More evidence that the sun has not only set on the British empire,…
…it has set on Britain as well:
If you’re thinking of getting steamed over [the Woolrich machete murder], don’t. Simon Jenkins, the former editor of the Times of London, cautioned against “mass hysteria” over “mundane acts of violence.”
That’s easy for him to say. Woolwich is an unfashionable part of town, and Sir Simon is unlikely to find himself there of an afternoon stroll. Drummer Rigby had less choice in the matter. Being jumped by barbarians with machetes is certainly “mundane” in Somalia and Sudan, but it’s the sort of thing that would once have been considered somewhat unusual on a sunny afternoon in south London…
That’s Mark Steyn writing, and he goes on to say a great deal that was already discussed here and elsewhere.
Jenkins’ use of the word “mundane” is positively stunning. We can assume that, as a former big shot editor, he is well aware of the meaning of words. But for the rest of us, let’s have a refresher on the meaning of “mundane”: “characterized by the practical, transitory, and ordinary : commonplace.”
Let’s hope Mr. Jenkins is not prescient, and that such acts never become either ordinary or commonplace in the West.
If you want to read Jenkins’ entire piece, see this, and make sure you read it to the end. It’s an interesting hybrid of things. For example, he’s certainly correct that part of the killers’ aim was to get lots of publicity, and if we somehow denied them publicity they wouldn’t be so inclined to do this sort of thing. But he ignores the fact that, when guys with cleavers hack apart a soldier on a London street in broad daylight, it’s already too late to keep it hush hush, or to moderate the response. If anything, the response was too mild, but Perkins would have us shrug and consider it a regular everyday murder, which it most assuredly was not.
What’s more, of course, he devotes quite a bit of space to ye olde terrorism explanation/excuse and the usual moral equivalence:
British and American operators indeed use drone missiles to kill Muslim soldiers, and inevitably civilians, on the streets of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. They deploy horrific airborne violence against communities, including in non-combatant countries. Retaliation for these killings may not be “justifiable” in our terms. But jihadists have no access to drones and must rely on car bombs, nail bombs, machetes and cleavers.
The result may appal Londoners, but there are no citizen journalists to witness the appalling impact of a drone attack on a Pashtun village. Can we be surprised when the other side (or its distant sympathisers) retaliates on London, where it gets so much more publicity than in Baghdad or Kabul? Of course, people should be able to walk peacefully down the street in London. They should also be able to walk peacefully in Kandahar, Yemen or Baluchistan.
This is the caliber of the kneejerk thinking among bigwigs in the MSM, there and here. Unfortunately, it has become quite “mundane” among the chattering classes.
One further note: while I can’t be sure about Jenkins’ past, the Times is a “conservative” paper, generally supportive of the Tories in its editorial outlook. So, not only is this an example of bigwig MSM outlook, it may also be an example of mainstream conservative thought in the UK.
Colin: yes, mainstream. Mundane.
Ever notice how the political establishment and cultural elite speak on behalf of muslims to excuse these acts of violence as aberrations and to warn the public against retaliatory acts of hate? You’d think that if moderate muslims were really outraged about violence being done in the name of islam, they’d be going out of their way to condemn these murderers, turn the mosques inside out to make sure hate is not taught there, and raise funds to support the families of the victims.
“ye olde terrorism explanation/excuse”
Clearly a subset of White Christian Europeans ruined the world.
The mundanely treacherous just keep slithering out from under the rocks:
“Over the last few days London has shown itself at its best: an unbreakable city once again refusing to bow to hatred and violence. Of all the groups and faiths represented here today, I would like to pay special tribute to London’s Muslim community.
“An unspeakable act has been conducted in their name. Yet while this has provoked feelings of frustration and anger – it flies in the face of the peace and love that Islam teaches – Muslim organisations, Mosques, Imams and community leaders have responded with a call for unity and calm. They have set an example for us all.”
– Nick Clegg (Leader of the Liberal Democrat Party and MP)
Not only do they excuse muslims as per Steve’s comment above, they hold the muslim community up as models of calm. I think the precise word Mr. Clegg was searching but would not find is sangfroid.
I imagine those who auger for global caliphate are counting on the infidels’ acquiescence when faced with the sword. It goes back to Mohammed. The strategy works well against western civilization.
It’s like a family with three or four kids and the smallest of them is kind of slow, with a tendency to abuse his older siblings. He throws temper tantrums making his parents miserable. And to make things worse, mom and dad not only indulge the tantrums, they praise him for managing to show up at school(when he actually does) and get D’s while the other kids get good grades and do their chores.
The parents feel that appeasing their little emotional terrorist will keep them sane but it will only encourage his behavior till one day he gets old enough to do something really bad, like sexually assault his sister or neighbor. Or worse.Then the family will implode and everybody will wonder why it happened. Well, we won’t here.
indeed ,the drones kill lots of non involved people..
and the Muslims are justified for retaliating
but
what was the excuse for the original bombing of the wtc??(1993)
“what was the excuse for the original bombing of the wtc??(1993)”
According to the Qur’an, failure to submit is all the excuse needed. Indeed, Islamic theology unequivocally declares that it is mandatory that Muslims attack any person, tribe or nation that does not submit.
So Muslims are justified in retaliating against British and Americans because of drone attacks. OK, then British and Americans should be similarly justified in retaliation against Muslims, shouldn’t they?
When the left calls things like this “mundane”, they are not trying to fool us, instead they are really trying to fool themselves. They desperately want to believe these are acts are not part of a bigger picture, they can’t allow their feet to be placed on the path to the inevitable conclusion that thesebacts are part of a larger clash of cultures, that their multicultural utopia is an illusion, that we really haven’t come to the end of history, that we are really in an existential battle which can choose to fight, or choose to lose.
Multi-Culti Uber Alles!
So, Mr. Jenkins:
Is Lara Logan any safer in the West’s homelands than in Egypt?
This is what multiculturalism gets you. This is what you get when your humanitarian values are pitted against you by the barbarians and their traitorous enablers (the Muslims and the Marxists, respectively).
Don’t be afraid to call evil by its name | Boston Herald
http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/columnists/joe_fitzgerald/2013/05/don_t_be_afraid_to_call_evil_by_its_name
“So Muslims are justified in retaliating against British and Americans because of drone attacks. OK, then British and Americans should be similarly justified in retaliation against Muslims, shouldn’t they?” CBDenver
Of course not. Islam’s justifications and rationalizations only apply to them. You need to understand that until you convert to Islam, you have no human rights. Not to life or liberty, much less the pursuit of happiness. As a kafir (non-Muslim) you only have one right, to make a choice; conversion, submission to discriminatory second class status or death.
Britain and Sweden are merely the latest outposts of Muslim rage. Now we learn that Sweden’s reaction to a week of young Muslim rioters taking to the streets of Stockholm’s suburbs every night and then torching cars, schools, stores, office buildings and residential complexes is…”Our ambition is really to do as little as possible,” Stockholm Chief of Police Mats Lé¶fving explained to the Swedish newspaper Expressen on Tuesday.
”We go to the crime scenes, but when we get there we stand and wait,” elaborated Lars Bystré¶m, the media relations officer of the Stockholm Police Department. ”If we see a burning car, we let it burn if there is no risk of the fire spreading to other cars or buildings nearby. By doing so we minimize the risk of having rocks thrown at us.”
Lest you think that to be the extent of appeasement, Owners of cars destroyed in the riots fined for parking illegally while police adopt non-intervention policy
Finally, get this, it’s not where the cars are parked that makes it illegal but that torched car’s license plates can’t be read, that makes them illegally parked.
Gosh, it’s almost as if the ordinary working and middle class citizens just aren’t worthy of any consideration by the ruling elite of their society in Britain or in Sweden. It seems as though the ruling elite have decided to dissolve the people entirely (or hector them into submission) … and replace them with another, whom they confidently hope will be more amenable towards permanent serfdom.
embutler: “indeed ,the drones kill lots of non involved people..
and the Muslims are justified for retaliating
but
what was the excuse for the original bombing of the wtc??(1993)”
Terrorists kill us, so we kill terrorists, so terrorists kill us. That’s the nature of competition. Makes sense on that level. Of course, terrorists are competing to replace our preferred world order with their preferred world order. The two orders are not compatible.
Given the way terrorists choose their targets, including and especially their intentional mass murders of Muslims in Muslim countries, I wonder whom the terrorists actually consider to be “non involved people”. Terrorists seem to be totalitarian in their aspirations, inclusive in their choice of targets including Muslims, and narrowly exclusive in terms of Muslims whose lives they value.
As far as the 1993 WTC center attack, there are two justifications given:
One, the strategy adopted by Osama bin Laden was that the governments in the region they plan to replace for their Caliphate rely on international support, especially the US. By severing the international support, they believe their near enemies will be weakened enough for the Islamic revolution to take over.
Two, their chief rallying cry has been about the US-led UN intervention in Iraq/Kuwait starting with Desert Shield/Storm (1991) and throughout the subsequent US-led enforcement of the ceasefire and UNSC resolutions with Saddam’s Iraq.
Geoffrey Britain,
“Britain and Sweden are merely the latest outposts of Muslim rage.”
I get angry seeing the words “Muslim rage” even when they’re written as a description like you’ve done. They have a reason to rage?! They’re the oppressors, not victims! And they’re the oppressors worldwide, as non-Muslims from Nigeria to Thailand can tell you.
Until the free nations categorically reject that they owe the Muslims anything, and ostracize all those who suggest the Muslims have any right to rage, this will go on and on without an end in sight.
Sgt. Mom,
“Gosh, it’s almost as if the ordinary working and middle class citizens just aren’t worthy of any consideration by the ruling elite of their society in Britain or in Sweden.”
This is a worldwide affliction, not limited by any means to Britain and Sweden or even just Europe. India and Israel are similarly held in thrall by out-of-touch, oikophobic elites who have consistently ignored their citizens’ cries for ridding their countries of the offending population.
ziontruth,
I did NOT, in any manner, shape or form intend to even imply that Muslim rage was justified. I entirely agree with your position. They are indeed the oppressors, not the victims and the ring of violence that surrounds Islam definitively demonstrates that FACT.
Permit me to clarify. Muslim ‘rage’ is and will be the norm until there is only Dar al-Islam. But even then the Sunni-Shia split will remain. The Wset is not at war with Islam but Islam is at war with the West. As IMO they must be…for 7th century ideological Islam cannot survive another century of cultural exposure to the modern world.
And while I agree that Muslim claims to be owed anything and justified in their ‘rage’ should and must be categorically rejected, I would ask you to which ‘free’ nations you refer?
The West cannot even identify their enemy, no greater psychological prison can be envisaged.
And IMO, it is NOT just oikophobic (new word) ‘elites’ of whom the problem consists. Their power is derived from the indoctrinated, liberal “useful idiots” who provide the critical political support necessary to their elitism.
Islam cannot conquer the West but the West can and is surrendering to Islam.
Geoffrey Britain,
“I did NOT, in any manner, shape or form intend to even imply that Muslim rage was justified.”
I know you didn’t–I acknowledged that your writing of it was purely descriptive. I simply hate that expression for merely being a concept at all.
“I would ask you to which ‘free’ nations you refer?”
It’s my umbrella term for nations not yet under either Islamic or Far Leftist rule. Those nations where resistance is still theoretically possible.
“oikophobic (new word)”
Not very new; this coinage for those who prefer to appease strangers in their own state on expense of their fellow nation-members is at least a couple of years old. Nor did I coin it.
Interesting that the middle class is growing in Communist nations adopting capitalism while the old capitalist leaders are trending Communist with their middle class eroding towards a flat proletariat and central committee. Maybe Marx was onto something in application, not just theory, after all.
“Of course, people should be able to walk peacefully down the street in London. They should also be able to walk peacefully in Kandahar, Yemen or Baluchistan.”
No, they should NOT. They should NOT be able to walk peacefully down the street in cities, towns, or countries that not only condone, but also, embrace terrorism as a way of life, as something to be celebrated. They should not live in peace as they do not wish peace upon others.
Leftists are so morally retarded it doesn’t even surprise me anymore.
When it comes to the revolution within their own societies, you can’t even waterboard the guy who masterminded blowing up two buildings and three thousand of your fellow citizens. You can’t execute mass murderers. You can’t strike back, in general, unless you are Not Really Striking Back (the NRSB law, as it were).
But whenever a communist tyrant and his goons murder millions – hey, eye for an eye. Whenever a Muslim dismembers an infidel or five – hey, blood for blood.
Makes no sense, and it’s not intended to. DNW put it marvelously a few weeks ago when he said that leftists do not value truth when they speak, but instead “emit what are supposed to be behavior-modifying sounds at targeted audiences” (paraphrase from memory).
So we get this nauseating and laughable spectacle of a columnist reminding us both that 1) we ought not to respond even with harsh language to a Muslim decapitator; and 2) we ought to understand that decapitation is a justified response to civilian casualties in Muslim countries.
The impeccable combination of cowardice, illogic, insidious racism (Muslims, implicitly, are assumed to be subhuman, and so cannot be held to a standard higher than Tribal Blood Feud), and – last but not least – sheer mendacity is awe-inspiring.
Leftists know the difference. We do not attack “Muslims” or “civilians.” Rather, we attack Muslim terrorists and their enablers who hide among civilians, precisely to ensure that to endanger the one is to endanger the other. A Muslim decapitator can wait outside an army barracks and kill a soldier. Show us the barracks where the terrorists form their armies and platoons, and we’ll happily blow them up and say goodbye.
That’s a civilizational difference – we have no desire to kill civilians or to make other nations submit. Leftists know that too. Sometimes I think that what the leftists really hate about the West is PRECISELY the humanity in our ideals. They smell the weakness and cowardice that flows from them if taken to their extremes, and they despise it. Deep down, they feel that anyone who truly believes anything must be willing to send his opponents to the gas chamber, to the Gulag.
This would reveal something like an axiom of their political philosophy: there is no such thing as rational obedience (e.g., to a Constitutional system); one either conquers and suppresses or is conquered and suppressed. Dominate, or be dominated. The primitive mentality is alive and well, right in their skulls.
In any case, they have been frustrated time and again in Western societies trying to get their Gulags up and working, and over time this frustration has morphed into Third Worldism, multiculturalism, and the like. The idea is that if the left will not get its Gulags then someone else will – the Strong Horse(s). Power worship at its purest.
There are no men left in Britain.
They are all gone.
The same thing is happening in the U.S.
Masculinity is being drummed out of culture. The only thing that can follow is some kind of hideous monstrosity whose lifespan, though vicious and horrible, cannot be long.
Whose fault will the fall of civilization be? Will it be the people who killed the men, or the men who would not fight their killers? Probably the latter.
To show you just how far apart the West and the muslims are:
During the daze of Gorby, the Ayatollah sent a diplomatic letter to the big man inviting him to convert to islam.
This missive, when presented, had the entire Politburo on a roar. It was the SINGLE most risible communique that the USSR had ever received.
What the pagans and atheists failed to understand was that the invitation was a formality; a prelude to WAR, perpetual.
Under islamic jurisprudence it is an absolute requirement that if ever possible, that s o m e attempt must be made to induct the target into the ummah.
A check through the history books will reveal that e v e r y nation absorbed by the ummah received a missive — nearly identical in wording — to that sent by the Ayatollah.
Even the Soviet diplomatic arm utterly failed to comprehend the import of the letter. Such missives are not what the West takes them for.
=========
And it’s significant that the fanatics used knives to butcher their victim. This form of murder is specified by Mo.’
Firearms just won’t do.
That’s something to keep in mind when the Obama regime comes for your guns.
why did the crowd not throw stones?or whatever.’twas blindingly obvious that the perps needed subduing.
Muslim terrorists like to publicize beheadings and wave bloody cutlery around because they know it terrorizes us.
One might return the favor and greatly reduce- if not end- Muslim terrorism were one publicly to feed the two Woolrich terrorists to some picturesque pigs and record the event for posterity.
The sounds of greedy pigs grunting and slurping as they devoured Terrorist Tartar, played as a backdrop to some of the calls to Jihad available on the Internet, might have a calming effect on excitable natures.
After all, no matter how many infidels were dispatched, could any Muslim holy warrior be certain of his 72 Virgins if his journey to Paradise included a side-trip through the intestines of a pig?
You’re right to point out that the Jenkins used ‘mundane’ inaccurately. I suspect the ‘thought’ behind the use of it was ‘boring’, ‘trivial’, ‘unimportant’.
He is both an incredibly stupid writer and an incredibly callous one.