The problem of the "peaceful" Muslims

Given the infernal nuisance that Muslims make of themselves, many of us would like to send them all back whence they come.  Let them murder one-another -- which they already do with great enthusiasm -- and leave us alone.

But there is the difficulty  -- constantly drummed into us by Leftists -- that the Jihadis mounting terrorist attacks in the Western world are only the tiniest fraction  of the Muslim population.  So is it fair to penalize the many for the deeds of the few?  That is the problem I wish to address.

Muslims are like Catholics.  They may regularly go to church/Mosque but they disobey much that their faith commands.  Catholics, for instance, almost all use contraception and get divorced if in a bad marriage.

And the commandments of Islam are even more onerous than Roman doctrine.  The slightest reading of the Koran -- and I read all of it in my teens -- will tell you that it is a supremacist religion.  White supremacism is way out of fashion now but religious supremacism is alive and well in the Koran.  And there are many Mullahs who energetically remind Muslims of their obligations in that direction.  They preach Jihad against non-Muslims with perfect Koranic justification.  And the Jihadis are in fact the obedient Muslims.  They do what the Koran commands.

But 99% of Muslims have enough brains to see that any hope of subjugating Western civilization is totally hopeless -- so do nothing towards subjugating anyone outside their own families.  But most DO harbour disrespect for Western ways.  They think that they, as Muslims are superior by way of having the true faith even if they are careful about how they behave.  But they do on occasions push their luck.  They wave placards and shout their silly slogans.  But once they start pushing or attacking people around them the police usually suppress them in some way.

Australia's main Muslim problem is with Lebanese Muslims. Many Lebanese Muslim young men make their feelings of superiority obvious in minor ways.  They make themselves obnoxious by pushing past peple without apology, harassing women etc.   And some of them of course join criminal gangs. The Sydney police have a "Middle Eastern Crime Squad" devoted to them.

The point to note, however, is that the hostility to the rest of us is there among Muslims generally even if they rarely have the guts to do anything about it.

And that is what justfies restraining action against the Muslim community in general.  They cannot be blamed for the deeds of the few but they can be blamed for providing the sea in which the jihadis swim.  They provide community support and encouragement to the jihadis.  The problem is the religion.

So a Western national leader might well address his Muslim residents as follows:

"Would you like to have a person hostile to you  living with you in your own house?  Obviously not.  And we in this country don't like to have living among us a class of people who are hostile to us.  And it is sadly clear that many Muslim people in this country are hostile to the rest of us and our ways.  Many  Muslims living in this country came to us as refugees or in search of a better life and we have always been glad to give a safe place to refugees and support opportunity for all.  But we expect gratitude for what we have done for such people, rather than hostility.  And we normally get that --  but not from Muslims on many occasions. So I say to you now: Either go back to a place and people you like better or abandon your hostility to us.  If you stay here we expect you to become one of us. We expect you to adapt to us rather than  us adapting to you

And we all know that your feelings of superiority and hostility to us originate in your religion.  What you do reflects the teachings of the Koran and what your Mullahs tell you.  So if you wish to remain among us you must change your religion.  You have six months to either depart these shores or instead develop a new religious affiliation.

To encourage that I am going to legislate that the restrictions  which presently apply to Christians in Saudi Arabia apply immediately to Muslims in this country.  That means no mosques and no Muslim activities of any sort.  As soon as the necessary legislation is passed, all mosques will become government property and will thenceforth be used for welfare housing only."

I apologize to those Muslims who do not feel hostile towards us  but many of you ARE hostile towards us and the government does not have mind-reading machines that could tell us who is hostile and who is not.  So to the only way to rid ourselves of hostile Muslims is to rid ourselves of all Muslims.  I wish you well as you return to your ancestral countries

The prohibition of Muslim practice would not of course pass constitutional muster in America under the freedom to practice your religion provisions of the First Amendment (or in Australia under Section 116 of the Constitution) but the command to depart almost certainly would. The First Amendment and its Australian equivalent protects religious practice for people living in the USA or Australia but it says nothing about who is permitted to live there.

I suspect that most Muslims born and bred in Western countries would take the option of changing their religion rather than lose the life they have become used to.  Any Muslims who failed to leave would of course have to be deported but all the Anglospheric countries have had plenty of practice at deporting illegal immigrants so deporting a few Muslims as well should not require much more in the way of resources in those  countries.  France and Germany would have bigger problems.

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Untrue Truisms in the War on Terror

V.D. Hanson

In the current tensions with the Islamic World, pundits bandy about received wisdom that in fact is often ignorance. Here are a few examples.

1)  The solution of radical Islam must come from within Islam.

Perhaps it could. It would be nice to see the advice of General Sisi of Egypt take root among the Islamic street. It would have been nice had the Arab Spring resulted in constitutional republics from North Africa to Syria. It would be nice if an all-Muslim force took on and defeated the Islamic State. It would be nice if Iran suddenly stopped stonings and Saudi Arabia ceased public whippings. It would be nice if Muslims dropped the death penalty for apostates.

Unfortunately, there is no reason to believe that any of these scenarios is soon likely. Nor is there much historical support for autocracies and totalitarian belief systems collapsing entirely from within. Hitler was popular enough among Germans until the disaster of Stalingrad. The Soviet Union only imploded under the pressures of the Cold War. Mussolini was a popular dictator — until Italy’s losses in World War II eroded his support. The Japanese emperor only was willing to end the rule of his militarists when Tokyo went up in flames and the U.S. threatened more Hiroshimas. Only the collapse of the Soviet Union and its bloc pulled the plug on the global terrorism of the 1980s.

Until Muslims themselves begin to sense unpleasantness from the crimes of radical Islam, there is little likelihood of Islamism eroding. Were France to deny visas to any citizens of a country it deemed a terrorist sponsor, or to deport French residents that support terrorism, while weeding out terrorist cells, then gradually Muslims in France would wish to disassociate themselves from the terrorists in their midst. If the U.S. adopted a policy that it would have no formal relations with countries that behead or stone, Islamists might take note.

2) The vast majority of Muslims renounce terror.

True, current polls attest that grassroots support for Islamic terror is eroding among Muslim nations, largely because of the violence in Libya, Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere that is making life miserable for Muslims themselves.

But if even only 10% of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims favor radical Islamists, the resulting 160-million core of supporters is quite large enough to offer needed support. Again, by 1945 most Germans would have polled their opposition to Hitler. But that fact was largely meaningless given the absence of action against the Nazi hierarchy.

In truth, the majority of Muslims may oppose Muslim-inspired violence in their homelands, but will do so abroad only if radical Islam diminishes the influence and prestige of Muslims. If terrorism does not, and instead another charismatic bin Laden wins the sort of fear abroad and popularity at home (cf. his popularity ratings in some Muslim countries circa 2002), then it matters little that most Muslims themselves are not actual terrorists — any more than the fact that most Russians were not members of the Communist Party or Germans members of the Nazi Party. Likewise, the idea that Muslims are the greatest victims of Muslim-inspired terrorism is not ipso facto necessarily significant. Stalin killed far more Russians than did Hitler. That Germans suffered firsthand from the evils of National Socialism was no guarantee that they might act to stop it. Mao was the greatest killer of Chinese in history; but that fact hardly meant that Chinese  would rise up against him.

3) There is no military solution to radical Islam.

Yes and no. The truth is that military action is neutral: valuable when successful, and counter-productive when not. In 2003, there were few terrorists in Iraq. In 2006, there were lots. Then in 2011, there were few. Then, in 2014, there were lots again. The common denominator is not the presence or absence of U.S. troops, but the fact that in 2003 and 2011 the U.S. military enjoyed success and had either killed, routed, or awed Islamists; in 2006 and 2014 the U.S. military was considered either impotent or irrelevant. U.S. military force is counter-productive when used to little purpose and ineffectively. It is invaluable when it is focused and used successfully. If the U.S. bombing campaign against the Islamic State were overwhelming and devastating Islamic state territories, it would matter. Leaving a Western country to join the jihad in Syria would be considered synonymous with being vaporized, and the U.S. would find itself with far fewer enemies and far more allies.  Otherwise, sort of bombing, sort of not will have little positive effects, and may do more harm than good.

4) Reaching out to Islam reduces terrorism.

It can. No one wants to gratuitously incite Muslims. But the fact that Mediterranean food and Korans were available in Guantanamo did not mean that released terrorists were appreciative of that fact or that the world no longer considered the facility objectionable. Obama’s name, paternal lineage, apologies and euphemisms have neither raised U.S. popularity in the Middle East nor undermined the Islamic State.

The 2009 Obama Cairo speech went nowhere. Blaming the filmmaker Nakoula Nakoula for Benghazi did not make the Tsarnaev brothers reconsider their attack at the Boston Marathon. The use of “workplace violence” and declarations that the Muslim Brotherhood is secular or that jihad is a legitimate religious tenet has not reduced Islamic anger at the U.S.

The Kouachi brothers did not care much that under Obama Muslim outreach has become a promised top agenda at NASA. Backing off from a red line in Syria did not reassure the Middle East that the United States was not trigger-happy. Had Obama defiantly told the UN that Nakoula Nakoula had a perfect right to be obnoxious while on U.S. soil, or had the Tsarnaev family long ago been denied entry into the United States, then Islamic terrorists might at least have had more respect for their intended victims.  Current American euphemisms are considered by terrorists as proof of weakness and probably as provocative as would be unnecessary slanderous language.

The best policy is to speak softly and accurately, to carry a large stick, and to display little interest in what our enemies think of our own use of language. The lesson of Charlie Hebdo so far is that the French do not care that radical Islamists were offended and so plan to show the cartoons any way they please. If they stay the course, there will eventually be fewer attacks; if they back off, there will be more.

5) We need to listen to Muslim complaints.

No more than we do to any other group’s complaints. Greeks are not blowing people up over a divided Nicosia. Germans are not producing terrorists eager to reclaim East Prussia, after the mass ethnic cleansings of 1945. Muslims are not targeting Turks because Ottoman colonial rule in the Middle East was particularly brutal. Latin Americans are not slaughtering Spaniards for the excesses of Spanish imperial colonialism.

Christians are not offended that Jesus is Jesus and not referenced as the Messiah Jesus in the manner of the Prophet Mohammed. The Muslim community has been constructed in the West as a special entity deserving of politically correct sensitivity, in the manner of privileged groups on campus that continuously suffer from psychodramatic “micro-aggressions.” That Muslims abroad and in the West practice gender separation at religious services or are intolerant of homosexuals wins greater exemption from the Left than a Tea Party rally.  If the West were to treat satire, parody and caricature of Islam in the fashion of other religions, then eventually the terrorists would learn there is no advantage in killing those with whom they disagree. Once Westerners treat Islam as they do any other religion, then the Islamist provocateurs will be overwhelmed with perceived slights to the point that they are no longer slights. The Muslim world needs to learn reciprocity: that building a mosque at Ground Zero or in Florence, Italy, is no more or no less provocative than building a cathedral in Istanbul, Riyadh, or Teheran.

SOURCE

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Uncovered California

Covered California, the Golden State’s wholly owned subsidiary of Obamacare, has been cancelling the coverage when people report changes in their income, changing their eligibility for tax credits. This problem exposes people to severe tax penalties but Covered California bosses blame it on their $454 million computer system. On the other hand, those turning 65 and going on Medicare find it practically impossible to cancel their Covered California deal. Covered California bosses blame this on the $454 million computer system, but it is probably a ruse to inflate the number of people Covered California can claim are enrolled. This kind of incompetence, waste and abuse are hard to top but as Emily Bazar of the Center for Health Reporting observes, Covered California appears to have pulled it off.

Bazar has been receiving notices from an “untold number” of consumers asking what coverage they qualify for, “if any.” She cites the case of Los Angeles writer Juniper Ekman, who dutifully applied during the first enrollment period with her husband and two-year old daughter. They began getting letters from Covered California, five or eight at time. Some letters said they did not qualify for tax credits. Then, last September, “I received 18 notices from Covered California in one day. Fourteen say we’re covered and four say we’re not. Which one should I believe?” No clear answer emerged, and Ekman is not alone. As Bazar notes, one Bay Area consumer received 40 notices in less than a month and in another case, “four people in the same household received four different eligibility decisions in the same notice.”

Covered California boss Dana Howard blamed the problem on the computer system. “This is the same system that has cost nearly half a billion dollars so far,” writes Bazar. The system may have helped “multitudes” apply for health insurance but “it also is responsible for countless glitches and widespread consumer misery.” That misery is inherent in the Obamacare system. Congress had to pass it for people to find out. If you don’t like the plan, you have to keep it.

SOURCE

There is a  new  lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.

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