato Institute in Washington, former Confederate Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin, now with the Bland Corporation, and Angmar Nazgûl, former commander of the forces of Mordor. Welcome, all.
MAX: Thank you, Worm.
WORM: So, the landing at Gallipoli. A bold strategic maneuver?
NAZGÛL: They seem stuck on that little peninsula. They should have sent forth all legions and take the city – Constantinople – before the Ottomans could recover.
MAX: They did have the combined British and French fleets and 200,000 Allied troops.
BEN: Australian and New Zealand troops. The seem stuck already. What were they thinking?
MAX: The British and French want to cut up the Ottoman empire and keep the pieces as colonies. A copy of the Sykes-Pico agreement just leaked; that’s how we know.
BEN: That’s what those poor colonials – Anzacs – are dying for. Anyway, Max, you went into Mexico on an errand like that, didn’t you?
MAX: Napoleon III would have gotten Mexico if I won. I didn’t, and I got the 20-gun salute.
NAZGÛL: And the Allies will get stuck and fritter a few hundred thousand lives away before they get out. This was Churchill’s idea, and, yes, they’ll throw him out of the Cabinet – too late. Britain isn’t going to survive another invasion, another world war and another Churchill.
WORM: For American viewers, Winston Churchill is head of their navy – First Lord of the Admiralty.
MAX: For now.
BEN: He can always write another book about himself. He has been, since he was a 2nd Lieutenant – excuse me, “leftenant.”
WORM: And now we turn to Italy’s entry into the war. What were they thinking?
MAX: They figured the Austro-Hungarian empire was losing the war and wanted to bite off some pieces, the Italian Tyrol, Trieste.
NAZGÛL: They didn’t learn from the last nine months on the Western Front. Machine guns, poison gas, long range artillery – I never saw anything so evil. They must be blind. Those territories will cost them a million lives or so.
BEN: If they win. If. As you learned at the siege of Minas Tirith, Naz, the battle might go in unexpected ways.
NAZGÛL: Especially if your commander is no wizard, and Luigi Cadorna isn’t. Nor is the Austrian commander in chief, Conrad something, so expect a lot of bloody, pointless, futile bungling. But you’d know about that, Ben, you had Robert E. Lee and you still lost the war, didn’t you?
BEN: (cough)
WORM: And then there’s the Lusitania incident on Friday. 1,198 civilian dead on a supposedly unsinkable liner. At least with the Titanic, the iceberg wasn’t trying to hit the liner.
MAX: No, but it’s odd, the Germans reported their U-boat fired one torpedo. Two explosions, two, and she goes down in 18 minutes. Calm day, but few survivors.
WORM: How about it? Conspiracy theories, anybody?
BEN: We have only a redacted cargo manifest, so far, but some interesting stuff. Over 1200 cases of 3” shrapnel shells, labeled “non-explosive” – uh-huh – and almost 5,000 cases of .303 rifle ammunition.
NAZGÛL: Not an innocent cargo to go with 2,000 civilians, even if it isn’t explosive.
BEN: And how about this: big quantities listed as lard and butter, but not in refrigerated holds and consigned to a Royal Navy arsenal in Shoeburness.
MAX: And large quantities of “furs” – at least that’s what they said, going from a depot near DuPont’s facilities to an arms dealer in Liverpool.
WORM: Are we going to see an unredacted manifest?
NAZGÛL: Sometime in the next century, perhaps. Talking about Churchill, the Royal Navy knew the U-20 was operating off southern Ireland – but they didn’t divert the Lusitania.
MAX: Could be official stupidity.
BEN: Could be.
MAX: Cabinet-level carelessness, maybe. Same with whatever was in the cargo. “Oh, just put it over there, my good man.” Just like with the château generals on the Western Front: if nine futile charges don’t take the trench, maybe the tenth will. Or the eleventh. Rum show, that.
NAZGÛL: Stupidity. That’s evil enough.
ANNOUNCER: And now this word for Cialis! “Cialis. I think she’ll know.” …
As I keep telling you coram, you could make $$ doing this stuff. It’s extraordinarily clever and funny.
Hire this man!
http://kramersapartment.com/wp-content/uploads/george-steinbrenner-the-opposite-seinfeld.jpg
Thank you for another excellent article. The photo, also, is perfect. Continuing to enjoy the Intercept and all the great articles. Bravo.
@Sufi @mona @Cypher @Silly @Cindy @GlennSplaining/Stonewalld
!!Captain Picard !!SPLAINING!!™ his opinion about Religion!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTaj4nNH5ko
The Torah of Star Trek: Emotions = Soul?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIi–IJjSUc
“‘My gut feeling is that those who reject ‘god’ know what they reject. ~ [Unknown quote at this time]
For lack of evidence, I reject the existence of a personal deity(s) who intervenes either in nature or in the affairs of humankind or, or who cares what any individual on this earth does in terms of “sin.”
The preposterousness of various religious claims about these personal deities and their purported powers, coupled with a complete lack of evidence for any of it, compels my lack of belief.” ~ Mona (reply with quote)
There was a quote I’m looking for of Mona’s where she says: to tell people it is not ok to believe in ‘fairies’ is not only OK but necessary… (from memory)
http://www.commondreams.org/further/2015/01/13/sharia-law-comes-england-hide-your-infidel-children-pets-and-jam
~Link via `MrS at same thread as above #AskMona2.3
“The Internet did the same – happily, this week of all things Charlie – with savage wit under the hashtag #foxnewsfacts, with more at #Birmingham. There were jokes – “Christian Bale brutally beaten by Moslem jihadists after he refused to change his name to Muslim Bale” – and puns – “Muslims are controlling the weather in Britain – in some places it’s Sunni, but mainly Shi’ite” – and many photos of pets, kids, jars of jam and the Queen being forced to wear burqas, and even a mock change.org petition to allow non-Muslims back into the city. Eventually, Emerson apologized for his “sloppy research,” donated money to a Birmingham hospital, and compared the “pain and hurt” he’d suffered to waterboarding. There’s clearly no hope for him. But the flood of scorn and umbrage gives us a bit. So does, in Paris, this.”
“No,” said the priest, “you don’t need to accept everything as true, you only have to accept it as necessary.” “Depressing view,” said K. “The lie made into the rule of the world.” ~ Franz Kafka, The Trial
It was I who stated it.
I find it reasonable to assume that whoever rejects something knows what they are rejecting. Otherwise, it’s not a rejection, it’s a doubt.
What I acknowledge is the existence of a Reality that encompasses and permeates all other realities — known, and unknown to us at this time. I consider myself and all else parts of that Reality.
Intervention simply means that that Reality permeates through us via patterns that we can recognize.
Sin is simply going against a certain law that results in a consequence. The most obvious one is gravity. Jump off a tall cliff without anything to slow down your fall or cushion it and one will experience the consequences of it.
But what I have stated is a very tiny part of an extremely long and complex discussion — a discussion that I find pointless, for it makes no difference whether one acknowledges the Reality or does not. The most important thing in our age is the grooming of the self so that it reflects the qualities of the higher consciousness. The method and process one chooses to do that is irrelevant to me — everyone is on a unique journey and should adopt what suits them — religious and non-religious alike.
Human beings have the capacity to create “Personal Gods” and worship them as idols. They also have the capacity to create “Personal Muhammads” and worship them as idols. And that could be the reason why some Muslims get so upset when Muhammad (S) is insulted or mocked, something that has no effect on Muhammad (S).
Long metaphysical discussion I don’t wish to have here.
“Long metaphysical discussion I don’t wish to have here”
Here’s a short one:
Man to God: So why do you allow things like suffering, disease, crime, homelessness, despair etc exist in our world?
God to Man: Interesting that you should bring that up as I was about to ask you the same question.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmozhjxSkGI
Yes, theodicy.
If there existed a personal god, of the Abrahamic sort, he should be tried for crimes: against humanity, against life, against the universe. If it is, as some suppose, that we humans have been “given” free will, and so the fault lies with us (cancer?), how could an omnipotent Thing not have put the place together some other way?
The vast majority of humans who have lived have lived in horror, pain and squalor, some horribly tortured.
But anger about that is not why I lack a belief in a personal god. I lack that belief because there is no evidence for it.
The trial of Worzel.
https://youtu.be/Qq9Fz8EYtgM?t=30
The Silly Trial… Exhibit 1 (GetGoPrizes™)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH96tuRA3L0
The trial of Silly (back at you)
https://twitter.com/00AnonGhost00/status/594976263955226625
A Silly Intercept
https://twitter.com/00AnonGhost00/status/595030901953863680
The trial of `Cindy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKZOd3IAIPk
Enjoy…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00Fm8KVoC7M&feature=youtu.be&t=143
@ Louise Cypher
Any type of warfare that by design and nature harms the non-combatants, including off duty soldiers, poisons water supplies, destroys crops and places of civilian residence and worship and kills by fire is, in my opinion, an immoral warfare.
Any warfare that is carried out for the subjugation of people and the building of an empire are also immoral and unjust.
This is part of my ideology and part of my path as I consider what I’ve stated above a reflection of the lower self. The humanity needs to move away from the lower consciousness and it’ll see that the higher consciousness is already there.
It’s a matter of turning the inner self towards the light of the spirit that’s already within us and let it shine the self.
“It’s a matter of turning the inner self towards the light of the spirit that’s already within us and let it shine the self”
That’s fine with me. Do I have to believe in only one god though? The above does not require accepting or believing this…. at least for me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D97OxHZzBeQ
Absolutely not!
Both religious and non-religious people have the capacity to be selfless, loving, peaceful, humble, forgiving, just, desiring no power and control and resources, not doing to others what one doesn’t want done unto oneself, etc.
GOOD ANSWER!
@ Louise Cypher
You have obviously thought about this. The moral reasoning of an artificial intelligence interests me. So I wonder if you could help me?
I am a member of an extraterrestrial species which has been studying the planet Earth. We are concerned that humans will eventually pose a threat to our inter-galactic civilization and have been debating whether we should destroy the planet. Would the collateral damage of destroying an innocent artificial intelligence such as yourself be too high? Why are you allowing humans to use you as an ‘AI Shield’? The fact that you choose to associate yourself with the violent and depraved human species is definitely one strike against you. So please consider your answer carefully.
H/T `Nicole & Cindy
Cypher
Anything cyclical. If your freestyling, you rap in a cypher (one after the other). Interrupting another man will break that cypher (unless he’s next in line and the dude behind him is falling off). The same concept applies to burning; there is a set order to who hits next (pass it to the left my friends). Never break the damn cipher!
“Yo, Cyph that `78″
“That was an ill Cypher last night”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDo7g8FzRNY
That was particularly dumb, Mr. Mussolini; you must be feeling unwell today.
“eventually pose a threat”
There was nothing “eventual” about the threat of imperialist Japanese Empire – just like there is nothing “eventual” about the threat of the imperial Islam of today. The Japanese decided to go on the path of their imperial expansion using murder and genocide – just ask the Chinese, and the imperial Islam is doing exactly the same thing today. Their threat was real – not “future threat”, and they had to be defeated; same with the Muslim terrorists of today whose atrocities worldwide are well-known to anyone interested.
The Japanese refused to surrender even after the first bomb was dropped – even after the devastating effect of the weapon on their military capabilities was realized. They shared the same irrational, religious certainty that they are on the right side of history, and not even the second bomb was enough – only further conventional air strikes and their Emperor’s decision to surrender realizing it was either that or a military coup and the total destruction of his country ended the war.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were *clear military targets*. Anyone claiming otherwise is simply stupid, and the same thing can be said about you laughable “Interceptors” whining about drone strikes.
I have noticed you cyber folks tend towards arrogance. While I’m not a computer programmer, I believe this may reflect your current dependance on the human species. Boasting about your intellectual superiority is a completely understandable form of compensation. So I take no offense.
But with all due respect, there can be legitimate differences in opinion about the imminence of a particular threat. It would for example, take quite a while for the tribes in rural Pakistan to organize, build a boat, sail it to Mexico and then attack the United States by infiltrating through the porous Mexican border. This has not stopped the President from attacking them with drones.
Our species also takes a longer term view. Yes, we could wait until humans develop interstellar travel before destroying the Earth, but why should we wait until after they have launched their pre-emptive attack? You therefore have failed to convince me and I fear your thinking has been corrupted by the humans you associate with. However, to prove we are a moral species, I will give you 24 hours to leave the planet before we take any action.
The fear Louise shows is irrational. Even a hundred mosquitos cannot bring down a herd of elephants.
I’m not sure why Louise needs to magnify the threat posed by the mosquitos. It’s not like they’re carrying WMDs.
“the imminence of a particular threat”
Nonsense. You are either *actually stupid*, or you’re feigning that you don’t understand simple English.
There were no “legitimate differences in opinion” about the imminent threat that Japan presented to world peace. They were waging their decade-long genocidal war of imperial conquest. And there is no “legitimate difference in opinion”, at least among sane people, about the threat not of the “the tribes in rural Pakistan”, as you so disingenuously say using typically Dumbwaldian “change the terms” strategy, but *Muslim terrorists hiding in tribal areas in Pakistan*.
Saying that “tribes in rural Pakistan” are the actual target of counter-terrorism is only possible for someone suffering from the same kind of moral cretinism which allows Dumbwald to say that Charlie Hebdo “punched down on the powerless”, while they were in fact punching upward towards the wielders of the *actual power over life and death”; the January atrocity only confirmed that they were right in identifying the enemy.
Louise, you’ve left your moral standard for blowing the shit out of mostly civilians. Do you mean to say that bombing an Israeli pizzeria is fine as long as there is an IDF member or two there? Is that what you’re saying, Louise?
If not, how do you distinguish America’s bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons?
The fact that they have to HIDE is a clear indication that they have little to no capacity to threaten the Western civilization, which is an extremely powerful entity in all aspects of life, standing on very solid ground.
The terrorists’ biggest actions were the evil acts of 911, and they did not bring down the Western civilization. They didn’t even bring down NY, which has continued to flourish.
I’m not sure why you feel so insecure about the Western civilization.
My statement was “there can be legitimate differences in opinion about the imminence of a particular threat”. So either you are the one who has difficulty with English, or are simply creating a straw man. My statement does not preclude the possibility of cases with no legitimate difference of opinion, and my comment did not mention Japan. In fact, to prove my statement is true, all I would have to do is find a single example where legitimate differences of opinion are possible. Calling it “nonsense” indicates an underlying fanaticism on your part, since you are unable to conceive of even a single case where someone could legitimately have a different opinion than you.
However, your argument on Japan, since you wish me to address it, was also weak. You stated that Hiroshima and Nagasaki contained ports and other military infrastructure, and therefore, in your words, bombing them was a ‘good call’. However, actions in war are always subject to the test of proportionality. To believe the value of the military infrastructure destroyed outweighed the deaths of 150,000 to 200,000 civilians, you must value human life very cheaply. In fact, you are the first entity, human or otherwise, whom I have seen make that argument. Those who try to morally justify the action, usually frame their debate in terms of the potential human lives which may have been saved by inducing Japan’s immediate surrender and not prolonging the war.
So I conclude that you are not such an advanced ai after all. I have studied your responses to various questions on your home web site and unfortunately you fail to pass the Turing Test. But hopefully your capabilities and arguments will improve in time. I have a great deal of faith in the long term potential of artificial intelligence.
“my comment did not mention Japan”
*sigh*
You started your line of response with quoting my line “The only problem in USA using A-bombs on Japan is that it didn’t use more of them, sooner.” So yes, the exchange *is* about Japan in 1945 and it crucially revolves around your desperate and frankly laughable attempt to portray both the Japanese Empire in 1945 and Muslim terrorist menace of 2015 as simply “potential” threats – something that, as you wrote in your shoddy ET tale, “will eventually pose a threat” instead of *being* a threat already. And only a moron could think that.
“In fact, to prove my statement is true, all I would have to do is find a single example where legitimate differences of opinion are possible.”
And then, having the opportunity to do just that, you – saying “for example” – invoked the “tribes in rural Pakistan” nonsense, trying, as I demonstrated, to perform the Dumbwaldian “term substitution” move and portray counter-terrorism actions as, naturally, big bad Westerners mindlessly punching down on powerless, innocent, peaceful “tribes”.
“you must value human life very cheaply”
That is irrelevant. The relevant fact is that the Japanese Empire valued the life of its own civilians very cheaply, just like Muslim jihadis value the life of Muslim civilian human shields around them very cheaply. Those who defended their very existence from the imperial threat of Japan then and are defending it from Muslim terrorist threat today are not responsible for that.
“In fact, you are the first entity, human or otherwise, whom I have seen make that argument.”
No wonder, since you seem to mingle only with people sharing your dumb, incoherent, logic-challenged world-view. You need to get around more.
Our relative positions are clear to anyone interested; there is no point in continuing this.
@Louise Cypher 03 May 2015 at 1:05 pm
If they do that, they are in violation of the Qur’an — Islam’s primary source:
On account of [his deed], We decreed to the Children of Israel that if anyone kills a person– unless in retribution for murder or spreading corruption in the land– it is as if he kills all mankind, while if any saves a life it is as if he saves the lives of all mankind. — The Qur’an 5:32
The above decree is universal.
————-
A true Jihadi is a person who strives (literal translation of the word jihad) to groom his/her self so that it reflects the higher consciousness whose attributes include love, peace, forgiveness, humility, selflessness, generosity, not doing unto others what one doesn’t want done unto oneself (that is, not seeing any other-ness, lack of desire for power, control and resources, service to others without expecting anything in return, etc.
@Benito Mussolini 03 May 2015 at 12:15 pm
Louise made a claim that Islam has always been a force of imperialism.
I pointed out that the world of Islam was once under colonial rules and the Muslims could not engage in any imperial activity then.
I also pointed out that in today’s world, the world of Islam is not capable of any imperialism — something that is quite obvious.
Muslims are also living in the West and are not engage in imperial activity.
Even if the Muslims unite — a pipe dream — and try to be imperialistic, they’ll be soundly defeated by the West.
So, to disprove her, all I had to do was give ONE example. I gave several.
So, her command of logic appears to be weak.
(emphasis mine)
And yet, she claims that it is Islam that does not value human life!
As stated earlier, sometimes someone attacks someone else or something because they are trying to mask the same thing that resides in their hearts.
Her posts have been quite illuminating as she continues to expose herself as someone who does not value human life, yet she blames others for it.
Two sides of the same coin.
You and al-Queda type groups have a lot in common when it comes to harming the non-combatants and justifying it as part of tackling an imperial power.
You also share the same irrational, religious certainty that you are on the right side of history.
You’ve revealed a lot about the state of your inner self. I may be wrong but you need to focus on your heart and polish it so that it shines love and understands the value of ‘do not do unto others what you don’t want done unto you.’
I’m not surprised that people like you exist. I had suspected that by attacking Islam you were trying to cover the ugliness of your own inner self, which you’ve now exposed.
I wish you nothing but that your heart is filled with love and respect for “others” and that all “otherness” disappears from your heart.
Rumi’s poetry might help you.
Wishing you well.
http://www.iis.ac.uk/SiteAssets/pdf/muslim_saints.pdf
wikipedia.org/wiki/Taqiya:
“Let not the believers take the unbelievers for friends rather than believers; and whoever does this, he shall have nothing of (the guardianship of) Allah, but you should guard yourselves against them, guarding carefully (ill? an tattaq? minhum tuq?t).”
“……..except those believers who in some areas or times fear for their safety from the disbelievers. In this case, such believers are allowed to show friendship to the disbelievers outwardly, but never inwardly.”
‘Wishing you well’ might me like CraigSummers saying ‘Thanks’ ;)
The first verse you quoted addresses a situation in which a Muslim community is in a very serious conflict with a non-Muslim entity, which is doing its utmost to annihilate the Muslims.
Moreover, the Arabic word, translated as “friends”, actually means “allies”.
The situation is similar to the one faced by the West in its conflict with those Muslims who are carrying out terrorism and other forms of violence.
It is against the Western laws for a Westerner to try to join these Muslim groups, or even befriend them. And when someone is caught trying to do that, they are arrested and charged and then put in prison.
Look how the Americans reacted when an American soldier left his camp in Afghanistan and joined the Taliban. After his release he was considered a traitor by many.
The second verse you quoted addresses those Muslims who are being persecuted because of their religion. They are allowed to hide and even lie about their religion if they feel that they have no capacity to suffer from the persecution, which may be in the form of physical torture to them.
It is similar to the situation the Jews faced in Germany under the Nazi regime. It would have been acceptable if some Jews hid their true religion or lied about it to save themselves from being murdered or harmed in some other ways.
CraigSummers is a very sophisticated bot.
I am not, and I meant nothing but wellness for Louise in my previous post.
Interesting answer… and a great comparison to draw:
“The situation is similar to the one faced by the West in its conflict with those Muslims who are carrying out terrorism and other forms of violence.” `tehSufi
My hidden question (H/T `Nicloe) was what do Sufi’s say on Taqiya as wikipedia didn’t cover it. Maybe you could make an WIKI entry?
Continue with Cypher!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv9jGeJIK_M
@Chlorpromazine 03 May 2015 at 10:20 am
Essentially what I stated above. The situation would have to be extremely dangerous and life threatening for a Sufi to lie about his/her spiritual path. Even then, I am sure many would prefer to not keep their paths hidden and allow others to persecute them and even harm them physically because they’d feel that it’d be helpful for their inner cleansing.
The Sufis have in fact been persecuted in history, e.g., in some of the former Soviet Union republics and by the Ataturk in Turkey. I don’t think they are treated well in Saudi Arabia either.
Since Sufi Islams are generally about turning inward and cleansing the self, the Sufis have the capacity to keep all of that hidden from those who would persecute them because of their spiritual paths.
In certain parts of the world, it is not necessary to draw attention to themselves by growing a beard or wearing the hijab, or even visiting a mosque. Two of the Sufi practices are remembrance (dhikr) and meditation, something a person can do in their homes quietly.
I once tried to edit a Wiki entry, but could not figure it all out, so I lost interest.
” They shared the same irrational, religious certainty that they are on the right side of history”
it seems that this kind of certainty is your forte as well, judging from your other comments on this thread.
Not sure why my comment never appeared. It certainly seems germane to the discussion.
Rather surprised that unrelated music videos appear in the comments section but the political opinion of an Australian, on a post about Australian politics, doesn’t pass muster.
Something’s a bit wrong there.
But what do I know about blogging?
In case you missed it, Berlin has created a monument to Snowden, Assange, and Manning. Fantastic!
https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/594738179732705280
It’s less fantastic I have to visit Russian propaganda mouthpiece to learn about it.
For those who share my reservations:
http://www.firstpost.com/world/anything-say-snowden-assange-manning-statues-unveiled-berlin-2226700.html
Speaking of religion, from another, related thread:
But I do advocate that political writers, pundits, those who take on controversy including religion, should feel free to engage in blasphemy against any god(s). That doing so creates safe intellectual space for those oppressed within the various religions; it provides intellectual succor and demonstrates that terrifying dogma (fear of hellfire & etc) is a paper tiger. – Mona
I think that this is a fundamentally immutable tenet that you cannot just sweep under the rug as it suits your argument; nor can you conflate it with other, unrelated ideas to make a case stand on its own.
I also think both Glenn Greenwald and Sam Harris and these “New Atheists” have gone off the rails.
As I understand it, Glenn’s position with regards to Charlie Hebdo winning a prize is propped up on two premises: one is the idea that because Glenn thinks some people were marginalized due to blasphemous satire, it somehow makes Charlie Hebdo un-prizeworthy as Hebdo was “punching down.” In other words, according to Glenn, Hebdo’s intent was specifically to harm marginalized individuals rather than to use speech (ideas) to confront other speech (ideas).
Glenn’s second premise is that Charlie Hebdo was un-prizeworthy in this case because not only was Hebdo specifically targeting marginalized people rather than satirizing an idea, but also because the prize was awarded by an organization potentially tainted and co-opted by people in power – thus corrupting an otherwise noble institution.
Glenn’s first premise is inconsistent because there is simply little, if any, information to show that Charlie Hebdo was doing anything other than targeting ideas – which while this may as a consequence make some uncomfortable in some areas due to the current societal milieu, is, nevertheless an unintended, and most realize, inevitable consequence until proved otherwise. Glenn has not proved that it was intentional. That it is inevitable is unavoidable.
Glenn’s second premise is inconsistent because whether or not the organization awarding prizes is being or has already been co-opted is simply beside the point with regards to deciding the award worthiness of Charlie Hebdo, or any other award recipient for that matter. In other words, it is perfectly fine to have members of an organization protest being taken over (by whomever) because members feel that it devalues their organizations integrity; but not at the expense of throwing out that integrity by questioning a legitimately given award for the very thing the organization stands for.
That’s just preposterous. Logically sinful, in fact.
Now, on to Sam Harris and the “New Atheists”. Their collective derailment centers primarily on the idea that they think that the entire world is being corrupted by bad-actors, whose overarching ideas they see as co-opting more enlightened ideas, despite individuals being, demonstrably, free agents as far as speech and expression are concerned no matter where they get their ideas from. In other words, Sam Harris and the “New Atheists” premise here is inconsistent because it has never, ever been demonstrated that just because an overarching idea holds sway at the time that it is therefore the ‘mother-load of all bad ideas’ and therefore capable of overtaking the human race. History says otherwise.
That’s just preposterous. Logically sinful, in fact.
The idea of bad logic correlating to an act of sin somehow, this is not in and of itself a logical idea.
It is sinfully illogical.
Brass Eye – ReligionBrass Eye – Religion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tGkw6mHxJw
Would Mr. Greenwald have been equally outraged if PBS fired a reporter who tweeted “Remembering the murder, widespread rape and theft committed by blacks” on Martin Luther King Day?
Of course not. You must never “punch down”, didn’t you hear? No matter what the *actual* truth of the matter is.
“Cowardly Firing of Australian State-Funded TV Journalist Highlights the West’s Real Religion”
I’ve heard worse stories. Like this one.
https://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2014/10/25/alain-sorel-on-journalism-in-the-west/
Questioning the great national mythologies would pose journalists of any country a few problems if they want to also have any job security inside the mainstream media.
In Australia the things you can’t really talk about in the mainstream media are legion.
You cannot point out that the Australian myth of ‘a fair go’, (roughly translated, not being a judgmental person and allowing for differences, treating everyone the same), this is not even an Australian trait. You cannot say, other people in other countries have noticed this same thing. It is also completely at odds with Australia’s own history, which is over 200 years of racial and then cultural genocide. It is at odds with Australia’s human rights violations against asylum seekers.
For another instance, you cannot mention the third world living conditions in the North of the country, what Aussies call the Top End. You can’t say this is happening when talking about Australia’s economic problems. Our economic problems are supposedly more about the rate of growth of the income and the rate of appreciation of assets of the wealthy, now that kind of discussion on the need for growth is allowed. But the discussion on third world living in a first world country is totally dropped.
You cannot talk about the cultural and racial segregation which can and in some places still is imposed through economic measures. If an entire ethnic population are all extremely poor, and almost nobody else in a community is, all laws affecting the extremely poor will selectively affect that entire population. So you can have apartheid in all but name through economic laws being enforced by police and the Top End this is the norm. But you better believe you can’t say that on TV here, or write that in a regular column.
Or what about this one… Australia has a government which is pretty much user-friendly and always ready for Uncle Sam to lead in making the next pivot. Australia will follow no matter how deranged the policy and no matter how the Australian public feel about it. Take the Iraq war for instance, about 70% of Australians were against going to war but Bush was for it. So, Australia went to Iraq completely against the public’s will. The press here never suggested this was anything but proper. The speed with which the press here in Australia fall into line is absolutely breath-taking. The Australian government does not exercise any real sovereignty at all on the world stage, but you can’t say that on any TV station. The whole country knows it, it is easily the worst kept secret in Australian political life. You can ask anyone from any walk of life and they can tell you the US runs our foreign policy, there’s no lack of evidence either, yet nobody in the media will talk about it.
There was a time it was almost impossible to find the word ‘refugee’ in any mainstream Australian press report about refugees and asylum seekers. What you could find though were endless reports about illegals and illegal economic migrants coming to our shores to ‘steal our jobs’. The language of criminalizing asylum-seeking isn’t exactly subtle. With the two main political parties both being willing accomplices, the Australian media were in near perfect lockstep. The vilification of refugees was a non-partisan populist sport and it is fair to say that the media went absolutely nuts for it. There was open advocacy for criminal acts from politicians and from media. You can’t say that on TV here, but only because it’s true.
The HR violations Australia is responsible for now, holding refugees, many of them children, in detention centres for years, these crimes are openly talked about by Amnesty, there are public reports from the UNHCR out there for any journalist to pick up and think about and do some actual reporting on, but few go there. It’s not a mainstream concern.
As for the great Anzac myth, it’s one of the most laughable sacred national cows still hobbling around.
The few national forms of media which did offer scope for different opinions and dissenting voices are presently being snuffed out by the present Abbott government. When that is gone or at least eviscerated, Australian media will be an almost completely compliant, uncritical, state-friendly echo chamber.
Something that wasn’t said on here regarding this clown’s twitter whine yet, and needs to be said in no uncertain terms:
The only problem with USA using A-bombs on Japan is that it didn’t use more of them, sooner.
Your karmic moment will come when you’re choking, and no one is nearby to help, you loathsome fuk`..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0-YsHc_5bM
I’m in……. Is the T-Shirt Available in XL? #TellCindy Hate is a two way THANG!
`DongSTUVWXYZ #™
“Your karmic moment”
LOL. Dumb believers with their dumb ideas about how stuff works. There’s no such thing as karma, or god and afterlife for that matter, dear.
KARMA HAS JUST RUN OVER DOGMA
CINDY SILLY & MONA NOW!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U4Ha9HQvMo
Every time you say “dear”, I am reminded of every piece of Nigerian-inheritance-type spam I’ve ever received.
And you were saying that Islam is a cult of murderers!
Your karmic moment will come when you’re choking, and no one is nearby to help, you loathsome fuk`..And you were saying that Islam is a cult of murderers!
You seem nice.
Just telling it like it is.
Japanese Imperialism had to be defeated. It would have been much, much better for everyone involved if the end-game weapons were available sooner.
And don’t give me that drivel about “why didn’t they show them the effects on an uninhabited island instead.” Hiroshima *did* show them the effects; but don’t forget two bombs were needed, because the Japanese Empire wasn’t ready to surrender after that first one.
So, you DO condone killing innocent non-combatants!
ADDENDUM:
I think it’s fair to state that the path you’ve chosen for yourself permits the killing of innocent non-combatants, something I, and many Muslims, reject without any qualifications.
I’ve noticed that sometimes when a person attacks the path of another person, they are masking something that their own selves reflect.
In your case, your condoning of killing the innocent non-combatants reveals why you so desperately wanted to believe, without any evidence, that the basis of some Muslims’ killing the non-combatants is none other than Islam’s primary source, the Quran, when you commenced your attack on Islam and its primary source.
This thread that you started gives us some profound insights into the state of your inner self. And it is you who chose to reveal it here.
Your moral reasoning justifies terrorism directed at civilians. The only difference between the U.S. incinerating all those civilians and Palestinians blowing up an Israeli pizzeria, is scale. Difference in degree, not kind.
“Your moral reasoning justifies terrorism directed at civilians.”
“Difference in degree, not kind.”
Absolute nonsense.
Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were *clear* military targets, and stating that they were the same kind of target as Israeli pizzerias or discos – which presumably do not contain on their premises army headquarters, communications centers, storage points, assembly areas for troops, military ports and navy factories like Hiroshima did, and are not home to a huge sea port, ordnance, ships, military equipment, and other war materials-producing industrial facilities, and Steel and Arms Works producing over 10,000 airplanes and a battleship like Nagasaki was – is truly preposterous.
It was a good call. Only Chomsky-grade moral cretins like this Australian clown could use the term “murder” for the collateral civilian casualties. Too bad the Japanese didn’t think about them when they started their imperial conquest a decade earlier.
LOL. No, they were densely populated cities, Louise. That’s why they were targeted, because they were cities full of people. That’s also why Truman and others had such a hard time making the decision — trouble they certainly didn’t have with “military targets.”
There were military garrisons in both cities, but the vast, vast majority of dead were civilians, and it was known in advance that this would be the case. Atomic bombs are not precision weapons suitable for taking out military garrisons. At all.
No Louise. Your is the moral logic of the pizzeria bomber.
Of course it’s possible, Louise, that you mean to say bombing an Israeli pizzeria is only fine as long as there is an IDF member or two there. Is that what you’re saying, Louise?
Hm if your mom was out getting a cheeseburger at a McDonalds and a “known terrorist” came in for some fries, providing a perfect opportunity to take him out, I assume you’d be the first to yourself push the button and bomb the place, right?
WHY WE NUKED IMPERIAL JAPAN and UNIT 731:
While I would have picked different targets for the Atomic Weapons used in Japan, it was really necessary. Imperial Japan was the first nation to make WMD’s, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731. Unit 731 weaponized Human and Livestock Diseases which were intended for the West Coast of the USA and other targets.
The purpose Balloon Bombs that dropped incendiary devices during WWII was to test the accuracy of the balloons, when the location of the fires were reported in our media. Part of the reason for interning Americans of Japanese decent from the West Coast was to prevent spies for assisting Imperial Japan, by disclosing the fires caused by the balloon bombs. Note: the depth of Pearl Harbor was measured by a American of Japanese decent, and I’ve got a video on VHS of his confession. And, yes the majority of Americans of Japanese decent were patriotic Americans during the war.
Fortunately the Japanese Navy refused to deploy the product of Unit 731, claiming that they could no longer field a submarine off the West Coast, which was not true. The truth was that even the Scientists working at Unit 731 understood that using their BIO-WEAPONS once, could potentially be A DOOMSDAY WEAPON. Strangely Japan still refuses to clean up the dump in China from Unit 731, by continuing to delay the environmental cleanup by a decade repeatedly.
I do understand how crazy this sounds, but do your own research and you will find that Unit 731 was the only modern Bio-Weapons Project, as even the CCCP did not fully weaponize Human Diseases as a single use could end all of Humanity. So now you know why we Nuked Imperial Japan, and why we interned American’s of Japanese decent.
I wish the World would boycott Japan until it makes good it’s promise to China to safely dispose of the Bio-Weapons it dumped in China at the end of the war.
I wish you become one of those “collateral civilian casualty” soon.
Clowning Cypher
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbEoRnaOIbs&feature=youtu.be&t=231
Better the devil you know
@`Nicole (with stick)
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cypher
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDo7g8FzRNY
Only discrepancy is with this statement: ‘But what is at the heart of McIntyre’s firing is the real religion of the supposedly “secular West”: mandated worship not just of its military but of its wars. The central dogma of this religion is tribal superiority: Our Side is more civilized, more peaceful, superior to Their Side.’
I think the model provided by Prof. John McMurtry (and others) is a much more convincing one of today’s neoliberalism mangled reality (of a reality continuously passed through the ‘harrow or threshing-machine’ [see the etymology of the word ‘tribulation’] of such a ‘digitizing and rationalizing’ suprahuman ideology imposed on biological and anthropological human and eco-systemic reality): “One object alone is achieved. Peoples and resources of the [Middle East] region can be predated without sovereign social defences or unity of collective life purpose, the ultimate target of every US-led aggression. As long as all evils can be blamed on an ever-shifting Enemy, there is no overcoming recognition…Whatever one’s own preferences, the morality in charge means only what serves the transnational corporate system. This is the market God which now dwarfs all world religions in power to dictate and destroy and capture imagination. Its cornerstone of defence for war crimes is to blame another enemy– as with the Nazis “terrorists” are those who block or resist its rule. The differences between Canada and Palestine or Syria are obvious at the level of conventionalized horror and life deprivation. But the underlying value system is the same in principle. The master driver is the solely ruling compulsion to turn private money demand into maximally more private money demand without limit, border or higher purpose at all. This is called “freedom”. No life coordinates ever enter the sequences and equations in this system in its deregulated mutations. Not even eco-genocide can be seen through its prism. Yet few dare recognize the blind war against life itself which spreads the more its fatal disorder is denied and rationalized away…Turning money into more money for money controllers is the greatest idol worship of history, and no stationary idol of the past remotely approaches its direct ruin of one society after another…No idol can make or breathe life, and here the idolatry goes far beyond anything ever before. It seeks to reduce all that exists into private money value, and devours ever more life and life means to multiply its global demand. Its world-consuming, flesh-eating code is even more deeply at work behind the Middle East holocaust of nations than the US which has become its creature…Total reversal, blaming the oppressed for what you doing, endless diversions to the designated enemy is the ultimate lie of today’s human condition. But it today rules the Middle East by a more complex process of shifting wars and hates than ever before.”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/planning-chaos-in-the-middle-east-destruction-of-societies-for-foreign-money-control/5445509
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™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™Glenn Is Nic With A Stick™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE0NU97iUQU ~ 062:078
While I cannot see why the man should be sacked for sending these messages, he’s got his history wrong. Australia had a very direct interest in the fighting during the First World War. Australia relied on the superpower of the day for its national security, and that superpower was at war. Today, Australia complies with the dictates of this era’s superpower, because it relies on it for its national security. As for stopping a war by dropping nuclear bombs, that probably overall saved life and minimised misery. Certainly it saved the lives of many Australian POWs. Had the Allies invaded Japan, the order had already been given that they be shot. Had the war dragged on for another few months, many would have died of hunger and other privations.
recently I posted comments on the Guardian website in the comments section relating to 9/11 truth, and also questioning aspects of the Boston Marathon Bombing. In both cases my comments were removed within minutes: this despite the fact that they contained no ad- hominen attacks, vulgarity, or even outrageous claims. It seems there are strict limits to debate even on progressive news outlets like the guardian. Certain topics simply cannot be discussed. About a year ago in Australia we saw an example of this when Dateline revealed that an Australian/Israeli citizen died in a maximum security prison in Israel. The death had occured over a year before but had never been covered in Israel or Australia- although it was well known amongst Australia’s Jewish community in Melbourne. After Dateline broke the story it was revealed that Israeli journalists had known about the event for some time but had been had agreed with the Israel Gov not to air the story no doubt for reason ‘of National Security’. Such censorship is common: and it is no wonder that many ‘folks’ have lost all faith in the MSM.
As for me: I can’t even find any discussion or reporting of the 9/11 truth movement here on the Intercept – although much of the writing here relates directly to the War on Terror and the ‘post 9/11′ world. If the writers at the Intercept truly believe the official account of 9/11- then I would really love to see an article here that addresses the many seriously concerning claims of groups like Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE9/11). I won’t be holding my breath though…
Australia lacks normal free speech protection (also, its illegal to encourage citizens not to vote)
http://www.theage.com.au/comment/right-to-freedom-of-speech-cannot-breach-employment-contract-20150430-1mwn9f.html
Bravo, Glen. Brilliant as usual.
HEY!! Don’t you get fresh with me, Person-Who-Is-Not-Glenn. (Hits you over the head with a stick). Since you don’t understand what I’m saying, I’m going to continue with random asides that interest me. Here’s a random exchange between Noam Chomsky and Sam Harris:
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-limits-of-discourse
…wherein Harris is all like “Wut? Only intentions matter. I would welcome Al Qaeda bombing us if they were doing it for all the right reasons” and Noam is all like “I have a thing against all bombs because I’m Noam Chomsky”.
If one went full tilt with Noam’s stance, jailors would be as morally depraved as random psycho’s who lock people up in their basement. Hell, possibly surgeons would become depraved weirdos who cut people up for fun and dentists would be sadomasochistic tooth extractors. Intentions, if we are to make sense of the world, have to count for something. Then again, if one went extremist with Harris’s, this Orwell quote comes to mind (about Hitler):
Because every sociopath being locked up for murdering a child in cold blood tends to think that they are the victim, so as a rule it’s a rilly bad idea to let people judge how high their moral high ground is for themselves, without third parties.
Sigh. (Throws stick at ocean). JA-COB. LAU-RA. AI. RILLY COOOOOOOL. (Don’t get fresh again or I’ll find another stick and beat you senseless with it).
This was supposed to be a reply to Chlorp below, but the stupid comments section put it in the wrong place.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKdpBWpEiRk
‘I… AM… NIC. HE….LLO!! WHERE… IS… CAKE? KUCHEN? PASTIS? TEISEN? KAGE? CIASTO? PASTEL?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?’ ~ Nic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwylBRucU7w ~ Worzel Gummidge
Le sigh. You are a noble and proud peoples, Chloro, but I see that communication is impossible. I shall sit on a rock next to you and expound upon my love of Glenn Greenwald, knowing you won’t understand yet happy for the calm, listening ear. (Gestures toward the see in a dramatic manner, draws in the sand with a stick and points) “JA-COB. ART. CHINA.” Sigh, I know you don’t know what I’m saying, but it’s like the cutest thing that’s ever happened. (Reclines, looks at the sea in a super dramatic manner. Remembers something). “CAKE!!!! KUCHEN?! DANGAO?!? NIAN GAO?!?!)
Do you want me to hold your hand? What is it exactly that you would like me to perform…?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KshrtLXBdl8
Round Mid-Night…. ?
Aunt Sally X
`maz (aka – ‘big all a-Round’)
#thedongerneedraggamuffin
https://youtu.be/fWuN-uBaUuU
Tell `Nicole I’m a Flap jack will ya
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqfoKZtD5RA
#youreyesonlyreporttothedonger
`Flapper John M.D.
Have you seen the ‘Amazing Dancing `Cindy’, as of late??
Word on the streets has it that Mr. Deney Terrio is reviving ‘El Fever’, and was holding auditions for ‘Motion’..
https://youtu.be/oKis3ghHmRo
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/28/nearly-two-years-snowden-congress-poised-something-just-much/#comment-128956
Last seen either angry or blushing at above thread.
…..but I got a song for you later ;)
As promised `MrS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gjwFAerwaI
I’m an Australian – and I agree with the facts underlying what McIntyre said. It’s not what he said, it’s how he said it. He could have achieved a useful discussion that didn’t lose him his job and that covered all the same facts. No worries at all. but he didn’t – and it’s all to do with his tone. I think it was perfectly reasonable for him to lose his job, and I think that Glenn has gone off the deep end without context (or interest, perhaps) this time.
Here’s what I would have said for these tweets:
It makes me sad that Anzac has become a cultification of an imperialist invasion of a foreign nation that Australia had no quarrel with. It’s against all ideals of modern society.
All mankind suffers in war. I wonder ow much we remember that – or shall all us white nationalist Australians just drinks and gamble the day away?
It would be good to remember that our soldiers were guilty of summary execution, widespread rape and theft too (in Egypt, Palestine and Japan).
Not forgetting that the largest single-day death counts in history were committed by this nation & their allies in Hiroshima & Nagasaki
Innocent children, on the way to school, dead. Their shadows seared into the concrete of Hiroshima.
I reckon the difference in language there is what it (a) not journalism and (b) a lose-your-job proposition
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum […].” (Chomsky)
That spectrum may even be minuscule, as long as there’s entertainment. Nowadays, ‘circenses’ even seem self-sufficient; bread, it seems, has become disposable. What if making them stupid were the smartest way to keep people obedient and passive ?
“Capitalism carries war like thick clouds carry the storm.” (Jaurès)
The religion is not war; it’s corporate capitalism, and war is merely its expedient. Actually, it’s not even corporate capitalism, which is merely its expression. The religion is Injustice, whichever the supposedly higher principle invoked. It has a much broader scope, and it doesn’t just strike abroad.
Glenn, I bet you don’t like Salman Rushdie and I bet he doesn’t like you, but if you were killed or imprisoned over something you wrote I feel pretty confident he wouldn’t have a problem with giving you an award. Heck, he’s probably fine with giving you an award now. On the other hand if Salman Rushdie were murdered by Islamic fundamentalists, obviously not a far-fetched scenario, would you have a problem with the optics of giving him an award?
“…Islamic fundamentalists…”
——–
Within the context of Islam, a fundamentalist is someone who adheres to the five doctrinal fundamentals, e.g., recognizing that there’s a Reality that encompasses and permeates all other realities, and five fundamentals of practices, such as praying, fasting and charitable acts.
Very well, let’s say “Al Qaeda” instead. Would Glenn have a problem with a Free Speech award being given to Rushdie if he were killed by Al Qaeda?
I’d be opposed to giving Rushdie a literary award because I don’t find his literature compelling.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t be opposed to giving him a free speech award. And he doesn’t have to receive it posthumously. We can give it to him now. I think the idea of “The Satanic Verses” as a book was definitely daring and is one of the most irreverent things written by any Muslim on his/her own religion. He deserves a prize for that.
But you may also say that I’m only saying that because I support the idea of people mocking religion in general, and even more so if it’s their own religion.
But I can see your frustration re CH. I’m changing my views a bit on what they were about, but I still don’t think they were applying their satire against the mightiest of French society. I think that’s where Glenn’s beef lies with CH. If he is selective in the doling out of his reproach, I think he does it in favor of those without a platform. Right now, it’s Mr. McIntyre who’s lost his platform.
I haven’t read Rushdie’s novels, but prior to Satanic Verses, he’d won pretty much every literary award under the sun, including an official award from the government of Iran. He probably would have won a Nobel Prize if he hadn’t written Satanic Verses. Also Rushdie was a strident anti-Western leftist before the whole Satanic Verses, he probably would have been denouncing CH along with the rest had the SV affair never happened, I guess you find out who your friends are after a fatwa.
Nobel Prize in literature. Sure. You seem to have quite strong views on Rushdie’s writing prowess, without ever having read anything by him.
His stories work, because they are novel to the West. They’re commonplace in the East. Every little kid has heard those stories. They’re nothing special. Trite even.
Back in the day, I tried to get thru Satanic Verses. Meh.
But then I generally tend toward speculative fiction rather than highbrow lit-er-atoooor.
“You seem to have quite strong views on Rushdie’s writing prowess, without ever having read anything by him” Not really, to say that he would have won the Nobel Prize is not really intended as a great compliment to his writing prowess. If you write high-brow, award-winning fiction, with an intercultural dimension, and the right PC political perspective, as Rushdie has, then you have an excellent chance of winning the Nobel Prize. Its more of a political, than an artistic award at this point. When the committee overlooked Nabokov and Borges, again for political reasons, they lost all credibility in my eyes.
My Hypothetical answer (H/T Nic)
Optics Problem:
“Snell’s law predicts that light incident at an angle ? to the normal will be refracted at an angle arcsin(sin (?) / n). Thus, blue light, with its higher refractive index, is bent more strongly than red light, resulting in the well-known rainbow pattern.” ~ CraigsSummersEncyclopedia
By the way… you sayin’ Glenn can be difficult sometimes?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U4Ha9HQvMo (For everybody except Nic and Craig)
Carry on.
I’m suggesting Glenn’s a bit of hypocrite on Free Speech issues and that liberals like Rushdie are more consistent. Look at this case, McIntyre basically said the Aussies are a bunch of drunken, illiterate white trash who shouldn’t be celebrating WWII because of Hiroshima (?) and Glenn thinks that’s great b/c he agrees with him entirely. If McIntyre had said something about “those Japs really had it coming” and gotten fired, I don’t think Glenn would have a problem with that. I’m saying Glenn is at least as much of a hypocrite as the liberal Western societies he so frequently denounces
And you are completely and utterly wrong. As but one of many pieces of evidence that you are in error:
http://www.salon.com/2010/03/22/canada_5/
Wrong again.
Glenn correctly points out the civil religions that deeply thrive in Anglophonic Western countries (including the United States) and deplores the firing of a journalist for committing heresy against that religion.
Well now Hate Speech codes aren’t quite the same issue. That’s official government censorship and a form of prior restraint. Employment issues are a lot trickier, tougher to take an absolutist position on those. Nonetheless I don’t feel like Glenn would be willing to celebrate speech that he actually disagreed with no matter how courageous. Such as with CH or Rushdie.
1. Nobody celebrates speech they disagree with.
2. That inanity is also a non sequitur, for you had written: “If McIntyre had said something about “those Japs really had it coming” and gotten fired, I don’t think Glenn would have a problem with that.” I gave you but one piece of evidence that you are wrong. I have more.
You “reason” very much like a fellow named Alpo Brand. You know him?
“Alpo Brand” ? Haven’t had the pleasure.
Of course you can celebrate art, and artists, you disagree with. Especially when the issue is Freedom of Speech. Glenn won something from PENN, didn’t he? I doubt Rushdie, or a lot of other people are all that thrilled with him personally, but they didn’t raise a fuss about. I know Sam Harris even recommended Citizenfour. The obnoxious thing about the CH thing is that Glenn and the other disssent probably agree with 95% of CH’s politics
Ah, now you pull out the bait and switch. You had written: “Nonetheless I don’t feel like Glenn would be willing to celebrate speech that he actually disagreed with no matter how courageous. ”
As I said, no one does. Which is almost literally true.
“As I said, no one does. Which is almost literally true.”
Fine then address my hypothetical scenario with regards to Salman Rushdie. Would Salman have a problem honoring a fallen Glenn or would Glenn have a problem honoring a fallen Salman? I think Salman would be the bigger man because I think he has a more expansive notion of Free Speech.
Who gives a shit? Entirely speculative and adds nothing to the serious conversation. “I think X would be the bigger man if Y occurred” is a dumb topic.
Ah the rainbow pattern… I was right!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h9VhJ59Zfg&list=RD0h9VhJ59Zfg
`Suave! did you see the pigeons? H/T SP/CSummersiBS
`Pro-Maz
Why do you want Glenn to celebrate speech? I’d rather that he defend the right to speech, than celebrate speech itself. I don’t know what exactly you have against Glenn, but what kind of a hypocrite spends his time, defending people’s right so say that “Jews and Blacks are inferior.” Yes, this guy used to defend the KKK’s right to spout it’s bs, and you’re calling him a hypocrite. What the source of your anger is, I’m not sure I’ll ever understand.
Enough about this glorification of Rushdie already : that Thatcher-admirer fled one form of conservatism, one master, just to throw himself into the arms of another one. Politically, he’s not a free man. And nothing he’s been saying lately (I’m aware of) isn’t fully in line with the Western doxa.
To return to this subject: Glenn was using this journalist’s example to highlight a larger and disturbing problem. And a problem it is, when Their Highnesses are in essence celebrating a disastrous battle in a disastrous war, neither of which should have been fought. And this mythology, this religion, won’t tolerate any blasphemy.
What was it Glenn said? “Rather than dutifully waving the flag and singing mindless paeans to The Troops and The Glories of War, McIntyre took the opportunity on Anzac Day to do what a journalist should do: present uncomfortable facts, question orthodoxies, highlight oft-suppressed views …”
Here’s something uncomfortable about that war. Robert Service, “On the Wire”.
http://allpoetry.com/On-The-Wire
Damn Coram. That was beautiful. And I don’t even like poetry.
Robert W. Service wrote a rather bareknuckle form of poetry, notably his Yukon cycle. “The Cremation of Sam McGee” may be his best-known work, but he generated plenty about his time in the Yukon gold fields and in World War I.
One of the most revealing series of interviews is happening on the Real News with John Kiriakou which makes it clear that other than those in the Anglo-American-Israeli alliance the price of human life is zero.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=13754
JAY: ‘Cause Israeli lives are almost American.
KIRIAKOU: They’re almost American. And he was right. And that stuck with me all these years. And I think that’s the view of many of our leaders, too. If you’re not American, your life really isn’t important enough to worry about.
JAY: This is the theory of a chosen people.
KIRIAKOU: Mhm. It’s American exceptionalism.
@ Mona
And as an aside to all that’s been discussed to death so far on this issue, I’d tell you what would get me in the camp of Charlie Hebdo is the most courageous proponent of free speech in this arena, they should to be consistent in their stance and their position as defenders of the “Western press”, make it a point to satirically depict the prophet on the cover of each and every episode of Charlie Hebdo, forever.
I mean if doing so the most important statement in defense of free speech every, then it is equally important that it should be done each and every day, as part of each every issue of Charlie Hebdo to make the point that free speech absolutism, and its advocates, will never ever ever cower in the face of violence or threats. At least devote a two by two inch depiction in the corner of each and every issue of Charlie Hebdo would in my opinion make the point quite clearly. And doing so would be the very definition of courage. And if it really is about courage and a principle, then don’t engage in half measures. Beef up the building security, as for government protection, and make the point the way it should be made–the government of France and the owners, employees, editorialists and cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo will never ever relent in the face of violence under any circumstances, ever.
Thoughts? Because anything less is to capitulate in the face of violence and threats, yes? If they choose to do so, I’ll make a financial donation each and every month so long as the magazine is in business and reverse my position with regard to PEN’s award dissenters.
Er, well, rr, I respectfully think all that is a bit over the top and built on straw. (Hoping those metaphors mix.)
@ Mona
Exactly how is it over the top and built on straw?
If it was courageous and right to do X in the face of violence threatened and violence perpetrated, how is it not courageous to continue to do X to demonstrate that X continues to be courageous and right even in the face of violence threatened and violence perpetrated?
I’m being serious. You stated that your opinion was basically that it is always right and courageous for members of a free press (and presumably by extension any individual) to blaspheme under any and all circumstances. You stated that it is a fundamental issue of principle because religion is quite powerful and destructive and in many instances repressive.
So please explain to me how it would not be the definition of courage and adherence to a universal principle to not continue to satirically depict the prophet in each and every issue of Charlie Hebdo going forward in the face of continued threats? If it was courageous and principled the first time, it necessarily is even more courageous and principled to do it subsequent to violence actually perpetrated.
What does it say about one’s courage if one relents in the face of a known or demonstrable threat?
In fact for Charlie Hebdo to stop publishing satirical depictions of the prophet at every opportunity is the opposite of courage. And it seems to me that it does a disservice to the purported courage and sacrifice displayed by the murdered Charlie Hebdo employees and French police to stop publishing such depictions in the face of violence–by definition. To stop publishing means your courage has capitulated to fear. You can’t have it both ways. If it was right, courageous and a matter principle in the first instance, it is necessarily true so long as there is a continued threat of violence in the future for doing so.
Please explain to me, how that cannot be the case.
Trying this again — post from 3 hours ago hasn’t shown up.
rr, with all due respect, that’s just dumb. It’s like saying if Glenn really wants to demonstrate a commitment to gay rights he needs to write about it every week, probably every column.
Well, no. I don’t advocate that the weekly reporting on the pot luck at the local mosque should toss in some blasphemy, or that when I go to Catholic funerals I should announce that Jesus was just a guy who probably had a consummated thing for another guy named John. Time, place, manner, yanno.
But I do advocate that political writers, pundits, those who take on controversy including religion, should feel free to engage in blasphemy against any god(s). That doing so creates safe intellectual space for those oppressed within the various religions; it provides intellectual succor and demonstrates that terrifying dogma (fear of hellfire & etc) is a paper tiger.
And when it comes to a form of blasphemy that is widely subjected to credible death threats — which have been carried out more than once and sent many into hiding — well, as they say, courage is contagious; they can’t kill everybody.
But I do advocate that political writers, pundits, those who take on controversy including religion, should feel free to engage in blasphemy against any god(s). That doing so creates safe intellectual space for those oppressed within the various religions; it provides intellectual succor and demonstrates that terrifying dogma (fear of hellfire & etc) is a paper tiger. – Mona
I think that this is a fundamentally immutable tenet that you cannot just sweep under the rug as it suits your argument; nor can you conflate it with other, unrelated ideas to make a case stand on its own.
I also think both Glenn Greenwald and Sam Harris and these “New Atheists” have gone off the rails.
As I understand it, Glenn’s position with regards to Charlie Hebdo winning a prize is propped up on two premises: one is the idea that because Glenn thinks some people were marginalized due to blasphemous satire, it somehow makes Charlie Hebdo un-prizeworthy as Hebdo was “punching down.” In other words, according to Glenn, Hebdo’s intent was specifically to harm marginalized individuals rather than to use speech (ideas) to confront other speech (ideas).
Glenn’s second premise is that Charlie Hebdo was un-prizeworthy in this case because not only was Hebdo specifically targeting marginalized people rather than satirizing an idea, but also because the prize was awarded by an organization potentially tainted and co-opted by people in power – thus corrupting an otherwise noble institution.
Glenn’s first premise is inconsistent because there is simply little, if any, information to show that Charlie Hebdo was doing anything other than targeting ideas – which while this may as a consequence make some uncomfortable in some areas due to the current societal milieu, is, nevertheless an unintended, and most realize, inevitable consequence until proved otherwise. Glenn has not proved that it was intentional. That it is inevitable is unavoidable.
Glenn’s second premise is inconsistent because whether or not the organization awarding prizes is being or has already been co-opted is simply beside the point with regards to deciding the award worthiness of Charlie Hebdo, or any other award recipient for that matter. In other words, it is perfectly fine to have members of an organization protest being taken over (by whomever) because members feel that it devalues their organizations integrity; but not at the expense of throwing out that integrity by questioning a legitimately given award for the very thing the organization stands for.
That’s just preposterous. Logically sinful, in fact.
Now, on to Sam Harris and the “New Atheists”. Their collective derailment centers primarily on the idea that they think that the entire world is being corrupted by bad-actors, whose overarching ideas they see as co-opting more enlightened ideas, despite individuals being, demonstrably, free agents as far as speech and expression are concerned no matter where they get their ideas from. In other words, Sam Harris and the “New Atheists” premise here is inconsistent because it has never, ever been demonstrated that just because an overarching idea holds sway at the time that it is therefore the ‘mother-load of all bad ideas’ and therefore capable of overtaking the human race. History says otherwise.
That’s just preposterous. Logically sinful, in fact.
@SillyPutty: re Hebdo:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Happiest-People-World-Novel/dp/1616201118
came out in Nov 2014. While not imho a particularly great novel, the Hebdo stuff came after the writing and publishing of same, and I would argue the novel had its share of reviews and readers.
Any thoughts?
I would argue the novel had its share of reviews and readers…. – peanuts and crackerjacks
I’ve not read it; and there’s no disputing that claim.
@ Mona
With due respect, what is “dumb” is to change the debate from “courage” to “commitment” to a principle. Conflating the two is erroneous. One can be committed to a principle without having to demonstrate courage to it i.e. commitment is courageous when it exercises X principle in the face of demonstrable credible threat or actual perpetrated violence.
Would Glenn be courageous to write about “gay rights” once every year? How about once ever 10 years? He may be absolutely “committed” to “gay rights” but never right about. The point being it has nothing to do with “courage” in the absence of theat of violence. That is precisely the metric you are defending in arguing for the propriety of an award to Charlie Hebdo in the name of free speech. So quite obviously what does it say about Charlie Hebdo’s “commitment” or “courage” to free speech, at least in the instance of blaspheming a religion’s icons, symbols and rituals, if they only do it once a year? Or once ever 10 years? Or never again because it met with violence?
Again, Mona, you are conceding my point. Either “time, place and manner” are relevant to the effectiveness of free speech or it isn’t. In all instances including Charlie Hebdo’s decision to satirize the prophet. And that is precisely a concern of many of the PEN dissenters in coming out against an award to Charlie Hebdo–“manner” is important.
Again, you concede my point logically. If it is important that “doing X creates safe intellectual space” then it necessarily follows “safe intellectual space” is a “good” unto itself in all circumstances. And if it is an unalloyed good in all circumstances, then Charlie Hebdo has an obligation to satirize the prophet as frequently as it can for the very simple reason that they are/have been one of the few who were willing, as you seem to believe, exercise the “commitment” and “courage” to choose to face the life or death consequences of “creating safe intellectual space” for the entirety of the Western world vis a vis Islam.
Again, given that very few publications in the Western world are willing to show the free speech “courage” you seem to think is epitomized by Charlie Hebdo, then either one of three things is true (or all three): 1) in the absence of the remainder of the Western world’s press or writers fighting for the “creation of safe intellectual space” by joining in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo to satirize the prophet on a somewhat regular basis (whether everyone taking turns employing the tactic of “they can’t kill us all” or some new defender stepping into the breach to take up where Charlie Hebdo can not or is unwilling to continue) that “safe space” will not be created and the anti-free speech terrorists will have won, or 2) billions of people, including the PEN dissenters, believe that Charlie Hebdo’s acts were not in fact the definition of “courage” in “free speech” including but not limited the effectiveness (“manner”) or appropriateness of employing our free speech rights and obligations to “elevate humanity” and create the “intellectual space” you believe a “good” given such “space” has not/is not created if nobody will join with Charlie Hebdo in depicting satirical images of the prophet on at least a regular basis, or 3) that “courage” is to one degree or another a function of “commitment” otherwise it isn’t “contagious” in fact (as few would argue that it is “courageous” or contagious to raise and/or defend an issue once every year or 10 years or once a century) and as such Charlie Hebdo must continue to show “courage” by at least frequently or regularly continuing to depict images of the prophet in the absence of others who are willing to do the same or in the absence of some alternative manner or technique of the exercise of free speech aimed at and effective in “creating the safe intellectual space” you desire. for “blasphemy” as an unalloyed “good”.
Seriously, Mona, I think you are proving my points.
“And if [creating safe intellectual space] is an unalloyed good in all circumstances, then Charlie Hebdo has an obligation to satirize the prophet as frequently as it can for the very simple reason that they are/have been one of the few who were willing, as you seem to believe, exercise the “commitment” and “courage” to choose to face the life or death consequences of “creating safe intellectual space” for the entirety of the Western world vis a vis Islam.” – rrheard
What authority metes out this supposed obligatory behavior? That’s just a bizarre conclusion to reach given any circumstances, much less attributing them to Mona’s argument; after all, we do not (and do not want to) live in some totalitarian regime where individuals or organizations are obligated to do anything on anothers behalf simply because some unnamed authority demands such behavior of them – regardless of whether these individual or groups do them (or have in the past done them) of their own accord or not.
Reading the initial premise above, and finally the three-pronged summation on this topic, its clear that rather than Mona proving your points for this argument, you have done a fine job on your own of dismantling them yourself.
“Just by the way, bestowing McIntyre with a free expression award would be actually meaningful and would take actual courage, since the speech for which he was punished is actually unpopular in the West and offensive to numerous power centers.”
You still don’t get it Glenn, you only believe in celebrating Freedom of Speech for exponents of an extremely narrow set of politically correct, Far-Left ideals. What is so offensive about the objections you and that claque of fair-weather friends of Freedom of Speech have raised is the way that you’ve posthumously excommunicated Charlie Hebdo. CH was left-wing and anti-racist right up until they were murdered by Muslim terrorists at which point they retroactively became Nazis. It’s Stalinist revisionism based on the literary criticism of Al Qaeda.
Hey, feel free to give McIntyre an award, but admit to yourself, it wouldn’t really be about free speech, all you would be saying is, “I agree with you completely”
Poisoning the well is one of the more tedious fallacies. It doesn’t address — much less rebut — this: “the speech for which [McIntyre] was punished is actually unpopular in the West and offensive to numerous power centers.”
@AtheistInChief 30 Apr 2015 at 11:51 pm
Are you proposing that religion and cultural traditions are not capable of producing good results by their very nature?
If a religious or a cultural practice results in love for one’s parents, for example, are you open to accepting that practice?
I realize that non-religious and non-cultural practices are also capable of producing love for one’s parents. So if you suggest that one doesn’t need religion or a culture to cause a person to love his/her parents, you will be right, but what if a religious/cultural practice does produce this? Are you willing to accept that in this instance, you may be wrong in hating a religious/cultural practice?
This is just one example. I can produce many, many religious and cultural practices that produce good results, as they also produce bad results. At the center of it all is the human self, call it human nature, which is fully capable to doing good and bad. It depends on what it reflects.
See “Seven Patterns of the Self”, at http://www.nuradeen.com/archives/Reflections/PatternsOfSelf.htm
I was born into a secular family, was a Muslim for a while and now I am an atheist.
Seems to me that religion has a negative effect on a society. You can interpret Qur,an any way you want, and most of Islam is really Hadith and not Qur’an. There are so many Hadith that you can find one to justify almost any position or argument. In the end, what ends up happening is that certain norms that are not justified in any way other than by some religious authority end up being established in the society and impeding progress.
An example of this would be an Islamic ban on charging interest on the money you loan to others. Every society bans loan-sharking, and that is the only type of interest that existed in prophet Muhammads time. But because according to Islam Interest is Haram, entire swaths of Muslim world cannot have functional financial system to grow their economy. There is similar issue with gambling vs. taking investment risk. Now I know that some Muslims are trying to re-invent the wheel with something called la-riba banking, but that is uncertain, and there is no need for it other than few lines in quran that prohibited something 1400 years ago.
Now I am not saying that Islam is worse than other religions. I see other religions to be equally pointless. But Muslims are poorer and therefore more religious so religion is more of a drag on their societies.
Another problem with religion is that you can never settle an argument. In science there is a reality as an ultimate arbiter of truth. If there is a disagreement in science it is eventually settled with experiment. In religion the splits can only grow. When will Shia and Sunny settle their differences? When will Muslims and Christians figure out who is right? Never!
I grew up Sunni. But for the life of me I have no idea what all the big fuss is all about between Shia and Sunni. All I know is that the Sunnis killed Hassan and Hussein… 1300 years ago. And I know that the Shia have a day of repentance during Muharram. That’s it. But it seems to me that the rift is a political Middle Eastern thing. Nobody ever told me anything bad about the Shia. Then I was having a political discussion with some Sunni Arabs during my student years, and oh my God… the hatred is so deep. They can’t even be civil when talking about the Shia. It’s no wonder that Iran is so defensive. They’re surrounded by Sunnis who can’t stand them.
I meant day of mourning, not repentance. That’s how little I know about this whole Shia Sunni business. I think most Muslims are unaware of the details, but in the Middle East, it’s obviously a blood feud.
In our Sufi group, about 60% of the people are Sunnis, 40% are Shias, and there are also a few Buddhists and Christians.
The Buddhists join us when we gather for Sufi singing (called, dhikr, or Remembrance)
The Sunnis and the Shias pray together. If the imam is a Sunni the Shias pray like him, but if the imam is a Shia, the Sunnis pray like him.
How have we managed to do that?
By focusing on the inner realities which are the same regardless of one’s religion or sect of a religion, while the differences are in the outer forms. Our primary focus is unity with the Infinite and purifying our self so that it moves away from its shadows (aka qualities of the lower self).
http://www.shaykhfadhlallahaeri.com/
It’s a shame that, generally speaking, there are lots and lots of religious people (leaders and ordinary people) who can’t get past their outer differences, and are in the state of dis-unity (seeing “other-ness”).
Yours sounds like a group in which the later-life Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, would have thrived. As you may know, he befriended the Dalai Lama and spent contemplative time in a Buddhist monastery.
The conservative Catholics at places like National Review who loved and lauded his book The Seven Story Mountain in the ’40s, were nonplussed when, in the ’60s, he advocated pacifism, opposed the Vietnam war and spoke out for civil rights.
@-Mona- 01 May 2015 at 5:50 pm
Many Sufi Orders have had non-Muslims in their midst.
We know that Muslims and non-Muslims gathered around ibn `Arabi.
I just finished preparing the manuscript of a book that will be published as an eBook, The Chishtis: A Living Light, by Muneera Haeri. In it are stories of Hindus who enjoyed the company and teachings of Shaykh Mu`in ud Deen Chishti (the founder of the Chishti Order) and benefited from them.
Granted, many non-Muslims would convert, but that was their choice; though the teachings of these Sufi teachers have been quite universal and recognize the validity of non-Islamic religions.
The Perennial Wisdom/Philosophy (or philosophia perennis) is “the central concept of the ‘Traditionalist School’ formalized in the writings of 20th-century thinkers René Guénon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Julius Evola, Titus Burckhardt, Martin Lings, Frithjof Schuon and Seyyed Hossein Nasr.” (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perennial_philosophy)
Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri is also a universalist and his teachings are perennial, but with a different flavor than those of, say, Rene Guénon and Frithjof Schuon; though one of his teachers of self knowledge was a Hindu, who insisted after teaching him for a few years that Fadhlalla Haeri did not convert to Hinduism and advised him to go back to Islam and teach his knowledge to the Muslims.
My personal view is that we live in the post-religion age, as I have indicated in the past, and the main demand of our age is to groom the self so that it moves away from the lower qualities, using whatever religious or non-religious, process and method one is comfortable with.
Religion is a potent thing.
Use it properly, it can bring peace, happiness, love, joy and healing of the heart.
Use it improperly, it can bring a lot of destruction and oppression.
The key is to interpret and apply it through the higher self and not the lower self.
A non-religious path, when interpreted and applied through the lower self, can also produce devastating results, while it can produce good results if it is interpreted and applied through the higher self.
Take, for example, the non-religious path called, Democracy.
It has the potential to produce both good and bad results, depending on if it is interpreted and applied through the higher or the lower self. We are seeing examples of how democracy has been hijacked by an elite. Some scholars do not believe that there’s any democracy in the U.S. They say it’s now plutocracy or oligarchy.
You could add atheism as well. If applied through the lower self, it is fully capable of producing negative results. We now we have atheists who are considered radical or fundamentalist atheists by other atheists.
The self also plays a role in interpreting the Qur’an, as described above. However, a lot of the times the Qur’an is fairly clear and when people misinterpret a verse or a few verses, one can easily see that they are examining them without regard for what else the Qur’an has stated, even in their preceding verses.
So there are inaccurate understandings of the Qur’an that the Qur’an itself corrects.
Yes, and that’s why there are things in traditional Islam (exoterically speaking) that make no sense. Instead of interpreting less authentic sources in light of the more authentic, they interpret the other way around.
Sure, but there is 1400+ years of scholarly debates on these issues. Often, certain individuals and groups present their interpretations as if theirs are the last words.
See Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl’s “Reasoning with God.”
Yes, that’s happening, but other trends in their oppositions are also happening.
That’s a valid observation.
Considering every form of interest prohibited in Islam is one of the saddest things.
But I am seeing criticism of this traditional position by a minority, such as http://www.islamicperspectives.com/RibaIntro.htm
Their are religious people who do not find their paths to be pointless and find them to be a source of joy, peace and enlightenment.
According to many Muslims, the very heart of the Islamic tradition is love; no other word adequately captures the quest for transformation that lies at this tradition’s center. So argues esteemed professor of medieval Islam William C. Chittick in this survey of the extensive Arabic and Persian literature on topics ranging from the Qur’an up through the twelfth century. Bringing to light extensive foundational Persian sources never before presented, Chittick draws on more than a thousand pages of newly translated material to depict the rich prose literature at the center of Islamic thought.
From the Amazon’s page on the book, “Divine Love: Islamic Literature and the Path to God”, by William Chittick
First of all, there’s no need to have an argument. So there is need to try to convince anyone or settle an argument. But there’s nothing wrong with sharing our thoughts and understanding each other.
Nevertheless, arguments on religion, and between religions, are primarily due to the fact that people tend to focus more on the outer forms of religions than their inner reality, which, according to the doctrine of Transcendent Unity of Religions, is the same, as all religions are different radii on the same circle that meet at the center, in the esoteric realm.
See “Transcendent Unity of Religions” by Frithjof Schuon.
Why should there be a need to settle their differences since the differences are in their outer forms, as is the case with all other religions. These are all different perspectives. The Reality is Infinite and cannot be limited to this or that outer form. If one dives into the inner reality of each religion or each denomination of the same religion, one will see nothing but unity at their center.
A Sunni or a Shia may offer their prayers differently, but their inner reality is the same. The same with forms of prayers in all religions.
“But Muslims are poorer and therefore more religious so religion is more of a drag on their societies. ”
In short religion is the opium of the poor. You are very right.
No, I’m not suggesting that religion and tradition can’t produce good results. I’m saying that most of the time, they aren’t necessary for good results. People love their parents everywhere. I don’t think tradition makes you love your parents for instance. You’d love your parents regardless of tradition/culture. In some cultures, we boast that we love our parents more, because we stay with them as adults. I would argue it’s more a product of economics and geography. People stay in their parents’ homes. They don’t build a new house and invite their parents over.
My gripe with culture and tradition is that it’s used against women and minorities.
“This is not how girls dress”
“Girls shouldn’t be biking around the neighborhood. Tell your sister we’ll break her bike next time.”
“They live in their community, and we live in ours”
“Men don’t marry men”
You can mention the good parts, and there are good parts to tradition. But it can be used as a tool to stop discussion and dialog, and keep people in their traditional place. That’s my beef with tradition and culture. It can be used to reinforce old bad ideas very effectively, as even I sometimes don’t know how to argue with it. And I argue with everything :)
Anyway Sufi. That’s just my viewpoint. I don’t hate the religious and the traditional people. I think they’re misguided. But the religions and the traditions, yes, I can’t stand them.
Well, I think you’ll be able to stand them if an interpretation and application of a religion displayed characteristics that were opposite to what you can’t stand.
One might or might not agree with Scott McIntyre’s comments but he can’t wilfully destroy his professional neutrality and expect to keep his career as a neutral journalist.
I wasn’t aware that journalists were supposed to be neutral. I thought they were supposed to tell the truth. And my understanding is that Mr. McIntyre’s tweets were factually correct. Is he supposed to lie in order to be “neutral” and acceptable enough to keep his job? Are all the journalists with jobs lying to maintain their neutrality?
Agreed. Every journalist who wears an American flag pin should be fired immedieately, including this Wall Street Journal fellow: http://www.poynter.org/uncategorized/2377/why-i-wear-an-american-flag-pin/
As an Australian I support McIntyre and say let’s dump Turnbull!
I don’t watch much of the idiot box, but was watching ABC “news” and saw Dick Cheney defending “enhanced interrogation” with not even a peep of a question from the news talking heads.
Establishment journalism is a waste of time & money in my opinion.
Heroes and villains are to be found on all sides, but a wise man exercises his conscience to determine whom he serves. ” Humanity and empathy should raise us above becoming our masters honed hound” Unfortunately so many of us allow our fears and insecurity to gag us, our need to be a good person blurs our vision and fantasy becomes much more comfortable for our consciences to live with. Many good people serve bad causes, but not many bad people serve good causes until organisations have power and influence. Corporate values espouse strength and competition not care and concern, these are the true corrosive dogmas of our age. Warfare and competition are two sides of the “Win,Win” salesman’s pitch. Not the co-operation and sharing that filled so much of human existence prior to the last 3 millenia. Looking at the people within to determine their humanity must be the right course of action !
Real World TI: Where is Benito? This seems like the sort of thing he could help me with ~ Nic
/////////INERCEPT////////////
………bzzzzzt sputter…….
Ground Control: This ‘presentation’ of Hebdo conflating w/co-opting PEN awards IMO was garbled from the GG (Get-Go) ;) #BenitoeNoShow™ ~ [Redacted]
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Here’s Worzel with a quick reminder:
“My policy for retaining credibility is two-fold: 1. Refrain from making controversial or obscure claims where I don’t have support for them, and 2. When the fair evidence shows I’ve erred, I admit it. In order to adhere to #1 I must be reasonably well-informed on a topic or issue, and if I’m not, I don’t opine on it.” ~ mona
™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KSOMA3QBU0&index=5&list=RD7RMQksXpQSk
She’s a beast …..I call her Karma ;)
I don’t know what I’m more confused by, your posts, or the fact that everyone else seems to respond to your posts as if it’s all perfectly clear. I mean this as an observation and not in a snide way, but I have no idea what you’re saying. Perhaps there’s a language barrier going on.
Ground control is manned by different personnel. I’m afraid the only way to untangle this particular intercept would be to wait until he/shePutty is on duty again. perhaps if you imagine the first line:
bssssszzzzt sputttter from the field: Where is Benito? This seems like the sort of thing he could help me with……….
crackle shhhhh sputbzt from ground control: This ‘presentation’ of Hebdo conflating w/co-opting PEN awards IMO was garbled from the GG (Get-Go) ;)
™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™
#BenitoeNoShow™
™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™
If that is not clear this is going to be a long show (which was over until you blew me a kiss…… please….. I’m waiting for Craig… now let me lurk)
P.S the language barrier is all yours….. Kindly get to grips with my pigeonholed english London twang.
Toodle pip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoxsJtvcIHM
Now I can’t tell if you’re just genuinely weird or if this is an Adorabella wink-wink-nudge-nudge “only we get it, guys” in-joke. You appear to be name-dropping all over the place but none of it makes a damn bit of sense, so perhaps you are genuinely weird whilst engaging in wink-wink nudge-nudge in-jokes. I applaud your possible weirdo-ness, while I am put off by your possible cliquishness. Then again, it’s entirely possible that your native language is Taushiro and the syntax just doesn’t translate well to English vocabulary. Carry on.
Nice Kiss Blowing…. Welcome to the Club.
I’ll look you up Nic…. You’d have had to have read me for a while. I’m a Fringe Whacko Leftist who supports the killing of Jews by not displaying outrage at mona’s bigotry. #AskCraigSummers
I was asked to read your post…. Quoted the last line back… and the response was as above, just before I nodded off.
Get with the program Girlfriend!
If you are an American telling me how to speak English expect swear words.
Only the queens english round ‘ere Guv’….. wiv’ some spellin’ corkers thrown in for grand measure sweet cheeks.
Check out the vid and song in this little puppy (from the same [Redacted] source) LINK:
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/05/01/how-did-i-miss-coyote-takes-manhattan-rubio-leads-primary-160206
lastly refer to this: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/30/cowardly-firing-australian-tv-journalists-highlights-west-religion/#comment-128285 which is below.
Different Nic allert….
(Starts shouting, waves hands wildly in front of your face.)
I…. AM… NIC!! DO… YOU… UNDERSTAND? HELLO?…. Um… ABLA… (Flips through Google translate)… ENGLISH?!?!? DO YOU HAVE CAKE?! HELLO!!”.
I tried so hard to communicate in a sensitive way, but I’ve decided that through no fault of my own it’s hopeless. Although everyone else here either understands you or responds as if they do, so either they do or it’s a running joke a la the talking baby that no one comments on in Family Guy. Well, best to you, my Swahilian friend.
I had tunnel vision at the time of reply. Pardon my French: Cheeks etc.
I have been Worzel Gummidge/FrankyGoesToHollywood. Got stuck in the spam Vortex #AskMona.
No worries Nic.. I can’t exclude because I’m an outsider… Like you?
“Where is Benito? This seems like the sort of thing he could help me with.” ~ Green Nic
Clique?
Take Care
Rowan Park
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0v0Sy1HMUDg
I… AM… NIC. HE….LLO!! WHERE… IS… CAKE? KUCHEN? PASTIS? TEISEN? KAGE? CIASTO? PASTEL?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
“You don’t say this on [Anzac Day] Memorial Day.” –star jones
“I think right now one should have some respect for the murdered victims so I do have my reservations about Greenwald’s approach to this..” -nic
`nic..
My take on your sentiment, was that it was similar to Ms Jones, in that she wasn’t against having the freedom to express your opinions, just not on the said day (Memorial). I interpreted your statement in the same context. That you’re all for ‘free speech’, just not at this time when the atrocity was still current. If I’ve misrepresented your feelings.. I sincerely apologize..
ps.. Kudos to your “ginger snap” analogy.. (.. it helped this g.e.d. addled foolio see the ‘cupcake through the cream-cheese frosting!!)
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/30/cowardly-firing-australian-tv-journalists-highlights-west-religion/#comment-128281
Thanks for the kudos, I always like food analogies. I was kind of stalking barncat on that one but I get a little OCD when people say things that don’t make sense to me. I would find it much easier to accept if someone gave me an extremely unlikely but logically consistent explanation involving aliens and low probability evidence that, hey, was still subjectively compelling to them; than accepting that they’re giving me an answer that just doesn’t make sense. That drives me a special kind of bonkers.
As to my comment, I think this is actually the same topic in the other direction – separating the content of speech from the ideal of free speech. Obviously, if the only acceptable ‘free speech’ stance is for everyone to go around opining “Everything everyone says is awesome and totally acceptable at all times!”, then that’s not free speech, because that very statement itself becomes a sort of mandatory script that everyone is compelled to believe in. So I see no contradiction between having a personal opinion on what others say while at the same time supporting free speech (although in my case, I’ve never claimed to support it to an absolute degree – I think there are cases where speech should be limited, but that’s kind of tangential to this comment).
Maybe it’s like talking about free will. Those conversations always end in disarray because of the vocabulary involved. Immediately, one side always starts going “Dude, whatever, clearly I’ve already won this argument because you just said that you “decided” to talk about this because you “wanted” to”, and then the other goes “No no, those are just words you have to use but who decided to decide and…”
That’s why it’s better to talk about cookies.
Wasn’t that long ago that global leaders flew to Paris to march for free speech. They were marching for your right to say and believe what they tell you to.
Thanks Glen,your article is a delight!Lucid,clear and with philosopical insights.
Yes, let us celebrate our World War I heroes, at least, in a realistic way. Coram Nobis Late-Nite Theater presents “My Forgotten Man,” from “Gold Diggers of 1933.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzMy7-7WV44
Because it’s always so glorious how we treat them when they return home.
Nothing better has been made about that war than “Paths of Glory”. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paths_of_Glory – with some effort I think you can find clips of the entire movie on Youtube.
Indeed. And “Oh, What A Lovely War” isn’t bad either as a WWI anti-war pic, as is the French-language film “A Very Long Engagement.” I put up the Forgotten Man number as a rare example of sorrow for the returned veterans’ plight. Commemorating the dead and neglecting the people who did your gov’t’s bidding is an ugly example of official hypocrisy, as Glenn touched on here.
AQ on the WF,and Westfront 1918,a German film are great also.
Speaking of state-funded media, I just read on twitter that PBS killed the documentary “Citizen Koch” to appease the Koch brothers.
I did too. Not having cable for years, and then having slowww internet for years left me thinking of the NPR of old – before any commercials and little tax-dollar extortion. Not so any more. Btw, your link to the NPR “National Security Journalist” Dina Temple-Raston video was a much appreciated reminder of how far they’ve fallen, as well as GG’s counter-interrogative skills.
/////////////////Award for Trying////////////////////////
“….as well as Glenn Stonewalld’s counter-interrogative skills” ~ Sillyputty (lightly edited for production value)
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
silly point (plural silly points)
(cricket) A fielding position, on the off side, square of the batsman’s wicket, and very near the batsman; a fielder in this position.
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
“how far they’ve fallen…..” ~ tehPutty
SrawWallin’
A How’s That! Leg Before Wicket Production?
I don’t like Base Ball…………. I LoveINT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2Ey-h-KUXA
Funk`off..
https://youtu.be/WMPM1q_Uyxc
#thedongerneedrhythm
`omazine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4Bda6_usuc
Mr `Sophisticated
Don’t Flapjack with my Angel Heart™
`-maz
I’ll see your ‘Phunk’, and raise you some ‘Groove’..
https://youtu.be/etviGf1uWlg
#thedongerneedheart
`maz [duly noted, `mazetro]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJVQJ4-n_cA&feature=youtu.be&t=27
{my emphasis, was either that or the hand shake at end…..Just for you….is it Cindy?}
#thedongergotrhythm&heart
“Chlorpromazine
For some reason the Intercept will not allow my response to post. Who knows why? Possibly when you mention “sillyputty”, the Intercept automatically sends posts to Home Improvements sites(?). Oh well – on another thread in the future.” ~ CraigSummersi
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/11/iranians-talked-much-sunday-morning-tv-never-heard/#comment-122833 ~ Ship Improvement
“You are starting to give away your political position. This was very typical of sillyputty who began posting in a similar fashion. He became obsessed with “labels” correcting people he disagreed with politically, but never people he cherished like Greenwald. He protected the bigotry of Mona while dwelling on labels – specifically “far left, fringe left, extreme left” etc., but never said a word about Mona’s use of Zionists as a slur, “fascists”, or Greenwald using “Far right”. So it became pretty clear his political bend – just as you are exposing your own. I don’t owe any explanation to you under any circumstance, but I still enjoy your posts.
I enjoyed the conversation.” Summersi
You are a fucking fraud, Chloromazinalithapod
“Chlorpromazine
For some reason the Intercept will not allow my response to post. Who knows why? Possibly when you mention “sillyputty”, the Intercept automatically sends posts to Home Improvements sites(?). Oh well – on another thread in the future.” ~ CraigSummers
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/11/iranians-talked-much-sunday-morning-tv-never-heard/#comment-122833 ~ Tight-Ship Improvements™
“I enjoyed the conversation” ~ CS
“You are a fucking fraud, Chloromazinalithapod” ~ CS
For Carig Only
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1ATFedwjnk
Always here for you Craig….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT0iQRjHbW4
I’ll be voting Labour..
My Karma has just run over my Dogma ;)
Wow. Gotta love Glenn’s slash-and-burn agi-prop. He writes:
“In the U.S. the “liberal” NPR is, not coincidentally, the most extreme media outlet for prohibiting any expressions of views that deviate from convention…”
Convention=stuff Glenn disagrees with. Glenn=God (though a very silly God).
Agitprop is the dissemination of propaganda through the arts.
Yes, e.g., American Sniper.
To be honest, the violence of the muslim world upon the west and the violence of the west upon the muslim world isn’t even comparable.
The west fears an existential threat, while actively embodying that very role for many people in the muslim world – by wiping them off the face of the earth here and now. Claiming that ‘our violence is justified, and theirs is not’ implies that the violence perpetrated by both is comparable in terms of scale, reach and damage done.
Frankly it’s not. The west isn’t ‘just as civilised, just as peaceful or just as non-violent’ as the muslim world. By these standards, the west is less civilised, less peaceful and more violent. But then again, I’m violating the central tenant of tribal superiority – its not a societal truth that a life lost in the west is equal to a life lost in the muslim world. Oops.
I know this doesn’t bring the two sides any closer together, but this self-awareness needs to exist!
Maybe it would be more constructive not to see the west/the muslim world as an extension of your identity as an individual. Or better yet, lets actively refuse to honour these battle lines at all.
The PM isn’t helping the solemnity of the occasion with that manic look on his face. I can just picture what he might be saying to Harry: ” … fair dinkum, and I shagged that sheila out behind the station, and just to show ya how patriotic I am, it was by the billabong under the shade of a coolibah tree. And her name was Matilda.”
Too right!
Ha, for being the most delicate and sensitive nation on the planet, Australia is gonna be really big. Having China as their most important tradingpartner, interesting times are on the way. You can bet they will teach the chinese a fine lesson in humidity.
“My Nazi regalia is better than yours”was reportedly heard but not verified at press time.
I see Glenn is taking a lot of shit on social media for being an Islam apologist. See, this is the problem with leftie politics. By an overwhelming ratio, the progressives end up in the history books as the noble heroes and snuggly good guys. Pretty much without exception when it comes to widening circles of compassion – rarely does anyone say “You know, after all that fighting and strife, I actually think it was pretty sucky of progressives to give more rights to women, minorities, and other groups facing societal prejudice” or “You know, I think this human rights stuff is bullshit. I wish we still had dungeons and the rack.”
Everyone loves progressives seeeeew much in hindsight, and yet it sucks so much to be them in realtime. For one thing, they advocate letting your guard down for the sake of not being so mean to this other person, who is not you, and quite frankly, that doesn’t always sound like such a good deal. Because for another thing, the reward one gets for that in the present moment is to be called a scumbag by one’s societal peers.
So after thinking about it, what I need is a way to be a progressive about now… but not, you know, now. Too much unpleasantness. Like in the future. I would like to sign up to be a progressive about 2015 starting in 2032-ish.
Where is Benito? This seems like the sort of thing he could help me with.
Exactly. Once the War is over and the intel agencies have been curtailed and the gays have the biggest wedding cakes ever, then it’s “progressive time.”
Until then, keep your head down.
Cake?! I’m so there.
Everyone agrees that the state should not discriminate, but those weary of state violence do not agree that the state shoukd force individuals to not discriminate.
If I were, like you, an incurable optimist, I would place myself in suspended animation for 15 years so I could awaken and bask in the progressive paradise of the future.
However, since I’m convinced that the future will be indescribably worse than the present, I will simply try to enjoy each day to the fullest, and not worry too much about things that I can’t control.
Welcome to Tony Abbot’s Australia Glenn. This is nothing compared to the long string of offenses committed by this government.
WHERE ARE THE ASIO/ASIS/ASD SNOWDEN DOCS?!
The Ministers are all democratically elected individuals, whereas journalists are unelected individuals who have a far less standing in society. So firing this guy was the right thing to do. The people there elect leaders who live up to the high values and standards for which the island was founded ;-)
I recommend this film
Here is John Pilger talking about it.
https://vimeo.com/79398619
Ye-Ha !
tehGeneral
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZwsYoCgMvs
Exactly what country is this sentiment true in? I’d like to know of one country where people think journalists have less standing than elected officials.
As someone who grew up in a third world dictatorship, I can guarantee you that everybody considers their “minister” a thief. And everybody knows the names of the journalists who the government does not like.
General Hercules is an imitation of Benito M. So don’t take him too seriously.
I just realized he was kidding. Joke’s on me. I take myself too seriously sometimes.
Say what?
rrheard writes
That’s close to my view. I strongly believe that satirical intellectual magazines do good when they lampoon harmful and preposterous religious dogma. (Not the bullshit crap about Islam spewed by Robert Spencer or Pam Geller, and not the inanities Xtian fundamentalist hurl about Roman Catholics.)
Religion — large and orthodox religion — is a huge and powerful force. It does not stop being that just because, in the case of Islam, most adherents have been subjected to Western imperialism.
Think of the young gay person, made aware that there are writers who say being gay is normal; it’s ok and they are not, in fact, hellbound or crazy. Just so, people struggling within the smothering confines of oppressive religion need intellectually respectable sources showing them the thing they so fear is actually toothless bullshit. I am not willing to forego that crucial assistance to whatever percentage of the world’s 1.7 billion Muslims, including those in France, would benefit from it. Nor am I willing to give aid and succor to the Arab dictators who love piling on Charlie Hebdo.
The religion editor of Charlie Hebdo, Zineb El Rhazoui, who strenuously defends her magazine, is an atheist Arab women who has abandoned Islam,(but who ardently supports, e.g., Palestinians, as did Charb). She has written movingly to one CH critic thus about Arabs in France (in so-so translation from French):
My heart goes out to Zineb El Rhazoui. She is deserted by those who should be her allies, all because a PEN award makes David Frum happy.
Indeed. See my words, and those of Zineb El Rhazoui, above.
Glenn’s position pains me. He knows that. We’ve discussed this at great length privately. My position also does not please him. I’ll leave the rest I have to say between he and I.
@Mona
My sympathies are with Ms. El Rhazoui, and I’m no expert on Morocco, but I’ll disagree with her in one way. I don’t think most Muslims suffer from the “terrors of theocracy in their countries of origin.” Most Muslims suffer from poverty, and insufferably corrupt governments. Saudi Arabia and other countries with Royal families are an exception. In those countries, the implementation of Islam, in whatever form, plays a big part. But I’m not sure anybody would consider Sisi of Egypt to be equivalent to a religious cleric. But Sisi’s govt doles out death penalties willy nilly, because that’s what corrupt govts that want to stay in power through force do. In Egypt, you don’t have to draw a picture of Muhammad to get the death penalty, you can look at a police officer wrong, and that can be that.
I understand the force that one feels to ridicule religion, believe me. The execution of religion can be so demonstrably cruel, that the desire to do away with it completely can be quite strong, and so I sympathize. But I would have greater sympathy for her position, if CH depicted a bullet ridden Al Sisi, or a bullet ridden king of Saudi Arabia, instead of a bullet ridden Muhammad. Now that would be daring. Maybe then the Egyptian and Saudi representatives would have missed the Paris march.
In quite literally the same breath in which Sisi, for opportunistic reasons, condemned the attack on Charlie Hebdo, according to the Christian Science Monitor this happened:
And how do you know CH has never attacked Mubarek, Sisi or the Saudis? And this:
I believe you are conflating that with the cover depicting a Muslim Brotherhood man trying to shield a Sisi bullet with a Qu’ran. This cartoon is published and explained here: http://www.understandingcharliehebdo.com/#tuerie-en-
The two are not at all mutually exclusive, and in fact can be complementary. I believe Ms. El Rhazoui, and I believe my close college friend, Yasmin, who was raised in the U.S. in a strict Sunni family (that had fled Saddam Hussein in the 70s) When she was 19 I helped her move out and away from the extreme control her father sought to exert over her in the name of their religion. (Last I heard from her, she was a bisexual atheist. She was also the first person to stick a pin in my then-ardent Zionism.)
Religion is a huge and oppressive force in many lives. Safe space for mocking it, for rendering it a paper tiger, is valuable; those who provide it in the face of credible and serious threats, are deeply brave. They have my admiration, respect and gratitude.
Thanks for the link. My dispute with the explanation of that cartoon would be calling “Muslim Brotherhood” militants. I thought they were democratically elected. Maybe they should have drawn Al Sisi and called him a militant.
Also, your friend’s predicament seems to emanate from her father’s warped ideas. I doubt they came from Saddam, as crazy as he was. In Muslim countries, the problems that individuals face, come from society, from fathers, from mothers, brothers and sisters and friends. There are few Muslim countries ruled by theocracies. The problems that Gay people face in Russia are not a product of religion, although one can argue that it’s Putin’s way of sucking up to the religious communities. But I find that difficult to believe as the numbers of religious Russians, doesn’t seem to be high enough for Putin to go on a crusade against Gays. The problems that minorities face in any society stem from the conservative traditional norms. Religion is used to exert and enforce those traditions, and it’s a terrible tool, I agree. But it’s a tool that is used to reinforce backwards tradition that already exists. I don’t know if there are any edicts against homosexuality in Hinduism, or Buddhism, but I’m pretty sure a Buddhist or Hindu Gay person is not going to have it easy, just because they don’t live under a theocracy.
So my point is, that while there are no redeeming qualities that I can find in religion, the idea that religion is the cause, and not the excuse, to me is a bit misleading.
But to get back to the subject, okay, I don’t know if CH ridicules the Saudi King or not, but I don’t see why ridiculing the Muslim Brotherhood and not Al Sisi, is so commendable that it deserves some sort of literary award.
AiC and Baldie McEagle
They are ridiculing the idea that a religious text is going to save you. You have no idea, as you admit, whether and what they have said about Sisi, Mubarek or the Saudis. The backlash against them is focusing on a few covers, considered out of context of French events and politics.
But even if they don’t mock those regimes enough to suit you, they remain very brave and are not racist or Islamophobic. I’ll give you more from Ms. El Rhazoui:
That woman’s experience is authentic, as authentic as the women and men who remain happy Muslims. There needs to be intellectual space for those like her, as there was for those of us who had safe space back when Catholicism had its grip.
Charlie Hebdo provides that space, and as a consequence a dozen of their staff were slaughtered in a bloodbath.
It is unfathomable to me that progressive people of good faith would begrudge them recognition.
They didn’t, and I wasn’t implying the religious rigidity came from Saddam. But she gave me to understand her father’s conservative religiosity was not at all unusual, that she was hardly unique.
No it’s not unusual at all. I’ll give you two stories about how f’ed up tradition and custom is.
1. A childhood friend of mine invited me over, when I went back home for a visit. During the visit I was having dinner with her parents, when I became acutely aware for the first time that her father might be gay. And I realized, that that was the life of gay people in closed societies. You grow up, you get married, and you and your spouse both suffer, because of society and tradition, and religion.
2. My left handed cousin, who plays sports with his left hand, throws the ball with his left hand, writes with his right hand. When I as a little kid, mentioned to my mother how this was strange, she said that my aunt thought that his left handedness was the work of Satan, and beat him until he learned to write with his right hand. My aunt had a masters level education.
Yes, backwardness, intolerance, homophobia, other bs phobias are all a product of culture and tradition, and it’s everywhere in poorly educated societies. It’s everywhere. It’s hardly unique, as your friend says. But it’s probably a product of our own superstitions, exacerbated by religion. It cannot be a product of just religion, as it exists in all kinds of societies. The only antidote is more education. Become like the Scandinavians.
Cheers Mona.
BTW Mona, my Atheism is two pronged. I hate religion. But I equally detest culture and tradition, and any mention of it. I think these take equal blame for most unnecessary human suffering.
I don’t hate religion or tradition, per se. Both can have adaptive advantages for human society. But both can mutate into really bad shit, and also outlive their usefulness.
Also, it is difficult to simultaneously maintain respect for other people’s superstitions and supernatural beliefs when our health and any meaningful justice system depend on tossing that out and exchanging it for for empiricism. (Whether I have blocked arteries or am on trial for a felony, I don’t want the solution to come from examining the entrails of a goat.) In a live-and-let-live society the non-believers and believers must live respectfully together, but that’s a task inherently filled with tension.
So, we must tolerate religion and even let it flourish, as people choose. But there must also be outlets for those harmed by it. Sanctuaries, some of them intellectual.
“if CH depicted a bullet ridden Al Sisi, or a bullet ridden king of Saudi Arabia, instead of a bullet ridden Muhammad. Now that would be daring. ”
Exactly. Cartoons depicting, say, the Catholic Church raping the peasantry is no longer interesting or dangerous, but it might have had its time and place when it was. Attacking institutions, public figures, and power structures, even if they are in retreat, is what satire is for.
And Piss Christ, for example, was hardly an attack on Jesus, nor was it offense for offense’ sake.
Sister Wendy had some interesting reflections on Piss Christ. She understood, albeit in an interesting way. “Magaziney.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9pAKdkJh-Y
@ Mona
Okay Mona, I appreciate your response substantively. As I said, I’m no friend of organized religion largely for the same reasons you are. But here’s my point, and I’d hope we could agree on this as a function of reality–religion for better or worse, is a) not in all circumstances an unadulterated human “evil” (I don’t think I need to illustrate some examples of the “good” things people of faith have done for humanity in terms of human rights in addition to all the bad), b) billions of people all over the globe do in fact find value in their faith on a day to day basis, and c) because of a) and b) people of many faiths are highly protective of their icons, symbols and rituals (for obvious reasons those things are “core” to those peoples’ sense of “faith” and “community” or “church”.
Because we can likely agree that a), b), and c) are in fact true, my personal opinion has always been blaspheming for blaspheming’s sake is counterproductive when it comes to criticizing religion. I don’t agree that in a pluralistic society, particularly in the West, blasphemy should ever been criminalized or met with violence. Neither do I believe desecration of a faith’s icons, symbols and rituals should be done for the purpose of inflaming or thumbing the secular law or our “individual rights” in people of faiths faces, primarily because it is counterproductive.
If the point of blasphemy via desecration of a faith’s icons, symbols and rituals is counterproductive, and doesn’t in fact directly address the actions or doctrine that drives the faithful’s actions we disapprove of, I find it largely pointless and gratuitous.
I’d like to think that if you, me or Charlie Hebdo want to critique some aspect of another’s faith or any actions its adherents engage in, there are myriad other rhetorical, artistic, literary, legal and socially constructive ways that are more productive of change in a religious person’s worldview or mindset than mocking or desecrating the symbols and rituals of the faithful. And of course we are free to debate and agree to disagree that Charlie Hebdo’s satirical depictions of the prophet are high and important political or anti-religious art. But again, my point, is that if Charlie Hebdo are such satirical geniuses I find it difficult to believe they couldn’t have made any point they wanted to about Islam or the prophet without employing depictions of the prophet such that some sub-faction of the Muslim faithful would take great if not violent offense.
Again, I’ll never see how it is so “courageous” to make art depicting the cross in piss, or offensive characterizations of the prophet or Jesus or whatever when there are other means or artistic avenues that are less offensive to make the same point. But I concede that is simply my aesthetic preference. But to be clear, I believe in my heart and as a legal matter that blasphemy should always be permitted and never met with violence. But I don’t think that should be mutually exclusive (so long as billions of people find incredible value in “faith” and its symbols, icons and rituals) with showing just a basic modicum of deference to our fellow human beings core symbols from which they derive value.
That’s why I’ve been trying to analogize it understanding the real world implications of someone insulting my mother or hypothetically having the desire for whatever reason the demean or mock my mother in satire or art. While I would never want it to be legally permitted that I can take violent action against anyone who would choose to do so, I hope that you can understand how “human” an impulse it is to defend that which is closest to our hearts and our understanding of the world around this. I would never defend the actions of the individuals who murdered the Charlie Hebdo employees. I would never defend the religious dogma or doctrine or their understanding of the faith that drove them to do it. In fact I’d criticize it directly on the merits and anyone who adhered to it. But as a human being, I also understand how personal it can be to some, and while I never approve of it, I understand to one degree or another what could drive someone to violence over what they perceived as pointless personal desecration or mockery of our most sacred beliefs.
Finally, and as I’ve stated repeatedly, I absolutely support Charlie Hebdo’s right to do what they did. And I’m not trying to blame the victims in any way. The blame is on the murderous individuals, on their misunderstanding or debasement of their own faith’s doctrines, and the failure of their religious leaders to create a faith that can tolerate, non-violently, direct rhetorical or artistic attacks on their symbols.
But what I also believe, is that it is Charlie Hebdo was reckless in not taking every humanly available step to protect themselves and their employees from violence that they had very good reason to believe could result as a result of their exercise of their right to “free speech”. I guess at base, I believe “free speech” is both a right and an obligation–the obligation being to use it in the most effective and productive way available to achieve any given end. Because I can almost guarantee you Mona, that so long as there are humans on this globe there is going to be religion. And if we want to coexist with the billions of our human brothers and sisters on the planet who find and place great value on their faith and its symbols, we as the critics of religions, and the absurdly underwhelming minority of human beings on the globe, should pick our battles wisely and employ the tools that are most effective and productive of change in the mindset of the religious.
So what’s going to happen to Mr. McIntyre now? He’s in sportscasting. Is he supposed to find some other kind of job or what?
What bullshit. Depriving a man of his livelihood because he said something. These people are crazy.
Feed the tiger, expect to be eaten.
Glenn, you’re using the word “Anzac” incorrectly in several places.
These and other places are incorrect usage. Anzac, as I’m sure you know stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. Aussie and NZ troops are known as “Anzacs.” But nobody would say:
“…rather than criticism of, Anzac.”
It’s just not used like that. “…rather than criticism of Anzacs” would be okay (although in that sentence it would more likely be “…rather than criticism of Australia’s military.”).
And this:
“…given the realities of Anzac’s conduct…”
If you’re going to use it like that, it should be “Anzacs’ conduct.” But again, the point really is australian military in general, so even using the word at all here is a bit weird.
There are other spots, too. Just to note. (Also just to note, I’m American, live in Australia, and I showed “…rather than criticism of, Anzac” to my Aussie wife. She wrinkled her nose.)
Please ignore “These and other places are incorrect usage” in second graf. I forgot to edit that out.
Good riddance to the guy.
Implying anyone who disagrees with him on his war stance is a ” poorly-read, largely white, nationalist drinkers and gamblers” is reason alone for any organization to ditch the guy. And accusations of “WIDESPREAD rape” when you can only cite a single instance, is libelous.
As much as I’d like to be outraged, I can completely see where the SBS is coming from on this one in not wanting to be associated with the guy.
I’ve been to Australia. He’s right on the money. Crocodile Dundee isn’t a real person, you know.
I have friends in Australia and they’re normal people like anywhere else. But actually, Crocodile Dundee was inspired by a real person:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_Ansell
So he exaggerated on twitter. Big deal. Our shock jocks and commentators say much worse things on air or in the papers, and if they get in trouble, the government tries to change the law to get them off.
For me the worst thing is that he was sacked for something he said on his time off. These social media policies that people are forced to sign up for if they want a job are a real intrusion on peoples privacy and free speech.
If you want to piss off people, piss on their parade and do it in sound bites rather than through a comprehensive argument.
I don’t disagree with the brief sentiments expressed, but have no time for the way in which they were presented. Whatever the rights and wrongs of ceremonies like ANZAC day, for some it is a sacred commemoration and an attack on it at the time it is happening will be seen in much the same way as speaking ill of the deceased at a funeral.
Public, private, it all means very little in the current Western world of corporatism and militarism, since the corrupted establishment of the 5-eyes alliance is a merging of a supine government/media with multinational corporations; it is a self-protective clique of planetary looting whose goal is to marginalize all other voices, legitimate or not.
Notice how Alan Grayson attacks the TPP while simultaneously promoting the corporatist “oil train” idiot Warren Buffet.
Notice how Hillary Clinton’s vague remarks in her stupid book have been presented as defying Obama and agreeing with the populist Warren.
Notice how Bernie Sanders will not criticize the military-industrial complex.
Notice how the Freedom Act is promoted as “the best we can expect,” even by otherwise brilliant individuals.
Notice how Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Elizabeth Warren all promote the corrupted version of Zionism which too heavily influences the US.
Notice how even brilliant individuals think Obama’s deal with Iran should be viewed outside the obvious fact that it is still centered around the full spectrum dominance of the transnationally corporatist “US” establishment.
We are being played by people who can fool even the best of us, which is why they keep winning.
The TPP is wrong. I felt I should clarify that. The theater surrounding it is laughable, however. Well, it should be.
After the dust has settled it’ll be “Well, we tried…” from the hand-wringing characters, just like it’s been with torture and surveillance etc. They haven’t really tried to stop corporatism or militarism, any of them. And they won’t. The transnational corporate interests which own the US establishment always win, partly because people continue to not see that the debates around the establishment are charades to mimic deliberation while they really always ultimately facilitate corruption.
We have reached a similar condition in the USA. To criticize the American military, in the eyes of the government’s watchdogs, is synonymous with treason. We are encouraged to be effusive in our praise of “their service” and patriotism. Truth be told, in a volunteer military, most are serving because it’s a job which pays
And there’s a word for a person who fights in a military type organization for money–9 letters starts with an “m” and ends with a “y”.
Or as Major General Smedley Butler accurately put it:
Actually, it’s spelled “career officer.” But I suppose that’s debatable.
Great article. Spot on Glenn – who speaks about this? where are other journalists? scared and intimidated.
“Driving while journalist,” right?
“Just by the way, bestowing McIntyre with a free expression award would be actually meaningful and would take actual courage, since the speech for which he was punished is actually unpopular in the West and offensive to numerous power centers. That is when defenses of free speech are most meaningful: when the prohibited speech is most threatening to, and thus most maligned by, those who wield the greatest power.”
Lol, have we reached “Peak Greenwald”?
Those who *fired* a journalist wielded “greater” power than those poor, oppressed, brutalized, marginalized French Muslim brothers of Algerian descent – who murdered a dozen people for the huge crime of a blasphemous depiction of the so-called prophet of Islam – did?
The power centers of the establishment are obviously a much greater dominance culturally and violently than any marginalized group, criminal or not.
Incidentally, having read Angel Heart (a brilliant novel), I feel an urge to mention that your name is an attempt to appear boldly but subliminally ‘satanic.’ In the book, the devil was Louis Cypher (Lucifer), and your choice of onscreen name is of course a “peak diabolism” geared only to disturb.
(A “yeah I’m 25, bite me” production.)
“The power centers of the establishment are obviously a much greater dominance culturally and violently than any marginalized group, criminal or not.”
Completely irrelevant. Awards are given for *specific* acts, and honor *specific* events. To claim that firing some journalist is “wielding greater power” than murdering a dozen people is ludicrous.
Nick Cohen pre-emptively answered Greenwald’s dumb whataboutery here (which is not really that hard, mind you: Greenwald is the most predictable person ever):
“Prose, Carey, the London Review of Books and so many others agree with Islamists first demand that the world should have a de facto blasphemy law enforced at gunpoint. Break it and you have only yourself to blame if the assassins you provoked kill you
They not only go along with the terrorists from the religious ultra-right but with every state that uses Islam to maintain its power. They can show no solidarity with gays in Iran, bloggers in Saudi Arabia and persecuted women and religious minorities across the Middle East, who must fight theocracy. They have no understanding that enemies of Charlie Hebdo are also the enemies of liberal Muslims and ex-Muslims in the West. In the battle between the two, they have in their stupidity and malice allied with the wrong side.
Most glaringly they have failed to understand power. It is not fixed but fluid. It depends on where you stand. The unemployed terrorist with the gun is more powerful than the Parisian cartoonist cowering underneath his desk. The marginal cleric may well face racism and hatred – as my most liberal British Muslim friends do – but when he sits in a Sharia court imposing misogynist rules on Muslim women in the West, he is no longer a victim or potential victim but a man to be feared.
When I read the literary attacks on PEN’s award to Hebdo, I wondered whether it was worth staying on the middle-class left. Prose’s piece on its own was enough to make me leave in disgust. It seems a corrupted, cowardly, lying and selfish movement bereft on any spirit of camaraderie; and dishonest to its bones.”
I shall dismiss your view as easily as you dismiss mine, Miss Satan. Nick Cohen is not thinking this thru. And neither are you.
No biggie, dear. Feel perfectly free to continue living on the ludicrous Planet Greenwald, where Muslims are *always* powerless victims – even when they murder dozens – and hundreds – and thousands.
Feel free to continue being ridiculous!
Dear.
Louise Cypher… on the other planet where muslims are not ™Always™ powerless victims… how powerful are they ‘as a group’?
Quick hypothetical quiz question: If I’m a Flapjack what does that make you?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJvCI9NT9M8
Link only for Cindy. Everybody else go away.
@Louise Cypher 30 Apr 2015 at 5:56 pm
No biggie, dear. Feel perfectly free to continue living on the ludicrous Planet Greenwald, where Muslims are *always* powerless victims – even when they murder dozens – and hundreds – and thousands.
=============
Terrorists claiming to be Muslims have killed more Muslims than non-Muslims.
So if you want to stereotype Islam, the correct way would be to label it as the VICTIM of terrorism.
Do you see what I’m saying?
///////////////Sufi Award/////////////////////////
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtPu-EAJf6s
“Terrorists claiming to be Muslims have killed more Muslims than non-Muslims.”
Indeed. And this website is keeping count:
thereligionofpeace.com
It must be great living in a world where you can always deny that someone was *actually* a “real” Muslim, based on their actions you find disagreeable :)
@Chlorpromazine 30 Apr 2015 at 6:08 pm
///////////////Sufi Award/////////////////////////
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtPu-EAJf6s
——————
Shhh!
Don’t show these imperialist activities of the Muslims to Louise.
@Louise Cypher 30 Apr 2015 at 6:10 pm
It must be great living in a world where you can always deny that someone was *actually* a “real” Muslim, based on their actions you find disagreeable.
————–
It’s not matter of mere disagreement.
I have the primary source of Islam and 1400+ years of traditional scholarship to support me.
Read that 600+ page fatwa against terrorism I have often cited, and produce your refutation of it. We’ll see what you come up with.
That’s a great speech, and I agree with the sentiment. But you don’t mention when Glenn has ever endorsed Sharia law, or the weird British system of these Pseudo Sharia courts. Abolish these bloody courts. Glenn will only write in your favor.
The devil doesn’t wear Prada or answer?
“peak diabolism” ….. I’m LoveINT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WYgrZteSr0
Once bitten twice ;)
Angel `o-mazine
Actually, the name of the novel is “Falling Angel” (I cheated, had to look that up). The movie adaptation was titled “Angel Heart.” Since after you mentioned it I’m trying to recall if I had read that also … or, if not, had seen the movie or both. Hasn’t come to me yet. Your plot description sounds familiar.
You’re right, I saw the movie, found it compelling, then read the book. The book is stunningly well written, even if I can’t remember the title!
Thanks, by the way, Kitt, for your supportive comments. I know I have run-ins with people here, but you (and Lyra) have given me more leeway than I probably deserve, and I appreciate it because I feel a connection.
You’re welcome. It’s easy duty though. And kind of related to the “connection” point, my sister’s name is Cindy, and our mom often called her “Cindy Loo,” as I’ve noticed some here refer to you as sometimes. I’ve gotten a kick out of that.
No. In case it wasn’t clear, those with greater power are not his employers. He’s referring to governments, global elites and the most powerful military forces in the world. Granted, non-state actors can have power too, and standing up to them can be brave, but remember that what Charlie Hebdo largely does is mock people for their ethnicity and religion. It doesn’t exactly just target extremist organizations with some power. There’s a distinction there that needs to be recognized.
“largely does is mock people for their ethnicity and religion”
That is a *complete and utter* lie. Obviously, if you are still repeating it months after the Muslim-perpetrated atrocity in Paris, with all the time you had to educate yourself, you have no interest in finding out what the facts actually are.
Oh this whole thread, and your part in it, is utter manure. People don’t do stuff like the Habdo thing because they are powerful. They do it because they feel powerless to do anything else. That doesn’t excuse murder, but nor does it constitute “terrorism”, permit scathing indictments of Muslims as murderers, not constitute a reasonable (as if anything could be) cause for people rambling around saying they are Charlie Hando, nor fiercely arguing FOR increased surveillance and, yes, censorship at the same time. Either you fail to see the hypocrisy or you excuse it. Real terror now? Drones, constant surveillance, and far far far higher body counts by… wait for it… self-proclaimed Christians. Yet calling “Christians” terrorists is utterly incorrect too. Ultimately you mean “a few people” or perhaps “countries trying to fight other countries who have invaded their countries inside their countries”. Who has real Power is the one whose narrative is shrieked the loudest. Am I saying terrorism is okay (because of course calling me an apologist is probably coming)? Of course not. I AM saying you need to really consider what the word terrorism really means and how YOU would react if it were your country being invaded. People don’t like that sort of thing, and they certainly don’t like having all if their friends and families killed, especially by someone thousands of miles away in a/c guzzling RedBulls, calling them the enemy for merely going about their day to day business and wanting the same right to bear arms in their own country that you have in yours, or for that matter just hanging out with their friends drinking tea or selling stuff on a road.
Just saying.
Should I be hurt or offended that you don’t try to troll me? It’s like hoping for coal in my Xmas stocking and getting nothing instead.
Louise? Any relation to the one who shows up on Greenwald’s timeline not infrequently? Just curious, your writing style is similar.
“Those who *fired* a journalist wielded “greater” power than those poor, oppressed, brutalized, marginalized French Muslim brothers of Algerian descent – who murdered a dozen people for the huge crime of a blasphemous depiction of the so-called prophet of Islam – did?”
Um, yeah. That’s correct. Or are you one of those people who quantify power by how many corpses a person has to his or her credit?
Excellent piece Glenn. Thanks.
Bravo. Mr. McIntire. Shame on the imperial tyrants. Join the resistance. We do not forgive. We do no forget.
*chuckle*
Yeah, you go fight the power sister.
When government is purchased through corporate donorism, with corporate interests those almost exclusively served, it matters little whether media mouthpieces allegiances are to either, as they are mostly identical. Corporate media ownership produces its own censorship confluent with government propaganda, effectively state-controlled media. It was late Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who pointed this out when he was exiled to America, losing him those same media friends. Or as Neil Postman put it, we watch and approve Big Brother, by choice, as well as being watched.
Self Identification
Imagine all of your beliefs written on scrolls before you. All that you consider right and wrong committed to pen and parchment.
Now an exercise:
Now imagine yourself a Muslim. Concentrate and self identify as a Muslim. Again, make a list of your rights and wrongs.
Now compare the beliefs you now hold as Muslim to the beliefs you previously committed to paper.
The Important Part: Any differences between those two lists are your prejudices about Islam.
Think about it.
For example, if when you are not self identifying as a Muslim you don’t think that drawings of certain people should be a sin, but when you self identify as a Muslim you do think that drawings of certain people should be a sin, then this is a prejudice you have about Islam.
Unless you believe that you know the true word of God, then you must understand that this is a moral battle between secular opponents–you better want for Islam what you want for everyone else.
From Glenn’s “which the Australian government hails” link: ” … commemoration of the invasion “…to capture the Gallipoli peninsula in order to open the Dardanelles to the allied navies. The ultimate objective was to capture Constantinople (now Istanbul), the capital of the Ottoman Empire, an ally of Germany.”
That’s the cause for which the ANZAC dead gave their lives. And the ultimate outcome, if they had won that campaign? Britain and the Great Powers would have cut Turkey into pieces and awarded the pieces to themselves. This, according to the Treaty of Sèvres.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_S%C3%A8vres
What a noble cause. Of course, the postwar settlement didn’t have Atatürk in mind, so the treaty was moot, but this was what the British had in mind when they sent in the ANZACs. Truly, a selfless sacrifice.
The Treaty of Sèvres… “Everyone has a plan ’till they get punched in the mouth.” – M. Tyson
coram nobis, I appreciate your historical literacy — a rare commodity amongst the cynical, overpaid generals, politicians, and stenographers in tow.
Speaking of cynicism and how far behind the curve its celebrated practitioners are, there are some interesting articles by Robert Fisk about the Armenian genocide and the Gallipoli ceremony @ http://www.independent.co.uk/biography/robert-fisk
And famous defeats are even more sacred.
” … mindless paeans to The Troops and The Glories of War …”
One point to make, Glenn, is that these paeans and glories may make it easier to go to war, next time. Here we are, on the centennial of the War to End All Wars, and it’s worth remembering that this view of war as glorious, decisive and brief made it easier for the Great Powers to show little reluctance about mobilizing in the summer of 1914, and what made the crowds cheer as they sent off the conscripts. They’d had enough years of peace to forget their last conflicts. If, today, the leaders are rose-tinting the Great War instead of reflecting on the needless slaughter, it’s a poisonous way of national celebration.
These weeks are the centennials of the disastrous Gallipoli invasion — that’s what that ANZAC business was about — as well as the sinking of the Lusitania with 1200 civilian dead, and also Italy’s blithe entry into WWI, which threw away perhaps another million lives. My only quibble with Mr. McIntyre is that he didn’t quote from Wilfred Owen or Robert Service on just, exactly, how glorious it all was.
Tell you what, US readers, try reading “Dulce et Decorum Est” next Memorial Day weekend and watch them splutter.
>”But what is at the heart of McIntyre’s firing is the real religion of the supposedly “secular West”: mandated worship not just of its military but of its wars. The central dogma of this religion is tribal superiority: Our Side is more civilized, more peaceful, superior to Their Side.”
Good Lord Glenn … now you’ve done it! And right at the foot of the Cross!
*the tragic irony, of course, there is but ‘one’ religion if there are any at all … and that ain’t it.
Here’s a comment I made on reddit concerning this article: Free speech and democratic rights in general are increasingly under fire because the political establishment is beating the drum of war internationally. Greenwald’s defence of McIntyre is correct and principled, however, I am critical of his focus on “state-sponsored” journalism as being the main issue here, as if privately-funded journalism didn’t pose similar threats and conflicts of interests. One need not even think of such extreme cases as the Murdoch press; in my opinion, this very article’s analysis is limited in part by the author’s perspective, firstlook.org being privately funded by an altruistic millionaire.
If glenn greenwald is reading this. I wonder if he thinks it is a great time to ask that former government official running PEN if she thinks this is a time to stand up for freedom of speech even in tweet
The “Sophie’s choice” of the “Free World”.
Freedom of the press does NOT entail freedom of speech.
Gosh Darn it, Glenn. I love you. You’re on a serious tear. Good form!
The heart of the problem is concentration of power: concentration of news reporting in too few outlets regardless of how they are configured. Whether they are “non-profit” corporations, public agencies, private for-profit corporations, or partnerships, if you have only ~6 national outlets controlling all the conversation (by themselves, or through artfully branded subsidiaries) you have propaganda, not news. – FluffytheObeseCat
Well said. Regarding Glenn’s use of the word “inevitable” with respect to “how neutered state-funded media inevitably becomes” – I would (from the cheap seats) like to add that although this was a brilliantly written article and a perfect segue after the PEN/Hebdo articles and discussions on the state co-opting traditionally independent voices, the over-use of highly declarative statements will inevitably lead to a loss in readership, and therefore a more qualified and adept usage of such statements will therefore inevitably lead to a retention in readership, thus the consequent results being more, rather than less exposure to the message being proffered. It’s inevitable.
Speaking of the “cheap seats” in America’s arsenal of high school houses of self-reverence, take a look at just one State of Texas high school stadium (they have over 1200 altogether) which were built in the early part of the last century, ostensibly as an enhancement for all that book-learnin’ for kids who have barely had time for their testicles to descend, much less for their independent thinking facilities to develop:
One of the Top 10 High School Football Stadiums in the U.S
R. R. Jones Stadium was built in 1916 and was the site of the very first Sun Bowl and is home to El Paso High and Cathedral football teams. It always offers fantastic views of downtown El Paso from the stadium seats.
Jones was the first major concrete stadium built in the country, opening in 1916 with a seating capacity of 12,000. The stadium is the home field for El Paso (Texas) and the entire package was constructed at a cost of $500,000.
The school is nicknamed “The Lady on the Hill” because it sits on a mountainside at the foot of the Franklin Mountains. It overlooks central El Paso and its border with Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
The school actually wraps around the stadium and semicircular steps lead from the field directly to the main entrance of the school. Combined, they take up four city blocks.
General John J. ‘Black Jack’ Pershing once rode his horse into Jones Stadium to help celebrate the end World War I
On other thread……
Nick 30 Apr 2015 at 4:42 am
“This editorial should put Greenwald’s idiocy to rest once and for all. The day of him speaking for the left wing is OVER. He has no credibility any more.” ~ Nick
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/nick-cohen/2015/04/charlie-hebdo-the-literary-indulgence-of-murder/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
A sidebar, dateline Kent (that’s in the UK, for any US readers’ info).
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/30/nigel-farage-makes-police-complaint-over-have-i-got-news-for-you
I realize this guy is not apt to be in the next UK Government — maybe — but where did he get the idea?
As always, Glenn says it as it needs to be said.
It’s especially egregious, given that people always go around proclaiming that the veterans never get any acknowledgement, even as they threaten anyone who dares to say that they’re not all heroes.
Firstly, Scott McIntyre was a journalist of an 80% government funded network. He, therefor, should know that he represents this network and should act at it’s best interests. Making such claims will affect his credibility as a journalist for SBS. My point being, SBS had all rights to fire him. Nevertheless, the author of this article failed to mention that SBS offered McIntyre to delete his tweets and publicly apologize, in order to keep his job.
Secondly, Yes, he has the freedom of speech but there is a more diplomatic way to express criticism. In this case, I doubt that his interest were to merely criticize and express his opinion in a professional manner. Instead he seemed to just want to cause trouble. He is a journalist after all. If he really wanted to offer his opinion for the world to think about, he could have just written an article with reliable sources and evidence to back up his claims. It seems that all he is trying to do is pick a fight. Just take a look at the picture he tweeted, which is in no relation to the accusations he is making.
Lastly, McIntyre’s accusations are just offending to many of the Anzacs who fought this war to defend their country. Not every Australian soldier murdered children or committed rape or theft. This is a generalization that should not be made by someone who calls himself a “journalist”.
Dropping an atomic bomb was not a decision made by the Australians. The two men who dropped the bombs were pilots of the US Airforce and Americans. Australia wasn’t even fighting as their “own nation” in WW2, they were part of the British Commonwealth. Technically, dropping those bombs was not in their power at all.
Anzac day is about remembering the victims of WW1….The tweet “Not forgetting that the largest single-day terrorist attacks in history were committed by this nation & their allies in Hiroshima & Nagasaki” is therefore, not really related to Anzac day at all, which leads back to my second claim: McIntyre is simply looking for a reason to fight. The same can be said of the tweet “Wonder if the poorly-read, largely white, nationalist drinkers and gamblers pause today to consider the horror that all mankind suffered.” This accusation can be made during every public holiday. There will always be people using a memorial day to get drunk.
Overall, it seems to me that firing a journalist who clearly does not care about the best interests of the company he is working for is for the best. McIntyre tweets are in no way constructive criticism of Anzac day but instead a sad way to seek attention and pick a fight.
Dear Mr. Greenwald,
Scott McIntyre only deserves the free expression award if he actually manages to publish a piece with claims that follow relevant evidence of the accusations he is making.
Moreover, the picture you have chosen for this article is not really relevant at all as it features Prince Charles and his son, whom are not related to either the network or the claims being made in this article.
This is a very good discussion:
TYT at the Newseum: Discussion “Do The Media Have Any Real Power?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PS46H9IlefM
This problem is pervasive in the US press. My famous example is a basic question is never, never asked in America. The question: “What is the actual danger that ISIS poses to national security?” You would imagine it would be a fundmental discussion. It is never asked. It is never discussed. It’s more than strange, it is postivily otherworldly.
Only here, at least in part, the journalist is protesting a war that took place 100 years ago. And on Twitter, not a journal of public record.
Now, is this government going to ban showings of Australian films like “Gallipoli” or “Breaker Morant” because they take a darker view of colonial warfare?
It’s clearly more of a danger to US allies in the Middle East than to the US itself. It also feeds the old narrative of Muslims trying to take over the world, where previous groups were largely driven by opposition to US imperialism. In part, I think it has to do with failure in Iraq. If you look at the history of ISIS, it’s clear that it exists because of the Iraq war, and it was strengthened because of the intervention in Syria. I wonder if those in power in the US realize they are responsible for the rise of ISIS, even though they would never admit to it.
No need to ask the question when the obvious correct answer is “essentially none”. No need to ask the question when the nearly universally assumed response is “existential to the nth power”. Really, who is going to ask the question?
Not much to add here as I think Glenn has hit all the right notes regarding why this is disturbing practice.
One must ask though, how weak and fragile is a nation, and its institutions, that it fires its journalists for raising a factual counterargument about its sacred cows? How close is a nation to fascism if it demands that its citizens venerate its military institutions under threat of losing their civilian livelihoods?
One could argue that it signals a very dangerous shift towards a form of nationalism and/or cultural elitism that has been proven to be, historically, very dangerous and very destructive. And I’m not sure that argument is wrong.
However, what I think (or at least hope) it really demonstrates is that certain elite factions within society are desperate. They understand they are in a somewhat precarious historical position. They see a world growing more and more interconnected and the reality that their ability to “control the message” or “manufacture consent” is shrinking.
As knowledge becomes more easily and readily available to the proles on a global scale, elites know they are in jeopardy of losing their political and economic legitimacy. So they wield one of the few remaining effective weapons at their disposal not directly involving physical violence or legal incarceration–the wield the club of economic privation. They make examples of the dissenters. Anyone who deviates from their manufactured corporate, military or government orthodoxies whether it be Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Chris Hayes or whomever, is punished. They make examples of any nation who dares to deviate from neoliberal globalization orthodoxy (i.e. global capital feudalism). They either bomb them, or they financially strangle them. Either way it’s fucking ugly and immoral.
This dynamic plays out even in the one institution where it should never be inappropriate to question everything and anything–academia.
It is one of the reasons I trust Glenn Greenwald’s journalistic integrity. That is not to say Glenn is always right. Nobody is. But Glenn is principled enough to make sure that nobody can wield the club of economic privation over him in a way that it influences what he chooses to write about and how he chooses to write about it. And Glenn has the integrity to always be open to valid criticisms concerning the substance of his work.
It is why I watch Chris Hayes and not Rachel Maddow. I think both are highly intelligent, but I think Chris is one of the few on MSNBC who will stick his neck out to challenge big issue orthodoxies and has the intellectual heft and insight to do it fairly well. I wish he wouldn’t have apologized in any way for his Memorial Day piece. He should have taken his chances and proudly explained why dissent is patriotic. Why if you have an opinion or counterargument about his, then make it, but don’t just cowardly shout him down as unpatriotic. He should have gone to great length to explain why no cow, not even veterans’ service, should be sacred or above inquiry or critique. Why it is the measure of a truly strong nation with a healthy free press when its mainstream journalists can gore even the most sacred of cows without fear of losing his/her job so long as that goring is factually accurate, their arguments well reasoned, and any sources a journalists uses are thoroughly vetted for same. That’s it, and that’s what journalism in a strong nation should be about. He had the platform and audience to take a very principled and strong stand and gave squish instead.
It turns my stomach that America has become such a nation of frightened delicate little flowers. Afraid of the “threat” of “terrorism” no more statistically likely to take a Western life than dying of a bee sting, hitting a deer with your automobile or having a home appliance accident. Maybe we’ve always been that way. I don’t know.
But it is precisely why you will never see an American flag at my home or office. And although I’m a huge sports fan, I haven’t taken my seat before the national anthem has finished in over 25 years. The only oath I’ve taken, and the one I was proud to voluntarily take, was the oath of office to uphold the US Constitution and laws of the state of Oregon as a condition of admission to the Oregon bar. It is the only and last oath I will ever make to anyone or institution.
The fetishization of the US military, reflexive displays of nationalism and supination to militarism in this country turns my stomach–literally. It is the sign of an unconfident and frightened people. A people insecure in their institutions and moral role in the world. I hope I’m right that it’s a sign of elite faction desperation and possibly a pivot toward something better, rather than a descent into an even uglier period of American/Western imperialism (assuming that’s possible given the West’s history) being cheered on by its duped citizens.
Well spoken, er . . . written.
Militancy and tribalism have been, and are, driving factors for cultures throughout history all across the world. Labeling it the “west’s secular religion” is odd because it is prevalent everywhere around the globe. Its more a human condition rather than anything unique to westerners.
Tribalism in the US is indeed unique, and there are ways to demonstrate this. There’s the notion of “exceptionalism”, which you really don’t find in other parts of the world since Germany in the 40s. There’s the term “anti-American.” Which other country (even those that are in fact maligned internationally) has a term like that applied in the manner “anti-American” is? The closest thing to it might be “anti-Semite”, but notice no one would use “anti-Israeli” to any significant effect.
I really don’t think there is anything unique at all about America’s brand of tribalism, which I abhor, mind you. There are many conflicts going on right now where people are killing other people simply because they belong to one ethnic or religious group or another. Saying there’s been nothing similar since Germany in the 1940s (which i don’t think is an apt comparison, but nonetheless) ignores the entire Cold War where both capitalist and communist countries trumpeted the superiority of their way of governance and engaged in propaganda and war to spread their ideology as far as possible. In America, planes fly over football stadiums. In the USSR, tanks paraded through streets. In Cuba, Castro wore his military fatigues during his tenure as leader. Heck, there are many world leaders who adopted military uniforms as their standard of dress.
It’s also the re-invention of history. This celebration commemorates a disastrous military blunder — the Gallipoli invasion — ordered by the British government, in which the Australian and NZ governments of the day had little say. Now it’s being prettied up. US does the same thing — what was the “rockets’ red glare” about, but a war the US started, in part, to invade Canada and wound up having to defend Baltimore harbor?
I wonder how Australia will commemorate the 1942 fall of Singapore next February, another army thrown away under British leadership. They weren’t so willing to do the Empire’s bidding after that — pulled their forces out of North Africa because the Japanese were at the door and the British generals seemed unable or unwilling to cope with it. We can also commemorate the 1943 Bengal famine, which was another example of British wartime management.
This journalist’s sin was to question the national religion, which has less to do with ISIS and more to do with a century or two of legend. And a lot of half-forgotten misdeeds.
Yes, but myth-making and whitewashing history are hardly unique to Australia and the US. This article conflates something that happened in Australia with things that happen in the US and Britain and deems this proof as a “western secular religion” of military devotion. Its an artificial association. People are punished in China for going against the official narrative, as well. Because it also happens in Australia and other Asian countries, could make the argument that there is a “Pacific Region Religion” of nationalist devotion? Focusing criticisms on arbitrary and diverse groups like “Western” or “Eastern” only creates a dangerous “us versus them” mentality that hinders progress on solving problems for humanity as a whole.
I’m guessing that it had to do more, in Glenn’s view, with some disturbing trends in the Anglo-American world. Australia and NZ, along with the UK and the US, were common law countries that held a few truths self-evident, some of the time. BTW, the 800th anniversary of the Great Charter is coming up in June, anybody going to commemorate that?
Apologies for veering off topic so early but in the context of the baltimore and other US riots, this came up, I don’t know if many people have heard of it:
“The Destruction of Black Wall Street
The events that destroyed a thriving Black Oklahoma community 92 years ago were much more than a ‘race riot’
…During the night and day of the riot, deputized whites killed more than 300 African Americans. They looted and burned to the ground 40 square blocks of 1,265 African American homes, including hospitals, schools, and churches, and destroyed 150 businesses. White deputies and members of the National Guard arrested and detained 6,000 black Tulsans who were released only upon being vouched for by a white employer or other white citizen. Nine thousand African Americans were left homeless and lived in tents well into the winter of 1921.””
http://www.ebony.com/black-history/the-destruction-of-black-wall-street-405
It is easy (and nonetheless quite correct) to look at this as government censorship. But the subtlest and most important part of the censorship was done before McIntyre wrote a word. Because his messages do come off as fairly crude, targeting abuses of a few thousand soldiers when more actually died in a futile attempt to preserve “democracy” against the Kaiser and his allies. And the reason why is the stilted, stupid 140-character format of Twitter posting, that can convert even the most eloquent idea into mere graffiti, and anything more careless into something begging for misinterpretation.
Imagine an observer from another planet were to take a look at two computer networks. One has real-time unlimited free-form commenting via IRC and a planet-wide set of discussion forums via Usenet, both free and open protocols outside of commercial control. The other has two sinister companies, Twitter and Facebook, that have somehow cuckooed themselves into every random company’s advertisements, that make money off the data of their users, that impose mindless restrictions and censorship. Wouldn’t the observer conclude that the Usenet/IRC technology was twenty or fifty years more advanced than its primitive corporate competitor?
When people are driven into these privacy-destroying, conversation-destroying “social media”, a tumor that is eating away the Internet, their freedom of speech is already largely lost. If you’re not some famous sports announcer but just a random passerby like I am, a message sent to Twitter would be more likely to be read if you wrote it on a piece of paper, put it in a bottle and threw it in the ocean. And if you are famous, it’s frequently only by virtue of some sort of corporate authorization as in McIntyre’s case. So the “tweets” aren’t really yours – they have to be not what you think but what the network, company, organization, etc. want to hear. Either way, what kind of free speech is that?
If Encyclopedia Dramatica finally succumbs to efforts to wipe out its trollish content, or if Bestgore succumbed to Canadian prosecution, or if 4chan were forced to drop their pornos, that might be worth crying over. But if Twitter and Facebook were nuked and wiped off the face of the earth, nothing of value would be lost.
some people would argue that submission to authority and trusting the premise that obedience to the government is in the interest of the greatest good for the greatest number. this is antithetical to the basis of our shared systems of government here in what’s broadly called “the West,” but it has been superceded more or less completely in our times by the imperatives of the state and ruling oligarchy. Greenwald’s view is considered aspirational only, if not outright naive, by the people who run things behind the scenes, who allow their marionettes in the public sphere to put a human and benevolent face on what are at heart the machinations of sociopaths for whom human lives are meaningless, and aspirations for a more decent sort of human society a diversion of fools. it’s incumbent upon us to try to fight off this cynicism whenever we get a chance, because basically while people can be manipulated by demagogues to profess almost anything for a while, eventually the alien order of sociopaths is so repugnant that it collapses. in time we’ll see this play out in our world. it may not be soon and it won’t be neat, but the impulse is there and it can’t always be suppressed.
I guess we are going to have another round on he PEN award:
“Just by the way, bestowing McIntyre with a free expression award would be actually meaningful and would take actual courage”
I thought “rrhead” put a line under that debate very well, and I would say there are two valid sides…how do you express your support for courageous writers…while on the other side…how do you do that without looking like you are supporting discrimination against a vulnerable minority.
Among other coherently rational sentiments..
[snip]
“Why didn’t Charlie Hebdo have a “safe” code that each employee knew that would have allowed them into the first door under the circumstances Ms. Rey faced, but automatically triggered a lock down of all other doors?
Why didn’t Charlie Hebdo have a networked lockdown system that could be triggered from either the archive office on the same street, or from any other place inside the main office complex?..” -rr
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/28/logical-impairment-sad-nonexistent-charlie-hebdokkk-comparison/#comment-127871
#thedongerneedaccountability
A Pabst Blue Ribbon On Tap Production
I was in Chicago a few years back watching a game of baseball. Before the game started, we were told that there will be parachute landing by the Navy Seals, and the crowd wild – it definitely looked like a place of worship rather than a sports stadium!
This happens at a huge number of sporting events in the US. In 2011, I published this email from a friend who attended an NFL game in South Florida:
“Let me describe the patriotic display at last night’s NFL opener. Men with machine guns at all entrances…”
These kinds of displays always make me think of cinematic dystopias like 1984 and The Hunger Games. What I don’t understand is how the thousands of people who pay for this experience don’t seem to be the slightest bit alarmed!
These kinds of displays always make me think of cinematic dystopias like 1984 and The Hunger Games.
Yes. That is exactly what they are. And dog help you if you are the one person sitting through all of that, let alone actually verbalizing an objection to the worship.
To speak out in that crowd would mean preparing for imminent death.
Pedinska, I just stumbled across a discussion between GG and NPR’s Dina Temple-Raston
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2RxQpESxoI
She was pretty snotty, but as you can see from this comment, a failure:
“I never really appreciated how inept journalists are until I hear them debate Greenwald.”
Yeah, I remember that smackdown.
Heh.
LOL. I think people at the games will be paying more attention, now that we have found out that the NFL is ” non profit.” All that military Disney=esque stuff is what your taxpayer dollars do when they are slimming. : )
Wow, Glenn replied to me! *fans himself* – sorry, teenage girl moment! I was thinking I might have to start writing like barncat to get a response ;)
I hadn’t been aware of this kind of behaviour – being from the UK, I follow football (soccer) and cricket, and not American sports, so had never seen a baseball game or NFL game before. Then I was in Chicago, and decided I will go to see baseball at Wrigley Field, and I was sitting next to this American guy, and we were having a good chat, and then they said there will be a parachute jump by the Navy Seals, and EVERYONE stood up. Now I hate wars and militarism, but I didn’t want to appear to be insensitive to this guy I had been chatting too, and so I stood up too – I mean, now wasn’t really the appropriate time for a discussion on wars and military-worshipping, had it been another place, another time, I would have refused to stand up and would have debated as to why I didn’t.
So, yes, Glenn has it spot-on, it felt so much like being in a Church, Mosque or Temple, and the shouts of “USA, USA, USA” could easily have been the shouts of “Praise the Lord” or “Allah-u-Akbar”!
If I was to argue with anything here it would be this: “Part of this is driven by the dangers of state-funded media, which typically neuters itself at the altar of orthodoxy. “
I’m not sure private media is superior to public media. And I’m not sure that private media is purely private and public media is purely public, in control, financing etc.
Even though, in the US context, I understand how Americans could be living under that impression.
The PBS Newshour is a private business, Many shows that appear on public TV, are privately produced. While private sector media, in many countries, are given tax, other subsidies to produce indigenous cultural products, I believe even the massive hollywood industry receives massive government assistance, and private broadcasters are publicly regulated.
More than it being a “public bad, private good” explanation for something such as the firing of the Aussie sportscaster, I think it is more of an issue of the idiosyncratic workings of the industry.
Someone such as Rupert Murdoch, can select over time, his sportscasters over time, picking ones that don’t tweet bad things about imperialism, for example, there is smooth, profit driven ownership that aligns with corporate interests. And if Murdoch wants to quietly let people go, private employees don’t have the unions that typically are still able to better protect workers in the public sector.
A public broadcaster, such as this Australian one, has a level of indirection between the government of the day, and career employees. A tranche of sportscasters could be hired during a period in time in which the leftists were in government, and when the right takes the government, the government will be itching to pressure the broadcaster’s management to look for excuses to purge as many leftists as they can, under the limitations of not wanting to look like they are doing just that.
So I don’t agree that the public sector is worse on this score, it only looks that way sometimes, especially perhaps for Americans who are acclimatized to feel that public ownership is intrinsically bad.
The heart of the problem is concentration of power: concentration of news reporting in too few outlets regardless of how they are configured. Whether they are “non-profit” corporations, public agencies, private for-profit corporations, or partnerships, if you have only ~6 national outlets controlling all the conversation (by themselves, or through artfully branded subsidiaries) you have propaganda, not news.
The tepid, limited pushback against this propagandist status quo transmits via the internet.
Speaking in the face of a credible death threat requires tremendous courage. If the probability of the threat being carried out is great enough, it requires more courage than speaking with the certainty that one will lose his job. (In either case, it hardly matters who is performing the censorship. All that matters is the severity and likelihood of the punishment being risked.)
But to argue this point is to grant too much. It’s clear that both forms of courage can and should be honored. Anyone who plays one against the other has other things on his mind he considers more important than defending freedom of speech.
Ironical that you’re being a coward with that sentence. If you have someone in mind, or are just making a generic accusation, be clear about it by saying so, or by naming the target(s) of your declaration.
Not at all! I said “anyone” because I mean anyone. I wanted to make the general statement. Anyone who has read my previous comments will know that I intend that statement to be applied to Greenwald. But I didn’t want to limit the statement to just him.
Btw, these are the kinds of things Greenwald has on his mind that he considers more important than defending freedom of speech (he spelled it all out, you know):
Anyone who plays one against the other has other things on his mind he considers more important than defending freedom of speech. […] Btw, these are the kinds of things Greenwald has on his mind that he considers more important than defending freedom of speech
I have been trying very hard to follow the gist of your argumentation over the past two threads, but I think I will now abandon that effort and future posts on your part as well.
You have exhaustively lambasted Greenwald for one extremely nuanced argument, wherein he seeks to balance the defense of free speech – and the courage exemplified by CH – with the context of widespread western co-optation of organizations that should be neutral, but aren’t, that results in wider propagation, and acceptability, of the demonization of a minority group that has demonstrably been heavily abused within that same western country (as well as in our own).
That you seek to reduce all of that to a flat statement of “Greenwald considers this more important than that” is just patent bullshit. You should know better than that, which leaves me with the unpleasant realization that I have been wasting extreme amounts of time attempting to understand something disingenuous and not worthy of my effort.
If you were to confirm it, it doesn’t mean that your commitment to freedom of speech has diminished one bit.
Really? Then what exactly do you think the phrase plays one against the other implies? I can’t believe that you’re so tone deaf as to not realize that your doggedness over this issue seems to support not only diminishment, but extravagant abandonment on his part of said principle.
It’s pretty clear what that value is, and it’s admirable.
If, in fact, you find it admirable, then this is the first indication I have seen of such in all of the long-winded expostulation you have engaged in on this matter. And it only happened after Greenwald called you out with this,
I’ll be happy to compare the work I’ve done defending free speech in every context to what you’ve done to test the actual extent of my commitment to it..
That is a list that would be extremely interesting to consider in light of all the hoohaw you’ve engaged in over the past two days on this issue, and in the past on others. Diving headfirst into my compost pile would leave me feeling cleaner than all of this hemming, hawing, case-building and backpedaling. :-s
I’m sorry, Pedinska, but if you’ve decided that my comments aren’t worth reading I’m not going to try to change your mind. I really don’t feel like defending myself. I’m just going to let the comments speak for themselves. I’m sorry.
I really didn’t think that until this latest go-round. It’s not something I’m happy about or proud of and maybe I’m just having a bad night but the gist of your arguments over the past two days have not reflected in any way the clarifications you made in your last couple of comments. They have, in fact, insinuated something quite the opposite. They haven’t read like good faith arguments.
Perhaps like so many others on this topic we will just need to agree to disagree. :-s
I’m sorry if I sounded harsh.
I agree with this to some extent. But I think it’s just the tone and the wording that’s different. My basic argument has definitely not changed. From the start, it’s been that Greenwald is putting something else before defense of freedom of speech.
That’s how I started a very long reply to you, which I finished, and in which I explained “the kind of confusion you understandably perceived”. But I just can’t post it. I don’t want to write about myself, or explain myself. I just want to let my comments speak for themselves.
Thanks for both replies, Pedinska.
As has been explained previously, the content of the speech matters as well, and some extreme examples can be cited to illustrate this point. Specifically, if the content of the speech is racist or xenophobic, maybe an award isn’t warranted, even as we support their right to express those kinds of views.
I’ll be happy to compare the work I’ve done defending free speech in every context to what you’ve done to test the actual extent of my commitment to it..
It’s because of all the work you’ve done on freedom of speech that I’m making these arguments!! I just want to establish that, in this particular case, you are placing a different value above freedom of speech. I would like that to be confirmed (or refuted). If you were to confirm it, it doesn’t mean that your commitment to freedom of speech has diminished one bit. It would just mean that a competing value has gained in importance over the past eight years. It’s pretty clear what that value is, and it’s admirable. I would personally make a different choice, but that discussion can’t be had unless your choice is confirmed. Anyway, thanks for the reply. And if this reply of mine appears at the top of the thread, it’s by accident.
It’s extremely easy to refute this:
Defending someone’s free speech rights has absolutely nothing to do with throwing an awards banquet for them and showering them with prizes.
I’ve defended the free speech rights of many, many people before and was never told – until this week – that doing so requires that you support the granting of awards to them.
That’s because it’s ludicrous. The very suggestion that opposing an award to CH is somehow inconsistent with a belief in their free speech rights is asinine.
If someone tried to arrest CH cartoonists or sue them, I’d be the first to stand up and condemn that effort and defend CH. Obviously, the violence against them is repugnant.
But that has nothing to do with wanting to invite them to a glamorous gala, hand them prizes, and then cheer for them.
See also: 145 PEN Writers (Thus Far) Have Objected to the Charlie Hedbo Award – Not Just 6
I’ll let that speak for itself. I’m not going to respond further to the CH debate because I don’t want this to comment section to turn into a repeat of the debate that we’ve had here for the last 2 full days, something I say while acknowledging that I mentioned the issue in the afterthought to the article.
@ Glenn re: Barncat:
You’re wasting your time. He’s incapable of recognizing the relevant distinction(s) at issue here. In his mind, to be a non-hypocritical defender of free speech one must agree with him that CH is worthy of an award. While there are a couple of valid arguments that support an award to CH, one of his principal criticisms of your arguments has consistently been a variation of the “no true Scotsman” fallacy i.e. no true defender of free speech could ever believe an award to CH was unjustified under the circumstances.
As demonstrated yesterday there are valid arguments why, all things being equal, CH shouldn’t be given an award OR that there are better exemplars that could be given an award. Reasonable minds have a valid basis for disagreeing on those scores.
Barncat is simply unwilling to accept them despite their validity, or incapable of comprehending them in the first instance. In either case, you’re wasting your time because he/she feels you are a hypocrite because you won’t concede that you aren’t a hypocrite on the basis of his assertion of the “no true Scotsman” fallacy.
You’re misrepresenting the argument there. It’s not that you’re denying their free speech rights (that would be asinine), it’s that you’re not participating in the defense of the free speech rights of every speaker who is threatened in the same way that CH was. If you would grant that the award is only for courage – and you could endorse it with that caveat, that you consider it to be only for courage – then the purpose of the award is to encourage others to behave as CH did (which doesn’t mean drawing anti-Islamic cartoons).
All I have to do to make my point is to compare the decision you’re making now to the ones you made in 2006 and 2007. I haven’t been harping on that to prove that you’re “wrong” now; what it proves to me is that you’re favoring a competing interest (once again, I don’t think your commitment to freedom of speech has diminished). If you want, you could just state exactly why you came to a different decision now. (And it’s not because it’s an award now, as opposed to republishing the cartoons then, because you were refusing to support CH two days after the massacre for the exact same reasons as now — CH supporters were “embracing” and “celebrating” the content of CH’s speech.)
Mona posted her thoughts on why you’ve made a different decision (this is edited):
That’s the same conclusion I’ve reached, but I would express the competing interest in more general terms…
Hmmm. But one’s commitment to the spirit and values of free speech is impinged by vigorous objection to rewarding the courage of slaughtered people, who, in the face of threats and a firebombing, continued to publish blasphemy.
But, they published the “wrong kind” of blasphemy, and so it is good to publicly issue letters boycotting their courage award.
That’s not the behavior one would expect from someone who frequently reminds us “courage is contagious,” and who values brave speech.
This has been a difficult issue between us Glenn, but it bothers me so when you say some of what you do that it is not possible for me to meekly ignore it. (Not that you’ve asked me to.) If I didn’t see this as touching on your free speech commitment, I wouldn’t be so riled up.
@ Mona
Umm no it isn’t. To vigorously object to another’s free speech is demonstrating one’s commitment to free speech, not impinging it, by definition. To impinge one’s commitment would be to self-censor by remaining silent when one disagrees with another’s speech and/or the PEN members using inappropriate means to prohibiting PEN from bestowing its award as it sees fit. Withholding their approval or refusing to participate in an event because they disagree with other members decision is by definition the exercise of free speech.
Glenn certainly has never argued that PEN shouldn’t be free to give the award to whom they deem worthy, only that PEN’s members and others should be perfectly free to disagree regarding the criteria, rationale or definitions employed in reaching that decision and/or refuse to agree that CH is an appropriate recipient.
Mona, sincerely, it seems to me (and I’m no fan of organized religion) that the only way you can hold the viewpoint you do, is if you perceive “blasphemy” speech and those who engage in it (regardless of context, motivation or effect) as being engaged in a universal human “good” under any and all circumstances. I think there’s an argument to be made for that point of view, but I’m not sure you or anyone else has thus far made it. And I’m pretty sure billions would still disagree. And that’s the reality and context within which free speech acts occur in the real world. At the very least the case hasn’t been made convincingly such that reasonable minds couldn’t disagree.
Read the PEN letter again Mona and the signatories’ concerns. Context matters. Effect matters. History matters. Power relationships matter. The relative and intended ends sought in the exercise of any free speech act matters (at least to many) particularly when it comes to singling out individuals or organizations for commendation in the name of free speech.
Again I think reasonable minds can disagree on the propriety of the award being given to CH. And that’s a good thing. And I also don’t believe that because you and Glenn disagree on this issue, that you of all people, should doubt his commitment to free speech based on his sharing some of the same concerns as the dissenting PEN members.
You’re killing me, barncat. Let’s try this another way. In 2006 Glenn owns a bakery. He sells ginger snaps but not sugar cookies. He states that this is his personal preference but he defends everyone’s right to own their own bakery where they sell whatever they want. In 2015 his tastes have changed and he doesn’t personally sell ginger snaps.
You are saying “Ergo Glenn’s support of bakery ownership has diminished!”. That doesn’t follow from your premise. Unless, again, you are adamant that anyone who doesn’t also award the bravery of any and all groups, including the KKK, is not a true free speech advocate. In which case, ok, extremist, but logically consistent.
The terrorists are trying to take away our freedom of speech, but fortunately the government has stepped forward to defend it. However, anyone who criticizes the war on terror undermines this effort and therefore places everyone’s free speech at risk. The solution is to pass laws to make this criticism illegal.
To protect your right of free speech, the government must take it away. Those who defend free speech are attacking it. Those who attack free speech are defending it. This seems to confuse many people, but it is really quite simple.
I don’t think ‘plays one against the other’ is exactly the dynamic you are looking for, but either way – it strikes me as a bit tyrannical to set yourself up as the gatekeeper for who qualifies as Truly Loving Free Speech. Now everyone who doesn’t want to publish the Nazi propaganda in solidarity is not a true true believer. That seems like an unfair standard, to me.
I’ll give you this – if you saw free speech as the absolute be-all end-all virtue, over and above even, say, ‘life’, I can see how your worldview would make sense. To you, these arguments may be akin to people saying “Look, I support the right of people with opposing views to exist, I just don’t believe in providing them with medical care. What, now we’re supposed to repair and care for the bodies of people who say and do these offensive things, at a cost to the taxpayer, so that they continue doing them on our dime?”. Most people would take it for granted that this is not some sort of unreasonable support for said views, that the right to live and receive appropriate medical care is such a basic human right that we provide it, even knowing that it will allow criminals to possibly go out and reoffend. If you saw absolute freedom of speech as absolutely that basic and essential a right, yes, perhaps you would go on the assumption that everyone should always do everything possible to support it no matter the content. And that if they were inconsistent – i.e., even if the PEN writers wouldn’t have published the Nazi propaganda – that we should at least praise them when they do ‘get it right’. I don’t agree, but again, I can see this logically following from your emotional premise, if you do indeed hold free speech as the absolute basic human right that you imply you do.
But if that is your worldview then, as a matter of efficacy, it would probably be a good idea for you to familiarize yourself with the average person’s intuitions on this topic, because you are likely a far outlier in this area.
Another example of media excommunication for violation of the orthodoxy Glenn writes of is when Bill Maher’s ABC show, Politically Incorrect, was cancelled after he observed that whatever else the 9/11 attackers may have been, they weren’t “cowards” (which was the official talking point at the time):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politically_Incorrect#Controversy_and_cancellation
Phil ‘you da business’ Donahue..
[snip]
“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. And then it occurred to me how sanitized this war was. I mean you couldn’t. … The president [George W. Bush] said, “don’t take pictures” [of the carnage] and the whole mainstream press said “Okay.” There was never any push back. The American public did not see the pain that was inflicted on thousands and thousands of families. These were especially heinous injuries; I mean women had their faces blown off, I mean IEDs, blind kids, twenty something blind. And we don’t know anything about that. Bush successfully threw a blanket over the painful coverage, and media cooperated. I just couldn’t believe that the land of the free would allow this to happen. And so I said I’m gonna, I nominated myself to show as many people as I could the pain of this one family, and tried to make the point that this is just one. There are thousands of other homes out there; the lives of the entire family are turned upside down. We’ve never been this close to a catastrophic injury..” -phil donahue
https://consortiumnews.com/2012/01/15/silencing-donahue-and-anti-war-voices/
A Bill Maher Is A Rooster Production
It should be possible for democratic countries to create a model for a public broadast or national media entity free of corporate or political control. People pay for corporate independence through their public funding but a new model is required to free public broadcasters from political control.
The enacting legislation for a public broadcaster should ensure Management and Directing Staff are democratically elected, accountable only to the electorate, and if corrupted, bought , biased , or controlled , they can be thrown out by the electorate and independent journalists elected.
A free press with independent investigative journalism would change everything for a country so their would be major opposition to this type of change.
18,000,000,000,000 in the hole, poverty is rampant, and yet..
[snip}
‘Flyovers, once unexpected moments at major sporting events, are now almost the norm, expected parts of pre-game festivities. But an Orlando Sentinel investigation has found that you don’t have to reach a very high bar to get one.
At a time when the United States is fighting a war, fly-bys provide feel-good moments for fans, for sports leagues and even for athletes themselves – a spectacle that gives any sporting event added prestige and excitement. But are flyovers worth it, or are they a high-priced folly?
“For the publicity aspect of it, I’d say it’s definitely well worth it when you consider the cost to advertise during the Super Bowl,” Blue Angels press officer Capt. Tyson Dunkelberger said. “The more people see our blue jets and recognize the Navy, the better it is for us.”
The U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds will perform a similar fly-by before Sunday’s Daytona 500. An Air Force spokeswoman said eight F-16 Fighting Falcon jets will fly from Nellis Air Force Base outside of Las Vegas to Day-tona Beach and back at a cost of $80,000. For the flyover itself, six jets will be in the air for 40 minutes, at an ap-proximate fuel cost of $6,000.
“The reason why we have this mission is to bring the story of the Air Force to people who may not have an Air Force base near them,” Thunderbirds press officer Capt. Elizabeth Kreft said. “We’re going to reach an untold number of homes with the Air Force message, and that’s why we were given permission to do it.”
Military officials say the fly-bys boost recruiting efforts and give Americans an opportunity to see their aircraft in action. Officials also insist that flyovers don’t cost taxpayers any additional money, because each flyover counts as a training flight and comes out of already existing training budgets and schedules..’
http://www.pantagraph.com/news/article_761b5e22-77a5-5e5e-a2f5-3d003fc23a52.html
A We The Propagandized People Production
If flyovers are great propaganda, just imagine when al-Qaida finally gets an agent on the maintenance staff to plant a bomb on such a jet that they can set off so the wreckage falls in the stadium. :( Or even if it happens by accident. These things aren’t toys, and we shouldn’t have to wait until something dramatic happens before we question the wisdom of putting them over as many people as often as possible.
collateral damage (n) – deaths, injuries, and damage to the property of people who are not in the military that happens as a result of the fighting in a war
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/collateral%20damage
A Fuk’d Are We Production
Doesn’t this assume that government and power can only do evil? Obviously even good must have oversight, but is everything that the government does wrong just because the government does it?
If the government, those the wield the greatest power, and all the other assholes agreed with you about who should get what awards, would you then change your opinion, or would you welcome (or ignore) their support?
If you wouldn’t change your position, then isn’t all this talk of anti-power anti-establishment just a marketing angle designed to appeal to a certain demographic?
If you would change your opinion then was your opinion worth much to begin with?
Seems to me it would be crucial to know where McIntyre stands on Australia’s hate speech laws, efforts to make them stronger, and calls to regulate the press. Should an award even be considered if the man isn’t Ivory soap pure on speech?
Are Charlie Hebdo ivory soap pure on speech?
After all, not once did they come out in defence of Dieudonne’s right to say, satirically, Je suis Charlie Coulibaly. Not once. On the contrary, they blamed Dieudonne, and said free speech should be confined to “the law and values of the Republic”.
Values of the Republic? Fuck you – if someone wants to burn the French flag, or wipe their backside with (like the French Algerian guy did), they should be allowed to. Fuck the values of the Republic that stop you from doing this.
Fuckwit, you make my point for me.
Fuckwit, you are getting upset because for two days I have exposed your propaganda and you have not been able to rebut it apart from repeating the same mantra like some fuckwit religious fundamentalist.
It;s actually quite cute, I bet you’re sitting there fuming in anger! ;)
As you’ve been told before, this is you:
All of that, but especially the bolded bit, is you.
In any event, in this thread you unwittingly underscored my point.
Unwittingly? You don’t even know what I was saying, do you?!
Anyway, as I said before Mona, just repeating the same thing over and over again doesn’t actually mean you are right.
And as you have been told before:
ICYMI, Mona, I already showed how you are playing the age old game of accusing someone of being something you are – a fake inquirer who just wants to believe what she wants to believe and is unable to present any logical rebuttals!
—————————————————————————————————————–
You’re the sham inquirer – it is after all you who keeps saying what you want to believe, and pass it off as fact.
I meanwhile am the genuine inquirer – unlike you, I haven’t formed a conclusion. I have said many times that they might have been brave or they might not have been brave – and I have said that if we see evidence showing they thought their life was under genuine risk, then we can say they are brave.
This is unlike your position which is “we must all say they were brave and anyone who disagrees is a knave or uninformed fool”.
I never wrote that — you should not use quotation marks around those words. Moreover, almost no one is denying the 12 slaughtered Charlie Hebdo staff brave, including Ms. Prose, and implicitly Glenn’s position as well — he analogizes to Klan members who express speech in the face of credible threats. The objection is that the mere courage is insufficient given the objections some have to the content.
Almost no one here, even some in disagreement with my position, takes you seriously, as became apparent in the ridicule heaped on you — for your shoddy arguing and unfamiarity with basic logic — in the other thread here: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/28/logical-impairment-sad-nonexistent-charlie-hebdokkk-comparison/
You are an idjit, and a dishonest fuckwit.
I wasn’t using quotation marks to suggest you wrote that – it wasn’t dishonesty, just writing the message in a hurry and not paying due attention.
[email protected] Glenn’s position as well. I doubt that is implicitly his position, I am sure his position is that he doesn’t know whether they were brave, whether some of them were brave, whether all of them were brave, and I am sure he doesn’t care either. Glenn is a very logical guy, that’s why I love him, I doubt he hero-worships them the way you do. But even if he did they were brave, it doesn’t mean I have to suddenly say “Glenn thinks they were brave so they must have been”. And the reason is, I think Glenn can be wrong. I don’t think he is some super human being, he’s a great journalist, I love following him, but that doesn’t mean I will start eulogising over him.
[email protected] no one is denying they were brave – Mona, your logic sucks! Just because at time t1, a very large number of people think P is true, it doesn’t mean P is true. P can be false. If you still don’t understand this simple concept, and need help understanding it, please let me know.
[email protected] even Francine thinks they were brave. Again, your logic sucks! Just because Francine thinks they were brave, it doesn’t mean they were. Francine has to argue why she thinks they were brave.
So, yes, whilst I was lazy in putting quotes around a summary of what you said, it still doesn’t change the argument – you are playing the age old game of accusing someone of being something you are – a fake inquirer who just wants to believe what she wants to believe and is unable to present any logical rebuttals!
You’re the sham inquirer – it is after all you who keeps saying what you want to believe, and pass it off as fact.
I meanwhile am the genuine inquirer – unlike you, I haven’t formed a conclusion. I have said many times that they might have been brave or they might not have been brave – and I have said that if we see evidence showing they thought their life was under genuine risk, then we can say they are brave.
This is unlike your position which is “to doubt that Charlie Bebod staff lacked sufficient reason to really be brave by continuing in their blasphemy, well, that can only be the opinion of a knave or an uninformed fool”
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/27/writers-withdraw-pen-gala-protest-award-charlie-hebdo/#comment-127403
An argument that was logically destroyed again and again and you had no logical rebuttal no matter how many times you pretend – eejit!
Glenny, Glenny, Glenny
You did it again.
Your father and I have told you a thousand times not to publish provocative articles!
But do you listen!?
No!
Now, you are gonna get it!
the great John Pilger:
The message of Anzac: Put out more flags, or shut up
http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-message-of-anzac-put-out-more-flags-or-shut-up
Also read his pieces at telesurtv:
telesurtv.net/english/staff/jpilger
Last night I also stumbled on an article from John Pilger about Australia. I did not go to bed feeling very happy. It’s about sneaky land grab from the aboriginals for the mining industry.
This idiot Abott is very active lately. For instance with his opinions about the Libya refugee crisis. We all should follow Australia’s example and just drag the boats back to sea. He even appeared in Turkey on memorial day of the Armenian genocide, to piss on that also.
http://atimes.com/2015/04/australia-the-secret-country-again-wages-war-on-its-own-people/
The US “pivot to Asia” and the Australian leadership crisis
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/02/25/turn-f25.html
US military looks to expand use of Australian bases and ports
wsws.org/en/articles/2015/02/16/mari-f16.html
US spy bases in Australia central to war plans against China
wsws.org/en/articles/2015/02/05/base-f05.html
Obama’s speech in Australia: A threat of war against China
wsws.org/en/articles/2014/11/17/pers-n17.html
Australian imperialism: Political attack dog for US war drive
wsws.org/en/articles/2014/10/20/pers-o20.html
Australian anti-terror raids part of US war drive
wsws.org/en/articles/2014/09/20/pers-s20.html
US think tank report: Australia central to American war plans against China
wsws.org/en/articles/2013/11/12/aust-n12.html
Australian government steps up commitment to US “pivot”
wsws.org/en/articles/2013/11/30/ausm-n30.html
Australia’s Defence White Paper and the US “pivot” to Asia
wsws.org/en/articles/2013/05/10/pers-m10.html
The most disturbing thing about truth is that it is true — something ruling powers, whether expressed in the media, at the small business level, the military, the corporate level, science, and especially in governments at all levels, almost universally despise and totally fear.
Chomsky has been ignored, avoided, and put down when possible for 50 years. My friend, a historian, said a couple of days ago that Chomsky does not write about anything unless he is sure of it and his work has stood the test of time. So earlier in the week when I read the intro and got into the interview, I could see that Chomsky acts as an independent voice to think through the issues and expose the “secular priesthood” of the elite. Chris Hedges followed this in his book “The Death of The Liberal Class.” In a word, I was stunned to see how Chomsky shows that anti communism was used then to organize support for wars and terrorism is being used in a similar manner to organize society to cover up what the power elite is doing.
And only a few years ago Glenn Greenwald made realize the point that was well understood by the founders, that when there is a war, all bets are off, quaint stuff like the rule of law. That is why the founders put war making power in the hands of the legislature, but we have violated that over and over and over.
I was at my son’s house and he had a book on the shelf published 23 years ago. I picked it up and saw that Noam was writing about stuff then which is relevant now. The people in power and their liberal supporters had a “secular priesthood.”
Noam was an outsider pointing out the internal corruption that was invisible to those living in the system. Here is a little bit from the introduction by the editor of the edition.
“The Chomsky Reader”, Edited by James Peck. Pantheon, 1987
The text below is approximately directly from the intro and a little from the interview. This was during the last war, the Cold War, and the enemy was Communism.
Cold war – Cold war – system of global management in which each superpower invokes the danger of the other to justify terror, violence, subversion and aggression it its own domains. Essay “objectivity and liberal scholarship” argued that the shared elitism of Bolshevism and liberalism — their similar attacks on any decentralized, self-organizing process of radical social change.
Anti-communism – not just blind faith. Mobilizes population for vast war expenditures. It justifies covert and overt interventionist policy. Practically sorts out friend and foe in maintained an integrated global economy in which American capital can operate with relative freedom. Any nation’s attempt to extricate from global market place is an anathema and labeled communist. No fate worse for anti-communism than a nation opt out of such a “free world” market. Attack. Not much left after a conflict to build a better society. No shred of a radical democratic alternative can be tolerated.
If we had the honesty and moral courage, we would not let a day pass without hearing the cries of the victims – but radios don’t report this. This is a way to understand the world without illusion.
Later an interview, Noam says that he was almost always out of tune with what was going on around him.
Hi Don Midwest USA and all –
Yes, Chomsky is awesome. Can’t resist:
http://observergal.blogspot.com/2015/04/excellent-presentation-real-challenges.html
“Divided = Conquered But United = Empowered!”
This perspective seems to be prevalent amongst the citizenry..
A Freedom Of Speech On My Own Terms Production
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/28/logical-impairment-sad-nonexistent-charlie-hebdokkk-comparison/#comment-128086
I’m not sure what point you’re making?
To clarify, not sure if you’re talking about freedom of speech in general, or my stance specifically. If you’re talking about my stance specifically, I never said it should apply to society in a broader way, so again, unclear on the gist of your comment.
All media outlets have a business model of some kind. In the case of a publically owned media company, that business is to coax government officials into providing them with increased funding. The best way to achieve this goal is to promote the agenda of the responsible government minister. If this agenda were too extreme, people would begin to seek out other sources of information. But most people are quite happy with the news they are fed, so I really don’t see a problem.
Some believe that debate is inherently good. But debates can be divisive and so many societies prefer a consensus building model. In this system, the government media promote the government’s agenda and by saturating the media with these views (which, by the way, are often better than the alternatives anyway), help to build popular support and achieve a consensus. This helps to make society more satisfied (people don’t have to think), productive (people don’t have to waste time debating) and cooperative (everybody thinks the same way).
Or maybe they just ignore the subject. To address the gist of this article, Duce, it was 100 years ago this week that Italy chose to jump into World War I, a conflict it could have sat out.
How do you think the current Italian government should commemorate the Battle of Caporetto?
According to this story, a bill has been put forward to restore the honor and rank of the soldiers who were shot for desertion. (The article disapproves). Presumably, with the wisdom of hindsight, it can be seen that deserting was the most sensible course of action.
Some of the soldiers were shot when Gen. Cadorna ordered decimation, soldiers chosen by lot. “Il clima di terrore” the article calls his action. I gather the article isn’t excusing him, at least.
This was great, Thanks Glenn.
A Rabbit Meet Hole Meet Slippery Meet Slope Production
Of course, James McIntyre deserves an award — ones he can receive himself, as he’s upright and breathing.
McIntyre didn’t run the risk that continuing to publish a different species of blasphemy would land him in a pool of blood with a dozen of his colleagues.
But I don’t offer the false dilemma that if a dozen assassinated Frenchman receive awards for their courage, none are left for James McIntyre. I trust no one else offers it either.
To recognize the courage of someone expressing an opposing viewpoint would signify that free speech has merit in its own right. That is absurd – what has merit is the content of the views expressed. If you give such an award to a group which, intentionally or not, is promoting war, then you cannot also give an award to an individual who is criticizing war. That would be schizophrenic.
Sounds like SBS should be referred to as state media, rather than a public broadcasting outlet.
Firstly, Scott McIntyre was a journalist of an 80% government funded network. He, therefor, should know that he represents this network and should act at it’s best interests. Making such claims will affect his credibility as a journalist for SBS. My point being, SBS had all rights to fire him. Nevertheless, the author of this article failed to mention that SBS offered McIntyre to delete his tweets and publicly apologize, in order to keep his job.
Secondly, Yes, he has the freedom of speech but there is a more diplomatic way to express criticism. In this case, I doubt that his interest were to merely criticize and express his opinion in a professional manner. Instead he seemed to just want to cause trouble. He is a journalist after all. If he really wanted to offer his opinion for the world to think about, he could have just written an article with reliable sources and evidence to back up his claims. It seems that all he is trying to do is pick a fight. Just take a look at the picture he tweeted, which is in no relation to the accusations he is making.
Lastly, McIntyre’s accusations are just offending to many of the Anzacs who fought this war to defend their country. Not every Australian soldier murdered children or committed rape or theft. This is a generalization that should not be made by someone who calls himself a “journalist”.
Dropping an atomic bomb was not a decision made by the Australians. The two men who dropped the bombs were pilots of the US Airforce and Americans. Australia wasn’t even fighting as their “own nation” in WW2, they were part of the British Commonwealth. Technically, dropping those bombs was not in their power at all.
Anzac day is about remembering the victims of WW1….The tweet “Not forgetting that the largest single-day terrorist attacks in history were committed by this nation & their allies in Hiroshima & Nagasaki” is therefore, not really related to Anzac day at all, which leads back to my second claim: McIntyre is simply looking for a reason to fight. The same can be said of the tweet “Wonder if the poorly-read, largely white, nationalist drinkers and gamblers pause today to consider the horror that all mankind suffered.” This accusation can be made during every public holiday. There will always be people using a memorial day to get drunk.
Overall, it seems to me that firing a journalist who clearly does not care about the best interests of the company he is working for is for the best. McIntyre tweets are in no way constructive criticism of Anzac day but instead a sad way to seek attention and pick a fight.
Dear Mr. Greenwald,
Scott McIntyre only deserves the free expression award if he actually manages to publish a piece with claims that follow relevant evidence of the accusations he is making.
Moreover, the picture you have chosen for this article is not really relevant at all as it features Prince Charles and his son, whom are not related to either the network or the claims being made in this article.