Thursday, December 18, 2014

Response to Sydney tragedy: "Why you gotta hate?"

On Monday, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott addressed his country's people while the terrorist hostage siege in the Lindt Café in Sydney played out.
Standing in front of a Christmas tree (oh, how anti-diversity of him), Mr. Abbott said: "'[O]ur thoughts and prayers must above all go out to the individuals who are caught up in this. I can think of almost nothing more distressing, more terrifying than to be caught up in such a situation, and our hearts go out to those people".
But if I was Mr. Abbott, I would have said at Martin Place, in the wake of the siege, while Sydneysiders were lying flowers on the ground near the café in honor of victims Tori Johnson and Katrina Dawson, "to all of you who took selfies of yourselves in front of the Lindt establishment while the drama was going on, who thought this situation was 'cool', and was nothing more than an opportunity to earn likes on Facebook or Twitter, go home. Get out of here now. You did not care then; why should you care now? No-one wants to see you here. As a result of your selfish, callous and morally vacuous actions, you have nullified any right to be here."
There are many questions to be asked about the gunman Man Haron Monis, who Abbott noted had "a long history of violent crime, infatuation with extremism and mental instability". Australian authorities will have to account for why Monis had his asylum accepted, why he had a gun license, why he was walking free in society after murdering his wife and, above all, why he was not on a terrorist watchlist.
But more chilling than Monis's actions in Sydney's financial district earlier this week was the reaction to it. Social media has not only given us the cretinous Cro Magnons that thought they were clever to snap photos of themselves in front of the café during the height of the drama. It has also given us those halfwits whose response to this tragedy is to think not of the victims and the suffering and anguish of the siege survivors, but to re-assure Australian Muslims.
The Australian sense of "fair go" used to be what made that country so charming, and so great.  Not now.  Not with regard to this.  This type of acceptance will bring Australia down.
The hashtag generation, the same people that have shown such jurisprudence and acted with such dignity with regard to Mike "Gentle Giant" Brown and Eric Garner by protesting in the middle of main thoroughfares and calling for the death of cops, struck back against "Islamophobia" by creating #illridewithyou, to show solidarity with Muslim citizens.
While I certainly agree that no innocent Muslim should have to suffer for Monis's crimes, this movement speaks to a larger issue. Namely, if you even for a moment questioned Islam's place in Australia's open and generous society in the wake of Bali and now the Lindt café siege, then you are the problem. You are what's wrong with Australia and the West. The Muslim community must be protected—über alles!
Social media was either in its infancy or practically non-existent during the time of 9/11 and the Bali bombings. One now wonders what the righteous response of liberal mush-heads everywhere would have been: #illflywithyou and #illgotoanightclubwithyou?
This absolutely spits in the face of every siege survivor, that the first thoughts of their young liberal countrymen was not, "how are the hostages?", but "oh, anyone with a dark beard or a hijab is going to face potential abuse today."
And what credit will this buy us with the Muslim community? We'll just end up, as usual, looking like saps—useful idiots—to them.   They won't be appreciative for more than three seconds before declaring jihad all the fuck over again. No wonder they're slowly taking over the entire world. Vladimir Putin shakes his head at how the rest of the West automatically celebrates Islam and regularly turns a blind eye to its atrocities. The Russian leader is correct in this assessment.
It doesn't matter how often this happens, at Ford Hood, in Moore, Oklahoma, in Pakistan, in Sydney, in London, in Madrid, in Boston, in New York, etc. It's always, without fail, a case of forgive and forget.
It's only a matter of a very short time before this generosity of thought and action results in a networked caliphate of the West, a land where Sharia law is the only law.
Imagine if this curse known as social media had existed during the 1970s and '80s. How many mulligans do you believe would have been handed to the Irish community in the wake of an IRA bombing? How many hashtags showing solidarity with them would have been created, do you think?
And, where were the hashtags offering to walk and ride with ordinary Jewish citizens during the Hamas-initiated atrocities concerning Gaza earlier this year? Anti-Semitism is at record levels across the world. One could argue that Jews are in danger everytime they step out their front doors. How many people have offered to protect Jews? Oh, gee, that's right: There were no such offers. Nothing makes a social media-dependent Left-winger happier than a beaten-up, degraded Jew. Of course, these people would throw their own mothers into a gas chamber if some bespectacled beardy-weirdy patted them on the back and told them that they were a good, tolerant, diversity-celebrating person to do so.
I'll demonstrate to you how seriously the Muslim community takes its role in a Western society, dear reader: You may have heard about the indefensible (because it was absolutely preventable) tragedy that afflicted the town of Rotherham in northern England. Between 1997 and 2013, sixteen years in total, local white girls as young as twelve were drawn into white slavery by men of Pakistani extraction. The authorities did nothing about it because, (1) they simply couldn't be bothered and (2) they were fearful of getting on the wrong side of the political correctness fence. If they exposed this wrongdoing and attributed it to Asians (a.k.a. Muslims), it would bring about repercussions that they weren't prepared (i.e. weren't willing) to handle.
Sure, you can blame the complete cowardice of the Rotherham police force. But that would be akin to blaming a dog for its fleas, simply because it is accustomed to rolling about on the ground. The police were tied by the then-Labour government's absurd law enforcement guidelines. The real issue is the total callousness with which members of the Muslim community went about exploiting the native population.
And how have they responded to the Rotherham scandal? A group of Muslim cab drivers have spoken out against a policy in which their taxi company will provide a white driver if so requested by a customer. This, in their view, amounts to "unprecedented and unacceptable" racism. The Rochdale Muslim Community group has taken up their cause, and this the statement they released, in full:
"It has become evident to anyone that follows events in the media that Islam is being portrayed negatively and that Muslims living in Britain are bearing the brunt of discrimination and violence. There is little doubt that this has resulted in not only the community feeling vilified but could potentially break down social cohesion within society. Irresponsible comments from senior local and national politicians are aiding the negative portrayal of the Muslim community. Time and time again some politicians and the media have attempted to equate issues such as grooming and the Muslim community as being one and the same. It is only natural that this sort of misinformation will stigmatise the whole of the Muslim community. This has meant that casual xenophobia towards Muslims has now become an acceptable norm. Unfortunately, we are now facing a situation where a disdain of the Muslim community is something which is deemed acceptable. We do not wish to go back to a situation where discrimination against minorities becomes the norm. We believe that all segments of society have a duty to stand up against Islamophobia in all of its guises no matter how subtle or apparent. We intend to double our efforts in order to alleviate the misconceptions that have been manufactured by irresponsible speech, not only by farright but mainstream politicians and the media. Part of our action plan will be to educate the wider society about the Islamic belief to help overcome stereotypes against Islam."
Tempted as I was to truncate the above statement, I couldn't. Why? Because I wanted to demonstrate that there were no apologies offered for the scandal or even any recognition of why it was such a sensitive issue for the local population. There is not even one sentence stating, "While we can understand the sentiments of the local community and its justifiable anger and distrust, we want to work to correct that." I don't know if I'd believe it, frankly, but it would have been nice to see it in the statement. But, alas, this declaration amounts to nothing more than "We are having a tough time of it. You need to try harder to understand our concerns. When something rotten happens as a result of our community being here, you will just have to suck it up. If there is any social cohesion breakdown as a result, then it is your fault for not being tolerant of Islam, the ultimate religion of peace, which you stupid white infidels refuse to embrace and over which we would happily slaughter you all if there was any chance of getting away with it".
This is the sort of attitude that gets handed down to us by the Muslim community and their defenders, everywhere, every day. I don't know why the hashtag generation is so worried. Their precious pet people have got the world by the balls. But yet, so do liberals, and they don't realize it either. Everyone's got to be a victim.

Friday, December 12, 2014

A jerk is a jerk, period

Here we are in the lead-up to Christmas (not "holidays," thank you very much, but Christmas), a mere fourteen days away. But you wouldn't know it by the way some people act.
Anyone who hasn't been brainwashed by Mary Poppins or any Hugh Grant movie you care to mention knows that London has its fair share of downright nasty people, the sort you find yourself wishing would get a pistol-whipping sometime soon. You can't help but think, how did they get this far in life without once having had the bejesus beaten out of them?
Standing in line at the Marks & Spencer Simply Food store at Liverpool Street last night, I heard a man who was probably in his 40s raising his voice at one of the check-out points. The cashier had made the decision to deny him the purchase of a bottle of wine because he already appeared too loaded.
Predictably, in the manner of a spoiled, entitled, elite-educated schoolboy, he kicked off. "What do you mean I can't have this?" Then, a flurry of curse words and ad hominems. And the accusation that the cashiers—by this time, three of them were present to confront this "gentleman"—were the type "to join and fight for ISIS." More curse words, more insults, more crybaby behavior. And finally, for the parting shot, "Marks & Spencer, run by Jews!"
At one point, he pulled the ol' "Do you know who I am?" schtick, identifying himself as working for The Evening Standard. Ah, The Evening Standard. The same rabble-rousing rag owned by a former KGB agent, Alexander Lebedev. No wonder the paper is free; no sane person would pay a penny for it.
Why exactly am I relating the tale of this shit smear on two legs? Good question, dear reader. Firstly, I guess it's to demonstrate that there are bad apples on any position on the political spectrum. I would postulate that he and I would agree on many things. He may have voted for David Cameron. I would have done so as well, had I the vote here. He also may have voted for Boris Johnson, loathes Ken Livingston and bristles at the way his taxes are being used to fund layabouts. Again, same here.
But I am not going to defend a loud-mouthed bully. I don't know if the workers at the M&S food store are all Muslim. They do seem to be predominantly Pakistani or Indian. Some of them could be Hindu. At least they're working. I don't care if they break out the prayer mats at certain times of the day. They're fellow tax-payers.
I'm often tough on the Muslim community myself.  But only when it displays intolerant or jihad-sympathetic behavior or appears to be on the receiving end of special treatment.  In this sense, I regard them no differently than gay militants, black militants, feminist militants, et al.  These people talk about celebrating diversity, but it's just a means to an end, and a very convenient one at that, for them.  They don't live by their rule at all, but will tell me that I have issues with diversity and acceptance.
I have three simple rules by which I abide. One, that you get your butt out of bed and out of the house and contribute to society in some meaningful way. Two, if you're OK living next door to me, I won't give you any attitude either. Three, that you aren't possessed of a desire to kill me. That's it. Simple, is it not? Work. Show me respect (and expect to receive it in return). And don't advocate the death of me or others like me. That's all I ask.
If you're going to break one of my cardinal rules by being disrespectful and not taking responsibility for yourself, then I will not befriend you. I don't care how much we may have in common. I really like German Shepherd dogs. That does not make me a fan of Adolf Hitler.
Secondly, I wanted to demonstrate that I am not blind to the jerks of the world who may so happen to hold conservative views. Again, there are bad apples in every group, every walk of life. When was the last time a liberal, anywhere, told off the idiots in their midst who go too far? One of the biggest reasons why the Occupy protests quickly became so infamous was due to the fact that no standards were maintained. They absorbed any bum with a grievance and a penchant for hard drugs or alcohol abuse into their camps.
Any Lefty protest anywhere is going to have a very sizeable contingent of black-clad anarchist creeps in Guy Fawkes masks. You can bet the house on it.  But do these cretins ever get called out or challenged by the protest leaders?
Here's another rhetrocial question, just for the hell of it: If you didn't wipe your behind, would it stink? (Just ask an Occu-pooper.)
As for you, Mr. Evening Standard guy: You're lucky that I was headed into work after making my purchases and didn't have the time for a confrontation. Otherwise, I absolutely would have taken you to the woodshed.