In late June the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a.k.a. the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a.k.a. the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shaam (also ISIS) decided to codify its global ambitions by renaming itself as simply the “Islamic State” and referring to its political order as the “Caliphate”. The leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is now known as Amir al-Mu’minin Caliph Ibrahim. His name hearkens back to the first “rightly-guided” caliph after the death of Mohammed, and ISIS’ action is a proclamation of the re-establishment of the institution ninety years and four months after the Caliphate was formally abolished by Kemal Ataturk and the Turkish legislative assembly.
The nomenclature “Islamic State” has created a delicate international issue, one that ISIS may or may not have intended, but one that was certainly unexpected by the Western media.
For the past twelve years — the last six years of the Bush Administration and all six of Obama — the United States has striven mightily to erase the word “Islam” from any reports and discussions about terrorism. When people are raped, tortured, shot, beheaded, or enslaved, no mention of jihad, Islam, or Muslims must be made — you don’t mess around with JIM! The text of official documents and training manuals and government publications has been scoured clean of references to Islam in any materials related to “violent extremism”.
Our NATO allies in Eurabia have followed suit. And the media on both sides of the Atlantic fell eagerly into line, declining to talk about JIM if at all possible when anything nasty occurs in the news. The word “Islam” is generally reserved for fawning stories about Ramadan and Eid, or accounts of interfaith outreach, or videos of women in hijab giving out fluffy pink bunnies (but not piglets!) to children at street festivals.
But with the proclamation of the Islamic State, JIM has made a comeback.
The problem, you see, is the acronym…
Before the beginning of July, when the media had to report on the blood-soaked streets of Raqqa or Aleppo, they could refer to those responsible as “ISIS” or “ISIL”, thereby hewing to the Pentagon/State Department guidelines on how to discuss violent extremism.
But “IS” doesn’t work so well: it looks too much like “is”. This is especially true in news headlines, which, depending on the site and/or application, may be shown in all caps for news feeds or posted articles. I saw one earlier in the week that I read several times, unable to parse the syntax until I realized the word was “IS” and not “is”.
As a result media outlets use the acronym sometimes, especially in the text of articles, but less often in their headlines. For example, this Reuters article — which refers to the deeds of “Islamist militants” in the body of the text, in its best mealy-mouthed manner — sports the following headline: “Islamic State extends gains in north Iraq, reach Kurdistan border area”.
This is not what the Nattering Nabobs of Nomenclature were hoping for.
I hardly need to tell you that virtually anything that ISIS does in front of the camera is horrific, so that every news story that includes a photo or a detailed description will associate the most grotesque and barbaric of acts with something the reporter calls the “Islamic State”. This can’t be what the Powers That Be intended — the West’s slide into full Islamization was supposed to proceed quietly, without the man in the street becoming aware of what the word “Islam” really means until it was too late to do anything about it.
The new Vice News documentary about the Islamic State (Part 1, Part 2, three more to come) is too graphic to embed here, but if you follow the links, you’ll see that it contains everything that our political masters do not want us to associate with Islam.
The 20th century had no shortage of mass carnage of the same sort that ISIS is now so heartily engaging in. But when the Communists or the Nazis shot thousands of people and threw the corpses into rivers or bulldozed them into mass graves, it was not something they trumpeted in their propaganda outlets or posted photos of on billboards. They did their gruesome deeds in remote areas, and tried to restrict awareness of them to those with a “need to know”. I’m certain that killers who loved their work were employed to perform those grisly tasks, but for their superiors it was a distasteful political expediency, and not an end in itself.
ISIS is different. They want everyone to see them gunning people down, and beheading them, and celebrating over the heaps of bodies. They put rows of heads on fence palings and videotape it themselves, so that their fans can make the ghastly footage go viral. Every blood-soaked corpse is a glorious triumph to be made part of the ubiquitous jihad propaganda that circulates all over the world. And, above all else, they are eager for the world to know that it is seeing Islam in action.
This is more than just barbaric political theatrics. It is a religious frenzy. It is an ecstasy of slaughter.
It is, in a word, a demonic sacrament.
ISIS wants the world to know that the Islamic State is expressing Islam fully and completely, just as Allah and Mohammed intended it to. They want everyone to know what jihad is all about. They want us all to see what good Muslims they are.
They don’t mind whether the word gets out on their own websites, or is excerpted on Vice News, or quoted by me, or displayed (with fastidious pixellation) in nightly news reports on Western TV. It doesn’t matter to them, just so long as the word gets out.
But that’s not what our political masters wanted. This was not supposed to happen.
We can do our part to undermine the Islamization of our countries by lavishly quoting the MSM whenever they discuss the Islamic State. And make sure you include the headline!
I can guarantee you that ISIS will provide copious material that the elites don’t want the hoi-polloi to associate with the word “Islam”.
So thank the Lord (or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, if you prefer) for providing us with the confluence of “IS” and “is”. It’s one of those little pranks he likes to play on us from time to time, just to keep us on our toes.
What an astute observation Baron. Well done! Now let’s wait and see as to how many knots and twists the MSM and the Collective can get themselves into undoing this little gem of unintended awareness.
those pretzel postures simply show their famous flexibility. As Bill Clinton, in a prescient and perspiring moment, pontificated*: depends on what the meaning of “is” is.
*make that “caliphated” because in a generation or so children will be asking their parents where the word pontificated came from.
Pretzel contortions evident with
via NewsBusters: Big Three Networks Avoid Calling ISIS ‘Terrorists;’ Label Them ‘Rebels’ and ‘Militants’
The gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church.
Seriously, even if the title Bishop of Rome were to become a titular see, there would still be a pope. Although I doubt he’d hang out in France this round. The papacy isn’t going to change.
The Papacy has changed. And done so many times. To avoid the grisly parts of papal history, just look at the protracted conflict between Italy and “The Holy See” in the 19th century.
I agree: Avignon ain’t what it used to be. The Revolution changed all that.
In the end, as hierarchical systems degenerate into whatever is scheduled to be up next as the new normal, the paradigm – well, let’s just say that people who don’t know or care about history will be unable to comprehend how hierarchical arrangements ever had such a stranglehold on our thinking. Eventually, our thinking about systems and how they work catch up with whatever physics says is reality. So I vote for asymmetry.
Sunny Jim and serial Islam
Jim Dumps was a most unfriendly man,
Who lived his life on the Western plan;
In his gloomy way he’d gone through life,
And made the worst of peace and quiet;
Till Islam one day was served to him
Since then they’ve called him “Sunny Jim.”
Whatever you say, wherever you’ve been,
You can’t beat the Islam, that raised Sunny Jim!
High o’er the fence leaps Sunny Jim, Jihad is the food that raises him
(with apologies to Minnie Maud Hanff and Dorothy Ficken who created the Force cereals character Sunny Jim.)
I am that I am. IS is what it is.
Good article!
Totally agree.
I’ll go with the Flying Spaghetti Monster but yes, perversely, it should be one of those ill winds.
stop being so knee-jerkily predictable. When I first read this post I thought to myself “ah, there’s a tar baby MH won’t be able to resist”. How’s about you sit quietly and munch on your Eternal Pasta?
Well Dymphna, if I don’t believe in a benevolent creator, then of course “demonic sacrament” must be nonsense. Not sure if being read like a book is flattering or not! But I’m quite happy with the epithet “evil” being applied to the Islamic State; such language is part of our Judaeo-Christian heritage.
The BBC and other news services degrade public discourse (hope that isn’t pompous) by referring to the IS, Hamas, Boko Haram etc as “militants” rather than terrorists. “Militants” are aggressive picketers, not mass murderers.
The dead silence of liberals and so-called progressives on the VICE News documentaries so far is DEAFENING, and, I hope, for their acceptance-of-all agenda, damning.
Islam is a religion of peace, Islam is a religion of peace … What’s that you’re saying … no,no,no no … I can’t hear you … Islam is a religion of peace, Islam is a religion of peace …
Like it, Baron! It’s an early demonstration as to how the lid will sooner or later blow off of the pressure cooker that our so called leaders and their collaborationists in the establishment and media have created for the purpose of hiding their about to explode socio-cultural time bomb. They know this is inevitable and rightly fear it will happen on their watch, and I hope it does. S III.
Ewwhew…don’t say pressure cooker. It speaks to your violent radicalism and we can’t have *that* here.
Imagine, Obama bombing a Muslim group. Does ISIS realize how stupid it is to allow pictures of them lining people up in trenches and shooting them? Carrying out Nazi SS actions are one of the most idiotic things Muslims have done. Israel’s actions don’t seem so extreme now, do they?
But Israel is *still* evil. Besides the BDS folk have all that signage to be dispensed and used against the Real Enemy. I’m waiting for the ‘exclusive’ MSM
conjectureproof that the Jooooos are financing this…Oh!! I have seen actually read comments from the public …actually a muslim commenting on an Israeli news site which said EXACTLY that…”the Jews are financing ISIS”…
bwahhhhh !!! How dumb can any person on this planet be… oops….. I was reading a comment from a REAL guy on FB named Mohammed out of LA. I checked that page and the dolt is REAL . His info was ALL there ..no FB security ..nothing all his pictures and likes, blah blah ….right on his page.
Islamic State (IS) – a group formerly known as Isis. – the BBC rocking the casbah.
Embarrassingly I tripped over the “is” and had to reread the paragraph of a BBC article.
I’ve often wondered about the West’s liking for the acronym; and it seems that the larger the organisation the more likely it is to replace its name with a collection of letters.
America and Great Britain, the West’s current spiritual leaders, are particularly fond of them. They’ve even gone so far as to labelling themselves by acronym – America became USA and was further ‘sanitised’ into US, no longer American but just a collection of states, and Great Britain, ‘coincidentally’, has gone through exactly the same process, morphing at first into GB and then into UK, and like America losing all specificity. Signifying of course that the US and the UK are no longer America and Britain – they are no longer defined according to their people, American and British, but now merely in terms of their bureaucratic structure.
America is now no longer American as Britain is no longer British. Both are multicultural multiracial aggregates and thus can no longer legitimately be called America or Britain, hence US and UK.
For America, that is becoming the case as people begin to rebel against the central government’s force field and start to search for labels that more accurately reflect their own reality. Not only has the center ceased to hold but the margins are beginning to morph also.
The US has been multicultural and multiracial from its inception. It is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the country. Unlike France for the French or Japan for the Japanese.
This is, unfortunately, a blanket-smothering ‘truth’. Waay too many counter-examples to list, but some random examples would be:
It was only due to the Dutch authorities in New Amsterdam that Jews were let into the country to begin with. That boat sailed from port to port being refused entry.
Religious intolerance in New England was widespread. It was not only condoned but promoted by the English-descended Americans.
The Commonwealth of Virginia, being a commercial enterprise, was somewhat more accommodating,but the state religion known as The Church of Virginia, was the denomination allowed. The Methodists with their circuit riders, conquered the western reaches of Virginia because the Church of Virginia, eventually freed from direct control by England, had an inherently urban locus. To this day it still does. The fierce competition between Anglicans and Methodists was simply an old war in a new land.
No, the United States of America has NOT been multicultural or multiracial from its inception. The laws against miscegenation never held sway in the Gulf regions but the rest of the country had laws and made life tough for those who ignored them. That includes intermarriage with Asians, Indians, Negroes (back when that was the p.c. word for black people), etc.
What we did to American Japanese in the 20th century is a good example of what we do when we’re scared and hucksters use the crisis to make an opportunity appear.
Each region of the country had its own hatreds and fears against “foreigners”. One of the reasons many immigrant Jews became itinerant traders going from one outpost to another is because none of those outlying places had any fear of Jews. That’s another reason there was an early upper middle-class group of influential Jews in the South; it was relatively safe.
Under the skin Americans weren’t any different from other countries. Groups gravitated toward like groups. Pennsylvania Dutch, anyone? Our exceptionalism has utterly nothing to do with a lack of bigotry. It was founded on an openness to initiative. The fellow with the good idea prospered, generally speaking. When his good idea was seen as an obstacle to vested interests? Not so much.
We will eventually expire from the thousand paper cuts of our delusions about our lack of bigotry. If anything, the hatreds are worse than ever they were. Just try going against the narrative and see how long your career lasts. Try bucking the “accepted consensus” and watch your hopes wither.
As I said, America’s blanket smothers truth.
Well put. Now I wonder, if you were an Asst. Prof. of History down the road at UofV, would it bury your tenure prospects forever? Or would it be seized and recirculated as a juxtaposition to show how much we have “improved,” how we are expiating for early vices by celebrating diversity, donning kente cloths, holding Eid festivities in the White House, repudiating White Privilege, ordaining lesbian atheist bishops etc.
Great Britain is an island, not a state. The UK should be UKGBNI (the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, since 1922). But the unwieldiness of that acronym only serves to provide those who wish to blur the geographical specificity with a convenient excuse to refer just to the UK. I would prefer BNI, although that has the feel of a bank or an airline – maybe greater use would diminish the confusion.
39 days 5 hours and 56 minutes to Scottish independence referendum, the polls say No the buzz on the streets says Yes.
You must be standing outside Bute House all day long
This is a very interesting article. On many occasions whilst propping up the bar, and at other times too, my mind has turned to the curious matter of the acronym.
My take on the subject is kind of borne out by a Wikipedia article, and I note that although it’s been around for many years (Greek and Roman times) it’s only since the sixties that the acronym has come into common useage.
Now that’s a juxtaposition worthy of consideration – the acronym and flower power!
Initial consideration leads to the conclusion that the acronym is a simple matter of convenience; it’s easier than saying or writing in fill whatever it is the string of letters stands for. And it’s cheaper too when you take into consideration printing, labelling, signwriting etc costs.
But there’s an obvious drawback. Understanding the acronym is a function of knowing what the initials stand for: as a means of communication it is useful only for those in the know.
So as well as it’s use as an abbreviation, the acronym can be used both as a means of concealment and as a means of control. In an earlier post of mine in this particular discussion I talked about the terms US and UK both of which are being used in this manner – as means of concelament and control.
Which, in a roundabout tangential kind of way (is that possible!?), brings me to the subject of Scottish independence…
The biggest curiosity of which is the Conservative Party’s opposition to Scottish independence – why are they opposed to it? Their argument is that it would weaken the whole – which it probably would, but if the Conservatives are so concerned about losing power why are they so eager to remain inside the European Union where power is taken away from sovereign states and handed to unelected bureaucrats?
Another conundrum is that the Conservatives would benefit electorally from Scottish independence – in the last general election Scotland returned 1 Conservative MP as against 40 Labour MP’s. Without Scotland the Conservatives would stand a much better chance of forming the government – which is their raison d’etre, isn’t it?
The Conservative Party’s patriotism is disingenuous. Why is it ‘patriotic’ in respect of Scotland but not in respect of the European Union, or of mass third world immigration and its negative impact on British life?
The fact is its opposition to Scottish independence is fuelled not by Conservative Party idealism but by the self interest of the political establishment.
One of the establishment’s greatest fears is the break up of the UK into its constituent parts. Their interest is in the annihilation of those constituent parts – their fear is driven by thoughts of English nationalism, which the break up of the UK could not help but facilitate.
The debate of who and what we are and what we should be called would flare up in their faces. England? Scotland? Ulster? Wales? They much prefer the UK, it’s so much closer to heart, to the EU, and of course the the USSR.
…to the EU, and of course *to* the USSR.
Well said. Spread the word – far and wide.
So, ISIS IS ISLAM. Couldn’t be clearer.
The latest ploy of the msm is to assert that ISIS is “too extreme” even for Al Qaida. I’m not sure upon what basis, if any, they make this statement.
I’ve had two liberals tell me that they find ISIS “scary.” I told them that it’s classical Islam, the way Muslims have historically behaved and that ISIS is just following the example of their prophet. This actually stuns them.
I believe your liberal acquaintances were stunned by your assertion because their minds are literally incapable of understanding that a group like ISIS could exist in 2014 when all is peace and love in the world.
In addition to all of the above, we should never hesitate to point out that these monsters have chosen the name, “The Islamic State of … ,” and NOT “The Radical Islamic State of … .” To paraphrase Ergodan, there is no radical islam; there is only islam.
It appeared to me that the mainstream media (with the exception of Fox) did not start to really publicize the oppression/murder/genocide of Christians in Iraq and elsewhere until a Yezidi woman made a public plea for her people. Then, apparently, it was OK for the Obama Administration and the multi-cultis in the msn to broadcast the dire straits of Christians–only when Christians could be included with another religious/ethnic group did it become PC to do so.
I’ve not made a survey of the whole multi-culti msn, but that’s how it appeared
I had thought that I could not be more disgusted with the Obama Administration and the multi-cultis in the media. But I was wrong.
On Twitter last night I saw a number of chirpy messages proclaiming the Yezidi to be Christians. A number of them were suggesting the use of their flag – “so pretty” – as a symbol of Christian persecution in the M.E. One can imagine the Yezidi response to that claim.
I’ll get back on later today armed with information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazidi
BTW, whether they are Christian or not is immaterial. They are fascinating. The fact that any of them survived is amazing; proves again that in its takeover of a region, Islam usually ignored the rural reaches. That’w how Christianity survived at all in Egypt, etc.
May I post this set of links to accredited charities that are helping the suffering Christians, Yazidis and other minorities in Iraqi’s Kurdish area?
God bless for helping.
Just in case here is a short list.
http://www.samaritanspurse.org/donation-items/kurdistan-projects/
http://adoptarefugeefamily.org/aarf/how-you-can-help/
http://theacero.org/mosul-appeal/
I saw several pictures on UK news sites that called the Jazidis Christians. Even a fellow who does the needs for Herman Caine’s radio program made the same error.
According to this study, the idea that Yezidis are so heterodox as to be not Islamic is more of a myth than fact:
http://home.hum.uva.nl/oz/leezenberg/PoliIslamKurds.pdf
Dymphna-
Your last paragraph is exactly why I advise people traveling to the UK or Scandinavia to head for the countryside and its natural bounty.
Fresh air, blue skies, clean water, and green forests seem highly repellent to the undesirable types that are all too often encountered in urban areas.
You have it in one, Dymphna. The last Muslim to show his face around here was shot by mistake because, as the yokel who did so said, “Ahhr…Oi never seen a pheasant with a beard like thaat before!”
I haven’t seen the issue raised here by the many Britons who frequent GoV so I, an interloper from the other side of Europe have to weigh in:
The Yazidis are the same people of Sarmatian origin who, long ago were known as Iazyges and had the best cavalry in the world. Marcus Aurelius recruited 5500 of them (some sources give 6,000 – 8,000) to fight against the Britons who at that time were still sane enough not to be tolerant and inclusive. They Iazyges and their horses came, they fought –well –and they never left.
Which means than a Nigel Jeremy Worthington may have partly Yazidi blood in his veins…
The Sarmatians are fascinating; I Googled them after seeing a (less than wonderful) film which reinvented the legend of King Arthur and his Knights as Sarmatians, as the Romans retreated from Britain; it is actually plausible.
Well before Marcus Aurelius imported them to Britain, the Sarmatians lived in (roughly) modern Ukraine. Their cavalry included women who’d not yet had children, possibly the origin of the Greek legends of the Amazons, and the novelty of mounted warriors, Sarmatian or otherwise, likely led to the idea of Centaurs. It is known that the Romans recruited Sarmatians as auxiliary cavalry long before Aurelius.
A superb article Baron. I liked Vlad’s comment some time ago on LGB Radio, and its relevance to how the media prefer to use ‘Islamism’ when referring to Muslims doing unpalatable things and ‘Islam’ to Muslims doing nice things.
“The difference between Islam and Islamism, is like the difference between the point of the spear and the handle of the spear.”
Exactly how it is Baron !
Very frustrating, and the worst part of all is that they have been very successful. People have become so PC and dumbed down to what I believe the stuupid people ever i Western history. Just one teeny weeny negative mention of Islam or Muslims such as a genuine quote from their prophet,and they are viewed as Hitler reincarnated ( tell me about it !)
The complicit Western lefty media are in fact even worse than the Muslims
They encourage them and the Muslims are laughing. I recently read that
A Pakistani who went to reside in The Netherlands in the eighties wrote a book years later entitled :
“The downfall of the Netherlands, land of the naive fools”
It was banned !!!! In 1996. The Dutch Government at the time said it ” incited hatred” it is still however available online on some site.
The Pakistani was only warning the Dutch about what the Muslims in private said they would do to the dutch once they took over.
Very scary.
But no, warnings verboten !! our governments and our media are complicit. They WANT a Muslim take-over of the West . Of this I am convinced.
Years ago they were desperate for the Russians to take over. Muslim fascism will do them just nicely instead though. Anything anything to destroy the West so they can ” re-build.”
However…a Muslim has said they know the socialists are on their side ( I read this on a forum) and they would fight the patriots one day together and win and then the Muslims would get rid of the socialists, their useful idiots.
And win.
Clear enough.
Mohammed Rasoel’s book “Downfall of the Netherlands: Land of the Naive Fools” wasn’t actually banned. After the author was fined for “inciting racial hatred” or whatever for publishing it, Dutch bookstores, in an act of collective do-goodery/PC virtuousness, voluntarily removed it from their shelves: “Look at how anti-racist we are!” Remember, this was written pre-Pim Fortuyn, pre Theo Van Gogh, pre Geert Wilders, so the author was going where nobody had gone before. And being a Pakistani Muslim himself made it so much more powerful. And embarrassing for the Dutch establishment as they couldn’t simply write him off as a cranky, intolerant old Dutchman who just hated brown people.
The author left the Netherlands after being fined, never to be heard from since. It would be marvellous if he resurfaced and made known, in book form, his views on what has happened in the Netherlands in the subsequent two decades. It would be akin Robert Conquest’s “The Great Terror: A Reassessment”, Conquest suggested it should be entitled: “The Great Terror: Told you so, you f***ing fools!”
It is an amazing and highly entertaining tract, very personalised. The author was a cabaret artist not a writer, so it’s a little unpolished. The deadpan way he describes his violent middle class childhood in Pakistan, filled with cruelty, dishonesty and corruption (he is both a victim and a perpetrator) as absolutely normal, unremarkable and typical is truly an eye-opener.
What comes out of the pages is a deeply passionate love and admiration for the Dutch people and their values and his abiding fear that by importing Muslims en masse it will all be lost. He conveys a very ominous foreboding that what the Dutch have (had) is highly fragile, but they have no idea at all that it is fragile and their very niceness, kindness, generosity, trust, openness and honesty is the seed of their national self-destruction.
In one anecdote (apparently true as he names the small town) he tells of a Turk in a bar who was told by ethnic Dutch that having a Dutch passport didn’t make him Dutch: the Turk responded by stabbing five of them to death and Rasoel wryly notes that the Turk thereby proved their point.
If any GoV reader hasn’t read it, I can’t commend it strongly enough. You won’t regret it. I have kept a PDF version (just in case it is ever removed from the Web) which I will happily e-mail to the Baron.
Yes, I read it. He says that all Muslims lie — to each other, to family, to friends, to authorities, to enemies… All Muslims. He wasn’t afraid of the A word like so many in the Counter-Jihad are (not to mention, of course, the mainstream), anxious to avoid what they feel is a thought crime rearing its form in their heads.
If I may add to that comment, Hesperado, it has been my long experience that Muslims will always tell you what they think you want to hear. To them ‘truth is not and issue’ as is the case in British and many other Western judicial systems now that Dhimmitude is the prevailing motivator. S III.
For ‘and’ substitute ‘an’ – far too much of a liquid lunch I’m afraid 🙂
The truth is no defence…
Is it in English?
Yes, it is.
It contains this gem about what has happened to the brains of Westerners who have imbibed the PC-Multiculti kool aid:
“Meanwhile the only topic that has been babbled about has been discrimination … There’s no doubt that the history of discrimination is horrible and shouldn’t be forgotten.
But somewhere in the campaign against it, with endless TV series about slaves in America, Jews in the second world war, South Africa, the Ku Klux Klan, etc, the Dutch lost track, short-circuited their brains, until they melted the various separate occurrences into one gigantic monster. Meanwhile they failed to see, intentionally or not, the word was used by either side like a gun against the head.”
A very pithy analysis.
The Baron has got them all by tha balls.
Since the real islam now is beeing bombed (well, sort of) by orders of mr.Obama.
Maybe now’s the time for Mr Obama to admit that the jihad conducted by Nidal Malik Hasan was exactly that… Prime time. On the teleprompter, please mr Obama.
With 13 fold excuses to the families that lost their loved ones due to workplace related violence.
Could not resist …
One thing they have done is stripped the blinkers off our former Chief of Military (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Leahy) who now that he is Professor Leahy is telling us to prepare for 100 years of war (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/defence/well-fight-radical-islam-for-100-years-says-exarmy-head-peter-leahy/story-e6frg8yo-1227018630297#)
The article in The Australian is pay-walled but I can get the full article if required.
I think Baron is underestimating the resilience of the PC MCs, who can flex into gymnastic contortions better than Mr. Fantastic crossed with a Hindu yogi. While of course they wish to avoid the JIM words, they may still fall back on the unfalsifiable shibboleth that “IS” is simply one of the TMOE (Tiny Minority of Extremists), whose “twisting” of Islam is precisely evident in their obviously (and fanatically) false belief that they are following true Islam. I mean, every extremist of any religion usually thinks they, and they alone, are promoting the “true” religion unlike everybody else, right? Hence, as we all know, courtesy of the PC MC paradigm, dominant and mainstream throughout the West, it must also be the case within the orbit of Islam, since everything is comparable with everything else, in one vast vat of homogenous oatmeal (until, that is, one wants to condemn right-wing white Christians and Jews — then suddenly Relativists drop their mask and become Absolutists).
So, alas, this may begin to put incremental brakes — small and thin rubber pads — on the H.M.S. Titanic as it continues to barrel full speed ahead to its (and our) global train wreck; but I doubt it will slow it down much.
Hesperado —
I know they’re going to try to pin ISIS on the TMOE, but I’m not at all certain they will be successful. The meme may be spinning out of their control.
The numbers involved are starting to percolate into the media stories, and they’re hard to reconcile with the TMOE — tens of thousands of ISIS troops, advanced weaponry, and obvious public support in many locations in the region. Then there is the number of Yezidis driven out of Sinjar — 70,000 iirc — being subjected to thirst/starvation genocide in the mountains. Once again, that number could hardly have been routed by a TMOE.
By mid-October, after the Ebola epidemic gets to Mecca via the Hajj, the Middle East may well be a more interesting place, as will the standard Western media take on it. It’s too early to say for certain, of course, but I sense change coming.
To me, the concept of a TMOE is irrelevant. ISIS are the actors who have seized control and who are driving the evolution of their ideology. Their co-believers will happily follow in their bloody wake.
Here in the Maghreb, Gaza is still the lead in the moderate papers and Iraq barely gets a peep. The few commenters on the Iraq articles are convinced the whole situation is some kind of CIA/Zionist conspiracy.
rapsail —
Hesperado and I are talking about how the TMOE meme impacts public perceptions (and thus political decisions) in the West.
You’re right that it doesn’t matter over there, in the sandbox. I’m certain that the Yezidis and the Assyrian Christians would scorn the idea that their tormentors are a tiny minority.
But it matters over here. George W. Bush was very successful at injecting the TMOE fable into the top levels of public discourse. Since then, of course, the Ikhwan-influenced U.S. government has gone much further, ruling JIM entirely off the turf, so that the ideology behind any violence simply cannot be mentioned.
The first step towards reversing this suicidal policy is to debunk TMOE. It looks to me like ISIS is beginning to do that job for us.
Pure Islamic Sharia State?
Mohammed Rasoel’s book “Downfall of the Netherlands: Land of the Naive Fools”
http://www.uitkijk.net/docs/De%20Ondergang%20van%20Nederland.pdf
http://www.pdf-archive.com/2014/03/30/the-downfall-of-the-netherlands/the-downfall-of-the-netherlands.pdf
The book is also available at this link:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1980674/posts
Islamic “peace”
Converted, “protected”, or dead
It must be said again, and again, the ‘islamic peace’ means that there is no opposition to the death cult. Everyone is either converted, “protected”, or dead…..
Still left in Pandora’s Jar?
“Pandora had a jar which she was not to open under any circumstance. Impelled by her natural curiosity, Pandora opened the jar, and all evil contained escaped and spread over the earth. She hastened to close the lid, but the whole contents of the jar had escaped, except for one thing which lay at the bottom, and that was Hope. ”
Pandora’s Jar
Greek mythology