The following are best described as
opponents of the west.
They are some of the leading opponents in the west
of American and western power,
and opponents of American and western victory against
non-western enemies.
They appear regularly on my local radio and TV,
and in my local newspapers,
so I thought I would gather in one place refutations of them.
They have every right to speak of course, and it is one of the strengths of
the USA, the UK and other democracies that their harshest critics
- indeed practically their open enemies -
are not only free to speak, but can make a good living by doing so,
and even become immensely wealthy
doing so (like Michael Moore).
The people below claim
to be friends of oppressed people around the world,
but in fact they are enemies of the non-western world as well,
since they want to stop the spread of western ideas
to it, and hence prevent its liberation.
The left is worth nothing
- An angry column by Dennis Prager, February 1, 2005,
in the week when leftists scorn
the brave Iraqis as they turn out
in their millions to vote
despite the threats of fascists to kill them.
Truly, since 9/11, the left now stands for the opposite of what
it claims to stand for.
The left are the reactionaries.
The left are the fascist lovers.
On apologists for evil:
"in my lifetime, these people have overwhelmingly congregated on the political Left.
Since the 1960s, with few exceptions, on the greatest questions of good and evil,
the Left has either been neutral toward or actively supported evil."
"It is the Left
- in America, in Europe and around the world -
that should do all the apologizing"
The leftist
Christopher Hitchens
breaks with the left
to attack Chomsky after 9/11.
Hitchens is one of the few old-fashioned
believers
in reason and the 18th century secular Enlightenment
left on the modern left,
most of the others having succumbed to various
versions of the anti-reason ideologies of
socialism and
postmodernism.
Hitchens
debates
(or here)
the fuzzy-headed, anti-American Chomsky on
Islamic fascism.
Chomsky opposed action against
(or even supported)
just about every enemy of human freedom
since WW2.
Indeed, had Chomsky been alive and writing during WW2,
one cannot
imagine him possibly writing in support of the Allies.
The Soviet Union (1),
the Soviet imperialist occupation of Eastern Europe,
Mao's China,
Castro's Cuba,
Communist North Vietnam (2),
the Khmer Rouge (3),
North Korea,
Communist Nicaragua,
the Ayatollah's Iran,
Saddam Hussein's Iraq,
Serbian fascism,
Islamic fascism (4)
- all are supported, defended, or at least action against them is opposed
by Chomsky.
Again, it is impossible to imagine him supporting the Allies in 1944.
Surely he would have condemned
the D-Day liberation of France
as an appalling, illegal and aggressive act against a continent
that was finally at peace. (5)
(1) Noam Chomsky's Satanic Verses
by Paul Crespo, January 29, 2004
- Chomsky writing on US foreign policy in the 1980s.
Interesting on his credulous belief in
everything the Soviet Union spokesmen say.
(2) North Vietnam:
See 1970 speech
where Chomsky is not just anti-war,
but actually
pro-North Vietnam,
and pro-totalitarian communism
(although he claims not to be a communist/fascist today).
See Tim Starr articles.
Remember
that
communist North Vietnam
killed nearly 2 million innocent people outside of combat.
And Chomsky and the anti-Vietnam War
protesters must share some moral responsibility
for the communist victory and subsequent democide.
Keith Windschuttle:
"There has now been enough analysis of the Vietnam War to demonstrate conclusively that the United States
was not defeated militarily. South Vietnam was abandoned to its fate because of the war's political costs at home.
The influence of radical intellectuals like Chomsky in persuading the student generation of the 1960s to oppose the war
was crucial in elevating these political costs to an intolerable level."
(3) Cambodia:
Chomsky welcomed the Khmer Rouge victory,
and denied reports of the genocide.
Keith Windschuttle:
"Chomsky was this regime's most prestigious and most persistent Western apologist."
Chavez praised Chomsky as
"one of the greatest pioneers of a better world",
and Chomsky replied that:
"what's so exciting about at last visiting Venezuela is that I can see how a better world is being created."
Chomsky attacks American freedom, sneering that:
"control over the media is in the hands of a minority who own large corporations... and the result is that the financial interests of those groups are always behind the so-called freedom of expression".
David R. Adler
points out that
the US is so "oppressive" that
Chomsky was invited to address US military cadets in Apr 2006.
As
Harry's Place
says:
"just try to imagine a fierce critic of Chavez being invited to address a class of military cadets in Venezuela."
Chomsky's reputation as a thinker
rests on his work in linguistics.
My field is Cognitive Science,
and many in that field believe Chomsky's reputation will not survive,
long-term - that he is a figure like Freud.
The central problem is the incompatibility between his ideas
and the origin of language
(i.e. its gradual evolution from non-language
in populations of hominids).
Obituary by Mark Steyn
- ".. he didn't
seem to understand that the life he enjoyed
was only possible in the west.
...
The 300 firemen who died on September 11th died in part for
their fellow New Yorker Edward Said,
though he is too stupid
and graceless to understand."
Warraq
says that
Said's Orientalism".. taught an entire generation of Arabs the art of self-pity - were
it not for the wicked imperialists,
racists and Zionists, we would be great once more - encouraged the
Islamic fundamentalist generation of the 1980s,
and bludgeoned into silence any criticism of Islam"
Warraq points out that
"Intellectual inquisitiveness is one of the hall marks of Western civilisation"
- in contrast to most of the world,
who have little interest in anything
outside of their own narrow culture.
It was Westerners who discovered
the orbit of the planets,
the laws of gravity, the distance of the stars,
the size and age of earth and the universe,
the sub-atomic laws of physics,
biological evolution,
the nature of genetic inheritance,
human evolution,
the origin of human civilization,
and a million other things
- and told an ungrateful world about it all.
It was even Westerners who told the Orient about its own past:
"One should remind Said that it was thanks to this desire for knowledge on the part of Europeans
that led to the people of the Near East recovering and discovering their own past and their own identity.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth century archaeological excavations in Mesopotamia, Ancient
Syria, Ancient Palestine and Iran were carried out entirely by Europeans and later Americans - the
disciplines of Egyptology, Assyriology, Iranology which restored to mankind a large part of its heritage
were the exclusive creations of inquisitive Europeans and Americans. Whereas, for doctrinal reasons,
Islam deliberately refused to look at its pre-Islamic past, which was considered a period of ignorance."
Review:
"As common sense suggests and Ibn Warraq substantiates, the interest of Westerners in the East from classical antiquity onwards was motivated" [not by "imperialism" or "racism" but]
"by intellectual curiosity; they wanted to find out about the other human beings with whom they were sharing the world. To seek knowledge for its own sake is the special and wholly beneficial contribution the West has made to mankind. ... Rationalism, universalism, and self-inspection are Western traits which expand civilization. Said's cultural relativism leads only to a dead-end."
In short, Said was yet another narrow-minded, reactionary,
tribal Easterner who failed to understand the West.
In this cheeky novel,
one of the villains is the
West-hating professor
"Arthur Rashid".
"Now Rashid, of course, was a star in the intellectual world.
Among his fellow academics, he was considered a great man.
A hugely popular professor of multicultural studies, he was credited with
formulating the very concept of multiculturalism in his best-selling book,Eastern Mind, Western Eyes."
Edward Said (died 2003) certainly
sounds like the model for Rashid.
In the novel, Rashid
is secretly involved with Islamist terror.
The hero even tortures the professor in order to (successfully)
avert a major attack on America!
And then at the end we hear that
Rashid has "disappeared" into the CIA's secret prisons!
Very naughty of Klavan, but you have to laugh.
It makes a refreshing change from
the usual right-wing and "neo-nazi" villains.
The childish clown
Michael Moore
(and here).
The buffoon
who shows the intellectual bankruptcy of the left
in the Islamist War.
The vulgar, anti-American, mean-spirited, immensely wealthy
multi-millionaire.
The semi-educated author of cartoon-like books
and simple totalitarian propaganda
who makes Chomsky
look like a deep thinker.
Stupid White Men
- a perfect description of the kind of people who bought this book.
And the title!
This kind of PC
patronisation must drive minorities crazy.
As if non-whites are always wise, and cannot be stupid!
The very title of the book declares that whites are cool people who can take insults,
and non-whites are sensitive and must be patronised, like children.
David Frum asks an excellent question
about Moore's inexplicable popularity at Cannes
and at the Oscars:
"If an American were to make a documentary about the (genuine in this case)
links between French President Jacques Chirac and Saddam Hussein
- how do you think he'd do at the Oscars?"
Unfairenheit 9/11:
The lies of Michael Moore
by Christopher Hitchens.
He quotes Orwell, writing in 1945,
but it could just as easily be about the present day:
"The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects
or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and
prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point.
But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though
unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy
and admiration for totalitarianism."
The failure of cinema
- Years after the war started, there has been no real movie about the war.
"What I found myself wondering
.. was whether Michael Moore may, in the end, turn out to be the American Loonie Left's
Muqtada al-Sadr.
He's become the rallying point. He's raised the flag, and the most motivated LL's are flocking
to support him. He's become their poster boy, their public face. He provides a focal point;
he's a magnet around which they can gather and organize.
He has chosen the ground they will defend
- and it is dreadful ground indeed."
"the LL's have rallied to his flag. They've moved to his holy city. They've adopted positions on the terrain he's chosen for the battle. And they're using the arguments and evidence he provides as ammunition.
In the short term, it may seem as if the LL's are mobilized and fighting hard. But it also leaves them concentrated and vulnerable. And they are fighting on just about the worst ground they could have chosen."
Worst, that is, if they want to win the election.
"Moore has planted his flag smacko in the middle of the Holy City of anti-Americanism. To defend that position, the LL's will now vocally proclaim something many have long believed but avoided admitting: they hate America and everything it stands for. That is not a message that will sell well to the broad electorate."
"It is rare for a political faction to be blessed with an opponent who is so charismatic to his fanatical supporters, so repulsive to non-supporters, and so vulnerable to criticism and caricature. I can't think of a high-profile leftist I'd rather have "at the centre of things" than Michael Muqtada al-Moore."
Less is Moore, Kyle Smith, September 27, 2009, on the ruthless capitalist millionaire Michael Moore,
who attacks capitalism
while becoming rich out of it
and proposing no alternative.
Smith:
"But I don't begrudge Moore his earnings. Being allowed to separate suckers from their money is one of the more entertaining privileges of capitalism."
Smith is amusing on how leftists like Moore never seem to propose
a better system than capitalism:
"David Denby defined "Snark" as, in part, a system that fails to make an affirmative argument. Snarkists are back-of-the-class spitballers who go silent when asked to teach the class themselves.
Moore .. cannot stand in the front of the room and define for us a new system of government to replace the one he finds so unbearable. ... If he shouted the name of the system he apparently worships .. he would be the mockee instead of the mocker. He'd have to play defense instead of merely being offensive.
As it is, Moore drops hints that communism is kinda groovy while solemnly presenting a clip of an angry victim of foreclosure who speaks of armed uprising against banks ...
The majority of the liberal audience, which hates the same things Moore hates ... feels so cozy in his company that they fail to ask themselves where Moore-ism leads."
"Fahrenheit" shown on TV in Cuba
- The communist tyranny of
Cuba
supports Moore.
No dissent (such as calls for democracy) is allowed to air in Cuba
- but the state promotes Fahrenheit 9/11.
Is Moore proud
that his film is so safe and acceptable to tyrannies all over the world?
Iran
Fahrenheit 9/11 Debuts in Tehran
- The Islamofascist tyranny of
Iran
supports Moore.
No dissent (such as calls for democracy) is allowed to air in Iran
- but the state promotes Fahrenheit 9/11.
An Iranian Moore, poking fun at the Iranian government, would of course be executed.
Some quotes from the Iranians watching the film:
"The authorities obviously gave the film the green light for political reasons, in that anything against the United States must be good"
"They are showing this film to erase from our minds the idea that America is the great saviour"
"out of all the films people would love to see, the authorities had to go for this one
- just because this film is in line with the view of the Islamic regime"
"It [the USA] sure is a great country, where someone like Moore trashes the president and gets away with it
- and makes so much money!"
Poles call 9/11 film "propaganda"
- Film critics in Poland liken Fahrenheit 9/11
to the totalitarian propaganda they grew up with.
Again,
people who have lived under totalitarian regimes
recognise totalitarian propaganda
and a totalitarian apologist
(consider the happy scenes in the film of Saddam's Iraq
before the war)
when they see it.
What's wrong with Fahrenheit 9/11?
by Joey Tartakovsky,
describes the happy scenes of Saddam's Iraq as
"surely one of the most disgraceful instances of cinematic propaganda
in the annals of American film".
The enemy narrator describes Michael Moore as
"one of my favourite guys",
and says of him:
"After all, there are honest and influential guys in America".
Is Moore proud?
These people incinerated three thousand civilians in the city where Michael Moore lives.
They are violent, uneducated religious maniacs fighting to enslave Iraq
under totalitarian rule.
Is Moore proud?
This propaganda video also vividly shows how the
anti-Vietnam War protesters
encouraged the West's enemies
- all the fascists, totalitarians and religious maniacs that the world has been
full of for 5,000 years.
Anyone who has ever supported the Iraqi "resistance", even on realpolitik grounds
(e.g. because they are constraining America),
cannot ever again be taken seriously as a moral thinker.
Dennis Prager interviews Howard Zinn
(and part 2).
Zinn is opposed to all war against tyranny,
including the liberation of Iraq,
the liberation of Afghanistan,
the liberation of South Korea,
and he even refuses to declare in favour of WW2.
"I think we have to find ways other than war to get rid of dictatorships and tyrannies."
As Prager says:
"I would love that. But this is where we often consider people on the Left, at best, to be naive."
Pilger
apparently described Castro's Cuba as
"a crucial model for challenging power".
Learning Lies,
John Pilger, 19 February, 2005,
sums up Pilger's alternative universe:
He
denies the basic fact that America protected the free world
from Soviet imperial expansionism during the Cold War.
He describes the long, hard,
American-led effort to save liberal civilization from communist tyranny
as
"modern history's imperial trail of blood of which Iraq is the latest".
What I don't understand is why he excludes the liberation of Europe in 1944 from this list.
Surely the
1944 invasion of Europe
is the defining example
of this modern American imperialism.
He denies that the
Vietnam War
was a struggle against democidal communist tyranny,
and instead claims that America
- rather than democidal communism
- was the real enemy of the Vietnamese people.
Well he must be happy then, since the communists won,
and took over the country for decades.
1.7 million people killed by the communists in democide in Vietnam alone,
and
no human rights,
even today.
Nothing like a happy ending, is there.
Pilger on Vietnam:
"The longest war this century was a war waged by America against Vietnam,
North and South. It was an attack on the people of Vietnam,
communist and non-communist, by American forces."
For oil, or rubber, or something, presumably.
Pilger laughably claims that Ho Chi Minh was not like other communist butchers.
Well if so, then
why didn't he set up a democracy
after 1946?
For 23 years, until his death in 1969, he ruled like a typical communist dictator,
showing no interest in setting up a free democracy.
Why was this?
Can Pilger explain?
Anyone who has ever supported the Iraqi "resistance", even on realpolitik grounds
(e.g. because they are constraining America),
cannot ever again be taken seriously as a moral thinker.
Criticism of John Pilger
for not treating Islamists as
moral agents,
who are responsible for their actions.
"So naturally, the bombs of 7/7 are Blair's. The Islamist terrorists who actually built and deployed them
were acting in a blameless way, with the inevitability of falling rain and lions pursuing prey.
You don't blame the rain for falling. You don't blame lions for killing gazelle.
And you don't blame Islamist terrorists for bombing London.
In this view, the terrorists aren't "wrong" per se. They're just reacting. The only way to get them to stop
is for us to change."
And the writer really nails it:
"To the degree that getting us to change policies is a goal of the terrorists,
then John Pilger's way of thinking is necessary for terrorism to work."
He describes it as hopeful that Hizbollah are fighting Israel:
"But there is hope. After all these years of terrorising an occupied people,
eventually driving them to the despair of having to commit their own atrocities,
the rogue regimes in Washington and Tel Aviv may,
... just may, have met their match."
He claims that Palestinians were driven to suicide bombing Jewish women and children
by oppression,
rather than by Islamist Jew-hatred.
His weasel words about Hizbollah deliberately targeting civilians,
as if this is some unfortunate collateral damage
rather than the intended target itself:
"The resistance to rapacious power, to epic crimes of invasion
... is humanity at its noblest; yet the paradox
warns us that no resistance is pretty;
that each adds its own form of violence in order to expel an invader
(such as the civilians killed by Hizbollah rockets)"
Hizbollah are
Jew-hating, Holocaust-denying,
fanatical religious reactionaries.
Anyone who supports them has no moral compass.
Now do you understand,
Jose Ramos Horta?
John Pilger only supported East Timor because Indonesia was
a western ally.
If Indonesia had been an enemy of the west,
he would never have supported you.
Now do you understand?
58,000 American soldiers died in Vietnam.
North Vietnam never fell. Rather, it won the war.
In the 2001 Afghan war, the Taliban regime
fell before a single US soldier
died from hostile fire.
Essentially all US deaths in Afghanistan have been caused by nation building,
not by the war itself.
Same in Iraq.
As at 2009, after 8 years of nation building,
750 American soldiers have died in Afghanistan.
Do you want the facts ... or Fisk's version?
by Eoghan Harris, November 25, 2001
- "Fisk has now been wrong about three wars in a row.
In the Gulf War he told us the Republican Guard would give the Americans a hard time: in fact, they folded.
In the Kosovo War he said American bombing would not work: today Slobodan Milosevic is on trial for war crimes.
And Fisk has been wrong about the Afghan War from first to last."
Anglo-American Lies Exposed
- whining wartime propaganda from
Robert Fisk, 24 March 2003.
He
laughs at the idea that the allies are winning the
Iraq war:
"So far, the Anglo-American armies are handing their propaganda to the Iraqis on a plate.
First, on Saturday, we were told ... that Umm Qasr, the tiny Iraqi seaport on the Gulf,
had "fallen".
...
Then we were told ... that Nassariyah had been captured.
Then its "embedded " correspondent informed us - and here my old journalistic suspicions were alerted - that it had been "secured".
...
All in all, then, this has not been a great weekend for Messers Bush and Blair.
...
One of our own Tornadoes is shot down by the Americans
...
and we haven't even totally captured the first town over the border from Kuwait.
...
this weekend, the quick and easy war, the conflict of "shock-and-awe"
...
doesn't seem so realistic. Things are going wrong. We are not telling the truth.
And the Iraqis are riding high on it all."
Fisk propaganda, 1 April 2003
laughs at the allied effort:
"Even the "siege of Baghdad" - a city that is 30 miles wide and might
need a quarter of a million men to surround it - is fading from the diary.
...
I have a suspicion that what's gone wrong has nothing to do with plans.
Indeed, I suspect there is no real overall plan."
Fisk propaganda, 2 April:
"Anyone who doubts that the Iraqi army is prepared to defend its capital should
take the highway south of Baghdad. How, I kept asking myself,
could the Americans batter their way through these defences?"
On 9 April,
Baghdad fell.
And yet still this ignorant man appears constantly on my radio set.
Doesn't it matter
that he was wrong?
Surely it counts for
something??
Eoghan Harris
coined the verb "to fisk" in 1999,
meaning to do what Fisk does
(sloppy, biased, one-sided argument;
hopelessly wrong predictions,
lack of embarrassment about said predictions, etc.).
Pryce-Jones talks of Fisk's
"hysteria and distortion"
in his reporting on the Middle East.
He describes Fisk as an enemy of the Iraqi people
posing as their champion:
"Perverting American purposes and
practices in Iraq, fisking helps to bring about the doom that it anticipates
with such glee and relish.
... The Iraqis are his real
victims."
This definition of "fisking" has not caught on, though.
The verb "to fisk" has been popularised by the blogosphere
to mean "to clinically dissect someone's shoddy argument piece by piece".
Robert Fisk is not a practitioner of "fisking".
Fisking is what is done to Robert Fisk.
Also here.
In 2001, Robert Fisk was attacked and beaten up by ignorant pro-jihad Afghans close to the Afghan-Pakistan border.
He responded with sympathy to his own assault!
My Beating is a Symbol of this Filthy War, Robert Fisk, 10 Dec 2001.
He is sympathetic to their attack on a filthy infidel.
"And even then, I understood. I couldn’t blame them for what they were doing. In fact, if I were the Afghan refugees of Kila Abdullah, close to the Afghan-Pakistan border, I would have done just the same to Robert Fisk. Or any other Westerner I could find."
"Many of these Afghans, so we were to learn, were outraged by what they had seen on television
...
A villager [said] they had seen the videotape of CIA officers “Mike” and “Dave” threatening death to a kneeling prisoner at Mazar."
They are outraged by rough words to a captured jihadist.
But they are not outraged by the Taliban's long oppression and butchery, or the 9/11 attacks.
And Fisk thinks these are reasonable people!
He had a glimpse of enlightenment, but he pulled back:
"Did I catch the word “kaffir” — infidel? Perhaps I was was wrong."
He sticks to his belief that they are motivated by geopolitics
rather than religion.
He says his attackers are not responsible for their actions:
"there were all the Afghan men and boys who had attacked me who should never have done so but whose brutality was entirely the product of others, of us — of we who had armed their struggle against the Russians and ignored their pain and laughed at their civil war".
Because Muslims would never be violent if left alone by the West.
Review
by Efraim Karsh
of Fisk's
The Great War for Civilisation.
Good stuff by Fisk:
Let's give credit where it is due.
Fisk has not made the mistake of
many leftists
of
supporting the vile
Iraqi resistance.
And my attention was drawn to this article:
Conspiracy of silence in the Arab world, 10 February 2007,
where he complains that Arabs do not protest Arab-on-Arab violence,
only violence by the West and Israel.
He complains at the silence of the Arab world about the Iraqi resistance
as it slaughters Muslims.
In among his usual attacks on the west and Israel, he has a good point:
"When the Hama massacre occurred, neighbouring Arab states were silent. ... Just as the imams and scholars of Islam were silent when the Algerians began to slaughter each other in a welter of head-chopping and security force executions in the 1990s.
Just as they are silent now over the mutual killings in Iraq.
...
where are the sheikhs of Al-Azhar and the great Arabian kingdoms when the Iraqi dead are fished out of the Tigris and cut down in their thousands in Baghdad, Kerbala, Baquba? They, too, are silent.
Not a word of criticism. Not a hint of concern.
...
But when does Arab blood become less sacred? Why, when it is shed by Arabs. It's not just a failure of self-criticism in the Arab world. In a landscape ruled by monsters whom we in the West have long supported, criticism of any kind is a dodgy undertaking. But can there not be one small sermon of reprobation for what Iraqi Muslims are doing to Iraqi Muslims?"
Good for him.
However, one could argue that Fisk's entire career is based on an excessive focus on violence
by westerners, instead of violence by non-westerners.
Some angry and demented
Galloway fans
on some pro-Galloway site
think I run the anti-Galloway YouTube channel.
Em, no.
I don't.
An introductory tour of George Galloway, Britain's greatest supporter of tyranny:
George Gallowaystill bemoans the end of the Soviet tyranny:
"If you are asking did I support the Soviet Union, yes I did. Yes, I did support the Soviet Union,
and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life."
Galloway
to the butcher Saddam Hussein in 1994:
"I thought the President would appreciate to know that even today, three years after the war,
I still meet families who are calling their newborn sons Saddam
... Sir, I salute your courage, your strength your indefatigability.
And I want you to know that we are with you until victory, until victory, until Jerusalem."
Galloway
to the butcher Uday Hussein in 1999:
"I'd like you to know that we are with you 'til the end"
On the Iraqi resistance:
"The Iraqi resistance isn't just defending Iraq. It is defending Syria, Lebanon and Iran
and all Arab states."
On Saddam Hussein:
"He is likely to have been the leader in history who came closest to creating a truly Iraqi national identity, and he developed Iraq and the living, health, social and education standards of his own people."
Galloway openly supports the brutal dictator
Castro:
"Fidel Castro is a hero."
He even openly supports Castro's denial of political freedoms:
"when the enemy is at the gates
.. you have to accept that there will be restrictions on political freedoms
in a place like Cuba."
He openly supports the Islamofascist resistance in Iraq:
"The Iraqis have a legal and moral right to resist violent, illegal, foreign occupation,
and that's what they're exercising."
He hopes that Iran
is safe from regime change:
"If I have to choose between the Mullocracy in Tehran
or a British and American invasion of Iran, I'll be with the Mullocracy.
.. if George Bush and Tony Blair invade Iran, I'll be with Iran."
And hear his unforgivable defence of a genocidal regime
that has killed 4 million people
and kills women and children in gas chambers:
"If it comes to invasion of North Korea,
I'll be with North Korea."
Galloway's fawning over the Syrian dictator Assad:
"Syria is lucky to have Bashar al-Assad as her President.""I want to help rally people to the side of Syria, to defend Syria."
Note that Syria has
no elections and
no human rights.
He claims Syria's occupation of Lebanon was legal.
He says in the interview that
"For me terrorism is harming innocent people for political purposes".
And then he denies that
Hamas
and Hizbollah
are terrorists.
Galloway worries that laws against incitement to terrorism will affect him:
"It is clearly a very substantial problem because it means if I make a speech, like last night,
in England in which I support the Iraqi resistance and the Palestinian resistance
.. I may be persecuted for my speech."
It is interesting how he openly supports
the Iraqi resistance
and the Palestinian resistance.
I myself am not sure
if incitement to terrorism should be illegal for
native-born citizens
(who cannot be deported).
If it is made illegal,
then it seems it certainly should include the leftist supporters of the jihad
like Galloway,
as well as the more traditional Islamic supporters of jihad.
Both are influential.
Both recruit for the enemy,
and encourage violent young men to go to war against the West.
I fail to see what line
Lord Haw-Haw crossed
that George Galloway has not also crossed.
George Galloway v. Christopher Hitchens,
debate at
CUNY,
Sept 2005,
moderated by a radical leftist
and streamed on a
radical leftist radio station.
The debate is also surrounded by crackpot left-wing commentary from
Stop the War Productions.
You have to wade through all of that (plus Galloway's rubbish)
to get to Hitchens.
Best line from Hitchens on Galloway:
"He turns up in Damascus! The man's search for a tyrannical fatherland never ends!
The Soviet Union's let him down.
Albania's gone.
The Red Army's out of Afghanistan and Czechoslovakia.
The hunt persists! Saddam has been overthrown. On to the next!"
Christopher Hitchens on Galloway:
"Thus ... the "anti-war" movement has as its new star a man who is openly pro-war,
but openly on the other side."
May 2006
- Galloway says it would be "justified" to murder Tony Blair
for liberating Iraq.
Question:
"Would the assassination of, say, Tony Blair by a suicide bomber
- if there were no other casualties - be justified as revenge for the war on Iraq?"
Galloway:
"Yes, it would be morally justified."
Supporting Hizbollah, 2006:
Anti-Israel march, July 2006
(see videos).
Galloway apparently says:
"What I am about to say is illegal in Britain.
...
I am here
to glorify the Lebanese resistance,
to glorify the leaders of the Lebanese resistance,
Hezbollah,
and I am here to glorify their leader, Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah.
...
I am saying this to these treacherous cowards - the regimes of the Arab states:
If all the Arab leaders were like Hassan Nasrallah,
Iraq would be free, Palestine would be free".
The crowd roar, and cry
Allahu Akbar.
Hizbollah is right to fight Zionist terror,
by George Galloway, puts it in print:
"The invasion of Lebanon by Israel .. is a monstrous injustice.
I side with the resistance to that injustice. Hizbollah is leading that resistance.
I do not hesitate to say ..
that I glorify that resistance.
I glorify the Hizbollah national resistance movement, and I glorify the leader of Hizbollah,
Sheikh Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah."
Note that Hezbollah
are religious nutcases.
They are anti-semitic terrorists who target Jewish civilians,
calling them a "cancer".
Hassan Nasrallah is a
Holocaust denier.
Galloway,
Aug 2006:
"I came here to extend my congratulations to the Lebanese people
on a great and historic victory against this aggression.
I want to congratulate the Lebanese resistance and their leading edge,
Hizbollah, whose martyrs and heroes have achieved this great victory.
And in particular to their leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah,
whose name now rings in joy around the world."
No mention of the Israeli civilians who have just been targeted
and killed (no accident) by his heroes Nasrallah and Hizbollah
-
44 men, women and children dead and 1,350 injured.
Is he congratulating Hizbollah on this?
If Galloway ever expresses any regret for the civilians targeted by Hizbollah,
tell me here.
Galloway openly supports Hizbollah, at the Al Quds Rally, London, Oct 2007:
He openly supports Castro.
He stands in front of a picture of Ayatollah Khomeini.
He supports Iran.
He attacks Arab democrats as traitors.
He rants on about casinos and bordellos
and damnation "for all eternity"
as if he has converted to Islam.
The crowd of deranged Islamic terror supporters are rather muted.
Maybe even they think he's nuts.
Galloway has to start a new pro-defeat, pro-enemy, pro-Islamist party,
"Respect Renewal".
Oh, it's so sad when
hate-filled, enemy-supporting tyranny-lovers
can't get along!
Harry's Place, November 18, 2007:
"The plain fact is that the attempt to hoist the yoke of the remnants of the nihilist Left to the Islamist plough - in this country at least - has ended in recrimination, long lasting bitterness, and irreconcilable division. Islamo-Leninism officially self-destructed yesterday.
...
Those of us who can't bring ourselves to attend demonstrations which cheer Hezbollah, refuse to support the cold blooded massacre of Iraqi men waiting in line for work, and reserve our right to protest against the stoning to death of women wherever it happens should take comfort from that fact and enjoy the rest of the weekend a little more than we might have done before hearing the good news."
He claims that Iran
"hasn't attacked another country for more than 300 years".
This rather
ignores the fact that Iran is
attacking Israel, the US and Britain
right now,
and has killed hundreds of allied troops and Israeli civilians
in the last few years.
George Galloway led this convoy of Islamism supporters.
Islamist extremist Yvonne Ridley
was also on this convoy.
Convoy pelted with stones in Egypt, Mar 2009.
"members of our convoy were attacked with stones.
Vandals also wrote dirty words and anti-Hamas slogans".
More here:
"the convoy has .. been attacked
by people purporting to be Fatah supporters."
On arrival in Gaza,
Galloway donates thousands of dollars to Hamas.
"We are giving you now 100 vehicles and all of their contents, and we make no apology for what I am about to say. We are giving them to the elected government of Palestine".
That is, Galloway is funding Hamas which is firing rockets at Israeli civilians.
Canada's Immigration Minister said:
"I believe that folks who are supporting or promoting and helping terrorist organizations are not needed to visit Canada".
One of his staff
said:
"We're going to uphold the law, not give special treatment to this infamous street-corner Cromwell who actually brags about giving 'financial support' to Hamas, a terrorist organisation banned in Canada.
I'm sure Mr. Galloway has a large Rolodex of friends in regimes elsewhere in the world willing to roll out the red carpet for him. Canada, however, won't be one of them."
The Immigration Minister's office also said:
"George Galloway is not getting a permit - end of story.
He defends the very terrorists trying to kill Canadian forces in Afghanistan."
Canadian Jewish organisation praises the decision:
"Those who support the pro-terrorist agenda of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, whose avowed aim is the destruction of the Jewish State, should not be given public platforms to spew their vile messaging."
Should Galloway be treated as (barely) legal extremist domestic dissent?
Or should he be treated as the enemy, like
Lord Haw-Haw
and Omar Bakri Muhammad?
I'm inclined to the latter.
Is George Galloway a Muslim?
He talks as if he has converted to (radical) Islam.
But perhaps he is just a radical leftist who
loves anyone who hates the West.
What would be terrific would be if Galloway, and everyone who thinks like him,
actually left the West and went to live in more suitable countries,
like Iran and Saudi Arabia.
For one thing, it might educate them.
Anyone who has ever supported the Iraqi "resistance", even on realpolitik grounds
(e.g. because they are constraining America),
cannot ever again be taken seriously as a moral thinker.
George Monbiot gets an inkling that everything he believes is wrong
- and then the darkness comes over once again
- "While I
was speaking, the words died in my mouth, as it
struck me with horrible clarity that as long as
incentives to cheat exist (and they always will)
none of our alternatives could be applied
universally without totalitarianism."
This may be news to Monbiot,
but some of us understood this before the age of 20.
But it's hopeful.
Maybe he'll get there some day.
What am I thinking!
Monbiot
doesn't even believe in prosperity.
"In this age of diamond saucepans, only a recession makes sense.
...
Economic growth is a political sedative, snuffing out protest as it drives inequality. It is time we gave it up.
...
If you are of a sensitive disposition, I advise you to turn the page now. I am about to break the last of the universal taboos. I hope that the recession now being forecast by some economists materialises."
Not really a taboo, George,
just a sign that someone is nuts.
And we are not shocked. We just conclude that you are a loony
who should not be listened to on economics (or anything, I guess).
George Monbiot wants to
arrest Blair
for liberating Iraq.
"We should tell the Israeli airlines EL Al that until they abide by the United Nations' decisions, no Israeli aircraft would be allowed to fly into any British airport. We should tell the British ambassador to withdraw from Israel, and the Israeli ambassador to withdraw from here."
He says nothing should be done:
"to assist the Israelis in their determination to destroy Hamas
... Hamas must be seen as the agent of the Palestinian people."
Great comment expresses
how I feel about people giving him respect just because he is old:
"No he's an old fool. He was once a young fool. But always a fool."
The liberal, left-wing Muslim
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
was rescued from the black racist Idi Amin
by the tolerant, anti-racist UK,
and given a wonderful, free, wealthy life that she could never have had in Uganda.
Sadly, she did not learn the correct lesson
- that we should broadly support countries like the UK, Israel and the US,
and spend all our time attacking people like Idi Amin.
"What incensed me was Alibhai-Brown's assertion that she knew what life was like in Baghdad, and that I was using 'emotional blackmail' by telling what I knew. She should be grateful that as an Asian immigrant she has a British passport and not an Iraqi one.
No human being on this Earth should have to witness what I have witnessed."
Alibhai-Brown should be grateful, that is the bottom line.
But gratitude is one of the hardest of all feelings to express.
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown provides a refreshing insight into the mind of the modern left.
She utters the thoughts that so many have but hide:
Apr 2004
- "I've been against the war and part of you begins to... you know, it's horrible how your mind works. You think 'Good!', you wake up thinking 'Good, there's all this mess'. And then you have to question your own self, saying what kind of a human being are you, that you want this mess?"
June 2004
- "I am ashamed to admit that there have been times when I wanted more chaos, more shocks, more disorder to teach our side a lesson. On Monday I found myself again hoping that this handover proves a failure because it has been orchestrated by the Americans."
Bless her honesty, at least.
She does recognise her darker impulses, and struggles against them.
But whatever happened to the left?
What happened to the left that is supposed to stand for democracy and human rights everywhere?
Why has it degenerated into this bitter anti-American cul-de-sac?
Why am I becoming allergic to the word "left",
even though my belief in democracy and human rights is as strong as ever?
I tend not to list actors and musicians
on this page,
or on my page on
the left's long history of praise for tyrants
and hostility to democracies.
Certainly, one could make a long list of stupid things said by
actors and musicians from the 1960s to today.
But what is the point?
Probably most people
think actors and musicians are fairly lightweight thinkers anyway,
not to be taken seriously.
Anyway, here's a few bits and pieces, but no exhaustive list.
Sean Penn on Cuba
absurdly
claims that:
"in a free and open election in Cuba today, the ruling Communist Party would win 80 percent of the electorate."
So why not hold an election then?
Cuba has not held an election since 1948.
Hollywood vs. Our Leaders
by Cindy Osborne
- lists the education records of members of the Bush administration,
and the education records of some of the Hollywood "anti-war" left.
"Does Sean Penn fancy himself a Diplomat, in going to Iraq when we are just weeks
away from war? Does he believe that his High School Diploma gives him the knowledge (and the right) to go to a country that is
controlled by a maniacal dictator, and speak on behalf of the American people?"
Michael Moore,
Martin Sheen, Sean Penn,
Barbra Streisand, Jessica Lange, Alec Baldwin,
George Clooney, Matt Damon
- not one of them
has even a basic undergraduate degree.
Just high school.
Whereas Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rice
- all have postgraduate degrees.
Rice has a PhD, as do I.
Of course we could still be wrong, and the
uneducated celebrities
could be right.
But you'd think they'd be cautious about calling the Bush administration
"idiots" and "morons".
The failure of cinema
- Years after 9/11,
Hollywood is still incapable of saying anything about the war.
Not In Our Name:
A Statement of Conscience
- American writers, actors and academics
(including Noam Chomsky, Edward Said and Howard Zinn)
sign a statement against war
to liberate Iraq, June 2002.
The brave Iraqi blogger
and democracy pioneer
"Iraq the Model"
does a magnificent fisking of this
after the liberation
he is so grateful for:
We say Don't free them, NOT IN OUR NAME.
We extend a hand to those around the world suffering from these policies;
we will show our solidarity in word and deed,
but excuse us if we can't come closer to you because frankly, WE DON'T GIVE A SHIT.
Instead, let the world hear our pledge: we will resist the machinery of war
.. and rally others to do everything possible to stop it
and we will offer no alternatives, as it's not our business!
Join your voices to ours and let's DO NOTHING.
"Last year, I went to Iraq. Before Team America showed up, it was a happy place.
They had flowery meadows and rainbow skies and,
and rivers made of chocolate where the children danced and laughed
and played with gumdrop smiles."
- Sean Penn's character in
Team America: World Police
captures perfectly the ignorant world of the
"anti-war"
protester.
Much-loved Hollywood actors
People like Matt Damon, George Clooney, John Cusack, Sean Penn and Oliver Stone are well known for radical leftism.
You know what you're getting with them.
But then there are much-loved actors like Tom Hanks
and Morgan Freeman.
For years they seemed perfectly reasonable.
And then they come out with some stuff that makes you realise what is going on inside their heads.
I like Tom Hanks, but then you are forced to recall he's an actor, not a thinker.
This is incredible:
As if that wasn't bad enough, he then idiotically says:
"Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what's going on today?"
John Nolte replies with great restraint:
"to answer Hanks's question:
No - annihilating people who are different sounds NOTHING like what's going on today."
Hanks says it again:
"'The Pacific' now is coming out, where
it represents a war that was of racism and terror,
and where it seemed as though the only way to complete one of these battles
in these small specks of rock in the middle of nowhere
was to, I'm sorry, kill them all.
And does that sound familiar to what we might be going through today?"
Um, no, it doesn't.
Hanks says it again, March 14, 2010:
"It was fighting that was based on racism, and a war waged through terror. Horrible things were done on both sides to human beings both dead and alive. It was a case of 'We hate these people' - not 'We're going to liberate this island'. ... It was like a large industrial version of what all future wars were going to be like - between different-coloured peoples with different theologies they thought were the absolute truth."
What an idiot.
Morgan Freeman, Sept 2011, is shocked that Republicans want a Democrat President to only serve one term. He says it must be racist!
What the hell does he expect? That the Republicans will support a Democrat to be re-elected?
Saying the Tea Party is "racist" is pathetic and boring.
23 percent of tea partiers are non-white Anglos.
(Whereas 25 percent of Americans are non-white Anglos.)
When asked to explain exactly what is wrong with the Tea Party, he is completely incoherent:
"It just shows the weak, dark, underside of America. We're supposed to be better than that. We really are. That's why all those people were in tears when Obama was elected president."
What is he on about?
Is he drunk?
It turns out that the wise and noble Morgan Freeman - the voice of
Mandela
and the American President
and the noble prisoner
and God
and God -
is a political idiot.
See transcript.
In contrast to useful idiots like Sean Penn,
Jude Law
understands what this struggle is all about.
He visits Afghanistan and complains about the media's
reporting:
"It stuns me and appalls me that the media in the west only report bloodshed, murder, the violence.
Because I met people over there, reconstructing, with incredible pride and hope.
And little girls who had been shot at by Taliban going to school the next day because they wanted to, to be teachers and doctors.
That's really, really moving stuff and real stuff and that should be reported."
Good for him.
How unusual in Hollywood.
Gary Sinise
also understands the war.
He co-founded Operation Iraqi Children, which helps
the U.S. military distribute school supplies in Iraq.
He formed a band, the "Lt. Dan Band", to entertain the troops in Iraq.
He visits them, speaks to them, and tells them he supports their mission.
On a typical encounter in Iraq:
"It was hot, Iraq hot when we stopped at a check point
...
Gary began speaking with a soldier through the window and soon we were all standing outside so he could have his picture taken with him and a few of his buddies. Soon there were at least fifty guys around him and he greets each one as he always does.
...
As we are about to get into the vehicle we hear the guys yelling and in the distance is one more soldier. He is dressed in full battle-rattle humping as fast as he can in this unbearable heat to get to Gary before he leaves.
...
Gary without hesitation stopped and waited and he greeted this young man as if he was the first man in line, full of enthusiasm and appreciation.
When we did finally get into the vehicle I mentioned to Gary how I observe how he makes each and every man or woman feel special and appreciated, he paused in thought before answering, as he often does, and then says with a heavy heart, 'It's because we don't know what the next hour holds for them. As tired as I might get sometimes, and I do, it is nothing compared to what they go through day-after-day with the price they are so readily willing to pay.'"
Chomsky finds another foreign strongman to support, Aug 2009.
He visits thug
Hugo Chavez
in Venezuela.
Since 1995.
