Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Open-Source Warfare

22 Comments

Zenpundit has been slogging through the Oslo terrorist’s writings, and found some interesting things (check some of the other posts as well):

…the British, too, come in for a measure of contempt, via a quotation from none other than Osama bin Laden:

“When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse”. Perhaps its unsurprising that the author is something of an admirer of bin Laden’s means, if not his ends.

This came to me via an email from James (Anglosphere) Bennett, who comments:

For the past decade people concerned about the consequences of multiculturalism have warned that one of its hazards will be an inevitable response, which a short perusal of European history will quickly suggest will not be very nice. Looking at this, my thought is “well, here it is”.

And there may be more of it to come.

[Update a few minutes later]

Was he influenced by the Unabomber?

Of course, given the similarities, maybe it was Al Gore.

22 thoughts on “Open-Source Warfare”

  1. I’m not sure the “strong horse” quote really deserves to be attributed to bin Laden, since he certainly didn’t originate the idea behind it.

  4. I think that type of mocking criticism might be reconsidered by Transterrestrial commenters given the similarity between Breivik’s writings and a typical Transterrestrial comment.

  5. I think that type of prissy, smug, lecturing “criticism” might be reconsidered given the similarity between the typical Bob-1 comment and the issue of a back end of a flatulent cow.

    Oh sorry, too harsh? Well, as is the way of the Great Bob-1, let me just direct you to read this website. It’s very informative.

    (Warning: Encyclopedia Dramatica. This particular link is fairly safe for eyes but if you decide to link deeper you’re on your own.)

  6. I stopped reading the linked article at the anti-gay slur.

    Comparisons between the Vice President and the Unabomber are odious, and moreover, if there is something logically valid about the comparison, then why aren’t comparisons between anti-Muslim anti-multicultralism commenters and Breivik comments equally valid?

  7. Can we then presume Bob that you got 100% on the quiz?

    You can make comparisons between commenters here and any wacko you like. So far I don’t see anybody stopping you. However, you can expect some feedback. No good person likes being told they are evil.

  8. Bob-1 Says:
    “I think that type of mocking criticism might be reconsidered by Transterrestrial commenters given the similarity between Breivik’s writings and a typical Transterrestrial comment.”

    Wake me up when commentators here call for the mass murder of kids at camp and the bombing of government buildings because they don’t like the other political party.

    The anti-jihad movement sprung up because people were repulsed by the jihad use of terrorism and the targeting of civilians and other innocents. Why would they suddenly approve of a similar style of attack by someone from a different ideology? They don’t not approve, btw.

    The actions of the man in Norway are antithetical to the anti-jihad movement.

  10. Bob-1, the bigger question is whether Obama will give this anti-government terrorist a cabinet position or hire him to ghost write a White House memoir.

  11. Hey wodun, to Bob-1, mockery is just the same as advocating killing kids. He’s the first person I’ve ever encountered who genuinely has no sense of humor. He is incapable of perceiving satire, gallows humor, black humor (probably thinks that’s another name for racist jokes), any of it. I’ll bet he’s busy writing a scolding letter to the Encyclopedia Dramatica website right now about their nasty anti-gay slurs. Little does he know that’s just them resting.

  12. Wodun, many of Breivik’s writings didn’t call for the mass murder of kids at a camp; in writing, he sounds like anti-multicultralists here. Similarly, the selected Unabomber quotes sound like Al Gore. If one comparison is spurious, so is the other.

    Nice rhetorical move to call it the anti-Jihad movement (what reasonable person could be in favor of terrorism), but Rand’s recent comment that Islam is not a religion but a totalitarian ideology, and his (and others, such as Curt’s) recent railing against “multi-culti” are not specifically about violent Jihadists.

    =====

    Ken, I agree: good people don’t want to be called evil. And that’s my motivation for commenting. Clarke’s RLV and Space Transport blog freqently links to Rand’s blog. I think of a young space enthusiast, who is a well intentioned Democrat, perhaps also an environmentalist, and perhaps also Muslim, who follows Clarke’s links to Rand’s excellent space commentary, and then looks further on this blog, and finds that he or she is being characterized as evil. Rather than suggest to Clarke that he not link here, I’d like to suggest to Rand and the people who comment here that he and they stop overgeneralizing, and stop calling perfectly good people evil (or compare them to the Unibomber, or tell them that their religion isn’t one, or tell them that their culture has no place in the West, as the case may be.)

  13. Bob, have you ever considered that you might be the one over generalizing? For example, when I or anyone else talks about muslims, we all understand we are not talking about all muslims. Especially when a particular situation is under discussion. Language tends to be imprecise.

    It is the listener that has the requirement to ask for clarification rather than just assume something else is meant and attack that which is essentially a strawman.

  15. “Wodun, many of Breivik’s writings didn’t call for the mass murder of kids at a camp; in writing, he sounds like anti-multicultralists here. Similarly, the selected Unabomber quotes sound like Al Gore. If one comparison is spurious, so is the other. ”

    Well, you did both too. If looking at the similar language between the unabomber and gore was wrong so is what you were doing.

    What makes this event so shocking is that violence from the right wing is so rare and this event was so over the top in it’s inhumanity.
    Even if you go back twenty years and include both Europe and the USA, you will only find a couple of similar events.

    No one would have been shocked if this was done by a radical muslim because over the last thirty years and over the last ten especially, there has been a large number of similar events carried out by radical muslims. By large number I mean hundreds, in countries all around the world.

    Just because there was one right wing guy who committed a horrible mass murder doesn’t mean that we should forget about another group of people (radical islamists) who committed hundreds more and are a much larger threat on a global scale.

  16. “I think of a young space enthusiast, who is a well intentioned Democrat, perhaps also an environmentalist, and perhaps also Muslim, who follows Clarke’s links to Rand’s excellent space commentary, and then looks further on this blog, and finds that he or she is being characterized as evil.”

    The cries of islamophobia are sometimes well placed but often are not. The comments I have read here or elsewhere about Islam pale in comparison to what the left wing says about the right wing and chirstians. Aside from politics related sites, have you ever read the comments at Wired or other sites dedicated to science/technology topics?

    One thing you will notice is that people who don’t like christianity and often religions in general, don’t make any distinctions like Muslim and Islamist.

    Would you be worried about a young christian space enthusiast going to Wired or other main stream tech sites and reading the comments?

  17. He’s the first person I’ve ever encountered who genuinely has no sense of humor.

    The first?! Shirley Andrea, you jest. The dour self-importance of the Left is one of its worst and most ubiquitous traits: “Oh, I’m so torn over the issue of whether to tell some blogger to not link to some other blogger because it might hurt the feelings of some hypothetical person – it’s just like Sophie’s Choice!” /violin

  19. Wodun, I think you’re making good points. I don’t read wired (it is too close to what I do in real life, so I read journal articles) but I bet you’re right that many tech sites are quite alienating for religious Christians.

    I don’t find modern xenophobic rightwing violence as unusual as you do. As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, I know an extended group of Croatians, and the violence in ex-Yugoslavia was often nothing more or less than rightwing terrorism committed with by aggressors staring right into the eyes of their victims . What happened in Norway is so unusual to me because the labor party rather than Muslims were the ones targeted, and this is one more reason why comparisons to McVeigh are apt. (I know at least one Croatian reads this blog — I’m not making any slams on Croatia as a whole – it is a great place, full of wonderful people. And for that matter, the rightwing is full of wonderful people too. It is just that neither group is so impossibly wonderful that it can’t also produce terrorists.)

  20. I have repeatedly called for the bombing of government buildings – and the method I’d choose would inevitably cause casualties among children. It’s a question of the choice of which buildings, and my choice would be the palace of the King of Mordor – who is not, unlike European monarchs, a figurehead.

    I called for it on 9/12, I’ve called for it several times since and I’m calling for it now. And if it was done, maybe people like the Norwegian lunatic wouldn’t feel it necessary to kill Westerners to get their point across. Not that I would condone what he did; multiculti and Leftism are an explanation, not an excuse.

  21. “Comparisons between the Vice President and the Unabomber are odious,” though only to the person who suddenly realizes that he shares the indistinguishable views of both…

  22. “the rightwing is full of wonderful people too. It is just that neither group is so impossibly wonderful that it can’t also produce terrorists.”

    This is true.

    What the guy in Norway did was totally f’d up and he deserves more than 20 years in jail for it.

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