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What part of socialism in national socialist don’t you understand?
honour killings –
So, how many atheists carry out such crimes, eh?
Anonymous | 07.05.07 – 6:50 pm
Hitler either killed/had killed/drove to suicide his niece because she was sleeping with a Jew.
Albanian atheists have blood feuds because of marital/dowry issues.
Bet the Japanese have lots too. Social pressure there much stronger than religion.
Great: can we have a chart explaining how the BBC work out “militant-extremist-terrorist” labels now?
Trolled.
Korova probably won’t even read these responses. I know I wouldn’t, and as a troll myself I spend no more than 25 seconds writing out inflammatory crap and then I forget about it.
For everyone else’s amusement:
I have read enough of Korova’s blog to know that some people here have made some incorrect assumptions.
Korova is male, married, seemingly British, and maybe in his late 20s/early 30s. Korova is also most likely a fan of one of my absolute favorite movies/stories “A Clockwork Orange”. Our hero Alex used to hang out at the Korova Milk Bar, where he and his gang would drink milk laced with LSD. This would get the juices flowing before a night of good old ultraviolence.
(Burgess used Russian words, including slang, to create the decadent, futuristic-souding patios spoken by Alex in the story.)
Burgess’s story involves the government forcibly modifying Alex’s behavior to achieve a good result. However, Alex does not end up educated or changed into a good person. Rather, he is simply left physically unable to behave badly. Of course, since society no longer suffers from his behavior, this is considered to be a “good thing”.
The only person who disagrees is the chaplain – the one in charge of the prison’s religious program, which is itself an attempt to change thought processes and behavior. This vicar realizes that the result is wrong because human choice has been taken away. Alex does not behave well by choice. Rather, he is physically unable to behave badly because his body chemistry had been altered. Once choice has been removed from the equation, there is no intrinsic goodness in the behavior. There are no degrees of behavior permitted, no variations, no nuance. 100% submission of all behavior is the only acceptable result.
This is the path down which Korova’s crowd would lead us. Since mankind is at present free – in most places – to choose to behave in ways that do not conform 100% to their world view, then the masses must be forced into acceptable behavior. Naturally, in this mindset, the only people harmed by this would “the rich”, the “privileged elite”, the “capitalist opressors”. In this mindset, the economy is a zero sum game, wealth cannot be created – it can only be redistributed. In this mindset, mankind should be living according to the dreams of Che Guevara and Pol Pot. 100% obedience or 100% shut down. And we all live at a bare subsistence level, as all else has been shut down.
I’m guessing that, unlike John Reith, Korova did not imbibe irony with the milk. And it’s no wonder he has a little “I believe in the BBC” banner on his blog. The BBC are trying their own form of behavior modification, albeit it’s a method of slow torture rather than a short, intensive regimen like in “A Clockwork Orange”.
AntiCitizenOne 07.05.07 – 9:41 pm |
What part of socialism in national socialist (sic) don’t you understand?
Which part of Mein Kampf do you not understand?
Clearly not the bit where Hitler reminisces about how he and the party founders used to roar with laughter at the dimwits who thought the party was socialist.
Clearly not the bit where Hitler reminisces about how he and the party founders used to roar with laughter at the dimwits who thought the party was socialist.
John Reith | 07.05.07 – 10:04 pm
I have read Mein Kampf and I have absolutely no recollection of any episode like this. Which page – give the reference – I do not think you will be able to.
Anonymous said:
“Hitler either killed/had killed/drove to suicide his niece because she was sleeping with a Jew.
Albanian atheists have blood feuds because of marital/dowry issues.
Bet the Japanese have lots too. Social pressure there much stronger than religion.”
Hitler was not an atheist. He had at various stages all sorts of polytheistic, dopey superstitions. He did not adhere to anything close to typical Christian beliefs, but he most certainly believed in a higher power, the supernatural, and other mumbo jumbo. Nothing like an atheist.
Albanians have violent caveman feuds regardless of relgious conviction. Atheism was forced on them only about sixty years ago, when the totalitarian regime took over. They, like all totalitarian leaders, viewed any religion as a threat to the masses’ loyalty to them, so outlawed it. The only higher power people are allowed to believe in these societies is the Dear Leader (see North Korea) or The State or The Party (see the Soviet Union or China).
This mindset can be viewed as a form of religion, indeed can be analyzed along similar lines. Albanians in the last couple of generations have not grown up with any religion in public view, but their violent little caveman feuds have existed long before this, and go at least as far back as when they were – wait for it – Muslims. But that sort of behavior has little to do with whether or not they have any religion, per se.
Japan has one of the lowest violent crime rates anywhere. I would sooner walk the streets of Tokyo alone at 3AM (have done, actually) than in any major city where religion has a prominent role in society. As you mention, social pressure to behave properly has more to do with it than anything else. But the Japanese are not atheists either. They do not come from a monotheistic culture, but that is not the same thing as atheism.
I suppose next we’ll hear that all the violence in Africa is down to atheists as well.
I don’t know if it’s on the BBC website, but the UN school shooting has just been reported on the BBC news.
“The school was attacked because IT was un-islamic”.
According to other scources, it was attacked because a mixed gender sports day was planned.
Update:
On the late BBC news.
“Militants attacked a UN school because they said IT was un-islamic”
I guess I must have read the wrong story elsewhere.
Oscar | 07.05.07 – 10:24 pm |
I have read Mein Kampf and I have absolutely no recollection of any episode like this. Which page – give the reference – I do not think you will be able to.
The ordinary bourgeoisie were very shocked to see that, we had also chosen the symbolic red of Bolshevism…. they regarded this as something ambiguously significant. The suspicion was whispered ….. that we also were merely another variety of Marxism, perhaps even Marxists suitably disguised, or better still, Socialists. …….We used to roar with laughter at these silly faint-hearted bourgeoisie and their efforts to puzzle out our origin, our intentions and our aims.
We chose red for our posters after particular and careful deliberation, our intention being to irritate the Left.
Vol II Ch 7.
I see according to the clones at the BBC there’s a full moon outside.
“Mr Teeth yer barking”
P.S
Give my regards to your Mullah as he spits in your eye.
We were also reminded on the late news that 1.5 million people are crammed into this tiny strip of land (Gaza)…360 sq ks.
Compare that to Manhattan …59sq ks, with a damn sight less problems.
The Biased BBC and what it does best.
Migrants find a voice in the rain
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6633015.stm
Has anybody else read that excuse for a political; broadcast by Corinne Lotz, who was at the rally campaigning for anti-capitalist group World to Win. Well while I have no problem with the BBC painting the group as Anti-capitalist I wonder why they didn’t mention it is a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist group. I mean the BBC has no problem informing people about far right groups. But hey don’t take my word for it have a butchers at their web-site.
http://www.awtw.org/index2.htm
Then we come along to Sophia Buchuck who having lived here for 15 bitches to the BBC about how long it takes the British Government to hand out citizenship papers to people who having come to the UK to study decide to play the asylum card.
“But at the moment, too many of them are sad. They come here legally to study or work, but when they apply to stay, it takes ages.”
Sorry my dear I must apologise about how long it takes this leftwing government in which to enable you to skin the British taxpayer for all you can.
As for Bervelyn who the BBC reported as saying;
“If people can be made legal, they can contribute to the country, and there will be unity in the country,” she said.
Unity BBC? Have you had a look at the HYS page ref the Panorama program about Burnley. 99% of the reports show a distinctive polarization against multi-culturism and how the BBC loves to blame the hard working whites of this country for a problem which its political yearning has fostered onto us all.
(No doubt by tomorrow morning all the posts on that thread will be pro-Islam)
The “left” meant to Hitler “communism” not socialism.
“Thus, the task of the state toward capital was comparatively simple and clear: it only had to make certain that capital remain the handmaiden of the state and not fancy itself the mistress of the nation. This point of view could then be defined between two restrictive limits: preservation of a solvent, national, and independent economy on the one hand, assurance of the social rights of the workers on the other.”
“As I listened to Gottfried Feder’s first lecture about the ‘breaking of interest slavery,’ I knew at once that this was a theoretical truth which would inevitably be of immense importance for the future of the German people. The sharp separation of stock exchange capital from the national economy offered the possibility of opposing the internationalization of the German economy without at the same time menacing the foundations of an independent national self-maintenance by a struggle against all capital. The development of Germany was much too clear in my eyes for me not to know that the hardest battle would have to be fought, not against hostile nations, but against international capital.”
Mein Kamf -Chapter 8: The Beginning of my Political Activity
“Gottfried Feder (January 27, 1883 • September 24, 1941) was an economist, anti-semite and one of the early key members of the German Nazi party. He was their economic theoretician. Initially, it was his lecture in 1919 that drew Hitler into the party”
“From 1917 on, Feder studied financial politics and economics on his own; he developed a hostility towards wealthy bankers during World War I and wrote a “manifesto on breaking the shackles of interest” (“Brechung der Zinsknechtschaft”) in 1919. This was soon followed by the founding of a “task force” dedicated to those goals that demanded a nationalisation of all banks and an abolishment of interest.
In the same year, Feder, together with Anton Drexler, Dietrich Eckart and Karl Harrer, was also involved in the founding of the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (“German worker’s party”, DAP), which would later change its name to Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP).
Adolf Hitler met him in summer 1919, and Feder became his mentor in finance and economics”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Feder
“What the differences are there between nazism and communism? You sure could list a few. Still, I will begin with a list much more impressive although incomplete, the list of similarities:”
” Capitalism Both associate the other with capitalism. To the communists, the nazism is a branch of capitalism. To the nazis, communism and the international capital are two branches of the international jewish world conspiracy. ”
“Not socialists Both think that the other is not a real socialist.”
Read the rest
http://web.comhem.se/~u42145233/nazi.htm
John Reith:
Oscar | 07.05.07 – 10:24 pm |
I have read Mein Kampf and I have absolutely no recollection of any episode like this. Which page – give the reference – I do not think you will be able to.
The ordinary bourgeoisie were very shocked to see that, we had also chosen the symbolic red of Bolshevism…. they regarded this as something ambiguously significant. The suspicion was whispered ….. that we also were merely another variety of Marxism, perhaps even Marxists suitably disguised, or better still, Socialists. …….We used to roar with laughter at these silly faint-hearted bourgeoisie and their efforts to puzzle out our origin, our intentions and our aims.
We chose red for our posters after particular and careful deliberation, our intention being to irritate the Left.
Vol II Ch 7.
John Reith | 07.05.07 – 10:39 pm | #
Blimey, sometimes you have to give credit where it’s due: good work, JR!
just to second and third the above posters – two people exchanging insults on here just bores the hell out of me. If you want to exchange insults PM eachother.
How do you explain this Mr Reith.
“We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”
– Adolf Hitler
mick in the uk:
We were also reminded on the late news that 1.5 million people are crammed into this tiny strip of land (Gaza)…360 sq ks.
This overcrowding in Gaza is an often repeated myth. Even if the figures are true Gaza is no more overcrowded than most large cities. You don’t have to compare with Manhattan. Think Portsmouth.
I have been to Gaza. I was expecting Singapore. Instead I was amazed at the open space and low density building.
Makes you wonder if anyone from the BBC has ever visited there. A quick Google shows that Alan Johnston also was a fan of the idea of Gaza’s ‘exploding’ population. Perhaps he was never there? 😉
See for yourself. http://thumbsnap.com/v/MkP2lZvO.jpg
Biodegradable | 07.05.07 – 11:49 pm |
easy Biodegradable…..
the bas**rd wasn’t just a mass murderer, he was a liar too.
Easy yourself Mr Reith, I’m simply quoting, just like you. Far be it from me to defend the lying, genocidal bastard.
Here’s more:
http://constitutionalistnc.tripod.com/hitler-leftist/
Hitler’s Anti-Tobacco Campaign
Hitler’s Animal Rights Campaign
Hitler’s Persecution of the Christian Churches
Nazi Gun Control
Hitler Pro-Abortion
Hitler’s Leftist Economic Policies
Of special interest to Ultraviolets:
Homosexuality in the Nazi Party
He was a liar too – well he was a persistant one.
“Hitler, spoken to Otto Strasser, Berlin, May 21, 1930:
I am a Socialist, and a very different kind of Socialist from your rich friend, Count Reventlow. . . . What you understand by Socialism is nothing more than Marxism.”
http://freedomspeace.blogspot.com/2005/08/hitler-was-socialist.html
deegee | 07.05.07 – 11:52 pm
ROTFLMAO!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4216244.stm
Much of Gaza is a great mass of apartment blocks – flung up to house the exploding population.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6443667.stm
He pores over the details and agonises over every sentence.
Gaza City …… average population density of over 8,800 people per square kilometer.
http://www.mogaza.org/afd.htm
Israel: average population density of 324 people per sq km
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel
David Preiser – Yes, it is also my favourite book/movie. However, I take issue with your deductions regarding my moniker. Korova is, as you rightly point out, the drink that Alex and his droogs drink. But, this is before his treatment to make him behave in an ‘acceptable’ way. Therefore, one might argue that Korova represents the choice that he could make before he was ‘educated’. Korova is his choice when he is free, not when he is forced to conform.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_density
Monaco – 23,660 Pop per km²
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_densely_populated_administrative_units_in_the_world
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_selected_cities_by_population_density
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761579828/Gaza_Strip.html
The Gaza Strip has one of the highest overall growth rates and population densities in the world. The 2006 population was 1,428,757, giving the region a population density of 3,750 persons per sq km (9,712 per sq mi). More than half of Gazans live in the region’s urban centers, the largest of which is the city of Gaza. Other cities and towns in the Gaza Strip include Kh?n Y?nus, Rafa?, Bayt L?hiyah, and Jab?liy?.
http://www.hivegroup.com/world.html
Anonymous | 08.05.07 – 12:11 am
What are you trying to prove by comparing a city (Gaza City) with a whole country (Israel)?
Anon:
“Israel: average population density of 324 people per sq km”
Manhattan 69,400 per sq ml.
Are you comparing the population density Gaza City with the WHOLE COUNTRY of Israel?
Manila, 41,014/km²
Cairo, Egypt 36,618/km²
Paris, 24,775/km²
Athens, 20,254/km²
Anon – what was the point again?
I don’t think John Reith has cracked the “Political Compass” at all :
JR : If you were to look a little more closely at the Political Compass chart, you would see that the top right quadrant is actually labeled ‘authoritarian’.
Wrong again. It’s labelled “Authoritarian Right”, much as the top left is labelled “Authoritarian Left.” On the Political Compass, Up is Authoritarian. Right is Right Wing. Since they think that almost everyone involved in current Western politics belongs in the Top Right quadrant, you can get a fair idea of where they are coming from politically. Even so, since you mention the Nazis, they put Hitler well to the left of Tony Blair, and only just in right wing territory.
Mussolini, who as you say was something of an economic dirigiste, belongs in the Top Left quadrant. As do Iranian mullahs, who are authoritarian and not noted for their enthusiasm for laissez faire economics. I’m afraid that the only basis on which Ms Harrison could assign the label “right wing” to student supporters of the Iranian mullahs is that “Authoritarian” is a subset of “Right Wing.” She certainly couldn’t get there using the Political Compass (though I suspect that the Political Compass mob are pretty sympathetic to standard BBC prejudices.)
No system of taxonomy suits every case.
Not so. We have identified the system of taxonomy being used here. “Right Wing” is used of the class of objects “{We at the BBC do not approve of this lot}” • consequently “Right Wing”can be used by a Beeboid of both Robert Nozick and Ayatollah Khomeini in perfect comfort.
“Hitler’s Anti-Tobacco Campaign
Hitler’s Animal Rights Campaign
Hitler’s Persecution of the Christian Churches
Nazi Gun Control
Hitler Pro-Abortion
Hitler’s Leftist Economic Policies”
None of those things are nessecerily connected to genocide and aggressive wars.
It was his outright approval of endogenous inequality, racial eugenics and euthanasia that define Hitler. It was Socialism/People-ism but not as we know it.
Social Darwinism and Libertarianism are quite compatible, along with eugenics. Just so long as it is all voluntary and no one is forced..
Oh lordy, these discussions can just run and run.
Korova said:
“Korova is, as you rightly point out, the drink that Alex and his droogs drink. But, this is before his treatment to make him behave in an ‘acceptable’ way. Therefore, one might argue that Korova represents the choice that he could make before he was ‘educated’. Korova is his choice when he is free, not when he is forced to conform.”
If you are trying to say that the drug-laced milk Alex drank by choice at the Korova Milk Bar is analogous to the political swill you drink before going about your own activities, then…well…words fail me.
No sense of irony at all, apparently.
Lee Moore | 08.05.07 – 12:53 am
I am puzzled by your absolute insistence on laissez-faire economics as the touchstone. It’s a relatively recent – and yet almost obsolete – point of difference.
Not much use for deciding the relative left/right placement between of French Revolutionaries, pro-Dreyfus liberals and anti-Dreyfusards, supporters of the ancien regime and proto-democrats etc.
On some issues, it would put Whigs to the right of Tories, come to think of it.
I say ‘almost obsolete’ as Fukuyama has a point. Strip out the Hegelian cobblers and we’re left with the fact that socialism is pretty universally held not to work, and no-one has a better idea than free markets and free trade. The end of economics, perhaps?
In the context of Islamic states, I think you’ll find the bazaar tends to see itself as to the ‘left’ of the mullahs.
In the West, the left/right divide tends now to be more about identity politics – multi-culti, gay ‘rights’,or about the precise state/market balance – foundation hospitals, academies and so on.
Since the BBC scrupulously shuns editorializing, the ‘not liked here’ thing doesn’t apply. Not liked by which reporter/producer/editor, which department head? I had rather hoped you had got beyond the ‘BBC as monolith’ myth.
http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/248/28/
Steyn right on the money as usual with this piece in the WSJ.
I’m willing to give credit to the Beeb when they (occasionally) produce a good programme.
Panorama: White Fright was quite a good programme. It would have benefited by being an hour long rather than 30 minutes, but at least it gave a voice to people’s legitimate views and concerns. For once, they resisted their usual impulse to interview ‘knuckle dragging skin heads’ that struggle to construct sentences let alone coherent arguments.
Anyway, if you missed the programme, it can be found here:
http://www.mininova.org/tor/694955
Prior to 1948, there were around 130 000 Jews in Iraq. Now there are a few dozen, mostly in Baghdad.
From 1941 Iraqi Arabs began dispossessing and slaughtering the Jewish minority. Jews were hanged in public. The majority escaped to Israel leaving all assets to be looted by the Arabs.
http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~peters/arabjew.html
Scroll down to ‘Iraq’.
But the BBC omits this important bit of history from the following account, choosing to dismiss it with the following statement:
Yakov recalls, with vivid, powerful details, the life that he had once led, a life that was changed overnight by the political realities of the time.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6611667.stm
It would be difficult to think of a more PC term than that to describe the horrific persecution by Arabs of the Jewish minority in Iraq. Of course there is no way of knowing whether the writer herself omitted all reference to murder and mayhem from her report or whether it was edited out by the historical revisionists who sit at editors desks at the BBC.
Whatever the case, this is yet more misleading “journalism” from the BBC.
Since the BBC scrupulously shuns editorializing…
John Reith, you have to be having us on.
Re Nazis and socialism – Night of the Long Knives anyone?
Rather odd article here –
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=4PG3CGP53QVXRQFIQMGSFGGAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2007/05/08/nmoore108.xml
The moderators at HYS are fiddling with the recommendations on the Johnston topic:
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=1&threadID=5911&start=0&tstart=0&edition=2&ttl=20070508093102&#paginator
The following comment, currently on page 5:
Added: Saturday, 5 May, 2007, 23:18 GMT 00:18 UK
Perhaps the BBC and its readers now know what it’s like to be at the receiving end of Palestinian Arab terrorism.
“Kidnapping/blowing up buses is wrong, BUT these are poor people…”
I hope his fate is better than the countless others killed by these barbarians.
Hamilton or Burr?, Washington
Recommended by 1 person
has beeen stripped of the recommendations it gleaned, as indicated here:
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/patrickcrozier/3253162701720140571/#340352
Another contributor to HYS noticed the same thing:
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/patrickcrozier/2733274257919845688/#340259
And then his recommendations mysteriously reappeared:
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/patrickcrozier/2733274257919845688/#340260
John Reith, can you please get your friends at HYS to resolve these technical difficulties?
Al Beeb continues its stealth campaign to avoid the word ‘IMMIGRANTS’ from its lexicon.
Its ‘Have Your Say’ currently running a very inaccurate and politically biased title-question (and sub-heading title):
“ARE THE RIGHTS OF MIGRANTS RESPECTED? ARE MIGRANT WORKERS BEING EXPLOITED?”
What a more accurate and fair title-question would be is something like:
“ARE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS IN THE UK FULFILLING THEIR LEGAL RESPONSIBILITIES,AND ARE THEIR RIGHTS BEING RESPECTED?”
It was apparent from the ‘Panorama’ programme last night, that despite the misleading title again: ‘Britain’s growing race divide’, that the programme was not about ‘race’ but about the growing Islamisation of the UK, with Blackburn as a case-study.
It was noticeable that the programme
presenter, Vivian White, found himself having to accept the description of the two main human groups in Blackburn as ‘white’ and ‘Muslim’.(This sounds like a mixture of racial and religious classification to me. Al Beeb types scold mere mortals on this site for such transgressions.)
‘Panorama’ did not take up the issues about Islam which I raised in advance of the programme here (07.05.07 5.46pm).
I thought that the programme presented a depressing picture of British society, not often shown; but in terms of analysis, I didn’t think that the programme took us very far. For example, the title of the programme emphasises ‘race’, but
Muslims are not a race. And then there was the limited discussion of whether, given that Blackburn’s ‘whites’ and Muslims are separated, this means that they are divided.
“Car bomb explodes in Iraqi city ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6633911.stm
The title makes me to think that A car bomb is actually a Volcano and it exploded killing 16 people.
Funny BBC Journos
Honour among Trolls??
“Ultraviolets:
Trolled.
Korova probably won’t even read these responses. I know I wouldn’t, and as a troll myself I spend no more than 25 seconds writing out inflammatory crap and then I forget about it.
Ultraviolets | 07.05.07 – 9:58 pm ”
Better on the inside Trolling outwards instead of on the outside Trolling inwards?
I’ll get me coat!
On the subject of Clockwork Orange, it was recently pointed out to me that this book shares the main points of its plot with Roger Hargreaves’ seminal work Mr. Uppity.
Worth pointing out again that JR claims to be a Conservative voter.
Interesting that when confronted by Hitlers beliefs he said that “Hitler was a lier.” This is true, after all he was a politician. The point is that the German people did not know this at the time and voted him into power on those lies.
As an ex or current Conservative voter, why is he so sure that The BBCs mates in the New Labour party can be trusted any more then Adolf.
The Nazi party was a socialist party in WORD AND DEED.
Just look and compare the facts of 10 years of a socialist New Labour government vs 18 years of a Conservative government.
Socialism is not a be “nice to poor people and eat the rich people” ideology. It is an economic model designed for despots to abuse and controll their people.
We became a socialist country in order to win against Hitler. We are still recovering from the shock. The BBC is a WW2 trowback that should have just gone away when ration books did.
Yakov recalls, with vivid, powerful details, the life that he had once led, a life that was changed overnight by the political realities of the time.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middl…ast/ 6611667.stm
It would be difficult to think of a more PC term than that to describe the horrific persecution by Arabs of the Jewish minority in Iraq. Of course there is no way of knowing whether the writer herself omitted all reference to murder and mayhem from her report or whether it was edited out by the historical revisionists who sit at editors desks at the BBC.
Whatever the case, this is yet more misleading “journalism” from the BBC.
Bryan | 08.05.07 – 9:05 am
Allow me to fisk a little more. The writer would like us to believe that those Iraqi Jews (not “Israelis from Iraq”, as per the title) went to Israel as part of what the Arabs would call the “Jewish colonization”.
For the Jews of Middle Eastern origins, like their European co-religionists, coming to Israel was the culmination of a religious journey – it was the fulfilment of the centuries-old dream to live in the so-called Promised Land.
That may be so, but the real reason for their leaving was Iraq was one of survival, not religious or romantic adventure.
But many who came over to Israel as part of the mass migration that followed the creation of the Jewish state in 1948, look back with nostalgia and fondness for the life that they had left behind.
“Mass expulsion” would be a more appropriate term, and while I’m sure they “look back with nostalgia and fondness” I’m equally certain they would have stayed had they not been forced to leave.
“We never thought of who was Jewish and who was Arab, until 1947. It all suddenly changed. The people that you knew as good people turned into bad people for you and you became bad for them. It was very sad.”
1947 was a year before the founding of the state of Israel.
Recommended reading and viewing:
http://www.pierrerehov.com/exodus.htm
It’s not just me and Bryan, HonestReporting has picked up on the BBC piece on Iraqi Jews:
By The Waters of Babylon
WEASELS NO MORE?
“Some 38 million Frenchmen went to the polls Sunday to elect a new president, and guess who won? Civilization.
Sunday’s big losers?
Islamists, freeloaders, troublemakers and those whose “vision” doesn’t go beyond blaming President Bush for all the world’s woes.
But France has made a turn; it’s a start.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/05082007/postopinion/editorials/weasels_no_more__editorials_.htm
“Herod was noted in the New Testament for his Massacre of the Innocents.
Told of Jesus’ birth, Herod ordered all children under two in Bethlehem to be killed, the Gospel of Matthew said.”
“King Herod was appointed “King of the Jews” by the Roman authorities in about 40 BC.”
Bad Jews…
What the NYP article fails to do of course is make any acknowledgement that rapprochement between France and the US is a two way street in which appalling arrogance and inflexibility has been demonstrated by both sides. I see that French opposition to Iraq for example was entirely due to a desire to protect their client Saddam and in no part due to an assessment (based on a century of Middle Eastern experience) that the plan was completely f**ked from the start. ho hum.
Sarkozy will improve relations, he doesn’t have Chirac’s propensity to sulk and he appreciates that more liberal economics is needed, but he needs to take the French with him and if the more ideological elements of the Bush administration and media chums think they’ve got an unqualified cheerleader they’re in for a shock.
O little town of Bethlehem – probably had at most 40 innocents under 2 years old.
A horrible crime but perhaps not on the scale most envisage it.
However we should not be surprised that Herod would do this, rather that he did not do even worse!
He almost routinely massacred in large numbers, he even had his wife and three of his own sons killed.
Undoubtedly he was one of history’s vilest tyrants.
But here is the rub, attempts to vilify him because he was Jewish are a joke.
He was not Jewish!
He had no Jewish blood at all.
He was Idumean with some Arab blood.
IBC – lets not allow facts to get in the way of a story that suits our agenda…