UPDATE: Little Green Footballs has a piece on the Doha Youth Center in Qatar, showing its solidarity for Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Mayor Livingstone made a speech on film for the conference.
- - -
Nick Cohen has written an interesting editorial about London's Mayor 'Red Ken' Livingstone's public embrace of Egyptian Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi. The London Sheikh has publicized his hatred for women, gays and unbelievers. 'Pseudo-leftist' Red Ken has aligned himself with him as the 'leader of a great world religion,' and a symbol of British oppression, but at the cost of eroding liberal values:
[Mayor Livingstone] doesn't seem to realise that this bland formulation is cover for a deeply reactionary manoeuvre which is being practised across the Western pseudo-left. First they define 'communities' by their religion. Then they assumed that misogynist and anti-democratic practitioners of that religion are the true leaders of their communities. The inevitable consequence is that liberals, socialists and feminists in the poor world are betrayed. They look to the Western homes of liberalism, socialism and feminism and are greeted with indifference or spite.Cohen essentially posits that leftists are undermining liberalism by ennobling any minority group claiming victimhood, including al-Qaradawi's ilk. And since 'left' and 'liberal' commingle so much, genuine progressive outrage is muted by the betrayal of enlightened principles in the face of religious fascists. Such are the times.Last year Iraqi, Jordanian and Tunisian writers organised a petition to the United Nations by 2,500 Arab intellectuals which condemned 'individuals in the Muslim world who pose as clerics and issue death sentences against those they disagree with. These individuals give Islam a bad name and foster hatred among civilizations.' Prominent in their list of the 'sheikhs of death' was one Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Just as the British anti-war movement chose to turn its back on the eight million Iraqis who defied the murderers and voted, Livingstone has chosen to ignore the Arab left and offer comfort to its enemies.
...As inevitable as betrayal is award-winning hypocrisy. In the name of anti-racism, Livingstone perpetuates the stereotype of the Muslim as a death-obsessed, woman-hating, queer-bashing cheerleader for suicide bombers. In the name of multi-culturalism, he talks as if something in the water supply of the Islamic world, or maybe an obscure genetic mutation means that one billion people actually want to be ruled by priests.
President Bush is an unlikely defender of liberalism. Perhaps that's part of the reason why he is so abused by progressives, who know they should be carrying the sword. It's difficult to ascertain how much 'Red Ken' there is within the liberal parties of the West. The liberal Prime Minister Tony Blair has extracted some of his party from the self-immolation of leftist realpolik. In contrast to Blair, leftists like Mayor Livingstone represent a political strain that is no less dogmatic than the Medieval ravings of the Egyptian sheik who struts among them. Dogmatism defines leftists and Jihadists equally. Indeed, Red Ken is to liberals what Osama bin Laden is to Muslims.
The 'War of Civilization' that threatens to erupt might only truly arrive when one civilization is betrayed. Leftists appear to be comfortable with forsaking progressive liberalism to wage their many causes. In an era of appeasement, self-doubting liberals are sinking the progressive ship by allowing leftist bilge to gather. There will be many things appeasers will give away to the radicals -- both leftists and Islamofascists alike -- before there's a war of civilizations.
Appeasement requires the slow, steady betrayal of core values in the face of tyranny. Israel could be the last concession to the sheiks of the New Caliphate, and the troops of the Red Ken Brigade -- the equivalent of giving Hitler the Sudetenland. The popularizing view that democratic, secular Israel is merely Zion is a moral concession that has already been given to the fascists. If the day comes that liberals promoting leftist politics can give Israel the Sudetenland treatment, the appeasement chest will at last be empty, just as it was in 1938. And then there will be war.
Thanks - an excellent piece of analysis.
In the not too distant future, it may not only be Israel, but also parts of Europe that are offered as "last concessions" - in the latter case, to the leaders of a fascist Kremlin. Since 9/11 the lines of convergence and co-operation between the various illiberalisms of the world are becoming clearer - from Seoul to Moscow to Minsk to Damascus and Tehran. Red Ken is just a local red warning light among others presently glowing. Unfortunately for our world, appeasement of tyranny is now almost as widespread as it was in 1938.
McDuff: "the lines of convergence and co-operation between the various illiberalisms of the world."
Lovely phrase, that. Though I'm still partial to "idiotarian," for sentimental reasons.
Alas, the war is on. The charge is deicide, repeated alike by neo-Marxists, neo-Fascists, and now by Islamists who discover that their graven idols are powerless after all.
The killers are the usual suspects: modernity and capitalism, represented as always by the Jews... and now by America, too. It can hardly be surprising, therefore, to find the committed left working busily to expunge modernity's gains on all fronts. Before a charge of deicide, history teaches us that all ideals are silent. And so it proves, again, save for a remnant.
There is a force out there beyond the sun and stars and above all idols, but the Islamists and their fellow-travelers remain blind as they throw their children into the mouths of fire-mawed idols - and imagine divine favour in payment.
Others, too, have imagined such things, and received their payment. It was not what they expected.
I don't speak only for myself when I say that, if Israel looks to be surrendered, war will begin before that happens.
Winds of War will be up within an hour. I was drafted at the last minute to work all day today, so I didn't have time to polish up and post this morning. Apologies.
Very good report!
The alliance of the remants of the old European (national)socialism and the new islamofascism poses a great risk for many European nations, and collaterally to all the Western world. In such a scenario, the situation of Israel might become even gloomier.
The weak point is that this analysis concentrates in what is going on in Britain, where the left wing of the Laborist party is, in spite of (or perhaps because of) their control of the BBC, far more noisier than dangerous. I am afraid in other European countries the words have already turned into facts but, since its media does not use english, it has had no impact in the US.
The remarks on freedom in the inaguration speech of Bush may have sounded obvious for an American, just rhetoric, but those words can be applied not only to oppresed peoples, but also to nations whose political system is not founded in freedom, but in privileges. Such systems still survive in Continental Europe.
Katz: "The war is on."
I wasn't going to reply, but It occurs to me to say that the global war, the physical war, is not yet on. As the British historian Robert Conquest writes: "the events of September 11, 2001, were... a tremendous shock. And part of the shock was that it brought home to Americans the knowledge that the world is full of immense dangers. Not only the general population, but also the politically educated stratum, those concerned with world affairs, were staggered and shaken. They knew in theory that the planet harbors alien and hostile movements and states. But this had always seemed peripheral-psychological rather than physical. They had not really understood the possibilities out there in totally different mentalities, and histories. We need not only to cope with the incendiary powers and movements but also to make sure that our minds, and the minds of all civilized humankind, and especially of its mentally active elements, are brought up to the necessary habits of knowledge and judgement."
The global war, if it comes, will be terrible and overwhelming and all-destructive. In spite of Iraq - or, perhaps, because of it - we're still living in the pre-war period, and, as Conquest suggests, in order to avert war, the path to salvation is not to appease tyranny, but to work on our minds, our ideas, our beliefs, and make sure that they will hold against the single-minded ideological onslaught of tyrants.
The war at present is an ideological one, and we in the West need to win it. If we don't, the consequences are obvious.
"Katz"
sorry, I got your name wrong - Katzman.
"Surrendering Israel" is hardly an option; Israel is alert, armed, and more than a match for the locals. Short of an exchange of nukes with Iran, it is hardly on the table for the Left or anyone else to pass over to the mullahs.
"Surrendering Israel" will not be an option for any party wishing to govern the United States. This is moonbattery!
And I'll go on record now and say the samething about Taiwan.
S'okay. As for the war, there is a physical war, just not yet of the Total War variety. But I don't limit my definition of war to that extreme circumstance.
If you define war as an organized effort to destroy an opposing tribe, grouping, ideology, or society, using all means at one's disposal that one considers prudent - then yes, the war against Western Civilization most certainly is on.
The Oslo War (1991-present) against Israel is a good example, waged with a combination of physical attack, diplomatic & economic measures, and ideological attack. Does it still have room to escalate? Absolutely. Is it a war by any definition, and a regional war at that? Absolutely.
The neo-Fascists and neo-Marxists simply never ceased their wars, which some folks refer to as World War II and World War III (a.k.a. "The Cold War") respectively. The Islamists have started their own war - and while World War IV has not yet reached the Total War status of WWII or the high tension of WWIII, Cicero is right that at some point it could begin to do so. Meanwhile, we see the remnants of our opponents in the 2 previous global conflicts rallying around the new standard.
While the philosophies themselves differ, the motivations are errily parallel: revenge against theslayers of the gods, spiteful envy, and a deluded alchemy of divine rebirth. On this common ground is raised the enemy banner. Around that, its forces marshal for war.
David McDuff is correct to fear the consequences of further escalation, a point we have made here on Winds many times before. Ultimately, however, the choice of escalation belongs to us only in part. We must fight as best we can, and meet whatever comes. And what of escalation of the ideological war within the West? On that subject, I give you Belmont Club's Mordor as food for thought.
Welcome to the comments section, David. Nice to have you here.
You haven't factored in the Israeli left.
Thanks, Joe.
Re "Mordor": Wretchard focuses his attention on two major sources of trouble: the Western Left and the Islamists. He's right to do so, of course. But it's worth remembering, for example, that it was the long-lasting Western misevaluations of the Soviet phenomenon that led to the Left's present strength in the Western world. For that, Western society and its elites as a whole are to blame. In wide circles there still prevails an idea that Soviet Communism was somehow less physically lethal and mentally repressive than Nazism, that somehow it was not a total failure. It's largely because of that false perception that the Left still has some "credibility" in the world we live in now.
And again: it was Walter Laqueur who pointed out that some of the most extreme right wing groups in the United States - the American Nazi Party, the White Aryan Resistance, the Missouri Militia,the National Alliance - spoke enthusiastically about the "brave Arab bombers" of September 11.
Not only is it hard to separate the totalitarian variants of the Left from the those of Right - it's hard to separate them from our own attitudes and prejudices. It's easy to imagine that Nazism and Communism faded away and died with the 20th century. But their legacy lives on - even in the idea that for all problems there is a "solution", and that, as Conquest says, "when found this can be put into effect by the state (or its opponents).
In some very real ways, the enemy is in ourselves.
Here's food for thought: Russian oil is about to come online in a big way, and will almost certainly be pumped through Israel. Arab could well be undercut by a Russia unconcerned with maintaining 30,000 princes and hundreds of thousands of Western exapts.
Without oil, the Arab world is without a major source of income. So if they're going to destroy Israel, it will have to be soon.
BTW, Joe, check out David McDuff's blog. Quite a bit worth reading there. Apparently, he's a professional translator of Russian (and other languages) into English of some prominence. Great resource on the USS-were (the former Soviet Union).
LMAO!
Colt, i always asumed that my topographical knowledge was good but i seem to be wrong in that. Didn't know that Israel bordered on Russia and that it would make sence to pump oil through it.
the equivalent of giving Hitler the Sudetenland.
Why would you write it like that? The problem with the Sudetenland was not the giving cause it was rightfully German but that it was the wrong place and time as the Germans were going through a lunatic fase
Yes, not only are the USA Left traitors to the USA, but the Israeli Left are definitely traitors to Israel. Why, my Israeli Leftist friend G., who was wounded as a paratrooper (elite unit) in both the '67 and '73 wars can't wait to betray his country, just like Kerry did. I mean, he speaks a little Arabic and buys hummus in Abu Ghosh. What more proof could you want? And it's gotten even worse, Ariel Sharon must have had a stroke or something, because he's moved from the Israeli far right to something left of center, becoming the first PM to use the word "occupation" instead of patriotic euphemisms and insisting on withdrawal.
It's a great thing that Israel still has heroes like Yigal Amir, right, Colt? And the other "nationalists" you write about so approvingly on your own blog. (Here's a small clue for you: if 37% of Israelis support transfer/ethnic cleansing, why do the National Union and the Mafdal combined have, what 8% of the Knesset?).
Check out the Koyoto Cost Counter
The fraud with the potential to make the UN-OFF rippoff look like chump change (and make chumps of all who apply)
The left want to destroy the west, it dont matter that their utopia of 174 Million skulls seems a bit more distant these days, just because they lost everything to be for, does not mean they have lost focus for a single instant of what they are against.
The Koyoto fraud, Agenda 21, reflexive opposition to anything good for the US, be it some project abroad, or access to its own resources and the strength of its economic engine at home. Its all part of one and the same thing.
The ComuGreen Watermelons attack farmers with the ESA etc.
I often visut a local Veterans Cemetary, and during the Hazel O Leary template invasion of all our institutions by leftist American hating wackjob clintonistas, they started declaring mudpuddles all over america to be wildlife preserves, throwing farmers in prison if his plow ran over the wrong kind of rat in his field
(no, field rats are not rare, but they would invent new subspecies of them, like measuring hair length to the micrometer, .0000001 shorter hair = new subspecies, native to only that area of course, and presto, farmer joe is in jail for injury to a protected animal, they learned all the tools of power)
And thru the Cemetary is a dranage ditch that snakes around, complete with those large thick corrigated black plastic culverts
Well guess what, its now a wildlife refuge, it has a govt sign talking about what kind of "ecosystem" it is, and wildlive preserves, by UN Agenda 21 Treaty, have large "buffer zones" that ring them, and there are 3 levels in greater expanding rings, with ever more restrictions depending on what ring you are unfortunate to find yourself in.
At a later time the inner ring is absorbed, and a new outer ring takes effect.
And it all starts, with a mudpuddle, or a dranage ditch, or subspecies 15697.1 Field Rat, protected, endangered.
None of this has anything to do with the eviroment or protecting critters.
So, when Europundit said:
This is all a part of what he is talking about, and it needs no master plan, all they need to do is attack any apparent example of success or anthing that seems to be working and do what they can to break it, make it dysfunctional or burden it with as much cost as possible, and they have become expert in using the countrys own instutions and incomprehensable regulations that outnumber the stars and the grains of sand on the seashore.
No person can know all these laws, nore can you get out of bed without breaking a few, every small bussiness, farmer or plumber is little more than a sitting duck.
So while its amusing to see, well, even just the past two weeks its been leftist moonbats on parade, and been this way as far back as anyone can remember.
So perhaps you might entertain the idea of a more broad view, rather than observing the solitary ant at a time, step back and perhaps notice that the community of ants as a whole, have a perpose.
....
Meanwhile
Lt Smash, Now Indepundit Has gotten really annoyed at the ComuNazi Moonbats like ANSWER, and became a Protest Warrior.
Raymond, do you have a source for that quote by Maurice Strong? I'd love to see a video of the speech if possible.
Brian H
Yes
But some history is in order
Every military engagment with the Veitcong was a Victory for the our Military.
But what really wiped them out, was their Tet offensive, losses so bad, the Veitmin General has now said it would took him years to rebuild an offensive force.
By the time Traitor Kerry was in collusion with the Regime of the 5% Death quota in paris, the man that Murdered his own people by 5% death quota he called "George Washington", by that time, the USA was already well on the way out, and the South was fighting on its own with the exception of military aid in munitions and such.
So while Kerry extended the stay of our POWs so that more could die from torture for 2 years, the defeated Veitcong was at the negotiation Table (due to their weak condition after TET, that the Leftist traitor media presented falsely, deliberatly, as a victory for the enemy)
The %5 death quota killers of the north, had decided they could not win on the battlefield, so the effort concentrated on the political war in the USA. Enter john Kerry and crew, to buy time, the paris delegation argued over table size and color of the chairs for 2 years, giving Kerry time for the plot hatched in Paris to ramp up.
Long after our troops had gone, and only the Emabassy and such remained, the north still could not win, so the commicrats in congress, (with Kerry and crews help) cut funding to the south, so that the regime of the 5% death quota could come south and murder by the millions.
Some 500.000 drowning in the south china sea, etc.
All the Jew Hating marxocrat-islamfacist alliance needs to do really, is get the USA to cut off support for Isreal, no more aid, no more spare parts for the jets etc ...
Now that might not do it, but its a model that the left have used before.
lindsey
Got it off the junk science site
Perhaps you could contact Steve or Barry there and ask how much they got, Agneda 21 is a HUGE mountain of stuff emenating from the Rio summit and afterwards,
They are also entertaining a needed 80% population reduction, well large segments of them anyway, they say any more than that isnt "sustainable"
Even the two words "Sustainable Development" once you grok what that really means you find world govt writ large, its basically a scheme to entangle the world in treaties and regulations, world court etc ... untill the UN has control of the world recources
We have globalist republicans pusing the LOST treaty, that would put the world oceans under the UN, they would control all offshore OIL etc ...
Scary stuff
But in simplcity its just another angle to obtain Socialism Internationale their leftist dream
Its also the plan most likely to work, Bush saved our ass keeping us out of Koyoto. but if Kerry had been in charge we would would be under Koyoto and LOST both, we got that close to to losing a lot of our ability to rule ourselves.
Raymond (#19), I agree. Many forces have joined efforts against freedom and thus against democracy and capitalism. A broad view is necessary to identify them and their individual tasks, the first step to tackle them. To say that all our problems stem from Islamic extremism is a dangerous oversimplification.
A (#17),
The problem with the Sudetenland was not the giving cause it was rightfully German...
So... some areas of the Miami Dade county are rightfully Cuban and, in the future, they may be governed from La Habana. For God's sake, two World Wars and an European Union and still this...
a:
Read this.
AJL:
Huh? Some of them are, sure. Israeli leftists are pretty keen to put Israelis in more (!) danger.
What are you accusing me of, exactly? Incidentally, that you believe Rabin was killed by Amir explains your view on Israeli politics.
Because Kach is banned (something which most Israelis oppose, BTW).
The Israeli left is increasingly post-Zionist and secular in their outlook, and positively obsessed with international approval. They want to be loved, and believe that if they give enough, that love will come. They just need to give a little more. Gaza, northern Samaria, then the rest of it, Judea, Jerusalem, as many Jewish religious sites as possible, the Golan Heights of course. Then peace will come. Surely.
What I meant in my comment about the Israeli left is that they're pursuing the impossible, a utopia even, so those that die in the short-term are a small price to pay for the brotherhood to come. It is remarkable that they've not yet learned that the Arab world will not, in the forseeable future, love (or even like) Jews. Look at what civilised Europeans did for centuries - and they expect a tribal culture to accept them as equals?
That was the lesson of the Holocaust, though it would be just as accurate even if the scale of murder was lower. Honest, humble, and (with one major exception) seemingly good people can be Jew-haters, to a genocidal degree.
I don't see the point in relying on the goodwill of an antisemitic culture to safeguard Jewish lives. The Israeli left (including Sharon, these days) thinks that makes perfect sense. The right (for the most part) won't risk Israeli lives in the hopes that the most antisemitic Arabs in the world see the error of their ways. The left apparently expects just such an evolution.
One more thing: I don't discount the possibility that the world will reconcile itself to Israel's existance, perhaps even starting with the balestinians. But for goodness sake, look at history. Is betting on that happening the smart option?
Freed terrorist arrested again. He was arrested for shooting at Israelis, but since his release, he has gone on to deal arms to terrorists and work with Hezbollah. A buddy of his was killed last week, planting a bomb. That guy was released from prison, too.
Perhaps another gesture of goodwill would reform these guys? Maybe a pension, or a gold watch or something?
Joe_A (#23),
Joe, your right. I was thinking about the Saarland.
Colt (#24),
Didn't know about the bypass but can't imagine that it saves that much money to bypass the Suez Canal. Reading it it sounds more as a way for the Russians to have a stronger negotiating position with the Egyptians
SaarlandRhineland
Joe_A:
It will save them a good deal of cash. Israel can outbid the Egyptians, I suspect.
But it isn't a done deal.
Colt (#25)
Look at what civilised Europeans did for centuries
They were quite nice actually, the 99.7% of Europeans that weren't civilised were the problem.
ps. read Rhineland instead of Saarland.
Are you saying that only 0.3% of Europeans from the last x centuries were antisemitic? Not that your saying that would surprise me, but just to clarify things.
Joe_A? I meant 'a' obviously. Apologies.
Good grief. Re-read #31. My mistake. Sorry.
The use of minorities as scapegoats, a condition the jews suffered during centuries in Europe, is common in political systems not truly founded on freedom.
In the good times, European countries prospered, the people was happy and the king appointed jews as ministers of the Treasure. In the bad times, the king and the aristocracy did not want to assume any responsability, although they were the rulers, and blamed the jews. The people, instead of burning the king's (or the duke's or the bishop's) palace, burnt the jewish quarter.
Incidentally that is exactly what happened after the First World War: General Luddendorf, chief of the German army, blamed the jews for the defeat. This was the spark that triggered the process that ended in the Shoah.
In some place's of today's Europe, groups of population are still been used as scapegoats: their business are burnt and sometimes they are murdered. This problem is related to lack of freedom.
Joe, your an optimist. Sadly freedom has little to do with it as it is human nature to not find the fault at oneself
'a'... True - but some systems address this natural deficiency better than others. It is not a fixed constant, it's a variable that expresses in combination with the political system and culture. The question then becomes how to shrink this tendency, given its potential for violence and tragedy... so one's political/structural choices matter. A lot.
And of course, that's the whole underlying basis of everything the West has become. If humans are mired in sin and flaw irretreivably, then why not just turn everything over to the Church? Or to an Imam, for that matter. Been there, done that, got The Inquisition. We broke free a while ago, and got an intellectual and moral foundation that led to unprecedented success and (not coincidentally) the greatest explosion of science and discovery in human history.
Free systems greatly expand both the opportunities and incentives for self-criticism. This is dawning on people around the Middle East, who are beginning to see that extreme lack of self-criticism and extreme scapegoating are the core problems that are steering them toward a war with, literally, the rest of the world.
Free socieites also connect people into the political system, which means they have opportunities to affect their environment beyond physically attacking key targets to let off steam. Instead of seeing minorities as possible enemies (convenient scapegoats for problems that cannot be faced due to an unfree system, and are difficult to endure), they become possible allies in the ongoing bazaar of possible deals and winning coalitions - and so, many in the 'majority' group can begin finding potential friends there. That has been the general experience of free societies, and the corresponding improvement in minority prospects within those societies is no concidence.
Obviously, Natan Sharansky's The Case for Democracy makes good reading on this score. As someone who has seen dictatorship from the inside, he is a very credible observer. As this UC Berkeley interview segment explains, he has had a lot of time to think about this, and a lot of motivation too. It has become the hot book of our present age, and if you want to think really deeply about our modern situation, starting with Sharansky's book is a good idea. Not least because its ideas are currently animating American policy and policymakers - so at the very least, this is the case you'll have to face.
I would follow it up with three works which raise important questions, and may help refine Sharansky's ideas in the face of the disastrous legacy the post-colonialist Third World. That legacy offers both reinforcement (in the utter catastrophe of the dictatorship/socialism paradigm) and caution flags (in the widespread failure of real democracy founded in liberty to take and to persist, even when the initial setup wasn't socialist or dictatorial). Understanding both is important if we wish to translate these insights about free socieities into policy around the world.
With those 3 works plus a speech, you'd have a very good set of resources to begin thinking about democracy and liberty (they are not always the same thing, and their tension is important) in the modern world. I'll add a final question:
Good questions for us all to think about.