Speaking at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., Mr. Bush told his predecessor to get ready to be “like, the lowest person in the pecking order in your family,” Politico reported.
“Be prepared to fall completely in love again,” he said. “You’re not going to believe it. You’re just not going to believe the joy and the fun. And I’m looking forward to talking to you after that child is born. And we all wish the very best. … It’s going to be an awesome period for you.”
Well if you look in the Oxford dictionary in fact, the word terrorism is the use of violence against a community or a section of the community for political purposes. So I would say to you that the ordinary English meaning is precisely what the Americans and the British are doing in Afghanistan, and what they did before in Iraq, to establish their own military and economic interests no matter what the cost is to the life and wealth of the people… I think there is something called state terrorism, which in fact the Americans are in fact engaging in quite regularly.
The Islamic State’s terrorism is “pro-life”:
I think that there is terrorism which is pro-life, and there is terrorism which is against life. You know, you could terrorise the enemy in order to make sure that the war ends quickly. And I think this is what the Islamic State in fact are trying to do, to scare off the Americans and their own allies in Syria and Iraq. And then there is terrorism which is against life, which is like carpet bombing, dropping nuclear weapons, the shock and awe that we saw in Iraq before.
Terrorism is “part of Islam” and killing civilians is legitimate:
Allah mentions in the Quran in fact, if you look in Chapter eight, verse 60, he said “Prepare as much as you can steeds of war to terrorise the enemy.” So terrorising the enemy is in fact part of Islam, I mean this is something that we must embrace and understand, as far as the jurisprudence of jihad is concerned. Secondly, I think that think that people need to appreciate is that in war, the Muslims are not distinguishing in general between civilians and military. Because those very civilians are those that put the people in charge, and those people in charge – Barack Obama and others – are sending their troops to Muslim countries. So they’re not making that distinction, let alone between people who are journalists, who are considered to be the right hand in fact, and the propaganda machine of the Obama administration.
James Foley and other journalists are seen as the enemy:
I don’t know the details of Mr James Foley… But what I can definitely tell you is that journalists in general from the West, the civilians from places like America, at the current time are in a position where there is no sanctity for them in Muslim countries. There is no one to give them that sanctity. We are uprising against our own regimes, and they are seen as enemies of the Usama Muslims.
Taking hostages is what Mohammed did, too, and all non-Muslims in Muslim lands are targets:
…the Prophet himself took hostages from a tribe which had an alliance with another tribe, who had actually taken the Muslims hostage…. But what I can say to you definitely is that at the current time, in Muslim countries, there is no sanctity for non-Muslims who are citizens of those regimes who are fighting against Muslims. So my advice to you, which is good advice, is to withdraw completely your own civilians, and your own journalists, and your own armies from Muslims countries.
Everyone’s against the Muslims, who are the victims and entitled to hit back at these criminals:
You know, the killing of James Foley is not going to make a difference to the heinous, very barbaric, criminal nature of the American regime and the history of atrocities against Muslims… You can see that what happened with the Taliban, and what’s happening with the Islamic State, and what’s happening to the Americans and their own allies in the area, is a direct result of their own policy over the last decade… China occupies and tortures people in the Xinjiang. The Russians do it in Chechnya. The Burmese do it to the Muslims in Burma. The Indians do it in Kashmir. We are the only ones defending ourselves, we are rising up. You know, when people rise up, of course there will be casualties.
Never mind the atrocities we see from the Islamic State:
It is never justified to kill women and children, as a general rule… Many of the images that you see are from other battlefields, from the Nusayris [Alawites] for example in Syria, from Hizbullah in Iran, who have killed women and children, and then they’re blaming the Muslims…
OB: (crosstalk) But Mr Choudary, we can also see images of people being executed, soldiers, Syrian soldiers being executed en mass and being put into mass graves. I mean, those images exist.
AC: Remember, we’re talking about people who are criminals. The soldiers of the Syrian regime committed horrendous crimes. Remember, the Nusayris [Alawites] in Syria are people who consider the Sunnis to be like animals, even the children and women are animals. They slaughter them the way they would a dog or a cat.
Shariah is coming to the West, which must submit:
I believe that one day the Sharia will be implemented in Russia and in China and America. There is no, if you like, permanent treaty between the Islamic State and any nation which is implementing non-Islamic law. There could be a temporary ceasefire with those people who are not enemies to the Muslims. But definitely, because of the aggression of the Americans, and the British and others, there will never be a treaty with these people. I think eventually they will be conquered… Now we see the re-emergence of the Khilafah [Caliphate], we can see a new world order. Finally, we have a state where the Muslims are implementing Sharia, and it is expanding once more, and inshallah all the world will be governed by the Sharia.
Only a bigot believes that all Muslims are terrorists, but only a fool believes there is no link between Islam and terrorism.
Yet as still another innocent person is beheaded and paraded before the world, there are two odious coalitions that refuse the embrace or admit the truth.
The first is in some ways easier to deal with. This dark gang includes Islamic fundamentalists, anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic fanatics, haters of the west and in particular the United States and hard left extremists who believe all violence and instability aids their cause.
The second is more complex and nuanced. This alliance involves the cowardly, the absurdly naive, the usefully stupid, the relativist deniers and those who due to good will or a total lack of historical consciousness believe all religions are the same and if only everybody had high speed Internet and a full belly we could all dance together into the sunset.
There are in fact four stages involved in the denial of Islamic terror. The first is where we empty our heads. The second is where we bury of heads. The third is where we bow our heads. The fourth is where we lose our heads.
The first three are metaphorical, the last is literal.
The first stage involves ignorance. We assume Islamic violence is all our fault because of, for example, the Crusades.
This is what I call the Kevin Costner school of history.
In the movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, dashing Kev tells us that his dad thought it wrong to try to convert people to another religion. Quite so, but Robin’s dad obviously knew little of the Crusades because they never tried to convert Muslims and were a direct response to 300 years of Islamic violence in the Holy Land. They were a product of Islamic brutality, not its cause.
From the Crusades we blame imperialism, even though the major empire o f the Islamic world was Turkish and Muslim; we blame Israel; we blame George Bush; we blame everyone and everything other than the genuine article.
The second stage is an attempt to ignore what is going on, to pretend if we are sufficiently indifferent it will all disappear and we can return to our Netflix and HBO and be terribly smug and clever in our own cocoons of moribund complacency.
Next is submission, where we become subservient to an Islamic ascendancy that takes the shape of anti-racism, anti-Islamophobia, liberalism and a bewildering belief that Christianity is oppressive and reactionary and perhaps Islam really does have quite a lot to offer if we give it enough time and thought.
Finally comes, well, the decapitation of the few followed by the political and moral decapitation of the many.
If you doubt me, ask Arab Christians how quickly the Islamic cringing minority becomes the angry, demanding group insisting that their rights and sensitivities triumph over all other feelings and aspirations.
This is not about individual Muslims but about an Islamism that runs directly contrary to progress, human rights, sexual and gender equality, pluralism, independent opinion and individual, scientific and ethical advancement.
The blades are hovering quite close now, closer than you might imagine.
It is now a day later, I am back in Australia and no one else has blogged since my own last post. Everyone really must be at the Mt Pelerin in Hong Kong. I was scheduled to go myself but I could not pass up this trip to France and the discussion on Say.
But let me say this about air travel which gets better and compared to the really old days is incredibly cheap. But there is this one thing. Which is why this story interests me so much:
My own solution was to bring a rubber hammer for the people in front and a plastic helmet to defend myself against the people in the row behind. But it is not a small matter when there is hardly any space to begin with and you have pulled your trusty PC out to do some work. So now someone has come up with a solution:
You know the moment all too well — and dread it. Just as you’re getting a modicum of comfort on a flight, the seat in front suddenly pushes back, depriving you of valuable inches of legroom.
All you can do is to glower in a silent rage at the head of the other passenger, who has decided that by reclining his seat, his comfort is more important than ours.
However, some passengers have decided to get even rather than mad, by investing £13 in a gizmo called a Knee Defender, which its manufacturer claims is as ‘devious as it is ingenious’.
On this flight, the couple in front played gin rummy until the sun went down and then we all went off to sleep with our seats pushed back. But in the day time, I can understand the fury of anyone already crammed into an economy seat having what room there is taken from them. I think of it as the same as talking on the mobile in a loud voice while sitting on the train (and soon on the plane as well).
My own rule:
No pushing seats back until after the evening meal
I understand that on airplanes people have woken early to catch the 8:00 a.m. flight, and others are connecting from flights where whatever it might say on the local clock, it is still past midnight to them. But it is more than courtesy and a kind of etiquette needs to be developed so that at least we can work out who is in the right before the fights break out.
There was a time you could smoke on airplanes as well. Let us hope for a day in the future when people remember the time when you could put your seat back in the middle of the afternoon which by then they will no longer be permitted to do.
I have just reached home and happy I am to be here but I must say seldom has any trip of mine been so complete. All my interests – economic, political and historical – came together so seamlessly that I only wish life was always like this.
Economically, the meeting on J.-B. Say and the Entrepreneur was an outstanding success. This being the first such meeting, it is of major significance that there is a casting about for some kind of successor paradigm to the fault-ridden neo-classical synthesis so accurately represented by Paul Krugman and Joe Stiglitz. As just a minor point, what became evident is that economists are useless at predicting the future so have substituted GDP estimates for actually knowing anything at all about the economy. If I tell you that Australia over the past twenty years grew by 50% and China by 150%, you would not have any idea about what either was really like, the kinds of economy each is or what is actually going on. Economists have substituted statistics for actual knowledge. It is all pretty useless, but if your aim is to pull wool over people’s eyes about what is taking place, GDP is a great number since it is almost meaningless as a statement about anything of significance.
Politically, it has been amazing to be here for the transition to a more market-oriented socialist Prime Minister. Every country is a hopeless case since the freeloaders have now overrun the productive. But if you are trying to manage the place, even the most dense political leader trying to re-engineer a recovery cannot help noticing that only those who make a net contribution to output actually create more value than they use up. A tremendous amount of capital to run through in our Western economies, but we are managing to do it. Fascinating to see it all in action in a place you would not normally expect it.
Historically, there are two sides to it. In relation to why I am here, I am part of a group that is trying to save Jean-Baptiste Say’s factory in Auchy-les-Hesdins for posterity. There are not many – any – places in the world that are actually historical sites in which economic issues are at the forefront. Auchy is astonishing in that it combines an ancient cotton mill – where the waterfall that ran the mill can still be seen – with the writings of one of the greatest economists of all time. If you are in France in the north-west around Calais or Normandy, and you have any interest in these things at all, you must come visit. The website I am told is coming but you should see it for yourself. The best way to describe the positioning of Auchy is to note that it is half way between Azincourt and Crecy. See all three, but if you have an interest in economics and its history, this place will astonish you. There is nothing like it on the planet and, as with everything related to Say, is only now in the process of being rediscovered.
Lastly there has been my following the trail of historical battles, with the last few days on the WWI battle fronts. Went to Villers-Brettoneaux yesterday which is the Australian Vimy Ridge. Very moving places both of them. Two things I found particularly noteworthy. The first was the direction finder in the tower pointing out various places of significance on the Somme battle grounds. But amongst the 20 miles to this and 30 miles to that was the arrow that pointed to 14,235 miles to Canberra. It was a long way from home for those young Australians who lie buried in the fields of France.
The other was a grave to some young lad who died on this battlefield in 1918. His name was S. Keates. It was quite a strange moment. It is truly the case that there but for the grace of God go we all.
This would not be just a minor fraud but the basis of a tens-of-billions dollar loss to the future growth and wellbeing of Australians. No one would have robbed more people of more of their potential earnings than anyone who might have undertaken this:
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has been caught red-handed manipulating temperature data to show “global warming” where none actually exists.
As we motor through the weirdly extraterrestrial stand of windmills you see by the highways all over France, but which I had never run across before, what occurs each time is the phenomenal scandal of the entire global warming con. This story must be big news back home – although a quick look has not seen it mentioned on any of the usual sites. But it is part of a worldwide determination on behalf of the most ignorant to demonstrate that they are right about what appears to be completely unproven, and near enough unprovable.
Reverend Franklin Graham, head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and the international Christian aid group Samaritan’s Purse, said ISIS jihadists are crucifying and beheading Christians in Iraq and Syria–“people are dying for their faith”–and added that he has heard of “incidences where entire families have been buried alive because they refused to convert to Islam.”
But if photographic evidence is more of what you’re looking for, there is this:
Horrific video of American freelance photo-journalist James Wright Foley, 40, being beheaded by ISIS in revenge for US airstrikes 12-days ago in Iraq was posted to the internet Tuesday afternoon.
You may think this “Team Australia” is a bit hokey but I’m with Tony Abbott. This is our version of “you’re either with us or against us”. He is asking people to declare their own position. This is a civilisational war and I know which side I’m on. And I might add that I’m not all that sure we’re going to win it.
TONY Abbott has described the claimed beheading of American journalist James Foley by Jihadist group Islamic State as absolutely sickening and pure evil.
The Prime Minister said he had not seen the video released by the group purportedly showing a masked militant executing the reporter but said it showed why there could be no compromise with the murderous terrorists.
“It’s absolutely sickening, absolutely despicable and it’s a sign that there can be no compromise whatsoever with the murderous terrorists of the ISIL movement,” Mr Abbott told Brisbane Radio 4BC.
“This is evil, this is as near pure evil as we are ever likely to see.”
Mr Abbott said while it was not Australia’s intention to get caught up in unwinnable wars, he would keep talking to partners and allies about how to be useful. Australia had already joined an international air lift to provide humanitarian aid.
“We’re certainly not going to participate in ground wars and things like that,” he said.
But Mr Abbott said Australia agreed with US President Barack Obama’s position not to stand on the sidelines and watch a potential genocide.
The Obama administration says it has not confirmed the authenticity of the video.
The last line is equivocation of the finest kind. What side Team Obama is on is as yet unknown.
I remember coming across Will Durant’s quote as noted below in utter astonishment. Durant is amongst the finest writers of history I have ever read. I never did get through the eleven volumes but I did come across his description of the Moghul invasion of India as the bloodiest in history, with a depiction of raw barbarity that was hard to fathom. Reading about the events in Iraq and Syria fills me with dread since nothing seems to have changed in a thousand years. This is taken from a comment on a Daniel Pipes article in 2006:
The ruthlessness of muslim invaders continued for a thousand years.
Will Durant, the famous historian summed it up like this:
“The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.”
Koenraad Elst , the german historian writes in “Negation in India”
The Muslim conquests, down to the 16th century, were for the Hindus a pure struggle of life and death. Entire cities were burnt down and the populations massacred, with hundreds of thousands killed in every campaign, and similar numbers deported as slaves. Every new invader made (often literally) his hills of Hindus skulls. Thus, the conquest of Afghanistan in the year 1000 was followed by the annihilation of the Hindu population; the region is still called the Hindu Kush, i.e. Hindu slaughter. The Bahmani sultans (1347-1480) in central India made it a rule to kill 100,000 captives in a single day, and many more on other occasions. The conquest of the Vijayanagar empire in 1564 left the capital plus large areas of Karnataka depopulated. And so on.
As a contribution to research on the quantity of the Islamic crimes against humanity, we may mention that the Indian (subcontinent) population decreased by 80 million between 1000 (conquest of Afghanistan) and 1525 (end of Delhi Sultanate)..
But the Indian Pagans were far too numerous and never fully surrendered. What some call the Muslim period in Indian history, was in reality a continuous war of occupiers against resisters, in which the Muslim rulers were finally defeated in the 18th century. Against these rebellious Pagans the Muslim rulers preferred to avoid total confrontation, and to accept the compromise which the (in India dominant) Hanifite school of Islamic law made possible. Alone among the four Islamic law schools, the school of Hanifa gave Muslim rulers the right not to offer the Pagans the sole choice between death and conversion, but to allow them toleration as zimmis (protected ones) living under 20 humiliating conditions, and to collect the jizya (toleration tax) from them. Normally the zimmi status was only open to Jews and Christians (and even that concession was condemned by jurists of the Hanbalite school like lbn Taymiya), which explains why these communities have survived in Muslim countries while most other religions have not. On these conditions some of the higher Hindu castes could be found willing to collaborate, so that a more or less stable polity could be set up. Even then, the collaboration of the Rajputs with the Moghul rulers, or of the Kayasthas with the Nawab dynasty, one became a smooth arrangement when enlightened rulers like Akbar (whom orthodox Muslims consider an apostate) cancelled these humiliating conditions and the jizya tax.
It is because of Hanifite law that many Muslim rulers in India considered themselves exempted from the duty to continue the genocide on the Hindus (self-exemption for which they were persistently reprimanded by their mullahs). Moreover, the Turkish and Afghan invaders also fought each other, so they often had to ally themselves with accursed unbelievers against fellow Muslims. After the conquests, Islamic occupation gradually lost its character of a total campaign to destroy the Pagans. Many Muslim rulers preferred to enjoy the revenue from stable and prosperous kingdoms, and were content to extract the jizya tax, and to limit their conversion effort to material incentives and support to the missionary campaigns of sufis and mullahs (in fact, for less zealous rulers, the jizya was an incentive to discourage conversions, as these would mean a loss of revenue).
It really does get tedious to read the various defences of the climate change hypothesis wheeled out by scientific illiterates. Take The Age today with its editorial that “The evidence is in: science gets an F”. See why we need a Minister for Science and a paid up CSIRO. The Age is concerned about this:
The rather unedifying sight of the brush-off by advisers to the government of the scientific evidence on the great challenge facing the planet: climate change.
Science, I’m afraid, is not a set of conclusions but a method of investigation. The scientific method is about demonstrating some hypothesis is possibly true by arranging a series of repeatable experiments that will allow you to reach a tentative conclusion along the lines of the evidence is consistent with this hypothesis being valid. It’s a methodology that has gone a long way in the past thousand years to changing just about everything about what we do and how we think.
I am told, for example, that water is made up of two gases, hydrogen and oxygen. It seems completely implausible to me but apparently the evidence is pretty conclusive. It seems that water can be broken down into these two gases if you know how, and can be made to appear if these two gases are brought together in a particular way. Here the science is pretty settled, although we must always keep an open mind.
In regard to climate change, however, the evidence, such as it is, has more in common with economics than making liquids out of gases. In economics we develop theories but there are no repeatable experiments. We use common sense and a review of history to piece together hypotheses about the nature of reality. We then test these by making predictions about what will happen in the future based on our theories. Oddly, and it is an oddity, almost no economist I have ever heard of has changed any opinion based on the fact that some forecast did not turn out as predicted. There are always other circumstances – those other conditions that were not controlled as the world unfolded – that they are able to conjure up that caused the outcome to be different from the prediction. So on we go with our theories near immortal based on nothing other than historic authorities who said something sometime back that happened to catch on.
Thus climate change. Where is the evidence? Every prediction of every model has now been falsified by events. Not one has predicted the way things actually turned out. I don’t expect anyone to change their mind as a result, but I do wish they would shut up about this being about accepting science. There are no repeatable experiments, just forecasts that never actually forecast correctly. More like a pseudo-science if you ask me, like astrology or reading the Tarot.
A very clever article titled How to Be Polite. This was the one piece of direct advice offered which I thought was quite sound:
Here’s a polite person’s trick, one that has never failed me. I will share it with you because I like and respect you, and it is clear to me that you’ll know how to apply it wisely: When you are at a party and are thrust into conversation with someone, see how long you can hold off before talking about what they do for a living. And when that painful lull arrives, be the master of it. I have come to revel in that agonizing first pause, because I know that I can push a conversation through. Just ask the other person what they do, and right after they tell you, say: “Wow. That sounds hard.”
And I like it not because it is false, but because it will do what I want done in a conversation, which is to get someone else to talk about themselves in a way that will interest us both.
Those exertions of natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments.
Adam Smith (1776)
I think of myself as a free speech absolutist. There is no point of view that is not open for debate and all perspectives are invited to join. Jews are descended from apes and pigs. Well, that’s one way of looking at things. Jews are murderers of Gazan children and use their blood to make matzohs. Speak the truth as you see it. There was no holocaust but if there were one we would do it right this time round. Interesting, please tell me more.
As you may imagine, I am disgusted and outraged by each of these but the principle is more important than the abuse that some make of the principle. Public discourse is very dangerous, but beliefs that cannot be challenged in public debate is where the greatest dangers lie. Bring them out into the light. Go on, discredit yourself, because if there comes a time when saying such things in public does not make you a social leper, then things have already gone too far. Your rabid, racist, repulsive views are genuinely useful information for the rest of us. It requires judgement to know what can and cannot be said in public without consequence, but there should be nothing to stop you from saying what you want.
But racist rants in public amongst strangers, people abused on the streets by others they do not know, are out of bounds in a civilised community. It is just not on, rightly illegal. In the workplace or amongst those known to each other it becomes trickier but I side, with a heavy heart, on the side that this is just one of those things up with which we must put. But I also understand those who take a different view.
Ordinary people are not political philosophers. They are not social theorists who have read, absorbed and contemplated the arguments of John Stuart Mill. They are not people who are immune to abuse for their religion, skin colour, gender or anything else. Most people are prepared to debate all issues but they are not prepared to have to deal with some idiot shouting abuse at them on the street or where they work.
If the government cannot distinguish between free speech in a civilised community and a racist rant individually one-on-one in a public place, then it should not have gotten into this debate in the first place. And had they made this distinction, they could have presented their aim in terms of doing something positive, that being stopping racists rather than protecting the rights of bigots. What a loser argument that was! Why didn’t the government show they were providing something that will aid comity in the community, not taking something useful away. I fear by not thinking this through, they have damaged the cause of free speech in this country.
Law of Markets 