We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

How is one to know which horrors outrank which?

The rage metre has been in the red for a while now, with Baroness Warsi, a Muslim in case you did not know (or Baroness Token as she is known in some parts), quitting over the UK’s policies towards Israel (yes it is said the UK actually has a policy on the subject). Strangely she did not quit the government in protest over UK support of Pakistan, at a time when several hundred thousand people have been displaced by strikes against the Taliban in Waziristan. Go figure! I wonder why? Actually, no I don’t.

So what will be the reactions and suggestions from within the BBC/Guardian Bubble to the rapidly building catastrophe in Iraq amongst the Yazidi and Christian communities, I wonder? I realise these communities are being ethnically cleansed (i.e. murdered and dispossessed) but as it is not being done by Jews or Westerners, does it really matter? Indeed can it even be said to be truly happening? It will be interesting to see and contrast I think, in a nightmarish kind of way.

39 comments to How is one to know which horrors outrank which?

  • Gene

    Oh, I’m sure it will all be laid at the feet of Bush/Blair. (And some commenters on this site will do exactly that.)

  • And some commenters on this site will do exactly that

    This indicates to me you do not read this site much.

  • Surellin

    To quote (I think) Ace of Spades, if a Moslem dies and there is no Zionist nearby, did he really die?

  • Johnnydub

    Simply put… The mussies killing everyone is old hat.. Now lets get back to those pesky Jooz…

    To expand… following Warsi’s comments about consequences… if we start bombing the shit out of ISIS (which we should have done a long time ago) expect the local 5th columnists to start bombing us…

  • Dom

    Sometimes I think there is a little black speck in the Muslim mind that forces them to think that murder and mayhem in the Ummah is no one’s business but Allah’s, but war unleashed by outside forces (by Jews especially) is something, well, unabrahamic. And the most disturbing part is this — this same black speck leads them to think that others must see things this way also.

    The greatest evil of Israel is its existence. Land that was once Muslim is now not Muslim. This can’t be forgiven.

  • Laird

    I’ve heard this woman’s name mentioned before, but this post encouraged me to actually look her up. I find it hilarious that she was made a baroness* in order to be appointed “Shadow Minister for Community Cohesion.” It’s difficult to conceive of a more utterly useless position than “Minister for Community Cohesion”, but surely being a “Shadow” such minister achieves that lofty status. And now the UK is being deprived of her services as “Minister for Faith and Communities”? If the empire hadn’t already collapsed it surely would now.

    * Is it necessary to be elevated to the peerage in order to be appointed to a cabinet position? Even a “shadow” cabinet position?

  • Gene

    Perry, on the contrary I visit frequently. And believe me, I do appreciate that the kind of libertarians that would make the argument I suggested above are not common around here, though I have seen such sentiments crop up now and then. Now, at REASON magazine, on the other hand …

  • veryretired

    The genocidal frenzy by the islamists will continue unabated, and largely ignored, by the nations of the west. Even the religious leaders can barely stir themselves to make anything more than feeble protests.

    As I have said before, the islamists will keep pushing out and expanding their madness until they take one or more steps beyond the pale, even for the enervated populations of the somnambulant west, and the long repressed fury of the Christian world will be released.

    It will end, someday in the future, with the last Islamic refugee pleading he really isn’t, and then his death.

    The west may regret and repent for a century afterwards, as some of us have over our conduct in other wars, but the result will be the same.

    Western civilization is the most ruthless and deadly culture the world has ever seen.

    Militarized societies such as Germany and Japan, which considered themselves far superior to the mongrel west, as the feudal Confederate south did toward the “shopkeepers” of the north, learned a lesson painful beyond their worst nightmares.

    When we decide to throw away all the moral niceties that normally restrain us, and the wolves are let loose, islam will cease to exist.

    There used to be hundreds, even thousands, of religious sects in the western world, and around the globe, until Constantine saw that cross in the sky. You can count what’s left on your fingers and toes, with some left over.

    Islamic society exists because we allow it. They have some wealth in resources because we allow them to keep it, and buy it from them instead of taking it.

    They make nothing. They live in a fictional past which can never exist.

    When we remove the obstacles that we have constructed to restrain our passions, the past is all that will exist.

  • Jeremy

    VR, very nicely put. And there’s no shortage of wolves facing Islam: as well the enemies it creates on its constantly bloody border, it imports much of its food.

  • Jacob

    very:
    “Western civilization is the most ruthless and deadly culture the world has ever seen.”

    “Was” not “is”. “Was”.
    You are nostalgic for a past that doesn’t exist any more.

  • Jacob

    Perry, why are you indignant only when it comes to the murder of Christians? (Arab Christians)?
    In Syria and now Iraq, hundreds of person get killed almost every day, and it goes on for more than 3 years.
    Is the killing of Arabs by Arabs somehow tolerable, or less worthy of indignation and protests ?

  • These are Arabs killing Arabs (the Christians are all Arabs), although the Yazidi are actually Kurds. But I am far more indigent when the fight is not Islamo-fascists vs. Ba’aathists… I could not care less if those two groups exterminate each other, indeed I am all for it, and whilst many innocents will inevitably get caught up, those two groups do represent a not insignificant section of the society hosting the festivities.

    It is rather harder to see what the Yazidis, or Kurds generally, did to brings this upon themselves however.

  • Chip

    Did Warsi have an occupation that produced things of value before joining the parasitic class?

    Will she afterwards?

    If she really had a conscience – as so much of the media imply – it should have pricked long before now.

  • veryretired

    Jacob—you don’t have lunch with the guys I have known all my life. Suffice it to say, for them, “more rubble, less trouble” is a very moderate position.

    I keep my guns in one friends’ gun safe when I travel. Another is a licensed gun dealer and bomb disposal expert, and, therefore, an explosives expert in general. You cannot imagine their opinions, and some others I know very well who are every bit as hard-core and then some, because nice young intellectual people don’t rub elbows with my sort any more.

    We’re not kidding, and we’re not fooling around.

    Some very shocked tranzis, and some extremely imprudent islamicists, are going to find that out the hard way, probably a lot sooner than anyone imagines.

    Whether you believe me or not, I suggest you just stay out of the way when the time comes.

  • Gene
    August 7, 2014 at 8:15 pm

    Reason Magazine of late has become quite Jew friendly in the comments. Something on the order of 5 to 1 to 10 to 1 in favor of the Jews. The writers….. are another story.

    OTOH Zero Hedge – a libertarian oriented financial site is rabidly anti-Jew. I don’t visit near as much as I used to.

  • J.M. Heinrichs

    The Christians being ‘displaced’ in Iraq are Assyrians. Like the “Arab Christians” in the holy Land, they are only “Arab-speaking”.

    Cheers

  • Julie near Chicago

    M. Simon, I wouldn’t go anywhere near Zero Hedge, and not just because of anti-Jewish bilge. There are things that seem to interest it far more than either finance or libertarianism.

    She hinted, darkly.

  • Laird

    Julie / Simon, I visit Zerohedge regularly, and despite the presence of some anti-Semites (primarily in the comments; they don’t tolerate much of that in the actual articles) and some weird (but fun!) conspiracy nuts, it has a lot to offer. Just skip the things you don’t like; the economic writing is worth wading through other stuff.

  • Julie near Chicago
    August 8, 2014 at 5:04 am

    Would you be referring to their cheer leading for the apocalypse?

    BTW I’m near Chicago too. Rockford.

  • Paul Marks

    This morning Islamic rockets were again raining down upon Israel – while the Israelis sat around in their shelters (hoping the Iron Dome defences continued to work) wondering what the …… to do.

    “Oh Paul you Zionist agent – you are reporting from a biased source”.

    Al Jazeera is biased in favour of the Jews???????????????????

    For it was Al Jazeera I was watching this morning – their correspondents in Gaza reported no Israeli attacks (NONE) whereas their correspondents in Israel were reporting Islamic attacks (indeed were coming under attack – the fact that they themselves are Muslims does not spare them from random missiles.

    Perhaps Baroness W. would like the explain all the above – how it is all the fault of the evil Jews really………

  • Julie near Chicago

    Wow, M! That’s amazing! I’m in Rockford too! If you like, e-mail me — I’m Julie Krauss, only all lower-case and no spaces, at YaHell-dot-com (if you see what I mean, grrrrrr).

    Heh…Fraser Orr is also Near Chicago he says–I don’t know just where, but it must be somewhere in DuPage County. –Or Will County (I’m still moving out of my old house in Naperville, unincorporated, FAR SW, so in Will County by a whisker). Anyway, we can have the U.S. Branch of the Samizdata Society, complete with meetups. Maybe we can even get Midwesterner to come down from Wisconsin (Madison?) and llamas to make the trek from wherever he is in Michigan. Wouldn’t that be great!

    Um, yes, back O/T. (O/T. Off-topic? On-topic? I love toggles that you can’t figure out which is Off and which is on. LOL) –Zero Hedge. I absolutely believe you about the cheerleading, but in fact their “George Washington” (some say everybody is this Tyler Durden, and some say T.D. is a pseudonym, or possibly a pseudo-man, SNARK!) wrote a piece a few years back on Ayn Rand that was the nastiest piece of sewage I’ve ever seen, and showed zero, no, LESS THAN ‘ZERO’ evidence of having ever read a word she wrote, or else a failure of comprehension that a 2-year-old would be ashamed of. She’s a terrorist! She advocates blah blah blah. He drags up the Hickman rumor. All the most vile accusations.

    I ran across something else from Z-H later that only reinforced my opinion, but I don’t remember what it was.

    Anyway, if you’ve run across “Fellowship of the Minds,” you may have noticed lots of stuff by “Dr. Eowyn.” She picked up this Z-H piece and used it to bludgeon all of us into knowledge of the True Evil Awfulness of A.R. So I pay her no respect anymore either. No investigation of sources, or else she’s as stupid and nasty as “George Washington.”

    There now, aren’t you sorry you asked! 😉

    Still, one does have the occasional urge to go slumming. (Does anybody ever still use that expression anymore?)

  • Rob

    It’s bad luck for the Yazidi and Christians in Iraq that their suffering is taking place during the annual SWP summer holiday. Otherwise the “Stop the West Coalition” would have been marching day and night to stop the slaughter.

  • llamas

    Naperville, you say? On my first-ever visit to the US, I pulled an overnighter fixing two ATMs in Naperville, and the salesman let us drive his black TransAm in gratitude. Happy days . . . . .

    Don’t plan meetups IRL. Parts of the magic of this playspace is that we don’t see each other too closely. I’m actually a 73-year-old grandma in Queens.

    llater,

    llamas

  • The unfortunate Chaldean church is too foreign for the Right to get worked up about, and too Christian for the Left. Sad… Like the 2005 Cedar Revolution and the later Twitter Revolution in Iran, social media is only permitting us to watch them perish in real time.

  • Regional

    Being a dumb Redneck Bogan I was under the impression that the Christians in the Middle East were Maronites, not Arabs, who are mentioned in the Christian Bible. The Arabs in Palestine are invaders from the South Yemen.

  • Why does it even matter?

  • Snag

    Land that was once Muslim is now not Muslim.

    Not only were Jews in Israel long before Muslims, Jews were in Saudi Arabia long before the Muslims (until Mohamed murdered them all).

    For some reason, Jews are not pressing for a Right of Return to Mecca.

  • For some reason, Jews are not pressing for a Right of Return to Mecca.

    LOL

  • Rich Rostrom

    as it is not being done by Jews or Westerners, does it really matter?

    Jews count as Westerners for this purpose; and the answer is, basically, no. It’s really all about white guilt.

    The peacemongers and atrocity-decriers have had next to nothing to say about most of the catastrophes in Africa. Even Darfur, a cause celebré, prompted no action. The same criminal regime is in power in Sudan, still ruling over Darfur, and none of the perpetrators were ever punished.

    Sri Lanka ruthlessly suppressed the Tamil Tigers terrorist insurgency; the world reaction was a yawn. (Not that LTTE wasn’t deserving, but a Sri Lankan co-worker (Sinhalese) once told me the government just killed anyone they thought might be LTTE.)

    Laird @August 7, 2014 at 8:08 pm: Is it necessary to be elevated to the peerage in order to be appointed to a cabinet position? Even a “shadow” cabinet position?

    Since no one else has answered this: members of the cabinet must sit in Parliament. They must be either MPs, elected to Commons, or peers in the House of Lords. A “shadow” minister’s positions is AFAIK unofficial, but I suppose the requirement is applied for consistency. And if there is a sudden switch of government, the shadow ministers are supposed to be able to move immediately into office.

    Chip @ August 7, 2014 at 11:26 pm:Did Warsi have an occupation that produced things of value before joining the parasitic class?

    Wiki is your friend: Warsi was a solicitor until 2004, when she retired from practice to stand for Dewsbury as a Conservative. She lost, but became a Conservative Party advisor, and has had various insider posts ever since. (She was young, somewhat telegenic, and Moslem.)

    Julie near Chicago @ August 8, 2014 at 7:29 am:
    Anyway, we can have the U.S. Branch of the Samizdata Society, complete with meetups.

    Being as I’m actually in Chicago, may I suggest a venue in the metropolis? (I don’t drive, but I can get to the suburbs.)

  • Fred the Fourth

    The MSM, at least in the US, got into a much bigger froth over the dynamiting of Buddhist statues by the Taliban (back in 2001), than they will ever get into over the current events under ISIS’s bulldozer progress through the mideast. That was ART, don’t you know, and therefore IMPORTANT.

  • TomO

    Tom Holland’s Islam – The Untold Story is a relatively dispassionate investigation of the early years of Islam – and if you’ve not seen it… IMHO it’s required viewing.

  • Mr Ed

    members of the cabinet must sit in Parliament.

    In the UK, that is not quite a ‘must’, it is a constitutional convention that Cabinet members sit in a House of Parliament, and nowadays a non-MP is simply given a peerage, e.g. Mr P Mandelson took a peerage after joining the Cabinet on his return from Brussels. The last person to sit in Cabinet without ever taking a seat in either House of Parliament was the celebrated Dutch Carry-On Film star Jan Smuts.

  • Paul Marks

    For once the leftist myth that Israelis are all white is a useful leftist.

    Actually many Israeli Jews are physically identical to Muslim Arabs – – the difference is in their thoughts (not their bodies).

    Which, means (as some Israelis speak Arabic without an accent and have a deep knowledge of Islam) that the person next to you Mohammed (your comrade-in-arms) may be a secret Jewish agent.

    Better kill your friend Mohammed – just to be on the safe side. After all if he really is a Muslim he will go straight to paradise.

  • Mr Ed

    An Ashkenazi Israeli once told me that they have a throwaway remark:

    I can’t stand these Arabs, they remind me of the Sephardim!‘.

  • Johnnydub

    What this really boils down to is the left’s racism – the racism of low expectations – that is the inability to hold Arabs, blacks, Muslims, whatever, to the same standards that they hold for white westerners.

  • Julie near Chicago

    Rich R,

    Another Chicagoan! What part of the city?

    I don’t do Chicago anymore, not even to see the Joffrey or ABT when they come to town. (Health issues make distant appoints pretty much a non-starter.) And apparently there are no longer passenger trains between Chicago and Rockford, nor even DeKalb. (In her youth, my mom lived at 63rd & Dorchester, and part of her bacon came from her job as organist at the Methodist Church in DeKalb, to which she commuted by train.)

    Seems the closest approaches to Rockford are Elburn and Aurora (Metra).

    Sigh. Still, I think Rockford is angling to get train service reinstated, so we might keep each other in mind. Anyhow, you have my e-mail if you ever feel like writing:

    Julie Krauss, only all lower-case and no spaces, at YaHell-dot-com

    and if the train ever appears, and if you feel motivated….

    At least you wouldn’t have to deal with O’Hare! :>))))

  • Mr Ed
    August 8, 2014 at 9:21 pm

    Hadn’t heard that one before. I AM amused.

    Julie near Chicago – did you get my last e-mail?

  • lucklucky

    “What this really boils down to is the left’s racism – the racism of low expectations – that is the inability to hold Arabs, blacks, Muslims, whatever, to the same standards that they hold for white westerners.”

    While that is true for some on the Left that is not the main reason.

    We must understand that what Left wants is Power. Not Justice, neither the left wants Equality. They are only useful propaganda.

    Same for the victimengineering

    The blacks, the gays, the palestinians, the muslims whatever other group is only advocated insofar as it helps the Left destroy the power structures of Western Civilization.

    If the gays are persecuted by palestinanians, the Left – if it has to choose – makes a calculation of whom should support based on profit it will get towards the main objective.

    If the Palestinians are murdered by Assad or by other Palestinians then the Left is silent. When Hamas was fighting Fatah suddenly the images of hospitals, hurt and killed people stopped to be in the BBC, CNN, The Guardian. In that case they only showed some combat.

    If the blacks are persecuted by a black dictator the left is silent. As an example Mandela supported several dictators. The difference is that they were black so it doesn’t help fighting the Christian, Capitalist, Individualism, Free Market and White Men.

    All synonyms.

    ——-
    Also we should be aware that Israel History and how initially the Left had high hopes for the country as the vanguard. When Israel didn’t went were the Left wanted, it transformed itself in an apostate of the Left.

    And all totalitarian religions hate more the apostate than the infidel.

  • bobby b

    ” I realise these communities are being ethnically cleansed . . . but as it is not being done by Jews or Westerners, does it really matter?”

    There are two kinds of ethnic cleansing.

    The real kind of ethnic cleansing was all designed and financed and supervised by the heretics and the blasphemerites and the apostacles who wish to kill The Faithful and deny God and his Prophet their due glory.

    The other type of ethnic cleansing is mostly just mislabeled evolutionary culling. Not everybody makes it to the Bigs, especially when Allah despises you.