Kinda fits though somehow. 🙂

And Sally, I’d punch the crap out of that guy again. Every time. There is no ‘unconditional support’ for anyone from me.

In your world, the bullies would have been right on the basis of their nationality. Bogotry indeed.

1) Unlike Chavez (not to mention Hitler, Goebbels, and confud), I don’t attribute “all the troubles of the world”, and all your troubles in particular to a group — I attribute all the troubles regarding global islamist terrorists to, um, global islamist terrorists. Those troubles are quite serious, but also quite specific.

Sally, I’ve explained my position a number of times on this. I do not blame all the world’s ills on the US or Israel.

1) I point out that the hypocrisy of your/our (as the west) stance makes the stated goals look suspect. We can’t claim moral supremecy or expect to be viewed credibly ia a) we’ve been just as barbaric as the nastys we are trying to eradicate an db) we won’t own up to the obvious documented trangression in the recent past.

2) US inability to treat the Israeli/Palestinian crisis with any sense of balance or fairness, and turning a blind eye to flagrant breaches of law and common human decency in the pursuit of a ‘final solution’ is a weeping sore that serves as an overwhelming example of western hypocrisy and a clear reference point to US disdain for islam and arabs at the behest of Judeochristian militancy.

3) You have referred many times to islamic flaws and crazy beliefs yet your own president thinks that god told him to invade Iraq, and Israeli settlers have a belief system that says it is OK to steal arab land, kill muslims and christians and act as a master race under god’s will.

Hypocrisy, credibility and law.

You are under scrutiny because you are the aggressors and your false statements are discussed because you keep putting them out there to be shot down.

No, if you really think that the problem is just a “comparitive handful of terrorist” (sic), then your really are wonderfully simpleminded. But I think, sadly, you’re not

Prior to your invasion of Iraq, the number was quite small and probably containable with intelligent leadership and prosecution. Instead you/we attacked a traditionally secular arab state and strengthened ties to other militarists, butchers and gangsters.

Brilliant.

Chavez is a democratically elected head of state. You can disagree with him all you like, but when you use hyperbole e.g “siezing power by whatever means” it only weakens your argument if you have one.

He does have a point regarding world food , water and mineral resources though. There is no world food shortage, just a distribution problem that could be solved for less money than you spend on your military.

I don’t know what “when not responding to smear” is supposed to mean — is that supposed to excuse his obscene description of an “Israeli tourist” above, for example, or his gratuitous and irrelevant mention of a “Jewish intellectual” as a supposed founder of his hated “neocons”? Or are those instances, in your view, of his use of “quite specific examples to argue his case”?

The reference to Leo Strauss, Sally, isn’t about his Jewishness at all. You are being paranoid and hyperbolic again. Strauss was Wolfowitz’s greatest influence and has had an impact on the Chicago school of politico/economic thought.

It is about amoralism, power and manipulation. OK?
It was a teaser which was clearly too subtle for you.

What is obscene about my description of this particularly obnoxious racist Israeli Sally? And how would that indicate antisemitism on my part? If you want, I’ll tell you the whole story but I doubt that you’d want to know, because 9 of the 11 in the group were disgusting racist bullies, picking on a 14 or 15 year old Bolivian kid who’s crime was to be a bit simple and not an Israeli ‘master’. 1 Aussie and 1 Kiwi soon showed them how brave they were, and we were racially abused too.

I’d have knocked his teeth out whatever nationality he was, but in my experience young Israelis are some of the worst of the worst when it comes to being obnoxious and disrespectful to other cultures and peoples. I’ve seen them in Egypt, Kenya, Bolivia and Peru and they ain’t pleasant in the main.

I could tell you what IDF soldiers have done when an Irish woman I work with sometimes, takes personal mail to aid workers in the West Bank. They’ve kept her waiting for hours while they take the mail away and urinate and defecate in the bag. Just for fun. Heroic eh?

Or, how about the settlers who shoot at the refugees and UN workers on the Syrian side of the green line from the land they stole from those very refugees. I’ve been shot at there. Just for sport.

Or how about the arab christians and muslims within Israel who are treated as 3rd class citizens? I’ve posted links to credible reports on this. I doubt that you would allow yourself to read them though. You’d rather read Alexandra and her wingnut conspiracy rantings.

This is no liberal democracy Sally. They make war, they steal land, they kill and they ethnically cleanse and they’re doing it right now.

And they are doing it with YOUR MONEY and YOUR BLESSING.

Hundreds of Palestinians will lose their homes in the West Bank TODAY. Some of these people are 3 and 4 times refugees. Where is that in your great left wing conspiracy MSM?

And you want them (the Palestinians) to submit to eternal serfdom.

It is nought to do with antisemitism, it is about taking them off this bizarre pedestal you’ve placed beneath them and making them and you accountable in the same way everyone should be. If you are wedded to freedom, democracy and the rule of law, some time soon you are going to have to prove it by living it.

Steve: So yes – I’d agree that ” reason and evidence are the tools that we use to distinguish them.” It’s probably good to remember too that bigotry exists because a good portion of the theories and positions are formed on obervable facts – i.e jews and money, black and unemployment etc – it it the conclusions that we draw from observable fact that constitute racial, cultural or religous hatred.

No, it doesn’t — bigotry exists prior to observable facts and merely exploits what facts it can to provide a false cover for its hatred, and is quite happy inventing “facts” when it can’t find them. What is good to remember is that bigotry can appear in a variety of forms, one of which is a kind of patronizing, self-satisfied moral condescension, in which, for example, the bigot declares something like: “well, the jews have gotten hold of most of the money, it’s true, but we should forgive them for it rather than hate them”, etc. I would hope you’re not saying something like that.

Incidently – I don’t draw much of a distinction between them either – but I wouldn’t think it should be a a matter of major contention..

I have no idea what that means, but perhaps that’s just as well.

Having said that – I’m still left wondering how you arrive at the conclusion that confud is an anti-semite based on what he has written.

Here are a couple of comments in their entirety that confud posted and that might have come straight out of the pages of Der Sturmer:

” You filthy fucking little Indian shit”

Same Israeli tourist blubbing whilst getting up off the footpath before running away.
March 17th, 2006

Did you just miss those, Steve? Or do you think there’s nothing antisemitic about them?

… but Confud and Chavez have not attributed all the troubles of the world to a particular group in the same way Hitler and co did.

Here’s what Chavez actually said:
The world has these things [“sufficient riches”] for all, sure, but because of some minorities, the decendents of those same people who killed[crucified] Christ, the decendents of the same people who fought Bolivar, and also those who crucified them in Santa Marta, over in Colombia. A minority that has seized the riches of the world, a minority that has seized the gold of the planet, the silver, the minerals, the water, the good land, the oil, all these riches, well, and they have concentrated the riches in only a few hands

Did you miss that too, Steve? Or is that not quite “in the same way” as Hitler and co. did? How does it differ?

Well, don’t worry about it too much. As I remember now, you tend to write from behind a certain faux-naive, diffident mask that you think protects you from having to make or defend much in the way of an argument of your own. But instead it just makes you lazy and sloppy — so, for example, your banal observation that “terrorism is found in many cultures” is simply irrelevant to my suggestion that a root of islamist terrorism might be found in Islamic culture.

No, if you really think that the problem is just a “comparitive handful of terrorist” (sic), then your really are wonderfully simpleminded. But I think, sadly, you’re not. I think, “if I may be so bold”, and as I said last time, that you’ve picked your side, whether you know it or not — and a fake ingenuousness won’t hide the fact. I can’t say good luck with it.

Sorry, me.

Yep.

Unlike, I suppose, nazi antisemites who DO provide “credible sources of evidence”, etc.?

I don’t recall confud refering to any Nazi literature or known anti-semites(e.g Grundel etc) for his evidence – you’d have to be a little more specific for me to get your point.

1) Unlike Chavez (not to mention Hitler, Goebbels, and confud), I don’t attribute “all the troubles of the world”, and all your troubles in particular to a group — I attribute all the troubles regarding global islamist terrorists to, um, global islamist terrorists. Those troubles are quite serious, but also quite specific.

Fine – but Confud and Chavez have not attributed all the troubles of the world to a particular group in the same way Hitler and co did. It makes for sensational rhetorical affect – but very little substance. I don’t think I’m overstepping to say that you are a firm supporter of U.S/Israeli defined “Global War on Terror” – so I equally confident in claiming that you are attributing the troubles of the world on Islamic terrorismm as it appears you’ve so broadly defined it. Clearly if you believe that exterminating a comparitive handful of terrorist requires and justifies the invasion and destruction of two nations; the killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians, the revoking of civil liberties and human rights etc – than you are not being very specific Sally.

If I may be so bold.

2) Unlike Chavez, Hitler & co., and a couple of our local trolls here, I don’t regard a culture as equivalent to a race, and hence I don’t see criticizing cultural aspects or features as having the same sort of consequences as criticizing racial features or aspects. Thus, even if the underlying or “root” cause of the upsurge in islamist terrorist activity is to be found in flawed aspects of Islamic culture, the logic would point to cultural change not to racial extermination.

This doesn’t make any sense. “If” the root cause of terrorist activity is found in cultural deficiencies than we would quite logically have to look in other areas for the cause – you are well aware that it is an objective fact that terrorism is found in many cultures and the reasons are complex and cannot be narrowly defined explicitly to one culture. Unless we use bias.

3) To my mind, however, the question about root causes in this sense is still open, as I indicated in this comment and this. I differ with neo on this, I think, who seems much more sanguine than I am about the viability of Islam in a modern world — but I’m quite willing to say my concerns on this may be wrong or exaggerated, and I hope that proves to be the case.

Fair enough. Keeping an open mind never hurts.

4) Last for now at least, but probably more important than anything else is the simple test of reasonableness. Compare the antisemite’s notion of a centuries-old conspiracy to steal the “riches of the world” (not to mention to drink the blood of gentile children, to target arab children, etc.), with a critique of a manifest current conspiracy and focused on particular cultural traits that may help explain it. Quite obviously, not all conspiracies are imaginary, but just as obviously some are

Well I can’t really comment on this because you’ve only offered explict anti-semitic expressions and thought and offered only ‘current’ manifestations of anti-semitism as exhibited by conspiracy theorists – without any examples.

So yes – I’d agree that ” reason and evidence are the tools that we use to distinguish them.” It’s probably good to remember too that bigotry exists because a good portion of the theories and positions are formed on obervable facts – i.e jews and money, black and unemployment etc – it it the conclusions that we draw from observable fact that constitute racial, cultural or religous hatred.

Incidently – I don’t draw much of a distinction between them either – but I wouldn’t think it should be a a matter of major contention..

Having said that – I’m still left wondering how you arrive at the conclusion that confud is an anti-semite based on what he has written.

Unlike, I suppose, nazi antisemites who DO provide “credible sources of evidence”, etc.?

No, Steve, there are a number of differences, and these differences are significant. Let’s look at a few:

1) Unlike Chavez (not to mention Hitler, Goebbels, and confud), I don’t attribute “all the troubles of the world”, and all your troubles in particular to a group — I attribute all the troubles regarding global islamist terrorists to, um, global islamist terrorists. Those troubles are quite serious, but also quite specific.

2) Unlike Chavez, Hitler & co., and a couple of our local trolls here, I don’t regard a culture as equivalent to a race, and hence I don’t see criticizing cultural aspects or features as having the same sort of consequences as criticizing racial features or aspects. Thus, even if the underlying or “root” cause of the upsurge in islamist terrorist activity is to be found in flawed aspects of Islamic culture, the logic would point to cultural change not to racial extermination.

3) To my mind, however, the question about root causes in this sense is still open, as I indicated in this comment and this. I differ with neo on this, I think, who seems much more sanguine than I am about the viability of Islam in a modern world — but I’m quite willing to say my concerns on this may be wrong or exaggerated, and I hope that proves to be the case.

4) Last for now at least, but probably more important than anything else is the simple test of reasonableness. Compare the antisemite’s notion of a centuries-old conspiracy to steal the “riches of the world” (not to mention to drink the blood of gentile children, to target arab children, etc.), with a critique of a manifest current conspiracy and focused on particular cultural traits that may help explain it. Quite obviously, not all conspiracies are imaginary, but just as obviously some are –Steve: … only, I would offer, without any credible sources of evidence or a consistently logical analysis.

Unlike, I suppose, nazi antisemites who DO provide “credible sources of evidence”, etc.?

No, Steve, there are a number of differences, and these differences are significant. Let’s look at a few:

1) Unlike Chavez (not to mention Hitler, Goebbels, and confud), I don’t attribute “all the troubles of the world”, and all your troubles in particular to a group — I attribute all the troubles regarding global islamist terrorists to, um, global islamist terrorists. Those troubles are quite serious, but also quite specific.

2) Unlike Chavez, Hitler & co., and a couple of our local trolls here, I don’t regard a culture as equivalent to a race, and hence I don’t see criticizing cultural aspects or features as having the same sort of consequences as criticizing racial features or aspects. Thus, even if the underlying or “root” cause of the upsurge in islamist terrorist activity is to be found in flawed aspects of Islamic culture, the logic would point to cultural change not to racial extermination.

3) To my mind, however, the question about root causes in this sense is still open, as I indicated in this comment and this. I differ with neo on this, I think, who seems much more sanguine than I am about the viability of Islam in a modern world — but I’m quite willing to say my concerns on this may be wrong or exaggerated, and I hope that proves to be the case.

4) Last for now at least, but probably more important than anything else is the simple test of reasonableness. Compare the antisemite’s notion of a centuries-old conspiracy to steal the “riches of the world” (not to mention to drink the blood of gentile children, to target arab children, etc.), with a critique of a manifest current conspiracy and focused on particular cultural traits that may help explain it. Quite obviously, not all conspiracies are imaginary, but just as obviously some are — reason and evidence are the tools that we use to distinguish them.