Off Topic The Politics Thread

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kiwiqpr said:
in my personal opinion

he will have to eat the chocolates himself before they go out of date
also
not many people will have seen this or wish to click through to the spectator

Is Boris wrong to claim Islam set the Muslim world back?
Douglas Murray
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Boris Johnson
Douglas Murray
18 July 2019
5:17 PM
18 July 2019
5:17 PM
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I do love the Guardian. As the years go by almost no publication continues to give me such constant amusement. This week has been no exception.
A couple of days after first reading it I still remain almost impossibly amused by the paper’s lead, front-page story from earlier this week. The banner headline read ‘Boris Johnson claimed Islam put Muslim world “centuries behind”.’ As the sub-header for Frances Perraudin’s piece put it:
‘Anger as 2007 essay lamenting ‘no spread of democracy’ in Islamic world comes to light.’
Comes to light, eh? Must be some under-the-counter pamphlet, previously hidden-from-public-view stuff. That impression is reinforced as we start reading Perraudin’s piece, a piece that sets off with a paragraph of scintillating promise:
‘Boris Johnson has been strongly criticised for arguing Islam has caused the Muslim world to be “literally centuries behind” the west, in an essay unearthed by the Guardian.’
‘Unearthed’. Wow, this must be exceptionally secret – as well as strong – stuff. So we have to keep reading to discover that the offence complained of did not occur during a rally in a Bavarian beer-hall, but in ‘An appendix added to a later edition of The Dream of Rome, his [Johnson’s] 2006 book about the Roman empire.’ So in fact when the Guardian’s intrepid correspondent, Frances Perraudin, talks about ‘unearthing’ something, what she really means is that she has read some of a book published a little over a decade ago. You can say many things about reading books, including reading books by prominent politicians, but the turning of research into ‘unearthing’ is the sort of self-glorification and task-inflation that could only occur in a trade that is dying.
And what is the ‘Anger’ which helps to make this Guardian front-page story about a published book? Have the Ayatollahs in Iran commented on ‘The Dream of Rome’? Has Al-Azhar issued any ruling on the permissibility of the 2007 appendix? It appears not. Firstly because they are probably not much bothered by it. And secondly because to get comment from such sources would require effort. Instead Perraudin in all likelihood called up the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) and ‘Tell Mama’ for comment. The way such organisations work is that journalists of the Perraudin school call them up to ask if they are outraged by something, the organisations then agree that they are outraged at this week’s outrage and thus the journalist gets a story and the group in question gets to continue to hold itself out as a representative body of some kind. Making everyone a winner.
Yet still this does not seem enough for a real story. Let alone a front-pager. So what we are really reduced to hoping for is that the contents of the book Johnson secretly published through one of the nation’s biggest publishers a decade ago must contain really frightfully incendiary stuff.
Alas here again we must be disappointed. For in his book Johnson apparently argued that the Islamic religion caused the Muslim world to be ‘literally centuries behind’ the West. He furthermore said,
‘There must be something about Islam that indeed helps to explain why there was no rise of the bourgeoisie, no liberal capitalism and therefore no spread of democracy in the Muslim world.
‘It is extraordinary to think that under the Roman/Byzantine empire, the city of Constantinople kept the candle of learning alight for a thousand years, and that under Ottoman rule, the first printing press was not seen in Istanbul until the middle of the nineteenth century. Something caused them to be literally centuries behind.’
The Guardian, and Perraudin, along with the MCB and Tell Mama and various other professional offence-takers think it not just outrageous but seriously provocative for someone to point this out.
So rather than counter anger with anger, I would like to respond in a spirit of charity and generosity. Thus do I hereby offer a box of Roses chocolates to any Muslim or non-Muslim organisation or spokesperson who can prove that Johnson was wholly wrong in the above statements, and that rather than being a plausible and legitimate interpretation of the historical record, the statements in fact constitute a set of wholly made-up hate-claims. I have purchased the box of chocolates. They are sitting beside me, temptingly, indeed coquettishly, as I write. Yet I will not touch them. All that Tell Mama, the MCB or anyone else needs to do to get them, is to prove that wherever and whenever the religion of Islam arrives in a society, that society sees a burgeoning of capitalism, democracy and the free exchange of ideas. It can’t be that difficult, can it? I await the deluge of applications.
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What’s your problem? You’ve been asked many times by a variety of posters, including Mods, to stop cutting and pasting stuff on this thread, just put the links in. Not being able to do your fellow QPR fans the modest favour of doing this is just rude. I’m putting you on ignore now, which is a shame because a couple of your inputs to the joke thread are funny, but what you are doing is WUMIng, and WUMs starve without attention. Cheers.
 
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brb said:
To confirm. I took the post down for a quiet life. No other reason should be read in to it. If people wish to debate it then I'm cool with that, but it's my personal own final word on the topic. Basically I'm cool with Kiwi too.
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Thanks for taking the trouble to confirm, brb
 
sb_73 said:
What’s your problem? You’ve been asked many times by a variety of posters, including Mods, to stop cutting and pasting stuff, just put the links in. Not being able to do your fellow QPR fans the modest favour of doing this is just rude. I’m putting you on ignore now, which is a shame because a couple of your inputs to the joke thread are funny, but what you are doing is WUMIng, and WUMs starve without attention. Cheers.
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Petulant. In my view, if the cut and paste was stuff that suited your liberal agenda, Stan, you'd be cool with it. I like Kiwi's cut and paste. While we're at it, what else do you want to ban?
 
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sb_73 said:
Only if you are a fascist.
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I deplore fascists and fascism, which these days, increasingly seems to includes antifa's and the violence offered. I've looked hard and haven't seen any fascists on our board. There is stuff put up that is the basis for interesting debate
 
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sb_73 said:
What’s your problem? You’ve been asked many times by a variety of posters, including Mods, to stop cutting and pasting stuff on this thread, just put the links in. Not being able to do your fellow QPR fans the modest favour of doing this is just rude. I’m putting you on ignore now, which is a shame because a couple of your inputs to the joke thread are funny, but what you are doing is WUMIng, and WUMs starve without attention. Cheers.
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Are there not more important things to become enraged about?
 
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rangercol said:
Are there not more important things to become enraged about?
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You’ve never seen me actually enraged. No rage involved in this at all. Just mild exasperation.
Goldhawk-Road said:
I deplore fascists and fascism, which these days, increasingly seems to includes antifa's and the violence offered. I've looked hard and haven't seen any fascists on our board. There is stuff put up that is the basis for interesting debate
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Where do you come out on this Goldie? Uber has posted this before, ages ago. For what it’s worth I’m in the bottom left hand corner, libertarian left.

https://www.politicalcompass.org/

If we are going to have ‘interesting debate’ it will help to have a perspective on starting positions while avoiding labelling in a party political way. That’s my main frustration with Kiwi, he posts reams of stuff without comment or opinion. Either he has no views or is ashamed to share them.
 
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sb_73 said:
You’ve never seen me actually enraged. No rage involved in this at all. Just mild exasperation.


Where do you come out on this Goldie? Uber has posted this before, ages ago. For what it’s worth I’m in the bottom left hand corner, libertarian left.

https://www.politicalcompass.org/

If we are going to have ‘interesting debate’ it will help to have a perspective on starting positions while avoiding labelling in a party political way. That’s my main frustration with Kiwi, he posts reams of stuff without comment or opinion. Either he has no views or is ashamed to share them.
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A surprise to me (although some of the questions were loaded and at least one, obscure), I come out slightly left of centre, towards the top right of the Libertarian green box. A little bit more right wing than Ghandi!

I generally find Kiwi does put comments on most of his posts. If I find the article interesting, it doesn't much bother me if he doesn't.
 
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Steelmonkey said:
**** me, I'm level with Ghandi....

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I ended up with Ghandi as well: Economic Left/Right - 9.75 and Social Libertarian - 5.33. Wide to the left of Gandhi on the far left edge of the box. However it is a bit loaded because it presumes that you accept the free market, and economic globalization as being inevitable and are simply looking for ways of controlling it.
 
bobmid said:
I think all posters under the height of 5ft 6 should be banned ! Aswell as anyone who thinks keeping a rodent as a pet is a good idea.
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That completely and absolutely rules me out.
5 foot 2... two rabbits and a now deceased rat...am looking to get a couple of new rats in the autumn.


Bobmid you really are a heightist and rodentist.
Come the revolution you are first in Room 101 with Winston Smith
 
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colognehornet said:
I ended up with Ghandi as well: Economic Left/Right - 9.75 and Social Libertarian - 5.33. Wide to the left of Gandhi on the far left edge of the box. However it is a bit loaded because it presumes that you accept the free market, and economic globalization as being inevitable and are simply looking for ways of controlling it.
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I’m 9.13 left/right and 6.46 authoritarian/libertarian, in favour of left and libertarian. I think it is weighted in favour of ending up in the green box for people who like to think they have some control over their own lives and who are generally egalitarian. Rather than accepting the free market and globalisation I’d say it was testing your position in today’s real world. If there was a question along the lines of ‘would you support a revolution to change x or y’ wouldn’t that automatically make you an authoritarian, imposing your worldview on others ‘for their own good’?
Goldhawk-Road said:
A surprise to me (although some of the questions were loaded and at least one, obscure), I come out slightly left of centre, towards the top right of the Libertarian green box. A little bit more right wing than Ghandi!

I generally find Kiwi does put comments on most of his posts. If I find the article interesting, it doesn't much bother me if he doesn't.
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Was the obscure question the one about forgetting problems and worries? I didn’t see where that fits in.

The most valuable thing about it is the detachment/separation of economics from social/political structure. We use right wing in particular to cover free market economics and extreme nationalism and authoritarianism. The two are very different things and really don’t usually go hand in hand.
 
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sb_73 said:
I’m 9.13 left/right and 6.46 authoritarian/libertarian, in favour of left and libertarian. I think it is weighted in favour of ending up in the green box for people who like to think they have some control over their own lives and who are generally egalitarian. Rather than accepting the free market and globalisation I’d say it was testing your position in today’s real world.

Was the obscure question the one about forgetting problems and worries? I didn’t see where that fits in.
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Yes, and this one (which I now understand is attributed to Marx) threw me:

“from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” is a fundamentally good idea.
 
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