Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - This Week in Stupid (01⧸05⧸2016)

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May 1, 2016 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

23:58

This Week in Stupid (01⧸05⧸2016)

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	Hello everyone, welcome to this week in Stupid for the 1st of May 2016.
	If you see anything you'd like to see in this week in Stupid, please tweet using hashtag TWIS or post it to our Sagan of Akkad.
	I thought I'd mention the arts competition that I'm running, because I've had loads of submissions, and some of them are really good, so I thought I'd increase the amount of prize money I'm offering to kind of recompense the people submitting, because I'd feel that £200 just isn't enough.
	So the rules I'm working with are the piece of artwork must be featuring the historical figure of Sargon of Akkad.
	You can choose how you'd like to do it.
	The piece must be 1920 by 1080 pixels in resolution.
	Preferably the image of Sargon can be easily cut out of the piece to use as an overlay, but this isn't essential.
	The email to send your submission to is in the description and send it with the title Art Submission, because that's how I'll be searching through my emails to find it.
	So if you don't call it exactly that, then I might not find it.
	There's no limit to the number of submissions you can send.
	I would just like them by the end of May 2016.
	I've increased the time because I'm effectively restarting the competition by increasing the prize money, which I'm increasing to $1,000 for first prize, second prize $500 and third prize $250.
	I've changed the dollars just because it's probably easier for the majority of people to use dollars.
	And like I said in the previous video, when all of the submissions have come in and the competition's closed, I'll go through them.
	I might do a live stream or something going through them and talking to people, you know, so we can have like a discussion on which one's the best.
	Because these are the pieces of art I'll be using in videos for Aura TV.
	So I'm going to choose three pieces of artwork, which is why I'll give the three prizes, that I'll use in videos for different things for different reasons.
	Obviously, I'll give all the contact details for the artists so this can be used as a showcase for their work.
	And send any submissions from your PayPal address so I can give that email address the prize money, and I can know it's got to the artist who sent it.
	So has anyone noticed how many people are being hacked to death by Islamist militants in Bangladesh, using machetes?
	Because it seems to be quite a lot.
	Earlier this week, the editor for an LGBT publication in Bangladesh was hacked to death by Islamists using machetes.
	Bangladesh police say a top gay rights activist and editor at the country's only LGBT magazine is one of the two people who have been hacked to death.
	The US ambassador to Bangladesh condemned the killing of Zolhaz Manan, who also worked at the US Embassy.
	Since February last year, suspected militants have killed several secular or atheist writers and members of religious minority groups.
	The two men were murdered days after a university teacher was hacked to death by suspected Islamist militants.
	Naturally, ISIS has claimed responsibility for this, but then they would, wouldn't they?
	Homosexuality is technically illegal in Bangladesh and remains a highly sensitive issue in society.
	Both men were openly gay and believed that if more gay Bangladeshis came out, then the country would have to accept them.
	Earlier this month, a Bangladeshi law student who had expressed secular views online died when he was hacked with machetes and then shot in Dakar.
	Last year four prominent secular bloggers were also killed with machetes.
	The machete industry must be booming in Bangladesh.
	There have also been attacks on members of religious minorities, including Shia, Sufi and Ahmadi Muslims, Christians and Hindus.
	Two foreigners, an Italian aid worker and a Japanese farmer, have also been killed.
	Apparently there are also critics who say the government has failed to properly address the attacks.
	And then later on this week, Hindu man hacked to death on the streets of Bangladesh by two men on motorcycles after he criticised the Prophet Muhammad.
	So the brutal attack in the central district of Tangale comes after a spate of similar attacks in the South Asian country.
	It comes just a week after a university English professor was hacked to death by a gang of attackers while on his way to work.
	So you may have thought, well, LGBT activists being hacked to death by religious, patriarchal, cis-normative right-wingers who are using terror as a weapon.
	Now, it's commonly believed that the sort of regressive press don't report on things like this, but they do.
	And this is the one and only time you will find them conducting objective journalism, where they simply report the facts.
	But these articles never seem to receive any particular traction.
	And I think that's probably because they're not emotively written and the people who would normally react to this are afraid of being called racist.
	But just take five seconds to imagine the outcry if it wasn't Islamists hacking homosexuals and secularists to death, but instead Christian fundamentalists.
	Now I know what you're thinking, but this is just happening in Bangladesh.
	This isn't something that's really widespread.
	Most Islamists blow people up.
	And I agree with you.
	Hashtag not all Islamists.
	But the thing is, Islamism is an ideology.
	And like all ideologies, it has a consistent set of principles that are followed by many or most of its adherents.
	So when you find something like Swedish Green Party jolted by claims of Islamist infiltration, and you know that Islamists will literally murder people for their beliefs, even Captain Sweden starts getting a bit pensive about the issue.
	One refused to shake hands with a female journalist.
	Another compared Israel to Nazi Germany.
	A third was seen doing hand signs associated with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood in the background of a live TV broadcast.
	The behaviour of some Muslim members of Sweden's Green Party, which is a part of the coalition government since 2014, has sparked concerns that the small environmentalist group may have been infiltrated by Islamists.
	And naturally, it's triggered a wider discussion about whether Sweden has tried so hard to be inclusive and tolerant towards migrants that it's failed to stand up for its own feminist ideals.
	Well what a surprise.
	Green party leaders said Monday that there's no evidence of Islamists influencing party policies, but admitted the party needs a reset with a greater focus on environmental issues.
	Why would you need to do that if there's no evidence of them influencing your party policies?
	Shouldn't the Green Party's policies already have a great focus on environmental issues?
	The party's problems started when Housing Minister Mehmet Kaplan, a Green Party member and former leader of a Swedish Muslim youth group, resigned last week after media reports that he had contacts with ultra-nationalists and Islamists in his native Turkey.
	Though he denied any wrongdoing, the party leadership defended him until the end.
	He stepped down when a video surfaced of Kaplan comparing Israel's treatment of Palestine to how the Nazis persecuted Jews.
	Trying to cool things down, Green Party co-leader Asa Ronson only made them worse when she went off on a bizarre tangent in a TV interview describing the September 11th attacks as accidents.
	I don't mean to laugh, but how far down the ideological rabbit hole do you have to be to take a terrorist conspiracy that claimed the lives of 3,000 plus people in a coordinated attack across the United States and class it as an accident?
	After a Green Party member refused to shake the hand of a female reporter, a ferocious debate ensued in Sweden, with Khan's critics calling his behaviour insulting to women and his supporters dismissing the criticism as Islamophobia.
	It's just either misogyny or Islamophobia.
	Pick one.
	Even Prime Minister Stefan Lothen weighed in saying that in Sweden you shake hands with both women and men, which I don't believe because Sweden, I have been informed, doesn't have a culture.
	And if in Sweden there is a cultural norm that you must do, that means that Sweden does have a culture.
	When asked whether he would describe himself as an Islamist, he said he doesn't even know what the word means.
	If it means a practicing Muslim who contributes to politics, then I'm an Islamist, or was since I'm leaving.
	But if it means a terrorist or against gender equality, then I am as far away from an Islamist as you can get.
	Well, no, an Islamist is not simply a practicing Muslim who's contributing to politics.
	An Islamist is someone who is trying to implement Islamic values in all spheres of life.
	And this is what I hate most about regressives.
	They're so happy to simply go, well, if I define it differently, then sure I'm an Islamist.
	It's like, look, why are you defining it differently?
	He already has a definition.
	People who are close to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is an Islamist party, obviously have a big foothold in the Green Party, says Lars Nikander, a security expert at the Swedish Defence University, who told Sweden's TV4.
	He compared it to how Soviet agents tried to infiltrate political parties in the West during the Cold War.
	And apparently the Greens didn't dismiss his theory outright.
	Even though at this point there are no indications that fears of an infiltration are real, well apart from all the evidence that's causing us to now go ahead and investigate our potential vulnerability to infiltration, senior party officials said.
	Well I'm sure that's all going to work out okay.
	I'm sure there are going to be no further problems.
	They will definitely do this investigation.
	They'll absolutely find there's nothing wrong.
	And then things will carry on being said that are stupid.
	Like for example when a Scottish National Party MP decided to compare women's rights in Westminster and Iran.
	Tasmina Ahmed Sheikh accompanied Alexander as part of an SNP parliamentary delegation to Tehran, which arrived back in Britain yesterday after spending four days in the country.
	The Okhil and South Perthshire MP said she had raised the issue of human rights at every key ministerial meeting the group held and that she was pleased that at least one woman was present in the Iranian delegation at virtually all of the encounters.
	She then added, while clearly Iran has a distance to travel on gender equality, so too does Westminster.
	Now you might be thinking that these two things are in no way comparable, but a few human rights charities who are very concerned about Iran decide to let you know just how things are there, so you can make the judgment for yourself.
	In Iran, women are forbidden from watching men's sports in stadiums and according to Human Rights Watch have been sent to jail for publicly speaking out in favour of equal rights between the sexes.
	They are forced to wear headscarves in public, with the rule even applying to young children.
	Women are banned from leaving Iran without permission from their husbands.
	A law illustrated this year when the captain of the country's female football team was unable to take part in the Asian Cup as her spouse refused to sign the papers allowing her to renew her passport.
	Last year, the country granted a reprieve to a woman sentenced to death by stoning after being convicted of adultery.
	Because Iran uses Sharia law and that's the punishment for adultery under Sharia law.
	For women, of course, men get lashes.
	Amnesty International states that Iran executes more juvenile offenders than any other nation on earth, while torture remains prevalent.
	The charity in its most recent report on the country says it believes that public floggings and amputation sentences are still carried out for a wide range of offences, including alcohol consumption, eating in public during Ramadan, and of course, theft, with these sentences being often implemented in public.
	But the SNP's foreign affairs spokesman said yesterday that there was a desire to usher in a new era of cooperation between Scotland and Iran.
	But presumably not before Westminster sorts its gender inequality problem out.
	So we've talked briefly about Islamists and how Islamists are generally not very pleasant people and countries that are Islamist countries like Iran generally aren't very pleasant countries.
	We haven't really mentioned the Jews very much yet, which is where things are about to change.
	So if the Islamists, the progressives and the neo-Nazis would like to stop the video and go and watch something else, that would be a good idea.
	Alternatively, you could join the British Labour Party, which is apparently rife with anti-Semitism.
	For example, when you have a British Muslim MP suspended from the Labour Party, you just know the Jews are going to be involved.
	But the thing is, you know she's just going to have posted something on social media that's either anti-Semitic or anti-Israeli.
	Labour has suspended MP Naz Shah over comments she made about Israel.
	The Bradford West MP has been heavily criticised over Facebook posts, including one suggesting Israel should be moved to the United States.
	What a fucking surprise.
	In a comment statement, she offered a profound apology for the posts, which were made before she became an MP, which somehow makes it okay.
	Earlier party leader Jeremy Corbyn warned her about the offensive and unacceptable posts and Cameron called for her suspension.
	But the thing is, this is not just a single isolated incident of a Muslim Labour MP who just happens to be an anti-Semite.
	Ten days ago, Labour's general secretary had reassured MPs those accused of anti-Semitism would be expelled or suspended.
	Okay, I mean, I don't think the accusation should be the proof, but why do you even have to have this discussion?
	I would just assume that anyone who is openly racist wouldn't have a place in the Labour Party.
	But anyway, Jeremy Corbyn issued a statement saying, these are historic social media posts made before she was a member of parliament.
	NAS has issued a fulsome apology.
	She does not hold these views and accepts that she was completely wrong to have made these posts.
	The Labour Party is implacabed to anti-Semitism and all forms of racism.
	Well that's fantastic.
	I wouldn't have expected any other answer from a British politician.
	This really annoys me though, this apology.
	The language I used was wrong.
	Well, hang on, I'll stop you there, because the language you were using was English, and you said that Israel is like Nazi Germany.
	Now, I'm not a big fan of Israel.
	Israel does plenty of things that I think it should be held accountable for, and I think that because it's a powerful state in the Middle East, it needs more scrutiny than less powerful states.
	But that doesn't mean it's anything like Nazi Germany.
	It wasn't the language you used that was wrong, it was the fact that you were saying something that was fucking stupid.
	And the thing is, I'm really against these sort of politically correct witch hunts, but given the current climate of British politics, you can't possibly think that you're going to make sweeping statements about the Jews and how they should leave the Middle East or that Israel is like the Nazis and think that everyone in the British political establishment isn't going to come out hard against you, virtue signalling like a fucking pro.
	So when former Labour MP and Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, stands by his Hitler comments, I'm just face-palming, just, oh, fucking why?
	Why were you making controversial statements about Hitler, Ken?
	What possible reason would you have to do this?
	Ken Livingstone cites Marxist book in defense of Israel comments.
	Oh, God, why is this the news?
	Former London Mayor praises Lenny Brenner, author of 1983 book Zionism in the Age of Dictators.
	Why?
	How can I regret stating the truth?
	Ken Livingstone refuses to apologise, and hits out that embittered Blairites are fucking...
	Alright.
	Alright, fine.
	Let's talk about Hitler, the Jews, Israel, and Ken Livingston's connection to these subjects.
	The former London mayor told BBC Radio London earlier this week that Hitler's policy in 1932 was to move Jews to Israel, adding, he was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing 6 million Jews.
	Why?
	Why would you even think this is a good thing to start saying on the radio?
	I'm not- I don't know whether you're right or wrong.
	I'm not saying this is true or not true.
	I'm just saying it's really fucking stupid to have done this, Ken.
	Aside from the fact that obviously Israel didn't exist then, trying to persuade people that Hitler was a Zionist is going to be very difficult because, like with feminist and women, Zionists have been very keen to make Zionism synonymous with Jews.
	Mr. Livingston claimed his comments could not be anti-Semitic because similar things have been said by the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu.
	He said, I really regret saying it because it's caused all this disruption.
	Well, yeah, you should, you dummy.
	But he says, I never regret saying something that is true.
	How can I have hurt and offended the Jewish community when the Prime Minister of Israel said exactly the same thing?
	Honestly, Ken, I'm just going to level with you.
	It's because I don't think the Prime Minister of Israel is concerned about being called an Islamophobe.
	But let's watch the clip and see what exactly he's talking about.
	Other attacks on the Jewish community in 1920 and 1921, 1929 were instigated by a call of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajamin al-Husseini, who was later sought for war crimes in the Nuremberg trials because he had a central role in fomenting the final solution.
	He flew to Berlin.
	Hitler didn't want to exterminate the Jews at the time.
	He wanted to expel the Jews.
	And Khajamin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, if you expel them, they'll all come here.
	So what should I do with them? He asked.
	You said, burn them.
	And he was sought in the during the Nuremberg trials for prosecution.
	He escaped it.
	Later died in cancer after the war.
	Died of cancer in Cairo.
	But this is what Hajamin al-Husseini said.
	He said, the Jews seek to destroy the Temple Mount.
	My grandfather in 1920 seeks to destroy the, sorry, the Alaksa Mosque.
	So this lie is about 100 years old.
	Well, it's no wonder that Ken Livingston said that he would invite the Prime Minister of Israel over to defend him, as he clearly agrees with what I said.
	Mr. Livingston said, two days before I did that interview, the Prime Minister of Ismail, Benjamin Netanyahu, is addressing the World Zionist Congress.
	This is the sentence he says.
	Hitler didn't want to exterminate the Jews, only to expel them.
	Now, I just want to take this point to stress that I don't think that saying Hitler was a Zionist is anti-Semitic.
	Zionism is not Jews, and not all Jews are Zionists.
	So it's not the same thing, it's an ideology.
	I don't necessarily think that one would call him a Zionist, because that would kind of imply a level of commitment that I don't think he had towards Zionism.
	But anyway, Livingston says that the anti-Semitism in the Labour Party is nonsense, stirred by embittered Blairites to undermine Jeremy Corbyn.
	In Ken's case, I think he's probably right.
	I don't think he is actually being an anti-Semite.
	However, as we have already seen, there are other Labour MPs who are anti-Semitic, and it is a problem in the Labour Party that Corbyn has had to lay down a dictate over.
	Of course, you know, Ken Livingston, Labour MP, isn't getting the Israeli Labour Party on his side, and they're in fact complaining to Jeremy Corbyn about the sickening anti-Semitism row.
	And of course, the conservative media are making as much hay with this as possible.
	Jeremy Corbyn can't solve Labour's anti-Zionist problem.
	He is the problem.
	Well, if he's anti-Zionist, I don't really care.
	I don't mind him being against Zionism the ideology.
	I do mind him being against Jews as a race.
	If he's not actively against Jews as a race, as neither Corbyn nor Livingston appear to be, who gives a fuck?
	So this idea that Hitler was a Zionist seems to have come from an American Trotskyist author called Lenny Brenner, who wrote a book called 51 Documents, Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis.
	I suppose it's important to note that Brenner is also a Jew.
	And apparently the same controversy is going on here in the United States.
	The Zionists are accusing pro-Palestinians of getting different campuses and student bodies to endorse the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, and yelling that this is all anti-Semitism.
	I haven't read this book, so I can't give you any comments on it myself, but Thomas Weber, a professor of history and international affairs and expert on the Hitler era, Jewish relations and German history, said that he was not immediately familiar with Brenner's book.
	He says, Brenner's book lies well outside of academic mainstream.
	It is mostly celebrated by either the extreme left or by the neo-Nazi right.
	I'll try and contain my surprise.
	Commenting on the broader points made by Livingston about the extent of Zionist contacts with the Nazi party, Weber said, as far as I'm aware, there were contacts, but they did not involve Hitler himself.
	Now, as I understand it, basically what Netanyahu and Livingston are trying to say is that the Nazis simply wanted to evacuate all of the Jews from Germany and Europe and send them to the Middle East.
	Unsurprisingly, the Muslim Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, wasn't thrilled about this because he hates the Jews.
	And so he apparently told Hitler to simply kill them all.
	And this is the, as far as I can tell, and if I'm wrong, please do let me know.
	And this is apparently considered to be the inspiration for the Holocaust.
	And there does appear to be evidence that in 1943, Husseini knew about the genocide.
	However, like I said, I'm no expert on this, and I've got no doubt there are people who care a lot more about this than I do who are going to tell me that I'm wrong.
	So I'm just going on the sort of mainstream narrative.
	Like I said, I don't know whether this guy was instrumental in causing the Holocaust or not.
	And honestly, I don't think any of these people genuinely know either.
	That's the impression I'm getting.
	Remember how we mentioned pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian students having a good old time of it in Western universities?
	Well, it's still happening.
	NUS disaffiliation campaigns at universities of Cambridge and Oxford gather pace.
	You may remember a few weeks ago, I covered Malia Buatia's accession to the presidency of the National Union of Students, because it was notable as she was a Muslim woman who happened to have a problem with the Jews.
	Again, just the coincidences.
	But anyway, this is the pushback against that, because unsurprisingly, the Jewish Society at Cambridge is announcing that it's throwing its support behind a cause to break away from the student campaigner.
	Weirdly, she's meant to be representing students, and being anti-Semitic isn't representing Jewish students, and for some reason not happy about that.
	She says that the University of Birmingham is something of a Zionist outpost in British higher education, which is interesting as Birmingham has a massive Muslim population.
	But it is even more interesting that she sees Zionist communities as a problem.
	But again, I'm sure it's got nothing to do with Islam.
	I'm sure it's just a total coincidence.
	But she thinks that it's no surprise that a Muslim woman elected to a national position would receive such extensive national attention and quite racialized and sexist abuse over social media.
	Oh yeah, it's nothing to do with what you've said or done.
	It's not because you seem to dislike Jewish people, it's because that you were a black woman.
	That's what it is.
	Everyone just hates black women.
	I mean, it's not that you bemoaned the West's Zionist-led media, and you think the British government is beholden to a Zionist and neocon lobby, or anything.
	I don't know about anyone else, but I'm getting really sick of Islamist, Zionist, Marxist, Nazis being the subject of modern political discourse.
	These are things that should have been settled a long time ago.
	But there are still regressive idiots who think they have some relevance to the modern world.
	And this is why we find ourselves in the position we find ourselves.
	It's just ideas.
	Bad, stupid ideas that we could just stop.
	But they don't.
	And I think that's because it's just easier.

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