Pamela Geller discusses The Post-American Presidency on Quebec TV

Richard Martineau doesn't even try to convey even the veneer of impartiality. Instead of phrasing his point by saying "Some people would say that George Bush is a dangerous man because...", he says "I think George Bush is a dangerous man because..."

The new journalism.

It seemed more like an ultimate cage fight than an objective interview. Strike and parry, kick and parry. Very well done, Pam! I think she could take him in a real match. Although an illegal move in a real match, a swift knee in his leftist gonai would cure a lot of rudeness. Just like Islamic retoric---soooo repetively boooring! So much troting out of "Palin" Bush", ad nausem.

Fantastic performance by Pamela. The guy was truly clueless when it came to anything of substance. All he offered were his opinions. And then he brings up the "seeing Russia from her house" nonsense which Palin never, ever said. I just wish Pamela had called the ignorant SOB on that one.

What a tool.

What a pathetic, stoopid man.

The prototype of a leftist, clueless drone.

The similarities between him, Skeletor Colmes & Geraldo Rivera are striking.

She was effective, especially in the first part.

I admire Pamela Geller's support for individualism, but I don't agree that only the left has extreme forms.

You'd be surprised, but Martineau is one of the most vocal anti-jihadist in Quebec. He's also quite to the right of the political spectrum in Quebec. Obviously, since he "dared" confront some of your hero's most ludicrous ideas, he can only possibly be a "clueless leftist tool".
Well, I guess none of you people know Martineau at all, so that allows you to have a perfectly well defined opinion.

A big problem for people like Martineau (and me) is that when we denounce Islamic supremacists, we get lumped with people who actually believe that Obama is a secret Islamist/communist hell-bent on "destroying America". People like Geller, Glen Beck, S. Palin... Buffoons.
That simply destroys our own credibility.

If people like Geller and Spencer kept to the facts, and at least kept quiet about their conspiracy theories, that would actually help their own cause. And if they didn't lump in an ultra-libertarian agenda, you might even get some leftists on board.
Serious: Many left-wingers are very much against the aggressive Islamist agenda as you are. It's when they see people like Geller taking the lead that they start having self-doubts.

A big portion of that interview was Martineau trying to get Geller to explain some of her ideas, which defy normal definitions of reality. She didn't. She only repeated her mantras.
For example, if I'd conducted the interview, I would have asked her to define "Communism": Because she obviously has a very personal definition. (Regardless of what you all think, Obama's health care coverage "does not" equate the end to the concept of private property. But details like these don't matter much, do they...)

Anyways, I'll let you all continue talking among yourselves.

Richard Martineau doesn't even try to convey even the veneer of impartiality. Instead of phrasing his point by saying "Some people would say that George Bush is a dangerous man because...", he says "I think George Bush is a dangerous man because..."

The new journalism.
============================================
Mais non...c'est journalisme français

Also, Martineau's show, "Les Francs Tireurs", never claimed to aim for impartial coverage. (We have the news for that.) It's about confronting opinions and ideas.

He did exactly that.

Pamela's got a set of .... and her points are very good.
"Representing the smallest minority in the world---the individual"
"Chasing the perfect and sacrifing the good"
I like her; serious minded and not bad looking to boot.

A Socialist is a "good Marxist". A Communist is a "bad Marxist". That's the definition. Historically the term "communist" derives from the uprising of the Paris Commune (1848?). They called themselves "socialists" and they weren't followers of Marx who was unknown at the time. But I don't recommend to Pam Geller that she go into details like this when someone demands definitions of ordinary words. Pamela did just fine. She knows what she's doing. It would be senseless to say a communist is a member of a commune who has never even heard of Karl Marx.

Great interview Pamella(!)

I am from Quebec, speak French and follow both "les francs-tireurs" and Richard Martineau's blogs http://www.canoe.com/chroniques/richardmartineau.html

My fellow Americans, please note that interviews in this television program are always "rough". This is how French Canadian confront ideas and debate (just as there are particular ways that Americans confront ideas and debate).

Richard Maritneau is one of the few commenter in Canada who report on islamic supremacist behaviors. He actively promote Western Values and oppose the Islamist agenda.

However, in many occasion within this interview, disagrement seemed to be related to how ideological concepts are used. In Canada, even the Communist Party would be called within the neutral perspective of "Left - Right". To put it simply, for us, Communist = USSR (pre 1980). Therefore, when you call Barrak Obama a Communist, we can't help to notice how that does not compute with the likes of Brejnev, for example. Different countries, different histories, different ways of using political conceptual ideas.

Hope this slight background information may be of uses. For those who speak French (or have a good translation program) and would like to learn more about how French Canadian think of the challenges facing Western Identity and Value, I would also recommend reading some of Joseph Facal's blog (http://www.canoe.com/chroniques/josephfacal.html

Au revoir (!)
Sobieski

Gotta agree with Raman here. I am generally sympathetic to this blog and stories posted on it, but calling Obama a communist, anything you dislike to be "left wing", believing that saddam's WMDs are hidden in the Golan heights etc. is just going to get the anti-jihad stuff bracketed as another loony idea of a deranged fascist blogger. And it's difficult as it is to get people to just get people to believe in the jihad threat, let alone that Obama is a commie.

That's too bad.

I think Geller needs to stick to core competence, and stick to the fundamental message on which some traction has been gained, namely the anti-Islamist platform, rather than conflating a bunch of other things into it.

I'm very surprised at how this interview turned out !

Living in Québec, I can confirm the info given by other posters above about Martineau and how we view Communism here. I don't think Pamela scored big points over here with that interview and I was quite sorry to see this.

Sure she kept her cool, but everything else focused on rigid left-right ideology. So the contents came out as quite "linear". At first, I thought Martineau was working to bring out Obama's Islamic bias, but it nerver quite got out as such... :-(

I think the best part was about the Ground Zero Mosquee...

My impression of the slant and drift of the interview was that it was Mr. Martineau who kept steering the topic in the direction of left-right politics. This is only a segment of a longer interview, I presume, so maybe the whole focus was from the start left-right politics. If the guy prefers to find out Pam Geller's politics, how are you going to stop him. Refuse to talk about it?

Also, Pam Geller, like all U.S. citizens, is sufficiently competent to talk about the intricacies of U.S. politics. You don't need a Ph. D. in "Present Day U.S. Politics" to speak authoritatively about it, if that's what you're asked to do. And whether Barack Obama is a Communist is a matter of factuality. Both of his parents and all of his friends and most of the persons in his Administration are self-avowed proud Leftists of one sort or another. Every U.S. citizen has a moral obligation to know about things like this so they know who to vote for next time. Only in a Soviet system of governance would individuals not have that responsibility, but would rely on their Union officer to decide those things for them.

What is it about Barack Obama that would make him seem to be simply a kind of moderate liberal? Of course he hasn't managed to institute full-scale Socialist State-planning in only two years. He would have to have magical superhero powers to transform the U.S. into a complete Communist country so quickly.

I am mostly French Canadian.first name is Louise, although l am not from la Belle province de Quebec, l know enough of them to understand partly of how this so called journalist thinks like. First he is partly of the elite crowd and sympathy is left leaning, Pam was right on the mark calling Obama a communuist! Many Quebecers disliked Trudeau, he was not as well liked in Quebec as many are lead to believe.And Trudeau like Obama ruined so much of our country, created the largest dept! Also many in Quebec are isolationists and they are very strong on defending their language and culture, and that is why you see a strong reaction to Quebecers to demand muslims assimilate, like banning burqas. Also more people of Quebec support the US than the English Canadians who tend to put down Americans to make themselves better. I find this with people in the Toronto area. you leave that area to where l live in SW Ont bordering Detroit and then to Western Canada, ie Alberta and we tend to split away more from the elites of Toronto and Ottawa. Also there is a new wave of conservative Quebecers, one is the owner of the upcoming FoxNorth! And lastly as Rush says, a leftist is a leftist first, that is why you have so many self-hating Jewis who are leftist first! l thought Pam was right on, and this information will sink in when she demands people should not depend on the MSM, but to think for themselves,, ie internet etc! Great stuff from Pam!

There is good counter-jihad stuff in French.

One of the great studies of dhimmitude is in French (according to Hugh Fitzgerald, who used to sing its praises). It was written by a Lebanese Christian - Antoine Fattal - and it is called "Le Statut Legal des non-Musulmanes en pays d'Islam", published in Beirut in 1958.

It has never been translated into English.

French Canadians might like to try tracking it down, and then read and share.

Another book Hugh used to recommend was something called 'Le Radeau de Mahomet', 'The raft of Mohammed', by Jean-Pierre Peroncel-Hugoz. You can get it from Amazon.

Pamela's best retort to leftist Martineau: "It isn't easy being me. But I'd never want to be you." But, he didn't get it. He was too obsessed with insulting and badgering her to notice that he and his ideology had been scored against.

However, I don't agree with her about Sarah Palin. Palin is a religious conservative, who would be as bad news for this country as was either Bush. And she probably didn't have a chance to say it or develop the point without Martineau interrupting her, but Islam declared war on us, and so the moral grounds for opposing the GZ mosque is that we shouldn't allow the enemy to erect victory monuments anywhere in the U.S., never mind GZ. The GZ mosque has nothing to do with religious freedom, because Islam is a totalitarian ideology. That's what she should've stressed, given the time and courtesy of Martineau, which he didn't afford her.

I might also add that Pamela shouldn’t have focused on the “compassionate” issue regarding the GZ mosque. She was apparently trying to charge the Muslim backers of the GZ mosque with hypocrisy. Hypocrisy, however, is the least serious charge to accuse Islam of. If one were charging a Mafia kingpin with anything – one who had ordered murders and extortion and instituting a reign of terror – one wouldn’t charge him with a venial sin, but with a mortal one (to borrow from Catholic parlance). Islam isn’t capable of “compassion,” except to followers of its creed, that is, to fellow Muslims. All other Muslim “charity” is directed towards funding and enabling the conquest and subjugation of infidels. Us.

If Martineau is Quebec's idea of an opponent of Islamic supermacism, I shudder to think what the dhimmi contingent is like. He showed no interest in discussing the dangers of jihad, he was too busy insulting Pam and trying to trip her up. He may pose as an opponent of jihad, but from this performance it is obvious that he is more interested in scoring points for the Left and pleasing fools like "Raman" who prefer to indulge in the pseudointellectual pastime of splitting hairs on the precise definition of radical collectivists.

If the level of public discussion cannot be raised above this, I fear we run the risk of nominating candidates who will be more interested in keeping gays, women, and uppity "secularists" in line than in dealing with the tsunami wreckage surrounding the economy and efforts to curb the Jihad which Obama will be dumping on us as he recedes.

Bush was a supporter of terrorist-financing regimes just as much as Obama is. The fact this woman supports Bush's foreign policy makes her suspect in my eyes. It's a simple fact that Obama's and Bush's foreign policy has been very similiar. Don't believe me? Look up the pics of Bush and Al Saud holding hands, and Rumsfield and Saddam holding hands.

By alienating we liberals who are also in oposition to jyhad, you alienate one half of the country, and will ultimately loose the battle against the terrorists. If this blog could reach out to the middle and left and find common ground (like our mutual dislike of jyhadi terrorism and mutual appreciation of freedom), then you may have a shot at giving a full and terrorism free life for your grandchildren.

I used to be a big fan of Pamela's until she started spinning out into LaLa Land, also known as Tea Partydom and Hypocristan. I still will stand shoulder to shoulder with her against Islam, political Islamism, Jihadism or whatever exact moniker is used, but this whole bit about hyper individualism just doesn't hold water, at least not in her case. I could support Pamela in her invocation of individualism if she *actually* meant it, but rather, she invokes it merely as a marketing cloak for run of the mill right-wing collectivism.

Her message would be believable if:

1. the anti-collectivist ideology also encompassed other collectivist government endeavors such as fire departments, municipal police departments, highway patrol collectives, the US Department of Veterans Affairs, state National Guard militia units, and all branches of the US Military. Namely by:

2. employing the anti-collectivist ideology against Constitutional "general Welfare" to also encompass "common Defense" in promoting the FULL privatization of not just of mechanisms of general welfare but also of common defense. Common defense and general welfare are intentionally two sides of the same coin and one cannot exist without the other, i.e. general welfare is worth defending and a generally well-doing populace will support common defense in order to perpetuate its general welfare. At the end of the day, however, it is all collectivism and justified by the Founding Fathers.

3. Pamela will simultaneously need to call for the withdraw of forced government confiscation of wealth by American citizens to finance our socialized government security and defense forces at all levels. If America is truly going to be a land of the individual, then only those individuals who want the service of defense and security should pay for it. Everyone else should be allowed to opt out and accept the individual consequences.

4. Pamela will have to withdraw any and all state recognition and support/tax benefits for private collectivist unions such as companies, corporations, churches, synagogs, temples, lobbying groups, etc. and promote the concept that these collectives really do not exist as there is no social unit higher than that of the individual.

5. Finally, Pamela must renounce and deny the institution of marriage, which itself is the source unit of collectivism throughout all societies and cultures. Marriage is the primary slippery slope that leads to all other manifestations of collectivism and must be stopped if one is a true individualist.

Otherwise, Pamela is no different than the slew of other pseudo individualists who on one hand believe American citizens should not be taxed to finance other people's "general Welfare" but who SHOULD be taxed and forced to support the socialization of collectivist American military power. In the case of the posted video via the collectivist military arial bombing of Afghanistan, initiated by our Socialist President George Bush, Jr and continued by our other Socialist President Barack Obama.

Pamela: "common Defense and general Welfare" are inseparable and if you are going to be a ideological individualist with one, you must also be so with the other. If you are prepared to individualize "common Defense" in the same way you advocate for "general Welfare", then and only then will you not be a hypocrite and worthy of respect.

Al Kaafir Al Amriikii: Allow me ask you this: When was the last time you did a tenth of what Pamela Geller has done? When was the last time you publicly put your reputation and even life on the line? I'm sure she's on some Muslim hit-list, as well as Robert Spencer. And, going by your itemized breakdown of all of her alleged "faults" and inconsistencies, you are a very, very morally and philosphically confused person. Taken altogether, your grasp of the Founders, marriage, collectivism, etc. is one of the most bizarre interpretations of anything I've ever read, and I've read some top-rated instances of incomprehensibility in my lifetime. The only thing I might fault Pamela Geller for in her verbal battle with Martineau is that she didn't just stand up and take swing at the idiot. Martineau wasn't there to debate anything; he was there to repeat the smears and attacks on her and on anyone else and to put her in the place designated by the left for "extremist wackos." Extremist she is, but wacko she isn't.

Skeen66: I like Pamela, I support Pamela, and I have been a long-time fan of hers. However, as she continues to deviate from her former focus on critically important views against Islam and Shariah, I find that I cannot support her in her attempt to flirt with and court fame and glory from the Tea Party and the general right-wing of the American political spectrum. I understand that Pamela needs to drum up support wherever she can get it (and I mean that positively), but I think that enmeshing herself into the Tea Party ideology will not be the best way to accomplish it.

I will ALWAYS support Pamela with regard to the Ground Zero Mosque - I have been to the site several times despite living thousands of miles away - and as mentioned above, I will stand with her shoulder to shoulder vis-a-vis Islam. But if Pamela is looking to diversify her political portfolio *within the context of American politics* then she will need to be held to the same political standards of credibility and consistency that she thrusts upon everyone else.

If you re-read my post, you will notice that I did not submit a litany of faults based on her activities and views against Islam - which I *fully* support as per my personal experience with living in Saudi Arabia for several years - rather, I focused SPECIFICALLY on the issue of individualism vs. collectivism and suggested that either A) she become a true individualist as per the five points I listed, or B) (unstated) that she refocus her brilliant efforts against the threat and political ideology of Islam, and leave the fodder of domestic political debates on private or public universal or non-universal healthcare coverage to people interested in politics but who do not share her brilliance regarding Islam.

As for the video itself: I quite liked Pamela's battle with Martineau since he *attempted* the same tactics that many interviewers employ, which is to ask a question which frames the entire scene in such a way that the viewer is conditioned to believe that there is only one viable answer and any deviation from that pre-established narrative is either dismissed outright or simply marched over by not allowing Pamela to respond and explain herself. In that sense, I believe Pamela performed wonderfully and she showed once again why she is such a force to be admired and reckoned with.

Despite that, if she is now going to go down the road of fundamental individualism and not focus on Islam, then her off-focus political views are fair game. (Keep in mind, I'm contributing to Jihad Watch here, not Atlas Shrugs.)

As for "my views" on the aforementioned non-Islam related issues of my post, these are NOT my views, rather, the de facto result of the "slippery slope" that Pamela always invokes, only in this case as it regards fundamental individualism. I generally subscribe to the moderate 21st Century American views on governance, economics, human rights, militarism, individualism, etc., i.e. that there is a balance of degree, not that the discussion must be a purely black and white affair which is the direction Pamela is heading into these days politically. For the record, I think the US should continue its mixture of public and private defense and security forces, its mixture of public and private funding for health care, and for its full support of marriage and various other social/economic institutions such as religious organizations, companies and corporations ESPECIALLY when those American institutions are competing against foreign institutions that have the full support of their own people and states.

If you found anything bizarre about my post, it was not because of what I believe, but because I have cast a light on the absurd and natural outcome of the political beliefs Pamela touched upon in the video vis-a-vis fundamental individualism, which I believe will only serve to alienate large numbers of former supporters who share her views on Islam but not the rest of her unrelated domestic political agenda.

Interestingly, your reference to me as a "morally and philosophically confused person" would fall under Pamela's oft-invoked warning against "ad hominem attacks." Please stay on track and debate the issues, and don't try to character-assassinate the person. Yes, I am not a mindless zombie who just follows whatever is broadcast on Fox News or MSNBC (since I neither own nor watch TV, although see them online on occasion) and therefore my opinions do not always fall in line with the American "norm", but to attack me as a person is unwarranted.

And finally, so that you are aware, Skeen66, I will shortly be publishing a book about living as a gay American in Saudi Arabia and thereby exposing large hypocrisies in that Islamic country, so I expect the full barrage of intimidation that everyone gets who writes/blogs publicly about the Middle East and Islam. Having been threatened numerous times with violence while I was living in Saudi Arabia for promoting my views of human rights, women's rights, democracy and separation of religion and governance - and expressing my support for the Iraq War to a large degree - I am well aware of the intimidation that Pamela and Robert experience on a daily basis. The primary difference, however, is that most of us are not so prominent and prefer to do our work anonymously by getting our hands dirty in the Islamic countries that 99% of the readers of Jihad Watch and Atlas Shrugged haven't had the chutzpa to go to.

So be mindful when you go around pointing fingers.

I feel SO PROUD of Pamela. She speaks from the heart and does so with admirable style: clear, concise and intelligent. Well done!!