There has been much hum about the Left supporting Islamic radicals in the wake of the horror in Orlando.
It happens every time there is an attack. Usually in this order…
1 – Decry it as a terrorist attack
2 – Demand every Muslim in the world decry it in the exact same shrill tone of accusation or else they are supporting it.
3 – Demand to know why the Left don’t do the same and suggest deep down we philosophically love the Islamic Terrorists and are secretly on their side.
It’s tedious and it is a pretty ugly way to remember the innocent lives stuffed out by hate.
I remember the drum beat towards war in Iraq the second time around in the early 2000s. Bush had connected the terror attacks to Iraq and wanted regime change for geopolitical reasons and because the Military Industrial Complex needed a new feast. The Bush Administration molested the terrified post 9/11 world into invading another country on a pack of WMD lies.
The ferocious blowback of that event is being felt right now throughout the Middle East. The destruction and displacement within Iraq is still reverberating into todays conflicts. Just as the CIA had unknowingly funded Osama Bin Laden through the Pakistani Secret Intelligence Service, the US military who tortured and held prisoner many Iraqi Army Officers during their invasion and occupation of Iraq accidentally sowed the seeds of ISIS as many of those imprisoned and tortured former Iraqi Officers went onto become senior figures in IS.
We nurture the monsters who turn on us.
The ease of the manipulation of my fellow NZers to support such a trumped up and manufactured war all because we were sold a version of Islam that claimed they hated our way of life so much that they want to kill us. The denomination of an entire religion was easy, manipulative and green lighted wars and military action which reset the cycle of violence and grievance.
The Middle East hate that the West props up Authoritarian regimes that crush their people. Radical Islam becomes the only vent for that righteous grievance. Every bomb we drop we create more terrorists.
I see radical Islam in the 20th and 21st Century as a response to Western intervention in their world. The coup organised in Iran put in a dictator who was so cruel, radical Islam was the only opposition left standing. To not directly blame American corporate greed for oil as the direct reason why the Iranian Theocracy stands today suggests you don’t understand what’s going on, and if you don’t understand what’s going on, advocating dropping bombs won’t help.
America, time and time and time again interfere in the Middle East for their corporate interests and end up grooming the next monster to attack us. To destabilise the Soviets. the CIA feed Islamic fighters in Afghanistan. These fighters then ran amok after the Soviets lost and formed the Northern Alliance whose rampages were so extreme the people reached out to a hillbilly meth version of Islam, the Taliban.
Meanwhile Osama Bin Laden, emboldened by his CIA funded wins in Afghanistan, starts plotting death to America after America starts stationing troops in Saudi Arabia.
All the time America props up Israel’s brutal and genocidal occupation of Palestine. While propping up Saudi Arabia, the biggest funder of terror in the region. While propping up numerous other despots.
And then we wonder why these people loath us so much.
Has it actually occurred to anyone that our Western foreign policy actually makes us loathable?
I’ve always believed the greatest recruitment video for Islamic Radicalism is Jersey Shore.
To scream at the religion and blame it for being incompatible with us as justification to continue the western foreign policy that is actually breeding this type of deformed schism is just intellectually dishonest.
I don’t blame Islam because I try to understand what it is we do in the West that angers them so much for this kind of extreme violence. Blaming the religion is lazy and stupid thinking if we want solutions to what the bloody hell is going on.
The ease with which my fellow NZers are manipulated into screaming about a religion rather than critically analysing what it is that we are doing in the West that continue to create the environment for this kind of response is an indictment on a media that has traded its Fourth Estate obligations for clickbait ignorance.
Martyn are you claiming that the Left is a place of purity whereas the Right per se is anti Islamic? Are members of the Right deliberately fast and loose with factual evidence?
Can a member of the Right support religious tolerance, gay rights, immigration, feminism?
The worlds not simple, much to my discomfort a gay friend of mine votes ACT. Last night a woman branded by the Left “arch National stool pigeon” Sue Devoy marched with the Taranaki hikoi in support of Maori rights.
Im of the Left, life long socialist no less. And I am way out of line with lots of the ideological dictates over on the Left. I just wish when making sweeping statements like this story that the Left would not leave itself open to ridicule.
Nick, right-wing groups generally tend to be anti-Islamic; anti-immigration; and highly nationalistic. You don’t have to be a political scientist to know this. But if you have examples of right-wing groups asking for tolerance for diversity and for muslims, I’d be fascinated to know.
Yes.
Even our Dear Leader has a somewhat dubious reputation for being “fast and loose” with the truth. Internet commentator, “BLiP’ has compiled an extensive list of Key’s fibs/omissions/spin, and my own series, “The Mendacities of Mr Key”, provides concrete examples.
Hmmm, I’ve yet to see examples of your socialist ideals. Can you name some?
Frank, read Trotters latest and compare it with Martyns for considered accuracy. It’s not fast and loose. When the Right do it they tend to somewhat economic with the truth, spin doctor first and leave out the inconvenient bits. And if I have a gripe with the Left its because we too ignore inconvenient contrary evidence.
I bow to blip’s lists. Brilliant, but getting very little traction for such a compelling indictment. Of late I have noticed Key being very fast and loose, maybe he is bored by the ease he hammers the Left, or perhaps he is bored.
One little thing Frank. How would you feel if I challenged you for your left wing credentials? Would you feel obliged to lay them out? For the record I have never voted for the Right, I have been in and believe in union membership, I have been a Labour party LEC chair, and I agreed with the old unammended Labour Party principles. My initial response was to tell you to fuck off but hey, its supposed to be a broad church.
Feel free.
Go on then.
Nick: “One little thing Frank. How would you feel if I challenged you for your left wing credentials? ”
I’ve read plenty of Frank’s writings to know his “creds” are 100% left-wing.
But I don’t know who the hell you are and claiming that you “have been a Labour party LEC chair” cuts no mustard with me. I could claim to be the Queen’s butler and how would you disprove it?
Wasn’t me who asked. Didn’t ask if you were the Queens butler either though who am I to object if you were to claim that.
“Brilliant, but getting very little traction for such a compelling indictment.”
That’s because there are so few examples on the ‘list’ that actually constitute a ‘lie’, at least by the conventional definition. BliP overreached so badly, he, and the list, just lost credibility.
Actually, MANINTHEMIDDLE, I’ve read BLIP’s list and it does make for compelling reading. More than that, he references every single quote he makes. So you’re not being truthful on this.
In fact, you’ve been caught out a few times telling porkies haven’t you??
actually the corporates and right wing governments tend to be pro immigration… just as they are pro EU and NATO…
(Obama , John Key and other right wingers have advised Britain not to Brixit…the EU is essential for NATO which is run by the USA/Israel Middle East agenda)
1) they corporates and right wing without consultation of their own people destroy countries like Iraq and Libya and Syria ..so they can plunder their wealth
2.) they create a mass of unhappy refugees fleeing the ugly results
( eg ISIS which is actually supported by Saudi Arabia/ friend of USA and Israel and NZ and Britain …and ISIS covertly created by Israel and USA to destabilise the MIddle East)
3) the countries of the former refugees are plundered
( eg Iraq , oil …Sunni and Shiite are now at war; Libya had its gold and oil and water plundered..a wealthy egalitarian country with a high std of living is in ruins and overrun by ISIS, with Christians murdered; Israel coverts the Golan Heights belonging to Syria… and Syria is in ruins, its various religions which once lived happily together now at war and more Christians murdered )
4.) people like Angela Merkel who is in cahoots with USA and friends including Turkey welcomes the refugees into Europe …no consultation with her peoples or other European cultures and working peoples
5.) … and worst of all ….no criticisms by Merkel of NATO and USA/and friends for warmongering and creating the crisis in the first place and causing the poor refugees to flee from their homelands and have their wealth ripped off ( those who protest are accused of being fascist or terrorist)
…it is a theft and a scam ( shades of the annexing of Palestine by the Israelis)
6.) For goodness sake lets look at the ROOTS of the problem ( it is not a fascist anti refugee problem, this is a result) …the ROOTS of the problem are in those undemocratic laissez faire militaristic Western countries run by corrupt politicians in the pay of the corporates who have declared war on innocent countries and created the refugee problem in the first place…the reason is for theft of assets
Refugees should be returned to their countries of origin and the West should pay reparation and create fair trading…the UN should ensure refugees can live in peace back in their own countries , where they want to go, and are paid for the war crimes… and those who have aggressed against them are called to account, as in the Nuremberg Trials
I like that, Chooky. I would like to vote for you instead of Helen Clarke. A pity we are relatively impotent – we won’t even get to vote.
And the left are pro Islamic and anti-Semitic
And you are a troll
“The Truth”, if there ever was a mis-nomer for a pseudonym, yours is it. Mike is right, you’re a troll witrh nothing to contribute. Which is symptomatic of the Right.
I just wish when making sweeping statements like this story that the Left would not leave itself open to ridicule.
Yes Nick, my sentiment too. Although Bradbury is right to be outraged at what the West is doing politically and on the ground in the Islamic Middle East, he appears to be wilfully blind to the role of Islam in not only enabling and inflaming violent responses, but also denies Islam’s openly dirty hands in perpetrating vile human rights abuses on its own ground, particularly when considered by the values of the Enlightenment.
It took the West three hundred and fifty years to pull the fangs of organised Christian religion and separate the state from religion. It doesn’t help to pretend that the Islamic world has not got a huge problem in this respect and that it needs to sort itself out.
Richard: “Although Bradbury is right to be outraged at what the West is doing politically and on the ground in the Islamic Middle East, he appears to be wilfully blind to the role of Islam in not only enabling and inflaming violent responses, but also denies Islam’s openly dirty hands in perpetrating vile human rights abuses on its own ground, particularly when considered by the values of the Enlightenment.”
Two things, Richard.
Firstly, violent extremism arises when a society is under severe stress. Germany in the 1920s with the Depression; post-war effects of WW1; and the punitive Treaty of Versailles led to the growth of extremist, violent Nazi Party. Likewise the bombing of Cambodia; deposing of King Sihanouk; and US interference in Cambodian affairs led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge. The invasion of Iraq led to remnants of Saddam Hussein’s army reforming under the cloak of “ISIS-ISIL-Islamic State” and exacting a brutal revenge in conquored territory and further afield in Europe.
This isn’t about Islam, it’s about a military rump taking on the cloak of religion and exploirting it for an-Western reprisals.
Don’t forget also that the US SUPPORTED Osama Bin Laden’s Mujahideen to fight the Soviet occupation force in Afghanistan. The Americans, bless their ignorant, naive cotton-socks, armed, trained, gave logistical and Intelligence support to a guerilla group that would later become part of the Taliban government. If the US had left well alone, the Soviet-aligned Afghan government would have developed a secular society and continued to educate Afghan women. The Taliban would’ve remained an isolated group in the Afghan hills and 9/11 would never have happened.
Secondly. “Enlightenment”?? Considering that two bloody world wars started from Europe, sparked by supposedly “christian” nations, just what “enlightenment” are you talking about? I see nothing remotely enlightened about a Christian nation slaughtering six million Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, communists, etc, etc in concentration camps.
In fact the only non-religious, totally secular government in Europe was post-1917 Soviet Russia. (Which Stalin turned into a vast death camp, forever giving socialism a dark stain.)
The West is “enlightened” when it wants to be and at other times slaughters it’s way across Europe, Indo-China, Africa, Middle East, and anywhere else our missiles and bombers can reach.
So kindly take your “enlightenment” and file it away about “H” for hypocrisy or “B” for bullshit. I’ll have none of it.
100% Sally’s Husband my sentiment too.
Seems like these Neo cons come out of the woodwork with their holly over tones on civility while voicing Christianity as the answer.
It v was them not in their churches that never stop the war mongering US dragging us into their conflict yet again now in the middle east to bomb an d kill these people so are they innocent here??
I don’t think so, we are part of the problem as the Christian state we profess to be, simply stood by encouraging another war again!
So Martyn is right.
Ridicule tends to come from those who are keen to apply it, and who would look for other destructive means if in default.
You amuse me otherwise: Christianity taught barbarity to the Islamic world with its unspeakably uncivilised Crusader campaigns hundreds of years ago. And now you turn a blind eye to the butcher’s job that Christianity has made of the Middle East since the Sykes/Picot agreement, and ignore the continued idiocy of recent Bush/Blair etc policies.
It is the West that keeps provoking such barbarity by its own, then keeps throwing its hands up in horror.
I think you need to need to study your history, Islam was a barbaric religion long before the Crusader campaigns
I think you are the one who needs to study history. Do you have some naive illusion that christians were more civilised than others at that time, or, especially, before that time? The destruction of scriptures and records of the Roman Empire was what gifted Europe with the Dark Ages, and that destruction was done largely by dumb christians – not the Germanic invaders.. It was partly muslim enlightened scholars who helped rebellious christian scholars bring about the renaissance. Or can you inform me better?
100% IN VINO
Yeah, because Christianity never burnt women alive at the stake for being witches, right?
And both world wars were instigated by muslim nations, right?
“The Truth” = Orwellian to the extreme.
Quite Frankly I think all of the above need a history refresher and rather than criticise I have some pointers that may be of use. Might lift the level of debate above Im right you are wrong to “fekk theres a lot a contradictory dualities here….”
Some of the best contemporary commentary on radical Islam and Middle Eat poltics comes from Tariq Ali, long term editor of the New Left Review. You can watch his fascinating interviews with other experts from within the region on Youtube or on his own site. His book Clash of Fundamentalisms is dated but historically relevant.
If you want an accurate historic geopolitical book written for all ages try Ted Danforths The Eastern Question.. It gives you a good picture of long term rifts divides and continities. Great material for school projects (the author is a multilevel presentational genius).
If you are brave enough to navel gaze at the state of the contemporary Left watch on Youtube Sargon of Akkad on illiberal regressives. Gazing into the abyss can be challenging, for recovery Chomsky helps.
Is there meant to be a full stop before “Chomsky helps”? Most confusing…
Nah, just saying that after delving into areas that actually test your faith a little listening to Noam helps get the head straight.
Cool. I admire Chomsky.
Your history is faulty, Many Christians, including Martin Luther, Isaac Newton, Edward Gibbons, and others have identified the fifth and sixth trumpets as the rise and progress of Islam. In view of the tremendous military, religious, economic and cultural impact Islam has had on the world, especially in modern times, it is wise to carefully consider the impact this religion has had on the truths of God’s Word (Rev 9). Eccl (1:9) tells us there is nothing new under the sun, what has been is what will be. When the roman church & state were dominant the teachings of Islam united the Arab nations to a powerful force to resist them. Have you not noticed that after Rome & the USA combined to defeat communism that radical Islam became a major threat again?
I disagree. The bible quotes do not impress me. Once Communism was gone, the USA obviously needed a new external enemy to maintain its old mantra of quashing internal dissent with unity needed for Terrible External Threat. So guess what – we get this Islamic Terrorism bogyman.
Orwell’s ‘1984’ + Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ combined.
Try thinking less quickly and more cynically.
“Left” and “right” are artificial political assignations used to oversimplify politics so it can be superficially reported to people with below average IQs. That’s really all there is to it imo.
Religion is the greatest hoax ever played on mankind.
There are many paths leading to One God and depending where one lives in this world one had better choose the “right” path.
“Holy” books were written by man, for man, some passages channeled many not, and all seriously edited depending upon the politics playing out at the time and, in my opinion, designed to divide one against the other. NZ, as a member of The Club, entered all the wars intended to firstly depopulate and secondly to rape, steal and destroy and thirdly keep up the drug/child trafficking trade.
Our media told us we should deplore the pirates off the coast of Somalia and other places but they didn’t tell us that these people are starving from their waters being over-fished and polluted. Then jump to another media highlight of how Hussein is mistreating his people and has WMD but we’re not told he has massive gold stores that need plundering. Then we’re taken to Libya which has refused payment for oil in US dollars but wants payment in gold so leader must go. Then of course NZ troops are off to Afghanistan to protect the supplies of heroin (output of which jumped 70%) after Bush’s organizes The Club’s participation. And what now is our media entertaining us with? Oh yes, transgender, homophobia, xenophobia blah blah blah. In the meantime we ignore the fact that ISIS stands for Israeli Secret Intelligence Service and is/was set up, run by, financed through CIA Black Ops, Saudi Arabia, Israel (not, and I emphasize not the Jewish people who are brainwashed victims) and Turkey. Extremists in any religion are courted, trained, usually brain micro chipped, financed and supported by those with motives to divide and conquer.
In the meantime, our press fails to inform us that there are subterranean high speed (1000 mph) rail links all over America/Canada and underneath the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, massive cities underground in the USA/Europe and Antarctica and that space travel has been operating for years and for those wishing to go planets without a spaceship, jump rooms to facilitate the trips, all known as the “Secret” Space Programme, or Solar Wardens, and other names I’ve forgotten for the moment.
We are ever so subtly told in media and politics who to hate, where to hate and how to hate. Joke is on us. While the spaceships zip around space we still pull up our upgraded Model T Ford to the pump for gas, and we still pay for electricity when “free” energy is circulating around us every second of every moment (as Tesla proved before he was silenced). We still follow the university scripts approved so long ago by the Rockefeller elite and we still ignore the fact that cures for cancer were found years ago and trudge off to pink ribbon breakfasts, we still give our kids vaccinations deliberately intended to cause illness in later year and joy of all joy for the Bill Gates agenda – sterility.
The DNA of humans holds love and compassion. GMO crops are intended to alter the DNA and get rid of those qualities.
For Islamic Terrorist read: The Club and Goals of the Bilderberg.
Cuckoooo
Keep worrying in your armchair, Mr Smartie.
Watch, listen and consider: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LavklAnTXLw
But don’t worry.
Helena I have read a number of your blogs. and come to the conclusion that you are really a complete nutter and should be sectioned under the metal health act for your own good.
The truth = a nutter also.
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
Is this a good time to remind everyone that Mohammed did not write the Koran, and Jesus didn’t write the Bible.
My point is that religious books and beliefs are shaped by ordinary people (usually men) after the deaths of their prophets.
The original aims of the prophets are often entirely lost over the years and subverted by people who covet only wealth and glory and exhort other people to seek the same.
It looks like the gays and lesbians in Florida are blaming these slayings on Islam. Are you saying they are being Islamophobic?
JohnO, do you have a link to that?? You’ve been making claims like that without any supporting citations. It’s weird how even a whiff of so-called Islamic extremism brings the trolls out of the woodwork. Back it up or retract!
It looks like he can’t back it up, Sally’s Husband…
Like most Right-wing Trolls, they’re good at making up shit, but piss-poor at proving it.
Whats wrong with the comments ? ? ? Come on
Any comments we submit that do not agree with your beliefs, you delete.
Come clean and tell us why you delete many of our comments ? ?
What part of – freedom of speech – is being compromised here ?
This is pure masochism…its not all about ‘us’ (the west) Bomber.
Could you please explain how western foreign policy is responsible
for ELEVEN Islamic nations having the death penalty for being gay?
Or just stick to the regressive party line…America bad, Islam good (or at least misrepresented) . This denial shit is how Trump’s got so popular
So, Mr Asheer, which right wing troll are you? You’re using a middle-eastern sounding name, but my gut-feeling is that you’re a common, garden-variety right wing troll. None of your posts are anything but back-handed attacks on muslims.
ASHEER is one of many hired trolls.
When it comes to propping up dictators the US has an unenviable record.
As long as the dictators broadly support US policies and interests and allows the US to make money out of their country then it is a mutually beneficial arrangement – for the dictator and his cronies that is – usually not for the general population.
Examples over the years: Marcos – the Phillippines, Pinochet – Chile, Sadam Hussein, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Nicaragua, and many more.
Of course if the dictators just happen not to do what America wants and mouth off at them then everything is different. If you are a cruel despot but a friend of America then you are hero, but if you are a cruel despot and not a friend of America (which usually means you are a friend of Russia or China) then you are a scumbag.
If you are a cruel despot it makes no difference if you are left or right, black or white, Islamic or Christian or anything else.
Perhaps we should abandon the word “terrorist” and use a more appropriate word like “haters” because isn’t a terrorist largely a hater who is sufficiently mentally disturbed to take it a step further?
And there are a lot of haters around, a look through the comments sections on stuff.co.nz will illustrate that clearly.
Russia and China prop up dictatorships too. During the Darfur crisis last decade, it was noted that the Chinese were getting oil from Sudan in return for military helicopters and some older model combat jets being given to the Sudanese Government who turned them loose on ethnic groups and others they did not like in Darfur.
All religions are archaic claptrap, and the cause of war. They all preach over-population, and there is only so much land. The originators may have had one good idea each, before science, but now there is no excuse for any of them.
Agreed Kappanz!
But if you take a look at the history of the 20th century you’ll find socialism was the other major cause.
Really, Andrew?
You’ll also find that the first democratically elected government was toppled in Chile in 1973. That “regime change” was supported by no less than the freedom-loving US government. There have been other instances of coup d’états in Latin America deposing leftist governments, and suppoirted by our American cuzzies.
But that’s ok with you, I guess.
Frank, I’m not sure what Chile has to do with the tens, maybe hundreds of millions of innocent people killed by the Communists in Russia, China and other places.
Sure bad things happened in South America and yes in some instances (not all) the USA had a hand in it, but all the revolutions and counter revolutions in South America don’t amount to a tiny fraction of what either Stalin of Mao did.
You disgust me when you try to make excuses for what they did.
So it’s a numbers game for you, Andrew? Trivialising death squads in Latin America – often supported by CIA “advisers” – as “bad things happened in South America” is… “trying to make excuses for what they did”, as you so aptly put it.
The difference between us is that I view both what Stalin and Mao and the US and West have done equally evil. Perhaps worse on our part; we have the cloak of so-called “democracy and justice” to fall back on. Yet the West supported Pinochet’s coup and “at least 35,000 people: 28,000 tortured, 2,279 executed, and 1,248 missing. In addition, some 200,000 people suffered exile and an unknown number went through clandestine centers and illegal detention” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_violations_in_Pinochet%27s_Chile)
New Zealand’s hand is not clean either. Our government propped up the Indonesian invasion of East Timor and Pol Pot regime by voting to support the Khmer Rouge presence at the U.N. – https://fmacskasy2.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/nz-supports-for-timor-invasion.jpg
So for you to go on about muslims, when many of the world’s current problems have been a direct result of super-power manipulations; covert subversion, and support for puppet-regimes, shows your utter lack of understanding.
So what excuses did Frank make and when did he make them?
Go on Andrew, you are always the one demanding evidence for everything so lets see your evidence.
You have a vivid and distorted imagination.
I’ve never heard Frank making excuses for mass killings, what about you?
+1 Mike. As usual, Andrew creates BS arguments to smear Another person (Frank), simply because Frank has demolished his bigotry.
Stop playing the man, Andrew. If you’ve lost the argument, move on.
We had a major right wing troll attack on this subject Frank which suggests they care more about war than peace, AND OTHER IMPORTANT MATTERS LIKE warming THE PLANET AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION?
I concur, Cleangreen. This issue really seems to have been a trigger-point for right-wingers. Their responses are getting more vitriolic as their comments are de-constructed and ewasily dismissed as islamophobia, racism, and European chauvinism…
Which takes me back to the original questions I posed…to which there were responses but no considered answers. I’m open to be persuaded, nothing I have read above has persuaded me that either side are in possession of anything but chauvinism to their own opinions. It’s more, “I said, you said.” I’m none the wiser, just a little sadder that this foray hints that the Left echoes the Right as a vacuum for free thought.
So, another lying right-wing troll, revealed. And more disgusting is his use of an Arabic-sounding name to spread his bigotry.
Typical of the Right.
[Asheer, elements of your presence on The Daily Blog required clarification. I have attempted to contact you on the email address you provided. That email address has proved to be fake. Your posting privileges are therefore permanently rescinded. – ScarletMod]
Nailed it. Another right wing troll, this time assuming the cloak of a Middle Eastern sounding name to spew his toxic racist views.
As if we needed more evidence of the lying we get from the right wing.
Oh dear! Bogus name, bogus email address, it seems we’ve caught a little troll masquerading as a person with a middle eastern name.
These righties will stoop into the gutter to smear other ethnic groups.
Well done Scarletmod for rooting out this troublemaker!
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