“I’m not sure what is more sickeningly ironic to hear at a food summit – the thoughts of a brutal tyrant such as Robert Mugabe or a would-be genocidal murderer such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Tough call.”
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Samizdata quote of the dayJune 5th, 2008 |
 28 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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Weird. I mentioned the same two mentalists on my blog recently. Great minds and all that…
The whole thing is an incredible farce. It should be on in the West End and not Rome.
Now that’s difficult. Talk about being between two tyrants and two hard places! Painful.
“It should be on in the West End and not Rome.”
Yes and it would be a popular performance if they just do a re-enactment of that Wind in the Willows episode where the weasels take over Toad Hall. I think everyone would see the analogy there.
But seriously can anyone pin point exactly when it was that the UN (and all it’s off shoots) become more of a hindrance than a help?
Pollard is of course wrong to suggest that ‘Zionist’ and ‘Jew’ are synonyms. They aren’t, any more so than ‘Islamist’ and ‘Muslim’ are.
Patrick states that Pollard is “of course” wrong to conflate Jewry and Zionism; well, up to a point. The truth is that people like the Iran leader certainly do not accept that distinction, which is why when such folk damn Zionism, Jews feel threatened. Also, the creation of a Jewish state, with all its faults, was a direct result of the desire of Jews to be safe from the bigotry, mass murder and other horrors that they had endured. Israel is intertwined with the experience of Jewish people in Europe.
It may be strictly possible to be against Israel without being an anti-semite, but in practice, the two are so conflated that I usually dismiss people who want Israel to be erased as bigots of the worst kind.
I see you are a member of the new UK Libertarian Party.
Listening to Argentina’s presidenta Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, of course.
Argentina is a big producer of grain and beef, but the presidenta wants to pass on this oportunity to feed the world by imposing huge taxes to these traditional exports, making them a negative incentive for the farmers who went on a strike.
Atlas shrugged in argentina and many people around the world will not have enough to eat.
Pathetic.
Walter,
The whole conception is flawed, as is that other great post-war institution the NHS.
It’s flawed because it gives the same grand-standing rights to Yemen as it does to India.
One is an epic shit-hole and the other is a ramshackle democracy. I know which I’d rather visit.
It is flawed in principle. The real issues of the day should be dealt with when Dubya gets on the horn to Merkel or Brown or Hu. To pretend that some dive like Chad has any swing is absurd.
It’s just giving a platform for the likes of Mugabe and the Gnome of Tehran to spout bile. Christ the system allowed Col Gaddaffi (of the many spellings) to head up it’s “Human Rights” organisation. It is more fucked than Paris Hilton in that video.
OK, this might not have been obvious in 1946 but it was implicit in 1946. Paul Marks has frequently drawn our attention to the idea that bad ideas don’t always manifest themselves in their true awfulness immediately and he’s very right.
“Apples and Oranges,” is what the comparison of Ahmadinejad and Mugabe is like.
They are two totally different leaders, which two totally different concepts. Trying to discern the worst of the two is comparing two totally unlike things. Mugabe is a tyrant within his own country, while Ahmandinejad’s comments and purported beliefs influence events all over the world (especially Israel).
That is not to say that Mugabe’s attrocities are any less important, but that they should be assessed in a different context than Iran’s President.
Ah, so just as it is important to seperate Islamists from Muslims in order to deal more effectively and justly with the former, it is necessary to detach (bad) zionists from (good/neutral) Jews.*
Except that Zionism is not a threat or force for ill except in the minds of bigots and fools and that asking a Muslim to repudiate Islamism it to ask him to reject a genocidal ideology that seeks to end freedom for those it leaves alive and is the largest killer of Muslims today, wheras to ask a Jew to do the same with Zionism is to ask him to abandon a free democracy which is the only state that will ever, when push comes to shove, defend him at all costs.
You, sir, are a moral imbecile.
*I can’t see what other purpose the Islamist-Zionist comparison serves.
The difference is both cases (Zionist/Jew, Islamist/Muslim) is that each latter term designates the labelled in a religious manner only, whereas each former conflates that religion with political aims and aspirations.
I suppose I ought to say for any pedants out there that ‘Jew’ is actually not a religious label. However, and for the simple point that I was trying make, that really doesn’t change anything — it’s the addition of overtly political aims onto religion/race/whatever that is the key differentiator for each pair of terms.
How about people who could care less whether Isreal maintains it’s current government, but object to being forced at gunpoint to pay for it?
Welfare is destructive, for mice, or men, or nations.
The greatest ill is that WE the moralists of our times lack the pragmatic guts to go in and remove these motes.
And when it has been done – oh the hue and cry!
What is the wishful thinking that constrains the actions needed in Sudan, Somalia, Zimbawa, Iran?
And most of subsaharan Africa?
What ideals are being sacrificed to uphold what other “ideologies?”
The UN went wrong, I think from it’s birth. Roosevelt would have known he was dying when he resurrected the League of Nations as his legacy to us all, and I can’t help thinking that is why he did it- he wanted to be known as the Founding Father of the United Nations, outdoing Washington. He left in various undemocratic features, such as members being appointed by governments, and a Security council for a Cabinet.
I think we need something new. (3rd time lucky?)
Let’s have an Allied Nations! Nations must be functioning democracies with governments and parties changeable by regular elections of the adults of a nation. Also, all Allies vote for a national Rep and become part of a lower-house seat! All nations also have a share in an electoral commission to watch each others’ elections. Their armies can train together, and they automatically support each other if outsiders attack any one of them.
Anyone for the AN?
In most cases, people who get steamed up about Israel are not, in my experienced, upset because Israel receives any tax-funded monies from the West, but because it is Israel. For sure, I oppose coercively-funded foreign aid, not just because it is coercively collected, but because it can damage its recipients. There is a risk that Israel becomes so dependent on aid that it behaves in an infantile manner, or that it becomes deeply corrupt, etc.
Do not forget, however, that Israel is in many ways an economically successful nation in its own right – and that is what drives its opponents nuts. It shows up, by its own example, the chronic under-achievement of its Arab neighbours. Also, when the US military provide Israel with the latest state-of-the-art kit, it is not done for altruistic reasons of course, but to test out that kit.
Anyway, if Israel could not survive, but would be destroyed by its neighbours, if it received no aid, would that be a good thing? Should a country, even if it is entitled to its borders, be allowed to be destroyed by mightier, more aggressive, neighbours? “Might is right” is not, as far as I know, a principle of international jurisprudence.
Jonathan, an excellent comment – thanks.
“I’m not sure what is more sickeningly ironic to hear…”
-It is to hear how the EURABIANS (but also EUNUCHALIA’S new Labor Government) are trying to justyfy their repulsive cowardice and indifference to the suffering of the slaves of totalitarian regimes arround the world…
Ridiculous. You knew perfectly welll what you were doing with that analogy and there was no point in even making it otherwise. Really, you were writing to explain that Zionism is a political ideology wheras Judaism is not were you? Well, first, did you actually think anyone doesn’t know that and, secondly, why bring up that particular comparison? Why do so, moreover, in a thread on the subject of a man that everyone full well knows is dedicated to the physical annihilation of, at the very least, half the Jews on the planet?
The bigotry and ignorance of the average Libertarian is only matched by his slipperiness when challenged.
In any case, the aim of Zionism, self determination for the people of Israel in the land of Israel, is just and anyone who opposes it, anti-semitic or otherwise, can go jump in lake.
And, look, fuck, he’s the party leader. Back to UKIP I suppose.
Gabriel, well said. (After our initial comment thread combat, I felt I ought to say that). Bravo!
There are of course serious pre-conditions placed upon Israel with regards to where that ~3 Billion in aid can be spent. I dare say pretty much all of it goes back into the US arms industry and every US dollar spent on military aid to Israel is spent in the United States with US companies employing US workers.
Western Civilization and culture have commenced an acceleration of eastward movement.
The original foothold (principally commercial) in the Levant, in what is today Lebanon, was always precarious as the routes of commerce changed, and has now shifted south to what is today Isreal, with a productive and cultural base of its own. It is a “colony” of Western Civilization in that its structure reflects of the standards (norms) of human relationships (some of which the West derived from the Hebrew religion in the first instance).
The Iraq intrusion appears as a “leap-frog” in that eastward movement, which will likely result in the nullification of any Syrian resistance to the movement (due to prospective benefits to Syria’s elites of economic inclusion in Western-dominated commerce – observable from developments in Iraq).
As a Western colony, Isreal, geographically, and culturally, has become essential to the marches of our civilization. The costs of preserving that foothold are infinitesimal compared to the costs its loss would entail.
Internally, our own civilization is undergoing notable alterations with large scale movements of peoples, changes in technologies and their availability, etc. But, despite disruptions, the alterations have not been destructive of the material bases for social organization – at least so far.
RRS, once upon a time Alexander extended western civilization to India; not until the Sassanians can we say that Persia was defintiely excluded from it. More recently, almost the entirety of what is now called the middle east as well as North Africa was unambiguously part of western (or Greco-Roman-Christian) civilization, indeed it was the centre. Lebanon was no ‘outpost’ and only the most partisan exponents of Islamic history would ever suppose otherwise. What is now Turkey, for example, had a very large Christian population until very recently, the absolute dominance of Turkish-Muslim culture there being a late development. Meanwhile, the territories of the U.S. and Canda have only joined the West over the past few centuries.
Western culture has been marching westward a long, long time and, if evidence from the Balkans is anything to go by, it hasn’t stopped yet (not that I support Serbian ownership of Kosovo or Bosnia, if they wanted to keep them they should have had more babies, otherwise they can stop whining).
Anyway, all this high level Geo-Civilization-Politics seems a tad tedious to me and I don’t see what it has to do with a genocidal nut in Iran or the state of Israel, a good deal of which’s population is not western at all.
Gabriel,
I tried to make clear for these cases what “civilization”is; that is the norms of human interactions.
It is not simply a question of “religions,” as I believe any unbiased observer will accept. And yes, there were waves of movements from the same areas that are today the havens of Western Civilization. But, what I refer to is the current acceleration.
Whilst possibly tedious to consider, it would be short-sighted to ignore the larger framework of events.
Gabriel,
For vehemence, you get an A+.
And while Ahmadinejad might be “dedicated to the physical annihilation of, at the very least, half the Jews on the planet,” who cares? He does not even control Iran, an also-ran power with an anemic economy and for-shit armed forces. Even if he did run the show, what do you think he would do? Wouldn’t Israel just kick his ass?
All your denunciations and hodge podge effort to “define” the topic did not work. But I hope it made you feel better.
I can’t say I get any more steamed up about Israel than I do about other welfare queens — bankers who cannot evaluate risk, “industrialists” who do not produce, nations which are too stupid to know that socialism doesn’t work, or countries who cannot maintian their own military. But they belong on the same list.
The drug industry does it’s research at it’s own expense, paying people to test their products. There is no reason that the defense industry should not be free to research at it’s own expense.
As far as I know there are no principals involved in international “jurisprudance”.
That said, if the value of living on that piece of Real Estate does not exceed the cost of living on that piece of Real Estate, including defending it, to those people who live on that piece of Real Estate, but they expect to continue to do so at someone else’s expense, then they are no differant from any other set of welfare queens. They value what they’re doing, but not enough to pay for it themselves.
Let me ask a similar question:
If I moved to the moon, and managed to survive for a couple decades, should the world be obliged from then on to support me in the style to which I had become accustomed at their own expense?
This is similar to the questions I asked when governments were stealing my money and using it to pay people who avoided being killed by Katrina it return to New Orleans and give the next hurricaine a shot at them.
Or when people say “education has to be centralized because some rural communities aren’t big enough to support schools”.
But what makes you think that the US military and the defence contractors are not getting something valuable in return?
For sure, I oppose all state aid to other countries, but there are degrees of badness in all this. I’d rather back a state like Israel against its many foes than say, give aid to a country likely to be run by corrupt idiots and thugs.
Of course, I support the fact that Israel should defend itself without asking money from anyone else. But you are not really addressing my point: if a country is legitimate, if its borders are acquired justly – let’s leave aside whether Israel’s are or not – then that country is entitled to be be protected from attack. To say that if a country cannot, for whatever reason, fully defend itself, then it should be okay for us to watch it being obliterated, is, as I said, a case of accepting that physical brute strength trumps law. It is endorsing the monstrous idea that national borders ultimately depend upon violence.
To take a different analogy: if a person cannot defend himself because he is quite weak, does that mean it is okay for everyone else to stand aside and watch him get beaten up by a thug? The answer is obviously no. Because when these things happen, it diminishes us all, it diminishes the respect for the rule of law.
Israel is entitled to exist, it is entitled to do what is necessary to defend itself, including asking other nations for help if necessary.
Define what topic? Zionism was equated with Islaimism, I attempted to demonstrate that the equation was obscene and then attacked the leader of the UKLP’s leader’s pathetic attempt to back away from what he said. I don’t have a clue what you think you’re talking about.
You are aware that the issue at hand here is that of nuclear weapons, right?
And even if you were right, how does that change the point that it is wrong for him to be using a conference on a world food crisis as a platform to express his hatred for a people he wants to destroy?
Sadly it is not just the President of Iran who believes that it is his duty to spread violence and terror (NOT just exterminate Israel – but anywhere else if need be) in order to create the conditions where the “hidden Iman” will come forth on his white horse to rule the world.
[ Those who snear at Christians for believeing in the second arrival (or at Jews for believeing in the first arrival) forget that neither Christians or Jews believe it is a relgious duty to create a wave of violence and terror over the Earth (it may happen but it is not their job to CREATE it). The Iranian elite do believe it is a religious duty to create a wave of fire over the Earth]
The Supreme Leader and the Council of Guardians also believe in the same interpretation of twelver Shia Islam.
This makes them as dangerious as those who believe in O.B.L’s interpretation of Wahabbi Sunni Islam.
As for economic collectivism.
There are collectivist elements in Islam – but a lot of “Islamist” economic ideas actually come from Western thinkers (although they have forgotten that).