Swinney-watch

More illuminating nonsense from Clare Swinney of Investigate magazine, ranting on NZ Politics:

It's common knowledge that Al Qaeda is the product of elements of the US
Admin, bent on a one world government - or as Bush Senior termed, the New
World Order...

Next week, how Noddy and Big Ears shot JFK, under orders from Mother Goose...

TAGS: Nonsense

Modernism: How bad was it?

A recent show of modern art at London's V&A has once again put modernism and particularly modern architecture in the spotlight, offering a chance perhaps for a reappraisal of a style whose obituary was deservedly written some years ago, but which is presently enjoying a 'more knowing' revival.

Modern architecture died in St. Louis, Missouri on July 15, 1972 at 3:32 pm when the infamous Pruitt-Igoe scheme [left], or rather several of its slab blocks, were given the final coup de grace by dynamite [right].

So said architectural critic Charles Jencks, (who unfortunately seized on the awful Pruitt-Igoe and contemporary cultural developments to invent the un-style of post-modernist architecture; Galt save us from po-mo wankers). What Jencks was celebrating in his own way was the much-needed destruction of a thoroughly Modernist, nearly new and utterly inhuman housing project, a project designed whole-heartedly in the 'bourgeouis-proofed' High Modernist tradition of Swiss-French architect-hero Le Corbusier I mentioned this some time ago here).

Who was Le Corbusier? Here's a perfectly fair satire of him by Uncyclopaedia:

Le Corbusier (October 6, 1887–August 27, 1965), a Swiss architect who frequently travelled as a French broom salesman, is single-handedly credited with turning architecture from an art form, one which celebrated man's spirit through the creation of uplifting and inspiring structures, into a vehicle by which humanity housed itself in a bleak, despair-filled world of soulless concrete and glass boxes devoid of anything resembling 2,000 years of human achievement.

Well put -- many a true word there spoken not entirely in jest. Le Corbusier was merely amongst the most emulated of modernism's elite, amongst whom the aphorism was often as telling as their bland work.

"Ornament is crime!" declared Adolph Loos -- "less is more," offered Mies van der Rohe (whose Reichsbank design that is at right) -- "Necessity would have to defeat beauty," said the constructivists -- between them helping set off a wave of defiantly un-beautiful 'neutron-bomb' architecture; that is, architecture from which all signs of humanity, beauty or soul were expunged. "A house is a machine for living," declared Le Corbusier (whose Casa Weissenhof that is at left). "If the house is a machine for living in," responded the more humane Frank Lloyd Wright, "then the heart is a suction pump." "A building should not be of a style," said Wright, "it should have style." However, like the anti-art of Dadaism from which modernism drew inspiration, heroic modernism rejected all style explicitly, but in the end all it had was this 'non-style' -- a reaction to all the style (and styles) already in existence.

Non-style celebrated as style -- what could be more ingenious! And, as it turned out, what could be more dispiriting?

Reviews of the V&A exhibition 'Modernism, Designing A New World 1914-1939' have been mixed, but they do show that the worm is beginning to turn against the sterility of the modernist movement in art, if not yet sure what exactly it's turning to. "To the past," unfortunately appears to be this reviewer's chosen route, an unfortunate conclusion to an otherwise sound review:

It is the most terrifying exhibition I have seen, because it is politics disguised as art. It opens with a word that says it all - utopia - and ends with an unspoken lie, that this nihilist ideology became merely a style and is no longer a threat. If only.

...Only now do I realise that the tawdriness of so much modernist architecture was deliberate. The constructivists sacrificed art as they rejected history, as bourgeois: "Necessity would have to defeat beauty." Harsh manufactured materials such as glass and steel were "appropriate to achieve the communist expression of structure". Hence the bleak minimalism of Mies van der Rohe and the cruel brutalism of Le Corbusier, whose creations must have inspired more human misery than any in history...

The modernist cult took hold most firmly in countries that capitulated easily to dictatorship: Russia, Germany, Italy and France. It was resisted in more resolutely democratic Britain and America. [The exhibition's curator] refers patronisingly to British critics who favoured an art that "gave pleasure, physical and intellectual comfort and a sense of place" as somehow missing the point, if not off the planet... Modernism was never a style. It was a rejection of style, because style required hard work and talent.

<Rejecting the 'modernist past' does not mean embracing the ancient past as too many cultural commentators would recommend, or moving on to the new non-styles of deconstruction, nihilism and the irrational as too many present-day architectural practitioners have done. Embracing art and architecture that celebrate human life on this earth in this age is possible, as I trust examples of both posted over the last year on this very blog have demonstrated.

LINKS: Pruitt-Igoe & the end of modernity- University of Missouri - St Louis
Le Corbusier - Uncyclopaedia
Brutalism and brutality - Simon Jenkins on the myopic vision of modernity - Guardian
Modernism - Special report - Guardian

TAGS: Art, Architecture, History-Twentieth_Century, Urban_Design

Hamilton footbridge: Evolution of an idea

Hamiltonians have been discussing the possibility of a footbridge over the Waikato River at the south end of Victoria Street, linking Hamilton's thriving restauarant, bar and entertainment precinct with the river and with the many people living across the river.

A great idea, that I'm told is back on the agenda once again. Great news.

The possible problem lies in the implementation of the idea.

At present there are two ideas. The first is elegant, playful and adventurous (right, below, in an unfortunately bad image). The second (left below) and the one presently proposed is dull, squat and -- as a friend said -- "looks like a road bridge with a few sheds on it."

Above at right is another foot-bridge, nowhere near Hamilton, which gives an indication of what another city has done in the way of an elegant solution to a similar demand -- a Barcelona footbridge by Santiago Calatrava.

TAGS: Architecture, Urban Design

Beer O'Clock: Kilkenny

About time I started on one of these I'm thinking. A perfect beer for a Friday Thursday before a long weekend just as winter's icy fingers start stealing across the scenery. The perfect spot would be in a small bar with the setting sun just coming in over distant leaves and picking out the flames of an open fire...

Jaysus, but sure and the very t'ought of it's enough to get a man poetic.

PS: Real Beer has the news of a man who got not just poetic over his beer, but downright romantic... There are some who might t'ink a feller had gone too far.

TAGS: Beer & Elsewhere

Auckland arseholes try to kill the car

A meddlesome arsehole from the Auckland Regional Council was bleating today that Aucklanders own too many cars ("1.66 cars per household!" says the arsehole from the ARC, "that's one for every person over fifteen!!" compared to "only 1.4 per household for Los Angeles!" [breathless exclamation points mine!!!]), with the clear implication that they intend to do something about that state of affairs by force. True. They do.

Recognising (or perhaps failing to recognise) that nearly every person over fifteen in Greater Auckland has a car since it's the only practical way to get around, live and do business in Greater Auckland, they intend to impose a scheme which will make car use in Auckland unfeasably expensive, and by which they themselves hope to collect scads of cash. Now you know why I've called them arseholes.

(What's not true however is that figure they quote for LA -- the actual figure for Greater LA and not just the benighted downtown is 1.9 cars per household, as the ARC surely know and as Owen McShane pointed out soon after this morning's ARC grandstanding. Fancy a bureaucrat lying to make a point.)

As to the scheme, the ARC and their fellow-arseholes at the Auckland City Council have both been considering the imposition of road-pricing around Auckland in a bid to get people out of their cars and on to, well, not on to public transport since there's barely any in Auckland, but just to impose it because they can, and because they think it will be a particularly lucrative form of theft.

Agreeing to support the measure Auckland Mayor Dickwhack Hubbard said "road-pricing stood to provide $200 million to $400 million of essential public transport improvements." Jolly good, but not nearly jolly enough for Auckland's creaking public transport 'network' (what's the opposite of a network? -- that's the only word for Auckland's pulic transport), as even former Labour MP Richard Northey can see:

"If you talk to anybody in the street, they will say: How on Earth can you seriously consider road-charging when there is no serious alternative for me to get into the central city for my work or my study except in my car?" the former Labour MP said.

Mr Northey said administrative and technical costs would drain away a huge proportion of revenues raised, and although there might come a time when such schemes became feasible, pursuing any of them now would risk losing public credibility for the future.

All true. However, said Dickwhack raising his hand to vote for road-pricing, "The council would be seen as 'Luddites' if it supported Mr Northey's amendments." It would also kiss goodbye to nearly half-a-million in potential revenue, not something a tax-and-spend politician could easily kiss goodbye to you must admit, even if the imposition of the new regime were in fact to strangle Auckland and make that revenue stream an illusory one. Meddling arseholes.

PS: as an antidote to this creeping, all-enveloping, all-statist, anti-car wowserism, try this from Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson: "If you love cars you are up against a global conspiracy to destroy your spirit. You must rebel." Great stuff -- until the last line. [Hat tip Marcus at SOLO]

LINKS: Auckland road tolls clear first hurdle - NZ Herald
Here's to health and safety - Jeremy Clarkson, Times Online

TAGS: Auckland, Urban_Design, Politics_NZ

Celebrating those Easter rituals

Every year at Easter we celebrate sacrifice with time-honoured rituals that go to the heart of who we are as a society. This year will be no exception.

Yes, this very Easter -- just like every Easter past in this pathetic authoritarian backwater -- bureaucrats will be out in force once again showing who's boss: arresting, harrassing and charging shop-owners who have the temerity to open their own shops on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Tourists will be able to say that they arrived in New Zealand, but the country was closed. And those of us who live here will be able to look forward to court hearings later in the year at which people will be sentenced, fined and pilloried for the act of minding their own business.

A pity that our politicians and bureaucrats can't learn how to.

TAGS: Politics-NZ

A movie about the mind, apparently.

Let me introduce you to a film in which the contradictions are apparently all worth it.

A teen-flick that celebrates intelligence.
A film in which Kim Basinger wins out by the use of her mind.
A thriller in which cellphones and technology star, and in which the mind comes out victorious over muscle.

Thrilling stuff, huh? Sounds like it to me too, and I know nothing more about it than what I've read here, and that it's called Cellular.

LINK: The digital divide: It's not the money stupid - Owen McShane, NBR

TAGS: Films, Objectivism

Is it true that the government that governs best, governs least?

'The Government that Governs Best, Governs Least.' That's true, but it's not the whole truth -- which just shows you how reliable bumper-sticker philosophy can be. What's missing from that analysis is what gets too many libertarians confused.

What's missing is this: Size isn't always important (and just try selling that line after dark). In particular, size is not the primary consideration when judging governments. What is of primary importance is not that government is small, but that it protects individual rights. That, after all, is what government is for - to protect you from me, and me from you. Size is a consequence of that primary role, not the generator.

To protect me from you and you from me -- in other words, to protect our individual rights -- a government needs to be big enough to be able to do that job properly, and it needs to be properly constituted so they don't do you over themselves. There are too many example of small but vicious governments that don't do the job, and some rare examples of big governments that (sometimes) do -- and some very rare but truly exceptional examples of small governments that very often do, and hardly ever don't. In judging them all, small is better, but proper protection of individual rights is best.

As the T-shirt might well say, 'There's No Government Like No Government - Unless it's Very, Very Small, and it Properly Protects Individual Rights.'

TAGS: Libertarianism, Cue_Card_Libertarianism, Politics

Elk Rock House - Robert Harvey Oshatz

Another house from Robert Harvey Oshatz, this one the Elk Rock House from 1988-89.

LINK: Robert Harvey Oshatz Architect

TAGS: Architecture

Muslims get tits in a tangle

A new Muslim-sensitive edition of Playboy has appeared in the world's most populous Muslim nation that should please all the local and international idiots who favour wowserish puritanism for Muslim women -- the just-launched Indonesian edition lifts the burqah on "midriffs, thighs and cleavage," but contains no nudity. None at all. I swear I am not making this up.

As a poster at Noodle Food says, if you're a Muslim, you really do read Playboy for the articles. Or perhaps, if you're a militant Muslim, you reach for your sword: in a reaction promising to be as intemperate as the one against the Danish cartoonists (now in hiding in fear for their lives), a few are promising to do just that:

"If within a week they are still active and sell the magazine, we will take physical action," said Muhammad Alawi Usman, a spokesman for [Islamic Defenders Front, a hardline faction known for offering violent solutions to moral problems]. "Playboy is not suitable for reading because its contents degrade women."

Don't you just love that characteristically tolerant, caring and reasonable approach to disagreement. Fortunately there were some genuinely reasonable outrage aired on a local radio station:

"It’s sinful to read Playboy if there’s no nudity!" said one caller. "It’s a scandal! There’s no nude women in the magazine. I think we have been deceived," said another.

If they want the real thing, it's not like there isn't plenty of it about in Jakarta. "More explicit photos appear daily in local tabloids," says AsianSirens.Com, so maybe the non-nudity is more about appeasement than anything else.

UPDATE: Turns out that the forces of barbarism have already acted, attacking the Playboy offices in Jakarta.

LINKS: Playboy's Indonesian edition enrages - and disappoints -- Time Online
More Muslim outrage - Noodle Food
Slide Show and Video - Reuters Video, via Yahoo
Tamer Playboy hits Jakarta newsstands - Asian Sirens
Indonesia Muslim hardliners attack Plyboy building - Reuters

TAGS: Religion, Multiculturalism, Politics-World, Sex

Petrol price gouging

There is a feeling afoot that there is some group taking advantage of high petrol prices to make a killing, to rip you off, to take you for a ride. That feeling is correct: the culprit is the Government.

At 166.9c for every litre of 95 octane petrol, the Government takes about 68c of that litre as excise tax. Sixty-eight cents. Every time the price rises ten cents they get just over four cents of that -- and of course that includes the extra 0.79c per litre in tax (plus GST) that kicked in on April 1, but does not yet include extra taxes proposed to build new roads like Wellington's Transmission Gully.

How much of every litre you pay for gets spent on roads? About 24c.

So when you fill up your Toyota Corolla (thanks to the Herald for the graphic), approximately $36.33 of every tank is going to the grey ones. Thirty six dollars and thirty-three cents, of which about $12.80 goes to build and maintain the roads.

So if you want to yell at someone when you fill up today, don't yell at the person at the pump filling you up; ring your MP and vent your spleen at them for being complicit in ripping you off. And if you want prices to fall, you could try lobbying the US Government to remove exploration restrictions and refinery taxes, environmentalists who oppose drilling in empty wilderness, rebels and insurgents in Iraq and Nigeria disrupting suppies, and intransigent mullahs and Mahmouds in Iran. Good luck with that. Just be happy that oil prices are still not at record highs.

LINKS: Petrol soars: get used to it - Herald
Why is oil so gosh-darned expensive? - Not PC (August, 2005)
Taxing profits stifles oil production - Not PC (September, 2005)
Oil at a record high? - Not PC (December, 2005)

TAGS: Economics, Energy, Politics-US, Environment

NZ's libertarians want you.

I know some of you have been meaning for some time to join the Libertarianz -- why not now? You know you want to; and you know you're wanted. If you agree with even half of what you read here at this blog, if you like us want more freedom and less government, then you really need to join New Zealand's only libertarian party.

And don't worry, you can continue your membership of other parties -- infiltration of libertarian ideas into places where they otherwise wouldn't be is one of our specialities.

LINK: Join Libertarianz
Libertarianz principles
Libertarianz on the web

TAGS: Libertarianz, Libertarianism, Politics-NZ

Atomic Iran

In 1981 when Israel bombed Baghdad's nuclear reactor in a bold air strike, the world was outraged.

Yet is there any doubt that if his reactor had been contructed as planned that when Saddam's Scuds were dropping in the suburbs of Tel Aviv in the 1991 Gulf War that some of them would have been armed with nuclear warheads?

How happy were the residents of Tel Aviv in 1991 that action had been taken in 1981 to halt Iraq's nucler programme? And how happy might the residents of the Middle East be in years to come if action is taken to halt Iran's atomic programme now?

LINKS: Blixatron - Cox and Forkum
Iran enriches uranium for the first time - Regime Change Iran
Iran cartoons - Cox & Forkum

TAGS: Politics-World, War

Welfare hardening hearts, minds and borders

George Reisman joins the chorus in favour of open immigration; I made my own small contribution here the other day, arguing that "letting peaceful people pass borders freely is both moral and practical," and quoting Harry Binswanger's argument that "Entry into the U.S. [and New Zealand] should ultimately be free for any foreigner, with the exception of criminals, would-be terrorists, and those carrying infectious diseases."

Reisman points out, as I did, that the large elephant in the middle of the immigration debate that no-one mentions is the Welfare State. That's a large elephant which is stampeding through all the moral arguments for open borders, and hardening the hearts and minds of those who should be the natural supporters of open immigration. His point is pithily summarised in the title of his piece: Immigration Plus Welfare State Equal Police State.
Click here to read more ... >>

'V' House

An unbuilt project from 1979 by a chap called Robert Harvey Oshatz.

LINK: Robert Harvey Oshatz Architect

TAGS: Architecture

Ideas vs People

There are a disturbing number of people who don't understand the difference between ideas and those who hold them. Perhaps the clearest example yesterday was a commenter on Kiwiblog's 'Anti-Islam Speech' thread in this exchange:

RW: "Islam is not any individual muslim, it is a socio-political ideology with religious dressings, and it is a mortal enemy of the infidel."
ERR: "Oh, now that's just sophism. What is a religion? It is an idea shared by a collection of people. If all the individual people vanish, so does the entire idea. Therefore the individuals making up Islam are a subset of the entirity of the religion."

Far from being 'sophism,' understanding the difference between destroying an idea and destroying a person is surely fundamental to the exchange of ideas. Conflating ideas and people is, well, either sophism or just plain silly.

Calling for the death of an idea does not entail calling for the death of a person. If for instance I say "I look forward to the death of the idea that flared trousers are fashionable," then I'm advocating that people no longer wear flares; I'm maybe suggesting that flared-trouser-wearers be shunned socially; what I'm not doing is advocating killing those who wear them or sell them. On the other hand, Eric Pianka in the post below is calling for people to die, or is at least saying he'll be happy when mass-dying happens. You see the difference? [Sheesh, you'd hardly think this was necessary to point out, would you?]

Equally, if I advocate the death of an idea or a religion I am not advocating genocide -- I'm calling for the death of an idea; the death of the religion, not the deaths of the religion's adherents. (Not, that is, unless those adherents have taken the next step of becoming murderers themselves.)

So what lack of logic equates one with the other? The other day I quoted Eleanor Roosevelt saying, "Great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about events, small minds talk about people." What sort of mind confuses one with another?

There are some ideas that are so toxic they deserve to lose support. They deserve to be shunned. They deserve to die out. Just because some ideas are held very strongly -- indeed religiously -- does not mean they can't be criticised, pilloried, satirised or laughed at. As Thomas Sowell reminds us, "Cultures are not museum pieces, they are the working machinery of everyday life." We need to judge cultures and religious beliefs and practices by the same standards as we judge "working machinery": that is, by how well they work for adherents and those affected by cultural and religious practices. The standard by which that judgement is made is life, human life. By that standard, modern Islam ranks very poorly.

The West too had its own Dark Ages before reason and individualism brought us into the sunlight of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Sadly, as the West embraced reason and went from Dark Age to Golden Age, Islamic philosophers did the reverse, rejecting reason and this earth and setting off Islam's own slide into darkness, where it has remained ever since. Without their own rebirth of reason, Islamic cultures are likely to stay there.

Whatever you can say about Golden Age Islam and its great advances, sharia, subjugation of women, suicide bombing, virulent irrationalism and worldwide terrorism say an awful lot about modern Islam and it's current anti-life outlook. Said the Islamic philosopher who first rejected reason and this earth on behalf of his brothers, "If it's in the Koran we don't want it; if it's not in the Koran we don't need it. Said Osama bin Laden after 9/11, "We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the difference between us two... in the [Muslim] nation there are thousands of young men who are as keen on death as Americans are keen on life." The events of the last five years in particular show these statements should be taken seriously, and judged accordingly.

Like I said, there are some ideas so toxic that they deserve to die out. Irrational, anti-life religion is one of them. "Death to the anti-life," say I.

NOTE: For your interest, I've added links to two related pieces I wrote for Scoop back in 2001: 'The Heart of the West' and a response to critics of that piece, posted down the page from 'Who Kills the Innocents?'

UPDATE: I'm adding a link to an excellent piece by Amit Ghate on 'The Islamist Threat to Civilization' which concretises exactly that, showing exactly what is at stake and why. It's not Islamism versus Chistianity, its Islamism versus every civilising value that the West stands for.

LINKS: Anti-Islam speech - Kiwiblog
The Heart of the West - Peter Cresswell, Scoop
Who kills the innocents? - Peter Cresswell, Scoop
The Islamist threat to civilization - Amit Ghate, Capitalist Magazine

TAGS: War, Multiculturalism, Religion, Philosophy, Ethics

When scientists go genocidal

Religous zealots aren't the only ones preaching destruction. One award-winning American academic beats even Islamic mullahs for sheer genocidal chutzpah.

Dr Eric Pianka, an environmental ecologist from the University of Texas (pictured left with an apparently adoring audience member) wants ninety percent of the human race exterminated so we can "save the earth." His preferred method? Ebola virus: "HIV is too slow. It's no good... You know, the bird flu's good, too. We need to sterilize everybody on the Earth.”

Pianka delivered his delighted obituary to the human race at a Texas Academy of Sciences award function at which he received both a plaque as the 2006 Distinuished Texas Scientist, and a standing ovation for declaring that "We're no better than bacteria," (speak for yourself, Buddy), "spoke glowingly of the police state in China that enforces their one-child policy," and said:

His favorite candidate for eliminating 90 percent of the world's population is airborne Ebola ( Ebola Reston ), because it is both highly lethal and it kills in days, instead of years. However, [as scientist and audience member Forrest M. Mims III reports] Professor Pianka did not mention that Ebola victims die a slow and torturous death as the virus initiates a cascade of biological calamities inside the victim that eventually liquefy the internal organs...

When Pianka finished his remarks, the audience applauded. It wasn't merely a smattering of polite clapping that audiences diplomatically reserve for poor or boring speakers. It was a loud, vigorous and enthusiastic applause.

"Bad philosophy, tenure, and your tax dollars at work," says Stephen Hicks, drastically understating the case. Life-hating philosophy, anti-human environmentalism and jobs-for-life tenure have allowed academics to seriously give this toxic stuff house-room. Post-modern nihilism, deep ecology, and vicious anti-humanism give it legs. Why don't they start their project on themselves?

NOTE:

• If you're wondering if this was a hoax, then rest assured the American media were too. No longer. Keep an eye on the MSM as this story develops, and as Pianka and his supporters spin. A transcript of Pianka's speech is not yet available, but Cathy Young has a transcript of an earlier speech by Pianka, and a brief summary of the state of play with the spin and counter-spin.
  
• If you're wondering how people can seriously sit still for this stuff, then rest assured there are those who do, and indeed environmentalists who have been saying this stuff for some time -- I quote many of them in a comment on this post here. Sample: "We are not interested in the utility of a particular species, or free-flowing river, or ecosystem to mankind. They have... more value - to me - than another human body, or a billion of them... Until such time as Homo Sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along." - David M. Graber, US National Park Service biologist.
• Time to repost or at least link to my earlier post calling for a new environmentalism that puts humans first.

UPDATE: Page with Piankas's earlier speech moved, and link updated.

LINKS: Meeting Doctor Doom - The Citizen Scientist
Pianka's speech - The Y Files
Pianka: Smear victim, eco-fanatic, or neither? - The Y Files
Anti-human environmentalism quotes, included in Comments on 'Eaten by Absurdity' - Peter Cresswell
A new environmentalism: Putting humans first - Peter Cresswell


TAGS: Conservation, Philosophy, Environmentalism, Politics_US

Eames House - Charles & Raye Eames

The 1940s Eames House showed that with the right amount of ability and careful design, 'off-the-shelf' steel componentry could produce a delightful and thoroughly liveable Californian house.

The picture at right is a 3d rendering of the famous Shulman photograph at left above.

LINKS: Charles Eames - Great Buildings Online
Eames Foundation website
Eames House - Shulman collection

TAGS: Architecture

Nicholas - abused

Louise Nicholas has been used, abused and then discarded by people in positions of power who have used those positions to exploit her shamelessly for their own ends

I'm talking here of journalists, militant feminists and editorial writers.

In the wake of a journalist resurrecting the Rickards/Shipton/Schollum story from twenty years ago, where Nicholas herself had been content to let it lie, a tide of sensationalism and intrusion into Nicholas's life and intensely private affairs has swept the media and the country. Whatever private life she once had has now vanished in the glare of a thousand close-up photographs, the breathless revelations of too-much titillating journalism, and the man-hating agendas of militant feminism.

Enough. Leave her be. For pity's sake, just leave her be.

LINKS: Suppressing information. A challenge to free speech? - Not PCRickards v Nicholas - Not PC
Cue Card Libertarianism - Feminism - Not PC
TAGS: New_Zealand

A reminder that we're still at war with barbarism

Death to Marxism! Death to Fascism! Death to Islam! Death to all forms of tyranny over the minds of men! And shame on those who would appease or apologise for the evils these disgusting and barbarous ideas represent.

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for cowards to appease it - and Islam is the locus of evil in the contemporary world." If that statement from The Free Radical's Lindsay Perigo is not true, then the death and destruction of September 11 did not happen; then Theo van Gogh was not murdered; then the Danish cartoonists are not in hiding in fear of their lives; then hordes of stone-age barbarians did not take to the streets in reaction against those cartoons to say "Europe, you will have your own Holocaust soon," "Behead those who would insult Islam" and "God Bless Hitler"; then Bali, Madrid and London were not bombed by maggots who show those threats need to be taken very seriously indeed.

It's still not clear to some people that war was declared in the name of Islam some five years ago by representatives from the dark ages who hate the West for its wealth, for its happiness and for its material success. This post is yet another reminder for those people. Since that time and in the name of Islam, murderous morons have reaped destruction across the globe -- and make no mistake, they mean to continue until another curtain of darkness has been brought down over the West. THEY MEAN IT! If you still don't understand that, then either you have a mind incapable of learning from events happening right in front of your eyes, or perhaps it's time you did some serious reflection. Let me help you in that task by reminding you that these barbarians want you enslaved and destroyed, and the world of the West returned to the darkness from which it once came. THEY DO MEAN IT!

Said the scum who murdered Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh at his trial for the killing, he "acted out of religious conviction and would do it again if given the chance." He really does mean it.

I don't feel your pain," he told Van Gogh's mother, Anneke. "I don't have any sympathy for you. I can't feel for you because I think you're a nonbeliever... I did what I did purely out of my beliefs. I want you to know that I acted out of conviction... If I ever get free I would do it again.

Said Abu Musab A- Zarqawi, Al-Qaeda frontman in Iraq and perpetrator there of bombings, butchering and beheadings, "Islam permits the killing of "infidel" civilians.":

In Islam, making the difference is not based on civilians and military, but on the basis of Muslims and infidels," said the voice attributed to the fugitive leader who has a 25-million-dollar price on his head.

"The Muslim's blood cannot be spilled whatever his work or place, while spilling the blood of the infidel, whatever his work or place, is authorized if he is not trustworthy.

Make no mistake, these are voices from the dark ages; representatives of ideas as intolerant and cruel as they are unfortunately widespread. The barbaric ideas these men represent are as evil as the murders committed in their name. The stone-age representatives of those ideas are not going away-- indeed, if left unopposed they plant to bring sharia and dhimmitude and death to all those unbelievers and infidels they can reach. THAT MEANS YOU! If that's something some of you still don't understand, then perhaps you should refrain from criticising those who do. For until you do you're like a child in an adults' world, and your brainless chattering just distracts adults when they're talking.

Fortunately, there are adults who do understand. As Tony Blair said just days ago, "the struggle facing the world today was not just about security. It was also 'a struggle about values and modernity, whether to be at ease with it or enraged at it'." As Dr Wafa Sultan bravely said on Al-Jazeera television just one month ago:

The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings. What we see today is not a clash of civilizations. Civilizations do not clash, but compete...

And as Lindsay Perigo said in that Free Radical editorial criticised as "reminiscent of the rhetoric which led to the Holocaust" by an infantile fool who smears Perigo as a Nazi (and who is linked to by a hand-wringing David Farrar) :

Human beings worthy of the title must rise up and shout in irresistible unison: “Enough of this primordial primitivism! We who are civilised are revolted by it and shall rebuff it at every turn!” Muslims must discover rationality and decency; Westerners must rediscover them, and, as a matter of urgency, speak up for them!

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for cowards to appease it—and Islam is the locus of evil in the contemporary world.

There’s been far too much appeasement of it...

It cannot be defended—indeed, it can only be betrayed—by apologetic weasel-worders appeasing militant, murderous morons whose savage pseudo-sensibilities have been stirred, not by sticks and stones, but by words.

May men of righteous rationality reignite the flame of reason and fight an unapologetic philosophical jihad in its holy name, that it may illumine the globe and save the world from another Dark Ages.

Bravo! Death to Marxism! Death to Nazism! Death to the barbarities of the Dark Ages! And as Perigo concludes himself, "Death to Islam -- and all forms of tyranny over the minds of men!"

UPDATE: I'm adding a link to an excellent piece by Amit Ghate on 'The Islamist Threat to Civilization' which concretises exactly that, showing exactly what is at stake and why. It's not Islamism versus Chistianity, its Islamism versus every civilising value that the West stands for.

LINKS: Death to Islam - Lindsay Perigo
Muslim radical confesses to Van Gogh killing in court tirade - Times Online
Intolerance in the Quran - Skeptics Annotated Quran
Cruelty in the Quran - Skeptics Annotated Quran
Death to hate speech - Ruth - Chaos Theory
Anti-Islam speech - David Farrar, Kiwiblog
"A battle of values..." - Not PC
'Clash of civilisations' rubbished by Arab-American woman - Not PC
The Islamist threat to civilization - Amit Ghate, Capitalist Magazine

TAGS: War, Multiculturalism, Religion