Posts by James Bremner
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Neil,
I will preface this by saying that I am not a very religious person, so this is not a personal issue for me. I don't think there is much of a comparison between Christianity and Islam, there are fundamental differences.At the core of Christianity are sentiments like "do unto others as you would have done to you" and "turn the other cheek". At the core of Islam is "submit or I will chop your head off". Islam has at its core the conquest of the world by Muslims, by war if necessary, for Allah. It is the only religion like this.
Christians think Christ was a good guy who was nice to people, which is true. Muslims think Mohammed was the perfect man whose example is to be followed to the letter, and he was a blood thirsty, brutal man, which is also true
While there are plenty of examples like Galileo where Christianity got in the way of progress, the amazing developments and progress of the Renaissance and the industrial revolution happen is very Christian societies. Islam conquered lands with a rich history of science and progress and over time stifled development and progress completely.
Islam needs to go through some kind of change or modernization, but Muslims believe that the Koran is the word of Allah and cannot be altered or reinterpreted in any way.
Compared with Muslims, the “crazy stuff” Christians do is just about completely negligible. You get the odd David Koresh out of the Christian world every now and again, but you get a hell of a lot more suicide bombers and people happy to kill in the name of Allah from the Muslim world.
It is not a good situation.
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Che,
"and migrants are expected to conform."
I couldn't agree more and this is where things are falling down. Some groups of immigrants, primarily Muslim immigrants are demanding that the adoptive country accept their way of doing things, for example by allowing various cultural practices to be practiced, and even pushing for Sharia law, rather than conforming to the new (western) country's values.
Some Islamic cultural practices and Sharia law condone practices, in particular with regard to women’s rights, or rather the lack of them, which are abhorrent to western norms.
And in the name of multiculturalism, some of the locals in the adopted countries are supporting these kinds of accommodations. In the name of multiculturalism, wife beatings and other barbaric practices are enabled. It is nuts.
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RB,
I hadn't caught up with the Germans canning that judge. Great to see them standing up at last, I hope it is a sign of things to come.
Here is another German article from 2005 on the subject of honor killings. It is just horrendous. The idea that there is some kind of problem here is not a right wing delusion.
THE DEATH OF A MUSLIM WOMAN
"The Whore Lived Like a German"http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,344374,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3888419.stm
The above link is a report on Ken Livingston sucking up to a misogynistic gay hating Islamic cleric, something he has been doing for a while.
I think the last sentence of the article sums up the confused state of many in the western world at the moment.
"Green MEP Jean Lambert, a staunch campaigner against the hijab ban, pulled out of the conference to avoid sharing a platform with the cleric after being told that he described homosexuality as a disease that needed a cure - possibly death."
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it's also amazing how cherry picking a few dozen cases of abusive behaviour can tar a policy as "liberal and therefore bad".
Che,
I stated that I love the diversity of the world, but in order for multiculturalism to work , there needs to be a set of basic values and norms that all in society agree with and conform to.Surely you can agree that there is a dividing line somewhere between the richness of diversity and accomodating horrendous behavior. And while that dividing line might be somewhat gray, that honor killings, the cultural acceptance of wife beatings etc are over that line? This seems perfectly reasonable to me, or is that just neo Nazi neocon thinking?
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Back to the original subject of this thread, the strange bedfellows of Islam and some (many?) of the left.
The left's mantra of multiculturalism, "we are all equal but different", leads directly to nonsense like the recent case in Germany linked to below where a woman was refused a divorce she was entitled to under German law, because her husban had beaten her and threatened to kill her. The divorse was refused because they were both Moroccan Muslims, and the Koran allows men to beat their wives
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,473017,00.html
What kind of utter nonsense is that? And examples like this are too frequent in Europe these days. I love the diversity of the world, but there should be no expectation that you can come to another country with your backward and retarded ways and expect the country to accommodate you.
Only the nonsense of the multiculturalism leads to this kind of ridiculous thinking, that for example it is racist or discriminatory to point out that honor killings, the cultural acceptance of wife beatings, the burqa etc are all primitive and unacceptable and have no place in a civilized society. Instead we are supposed to go "oohh" & "ahhhh", "who am I to say such things, I have no right to judge others". What utter crap.
This is how some on the left who claim that they are the greatest supporters of human rights etc, find themselves effectively agreeing with and supporting Islamist groups that do anything but support human rights.
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Danyl,
It must be something to do with human nature, I have read that there are not insignificant percentages of both Russian and Chinese people who yearn for the days of Stalin and Mao, despite the 10s of millions of deaths for which they were responsible. Maybe they are the people who missed or got left behind with the changes, or maybe they liked the feeling of strength and certainty they got from those leaders, so it doesn't surprise me that a good number of Sunnis would like Saddam to still be around. However you probably wont get too many takers in Shia or Kurd areas for a continuation of Saddam rule.
Riverbend sure does seem like one pissed off person, it is a bit hard to know how to take her postings. However, there are plenty of other Iraqi blogs, both pessimistic and optimistic that show that the belief that life in Iraq now is worse than under Saddam is an opinion, not a "FACT".
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RB,
http://www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_details.aspx?NewsId=67
Here is an opinion poll of some 5,000 Iraqis conducted during Feb 2007 that shows only 26% preferred life under Saddam, and that includes only 51% of Sunnis. That number is obviosuly a bit low as a lot of Sunnis have fled, but it is still amazing that after all the problems in Iraq since April 2003, that only a a quarter would want Saddam back.
So Russell, maybe your view that life in Iraq was better under Saddam is not such a "FACT", after all?
Also interesting to note is that only 27% of Iraqis think that Iraq is in a civil war. Perhaps NBC, NYT, CNN etc should have asked Iraqis whether Iraq is in the middle of a civil war before they endlessly repeat it as fact.
Also, a majority of Shias as well as Sunnis think that Iraq should stay one country.
http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/
You also linked to an Iraqi blogger than had a very pessismistic view of things, Iraq the Model has a bit of a different take.
If you don't agree that Iraqi women have it better now than under Saddam, how about women in Afghanistan? While things are far from perfect in Afghanistan, do you honestly think that life was better for them under the Taliban?
Although the survey doesn't specifically address the issue of women's right, the Oct 2006 survey linked to below shows Afghans to be fairly optimistic about the present and future.
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Simon,
The journalist I was referring to who was Novack. I thought that was clear from my previous posts but I should have made it explicit. He wrote the article that started the whole Plame thing, during an interview Armitage told him about Plame and he then called the CIA who confirmed Plame's identity and that she worked for the CIA. During the call, the CIA person made no mention of any reason Plame's identity could not be used in an article. I have seen Novak on TV several times go through the time line above and read and seen others discuss this series of events as well. My understanding is that facts these are pretty much undisputed. However, a lot of people and media outlets appear to ignore them, I don’t understand why, but perhaps because it is not helpful to their view of the issue.
All,
I am very well aware that there are many people over here, in fact a majority, who hold views different from my own. I wrote that I wasn’t suggesting that I knew everything about the US. I was responding to a poster who suggested that you get a clearer view of the US from the outside, which is just not true, isn't true for any country, and needed to be rebutted.When I go back to NZ, read NZ media and some of the MSM over here, or read forums like this one, there is usually just one side of the issues related to the States presented and discussed, and it is frequently the negative view of any particular issue. I live over here and have specific knowledge of some issues, and have some different views on others. I find when I discuss issues related to the US with friends and family in NZ, while they may not agree, their responses are usually something like: "well, I didn't know that", "that is a different take on things" or "now I understand a bit better why X, Y or Z happened, or is being done in the US etc."
Why do I post in a forum where most disagree with me? I can't think of anything more boring than an echo chamber. It is good to see other perspectives and have your views challenged. If that pisses some people off, then that is a shame; however I believe that it says more about them than about me. I saw at least one comment from someone who appreciated the back and forth from different sides of the issues; I am sure that there are others as well.
Danielle,
I am sorry to hear that your sister lost her house and that your father was without power for four months after Katrina. However that doesn’t change the fact that there were many factors prior to the storm and many factors after the storm that contributed to the disaster, and that the current Federal Administration’s mistakes played only a part in the whole fiasco. This is contrary to the usual painful line that you hear and read that “Katrina was Bush’s fault, blah, blah, blah” Sorry, just isn’t true, as I believe I proved quite clearly in the exchange on the subject we had last year.If Governor Blanco performed well after the storm, why did she just announce that she is not running for a second term? Maybe becasue she screwed up royally and everyone knows it.
While people around the world can read and watch some of the same media outlets, those on the ground in any particular country are interacting on a daily basis with many people in that country and thus develop a deeper understanding of many of the issues, views and “buzz” of the day. For example, for most of the last couple of years, the media and the expert’s standard line on the 2008 election were mostly that Hillary had an easy path to the Dem nomination, more or less a coronation, and that Giuliani, while he may be able win a general election, would never win the Repub primary. Both points are now pretty clearly inoperative, points I had picked up on a long time ago from being here and talking with people around the country.
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The description of the SWP is very similar to International ANSWER, a nasty bunch of creeps that is at the vanguard of the anti war movement in the US. ANSWER actually sent money to Zarqawi to support him and his head hackers when they had their base in Fallujah.
ANSWER et al get their knickers all in a bunch about a few meatheads on the night shift at Abu Graib doing some stupid stuff to some prisoners, during which no one was injured for which the soldiers were punished, while they actively support violent misogynistic head hackers for whom blowing up civilians & children is just another tool of war, and "Well yes, but so what".
Old Red Ken Livingston cozies up to some pretty nasty Islamists who want Sharia law in England, with all the oppression and loss of human rights that this entails and this is just fine?
It seems that those who pride themselves on being tolerant are so tolerant that they will tolerate extraordinary intolerance, all in the name of tolerance, of course!! And the rest of us are just supposed to go "Okay, that's cool, what a good idea!” Maybe not.
People and groups that protested for woman's rights, gay rights social justice etc. find themselves working with or effectively supporting Islamists who have no concept of woman's rights that we would recognize, stone to death woman accused of adultery who are actually victims of rape and think gays should be killed. I have to say that it all looks all very strange, from the outside looking in, kind of like a bad Monty Python sketch. I wish Graham Chapman would jump in and say "And now for something completely different!!", and we could forget all this nonsense, but unfortunately I don't think that is going to happen anytime soon.
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Rob,
Yes, you are correct, the center of US politics and society is significantly more to the right than in many countries, or many other countries are more to the left than the US, depending on your perspective.
You are also correct; it is a little bit arrogant of you to believe that you have a better understanding of the US by watching it from a far than those that live there. I know from my own experience as a New Zealander who keeps up with what's going on in NZ on a daily basis by reading newspaper and blogs etc, when I go home I find that there is so much more to what is going on that I didn't catch or realize from afar.
Whenever I go back to NZ I am struck by two things, how poorly informed many New Zealanders are about the US and what it is actually like there and what is actually going on, it seems that just about everyone can cite inane and superficial platitudes they have picked up from the media, but not much else. And unfortunately it seems that the certainty with which New Zealanders seem to hold these views is inversely proportionate to their actual knowledge of the subject matter, a most unfortunate combination. As someone who lives in New Orleans and evacuated before and returned after Katrina, I have had the experience of New Zealanders who have never set foot in the US, let alone New Orleans, lecturing me on who did or didn’t do what before and after Katrina. How they think they could possibly know more than people who live there is just bizarre.
Not that I am suggesting that I know everything about the US, I don’t. But I am likely to have a better idea about what is going on and why in the US than people who don’t live here.