Tim Daneliuk wrote:
wrote:
SNIP
So what did the world do?
Maintained pressure on the participants until they reached an understanding.
If you're arguing that no one magically made the problem disappear,
then I agree. Then again, people of your political bent tend to believe
in magic whereas I do not. I never believed the current issues with Islam
have some simple solution, merely that it's reasonable to hold the Islamic
leaders - both secular and religious - accountable for what they do.
I don't recall the world putting ANY pressure on the
participants.
Did the Britidh government disarm the Protestant militias? No.
Did the Pope excomunicate the IRA leaders? No.
The Brits tried to, but this was difficult because: a) The combatants
in question wore plainclothes and hid in civilian homes and b) The
Drooling Equivocators in the West tended to portray the IRA as
"Freedom Fighters" when they were, in fact, evil scoundrels ...
not unlike the excused today's Left makes for Islamic excesses.
Bull****.
On holidays the Protestant militias marched down the middle of
the streets displaying theiir arms openly.
SNIP
Do you read any newpapers or watch any television stations or listen
to any radio from predominantly Muslim nations? I do not, therefor
I do not know if what you say is true or not. If you do not, then
neither do you.
But I do. I try to get to Middle Eastern news (via the web) at
least a couple times a week. The silence about the excesses of
the radicals is thunderous.
You too can join the fun:
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/index.htm
http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage
http://www.debka.com/
http://www.jpost.com
http://www.tehrantimes.com/
http://www.memri.org/
Those are all ENglish language websites. Surely you are not
suggesting that they are representative of journalism in
predominantly Muslim countries.
So I conclude that you do NOT read any newpapers
or watch any television stations or listen
to any radio from predominantly Muslim nations.
I do not, therefor I do not know if what you say is
true or not.
But it is becoming clearer that you do not know if
it is true or not.
Let's deconstruct your logic above to expose it for the foolishness
it is. From your comments above it follows that:
1) Anything other than the native tongue is not "representative"
of the worldview of the speaker in question.
Non Sequitor.
That does not follow from my conclusion that it is
prudent to suppose that English-Language webpages
are written specifically to cater to the putative
'world view' of native speakers of English.
2) We cannot reliably know things translated from and by the people
of a given region who *intended* for us to read/hear/see these
things in *our* native tongue.
Non-Sequitor
That does not follow from my conclusion that we
(meaning you or I) do not know that the webages
are translations of anything that was published
in any other languages, or representative thereof.
3) In fact, this problem is so bad, that even when reading a
breadth of perspectives translated into English - perspectives
ranging from hardcore Islamist to hardcore Zionist to something
in between - we *still* can't know anything ... because they're
not being read in their native tongues. (P.S and big hint, MEMRI,
in particular was specifically created to make speeches and writings
in Arabic available in English by means of high-quality translations.)
Non-Sequitor
That does not follow from my conclusion that we
(meaning you or I) do not know that the webages
are translations of anything that was published
in any other language.
A broad spectrum of writing published for native speakers
of English and catering to their 'world-view' is STILL
writtne for native speakers fo English and STILL caters
to their 'world-view' .
Therefo
4) You are hereby prohibited from expressing any opinion about France,
Italy, Norway, Russia, China, et al unless you are a native speaker
reader of their respective languages. So, unless you have mastery
of many languages as a minimum cost of entry, you have no place
ever discussing geopolitics again.
As is usual with your type you have decided, _a priori_
on your conclusions and then go out to look for evidence
to support it. Upon finding little or no such evidence
you than take non-evidence and falsely claim that it
suports your conclusion.
Then you assert a (God-given, one supposes) right to
direct others to cease and desist from challenging you.
..
5) (And here's the real genius of your argument): I argued that there
was a "deafening silence" when reading the arguments of the Arab
world to the English speaking world. Your conclusion is that the
English translations are not "reliable" and that we "don't know"
whether there is widespread pressure by Islamic "moderates" upon their
radical brethren. So, (using your impeccable logic), we're left
with two possibilities:
Oh, here is another tactic popular with your type.
Realizing that your argument is being exposed
as the crap it is, you are now changing it to
another argument, substantively different from
what you earlier asserted. Now you are restricting
that 'deafening silence' to "FROM the Arab world
TO the English speaking world" (emphacis mine).
Previously you referred to "the deafening silence
heard through the overwhelming part of the Islamic
world"
*I* have heard heard Muslims condemning senseless
violence, specifically in response to the rioting that
followed the Danish cartoons. Maybe that is because
I listen to PRI, NPR, and C-Span.
E.g. one Pakistani, when asked if he found the cartoons
offensive replied, "Yes, I am offended by the cartoons.
But I am more offended by the violent reaction to the
cartoons. Burning a church does not restore my
dignity. Killing a Christian does not restore my dignity."
and so on.
It took me all of thirty seconds to find these examples
of that deafening silence using just one of your
references:
http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD133206
"There is a difference between an investor and
a destroyer, a bomber and a constructor, between
those who respect human rights and preserve human
integrity, and those who kill innocent people
cold-bloodedly, spreading fear, panic and poverty
among human beings, causing people to lose
sleep, and destroying their lands."
"...what Osama bin Laden does... planning how to
blow up, destroy and kill; he has introduced the
idea of suicide bombers, has founded a terrorist
organization, and he does not differentiate between
killing a child, a widow, or an elderly."
"Pure Islam and the real Prophet's message are
represented by what is implemented by Yunus and
Adu Latif Jameel, and not by bin Laden, al-Zawahiri
and those like them,.."
http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD133306
Abu Qatada Al-Falastini: The Pursuit of Religious
Knowledge is More Important Than Jihad
On October 22, 2006, an Islamist website posted an
old fatwa by the U.K.-based Muslim scholar Abu
Qatada Al-Falastini, a key Al-Qaeda operative
currently in prison. The fatwa states that "the
pursuit of [religious] knowledge (talab al-'ilm) is
more important than [waging] jihad in the path
of Allah..." and that "the state of [moral] decay
[among Muslims today] stems from the fact that
the mujahideen and other Muslims lack [sufficient
religious] knowledge."
The posting sparked a fierce debate among the
forum members. ...
http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD133506
Al-Riyadh: "Today, do you feel that you were wrong
to set out [to Afghanistan], obeying some irresponsible
fatwas?"
Al-Bidna: "Of course. I [now] understand that I was wrong.
I should have asked the leaders for permission to set out
[and wage jihad], or religious scholars known for their
knowledge and piety, of which there are many in our country..."
It would seem that either you don't read the sources you cite,
or you don't allow what you read there to change your conclusions.
i) The "moderate" Islamists are *not* putting pressure on their
radical brethern in any large way.
ii) The "moderate" Islamists *are* putting pressure on their
radical brethren but they are also purposely keeping
it a secret from their English speaking readership by
intentionally not letting us know about it.
Your argument is absurd on its face.
That's not my argument. It is your own maliciously
constructed straw man that you falsely attribute to
me. Yet another tactic popular with your ilk.
*My* argument was that we (you and I as individuals)
had insuficient information with which to reach your
conclusion. The idea that one should accept the
uncertainty of a proposition unless and until properly
researching it so as to arrive upon a probable truth is,
evidently, alien to you. In the alternative, you DID
realize that was my argument but went on to
deliberately mistrepresent it.
I generally fault our education system which has long
taught students to do 'research' in precisely your manner.
That is to choose a proposition and then to find evidence
and argument to support it. While there is _some_ value
to that process as a purely intellectual exercise it is
worse than useless as a modus operandi for the
aquisition of knowledge. What has been under-emphasised,
if not conspiculously absent from our education system,
has been the teaching what some call 'critical thinking'
or any process whereby the student judiciously
avoids reaching a conclusion and investigates the veracity
of a proposition, respecting always the potential that
the best conclusion may be an acceptance of ambiguity
or uncertaintly.
However, as you claim to have been educated outside
of the US, I cannot put the blame, in the instant case,
on our education system.
All this leads one to speculate just *why* you cling to such obvious and
patently ridiculous lines of thought.
Oh, now you move from your false conclusion to 'speculation'
as to _my_ motivation for that false conclusion. How high will
you stack your house of cards?
The truth is that you and your ilk
never found a Western Democracy perfect enough to support with any real
enthusiasm, but you jump right in with sympathy and big lefty tears for
every tin pot dictator, despot, murderer, and lunatic that spews forth
from the various sewers around the world. After all we need to
"understand" their reasons for doing as they do, since clearly "Good"
and "Evil" are anachronisms you threw out at the same time you were busy
denying the importance and role of religious faith. Your ilk (and
probably you as well) were busy being very quiet when Hussein was
savaging his own people and his sons busily pushing people into
industrial shredders just to be able to hear them scream a bit longer.
On these kinds of horrors our fine Left has not much to say, but when it
comes to Bush and Blair ... oh wait, let's have you speak for yourself:
Thank you for such a clear example of your intellectually
dishonest approach to debate. After misrepresenting my
present opinions, and having no knowledge of my past
opinions, you present a false proposition about those past
opinions, conclude, without evidence, that it is true, and
then build your straw man upon that foundation. The usual
responce when this is pointed out, would be to accuse
me of lying to hide a secret agenda. The "he's lying"
argument is ever the fallback position of the intellectually
bankrupt as it eliminates reliance on reason, and rests
on faith in the speaker instead.
Before you came along, I really didn't know just how high
bull**** could be stacked.
Plainly, this administration wants conflict.
Right. Sadaam & Son's butcher the innocent by the thousands, but it's
*Bush's* fault there is conflict in the region. It's the democratic West
that sacrifices blood and treasure to try and make the world just
slightly better and *we're* the problem, not the Hussein family, not the
beheading Islamic butchers of Al Queda, not the slave traders of
Mauretania, not vile savages of the Darfur, and certainly not the
various intellectual elites that advise us on our required degree of
Multicultural Tolerance (tm). It's *us*, the West that is always at
fault because were just not perfect enough for you and the rest of the
self-anointed elites.
I disagree.
In Darfur, the present policy is basicly the same as it was
with Saddam Hussein in the Reagan era. Bashir is the
new Saddam Hussein. The present administratino thinks
he serves some marginally useful purpose (e.g. supressing
Islamic extremists). While he hasn't been getting the support
that Hussein did, we are standing in the way of any meaningful
action against him. The idea that the solution to the problem
must be an African solution, the troops to enforce it must
be African Union troops assures inadequacy. The fact is
that where African Union troops are present in Darfur, the
Sudanese Air Force and Janjaweed militia do not attack.
But the AU does not have enough troops to provide adequate
coverage. If the UN were allowed to send in peace keepers
in sufficient numbers, with AU personell as liasons with the
locals. Bashir would not dare to continue his pogrom.
If he does, then a no-fly zone over Darfur could be enforced
from the French air bases in Chad.
In North Korea, direct talks between the US and N. Korea
resulted in shutting down their PU production, with cameras
installed to assure compliance. NK DID continue a
clandstine Uranium-enrichment program.
Here,
some technical knowledge is necessary to undertand
why that was not a complete failure of the agreement.
Keep in mind that Uranium enrichment per se is not a
volation ofthe NPT. It was the clandestine nature of the
program, that was in bad faith. Uranium must be highly
enriched (exactly how high is classified at least 65%)
to be used for a bomb but 3% is fine for reactor fuel.
NK has not made any bombs with U-235, and probably
never intended to, given that a U-235 bomb would be
an inefficient use of resources. It is far more efficient
to use the low-enriched Uranium in a reactor to convert
the abundant U-238 to PU.
When we (justifiably) pulled out of the agreement,
they reopened their reactor and went on to make
PU bombs.
Maybe it was always their intention to do so. At
the very least, when we caught them reneging
on the agreement, we should have made it clear
that we would _consider_ a resumption of our
side if NK would accept further safeguards on their
Uranium program. This is not because the despotic
North Korean regime deserved another chance.
This is because when millions of innocent lives
hang in the balance, the only ideology that is
morally acceptable is one that respects that
fact.
The US insistance on six-party talks
has effectively prevented any meaningful negotions.
The object of which, seems to be to wait for NK to
take miltary action that would justify retaliation that
could bring about a much needed regime change.
With the assistance of the South Koreans eager for
reunification, the end result might be a lot better than
the present debacle in Iraq. But the cost will be
hundreds of thousands of human lives.
I suppose you'll use these criticisms of policy
to (falsely) conclude that I'm arguing that these
policies created the problems in the first place.
Now I'll speculate just a bit as to your motivations.
Most of your arguments and certainly your topic
du jour follow closely along the lines laid our here
in Washington DC on Wednsday afternoons when
the Heritage Foundation and various other 'think
tanks' meet with Republican Strategists. I am not
about to speculate if you are a willing servant or a
hapless shill, nor does it really matter.
--
FF