For many years The Guardian
has been
pro-gay, pro-atheist, pro-feminist, anti-neo-nazi,
anti-authoritarian, pro-sexual revolution, anti-censorship,
but also anti-American.
Now, however, America
is at war with Islamic religious maniacs who hate
gays, atheists, women, Jews,
liberal democracy, sex and free speech.
So
The Guardian is in a dilemma.
Can it put its anti-Americanism temporarily aside to unite against a common enemy?
Sadly, no.
Tragically, it
has made the error of siding with America's enemies,
even if they are fascists,
no matter what
the contradiction to its previous beliefs.
So much so that it even publishes these religious maniacs.
It is now the best paper if you want to read
right-wing religious conservatism.
How far it has fallen.
The Guardian,
the paper of reactionary religious conservatism
The Guardian,
the paper of reactionary religious fundamentalism,
is called
Al Guardian
by the right.
The Guardian regularly
publishes Islamic religious fanatics like
Faisal Bodi,
who argues that people in Islamic countries should not be free to
convert to Christianity and then proselytise.
About a convert threatened with death
he says:
"So long as his change of heart remains a private matter, he should be left alone".
This religious loony believes in an "afterlife",
which apparently takes place after death,
where we will apparently be judged by some "being" for having the wrong religious beliefs.
On the convert, he says:
"he will also bear the consequences of his defection in the life to come".
What a load of made-up nonsense.
He is a
self-described Islamist.
He believes
that laws should be based on some alleged supernatural book:
"All Muslims defer to the belief that in the shariah, the body of laws defining our faith,
we have a supreme and peremptory point of reference. For the purposes of policymaking, it is a sharp sword capable of cutting through the generational and cultural divide."
He says
about the scum fighting for the Taliban:
"should we see these men no differently to the brave idealists who made up the international brigades which fought Franco's fascists in Spain? Behind the demonised portrait of the Taliban and their allies lie some important principles they are fighting to protect."
This is all well and good.
If the Guardian
wants to publish religious fanatics, it's up to them.
I never read the paper anyway.
But
why, then, do they not publish Christian religious fanatics?
The Guardian regularly publishes reactionary religious fundamentalists:
On comment editor, Seumas Milne,
not providing full information about the writers and the
fascist agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood:
"It's not entirely obvious whether these omissions
are a result of Milne's ignorance, or of some deeper sympathy with delusional bigots.
Either way, I'm inclined to wonder if the Guardian would publish a regular series
of propaganda pieces by members of Stormfront or the BNP,
championing the benign ambitions of white supremacist groups,
without reference to the writers' membership of those groups
...
what is more troubling is that the mainstream organ of the British left
is giving a preferential platform to fascistic ideas,
shielded from any meaningful opposition or factual correction, at least in its print form."
Al Guardian sinks to a new low, Feb 2007,
publishing enemy leader
Khaled Mashal,
the butcher of
Hamas.
If you want to read genocidal Jew-exterminating, gay-hating, atheist-hating,
Hitler-worshipping,
women and children targeting,
medieval religious maniac,
neo-nazi right-wing fascist scum,
come to Al Guardian.
I can't believe I ever admired this newspaper.
A restrained comment is probably best:
"Dear Mr Mishal,
I don't believe a word you say.
You represent a terrorist organization that kills innocent people and treats the killers as heros.
You represent an organization that is dedicated to ethnic cleansing,
and seeks the destruction of a legitimate sovereign nation.
My contempt for you is exceeded only by my contempt for the newspaper
which sees fit to publish your lies."
Seumas Milne starts spewing anti-Americanism on 13 Sept 2001!
He can't even wait!
"Nearly two days after the horrific suicide attacks on civilian workers in New York and Washington, it has become painfully clear that most Americans simply don't get it",
says Milne, who does not get it.
"From the president to passersby on the streets, the message seems to be the same: this is an inexplicable assault on freedom and democracy, which must be answered with overwhelming force",
says Milne, proving that the passersby get it, and Milne doesn't.
"But any glimmer of recognition of why people might have been driven to carry out such atrocities, sacrificing their own lives in the process - or why the United States is hated with such bitterness ... seems almost entirely absent",
says Milne, who has never (then or now) shown any understanding of the belief system
that leads young, starry-eyed religious maniacs to carry out such acts
- the modern revolutionary ideology of Islamism.
Seumas Milne goes fully over to the dark side, July 2004
- "The resistance campaign is Iraq's real war of liberation
...
The resistance war can of course be cruel, but the innocent deaths it has been responsible for pale next to the toll inflicted by the occupiers.
...
Jack Straw said this week that the resistance was "opposed to a free Iraq"
- but its campaign is in fact Iraq's real war of liberation."
Seumas Milne tries to downplay the communist democide
(see here
or via here).
He refers to:
"a determined rewriting of history since the collapse of the Soviet Union
that has sought to portray 20th century communist leaders as monsters
equal to or surpassing Hitler in their depravity
- and communism and fascism as the two greatest evils of history's bloodiest era."
Um, yes.
What exactly is the problem?
He complains about
European imperialism
and colonisation.
This might be a major player in
19th century democide,
but it is not very important in
20th century democide.
Is there some reason why he doesn't like admitting that
communism is the greatest killer, not just in the 20th century,
but in the entire history of the world?
Open support for the fascist resistance in
the Guardian:
No one is taken in by the US lies
by the Syrian, Rana Kabbani,
who was educated at Cambridge.
Despite having had a
wonderful life
thanks to living in America and Britain,
she openly supports the fascist killers of brave American and British troops.
She claims that
"Iraqi women are being incarcerated and raped in US dungeons"
and says the fascists
"will never cease fighting till they are finally rid of their
unspeakable latter-day oppressors".
The true face of Iraqi resistance
by Sami Ramadani
- a refugee from Saddam, saved by Britain,
given a fantastic job
as a senior lecturer at a British university
and a great new life.
And how does he repay Britain?
By openly defending the "resistance" that is killing brave British troops in Iraq
- the very troops that have liberated his country from Saddam.
The struggle for sovereignty
by Karma Nabulsi
- refined intellectual support,
from a research fellow at Oxford,
for the vilest form of medieval Islamofascist barbarism.
She not only supports both Palestinian and Al-Qaida Islamofascism,
but in her dreamworld, they are democrats,
rather than what they say they are themselves
- haters of democracy
and believers in
Islamic law.
As a snapshot of the purest form of intellectual delusion
she is hard to beat:
"The young men who defended Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank and
Rafah refugee camp in Gaza, and who recently won back the Iraqi cities of
Falluja and Najaf from the occupying power, are not the terrorists - or the
enemies of democracy. They are our own past torchbearers, the founding
citizens of popular sovereignty and democratic practice, the very tradition
that freed Europe and that we honoured on D-day."
Shame on the Guardian
for publishing these fascist-lovers.
This is no different from publishing open support for the Nazis in
a British newspaper in the middle of World War Two.
Actually, maybe the Guardian did do that.
It has a long history
of supporting tyranny.
Betrayed by the left's callous indifference,
by Nick Cohen
- The left's shameful indifference to the brave
struggling liberals and democrats in Iraq.
- "Most of the world's liberal left looked at the conflict between men and
women who upheld their ideals, and the torturers and theocrats and
homophobes and misogynists, and made a gesture so shocking that a year
on, they cannot admit to themselves what they have done. They shrugged.
...
Liberal opinion has refused to take sides in a struggle between the
principles it professes to hold and a fascist insurgency.
It is indifferent."
Nick Cohen, Magill, Apr 2007,
on the left abandoning the Iraqi democrats,
and how many on the left don't really care
what happens to non-westerners in Vietnam and Iraq.
All they care about is that America loses.
The left
used to
bravely support Iraqi democrats against Saddam,
but then when Saddam became the West's big enemy:
"the Iraqis were just dropped.
I should have realised then that in that sort of style of left-wing politics,
they just pick people up in the third world and drop them
...
If the Palestinians were allied with the Americans,
they'd drop the Palestinians."
Steven Vincent:
"Words matter. Words convey moral clarity.
...
mainstream media sources like the New York Times often use the terms "insurgents"
or "guerillas" to describe the Sunni Triangle gunmen
...
But when the Times reports on similar groups of masked reactionary killers operating in Latin American countries,
they utilize the phrase "paramilitary death squads."
...
imagine if the media routinely called the Sunni Triangle gunmen
"right wing paramilitary death squads."
Not only would the description be more accurate, but it would offer the American public a clear idea of the enemy
in Iraq. And that, in turn, would bolster public attitudes toward the war."
Scott Burgess
asks a great question to all the lefties who seem to
want America to fail in Iraq:
".. critics of America .. need to look into their souls and ask themselves some hard questions.
Here's one to get you started:
Honestly - in your heart of hearts, and as a first reaction
- what would be your immediate emotional response to this headline?
A NEW ERA DAWNS IN IRAQ.
IRAQI INSURGENTS LAY DOWN ARMS, CALL FOR 'PEACEFUL, DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS' IN DECEMBER.
JOY SWEEPS THE COUNTRY; ELECTRICITY, OIL PRODUCTION BACK ON TRACK - FULL RESTORATION SOON.
JUBILANT POPULACE CHEERS TROOPS - BUSH, US 'VINDICATED'."
The Guardian is probably the most pro-jihad newspaper
in the English-speaking world.
It regularly publishes open support for the Iraq jihad.
Despite this, the Guardian's correspondent
in Baghdad,
Irishman
Rory Carroll,
was
kidnapped by Islamists in Iraq in 2005.
He was quickly released, presumably when they realised their mistake.
The event made me look at Carroll's journalism in Iraq.
I didn't like what I found.
First, need I say that I am delighted he was released.
I don't find it amusing and ironic that the Islamists
attacked the Guardian.
The thugs who kidnapped him are the enemy,
and I wish only for their defeat and destruction.
Criticising Carroll's journalism (as I am about to)
does not imply that I ever wish him to be harmed (or even censored).
Gunmen take over Ramadi as bomb kills five marines
Under US noses, brutal insurgents rule Sunni citadel
Iraq rebuilding under threat as US runs out of money
Iraq war is blamed for starvation
"I just want to survive and go home with all my body parts"
And so on, and on, and on.
Endless negativity about Iraq's future
and hostility to anybody who is trying to make Iraq a better place.
Think I am too hard?
Consider this:
Would an enemy newspaper, trying to demoralise our side,
look any different?
Enemy propaganda wouldn't print stories about "the glorious jihad",
since that wouldn't sell with us.
Instead they would print articles, well, pretty much like the ones above.
Still think I am too hard?
That he is only reporting the news?
Well, there's a lot of other dramatic stories going on in Iraq.
I can't see a single story highlighting, for example, the awesome bravery and heroism
of
the American soldiers
taking on the jihad.
Or, if that sounds too much like propaganda to him
(as if the articles above aren't propaganda!),
how about titles like:
Justice for the victims as dictator faces death penalty
Insurgents kill 10,000 civilians to try to stop democracy
Poll: 90 percent of Iraqis support U.S. against insurgents
After 2 years of fighting, insurgents still hold no territory
Insurgents being massacred as they lose popular support
Arab democracy survives under siege from insurgents
Islamists now bombing mosques
Genocide of Shia must wait, says al-Zawahiri
which is all simply factually true.
If he wrote articles like that, I don't think the Guardian would employ him for long.
Carroll's account of the kidnap:
"American helicopters buzzed overhead but however hard I visualised it,
no Rangers came shimmying down on ropes."
- Like a comfortable middle class kid abusing the police,
funny how he thinks he can abuse them as much as he likes
and they will still risk their very lives
coming to his rescue.
In short, Carroll sums up much of what is wrong with modern journalism,
in Ireland as well as in Britain.
And it is, I believe, a dangerous game that the defeatists are playing.
For they could succeed.
If the west does lose heart,
like in Vietnam,
and pulls out,
and leaves Iraq to war and democide,
it will be partly the fault
of negative, defeatist western journalists like Carroll.
They did it before in Vietnam.
And they might do it here too.
Delighted that he was released: Yes.
An admirer of his: No.
Here is Rory Carroll, back in action,
writing a puff piece
on the totalitarian executioner
Che Guevara,
September 4, 2007.
Looks like he has learnt nothing from his experiences.
A Dutch journalist for a left-wing anti-American magazine
is kidnapped and repeatedly raped by the Taliban,
and still can't bring herself to condemn them!
She is so brainwashed by her left-wing beliefs that she reacts to evil this way:
"They also respected me.
...
They are not monsters.
...
I did feel angry because of the rape .. what I tried to make clear was that the acts of the Taliban cannot be reduced to rape. ... In a war situation people seem only able to think in black and white. I wanted to refine the story. A person is not a monster because he calls himself Taliban."
Whether this is true or not,
it doesn't seem like anything Canada should be concerned with.
She supports the killing of Canadian troops.
Canada should ignore any and all messages about her.
In between the endless support for third world fascist thugs fighting
to enslave their own peoples,
it is hard to single out any one piece in The Guardian.
But here is one candidate.
Neil Clark hopes Iran is building nuclear weapons.
"The President of Iran has of course denied that his country has any plans to build a nuclear bomb and that his only interest is to develop nuclear energy. In the interests of peace, I do hope he's lying."
He is of the hard left.
He says here:
"I am a democratic socialist".
And here:
"I always remember my first visit to Belgrade, in the summer of 1998. As an unreconstructed socialist, completely out of step with the spirit of the age, I had spent most of the Nineties trying to escape, as best I could, to a place where it was still 1948. So imagine my delight when I arrived in Belgrade and found a city that seemed miraculously to have escaped all the horrors of global grunge."
Neil Clark calls for an alliance of the world's tyrannies, 16 Oct 2007.
He hopes that they can band together to protect themselves from the free world.
"The formation of a mutual defence pact between Russia, Iran, Syria, Venezuela and any other countries threatened by neocon aggression is urgently required.
The pact would stipulate that an attack on any of the states would be considered an attack on them all: and would be met with immediate military retalitation, as well as economic measures, such as the disruption of oil supplies."
What an idiot.
Does he not know that
tyrannies, like gangsters, make hopeless allies?
Does he not know that the Soviets and Nazis
made an alliance in 1939?
Does he not know how that turned out?
Before we see his article,
first we consider the brave Iraqi interpreters working for the allies in Iraq.
These true heroes of Iraq are risking their lives to bring democracy, human rights
and the rule of law to their country.
These real Arab heroes risk
a terrible death for them and their entire families, including their children,
if the forces of totalitarianism and religious fundamentalism win.
To any leftist, it is a no brainer:
These men and women are heroes - fighting for human rights
against people who do not believe in human rights.
They are the people in Iraq who share the western left's values.
They are the people in Iraq that the western left should stand beside unconditionally.
And yet, blinded by hatred,
many on the left don't see it that way.
Totten: "How did you feel when the U.S. invaded Iraq?"
Interpreter: "Happy. It was like I was living in a jail and somebody set me free. I don't want Saddam ruling me. Never.
I was just waiting and waiting for this moment."
Totten: "What do you think about the possibility of Americans leaving?"
Interpreter: "It is like bad dream. Very bad dream. A nightmare. Worse than that. Like sending me back to jail. Like they set me free for four years then sent me back to jail or gave me a death sentence."
Totten: "Why is Iraq such a mess? Is it the Americans' fault?"
Interpreter: "No. You can't blame it on the Americans. Iraqis are number one at fault for this mess. They are greedy and will do anything for money. They are like people who were in jail for 30 years, were suddenly set free, were given money, then had their money taken away. What will they do next? They will kill for money. They are selfish.
They got selfish from Saddam. Iraqi people used to be different."
Totten: "Is there a solution to the problem in this country?"
Interpreter: "... Ok, if you want a serious solution try this:
Charge money to the families of insurgents. Fine them huge amounts of money if anyone in their family is captured or killed and identified as an insurgent. Make them pay. You can put it into law. Within one week they won't do anything wrong because they want money. Their familes will make them stop.
The militias pay them 100 dollars to set up IEDs. Fine them thousands of dollars if they are caught and their families will make them stop. Give them that law. Go ahead. Try it."
Totten: "What will happen if the Americans leave next year?"
Interpreter: "Rivers of blood everywhere. Syria and Iran will take pieces of Iraq. Anti-American governments will laugh. You will be a joke of a country that no one will take seriously.
I will kill myself if it happens. I am completely serious. The militias will hunt down and kill me and my family."
Totten: "Anything you want to say that I didn't ask you about?"
Interpreter: "... I'll tell you what I tell my family. If I die here, wrap me in the American flag when you bury me. I don't want to be wrapped in the flag of Iraq."
As a comment above says:
"If we - U.S., U.K. - leave these people behind, we can forget about having allies in the future. And frankly, we don't deserve them."
And what of the Iraqi "resistance"?
What are they fighting for?
What are they like?
Let the interpreter above speak:
"60 guys from Al Qaeda kidnapped an interpreter's sister. She had a baby boy, 6 months old. They raped her, all 60 guys. Then they cut her to pieces and threw her in the river. They left the 6 month baby boy to sleep in her blood.
We found him on a big farm south of Baghdad. All that was left was his legs and his shoes. The dogs ate him.
...
These people are like animals who came from another planet."
Is this normal? Of course it is:
"Marines from Golf Company said they recently fished two bodies out of the local river:
a man had been decapitated, and his 4-year old tied to his leg
before both were thrown into the river and the little boy drowned.
The killings were a product of Al Qaeda terror."
-
Andrew Lubin report, Feb 2007.
Do you not know what the Iraqi "resistance" is like?
Can you not read?
Have you heard of the endless bombs of markets, weddings, funerals, churches and mosques?
The torture of civilians - including children - with power drills?
Do you not know what they do?
Read the following links, but you better have a strong stomach:
OK, are you ready now?
Now
I can present you with my candidate for the sickest thing
ever written in The Guardian.
(And what a contest that would be.)
Note that it seems this piece was only on their website, not in the paper:
Neil Clark, though British himself,
sneers at anyone who helps the British army,
describing them as "quislings" and collaborators,
and saying that we should not protect them from a horrible death
at the hands of Britain's enemies.
He then crosses the line to the dark side
with this outrageous statement:
"The interpreters did not work for "us", the British people, but for themselves - they are paid around £16 a day, an excellent wage in Iraq - and for an illegal occupying force. Let's not cast them as heroes. The true heroes in Iraq are those who have resisted the invasion of their country."
He claims, in his strange moral world,
that deposing dictators is a crime:
"all those who aided the occupation are
complicit in what the Nuremburg judgment laid down as "the supreme international crime": the launching of an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign state."
Maybe that's his moral world, but it's not mine.
I don't see how any leftist could call a breach of sovereignty
"the supreme international crime".
Not when compared to genocide and democide.
What is so holy about sovereignty?
Why should we worship sovereignty?
Surely human rights are far more important.
He claims that all invaders are always wrong, no matter who they depose:
"how would you view fellow Britons who worked for the forces of a foreign occupier, if Britain were ever invaded? History tells us that down through history, Quislings have - surprise, surprise - not been well received, and the Iraqi people's animosity towards those who collaborated with US and British forces is only to be expected."
The simple answer is that if Britain was a dictatorship, and was invaded by a democracy that
removed the dictator, then Britain should welcome the invaders with open arms.
Has Clark never even thought about this?
Does he think the French
would have been justified attacking invading American troops in 1944?
If not, why not, according to his bizarre moral universe?
Comment:
"Did it ever occur to you that poor, brown skinned people might actually be smart enough to support the idea of democracy and human rights, and believe that defending their democratically elected parliamentary government from the fascist, terrorist religious right of Islam might be a positive thing for the future of their society?"
No, it doesn't seem to have occurred to him.
He is clearly opposed to the British army
intervening to stop genocide in Sudan,
or indeed anywhere else:
"let's do all we can to keep the British army out of war zones. And in the meantime, let's do all we can to keep self-centred mercenaries who betrayed their fellow countrymen and women for financial gain out of Britain."
Incredibly, he claims that the Iraqi resistance want to free their country
(rather than enslave it):
"Iraq was illegally invaded and the Iraqi people have a right of self defence. If they're not allowed to take up arms to try and free their country what rights do the Iraqi people have?"
He rejoices in the fact that tens of thousands of Iraqis and allies have died
as the forces of totalitarianism fight to enslave Iraq:
"I am pleased that Britain and the US have had a major setback in Iraq, in the same way I'm pleased that the German invasion of the Soviet Union was defeated."
He claims to be "anti-war"
yet is almost gung-ho in support of violence:
"I do think that when a country is illegally invaded, its people have a right to resist. We quite rightly see the French resistance in world war two as heroes, yet when it comes to Iraqis - all action against the occupying forces is denounced as terrorism".
Here's a question for the war-loving Clark:
Why didn't the Iraqi resistance form political parties and stand
in the Iraqi election?
If people support them, they could win the election
and then ask America to leave.
Why didn't they try that?
Why do they turn immediately to roadside bombs
and mass killings in marketplaces,
without even attempting to get people to vote for them?
If you can understand why the jihadis go straight to violence
without even attempting civil disobedience, or trying to win elections,
then ... well, then you would actually understand the jihadi resistance.
On
Neil Clark's blog,
more of the same ranting WW2 analogies,
as if he would have been
the type of intellectual who would have supported the allied effort in WW2:
"The line "I was against the Iraq war, but now that it's started let's hope the illegal invaders win easily and no one fights back" is as absurd as saying '" don't really agree with the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union, but let's hope Hitler gets to Moscow before the winter and finishes the job quickly'. In the 1940s the Nazis HAD to be defeated."
So Britain and America have to be defeated in Iraq?
And that will be good for the Iraqis??
And will Clark be embarrassed if it turns out not to be good for the Iraqis?
By the way, saying
"Britain must be defeated"
would have got you jailed in WW2.
Does he
think that was wrong?
He again bangs on about the UN and state sovereignty as if we all should support them:
"It's called the UN Charter, Chris.
If we're going to argue about the legitimacy of the UN Charter, then we may just as well argue about the legitimacy of the law which makes burglary a criminal offence."
Such arrogance these lefties who believe in the UN and state sovereignty possess.
Like Nelson Mandela saying we should "obey" the UN.
How would Clark like it if I told him he should "obey" the US.
More from Neil Clark:
"all of us who abhor war and illegal attacks on sovereign states do indeed owe a great debt to those Iraqis who did resist the illegal invasion: they have done the world an enormous favour by derailing the neo-con war juggernaut."
How can he "abhor war" and not abhor what the Iraqi resistance do?
Why doesn't he urge a non-violent Iraqi resistance?
Why is he so happy with a violent one?
Maybe it's not war that he abhors,
but rather western power
and western victory.
What can you say
in response to such an article?
What can you say
in response to such hatred of decency
and such praise for evil?
All you can do is be amazed by the diversity of western intellectuals.
I mostly stick here to covering actual support for fascism by the Guardian.
Accounts of just left-wing, anti-US, anti-Israel, pro-Arab, pro-Islam spin
could go on forever.
That's what they do - just as the Telegraph spins things the other way.
Everybody spins.
He sneers at the idea that the New York bomber might be a fanatic Muslim:
"It may be that the Pakistan-based Taliban .. has quietly established a Connecticut franchise while we weren't looking. That's possible. But it seems far more likely to me that the perpetrator of the bungled Times Square bomb plot was either a lone wolf or a member of some squirrely branch of the Tea Party, anti-government far right. Which actually exists in Connecticut
...
Sensible analysts of the event point out, convincingly, that no branch of the Taliban, whether in Afghanistan or Pakistan, has demonstrated either the intention or the capability of striking in such as fashion.".
Unfortunately ... it was indeed a fanatic Muslim,
who lived in Connecticut,
and who was trained by the Pakistan Taliban.
Mehdi Hasan,
a senior politics editor at the New Statesman,
a devout Shia Muslim,
seems an uneasy fit with the left-wing atheists at the New Statesman.
Mehdi Hasan Exposed. Part I, 24 July 2009.
Hasan, who believes in a being called "Allah", throws out the following absurd insults
about atheists:
""The kaffar, the disbelievers, the atheists who remain deaf and stubborn to the teachings of Islam, the rational message of the Quran; they are described in the Quran as, quote, "a people of no intelligence", Allah describes them as; not of no morality, not as people of no belief - people of "no intelligence" - because they're incapable of the intellectual effort it requires to shake off those blind prejudices, to shake off those easy assumptions about this world, about the existence of God. In this respect, the Quran describes the atheists as "cattle", as cattle of those who grow the crops and do not stop and wonder about this world.""
This would be fine, if he then said the Quran was wrong.
But he does not.
He is a believer in the Quran, speaking to an audience of believers.
No disapproval of the Quran is ever implied.
The debate:
Is this so bad?
I myself claim that
belief is about lack of curiosity,
and I would stand by that.
Believers like Hasan, in my experience,
are not stupid, they are just incurious about
the multiverse theory,
the origin of life,
the rise of multi-cellular life,
the great mass extinctions,
the extinction of the dinosaurs,
human evolution,
how the brain works, the possibility of artificial intelligence,
the possibility of alien life,
and any other issues
that might cast light on whether gods or souls exist.
If Hasan spoke like me, and said non-Muslims were "incurious" about the obvious truth of Islam,
that would be a reasonable thing for a devout religious writer to say.
But it would still be shocking to find such a devout religious writer in a "left-wing" magazine.
But Hasan does not speak like me.
He goes way further, by describing people who don't believe in his made-up supernatural nonsense as of
"no intelligence" and like "cattle"
- which is pretty sinister given that for 1,400 years
atheists and apostates and freethinkers
have been demonised, persecuted and killed
by his religion.
In contrast to Christianity,
Islam is still killing atheists for their beliefs today.
Hasan doesn't support this, but surely he knows about it?
Surely he reads the news.
No one seems
able to construct any defence of Hasan other than
"what aboutery",
that is, that other religious people say stupid stuff too.
Yes, Hasan is not an Islamist (as can be seen by the rest of his speech),
just a narrow-minded religious Holy Joe.
Yes, it's no more extreme than many idiot Christians saying atheists are stupid.
There are
similar idiotic statements on the right,
even from people I otherwise like.
But it's still important to point out that Mehdi Hasan is an idiot,
as is anyone who agrees with him,
such as leftie Christian
James Macintyre,
who actually says:
"As a Christian believer myself, I agree with Mehdi Hasan in his comments you seek to sensationalize".
(In fact, Macintyre cannot agree with Hasan,
since Hasan's moronic insults apply to all non-Muslims,
including Christians.)
There are some great comments at Harry's Place, but perhaps the best is:
"How 'Googling' a person's name has changed the world - for the better."
Mehdi Hasan replies, 28 July 2009,
and simply defends the Koran.
He says it's all a style of speech, or something,
and no one should be offended by it.
He never explicitly deals with the question of whether the Koran is right
to say that atheists "do not stop and wonder about this world".
Mehdi Hasan on atheists (and all non-Muslims), February 2009.
See more disturbing videos
of this weirdo.
Guppy
explicitly opposes western democracy and the Enlightenment
(while defending a medieval Islamist state):
"The events in Iran of the past 30 years must be seen for what they really are, not a revolution at all, but a counter revolution; not a negation of a nation's grand past .. but an affirmation of it; a realisation that the experiment you call the Enlightenment, or secular liberalism, far from being the triumph of your comfortable certainties, has been the opposite - a bringing low of all that once made Europe great.
...
Meanwhile, the value of your cultural output is zero".
Guppy, like most "radicals" and
"revolutionaries", has contempt for the middle class:
Guppy was born into wealth and privilege.
He was educated at Eton, and Magdalen College, Oxford,
and was the best man at Earl Spencer's wedding.
And yet (or perhaps because of this) he
has contempt for the middle-class British.
He describes
free peoples as
"the mindless, McDonald's-munching slaves of Mammon".
Well at least they have a vote, and freedom of religion, unlike the Iranians!
He refers
to the system that
"enslaves your population through a culture of consumerism.
For McDonald's is the ultimate symbol of the bourgeois, corporate interests that hold the real reins of power in your countries.
...
The planet has been brought to its knees by bourgeois greed."
How most of the planet
(indeed most Iranians)
would love to be "enslaved" by consumer wealth!
As a reply says:
"It is very clear what this particular Old Etonian thinks of the lower orders who "munch" at McDonald's, rather than dine at the Bullingdon Club."
Incredibly, he describes the tyranny of Iran thus:
"God willing, she can then become .. a "core state" around which other nations that cherish freedom can coalesce. As one of the few countries that has consistently dared to stand up to Mammon, she must be a bastion in the coming clash .. between civilisation on the one hand and the barbarism that is now synonymous with secular liberalism".
Amusingly, instead of living in Iran,
Guppy of course lives in a secular liberal democracy - South Africa.
Like anybody
praising a country they do not have to live in,
he says he is "a regular visitor" to Iran.
Nice to know he's not concerned enough about the planet being
"brought to its knees by bourgeois greed"
to stop flying.
The Independent to shut down?
The 2nd biggest shareholder Denis O'Brien said in Sept 2009:
"There's no point in us as a company subsidising a newspaper
that really nobody wants to read in the United Kingdom."
I stopped buying it after 11 Sept 2001, but this is still a bit sad.
"Orwell's Newspaper"
- Charles Johnson (when he was good) on
Robert Fisk's newspaper
The Independent, June 28, 2006.
The Israelis, who only want (and only ever wanted!)
to live in peace side by side with the Arabs,
are represented as the camp of "War".
Hamas, who want to war without end
until they have exterminated or expelled every Jew from Israel,
are represented as the camp of "Peace".
"Imagine, if you will, someone who read only "Reader's Digest" between 1950 and 1970, and someone in the same period who read only "The Nation" or "The New Statesman". Which reader would have been better informed about the realities of Communism? The answer, I think, should give us pause. Can it be that our enemies were right?"
- A 1982 confession of doubt from
Susan Sontag.
Quoted here.
The same could be said about the Guardian.
Yes, it is high-brow.
But who, after all these years,
and all those sophisticated whitewashes,
understands Islamism and jihadism better?
The simple Daily Mail reader,
or the "nuanced" and morally-ambiguous Guardian reader?
The Independent to shut down?
The 2nd biggest shareholder Denis O'Brien said in Sept 2009:
"There's no point in us as a company subsidising a newspaper
that really nobody wants to read in the United Kingdom."
Since 1995.
