Defense Against the Dark Arts - I Mean the Left
Barry Rubin is a pretty good political analyst. That's probably why he's not working for any of the big networks.
Here is one of his latest.
The hardcore Obama supporter is not watching unemployment levels, the economy, the mess in Egypt and Libya, or the effectiveness of health care reform, His concern is that if he decides Obama is a terrible president it means he is one of “them.” This is a horror he can never accept. For the Jews among them—which explains their higher membership in this group—these factors are reinforced by the image of becoming the very Nazi Cossack Klu Klux Klan monster that is their worst nightmare.
The left isn’t doing this because it’s on the defensive or desperate. On the contrary, this is its main strategy. How else can you persuade about half the population, liberals and centrists, to support the most left-wing policy in American history? That’s why they need a strategy based on hate, fear, stereotyping, demonization of the “other,” rejection of diversity, and all those other things that supposedly Political Correctness and Multiculturalism supposedly oppose! What’s the response? I’m not going to tell you anything you don’t know but it might be useful to have it all in one place:
1. Avoid playing into these stereotypes whenever possible. Once you lose your credibility by being too extreme or not being able to present facts, it is very hard to regain it in this atmosphere.
2. Word of mouth, have the best arguments and point them out to people. Never doubt that no matter how confident many of these people appear to be they are having severe doubts about their policies and ideas working. Be able to argue on the other side’s own terms in order to show hypocrisy (see point in bold above).
Don't stop here. There are
more tips. Collect them all.
Labels: Barry Rubin, Obama, the Left
A Major U.S. Policy Shift Toward the Muslim Brotherhood Disguised
This is actually by
Barry Rubin. I was going to do the usual blog thing and copy some of it, then offer my own erudite comments. But I decided to show mercy on any readers I may still have and just reprint Rubin's piece. It really says it all.
Here’s the headline: “U.S. to resume formal Muslim Brotherhood contacts.” But that’s not true. In fact, as the Reuters article itself admits there have never been “formal” contacts before but only informal ones. Let’s examine the language, which stems from a “senior U.S. official” to see what the Obama Administration thinks about the Muslim Brotherhood.
“A step that reflects the Islamist group’s growing political weight but that is almost certain to upset Israel and its U.S. backers.”
Note how it is portrayed as an Israel-related issue. Won’t it upset people who care about U.S. interests? Won’t it upset Egyptian Christians? The Saudis and Jordanians and other relatively moderate Arab regimes? Won’t it upset Muslims who oppose revolutionary Islamism?
We are supposed to believe that only Israel and the Jews will be upset about the Obama Administration moving closer to a radical antisemitic, anti-Christian, anti-American, anti-Western, pro-terrorist group that wants to repress women, kill gays, and overturn pretty much every existing government in the region. But just those Jews and their friends will be upset. You know, just like in the 1930s when certain people said that opposition to the totalitarian threat of those years was just coming from the Jews.
Reuters portrays the Brotherhood, as do many, as “a group founded in 1928 that seeks to promote its conservative vision of Islam in society.” Conservative? You mean they are like the Republican Party? You mean they are for the status quo? And of course one of the things they did since 1928 was to ally with Nazi Germany and the Brotherhood continues to voice the same political line toward Jews that it did back then
We are also told that the Brotherhood “long ago renounced violence as a means to achieve political change in Egypt….” This is simply not true. The Brotherhood merely temporarily renounced violence within Egypt because they knew that any resort to it would get them wiped out by the regime and the army. They postponed using violence until the revolutionary era arrived. Of course, if they can take over Egypt without violence they are happy to do so.
But there’s more. Every day for decades the Brotherhood has supported violence against Israel. It has supported violence against Americans in Iraq, and on various other fronts. Why is this so hard to see?
“The result has been a dilemma for the Obama administration. Former officials and analysts said it has little choice but to engage the Brotherhood directly, given its political prominence after the February 11 downfall of former President Hosni Mubarak.”
That is arguably true but by recognizing the Brotherhood and having contacts with it, the Obama Administration also makes a unilateral concession encouraging the Brotherhood. People who know the Middle East understand how this works: Soon many Egyptians will say (as they said in Iran and as they now say in Turkey) that the United States wants the Islamists to win.
But, the article continues:
“U.S. President Barack Obama will surely face criticism for engaging with the Brotherhood, even tentatively.” And who do they go to, Middle East analysts who can explain why this is dangerous? No, to the head of AIPAC in order to perpetuate the theme that this is merely a problem with the Jewish lobby! And who is presented to refute this? Former American diplomats. So it is the people who know versus the Jews.
And what are we told about the Brotherhood’s goals? This:
“The group says it wants a civil state based on Islamic principles, but talk by some members of an `Islamic state or `Islamic government’ have raised concerns that their goal is a state where full Islamic sharia law is implemented. The group says such comments have been taken out of context.”
“Some members” include the leader and deputy leader of the group. It is apparently too much trouble to read and quote what Brotherhood officials say, or their publications openly state, or their political platform calls for. Never are these statements fully quoted. Always they are dismissed as insignificant, like the statements of the late Usama bin Ladin once were.
Moreover, Egypt under Mubarak could be reasonably said to be a “civil state based on Islamic principles.” And since “Islamic principles” are mandated by Allah democracy is ultimately unacceptable since no human vote could alter those principles. How can an elected parliament pass a law limiting a man to one wife, or accepting religious conversion, outlawing amputations, or maintaining peace with Israel—to cite just a few examples—since those are “Islamic principles,” at least under the interpretation of Islam held by the Brotherhood.
So we just can’t tell if the Muslim Brotherhood wants a radical Islamist state before it takes power” Just like it was presumably a mystery about what Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini wanted to do in Iran, the Taliban in Afghanistan, Hizballah in Lebanon, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
And finally the article doesn’t even mention the most important development in U.S.-Muslim Brotherhood relations during that group’s eighty-year history: President Barack Obama’s explicit (and uninvited) statement accepting the Brotherhood being in government. U.S. policy is paving the way for a radical, possibly Islamist, Egypt. It is a catastrophic strategy.
OK, one quick comment. There are many tactics being used, and many groups dedicated to the destruction of Western civilization. I believe Obama is allied with those groups, and he is using a variety of methods to make us slaves to Islamic barbarism. Things were bad enough under the Bush Administration, when it was forbidden to admit that the terrorist thugs who were our declared enemies were Muslim. Now, under Obama, we're set to recognize those terrorist thugs, who are dedicated to our downfall, and negotiate with them. No good can come of this.
Labels: Barry Rubin, islam, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama
Hate Crimes in Canada
I saw the report, but I forget where I saw it originally, that in Canada, where Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently
proclaimed and
demonstrated his unwavering support for Israel, that
71 percent of hate crimes of a religious nature in 2009, were committed against Jews. While I appreciate Harper's principled stand on Israel, something needs to be done about the attacks against Jews in Canada. The first thing that needs to be done is to ask the simple question: who is doing the attacking? That was my first question. That was
Barry Rubin's question too.
Now the figures for "hate crimes" in Canada have been issued and guess what? Like the FBI's statistics for the United States, the number one victims of hate crimes are...Jews. Indeed, 71 percent of the hate crimes in the religion category are against Jews. The Jewish proportion of Canada's population? Around 1 percent. That's 71 percent of the hate crimes on a religious basis against 1 percent of the population.
For Canada, 4 per cent of the crimes were motivated by race or ethnicity, 29 per cent by religion and 13 per cent by sexual orientation
Makes you think, right?
Apparently not. Because the report is vague about just who might be attacking Jews and why these numbers have tended to rise. Skin-heads? Neo-Nazis? Russian peasant pogroms? Crusaders? The Klu Klux Klan? Peronists? Anti-Dreyfusards? Know-Nothings? Knights of the Camellia? Republicans? Tea-Partiers?
Because if we don't know who did it, then how can the situation be improved? Was it Anglicans? Bahai? Catholics? Dunkers? Episcopalians (oh, wait, they're the same thing as Anglicans), Franciscan monks or Fire-worshippers? Greek Orthodox? Hawaiian traditionalists? Idolotors or Illerati or Inuit? Jacobites? Kansans? Lutherans?
Of course, we know that answer to the question. And for those who are still having difficulty admitting to the answer, let me help by asking, which religion do you desperately try not to think of when you read reports like this?
Right.
Exactly.
But to admit to anti-Semitic attacks by Muslims destroys the "Muslim as victim of Western Society" paradigm that must be upheld at all costs, no matter what kind of mental gymnastics are required to maintain that ridiculous idea. There are
people who will fight tooth and nail to force that paradigm on others and battle fiercely against those who point out its falseness. And some of them aren't Muslims. They are the happy dhimmis.
Labels: Barry Rubin, Canada, hate crime, islam, Israel, Muslim anti-semitism, Muslims, Stephen Harper
CHALLAH AKBAR
