With Libya now moving to a Sharia-based system that will impose religious values on the population, Egypt is also rapidly moving toward an extreme Sharia based system. Indeed, Hesham al Ashry (the leader of the Salafists) announced this week that “I am the enemy of democracy.”
Businessman Naguib Sawiris now calls Egypt’s future “dim … bad.”
Al Ashry put the reality into perspective: “This is a big opportunity and it’s not going to go back. This was mentioned by the Prophet Mohammed. Peace be upon him. He said this was going to happen.” Thus, the freedom that led to the overthrow of Mubarak regime will now be extinguished to embrace a new form of oppression — just faith-based rather than tyrant-based repression.
One of the objections made to the intervention of the United States in Libya was that, in addition to the absence of any declaration from Congress, President Obama could bring bring about a more radical regime. Even at the time, Libyan rebels were known to have extremist elements, including some linked to Al Qaeda. Some of the same concerns were heard in our Egyptian policies. I am less critical of the Obama policy on Libya. Indeed, I thought the Administration struck the right tone — without military intervention. However, there is a general misconception that the “Arab Spring” necessarily means a triumph of democracy and human rights. Movements in both Libya and Egypt show the powerful pull of theocratic oppression. The denial of the separation of mosque and state (as well as religious freedom) undermines a host of other rights from free speech to free association. The Obama Administration undermined those rights further with its shocking support of a United Nation’s resolution that embraced the concept of blasphemy prosecutions.
With the move to Sharia law, Egypt is showing other signs of extremism. Sectarian violence, particularly against Christians, has increased with little intervention from the military.
The loss of Egypt to religious extremism would be extremely destabilizing for the regime. It will also raise a question of our continued massive support for the country. Even though we have cities and states breaking under economic pressures, we are still pouring billions in aid to both Israel and Egypt.
Bron,
You use a lot of words you don’t know the meaning of which in itself always makes me laugh.
Save your criticism for someone who cares what you think.
Ok So what does all that have to do with the facts surrounding Scott Olsen.
It as if the facts don’t matter to you because some how Briepart has a hand in Scott Olsen views.
Gene H:
You use a lot of words but you dont say much. But you always make me laugh with your vituperation and your use of the dictionary.
It never changes. And you really dont like your religion challenged.
When you know something about economics be sure to let me know.
Lawyers may know the law but that doesnt mean they know anything else.
http://bigjournalism.com/author/jsexton/
http://biggovernment.com/author/jsexton/
Bdaman,
I didn’t say Olsen wasn’t the owner of that website. I said I smell Breitbart. In fact, one of the people who writes for Verum Serum also writes for Breitbart’s Big Journalism and Big Government:
http://www.verumserum.com/about-verum-serum
John Sexton has a degree in Liberal Arts from Virginia Tech and a Masters in Science and Religion from Biola University. He does freelance web design and photo restoration work, is married and has three children. John is a contributor at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Journalism and also to Hot Air’s
Green Room. For tips or feedback, you can contact John directly using john@verumserum.com.
Bdaman,
I didn’t say Olsen wasn’t the owner of that website. I said I smell Breitbart. In fact, one of the people who writes for Verum Serum also writes for Breitbart’s Big Journalism and Big Government:
http://www.verumserum.com/about-verum-serum
John Sexton has a degree in Liberal Arts from Virginia Tech and a Masters in Science and Religion from Biola University. He does freelance web design and photo restoration work, is married and has three children. John is a contributor at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Journalism and also to Hot Air’s
Green Room. For tips or feedback, you can contact John directly using john@verumserum.com.
http://bigjournalism.com/author/jsexton/
I had to spell dot spam filter wouldn’t let me post it
Scott Olsen is listed as the registered owner of IHateTheMarineCorps.com
http://website.informer ( DOT) com/ihatethemarinecorps.com
and I was able to confirm that this is indeed the same Scott Olsen based on a user profile on the fundraising site pledgie.com.
http://pledgie( DOT )com/accounts/solsen230
Compare the image above to Olsen’s profile on Facebook and it’s him.
Bdaman,
I smell Breitbart.
Scott Olsen, the former Marine who was injured while rioting in Oakland on Wednesday night, is the founder of I Hate the Marines Corps.
http://www.verumserum.com/?p=31617
He also hates Jews.
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20080307_iraq_turkey_look_to_end_kurdish_clashes/#139551
“We eliminated 21 positions in the company,” Epstein said. “First time in 30 years I’ve laid anybody off.”
They’ve also cut back their hours at the New York location, closing now at 3 p.m. instead of 9 p.m.
However, Epstein doesn’t lay all the blame at the feet of Occupy Wall Street.
“I think this is an issue of both Occupy Wall Street and the city officials. There’s protest and how you react to protest,” Epstein said. “If the barriers do not come down, I do not see how we can survive. This has got to become like America again. You have to be free to walk around.”
“Everybody should understand the consequences of their actions,” he said.
“Everything was going in the right direction. Sales continued to grow. We started to build our catering business. Costs were going down. I felt that by October or November we would break even.”
Then the Occupy Wall Street movement launched.
“The end result of it is that it completely destroyed the pedestrian traffic on Wall Street. Completely destroyed it,” Epstein said. “It is a desolate, police-controlled area.”
O.S. remember this
Let me see if I can put it to you another way.
My brother use to eat lunch everyday in Zucotti Park. My grandmother use to go every morning to feed the pigeons. My cousin use to go at night just to look at the stars.
The pizza owner at the corner could depend on my brother to buy a slice every couple of days. The convient store would sell my grandmother the seed. The local tavern depended on my cousin to come in for a few beers before he star gazed. They have not been able to do this for a couple of weeks. They have been deprived of there right to freedom.
What do you say to them.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Milk Street Cafe Owner Sacks 21 Employees As Consequence Of Occupy Wall Street Demonstration
The Occupy Wall Street movement, which says its goals include improving the economic lot for 99 percent of Americans, may have some explaining to do to some cafe workers now out of a job.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/11/01/milk-street-cafe-owner-sacks-21-employees-as-consequence-of-occupy-wall-street-demonstration/
“to do well in business you have to be honest and treat people fairly.”
Pure fantasy.
You have to get paid and you have to avoid punishment for screwing people over to do well in business. Period. Profit is an amoral measurement of success.
“I am so impressed with the way the SEC protected all of the people who got screwed by Bernie Madoff.”
Laws don’t prevent crime and to suggest they do is childish thinking. Laws can deter crime, they are necessary to define and prosecute crime, but they don’t stop determined criminals. In the broadest sense of the word, criminals are simply takers. Thieves take your property and killers take your life. They are the tyranny of the strong over the weak. What society cannot prevent, it has a duty to mitigate – to make the victims of bad acts whole again. That’s the whole point of systemic justice.
“I would also argue that the pursuit of profit is not amoral.”
Then get to arguing. Do you even know what the word amoral means? It seems to me that once again instead of knowing what a word means, you make up a definition to suit your own ends.
amoral \(ˌ)ā-ˈmȯr-əl, (ˌ)a-, -ˈmär-\. adj.
1a : being neither moral nor immoral; specifically : lying outside the sphere to which moral judgments apply b : lacking moral sensibility
2: being outside or beyond the moral order or a particular code of morals
Profit is a measure of success that lacks a conscience, ergo it has no moral sensibility. As such, it’s a measure of success that inherently appeals to those without a conscience or with an impaired or undeveloped conscience. To recognize that the pursuit of profit is an amoral motive would invalidate your Randian religious views and your unscientific worship of von Mises teachings about the perfection of free markets. Of course I’d expect you to argue the pursuit of profit is not amoral. To do otherwise invalidates your worldview in addition to being a tacit admission of defeat of your principles (such as they are). But you’ll have to do better than saying “I’d argue” and leaving it at that. Be prepared though. This is another argument you are simply not going to win. The pursuit of profit is inherently amoral by definition.
“Tell that to people who love what they do.”
People who do what they love to do would do it for free. If you don’t know this, then you don’t really know anybody doing what they love other than those who simply love making money for the sake of making money. This idea of love being a good motivator does not apply though to people who love money. People have been known to do all kinds of crazy shit in the name of love. It’s not always the motivation that makes an act good or bad, but the outcome is a different story. The love of money – greed – is considered a bad thing personally and for society by every major philosophical and religious tradition in the world. From Christianity’s admonition in 1 Timothy 6:10 that “[f]or the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs” (NIV) to the Buddhist concept that desire – including the desire for profit – is the root of all suffering not just in the self but in others as well, greed is universally condemned as a bad thing by all but the greedy themselves. That’s one of the reasons sociopaths are so attracted to Objectivism. It rationalizes their greed so they don’t have to recognize or feel bad about what shitty people they are in reality. “Well Ayn said it was good because it helps the individual and this helps me and I’m an individual, dammit!” So what? Your goddess was demonstrably crazy and her beliefs in what constitute both society and human nature were scientifically wrong and delusional to boot. An appeal to authority is a weak substitute for facts and logic but doubly so when the authority you appeal to is mentally disturbed.
Everyone but the hardest of hardcore craziest psychopaths and sociopaths think they are the hero of their own story. Do you think Hitler thought he was a monster? Of course he didn’t. He thought he was saving the “Aryan race” and Germany. In his admittedly twisted mind, he was the hero of the story. That doesn’t make him any less evil or any less delusional. It makes him human. It’s simply human nature. As a contra-example, Stalin probably knew he was a monster and just didn’t give a damn. Stalin was a hardcore sociopath interested only in his personal power and building a cult of personality around himself.
Again, evil actions are not always predicated upon evil intentions. The old saying about the road to Hell being paved with good intentions became an old saying for a reason. However, without a moral motivation – or at least ethical humanist motivation to remove any appeals to religion – in place of an amoral motivation like profit? The best case scenario is that you have a plane with no pilot to get you safely to the Airport of Maximized Good Outcomes. Your von Mises laissez faire approach to economics throws the pilot out the window because the Free Market Plane will figure out how to land itself eventually. Your Randian pseudo-philosophy exacerbates the problem by encouraging you to steal one or all of the parachutes because you’re “special”.
Straw men? Back to your old “I know you are but what am I” defense, are you? I don’t need straw men to destroy your nonsense nor do I have a reputation with any of the regular posters or GB’s for using them. The only person whining to me about straw men is you; the repeatedly vanquished. If you’ve read Aesop’s tale about the fox and the grapes, you apparently missed the point of that lesson too, whiner. If anything, I turn your own arguments against themselves and by extension you. I don’t best you because I use invalid tactics.
I best you because your premises are crap, your execution of argument is weak and your knowledge of any given area of study is usually substandard and often simply made up.
The only person you are fooling otherwise is yourself and perhaps other zealots of your irrational ilk, Bron. Even the simply greedy think they are heroes and the easiest delusion of all to fall in to is the river of denial. It’s not a false dilemma to tell you that your choices are 1) you’re in denial about your fundamental chosen parameters of operation (Objectivism/the Austrian School of Economics) being irrationally faulty, 2) you’re simply a bad person in denial about being a bad person or 3) you’re simply not very bright. Personally, I don’t care what your motivation might be. The net outcomes of your professed beliefs are bad for society and that is not speculation. We are seeing them play out across the headlines every day now in a Pyrrhic display whose groundwork was laid down by Objectivists like Alan Greenspan who was encouraged by like minded clowns from the Austrian School of economics. Like it or not, society is a collective endeavor by nature and definition. Your short-sighted devotion to self above all other consideration but especially social considerations is a fine example of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Gene H:
“In a society, some body has to the be ultimate arbiter of right and wrong in dispute resolution which is part and parcel of the whole rationale of setting up a government under social contract in the first place.”
Should means should, to do well in business you have to be honest and treat people fairly. At the corporate level it may not be that way but at the small business level it is. You dont last long if you screw people over.
That is why we have a court system so people can redress civil wrongs.
I am so impressed with the way the SEC protected all of the people who got screwed by Bernie Madoff.
Limited, effective government is a very good thing. Large ineffective government does not protect our rights, in fact it is deleterious to our rights.
You should take heed of you’re own advice Mr. King of the Strawmen.
I would also argue that the pursuit of profit is not amoral. Tell that to people who love what they do.
“No, that is not my myth. That is your myth that you think is my myth.”
You’re going to call that an argument? Really? Because I’m not the one who insisted that “[b]usiness should be better than government and hold itself to a higher ethical standard”.
1) Should is not the equivalent of is.
2) Your position is naive and childish and reflects the fundamental flaw in your laissez faire philosophy and your Objectivist pseudo-philosophy. In a society, some body has to the be ultimate arbiter of right and wrong in dispute resolution which is part and parcel of the whole rationale of setting up a government under social contract in the first place. But you don’t want government to operate to the highest ethical standard (as evidenced by your wishful thinking above)? Because government doesn’t have to make a profit? Pst! Your venal religion is showing again.
“Your myth is that when someone doesnt work for a profit they are some how ethically superior to those who do.”
Not at all. You can be a scumbag no matter what you do in your day job or whether your business model is for profit or not-for-profit or even if you can operate at a loss like a government can. My argument – which is not a myth but an accurate assessment of human psychology – is that an amoral measure of success like profit attracts amoral people as a matter of proclivity and that not every human endeavor is best measured by profit but rather by effectiveness in improving the quality of life for all of society (which, unfortunately, includes you).
You’d do a lot better at this if you spent less time inserting premises that don’t exist in others arguments and generally building straw men and more time learning (as in reading and understanding in context) about that of which you speak.
Gene H:
“Your myth that businessmen are somehow ethically superior to others is simply that: a myth.”
No, that is not my myth. That is your myth that you think is my myth.
My belief is that people are pretty much people whether they work for the private sector or for government.
Your myth is that when someone doesnt work for a profit they are some how ethically superior to those who do. And so you think they can create laws protecting the rest of us. Now that is mystical thinking.
Noah V,
True enough …
Speaking of Herman Cain, if you have not seen any of the Bad Lip Reading videos, you may get a kick out of this. It is safe for work, but you might want to keep the sound low enough the person in the next office can’t hear or they may have questions….