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Monokultur » Irak


Mentalitet

Medier, fagfolk og politikere har gjort det til en vane af affærdige ensomme ulve, der næsten altid synes at være godt assisteret, som værende psykisk ustabile socialt udsatte eksistenser. Belgisk politi har netop arresteret en 14 årig af slagsen og det er oveni de 29 andre ensomme jule-ulve.

Psykisk ustabile mennesker er fanget i deres egne unikke indre universer. Grupper opstår om noget medlemmerne deler. Selv hvis man som læser af Politiken skulle finde trøst i forklaringen om terroristens forvrængede virkelighed, kan man vanskeligt komme udenom at stille spørgsmålet; hvorfor er så mange muslimer, med de traditionelt grænsende over til det rent morderiske tætte sociale bånd, så udstødte psykofanter. For empirien løber ingen om hjørner med i sidste ende - man kan ikke skrive islam ud af ligningen for islamisk terrorisme.

For nyligt offentliggjorde Islamisk Stat en særligt grusom video i HD. To unge mænd, angiveligt tyrkiske soldater, bliver lukket ud af deres jern-bur i et goldt stenlandskab i Levanten, tvunget ned på alle fire og må kravle, ført som hunde, hen til eksekutions-stedet. Her blev de rejst op og via et langt bånd antændt og brændt ihjel i et roligt tempo, der tillader minutters dødskamp.

Deres dødsskrig akkompagnerer den hoverende islamiske messen, der danner det gennemgående lydspor, som det altid gør. Aldrig en pause for at tænke synes der at være i islamiske videoer. Det var en tilfredsstillende forestilling for jihad-krigerne, der som selve videoen svælgede i de grusomheder, man udsatte en i forvejen besejret og ydmyget fjende for.

Når eksperter og medier beflitter sig med Islamisk Stats propaganda videoer hæfter de sig ved at de er i HD kvalitet med en billedside, der mestrer både den lækre belysning, flere kamerastillinger og bevægelser, der fanger en koreograferet opsætning. Dette sættes i modsætning til Osama Bin Ladens grynede VHS bånd af ham selv, der holder monotone monologer i en hule i Bore Bora eller fra hans sidste bosted med den store pornosamling. Men, som jeg har skrevet før, så undgår eksperterne altid videoernes smertelige indhold, måske fordi konklusionen ikke er til at bære.

Propaganda skal lokke nye krigere til og islamisk stat lokker med grusomheder mod en slagen og ydmyget fjende. Kom og vær med, hug hoveder af, se dem vride sig i smerte, som flammerne fortærer dem, hør deres skrig, vær med til at nære angsten. Og deres målgruppe, muslimerne, lader sig lokke af de smukke billeder med det hellige indhold - skønt alt vi synes vores velfærdsregimer har gjort for at få dem inkluderet.

Julen er tid for religiøs krig, skriver Michael Finch i American Thinker og Syv migranter forsøgte at sætte ild på en hjemløs mand i Berlins undergrundsbane.  ‘Nogen andre’ forsøgte at brænde Emanuelskirken i Hamborg ned til grunden og i Sverige lykkedes det med et indkøbscenter. Og så er der nogen der bare synes det er sjovt at sparke en ældre hjemløs mand i asfalten.

Alfa-hannerne skaber bekymring og stress

Det er svært for Politiken, der i lørdagens udgave af Debat sektionen leger med tanken om Trump som Hitler, i form af Chaplins Anton Hynkel.

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Og hans stab klar til krig

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Politiken har næsten ret. Alfahannerne er kommet igen. Breitbarts sikkerhedsredaktør Sebastian Gorka om Trumps udnævnelse af flere generaler i sin kommende regering

“I’d like to recognize the fact that after eight years of Pajama Boys, it’s time for the alpha males to come back,” he added. “How appropriate that we’ve got three Marines from the same division, legendary figures in uniform, to represent three of the key posts in the new administration! The fact is, having met Donald Trump a long time ago, and talking about national security issues, one of the first things that was clear to me from this businessman, this very special businessman, is that he understands we are at war, Raheem. He gets it. And he wants to win that war. He knows he’s not going to do it with limp-wristed Pajama Boys. Who better than a bunch of legendary Devil Dogs to do it? So yeah, it’s baloney, and it’s very cool in my opinion.”

Kassam turned to a discussion posted at The Gorka Briefing, in which Dr. Gorka argued that “Europe is collapsing.”

“I think it’s patently obvious that the Trump Train was the result, in part, a reflection of, the general rejection of centralized federative bureaucracy, and as a result, we have Brexit foreshadow the future of what used to be called Project Europe,” Gorka elucidated. “And the fact is, people are waking up. They’re rejecting faceless bureaucracy. We see it all across the continent. Brexit isn’t a uniquely British phenomena. As a result, we will see more and more people say, ‘Enough is enough. We want national sovereignty. We want national security most important of all.’ And as a result, I think Project Europe is on the ropes.”

Den mest markante alfahan er tidligere general i det amerikanske marinekorps James Matthis, en mand der selvfølgeligt erkender, at “there are some assholes in the world that just need to be shot”. National Reviews Tom Rogan kalder Matthis “at once a scholar and a warrior” og begynder sin beskrivelse med citatet “I don’t have worry and stress. I cause worry and stress!”, bl.a fordi sin “…annihilation upon al-Qaeda in Iraq”

Iran has particular reason for concern. Commanding CENTCOM, Mattis pushed for tough realism in constraining the Islamic Republic’s revolutionary expansionism. He recognizes that Iran’s leaders are rational actors, but he also knows that their revolutionary impulses must be checked. For this, he earned the ire of President Obama, who was so intent on kowtowing to the Iranian regime. But now he is set to take over the Pentagon, and Khamenei and the Qassem-crew have much to fear.

First, Mattis is likely to push Trump to focus on fixing the Iran nuclear deal. This will likely entail reducing Iranian cheating on inspections protocols and Iranian ballistic-missile research. If Trump and Mattis work with U.S. allies (notably the French) who are concerned about President Obama’s failure to enforce the deal, Iran could face rougher waters next year. Mattis has suggested blockading the country if the regime tries to play hard ball. It’s a good idea.

Second, a Mattis Pentagon will likely take tougher action against Iranian aggression in the Middle East. As I’ve noted, President Obama has largely ignored Iranian malevolence in states such as Lebanon and Iraq. That needs to be remedied, and quickly.

Third, Mattis will deter Iranian terrorism against America. That imperative is real. In 2011, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards — as Mattis himself explains — tried to murder the then-Saudi ambassador to the United States. The plan involved blowing up a Washington D.C. restaurant and everyone in it. He’s the incarnation of the First Marine Division motto, ‘No better friend, no worse enemy.’

Fourth, Mattis’s realism will be useful in helping the U.S. to confront Sunni extremism more effectively. As I’ve explained before, thanks to his supplication to Iran, President Obama has alienated America’s Sunni-Arab allies. Mattis, who is adored by the Sunni-Arab monarchies for his honest courage, offers the Trump administration a chance to renew those bonds. That means new potential for a Sunni-Arab crackdown on Sunni fundraising for groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda. It also means we might see more special forces on the ground in Iraq and Syria.

“Who knows? American red lines might even make a comeback.” slutter Rogan.

Breitbart har samlet 15 Matthis citater, hvor mange er skønne. Jeg vil dog trække et andet citat frem, hvor kampen mod islam og anden fjendskab, ikke blot skal overlades til alfahannerne

I think it’s very clear that this enemy has decided that the war, the real war for them, will be fought in the narrative, in the media. This is not a place where we’re going to take the enemy’s capital and run up our flag and drink their coffee and that sort of thing.

Politiken er Hitler-forskrækket over generaler i regeringen Trump, fordi Alfahanner ikke hører til i fredstid - men det er Politiken ikke hører efter, hvad der foregår uden for deres bombesluse. Vi er ikke i en fredstid.

Det er min overbevisning, at demokratier ikke kan kæmpe for sin frihed uden konsensus om en nødvendighed og hvem der er fjenden. Vietnamkrigen blev tabt i de amerikanske hjerter og  ikke på slagmarken. Vi danskere, der anerkender vores nationalisme, Danmark først kunne man kalde det, kan ikke nedkæmpe truslen fra islam, uden et konsensus bag os.

Og det betyder at vi er forpligtet til at nedbryde det narrativ, den fortælling, der dominerer medierne. Sammen med venstrefløjen og bureakraterne enabler de islams angreb på vores frihed og kultur ved at fortrænge realiteterne for det stor tavse flertal. Det er en kamp for definitionsretten og den frie debat, som alle os betahanner og -hunner, kan tage på alle niveauer.

Og fordi vi i den kamp har brug for friheden til at ytre os, reagerer bureaukraterne og venstrefløjen og medierne med allehånde forsøg på at sikre kontrol med ytringer og nyheder. Racismeparagraffer ikke blot opretholdes, men søges udvidet til forbud mod hadtale, hadprædikanter bliver løst defineret som både de der spreder had som de der advarer og nægtet indrejse, sociale medier indskrænker rammerne og venstrefløjen og dens medier opfinder nye begreber, som post-faktualitet til fake news for at retfærdiggøre et offentligt meningsmonopol.

Vi kan skal alle sammen kæmpe for den frihed, der er blevet os skænket. Og der er lyspunkter i den kamp, fra store sejre som Brexit og Trump til små sprækker i mediernes selvfølgelige forståelse af ofre og skurke i det store og modige arbejde For Frihed bedriver. Og vi vil vinde - yyyuge!

Postfaktualitet: I disse Trump tider…

Uffe Dreesen parafraserer i en perspektiverende artikel på TV2, om den tyske presses redaktionelle valg ved dækning af en teenagepige - “aktiv i hjælpearbejdet for flygtninge“, der blev brutalt myrdet af “en af de tusindvis af mindreårige flygtninge, som er kommet til Tyskland” - Joachim Käppner for i Süddeutsche Zeitung at konkludere at “…i de her ”Trump-tider” med masser af ”fake news” gælder det om ikke at sætte troværdigheden på spil”.

Hvis vi leger med på at døden skal have en årsag, så er fænomenet Trump, som de alternative medier og det ‘alternative højre’, resultater af, at pressen for længst har sat sin troværdighed over styr, ikke blot med non-information og fake news, men også og især udvalget af historier og vinklingen af dem. Dreesen leverer selv et par eksempler på løgnens anatomi. Først en løgn som ikke problematiseres af løgnepressen

Borgmester Salomon minder om, at mordet på Maria L. ikke har noget med gerningsmanden kulturelle baggrund at gøre, sådan som det var tilfældet med de nordafrikanske mænd på banegårdspladsen i Køln. ”Du finder ikke noget land eller nogen kulturkreds i verden, hvor en sådan afskyelig forbrydelse bliver tolereret”, forklarer han til avisen.

Lovgivning mod mord er én ting, accept af mord på vantro er en anden. Borgmesteren taler formentlig i komplet uvidenhed om dette, og løgnepressen er slet ikke klædt på til at fange det og stille spørgsmål til det. Når folk hævder at de flygter fra sekterisk vold så er det netop fordi, hvad vi anser for anskyelige forbrydelser tolereres i disse lande og kulturkredse.

Det er derfor de tyranniserer hinanden og andre der udgiver sig for asylansøgere, som man kunne læse i Ekstrabladet et par dage forinden Dreesens artikel.

Det er derfor at fem andre afghanske teenagere, der var nået til Sverige, kunne samles om det for dem helt naturlige at tæske og gruppevoldtage en mindreårig dreng ligeledes fra Afghanistan (Se evt filmen The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan, for at vide mere om, hvad der i den afghanske kulturkreds tolereres), som Daily Mail skrev om dagen forinden Dreesens artikel.

Og sandelig om Daily Mail samme dag kunne fortælle at “Another refugee has been arrested in Germany for sexually assaulting two Chinese students“, denne gang fra den irakiske kulturkreds, som man kunne læse dagen forinden Dreesens artikel.

Så en sandhed, der betvivles af løgnepressen ved Dreesen

Mordet på Maria L. var ifølge dem [tyske borgere med bladet fra munden] et ”Køln nummer to”. En begivenhed, der udstillede de etablerede mediers fortielser og politisk betingede tavshed, når det gælder kriminalitet, begået af flygtninge og indvandrere.

Akkurat som medierne blev beskyldt for at have gjort i forbindelse med sagen om mange seksuelle overgreb, som især nordafrikanske mænd skulle have begået ved banegården i Køln nytårsaften.

Obama: “Just because Iranian hardliners chant Death to America does not mean that that’s what all Iranians believe”

Husker De det? Da Obama ikke lagde noget i at ledende kræfter i det iranske regime ønskede død over USA. Hans ræsonnement var at et flertal af iranere sikkert ikke ønskede, hvad lederne ønskede. Jo, og så slog han de, der advarede om truslen fra de dødstruende iranske hardlinere i hartkorn med de selv samme dødstruende iranske hardlinere. Derfor var det helt logisk at lade død-over-USA Iran starte deres eget atom-program og frigive de enorme summer, der havde været indefrosset i udenlandske banker siden Shahens fald.

Man kan håbe på at Hillary Clinton ikke vinder det amerikanske præsidentvalg i november. Og hvis den ulykke skulle være undgået, så kan man håbe at Trump holder noget af det han lover. I så fald vil USA, og det vil måske kunne trække det meste af Vesten med sig, skifte kurs fra Obamas farlige underdanighed overfor verdens tyranner i almindelighed og muslimer og deres månereligion i særdeleshed. Victor Davis Hansen, der altid er værd at læse, giver i Townhall på glimrende vis en forelæsning i konsekvenserne af eftergivenhed for bøller - at de tolker det som svaghed

When President Obama entered office, he dreamed that his hope-and-change messaging and his references to his familial Islamic roots would win over the Muslim world. The soon-to-be Nobel Peace Prize laureate would make the U.S. liked in the Middle East. Then, terrorism would decrease.

But, as with his approach to racial relations, Obama’s remedies proved worse than the original illness.

Obama gave his first presidential interview to Al Arabiya, noting that he has Muslims in his family. He implicitly blamed America’s strained relations with many Middle Eastern countries on his supposedly insensitive predecessor, George W. Bush.

The new message of the Obama administration was that the Islamic world was understandably hostile because of what America had done rather than what it represented.

Accordingly, all mention of radical Islam, and even the word “terrorism,” was airbrushed from the new administration’s vocabulary. Words to describe terrorism or the fight against it were replaced by embarrassing euphemisms like “overseas contingency operations,” “man-caused disaster” and “workplace violence.”

In apology tours and mythological speeches, Obama exaggerated Islamic history as often as he critiqued America. He backed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. He pushed America away from Israel, appeased Iran, and tried to piggyback on the Arab Spring by bombing Libya. He even lectured Christians on their past pathologies dating back to the Crusades.

Yet Obama’s outreach was still interpreted by Islamists as guilt and weakness to be exploited rather than magnanimity to be reciprocated. Terrorist attacks increased. Obama blamed them on a lack of gun control or generic “violent extremism.”

(…)

Radical Islam never had legitimate grievances against the West. America and Europe had welcomed in Muslim immigrants — even as Christians were persecuted and driven out of the Middle East.

Billions of dollars in American aid still flows to Islamic countries. The U.S. spent untold blood and treasure freeing Kuwait and later the Shiites of Iraq from Saddam Hussein. America tried to save Afghanistan from the Soviets and later from the Taliban.

For over a half-century, the West paid jacked-up prices for OPEC oil — even as the U.S. Navy protected Persian Gulf sea lanes to ensure lucrative oil profits for Gulf state monarchies.

Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the original architects of al-Qaida, were so desperate to find grievances against the West that in their written diatribes they had to invent fantasies of Jews walking in Mecca. In Michael Moore fashion, they laughably whined about America’s lack of campaign finance reform and Western culpability for global warming.

The real problem is that Islamic terrorism feeds off the self-induced failures of the Middle East.

Som Churchill sagde om tyskerne (I en anden tid! I en anden tid!) “They are either at your feet or at your throat!”

Fri Debat uden ideologisk dagsorden

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Fri Debats konference lørdag 6/2 stillede spørgsmålet, hvordan det er “kommet dertil, at blasfemi i dag betragtes som en sinister ideologi i kunst- og litteraturlivet, mens tavshed om den religiøse terror og tvang fremstår som progressiv blandt kunstnere og forfattere?” Til at besvare det spørgsmål havde man indbudt et panel bestående af færøske Heini i Skorini fra King’s College, Dennis Meyhoff Brink fra Københavns universitet og kunstnerne Lars Vilks fra Sverige og norske Thomas Knarvik til en næsten fyldt fællessal på Christiansborg.

I sin korte indledning sagde Henrik Dahl fra Liberal Alliance, at historien vil bedømme denne generation af politikere på hvor resolut de er i stand til at forsvare det liberale samfund. Som emnets alvor således blev placeret i historien var Niels Ivar Larsen manden for at motivere sin nylige afgang fra Lars Vilks Selskabet og positionere Fri Debat i “landskabet af ytringsfrihedsaktivister”. Fri debat var nemlig den mest principfaste forsvarer af ytringsfriheden uden ‘men’, blottet for ideologiske dagsordner og påstande om ytringsfrihed som noget kulturelt betinget.

Et principfast forsvar for ytringsfriheden kræver altså at man ikke lader sig præge af kulturalistiske dagsordner når man diskuterer blasfemi, censur og selvcensur blandt kunstnere. Men ikke nok med det, det kræver også et sikkerhedsapparat med snifferhunde og politifolk med maskinpistoler kunne man erfare og det er ikke fordi man frygter alle kulturelle repræsentanter lige meget. Mangel på proportioner giver åbenbart den bedste position i landskabet af ytringsfrihedsaktivister.

Dennis Meyhoff Brink, der er ekstern lektor ved institut for kunst og kulturvidenskab, foretog i sit oplæg en analogi mellem det kristne Europas udvikling fra Oplysningen og et tilsvarende perspektiv for den islamiske verden. Europa var kendetegnet ved at have den ubestrideligt højeste grad af religionskritik og satire i nogen civilisation og det var da også i Europa demokratiet opstod og trivedes. Årsagensforbindelsen var klar; Oplysningens blasfemiske satire udhulede, som dryp på en sten, med et Webersk udtryk, den fortryllede verden og tog frygten fra folk. Med frygtens fald fulgte også æresfrygten for præsten, der nu kunne latterliggøres, ikke blot som repræsentant for kirkens hykleri, men for religionen i sig selv.

Lars Vilks forklarede derefter hvorledes opfattelsen af geniet fordrede at kunstneren selv blev den skabende og gennemgik en række blasfemiske kunstværker; film af bl.a Lois Bunuel og Ken Russel og billeder som Piss Christ. Netop Piss Christ er trukket meget ind i debatten om religiøs krænkelse og islam for skønt nogle dybere lag i værket - at selve værket er et fotografi af en installation af et krucifiks nedsænket i glas urin - så blev der ikke taget hensyn til kristnes krænkede følelser, som man er vant til, når emnet er udfordring af islam.

Den norske kunstner Knarviks første forelæser på kunstakademiet var netop Lars Vilks. Knarvik viste endnu flere billeder end sin ‘læremester’ og mange han selv havde kreeret, som han fortalte om, hvorledes han var blevet engageret i kampen om ytringsfrihed og blasfemi, og hvorledes det havde påvirket hans kunstneriske retning. Knarvik er, som de øvrige panelister, ingen skimlet konservativ kulturkæmper. Han har f.eks blandt andet bygget et kulturcenter for massaikvinder og skabt en forfatterpersona, en muslimsk teenagepige under navnet Miss Supression Figther. For ham er mange muslimer de største ofre for de jihadister, der har taget deres religion som gidsel og gjort den største karikatur af Muhammed.

Men han har også overhørt skrigene fra en pige, der blev omskåret og bevidnet hvorledes kvinderne, der forestod omskæringen, kom ud af hytten og smed det omskårne ud til naturen. Og hans interesse for islam, som en trussel mod ytringsfriheden, blev vakt da han hørte den norske statsminister undskylde for alverden, at den norske avis Dagbladet havde trykt Muhammedtegninger.

Knarvik udgav på 10-årsdagen for offentliggørelsen af Jyllands-Postens Muhammedtegninger en mere end 100 sider lang samling af blasfemiske tegninger rettet mod alle religioner. Et norsk forlag havde i første omgang trykt den i 2.500 eksemplarer og den lå klar på en europalle, da forlaget blev ængsteligt ved udsigten til endnu en Muhammedkrise og makulerede hele oplaget. Bogen er i stedet udkommet på Kåre Bluitgens forlag.

Men det var den første oplægsholder, Heine i Skorini, der leverede det mest almeninteressante oplæg, da han perspektiverede den islamiske trussel historisk. Han fortalte først om en Muhammedkrise i 1925, der blev udløst da den engelske morgenavis The Star havde trykt en tegning, hvor den tids legendariske cricketspiller Jack Hobbs ragede op som en kæmpe blandt andre historiske skikkelser, som Julius Cæsar, Columbus og så selvfølgelig muslimernes profet Muhammed. Muslimske organisationer protesterede højlydt og der var demonstrationer i Calcutta. Ingen døde dog, men episoden demonstrerede at ideen om at en nyopfunden islamisme adskilt fra en ægte, om ikke tolerant, så afdæmpet, islam ikke holder.

i Skorini fortalte hvorledes OIC (organisationen af islamiske lande), gennem FN har arbejdet målrettet på at gøre blasfemi til en krænkelse af menneskerettighederne. OIC ser den islamiske verden være under pres både udefra, ikke mindst fra Vesten, og indefra. I Kairo deklarationen fra 1990 hedder det således at formålet bl.a er ”cleanse our societys of moral laxity deviation” og dens artikel 22 slår fast at ytringsfriheden (og alt andet i øvrigt) skal underlægges den muslimske sharia lovgivning.

Bastante religiøse krav til en sekulær organisation, som FN er ikke effektivt og i 1999 skiftede organisationen taktik til en sekulær argumentation. Nu brugte man i stedet FNs egne artikler, som artikel 29, der betoner ansvar over frihed og artikel 22 om hadtale, til at få ytringsfriheden underlagt sharia. For OIC var religionskrænkelse, som grundlæggende blot betød krænkelse af islam jvf sharia-kravet ovenfor, en krænkelse af menneskerettigheder på linje med racisme, intolerance, islamofobi og ekstremisme. OICs nye argumentation var derfor også på linje med den vestlige venstrefløjs tankegang og det skabte en naturlig alliance af parallelinteresser.

Netop det sidste punkt, at se blasfemi som ekstremisme, er forklaringen på, hvorfor muslimske landes fordømmelser af islamisk terror, som Saudiarabiens fordømmelse af angrebet på Charlie Hebdo, altid ledsages af fordømmelser af ekstremisme i al almindelighed. De myrdede, som redaktionen på Charlie Hebdo, er nemlig lige så ekstreme i deres brug af ytringsfriheden, som deres mordere. Og det er en retorik som man hører ikke blot fra venstrefløjen men fra vestlige ledere.

Det var en journalist fra information, der stillede det første spørgsmål til panelet, om forskellen på satirens antiklerikale, politiske angreb og kunstens ikonografiske behandling af det blasfemiske, førend to tilhørere ville vide, hvad Saudiarabiens betydning for FNs Råd for Menneskerettigheder og OICs fremtid som Saudiarabiens økonomiske situation ser drastisk anderledes ud med de faldende oliepriser. Saudiarabien sponserer OIC og organiserer dagsordenen på de indre linjer, mens det er Pakistan der tegner organisationen i FN.  Skorini svarede at det dels udstiller FN for hvad det er, en samling af de regimer og regeringer i verden, der nu engang er og at Saudiarabiens betydning for OIC ikke vil ændre sig de første mange år, dertil er rollerne for satte. Og så svarede Vilks og Knarvik meget pædagogisk at satire er meget bundet i en konkret debat i tid og sted, mens kunst ikke søger et konkret politisk budskab og kan værdsættes ud over tid.

Først herefter var der en tilhører, der ville have svar på konferencens spørgsmål, nemlig, hvorfor kunstnere, og alle os andre såmænd, var mere optaget af selvkritik end af religionskritik, selv når vi blev konfronteret med en trussel. Spørgsmålet kom næsten bag på panelet, der dog hver for sig svarede at det traditionelt var lettere og moralsk mere acceptabelt at levere angreb på værdier inden for egen kulturkreds end at kritisere, hvad man kunne opfatte som udsatte minoriteter med kulturelt betingede problemer. Det handlede, med udgangspunkt i eksemplet Carsten Jensens jævnlig tirader, om hvem der havde ret til at kritisere andre. Og det var en god pointe, for ingen vil jo mistænkes for at have en ideologisk dagsorden.

Og det var der også en tilhører der heller ikke ville og mindede Meyhoff Brink om at satire ikke kun var forbeholdt vesten og fortalte om en irakisk ateistisk bevægelse der bedrev en ganske giftig satire. Desværre blev denne bevægelse slået hårdt ned beklagede han og besvarede således sit eget spørgsmål, inden islameksperten Tina Magaard tog ordet og sagde at hun faktisk havde skrevet om blasfemisk satire i den muslimske verden ikke mindst Iran. Det var Magaards pointe at netop Muhammed satire var et inkluderende redskab i integrationen i vores selvkritiske kultur og at man skulle vise skolebørn muhammedtegninger fra den muslimske verden, der almindeligvis var langt grovere end de tegninger Jyllands-Posten udgav.

Og så var det, at det sidste spørgsmål kom fra en tilhører, der ville høre panelet, hvorledes det ville se ud med ytringsfriheden om føje tid i et stadigt mindre demokratisk Europa “og med en stadig mere islamisk indflydelse”. Det er svært at holde en hel konference om “religiøs terror og tvang” og “blasfemi” uden at komme ind på noget ‘kulturelt betinget’, ideologisk dagsorden eller ej. Inden det skulle besvares syntes Meyhoff Brink at det var på sin plads med et fejlcitat og sagde “Jeg synes også det er racistisk når Hedegaard siger at ‘alle muslimske mænd, onkler og fædre, voldtager deres døtre…”. Men ytringsfrihedens fremtidsudsigter i et mere et mindre demokratisk og mere islamificeret Europa var et svært spørgsmål at forholde sig til på falderebet af konferencen, sagde Ivar Larsen og gav ordet til i Skorini.

Forholdene i Danmark var ikke nær så dårlige som i England, forklarede i Skorini og sagde at han selv måtte forberede sig ganske anderledes når han holdt foredrag i London end i Danmark. Og det var ikke blot kønsopdelte arrangementer, men også sikkerhedsproblemer fordi så mange kunne blive stødt og emnets indhold. Men han mindede om at de islamistiske grupper udgjorde en meget lille og ikke repræsentativ minoritet blandt de muslimske studerende, men realiteterne var deusagtet at det var svært for ham at bevare en optisme. Og med den kedelige udsigt var konferencen slut.

Uagtet hvor urepræsentative og lille en minoritet islamister udgør på campus, kan man alligevel konkludere, hvad i Skorini og Fri Debat helst vil tøve med, at jo flere kulturelt betingede muslimer vi ser på campus og i vores land, jo mere vil det være islamisternes dagsorden vi vil leve under. Men dyster som fremtiden ser ud kan man glæde sig over at vi i Danmark har et levende landskab af ytringsfrihedsaktivister med hele tre virile selskaber i Fri Debat, Trykkefrihedsselskabet og Lars Vilks Komiteen. At det til tider bærer lidt præg af positionering og nok også en snert af intern personrivalisering er en lille detalje og måske blot et bidrag til at holde konkurrencen skarp og landskabet frodigt. Fri Debats arrangement var så velafholdt og oplysende, som man er kommet til at forvente det i Danmark - men desværre med et tilhørende sikkerhedsopbud, selv for de, der ikke vil vedkende sig en ideologisk dagsorden.

Artikel skrevet for Document.dk

Stadig svært at erkende kristenforfølgelsen endsige dens ophav

Eliza Grizwold skriver i New Yok Times fyldigt om muslimernes forfølgelse af kristne i Mellemøsten

From 1910 to 2010, the number of Christians in the Middle East — in countries like Egypt, Israel, Palestine and Jordan — continued to decline; once 14 percent of the population, Christians now make up roughly 4 percent. (In Iran and Turkey, they’re all but gone.) In Lebanon, the only country in the region where Christians hold significant political power, their numbers have shrunk over the past century, to 34 percent from 78 percent of the population. Low birthrates have contributed to this decline, as well as hostile political environments and economic crisis. Fear is also a driver. The rise of extremist groups, as well as the perception that their communities are vanishing, causes people to leave.

“‘‘If we attend to minority rights only after slaughter has begun, then we have already failed,’’ siger FNs Menneskerets Højkommissær Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein. Demokraten Anna Eshoo, der sidder i Repræsentanternes Hus for Californien siger “Christianity is under an existential threat”. Men alligevel har Det Hvide Hus uligt meget sværere ved at anerkende kristne ledere end muslimske skriver Raymond Ibrahim i Gatestone Institute.

During the height of one of the most brutal months of Muslim persecution of Christians, the U.S. State Department exposed its double standards against persecuted Christian minorities.

Sister Diana, an influential Iraqi Christian leader, who was scheduled to visit the U.S. to advocate for persecuted Christians in the Mideast, was denied a visa by the U.S. State Department even though she had visited the U.S. before, most recently in 2012.

She was to be one of a delegation of religious leaders from Iraq — including Sunni, Shia and Yazidi, among others — to visit Washington, D.C., to describe the situation of their people. Every religious leader from this delegation to Washington D.C. was granted a visa — except for the only Christian representative, Sister Diana.

After this refusal became public, many Americans protested, some writing to their congressmen. Discussing the nun’s visa denial, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said:

This is an administration which never seems to find a good enough excuse to help Christians, but always finds an excuse to apologize for terrorists … I hope that as it gets attention that Secretary Kerry will reverse it. If he doesn’t, Congress has to investigate, and the person who made this decision ought to be fired.

The State Department eventually granted Sister Diana a visa.

This is not the first time the U.S. State Department has not granted a visa to a Christian leader coming from a Muslim region. Last year, after the United States Institute for Peace brought together the governors of Nigeria’s mostly Muslim northern states for a conference in the U.S., the State Department blocked the visa of the region’s only Christian governor, Jonah David Jang.

Greenfield har en lang udførlig liste over den undertrykkelse kristne udsættes for i den muslimske verden, der er værd at gøre sig nedslået over. Men få politikere synes at kere sig. I Griswolds lange, velskrevne, detaljerede og på en gang indsigtsfulde og manipulerende artikel skriver hun, at det har været en topprioritet for både Bush og Obama ikke at tage sig ud sig ud som kristne korsfarere

It has been nearly impossible for two U.S. presidents — Bush, a conservative evangelical; and Obama, a progressive liberal — to address the plight of Christians explicitly for fear of appearing to play into the crusader and ‘‘clash of civilizations’’ narratives the West is accused of embracing. In 2007, when Al Qaeda was kidnapping and killing priests in Mosul, Nina Shea, who was then a U.S. commissioner for religious freedom, says she approached the secretary of state at the time, Condoleezza Rice, who told her the United States didn’t intervene in ‘‘sectarian’’ issues. Rice now says that protecting religious freedom in Iraq was a priority both for her and for the Bush administration. But the targeted violence and mass Christian exodus remained unaddressed. ‘‘One of the blind spots of the Bush administration was the inability to grapple with this as a direct byproduct of the invasion,’’ says Timothy Shah, the associate director of Georgetown University’s Religious Freedom Project.

More recently, the White House has been criticized for eschewing the term ‘‘Christian’’ altogether. The issue of Christian persecution is politically charged; the Christian right has long used the idea that Christianity is imperiled to rally its base. When ISIS massacred Egyptian Copts in Libya this winter, the State Department came under fire for referring to the victims merely as ‘‘Egyptian citizens.’’ Daniel Philpott, a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, says, ‘‘When ISIS is no longer said to have religious motivations nor the minorities it attacks to have religious identities, the Obama administration’s caution about religion becomes excessive.’’

Politisk korrekthed og hensynsbetændelse til muslimske vrangforestillinger betales af de kristne. Og politikerne høster veksler for deres kulturelle sensitivitet fra den smagfulde venstrefløj. Den umiddelbare historie og situation ridser Griswold op således

For more than a decade, extremists have targeted Christians and other minorities, who often serve as stand-ins for the West. This was especially true in Iraq after the U.S. invasion, which caused hundreds of thousands to flee. ‘‘Since 2003, we’ve lost priests, bishops and more than 60 churches were bombed,’’ Bashar Warda, the Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Erbil, said. With the fall of Saddam Hussein, Christians began to leave Iraq in large numbers, and the population shrank to less than 500,000 today from as many as 1.5 million in 2003.

The Arab Spring only made things worse. As dictators like Mubarak in Egypt and Qaddafi in Libya were toppled, their longstanding protection of minorities also ended. Now, ISIS is looking to eradicate Christians and other minorities altogether. The group twists the early history of Christians in the region — their subjugation by the sword — to legitimize its millenarian enterprise. Recently, ISIS posted videos delineating the second-class status of Christians in the caliphate. Those unwilling to pay the jizya tax or to convert would be destroyed, the narrator warned, as the videos culminated in the now-­infamous scenes of Egyptian and Ethiopian Christians in Libya being marched onto the beach and beheaded, their blood running into the surf.

The future of Christianity in the region of its birth is now uncertain. ‘‘How much longer can we flee before we and other minorities become a story in a history book?’’ says Nuri Kino, a journalist and founder of the advocacy group Demand for Action. According to a Pew study, more Christians are now faced with religious persecution than at any time since their early history.

Griswolds artikel kan absolut anbefales, hvis man vil være klogere på de kristnes situation og Mellemøstens morads. Men jeg skrev at den også var manipulerende og det er den i sin apologetiske omgang med islam. Selvfølgelig, fristes man nemlig til at sige.

Så skønt Griswold er langt fremme i erkendelsen af de kristnes ulykkelige situation i Mellemøsten (i hele  den muslimske verden, rent faktisk, og den kommunistiske også), og mens politikerne tøver, så er hun ikke nået dertil, hvor hun kan beskrive det reelle problem. Det er generiske “ekstremister”, der er problemet for Griswold, mens Condoleezza Rice trods alt vidste mere end det med sit “the United States didn’t intervene in ‘‘sectarian’’ issues” - og så svigtede de alligevel. Så civilisationernes sammenstød bliver derfor kun et narrativ for Griswold, en fortælling og ikke en beskrivelse af de faktiske forhold. (”Israel and Palestine” har en konflikt, en formulering, der betyder at Israel er en illegitim stat, der hvor Palæstina eksisterer).

Griswolds artikel er vævet over nogle flygtninges frygtelige historier med den 31 årige Rana og hendes mand som hovedroller. Ranas mand Diyaa beskrives som “a tyrant (…) who, after 14 years of marriage, wouldn’t let (), Rana, 31, have her own mobile phone. He isolated her from friends and family, guarding her jealously”. Han var tillige nærig. Jeg mindes ikke en historie om palæstinensiske ofre, der hænges ud som dumme svin. Nuvel, mennesker er mennesker og Diyaas karakterbrister drukner hurtigt i beskrivelserne af det muslimske vanvid. Bortset fra, at det gør det ikke helt, for islam holdes fri.

Lad os, som enhver god film, fokusere på parallelhistorierne. I det historiske afsnit hedder det fra Griswolds hånd

When the first Islamic armies arrived from the Arabian Peninsula during the seventh century, the Assyrian Church of the East was sending missionaries to China, India and Mongolia. The shift from Christianity to Islam happened gradually. Much as the worship of Eastern cults largely gave way to Christianity, Christianity gave way to Islam. Under Islamic rule, Eastern Christians lived as protected people, dhimmi: They were subservient and had to pay the jizya, but were often allowed to observe practices forbidden by Islam, including eating pork and drinking alcohol. Muslim rulers tended to be more tolerant of minorities than their Christian counterparts, and for 1,500 years, different religions thrived side by side.

One hundred years ago, the fall of the Ottoman Empire and World War I ushered in the greatest period of violence against Christians in the region. The genocide waged by the Young Turks in the name of nationalism, not religion, left at least two million Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks dead. Nearly all were Christian. Among those who survived, many of the better educated left for the West. Others settled in Iraq and Syria, where they were protected by the military dictators who courted these often economically powerful minorities.

De islamiske hære ankom, skiftet fra kristendom skete gradvist og naturligt, kristne var beskyttet mod et vist kontingent (en lille del af folks motivation for det ‘naturlige’ skift), de muslimske fyrster var tolerante og religionerne trivedes side om side. Men så kommer nationalismen som følge af Osmannerrigets sammenbrud og begår folkemord. Det er ikke islam, det er end ikke ‘religion’! Alligevel sker folkemordet på kristne.

Det er djævlen i detaljen. Fortællingen er tilstrækkelig upræcist formuleret til ikke at være direkte løgn, men vildledende. Folkemordet på de kristne skete ikke som følge af Osmannerrigets sammenbrud, det startede med tiltagende pogromer i 1890′erne og blev færdiggjort i 1919, inden sammenbruddet. Og det var en erklæret jihad mod de vantro. Derfor fandt grusomhederne også en naturlig klangbund blandt almindelige muslimer, der tog ivrigt del i grusomhederne. Den dag i dag er kirkerne i Tyrkiet på vej mod udryddelse. Og regionens diktatorer, hvem var det nu de beskyttede de minoriteterne imod?

Så lad os vende tilbage til Rana og Diyaa og de andre kristne minoriteters historie om da nutidens islamiske hær ankom til den kristne by Qaraqosh, hvor de boede. Flygtninge fra Mosul fortalte de lokale at “The militants painted a red Arabic ‘‘n,’’ for Nasrane, a slur, on Christian homes”. Just ankommet kendte den islamiske hær ISIS ikke de kristne i Mosul - men det gjorde de kristnes muslimske naboer, klangbunden og de malede ‘n’ for nasrane på de kristnes hjem.

De kurdiske styrker, peshmerga, der havde været ene om at give ISIS modstand, trak sig fra området. Da kurderne havde afvæbnet de kristne og ISIS afskåret vandforsyningnen, flygtede de fleste af Qaraqosh indbyggere og efterlod kun de svageste, gamle og syge og en enkelt fulderik tilbage. Og så Diyaa, der nægtede Rana at flygte fordi han ikke mente ISIS vil ankomme.

As Diyaa and Rana hid in their basement, ISIS broke into stores and looted them. Over the next two weeks, militants rooted out most of the residents cowering in their homes, searching house to house. The armed men roamed Qaraqosh on foot and in pickups. They marked the walls of farms and businesses ‘‘Property of the Islamic State.’’ ISIS now held not just Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, but also Ramadi and Fallujah. (During the Iraq War, the fighting in these three places accounted for 30 percent of U.S. casualties.) In Qaraqosh, as in Mosul, ISIS offered residents a choice: They could either convert or pay the jizya, the head tax levied against all ‘‘People of the Book’’: Christians, Zoroastrians and Jews. If they refused, they would be killed, raped or enslaved, their wealth taken as spoils of war.

Således ser det ud når den islamiske hære ankom, skiftet fra kristendom sker gradvist forstået som et rykud, hvilket er naturligt omstændighederne taget i betragtning. Og de muslimske herrers tolerance var baseret på beskyttelsespenge. Således skal religionerne trives side om side, hvis altså ikke man foretrak at blive “dræbt, voldtaget eller gjort til slave”.

Men ISIS bløder op i dovenskab efter at rende og lede efter de sidste kristne og tilbyder “what they call ‘exile and hardship’”. Diyaa og Rana kommer frem fra deres skjul og melder sig til ISIS sundhedscenters ‘checkups’’, der er en slet skjult eufemisme for en visitering efter eventuelle værdier. Og, skal det hurtigt vise sig, så har mennesker også en særlig værdi i sig selv i det islamiske tankesæt

By 9 a.m., ISIS had separated men from women. Seated in the crowd, the local ISIS emir, Saeed Abbas, surveyed the female prisoners. His eyes lit on Aida Hana Noah, 43, who was holding her 3-year-old daughter, Christina. Noah said she felt his gaze and gripped Christina closer. For two weeks, she’d been at home with her daughter and her husband, Khadr Azzou Abada, 65. He was blind, and Aida decided that the journey north would be too hard for him. So she sent her 25-year-old son with her three other children, who ranged in age from 10 to 13, to safety. She thought Christina too young to be without her mother.

ISIS scanned the separate groups of men and women. ‘‘You’’ and ‘‘you,’’ they pointed. Some of the captives realized what ISIS was doing, survivors told me later, dividing the young and healthy from the older and weak. One, Talal Abdul Ghani, placed a final call to his family before the fighters confiscated his phone. He had been publicly whipped for refusing to convert to Islam, as his sisters, who fled from other towns, later recounted. ‘‘Let me talk to everybody,’’ he wept. ‘‘I don’t think they’re letting me go.’’ It was the last time they heard from him.

No one was sure where either bus was going. As the jihadists directed the weaker and older to the first of two buses, one 49-year-old woman, Sahar, protested that she’d been separated from her husband, Adel. Although he was 61, he was healthy and strong and had been held back. One fighter reassured her, saying, ‘‘These others will follow.’’ Sahar, Aida and her blind husband, Khadr, boarded the first bus. The driver, a man they didn’t know, walked down the aisle. Without a word, he took Christina from her mother’s arms. ‘‘Please, in the name of God, give her back,’’ Aida pleaded. The driver carried Christina into the medical center. Then he returned without the child. As the people in the bus prayed to leave town, Aida kept begging for Christina. Finally, the driver went inside again. He came back empty-handed.

(…)

As the bus rumbled north out of town, Aida sat crumpled in a seat next to her husband. Many of the 40-odd people on it began to weep. ‘‘We cried for Christina and ourselves,’’ Sahar said. The bus took a sharp right toward the Khazir River that marked an edge of the land ISIS had seized. Several minutes later, the driver stopped and ordered everyone off.

Led by a shepherd who had traveled this path with his flock, the sick and elderly descended and began to walk to the Khazir River. The journey took 12 hours.

The second bus — the one filled with the young and healthy — headed north, too. But instead of turning east, it turned west, toward Mosul. Among its captives was Diyaa. Rana wasn’t with him. She had been bundled into a third vehicle, a new four-wheel drive, along with an 18-year-old girl named Rita, who’d come to Qaraqosh to help her elderly father flee.

The women were driven to Mosul, where, the next day, Rana’s captor called her brothers. ‘‘If you come near her, I’ll blow the house up. I’m wearing a suicide vest,’’ he said. Then he passed the phone to Rana, who whispered, in Syriac, the story of what happened to her. Her brothers were afraid to ask any questions lest her answers make trouble for her. She said, ‘‘I’m taking care of a 3-year-old named Christina.’’

Trods disse utvetydige beskrivelser er Griswolds ellers glimrende artikel fuld af de standardbesværgelser der tynger de ledende medier. “No one has suffered more at the hands of ISIS than fellow Muslims”, hedder det pludselig, med henvisning til at flere muslimer end kristne dør af andre muslimer. Samme logik kunne man sige om tyskerne og jøderne under nazismen. Skønt interessant med Ellemannske observationer så er den relevante pointe at kristne næsten pr automatik dør i mødet med den ankomne muslimske hær, forrådt af sin muslimske nabo. Den kristne kan, som andre ikke-muslimske minoriteter, ikke komme uden om den direkte forfølgelse. Og den forfølgelse er islam.

Det sidste man hører om Rita er at hun “had been given as a slave to a powerful member of ISIS; Christina was given to a family to be raised as a Muslim”.

Nyt fra Mordor

The war on terror, that campaign without end launched 14 years ago by George Bush, is tying itself up in ever more grotesque contortions.” skriver Seumas Milne for Guardian og konkluderer at stormagterne ikke kan nedkæmpe “Isis and its monstrosities” fordi det er “the same powers that brought it to Iraq and Syria in the first place, or whose open and covert war-making has fostered it in the years since”. Og han leverer et glimrende eksempel på de vestlige lederes fortvivlede ragen rundt i det muslimske ælte

On Monday the trial in London of a Swedish man, Bherlin Gildo, accused of terrorism in Syria, collapsed after it became clear British intelligence had been arming the same rebel groups the defendant was charged with supporting The prosecution abandoned the case, apparently to avoid embarrassing the intelligence services. The defence argued that going ahead withthe trial would have been an “affront to justice” when there was plenty of evidence the British state was itself providing “extensive support” to the armed Syrian opposition. That didn’t only include the “non-lethal assistance” boasted of by the government (including body armour and military vehicles), but training, logistical support and the secret supply of “arms on a massive scale”. Reports were cited that MI6 had cooperated with the CIA on a “rat line” of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to the Syrian rebels in 2012 after the fall of the Gaddafi regime. Clearly, the absurdity of sending someone to prison for doing what ministers and their security officials were up to themselves became too much.

At sende de små fisk i fængsel for den linje politikerne selv har lagt kender vi godt herhjemme. Men Milnes observationer er glimrende, de vestlige ledere ved ikke hvem, der er ven eller fjende og jo mere de engagerer os i de muslimske morrads jo mere selvmodsigende og kontraproduktivt bliver det. Men jeg citerer ikke fra Guardians selvretfærdige klummeisters paranoia uden at komme med en bemærkning. Halvdelen af de 14 års krig mod terror, som Bush startede er blevet ført af Barak Hussein Obama, men han nævnes ikke med et ord. I stedet bruges variationer af ‘amerikanerne’. Og det til trods for at hvor Bush måske kunne være naiv i hvad USA kunne opnå af mirakler i barberernes verden, så agerer Obama på baggrund af allerede opnåede erfaringer. Det er ikke blot denne “rat line” af våben fra Libyen til Syrien, der er sket på Obamas vagt

A revealing light on how we got here has now been shone by a recently declassified secret US intelligence report, written in August 2012, which uncannily predicts – and effectively welcomes – the prospect of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria and an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria and Iraq. In stark contrast to western claims at the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency document identifies al-Qaida in Iraq (which became Isis) and fellow Salafists as the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” – and states that “western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey” were supporting the opposition’s efforts to take control of eastern Syria. Raising the “possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality”, the Pentagon report goes on, “this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)”. Which is pretty well exactly what happened two years later. The report isn’t a policy document. It’s heavily redacted and there are ambiguities in the language. But the implications are clear enough. A year into the Syrian rebellion, the US and its allies weren’t only supporting and arming an opposition they knew to be dominated by extreme sectarian groups; they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of “Islamic state” – despite the “grave danger” to Iraq’s unity – as a Sunni buffer to weaken Syria. That doesn’t mean the US created Isis, of course, though some of its Gulf allies certainly played a role in it – as the US vice-president, Joe Biden, acknowledged last year. But there was no al-Qaida in Iraq until the US and Britain invaded. And the US has certainly exploited the existence of Isis against other forces in the region as part of a wider drive to maintain western control.

Jack Kerwick konstaterer på Frontpage Magazine at på “Barack Hussein Obama’s watch, Islamic militancy has only increased in scope and intensity”. Daily Mail skriver at Tyrkiet er på randen af en borgerkrig efter voldsomme gadekampe er brudt ud mellem politi, PKK-aktivister og venstrefløjsgrupper. Men ikke nok med det, så er NATO-landet og EU-aspiranten også på vej ind i en direkte krig imod ISIS. Uzay Bulut skriver på Gatestone Institute

Turkey is evidently unsettled by the rapprochement the PKK seems to be establishing with the U.S. and Europe. Possibly alarmed by the PKK’s victories against ISIS, as well as its strengthening international standing, Ankara, in addition to targeting ISIS positions in Syria, has been bombing the PKK positions in the Qandil mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, where the PKK headquarters are located. As expected, many Turkish media outlets were more enthusiastic about the Turkish air force’s bombing the Kurdish militia than about bombing ISIS. “The camps of the PKK,” they excitedly reported, “have been covered with fire.” It appears as if Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is using ISIS as a pretext to attack the PKK. Ankara just announced that its air base at Incirlik will soon be open to coalition forces, presumably to fight ISIS, but the moment Turkey started bombing, it targeted Kurdish positions. Those attacks not only open a new era of death and destruction, but also bring an end to all possibilities of resolving Turkey’s Kurdish issue non-violently. (…) Sadly, Turkey has preferred not to form a “Turkish-Kurdish alliance” to destroy ISIS. First, Turkey has opened its borders to ISIS, enabling the growth of the terrorist group. And now, at the first opportunity, it is bombing the Kurds again. According to this strategy, “peace” will be possible only when Kurds submit to Turkish supremacism and abandon their goal of being an equal nation. In the meantime, Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkish minister of foreign affairs, said that the Incirlik air base in Turkey has not yet been opened for use by the U.S. and other coalition forces, but that it will be opened in the upcoming period.

Så Bush udløste kaoset, Obama enablede ISIS, mens folk som Uffe Ellemann Jensen presser på for at få Tyrkiet med i EU. Man siges at have de ledere man har fortjent. Hvad har vi dog gjort?

ISIS er en islamisk bevægelse, derfor lader den sig ikke bekæmpe med fornægtelse og venstrehåndsbombninger

Daily Mail har en udmærket artikel om den enorme indsats imod Islamisk Stat der synes aldeles nytteløs.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3154680/The-astonishing-FIFTY-FOUR-countries-groups-battling-ISIS-haven-t-crushed-already.html#ixzz3fWyanjo9

An international coalition of over 30 countries and at least a dozen more rebel and terror factions have been unable to prevent the rapid growth of ISIS.

The terror group has expanded its territory, recruited ‘thousands’ of new foreign fighters and brought new jihadi organisations under its wing since an international ‘task force’ to ‘eliminate’ ISIS in October 2014.

At least 42 nations have either carried out airstrikes on ISIS, trained troops and Middle-Eastern tribesman to do battle against it or given weapons to those who are.

Meanwhile, at least a dozen rival Islamist groups are waging bloody war with ISIS on the ground - and for the hearts and minds of Muslims online.

Despite their collective hatred for the Islamic State, these disparate groups have failed to combat and destroy ISIS because their agendas conflict and they are not attacking the heart of the so-called caliphate, a counter-terrorism expert has told MailOnline.

ISIS commands 31,000 loyal fighters according to the United States - up from 16,000 last Autumn - while Kurdish forces put that number at closer to 200,000. And around eight million are thought to live under its barbaric rule.

This inspired more than 60 nations to commit to the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS which was formed to ‘eliminate’ ISIS, even though some of these - including Austria, Sweden and Ireland - are simply providing humanitarian support to the millions made homeless by the insurgents.

As part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the US-led coalition whose purpose is to eliminate ISIS, 13 different countries have executed airstrikes on Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.

The United States and five of its Arab allies - Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - launched the intense campaign of airstrikes and cruise-missile attacks against ISIS in September 2014.

Since then, America has been responsible for around 60 per cent of the 16,000 bombings on Iraq and Syria carried out since.

Den irakiske hær har kæmpet med den siden 2006, dengang den kun var en Islamisk Stat Irak og Syrien begyndte i 2011. Mange muslimske lande kæmper internt med deres egne muslimske entusiaster, der begynder at sværge troskab til Islamisk Stat, blandt andet Boko Haram, der trodsede Michelle Obama og aldrig gav de kidnappede småpiger tilbage, har bragt flere afrikanske lande ind i kampen. Alligevel trives Kalifatet Islamisk Stat som aldrig før. Terroreksperten, som Daily Mail har talt med, mener at problemet er at alle, der bekæmper Islamisk Stat har forskellige interesser. Men det hjerte han mente skulle angribes defineres ikke.

Vi får dog at vide at en lokal terrorgruppe producerer sin egen propaganda, der skal imødegå Islamisk Stats “poisonous narrative” “and mistaken understanding of Islam“. Og den amerikanske præsident Barak Obama er helt enig i det synspunkt og “says no amount of firepower will bring down the terror group who prey on ‘vulnerable’ Muslims around the world, adding: ‘Ideologies are not defeated with guns, they’re defeated by better ideas, a more attractive and compelling vision.’“. Man skulle tro at alle alternativer til Islamisk Stats svælgen i grusomheder var bedre ideer, at det IKKE at hugge hovedet at handlende der holder fredagsåbent klart var en bedre ide og en større vision end et gøre det. Men Islamisk Stats giftige narrativ, dårlige ideer, misforståeede islam og og uattraktive vision er åbenbart mere end almindeligt konkurencedygtigt og antallet af svage muslimer er svimlende og stigende.

Igår spekulerede jeg via kloge indlæg om Euroens og EUs krise kunne demaskere den herskende politiske klasses manglende realitetssans førend islams grusomheder blev ubenægtbare ud fra en Clintonsk ‘it’s the economyu, stupid’ tankegange. Douglas Murray forklarer i Gatestone Institute den stigende kløft mellem, det som politikere siger om ‘fredens religion og det som befolkningerne ved. For selvfølgelig kan man bekæmpe Islamisk Stat militært, skriver Murray i sit opgør med Obamas ide om attraktive ideer. Det var således man knuste nazismen. Islamisk stat kan ikke rekruttere nye krigere, hvis den knuses og den vil ikke virke attraktiv, hvis den får bøllebank og lider nederlag. Men der er noget andet om kalifatets ideer, som Obama og de andre vestlige ledere samt medierne vånder sig over at se i øjnene, nemlig at Islamisk Stat er islamisk, dens ideer er islamisk lære og det virker tiltrækkende på muslimer, der er opflasket med at islams ideer er de bedste uanset hvad virkeligheden ellers fortæller

While the Nazis tried to hide their worst crimes from the world, the followers of ISIS repeatedly record and distribute video footage of theirs. Between free and open democratic societies, and a society which beheads women for witchcraft, throws suspected gays off buildings, beheads other Muslims and Christians, burns people alive, and does us the favour of video-recording these atrocities and sending them round the globe for us, you would have thought that there would be no moral competition. But there is. And that is not because ISIS has “better ideas, a more attractive and more compelling vision,” but because its appeal comes from a specific ideological-religious worldview that we cannot hope to defeat if we refuse to understand it.

That is why David Cameron’s interjection was so important. The strategy Barack Obama and he seem to be hoping will work in persuading the general public that ISIS has nothing to do with Islam is the same tactic they are adopting in the hope of persuading young Muslims not to join ISIS. Their tactic is to try to deny something that Muslims and non-Muslims can easily see and find out for themselves: that ISIS has a lot to do with Islam — the worst possible version, obviously, for Muslims and non-Muslims alike, but a version of Islam nevertheless.

ISIS can destroy its own credibility among advocates of human rights and liberal democracy. The question is how you destroy its credibility among people who want to be very Islamic, and think ISIS is their way of being so. Understand their claims and their appeal, and work out a way to undermine those, and ISIS will prove defeatable not only on the battlefield but in the field of ideas as well. But refuse to acknowledge what drives them, or from where they claim to get their legitimacy, and the problem will only have just started.

Murray gør sig for mange håb om at islam kan reddes fra sig selv og det gør Jürgen Todenhoffer også i dette interview i BBCs Hardtalk. Men, hvis man kan abstrahere fra udtryk som “so-called Islamic State movement” og hæfte sig ved hans beskrivelse af den muslimske bevægelse for man et anderledes forstemmen realistisk billede af, hvorfor Obama har ret når han siger at vi kommer til at kæmpe med disse problemer i mange, mange år

The so-called Islamic State movement has very publicly murdered western journalists and aid workers who entered its territory. As a result, IS-held areas of Syria and Iraq have been off-limits to western reporters for the past year. Except for the guest today.

Last December Jürgen Todenhöfer spent ten days inside the self-styled IS caliphate. He emerged unscathed with a remarkable story - what more can he tell us about the jihadists and what can we conclude about his own motivations?

Stemning fra Mosul

Arabere, Arabiske forår, Diverse, Irak, Jihad, Kalifatet, Muslimer, Muslimguf, Syrien, Terror, Tyrkiet, islam — Drokles on June 12, 2015 at 2:41 am

Information giver via BBC og Facebooksiden Mosul Eye en stemningsbeskrivelse af forholdene i Mosul, der nu har været under ISIS kontrol i over et år

Et stort N, malet på husmuren, fortæller alle i Mosul, at her bor en kristen. Som oftest efterfulgt af en erklæring om, at bygningen er »Islamisk Stats ejendom« – et signal om, at de oprindelige indbyggere er flygtet.

Et år efter at Islamisk Stat løb millionbyen Mosul i det nordlige Irak over ende, har bevægelsen invaderet stort set alle dele af befolkningens liv og etableret næsten total sindelagskontrol.

I hvert fald hvis man skal tro de beretninger, brudstykker og videoklip, som smugles ud af den belejrede by af anonyme indbyggere, der sætter livet på spil for at fortælle omverdenen om livet i Islamisk Stat.

En af dem, der det seneste år har rapporteret om livet i Islamisk Stat, er Mosul Eye, der præsenterer sig som irakisk historiker og jævnligt poster oplysninger, fotos og amatørvideoer på Twitter og Facebookfra livet i den belejrede by.

»I løbet af de seneste måneder er det blevet tabu at tale om religion i Mosul. Folk mener ikke, at IS repræsenterer islam, men ingen tør sige det højt,« skriver han f.eks. og fortæller, hvordan Islamisk Stats efterretningstjeneste i stadig stigende grad overvåger indbyggerne i Mosul og indsamler informationer om folk fra naboer, taxichauffører og butiksejere – ligesom under Saddam Husseins diktatur.

Det seneste skridt til at kontrollere befolkningens sindelag er indførelsen af et skattekort, som alle indbyggere skal gå med som bevis på, at de betaler skat til Islamisk Stat. Mosul Eye har postet et billede af sit eget lyseblå skattekort med Islamisk Stats logo på som bevis på den nye, altomfattende registrering af borgerne. 2.000 irakiske dinarer om dagen er den pris, hver borger må betale, fortæller han. Det svarer til cirka 10 kr. Butikker skal betale 10.000 dinarer to gange om måneden. Og gør man det ikke, er straffen hård.

Som Information skriver så er det et andet billede end det ISIS tegner, eller får tegnet af John Cantile, der blev kidnappet sammen med sin amerikanske kollegaJames Foley. Foley blev halshugget, Cantile blev propagandist. Men Vice News har en stemningsrapport fra kurdernes kamp mod islamisk stat

A year after the Islamic State’s lightning conquest of Iraq’s second-largest city of Mosul, the poorly-trained and equipped Kurdish peshmerga forces are the international coalition’s only reliable boots on the ground in northern Iraq.

The Pentagon’s hopes of recapturing the city by spring 2015 have been dashed by the military failures of the Iraqi Army further south, leaving the peshmerga to defend a 600-mile long frontline almost encircling Mosul, fending off constant Islamic State (IS) assaults with insufficient supplies of ammunition and modern weapons.

For one month, VICE News embedded with the peshmerga fighters on the Mosul frontline, gaining an insight into the coalition’s faltering war against IS through the eyes of the Kurdish volunteers bearing the brunt of the fighting.

Jihadists vs. the Assad Regime: Syria’s Rebel Advance

Jeg kan ikke følge udviklingen i Mellemøsten, men det går tilsyneladende ikke så godt for Assad i kampen mod ISIS skriver Telegraph

The Assad regime has suffered a series of blows in recent weeks that have once again raised questions about how long Iran will continue to support it.

Since it took Palmyra three weeks ago, Isil has pushed on against a regime defence line that is withering.

It is now close to Homs, the capital of Syria’s largest province but more important as a symbol of the early, non-jihadist opposition to the Assad regime.

The defeat of a coalition of secular and “moderate” Islamist forces in Homs after a long siege by the regime was for a while seen as a turning point in the war.

In fact, it seems merely to have invigorated support for more militant varieties of rebel.

Vice News fulgte nogle jihadister

In just a few short weeks, a newly-united rebel coalition has captured almost all of northwest Syria’s Idlib province from government forces, overturning assumptions over the war’s course, and threatening the regime’s ability to defend its heartland.

VICE News filmmaker Salam Rizk secured rare access to the jihadist fighters at the spear tip of the battle for the strategic city of Jisr al-Shughour.

Brian Esbensen benægter folkemord på kristne

christian-homes-marked

Med Bent Jensens nederlag til Jørgen Dragsdahl i Højesteret forleden skal man passe ekstra på hvad man kalder andre mennesker uanset, hvor sandt det måtte være. Så jeg vil ikke bruge nogle som helst specifikke ord om Politikens faste blogger og Melløst ekspert ved Ræson Brian Esbensen blot fordi han benægter folkemordet på de kristne i Mellemøsten. Men det gør han på sin Facebook side. Ja, han anerkender end ikke at kristne forfølges

Forfølges de kristne i Mellemøsten? Nej, er det korte svar. Det lidt længere og uddybende svar følger her:

Kan I huske da kampe i det nordlige Irak, tæt på kristne og kurdiske byer og områder, havde det meste af verdens bevågenhed for et lille års tid siden? Civile - hvoraf mange var kristne - blev drevet på flugt, og begivenhederne blev af uforstandige personer set som (endnu) et bevis på, at kristne bliver forfulgt i Mellemøsten.

Det er sådan set rigtigt nok. De kristne forfølges og flygter; ligesom dem med brune, grønne, grå og blå øjne; og ligesom sunni-muslimerne, shia-muslimerne og dem der ikke tror på en skid; og ligesom de høje, de lave og dem midt imellem.

Irak (og er par andre steder i regionen) er et stort f**king anarki og folk flygter.

Lige nu kæmpes der i og omkring byen Ramadi og det er en rigtig god case til at illustrere, hvorfor ‘amatør-eksperterne’ som fx. Niels Ivar Larsen og Søren K. Villemoes fuldstændig fejllæser regionen, når de sidder i deres trygge kontorstole i København og fremfører ‘de-kristne-forfølges’-tesen.

Ramadi består næsten udelukkende af (sunni-) muslimer. Indtil USA, DK, UK o.a. besluttede sig for at bombe Irak tilbage til stenalderen i 2003 boede der cirka 700.000 mennesker. Da de nuværende kampe startede var tallet cirka 500.000 (altså var ca. 200.000 muslimer allerede flygtet). Indenfor den seneste måned melder UNHCR at 114.000 (muslimer) er flygtet og indenfor de seneste dage er det eksploderet med yderligere titusinder (muslimer) på flugt.

Summasummarum og pointen skåret ud i pap: Skillelinjen går ikke mellem kristne på den ene side og muslimer på den anden. Den går mellem de få radikale - hvoraf mange er tilrejsende tosser - og så alle andre, herunder de mange mange millioner moderate muslimer, der flygter i den største globale flygtningekatatrofe siden 2. verdenskrig.

I kommentarfeltet uddyber han sin pointe

Jeg kunne med udgangspunkt i data over flest døde i trafikken lave en lignende liste. Thailand er det farligste sted i verden for bilister. Jeg kunne med 100% sikkerhed lave en statistik, der illustrerede at ejere af grønne biler dør som fluer i trafikken i Thailand. Og, ja, det ville sådan set være helt korrekt, men det ville på samme tid også være uendelig uinteressant, da det samme gælder for ejere af røde, blå, hvide (you name it) biler. Det er i stor udstrækning det samme med ‘den kristne forfølgelse’ i Mellemøsten. En selektiv liste, hvor én religion (i et land i kaos) eller én bilfarve (i et trafikalt helvede) er udvalgt, fortæller os tæt på ingenting.

Esbensen argument er altså at fordi andre, inklusive andre muslimer, også forfølges af kalifatet så forfølges kristne ikke særskilt. Men dette er selvfølgelig forkert. Med varierende nidkærhed forfølges alle der opfattes som islams fjender og her forfølges kristne ikke blot for ikke at være muslimer, men for at være kristne.

Esbensens beskriver sine kompetencer

Faglig kompetence:
Demokratisering i en arabisk, muslimsk kontekst
Menneskerettighedsforståelser – kulturrelativisme, universalisme
Religion og kultur
Palæstinensiske flygtninges historie og situation
Konflikt, oprør og civilsamfund
Postmoderne udviklingsteori
NGO advocacy, lobbyisme
Regional kompetence:
Libanon, ophold og arbejde, 2002-2003 og 2005, 2012, 2013
Syrien, ophold og arbejde, 2004 og 2012
Jordan, ophold og arbejde, 2003-2004
Godt kendskab til Libanon, Syrien, Jordan, Israel, Palæstina, Balkan

Uddannelse og kurser

Cand.scient.soc., samfundsvidenskab, udvikling og internationale relationer, Aalborg Universitet
Tillægsmodul i skriftelig journalistik, Danmarks medie- og journalisthøjskole
“Modern history of Jordan and the M.E.”, University of Jordan

Ansættelser og anden arbejdserfaring

Journalist, kronikør og udviklingspolitiks kommentator, Kristeligt Dagblad m.fl. (for nuværende)
Foredragsholder, Det arabiske forår, Mellemøsten, Konflikten i Syrien (for nuværende)
Brian Esbensen er Mellemøst-redaktør, Magasinet RÆSON (ophørt august 2013)
Rådgivende Konsulent, Aarhus kommunes internationale kontor, Nis, Serbien (ophørt maj 2011)
Projektansvarlig, Arab NGO Network for Development, Beirut, Libanon (ophørt juni 2004)
Projektkoordinator og praktikant, Norwegian People’s Aid, Beirut, Libanon (ophørt jan. 2003)
Underviser, Dansk Røde Kors asylafdeling (ophørt sep. 2002)

Bestyrelser, tillidsposter og netværk

Tidligere medlem af Dansk Flygtningehjælps bestyrelse i Aalborgs frivillig-afdeling
Tidligere aktiv i diverse græsrodsarbejde

Produktion

Udgivelser:

Flere bidrag til e-bogen “Efter det Arabiske Forår”, RAESON, 2012 Se: http://raeson.dk/2012/ny-ebog-fra-r%C3%A6sonefter-det-arabiske-forar-%E2…

Kronikker, analyser, internationale kommentarer og baggrundsartikler i div. magasiner og dagblade, bl.a.

Artiklen “På flugt til fredens by”, Kristeligt Dagblad, om syriske flygtninge i Tyrkiet: http://www.kristeligt-dagblad.dk/artikel/460378:Udland–Paa-flugt-til-fr…

Kronikken “De islamiske partier har vundet – skal vi være nervøse?”, Kristeligt Dagblad, om de første frie valg efter det arabiske oprør: http://www.kristeligt-dagblad.dk/artikel/448338:Kronik–Deislamiske-part…

Personligt tilbageblik på Syrien-reportage tur, Politiken: http://politiken.dk/debat/profiler/brianesbensen/ECE2065475/sidste-aar-e…

International kommentar vedr. situationen i Syrien, Information: http://www.information.dk/313042

Kronik i Berlingske, Civilisationernes sammenstød er en farlig myte: http://www.b.dk/kronikker/civilisationskrig-er-en-farlig-myte

Sprog

Dansk - Modersmål
Engelsk - Beherskes flydende
Tysk - Godt kendskab
Arabisk - Noget kendskab

Opfordringer fra Brian Esbensens FB-vennerkreds til at sætte sig ind i virkeligheden, som ved at læse  Klaus Wivels: Den sidste Nadver eller læse Amnesty Internationals rapporter afviser Esbensen med at han allerede “har læst wivels makværk af en ‘bog’”. Jacob Mchangama kalder Esbensen for en skændsel og forsøger at højne debatten med nogle artikler fra BBCThe Guardian,CNNThe Independent, og The New Statesman, der alle utvetydigt beskriver muslimsk forfølgelse af kristne fordi de er kristne. Tidligere har jeg også henvist til BBC og Raymond Ibrahim. Men man kan også blot google det. De kristne bliver forfulgt fordi de er kristne. Esbensen har ingen undskyldning for ikke at vide det og ingen undskyldning for at benægte det.

Kill The Christians

BBC dokumentar om muslimernes folkemord på kristne

Venstrefløjen hader dem, der hader ondskab

Den amerikanske præsident Barak Hussein Obama bruger ofte udtrykket “en bankerot ideologi” om ISIS, Kalifatet i Irak og Levanten. Det er helt sikkert en ond ideologi og den hedder islam, men den er ikke bankerot. Den er sine steder, som hos ISIS ganske levende og dyrkes med stor nidkærhed og med et formål.

Hvad der derimod er bankerot ideologi er venstrefløjens dogmatiske kompleks af værdier. Så bankerot at Obama og mange andre med ham, end ikke kan sætte ord på det der skræmmer dem af frygt for at indrømme, deres eminente fejl og svigt. Dennis Prager diagnosticerer i Townhall venstrefløjens fortrængning af ondskabens realitet med udgangspunkt i netop Obama

There is no question about whether President Obama — along with Secretary of State John Kerry and the editorial pages of many newspapers — has a particular dislike of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But there is another question: Why?

And the answer is due to an important rule of life that too few people are aware of:

Those who do not confront evil resent those who do.

Take the case at hand. The prime minister of Israel is at the forefront of the greatest battle against evil in our time — the battle against violent Muslims. No country other than Israel is threatened with extinction, and it is Iran and the many Islamic terror organizations that pose that threat.

It only makes sense, then, that no other country feels the need to warn the world about Iran and Islamic terror as much as Israel. That’s why when Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the United Nations about the threat Iran poses to his country’s survival and about the metastasizing cancer of Islamist violence, he, unfortunately, stands alone.

Virtually everyone listening knows he is telling the truth. And most dislike him for it.

Appeasers hate those who confront evil.

Haviv Rettig Gur giver i Times of Israel et fremragende portræt af Obama og hans foragt for Israels premierminister Benjamin Netanyahu

At a recent gathering of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations, the eminent former director general of the Foreign Ministry, Prof. Shlomo Avineri, called Obama’s foreign policy “provincial.” It was a strange choice of words to describe the policies of a president with such a cosmopolitan outlook and so much eagerness to engage the world.

But Avineri had a point.

Obama’s remarkable memoir, “Dreams from My Father,” includes a powerful account of how his experiences as a young, keenly observant social organizer in South Chicago instilled in him the sensibility that would come to define his presidency.

In the book, he describes his reaction upon hearing the children of a poor Chicago neighborhood divided into “good kids and bad kids – the distinction didn’t compute in my head.” If a particular child “ended up in a gang or in jail, would that prove his essence somehow, a wayward gene…or just the consequences of a malnourished world?”

“In every society, young men are going to have violent tendencies,” an educator in one majority-black Chicago high school told him in the late 1980s. “Either those tendencies are directed and disciplined in creative pursuits or those tendencies destroy the young men, or the society, or both.”

The book is full of such ruminations, and they echo throughout Obama’s rhetoric as president. In his last speech to the UN General Assembly, he asserted that “if young people live in places where the only option is between the dictates of a state or the lure of an extremist underground, no counterterrorism strategy can succeed.”

For Obama, terrorism is, at root, a product of social disintegration. War may be necessary to contain the spread of Islamic State, for example, but only social reform can really cure it.

Add to this social vision the experience of a consummate outsider – half-white and half-black, with a childhood and a family scattered around the world – and one begins to see the profile of a man with an automatic empathy for the marginalized and an almost instinctive sense that the most significant problems of the world are rooted not in ideology but in oppressive social and economic structures that reinforce marginalization. This sensibility is broader than any economic orthodoxy, and is rooted in the hard experience of South Chicago.

After taking the helm of the world’s preeminent superpower in January 2009, this social organizer set about constructing a foreign policy that translated this consciousness into geopolitical action.

“The imperative that he and his advisors felt was not only to introduce a post-Bush narrative but also a post-post-9/11 understanding of what needed to be done in the world,” James Traub noted in a recent Foreign Policy essay. “They believed that the great issues confronting the United States were not traditional state-to-state questions, but new ones that sought to advance global goods and required global cooperation — climate change, energy supply, weak and failing states, nuclear nonproliferation. It was precisely on such issues that one needed to enlist the support of citizens as well as leaders.”

The world was one large Chicago, its essential problems not categorically different from those of South Chicago’s blacks, and the solutions to those problems were rooted in the same essential human capacity for overcoming social divisions and inequities. This was Obama’s “provincialism” — his vision of the world that favored the disadvantaged and downtrodden, that saw the ideological and political clashes between governments as secondary to the more universal and ultimately social crises that troubled a tumultuous world.

Republikanerne erkender ondskaben og forærede Netanyahu en bronzebuste af Churchill.

Hvor ER vore dages Monuments Men?

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ISIS er godt igang med at smadre alle kulturelle artefakter i det gamle Mesopotamien og omegn. Og som jeg har skrevet før, så har Vestens ledere ikke haft fantasi til at redde den del af verdenskulturarven, i modsætning til de amerikanske Minute Men under Anden Verdenskrig. Alle sidder på deres hænder og ser uerstatteligheder forsvinde for muslimers hænder. Daily Mail skriver

Islamic State thugs have destroyed a collection of priceless statues and sculptures in Iraq dating back thousands of years.

Extremists used sledgehammers and power drills to smash ancient artwork as they rampaged through a museum in the northern city of Mosul.

Video footage shows a group of bearded men in the Nineveh Museum using tools to wreck 3,000-year-old statues after pushing them over.

(…)

The articles destroyed appeared to come from an antiquities museum in the northern city of Mosul, which was overrun by Islamic State last June, a former employee at the museum told Reuters.

The extremist group has destroyed a number of shrines - including Muslim holy sites - in a bid to eliminate what it views as heresy.

Militants are also believed to have sold ancient artwork on the black market in order to finance their bloody campaign across the region.

Jeg havde i min tid på Geografi et par debatter med medstuderende om ægypternes krav på at få oldtidsartefakter ‘hjem’ fra British Museum. Hvor der var konsensus om at disse artefakter tilhørte ægypterne, thi de var hentet i ægyptisk jord, holdt jeg på at de tilhørte menneskeheden, eller den del der var civiliseret i hvert fald. Og, holdt jeg på, ægypterne var slet ikke i stand til at varetage verdenskulturen.

Under det Arabiske Forår, som selvsamme studiekammerater udtrykte store forhåbninger til, blev Egyptian (National) Museum angrebet og flere oldstidsartefakter ødelagt. I sommeren 2013 blev Malawi National Museum, der indeholdt masser af oldtidskunst, smadret af øhm, nogen. Samme sommer lukkede Arish National Museum på Sinaihalvøen og flyttede deres samling i sikkerhed, hvilket var klogt da museet blev angrebet tidligere på måneden. I januar 2014 blev Museum of Islamic Arts også angrebet.

Islamist Militants on Israel’s Doorstep: The War Next Door (Full Length)

Antisemitisme, Arabere, Arabiske forår, Diverse, Irak, Israel, Jihad, Kalifatet, Muslimer, Syrien, Terror, islam — Drokles on February 7, 2015 at 7:28 am

Fra Youtube

In August, al Nusra Front jihadists took control of Syria’s side of the border crossing with Israel and kidnapped over 40 United Nations peacekeepers — who have since been released.

But al Nusra Front, an al Qaeda-affiliate, isn’t Israel’s only threat from Syria. President Bashar al-Assad’s military, in a possible effort to bait Israel into its civil war to shore up Arab sympathies, has been lobbing mortars across the border. Just a few weeks ago, the Israeli military shot down a Syrian plane flying over the Golan Heights — the first time it has done so since the 1980s.

VICE News travels to Israel’s “quiet border” in the Golan Heights, where members of al Nusra Front are now a visible threat.

Read “The Explosive End of Israel’s ‘Quietest Border’” - http://bit.ly/1xcm7DB

Read “Islamic State Fighters Capture Jordanian Pilot After Downing Coalition Warplane in Syria” - http://bit.ly/1B5Fn6g

Read “The Syrian Regime Will Now Allow Desperately Needed Aid Into Rebel-Held Regions” - http://bit.ly/1t7ejoq

Read “New Evidence Suggests Israel Is Helping Syrian Rebels in the Golan Heights” - http://bit.ly/1BroztZ

Watch “A Fugitive and his Family: Escape to the Islamic State” - http://bit.ly/1rNVpwy

Check out the VICE News beta for more: http://vicenews.com

Dokumentar: ISIS Sex-Slave Raping & Selling Girls

Olien presser ondskaben

Olieprisen falder i disse tider “not by any action (or inaction) of the Saudis” skriver Peter Coy og Matthew PhilipsBusiness Week “but by the American shale producers, who are simply producing all the oil they can to maximize their profits”.

The world’s biggest oil companies faced ruin in the summer of 1931. Crude prices had plummeted. Wildcatters were selling oil from the bonanza East Texas field for a nickel a barrel, cheaper than a bowl of chili. On Aug. 17, Governor Ross Sterling declared a state of insurrection in four counties and sent 1,100 National Guard troops to shut down the fields and bring order to the market. A month later the Railroad Commission of Texas handed out strict production quotas.

That heavy-handed intervention in the free market was remarkable enough. Even more remarkable was who pulled it off. The person in charge of shutting down the wildcatters, National Guard Brigadier General Jacob Wolters, was the general counsel of Texas Co., an ancestor of Chevron (CVX). And the Texas governor who ordered Wolters in was a past president of Humble Oil and Refining, a forerunner of ExxonMobil (XOM). Big Oil played hardball in those days.

Russell Gold beskriver i Wall Street Journal hvad der “has set up a battle for market share that could reshape the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and fundamentally change the global market for oil”

Vikas Dwivedi, energy strategist with Macquarie Research, says a widespread deceleration of global economic growth sapped some demand. At the same time, several Asian currencies weakened against the U.S. dollar.

The cost of filling up a gas tank in Indonesia, Thailand, India and Malaysia rose, just as these countries were phasing out fuel subsidies. In Jakarta and Mumbai, drivers cut back.

“The fact that supply growth was strong shouldn’t have taken anybody by surprise,” Mr. Dwivedi says. But demand for oil “just fell off a cliff. And bear markets are fed by negative surprises.”

Rising supply and falling demand both put downward pressure on prices. Throughout the summer, however, fears of violence in Iraq kept oil prices high as traders worried Islamic State fighters could cut the countrys oil output.

Then two events tipped the market. In late June, The Wall Street Journal reported the U.S. government had given permission for the first exports of U.S. oil in a generation. While the ruling was limited in scope, the market saw it as the first crack in a long-standing ban on crude exports. Not only was the U.S. importing fewer barrels of oil, it could soon begin exporting some, too. This news jolted oil markets; prices began to edge down from their summer peaks.

On July 1, Libyan rebels agreed to open Es Sider and Ras Lanuf, two key oil-export terminals that had been closed for a year. Libyan oil sailed across the Mediterranean Sea into Europe. Already displaced from the U.S. Gulf Coast and eastern Canada, Nigerian oil was soon replaced in Europe, too. Increasingly, shipments of Nigerian crude headed toward China.

Oil prices began to decline.

Og det er dårligt nyt for mange fjendtlige regimer og ideologier, hvis magt bygger på høje oliepriser. De små fracking firmaer i Texas ændrer vilkårerne

The stressed-out giants of today are Saudi Arabia and its fellows in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. The descendants of the 1930s wildcatters are today’s producers of oil from shale, who are driving down the world price of crude by flooding the market with millions of barrels of new oil each day. At $64 a barrel, Brent crude is down 44 percent since June. The twist is that today’s upstarts aren’t draining oil from neighbors’ plots, as happened in the 1930s. And OPEC can’t call in the National Guard against them. All it can do is gape at the falling price of crude and contemplate the destruction of their cartel at the hands of the Americans, whom they thought they had supplanted for good 40 years ago. Energy economist Philip Verleger says shale is to OPEC what the Apple II (AAPL) was to the IBM(IBM) mainframe.

(….)

Collectively, their breakneck production is breaking OPEC’s neck. This is the remorseless, leaderless free market at work.

OPEC used to be something to reckon with. For a brief period in the 1970s its influence was so strong, it could set prices to the penny for scores of crudes, says Bhushan Bahree, senior director for OPEC Middle East research at market researcher IHS (IHS). Its power has waned considerably, but until this year Saudi Arabia could still be counted on to cut output for the good of the cartel when gluts emerged. The Saudis’ refusal last month to take one for the team is historic, says Michael Wittner, head of oil research at Société Générale (GLE:FP) in New York. “That is such a tremendous, dramatic change,” he says. “It’s hard to think of a way to exaggerate how fundamental it is.”

Men det er ikke blot Rusland og regimerne i OPEC, der mærkes af den økonomiske nedtur og amerikansk driftighed. Også den grønne mafia går svære tider i møde, skriver The Independent

A new “era of cheap oil” would be good news for consumers and motorists – but analysts say the consequences for politics, industry and the climate could be even more radical.

(…)

“Renewable energy subsidies have been mostly sold to the public on the basis of the economic benefits,” said Peter Atherton, an energy analyst with Liberum Capital. “But the economic arguments hinged on the idea that fossil fuel prices would get more expensive, while expensive renewable subsidies would be able to come down over time. That’s looking doubtful now.”

Anne Robinson, director of consumer policy at the uSwitch price comparison website, said: “More subsidies are likely to be needed [for green power] as the gap between the cost of fossil fuel power and renewable power gets bigger.” The extra subsidies would be borne by households in the form of higher energy bills.

Green energy technologies such as solar and wind had been banking on sharp increases in fossil fuel prices to make them increasingly competitive and help to attract the huge amount of investment required to build renewable power plants. But that “economic case” is now in danger of being lost, with the environmental argument seen by many as being insufficient to drive through high levels of green energy investment.

Så der er da andet end Julen at glæde sig over.

En tidligere Associated Press journalist beskriver mediernes anti-israelske fortælling

Matti Friedman arbejdede for det store nyhedsbureau Associated Press i Jerusalem mellem 2006 og 2011 og skønt han erklærer sig selv som venstredrejet (liberal i amerikansk terminologi) kan han ikke længere stå inde for, hvad han betegner som “a hostile obsession with Israel” i den almindelige nyhedsdækning. I en længere og højst anbefalelsesværdig artikel fra august i år i Tablet Magazine fortæller han om den overeksponering af Israel med sin tidligere arbejdsgiver som illustrativt eksempel. At de havde mere end 40 medarbejdere til at dække Israel-Palæstina, hvilket var mere end resten af Mellemøsten til sammen og kun ved særlige lejligheder vægtes andet end Israel højest.

To offer a sense of scale: Before the outbreak of the civil war in Syria, the permanent AP presence in that country consisted of a single regime-approved stringer. The AP’s editors believed, that is, that Syria’s importance was less than one-40th that of Israel. I don’t mean to pick on the AP—the agency is wholly average, which makes it useful as an example. The big players in the news business practice groupthink, and these staffing arrangements were reflected across the herd. Staffing levels in Israel have decreased somewhat since the Arab uprisings began, but remain high. And when Israel flares up, as it did this summer, reporters are often moved from deadlier conflicts. Israel still trumps nearly everything else.

The volume of press coverage that results, even when little is going on, gives this conflict a prominence compared to which its actual human toll is absurdly small. In all of 2013, for example, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict claimed 42 lives—that is, roughly the monthly homicide rate in the city of Chicago. Jerusalem, internationally renowned as a city of conflict, had slightly fewer violent deaths per capita last year than Portland, Ore., one of America’s safer cities. In contrast, in three years the Syrian conflict has claimed an estimated 190,000 lives, or about 70,000 more than the number of people who have ever died in the Arab-Israeli conflict since it began a century ago.

News organizations have nonetheless decided that this conflict is more important than, for example, the more than 1,600 women murdered in Pakistan last year (271 after being raped and 193 of them burned alive), the ongoing erasure of Tibet by the Chinese Communist Party, the carnage in Congo (more than 5 million dead as of 2012) or the Central African Republic, and the drug wars in Mexico (death toll between 2006 and 2012: 60,000), let alone conflicts no one has ever heard of in obscure corners of India or Thailand. They believe Israel to be the most important story on earth, or very close.

Det der er vigtigt i en Israel-Palæstina historie, argumenterer Friedman, er Israel. Palæstinenserne anerkendes ikke som selvstændige aktører  og eksisterer kun som passive ofre. Korruption er altid interessant, men kun israelsk. Friedman fortæller at han ikke kunne komme igennem med en artikel om palæstinensisk korruption fordi “that was not the story”. Således angribes enhver skævhed i det israelske samfund nidkært; Israelsks lovforslag til pressefrihed, antallet af ortodokse jøder, bosættelser, kønssegregering osv, mens der er meget få artikler om lignende palæstinensiske forhold.

Hamas formålserklæring, som handler om et udslette Israel og alle jøderne og deres graven terrortunneller ind under Israel er ikke vigtigt for medier og nyhedsbureauer, men det er derimod Israels angreb på Hamas. De fleste rapportere, siger Friedman, opfatter essensen af deres arbejde at rapportere om israelske overgreb: “That’s the essens of the Israel story”!

Og denne fortælling sættes ind i den ramme der hedder Israel-Palæstina konflikten eller variationer heraf. Her er det Israel, der er den store og dermed aggressoren hvor sandheden er at jøderne kun optager 0,2% af Mellemøsten og der er 5 millioner jøder overfor 300 mio. arabere. Det var den samlede arabiske verden, der ville udslette Israel fra begyndelsen og den palæstinensiske sag blev først interessant efter 1967 krigen, hvor Israel indtog de resterende områder fra delingsplanen fra Ægypten og Jordan, der ellers havde annekteret dem uden protester fra den arabiske verden.

For centuries, stateless Jews played the role of a lightning rod for ill will among the majority population. They were a symbol of things that were wrong. Did you want to make the point that greed was bad? Jews were greedy. Cowardice? Jews were cowardly. Were you a Communist? Jews were capitalists. Were you a capitalist? In that case, Jews were Communists. Moral failure was the essential trait of the Jew. It was their role in Christian tradition—the only reason European society knew or cared about them in the first place.

(…)

When the people responsible for explaining the world to the world, journalists, cover the Jews’ war as more worthy of attention than any other, when they portray the Jews of Israel as the party obviously in the wrong, when they omit all possible justifications for the Jews’ actions and obscure the true face of their enemies, what they are saying to their readers—whether they intend to or not—is that Jews are the worst people on earth. The Jews are a symbol of the evils that civilized people are taught from an early age to abhor. International press coverage has become a morality play starring a familiar villain.

(…)

You don’t need to be a history professor, or a psychiatrist, to understand what’s going on. Having rehabilitated themselves against considerable odds in a minute corner of the earth, the descendants of powerless people who were pushed out of Europe and the Islamic Middle East have become what their grandparents were—the pool into which the world spits. The Jews of Israel are the screen onto which it has become socially acceptable to project the things you hate about yourself and your own country. The tool through which this psychological projection is executed is the international press.

Men det er på alle måder den forkerte historie der fortælles, skriver Friedman. Reportere ser alt gennem en israelsk optik og ser derfor ikke islams undertrykkelse og forfølgelse af minoriteter, hvor der med ISIS nu er tale om folkemord

A knowledgeable observer of the Middle East cannot avoid the impression that the region is a volcano and that the lava is radical Islam, an ideology whose various incarnations are now shaping this part of the world. Israel is a tiny village on the slopes of the volcano. Hamas is the local representative of radical Islam and is openly dedicated to the eradication of the Jewish minority enclave in Israel, just as Hezbollah is the dominant representative of radical Islam in Lebanon, the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and so forth.

Hamas is not, as it freely admits, party to the effort to create a Palestinian state alongside Israel. It has different goals about which it is quite open and that are similar to those of the groups listed above. Since the mid 1990s, more than any other player, Hamas has destroyed the Israeli left, swayed moderate Israelis against territorial withdrawals, and buried the chances of a two-state compromise. That’s one accurate way to frame the story.

Men i mediernes og nyhedsbureauernes fortælling er Israel vulkanen, en vulkan der ikke eksisterer i den sammen geopolitiske virkelighed som resten af Melleøsten. Historen om Israel er ikke om nyheder men om “something else”.

Victor Davies Hanson om Obamaæraen, der rinder ud

Hanson skrev forleden i National Review at den amerikanske vensfløj (liberalism) lå i ideologiske ruiner. “Barack Obama has accomplished, in the fashion of British prime minister Stanley Baldwin in the Twenties and Thirties, will be to avoid minor confrontations on his watch — if he is lucky — while ensuring catastrophic ones for his successors.” konkluderede han og pegede på de 11 mio. illegale indvandrere, som, hvis det står til Obama, skal have amerikansk pas. Hanson minder ikke blot om at prisen først og fremmest betales af den amerikanske middelklasse og de nye jobsøgende, men at de iblandt de illegale, hvis tilstedeværelse i USA i første omgang er gjort mulig at de har brudt amerikansk lov findes en stor minoritet, der ikke deltager aktivt eller lovlydigt i det amerikanske samfund.

Henover den sekulære dyrkelse af klimaet “that filled a deep psychological longing for some sort of transcendent meaning” til Obamas opdyrkelse af racestridigheder fra Trayvon Martin til Michael Brown, godt assisteret af mediernes memer

After the disastrous Obama tenure, the U.S. will either return to the melting pot and the idea that race and tribe are incidental, not essential, to our characters, or it will eventually go the way of all dysfunctional societies for which that was not true — Austria-Hungary, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Iraq.

Og Hanson ender med følgende skudsmål

Obama will go down in history as presiding over the most corrupt administration of the last half-century, when historians finally collate the IRS, VA, GSA, and Secret Service scandals; the erosion of constitutional jurisprudence; the serial untruths about Benghazi, amnesty, and Obamacare; the harassment of journalists; the record shakedown of Wall Street lucre in 2008 and 2012; and the flood of lobbyists into and out of the Obama administration. Eric Holder – with his jet-setting to sporting events on the public dime, spouting inflammatory racialist rhetoric, politicizing the Justice Department, selectively enforcing settled law, and being held in contempt of Congress for withholding subpoenaed documents — managed what one might have thought impossible: He has made Nixon’s attorney general John Mitchell seem a minor rogue in comparison.

Men det er udenrigspolitikken der har lidt værst, midt i en periode med stigende udfordringer. Hanson skriv i går ligeledes i National Review at der er paralleller

We are entering a similarly dangerous interlude. Collapsing oil prices — a good thing for most of the world — will make troublemakers like oil-exporting Iran and Russia take even more risks.

Terrorist groups such as the Islamic State feel that conventional military power has no effect on their agendas. The West is seen as a tired culture of Black Friday shoppers and maxed-out credit-card holders.

NATO is underfunded and without strong American leadership. It can only hope that Vladimir Putin does not invade a NATO country such as Estonia, rather than prepare for the likelihood that he will, and soon.

The United States has slashed its defense budget to historic lows. It sends the message abroad that friendship with America brings few rewards while hostility toward the U.S. has even fewer consequences.

The bedrock American relationships with staunch allies such as Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan, and Israel are fading. Instead, we court new belligerents that don’t like the United States, such as Turkey and Iran.

Og

Under such conditions, history’s wars usually start when some opportunistic — but often relatively weaker — power does something unwise on the gamble that the perceived benefits outweigh the risks. That belligerence is only prevented when more powerful countries collectively make it clear to the aggressor that it would be suicidal to start a war that would end in the aggressor’s sure defeat.

What is scary in these unstable times is that a powerful United States either thinks that it is weak or believes that its past oversight of the postwar order was either wrong or too costly — or that after Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, America is no longer a force for positive change.

A large war is looming, one that will be far more costly than the preventive vigilance that might have stopped it.

“Vi vælger at rejse til Månen” proklamerede Kennedy på Rice University i 1962, “Ikke fordi det er let, men fordi det er svært!”.

[B]ecause that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win

For Kennedy æraen handlede det om at presse sig selv mod nye mål. “Yes we can” derimod sigter til det vi allerede kan. Det fornægter på sin vis ‘american exeptionalism’ i stedet for den teoretiske akademikers drøm om at kunne omdefinere verden væk fra dens iboende problemer. “Yes we can” siger ikke meget andet end at man vil gøre, hvad der er let, frem for, hvad der er rigtigt.

Martin Lidegaard beskyldes for uvidenhed

Bent Jensen har i Jyllands-Posten ikke tiltro til Martin Lidegaards basale viden om Mellemøsten og vil gerne vide, hvad Lidegaard egentlig mener Israel skal gøre

Hver gang jeg ser og hører ham tale så tilsyneladende forstandigt og overbevisende, spørger jeg mig selv: Ved manden i virkeligheden, hvad han taler om? Er han ordentligt inde i sagerne? Har han læst på lektien, og har hans embedsmænd forsynet ham med alle de nødvendige oplysninger om konfliktens rødder – og jeg understreger alle? Eller lader han blot munden løbe?

Det meste af Mellemøsten befinder sig i et omfattende kaos. Israels nabostat Syrien er hærget af en blodig borgerkrig, der foreløbig har kostet 200.000 mennesker livet og drevet millioner på flugt. Oprørsstyrkerne i Syrien har svoret at ville udslette Israel. Det samme har Assad-regimet i Damaskus. For nylig flygtede de udstationerede FN-styrker fra syrisk territorium. Hvorhen? Til Israel, hvor de fandt sikkerhed.

(…)

Jeg synes i fuld alvor, at Lidegaard skulle forholde sig seriøst til de reelle problemer, der her er omtalt. Og der er flere endnu. Hvorfor behandler han palæstinenserne som uansvarlige børn? Hvorfor stiller han ikke krav til dem, hvis de vil have egen stat? Hvorfor siger Lidegaard & Co ikke til både Hamas-lederne og til Abbas og hans mafia i Ramallah, at de skal standse myrderierne på jøder og indstille deres anti-jødiske hadkampagner i skolebøger og i palæstinensiske medier – inklusive de officielle trykte og elektroniske Hamas- og PS-medier.

Som ansvarlig minister ved Lidegaard naturligvis, at disse afskyelige hadkampagner kører hele tiden. Men hvordan forestiller han sig så, at der skal kunne blive fred og fordragelighed mellem jøder og arabere på det diminutive område, som Israel og selvstyreområdet udgør, når den ene part hele tiden dyrker hadet til den anden part, nægter dens ret til eksistens og vil have en jødefri zone?

Samtidig skrev en foruroliget Flemming Rose ligeledes i Jyllands-Posten om Lidegaards manglende viden om Rusland

I weekenden bragte Berlingske et interview med udenrigsminister Martin Lidegaard. Ministeren afslørede her en sjælden uvidenhed om russisk økonomis tilstand, effekten af sanktioner, og hvad der venter i den nærmeste fremtid. Interviewet var aftalt på forhånd, så der er ikke tale om, at Lidegaard uden varsel fik stukket en mikrofon i hovedet.

Det gør hans udtalelser foruroligende, for hvis kendskabet til Rusland, Danmarks største sikkerhedspolitiske udfordring, ikke er større, så er risikoen stor for at begå fatale fejl. En anden mulighed er selvfølgelig, at Lidegaard bevidst misinformerer, men det gør det ikke bedre. Om russisk økonomi siger han:

»Noget af det mest bekymrende er, at den russiske økonomi er i frit fald. Vi står over for en reel risiko for russisk økonomisk kollaps. Det skyldes vores sanktioner kombineret med en stærkt faldende oliepris. Underskuddet i staten stiger, inflationen stiger voldsomt. Den almindelige russers købekraft bliver udhulet dag for dag.«

I fredags, altså nogenlunde samtidig med at Lidegaard fremsatte sin dystre vurdering, noterede The Wall Street Journal, at Rusland med en vækst på 0,8 pct. i årets første ti måneder har klaret sig bedre end ventet, på niveau med eurozonen. Det får ikke én til at tænke på en økonomi i frit fald.

I virkeligheden passer Lidegaards udtalelser på et andet land i regionen, nemlig Ukraine, der befinder sig på randen af en finansiel nedsmeltning.

Lidegaard må lægge sig lidt mere i selen, hvis virkeligheden skal moraliseres væk. Begge indlæg bør læses i deres helhed, hvis man vil vide mere end Lidegaard.

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