[lit-ideas] Re: The de-islamization of Europe

Lawrence: "You say bizarre insulting things that don't relate to anything I've 
said or believe.  You make up things and impose them on me as though I must 
believe what you say I believe."

Hypocrite!
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Lawrence Helm 
  To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2007 5:16 PM
  Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The de-islamization of Europe


  Joerg:

   

  You write, "Just try a bit harder, and feel free to tell me just what it was 
that made you want to evade discussion."

   

  You say bizarre insulting things that don't relate to anything I've said or 
believe.  You make up things and impose them on me as though I must believe 
what you say I believe.   I've been through that before with others, attempting 
to give benefit of doubt.  I'm not interesting in wasting my time trying to 
figure out why some hostile person is so hostile.   If he or she passes a 
certain point in regard to civility, then I am done with them - at least while 
their mouths are full of their incivilities.

   

  If you want to discuss something then behave yourself.

   

  Lawrence

   

   

  -----Original Message-----
  From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
On Behalf Of joerg benesch
  Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2007 8:02 AM
  To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The de-islamization of Europe

   

  Lawrence Helm schrieb:

  > 

  > (...) Joerg seems to have gravitated into a frothing irrationalism and 

  > be beyond communicating with; so I shan't try,

  > 

  Just try a bit harder, and feel free to tell me just what it was that 

  made you want to evade discussion.

  > 

  > but the Serbs had been brutalized by the Ottoman Empire and as the 

  > Austro-Hungarian Empire took over from them, everything was left in 

  > place -- even to the allowing of the 6,000 Turkish landowners to 

  > retain their 100,000 Serbian serfs. And yes, I find that intolerable - 

  > not I hope from an anachronistic point of view, but certainly 

  > colonialism was an ugly manifestation of Europe's belief in its own 

  > superiority.

  > 

  Now here's the second Damaskuserlebnis within 24 hours! A neocon 

  discovering his heart for the poor & oppressed? What's next? 

  volunteering in New Orleans? Collecting alms for the Palestinians? 

  Suicide-bombing Wall Street? I suspect, however, that your sympathy is 

  not as much with the Serbian people as it is with those unwashed ("Black 

  Hand"!) Chetnik fascists - the killers of the 90ies, remember? - who may 

  flatter your taste for "military prowess". BTW, with your sympathy for 

  the "Serbs", you are in the privileged society of the Russian Czar and 

  his noble Panslavist warmongers. Maybe we'll live and hear you harping 

  the Ode to Despotism soon ...

  > 

  > It is good to be past the overt manifestations of that period. 

  > Unfortunately, as Fromkin and others tell us, in the aftermath, the 

  > rulers who took over in the Middle East for European governors turned 

  > out to be worse in many ways than their predecessors.

  > 

  Just want to annotate that the Brits, who followed the Turks in, say, 

  Mesopotamia and Palestine, were way far worse than the Habsburg Emmpire 

  could ever have been, and the impact of their, er, misrule lasts on to 

  this very day, generating the core of the muslim world's resentment 

  towards the West. I'm glad, but also somewhat uneasy, that you, after 

  your wonderful conversion, indirectly show your sympathy for their cause 

  here.

  > 

  > Does the glory of the Habsburgs compensate for their brutal and 

  > insensitive treatment of the Serbs? No, of course not - any more than 

  > the brilliant and creative period that preceded the Nazi ascendancy in 

  > Germany compensated for that particular European horror. Much has been 

  > written about Ferdinand's own plans, evidencing that he was more 

  > benevolent and insightful than some have painted him, but he was 

  > nevertheless operating within a colonial system and the system was 

  > insensitive and rotten.

  > 

  "Brutal & insensitive" - that really the supporter of the primitive & 

  heavy-handed occupations in Afghanistan and Mesopotamia speaking? To be 

  sure the Bosnian Serbs lived in a bad conditions, but won't you grant 

  the Habsburgs a certain amount of time for what you might call "nation 

  building"? By contemporary standards - which are, to a great deal, set 

  by you neocons - the treatment of the Serbs was extremely mild and 

  understanding, and what is more, never left the limits of the law. 

  Gitmo? Abu Ghraib? - unthinkable! As for sensitivity, a primitive bully 

  like Bremer would never have qualified for the k. k. Civil Service. If 

  you really do feel that delicately about the Serbs of the past - why not 

  hurry to the rescue of the Mesopotamian & Palestinian peoples of today? 

  Obviously, they're more endangered & oppressed than those unwashed 

  Bosnian Chetniks could ever even imagine

  > 

  > It is absurd and illogical to assert that trying to understand the 

  > Serbs and shed more light on Princip's motivation during this period 

  > is condoning Terrorism as a principle. Every historian writing of this 

  > period is going to provide his understanding of that motivation.

  > 

  Logic is a problematic claim on which one should not fail to deliver. 

  You have been shown to hold highly biased views on this matter, yet even 

  so, if you find Princip's action justified by his motivation, we may 

  justly guess that you either hold that a certain kind of motivation 

  justifies terrorism, or that there are at least certain groups for whom 

  this is true, while there may be other groups with a similiar motivation 

  whose terrorism is real bad terrorism. In the former case, I don't see 

  why you shouldn't use the general phrase "There are motivations that 

  justify terrorism", in the latter, you may want to deliver a criterion 

  to identify groups with a licence for terrorism.

   

  gravitating back into my dark star

  joerg

  from Suebia

   

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