Fire Hydrant of Freedom

Imagine the outcry if Bush/Cheney had done these things.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/us-dollars-dizzying-drop-wreaking-economic-havoc/article2002887/

The U.S. dollar’s long decline has turned into a sudden plunge, throwing currency markets into a frenzy that is complicating life for policy makers and executives the world over.

An index that measures the value of the dollar against six major peers declined for the eighth consecutive day Thursday, the longest slump in two years.

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/04/15/why-is-huntsman-running-for-president/

Why is Huntsman running for President?
 
posted at 1:36 pm on April 15, 2011 by Ed Morrissey

 
Everyone agrees that Jon Huntsman is returning from China to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.  What may be more difficult to determine is why.  The Daily Caller reprints two letters from Ambassador Huntsman to his former boss extolling the executive’s virtues, including his status as “a remarkable leader,” his “experience,” and “brilliant analysis of world events.”  With a President like the one Huntsman describes already in office, why bother challenging him?
 

Jon Huntsman, President Obama’s outgoing ambassador to China, is considering running against his boss in 2012 as a Republican.
 
But two handwritten letters from Huntsman obtained by The Daily Caller raise the question of why he’s not campaigning for Obama instead.
 
“You are a remarkable leader,” Huntsman wrote to Obama in an Aug. 16, 2009 note, underlining the word “remarkable,” “and it has been a great honor getting to know you.”
 
Click over to read the letters in their entirety to get a sense of just how obsequious Huntsman got in buttering up the boss.  His efforts at blowing sunshine even got directed to Bill Clinton’s skirt in a missives addressed to the former President.  Huntsman wrote that Hillary Clinton is “well-read, personable, and has even more charisma than her husband!”  And yes, the exclamation point is a direct quote.
 
Hunstman’s team told the Daily Caller that the leaked letters show just how much the administration fears a Huntsman bid, but I suspect that Huntsman might have guessed wrong about the source.  If Huntsman does run for the nomination, he’ll probably focus on attacking Obama’s foreign policy, which means attacking Hillary either directly or indirectly.  This looks like an attempt to blunt the impact of Huntsman’s criticisms, as well as some payback for laying the groundwork of a presidential bid while still serving in the Obama administration.  If they really feared Huntsman, they would have leaked this in December, not April.
 
Huntsman doesn’t have much of a chance in this cycle anyway, but the letters don’t add up to a boost in confidence that Huntsman would provide any sharp change in direction from his boss.

Then again, excluding the f-bomb it's kind of refreshing to hear blunt truthful talk.

“We build a school, we build a road, they blow up the school, we build another school, we build another road they blow them up, we build again, in the meantime we can’t get a f***ing school in Brooklyn,” Trump says.

I would point out to the Donald that the democrats he's supported in NY are a big part of the reason for the dysfunction in schools in Brooklyn and elsewhere in NYC.

I saw , , , what's his name, the black businessman/radio commentator , , , on Bret Baier last night.  Good interview, also the footage of him showed him tactfully getting in President Bill Clinton's face about Hillary Care-- which shows he has been politically involved for quite some time now.  I look forward to some excellent contributions in the debates from him.

Herman Cain?

http://www.mediaite.com/online/donald-trump-drops-f-bomb-during-speech-at-las-vegas-casino/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mediaite%2FClHj+%28Mediaite%29

Very presidential.

http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2011/04/leftwing-drone-cites-nobel-prize.html

He's earned it.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Royal-Wedding/Video-Royal-Wedding-Syrian-Ambassadors-Royal-Wedding-Invitation-Withdrawn/Article/201104415980785?f=rss

Take that, evildoers!

I'm sure store employees and/or angry Obamabots will quickly remove the stickies before the shelves/gas pumps collapse under their weight. It's just a small bit of guerilla marketing.

http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2011/04/gas-pump-sticky-note-campaign-makes-its.html

The Sticky Note Campaign

I'll be doing this.

"And second of all, the horrors of Marxism here werent really horrors at all, and most certainly they werent Marxists horrors"

When I say marxist horrors, this is what I'm talking about:


http://www.slate.com/id/2284198/pagenum/all/#p2

I find it hard to understand anyone who wants to argue that the murder of 20 million is "preferable" to anything, but our culture still hasn't assimilated the genocidal equivalence between Stalin and Hitler, because, as Applebaum points out, we used the former to defeat the latter.*

Consider the fact that downtown New York is home to a genuinely likable literary bar ironically named "KGB." The KGB, of course, was merely the renamed version of Stalin's NKVD, itself the renamed version of the OGPU, the secret police spearhead of his genocidal policies. And under its own name the KGB was responsible for the continued murder and torture of dissidents and Jews until the Soviet Union fell in 1991 (although of course an ex-KGB man named Putin is basically running the place now).

You could argue that naming a bar "KGB" is just a kind of Cold War kitsch (though millions of victims might take issue with taking it so lightly). But the fact that you can even make the kitsch argument is a kind of proof of the differential way Soviet and Nazi genocides and their institutions are still treated. Would people seek to hold literary readings at a downtown bar ironically named "Gestapo"?

The full evil of Stalin still hasn't sunk in. I know it to be true intellectually, but our culture has not assimilated the magnitude of his crimes. Which is perhaps why the cannibalism jolted me out of any illusion that meaningful distinctions could be made between Stalin and Hitler.

Perhaps we've failed to assimilate what we've learned about Stalin, Soviet communism, and Mao's communism (50 million may have died in the Great Leap Forward famine and the Cultural Revolution's murders) because for some time the simmering argument had a kind of disreputable side. In the mid-'80s there were German historians such as Jürgen Habermas accusing other German historians such as Ernst Nolte of trying to "normalize" the Nazi regime by playing up its moral equivalence to Stalinist Russia, by suggesting even that Hitler's murderous methods were a response to Stalinist terror and genocide, which some saw as an attempt to "excuse" Hitler.

But the disreputable uses to which the argument has been put—normalizing Hitler by focusing on Stalin's crimes—should not blind us to the magnitude and consequences of those crimes.

There is no algorithm for evil, but the case of Stalin's has for a long time weighed more heavily the ideological murders and gulag deaths that began in 1937 and played down the millions who—Snyder argues—were just as deliberately, cold-bloodedly murdered by enforced famine in 1932 and 1933.

Here is where the shock of Snyder's relatively few pages on cannibalism brought the question of degrees of evil alive once again to me. According to Snyder's carefully documented account, it was not uncommon during the Stalin-imposed famine in Soviet Ukraine for parents to cook and eat their children.

The bare statement alone is horrifying even to write.

The back story: While Lenin was content, for a time anyway, to allow the new Soviet Union to develop a "mixed economy" with state-run industry and peasant-owned private farms, Stalin decided to "collectivize" the grain-producing breadbasket that was the Ukraine. His agents seized all land from the peasants, expelling landowners and placing loyal ideologues with little agricultural experience in charge of the newly collectivized farms, which began to fail miserably. And to fulfill Five-Year Plan goals, he seized all the grain and food that was grown in 1932 and 1933 to feed the rest of Russia and raise foreign capital, and in doing so left the entire Ukrainian people with nothing to eat—except, sometimes, themselves.

I've read things as horrifying, but never more horrifying than the four pages in Snyder's book devoted to cannibalism. In a way I'd like to warn you not to read it; it is, unfortunately, unforgettable. On the other hand, not to read it is a refusal to be fully aware of what kind of world we live in, what human nature is capable of. The Holocaust taught us much on these questions, but alas, there is more to learn. Maybe it's better to live in denial. Better to think of human history Pollyanna-like, as an evolution upward, although sometimes I feel Darwin spoke more truly than he knew when he titled his book The Descent of Man. Certainly one's understanding of both Stalinism and human nature will be woefully incomplete until one does read Snyder's pages.

Here is an excerpt:

In the face of starvation, some families divided, parents turning against children, and children against one another. As the state police, the OGPU, found itself obliged to record, in Soviet Ukraine "Families kill their weakest members, usually children, and use the meat for eating." Countless parents killed and ate their children and then died of starvation later anyway. One mother cooked her son for herself and her daughter. One 6-year-old girl, saved by other relatives last saw her father when he was sharpening a knife to slaughter her. Other combinations were, of course, possible. One family killed their daughter-in-law, and fed her head to the pigs, and roasted the rest of her body."

According to Snyder "at least 2,505 people were sentenced for cannibalism in the years 1932 and 1933 in Ukraine, although the actual number of cases was most certainly greater."

One more horror story. About a group of women who sought to protect children from cannibals by gathering them in an "orphanage" in the Kharkov region:

"One day the children suddenly fell silent, we turned around to see what was happening, and they were eating the smallest child, little Petrus. They were tearing strips from him and eating them. And Petrus was doing the same, he was tearing strips from himself and eating them, he ate as much as he could. The other children put their lips to his wounds and drank his blood. We took the child away from their hungry mouths and we cried."

"And appetite, an universal wolf/ So doubly seconded with will and power/ Must make perforce an universal prey/ And last eat up himself." So Shakespeare wrote, but note that he is speaking not just of the appetite for food, but for power. Stalin was the true cannibal.

How should one react to this? There may only have been a few thousand cases, compared with the millions Stalin starved or murdered, compared with Hitler's slaughters, but there is something in these accounts that forces one to realize there are depths of evil one has not been able to imagine before. Killing another human being, killing millions of human beings. Evil. But forcing parents to cook and eat their children—did one know this was in the repertoire of human behavior? Must we readjust radically downward our vision of human nature? That any human could cause or carry out such acts must mean many are capable of it.

The point of the controversy really should be not whether Hitler or Stalin was worse, but that there was more than one of them, more than two of course: There are also Pol Pot and the Rwandan killers, among others.

Even if those 2,500 arrests for cannibalism were dwarfed by the numbers of those 2 million or more starved to death, they have something unspeakable to say, something almost beyond words. In the light of these reports, can those such as Slavoj Žižek still defend Marxism for its utopian universalism and dismiss the cannibalism as unfortunate unintended consequences of too much zealousness in pursuit of a higher cause? Just a detour on the road to Utopia. Tell us, Mr. Žižek, please. (And by the way, to scorn Postmodern Marxism is not to defend the failings of Postmodern capitalism.)

Should we hold different kinds of genocide differentially evil? One would think brutal direct mass slaughter to be the worst form, but forcing human beings to descend to cannibalizing their children goes beyond physical torture and killing. It is spiritual torture, murder of the souls. In a way more vicious and wicked because the enforced self-degradation is unimaginable in its suffering.

We know what it says about Stalin and his henchmen, all too willing to be accomplices of this horror. But what about the cannibals? How should we regard them? Purely as victims, with no choice? Certainly they must have suffered mentally and spiritually more than we can imagine. But does that mean they didn't have a choice? If we accept they had a choice are we blaming the victims? Or is it clear they were driven insane by starvation—and cannot be held fully culpable by reason of diminished capacity? On the other hand not every family that starved to death turned to cannibalism; were they of stronger moral constitution?

Snyder is very careful about this. He concedes "cannibalism is a taboo of literature as well as life, as communities seek to protect their dignity by suppressing the record of this desperate mode of survival. Ukrainians outside the Soviet Union have treated cannibalism as a source of great shame."

This is an almost too carefully, thus confusingly, worded sentence. It seems as if he's saying that some communities haven't sought to suppress the facts, but feel shame—"Ukrainians outside the Soviet Union." But there is no more Soviet Union. What did or do the Ukrainians who now have their own nation feel? What are they supposed to feel? Victimized into being perpetrators?

These are not easy questions, the ones about how to evaluate degrees of evil. I spend probably too much time thinking about them. Sometimes there are distinctions without a significant difference. Here are some very preliminary thoughts:

—Even if the cannibalism was confined to a few thousand and the larger genocides involved millions, they are not irrelevant to the heart of darkness revealed in the "bloodlands" that lay between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

—There are some distinctions, but no real difference, between Hitler's and Stalin's genocides. Once you get over 5 million, it's fair to say all genocidal monsters are alike.

Finally, the only other conclusion one can draw is that "European civilization" is an oxymoron. These horrors, Nazi and Communist, all arose out of European ideas, political and philosophical, being put into practice. Even the Cambodian genocide had its genesis in the cafes of Paris where Pol Pot got his ideas. Hitler got his ideas in the cafes of Vienna.

"After such knowledge," as Eliot said, "what forgiveness?"

But marxism is great, it just hasn't been properly applied yet?

"The African slave trade, that claimed the life of approx. 9 million souls."

And who were the first non-africans to take part in the african slave trade? Long before the europeans ever were involved.

April 12, 2005
The living legacy of jihad slavery
 By Andrew G. Bostom

 


A public protest in Washington,  DC, April 5, 2005 highlighted the current (ongoing, for centuries) plight of black Mauritanians enslaved by Arab masters. The final two decades of the 20th century, moreover, witnessed a frank jihad genocide, including mass enslavement, perpetrated by the Arab Muslim Khartoum government against black Christians and animists in the Southern Sudan,  and the same governments continued massacres and enslavement of Animist—Muslim blacks in Darfur.  These tragic contemporary phenomena reflect the brutal living legacy of jihad slavery.

Jihad Slavery
 
The fixed linkage between  jihad— a permanent, uniquely Islamic institution— and enslavement, provides a very tenable explanation for the unparalleled scale and persistence of slavery in Muslim dominions, and societies. This general observation applies as well to 'specialized' forms of slavery, including the (procurement and) employment of eunuchs, slave soldiering (especially of adolescents), other forms of child slavery, and harem slavery. Jihad slavery, in its myriad manifestations, became a powerful instrument for both expansive Islamization, and the maintenance of Muslim societies.

Juridical Rationale and Role in 'Islamization'

Patricia Crone, in her recent analysis of the origins and development of Islamic political thought, makes an important nexus between the mass captivity and enslavement of non—Muslims during jihad campaigns, and the prominent role of coercion in these major modalities of Islamization. Following a successful jihad, she notes:
 

Male captives might be killed or enslaved, whatever their religious affiliation. (People of the Book were not protected by Islamic law until they had accepted dhimma.) Captives might also be given the choice between Islam and death, or they might pronounce the confession of faith of their own accord to avoid execution: jurists ruled that their change of status was to be accepted even though they had only converted out of fear. Women and children captured in the course of the campaigns were usually enslaved, again regardless of their faith...Nor should the importance of captives be underestimated. Muslim warriors routinely took large numbers of them. Leaving aside those who converted to avoid execution, some were ransomed and the rest enslaved, usually for domestic use. Dispersed in Muslim households, slaves almost always converted, encouraged or pressurized by their masters, driven by a need to bond with others, or slowly, becoming accustomed to seeing things through Muslim eyes even if they tried to resist. Though neither the dhimmi nor the slave had been faced with a choice between Islam and death, it would be absurd to deny that force played a major role in their conversion. [1]
 
For the idolatrous Hindus, enslaved in vast numbers during the waves of  jihad conquests that ravaged the Indian subcontinent for well over a half millennium (beginning at the outset of the 8th century C.E.), the guiding principles of Islamic law regarding their fate were unequivocally coercive. Jihad slavery also contributed substantively to the growth of the Muslim population in India. K.S. Lal elucidates both of these points: [2]


The Hindus who naturally resisted Muslim occupation were considered to be rebels. Besides they were idolaters (mushrik) and could not be accorded the status of Kafirs, of the People of the Book — Christians and Jews... Muslim scriptures and treatises advocated jihad against idolaters for whom the law advocated only Islam or death... The fact was that the Muslim regime was giving [them] a choice between Islam and death only. Those who were killed in battle were dead and gone; but their dependents were made slaves. They ceased to be Hindus; they were made Musalmans in course of time if not immediately after captivity...slave taking in India was the most flourishing and successful [Muslim] missionary activity...Every Sultan, as [a] champion of Islam, considered it a political necessity to plant or raise [the] Muslim population all over India for the Islamization of the country and countering native resistance.
 
Vryonis describes how jihad slavery, as practiced by the Seljuks and early Ottomans, was an important modality of Islamization in Asia Minor during the 11th through the 14th century 3:
 

A further contributing factor to the decline in the numbers of Christian inhabitants was slavery...Since the beginning of the Arab razzias into the land of Rum, human booty had come to constitute a very important portion of the spoils. There is ample testimony in the contemporary accounts that this situation did not change when the Turks took over the direction of the djihad in Anatolia. They enslaved men, women, and children from all major urban centers and from the countryside where the populations were defenseless. In the earlier years before the Turkish settlements were permanently affected in Anatolia, the captives were sent off to Persia and elsewhere, but after the establishment of the Anatolian Turkish principalities, a portion of the enslaved were retained in Anatolia for the service of the conquerors
 
After characterizing the coercive, often brutal methods used to impose the devshirme child levy, and the resulting attrition of the native Christian populations (i.e., from both expropriation and flight), Papoulia concludes that this Ottoman institution, a method of Islamization  par excellence, also constituted a de facto state of war: [4]
 

...that the sources speak of piasimo (seizure) aichmalotos paidon (capture) and arpage paidon (grabbing of children) indicates that the children lost through the devşirme were understood as casualties of war. Of course, the question arises whether, according to Islamic law, it is possible to regard the devşirme as a form of the state of war, although the Ottoman historians during the empire's golden age attempted to interpret this measure as a consequence of conquest by force be'anwa. It is true that the Greeks and the other peoples of the Balkan peninsula did not as a rule surrender without resistance, and therefore the fate of the conquered had to be determined according to the principles of the Koran regarding the Ahl—al—Qit�b: i.e. either to be exterminated or be compelled to convert to Islam or to enter the status of protection, of aman, by paying the taxes and particularly the cizye (poll—tax). The fact that the Ottomans, in the case of voluntary surrender, conceded certain privileges one of which was exemption from this heavy burden, indicates that its measure was understood as a penalization for the resistance of the population and the devshirme was an expression of the perpetuation of the state of war between the conqueror and the conquered... the sole existence of the institution of devshirme is sufficient to postulate the perpetuation of a state of war.
 
Under Shah Abbas I (1588—1626 C.E.), the Safavid Shi'ite theocracy of Iran expanded its earlier system of slave razzias into the Christian Georgian and Armenian areas of the Caucasus. Georgian, Armenian, and Circassian inhabitants of the Caucasus were enslaved in large numbers, and converted, thereby, to Shi'a Islam. The males were made to serve as (primarily) military or administrative slaves, while the females were forced into harems. A transition apparently took place between the 17th and 18th centuries such that fewer of the slaves came from the Caucasus, while greater numbers came via the Persian Gulf, originating from Africa. [5] Ricks notes that by the reign of Shah Sultan Husayn,


The size of the royal court had indeed expanded if the numbers of male and female slaves including white and black eunuchs are any indicators. According to a contemporary historian, Shah Sultan Husayn (d. 1722) made it a practice to arrive at Isfahan's markets on the first days of the Iranian New Year (March 21) with his entire court in attendance. It was estimated by the contemporary recorder that 5,000 male and female black and white slaves including the 100 black eunuchs comprised the royal party. [6]
 
Clement Huart, writing in the early 20th century (1907), observed that slaves, continued to be the most important component of the booty acquired during jihad campaigns or razzias: [7]
 

Not too long ago several expeditions crossed Amo�—Dery�, i.e. the southern frontier of the steppes, and ravaged the eastern regions of Persia in order to procure slaves; other campaigns were launched into the very heart of unexplored Africa, setting fire to the inhabited areas and massacring the peaceful animist populations that lived there.  

Willis characterizes the timeless Islamic rationale for the enslavement of such 'barbarous' African animists, as follows: [8]


...as the opposition of Islam to kufr erupted from every corner of malice and mistrust, the lands of the enslavable barbarian became the favorite hunting ground for the 'people of reason and faith'—the parallels between slave and infidel began to fuse in the heat of jihad. Hence whether by capture or sale, it was as slave and not citizen that the kafir was destined to enter the Muslim domain. And since the condition of captives flowed from the status of their territories, the choice between freedom and servility came to rest on a single proof: the religion of a land is the religion of its amir (ruler); if he be Muslim, the land is a land of Islam (dar al—Islam);  if he be pagan, the land is a land of unbelief (dar al—kufr). Appended to this principle was the kindred notion that the religion of a land is the religion of its majority; if it be Muslim, the land is a land of Islam; if it be pagan, the land is a land of kufr, and its inhabitants can be reckoned within the categories of enslavement under Muslim law. Again, as slavery became a simile for infidelity, so too did freedom remain the signal feature of Islam...The servile estate was hewn out of the ravaged remains of heathen villages — from the women and children who submitted to Islam and awaited their redemption...[according to Muslim jurist] al—Wanshirisi (d.1508), slavery is an affliction upon those who profess no Prophecy, who bear no allegiance to religious law. Moreover, slavery is an humiliation — a subjection— which rises from infidelity.
 
Based on his study and observations of  Muslim slave razzias gleaned while serving in the Sudan during the Mahdist jihad at the close of the 19th century, Winston Churchill wrote this description (in 1899): [9]


all [of the Arab Muslim tribes in The Sudan], without exception, were hunters of men. To the great slave markets of Jeddah a continual stream of negro captives has flowed for hundreds of years. The invention of gunpowder and the adoption by the Arabs of firearms facilitated the traffic...Thus the situation in the Sudan for several centuries may be summed up as follows: The dominant race of Arab invaders was increasingly spreading its blood, religion, customs, and language among the black aboriginal population, and at the same time it harried and enslaved them...The warlike Arab tribes fought and brawled among themselves in ceaseless feud and strife. The negroes trembled in apprehension of capture, or rose locally against their oppressors.
 
All these elements of jihad slavery— its juridical rationale, employment as a method of forcible Islamization (for non—Muslims in general, and directed at Sub—Saharan African Animists, specifically), and its association with devshirme—like levies of adolescent males for slave soldiering— are apparent in the contemporary jihad being waged against the Animists and Christians of southern Sudan, by the Arab Muslim—dominated Khartoum regime. [10]
 
Extent and Persistence
 
The scale and scope of Islamic slavery in Africa are comparable to the Western trans—Atlantic slave trade to the Americas, and as Willis has observed (somewhat wryly), [11] the former '...out—distances the more popular subject in its length of duration.' Quantitative estimates for the trans—Atlantic slave trade (16th through the end of the 19th century) of 10,500,000 (or somewhat higher [12]), are at least matched (if not exceeded by 50%) by a contemporary estimate for the Islamic slave trade out of Africa. Professor Ralph Austen's working figure for this composite of the trans—Saharan, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean traffic generated by the Islamic slave trade from 650 through 1905 C.E., is 17,000,000. [13]  Moreover, the plight of those enslaved animist peoples drawn from the savannah and northern forest belts of western and central Africa for the trans—Saharan trade was comparable to the sufferings experienced by the unfortunate victims of the trans—Atlantic slave trade. [14]
 

In the Nineteenth Century, slaves reached the ports of Ottoman Tripoli by three main Saharan routes, all so harsh that the experience of slaves forced to travel them bore comparison with the horrors of the so—called 'middle—passage' of the Atlantic.
 
This illuminating comparison, important as it is, ignores other vast domains of jihad slavery: throughout Europe (Mediterranean and Western Europe, as well as Central and Eastern Europe, involving the Arabs [Western/Mediterranean], and later the Ottoman Turks and Tatars [Central and Eastern Europe]); Muscovite Russia (subjected to Tatar depredations); Asia Minor (under Seljuk and Ottoman domination); Persia, Armenia, and Georgia (subjected to the systematized jihad slavery campaigns waged by the Shi'ite Safavids, in particular); and the Indian subcontinent (razzias and jihad campaigns by the Arabs in the 7th and 8th centuries, and later depredations by the Ghaznavids, during the Delhi Sultanate, the Timurid jihad, and under the Mughals). As a cursory introduction to the extent of jihad slavery beyond the African continent, three brief examples are provided: the Seljuks in  Asia Minor (11th and 12th centuries); the Ottomans in the Balkans (15th century); and the Tatars in southern Poland and Muscovite Russia (mid—15th through 17th centuries).

The capture of Christians in Asia Minor by the Seljuk Turks was very extensive in the 11th and 12th centuries. [15] Following the seizure and pillage of Edessa, 16,000 were enslaved. [16]  Michael the Syrian reported that when the Turks of Nur al—Din were brought into Cilicia by Mleh the Armenian, they enslaved 16,000 Christians, whom they sold at Aleppo. [17]  A major series of razzias conducted in the Greek provinces of Western Asia Minor enslaved thousands of Greeks (Vryonis believes the figure of 100,000 cited in a contemporary account is exaggerated [18]), and according to Michael the Syrian, they were sold in slave markets as distant as Persia. [19]  During razzias conducted by the Turks in 1185 and over the next few years, 26,000 inhabitants from Cappadocia, Armenian, and Mesopotamia were captured and sent off to the slave markets. [20] Vryonis concludes: [21]


...these few sources seem to indicate that the slave trade was a flourishing one. In fact, Asia Minor continued to be a major source of slaves for the Islamic world through the 14th century.
 
The Ottoman Sultans, in accord with Shari'a prescriptions, promoted jihad slavery aggressively in the Balkans, especially during the 15th century reigns of Mehmed I (1402—1421), Murad II (1421—1451), and Mehmed II (1451—1481). [22]  Alexandrescu—Dersca summarizes the considerable extent of this enslavement, and suggests the importance of its demographic effect: [23]  
 

The contemporary Turkish, Byzantine and Latin chroniclers are unanimous in recognizing that during the campaigns conducted on behalf of the unification of Greek and Latin Romania and the Slavic Balkans under the banner of Islam, as well as during their razzias on Christian territory, the Ottomans reduced masses of inhabitants to slavery.  The Ottoman chronicler A�ikpa�azade relates that during the expedition of Ali pasha Evrenosoghlu in Hungary (1437), as well as on the return from the campaign of Murad II against Belgrade (1438), the number of captives surpassed that of the combatants. The Byzantine chronicler Ducas states that the inhabitants of Smederevo, which was occupied by the Ottomans, were led off into bondage. The same thing happened when the Turks of Mente�e descended upon the islands of Rhodes and Cos and also during the expedition of the Ottoman fleet to Enos and Lesbos. Ducas even cites numbers:  70,000 inhabitants carried off into slavery during the campaign of Mehmed II in Mor�e (1460). The Italian Franciscan Bartholom� de Yano (Giano dell'Umbria) speaks about 60,000 to 70,000 slaves captured over the course of two expeditions of the akinğis in Transylvania (1438) and about 300,000 to 600,000 Hungarian captives. If these figures seem exaggerated, others seem more accurate:  forty inhabitants captured by the Turks of Mente�e during a razzia in Rhodes, 7,000 inhabitants reduced to slavery following the siege of Thessalonika (1430), according to John Anagnostes, and ten thousand inhabitants led off into captivity during the siege of Mytilene (1462), according to the Metropolitan of Lesbos, Leonard of Chios. Given the present state of the documentation available to us, we cannot calculate the scale on which slaves were introduced into Turkish Romania by this method.  According to Bartholom� de Yano, it would amount to 400,000 slaves captured in the four years from 1437 to 1443. Even allowing for a certain degree of exaggeration, we must acknowledge that slaves played an important demographic part during the fifteenth—century Ottoman expansion.  

Fisher [24] has analyzed the slave razzias conducted by the Muslim Crimean Tatars against the Christian populations of southern Poland and Muscovite Russia during the mid—15th through late 17th century (1463—1794). Relying upon admittedly incomplete sources ('...no doubt there are many more slave raids that the author has not uncovered' [25]), his conservative tabulations [26] indicate that at least 3 million (3,000,000) persons — men, women, and children — were captured and enslaved during this so—called 'harvesting of the steppe'. Fisher describes the plight of those enslaved: [27]
 

...the first ordeal [of the captive] was the long march to the Crimea. Often in chains and always on foot, many of the captives died en route. Since on many occasions the Tatar raiding party feared reprisals or, in the seventeenth century, attempts by Cossack bands to free the captives, the marches were hurried. Ill or wounded captives were usually killed rather than be allowed to slow the procession. Heberstein wrote... 'the old and infirm men who will not fetch much as a sale, are given up to the Tatar youths either to be stoned, or thrown into the sea, or to be killed by any sort of death they might please.' An Ottoman traveler in the mid—sixteenth century who witnessed one such march of captives from Galicia marveled that any would reach their destination — the slave markets of Kefe. He complained that their treatment was so bad that the mortality rate would unnecessarily drive their price up beyond the reach of potential buyers such as himself. A Polish proverb stated: 'Oh how much better to lie on one's bier, than to be a captive on the way to Tartary'
 
The persistence of Islamic slavery is as impressive and unique as its extent. Slavery was openly practiced in both Ottoman Turkey [28], and Shi'ite (Qajar) Iran [29], through the first decade of the 20th century. As Toledano points out, [30] regarding Ottoman Turkey, kul (administrative)/ harem slavery,
 
...survived at the core of the Ottoman elite until the demise of the empire and the fall of the house of Osman in the second decade of the 20th century.
 
Moreover, Ricks [31] indicates that despite the modernizing pressures and reforms culminating in the Iranian Constitutional Movement of 1905—1911, which effectively eliminated military and agricultural slavery,


The presence of domestic slaves, however, in both the urban and rural regions of Southern Iran had not ceased as quickly. Some Iranians today attest to the continued presence of African and Indian slave girls...
 
Slavery on the Arabian peninsula was not abolished formally until 1962 in Saudi Arabia, 32 and 1970 in Yemen and Oman. 33 Writing in 1989, Gordon [34] observed that although Mauritania abolished slavery officially on July 15, 1980,
 

...as the government itself acknowledges, the practice is till alive and well. It is estimated that 200,000 men, women, and children are subject to being bought and sold like so many cattle in this North African country, toiling as domestics, shepherds, and farmhands.
 
Finally, as discussed earlier, there has been a recrudescence of jihad slavery, since 1983 in the Sudan. [35]
 
An Overview of Eunuch Slavery—the 'Hideous Trade'
 
Eunuch slaves — males castrated usually between the ages of 4 and 12 (due to the high risk of death, preferentially, between ages 8 and 12), [36] were in considerable demand in Islamic societies. They served most notably as supervisors of women in the harems of the rulers and elites of the Ottoman Empire, its contemporary Muslim neighbors (such as Safavid Iran), and earlier Muslim dominions. The extent and persistence of eunuch slavery — becoming prominent within 200 years of the initial 7th century Arab jihad conquests [37], through the beginning of the 20th century [38] — are peculiar to the Islamic incarnation of this aptly named 'hideous trade'. For example, Toledano documents that as late as 1903, the Ottoman imperial harem contained from 400 to 500 female slaves, supervised and guarded by 194 black African eunuchs. [39]

But an equally important and unique feature of Muslim eunuch slavery was the acquisition of eunuchs from foreign 'slave producing areas' [40] , i.e., non—Muslim frontier zones subjected to razzias. As David Ayalon observed, [41]
 

...the overwhelming majority of the eunuchs, like the overwhelming majority of all other slaves in Islam, had been brought over from outside the borders of Muslim lands.
 
Eunuch slaves in China, in stark contrast, were almost exclusively Chinese procured locally. [42]
 
Hogendorn [43] has identified the three main slave producing regions, as they evolved in importance over time, from the 8th through the late 19th centuries:
 

These areas were the forested parts of central and eastern Europe called by Muslims the 'Bild as—Saqaliba' ('slave country'), the word saqlab meaning slave in Arabic (and related to the ethnic designation 'Slav'); the steppes of central Asia called the 'Bilad al—Atrak' ('Turks' country' or Turkestan); and eventually most important, the savanna and the fringes of the wooded territory south of the Sahara called the country of the blacks or 'Bilad as—Sudan'.

Lastly, given the crudeness of available surgical methods and absence of sterile techniques, the human gelding procedure by which eunuchs were 'manufactured' was associated with extraordinary rates of morbidity and mortality. Hogendorn describes the severity of the operation, and provides mortality information from West and East Africa: [44]
 

Castration can be partial (removal of the testicles only or removal of the penis only), or total (removal of both). In the later period of the trade, that is, after Africa became the most important source for Mediterranean Islam, it appears that most eunuchs sold to the markets underwent total removal. This version of the operation, though considered most appropriate for slaves in constant proximity to harem members, posed a very high danger of death for two reasons. First was the extensive hemorrhaging, with the consequent possibility of almost immediate death. The hemorrhaging could not be stopped by traditional cauterization because that would close the urethra leading to eventual death because of inability to pass urine. The second danger lay in infection of the urethra, with the formation of pus blocking it and so causing death in a few days.
 
...when the castration was carried out in sub—Saharan West and West—Central Africa...a figure of 90% [is] often mentioned. Even higher death rates were occasionally reported, unsurprising in tropical areas where the danger of infection of wounds was especially high. At least one contemporary price quotation supports a figure of over 90% mortality: Turkish merchants are said to have been willing to pay 250 to 300 (Maria Theresa) dollars each for eunuchs in Borno (northeast Nigeria) at a time when the local price of young male slaves does not seem to have exceeded about 20 dollars...Many sources indicate very high death rates from the operation in eastern Africa.. Richard Millant's [1908] general figure for the Sudan and Ethiopia is 90%
 
Conclusion
 
Contemporary manifestations of Islamic slavery—certainly the razzias (raids) waged by Arab Muslim militias against their black Christian, animist, and animist—Muslim prey in both the southern Sudan and Darfur—and even in its own context, the persistence of slavery in Mauritania (again, black slaves, Arab masters)—reflect the pernicious impact of jihad slavery as an enduring Muslim institution. Even Ottoman society, arguably the most progressive in Muslim history, and upheld just recently at a United Nations conference as a paragon of Islamic ecumenism,  never produced a William Wilberforce, much less a broad, religiously—based slavery abolition movement spearheaded by committed Muslim ulema. Indeed, it is only modern Muslim freethinkers, anachronistically referred to as 'apostates,' who have had the courage and intellectual integrity to renounce the jihad,  including jihad slavery, unequivocally, and based upon an honest acknowledgement of its devastating military and social history. When the voices of these Muslim freethinkers are silenced in the Islamic world—by imprisonment and torture, or execution—the outcome is tragic, but hardly unexpected. That such insightful and courageous voices have been marginalized or ignored altogether in the West is equally tragic and reflects the distressing ignorance of Western policymaking elites.
 
Dr. Bostom is an Associate Professor of Medicine and author of the forthcoming, The Legacy of Jihad on Prometheus Books
 
Notes
1. Patricia Crone. God's Rule. Government and Islam. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004, pp. 371—72
2. K.S. Lal, Muslim Slave System India, New Delhi, Aditya Prakashan, 1994, pp. 46, 69.
3. Speros Vryonis, Jr. The Decline of Medieval Hellenism and the Islamization of Asia Minor, 11th Through 15th Century, 1971, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 174—175.
4. Vasiliki Papoulia. 'The impact of devshirme on Greek society' in East Central European society and war in the prerevolutionary eighteenth century. Gunther E. Rothenberg, B�la K. Kir�ly and Peter F. Sugar, editors. Boulder : Social Science Monographs ; New York : Distributed by Columbia University Press, 1982,  pp. 555—556.
5. Thomas Ricks. 'Slaves and Slave Trading in Shi'i Iran, AD 1500—1900', Journal of Asian and African Studies, 2001, Vol. 36, pp. 407—418.
6. Ricks, 'Slaves and Slave Trading in Shi'i Iran', pp. 411—412.
7. Clement Huart. 'Le droit de la guerre' Revue du monde musulman, 1907, p. 337. English translation by Michael J. Miller.
8. John Ralph Willis. "Jihad and the ideology of enslavement", in Slaves and slavery in Muslim Africa— vol. 1. Islam and the ideology of enslavement, London, England; Totowa, N.J.: Frank Cass, 1985, pp. 17—18; 4.
9. Winston Churchill. The River War, Vol. II , London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899, pp. 248—50.
10. John Eibner. 'My career redeeming slaves', Middle East Quarterly, December, 1999, Vol. 4, Number 4, http://www.meforum.org/article/449 . Eibner notes:
 

...based on the pattern of slave raiding over the past fifteen years and the observations of Western and Arab travelers in southern Darfur and Kordofan, conservatively puts the number of chattel slaves close to or over 100,000. There are many more in state—owned concentration camps, euphemistically called "peace camps" by the government of Sudan, and in militant Qur'anic schools, where boys train to become mujahidun (warriors of jihad).

11. John Ralph Willis. Slaves and slavery in Muslim Africa, Preface, p. vii.
12. This controversial topic is discussed here: Philip D. Curtin, Roger Antsey, J.E. Inikori. The Journal of African History, 1976, Vol. 17, pp. 595—627.
13. John Ralph Willis. Slaves and slavery in Muslim Africa, Preface, p. x.
14. John Wright. 'The Mediterranean Middle Passage: The Nineteenth Century Slave Trade Between Triploi and the Levant', The Journal of North African Studies, 1996, Vol. 1, p. 44.
15. Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism, p.175, note 245.
16. Bar Hebraeus. The chronography of Gregory Ab�'l Faraj, the son of Aaron, the Hebrew physician, commonly known as Bar Hebraeus; being the first part of his political history of the world, translated from the Syriac by Ernest A. Wallis Budge, Oxford University Press, 1932, Vol. 1, pp. 268—273; Michael the Syrian, Chronique de Michel le Syrien, Patriarche Jacobite d'Antioche (1166—1199), translated by J—B Chabot, 1895, Vol. 3, p. 331.
17. Michael the Syrian, Chronique, Vol. 3, p. 331.
18. Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism, p.175, note 245.
19. Michael the Syrian, Chronique, Vol. 3, p. 369.
20. Michael the Syrian, Chronique, Vol. 3, pp. 401—402; Bar Hebraeus, The Chronography, Vol. 1, p. 321.
21. Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism, p.175, note 245.
22. M—M Alexandrescu—Dersca Bulgaru. 'Le role des escalves en Romanie turque au XVe siecle' Byzantinische Forschungen, vol. 11, 1987, p. 15.
23. Alexandrescu—Dersca Bulgaru, 'Le role des escalves en Romanie turque au XVe siecle', pp. 16—17.
24. Alan Fisher 'Muscovy and the Black Sea Slave Trade', Canadian American Slavic Studies, 1972, Vol. 6, pp. 575—594.
25. Fisher 'Muscovy and the Black Sea Slave Trade', p. 579, note 17.
26. Fisher 'Muscovy and the Black Sea Slave Trade', pp. 580—582.
27. Fisher 'Muscovy and the Black Sea Slave Trade', pp. 582—583.
28. Reuben Levy, The Social Structure of Islam, Cambridge University Press, 1957, p. 88.
29. Ricks, 'Slaves and Slave Trading in Shi'i Iran', p. 408.
30. Ehud Toledano. Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998, p. 53.
31. Ricks, 'Slaves and Slave Trading in Shi'i Iran', p. 415.
32. Murray Gordon. Slavery in the Arab World, New York: New Amsterdam, 1989, p. 232.
33. Gordon. Slavery in the Arab World, p. 234.
34. Gordon. Slavery in the Arab World, Preface, second page (pages not numbered).
35. Eibner, 'My career redeeming slaves'.
36. Jan Hogendorn. 'The Hideous Trade. Economic Aspects of the 'Manufacture' and Sale of Eunuchs', Paideuma, 1999, Vol. 45, p. 143, especially, note 25.
37. Hogendorn. 'The Hideous Trade', p. 137.
38. Ehud Toledano. 'The Imperial Eunuchs of Istanbul: From Africa to the Heart of Islam', Middle Eastern Studies, 1984, Vol. 20, pp. 379—390.
39. Toledano. 'The Imperial Eunuchs of Istanbul', pp. 380—381.
40. Hogendorn. 'The Hideous Trade', p. 138.
41. David Ayalon. 'On the Eunuchs in Islam', Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 1979, Vol. 1, pp. 69—70.
42. Hogendorn. 'The Hideous Trade', p. 139, note 5.
43. Hogendorn. 'The Hideous Trade', p. 139.
44. Hogendorn. 'The Hideous Trade', pp. 143, 145—146.
 
on "The living legacy of jihad slavery"

"Thomas Aquinas, another key figure in Christian theology, has even perfected the concept of Just War."

Do you understand the concept of just war, or is it bad because it has the word war in it?

Saint Augustine’s cognite intrare (“force them to convert”). In fact the Qur’an says the exact opposite: There is no compulsion in religion ( 2:256 ).


http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/084.sbt.html
Volume 9, Book 84, Number 58:

Narrated Abu Burda:

Abu Musa said, "I came to the Prophet along with two men (from the tribe) of Ash'ariyin, one on my right and the other on my left, while Allah's Apostle was brushing his teeth (with a Siwak), and both men asked him for some employment. The Prophet said, 'O Abu Musa (O 'Abdullah bin Qais!).' I said, 'By Him Who sent you with the Truth, these two men did not tell me what was in their hearts and I did not feel (realize) that they were seeking employment.' As if I were looking now at his Siwak being drawn to a corner under his lips, and he said, 'We never (or, we do not) appoint for our affairs anyone who seeks to be employed. But O Abu Musa! (or 'Abdullah bin Qais!) Go to Yemen.'" The Prophet then sent Mu'adh bin Jabal after him and when Mu'adh reached him, he spread out a cushion for him and requested him to get down (and sit on the cushion). Behold: There was a fettered man beside Abu Muisa. Mu'adh asked, "Who is this (man)?" Abu Muisa said, "He was a Jew and became a Muslim and then reverted back to Judaism." Then Abu Muisa requested Mu'adh to sit down but Mu'adh said, "I will not sit down till he has been killed. This is the judgment of Allah and His Apostle (for such cases) and repeated it thrice. Then Abu Musa ordered that the man be killed, and he was killed. Abu Musa added, "Then we discussed the night prayers and one of us said, 'I pray and sleep, and I hope that Allah will reward me for my sleep as well as for my prayers.'"
 
Andrew, do you understand the role of naskh in islamic theology and why the "verses of the sword" override the nicer verses like what you posted above? Can you tell me where in the muslim world there is the freedom of religion?

Trump is a skilled self promoter, and it's nice to see someone taking the fight to Obarry, but he's not who we want or need.

Or "Palaestina" at the least.

http://people.usd.edu/~clehmann/erp/Palestine/history.htm

In the aftermath of the Bar Cochba Revolt, the Romans excluded Jews from a large area around Aelia Capitolina, which Gentiles only inhabited.   The province now hosted two legions and many auxiliary units, two colonies, and--to complete the disassociation with Judaea--a new name, Syria Palaestina.  The center of Jewish settlement moved northward to Galilee and Gaulanitis  The number of Jewish communities elsewhere declined, and many once-Jewish towns became Gentile or received large numbers of Gentile inhabitants.  They lost their old Jewish names to new Roman names; eg, Sepphoris became Diocaesarea, Lydda Diospolis, and Beth Guvrin Eleutheropolis.  Sebaste became a colony, like Caesarea and Aelia Capitolina.  The ban on circumcision remained in effect until Antoninus Pius--probably recognizing its dangerously provocative effect--revoked it.

After 135 the Jews no longer had political, urban, or territorial institutions that could support another revolt, but they managed to maintain national identity as a result of the growth of rabbinical institutions and the patriarchate in the Galilee (see People and Places).  Nor did the radical Messianism of earlier periods revive until the third century, when empire-wide economic crisis left the Jews too weak to mount any organized resistance.  The rabbinic sources vividly reflect the poverty of the people in the troubled third century because of rampant inflation and the collapse of the money economy, famine and plague, and crime.

Syria Palaestina thus became a good deal less problematic for the imperial government than Judaea had been.  The government continued to permit the Jews certain religious freedoms, such as exemption from the imperial cult, and gradually the Roman governors permitted the Jews to recover certain of their communal rights, such as local courts and internal government, under the overall authority of the patriarch in Tiberias. The Samaritans fared less well, as the Romans took steps to prevent a resurgence of Samaritan nationalism by founding a pagan temple on Mt Gerizim, just south of Neapolis, and refused to make concessions to Samaritan religious practices.

Narrated Abu Huraira:

Allah's Apostle said, "The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. "O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him."
 
Note that the islamic antipathy towards jews long predates the existence of Israel.


Oh man GM, you have a way about you. You can twist and attenuate parts of a text so far out of context to suit your view on things, I almost see it fascinating. Almost.

Please explain what it really means then.

For starters, Hadith are narrations concerning the deeds of the prophet Muhammad and are regarded by even the most traditional Islamic schools of jurisprudence as merely prisms through which better understanding the Qur'an, the socalled Qur'an exegesis. The texts were gathered and evaluated in bigger collections only in the 9th century and to this day are being investigated by even Muslims scholars of being authentic or not. Their semantic value, however, is unquestionable.

No kidding. Now, do you know the importance of the ahadith I cited above to sunni muslims? Can you find for me a sunni scholar that has a nice, non-violent interpretation of the above hadith?

"Again, History means a very specific thing, we are loooong past the 19.century Rankean notion of „wie es eigentlich gewesen“ that history is a sequence of tools that search for what „actually“ transpired.

This a very Marxist linear traditionalistic perception of time, which makes me surprised, since a while ago you actually encouraged me NOT to read anything with the term Marx in it."

The concept of cause and effect and the linear nature of time well predates any marxist psuedo-science. I would note that you'd probably be in a good position to look at the horrors that marxism has inflicted and I'd think would want to reject anything tainted by it.

This is long. Probably my last incursion in this, I am loosing to much time with this type of research.

It's good that you've started reading up on islamic theology. If you actually develop a good grasp of it, you'll find that all the politically correct slogans you've made about it are utterly bogus.

Can you yell fire in a crowded theater if the theater is on fire?

Obama and Holder are doing epic damage to this nation.

Careful neglect? 

Howabout a part-time president more interested in partying and the perks of the office than actually doing the job, and can't make a decision when actually focused on it. What happened to a meeting without preconditions with Iran that was supposed to make everything better?

Ok.

http://www.mymichigandefenselawyer.com/michigan-criminal-laws/disorderly-persons/

Disorderly Persons


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Disorderly conduct, known under Michigan law as a disorderly persons offense (MCL 750.168) is a catch all for several offenses in Michigan. What might be considered under a heading all its own in other states (public intoxication for instance) can be grouped in the disorderly persons statute. Because this offense is so common, and subjectively applied having a skilled defense attorney can be extremely helpful. If is often possible to get these charges completely dropped, preserving you for getting a permanent criminal record. Call and talk to us about the specifics of your case.
 
What is a Disorderly Persons Charge?
 
You can be considered disorderly and subsequently charged with this offense if you:
 • Refuse to support your family
 • Are a prostitute, window peeper, or vagrant
 • Engage in illegal business
 • Beg in public
 • Loiter where illegal activities are taking place
 • Cause a public disturbance in public while intoxicated
 • Crowd or jostle people unnecessarily in public
 
The penalty for this misdemeanor charge is up to 90 days in prison and a fine of not more than $500.00.
 
Molesting and Disturbing Persons in Pursuit of Occupation MDL 750.352

If you hinder or interfere with someone while they are in commission of their occupation or on their way to their occupation, you can be charged with a misdemeanor. Misdemeanors typically bring less than one year in prison and a fine.
 
False Report of Crime MDL 750.411a
 
If you report to law enforcement that a crime took place when you know that to be untrue, you can be charged with this offense.
 
The severity of the sentence depends on the crime you falsely reported. If the crime you reported was a misdemeanor, you can be charge with a misdemeanor. If you falsely reported a felony, you may be charged with a felony.
 
Misdemeanor false reporting carries a potential sentence of up to 93 days in jail and a fine of up to $500.
 
Felony false reporting, however, carries a possible sentence of up to 4 years in prison and a fine of up to $2,000.
 
In this offense, you can be charged if your report to the police or dispatch.
 


Hazing MDL 750.411t
 
Once quite common, hazing has become a crime in most states. In Michigan, you may be charged with hazing if you (while attending or being employed by an educational institution), commit an intentional act against someone knowing it will endanger their physical health or safety for the purpose of pledging, initiation, or maintaining office in any organization.
 
There are a range of activities that can be considered hazing, including:
 • Physical brutality
 • Physical activities involving sleep deprivation, exposure to elements, confinement, or excessive exercise
 • Activities involving the consumption of food, alcohol, drugs, or other drinks
 • Forcing or coercing someone into criminal activity
 



If the hazing causes:
 • Physical injury (misdemeanor)
 • Serious impairment of a body function (felony)
 • Death (felony)
 
_______________________________________________________________

Islam is being treated differently than any other group, just as sharia law requires. Are you aware of the arrests by Dearborn police of christians missionaries?