Trump is not an outlier, and it’s dangerous to treat him as one. There’s a sprawling cottage industry devoted to demonizing Muslims as the supreme threat, and much of it is quite mainstream.
(updated below — Update II)
Hours after a new poll revealed that he’s trailing Ted Cruz in Iowa, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump issued a statement advocating “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our representatives can figure out what’s going on.” His spokesperson later clarified that this exclusion even includes Muslim-American citizens who are currently outside the U.S. On first glance, it seems accurate to view this, in the words of The Guardian, as “arguably the most extreme proposal to come from any U.S. presidential candidate in decades.”
Some comfortable journalists, however, quickly insisted that people were overreacting. “Before everyone gives up on the republic, remember that not even a single American has yet cast a vote for Trump,” said New York Times columnist Ross Douthat. The New York Daily News opinion page editor, Josh Greenman, was similarly blithe: “It’s a proposal to keep Muslims out of the U.S., made in a primary, being roundly condemned. We are a long way from internment camps.”
Given that an ISIS attack in Paris just helped fuel the sweeping election victory of an actually fascist party in France, it’s a bit mystifying how someone can be so sanguine about the likelihood of a Trump victory in the U.S. In fact, with a couple of even low-level ISIS attacks successfully carried out on American soil, it’s not at all hard to imagine. But Trump does not need to win, or even get close to winning, for his rhetoric and the movement that he’s stoking to be dangerous in the extreme.
Professional political analysts have underestimated Trump’s impact by failing to take into account his massive, long-standing cultural celebrity, which commands the attention of large numbers of Americans who usually ignore politics (which happens to be the majority of the population), which in turn generates enormous, highly charged crowds pulsating with grievance and rage. That means that even if he fails to win a single state, he’s powerfully poisoning public discourse about multiple marginalized minority groups: in particular, inciting and inflaming what was already volatile anti-Muslim animosity in the U.S.
FBI is investigating bloody pig's head left at Philadelphia mosque https://t.co/jwROcjur8U @NBCPhiladelphia
— NBC News (@NBCNews) December 8, 2015
As The Atlantic’s Matt Ford put it yesterday, “The immediate danger isn’t Trump’s actual policy, but the bigotry and violence that it both legitimizes and encourages.” Muslim Americans (and, for that matter, Mexican-Americans and African-Americans) don’t have the luxury that people like Douthat and Greenman have to be so dismissive. That’s what Al Jazeera’s Sana Saeed meant when she said that she’s “tired of people telling us to not be afraid — Trump may not win but his words will last & there are people who support” the bile he’s spewing.
All that said, it’s important not to treat Trump as some radical aberration. He’s essentially the American id, simply channeling pervasive sentiments unadorned with the typical diplomatic and PR niceties designed to prettify the prevailing mentality. He didn’t propose banning all Muslims from entering the U.S. because it’s grounded in some fringe, out-of-the-mainstream ideas. He proposed it in part to commandeer media attention so as to distract attention away from his rivals and from that latest Iowa poll, but he also proposed it because he knows there is widespread anti-Muslim fear and hatred in the U.S. Whatever else you want to say about him, Trump is a skillful entertainer, and good entertainers — like good fascist demagogues — know their audience.
Trump’s proposal yesterday, though a new low, is not that far afield from what other credible GOP presidential candidates previously proposed. Jeb Bush previously urged that the U.S. be wary of Syrian Muslim refugees but eagerly accept “proven Christians.” Ted Cruz advocated an outright ban on Syrian Muslim refugees and then introduced a bill to bar refugees from multiple predominantly Muslim countries unless they’re Christians. Ben Carson argued that no Muslim could be president because their beliefs are anathema to constitutional principles. Those proposals are more limited than what Trump advocated yesterday, but they’re hardly in a different universe; they’re grounded in the same principle that Muslims are uniquely dangerous and antithetical to American values.
Lest liberals become self-satisfied about all this, this obsession with demonizing Muslims is by no means confined to the GOP presidential field. Residing — or so they claim — outside the far-right and Fox News swamps, there’s a sprawling cottage industry of pundits, academics, authors, TV hosts, think tanks, and “anti-extremist” activist groups devoted primarily to one idea: that Islam is supremely dangerous and Muslims pose the greatest threat. Beloved Democratic Gen. Wesley Clark, while on MSNBC earlier this year, explicitly called for “camps” for radicalized American Muslims. CNN’s role in all this is legion.
These are the people who have laid the rancid intellectual groundwork in which Trump and his movement are now festering. Just yesterday, the Daily Beast’s supremely loyal Democratic partisan columnist Michael Tomasky — who in 2013 instructed us all to celebrate the Egyptian military coup of the brutal tyrant Abdel Fattah al-Sisi because it got rid of the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood — repulsively demanded that American Muslims first prove they are loyal and can be trusted before they are “given” their rights.
Praising Obama (as always), this time for saying that religious fundamentalism is “a real problem that Muslims must confront, without excuse,” Tomasky wrote: “If anything Obama should have been more emphatic about this. He should now go around to Muslim communities in Detroit and Chicago and the Bay Area and upstate New York and give a speech that tells them: If you want to be treated with less suspicion, then you have to make that happen. That would be real leadership, and a real service.” The liberal pundit added, “That doesn’t mean just reading them their rights. It also means reading them their responsibilities.”
The imposition of this sort of collective responsibility — telling Muslims, as CNN anchors did after the Paris attacks, that they are all legitimately regarded with suspicion when individual Muslims engage in violence — is unthinkable for almost any other group. Indeed, it’s the defining hallmark of bigotry: imputing the bad acts of individuals to all members of a group or to the group itself. But it’s commonplace when it comes to discussions of Muslims.
It’s not hard to see why this demagoguery is so effective, why it spreads so easily and rapidly. Tribalism is a potent component of human nature, one of the most primitive and instinctive drives. Stoking it is and always has been easy. It’s particularly easy to do in an overwhelmingly Christian country that has spent 14 years and counting waging a relentless, seemingly endless war in predominantly Muslim countries and that touts Israel as its closest ally. Numerous factions have all sorts of lurking incentives to demonize Muslims as the greatest menace, and Trump has simply become an unusually unrestrained vehicle for expressing all of that and an unusually aggressive exploiter of it, but he is not its creator nor its prime mover.
All of this preexists Trump’s candidacy and is fueled by a wide array of groups with all sorts of cultural, religious, ideological, financial, and tribalistic motives for isolating and demonizing Muslims. Trump is not an outlier, and it’s dangerous to treat him as one.
As for the American media, I hope nobody harbors any hope that they’re going to be some sort of backstop preventing the emergence of dangerous extremism. They simply do not see that as their role. For most of them, a posture of “neutrality” and “opinion-free” blankness are the highest values. Here, for instance, was CNN anchor and dynastic prince Chris Cuomo last night vehemently scorning the suggestion that the U.S. media has any role to play in sounding the alarm bells on Trump’s growing fascism:
So the media should strike him down for making a suggestion that perhaps offends certain sensibilities? https://t.co/2AxRlKUOs7
— Christopher C. Cuomo (@ChrisCuomo) December 8, 2015
In Cuomo’s TV journalism-trained mind, Trump’s call for the complete exclusion of all Muslims from the U.S. is nothing more than “a suggestion that perhaps offends certain sensibilities,” and it’s not for him or other journalists to “strike him down.” When people objected, he said: “Characterize? Hmm. Test him on the implications, bring on other opinions and analyze the potential … that’s the job.” In response to an angry individual denouncing Trump’s extremism, Cuomo added (emphasis added): “Absolutely. That’s your role in voting. Accept and reject. Your role, not mine.”
Here’s what Mark Halperin — whose little-watched Bloomberg TV show was just picked up by an increasingly desperate MSNBC — had to say about Trump’s announcement:
Whatever happens, this is an historic day in the history of the @realDonaldTrump campaign.
— Mark Halperin (@MarkHalperin) December 8, 2015
No matter how extreme and menacing Trump becomes, that’s all one can expect from large sectors of the U.S. media: cowardly neutrality, feigned analytical objectivity (how will Trump’s fascism play with New Hampshire independents?) as an excuse for not taking any sort of stand. We are indeed a long, long way away from Edward R. Murrow’s sustained, continuous, unapologetic denunciations of Joseph McCarthy.
So by all means: unleash the contempt and the righteous indignation for Trump. It’s well-deserved. But that should not obscure everything that led to this moment, nor exonerate those who for years have been spewing unadorned anti-Muslim animus from multiple corners and under various banners. They’re more subtle and diplomatic (and thus more insidious) than Trump, but they’re reading from the same script.
* * * * *
Shortly before this article was published this morning, Cuomo re-appeared on Twitter and apparently had a change of heart from last night’s proclamation. Faced with a tidal wave of anger over his posture of neutrality, he did a complete reversal, seemingly thanking his critics by writing, “Thank you for stepping up and saying #trumpban is not about sensitivities or PC but core American values.” He added, “We have crossed a line in campaign and it deserves attention.” He then basically spent the whole morning atoning for last night’s statement by arguing that Trump’s “ban Muslim” policy is a “defining moment” and telling people they “should be angry.” Sometimes, social media shaming works.
On a different note: Trump gave a speech last night in South Carolina where he defended his “Ban Muslims” proposal. Speaking on an aircraft carrier underneath a suspended bomber jet (picture above), Trump added a new policy proposal about internet freedom that provoked substantial anger and mockery:
We’re losing a lot of people because of the internet. We have to see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that internet up in some ways. Somebody will say, ‘Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.’ These are foolish people.
As Trevor Timm noted, Trump’s statement — both in substance and even in words — was strikingly similar to what Hillary Clinton said the day before while delivering a foreign policy address at the Brookings Institution:
We’re going to have to have more support from our friends in the technology world to deny online space. Just as we have to destroy [ISIS’s] would-be caliphate, we have to deny them online space. And this is complicated. You’re going to hear all of the usual complaints, you know, freedom of speech, et cetera. But if we truly are in a war against terrorism and we are truly looking for ways to shut off their funding, shut off the flow of foreign fighters, then we’ve got to shut off their means of communicating.
Again, it’s easy and fun for elites to mock and scorn Trump. But he knows what he’s doing, and he’s not speaking to those elites. He specifically knows that what he’s saying will find a large, enthusiastic audience because of the ideas that have been mainstreamed in the U.S. for many years now: by political and media figures widely respected in the same elite circles that patronizingly mock Trump and his supporters.
UPDATE I: The always-smart Teju Cole with a related but somewhat different point, a crucial one:
UPDATE II: After Trump’s campaign spokesperson said his ban would also apply to American Muslims outside the country, Trump in an interview said the opposite: “If a person is a Muslim and goes overseas and come back, they can come back. They are a citizen, that is different.” How generous. It’s a small point — it hardly makes the proposal less repugnant — but it’s still worth noting.
I guess San Bernadino is workplace viloence
Creepy how both Clinton and Trump are on message for the powerful: we need control of the Internet bc it’s making you harder to propagandize – er, I mean, because Terrorism.
He’s not Petraeus he’s even worse. Hurray!
Far beyond my wildest expectations.
“In Cuomo’s TV journalism-trained mind, Trump’s call for the complete exclusion of all Muslims from the U.S. is nothing more than “a suggestion that perhaps offends certain sensibilities”.”
Right on, Cuomo! Wops like you know the score, ’cause the Cosa Nostra keeps all you Ities informed! Keep it up, Greaser! I’m sure you won’t be offended by this helpful suggestion, my Dumb Dago!
I support Trump’s proposal. What would be wildly dangerous would be Glen spending time in a country under the rule of Sharia law. We should do everything possible to defeat an ideology that condones hurling gays from buildings. This is war.
Modern muslims believe context must be applied when interpreting scripture, just like modern christians. The bible requires stoning of women wearing pants, condones slavery, promotes polygamy, praises old men marrying little girls.
The problem is not Islam, it is radical literalists.
Applying historical and textual context when interpreting the text has been part of the Islamic scholarship for over 1400 years; though there’ve those who have not done so.
I’m not aware of any text, or its authenticity, that suggests hurling gays from buildings. The OP did not provide a reference to a Quranic verse.
I may be accused of personal attack, but what the OP wrote is a classic example of fear mongering. What are the chances that the American Muslims will gain so much influence and power that they’ll manage to pass a law in the Congress that will call for gays to be thrown from buildings, something I’ve never heard a Muslim suggest or read in an authentic source.
Is that so? Because the culture of our own environment is becoming increasingly intolerant and violent. Look back to the 60s-70s in the middle east, and see how life was lived under a solid infrastructure and little foreign interference. And btw, your comment on hurling gays from a building..a Muslim teen was beaten and thrown out of a 6th floor building in a window in a hate crime, in washington. But of course..we dont blame america.
The whole world now knows whats happening in Brussels, France and many Europeon countries after the French attack.its clear Terrorists are mixing in with the refugees and slipping inside western countries to establish Islam rule and bring terror to all non muslims who they hate so much.these Islamic fanatic groups are also persent in India ,Bangladesh,Pakistan,Afghanistan we can go on.So now we all the ordinary citizens wonder what does our future hold for us in the hands of these Islamic Fanatics.what about our future generations is this how we want to leave our beloved countries to our kids where Islamic rule is going to prevail.its clear now it was a big mistake letting in Fanatic muslims into non-muslim countries and now they are multiplying like rabbits and taken over many quite and beautiful countries like Sweden, Netherlands Switzerland etc where even the women are attacked an draped to prove their points.While non muslims are attacked and their churches ,temples are burnt in all muslim countries.Ex:(Please look up in google and see what happened to Kashmir hindu pundits who were driven away from kashmir by islamic fundamentalities are now living in refugees camps) but yet they want to be given more rights to do what ever the hell they want in other countries.First they must be kind to non muslims in their muslim countries before protesting.Now we hear Mr.Justin trudaue is hurting too bring in 25000 refugees from Syria to canada just because he promised in his election speech to bring in muslim refugees just to get the muslim vote.
Does he and his minsters have even thought that terror groups might be among them and turn Canada into another rFrance?we belong to Canada too so we too have the right to ask why not bring in the minorities in muslim countries who are subjected to torture in the hands of muslim mullas.
already we see new generation young muslims who come from troubled muslim countries still look at all non muslims as traitors then why bring in more and make our lives a pure Hell. in the uk there are no go zone to non muslims does anyone know common friends lets stop these stupid politicians for the personal gains take us for granted.
And many around the world are wondering why rich oil Arab countries like UAE not taking in Muslim refugees from Syria and we have to take them and why do they not go there they are the same people right you k now why the arabic countries do not want them
2 out of the 9 shooters in paris came from Syria, the rest were EU citizens. San Bernadino was done by americans. Blocking entry from muslim nations would not have stopped either event. Blocking syrian refugees from france would have meant those two shooters would have had to choose one of the other many routes into the EU, but wouldnt have stopped anything.
The stated goal of the paris attacks by ISIS was to rile up the world against people like the syrian refugees, whom ISIS would be happy to slaughter if they were able to.
Buying into ISIS propaganda, and the people who promote it (like far right political parties), is helping them convince muslims around the world that they are telling the truth, and the world is ending, and they need to join the caliphate.
ADDENDUM
@N3VRM1SZ
Dec. 9 2015, 1:40 a.m.
See “Top Ten Ways Islamic Law forbids Terrorism”, at http://www.juancole.com/2013/04/islamic-forbids-terrorism.html
See also this 600+ page fatwa against terrorism: http://www.minhajbooks.com/images-books/Edict-Terrorism-Fitna-Khawarij/Edict-Terrorism-Fitna-Khawarij_1.pdf
There’s a tremendous amount of scholarship within Islam to refute all the religious arguments that those so-called Muslims who commit violence against the non-combatants, and also many non-Muslims, use to support that act using the text.
I made a typographical error for which you disparaged me. You now label me with being careless, as follows:
“Did I make a mistake when I considered your typo in your reference to 2:16 as carelessness on your part?” Oh Great Sufi Muslim, I made a typo.
It is said in the Qur’an, among other things, that surely Allah forgives. But, apparently, you don’t. You just change your choice of ugly words to describe me, rather than simply to overlook what should, to the great scholar of the Qur’an you hold yourself out to be, a simple accident in typing. I’m done with responding to your disrespectful attacks upon me.
I sincerely apologized to you for my shortcomings, and then for hurting your feelings.
I also replied to your comments with analyses of the Quranic verses you originally quoted.
When I asked you if I made a mistake when I considered your typo in your reference to 2:16 as carelessness on your part, I asked it with sincerity and respect.
I’m now puzzled as to why you didn’t accept my apologies and decided not to respond to my analyses and answer my questions.
So I ask with the utmost respect, sincerity and politeness: How should’ve I responded to your original post?
http://lettertobaghdadi.com/
What’s on that link? I’m fearful of tapping on links I’m not sure of.
“Again, it’s easy and fun for elites to mock and scorn Trump. But he knows what he’s doing, and he’s not speaking to those elites. He specifically knows that what he’s saying will find a large, enthusiastic audience because of the ideas that have been mainstreamed in the U.S. for many years now: by political and media figures widely respected in the same elite circles that patronizingly mock Trump and his supporters.”
Here, I’ll say it more bluntly in the vernacular of ordinary people:
The political establishment and media are the ones who have created this monstrous new movement that would vote for Trump and is ready to call for genocide killing an entire race of people, 99% of which are completely innocent and at the mercy of their puppet leadership that are the U.S. and Western allies has put in place just like we have in the U.S.. And it is NOT about race, even religion, it’s about FEAR. The FEAR that the political establishment and media have been peddling against Muslims since the Cold War ended. Some might suggest I should have said since 9/11, but it was right after the Cold War ended that they started planning to pull off that FALSE FLAG we call 9/11. Muslims were made the convenient scapegoat and boogeyman that were used to drum up public support for the failed “Arab Spring” translate: regime change policy of the U.S. and their allies.
The Reply link doesn’t work, so I’m forced to post this in its own thread.
@N3VRM1SZ
Dec. 9 2015, 1:40 a.m.
So, if I say to you that you’re distorting the Quran, am I guilty of attacking you personally?
Am I mistaken in my understanding that in your text above you are attacking and demonizing ALL Muslims?
So, in other words, it’s okay if you mention “Interpretation and contemplation of doctrinal law”, but it’s not okay for me to refer you, and others, to a few commentaries on the Qur’an.
But, you do say, “beginning with … The Holy Qur’an”, for it is in fact the primary source of Islam and works as The Criterion to judge if something is Islamic or not. So I’ll give you that.
Forgetting that you made a mistake in the verse number and accepting your claim that it was a typo, what is your purpose in quoting this verse, albeit partially, without its historical setting and without reference to other verses of the Qur’an on this subject?
Is it not important to at least try to understand a verse in light of what else the Qur’an has stated on a subject?
Also, is it not important to you to know how the Muslims have understood this verse over the past 1400+ years?
If you say that it’s not important how we Muslims understand this and related verses, then you’ll be contradicting what you’ve clearly stated at the beginning of your post (see the very first quoted text above).
In that you’re clearly making the case that we Muslims are commanded by God through the Qur’an ”…to take up arms against or otherwise subdue all non-Muslims…”
That is, given the fact that you charge us Muslims for doing what the Qur’an tells us to do, it should in fact be quite important to you how we Muslims read, interpret and apply the text of the Qur’an.
Elsewhere, I have pointed out that the verse you’ve referenced needs to be examined in conjunction with 2:190-193 (2:190 and the subsequent verses lay down unequivocally that only self-defence (in the widest sense of the word) makes war permissible for Muslims) and 22:39.
And that’s one of the primary ways we interpret 2:216, and not by taking it out of context as you’ve done.
And it’s more important to know how we Muslims traditionally interpret this verse than how you interpret it since it’s our beliefs that are being suspected and we’re charged with things you’ve stated at the beginning of your post, and tried to present this verse as an evidence of your claims, which I have now refuted.
Let’s read 3:19 and 3:20 carefully and more deeply. They say this:
“(3:19) Behold, the only [true] religion in the sight of God is [man’s] self-surrender unto Him; and those who were vouchsafed revelation aforetime took, out of mutual jealousy, to divergent views [on this point] only after knowledge [thereof] had come unto them. But as for him who denies the truth of God’s messages-behold, God is swift in reckoning!
(3:20) Thus, [O Prophet,] if they argue with thee, say, “I have surrendered my whole being unto God, and [so have] all who follow me!” – and ask those who have been vouchsafed revelation aforetime, as well as all unlettered people, “Have you [too] surrendered yourselves unto Him?” And if they surrender themselves unto Him, they are on the right path; but if they turn away – behold, thy duty is no more than to deliver the message: for God sees all that is in [the hearts of] His creatures.”
As you can see, the Qur’an isn’t necessarily talking about a specific religion with the label “Islam”. It’s talking about man’s self-surrender unto God [Alone] — an inner state.
Elsewhere, the Qur’an says this:
(2:62) VERILY, those who have attained to faith [in this divine writ], as well as those who follow the Jewish faith, and the Christians, and the Sabians – all who believe in God and the Last Day and do righteous deeds – shall have their reward with their Sustainer; and no fear need they have, and neither shall they grieve.”
So, as far as the Qur’an is concerned, the salvation is not based on the label of a person’s path that has been given by human beings. Rather, it is based on a person’s inner state (which is known only to God) and good actions.
What the Muslim scholars have said over the past 1400+ years cannot be ignored, because, as stated above, it is the Muslims’ beliefs that are being questioned.
Here’s but one scholar on 2:62:
The above passage – which recurs in the Quran several times – lays down a fundamental doctrine of Islam. With a breadth of vision unparalleled in any other religious faith, the idea of “salvation” is here made conditional upon three elements only: belief in God, belief in the Day of Judgment, and righteous action in life. The statement of this doctrine at this juncture – that is, in the midst of an appeal to the children of Israel – is warranted by the false Jewish belief that their descent from Abraham entitles them to be regarded as “God’s chosen people.”
Read also what the Muslim thinkers, such as Rene Guenon, Titus Burckhardt, Martin Lings, Frithjof Schuon, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and William Chittick, have said on the universality of the Truth, which transcends cultural and religious boundaries.
Many other Sufi scholars have said similar things, such as ibn Arabi and Rumi.
So, to suggest that ALL Muslims think that only those who call themselves “Muslims” (and use it as a label) are on the right path, and everyone else is on the wrong path, is incorrect.
Yes, there are those who are exclusivists, both Muslims and non-Muslims alike, but that’s not what I and many other Muslims see in the Qur’an.
Here, you’ve quoted the translation of a verse partially, which has distorted what this verse is actually saying.
Read the verses above it and you’ll see that they are talking about people of earlier revelations.
In fact, here’s the complete verse:
(5:47) Let, then, the followers of the Gospel judge in accordance with what God has revealed therein: for they who do not judge in the light of what God has bestowed from on high – it is they, they who are truly iniquitous!
So, if I say to you that you’re quoting verses out of textual context, am I guilty of attacking you personally?
You’ve continued to quote verses out of context. So I’m just going to quote what you have stated below, but it’d be repetitious if I were to comment on them.
Read the translations of these verses in light of what else the Qur’an has said, and you’ll understand them better.
Here, you’re now suggesting that it’s a segment of the Muslim population who interpret the Qur’an in this manner. At the beginning of your post, you gave a different impression.
Did I misunderstand the beginning portion of your post?
Sure, but do YOU now understand how the verses you’ve quoted have textual context? Do you see how the verses do not say what you yourself think they do, when they are examined within their textual context? Do you not see that you yourself have produced partial translations of some of the verses and that when they are read in their entirety, their meanings become clearer?
Is this anything other than an ugly attack on me, because of a typo (2:16 rather than 2:216?
“It’s obvious that this commenter didn’t even bother to read the verse he’s quoted let alone study it.”
How about your nasty comment that:
“In his/her haste to distort the Qur’an he/she just copied and pasted it from some source, most likely an anti-Islam source blindly.”
Was the following rhetorical question meant by you to be a polite disagreement with my stated position? I don’t think so. Perhaps you could refer me to a commentary which could make it read differently than the ugliness I experience in it.
“Is it worth my time and effort to analyze the other verses this commenter has hastily copied and pasted?”
How is this anything other than an ugly attack on me, even if only by inuendo?
“And, this is how the anti-Islam forces distort Islam, demonize the Muslims and cause hysteria against them, which results in all kinds of actions against the innocent Muslims!”
Were you perhaps speaking of someone else when you claimed the following?
“This commenter then goes on to quote a few verses (some partially) of the Qur’an to provide a yuuge distorted picture of what the Qur’an says.”
Peaceful? Not! Loving? Not! Open-minded? Not! A mean and personal attack from a vile hater, bigot, and eletist? Yes!
If I hurt your feelings, I sincerely apologize. I have given responses to you, and have asked you several questions. Are you planning on responding?
I’m done with responding to your disrespectful attacks upon me.
I again sincerely apologize to you.
You did state this:
Are you not painting us all with the same brush?
Why can’t my above question be considered a legitimate question that’s asked with sincerity and politeness?
Not a fan of the Dems but it is genuinely time to take measures to outlaw the GOP (and the Tea Party frankly) as a white supremacist hate group, dismantle all their national and state organizations, and to do the same with their propaganda outlets (Fox, the Center for Security Policy, any associated fronts). Seriously – the security of the country, its freedoms and traditions, and the health of the planet demand it.
Then we can get in the dems face about all the immoral crap they’ve caved on for lo these many decades (or themselves advanced), and maybe have, oh I don’t know . . . a civilization.
Greenwald/Greenwald 2020!
Glenn Greenwald,
I just want to thank you for standing up for the millions and billions of Muslims across the world. Thank you for being human <3
Hmmm. I like this Foreign Policy Magazine article from yesterday: Meet Donald Trump’s Islamophobia Expert
Apparently Frank Gaffney is a well known Islamophobe, having pushed theories that Huma Abedin is a Muslim Brotherhood operative and that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Read more here:
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/12/08/donald-trump-frank-gaffney-islamophobia-poll/
From Wikipedia:
I think it’s kind of funny to think it took Donald Trump attacking Muslims to get all these people, who wouldn’t normally, step up to defend the civil rights of (Americans that happen to be Muslim). Well, say what you like about The Donald, he does make it interesting.
Please sign the petition https://www.change.org/p/united-states-prevent-muslim-immigration .
I didn’t realize that Change.org had no scruples. One signature so far; that of the petitioner, Donald Trump.
All true as far as it goes. But the character of this analysis is risky, because it confuses proportionality, or runs away from it altogether. Yes, it’s true American petro dollars fund Wahhabi “madrassahs” and proxy terrorism. But they also fund the DoD-NATO-IMF-WORLDBANK leviathan. Chomsky’s helpful distinction between ‘retail terror’ and ‘wholesale terror’ needs to be the basis of any careful analysis of ‘the threat’. And this is not done. Fighting for ‘jihad’ requires the use of violent, manipulative euphemism. As does fighting for ‘freedom and democracy’. The latter form of religiousity is far more influential across the globe, and not in any real conflict with the former. So the scale is enormously out of wack. It’s not a clash of civs, it’s an arbitrage of ignorance and dissonance.
This arbitrage of dissonance, between “the West”, and its GCC coalition, where either side presupposes an independence of the other, to fulfill their given narratives, clears the oil-for-weapons balance sheet. It keeps the dollar hegemonic, and the capital networks fruitful. Sure, there’s Machiavelli at work, but it runs on useful idiocy. People believe this shit. People need to believe in it. And no one knows how to confront it explicitly. It’s always down to a wink and a nod. Because, ultimately, we’re talking about buying power. Terrorism fuels the Isuzu and underwrites the Christmas shopping. Terrorism indirectly “curates our egos”. I, consumer. It’s the ‘end of history’ and there’s no where else to go. Who wants to go? Not as many as we think.
Prof Eugene Volokh’s new OP: Banning Muslims from entering the U.S. is a very bad idea — but it may be constitutionally permissible
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/12/08/banning-muslims-from-entering-the-u-s-is-a-very-bad-idea-but-it-may-be-constitutionally-permissible/
Agreed about the menacing rhetoric, but before suggesting that Trump could possibly win the Presidency, look at the electoral demographics which are going to make it very hard for even a moderate Republican to win. This relates to the suggestion that there’s an American id he’s channeling. There may be AN id represented by Trump, but it’s not the id of voters in New York, California, and all those populous parts of the country which will decide the election.
It’s hilarious, you’ve got Clinton, who’s only got to be a hair’s breath more sane than the Republicans….and the Republicans who can’t or won’t distance themselves from the Fuhrer. They may not vocally support the “camps” or the “wall”….but they want to “secure the borders” wink wink.
Isn’t good news for anyone wanting a good choice of people to vote for.
“hilarious”?
Hillaryous?
Yes, but I can’t find any actual humor in it.
None of the options available lead to laughter.
– railing online… not even a chuckle*
– protest… in my neck of the woods, I’d at least get a brief laugh at myself
– tune out… ignorance can only be bliss if you can forget what you know
We’re fucked… ha, ha , ha.
Commiseration with like-minded individuals helps of course.
But I’d sure love to read a news report that those individuals have blossomed into an electoral majority…
… so on and on goes the effort.
Onward towards the last laugh.
* generated by my comments… Benito got me good a ways downthread.
“Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the communist party” For decades that question was asked to every person entering the US, is “Are you now, or have you ever been a Muslim”, fundamentally different?
Isn’t the whole Muslim issue just a replay of the 20th century Red Scare? HUAC? Black Lists….US has been there before…
We should also be ashamed of that McCarthy scare, which ruined the lives of so many people in this country for his political gain. Of course we’re not. We use such incidents to cite legal precedent, rather than show how we’ve become better people. We also used (some say still) to practice genocide against the original inhabitants of this country, perhaps that will be used by Trump supporters as legal precedent in the future.
Two of my biggest concerns is that 1- we have become so disgustingly subservient to the idea of an endless war in unknown countries without any public debate on their merits at all. This has led to this modern day crusade against all muslims, without regard to innocence or not. Strange how a religion named after a homeless man who preached compassion, love, tolerance towards all is the driving force behind all this ignorant hate.
My other concern is that the circus trump is creating has meant that any real issues we face in this country are not being addressed at all. I’m sure all candidates from both parties (and there should be a lot more parties, but that’s another story) are relieved about this. They no longer have to address TPP, net neutrality, our crumbling infrastructure, the reason for our endless wars, corporate fraud, environmental concerns (other than the highly profitable cap and trade agreements) , our misguided school system, health care problems, pedophilia among our leaders, etc., etc, etc, Nope. All we have to discuss is the lunatic ravings of a klan with billions. Though I do believe he would look better if he did wear a hood, it at least would hide that horrid hair.
This is not all 1950’s stuff. This ruling is from 1991 and denies someone naturalization due to communist association…
http://openjurist.org/941/f2d/878/price-v-united-states-immigration-and-naturalization-service
Someone needs to let Trump know what I have been saying all along:
That ISIS is a de-Ba’athification monster created by some in the “coalition” as a tool to stoke exactly the vitriol that he is spouting today about Moslems; to justify destroying what shreds of civil liberties exist; to compell all nations with with SOFA agreements with the U S to pass anti-terrorism code identical or similar to US ‘s; to roll back all legislation passed post Snowden revelations; revelations; to keep the US public criminally manipulated, ignorant and deathly scared, and to pass new draconian laws to silence critics.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/isis-show-tanks-devastating-hi-6981636
True. The end result of this endless 1984 type war is that we have given away all our freedoms in order to save them. It turns out that our own government is the true enemy of freedom with the monstrosities they’ve created in the name of fighting people who supposedly “hate our freedoms.” Not to mention the role that our entire school system (I refuse to say educational) is responsible for producing such servile slaves who refuse to question anyone in an authority position.
@Non sum dingus:
Another Internet warrior who thinks that they can simplify complex issues in small soundbites, and consequently, distort the picture, and demonize the Muslims, which results in yuuge misconceptions and fear of Islam/Muslims, which have reached very high levels now.
See “Decree and Destiny”, by Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri, at http://www.zahrapublications.com/book-DecreeAndDestiny-Revised.php#bookTitle
This is fun, video of people being read quotes from a bible, disguised as a quran
Yes, those who habitually engage in the folly of advancing a single perception of Islam in online forums with an endless string of small “sound bites” runs a very high risk of narrowing definitions and cultural viewpoints to a degree that irreparable undermines the reality of its rich plurality of ideas and traditions – including those that are violence prone and elitist in nature.
Thanks for the links
The times are such that racists, bigots and all manner of haters are enjoying a revival and today it’s not only acceptable to hold their foul beliefs openly, but to act upon them, and violently, if must be. Truly, these are fresh salad days for seasoned racists and young xenophobes alike the world over.
Doug S.
Thanks. It seems the problem may be linked to a JavaScript.
I normally disable JavaScript because of the vulnerability that it is known for, even when that means I may miss out on some image components of an opened page. But when I enable it, the Reply button seems to work at least for a while.
Someone, whom I chewed up nicely for it, blamed the whole thing on poor Dan Froomkin who of course, like TI, has nothing to do with this.
Terrorists murder thousands. State terrorism slaughters millions and displace millions more.
Both must stop if peace must have a chance.
Heads up, people!
The “reply” function of the forum software is, as we used to say in the early days of small computers, “scrogged” — that is, it’s fucked-up big time.
Nobody is censoring your replies; TI is simply experiencing technical difficulties of a kind that should be familiar to all involved. ;^(
Trump, Trump, Trump, everywhere. Why not let the electorate decide who they want rather than the Media constantly trashing him. (No, I would never vote for him, with or without the Media telling me ). We’ve elected worse before & that’s why we have the checks & balances built into our Constitution.
Besides, most know that the Media darling, Hillary, will be the next POTUS, even though she’s no leader & unfit for any high level security clearance.
@ N3VRM1SZ:
And, this is how the anti-Islam forces distort Islam, demonize the Muslims and cause hysteria against them, which results in all kinds of actions against the innocent Muslims!
These people completely ignore the 1400+ years of Muslim scholarship on matters such as this one.
I refer you to Muhammad Asad’s commentary on the Qur’an and the newly published “The Study Quran”, at http://www.amazon.com/Study-Quran-New-Translation-Commentary/dp/0061125865/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1447317176&sr=8-1&keywords=The+study
This commenter then goes on to quote a few verses (some partially) of the Qur’an to provide a yuuge distorted picture of what the Qur’an says.
I’ll just pick one to illustrate my point.
He quotes:
2:16 actually says this (2:15-16): (15) God will requite them for their mockery,11 and will leave them for a while in their overweening arrogance, blindly stumbling to and fro: (16) [for] it is they who have taken error in exchange for guidance; and neither has their bargain brought them gain, nor have they found guidance [elsewhere].
It’s obvious that this commenter didn’t even bother to read the verse he’s quoted let alone study it. In his/her haste to distort the Qur’an he/she just copied and pasted it from some source, most likely an anti-Islam source blindly.
Is it worth my time and effort to analyze the other verses this commenter has hastily copied and pasted?
No, it’s not.
So, I am going to stop here. Anyone who has an open mind and is willing to understand the verses of the Quran that the anti-Islam people often quote can look up their commentaries in the two sources I have mentioned above.
You are correct in your citation. I am in error on the reference to Sura 2:16. I should have type Sura 2:216. You attack my integrity over a typo. Unlike you, I have not made unsupported negative assumptions of personal character, motives, or integrity. Unlike you, I refer people to authority, the very words of the Quaran itself, not the opinionated “commentaries” you suggest people look to.
Is it your assumption that one can easily understand the Qur’an through its translations by focusing on individual verses (full and partial verses) without their historical and textual settings?
Do you not consider the Quran to be an integrated whole in which parts of it elaborate the other parts?
If you do, then read 2:216 in conjunction with 2:190-193 (2:190 and the subsequent verses lay down unequivocally that only self-defence (in the widest sense of the word) makes war permissible for Muslims) and 22:39.
Do you really think that we should throw away 1400+ years of Quranic scholarship, and adopt the Wahhabi/Salafi approach to the Quran?
Did you not find it appropriate when I referred you, and others, to the translation and commentary of Muhammad Asad and the newly published “The Study Quran”, instead of writing several pages of analyses of the verses you quoted in this forum?
Did I make a mistake when I considered your typo in your reference to 2:16 as carelessness on your part?
I think if someone really wants to dive into the Qur’an, they won’t rely on forums, such as this, to do so. There are much better ways. People usually throw around Quranic verses here in order to paint a negative picture of the Quran, Islam and the Muslims. And they usually do that by quoting verses out of their historical and textual context.
But, if you are really a sincere seeker, I suggest you get yourself the two commentaries I have recommended and study them carefully with an open mind.
If you are interested in the esoteric commentaries on the Qur’an, then there are audio and video discourses of Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri, at http://www.shaykhfadhlallahaeri.com/
I do sincerely apologize for my shortcomings and discourteous behavior.
Actually, you didn’t.
You quoted translations of a few verses, not the very words of the Quran. Only the original Arabic text is the very words of the Quran.
See my longer response in this thread.
Wanted to mention that Chris Cuomo did a good job with trump yesterday. As well as can be expected. I still don’t think it answered Glenn’s twitter question to him of what changed his mind. But good job Chris Cuomo. Unfortunately, though, the Trump genie is out. Whatever the media says about him now will not matter to his core followers of xenophobic trump wannabes.
What a mess.
I have tried, but I can’t regard the defining Islamic idea of Qadar (predestination ) as anything but evil. All 1.6 billion who call themselves Muslims are required to believe in this as an article of their religious faith. Every one who holds such a belief is an enemy of mankind, and of human freedom. Intolerable for us to allow them to raise their hapless children in these corrosive belief.
There is no room in the world for tolerance of this abhorrent doctrine of Qadar – Divine pre-ordainment. This is evil. Pure and simple.
Um, you mean non sum dignus, not dingus, unless you are asserting that you are not a dingus battius, in which case you better double check.
And by the way, if you meant non sum dignus, the verb should be at the end, and no, no you are not dignus, not if istas sententias caccas.
Fuck Trump and those that support that scumsucking bitch.
http://media.fyre.co/YKG7ifP7ShmHyRnImkVT_uncle-sam.jpg
Who, in their right (sane) mind would even want to visit the US while currently, it appears, a deadly minority of US Law enforcement officers at State and Federal level appear to regard Afro-America citizens of all ages, abilities and disabilities with a ‘target practice contempt’ to such an extent that so called ‘juries’ are now prepared to exonerate these killer cops while undergoing the process formerly known as “Justice”???
Ha!
According to last night’s Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Donald Trump is WHISIS (white ISIS) – and really wants to bang his daughter. I found it difficult to dispute their considerable evidence.
Apologies to TI for originally attempting to post the comedy central / viacom link to that show. I belatedly realized it probably involved a royalty fee I shouldn’t be asking TI to pay for my comment.
According to last night’s Daily Show with Trevor Noah,.Donald Trump is WHISIS (white ISIS) – and really wants to bang his daughter. I found it difficult to dispute their considerable evidence.
http://www.cc.com/full-episodes/bzp7rb/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-december-8–2015—tom-perez-season-21-ep-21034
@ N3VRM1SZ
Muslims do not approve of harming the non-combatants and do not consider it to be Islamic. Classical Islamic law is quite clear on that.
As a matter of fact, they are the biggest victims of it and are doubly-hurt: 1) From these misguided so-called Muslims who are committing terrorism in the name of Jihad, and 2) By those who show no sympathy towards the Muslim victims, rather, they blame them and demonize their religion.
The term, Jihad, doesn’t have the meaning you might give to this term.
See “The Spiritual Significance of Jihad”, by an eminent scholar, Prof. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, at http://www.al-islam.org/al-serat/vol-9-no-1/spiritual-significance-jihad-seyyed-hossein-nasr/spiritual-significance-jihad
Excerpts:
And those who perform jihad for Us, We shall certainly guide them in Our ways, and God is surely with the doers of good. (Quran 39:69)
You have returned from the lesser jihad to the greater jihad. (Hadith)
The Arabic term jihad, usually translated into European languages as holy war, more on the basis of its juridical usage in Islam rather than on its much more universal meaning in the Quran and Hadith, is derived from the root phd whose primary meaning is to strive or to exert oneself.
Its translation into holy war combined with the erroneous notion of Islam prevalent in the West as the ‘religion of the sword’ has helped to eclipse its inner and spiritual significance and to distort its connotation.
Nor has the appearance upon the stage of history during the past century and especially during the past few years of an array of movements within the Islamic world often contending or even imposing each other and using the word jihad or one of its derivative forms helped to make known the full import of its traditional meaning which alone is of concern to us here.
Instead recent distortions and even total reversal of the meaning of jihad as understood over the ages by Muslims have made it more difficult than ever before to gain insight into this key religious and spiritual concept.
To understand the spiritual significance of jihad and its wide application to nearly every aspect of human life as understood by Islam, it is necessary to remember that Islam bases itself upon the idea of establishing equilibrium within the being of man as well as in the human society where he functions and fulfills the goals of his earthly life.
…
Read the whole thing here: http://www.al-islam.org/al-serat/vol-9-no-1/spiritual-significance-jihad-seyyed-hossein-nasr/spiritual-significance-jihad
It’s no doubt a thankless task, SM, but you do it with admirable patience and aplomb.
Thanks,
I find you a very patience person too, but with more wisdom than I have.
Building bridges takes time; destroying them can take just a few seconds.
“with more wisdom than I have”
The first silly thing you’ve said on this blog. :-)
Don’t underestimate yourself. I have learned a lot from you. Your comments are short, concise and full of wisdom.
You find a cheerleader in Gator90, who writes that you do your task with “admirable patience and aplomb.” In your task, I experience personal attack in your attempts to duck and dodge the words from the Qur’an which I have set forth in my previous post. With the exception of dismissing my post by pointing out one typo I made (Sura 2:16 should have been typed as Sura 2:216), and holding me up for ridicule, you have yet to make a post denying that the words I set forth are in the Qur’an. I find your negative comments about me to be perplexing, in that it’s hard for me to understand how you can, if you are Sufi, seek to find divine truth and love through direct encounters with God, while castigating me. I agree with the Patheos Library that “some of the most famous and beautiful literature of the Islamic world has been written by Sufis,” but with you as an exception. I have found nothing but smoke and mirrors behind your personal attacks, obfuscation and references to second-hand commentary. The Emperor has no clothes. No degree of attack on my credibility and no reformation of fact into the fiction of opinionated commentaries will clothe the naked truth which I present.
I was replying to a comment. Then they gave me this damn page I’ve never seen before “sorry we’re having problems.” I come back. that original comment is gone. It wasn’t even a bad comment. It wasn’t even that bad a comment. Just some typical prejudiced anti-muslim crap. I had a perfect answer for it too. Now they’ve deleted that stupid comment and my brilliant retort.
Good job The Intercept.
It always does this for a moment after a reply — it just has some tar in the wheels today. I see the thing about the 72 virgins below … I assume that’s it.
For laughs, try http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/hadith/qudsi.php : Ya want anything? — No sir. — Ya sure ya don’t want anything? — No, we’re fine. — Positive? — Well, we might like to not be in the body of birds when we’re surrounded by those 72 virgins we married – can we please go back to jihadding? — Not gonna happen, chumps!
Trump, Trump, Trump, everywhere. Why not let the electorate decide who they want rather than the Media constantly trashing him. (No, I would never vote for him, with or without the Media telling me not to). We’ve elected worse before & that’s why we have the checks & balances built into our Constitution.
Besides, most know that the Media darling, Hillary, will be the next POTUS, even though she’s no leader & unfit for any high level security clearance.
Trump, Trump, Trump, everywhere. Why not let the electorate decide who they want rather than the Media constantly trashing him. (No, I would never vote for him, with or without the Media telling me not to). We’ve elected worse before & that’s why we have the checks & balances built into our Constitution. Besides, most know that the Media darling, Hillary will be the next POTUS, even though she’s no leader & unfit for any high level security clearance.
The desire to get laid by 72 young beautiful virgins can be overwhelming to horny, repressed men with no future.
Seems like you know a thing or two about sexual repression. Most of the rest of us just rub one out.
And how does your Hasbara manufactured bullshit jive with the woman in San Bernadino? Was she looking for 72 virgins also? You need to come up with a better Koran story.
I don’t know, but I’m really skeptical of claims this is the reason. A lot of times, suicide attackers get payouts to their families, and I think that prioritizing fairy tales over cash is a fairy tale in itself. I’m prone to think that suicide attackers are merely suicides; the deaths they cause, merely a chance to make money or status out of the act, or perhaps, to enact a general revenge on humanity. I mean, it’s like people wearing jewelry “for luck” which they’ve obviously picked for fashion; for some reason they want an excuse for something more mundane. Only, like all things Islam, this is much more morose.
@24b4Jeff
The reply button doesn’t work for me, so I’m responding to:
Fascism is hard to pin down – articles dealing with it generally provide a list of characteristics that it generally displays. That’s because it’s a goal oriented (‘strengthen the nation’) pragmatic system as opposed to a rigid ideology. There is nothing wrong with the goal of building a stronger nation, although when taken to the extreme the result is Sparta – a society where everything is subordinated to the military. So people are naturally unclear about when a ‘line’ into fascism has been crossed. However, I believe the concept of a line is contentious and therefore misleading – it’s more useful to imagine a spectrum. The US has shifted fairly far along the spectrum towards fascism.
If La Pen believes that nationalizing portions of the economy strengthens France, then doing so is consistent with fascism, even though it might also be consistent with socialism. What differs is the motivation.
Similarly, the US has found more sophisticated means of merging ruling and corporate interests, as defined by a governing elite. Because of the trappings of democracy, and the more sophisticated means of determining national policy than by governing fiat, many don’t see it as fascism. And it isn’t fascism in the classical sense. Therefore some prefer to call it inverted totalitarianism or other names, but I see it as simply a natural evolution of fascism – from the primitive classical fascism which tended to collapse under the weight of its own excesses, to a more sophisticated and stable form of fascism.
Trump is a throwback towards an earlier, uglier form of fascism, but Trump will not triumph (although he will help shift the US further along the spectrum).
>”Trump is a throwback towards an earlier, uglier form of fascism, but Trump will not triumph (although he will help shift the US further along the spectrum).”
Yeah, notwithstanding all that old Fascist mumbo jumbo … you and WhiteHouse spokesperson, Ernest T., are still free to say Trump’s latest remarks disqualify him from the POTUS.
But I say Trump has already triumphed … in the sense that his beady little eyes and will-0-wisp comb-over have greeted me on every publication I’ve visited the past three days.
The only thing Trump craves is wealth and power (that’s why you’re the funny guy.). Btw, You’re Fired!
*Wrt the ‘spectrum’ …
quote”Because of the trappings of democracy, and the more sophisticated means of determining national policy than by governing fiat, many don’t see it as fascism. And it isn’t fascism in the classical sense.” unquote
In the classical sense. Shades of Jim Garrison….in 1967
quote”What worries me deeply, and I have seen it exemplified in this case, is that we in America are in great danger of slowly evolving into a proto-fascist state. It will be a different kind of fascist state from the one of the Germans evolved; theirs grew out of depression and promised bread and work, while ours, curiously enough,seems to be emerging from prosperity. But in the final analysis, it’s based on power and on the inability to put human goals and human conscience above the dictates of the state. Its origins can be traced in the tremendous war machine we’ve built since 1945, the “military-industrial complex” that Eisenhower vainly warned us about, which now dominates every aspect of our life. The power of the states and Congress has gradually been abandoned to the Executive Department, because of
war conditions; and we’ve seen the creation of an arrogant, swollen bureaucratic complex totally unfettered by the checks and balances of the Constitution. In a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society. Of course, you can’t spot this trend to fascism by casually looking around. You can’t look for such familiar signs as the swastika, because they won’t be there. We won’t build Dachaus and Auschwitzes; the clever manipulation of the mass media is creating a concentration camp of the mind that promises to be far more effective in keeping the populace in line. We’re not going to wake up one morning and suddenly find ourselves in gray uniforms goose-stepping off to work. But this isn’t the test.The test is: What happens to the individual who dissents? In Nazi Germany, he was physically destroyed; here, the process is more subtle, but the end results can be the same. I’ve learned enough about the machinations of the CIA in the past year to know that this is no longer the dreamworld America I once believed in. The imperatives of the population explosion, which almost inevitably will lessen our belief in the sanctity of the individual human life, combined with the awesome power of the CIA and the defense establishment, seem destined to seal the fate of the America I knew as a child and bring us into a new Orwellian world where the citizen exists for the state and where raw power justifies any and every immoral act. I’ve always had a kind of knee-jerk trust in my Government’s basic integrity, whatever political blunders it may make. But I’ve come to realize that in Washington, deceiving and manipulating the public are viewed by some as the natural prerogatives of office. Huey Long oncesaid, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I’m afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America…
in the name of national security.”unquote
The “liberal id” is more complex than the “conservative id”. More sublimated, yeah? Conservatives use dog whistles. Liberals use cryptography. Liberal Id requires a fair bit of unpacking in comparison.
But Tomasky did us all a favor. He posted the encryption key for all to see.
That squirmy feeling? The revulsion? The outrage?
It’s the unconscious release of all pretense.
Oops!
They declared the war on drugs like a war on terror
But it really did was let the police terrorize whoever
But mostly black boys, but they would call us “niggers”
And lay us on our belly, while they fingers on they triggers
They boots was on our head, they dogs was on our crotches
And they would beat us up if we had diamonds on our watches
And they would take our drugs and money, as they pick our pockets
I guess that that’s the privilege of policing for some profit
But thanks to Reaganomics, prisons turned to profits
Cause free labor is the cornerstone of US economics
Cause slavery was abolished, unless you are in prison
You think I am bullshittin, then read the 13th Amendment
Involuntary servitude and slavery it prohibits
That’s why they giving drug offenders time in double digits
– Killer Mike
—
…the completion of the idealism of the state was at the same time the completion of the materialism of civil society. Throwing off the political yoke meant at the same time throwing off the bonds which restrained the egoistic spirit of civil society. Political emancipation was, at the same time, the emancipation of civil society from politics, from having even the semblance of a universal content.
The establishment of the political state and the dissolution of civil society into independent individuals – whose relation with one another depend on law, just as the relations of men in the system of estates and guilds depended on privilege – is accomplished by one and the same act. Man as a member of civil society, unpolitical man, inevitably appears, however, as the natural man. The “rights of man” appears as “natural rights,” because conscious activity is concentrated on the political act. Egoistic man is the passive result of the dissolved society, a result that is simply found in existence, an object of immediate certainty, therefore a natural object.
– Killer Karl
I simply do not get your point. You begin with a reference to the ID and end by providing a quote that speaks of “egoistic man.”
id-ego aren’t compartments. “begin with, end by”. quite.
The “Id” Knows More than the “Ego” Admits
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4061793/
Interesting article. However, there are those who argue that “consciousness is at basis an unbounded, nonmaterial field.”
http://permanentpeace.org/theory/consciousness.html
Ahh, I thought you were coming at it from a more classical interpretation. ;) Fair enough. But even if there is a ‘storehouse consciousness’, I’m not sure it contradicts the parameters of embodied cognition. The body represents a vector of sorts, no? Or, in the case of the ‘liberal id’, a complex of willful obtuseness (which Tomasky momentarily, accidentally, disabused).
Yes, it does. And upon further reflection, I now understand where you are coming from in regard to Glenn Greenwald’s misapplied use of the term “Id.”
Thanks for the feedback.
“In fact, with a couple of even low-level ISIS attacks successfully carried out on American soil, it’s not at all hard to imagine.” Greenwald
Funny, a few months ago, Greenwald said it was “irrational” to believe ISIS sleeper cells could be in the US.
I don’t remember what, exactly, Glenn may have said and I would expect an assertion from him to be rather more nuanced than what you claim, but . . .
Absolutely nothing known to the public suggests that Farooq & Malik constituted an “ISIS sleeper cell.”
The real story seems to be one of a religious man, repeatedly taunted and provoked at work by at least one hateful coworker, who married a woman with long exposure to narrow and vicious Wahabi ideology during years in KSA and who, together, made Internet contacts and “self-radicalized” — as our law enforcement types like to say.
If these two were an ISIS cell or acting on instructions from ISIS leaders, everything we know about the group tells us that they would have promptly claimed responsibility for the massacre and provided evidence that it had indeed been their work. And that didn’t happen.
[Glenn & Co., the comment system is all fucked-up again.]
@Danger:
“Funny, a few months ago, Greenwald said it was “irrational” to believe ISIS sleeper cells could be in the US.”
First, I don’t remember what Glenn may actually have written, but usually his assertions on such matters are more carefully crafted and nuanced than what you claim he said.
Second, and importantly, there is absolutely no evidence in the public domain that suggests that Farooq and Malik were part of an “ISIS sleeper cell.”
Everything we know suggests that the outline of this story consists of a religious man, repeatedly taunted and mocked at work by at least one nasty and mean-spirited coworker, who married a woman with years of exposure to narrow and vicious Wahabi ideology in Saudi Arabia. Evidently the two, together, made various online explorations and contacts and effectively “self-radicalized,” as our law enforcement officials like to say.
If this massacre had actually been carried out by or directed by an ISIS cell or real ISIS affiliates, experience tells us that ISIS would have promptly claimed responsibility for the massacre and likely also provided evidence that supported the claim. That didn’t happen.
Right, was mostly a leftie, but this San Bernadrino rampage has turned me right on this issue. What nursing mother of a 6 month old would build pipe bombs and join with the father of helpless infant to shoot, point blank other innocent human beings? I can’t fathom it? Tell me if there is a similar case where 2 young parents do this??
Thank you for writing this; thank you for doing your job.
What the fuck is this censorship about?
Other people can post but I cant reply?
I know the Intercept has only just begun, early days yet.
Hey everybody lets do the fandango/
The Amerikan election is a fools paradise where the constitutional loving American fools believe they are exceptional and Don and Jill can run up the Hill and fetch poor bernie sanders. You fucking fools.
Death to America is what I say.
If you all died tomorrow I would be happy.
The pretense of democracy and the Intercept playing its part of the status quo.
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/dec/09/abbott-compared-to-trump-by-labor-as-turnbull-condemns-his-attack-on-islam
The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has rebuked his predecessor, Tony Abbott, for making comments critical of Islam, and said that casting aspersions on all Muslims risks “playing into the hands of our enemies”.
Abbott published an opinion piece in News Corp newspapers on Wednesday morning that called on Islam to “modernise”.
..
Murdock strikes again
The main problem I see is that the Presidents now treats the military as their own special enforcers without any declaration of war by Congress. What would a Trump like President do with that much power. Clearly most of the candidates seem to view the world through tunnel vision. Their is plenty of documentation about where these problems came from. Watched the rise of ISIS on Frontline tonight. ISIS training of children to be suicide bombers is especially painful to watch. Destabilizing countries in the middle east has caused this. I guess the only way that we think about these problems is to send in the military. Asking the military whether we should go in to these countries and destroy them might be a good start. An excellent source for answers is “America’s Defense Meltdown” on the internet site POGO written by retired military leaders for the Center for Defense Information(244 pgs.) The entire book is there and shows that besides our nuclear option we are not geared to fight a 4th generation war. We still are organized to fight a large military like Germany, Japan and the Soviet Union in WWII. We are spending about 1 trillion dollars yearly and have nothing to show for it. Just one Tomahawk missile cost $1.2 million and on the first day of the air attack on ISIS (June 2014) we launched 47 missiles. The weapons we keep gave to Iraq etc ended up in the hands of ISIS in Mosul. Is the people’s bidding more war, more defense spending on a military designed for World Wars? We all need to do our homework. Throwing more money at this problem and blaming others besides our selves, is not going to solve the problem. Like always we have a choice if we vote at all, mostly the lesser of evils. We need leaders not entertainer billionaires.
Next time you see Muslims yelling “Death to America” in their streets, please remember Donald Trump.
He is right.
George Vreeland Hill
Next time you hear “Death to America” know they are right.
Next time remember if you kill hundreds of thousands of people, their relatives will probably want to kill you.
Next time remember that if you kill hundreds of thousands of people, many of their relatives will probably want to kill you.
Next time remember if you kill hundreds of thousands of people, their relatives will probably want to kill you.
hello. How are you all there at the wonderful Intercept?
Test
testing
tested
I read an eye-opening book 20 or so years ago by an author named Daniel Goldhagen, the title of which was, “Hitler’s Willing Executioners–Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust.” In it, Goldhagen describes in detail how the SS troops would move into communities and recruit locals to round up and drive Jewish residents through the streets like cattle to the local sports field, where there awaited an enormous pit, dug to contain all of the dead humanity to be dumped into it for the next couple of days, or however long it would take to fill it, depending on the size of the village.
Besides gaining new insight into the unspeakably brutal SS methods used to systematically destroy the Jews of Europe, I came away from that book with the overriding and incredibly unnerving feeling that something of this magnitude could easily happen in the U.S. under certain conditions. Another of my impressions was that the non-Jewish German populous simply wouldn’t accept responsibility for their own part in whatever demise they felt was happening or awaiting their nation economically, or, in any other way, for that matter. Of course, this is where all Jews enter again as scapegoats to be scorned and hated by an entire nation for something for which only a small percentage of individuals who happen to be Jews should be blamed, and that not for being Jews.
This is the same thing happening today with much of America’s attitudes towards Muslims. Never warm or inviting, these notions have become, since the Paris attacks, massively–and openly–racist. I think, “I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” and I really can’t believe what I’m hearing! It would be incredibly stupid not to take all of this seriously, or at least keep a razor-sharp eye on it. Stranger things have happened than a Donald Trump being made the leader of a great nation.
Many of those who deride Donald Trump, for voicing a position that would ban all Muslims from entry into the United States, gratuitously channel fantastical nice-speak adorned with politically correct apologia which attempts to convince the people that the Emperor does in fact have new clothes and that one can indeed make a silk purse out of a sows ear. Those deriding apologists dismiss the fanatical reality of a worldwide and very deadly threat to all “non-believers,” mandated as certain commandments set forth in The Holy Quran, to be fulfilled by all “believers,” all Muslims. Whether or not all Muslims will eventually join in Jihad, I cannot say. Whether all Muslims are obligated, in fact commanded by Allah through revelations to His Prophet Mohammed, to take up arms against or otherwise subdue all non-Muslims, I can and do say.
Interpretation and contemplation of doctrinal law, as well as Islamic ideology and practices in Islam, are necessary in order for one to form a basis for sincerely held religious beliefs, beginning with the mostly benign and often beneficent expressions and religious system of The Holy Koran. The Holy Koran, the sacred text of Islam, is revered as the word of God, or more appropriately here, Allah. As dictated to the Arab prophet Muhammad by the archangel Gabriel circa 625 A.D., and present as a matter of translation of The Holy Koran from Arabic into English by George Sale in 1734 A.D., are among other things, the following expressions with their respective citation to sura:
-Warfare is ordained for you, though it is hateful unto you. Sura 2.16.
-The only true faith in Allah’s sight is Islam. Sura 3.19.
-Evildoers are those that do not judge according to Allah’s revelations. Sura 5.47.
-Believers, take neither the Jews nor the Christians for your friends. Sura 5.51.
-When the sacred months are over slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them. Sura 9.5.
-Fight against such of those to whom the Scriptures were given as believe in neither Allah nor the Last Day, who do not forbid what Allah and his apostle have forbidden, and do not embrace the true faith, until they pay tribute out of hand and are utterly subdued. Sura 9.29.
I am aware of alternative translations of portions of the previously translated expressions, as well as further and related expressions, as follows:
According to Takrike Tarsile Qur’an, Inc., a nonprofit Islamic organization staffed by Muslims devoted to the dissemination of authentic knowledge concerning Islam, the following expressions are from The Qur’an, translated by Mahomedali Habib; which were originally published by Habib Esmail Benevolent Trust of Karachi, Pakistan; and were later reprinted by the World Organization for Islamic Services of Teheran, Iran:
-Fighting is enjoined on you . . . Sura 2.16.
-Surely the true religion with Allah is Islam. Sura 3.19.
-O you who believe! Do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends. Sura 5.51.
-So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them; surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful. Sum 9.5.
-Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Apostle have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection. Sum 9.29.
It is with such expressions, among others, of The Holy Koran, or Qur’an, that many Muslims believe that it’s okay to kill with suicide bomb attacks, believing that it is guided moral conduct and behavior remaining within the structured bounds of Islamic doctrinal law. Regardless of whether such makes sense or not to anyone else, it makes dangerously deadly sense to the mujahideen, those individuals known by others as Islamic extremists or terrorists.
I challenge all those who are tempted to succumb to the knee-jerk reaction of deriding me, to lay down the stones, venture outside your glass houses, and educate yourselves by reading The Holy Quran for yourselves. However hard it may be for each individual to accept the truth of the matter, the truth remains the truth.
See “The Spiritual Significance of Jihad”, by Prof. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, at http://www.al-islam.org/al-serat/vol-9-no-1/spiritual-significance-jihad-seyyed-hossein-nasr/spiritual-significance-jihad
Excerpts:
And those who perform jihad for Us, We shall certainly guide them in Our ways, and God is surely with the doers of good. (Quran 39:69)
You have returned from the lesser jihad to the greater jihad. (Hadith)
The Arabic term jihad, usually translated into European languages as holy war, more on the basis of its juridical usage in Islam rather than on its much more universal meaning in the Quran and Hadith, is derived from the root jhd whose primary meaning is to strive or to exert oneself.
Its translation into holy war combined with the erroneous notion of Islam prevalent in the West as the ‘religion of the sword’ has helped to eclipse its inner and spiritual significance and to distort its connotation.
Nor has the appearance upon the stage of history during the past century and especially during the past few years of an array of movements within the Islamic world often contending or even imposing each other and using the word jihad or one of its derivative forms helped to make known the full import of its traditional meaning which alone is of concern to us here.
Instead recent distortions and even total reversal of the meaning of jihad as understood over the ages by Muslims have made it more difficult than ever before to gain insight into this key religious and spiritual concept.
To understand the spiritual significance of jihad and its wide application to nearly every aspect of human life as understood by Islam, it is necessary to remember that Islam bases itself upon the idea of establishing equilibrium within the being of man as well as in the human society where he functions and fulfills the goals of his earthly life.
…
Muslims do not approve of harming the non-combatants and do not consider it to be Islamic. Classical Islamic law is quite clear on that.
As a matter of fact, they are the biggest victims of it and are doubly-hurt: 1) From these misguided so-called Muslims who are committing terrorism in the name of Jihad, and 2) By those who show no sympathy towards the Muslim victims, rather, they blame them and demonize their religion.
The term, Jihad, doesn’t have the meaning you might give to this term.
See “The Spiritual Significance of Jihad”, by an eminent scholar, Prof. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, at http://www.al-islam.org/al-serat/vol-9-no-1/spiritual-significance-jihad-seyyed-hossein-nasr/spiritual-significance-jihad
Excerpts:
And those who perform jihad for Us, We shall certainly guide them in Our ways, and God is surely with the doers of good. (Quran 39:69)
You have returned from the lesser jihad to the greater jihad. (Hadith)
The Arabic term jihad, usually translated into European languages as holy war, more on the basis of its juridical usage in Islam rather than on its much more universal meaning in the Quran and Hadith, is derived from the root phd whose primary meaning is to strive or to exert oneself.
Its translation into holy war combined with the erroneous notion of Islam prevalent in the West as the ‘religion of the sword’ has helped to eclipse its inner and spiritual significance and to distort its connotation.
Nor has the appearance upon the stage of history during the past century and especially during the past few years of an array of movements within the Islamic world often contending or even imposing each other and using the word jihad or one of its derivative forms helped to make known the full import of its traditional meaning which alone is of concern to us here.
Instead recent distortions and even total reversal of the meaning of jihad as understood over the ages by Muslims have made it more difficult than ever before to gain insight into this key religious and spiritual concept.
To understand the spiritual significance of jihad and its wide application to nearly every aspect of human life as understood by Islam, it is necessary to remember that Islam bases itself upon the idea of establishing equilibrium within the being of man as well as in the human society where he functions and fulfills the goals of his earthly life.
…
Read the whole thing here: http://www.al-islam.org/al-serat/vol-9-no-1/spiritual-significance-jihad-seyyed-hossein-nasr/spiritual-significance-jihad
What’s up Intercept? everytime I try to post I get a “we are having problems with this page”
Try this without a link.
I feel like the word “we” is just so tormented by misappropriation these days
TRUMP SHOWS HOW MORAL PANICS ARE VERY PROFITABLE FOR THE MAINSTREAM NEWS MEDIA AND THE POWER ELITE ALIKE
Erich Goode and ?Nachman Ben-Yehuda (2010. Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons: 2) describe a moral panic as “a scare about a threat or supposed threat from deviants or ‘folk devils,’ a category of people who, presumably, engage in evil practices and are blamed for menacing a society’s culture, way of life, and central values. The word “scare” implies that the concern over, fear of, or hostility toward the folk devil is out of proportion to actual threat that is claimed…Some supposed threats are, evidence suggests, entirely imaginary…There is, in other words, a delusional aspect to moral panics (or)…In other moral panics, the supposed threat may be genuine, even harmful, but the alarm raised is disproportionate to the threat…Even if approximately true, a claim may be exaggerated: perhaps the number of victims, or the financial cost to society, or how widespread the harm is, or the inevitability of the causal sequence from less to more harmful threats – any of these could be inflated above and beyond what the evidence, carefully assessed, indicates.”
Trump’s use of antisemanticism against non-Jewish Semites (a Semite being “a member of any of a number of peoples of ancient southwestern Asia including the Akkadians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Arabs” (http://beta.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/semite)), for example, Trump’s antisemanticism against Arabs, who for some unknown reason (probably ignorance) are no longer considered to be Semites by most westerners, along with Trump’s Islamaphobia, and his overall xenophobia goes to show that producing a MORAL PANIC is very profitable for the power elite (C. Wright Mills. 1956. The Power Elite. NY: Oxford University Press). This particular moral panic involving the threat to Americans by Muslims and Arabs (or any person who might be mistaken as being from either group by those roused by the moral panic), even American Muslims and Arabs, is profitable for the political power elite to get votes domestically, and to justify their support of dictators and wars in Muslim countries, particularly those that happen to be rich in oil, internationally. It goes without saying that it is profitable for the economic power elite for the oil and for the war –related and weapon manufacturers and for the military (and security) power elite to justify the continued defense and surveillance spending (as well as, a justification for NOT spending on other public services like health care (single-payer), education (tuitionless post-secondary), social services (basic minimum income for every citizen), etc. – come on, how can the U.S. government afford these services to citizens even though it is the richest nation-state on Earth when it has to spend so much on wars abroad?). But moral panics are also very profitable for the news media that thrives upon the sensational, the shocking, and the outrageous, and be damned the facts, be damned democracy, and the “people may seek out the news they already agree with” and which “reinforces their preexisting ideologies and partisan narratives” (11:13-11:22) (TEDxNCSU – Chase Whiteside and Erick Stoll – Journalism and Discourse Without Newspapers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6nnz3BC5Ok). They enjoy their newstainment (Chase Whiteside and Erick Stoll. 2012. Newstainment: Why the News Is Bad for You. Richmond, BC, Canada: Picador/Raincoast)!
The brilliant award winning British journalist Robert Fisk put it very simply in the title of his his terrific 1,400 page hard cover book, published 2005: THE GREAT WAR FOR CIVILISATION
THE CONQUEST OF THE MIDDLE EAST
The Financial Times calls hims “one of the outstanding reporters of this generation. As a war correspondent he is unrivalled.” I totally agree.
FLASHBACK: Jimmy Carter Banned Iranians from US, Deported Iranian Students During Hostage Crisis http://ow.ly/VEb5G via @edmecka
FLASHBACK: Jimmy Carter Banned Iranians from US, Deported Iranian
Students During Hostage Crisis http://ow.ly/VEb5G
However one views Trump, rightly or wrongly as either as right or wrong, he’s anomalous to the political fabric of the times. It’s a sheer wonder in historical contrast to see this sprout of a consciousness, whatever it is, find a toe hold in the barren black waters of the political elite. Whether he’s right or wrong they will stop at nothing to destroy him because they know he will do more of the people’s bidding than they can accept or permit. Funny ideas come from populist presidents, like the ability to inspire humanity by going to the moon. They don’t mind going to the moon, they just hate the idea of inspiring humanity. Such a thing has a nasty habit of exposing the impostors.
When a nation is largely indifferent to invasions of Moslem nations who did nothing to hurt us e.g. Iraq; indifferent to mind control torture labs where Moslems are guinea pigs as we speak; indifferent to regime change violence visited upon democratically elected leaders of Moslem nations whatever one thinks of their brand of democracy; indifferent to support of coups of democratically elected leaders e.g. Egypt, it is a little hypocritical to pretend to be shocked when all Trump is doing is simply taking the madness, with a popular nod as the polls indicate, to its ultimate conclusion.
My bet is that if Trump were to be POTUS, he could find much support in the halls of Congress as well as on Main Street, to actually implement what everyone pretends is abominable today.
Americans are terribly sympathetic with these Syrian refugees, but brutally callous when they are over there in Syria! American values? Well, the lust for nation destruction. Hence, lots of refugees. Rather dishonest: Turkey has nothing to do with stolen Iraq and Syrian oil. Turkey had every right to shoot down a Russian plane that was all of 17 seconds in its territory and despite the fact that the Turkish plane spent rather more time in Syria where it fired the missle. Anyway Putin is a dictator, right. Trump is bad because he said that he could talk with Putin so anything he says proves it. Since Trump is not a Syrian refugee how would he know anything about them?
Willie you are talking shit. Putin has the black box from the Su 24.
You will be dining on crow.
https://www.rt.com/news/325158-su24-black-box-truth-turkey/
Willie boy you are silly. You will be eating crow.
https://www.rt.com/news/325158-su24-black-box-truth-turkey/
Turkey shoot is what will happen next, NATO lover.
Bob Dylan – Turkey Chase Lyrics | Genius
genius.com/Bob-dylan-turkey-chase-lyrics
Trump’s candidacy doesn’t fit the definition of fascism, that is, a merging of corporate and government interests. Nor does it resemble the inverted totalitarianism and managed democracy of de facto oligarchy that has created mass angst among voters and to a certain extent energizes Trump’s candidacy, which appeals to putting disenfranchise Americans first in their own country. Tellingly, it is less gung ho for fomenting the foreign wars and conquests that are markers of most fascist states, and also are a remarkable feature of our current bipartisan policies. So I think that Glenn is indulging to a degree in the exaggerated rhetoric that is often a temptation of progressives, to raise the spectre of Hitler and Mussolini, when clearly any of the duopoly candidates, whether Hillary, Bernie or the eleventy-seven Republican dwarves, outside Rand Paul, deserve the epithet even more by virtue of their stated policies, even if delivered in an undertone.
Glenn’s right to observe Trump’s baldly stated views are not an outlier (and, I would argue, when read in context, are parsed far more reasonably than those who have an axe to grind with non-Establishment candidates, that is, the courtier press.) It’s not at all faithful to democratic accountability for establishment politicians and their hangers-on to make a pretense of vilifying a candidate’s thoughts (one who actually wields no actual legislative power) while immediately rushing to pass in a near heartbeat actual laws that have exactly the same intent. What Trump proposes, the Congress imposes:
“House passes legislation to tighten visa waiver restrictions with strong majority
With a 407-19 vote, bill intends to prevent foreign nationals who have visited Iraq, Syria and other countries in past five years from entering US
The measure has been supported by the White House”
The human rights that adjure to all people aren’t granted by the Constitution, only acknowledged. The Declaration, before there was an America or any citizenship, appealed to the decency of the opinions of mankind, and the rights of all human beings, not merely those of its authors, to justify rebellion against their own government.
Note that nothing in the Bill of Rights distinguishes between those who have a piece of paper bestowed by politicians and those who don’t, to reject their entitlement to human rights. Those are not merely the rights only enjoyed by some, due to the accidents of birth or bureaucratic favor.
Nonetheless, there is nothing in those rights that grants mass migration from the enemy side during war into an opponent country.
A huge part of our problem is schizophrenic – the failure to declare war while nevertheless waging it, while pretending that there is nothing more like war going on than shopping mall competitions. If we are not at war, by all means welcome normally those from those territories we are at peace with. But if we are at war with them, what other than suicidal purpose could be served by admitting enemy populations? And the facts are, whatever obscurantisms are uttered by mendacious leadership gone addled, the expenditures and assets deployed indicate an enormous ongoing war effort.
Although the effort is obviously vast, it is also vastly stupid, except in the service of military-industrial windfall profit and a misbegotten national pride, and therefore stupidities in its waging abound. I suppose, let the sins of stupidity increase, that the grace of military industrial profits may be greater still.
“Nonetheless, there is nothing in those rights that grants mass migration from the enemy side during war into an opponent country.”
One might almost imagine that you, like Trump and so many others, have managed to conflate “the enemy side” with Muslims. If you are not guilty of that, please explain to us who or what constitutes the enemy side and why you believe there is some move afoot to permit “mass migration” of those evildoers.
The “enemy side?” You just shot your whole faux-erudite argument in the ass, dude.
If there is no enemy, then why the hell is the U.S. military running short of ordinance? More’s been dropped on the Middle East’s Muslim countries than on Viet Nam, which exceeded that dropped in World War II. If there is no enemy, then just who are the folks being killed? If they weren’t our enemy before, they sure will be now. But I suppose we’re just open-endedly fighting “terrorism,” rather than any particular opponents, and since they can never be clearly named, it can just keep going on, and on, and on… fighting no one in particular and without discrimination. I suppose we’re all fighting on the same side, anyhow – that of death and destruction.
Yeah, right: The “enemy side,” eh? I think you’re doing a little too much “abjuring” lately. Nice phony erudition, though.
So I thought maybe “ass” resulted in a striking of my original comment. Why does the page reload when I hit “submit?” See what censorship-fear does to people?
The forum software still sucks, but it’s much improved from the early days of TI.
And you can say ass, fuck, shit, whatever, here. It is possible to be moderated but you have to say exceedingly awful things to be in danger of that.
I’m sure lots of cursing is more erudite and informational. BTW, abjure is the opposite of adjure!
Don’t forget to put in your name and email before submission or you “ass”inine comments will be lost :-)
This fear of Islam is having immediate direct results in small communities. In my locality a county sheriff has called for all local citizens who have registered guns to carry them at all times and to be vigilant . See https://www.facebook.com/Sheriffmikecapinelli/?fref=nf
also here….https://www.facebook.com/UlsterSheriff/posts/1201965929817773?fref=nf and here http://www.thedailystar.com/news/local_news/local-lawmen-question-call-for-more-gun-control/article_a9c50e67-1f87-54b9-bbc1-9efb229d7189.html
Ah, yes, Tug Hill, absolutely littered with (the frozen corpses of) evil terrorists.
Winter’s coming, so be especially watchful for ISIS cells on snowmobiles.
Backlash begins against Vancouver’s $360 million “beacon of racism”
http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2015/12/08/former-city-planner-wants-trump-named-removed-from-vancouver-tower/
“On August 5, 2012, a massacre took place at the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, where 40-year-old Wade Michael Page fatally shot six people and wounded four others. Page committed suicide by shooting himself in the head after he was shot in the stomach by a responding police officer.”
”
Wade Michael Page (November 11, 1971 – August 5, 2012) was an American white supremacist …”
….
“Wouldn’t it be neat if a reporter asked Donald Trump about this? Or the Christian extremist who shot up Planned parenthood just a week before San Bernardino? Does he plan to “do something” about these attacks? Does he think they are threat? if not, why not?”
Read the whole thing at: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2015/12/remembering-lone-wolves.html
Hey, that was just a lone nut! But seriously….
It is very important that the word “terrorism” get used for these kinds of incidents…and I do mean plural incidents, plenty enough of them….because it most certainly WILL get used if another kind of nutty killer goes on a website and claims to have joined an army via Facebook sign-up….did not Dylann Roof do the same kind of Facebook joining of the American White Supremacist movement before his shooting spree this year?
…..If we don’t call white terror Terrorism, we are doomed to this moronic “why are Muslims uniquely prone to terror?” hysteria crusades, idiotic remarks by the likes of Dawkins and Maher, etc. As a white guy I must add that it’s very easy to tell people not to expand the definition of terrorism when you know it will never get applied to you. One of the more pertinent uses of the overburdened term white privilege, I’d say.
Love seeing white guys who ‘get it.’. Thank you!
-From a regular Muslim mom
The post of Mr. Vic Perry exemplifies a divergence of argument when different foundations are assumed within one building of thought. IMHO the term “terrorist” may equally be applied to any and all persons exhibiting acts of terror, whether they be a Muslim, White Supremist, Christian, or other. The greater danger is not that some White Supremists or some Christians undertake violence against some people and should therefore be included in the category of “terrorist,” but rather that The Holy Koran or Quran, mandates by commandment that all “believers,” all Muslims honor the call to Jihad against all non-Muslims as well as Muslims who stray from the word of Allah and His Prophet.
In defense of personal slights against my character, dished out to me in response to my well-meant attempts to educate and enlighten others utilizing independently verifiable historical facts, as opposed to serving up heaping plates of emotional falsehood and histrionic conjecture, I provide the following:
“…[T]he dictionary definition of a bigot includes one who holds rigidly to an idea…[H]olding to what you believe to be true is, by itself, not inherently bad. Even the simple act of one person believing another to be a bigot, and refusing to be convinced otherwise, is itself a prime example of bigotry.” This quote is contributed to Fellowship Baptist Church of Fountain Inn, South Carolina. The intolerant ones label me intolerant. The bigots label me a bigot.
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/sam-harris-the-salon-interview
and…?
Thanks, here’s Sam with the straight talk:
“You can make the list of U.S. crimes and missteps as long as you want, but it still doesn’t explain ISIS. The fact that we invaded Iraq is merely a background condition for this local explosion of jihadist triumphalism and horror…”
Well now you CAN make the list of U.S. Crimes and missteps as long as you want, so good on ya, Sam…..I gotta hand it to him for channeling the logic of vandals.
Hey, that gas can was going to spill anyway, all we did was kick it over and light a match. It’s not our fault, man, it’s their culture.
Have I said “fuck Sam Harris” yet?
“Muslim Americans Raise Almost $100K For Victims Of San Bernardino Shooting”, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/muslims-raise-money-san-bernardino-victims_566747a7e4b009377b22c1ea
Little publicized fact: This kind of good works is an integral part of the Shariah.
“Little publicized fact: This kind of good works is an integral part of the Shariah.”
Yup. And this is typical of what US Muslim communities do in the wake of virtually every similar event — just what we expect from good neighbors.
Acts 9:36 Now there was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha, which by interpretation is called Dorcas: this woman was full of good works and almsdeeds which she did. (KJV)
DORCAS (gazelle)
Christian woman of Joppa known for charitable works (Acts 9:36); also called Tabitha, an Aramaic name. God used Peter to restore her to life. (KJV ©2001)
Great article. Best I’ve read from your pen. To the point and doesn’t pull punches. Calls everyone to the carpet. Well done.
I’ve got $20 that says The Schmuck will be assassinated before the election. Any takers?
Nah, the haters never get knocked off.
Interestingly, it’s the “peace and love” types that always seem to end up dead.
Sort of reminds one of how how Occupy protests are violently put down while KKK marches are protected by police.
I wonder what this says about the values and philosophies of our esteemed leadership?
Nah, the haters never get knocked off.
Interestingly, it’s the “peace and love” types who always seem to end up dead.
Sort of reminds one of how Occupy protests are violently put down while KKK marches are protected by police.
I wonder what that says about the values and philosophies of our esteemed leadership?
….thank you so very much for your article…
….personally, when I read commentary that tries to apply dark humor to Trump and his admirers, I get a chill….the admiration for Trump, the lack of media courage and analysis, the dismissive attitude by power brokers as if “this Trump rhetoric will pass”, I find very dangerous….
……keep writing, Glenn…
The MSM keeps itching for war. Doesn’t matter what we want. This generates Advertising revenue. Turn off the tube and read your news. TV news is for losers and is entertainment not news. 1/2 hour of news on the TV was enough for the old farts that follow Trump. Giving them 24 hours a day media keeps them off the street and makes their wives happy. These political rallies show the same people as the tea party. GOP leader today in SC spoke about polls being as much as 25 points off. Please think about who answers the surveys by phone? People that have time to answer their landline phones, retired, watching TV all day. Is this the demographics that represent all 300 million of us? This spokesman for the GOP in SC said it is still a longtime before the elections. I don’t listen to polls. Robocalls are bad enough.
Muslims/Islam is not a race it is a religion attached to an Ideology: Shariah Law.
What’s your point?
What do you think Shariah really is to you?
Yeah. What’s your point? You looking for an excuse for your bigotry?
ooooh I can help! Adam has done a premature ejaculation of an argument here, he was expecting someone to call this persecution “racist” and he had his canned, rather pedantic answer ready beforehand.
Of course, it’s possible to be bigoted against a religion: Adam, I refer you to the history of the Know-Nothing Party in the US, 19th Century, freaked out about Catholics. Maybe you could join the current version, if you haven’t already.
‘Make America Great Again’
In other words, go back to the wonderful days of total white supremacy.
Racism seems to be the bread and butter of America. Children growing up watching television can develop racism for groups of people they never met. For example just by watching those cowboy movies they can develop the belief that native Americans are savages and subhuman. Racism permeates American media and Donald trump is American as apple pie, the flag, gun rights, and the NFL.
Racism is being fueled against Muslims to portray them as uncivilized brutes. Young minds are being indoctrinated with these messages that carry to adulthood.
The media saturation before persian gulf war pushed that ignorance and corrupted young minds.
Do not underestimate the power of propaganda. It will corrupt minds left and right, black and white and everything in between in ways unseen and with consequences that can lead to violence.
Simple example during the build up to the Persian gulf war in NY 2 African american kids bullied an Indian boy because they viewed him as unamerican middle eastern.
In the same school the history teacher told kids that Muslims will take up jihad all over the world including America. It made it seem to 13 year old kid that Muslims are different and somehow when a switch is flipped they will turn violent.
All this happened in a new york city public school in a mainly African American neighborhood.
There are no boundaries for the impact of racism and misinformation in the media.
Talk about indoctrinating the young. ISIS brain washing of children as young as 8 years old. Taken from their parents and taught to be suicide bombers. See Frontline recent video about this. Not saying that this means justifying this bigot lumping “all” muslims together. I am a buddhist and a pacifist. Believe me when I say these bigots are from the same fundamentalist mindset that everyone that doesn’t agree with me is my enemy.
Oh Please! In what country does racism not exist? People fight their own race over religion. The US is not some evil exception. It’s better than most countries. Take a trip to Australia, if you are interested in some “in your face” racism.
A minor quibble but the aircraft photograph ” (picture above) ” is of a piston-driven bomber and not a “jet”.
Seattle NBC affiliate even had Dick Cheney expressing an opinion over Trump’s proposal … Cheney was a little taken aback … fucking joke.
Too kind and wrong.
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/325122-san-bernardino-mainstream-media-news/
The media is not neutral. It spews hatred and vitriol on a regular basis and is the real culprit fueling the divisiveness so prevalent in American culture.
If the media is going to scapegoat Trump for “inciting” ISIS they should at least take equal responsibility for attacking conservatives who feel unfairly stereotyped and who have seen nothing but bigotry from the liberal press to justify their feelings of persecution.
Yes, well, there’s blinkers and there’s blinders – and then there’s drinking koolaid on faith.
Sorry, I messed up my “j.” I’m usually more careful with those…
The freedom-of-speech dismissals (for the Internet) made by BOTH Trump AND Hillary are every bit as scary and anti-American as Trump’s (and others’) proposals with regard to Muslims.
NONE of us is as stupid as ALL OF us.
Um, I submit the comment that chronologically follows yours into evidence and respectfully suggest most rules have exceptions.
Glenn has a point. And it is Trump’s infectious demagoguery that’s really the point of this article, the civil-liberties matters aside, that he has a cunning instinct for the national psyche, or at least its neuroses, its id. He could very well be the nominee.
He wouldn’t be the first such demagogue: the very first GOP presidential nominee had that touch.
Beautiful! I must get that book.
The quote and link, below are from Pew, posted yesterday. No singular pulll quote, so I’ll just share the lede, but everyone seriously interested in this issue and the conversation here should probably head right on over and digest this carefully (much of the most currently-relevant stuff is some way down the page):
Muslims and Islam: Key findings in the U.S. and around the world
Dude: Americans know little of anything about everything. C’mon. Hence Trump.
Yes, although citizenship won’t save them, if the Korematsu case is any precedent.
@coram
“Yes, although citizenship won’t save them, if the Korematsu case is any precedent.”
But, really, does anyone, even on the Roberts court, really think Korematsu is effectively precedential any longer? Even Nino (“Nutball” Scalia has denounced it as shameful.
Supreme Court never overturned it. The 9th Circuit partially discredited it in the 1980s on a — cough — coram nobis action, but it’s still case law. They’d need a plaintiff to overturn it, which is to say, another concentration camp detainee. Given another terrorist attack, they might be persuaded otherwise, as the Korematsu court was.
All true, but . . . well, maybe this is one of those rare instances when I’m being overly-optimistic (I who generally believe there is little basis for optimism).
This may be interesting:
Ending the Korematsu Era: An Early View from the War on Terror Cases
My emphasis.
Interesting points, though while Korematsu stands, there’s nothing stopping a future President from doing another roundup, by executive order, until another Court ruling comes down. Also, the dissenters — Jackson regarding the procedural problem, Murphy on the merits — feared the decision made future such events more possible. (Also, this ruling affirmed strict scrutiny review on the basis of race.)
Quite right.
BTW, could we have another Robert Jackson & another Frank Murphy, again, soon, please?
Tired. Gotta go read light escapism.
The Northwestern Law Review article is interesting, as it looks more at presidential powers that allow extraordinary detention or trial, all the cases — Yamashita, Quirin, Korematsu, Eisentrager — that Bush DOJ lawyers cited. (Yoo tended to minimalize, or outright ignore, contrary cases on executive military power, the “but see” stuff: Milligan, Youngstown Sheet & Tube, Duncan v. Kahanamoku). We are talking about broad executive military (presidential) power and minimal judical oversight indeed. The fact that Bush’s lawyers still rely on those old cases suggest they are still compelling. The fact remains that the Court ruled that action against a racial group is not only justifiable given wartime emergency but stands up to strict-scrutiny analysis. The fact that the DOJ lied to the Korematsu Court may discredit the immediate case but not the general principle.
As Mr. Greenwald states, the Trump doctrine is not far from the U.S. mainstream.
Yes, Duce, although I’m left wondering if Trump is simply the Gabriele d’Annunzio of this movement, a herald rather than the leader.
Postscript, Duce: I believe this case is still valid, and is very on point. From the syllabus:
Citizenship aside, it suggests that basic due process is still required. Wong Wing v. U.S., 163 U.S. 228 (1896).
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/163/228/case.html
Paul Craig Roberts gets it:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43644.htm
Yes, yes. This.
Hillary Clinton echoed Trump’s freedom of speech handwaving dismissal: “You’re going to hear all of the usual complaints, you know, freedom of speech, et cetera.”
Trump is a problem, but he’s not the real problem. There are lots of people who don’t like Muslims or Mexican’s or whomever. So what? The real problem is the media. Their drive to make more money has normalized everything. It used to be that you couldn’t say objectionable things because the advertisers did not want to be associated with the controversy. But as long as you’re screwing with Muslims or Mexican’s everything seems to be copacetic. Just replace Muslims or Mexicans with Jews or Blacks. How long is that comedy going to last?
And Chris Cuomo, is supposedly part of the “liberal” media. What a joke.
I once heard a BBC interview with Mario Cuomo. That guy was smart. What diction? Too bad he had two idiot sons.
Glenn’s point, in part, is that we’ve seen this in American history before. The roundup of American citizens during WWII because of ancestry — dissenting Justice Murphy may have coined the word “racism” for Korematsu — is a matter of record. Before that, episodes going back to at least the Know-Nothing Party, by which I mean the American Party, not the GOP.
Wow!! Lincoln wrote that? in 1855? Thanks so much for posting.
And I’m completely with Glenn. Maybe I should have mentioned it in my post. I was just trying to point out, that the real devil is CNN/Cuomo/et all. They are the ones who allow Donald Trump to be relevant. Glenn wouldn’t have to write this article, if Cuomo was doing his job.
“These are the people who have laid the rancid intellectual groundwork in which Trump and his movement are now festering. Just yesterday, the Daily Beast’s supremely loyal Democratic partisan columnist Michael Tomasky — who in 2013 instructed us all to celebrate the Egyptian military coup of the brutal tyrant Abdel Fattah al-Sisi because it got rid of the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood — repulsively demanded that American Muslims first prove they are loyal and can be trusted before they are “given” their rights.”
And under the rule of the Muslim brotherhood would religious minorities, women, gays etc. even have equal rights, or rights at all? Of course not, but that doesn’t matter to you because you have a lower standard for Muslims than for Westerners – we’re to respect their rights as a minority, but there is apparently no onus on them to do the same for minorities in their countries. You support the brotherhood because it has popular support in Egypt, but when the same right-wing sentiments ignite popular support in America, somehow the individual rights as enshrined in the constitution are more important than the popular will. On standard for the West, another for the Muslim world. This is the soft bigotry of low expectations. Regressive leftism at its finest.
This article is about American policy and attitudes of Americans towards Muslims who live here or who might come here. You know, in the USA, where the Muslim Brotherhood isn’t in charge, isn’t likely to get in charge, and doesn’t set our policy or make our laws.
I wouldn’t throw around big words like “regressive” if I were you. Maybe baby steps like having a point would be more your speed.
Ah OK, so if Islamic theocracies persecute people it’s ok because they’re not in the USA. Only US lives matter. You should tell that to Greenwald who complains that indiscriminate drone killings reflect a terrible ideology wherein only American lives matter. If we listen to you, he must be wrong about that because only American people who suffer matter, not foreigners according to you. Drones away!
Harrold’s is what I’m going to dub the “best-keep-moving” style of argument. It seems to have formed in reaction to awareness of Stasis Theory.
How to do it: if anybody points out you are full of shit, try to change the subject, so that you never have the embarrassment of defending your indefensible points. Eventually your opponent will tire of talking to you. You will “win”, at least in the safety of your noggin.
The West has now violently overthrown and destroyed 5 previously secular countries in the ME/North Africa: Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lybia. Yet it fully supports and funds the most brutal Islamic hellhole & biggest exporter/founder of religious fundamentalism/terrorism: Saudi Arabia. The US has for decades propped up the most brutal murderous dictators in that region, including Egypt. They democratically elected the Muslim a Brotherhood because it is actually quite moderate and more cultural than religion (and because it sought to build a independent Egypt). So the US once again overthrows the people’s choice and installs a mass-murdering tyrant (Sisi, who doesn’t give a fuck about gays or women, whose lives under him have been worse than under the MB) who has committed abuses never before seen in Egypt’s modern history. And you have the gall to talk about “one standard for the West and another for the Muslim world”? Why don’t you first think about the brutal, violent, imperialist “standard” the West has been operating by in that region of the world for that last century, driven primarily by the quest for oil? Why don’t you ask what your own murdeorus country has been doing and supporting in that region? Maybe you’re just one of those intellectually-deficient, new atheist-worshiping tools who only questions the blowback instead of the source.
And if that’s the case, you should spare us your worthless, simple-minded drivel.
Strawmen, strawmen everywhere. I’ve given support to the overthrow of secular regimes or to Saudi Arabia where exactly? Of course I don’t support the kingdom’s domestic policies, but US support for them should be seen as strategic, not ideological. The same way we allied with Stalin in WWII, not because we were Stalinists, but because we needed him to beat Germany. We support Saudi Arabia because A.)They’re stable B.)They’re not about to go blow up Israel and C.) they sell us oil, on which our economy is completely dependent, at least at present.
As for Sisi, of course he doesn’t care about gays or women. That’s the point, the Muslim brotherhood, like Islamists in general, do care about gays and women – they care that gays are given our just punishments according to Sharia, and that women fulfill their rightful, inferior, role in society. Sisi, like Mubarak, will persecute gays sporadically to appease the Muslim population and shore up his Muslim credentials, but Morsi would have made it a much more through, ongoing affair, like it is in Saudi Arabia, Iran or the Islamic State, because like them, he aimed to institute a real Islamic state.
As for the brotherhood being “moderate” (notice how little tolerance you have for “moderate” Christian theocrats in the US) and “cultural”, let’s take a look at that wonderful culture shall we? There was a pew poll of Muslims a few years ago that can help shed some light:
http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/?utm_expid=53098246-2.Lly4CFSVQG2lphsg-KopIg.0&utm_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pewforum.org%2F2013%2F04%2F30%2Fthe-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-religion-and-politics%2F
74% of Egyptian Muslims want Sharia as the law of the land and should be applied to non-Muslims, 70% want corporal punishment for crimes like theft, 81% want stoning for adultery, 86% want the death penalty for leaving Islam for another religion. 94% say that homosexuality is immoral, and though the poll didn’t ask about what punishment they respondents would support, it’s a safe bet it would be death or at best some medieval corporal punishment. This is the popular base of the brotherhood, and the policies Islamists and their supporters like Greenwald and yourself support in the effort to oppose the US. Lest you chalk all this up for to blowback, all of the above punishments represent the majority consensus of Islamic Jurists, both historical and contemporary. This ideology was around way before any Western country had any foothold in the Middle East, or any hope of obtaining one. Look it up if you don’t believe me. The only way you might see this as blowback is that it is product of the revival in Muslim religiosity beginning in the 70s, which was partially a product of political developments, but the ideology was already there to be revived.
As for your ad-hominem, give it a rest. Go troll someone else.
Very simplistic and distorted picture.
Lol go live in Saudi Arabia, you lying Zionazi fuck. Also, “Sharia” doesn’t mean the same Ing everywhere, you ignorant, eneducated bigot.
Lol go live in Saudi Arabia, you lying Zionazi fuck. Also, “Sharia” doesn’t mean the same Ing everywhere, you ignorant, eneducated bigot. Lol yeah it keeps its mouth shut about thr genocidal, land-thieving, rogue entity of Irael but it massacres thousands in Yemen, the poorest Arab country, with US and Israeli bombs. The vast majority in Saudi Arabia live in poverty and misery while the nasty Saudi thugs pocket thr oil profits. Lol how virtuous of them that the capitalism-worshipping Saudi fucking Arabia doesn’t support freedom and justice for Palestinians and keeps quiet about the crimes of its equally disgusting little buddy Israel!
Lol go fuck yourself you fucking dipshit hack.
For me, this is the truly sad part of this conversation:
Had the State of Israel been settled in Germany (it was proposed) or in Russia or Ukraine or any other place on the planet EXCEPT where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and Jews were already living together peacefully, and had April Glaspie not lied to Saddam Hussein in the early 90’s by saying, “The United States has no opinion about your border dispute with Kuwait” and had the United States not put bases in Saudi Arabia and on and on.
If Saddam was still in power and Qaddafi was still in power and if the Taliban were still in control of Afghanistan (no poppy production allowed under the Taliban) and if the United States and NATO had not gone against their word and had not scooped up former Soviet nations to join NATO and encircle Russia and if Victoria Nuland and Co. had stayed away from Ukraine and on and on and on….
There would have been no 9/11, no Patriot Act, no NDAA, no Military Commissions Act, no need for massive spying on the American people, no Daesh and no need for bloody “blowback”.
All the evil we are witnessing in the world today can be blamed squarely on U.S. foreign policy and lying and deceit and secrecy and the quest for “Full Spectrum Military Dominance” over the entire globe.
There was a coup when JFK’s brains were blown all over Dallas in broad daylight and in spite of deadlines and promises by Obama ALL the records detailing that assassination have STILL not been released. Same for the 28 redacted pages of the 9/11 Commission Report dealing with the “financing” of the terrorists on 9/11. Most of the Congress members who are allowed to go into a closed room and read those pages have not even bothered to do so!
Now the U.S. is reaping what it has sown world-wide and the proverbial chickens are coming home to roost.
The only thing that can save us now is for the American people to wake the F up and to demand the TRUTH about our history, the WHOLE TRUTH and NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH.
If we do not demand this, I fear there will be no turning back the clock to the days before the CIA, NSA and Neocon dominated “Deep State” secret politics.
If Trump wants to truly make America “great again” he will have to take us waaaaayyyy back to times before even the Federal Reserve Bank was secretly hatched on Jekyll Island. Even Wilson regretted having a hand in that legislation.
Trump has a big freakin’ mess to clean up to achieve his goal.
@Charlene
Well said…but! And I do say that reluctantly.
Trump is only warming up the crowd…Hillary Clinton is the next face on the money. The Red Queen and women rights, another side of the Barry whatever his name is being the first black prez. Hillary is going to be the first woman. She is the annointed one.
And a nice set of balls to go with that, N’est ce pas.
The writing is on the wall, Charlene.
Trump believes himself to be a actor…maybe he’s right, ‘the world being a stage and all…and we are simply actors’.
He found his legs in Reality TV.
Trump comes from the old english to Triumph: a trump is a valuable resource that may be used especially as a surprise, in order to gain an advantage.
Why run one candidate when you can run two…and then in the end, surprise amalgamation… Clusterfuck, clusterfuck etc, etc.
And so on and so forth and the voting game continues….
“The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.” – William Blake
Trump is the personification of the system itself. He is driven by an insatiable lust for power and profit in service to his vanity. Years of unrequited self love have left him desperate for an infinite sea of shallow admiration from those who share his values…
Lets step back and take a look at a different situation. Imagine your flying a large Jet Airplane. Your cruising along fat, dumb ,and happy then then you hear BANG followed by an array flashing lights and bells all indicating the left engine is on fire. You pause to make a choice; you could either continuing using the engine as it’s still generating thrust ,or you could shut off the fuel ,put out the fire ,and limp along on one engine. When your making this decision you don’t consider whats good for the engine or the fire the only thing you care about is the Airplane and the People in it.
Back to the the discussion. The Presidents first action should be the same as the pilots, protect the Country ,and the People in it. There is NO obligation to take in refugees. All I seem hear from the president is how it our patriotic duty to take in thousands because that’s what our country was founded on, And we need to ban all guns because the second amendment only allows Psychopaths to commit mass murder. It’s old ,out dated and completely unnecessary in today’s world.
If we are taking in Syrian refugees from a war zone in Syria where there is thousands of ISIS fighters trying to escape the Russian war machine and take the fight to the enemy homeland. It makes perfect sense ISIS has already said “We will use the migrants to smuggle our people in to the west”. These people could do a lot of damage, attacks on chemical plants, car bombs, suicide bombers ,attacks at stadiums ,schools,protests, or any where else there is a large congregation of people. How many attacks do you all think it will take before our government starts enacting some of the more draconian parts of the NDAA against Muslims or anyone else deemed dangerous ,or don’t like. Internment camps, reeducation camps, Privacy gone Second Amendment gone Freedom of Speech gone. Who’s going to be the Fascist then? Obama ,Clinton Bush ? All Trumps doing is Preventing a huge problem before it starts. I like it. It’s decisive ,bold shows leadership, critical thinking, and bravery. Or you could just wait and watch the others do absolutely, nothing then ridiculously overreact In a single sweeping motion that will erase our constitutional rights permanently.
Some times we need to make a drastic changes to avoid a terrible situation. The real challenge is climbing way way down off the high horse of righteous piety and realize that the horse is already up to his eyes in refuse, and there is no way we are going to come out of this clean.
“The Presidents first action should be the same as the pilots, protect the Country ,and the People in it.”
Did the president have the same duty when he took advantage of disruptions in Syria due to drought, the Arab Spring, etc. to foment, fund, encourage and continue a war to topple the Assad regime and harm its ally, Iran (and, likely, Russia)?
Did he and the president before him (and the two before that) have that same duty of protection when they launched a moronic, insanely-expensive and utterly failed series of wars and sanctions that destabilized the entire region and led to the emergence of the current unsortable mess in the ME and widespread, worldwide hatred for “the People” here?
If your pilot had damaged that engine by his own incompetent actions, would you recommend that he do the same thing to the other engine in response to the emergency he had, himself, caused?
“There is NO obligation to take in refugees.”
Does that include the hundreds of thousands (at least) of those refugees whose refugee status is due in large measure to our actions and those of our allies (with our full approval and assistance)?
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
I like this idea of “One Weird Trick” to get rid of Daesh:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43617.htm
When I see “critical ” and ” thinking”
In the same sentence , talking about trumps attributes…i gagged a little.
And the theory we don’t have any responsibility to our fellow man,
In offering shelter and comfort morally bankrupt.
*Just my opinion
That’s the trouble with metaphors: they only go so far on one engine. What we’re talking about here is whether the pilot should respond by ordering some of the passengers confined in the galley, or, perhaps, thrown overboard. There’s been recent talk not just of exclusion but WWII-type sequestration. That virus is always in the American body politic, but usually dormant. Donald Trump is saying little now that Gov. Earl Warren once already said.
First of all The airplane is our Country and the Passengers are it’s citizens No one is being thrown over board. The point being you take care of your own first. Protecting Americans in America is the FIRST Priority. Secondly; Part of my point is Syrian refugees= terrorist attacks. Not all of them are terrorists but if just 1% are then Americans will die, we all will lose (Especially Muslims). Only the Security state wins.
Use your head whats going to happen to the Muslim people in America after a few dozen attacks. Every single one no matter how much the president down plays it makes their situation harder. It’s a range, now Americans are slightly suspect but you better believe after a dozen or so attacks there will be interment camps and loss of our rights.
I’m tired of hearing Social Justice Warriors say things like “It’s a moral imperative to take in these people because we destroyed there countries” that’s the equivalent of shooting someones child and saying “Oops I’m really sorry about that, here’s twenty bucks” . Part of being a decent person is not committing the atrocities in the first place. Once we have done these terrible things no amount of brownie points ,or good deeds will make up for it. Best course of action Don’t put yourself in that position. That’s is what Trump it Doing
The truth is collectively we are not great people. as a country we are despicable and people need to come to terms with that. Our Military is not King Aurthur’s Knights of the round table. It like all others Is a machine of whole sale slaughter. When you Intend on Killing your way to a solution through Murder and destruction send in the military.
Millions of lives have been destroyed. Nothing we do can make up for that. The least we can do is admit that we are a bunch of Ideological Hypocrites pull out and let them sort it out on there own. Every time we go in and try to fix these situations we make it far worse.
“The truth is collectively we are not great people. as a country we are despicable and people need to come to terms with that.”
——-
Or, we can make a solid effort to improve ourselves by grooming our collective inner self (consciousness) so that it reflects the higher qualities, such as love, peace, humility, not doing to others what we don’t want done to ourselves, not seeing any otherness, forgiveness, generosity, selflessness, lack of desire for power and control, etc., you know, Christ-like qualities.
At this point it’s no longer a case of letting any more people in. As I’ve noted elsewhere in this thread, the U.S. can restrict immigration and has lower presumptions for dealing with those in its immigration courts. (Trump is also threatening to toss a net over the illegals — presumably mostly Hispanic — and throw them out too). The worry now is what happens to citizens here, short of detention, we already have a dramatically heightened racial-profile mentality in security and police operations, which will only worsen as the incidents continue. Given a major terrorist attack, the clampdown will be far harder.
(BTW, the San Bernardino attack didn’t involve Syrian refugees. That’s a whole new threat profile).
Boy oh Boy — Those are some of the worst analogies I’ve ever heard, and I frequent places like Salon’s comments section. How long did it take ye? How long, to puzzle out that stuff? You might want to look up the word “piety,” numbnuts. It’s you.
How hypocritical that the media (especially CNN) are trying to hide behind ‘journalistic objectivity’ when they ignored it for years. When former Iranian president Ahmadinejad said that the death count in the Holocaust was exaggerated, did CNN objectively report it and cover both sides? Heck no, they demagogued against Iran and repeatedly told Americans that this was outrageous and we should be upset by this. Some objectivity.
Sorry to bring this (kinda-sorta-maybe slightly off-topic) subject back to the top, but I didn’t think it should be lost in the shuffle below:
Today’s Graun:
Bernie Sanders’ Baltimore visit: hold the Isis, let’s focus on ‘third world’ US cities
My emphasis.
You just had to tell me this just as I was about to slap my Bernie 2016 sticker on the car!
Oh well…..
Hold on to that sticker. It’s still good for picking up lint.
If Trump would clarify his stance to “Wahhabi Muslims” instead of all Muslims, I would agree with his proposal. Wahhabism is an enormous threat to non-Muslims, while Sufism is not.
Saudi-funded Wahhabi mosques teach hatred of infidels, and are a threat to our communities. The prime minister of Iceland and the vice-chancellor of Germany have recently spoken out about the threat posed by Wahhabi teachings being spread in our midst.
America doesn’t need any Wahhabis to visit America for any reason, and we should simply deny them visas. I don’t need to see a woman in a burka at my local supermarket.
American Muslims must not be discriminated against, in accordance with our Constitution. But nothing requires the US to give visas to Muslims overseas. We should recognize that Wahhabism teaches Muslims to hate non-Muslims (infidels) and since most Americans are not Muslims, we don’t need to bring in people who are taught to hate us.
I’m an infidel and proud of it. I don’t need a mosque down the street railing against me, telling people how evil I am. It’s hate speech that should be kept out of our infidel communities.
I don’t need to see a woman in a burka at my local supermarket.
Now, that sounds to me like hate speech that will only increase the hatred toward our “infidel communities” that you are so concerned with.
I would not, of course, suggest banning such speech, and I wouldn’t ever condone unlawful violence . . . but if someone manges to get a video of a woman in a burqa slapping you silly in your local supermarket, I’ll laugh my ass off.
Google’s Schmidt is proposing a new “algorithm” to censor the Internet for “hate speech”.
Talk about a freakin’ slippery slope!
I guarantee that it won’t be long before that “algorithm” will stop all criticism of Israel. When that happens we can kiss the First Amendment good-bye.
http://qz.com/568580/googles-chairman-wants-algorithms-to-censor-the-internet-for-hate-speech/
Teju Cole is quite correct. Additionally, Trump’s proposal is less extreme than his prior proposals to maintain a database of Muslim Americans and to close mosques (an idea he shares with the unhinged French government).
If the US has no starving masses to organize, then use the followers of your reality TV show. When did Trump decide to be President, before he made “The Apprentice”, or did he realize the possibilities later?
Let’s call a spade a spade, shall we? Trump’s EXACTLY in alignment with mainstream press… Can you say “LockStep” or “GooseStep”…? Ya don’t have to look very far – just at what they DO – to see they ain’t wearing any clothes, despite all expense…
Right now fear is being sold wholesale on the media market. Lately it’s selling like hotcakes, so to speak, and Americans are buying it like a black Friday selling frenzy. So how about stepping back, taking a deep breath, and assess what’s going on before working up to another war frenzy. The time is ripe to give up even more freedoms for a false sense of security. Don’t let it happen!
Since journalists have effectively been neutered there aren’t very many sensible views out in the mainstream media outlets. As I say fear is rampant, and humans can be irrational when frightened. Let’s all step back before the Nation launches another trillion $ extravaganza with lot’s of dead innocents fueling another round of endless war. I do hope a few cool heads prevail before another atrocity is unleashed, but lately I haven’t seen it, on my TV anyway.
Glenn you never fail to impress.
I got this email in my inbox this morning, subject heading “I’m a proud Muslim” from Huma Abedin, Vice Chair of Hilary Clinton’s campaign:
“Friend —
Donald Trump is leading in every national poll to be the Republican nominee for president.
And earlier today, he released his latest policy proposal: to ban all Muslims from entering our country.
I’m a proud Muslim — but you don’t have to share my faith to share my disgust.
Trump wants to literally write racism into our law books. His Islamophobia doesn’t reflect our nation’s values — it goes far enough to damage our country’s reputation and could even threaten our national security.
Unfortunately, Trump is leaning into the kind of fear of progress that very well could help him win the nomination. We have to be ready to stop him.
Add your name to stand with Hillary and build a stronger, fairer, more inclusive country together:”
“His Islamophobia doesn’t reflect our nation’s values — it goes far enough to damage our country’s reputation and could even threaten our national security.”
But no worries about Clinton, who has seldom seen a predominantly-Muslim nation in North Africa, the Middle East or Central Asia that she doesn’t want to bomb, drone, sanction, enforce regime change upon, etc., eh, Huma?
I don’t understand why people have to be “proud” this or that. Why can’t they just be that thing? Everybody is something. If everybody is filled with pride for just being something, aren’t we all losing something?
I write this in jest. But I stand by my point. I wonder what the conversion rate is for this kind of email.
Part of the problem with taking Trump to task for anything is that he probably doesn’t mean it and he’ll probably change his mind at some point. Up until September, Trump was for taking in Syrian Refugees, now after a few big terrorist attacks he’s for banning all Muslims. It is fair to say that Trump is channeling the American Id, but it’s important to remember what the Id is, an unorganized part of the personality structure that contains a human’s basic, instinctual drives. Trump’s view of everything is impulsive and ephemeral. Trump has said various things about foreign policy that I’m sure Glenn would agree with “America shouldn’t be the world’s policeman” Deposing Saddam and Gaddafi was a mistake etc. Obviously you shouldn’t put too much stock in anything he says because he’s just taking the temperature of the room.
That said there’s a certain hypocrisy here from leftist who claim that Trump’s empty rhetoric is symptom of a deeper “fascism” in the culture, while insisting that 35 years of “Death to America” chants as well as other vile anti-western propaganda emanating from the Muslim world is essentially meaningless and should have no bearing on any of our policies and that even noticing it is a bit racist.
That said there’s a certain hypocrisy here from leftist who claim that Trump’s empty rhetoric is symptom of a deeper “fascism” in the culture, while insisting that 35 years of “Death to America” chants as well as other vile anti-western propaganda emanating from the Muslim world is essentially meaningless and should have no bearing on any of our policies and that even noticing it is a bit racist.
What “leftist” has said this? You have twisted what is being said – i.e. that, under the circumstances of western meddling within Middle Eastern countries, such sentiments are understandable – and turned it into something entirely different – that they believe it meaningless. You have erected a classic strawman.
No one believes it to be either meaningless nor inconsequential. To the contrary. Policies insisting that less, not more, bombing of Muslim countries might go a long way toward mitigating the impact of “Death to America” chants and other attitudes in the Middle East toward the US is the opposite of saying it should have no impact on our policies.
“Death to America” started in 1979 in Iran. Who were we bombing then? Certainly not Iran. And don’t bother rehashing 1953 with me, the Mullahs were behind that one as much as anybody. Isn’t it funny that the Left-wing position on Syria –support the hated “secular” dictator against the Islamist majority– is essentially the same one that got us into trouble in Iran? The difference being that the dictator in Iran was pro-western.
But then if “Death to America” is understandable within in the context of US meddling. How is “no Muslim immigrants” so beyond the pale within the context of a wave of terrorist attacks. Seem rather mild in comparison. The ME and North Africa have almost become a defacto forbidden zone for all westerners. This doesn’t seem to bother anyone in the region other than the tourist industry. I believe we should stop bombing the ME, but that doesn’t mean I want to recreate the ME within our borders with mass immigration the way the Swedes have. I would like to see America take the Chinese position Syria, that this shouldn’t concern us and that we shouldn’t try to fix it.
When Iranians stub their toe they say “death to my toe”. It’s a pretty generic expression not unlike saying you’re “going to kill” your brother for something he did to piss you off.
Israel exists solely because of American dollars and Israel has been fucking Palestinians for some 7 decades. The America/Israel relationship is incredibly destructive. America basically is paying for the booze while the drunk uncle rapes the neighbor’s children; fucked or what?
Hey Pedinska, you were asking for an example of somebody brushing aside Iranian rhetoric, well here you are sir. Yeah I might be less offended if the Iranians hadn’t put it into practice in Lebanon and elsewhere.
As for Israel, though I agree we shouldn’t be giving them a dime, it would still exist without American Foreign aid and the idea that solving that conflict is the key to peace in the ME has always seemed naive.
Just a reminder — the French attackers were almost all French or Belgian citizens. I believe the French gave citizenship at one time to natives of their exploited overseas colonies. As for the latest carnage in the USA — how can that particular incident be differentiated from a long list of carnage? Sweden, by the way, is a successful country, partly thanks to the openness and new ideas that immigration brings. Not so the Eastern European countries close by, who are fighting accepting a few immigrants tooth and nail. Don’t you think your “no immigrants” is just Trump redux?
There’s a lot of middle ground between Trump’s anti-immigrant posturing and Sweden’s open door social experiment in mass immigration. Sweden was until a few decades ago one of the most homogenous countries in Europe, if not the world. Now about 20% people living in Sweden are foreign born. Obviously Sweden is going to be a very different country in a few generations. In the short term the strain is apparent, they’ve had to shut the door on more refugees and are begging their neighbors to shoulder the burden. Leaked documents suggest they aren’t able to keep track of the hundreds of thousands who’ve entered the country. Sweden has even had to cut back their generous foreign aid at a time when its most needed.
” And don’t bother rehashing 1953 with me, the Mullahs were behind that one as much as anybody.”
They hate us for our freedoms!
Fascism is big business in America. Trump is just the warm up act for even greater demagogues ahead.
Glenn
Gun owners are also demonized when any wacky job kills with a gun. Any defense of these innocent victims of hate?
Civil libertarians seldom speak up when anyone proposes to ban gun owners, which reveals their underlying hypocrisy. The NRA is no help because it also demonizes gun owners; it’s always proclaiming that people [gun owners] kill people. No wonder everybody is freaking out.
Here’s an excerpt from a lovely editorial written by Stu Bykofsky of the Philadelphia Daily News: http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/20151208_Terror__Muslims_are_the_illness_-_and_the_cure_.html
“Recently a couple of local men were detained in Chicago by Southwest Airlines because they were speaking Arabic and some nervous passengers reported it. The men were delayed a few minutes and one said he was traumatized. (Get a grip.) Others with Middle Eastern appearance and accents have been detained and questioned elsewhere.
If it seems like racial profiling, it probably is, because there are millions of people who look like you who wish us harm. We are a little on edge.
That may explain the increase in anti-Muslim “hate crimes,” according to the FBI. They hover in the 100 to 150 range each year.
Without minimizing that number, last year 648 of 1,140 reported victims of hate crimes were Jewish.
Given the 320 million population of the United States, those are laughably small numbers. Regrettable, but laughable.”
Isn’t he a compassionate and thoughtful man? Btw, Bykofsky once suggested that the best thing for this country would be another 9/11.
“America’s fabric is pulling apart like a cheap sweater.
What would sew us back together?
Another 9/11 attack.
The Golden Gate Bridge. Mount Rushmore. Chicago’s Wrigley Field. The Philadelphia subway system. The U.S. is a target-rich environment for Al Qaeda.
Is there any doubt they are planning to hit us again?
If it is to be, then let it be. It will take another attack on the homeland to quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America’s righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail.”
Let’s aim for Mt Rushmore. There’s a lot of prairie dogs around there, almost as good as quelling the chattering chipmunks, not to mention prevailing that singular purpose.
Yeah, and we’re spending something like $35 million per year maintaining that mountain ruining monstrosity.
And we move yet closer to a religious war.
While going to great lengths in the Middle East to appear to promote a local initiative and solution to ISIS et al, lest they be given the advantage of a huge rallying call for an all-out response to the ‘infidels’ that the reality of a religious war would provoke, we have in at least the U.S. and France, baldfaced efforts by political leaders to make it so.
It is a mistake to view the Middle East as backward. They are playing their opponents, the West, like fine polished trumpets.
A little more emphasis on the current Big Lie would be helpful.
We have Trump and Hillary and their supporters going after each other, pretending they are oh so different from each other… but the truth is they are far more similar than different.
If either one wins, US policies will remain nearly unchanged from those of the neolibcons Obama and Bush.
Openly fascist, Constitution trashing, Wall Street coddling foreign interventionist or closeted fascist, Constitution trashing, Wall Street coddling foreign interventionist.
And, while Bernie is touting a desire for a different domestic economic policy, he isn’t exactly distinguishing himself from the others on the rest of it. A comparison to Corbyn in the UK for example shows Bernie to be quite in line with the Establishment on foreign policy.
Some of his language allows for some wiggle room of interpretation, but I think that may be wishful thinking by his supporters more than they want to admit.
Thanks for highlighting the similarities between Trump and Hillary though GG… we need more of it.
We seem to be in a heads, they win, tails, we lose situation.
At the very least, helping people recognize that would be useful progress.
A
There is a strange conflict that I have been bearing………… There is wisdom/intelligence by those here that can get me to understand better?
We (Americans) can’t yell fire in a crowded theatre, yes? We all understand why…..
Why is it of no consequence to be a follower of an ideology that specifically tells its followers to kill me, you and anyone who doesn’t subscribe to its teachings? The followers killed along with the infidels/poppers or if no infidels/poppers are killed are considered to have received a favor, something good, martyrs. It’s a kin to Nazi-ism but worse. Would we allow a person(s) to immigrate if during an investigative interview said person(s) pledged to be a Nazi, no?
Somebody can square this for me…………..
Good points.
But what are “poppers”?
@ Phil Ferro
Which “ideology” are you referring to, and please link to examples of where known and avowed members of that ideology are otherwise immigrating to or being permitted entry into the US. Once you answer the above, I can probably answer the following:
Because I’m unaware of any “ideology” that has any statistically significant foothold or impact in American’s daily lives that tells its followers to kill others who won’t subscribe to said “ideology”.
Now there may be such “ideologies” in the world in some limited spaces. And if Americans or other non-subscribers to that “ideology” were to enter those spaces they might be at risk. But that is not to say or to prove that such “ideology” exists here in America other than in the hearts of a statistically insignificant handful of human beings. Or for that matter that such ideology exists anywhere except in a handful of places in the world.
@rreheard-Maybe I should have clarified the current way infidel is used? To most people it’s self evident as to what ideology, meaning, implifications etc it has/comes from……
@ Phil Ferro
Okay, so are you suggesting the “ideology” is Islam? Or are you suggesting some believe it is “self-evident” that Islam as an ideology, which how did you put it, is one where “those who subscribe to its teachings are compelled to kill those who don’t.”?
But let’s put the rationality of that idea to the test. Indonesia is the fourth most populace nation on the globe at about 250 million people. 90% of that 250 million are subscribers to the teachings of Islam (i.e. 225 million). India has 177 million subscribers to the teachings of Islam. Bangladesh 148 million. Pakistan 178 million. That’s roughly 725 million Muslims in just four countries that American travel to, have businesses in/with, and whose nationals or immigrants all in various numbers reside in America.
The United States of America by contrast has roughly 320 million people of which roughly 1% identify as “Muslim” or about 3.2 million.
So my question is, if it is true that “subscribing to a set of teachings that requires that all ‘infidels’ or non-believers must be killed” then why aren’t the other 316.8 million of us dead already? I mean what are those scary Muslims waiting for? Between the 3.2 million in America and the 725 million in the four countries Americans travel to all the time, you’d think all those subscribers to the teachings of Islam would have ample opportunity and targets to be carrying out their religious mandate.
So what gives? You think they are too lazy or scared to live their “faith” and its requirements to kill us all? Doubtful. Maybe they are just waiting for the most opportune time to spring their master plan of infidel annihilation on us. Unlikely but theoretically possible as almost all things are.
Maybe they aren’t really all that committed to the “teachings” nor the supposed mandate to kill all us infidels? Probably, in which case they are just like most other human beings and the “self-evidence” of you or any other person’s opinion about the teachings of Islam or what it requires is misplaced.
Funny thing when you overgeneralize about anything–when subject to just a tiny bit of logical scrutiny it amounts to nothing more than false beliefs and irrational fears.
But hey whatever floats your boat.
“Why is it of no consequence to be a follower of an ideology that specifically tells its followers to kill me, you and anyone who doesn’t subscribe to its teachings?”
It is of consequence. We’d like to keep them out. But most Muslims don’t follow that ideology. Just as most Christians don’t believe in stoning non-virgin girls (Deuteronomy 22: 20-21), or putting to death children who curse their parents (Leviticus 20:9).
“Would we allow a person(s) to immigrate if during an investigative interview said person(s) pledged to be a Nazi, no?”
http://www.npr.org/2014/11/05/361427276/how-thousands-of-nazis-were-rewarded-with-life-in-the-u-s
Glenn Greenwald is peerless to his relentless advocacy for justice, equality and civil liberties for all.
In this instance, it is innocent, marginalized Muslims that he defends against some of the most powerful and influential voices in America. Doubtless Glenn’s battle is a lonely one—real leadership always is—but he fights on seemingly impervious the vicious forces mounted against him.
It is without the slightest exaggeration that I say that Glenn is a true hero, a singular profile in courage, conscience and commitment—and a shining inspiration for us all to take our place on the skirmish line in the battle for good in the world.
It would be difficult to say it better!
>>>”…innocent, marginalized Muslims that he defends …”
The key point, I think, is HOW MANY of these (innocent) people are there? What percentage of Muslims are Church-once-a-year believers? As opposed to fire and brimstone True Believers? Remember, the Quran not only allows, but actively encourages Muslims to lie to non-Muslims as a matter of course.
We have prior examples of this:
Read up on the Thugee cult in India. From Wikipedia: “Thuggee or tuggee (Hindi: Nepali ????? ?hag?; Urdu: ????; Sanskrit: sthaga; Sindhi: ????? ???; Kannada: ???? thakka) refers to the acts of Thugs, an organised gang of professional robbers and murderers.
The Thugs travelled in groups across South Asia for six hundred years.[1] Although the Thugs traced their origin to seven Muslim tribes, Hindus appear to have been associated with them at an early period. They were first mentioned in ?iy?-ud-D?n Baran?’s History of F?r?z Sh?h dated around 1356.[2] In the 1830s they were targeted for eradication by William Bentinck, Governor-General of India, and his chief captain William Henry Sleeman. The Thugs were seemingly destroyed by this effort.[1][3]
The Thugs would join travelers and gain their confidence. This would allow them to then surprise and strangle their victims by pulling a handkerchief or noose tight around their necks. They would then rob their victims of valuables and bury their bodies. This led them to also be called Phansigar (English: using a noose), a term more commonly used in southern India.[4] The term Thuggee is derived from the Hindi word ??, or ?hag, which means “deceiver”. Related words are the verb thugna, “to deceive”, from Sanskrit ???? sthaga “cunning, sly, fraudulent”, from ?????? sthagati “he conceals”.[5] This term for a particular kind of murder and robbery of travellers is popular in South Asia and particularly in India.”
Care to quote the Surah and the verse number(s) and show us how you’ve interpreted it/them as you’ve stated above?
Glenn Greenwald is peerless in his relentless advocacy for justice, equality and civil liberties for all.
In this instance, it is innocent, marginalized Muslims that he defends against some of the most powerful and influential voices in America. Doubtless Glenn’s battle is a lonely one—real leadership always is—but he fights on seemingly impervious the dark forces mounted against him.
It is without the slightest exaggeration that I say that Glenn is a true hero, a singular profile in courage, conscience and commitment—and a shining inspiration for us all to take our place on the skirmish line in the battle for good in the world.
I agree. I’m sorry to see Mike Tomasky taken to task because I like him and agree with him more often than not, but Glen is right. He’s also been right on Snowden which Tomasky has treated as a “nothing to see here” story.
It’s really hard to fathom the integrity gap between those doing real journalism here and America’s politicians, particularly those in the Republican party.
After watching two Le Pen speeches you tweeted out GG, I found myself in agreement with a number of her points. Have you done some in depth research on her? I found her challenge to Merkel and Hollande to be quite effective. A few of the points she made, in no particular order:
1. Stronger national identities within the Eurozone
2. Anti-austerity
3. Anti-surveillance
4. Questioning alliances with Saudi Arabia and similar
5. clearer thinking about terrorism
Above, you summarize the FN as fascist–I’d like to hear your expanded thoughts on FN and right-wing developments in Eurozone–which are quite similar to the GOP movement in current US politics.
The FN isn’t fascist, as Orwell pointed out that word has no real meaning after 1945 other than maybe “bully”. It has even less meaning here than when people like Hilary Benn use it to justify airstrikes against ISIS. If taking a dim view of immigration is fascist then there is a fascist-norm across the globe.
Greenwald terms them ‘actually fascist’ above. I requested he extend/elaborate on that. Many people bemoan the fact that “fascism” or “terrorism” or other such terms have lost all meaning. But there’s a pretty easy way around that–a writer can simply define what he or she means by the term–and then proceed.
Trump also takes a “dim view of immigration”. So does Le Pen. Which of course means immigration of brown-skinned people. I doubt if dovescry immigrating to France or the USA would cause a flutter to either. So ok, all three are not fascist, just bigoted, racist and xenophobic. Feel better?
One of the few iron-clad rules of political science is the anti-populist norm with regards to immigration. Mass immigration historically is just never popular anywhere, even in countries that arguably need lots of immigrants. Essentially if you ask people anywhere, do you want neighbors you have a lot in common with, or neighbors who you have nothing in common with, they’ll always chose the former.
Thanks, Glenn, for added the Cole statement which is accurate and needs to be seared into the consciousness of every USA citizen.
I need a credible plan to get a sound candidate before the electorate who can challenge the pack of hounds now running on both sides. (Recall Sanders is Clinton’s shill). Otherwise we are all in smoke and mirrors until the end. My suggestion is Jill Stein. No chance, however.
” (Recall Sanders is Clinton’s shill) ”
Riiiiight, as you have exhaustively proven before, no need to dwell on whether this assertion makes a lick of sense.
…no need to dwell on whether this assertion makes a lick of sense.
Well, it only defies sense if one was completely asleep during the Obama primary and general election campaigns, followed by the past 7 years of his presidency. After that bait-and-switch election, why wouldn’t people look with jaundiced eyes at anyone who chooses to remain within the defined and corrupted scenario of Democrat v Republican?
There were a lot of people who drew back just a little when Bernie, a self-professed Democratic Socialist, chose to run as a Democrat. They drew back a bit further when he declared that he would throw his support to Clinton if he were defeated in a primary. Some of those folks felt that he ought not to make such bargains if he were truly interested in helping the country lift itself out of its political straight jacket. Some articles to consider:
http://blackagendareport.com/bernie-sanders-sheepdog-4-hillary
http://blackagendareport.com/node/4604
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/bernie_sanders_says_he_wouldnt_end_drone_program_20150831
Now, all of those can be examined without necessarily ending up thinking that Sanders is, explicitly, Clinton’s “shill”, but if you look at them with open eyes and closely examine what they point out, it becomes a bit harder to think that, shil or not, Sanders will end up offering any more difference in terms of policy than Obama did once he brushed the primary off his shoulders.
I will be registering as a Democrat in order to vote for him in the Ohio primary because I think Clinton is, quite simply, a wholesale, bought and paid for evil warmonger in her own right. But I reserve the right to keep examining Sanders as closely as possible between then and the general (should he win the primary) because we can’t afford any more Obamas pulling the pathetic shreds of what used to be the left further to the right.
Either way, I’ll most likely end up voting for Jill Stein because she most closely represents what I believe this country needs. And no one will ever have a chance outside of the Dem/Rep kabuki unless we, the people, decide to force that to change.
Not convincing, any of it, the Obama comparisons. Obama said all kinds of stuff during 2008 that marked him well to the right of Sanders — remember the bit about how he admired Ronald Reagan? Sanders doesn’t pretend to be a centrist (Obama really believes in the center, whether it really exists or not he thinks he’ll find one, even if it means acting like the Left are some kind of wild-eyed freaks).
Sanders, unlike Obama, doesn’t send little signals to the financial world that he will r-e-a-l-l-y be easy to deal with. And in fact the financial world was not nearly as freaked by Obama as they seem to be by the prospect of Sanders. Forbes runs a crazy editorial attacking Sanders every week, well I don’t know that for sure because I don’t read them all.
Sanders doesn’t have EVERY position I wish he had on foreign policy — well, can’t win em all, I’m still very enthusiastic about him — and that’s something I can almost never ever say about political candidates at this level of exposure.
If Sanders does not get the nom, he will probably urge support of HRC as nominee. I won’t hold it against him — I don’t expect him to fall on his sword —- and I also won’t listen to him at that point, and I will most likely vote for Stein (but yes, Casual Observer is right about the Greens getting more moxy, they’ve really had an awfully long time now to get a bit more I don’t know exciting…..
I don’t follow Sanders, I just plan to vote for him until I can’t any more.
I’m not comparing Sanders to Obama so much as noting the fact that there is a demonstrative strategy of co-opting candidates to ensure that whatever the outcome of the election – D or R – the status quo never really changes. The system itself changes the candidates to the extent that they ever really had any objections to it.
Bernie has, to whatever extent can be shown by his voting record and performance in office, slowly evolved to support much of the standard Dem party line. I acknowledge his battles with Wall St, in fact, those are the positions that got me to the point where I wanted to vote in a primary. My whole point is that the system itself will do much to bring him back in line should he be so fortunate as to make it through the process. My concern is, outside of Wall St which has ways of evading the control of both Congress and the executive, how much change can we really expect from someone who votes to a very large extent with the Democrats on almost everything else.
Not an easy assessment to make, and I certainly understand the enthusiasm that many around me hold for him as a candidate, I’m just a little jaded by the ups and downs I guess and not convinced that any candidate for the office can really change a system that is much larger and prolific than any single arm of government. :-s
Bernie Sanders: Silent partner of American militarism
Thanks Doug. Those are exactly the kinds of things that make me reluctant to pull a lever for him outside of a primary. The Wall St stuff fades into irrelevancy for the most part if we can’t get our spending on militancy under control and subservient to our infrastructure and basic social needs.
Oh, one other thing. I understand the whole bit with opposing both the 2 parties just because they are THE 2 parties, and I hold particular disdain for the Democratic Party because I hate false friends worse than real enemies.
But nobody should expect that if a 3rd party were to become more powerful that it wouldn’t also soon be infiltrated by the kind of creeps who go where the power is.
3rd party purity is in part a function of their irrelevance; we can make them more powerful through out support, but don’t expect their purity (if it exists in the first place) to outlast such a development.
3rd party purity is in part a function of their irrelevance; we can make them more powerful through out support, but don’t expect their purity (if it exists in the first place) to outlast such a development.
Of course. We saw how it all works when the Dems tried to co-opt the Occupy movement. Wasn’t working so they let it be destroyed by the authorities. That’s an oversimplification but its correct in the generalities.
The powerful will never simply roll over and relinquish, but we can let them know we see the system for what it is by voting third party while continuing to protest and work against them in every other way possible at the same time. It’s a battle for inches.
I doubt your Sanders claim is correct. He appears to be running as if he can win. While I’ve voted Green in the past, Jill Stein is a horrible candidate. If the Greens were even moderately competent as a party, they’d mend whatever fences were neccessary and get Rocky Anderson on board, perhaps paired with Stein. Their immediate goal might be to capture 5% in a general election. Anderson can speak–Stein cannot.
If the Greens were even moderately competent as a party, they’d mend whatever fences were neccessary and get Rocky Anderson on board, perhaps paired with Stein. Their immediate goal might be to capture 5% in a general election.
I think this would be a good strategy for them.
Delighted with all of your comments. Now let’s have a plan to have the Greens, Rocky Anderson included, make a significant showing in the General Election.
To be fair, Trump said ‘ban all Muslims’ … until our elected officials ‘figure out what is going on.’
*In this context, perhaps a benevolent interpretation of Trump’s linguistic circus show could indicate he is trying to protect Muslims (until our elected officials can figure out what’s going on)! .. perhaps not.
Either way, it’s very freaking radical… and, you’re right Glenn, I don’t believe in ‘self-radicalization.’
He could be testing the water, and more extreme proposals might be coming soon, depending on how his ideas are received.
Just my own opinion, Sufi, but I don’t think Trump cares what the water around him feels like. He creates his own heat and steam and, as his defense of the people who beat up a Black Lives Matter activist at his rally shows, the worse it gets the more he likes it.
There will be more extreme proposals irrespective of how people react because The Donald does not care how they react. He’s made that explicitly clear.
Try taking away his piggy bank and Trump will squeal like a stuck pig… and pert-near gnaw his own leg off to get it back! *i seen it with my own eyes up in Knaw York, darlin’. ^oo^
Well, we have yet to see how he’ll react if his poll numbers tank as a direct result of what he has said, unless he’s not a serious candidate and doesn’t care about winning the nomination.
if his poll numbers tank as a direct result of what he has said,
I would love to see that happen because it might indicate that the country hasn’t yet sunk as far down this rabbit hole as I can see in my own personal observations. However, I would note that each past incident of escalation has resulted in surges in the polls for him. In fact, several astute political observers I follow on twitter have noted that Trump specifically pulls out these rancid proclamations whenever anyone else in the field pulls close to him in polls because it works. I hope they, and I, am wrong. :-s
My problem with Muslims is that they don’t seem interested in reining in their own extremists. They just drone on that Islam is a religion of peace while watching the beheadings. The entire caliphate ISIS jihad carnage is a solely Muslim activity and is hardly peaceful.
Furthermore, just because they’re “people” doesn’t entitle them to invade Europe or migrate to anywhere else, especially when their fellow Muslims in the United Arab Emirates refuse to take them altogether. Something is very wrong with all of this and it’s not Donald Trump.
Total crap! The Muslims are the biggest victims of other Muslim extremists as well as at the receiving end of crap like yours!
“The Muslims are the biggest victims of other Muslim extremists…” – Which only reinforces my point. Thank you.
You said: “My problem with Muslims is that they don’t seem interested in reining in their own extremists.”
I replied: “The Muslims are the biggest victims of other Muslim extremists as well as at the receiving end of crap like yours!”
You then stated: “Which only reinforces my point.”
How does it reinforce your point: “My problem with Muslims is that they don’t seem interested in reining in their own extremists.”?
Are you suggesting that the Muslim victims of terrorism by other Muslims [are NOT] interested in reining in their own extremists.?
If so, then you’ve just thrown another load of crap, and are in fact blaming the Muslim victims and charging them of not being interested in reining in their own extremists.
The fact of the matter is that the Muslims are doubly concerned about extremism. One one hand they are the direct victims of it. On the other hand, they are at the receiving end of crap such as yours.
My problem with Muslims is that they don’t seem interested in reining in their own extremists.
You mean these extremists?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/america-created-al-qaeda-and-the-isis-terror-group/5402881
Furthermore, just because they’re “people” doesn’t entitle them to invade Europe or migrate to anywhere else, …
What, exactly, entitled the US and its European allies to invade Iraq? What entitled the US to create groups that are currently destroying the Middle East? What entitles you to think that other human beings have no right to try to seek a place to exist where there is no war, famine and widespread death?
Thank you for this resource (cited below), Pedinska. Indeed you raise some valid questions; as in, who the f_ck are we (the U.S., in particular) to impose hegemony throughout and across the globe? Dang! Our own nation is in one-helluva state (mess). Most of our elected officials and/or presidential candidates – it appears – couldn’t effectively manage a school lunch program… “until we figure it out” b.s… Please! These are the best of the best candidates for the highest elected office in the country!?! (Senator Bernie Sanders wins the office hands down, imho! – for disclosure only.) I do; however, wish to raise these two points below for further discussion if I may. After you :-)
[Excerpts]
America is using ISIS in three ways: to attack its enemies in the Middle East, to serve as a pretext for U.S. military intervention abroad, and at home to foment a manufactured domestic threat, used to justify the unprecedented expansion of invasive domestic surveillance.
(…)
Terrorism is the symptom; American imperialism in the Middle East is the cancer. Put simply, the War on Terror is terrorism; only, it is conducted on a much larger scale by people with jets and missiles.
– Garikai Chengu [Author] is a research scholar at Harvard University.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/america-created-al-qaeda-and-the-isis-terror-group/5402881
“My problem with Muslims is that they don’t seem interested in reining in their own extremists. ”
Funny, that’s the same problem I have with Christians!
I have yet to hear the Christian community stand-up, apologize, denounce, atone, and grovel on their knees for forgiveness for Colorado, Charleston, the Wisconsin Sikh Temple massacre, the assassinations of Dr. George Tiller & Dr. John Britton, the Centennial Olympic Park bombing, the Planned Parenthood bombing in Brookline, Massachusetts, the Oklahoma bombing, etc., etc, etc.
“My problem” is that more than 90% of the terrorist acts committed in the US are committed by non-Muslims and yet the religion responsible for the most terrorist attacks wants another religion to start “reining in their own extremists.”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/non-muslims-carried-out-more-than-90-of-all-terrorist-attacks-in-america/5333619
I do believe that law enforcement, much of it Christian, is and has been going after all manner of individuals in the events you cited, do you think otherwise?
Please supply links to news stories of Christians, en masse, apologizing, denouncing, and begging forgiveness for any of the acts of Christian terrorism I mentioned.
We don’t expect innocent Christians to apologize, only innocent Muslims. It’s absurd, it’s demeaning, and it’s 100% racist bullshit.
The entire purpose of the “We Want Muslims To Reign In “Their” Terrorists” talking point used relentlessly in the media is to demonize and ostracize ALL Muslims as being in cahoots with ANY terrorist acts committed by any Muslim.
You would never expect or require it of Christians or Jews. Only Muslims.
It’s flagrant bigotry and hatred masked as “concern”. Not unlike how the rightwing media likes to attack ALL blacks as being responsible for ANY black-on-black crime in America.
I don’t believe I wrote that Muslims should en masse apologize, denounce, and beg for forgiveness for what their extremist brethren are doing. I wrote that Muslims don’t seem to be trying to do anything about terrorism. When was the last time we heard of Saudi law enforcement arresting terrorists? Or the Turks? Or the Indonesians? (Maybe I missed some accounts, maybe not.)
As far as flagrant bigotry and hatred goes, I have yet to hear of any Swiss bombing cafes, or Icelanders beheading anyone, or any rabbis or priests stoning anyone to death, or any monks going to war over their religious beliefs. Have you? So therefore, yes, as you wrote, only Muslims. All Muslims? Of course not. But again, Muslims. (Ask the Swedes what they think.)
Are you really that ill-informed or are you just playing around with such non-sense?
“As far as flagrant bigotry and hatred goes, I have yet to hear of any Swiss bombing cafes, or Icelanders beheading anyone, or any rabbis or priests stoning anyone to death, or any monks going to war over their religious beliefs”
Setting aside that Americans didn’t make the list with the Swiss and Icelanders (in my view, a sad reality), you really aren’t paying attention if you think rabbis, priests and monks aren’t involved in violence and war in particular. All of them? Of course not. But again…
Well said Luther.
What are Christians doing to rein in their extremists?
I think the FBI would tell you that they’re doing plenty. Does that count?
“My problem with Muslims is that they don’t seem interested in reining in their own extremists…”
How are the extremists “theirs”? —what is it that makes, say, some Muslim guy, who’s a software developer for a fintech firm in Connecticut, any closer to extremists Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik than, say, you?
Why can’t be said that you are closer to the extremists than the Muslim developer in Connecticut?
Because I’m not a Muslim? Because, among other things, I don’t partake of the teachings of any organized religion. Because I call out and report unethical and criminal behavior, even that of privileged WASPs. Because I don’t think that violence of any kind, except in self defense or to overthrow a tyrannical government, should be condoned?
Trump is just following in the tradition of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Naturalization Act of 1790.
Further proof there is no difference between the Republican and Democratic frontrunners.
One thing to understand about American racists is the condition of their citizenship.
A decade ago, the founder of the “World Church of the Creator” was told that due to his racist ideology, he was not morally suitable to be admitted to the bar, despite having completed the requisite training and having passed the bar exam.
More recently, it was established that immigration status does not disqualify a person from being admitted to the bar.
So to recap: a person can be anybody on the street in Islamabad or Istanbul, pay a coyote to get past the border (who pays Los Zetas to shoot meddlesome cops on his behalf), move around the country under false pretenses, and that’s OK, but espousing constitutionally protected First Amendment rights is NOT OK.
Or to put it another way, anybody anywhere in the world is MORE OF AN AMERICAN CITIZEN than someone born and raised here who is a racist – or someone who holds any other immoral point of view. (Hmmm… repeal child pornography laws? Support a right to cock-fighting? I have no idea) At least in court … but then again, where else does being a citizen matter?
Trump’s fascist comments are made with one audience in mind–He knows how to jerk the main street media around like a three dollar whore. He knows any reactionary or opposed commentary only serves his self-interest in overcoming sagging poll numbers in my home state of Iowa. Since the evangelicals in this state have moved toward Ted Cruz whom they see as one of their own, Trump is horrified at the prospect of being one of his own “losers.”
Glenn, above:
It’s not at all difficult to imagine right now. In the latest CNN/ORC poll, Clinton’s lead over Trump is within the margin of error.
Even in the most recent (MSNBC/Telemundo/Marist, yesterday), the one that shows Killary with the largest lead, Trump gets 41% (with 7% undecided). Tosss in a 3-4% margin of error and play with those seemingly-encouraging numbers a bit.
Real Clear Politics — Latest Polls
I kinda hope we do. Not because I fear or hate Muslims, but it would start us down the path to banning all religion outside of ones home, which is going to be needed in the future if we plan on ending war.
Another American who either never learned the meaning(s) of even the very first element of our Bill of Rights or doesn’t want to abide by the principles established by the Constitution.
Should we blame your teachers, or are you knowingly responsible for this reprehensible situation, yourself?
Gotta love The Guardian’s neutral take on Trump: He spat out the word “sharia” as though it were verbal poison.
Somebody try to tell me with a straight face that sharia is anything BUT a verbal poison! Whether we’re talking Boko Haram or Saudi Arabia or Iran or Somalia or whereverthehell else it is used.
According to the Sufi Muslims:
Shariah is the outer form of Islam, whose primary objective is to provide a protective and conducive environment for the self to grow and develop so that it reflects the higher qualities, such as generosity, love, peace, justice, humility, selflessness, etc., and connect with the Reality that encompasses and permeates all other realities.
See http://www.askonline.co.za/courses.php
and http://www.zahrapublications.com
What Sufi Muslim said.
I recognize some Muslims don’t believe in beheading, and yes, that’s a great start!
But Sufiism doesn’t sound like a very reliable guarantee in this one:
https://books.google.com/books?id=aEh_IofABkYC&pg=PA65
A dervish named Mehmet … announced to a crowd in a mosque that anyone wearing a European hat … was an unbeliever, and that the Shariah would soon be reinstated … “Caliphate Army” of seventy thousand soldiers … cut off the wounded officer’s head … stuck it on a pole…
Sounds like Islam to me!
“I recognize some Muslims don’t believe in beheading…” That’s so generous of you.
Okay, you are officially an asshole and a bigot and a part of the new Nativist Know-Nothings of the 21st Century club. You are a throwback to every other xenophobic movement in American history — and you know what, not a single one of those movements has ended up having a good historical reputation for having improved the state of the Union. Wonder why that is.
Yes, I didn’t think you were receptive to expanding your knowledge and developing a more balanced and nuanced understanding of the world of Islam, of which various forms of Sufi Islam are a part.
So my comments, though in response to yours, were meant for more for those who are receptive than for you.
The fact remains: Islam/Shariah are not monolithic. While there exists a lot of ugliness, there also exists a lot of goodness. Some forms of Islam/Shariah are from bad to evil, most are pretty benign, some are excellent as they focus on self development and purification so that the self reflects the higher qualities I have often listed here.
Those who focus on the bad to evil strains of Islam and then conclude that this is real Islam are like those who would consider a cancerous tumour in someone’s brains to be the real brains.
http://sufism.org
http://www.scholarofthehouse.org/index.html
Perhaps I was snarky with the way I put that comment about “some Muslims”. I do recognize that many Muslims are good people. And in these forums I have in the past made the case for largely nation dependent quotas on immigration. While religion can be a factor, I think it could generally enter the equation as a positive factor — i.e. accept no Syrians, except Christians, Jews, Yazidis, atheists, and others who face a clear and present danger due to their beliefs.
Nonetheless, if we look at homogenizing a global pot with 23% of the global population, what does that mean? Based on what we see in the world, it means joining the dark-shaded countries on this map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_by_country And those countries by and large overlap with the dark-shaded “unfree” countries at the Freedom House article (though there are a few additional unfree countries with special circumstances, like Russia and the Congo) .
Now it is wrong to suppose that the Muslims are all terrorists and the countries are unfree because of that, yes. But the terrorism seems like the tip of a larger iceberg. From what I’ve read, Islam is often interpreted as a very legalistic religion, urging people to make no waves and get along in a way that is not consistent with the ugly, raucous patterns of a functional democracy. Whether it results in violence or not, countries with large Islamic populations rarely seem to be safe places to lambast Muhammad or even to try to convert people to Christianity.
So when we look at this world, we think: are we sure we can just stir it up, let Muslims become a large fraction of America, see if it remains a free country? And I’m not feeling very sure.
Of course, that isn’t all of it – there’s also the feeling that, right now, we’re either going to lose the First Amendment, or the Second, or the Muslim immigrants. And… well, I like those Amendments. I don’t really need the immigrants.
If liberals insist on being intransigent on this point, it will end up being conservatives who decide the whole agenda — and that could be an agenda with serious abridgments of the rights of the people who DO have the right to live in America.
According to the Non-Sufi Muslims:
See “Reasoning with God: Reclaiming Shari’ah in the Modern Age”, at http://www.amazon.com/Reasoning-God-Reclaiming-Shariah-Modern/dp/0742552322/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1449588607&sr=8-1&keywords=reasoning+with+god
To Understand Traditional Islam (both Sunnis, Shias and the Sufis):
See “The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary”, at http://www.amazon.com/Study-Quran-New-Translation-Commentary/dp/0061125865/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1447317176&sr=8-1&keywords=The+study
Shariah is not monolithic, and just like anything else it can be misinterpreted and misapplied by some. Thankfully, we have The Criterion (The Quran) and 1400+ years of traditional scholarship to pass a judgement on such misinterpretations.
It’s the Quran that sets the framework for what Islam is. Anything that contradicts it is not Islam.
Some people have a tendency to present the worst examples from the Muslims and ignore everything else that has been said and acted out over the past 1400+ years and what is being said in the contemporary world.
The picture vis-a-vis Islam is very complex, and by presenting the worst examples from the world of Islam as if they are somehow representative of Traditional Islam or contemporary scholarship distorts the picture.
That said, at the center of human action is the human self. Interpret and apply something through the lower self, and it’ll be disastrous. Do it through the higher self, and it’ll produce good results.
Boko Haram, ISIL, Saudi Arabia can easily be judged against the Qur’an and the 1400+ years of traditional scholarship and proven to have deviated from them.
But not everyone has the patience and desire to carry out such an examination, so they’ll just spew ignorant non-sense to demonize all of Islam since it’s now very fashionable, and in thing, to do so.
I don’t want to lay out the cash, so tell me: do you have different translations for the verses listed here? http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/quran/023-violence.htm
Like 5:33 “The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement”
Or 8:12 “I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them”
(Hmmm… has ISIS been neglecting their duties on the latter point?)
I mean come on, you’re trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
I see what your problem is: You’re trying to understand the Qur’an from anti-Islam websites.
I can’t help you.
For others — those who are open minded, the following brief points will suffice:
1. Read Muhammad Asad’s translation and the commentary on the Qur’an on these verses.
2. The Qur’an is an integrated whole, parts of it elucidate the other parts. Taking verses out of their textual context will not give you a good and accurate understanding of them, unless there are the verses that set certain timeless principles, but even those need to be examined within their textual context.
3. The word “messenger” (or “apostle”) is generic in this context, and “making war on God and His apostle” means a hostile opposition to, and willful disregard of, the ethical precepts ordained by God and explained by all His apostles, combined with the conscious endeavor to destroy or undermine other people’s belief in God as well.
4. In classical Arabic idiom, the “cutting off of one’s hands and feet” is often synonymous with “destroying one’s power.”
5. 8:12’s historical context is the battle of Uhud. This commenter did not even quote the entire verse, let alone the verses before and after, which give a much better picture of what is actually being said and its textual and historical context. Again, Muhammad Asad’s commentary will help those who will approach it with an open mind.
The site provides context for each quote if you click the links. For example, I see that 5:33 is followed by 5:38, “As to the thief, Male or female, cut off his or her hands: a punishment by way of example, from Allah, for their crime: and Allah is Exalted in power.” I suppose it is reassuring that all the people who have had hands chopped off for stealing were victims of a mistranslated idiom… honestly though, I’d have thought that an omniscient and merciful God would have decided to go a little lighter on the metaphor.
In Christianity, many of the phrases attributed to Jesus, the Beatitudes, the reply to the Sanhedrin, “Let him without sin cast the first stone,” well, they have a ring to them. One could believe they were the work of God, or the son of God, though even the latter term is only the opinion of a Nicean council that had a habit of being far too sure of itself. To say they were the work of the Son of Man means enough. In a new heaven and a new earth, the next revision of the human spirit will be like that; and there are a few good people, sometimes, who, acting that way, are already ready to star in that next revision. For the rest of us it is very hard, but at least, such phrases beckon onwards, not downwards, and those who live by them inspire us. The Koran? At best, if it were just as you say, it would be a tricky read that is ready to solicit atrocity from whoever drops their guard and believes something it says at face value. Or … it is worse than that. In any case, I don’t trust a Shariah court to get it right.
By relying on the anti-Islam websites, you are not getting a balanced and accurate understanding of the Quran.
See Muhammad Asad’s commentary on 5:33 and 5:38.
If someone really wants to dive into the Quran, and understand how the Muslims understand it, I highly recommend the commentaries by Yusuf Ali (the original, not the Saudi molestation of it), Muhammad Asad’s, the newly released The Study Quran, and Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri’s esoteric commentaries on selected chapters and his discourses on the Quran (See http://www.shaykhfadhlallahaeri.com.
Wnt, I would strongly suggest you read the Qur’an. I would suggest to you The Holy Qur’an with English translation and Commentary by Maulana Muhammad Ali. There is intensive commentary placing the chapters in historical context. Many of the twisted racist opinions of non Muslims comes from taking the verses out of context and were descriptions of battles of with the peoples who were trying to eliminate the Muslims from their homes and Mosques. Many of the comments you have made are classic forms of these mis interpretations. In order to speak intelligently about a subject you have to have an understanding of the subject , a good foundation , to debate it. I believe that our government counts on our ignorance on the subject of Islam, and uses this ignorance turned racist fear to cover up their heinous and bountiful crimes in the Middle East and to justify in the minds of our youth the reasons they must go to the Middle East to protect their country. If our youth truly understood that it was for the theft of resources and land and global power I do not believe it would be so enticing to join the armed services. With the release of the all the cables thanks to God by Chelsa Manning many of the lies we have been feed is becoming known . I think that there is a desperate need for government officials to feed the racist feelings against Muslims even more as the truth becomes more and more common knowledge because their asses are literally on the line. I also believe that there is a push to separate Americans as much as possible , to have lines drawn in the sand so to speak between Muslim Americans, Blacks, Whites , Hispanics , Asians to have us all at each other throats to turn our attention away from the very real truths that have been offered us in the last few years. They are truly criminals , and they are afraid that enough people learn and digest all the crimes that have been committed we will actually take them to task for their actions. I believe that the people who support Donald Trump truly are a product of our school systems, the media , and are exactly the populace that has been nurtured in our capitalist system. They have no information with which to make sound conclusions and for that matter have never been taught how to make sound decisions . This leads to making decisions based on emotions and simple concepts of right and wrong which is impossible when not given the truth , the facts. I am frightened by the incredible response of my fellow citizens to Mr. Trump. I find it more worrisome the divisions that I am watching take place before my eyes of the citizens of this nation, and how emotionally charged every debate on any subject seems to be. I am really worried for my nation.
If you can provide the name of a ‘neutral’ news source I’d love to see it.
I have no doubt that if you can name one, it shares your political leanings.
A request.
I would like the Intercept to do research and a report on
the recent slaughter in San Bernardino.
I have read a number of articles and watched some of the
video reports and,
the more I learn
the more suspicious the whole story becomes.
There has been a seeming rush to portray the horror as
a muslim assault on innocent people, but there is a shortage
of substantiated evidence being presented
Where did ALL of the weapons come from,
who posted what on the internet
(we are TOLD that an alias was said to be used by the wife),
where did the tens of thousands of dollars come from and go to,
why would newlyweds do this,….?
Of course, we cannot ask the supposed perpetrators because
there was an almost immediate “shootout” wherein
they were both silenced and now the couple is accused of
erasing electronic evidence.
The father of the man has said his son bought “a” gun, but
If one is so dedicated to a sick agenda, does one try to keep
the world in the dark about it after planning such a horror?
It doesn’t add up.
I agree. Everything about that incident sits wrong. As always, small things but could prove crucial in debunking official store. e.g. why was the woman terrorist – who was killed – in handcuffs? How could she have fired anything from a rolled up vehicle window?
If there is a major terrorist attack in the US between now and the election Trump will win.
He has just called for a TEMPORARY freezing of Islamic immigration into the US and is being taken to the woodshed for it. But what Trump is right? What if there is another major 9/11 attack? And the odds are very high that there will be another major attack based on security and intel reports and the ISIS propaganda machine. Clearly, ISIS has many supporters and that support base is growing.
Everyone agrees that we should not let terrorists into the country. The question before us is whether we should let Muslims into the country. Note that those are different questions to non-bigots.
I spend much of my time in the small world of libertarian academics, especially libertarian social scientists. It has been roughly two years since it became acceptable at cocktail parties to say things like, “Ending terrorism is easy: ban all Muslims from the country.” Incontrovertible facts like “most terrorism in the U.S. is committed by non-Muslims,” and “the vast majority of terror victims worldwide are Muslim” make no difference. I say this to underscore the pervasiveness of bigotry in the U.S. and its acceptance even among some of the best educated and supposedly liberty-loving people in the U.S. Obviously not everybody is privy to these conversations, but I am, and they tend to be worse than imagined. Just to drive the point home, the first time I heard this “ban all Muslims” crap that Trump is, er, trumpeting was straight from the mouth of one of the world’s leading historians on…wait for it…the American Revolution. The conversation was among a group of four rich white men (we were taking a break from running the world — everybody needs a break sometimes). I was the only one to protest, and the others were SHOCKED that I had a problem with such an obvious “truth.” If libertarian Ph.D.s are speaking this way, watch out! If you are Muslim in the U.S., expect nothing good. No one will defend you and many Americans want and plan to ban you from the country. There is nothing I can do about it but give you a heads up. My “peers” will not be persuaded (they are the smartest people alive, just ask them). And by the way the Canadians are even worse. Run like hell, and good luck!
Thanks, thought it was just my little town. I guess the Constitution did not take on many Americans.
Indeed, especially among “constitutional scholars.”
I guess the Constitution did not take on many Americans.
This paper points toward reasons why:
http://www.civiced.org/papers/papers_quigley99.html
That was written in ’99. I would argue that education has become even more removed from teaching civics as a result of the current teach-to-the-test mentality, so while many Americans profess reverence for the Constitution a continued decline in actual understanding seems inevitable. In fact, I am inclined to believe that it has now become an outright objective desired by those who are working so very hard to destroy that document in its entirety.
Thanks, student cannot learn what teacher does not know. I talk with younger generations and many have been cheated of basic primary education. Whose goal or ignorance allowed this? How can children have a better life if education has been diminished? Even if we prize and pay for top-shelf teachers tomorrow we have lost a couple generations.
A Nation at Risk” (1983), “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves.”
Libertarian Ph.D.s that… live in Los Angeles?
Damn you Macroman! I’ll spend the next 2 hours wondering!
@ Macroman
Maybe that’s part of the problem.
Are you spending time with the rights-based/propertarian libertarians (i.e. “classic liberals”) or the consequentialist libertarians? Or are you hanging out with libertarian socialists or left civil libertarian/anarcho-syndicalism of the Chomsky variety?
And when you say “libertarian social scientists” specifically which “social sciences” are you referring to–economics, political science, linguistics, analytical philosophy . . . what?
Do you believe there are meaningful distinctions in the canon of “libertarian” thought? If so which are you most closely aligned with as an economist?
I’d argue whichever kind of “libertarian” you may claim to be or surround yourself with, it makes a big difference in the way one attempts to understand or explain the world. Don’t you think?
MAJOR problem: Your source about the spokesman clarifying that Muslim-Americans can’t return … goes on to quote Trump saying citizens can come back, “that’s different”! http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/262348-trump-calls-for-shutdown-of-muslims-entering-us
Maybe they revised it since you cited it??? In any case, you have to fix this.
WNT – As you speculated, Trump’s statement came after his spokesperson said the ban would include citizens. The Hill added Trump’s comments after my article was published. I noted this in an update. Thanks for pointing it out.
“it’s the defining hallmark of bigotry: imputing the bad acts of individuals to all members of a group or to the group itself. ”
Kind of how the left does to straight white men all the time. Bunch them up and hold them accountable for some sort of original sin. The BLM’s, the Feminists, the SJW university students… all hold straight white men accountable for life’s sins.
And I say “them” because I’m not one of them, but I see through the hypocrisy of the left.
Spot on. And just like all other bigotry, it is rooted in ignorance and stupidity.
@ Pablo
My skin is outwardly “white” as I’m half Scottish or English.
I’ve never once felt the BLMs, Feminists or university students “bunching me up and holding me accountable” for something I had nothing to do with much less “life’s sins” in the aggregate.
However, unlike some I have always attempted to be cognizant of, learn about, and accept the fact that given my outward appearance I have enjoyed some limited “privileges” in America as both a man and a nominally “white” person.
And just so you know, “reverse racism” against white people isn’t a real thing. At least not for anyone who discusses the concept of “racism” with an understanding of its attributes, its historical context, its actual definitions (sociological/legal/cultural) and the necessarily unequal power relationships that animate it.
Please share whatever life experiences you are willing to help illustrate how it is that you feel like the BLMs, Feminists and university students are doing what you claim they are doing. Because if they are making you “feel” like that then you must be the most delicate white male sunflower I’ve ever run across.
The right has a far higher tendency to bigotry, Pablo. If you really are Hispanic, and live in the United States, I’d be really surprised if you haven’t experienced it before.
Many of the “God-fearing, Jesus-loving” white folk have a bias against anyone who isn’t them – which is completely opposite to the teachings of Jesus, from my reading of the Gospel…
“All that said, it’s important not to treat Trump as some radical aberration. He’s essentially the American id, simply channeling pervasive sentiments unadorned with the typical diplomatic and PR niceties designed to prettify the prevailing mentality. ”
Yes, Trump has followed the advice of Ann Coulter and relentlessly focused of immigration. Fear of Muslim extremism is only one aspect of middle-American opposition to immigration policies as outlined in Coulter’s best selling book entitled “Adios, America!.” Americans have largely been lied to by their government for decades in regard to economic policies that have been enacted with the specific intent of facilitating the erosion of America’s manufacturing sector in lockstep with the aims of globalization. Just yesterday, I was reading the minutes of a 1980 Bilderberg conference wherein the global elites were discussing the benefits that could be derived from a North American union and the difficulties imposed by nativist attitudes. Yet, even in the distant wake of NAFTA, American policy makers routinely deny that the legal framework had already been put in place that will allow for the eventual economic integration of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Such integration would result in an open border policy whereby workers from the three nations would form a single labor pool. The minutes of that meeting can be found on the Wikileaks website.
Chomsky has made the astute observation that America’s economic elites have long since decided that the rise of the middle class has cut into their bottom line and challenged their hold on power. Skilled labor has traditionally demanded higher wages. Higher wages translate in to a higher standard of living including education. Higher levels of education have resulted in greater pressure for democratization of the political process that has been traditional controlled by the elites. For over a decade, the number of middle class jobs has steadily declined due to a steep decline in US manufacturing. Although the overall number of American workers has increased, the largest growth has been in unskilled, low-paying occupations.
The arrival of new immigrants and the births of their children and grandchildren account for 55% of the U.S. population increase from 193 million in 1965 to 324 million in 2015. The influx of new jobs have occurred during a period where wages have largely remained stagnant while worker productivity has moved steadily upward. Immigration policy has predictably resulted in a steady influx of unskilled cheap labor that largely comes in from our southern border.
The percent of U.S. workers belonging to a union has declined over 300 percent in the last fifty years from a high of thirty-three percent to ten percent today; thus the democratizing effect of union participation in the political process has steadily declined in step with the capacity to bargain collectively for higher wages..
In keeping with the perception that educated Americans are a potential threat to the elites control of the political process, education costs have have been driven upward to the point where the average middle-class American family can no longer afford to pay the tuition costs for the children. The average freshman has to go into deep debt to acquire a high paying, white collar position in those segments of the economy that have most benefited from its deliberate polarization. Those who are least positioned to acquire a higher education are most affected by the influx of cheap labor.
Although the politically expedient conflation of Islamic extremism and Muslim immigration has become a hot button topic with Trump’s supporters, it is merely perceived as the latest in a truckload of straws that have been contrived to break the back of the middle class. Changes made to the political, social, and economic landscape of America by “the masters of mankind” have most negatively affected the economic prospects of America’s middle class – of which white native-born Americans comprise the majority. Some fear is justified; the future is bleak. Trump is tapping into to the irrational belief that a sitting president has the unilateral capacity to stem the tidal wave of global change that has engulfed them.
The choice between fascism or inverted totalitarianism does seem to be in the offing.
Karl: Superb analysis and synopsis. Very much appreciated. Thank you! For those who may not be familiar, let me add this link:
Inverted totalitarianism – Wikipedia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Still too wordy for my tastes.
“Still too wordy for my tastes.”
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That’s only slightly better. Keep trying.
“That’s only slightly better. Keep trying.”
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@ Karl
See there Karl. When you actually try, every once in awhile you have the capacity and/or ability to synthesize certain information or evidence into a coherent argument that is defensible.
Now whether or not Americans’ “fear is justified” based on the trends you’ve noted above, is debatable as we’d have to have a common understanding of what is/is not “justifiable”.
But the fact of that fear is very very real (or maybe uncertainty or unease in the face of a rapidly changing world in which they have little meaningful input is a better way to frame it).
And now that you’ve made a compelling argument for where this fear, uncertainty or unease arises from, the question is–what do we do about it? Do we follow the Trump and Coulter path of exclusion and demonization of “the other”, or do we join together in solidarity across race, gender, sexual orientation, religion and place of origin to fight for a better world of better wages, better access to healthcare and education, better environment and better life prospects for all–rather than snipe at each other based on non-differences as we circle the drain in our rapidly accelerating “race to the bottom.”
If so you are going to have to start thinking long an hard about your “identity” and “values” and any faith you may have in “global capitalism”. Because a continued faith in the latter isn’t going to solve any of the problems facing the world today. In fact, it is easy to make an argument that it drives most of them.
But again, decent comment, and I commend you sincerely for it.
You presume to know me, but you don’t. Praise and criticism are nothing more than a carrot and stick to people like yourself; you can keep your cheese because I abhor the very concept of people being programmed like a mouse in a Skinner box. I know the game. Unlike most of the faux liberal activists/intellectuals who frequent and/or write on these websites, I have no compunction to reveal the extent to which I have engaged in radical political action at various stages of my life in keeping with the dictates of conscience. I will say without equivocation however that I can spot a phony from a mile away. The mean by which people choose to convey their ideological commitment to a professed cause speaks directly to the depth of that commitment. Those who employ dishonest tactics to manipulate and/or brow beat their perceived opposition into either submission or retreat can be trusted by no one – especially those with whom they profess to share a cause. This fact, like the truth itself, should be self evident. One can never convincingly convey the “rightness” of their perspective while simultaneously engaging in behaviors that betray the very principles by which personal integrity is measured.
To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man. ~ William Shakespeare
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/williamsha106104.html#BGlTSI8e45C75Hji.99
Yes, absolute point on. Thank you for that Joanne.
Fear not the Path of Truth, for the lack of People Walking on It. ~ Robert Francis Kennedy
Cited on page 77 (Paperback), “FRONTIER JUSTICE …” by SCOTT RITTER Former U.N. Weapons Inspector.
Nice, thanks again Joanne.
@ Karl
Yawwwwwwwwwnnnnnnnn.
It truly is interesting to me the level of projection some people engage in on the internet–anonymously. That’s the difference between me and someone like you, I’m willing to defend my convictions and values openly under my real name. Most aren’t. Some don’t for legitimate reasons, most do it out of fear for their livelihoods. And that speaks volumes about what a person’s real “values” are–they value their livelihood over their values. Which is fine. But usually people like that are neither here nor there to me particularly when they attempt to lecture me, verbosely, regarding personal integrity or values.
I never have. Nor would I claim to. What I do take issue with is what you write here and whether it is a) logical or morally supportable or coherent and b) whether it is supported by evidence.
Actually the real world actions of a person the best way to evaluate the depth of their ideological commitment to a professed cause. Not their words. And since you are anonymous there is no way to evaluate your commitment to anything, much less any nominal cause. Which is entirely predictable.
Well if that was aimed at me, as soon as you can back up the claim that I’ve employed “dishonest tactics”, we can discuss it. As far as sharing any “causes” with you or anyone else goes, hard to know whether we could ever share a “cause” because you’re just some anonymous fiction on the internet who is afraid to openly advocate under his/her real name for whatever causes you profess to pursue. In doing so, it makes it impossible to take seriously or trust anything you say. Again, of course, that means I can only contest or interact with the ideas and statements you choose to submit as comments. And I am of the opinion that I will address them with the level of courtesy or respect they earn. No more or no less. I’m not somebody who finds all opinions valuable–particularly those from anonymous nobodies who haven’t demonstrated a consistent ability to string together a coherent sentence or defend an assertion with relevant evidence.
In part:
1. You incessantly employ an array of logical fallacies in your arguments
2. You incessantly use invective against those who hold an opinion contrary to your own
3. You are constantly employing sophistry simply for the purpose of winning an argument
4. You hold contrary opinions to markedly higher standards of proof then you adhere to yourself
5. You constantly presume the right to run interference against anyone who directly questions and/or challenges an Intercept journalist. This is especially irritating because each author should be willing to defend there own positions.
6. You are unnecessarily contentious
7. You rely on an us-and-them modality of intimidation when confronting contrary opinion
8. You engage in group attacks upon those who express contrary opinions
9. You expect that that your perceived opposition should address your every concern while simultaneously ignoring theirs.
10. You presume the right to speak on behalf of those who post articles on the Intercept
11. And you often make statements that are patently false for the purpose of advancing and array of ideologically based misconceptions
I have already challenged you in the past in regard to most of these behaviors and yet they persist. Anyone who is even vaguely familiar with your online behavior can readily confirm to these observations. That is not to say that those who share your win-at-all-cost approach will attempt to come to your aid and deny these observations; that is standard practice in Intercept threads.
Agreed, opinions that are shared on line are little more than a long strings of ASCII characters. The online claim that someone has a particular set of convictions is largely hot air as the test of conviction lies in actions not in words. Thus, the way that one chooses to comport ones self in the conveyance of those “convictions” and “values” becomes the only mean by which those convictions and values can be weighed by others. For all I know RRHeard could be a sheep herder Ruhamba. Chosen avatars and the self professed narratives that surround them mean nothing to me. From my perspective, the self professed claim that you are an attorney works against you; I have yet to meet an honest attorney – and I have known many. The general perception of attorneys in American popular culture is so negative that even attorneys themselves routinely swap jokes that speak to their perceived lack of moral integrity. Your own online behavior has only served to reinforce that popular perception.
Google is willing to help…and then some.
Eric E. Schmidt, executive chairman of Google
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/07/opinion/eric-schmidt-on-how-to-build-a-better-web.html
I love how the setup is a complete 180 from the money shot.
“sort of like spell-checkers, but for hate and harassment.”
You can’t make this shit up.
The War on Harassment is like the War on Drugs: the harder you fight, the more valuable they get, so the more people selling them, so the more people using them. The supporters of patents and copyrights understand that logic all too well, but they think the effect of prohibiting copying of something bad is 180 degrees removed from the effect of prohibiting something good. It ain’t.
(Ironically enough, I also believe in ending patents/copyrights, but I don’t deny that an alternative incentive structure is necessary to replace them)
“Cuomo re-appeared on Twitter and apparently had a change of heart from last night’s proclamation.”
Do you really believe that this change of heart was ‘heartfelt’, and not in response to direct orders from a CNN executive?
Bush and Obama trashed the Constitution and populated their administrations with blatant liars. Trump a neo-fascist and Hillary a dynasty elite candidate will continue the trend. Crowing rooster or cackling hen both with no respect for the truth or Constitution. Our freedom of choose more of the same or something worse.
Vote Green!
Green is a kind of a protest “wasted” vote but voting for either Trump or Hillary is also a waste. I see an alternate “entertainment protest” vote. Make sure the press is present the cameras are rolling, enter the voting booth close the curtain and strike yourself in the crotch, as you roll on the floor grasping your “stuff” cameras rolling you have elected to skip the vote and go straight to the pain. A protest worthy of the selection offered. Further you could audition for the plot for “Ow my Balls”!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_4jrMwvZ2A
The most popular TV show in the Movie “Idiocracy.”
http://www.mandatory.com/2013/08/09/10-things-idiocracy-predicted-would-happen-and-sadly-already/
…enter the voting booth close the curtain and strike yourself in the crotch, as you roll on the floor grasping your “stuff” cameras rolling you have elected to skip the vote and go straight to the pain.
LOL. What should us lady voters do? Holding our ovaries isn’t quite as, um, theatrical. ;-}
All could join in empathy and symbolism. No one would be left out, that would be un-America.
> Vote Green!
I’ve been there, done that. Pox on both their houses, they’re each just as crooked as the other.
Then George Bush came in and we wasted $2 billion on wars based on lies, and the national debate started to be whether it was OK to torture people (Incidentally, three of the four people they were debating about torturing turned out to be completely innocent – see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Ayub_Ali_Khan_and_Mohammed_Jaweed_Azmath )
Whether we like our options or not, we have a responsibility to stand up to the worse of the two parties, to try to avoid genuine crimes against humanity. Sometimes that means voting for a bad candidate — sometimes it means giving an abundance of consideration to issues of theirs that would be nicer to just not think about and hope go away.
“Whether we like our options or not, we have a responsibility to stand up to the worse of the two parties, to try to avoid genuine crimes against humanity.”
That’s what I thought I was doing when I voted O. No more faith in the system. Both parties bought and sold, by the same interests. Just can’t endorse either party. Makes my balls hurt.
Obama did not deliver what we wanted, no. But what he *did* do was to NOT DELIVER a war with Iran — something that McCain was salivating over in that way he usually only gets when there are hundreds of thou in it for his own personal coffers. Iran is a classic case of a brutal Islamic state we deplore that will be improved not at all by some lunatic American bombing campaign and severe political instability. They’re not coming in as refugees, they’re not killing American troops, and – knock on wood – maybe they’re not even building nukes, or at least, building them slower than if McCain was harassing them on a nightly basis.
It also needs to be credited that, despite his awful force-feeding practices, he at least stopped trying to justify torture as a new normal way of doing things. He didn’t end the imprisonment at Guantanamo – not even for the case of simple mistaken identity – but he did manage to release a few, and not add any more. Think of the kind of base that the Republicans would have built up down there by now.
Now yeah, if you have a better candidate and a real plan, or hope, to win, then go for it. But if all we get is A or B, then I don’t want to be responsible for B again. We’ll just need some other way to make things happen.
“Now yeah, if you have a better candidate and a real plan, or hope, to win, then go for it. But if all we get is A or B, then I don’t want to be responsible for B again. We’ll just need some other way to make things happen.”
So basically what you’re proposing is to keep on supporting the endless loop of voting for the “lesser evil” while claiming that you want to vote for a different candidate and party but that they need to have a chance of winning first (which they never will on their own without decent voter support unless they start accepting corrupt $$$ and start endorsing the Establishment’s corrupt policies). Sigh.
And you also say we need a “real” plan. What, the New Deal wasn’t a real plan? After all, the Green Party’s Green New Deal was based on it.
You know what, just go ahead and apologize for your “lesser evil’ later on when he/she (most likely she this time around, ie Hillary) bombs more innocent civilians abroad or cracks down some more on civil liberties or ends up being another massively pro “free-trade” neoliberal. The main difference between “lesser” and “greater” evils is that the country decays faster under one than the other; both don’t help the situation any.
If you’re on a runaway train, and the brake won’t stop it, does it make sense to leave it off completely? I say, maybe you can keep it on the track around the next bend, and maybe someone on the ground has a plan after that. It makes a difference whether Uruguay and Bolivia and Brazil are able to rally a civilized and prosperous South America as the next cradle of civilization before the boat people start fleeing the U.S. It makes a difference whether China can find the political will to make democratic reforms and establish civil liberties before its peacekeeping forces are called on to take custody of nukes after the American state collapses. Everything in the world dies – the question is, can you put it off long enough to matter?
As we know, “closing internet space” is not limited to ISIS, but also extends to Assange, Barrett Brown, Chelsea Manning, and others (i.e. potentially all of us). Clearly Ms Clinton, like most politicians, would be loathe to have to interact with truly informed and politically and economically aware citizens.
Which leads to my next question/point: How can anything, at least as far as foreign and military policy, that Obama (or any of the present contenders–with the possible exception of Sanders–) says be believed when it has been amply demonstrated in academic studies that the U.S. is a plutocracy, ruled by private industries and Crassus-like individuals, and as such has frequently no incentives (quite the contrary) to truly inform its citizens regarding its true geopolitical aims and policies, their true effects and costs (in other words, the real human, sociopolitical, and environmental logic and economy of ongoing imperialism)?
“. . . (i.e. potentially all of us)”
Yup. I’ve been banned from The Guardian (apparently by IP address — I happen to need static IPs) since I aggressively challenged its US-NATO stenography coverage of Ukraine. I’ve been banned, for years, from the Disqus forums used by Hearst media. And so on . . .
“Given that an ISIS attack in Paris just helped fuel the sweeping election victory of an actually fascist party in France…”
And if the same type of ‘coincidence’ occurs before the upcoming U.S. election, I’m sure you and all good ‘liberals’ will be quick to dismiss it as just that, and label all doubters as dimwitted ‘conspiracy theorists’…
As I understand it, in France, the socialist government has enacted a three-month state of emergency where any protest is banned, where people are searched and arrested without legal process… and they’re preparing to extend it indefinitely.
Under those circumstances, why _not_ vote for a “fascist”? You never know… maybe the National Front isn’t as bad as it used to be after all.
I agree Trump is dangerous and shouldn’t get away with his incitement to hate, but it’s also true that the person killing, torturing, spying on, Muslims right now is Obama. The so-called “liberals” use Trump to play the moral superiority card, condemning what he plans to do, whilst completely ignoring what their leader is actually doing. So far the most dangerous person to Muslims is Obama, period (and Hollande and Cameron). The hypocrisy of it all is disgusting.
The election system in France means that no Regional candidate is elected yet. Minority parties are eliminated, and the contest rerun this coming Sunday. The overall number of votes for the FN this time has actually decreased, but overall low participation has put them in a strong position. These first round results certainly represent a swing rightwards, but it’s not over yet.
Thank you for this brief explanation.
The overall number of votes for the FN this time has actually decreased, but overall low participation has put them in a strong position.
Is it possible for voters to come out in later rounds to participate? IOW, could Le Pen’s ascendancy shake people up enough for them to then participate to keep her out of office?
I wish we had this sort of voting in the US but I don’t have a good understanding of the mechanics of how it is applied in a given election. Thanks for any additional info you choose to supply.
Which presidential candidate is more dangerous and extremist:
a.) Hillary Rodham Clinton
b.) Donald Trump
c.) Ben Carson
d.) None of the above
e.) All of the above
Hint:
Record creator: Office for Emergency Management. Office of War Information. Domestic Operations Branch. Bureau of Special Services. (03/09/1943 – 09/15/1945)
Title: “July 4, 1776. When our Declaration of Independence was signed loyal Americans were of one mind to Protect Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” (Poster)
Date 1941 – 1945
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:%22July_4th_1776._When_our_Declaration_of_Indepedence_was_Signed_Loyal_Americans_were_of_one_mind_to_Protect_Life…_-_NARA_-_514752.tif
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:%22July_4th_1776._When_our_Declaration_of_Indepedence_was_Signed_Loyal_Americans_were_of_one_mind_to_Protect_Life…_-_NARA_-_514752.tif
Third time is the charm, lol. See and read World War II Poster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_Liberty_and_the_pursuit_of_Happiness
Clinton and Trump are right to mock Americans’ mindless support for freedom of speech. This stems back to an unfortunate decision, reversing the order of the constitutional amendments. A lot of people, looking for the Second Amendment, inadvertently end up reading the First Amendment. This causes them, although they wouldn’t otherwise have any interest in free speech, to believe it is a core American value.
That said, I do somewhat fault C&T for their unseemly haste in proposing to dismantle the internet. Neither the Paris nor San Bernardino shootings had any connection to the internet, based on information currently available. While people obviously can’t go about on the internet saying whatever they please, this can be controlled quite easily – not by removing access, but by simply requiring a biometric scan before logging on.
People are also over-reacting to the proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the United States. This obviously wouldn’t apply to anyone travelling to the US to buy weapons. Predominantly Muslim countries are some of the best clients for American arms manufacturers. This time honored relationship supersedes any populist electioneering posturing – which after all is only aimed at the voters, not America’s key stakeholders.
Whew! Thanks for putting my mind at ease, Il Duce.
Whenever people are upset, I always like to remind them that things could be (and soon will be) far, far worse.
Your piece, and Teju Cole’s reply, don’t shine a particularly positive light on American “democracy,” or what passes for it. As things continue to slide downhill, it is increasingly obvious to me that ours is a nation in the grip of white fascists putting white fascists in the House, desperate to arm their white fascist brethren for the fantasy race war that animates so much of the OTHER shootings in this wreck of a nation. Sad to say, it is the PEOPLE of the U.S. who are responsible for this mess. We are an ugly, violent, ignorant people.
Routinely brilliant as always Glenn but I wish you would take this to the next level: First Media has the money and resources to create a progressive, or at least independent, online television network that could take on the routine awfulness of cable news. I can think of a number of progressive hosts that will never hired again by the somewhat mediocre troika of MSNBC, CNN and the wretched far right propaganda mill that is Fox News. Put the Real News, Abby Martin, Ed Shultz (the only guy who talked about the TPP and look where it got him…) the Young Turks, Democracy Now into one online news channel and shop it to both Hulu and Netflix. You’re the only entity that can challenge what looks to be rising fascism. You should point out that under Trump’s rules your founder Pierre might not be allowed to come back into the country. He looks wrong.
Philip Shropshire
http://www.threeriversonline.com
PS: I run a progressive music video channel called “The Acid Jazz Channel” that features you and other smart people. We could use funding and development.
http://worldtv.com/the_acid_jazz_channel/
It’s also the only place where you can watch the Beatles, Frank Zappa and Charles Mingus back to back to back…Could be an app. Everyone should have their own video channel…
Trump is really no different from the other Party candidates; more outspoken perhaps, but no less extreme. All favor some form of elitism, ranging from fundamentalist Christianity in the cases of Huckabee and Cruz to corporatism in the case of Clinton. None see people of differing views as anything but a threat.
What Trump is proposing is little more than an extension of the No Fly rules that are already in place. When applied to US citizens, these rules are blatantly unconstitutional, yet nobody seems to notice. Since these rules have the overwhelming approval of Congress, were implemented by the Bush administration and continued by that of Obama, my point above is strengthened.
Actual Neo-Nazis disagree that Trump isn’t different: http://gawker.com/top-neo-nazi-website-applauds-glorious-leader-trumps-1746794915
“Heil Donald Trump – THE ULTIMATE SAVIOR”
“I’m at the point where if you don’t support Trump you are a fucking faggot and a traitor and deserve to be pushed off a building and stoned!”
“None see people of differing views as anything but a threat.”
The core problem, the C words Constitution and compromise are off the table. The center does not hold, it does not exist and this exposes us all to our most extreme worst angels.
Although I’m a fan of him, I think Bill Clinton deserves some blame for what Trump is doing. Clinton goaded Trump last spring into joining the race in the express hope that this would all come to pass. Its doing wonders for his wife’s campaign prospects but innocent people are and will be hurt by the passions Trump is unleashing before its all over.
Fun side fact, Trump called Pat Buchanan a Neo-Nazi after losing the Reform Party candidacy in 2000 so that will be fun when he bristles when one of his rivals calls him something similar.
United States history is filled with depressing politics. I recently backpacked through Laos and wrote an article detailing the aftermath of America’s secret war in that country. Back then you couldn’t lay all the blame for the other side’s violence at the feet of a religion as Laos is a nation of Buddhist peasants.
http://tysongibb.net/?p=325
Hope someone finds my article helpful, I cite Glenn a few time (as usual). Thank you for all your work and inspiration! My girlfriend is from Brazil and I have a fantasy of visiting Rio and interviewing you for my blog. God bless!
” ISIS attack in Paris just helped fuel the sweeping election victory of an actually fascist party in France”
Fact check this. The FN did not win anything last week. The 2nd round of voting is Sunday where the FN has a chance in winning 2 of 13 regions. To be sure, the FN did lead the national vote with 28% over the Les Républicains with 27%.
Indeed, and while you are at it, Glenn, please refrain from calling them fascists. Nationalists, yes; right wing, yes, but as far as I can tell, not fascists. Nowhere in their program do I see promotion of the corporate state. Quite the contrary, they seem to have a protectionist bent.
Protectionism is quite compatible with Fascism. A corporate state would consist of government outsourcing to private firms, which in turn would reward government functionaries for awarding them those contracts with future jobs and political contributions. This may not have happened in America yet, but political leaders should be aware of the danger of a rising military-industrial-government complex. It would be unfortunate if no one has warned them about this.
There is no contradiction between fascism and protectionism, as 24b4Jeff implies, so you are correct on that, but 24b4Jeff is correct to equate fascism with corporate-state partnership. He is also correct that GG does not know what fascism is, as he demonstrates almost every time he uses the word. Same with “capitalism” and “begs the question.” But nobody’s perfect.
@ Macroman
So if Glenn misuses or misunderstands the term “fascism” and its many attributes, “almost every time he uses the world”, I’m sure you can find 5 quick examples to illustrate this misunderstanding or misuse, with links of course. Thanks in advance.
Attributes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
Facism isn’t some economic or mathematical equation. Or some necessary and sufficient number of attributes that makes something either fascism or non fascism. It is an idea, or more accurately a label for a broad ideology, and for some common, though at different times and in different places, different attributes depending upon its historical, cultural and/or national context. And the unique human beings that tend to believe in some range of its attributes and are leaders in nations that may or may not be properly described as “fascist”. It is also, as a political science label, becoming less compelling in Western political thought by comparison to concepts like “inverted totalitarianism” or “corporatism”. Although none are necessarily mutually exclusive with the properties or attributes of “authoritarianism” or fascism”.
But to suggest Glenn is misusing the word, or misunderstanding it, to the point you could argue “he does not know what fascism is” is not born out by the evidence unless you are going to provide it. So please do if that’s your position.
Thanks in advance.
OK, so how about privatization? Surely being opposed to it is a socialist position, yet Marie La Pen takes that very position. And I disagree with your statement about the US being fascist. I know too many people who have gone through the revolving door from industry to government and back, in so doing enriching themselves substantially. Look a Congress, for goodness’ sake. A higher proportion of millionaires than among lawyers or brain surgeons. But it was not always so, and it becomes more egregious every term.
Fascism is hard to pin down – articles dealing with it provide a list of characteristics that it generally displays. That’s because it’s a goal oriented (‘strengthen the nation’) pragmatic system as opposed to a rigid ideology. There is nothing wrong with the goal of building a stronger nation, although when taken to the extreme the result is Sparta – a society where everything is subordinated to the military. So people are naturally unclear about when a ‘line’ into fascism has been crossed. However, I believe the concept of a line is contentious and therefore misleading – it’s more useful to imagine a spectrum. The US has shifted fairly far along the spectrum towards fascism.
If La Pen believes that nationalizing portions of the economy strengthens France, then doing so is consistent with fascism, even though it might also be consistent with socialism. What differs is the motivation.
Similarly, the US has found more sophisticated means of merging ruling and corporate interests, as defined by a governing elite. Because of the trappings of democracy, and the more sophisticated means of determining national policy than by governing fiat, many don’t see it as fascism. And it isn’t fascism in the classical sense. Therefore some prefer to call it inverted totalitarianism or other names, but I see it as simply a natural evolution of fascism – from the primitive classical fascism which tended to collapse under the weight of its own excesses, to a more sophisticated and stable form of fascism.
Trump is a throwback towards an earlier, uglier form of fascism, but Trump will not triumph (although he will help shift the US further along the spectrum).
Fascism is hard to pin down – articles dealing with it generally provide a list of characteristics that it generally displays. That’s because it’s a goal oriented (‘strengthen the nation’) pragmatic system as opposed to a rigid ideology. There is nothing wrong with the goal of building a stronger nation, although when taken to the extreme the result is Sparta – a society where everything is subordinated to the military. So people are naturally unclear about when a ‘line’ into fascism has been crossed. However, I believe the concept of a line is contentious and therefore misleading – it’s more useful to imagine a spectrum. The US has shifted fairly far along the spectrum towards fascism.
If La Pen believes that nationalizing portions of the economy strengthens France, then doing so is consistent with fascism, even though it might also be consistent with socialism. What differs is the motivation.
Similarly, the US has found more sophisticated means of merging ruling and corporate interests, as defined by a governing elite. Because of the trappings of democracy, and the more sophisticated means of determining national policy than by governing fiat, many don’t see it as fascism. And it isn’t fascism in the classical sense. Therefore some prefer to call it inverted totalitarianism or other names, but I see it as simply a natural evolution of fascism – from the primitive classical fascism which tended to collapse under the weight of its own excesses, to a more sophisticated and stable form of fascism.
Trump is a throwback towards an earlier, uglier form of fascism, but Trump will not triumph (although he will help shift the US further along the spectrum).
I’m sure he’ll add a correction in his ‘Update’ section very soon………………….
I’d like to see a journalist ask Trump if he would support banning Muslims from buying guns? Would be illuminating to see how Trump and his GOP colleagues dance around that one.
Random people from all over the world don’t have the right to enter the U.S. There are lots of hardworking Mexicans who would love to come here, and men with guns round them up every day. But American citizens have the right to bear arms, and that right shouldn’t be taken away based on their religion or because they have the same name as Ted Kennedy and got put on the no-fly list for it.