[lit-ideas] Re: The de-islamization of Europe
- From: "Simon Ward" <sedward@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 17:47:11 -0000
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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