More On The Salman Rushdie Attack: Speech, Violence & Revolutionary Regimes-The Motive Is Remarkably Clear

August 13, 2022August 13, 2022 / chr1 / Leave a comment

Sadly, I don’t trust mainstream outlets, nor their major driver of traffic, and business partner (Google), to report the facts. Of course, I can’t trust them to report the facts without accepting constraints I simply will not accept in defense of speech and Western Civilization, having been captured by activist/radical discontents (I don’t allow my baseline to be driven by those in the West who conditionally support speech, driving American idealism towards the regime in Tehran).

This means all of us, in defense of our own speech, and criticism of authority (think long and hard about this), will presumably find conditional support from similar outlets here at home. This does not bode well.

From The NY Post:

This is a novelist!

“I was completely shocked. I was probably 60 feet away from the incident. I saw the attacker jump onto the stage and immediately run to Mr. Rushdie and he started pummeling him is the best way to describe it. Hitting him very rapidly. I could not tell he had a knife,” Davies, a Brooklyn-based urban planner, told The Post.

Rushdie has potentially suffered serious injuries (eye, liver etc.)

‘Rushdie has spent decades looking over his shoulder after Iran’s revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a call for his death after the publication of his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses. The suspect, Hadi Matar, 24, of New Jersey, is said to be sympathetic to the Iranian regime.‘

As previously posted:

From The Independent- Ah, those tolerant mullahs:

‘Ayatollah Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in 2005 the order still stands.

The new bounty is the largest organised effort to assassinate Rushdie since the fatwa was issued.’

As previously posted. Salman Rushdie went into hiding for years for expressing his views in works of fiction (the kind which might well benefit parts of the Muslim world (and Iran) in evaluating just how it deals with the West, and the ‘modern world’:

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The mullahs with their moral absolutes and thuggish political opportunism aside, there are some in the West who won’t stand-up to such thuggishness.

Or, at least, they certainly didn’t in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo murders:

‘The decision by PEN American Center to give its annual Freedom of Expression Courage award to the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo has prompted six writers to withdraw as literary hosts at the group’s annual gala on May 5, adding a new twist to the continuing debate over the publication’s status as a martyr for free speech.

The novelists Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner and Taiye Selasi have withdrawn from the gala, at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan.’

The reasons? Here are a few:

‘In an email to PEN’s leadership on Friday, Ms. Kushner said she was withdrawing out of discomfort with what she called the magazine’s “cultural intolerance” and promotion of “a kind of forced secular view,”’

Rushdie on such cowardice:

“If PEN as a free speech organization can’t defend and celebrate people who have been murdered for drawing pictures, then frankly the organization is not worth the name,” Mr. Rushdie said. “What I would say to both Peter and Michael and the others is, I hope nobody ever comes after them.”

In their exercise of freedom, let such writers be one day judged by the truth they’ve expressed here.

No doubt, though, new levels of cosmic conscientious-objective-consciousness have been reached.

—————————————–

.As previously posted:

How do you marry liberal idealism with the radical roots? Shotgun-style.

Our institutions, bending to liberal ideals, will also involve a bending towards the radical base, which is not necessarily liberal.

Michael Moynihan at the Daily Beast ‘‘Whitewashing The Black Panthers’

When his captors uncinched the noose around his neck and shoved him into a wooden chair, Alex Rackley might have assumed his ordeal was over. He had already endured a flurry of kicks and punches, the repeated crack of a wooden truncheon, ritual humiliation, and a mock lynching. But it wasn’t over. It was about to get much, much worse.’

That party at Lenny’s is still pretty awkward, at least the way Tom Wolfe tells it:

‘. . and now, in the season of Radical Chic, the Black Panthers. That huge Panther there, the one Felicia is smiling her tango smile at, is Robert Bay, who just 41 hours ago was arrested in an altercation with the police, supposedly over a .38-caliber revolver that someone had, in a parked car in Queens at Northern Boulevard and 104th Street or some such unbelievable place, and taken to jail on a most unusual charge called “criminal facilitation.” And now he is out on bail and walking into Leonard and Felicia Bernstein’s 13-room penthouse duplex on Park Avenue. Harassment & Hassles, Guns & Pigs, Jail & Bail—they’re real, these Black Panthers. The very idea of them, these real revolutionaries, who actually put their lives on the line, runs through Lenny’s duplex like a rogue hormone.’

A British Muslim tells his story, suggesting that classical liberalism wouldn’t be a bad idea…as a more entrenched radical British Left and Muslim immigration don’t mix too well: From Kenanmalik.com: ‘Introduction: How Salman Rushdie Changed My Life’… Via YouTube: ‘Christopher Hitchens Vs. Ahmed Younis On CNN (2005)’…

Free speech (used both well and unwell) meets offended Muslims: ‘Mohammad Cartoonist Lars Vilks Headbutted‘During Lecture’……From The OC Jewish Experience: ‘UC Irvine Muslim Student Union Suspended’…From Volokh: ‘”South Park” Creators Warned (Threatened) Over Mohammed’

—

From Spiked: ‘Islamism & Identity Politics-A Destructive Mix’

‘Advocating voluntary restraint of speech (on grounds of common civility, community harmony or fear of violence) ultimately establishes a climate of silence in which any criticism of Islam can be dismissed as provocation – as racism qua Islamophobia, a label that is used to discredit critics.‘

=============

Kenan Malik review here.

Malik takes issue with some of the British left’s handling of the Salman Rushdie (wikipedia) affair:

“It has now become widely accepted that we live in a multicultural world, and that in such a world it is important not to cause offence to other peoples and cultures.”

=============

From this piece ‘Moderate Muslims Must Oppose Islamism‘ at the National Review published in the wake of the Marathon bombing:

‘Though these two brothers may have acted like regular American youth to unsuspecting neighbors, participating in sports, attending public schools, and hailing from neighborhoods in the Boston community, at some point they were taken in by the ideology of political Islam, which, like an intoxicating drug, lured them down the path of separatist Islamism and its common endpoint of militant jihadism against both non-Islamist Muslims and non-Muslim societies’

=============

See Also On This Site: Via Youtube: ‘Roger Scruton On Islam And The West’

.From The Middle East Quarterly Via A & L Daily: Europe’s Shifting Immigration Dynamic

Related On This Site: A British neo-conservative type?: Islamism, Immigration & Multiculturalism-Melanie Phillips Via Youtube

It’s the fierce critic of religion, new Atheist, and 68er Christopher Hitchens who has defended free speech most vigorously: Repost-From Beautiful Horizons: ‘Christopher Hitchens and Tariq Ramadan at the 92nd Street Y’

Free speech (used both well and unwell) meets offended Muslims: ‘Mohammad Cartoonist Lars Vilks Headbutted‘During Lecture’……From The OC Jewish Experience: ‘UC Irvine Muslim Student Union Suspended’…From Volokh: ‘”South Park” Creators Warned (Threatened) Over Mohammed’

Najat Fawzy Alsaeid At The Center For Islamic Pluralism: ‘The War Of Ideologies In The Arab World’…

More On Lars Hedegaard Via the NY Times: Is Europe Waking Up?

———–

Theodore Dalrymple At The City Journal: ‘What The New Atheists Don’t See’…Theodore Dalrymple Still Attacking Multi-Culturalism In Britain…From The WSJ Weekend Journal-Theodore Dalrymple: “Man Vs. Mutt”

How do you reasonably deal with relativism anyways?: From Virtual Philosophy: A Brief Interview With Simon Blackburn

Universal Enlightenment Truths & Politics In The Academy-Two Links

June 10, 2022 / chr1 / Leave a comment

Theodore Dalrymple at the Library of Law & Liberty: ‘The Impotence Of The Kantian Republic.’

Many proposed Enlightenment universal truths, truths used to make moral claims, and truths often used to guide modern institutions and political movements (and a lot secular global humanism besides) come into conflict with local, religious, traditional, patriotic and national truths, a conflict which can be witnessed in much current political debate here in America.

I think Dalrymple is leveraging such a gap to highlight the downside realities of Muslim immigration to Europe:

‘When I learned of the provenance of the Manchester bomber, namely that he was the son of Libyan refugees, I asked myself a question that is now almost disallowable, even in the privacy of one’s own mind: whether any authority, in granting them asylum in Britain, asked whether it was in the national interest to do so. In all probability, the answer is no. The officials concerned probably thought only that they were applying a universal rule, or pseudo-universal rule, that in the name of humanity all political refugees (as Salman Abedi’s parents were) have an automatic right of asylum. And if they, the officials, were to be criticised, they would no doubt reply that there were a thousand, or five thousand, refugees for every suicide bomber, and that therefore the admission of Salman Abedi’s parents was a risk that had, on humanitarian grounds, to be taken.’

Via Heterodox Academy (& Jonathan Haidt)-‘On The Intrusion Of National Politics In College Classrooms:

A student suggests (with the necessary caveat of having the proper politics) that point of entry to Shakespeare really shouldn’t be solidarity around current political ideals, especially solidarity as advocated by professors:

‘Students I spoke with after class appreciated the “relevance” of the lecture, noting how the election had revitalized the otherwise inaccessible works of Shakespeare. It’s been over 7 months since Trump was elected, yet my professors show no signs of putting their political digressions on hold. The spread of this phenomenon to subjects like Literature and English reflects a troubling trend: the growing partisanship of higher education.’

It’s hard to see how playing fast and loose with much of the humanities curriculum these past generations, while simultaneously inviting much political idealism, activism and radicalism to settle into academies won’t also invite a subsequent political response by those who don’t share in the ideals (if it’s got ‘studies’ after it…).

If you’re going to gather around political ideals, don’t be surprised when you’ve carved up the world into a series of political fiefdoms.

If it’s any consolation-I discovered similar trends occurring about twenty years ago: The vague notion there had actually been, and should be, a canon, along with much overt and covert political idealism uniting people in the academy.

But, I also found a lot to absorb, experience and hold dear.

It can be a bitter pill to swallow realizing how much shallowness, group-think and moral cowardice there is in a place dedicated to the pursuit of truth and wisdom, especially regarding radical ideologies, but that’s not all there is.

Try and leave things a little better than you found them.

There’s a lot to learn.

Heather McDonald At The WSJ: ‘ The Humanities Have Forgotten Their Humanity’

Repost-From Scientific Blogging: ‘The Humanities Are In Crisis-Science Is Not’…Which Way The Humanities? Five Links & Quotes Gathered Over The Years, Culture Wars Included

Sunday Quotation: From Jonathan Bennett On Kant…Via Youtube: (1 of 3) Kant, Chomsky and the Problem of Knowledge…From Bryan Magee’s Talking Philosophy On Youtube: Geoffrey Warnock On Kant

Via UnHerd, A Discussion With Eric Zemmour-Plus Ca Change…

December 6, 2021 / chr1 / Leave a comment

Via UnHerd, Freddie Sayers discusses immigration with Eric Zemmour, French right historian and politician on Islam, Immigration and French politics.

One has to disregard pretty much any mainstream outlet to discover information these days.

‘I guess I’m left with an anxious feeling…’

Well, watching the current tides in the West leaves me anxious as well.

—

As posted:

Christopher Caldwell filters conceptions of how a society should [be] through a Burkean lens.-‘Reflections On The Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam & The West‘

From the Mark Steyn show:

—

Theodore Dalrymple on Michel Houellebecq here:

‘Hou[e]llebecq has been accused of being a nihilist and cynic, but far from that, his work is an extended protest against nihilism and cynicism. It is true that he offers no solution to the problem, but it is not the purpose of novels, but rather of tracts, to offer solutions to such problems. For him to tell his readers to take up basket-weaving or some such as the answer to existential emptiness would in fact be an instance of that very existential emptiness.’

Here’s a brief Houellebecq interview on Tocqueville (I too was bored when I first read Tocqueville, but I hadn’t realized how deep and accurate so many of his observations were):

As previously posted:

Interview sent in by a reader with Houellebecq on his ‘Soumission,’ which, in his fictional world, imagined a soon-to-be Muslim candidate defeating a French nationalist candidate, followed by an ultimate submission of French society to Islamic law and political leadership.

Interesting discussion at the link (including a deflation of (R)acism as critical theory).

‘But now you’re asking words to mean something they don’t. Racism is simply when you don’t like somebody because he belongs to another race, because he hasn’t got the same color skin that you do, or the same features, et cetera. You can’t stretch the word to give it some higher meaning.’

On some of Houellebecq’s thinking behind the creative work:

‘Yes. It has to happen sometime and it might as well be now. In this sense, too, I am a Comtean. We are in what he calls the metaphysical stage, which began in the Middle Ages and whose whole point was to destroy the phase that preceded it. In itself, it can produce nothing, just emptiness and unhappiness. So yes, I am hostile to Enlightenment philosophy, I need to make that perfectly clear. ‘

Whoa, at least he’s relatively up front about that.

Isn’t it possible to reject Houellebecq’s modernity-is-dead worldview AND also put the universal claims of progressive, collectivist, ideological, postmodern, multicultural feminist discontents into their proper perspective? Perhaps without suggesting the end of the modern world and some presumed next stage to be reached?

And as for discussions of art: Is the book worth a read?

From the comments:

‘Those of you regarding e.g. feminism as somehow an antidote to the patriarchal impulses in enlightenment thinking or Islam, or in broader terms postmodern political and social movements as offering a ‘third way’, something totally new and immune from this dynamic of competitive decay and decline, forget the fact that these movements are themselves the most recent outgrowths of the emancipative instinct, one of the core features deeply rooted in Western thought ever since the renaissance, as Barzun described. As an Asian living in the West myself, I have to tell you that this instinct is simply not present as a core element in other civilisations, and is indeed distinctive about the West. That Japan and Korea, and for that matter every non-western nation, modernised without a countercultural ‘values’ rebellion is indicative in this regard. The west is going to be without allies as it goes with a whimper.
Under such a depressing worldview, hope is provided for by religion and mysticism, a return to medievalism. It is sad, because the West will truly die as it numbs its own most deeply embedded instincts in the process of conversion, but the mysticism is a form of hope for the masses, who never particularly cared for high ideals anyway.
Houellebecq seems to channel Spengler, who hardly anybody reads nowadays. But that such an interesting thinker is hardly glanced at today is an indictment of us, not of him.’

Also, from the comments. Hubristic, but there’s something to deflated nihilism:

‘This is why I love French writers and thinkers. Fascinating to read even if they are always wrong.’

As much as I’m hoping for a break-up of Islamist ideology, I suppose I’m hoping for some light into these dark, post-Enlightenment corners as well. Something other than the existential void and the ideas and ideologies which so often rush in.

I have to give Hollebecq credit, too, for as he points out, the major religions have been dealing with questions of purpose, suffering, telos, why, what, when, and the stuff human nature for a lot longer time.

Denis Dutton suggested art could head towards Darwin (and may offer new direction from the troubles of the modern art aimlessness and shallow depth…the money and the fame) Review of Denis Dutton’s ‘The Art Instinct’

Roger Sandall, Australian critic of romantic primitivism and the Western’s Left’s penchant for the Noble Savage: His home page where his essays can be found. Here’s “The Rise Of The Anthropologues“

Robert Hughes, Australian and often fierce critic of modernism and post-modernism.

***I should add that Werner Herzog’s ‘Into The Abyss‘ was worth my time. Herzog is probably not a proponent of the death penalty, but I thought he left me to decide what I thought, and he didn’t flinch from the crime, the tragedy and the loss.

From Edward Feser: ‘Nagel And His Critics Part IV’…A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts Of Liberty”…

John Gray Reviews Jonathan Haidt’s New Book At The New Republic: ‘The Knowns And The Unknowns’

Update And Repost- From YouTube: Leo Strauss On The Meno-More On The Fact/Value Distinction?’

Sunday Quotation: Edmund Burke On The French Revolution

From Reason’s Hit And Run Blog: ‘It’s Everybody Bomb Anybody Who Draws Mohammed Day in France!’

Repost: Theodore Dalrymple At The New English Review-‘Houllebecq And Call’

January 4, 2021 / chr1 / Leave a comment

Theodore Dalrymple on Michel Houellebecq here:

‘Hou[e]llebecq has been accused of being a nihilist and cynic, but far from that, his work is an extended protest against nihilism and cynicism. It is true that he offers no solution to the problem, but it is not the purpose of novels, but rather of tracts, to offer solutions to such problems. For him to tell his readers to take up basket-weaving or some such as the answer to existential emptiness would in fact be an instance of that very existential emptiness.’

Here’s a brief Houellebecq interview on Tocqueville (I too was bored when I first read Tocqueville, but I hadn’t realized how deep and accurate so many of his observations were):

As previously posted:

Interesting discussion at the link (including a deflation of (R)acism as critical theory).

‘But now you’re asking words to mean something they don’t. Racism is simply when you don’t like somebody because he belongs to another race, because he hasn’t got the same color skin that you do, or the same features, et cetera. You can’t stretch the word to give it some higher meaning.’

On some of Houellebecq’s thinking behind the creative work:

‘Yes. It has to happen sometime and it might as well be now. In this sense, too, I am a Comtean. We are in what he calls the metaphysical stage, which began in the Middle Ages and whose whole point was to destroy the phase that preceded it. In itself, it can produce nothing, just emptiness and unhappiness. So yes, I am hostile to Enlightenment philosophy, I need to make that perfectly clear. ‘

Whoa, at least he’s relatively up front about that.

And as for discussions of art: Is the book worth a read?

From the comments:

‘Those of you regarding e.g. feminism as somehow an antidote to the patriarchal impulses in enlightenment thinking or Islam, or in broader terms postmodern political and social movements as offering a ‘third way’, something totally new and immune from this dynamic of competitive decay and decline, forget the fact that these movements are themselves the most recent outgrowths of the emancipative instinct, one of the core features deeply rooted in Western thought ever since the renaissance, as Barzun described. As an Asian living in the West myself, I have to tell you that this instinct is simply not present as a core element in other civilisations, and is indeed distinctive about the West. That Japan and Korea, and for that matter every non-western nation, modernised without a countercultural ‘values’ rebellion is indicative in this regard. The west is going to be without allies as it goes with a whimper.
Under such a depressing worldview, hope is provided for by religion and mysticism, a return to medievalism. It is sad, because the West will truly die as it numbs its own most deeply embedded instincts in the process of conversion, but the mysticism is a form of hope for the masses, who never particularly cared for high ideals anyway.
Houellebecq seems to channel Spengler, who hardly anybody reads nowadays. But that such an interesting thinker is hardly glanced at today is an indictment of us, not of him.’

Also, from the comments. Hubristic, but there’s something to deflated nihilism:

‘This is why I love French writers and thinkers. Fascinating to read even if they are always wrong.’

Robert Hughes, Australian and often fierce critic of modernism and post-modernism.

From Edward Feser: ‘Nagel And His Critics Part IV’…A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts Of Liberty”…

John Gray Reviews Jonathan Haidt’s New Book At The New Republic: ‘The Knowns And The Unknowns’

Update And Repost- From YouTube: Leo Strauss On The Meno-More On The Fact/Value Distinction?’

Sunday Quotation: Edmund Burke On The French Revolution

From Reason’s Hit And Run Blog: ‘It’s Everybody Bomb Anybody Who Draws Mohammed Day in France!’

Islamic Terrorism And A Few Thoughts On Twitter-Some Links

October 17, 2020October 17, 2020 / chr1 / Leave a comment

A teacher who showed his class cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed during a lesson on freedom was beheaded by an Islamist shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’. @EmmanuelMacron has again condemned Islamist extremism. https://t.co/pcHvScYBra
— Rita Panahi (@RitaPanahi) October 16, 2020

Because you didn’t ask, here are some links:

Orlando (Pulse Nightclub, 49 dead)

Yes, terrorism’s still a thing: 12 dead in Berlin after a truck drives through a mall

Via the AP via Reason: 13 dead and more than 50 injured as a truck plows through a crowd along Las Ramblas.

Attack In Nice Exposes Strains In Policing A Constant Threat (terrible headline). Yeah, it probably wasn’t just a ‘lone wolf.‘ Like Bataclan. Like Orlando. Like San Bernadino. Like….

Is Islam incompatibile with freedom as we define it here in the West, or is this a false choice?: From YouTube: Roger Scruton On Religious Freedom, Islam & Atheism…

Michael Moynihan jihad.com.

Lawrence Wright discussed his long years reporting on Islamic terrorism (he spent some time in Egypt in his youth) at the Philadelphia Free Library. It might offer some insight.

As to Twitter, this is my semi-functional theory:

–The platform selects for loud ignorance. Twitter has a significant visual component, with some textual elements, and limited characters. Around any topic, a few nodes (popular accounts) will cluster across a larger distribution. For most users, it ain’t really a place to converse, nor think too much, but rather to gain new information through the aggregation function performed by these popular nodes (especially in the political sphere).

The format rewards brevity, pith, and some wit, but also cashes in on selling the idea of influence. It’s quite a cesspool, really, and I usually feel like I’m pissing into the wind; the rewards probably not worth the costs unless one just uses Twitter as a distribution network of one’s own.

Furthermore, the most popular accounts don’t necessarily seem to be the most knowledgeable, thoughtful, nor accurate and truthful (they could be, I suppose), but rather the nodes who use the platorm most effectively, efficiently dominating information distribution; coalescing the public sentiment surrounding their topic.

You get what you pay for, I suppose.

–The biases of Twitter creators and curators lean towards loud activist ignorance: In my experience as a user, I don’t know how firmly activist beliefs are held amongst actual designers and programmers at the top, but ideological capture is likely significant, especially in the administrative and bureaucratic functions.

Thus, some top-end design and aggregation, across all those different topics, pools of sentiment and individual users, is done by people who probably share a particular blend of Left-leaning moral, political and ideological views (creating special rules for special users like trans).

My biases are in view, of course: Twitter’s more about about geekier white kids wanting to hang out with cool black kids.

Welcome to the new wealthy and woke:

As previously and often posted on Silicon Valley ignorance:

“First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.’

‘Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied. ‘

‘Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. ‘

And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience.”

-John Stuart Mill ‘On Liberty: Chapter II-Of The Liberty Of Thought And Discussion’

Some Links On Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia & Azerbaijan October 2020

October 13, 2020 / chr1 / Leave a comment

Armenia is one of the oldest Christian nations going, sitting in a region surrounded by non-Christian nations.

Both Armenia and Azerbaijan were later additions to the U.S.S.R, and are now independent nations once again (Moscow still being a natural power center). The two have been disputing a region to which both claim ownership, Nagorno-Karabakh.

From Vice:

‘Nagorno-Karabakh is a majority ethnic Armenian enclave entirely within the borders of Azerbaijan, which broke away in a war that started amid the fracturing of the Soviet Union in 1991. With backing from Armenia, the ethnic Armenians who predominate in the territory have run their own affairs, despite the territory being internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan.‘

The Turks to the West, if you’ll recall, comitted a genocide against the Armenians this past century, and are now aligning with the Azeris in their renewed bid to reclaim Nagorno-Karabakh, sometimes attacking civilian populations. Escalation is likely.

Walter Russell Mead at the WSJ:

‘Ankara appears to be betting that the Azerbaijanis can overcome entrenched Armenian defenders in the mountainous region before the Armenians can persuade Russia and Armenia’s Western friends to force an end to the conflict. The Armenians, especially the residents of Nagorno-Karabakh, have a well-deserved reputation as tough fighters. But without outside help, the odds are not in their favor. Azerbaijan has about four times the gross domestic product of Armenia and three times the population, and Azerbaijan has invested heavily in its armed forces since a military and political collapse forced it to accept a cease-fire in 1994.’

If you accept some realist foreign policy assumptions (no friends, only allies) then the closest Moscow and Washington D.C. have been in the past few decades is on the issue of Islamic terrorism:

‘The conflict challenges Russia in perhaps the single most sensitive place on its frontiers: the South Caucasus. The Kremlin wants good relations with both Armenia and Azerbaijan. Its nightmare scenario is conflict in the southern Caucasus that spreads into Russia, where the Chechens are not the only Muslim ethnic minority who chafe under Moscow’s rule.‘

Other involved players include Tehran and Paris (showing some support for the Armenian cause).

Sometimes an image captures all you need to know about a war. This is one such image: in the recently shelled church in Karabakh, a cellist plays a composition by Gomidas, a priest who suffered in the Genocide of 1915. https://t.co/uWlYIhkAsI
— Mark Movsesian (@MarkMovsesian) October 12, 2020

What say you?

Repost: At Google-Lawrence Wright’s Discussion Of Al Qaeda In ‘The Looming Tower’

March 9, 2020 / chr1 / Leave a comment

Lawrence Wright offered a decent profile of many Al Qaeda top-men in ‘The Looming Tower.‘

They tended to be smart, educated sorts away from home. Ambitious men with deep grievances and wounded pride. Men seeking purity and strength of purpose, as well as a lost kingdom.

Like many Muslim men relative to those in the West, they’d spent most of their lives segregated from women, with many fewer opportunities to have their educations match a deeper sense of purpose and vocation. These were men, who in that rush of youth, perhaps saw little purpose in merely dedicating their lives to family, work and being connected to others through the kind of civil society and associations we have here in the West.

Of course, some men are pretty sadistic to begin with, but certainly not all.

There was righteous glory to be had, and bloody battles to be fought in driving the infidel from the Arabian peninsula, and eventually Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In fact, most of these men were often exposed to political oppression and brutality within the kinds of States common throughout the Muslim world these days.

As for the new recruits: Some of them had a bomb strapped to them same day. Not much room for franchise growth…in this life!

Wright piece on Al Qaeda’s number two man, Ayman Al-Zawahiri.

Some of Roger Scruton’s essays here. Interesting quote in this video, which may line-up with Wright’s observations about the pursuit of purity, and how it tends to end:

‘Universal values only make sense in a very specific context…the attempt to universalize them, or project and impose them…just leads to their appropriation by sinister forces.”

Any thoughts and comments are welcome.

Feel free to highlight my ignorance.

[Addition]: Of course, what do we do in defense against people who want to kill us where we live, whose ideals are fairly deluded and corrupted from the start?

Roger Scruton At The WSJ: ‘Memo To Hawking: There’s Still Room For God’

Repost-Fatwas Never Die And It’s Always 1968 Somewhere

February 7, 2020 / chr1 / Leave a comment

From The Independent- Ah, those tolerant mullahs:

‘Ayatollah Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in 2005 the order still stands.

The new bounty is the largest organised effort to assassinate Rushdie since the fatwa was issued.’

As previously posted. Salman Rushdie went into hiding for years, and could still easily be murdered for expressing his views in works of fiction (the kind which might well benefit parts of the Muslim world (and Iran) in evaluating just how it deals with the West, and the ‘modern world’:

================

The mullahs with their moral absolutes and thuggish political opportunism aside, there are some in the West who won’t stand-up to such thuggishness.

Or, at least, they certainly didn’t in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo murders:

‘The decision by PEN American Center to give its annual Freedom of Expression Courage award to the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo has prompted six writers to withdraw as literary hosts at the group’s annual gala on May 5, adding a new twist to the continuing debate over the publication’s status as a martyr for free speech.

The novelists Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner and Taiye Selasi have withdrawn from the gala, at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan.’

The reasons? Here are a few:

‘In an email to PEN’s leadership on Friday, Ms. Kushner said she was withdrawing out of discomfort with what she called the magazine’s “cultural intolerance” and promotion of “a kind of forced secular view,”’

Rushdie on such cowardice:

“If PEN as a free speech organization can’t defend and celebrate people who have been murdered for drawing pictures, then frankly the organization is not worth the name,” Mr. Rushdie said. “What I would say to both Peter and Michael and the others is, I hope nobody ever comes after them.”

In their exercise of freedom, let such writers be one day judged by the truth they’ve expressed here.

No doubt, though, new levels of cosmic conscientious-objective-consciousness have been reached.

—————————————–

.As previously posted:

How do you marry liberal idealism with the radical roots? Shotgun-style.

Our institutions, bending to liberal ideals, will also involve a bending towards the radical base, which is not necessarily liberal.

Michael Moynihan at the Daily Beast ‘‘Whitewashing The Black Panthers’

‘A new PBS documentary tries to excuse a murderous and totalitarian cult.

When his captors uncinched the noose around his neck and shoved him into a wooden chair, Alex Rackley might have assumed his ordeal was over. He had already endured a flurry of kicks and punches, the repeated crack of a wooden truncheon, ritual humiliation, and a mock lynching. But it wasn’t over. It was about to get much, much worse.’

That party at Lenny’s is still pretty awkward, at least the way Tom Wolfe tells it:

‘. . and now, in the season of Radical Chic, the Black Panthers. That huge Panther there, the one Felicia is smiling her tango smile at, is Robert Bay, who just 41 hours ago was arrested in an altercation with the police, supposedly over a .38-caliber revolver that someone had, in a parked car in Queens at Northern Boulevard and 104th Street or some such unbelievable place, and taken to jail on a most unusual charge called “criminal facilitation.” And now he is out on bail and walking into Leonard and Felicia Bernstein’s 13-room penthouse duplex on Park Avenue. Harassment & Hassles, Guns & Pigs, Jail & Bail—they’re real, these Black Panthers. The very idea of them, these real revolutionaries, who actually put their lives on the line, runs through Lenny’s duplex like a rogue hormone.’

Slight Update & Repost-Henry Kissinger & George Schulz Via The WSJ: ‘The Iran Deal And Its Consequences’

January 9, 2020 / chr1 / Leave a comment

It looks like one of the primary aims of targeting Soleimani was to send the Iranian regime the message that U.S. military force is back on the table, and that the JCPOA is pretty much null and void. As to mid-to-longer term U.S. strategy in the region, a strategic vision is still needed, scaled to our domestic oil production and our interests (domestically, I’m expecting some kind of center-Left economics, mildly Nationalistic, surrounding a somewhat anti-identity, older-school Marxist core ((Democratic Socialist)), to be a focal point of whatever’s going on with the Democrats during the next few cycles.

As to our foreign partners, I’m still favoring an Anglosphere inner-ring, with geography as a variable, extending outwards to a secondary ring of European partners and trade interests, unifying around containment and ‘common-enemy’ appeals. As to China joinging a coalition against the Iranian regime, that’s it’s own beast (I guess the appeal has to be made), and Russia, I guess common ground would be limited largely limited to Islamic terrorism and ISIS.

—

As previously posted:

Piece here (link may return behind a paywall)

A good analysis, likely worth your time. ======================

This blog remains skeptical, and mostly critical (surprise me) of the potential Iran deal so far, because, as Richard Epstein has pointed out, without the threat of force, the deal doesn’t have the leverage needed to really put pressure where it’s needed: Upon a throughly committed, anti-American incentivized group of mullahs and post-1979 revolutionaries running terrorism, militias, guns and money around the region (and sometimes further afield) to become as powerful as they can.

Deliverable nukes are not just a means for an authoritarian theocracy to keep repressing its own people (though there’s plenty of that) nor a way to quell Iranian hostility towards and isolation from international institutions (plenty of that, too), but also a way for deeper Persian, Shia, and national Iranian identity and pride to assert itself in a dangerous region under an authoritarian theocracy. The basic security issues are more than mullah-deep, and the basic security of the Saudis, Israelis, and other interested Sunni-led countries and parties leads one to conclude this could easily turn into an arms race.

This is very risky if you’d prefer peace, or fighting the wars that you need to fight for the security of yourself and your own people, for treaties, alliances and trade, basic human rights or whatever interest or ideal you’d like to see leading our policy in the world (I’d prefer to stay ahead of war in the first place). More details at the link:

‘Under the new approach, Iran permanently gives up none of its equipment, facilities or fissile product to achieve the proposed constraints. It only places them under temporary restriction and safeguard—amounting in many cases to a seal at the door of a depot or periodic visits by inspectors to declared sites.’

The negotiations may yet do a lot of harm because they may not be capable of stopping the Iranian regime from buying time, nor ultimately getting deliverable nukes, nor changing nor constraining their activities enough for the possible opportunity costs involved. Our authors finish with:

If the world is to be spared even worse turmoil, the U.S. must develop a strategic doctrine for the region. Stability requires an active American role. For Iran to be a valuable member of the international community, the prerequisite is that it accepts restraint on its ability to destabilize the Middle East and challenge the broader international order. Until clarity on an American strategic political concept is reached, the projected nuclear agreement will reinforce, not resolve, the world’s challenges in the region. Rather than enabling American disengagement from the Middle East, the nuclear framework is more likely to necessitate deepening involvement there—on complex new terms. History will not do our work for us; it helps only those who seek to help themselves

Addition: Richard Epstein ‘Barack vs. Bibi:’ takes the classical liberal, non anti-war libertarian position:

‘In the end, it is critical to understand that the current weaknesses in American foreign policy stem from the President’s adamant reluctance to commit to the use of American force in international relations, whether with Israel, Iran or with ISIS. Starting from that position, the President has to make huge unilateral concessions, and force his allies to do the same thing. Right now his only expertise is leading from behind. The President has to learn to be tough in negotiations with his enemies. Right now, sadly, he has demonstrated that toughness only in his relationships with America’s friends and allies.’

Another Addition: Adam Garfinkle has a thoughtful piece on American political discourse and the Iran deal.

Another Addition: Israel, Iran, & Peace: Andrew Sullivan Responds To Charges Of Potential Anti-Semitism…Some Saturday Links On Iran-Skepticism, To Say The Least George Shultz & Henry Kissinger At The Hoover Institution: ‘What A Final Iran Deal Must Do’ So what are our interests and how do we secure them as the fires in the Middle-East rage? Michael Totten makes a case here in Why We Can’t Leave The Middle-East.’ He gets push-back in the comments

Democracy as we envision it requires people to constrain themselves within laws and institutions that maintain democracy…through Mill’s utilitarianism?: Thursday Quotation: Jeane Kirkpatrick – J.S. Mill Is Bernhard Henri-Levy actually influencing U.S. policy decisions..? From New York Magazine: ‘European Superhero Quashes Libyan Dictator’…Bernhard Henri-Levy At The Daily Beast: ‘A Moral Tipping Point’

Do we try and invest in global institutions as flawed as they are…upon a Kantian raft of perpetual peace?: Daniel Deudney On YouTube Responding to Robert Kagan: Liberal Democracy Vs. Autocracy

Charlie Hebdo & Freedom Of The Press-Douglas Murray Reviews Phillipe Lançon

November 24, 2019 / chr1 / Leave a comment

At The Spectator, Douglas Murray reviews ‘Disturbed‘ by Charlie Hebdo survivor, Phillipe Lancon:

Murray:

‘Lançon is under no illusions about this process: ‘This lack of solidarity was not merely a professional and moral disgrace. By isolating and pointing the finger at Charlie, it helped make the latter the Islamists’ target.’ Death threats and ‘filthy emails’ to the staff were common for a decade.’

There is silence surrounding the bloodshed, along with desire to turn away, ignore, and forget.

Confronting, recalling and remembering upsets many assumptions these days.

As for my American take on the French desire to relentlessly and radically mock all institutional authority (the Catholic Church, ‘bourgeois’ thinking, diametrically opposed political views like Le Front National), well, how very French.

‘Charlie Hebdo (French pronunciation: [ʃaʁli ɛbdo]; French for Charlie Weekly) is a French satirical weekly magazine,^[3] featuring cartoons,^[4] reports, polemics, and jokes. Irreverent and stridently non-conformist in tone, the publication describes itself as above all secular, skeptic,^[5] and atheist,^[6] far-left-wing,^[7]^[8] and anti-racist^[9] publishing articles about the extreme right (especially the French nationalist National Front party),^[10] religion (Catholicism, Islam, Judaism), politics and culture.’

What about the differences between Islam and Islamic civilizations and the post-Enlightenment West? Point them out at your own risk. Violate much secular humanist conventional wisdom (supporting Christian religious liberty when it ain’t cool) and be ignored.

Stand against the oft radically driven causes of the radical Left (beneath much secular-humanist and high-liberal thought) and possibly be threatened with violence.

Draw cartoons insulting the central figure in Islam and maybe get murdered.

Salman Rushdie at about minute 57:00: ‘This idea of separate treatment for separate cultures…I think essentially if we follow that to its conclusion…destroys our ability to have a really moral framework for society.‘

Six writers apparently know what is acceptable speech and what isn’t, and thus don’t think the folks at Charlie Hebdo engaged in acceptable speech.

Christopher Hitchens (nearly a free speech absolutist, railing against many of his former friends on the Left) discussing the Yale Press, which was genuinely afraid that publishing this book could lead to violence in the Muslim street:

“…Yale had consulted a range of experts before making its decision and that “[a]ll confirmed that the republication of the cartoons by the Yale University Press ran a serious risk of instigating violence.”

Cartoons here. The cartoonist is still in some danger.

Food for thought.

See Also: If you thought the cartoons were bad, more on the Fitna movie here. From The NY Times: Review Of Christopher Caldwell’s Book “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West” Libertarians love this issue: Repost-A Canadian Libertarian Making Noise: Ezra Levant