Hard News: The Solipsistic Left
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an opinion, not a "FACT"
you mean, the way that the documented torturing of dozens of probably innocent iraqis was only conducted by a few hill-billies is an opinion?
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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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I have read that there are not insignificant percentages of both Russian and Chinese people who yearn for the days of Stalin and Mao
Amazing that the Russians would prefer the bad old days when capitalism, democracy and leaders like Yeltsin and Putin have bought them such freedom and prosperity . . .
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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".
multicultural policy resulted in the successful settlement of hundreds of thousands of individuals and families in places like new zealand, canada, the united states and australia throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s.
but, miraculously, when a need is found to lambast muslims in western countries "THE MULTICULTURALISM" is dragged out as a stick with which to beat "the muslims liberal aliies".
that bow is a very long one, mr bremmer. i would suggest you're pulling it the wrong way.
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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?
I was referring specifically to the position of women, whose loss of constitutional rights is matter of record, and gays, who are having trouble staying alive these days.
But the other recent poll of Iraqis, is the BBC/ABC/USA Today one, which had 50% of Iraqis yearning for Saddam, and only 38% saying life was better now than before 2003.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6464277.stm
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=2954716&page=1I'm not sure any of these polls can answer the question though: you're asking people to weigh quality of life against newfound and important freedoms.
But both paint a desperate and deteriorating picture. Eighty per cent of people report attacks nearby. More than half of people have lost a close friend or relative to the violence. Not only have basic quality of life indicators slumped since 2004 and 2005, so has optimism that things will improve.
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.
And a further 22% thought Iraq was "close" to civil war. I'm not sure whether what you call it makes much difference.
One interesting point from both polls is continued support for a unified Iraq, especially if you don't count the Kurds. That seems encouraging.
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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".
Like the reference to that nasty little group who happen to be "at the vanguard of the antiwar movement". Therefore, if you harbour even the teensiest doubt about the manifest destiny of Bush & co., you're a dupe of these creepy lefties.
Just more weasel words from someone who's plainly unacquainted with the phenomenon of people thinking for themselves.
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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.
Sigh .. what you don't say is that the actions of the (female) judge generated nationwide controversy and she was almost immediately removed from the case, which now proceeds under a judge who's not a raving loony. From The Guardian's story:
Commentators, politicians and Muslim leaders criticised the judge's decision, saying that choosing sharia above civil law was a threat to jurisprudence. Wolfgang Bosbach, of the Christian Democratic Union, said: "One thing must be clear: in Germany only German law applies."
Irmingard Schewe-Gerigk, women's affairs spokeswoman for the Greens, agreed, saying: "This decision is in conflict with the basic law."
I think this rather shows the opposite of what you were claiming.
PS: Just looked up a bit more on this case: the judge made a protection order (ordering the husband to move out of the house and not come within 55m) but then bizarrely cited the Koran to decline the quickie divorce.
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sanctions could have been further lifted (carefully and in a targeted manner). If combined with a continued rigorous inspections regime it would have been possible to do this and prevent SH from developing WMDs.
That's true that sanctions had become more fine tuned - the oil for food regime was part of that. In fact smartening up the sanctions further was the Bush Admin's initial approach to Saddam.
But those sanctions and the rigorous inspections relied on the enormous US and British military presence on Iraq's borders. One problem was having US troops in Saudi Arabia - that wasn't going to be easy to do for too much longer. Other problems were France pulling out of enforcing the no-fly zones and Russia pushing for the end of all sanctions. There was a bit of unraveling of the containment going on.
If those US and British troops ever left then Saddam was going to go back to doing what he always was doing. Despite the no fly zones he still created a lot of trouble for the Kurds.
For their efforts to contain Saddam the US and Britain became the objects of a very successful propaganda campaign by Saddam and his apologists. There were already terror actions against the US in the 90s justified by the containment regime.
My feeling is that after 12 years US and British patience wore thin. That suggests to me that the best way of avoiding the invasion would have been a more reliable international consensus as to how to deal with Saddam. But as we are seeing with Sudan that's not easy to achieve.
Another other important issue is what the demise of Saddam's regime would have looked like. The most recent example of the collapse of a dictatorship in an ethnically and religiously mixed country is Yugoslavia. The invasion has proved too costly in human lives but eventually an international intervention may have been required.
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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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needs to be a set of basic values and norms that all in society agree with and conform to
sure. but that is the fundamental premise of multiculturalism.
a multicultural policy tolerates diversity within limits. those limits are determined by the norms of the host nation, and migrants are expected to conform.
the result is that horrendous norms like genital mutilation or wife beating are not tolerated. but these are real people you're talking about, not abstract ideas. it takes time for the unnacceptability of norms to sink in.
but opponents of the policy grab and wave instances of unacceptable behaviour being brought to the media and scream abuse at the minority, usually based on their own prejudices or xenophobia.
consequently, they're attacking the means to the end they themselves argue they want.
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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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Florida rape victim denied emergency contraception by Christian nurse on religious grounds. Feel free to generalise wildly on Christian attitudes to rape.
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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."
Here, I agree with you. Opposing the hijab ban is one thing - I don't think a government has the right to tell me what I can or can't wear on my goddamn head - but even thinking about sharing a stage with such a person is lunatic.
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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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Well, in a sense it's no different from westerners expecting to have a beer with their BLTs and dress how they feel like in muslim countries.
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"Here, I agree with you. Opposing the hijab ban is one thing - I don't think a government has the right to tell me what I can or can't wear on my goddamn head "
I don't want to Godwin myself, but how far would you take the above? Are you a fundie Voltairean or not?
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"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. "
And those would, just by a happy coincidence, be yours?
I also have to query this idea that a German judge somehow is part of some giant creature called "The Left"
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There's certainly a lot craziness out there being done by Christians and the psychological processes are the same with crazy Muslims but there's one difference. There are still quite a few Muslim countries moving from conservative tribal-based societies to centralised democracies. Pakistan, Afghanistan etc. It's really the tribalism that's to blame for there being more trouble overall with Muslims than Christians, not the religion as such. It's just that most Christian countries moved away from tribalism a while back.
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Well, in a sense it's no different from westerners expecting to have a beer with their BLTs and dress how they feel like in muslim countries.
exactly. and, multiculturalism works along a spectrum from "very broadly tolerant and willing to accept integration of minority norms" to "what? who the hell are you kidding? dress different, but stop slapping your kids".
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And those [norms] would, just by a happy coincidence, be yours?
they vary between nation-states. doesn't change the premise tho.
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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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"It's just that most Christian countries moved away from tribalism a while back."
Really? I'd say the scourge of nationalism which is just tribalism writ large still haunts Europe and North America. The British Isles is a case in point, and Catalunya, Navarra and Euskadi is another.
The good thing is that there are very few christian countries left. Secularity is good.
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Ah ummm... James, no. That's not quite the accepted view of How Things Happened. It sounds more like your personal prejudices flowing through.
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"Muslims think"
All of them, all 1.1 billion?
"Compared with Muslims, the “crazy stuff” Christians do is just about completely negligible."
Remind me again how many "christian" countries have been invaded by "muslim" countries in the last 50 years?
I'm sure if you lives in Iraq you would not think that the actions of the West were "negligable"
(oh and do I win the prize for most frequest use of "" per word)
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"Muslims think"
i think he meant "clinical trials have shown Christianity to reduce the signs of aging by up to 76.843%"
anyone know how many million Muslims the crusaders have sluaghtered over the last aeon?
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