About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

13 Replies to “An interesting arrest in Russia”

  1. Someone may very well be lying… My “bet” is on that delusional Mahoundian guy…

    Mohammed Emwazi: Tanzanian officer recalls airport arrest (BBC, March 8, 2015)
    http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31785820

    “Mohammed Emwazi, the man who went on to become “Jihadi John”, was deported from Tanzania for being drunk and abusive, a police officer has told the BBC.

    Emwazi has claimed he was threatened and interrogated under direct orders from MI5 when he went there in 2009.

    But the BBC has been shown a custody record from the time of his arrest.

    The officer said Emwazi had not been allowed into Tanzania because he had “brought chaos to the airport” and “behaved like alcohol was involved”…..

    This account of events is in contrast to emails written by Emwazi after his arrest, angry at what he claims was abuse he suffered.

    In emails written to campaigners at advocacy group Cage, he said the trip had transformed his life.

    He wrote: “My life changed completely when I went on holiday after graduation at the age of 20 to Tanzania. I had been abused by Tanzanian authorities.”

    Emwazi said he had been threatened at gunpoint and was later told to ask the British government why he had been stopped.

    Emwazi said this had left him “in shock”.

    However, the officer who arrested him insisted Emwazi’s account was not true.

    “Immigration cases are given special treatment. They are not touched, they are not harmed. Emwazi was not tortured.””

  2. Smell that toxic Mahoundian breath…

    Anti-terror strategy a toxic brand – Muslim former officer (BBC, March 9, 2015)
    http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31792238

    “The government’s “Prevent” strategy aimed at stopping violent extremism has become “a toxic brand”, a former senior Muslim police officer has said.

    Dal Babu said some officers involved in the programme lacked basic knowledge of race and faith issues.

    Most Muslims did not trust the programme and many saw it as a form of spying, he said….”

  3. Ezra vs. Chomsky I & II

    Ezra grants Chomsky’s contention that the 60s and 70s were repressive, oppressive, a time of conservative hegemony against which there was a fight for civil rights, which was good, a fight against the bad Vietnam War, and ‘an effort to break through constraints against what could be articulated and what people could hear.’ Ezra asks whether the left cares as much about free speech now as in the 60s and 70s.

    Chomsky’s discussion of the First Amendment (by way of response) begins with what is almost a sneer at it: he says, dismissively, that ‘it doesn’t really say very much.’

    Amendment I

    Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

    In Part Two of the his discussion with Ezra, Chomsky’s own preferred choice for moral and ethical comparison to the U.S. is Iran.

    ‘Imagine if Iran was carrying out an assassination campaign [like Obama’s drone campaign].’

    ‘The duty of an Iranian dissident is not to join the huge chorus of condemnation of Israel and the United States (though their crimes are very real). The duty of an honest dissident, an honest, an honorable person in Iran, would be criticize the crimes of Iran.’

    ‘Shirin Ebadi in Iran is not a grouch.’ (She is instead an ‘honorable dissident,’ which, after much equivocation, Chomsky at this point is generously and grudgingly allowing that he is).

    Chomsky draws a moral equivalence between the objectives of Iranian and US foreign policies when he says that Iranian droning would be ethically comparable to American droning. (His safety hatch here is that he is citing a Gallup poll giving ‘global opinion’, not giving his own view.)

    He relativizes American and Iranian foreign policy ‘crimes’ by not allowing that there might be some non-relative basis for deciding that the exercise of American power in the world is finally preferable to the exercise of Iranian power, however flawed the American system might be, however far short of ideals like those in the First Amendment it might fall.

    Of course Chomsky gives no consideration to the perspective that a moral foreign policy, from an American perspective, might be one that protects American interests.

    Then, after making these arguments that rely on relativizing US and Iranian moral authority expressed through foreign policy, comes the main escape clause: Chomsky says he himself is not comparable to dissidents in Iran; they are under much harsher repression.

    Why might that be?

    Opening words of the Preamble to the Iranian Constitution:

    The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran advances the cultural, social, political, and economic institutions of Iranian society based on Islamic principles and norms, which represent an honest aspiration of the Islamic Ummah…

    That First Amendment that ‘doesn’t say very much’ has yet helped shape a social and political reality radically superior to that in Iran. The aspiration of ‘the Islamic Ummah’ is world domination. But the duty of an honorable American, according to Chomsky, amounts to making slippery false equivalences between the United States, his own country, and a declared enemy.

    • Correction: the Gallup Poll evasion was with reference to global perception of the U.S. being the greatest threat to world peace. A reason for this perception is Obama’s ‘global assassination campaign.’

    • The actual quote is quite telling: ‘Can you imagine if, say, Iran was carrying out a global campaign to assassinate people who it thought might be of harm to them? I mean we’d probably nuke them. But when we do it, it’s fine, and you call it “left”’. (Part 2, 1:50)

      So campaigns of global assassination are something carried out only by polities of the right. Chomsky’s purported left here is Horowitz’s ‘army of the saints.’

  4. One of Chomsky’s strategies is to ‘problematize’ everything, which in part means never giving a straight answer to a simple question. That which is self-evident to the rest of us (e.g. Islamic State is evil) is due to our inadequate comprehension. By contrast, all of Chomsky’s radical propositions are ‘obvious.’

    The extreme version of this is to respond that the opposite of an apparent truth is true. So, for example, there is no point at which the Islamic State becomes enough of a threat to the U.S. that Chomsky should desist from criticizing the U.S. and instead direct criticism at the Islamic State.

    It is Chomsky who introduces the word ‘dissident’ in the exchange, but he rebukes Ezra for repeating it without defining it, as though it is Ezra’s responsibility to define the terms that Chomsky elects to use.

    Although he claims his role as a ‘dissident’ is not just negative, all Chomsky really does is tear America down, and without offering any superior real-world alternative:

    Ezra: Is there a manifestation of these ideals on Earth that you think America should be more like?

    Chomsky: I don’t’ think there’s any particular society that I would… Any society that I can think of, if I were living there, I’d be criticizing the aspects of its policies that deserve harsh criticism.

    This is the Critical Theory tactic for undermining the West – making the perfect the enemy of the good, as Ezra puts it – and it’s back once more to the Frankfurt School.

  5. Part 3, Chomsky’s main points

    Israel is the aggressor in the Middle East.

    Iran has never invaded anyone [thus it is not aggressive]

    The UN has repeatedly condemned Israel, therefore Israel is a criminal state.

    U.S. crimes in Middle Eastern Muslim countries create refugees which the U.S. fails its moral obligation to absorb.

    The Charlie Hebdo attack was an understandable reaction to French oppression of Algerians in Algeria and their further repression and marginalization in Paris.

    The Islamic terror attacks in Paris and Copenhagen were ‘massively condemned’ in the Islamic world.

    1,000 Muslims surrounded a synagogue in Norway to protect it.

    Anti-Semitism in the Middle East is a result of Israel’s ‘politicide’ of the Palestinians.

    Growing Jew-hatred in Europe is because of the rise of right-wing neo-Nazi forces.

    • I’m impressed you could watch him. I found his rhetorical tricks so repugnant I had to stop and take a shower after the first 2 minutes.

      Constant misdirection and intellectual slight of hand reminded me too much of the Trudeau years in Canada. I don’t know how Ezra managed it.

      • Chomsky has been clouding the issues since I was in high school, and I have family and friends who still think he’s right about most things. I’ve had to work unpleasantly closely with people thrilled to have corresponded with him (talk about feeling you want a shower).

        I thought what Ezra did here showed great restraint, basically allowing Chomsky to reveal his intellectual dishonesty across the three segments. Chomsky starts out evasive and ends being outright mendacious. I wonder if Ezra has another segment in mind discussing the exchange.