stoush.net

I think I was making roughly this point on a LP thread to Jack Strocchi a few days back although less eloquently.

The analogy I was making was that had your typical RWDB been back 120 odd years they would be stating that the Kelly gang proved that Irish catholics were dangerous murders and seditionist and the Jerilderie letter showed that it was part of a global goal.

Sounds familiar. The airwaves were clogged a few years ago when there was a moral panic about Asian gangs, Lebanese youth, and the criminal migrants over-running our suburbs. A fellow named Jim Mackenzie wrote to the Herald in November 1998:

Young men who grow up in a family which is different, in ethnic and religious terms, from the dominant community, who suffer discrimination, whose education is inadequate, whose job prospects are poor, have a tendency to shoot at police.

Ned Kelly and his mates, for example, did just that.

Remarkably, Catholics didn’t conspire to blow up thousands of prods to protest (with the tacit approval of one or two archbishops). The Masonic Lodges didn’t conspire to blow up hundreds of Micks during the St Patrick’s Day parade. In later years, Greeks, Italians, Poles, Maltese and Vietnamese came to Australia and struggled their way into society. Remarkably, none of them conspired to blow up thousands of Australians.

Only one immigrant group has done this: Muslims.

“Only one immigrant group has done this: Muslims.”

Allegedly.

I don’t know who you are but that last line is a clear incitment to hatred and fear and frankly you should be ashamed of yourself.

You also don’t know your history and in making sweeping generalisations you are making this fundamentally racist argument - judeo-christian good, islam bad.

Come to Brunswick and you will see the future - a diverse community that treasures and embraces its muslim brothers and sisters, and does not regard them with any special suspicion because of their religion. And yes we have problems with extremists - whether they are of the muslim variety or white christian variety. But we don’t resort to racist claptrap or draconian laws to solve our problems, but to an appeal to commuinity values and community dialogue!

Crawl back to your slimey rock mate, its where you deserve to stay.

The solution to the problem is in muslims allowing us to know what is going on in their communities, for an open and trusting exchange between communities.

The problem is that there is so little trust that it appears an impossible task.

Chris, “Islam” and “Judeo-Christian” aren’t races, they’re religions.

And calling people names won’t change the fact – that religious terrorism in Australia is currently the sole province of extremist Muslims.

Youu seem to be quite ignorant of the role that radical Islamism plays in the world today. I suggest you go here and educate yourself.

Is that a link to a re-education site, EP?

Click it and see. :)

I did.

They strive hard to appear reasonable. Almost too hard.

Well, I’m glad they didn’t strive too hard. That would have been unfortunate.

Perhaps I should be less subtle next time…

No, not at all. It’s useful to know they’ve got the level of hard-tryingness within acceptable parameters.

did the sums… 6759 people killed worldwide by acts of terrorism. okey doke - that’s a bad number. no question.

curious thing that i am, i looked up the number of people killed at work on an annual basis: the ILO estimates some 2.2 million each year.

that means almost as many people die each day at work as die each year due to terrorism.

while i don’t mean to trivialise terrorism, it does mean that we’d be far better served smashing unsafe work practices than spending hundreds of billions on revisiting the crusades.

what about poverty? the WHO’s commentary on the millenium development goals is instructive.

more than 11 million children under 5 die each year for reasons mostly related to poverty and malnutrition.

500,000 women die in childbirth each year.

where’s our war on poverty and ill health that we pour countless billions of dollars into?

Terrorism gets a priority because it has many more potential dangers for the future than there have been incidents in the past.

Given nuclear or biological weapons – which they are trying to get – terrorists could kill millions or even more. Allowed to win, Islamofascists could enslave billions.

This is a war that we’re trying to win before it turns into a catastrophe, like World Wars I and II.

Hey, I’m all for stopping Islamofascists – so why did conservatives like you oppose us in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia,Jordan, Syria, Pakistan, East Africa, etc?

What are you talking about?

Countries such as America, France, the UK, Germany, etc have been funding and providing arms to the islamofascists since the 50s. The Left has been opposed to extreme and apocalyptic forms of Islam since they emerged in Egypt with Sayyid Qutb and the Muslim Brotherhood.

The general rule is that the United States would prefer islamofascists to pseudo-socialists (Saddam being an exception).

You have to deal with one enemy at a time.

The western democracies supported Stalin so they could defeat Hitler.

Then they supported Islamofascists so they could defeat Communism.

Now they support a few dictators so they can defeat Islamofascism.

It’s a continuous process of choosing the lesser evil to fight the greater.

If the Left had been in charge, we would never have defeated Nazism or Communism to begin with.

If the Left had won in Germany, Hitler would never have come to power; the same goes for the capitalist interventions into post-revolution Russia, which solidified totalitarian rule.

Conservatives have a history of supporting dictators. The Left consistently opposes them: Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao, Saddam, the Saudis, and so on.

Of course, this is a tactic of capital to ensure the left never gets “control”.

Half those dictators you name were the Left. And the Left opposed the Right’s efforts to remove the rest.

Speaking of people who support dictators, did you know that Gough Whitlam asked Saddam Hussein for $500,000 in campaign funding thirty years ago?

What’s it called when a political party seeks or accepts money from a foreign power?

“EvilPundit

Half those dictators you name were the Left. And the Left opposed the Right’s efforts to remove the rest.”

Guffaw

And who declined to sign 3 earlyday motions in relation to Hussien?

Amd who was it that financed his coup, and his wars, was it the western democracies, perchance?