Blarg, indeed.

Why is he worried? Only white people have good revolutions anyway.

Shorter Daniel Pipes…a piccolo?

You would think they would be in favor of overthrowing a muslim usurper president. Go figure.

I urge the administration to adopt two policies. First, renew the push for democratization initiated by George W. Bush in 2003…

Second, invade Russia in a swift summertime campaign to capture Moscow… or something like that.

Pipes keep getting backed up. Where’s a plunger when you need one

Third, I urge young grooms to go to Fantastic Sams for a pre-wedding day haircut.

Three paragraphs in and I’m already choking on the mango-shaped bullshit.

Four decades of sclerotic, sterile stability followed. With only rare exceptions (Iraq in 2003, Gaza in 2007) did regimes get ousted; even more rarely (Sudan in 1985) did civilian dissent have a significant role.

The Iranian Revolution never happened.

Neither did the assassination of Sadat.

There was no Somali Civil War.

Not to mention, Dude, Iraq?!?!? Really? You’re talking about countries turning over their own governments and you bring up Iraq?

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu………………….

It’s going to take some serious steel wool to scrub the stupid off after reading just that much.

Oh, or the Lebanese Civil War.

Or, or, or…

The Piper at the Gates of Yawn.

good one Arky

This is why we need HTML.

Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling. (Calling for you to scare your fellow Americans into squandering their blood and treasure on neocon debacles, and such as.)

Otherwise, we would not know.
~

I also choked on the Iraq in 2003 non sequitur. Really? Thought you could just slip that into a discussion of popular uprisings? Fuck you.

Four decades of sclerotic, sterile stability followed.

Ewwww. Stability. How am I supposed to get a boner from that?

ifthethunderdontgetya, I swear that I was in the middle of googling the lyrics for my own riff and damn you.

I’m sure that when he said, “Iraq, 2003,” he really meant, “Iran, 1979.”

A follow up to my previous post by Krugman about 19th century English conservatives and poop/sewer systems: a comment by one of his readers about the same battle in France. I shall paste it here, because it. Is. Good.

26.
Michael Symes
Toronto
January 18th, 2011
2:37 pm

And to belabour this disgusting point – exerpt from John Ralston Saul “Voltaire’s Bastards”:

The famed Paris sewer system was created over a long period in the
second half of the last century. The long delays were largely due to the
virulent opposition of the property owners, who did not want to pay to
install sanitary piping in their buildings. These people were the New
Right of their day. The Prefect of Paris, Monsieur Poubelle, succeeded
in forcing garbage cans on the property owners in 1887 only after a
ferocious public battle. This governmental interference in the
individual’s right to throw his garbage into the street — which was, in reality,
the property owner’s right to leave his tenants no other option — made
Poubelle into the “cryptosocialist” of the hour. In 1900 the owners were
still fighting against the obligations both to put their buildings on the
public sewer system and to cooperate in the collection of garbage. In
1904 in the eleventh arrondissement, a working-class district, only two
thousand out of eleven thousand buildings had been piped into the
sewer system. By 1910 a little over half the city’s buildings were on the
sewers and only half the cities in France had any sewers at all.

….

It was the gradual creation of an effective bureaucracy which brought
an end to all this filth and disease, and the public servants did so against
the desires of the mass of the middle and upper classes. The free market
opposed sanitation. The rich opposed it. The civilized opposed it. Most
of the educated opposed it. That was why it took a century to finish
what could have been done in ten years. Put in contemporary terms, the
market economy angrily and persistently opposed clean public water,
sanitation, garbage collection and improved public health because they
appeared to be unprofitable enterprises which, in addition, put limits on
the individual’s freedoms. These are simple historic truths which have
been forgotten today thus permitting the fashionable belief that even public water services should be privatised in order that they night benefit from the free-market system.

Sorry, gocart.

No doubt my membership in the Shamrock Club of Columbus contributed to my speedier google-fu.
~

whoaaaaa oh oh
dom
i
no

Yes, the Middle East was a fucking garden spot from 1970 to 2010.

Daniel Pipes (DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and a visiting fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.

Fuh. King. Hell.

Though I get the impression that he at least does know how full of shit he is. It’s somehow less deplorable to think that he’s a mendacious shit earning his silver than it would be to think that someone taken that seriously would be speaking entirely from ignorance.

Oh. Wait. Bill Kristol.

*weeps quietly*

Oh. Wait. Bill Kristol.

Same shit, spawn of different assholes.

I think Smut Clyde has some woodcuts illustrating the process.
~

Given that the Iranian revolution led to the election of Reagan, does Pipes think it was a good or a bad thing?

What does a poop/sewer system have to do with Pipes? Oh wait . . . Carry on.

the fashionable belief that even public water services should be privatised in order that they night benefit from the free-market system.

Bechtel, oh Bechtel, wherefore art thou Bechtel?

Hey, I just realized, that popular revolt in Iraq in 2003, it also smashed the tyranny of collectivist sewer pipes! Now they can have shit in their gutters like free men.

Four decades of sclerotic, sterile stability followed.

If you experience more that four decades of scelortic, sterile stability, please contact your doctor.

Given Pipes generally genocidal inclinations toward all of the Islamic faith, I would think he would be delighted by the prospect of them killing one another. Maybe he is afraid they won’t leave any for him to torture and kill personally.

Oh, fucking shit, that asshole again. I’ll get out of the boat, but before I do, Pipes’ record is worth reiterating;

1) Supported arming Saddam during the Iran/Iraq war, because, he said, it could be the “beginning of a fruitful relationship.”

2) Was one of the many “expert” douchenozzles shaking their heads at the Oklahoma City bombing and how it was clearly and unmistakeably Middle Eastern terrorism.

3) Wrote a long and cynical article during the Gulf War about how American troops had no prospects of occupying the area because it would lead to a terrifying sectarian war. Ten years later, suddenly reversed his policy when invading Iraq became the conservative party line.

4) Claimed that invading Iraq would reduce terrorism and President Mubarak was wrong to claim otherwise. (Later admitted he blew that call).

Even by the standards of the GOP, this guy’s one of the biggest fucking hacks on God’s green earth, and when it comes to his supposed area of expertise, he doesn’t know shit from peanut butter, which makes me shudder to think what his columns are like when he writes about anything else. That this guy has a job at all is a testament to why our politics keep us in a such a permanent state of shit.

Okay. Let’s see what’s outside the boat…

Oh boy, he said “domino effect.” Isn’t that cute?

jon stewart is on a freaking roll tonight…

If one exalts in the power of the disenfranchised to overthrow their dull, cruel and greedy master, one also looks ahead with trepidation to the Islamist implications of this upheaval.

If you’re worried about Islamist implications in upheavals like this, then you might want to ask yourself why it is that Islamists so often seem to be the only mainstream populist movement in the Middle-East. Might it be that the fuckups in Western foreign policy contributed?

The modernist, secular, democratic movement in Iran was destroyed by the SIS and CIA in 1953 (with the approval of some parts of the Islamic clergy, by the way). Without that coup, there likely would never have been a revolution in 1979.

There are no quite as blatant parallels in the Arab world, but when the British created Israel, they also gave demagogues in the Arab world (first nationalists, then islamists) a battle cry that they could easily use to seize power. Sure would be nice if the Western powers had actually paid attention to local concerns during their withdrawal, wouldn’t it? Or better yet, hadn’t occupied these territories in the first place.

The modernist, secular, democratic movement in Iran was destroyed by the SIS and CIA in 1953

We did the same in Iraq, ensconcing guess who.

I have your blatant parallels right here

For all his faults, Mr. Ben Ali stood stalwart as a foe of Islamism, battling not only the terrorists, but also (somewhat as in pre-2002 Turkey) the soft jihadists in schoolrooms and in television studios.

Translation; not only did he repress violent terrorists, but, like all wannabe totalitarians, he also repressed any movement that asserted (in a political way) that there was a higher authority than himself (God).

“Soft jihadism,” in the language of fundamentalist anti-Muslims like Danny Pipes, simply means “Islam.” At the very best, it means “any Muslim who acts Muslim anywhere outside the privacy of his own home, and even there only when and how we say that it’s okay.” Targeting Islam as a whole’s been a trend in the GOP for the last couple years, and it should be scary, because there’s simply no way we’re going to defeat a religion; if we try, we’re going to lose, period.

His not allowing alternate Islamic outlooks to develop could now prove a great mistake.

Well! No shit. You going to tell that to any of the jackasses who pay your salary? Because the last time anyone advocated “alternate Islamic outlooks” over here, in was in Lower Manhattan, and I seem to remember you all took it pretty badly.

I’d be a huge fan of you reaching out to other Islamic currents (the Moroccans have done a pretty good job of cultivating these), but somehow, I doubt if you mean it.

Not even going to bother with the gratuitous and irrelevant Eurabia comment.

What Franklin D. Roosevelt allegedly said of a Latin America dictator, “He’s a bastard, but he’s our bastard,” applies to Mr. Ben Ali and the other Arab strongmen, leaving U.S. government policy in seeming disarray

Yeah, here’s the thing; “bastards” like this have absolutely no long-term viability of their own. You should’ve learned that with the Shah; investing in an individual when you know his entire country hates his guts does not pay off. It’s not a strategy. So what is your strategy?

As Washington sorts out options, I urge the administration to adopt two policies. First, renew the push for democratization initiated by George W. Bush in 2003, but this time with due caution, intelligence and modesty, recognizing that his flawed implementation inadvertently facilitated the Islamists to acquire more power. Second, focus on Islamism as the civilized world’s greatest enemy and stand with our allies, including those in Tunisia, to fight this blight.

Not going to work. Your first point, in the way you mean it, is a contradition in terms; you want people to support democracy but only when it elects the kind of governments we want. That’s not going to fly with the Arab street, and they’ll see through it in a New York minute. Your last point puts the nail in the coffin, because you define “Islamism” so broadly that basically nothing other than a U.S. installed puppet would be acceptable to you. And that’s not acceptable to the Arab peoples, nor should it be to anyone who actually values democracy.

We did the same in Iraq, ensconcing guess who.

We did?

I know we supported the coup that brought the Ba’ath to power (in the sixties under Kennedy), but I thought that coup was against a military government. I didn’t hear we’d actually overthrown a democracy.

I thought that coup was against a military government.

I guess it was, but one which actually worked to make life better for the common people and nationalized the holdings of the foreign oil companies, as well as being sympathetic to the communists.

bbkf, and those west coast, it’s not as good was the words S. Colbert put into Ms. Braezinski’s mouth! Todully awesome!

W-A-Y Off-Topic:

Brief pickup from two threads ago; the WW I strand … and my last book recommendation for <The Face Of Battle: John Keegan closely investigates three battles.

The battles of Agincourt (“We few. We happy few. We band of brothers…” and Waterloo are recognizable, at least as Famous Placenames and/or Vapid Rhetorical Devices. [See Jim DeMint. I would wager Big Bucks there any number of Sadlies who have a fine knowledge of Agincourt and Waterloo. If I had Big Bucks.]

However Keegan’s third battle–The Somme in WW I (1916)–is more-or-less obscure. Here are highlights from Wiki:

The Battle of the Somme…. took place during the First World War between 1 July and 18 November 1916 … on both banks of the river of the same name. The battle consisted of an offensive by the British and French armies against the German Army, which since invading France in August 1914 had occupied large areas of that country.

The Battle of the Somme was one of the largest battles of the First World War: by the time fighting had petered out in late autumn 1916 the forces involved had suffered more than 1.5 million casualties , making it one of the bloodiest military operations ever recorded.

The opening day of the battle on 1 July 1916 saw the British Army suffer the worst one-day combat losses in its history, with nearly 60,000 casualties. Because of the composition of the British Army, at this point a volunteer force with many battalions comprising men from specific local areas, these losses had a profound social impact and have given the battle a lasting cultural legacy in Britain.

At the end of the battle, British and French forces had penetrated a total of 6 miles (9.7 km) into German occupied territory.

Keegan’s summation at the end of the book is outstanding. The Face of Battle is Must Read.

bbkf, and those west coast, it’s not as good was the words S. Colbert put into Ms. Braezinski’s mouth! Todully awesome!

watched it also and laffed mightily…

i am also going to order a coma cozy…

This fucking guy, he can’t have mere peace, it has to be interesting, progressive peace. Otherwise it’s all sclerotic. He sounds like a liberal.

W-A-Y Off-Topic again:

Recent polling of voter attitudes on gay marriage, civil unions, and denial of rights. (Let’s call ‘neither’ it what it is.)

So what was I doing at the Big Orange Cheerleaders site? Gathering intel, man, gathering intel. Another recon foray for the plucky bands of Guerrilla Voters hiding out in the hills.

I urge the administration to adopt two policies. First, renew the push for democratization initiated by George W. Bush in 2003…

Second, invade Russia in a swift summertime campaign to capture Moscow… or something like that. — pennystinkard

I laughed muchly!

Damn! NEW thread! —>

This is why we need HTML. — Thunder

S,N! has been smokin’ hot since you returned!

The second worry concerns nearby Europe, already deeply incompetent at dealing with the Islamist challenge.

One can only wonder what competence at dealing with the Islamist challenge looks like.

Makes me want to go listen to Joe’s Garage again.

The second worry concerns nearby Europe, already deeply incompetent at dealing with the Islamist challenge.

Right. Since, the Europeans NEVAH! had to deal with Islamic challenges.

However Keegan’s third battle–The Somme in WW I (1916)–is more-or-less obscure.

WTF!?

Of course I am English, and I live in France, but still, obscure!

Of course I am English, and I live in France, but still, obscure!

While Snidely might bet his imaginary bucks on my historical knowledge I’m not going to reciprocate.

I presume Snidely meant “obscure West of the Atlantic”, given that the very quote he provides refers to its “lasting cultural legacy” in the UK. Even so – is it? It’s one of those things I tend to assume everyone knows about, but is that just me being Eurocentric?

Even so – is it?

No.

Makes me want to go listen to Joe’s Garage again.

Almost any time is a good time for some Watermelon in Easter Hay. And can somebody get this thread a double short macchiato? I think it needs a little pick-me-up.

I presume Snidely meant “obscure West of the Atlantic”
I dunno. Does Canada count as “West of the Atlantic?” ‘Cause they sure remember the Somme there. (Hint: why is Canada Day July 1st?)

battling not only the terrorists, but also (somewhat as in pre-2002 Turkey) the soft jihadists in schoolrooms and in television studios.

Soft jihadism? Jesus, he’s talking about speech and the press, and praising a dictator specifically for denying what Madison called the “great rights of mankind.”

I would wager that most Americans are unaware of the Somme, considering that many cannot locate France on a map and are sincere in their belief that that country has never won a military victory.

The Battle of the Bulge is less obscure in the States, but only because of all the weight-loss puns.

moderately good looking not so hunchback said,

January 19, 2011 at 4:52

whoaaaaa oh oh
dom
i
no

Excellent.

Christ, what an asshole. Maybe if the USA didn’t prop up unpopular dictatorships in the first place the Islamists wouldn’t end up getting popular support?

“We always back the wrong horse
Then expect to win the race
Escalate the body count
In order to save our face”
– The False Prophets, “Banana Split Republic”

*Churchill voice* We will never forget Mr Pipes’s brilliant work in exposing the next King of England as a possible Muslim convert.
The evidence is overwhelming
He toured the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque for almost two hours and “took keen interest in studying various sections at the mosque, including the main prayer hall.”

:Keegans battle of Hamburg
and was sent off in a mid-season friendly against FC Lübeck after knocking out an opposition player with a punch

“What Franklin D. Roosevelt allegedly said of a Latin America dictator, “He’s a bastard, but he’s our bastard,” applies to Mr. Ben Ali and the other Arab strongmen.”

As someone who is both a bastard himself and alleged to have fathered several, I feel as if I can speak with some expertise on this matter. First off, never acknowledge a bastard as your own without a paternity test. In some states, mere acknowledgement of parternity can be construed as proof of such. Second, the preferred nomenclature these days is love child.

For crying out loud, do you know how much money we are going to have to borrow from China to pay child support if we start acknowledging all our bastards, uh.. I mean love childs all over the world?

Pipes learnt this gig from his Daddy, who made a living scaring us with Commies. Now Pipes fils has discovered a new menace.

But I really hope they don’t do that cuz, I mean, blarg.

——————————————————————————–
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha