Meaning no disrespect, but that would be a good way of retreating from previously held positions without actually admitting it. It’s what Foucault did. Having most vociferously supported Khomeini’s revolution with the utmost faith in the compatibility between Islam and democracy, he went to Iran just after Khomeini took power. He witnessed the mass executions of communists and the brutal repression of the anti-fundamentalist citizenry. After which he went home to paris and fell silent about the subject either of Iran, or Islam..

Good luck with your other endeavours.

What are your thoughts now about Hizzballa being a force which your kind of Leftism can do business with?

I’m terribly curious.

Need more be said about your being a prisoner to dogmatic thinking?

I notice you did not address my question about singling out the Israeli Jewish woman for your disapproval. What can you say, really? In a presentation that has “Fighting anti-Semitism” in its title, you then go on to attack a Jew for speaking up her mind and disagreeing with your one-sided support for a fascist organization which openly adulates Hitler and preaches the completion of the final solution.

Your comments are addressed to those who understand automatically why an Israeli Jewish woman is singled out. This should cause just a stir of anxiety in any decent thinking person. Clearly Jews have no rights. It is futile to imagine that anything can induce you to dig a little into your beliefs in order to better understand what you are advocating and whom you are supporting. “Fighting for antisemitism” would have been a more honest title.

AS for this:

” “gee, that sounds like a good description of the IDF’s destruction of the Lebanese infrastructure during the summer of 2006.”

Note you own distortion of this definition.

“Terrorism is aggression against civilians as civilians, inevitably taken by surprise and defenceless. ”

It would take a real malign intent to contend that the Lebanese who were attacked, were attacked for no other reason than they were civilians, or that they were defenceless, or that they were taken by surprise. The civilians who lived on the Israel’s northern border were taken by surprise by the barrage of a 1000+ katiushas from within those “civilian” areas from across the UN ratified Blue line, an international border.

But then, why allow a few easily verifiable facts interfere with your worldview and the way you choose to revise recent history? Absolutely there is a need to forget that Jews are human beings, too, if one is to continue one’s worshipping at the feet of one’s prophets.

Thanks as always for your comments from “outside [my] universe.” I have not replied to your first comment largely because you concluded by describing my efforts as laughable, and I have better things to do than engage in conversation with people who express no solidarity with me or my ideas.

I read your quote from Glucksmann over at Bob from Brockley’s blog, and my first thought — especially regarding the last paragraph — was, “gee, that sounds like a good description of the IDF’s destruction of the Lebanese infrastructure during the summer of 2006.” For the record, I will reiterate here that I am opposed to terrorism. Full stop. You can draw whatever conclusions you want from this statement, but if you conclude that I am lying then it might help explain why I have little interest in re-enacting our exchange from last spring.

I very much enjoy reading what you have to say (largely for the reasons that you suggest I should), but I find it generally a waste of time to respond in this sort of context to people who are so contemptuous of my perspective. I do hope that you will keep posting comments; I’m highly unlikely to censor them, but I’m also not very likely to respond in any depth.

Any ideology that gives support to murderous organizations or political parties whose express platforms stipulate unambiguously genocide and destruction needs all the help it can get, from what is known as useful idiots.

Here is something you should read, to clear away some of the fog surrounding the definition of terrorism:

“…the naive, the falsely naive, and the downright evil blur categories in support of their ideological prejudices and christen the killer of innocents a “resistance fighter,

[-]

The business of terrorists, after all, is to terrorize—so said Lenin, an uncontested master in the field. The ultimate refinement lies in the inversion of responsibility. Operating instructions: I take hostages, I cut off their heads, I show them on video; those who beg for mercy must address themselves to their governments, who alone are to blame for my crimes: my hubris is their problem. The less the terrorist’s restraint, the more he causes fear and the sooner you will yield in tears, or so he believes.”

“A better definition of terrorism is a deliberate attack by armed men on unarmed civilians. Terrorism is aggression against civilians as civilians, inevitably taken by surprise and defenceless. Whether the hostage-takers and killers of innocents are in uniform or not, or what kind of weapons they use—whether bombs or blades—does not change anything; neither does the fact that they may appeal to sublime ideals. The only thing that counts is the intention to wipe out random victims. The systematic resort to the car bomb, to suicide attacks, randomly killing as many passers-by as possible, defines a specific style of engagement.” (Andre Glucksmann)

http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_4_modern_terrorism.html

What so you think is the intent behind your ideological hero whom you keep quoting? What can be the intent of those who support Hizzbala and Hamas? Fighting antisemitism? How, by supporting the final solution-phase II?

Moral clarity is moral clarity. It does not need all these verbal convolutions to make itself known.

Pure and simple silence cannot be considered as a consent to a contract, except in cases when the silent person is bound in good faith to explain himself, in which case, silence gives consent.

But no assent will be inferred from a man’s silence, unless, 1st. He knows his rights and knows what he is doing and, 2d. His silence is voluntary.

When any person is … charged with any fact, and he does not deny it, in general, the presumption is very strong that the charge is correct…”

http://www.lectlaw.com/def2/s156.htm

Can I please get a translation into comprehensible language? When I encounter this kind of overwrought formulation my usual gullible nature springs to alert mode: What is the speaker trying to hide here? What’s “a totalitarian vision of collective rebirth”?

I also wonder at Mike that he finds it necessary to condemn the Israeli Jewish woman who courageously braved the “we are all Hamas and Hizballa “ crowd when she “presumed” “to define the acceptable limits of Palestinian resistance. ”

My own knowledge is that Palestinians believe there are no acceptable limits to their “resistance”, a term, which is a euphemism for an ideology and praxis of killing systematically, Israeli citizens, preferably kids, and women of childbearing age. Strange that of all the people you mention and quote in your exposition, you single out the “Jewish Israeli woman” for opprobrium.

And this, in the context of a presentation purporting to discuss how you, noble Rococo leftists, plan to fight “Islamophobia, Antisemitism, and Fascism”.

Laughable, really.