Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald, in the spirit of the day, offers some reflections on the use of strategic gift-giving in the advancement of the global jihad agenda:
The more we have to do with Muslim mores and manners, Muslim ways and Muslim byways, inevitably there will be more opportunities for Infidels to be fooled, to be inveigled, to be impressed, to be treated with such outward respect, to be subject to people well-versed in using personal charm (those soft voices, those looks of deep sincerity, the whole bit), that the clarity and resolve of many will be weakened.People like to be treated well. Ready to do so are the gracious host with the limitless resources, who invites you to "see for yourself" what "our problems are," who invites you (all expenses paid, and a fat honorarium at the end, with promises of future invitations if you play your cards right) to a "Dialogue of Civilizations" in Marrakesh, and the Turkish officials who "have you over to discuss what Turkey is doing now to comply with E.U. requirements and why it makes sense to let Turkey into the tent, in order to encourage the forces of moderate Islam."
And then there is the surprise gift at the end: the wrapped dishdashas for your kids, that silver dagger you admired, perhaps even a rug or two if you happen to be in the right place ("No, it was nothing, really. When you said you were interested in buying a rug and I couldn't accompany you to the souk that day, I felt badly, so I thought I'd just get it and have it wrapped and waiting at the plane when you left. Tell your wife I hope it works in her dining room"). Do you know just how easy it is to set up a warm feeling inside people? How they will trade their own futures, their own security, for a dishdasha or a dagger or a rug, or a fat envelope with cash, or promise of a donation to one's "academic center" or anything else?
The moral of the story is: Radix malorum cupiditas est. And the Muslims and Arabs are past masters at this. The buying up of Western hirelings, or the buying off of intelligent critics, has been going on for decades all over the Western world. For a while it did not seem dangerous, but merely disgusting. Now it is traitorous. And should be investigated, and all recipients of Arab and Muslim money publicly exposed, humiliated, and shunned.And that goes not only for all those "international business consultants" who "have a special expertise in the Middle East" because they were diplomats or intelligence agents in the Arab countries, but for those who, at such places as Kissinger Associates, think there is nothing wrong with profiting from their government "service" (as they like to primly and self-righteously call it) -- i.e., contacts, influence -- by preventing the rest of us, those who are not in the game, from understanding the full malevolence of those who pay them so handsomely to "advise" them on how to handle public and other relations.
If only one could force all of these people to disgorge their traitorous take. The Saudis have been extraordinarily successful in buying up the services of a small army of apologists, including ex-ambassadors and C.I.A. agents. Attention was paid to Edwin Wilson and Fran Terpil, who were involved with Khadafy; no attention has been paid to Raymond Close, who "retired" early in 1977 from being Station Chief in Saudi Arabia to go into business with some Saudis, and who has been dutifully involved in all sorts of activities, including BCCI, and has worked as an "international business consultant" ever since -- dutifully giving the Saudi take on everything. They have also bought journalists, and of course well-connected political figures and hangers-on (the Kennedy apparatchik Fred Dutton should not be overlooked). These people, like others all over the Western world, took in some tens or perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars.
One would therefore not have expected any alarms about Saudi money (nearly $100 billion worldwide) going to fund mosques, madrasas, and hate literature (with Infidels being the hated) to come from the likes of Close, or James Akins, or the late John C. West, or West's friend Crawford Cook, or the entire host of Saudi hirelings (direct or indirect). Nor could we have expected it to come from those who have simply been given gigantic honoraria for this or that "speech" to an Arab audience in Kuwait or the U.A.E. or at an Arab-funded lecture series at places such as Tufts. Few can 'scape whipping -- or should.
As part of the 9/11 report, Congress ought to have investigated the role of Saudi money in creating these apologists, in putting so many on the payroll, and in buying up and controlling academic centers for "Islamic Studies" (see Prince Alwaleed’s recent gifts to Harvard and Georgetown).
The Saudis, for more than 3 decades, have been getting their money's worth.
And they still are.
Speaking of gifts, Robert, I got a Slinky and a choo-choo train and a chapter book and a box of crayons and a game and Mr. Potato Head -- six possible things, and that was all before breakfast. And lotsa other good stuff that I still have to open.
About time
All around the world the story is the same — the massacre, enslavement and forced conversion to Islam of more than a million Sudanese Christians; thousands of Christians murdered or driven from their homes over the past decade by Islamist mobs in Indonesia; rape, kidnapping and forced conversion of Christians in Egypt; the list goes on and on.
Whatever, it is obviously too much to expect the Queen, or any of our neutered church Establishment, to speak up for their persecuted brothers and sisters abroad — but you could do it. Why not use a spare half an hour to write a letter or send an e-mail that in some small way may go towards helping the Christians of Pakistan enjoy even a tiny part of the freedom that we of all faiths — and none — in this country take so much for granted?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,21132-1958241,00.html
Remember when the BBC was free of Saudia money.the Saudia,lost 500 million try to stop the film Killing of a Princess
That was 25 years ago,so I can see why they are buying up the MSM
Julie Burchill, author of the piece in The Times to which a link is given above, is unusual. One of a handful of exceptions to the dismal rule.
"The buying up of Western hirelings, or the buying off of intelligent critics, has been going on for decades all over the Western world."
This buying would not be the massive widespread problem it is, were the buyers not infected with PC rot in the first place. A person who accepts material favors, knowing how bad and dangerous the giver is, is scurrilously cupidinous; but the person who accepts material favors sincerely believing there is nothing wrong with the vast majority of Muslims, is simply being naive.
Our overarching problem is a sociocultural hegemony of powerful naivete, not cupidity per se.
The sociocultural dominance of PC pulls the rug out, so to speak, from under all the time and effort we effectively waste on the 1,001 ways we say caveat emptor. Indeed, the more we say it, the more they regard us (at best) as eccentric, "Islamophobic" cranks.
In naming and shaming paid Saudi stooges, one should not spare the current President of the United States George Walker Bush. His family's close business contacts with the Saudi royal family is now a matter of common knowledge, but the subject seems a taboo for both Republicans and Democrats, except for the Michael Moore left. Republicans correctly see the Bush-Saudi association as the biggest political threat to their party and shun the topic. Democrats are unable to pick up the theme because they keep pedalling all the wrong influences on Bush policies: Israel, neo-cons, oil firms (they are right to an extent, but they mean "American oil firms", overlooking the fact that the biggest oil firm in the world Aramco, the Saudi monopoly). And the deranged, conspiracy-laiden universe of ultra-left anti-Bush folk prevents them from drawing a single reasonable conclusions from available facts.
Hugh writes:
"Julie Burchill, author of the piece in The Times to which a link is given above, is unusual. One of a handful of exceptions to the dismal rule. "
Julie Burchill is a British treasure, and one of
the main reasons I hate to engage in petty
partisan bickering. She's far to my left, and
she's funny, brave, and incisive. Since she
stopped writing for the Guardian, I get little
joy reading it.
Her taste in music leaves a lot to be desired
though! ;-)
"Julie Burchill is a British treasure, and one of
the main reasons I hate to engage in petty
partisan bickering. She's far to my left..."
-- from a posting one floor directly above me (as Hugh might say).
While many on the Right may be still myopic about the problem of Islam, one is ipso facto a "Leftist" when one not only maintains their myopic astigmatism as health, but goes further to add self-insult to self-injury and vilify anyone who dares to criticize Islam. If Julie Burchill is not myopic about Islam (a casual search of "julie burchill islam" yields many refreshing articles by her), then she is not a Leftist. Pure and simple. If she's "far to the left", she is simply being liberal, not Leftist.
Speaking of the Good Old Days (as we were on another thread) and the devolution therefrom of the modern West, Julie Burchill of The Times had some cogent remarks, all in the context of a piece poking fun at Prince Charles' infatuation with Islam:
"If we do accept the Second World War as the point at which the moral compass was set, what does the sexual behaviour of both sides tell us? Why, that putting it about is our patriotic duty and a sure way to end up with the good guys on the right side of Nuremberg court- rooms! UK/USA? — hands across the water, and then some! Soviet Union? — no room for bourgeois inhibitions there, comrade! Then look at the villains of the piece. Germany? — totally fixated on the idea that no woman would want to have sex except to breed little Nazis. Japan? — hmm, it’s not for nothing that they use the smallest condoms in the world. And as for those eternal suck-up monkeys the French; well, let’s be honest, no woman looks good — no matter how many things she can do with a Hermès scarf! — with a shaven head and a big sign saying “I screw Nazis, I am scum!” on her back. Trust me, I’ve tried it!
"Yep, the fact is that consensual sexual generosity is far more likely to occur in good countries than in evil ones; it is a sign of confidence, not of decadence.
And if people want to sit in judgment of “sluts”, now or then, then I would venture that it says far more about the name-caller than it does the slandered; either that they slept around a lot in their youth and are now trying to hide the evidence by taking the moral high ground, or that they didn’t get none/aren’t getting any. Either way, it’s such a bad look."
A Silver dager? A rug? People will sell themselves much more cheaply than that. They will betray themselves, their anscestors, their country, their famiy, their friends for nothing more than a chance to be in with the right people.
GIFTS FROM A MUSLIM
Cornelius Boza Edwards
It was the mid-90s. I was living in an apartment with my little family. A Palestinian immigrant lived in the same complex. I had a child born with some health problems and he generously inquired about the child's health every time I saw him.
As time went on and he and I became better acquainted, I began to converse with him about Islam, which by then had already become the focus of my intellectual energies and concerns. He would reply with the standard bilge, that the terror in the Muslim world had nothing to do with Islam and that the slaughter in Algeria (which was at the height of Civil War) was incomprehensible.
"How can Muslims kill other Muslims like this?" he would marvel, accidently betraying the prejudice so typical among Muslims...(in other words, his incredulity was not that Muslims were killing, only that they were killing other Muslims).
We touched on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Hamas was then in the middle of an intense suicide-bombing campaign that would discredit the dovish gov't of Shimon Peres and insure the election of the hawkish Netanyahu (1996).
When I asked him about suicide-murder, he insisted it was against Islam, but as our conversation unfolded, he betrayed - as Muslims often do when you get past platitudes of peace - his true feelings by saying that because Israel wasn't more forthcoming in negotiations, "they must taste the fire"...(his exact words).
I guess he felt uncomfortable about our exchange, because a couple of days later, he came by with some gifts for my child, telling me this was "the Muslim way, to comfort the sick." I thanked him for his generosity. He invited me up to his apartment for a visit. I obliged.
His wife was a fairly attractive, 20-something woman from Palestine. She was normally veiled with no hair showing, but on this occasion, in the privacy of her home, she wore her hair free. She served sweets and fruits as her husband and I talked.
I've never been one for small-talk folks, so after exchanging pleasantries, I returned to the issue of Islamic (in)tolerance. I had seen right through his transparent attempt to buy me off with gifts after alienating me with his extremist views. We covered a range of issues...from women working outside the home (he was against it of course), to the lack of religious freedom in the Muslim world.
On those occasions when I would ask his wife her opinion on the subject at hand, she would nervously smile and maintain her silence while he spoke on her behalf. It was illuminating to say the least.
We finally broached the issue of apostasy. I asked him if he would view Christians as barbaric if we murdered those among us who converted to Islam. He replied "of course."
I shot back "then how is it any different when Muslims kill those who convert to Christianity?"
His answer so starkly exemplified the mindset of a supremicist that - though I manitained my poker face, I was left absolutely shaken.
"Because OURS is the TRUE faith."
The words were seared into my memory. Here-in lies the rationale for every double standard, every display of intolerance, every act of violence that a Muslim chooses to employ against an infidel..."because OURS is the TRUE faith."
My neighbor was outwardly a decent fellow. He was also a religious man whose convictions were at total variance with the society in which we live.
I never talked with him again except to say hello in-passing; I'd already heard all I ever needed to hear.
How many others like him are living among us?
The story just above makes a useful point that should be remembered. When dealing with an outwardly friendly, plausible adherent of Islam, at a certain point, and no matter how outwardly pleasant the fellow (or fellowette) may be, try to bring the conversation around to certain matters. Ask, for example, about the "Hadith" and the "Sira." Start out with a tone of sweet ignorance, as ingenuous as you can possibly be. See what your informant tells you. Ask as well about the treatment of non-Muslims under Islam.
Then start asking a few questions -- test questions.
"What's the jizyah?" "What other things did non-Muslims have to do"? "Are they treeated with complete equality today"?
"Did Muslims ever own slaves"? "Did Muhammad ever own slaves"? "Do any Muslims today own slaves"? "What's this about black eunuchs -- any truth to the stories?" "Did Muslims really raid up and down the coasts of Europe"?
"What do Muslims think of Muhammad"? "Is he like Jesus?" "Do they want to be like him?" "Is he some kind of model, or what"?
"Who was Aisha"? "How old was she when Muhammad had sexual intercourse with her"? "Muslims don't really believe that they should imitate Muhammad in that, do they?"
"Who was Asma bint Marwan"? "What were the Banu Qurayza"? "What happened at the Khaybar Oasis"?
"Is it okay to lie about Islam to protect the faith from non-Muslims"?
"What do Muslims see as their goal"?
Long before you get through those questions, as you show a disturbing knowledge, the conversation will have been reduced to hysterical fury and lie after shouted lie.
Now imagine this final statement being delivered in the gravelly cajun voice I would like to summon up for the occasion:
"I gorontee."