Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - This Week in Stupid (10⧸07⧸2016)

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July 10, 2016 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

24:34

This Week in Stupid (10⧸07⧸2016)

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	Hello everyone, welcome to this week in Stupid for the 10th of July 2016.
	So, there was quite a lot of terrorism last week, coming from two distinct groups, Black Lives Matter and ISIS.
	So let's begin with an article by Black Lives Matter's token white boy Sean King, talking about ISIS.
	ISIS terrorists aren't Muslims, they're just evil men hell-bent on carnage and destruction.
	So I want to pause for a moment and just address whoever had written this headline.
	And it might not have been Sean King, although the sentiment is echoed throughout the piece.
	Saying just is a very interesting way of making it sound like evil men hell-bent on carnage and destruction are the norm.
	But not only that, it sounds like you're characterizing Islam as something more horrific than just evil men hell-bent on carnage and destruction.
	So King is committing his no-true Muslim fallacy in response to the Baghdad bombings that happened last week, where a suicide truck bomb tore through a busy shopping district in Baghdad.
	The bombing killed at least 215 people, including dozens of women and young children, and the death toll is expected to rise.
	And is the single deadliest attack in Iraq in nearly a decade.
	So this is a terrible tragedy that ISIS have claimed responsibility for.
	And to be fair, he does have a point when he says that the West didn't care.
	You didn't get the pray for Baghdad trending on Twitter and Facebook didn't give you the option of overlaying an Iraqi flag on your profile picture.
	Fair enough.
	There could have been more attention paid to this.
	And then he says, this is not the Terrorism Olympics, but.
	Stop you there, Sean.
	What do you mean, but?
	We just said we agree this is not the Terrorism Olympics.
	It doesn't matter if it's deadlier than Orlando or Paris or Oklahoma City.
	If we're not playing the Terrorism Olympics, why are you bringing this up?
	If not to say, well, it's worse for them.
	Well, yes, Sean, I would expect it to be worse for them.
	They are living in the country in which ISIS is occupying the northern half.
	I would expect it to be worse there.
	That's no reason to minimize the effects of the terrorist attacks that are happening here, though.
	I mean, it's even worse that such deadly ones are happening within our own countries.
	We are not being occupied by ISIS, are we, Sean?
	He goes on to say, I have also come to learn that all or nearly all of the victims of Sunday's attacks were Muslims.
	Well, that's kind of what I would expect if a bomb goes off in downtown Baghdad, Sean.
	But the thing is, I know you don't understand why you can so confidently assert that these people were Muslims.
	You can do it because that's what they self-identified as.
	Even if they were bad Muslims, even if they ate pork, drank beer, fornicated, basically did everything you can think of that is considered haram.
	It doesn't mean they're not Muslims, it just means at best they're bad Muslims.
	And I say this because you are doing to ISIS precisely what ISIS is doing to the residents of Baghdad.
	They are saying that they are not Muslims.
	They are apostates.
	They are not following the Sharia correctly.
	They are not obeying the laws correctly.
	They are cooperating with the evil West.
	There are many, many, many reasons that they can say that these people are not real Muslims and therefore it is okay, in fact, demanded that they should be killed.
	So he's just wrong when he says they were attacked by ISIS because the men who make up ISIS are evil and hell-bent on carnage and destruction.
	As if they are evil and hell-bent on carnage and destruction for its own sake.
	In their minds, they think they are fighting for Islam by killing apostates and non-believers.
	And they are doing to those people what you are doing to them and it's wrong when they do it and it's wrong when you do it.
	They are all Muslims.
	They have different interpretations of the same ideology.
	And you say another suicide bomber detonated himself on Monday in Medina, Saudi Arabia, at what many consider one of the holiest sites in all Islam, the Prophet's Mosque, where the Prophet Muhammad is buried.
	Except he didn't blow up the mosque, did he?
	He blew himself up in a car park.
	He's attacking the non-believers, not attacking the religion.
	When you say these men aren't Muslims, they have no regard for Islam, you are wrong.
	There is a reason that they blow up every pre-Islamic monument they can get their hands on.
	There's a reason why they raid museums and smash up pre-Islamic statues.
	They do it in the name of the most literal reading of the Quran and Hadiths possible.
	And these things are pre-Islamic pagan idolatry.
	They have to be destroyed, and that's what they tell us!
	That's what they say the reason that they're doing it is for.
	He justifies all of this, though, by saying, visiting the White House doesn't make you the president.
	Well, duh, Sean.
	Even if you toured the Oval Office, wore your best suit and sat behind the president's desk and declared the words, I'm the president, it's simply not the case.
	Listen, Muslim isn't a descriptive term.
	It's an identity.
	But then Sean goes one better and says that even the KKK, if they claim to be Christians, they wouldn't be, by definition.
	And it's like, no, they would still be Christians.
	They would simply be bad Christians, if you were going to make a judgment on their performance by the standards which Christians usually adopt.
	If they're not adopting these standards, sure, they're terrible Christians.
	But that doesn't mean they aren't Christians.
	But he is right when he says that they are a small, ugly group of evil, insecure, hyper-masculine men who do not represent the faith, period.
	And he's right.
	They aren't representative of Islam.
	They're representative of a branch of Islam.
	And not even a particularly large branch.
	But the thing is, that's fine.
	I don't think anyone is saying that ISIS is representing Islam.
	You know, not all of it in its entirety.
	The problem is when you look at the rest of it in its entirety, massive swathes of it are terrible, Sean.
	I mean, 88% of people think homosexuality is immoral in the Muslim world.
	Half of them want apostates killed.
	Atheists have been declared evil in Saudi Arabia.
	You know, these are not places that are ISIS, and yet you seem intent on defending this religion regardless.
	The good people you are trying to defend when you say they're not all like that, are the minority, and they are like that in spite of Islam.
	And I just want to be clear that the people who hold and act upon these pernicious beliefs are not necessarily bad people either.
	They have a radically different belief structure to us, and they are fulfilling it in order to feel virtuous.
	So in other news that I'm sure will be determined to have nothing to do with Islam, two immigrants have been convicted of Cologne New Year's Eve sex assaults but avoid jail despite the judge branding them as animals.
	So these two men were part of the mass frenzy of sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year's Eve.
	They were the first of dozens of men to answer for sex crimes, though several men have been found guilty of robbery on the night.
	After being found guilty, they've been effectively given a sort of probation for the duration of the suspended sentence.
	So as I understand it, as long as they don't commit any further crimes and commit to whatever conditions of this probation, they're not going to be punished for the crime they've committed.
	Given how subsequent instances of Tarosh Jumiyah have occurred since Cologne, one might think it's prudent to punish these fellows to the limits of the law as an example to others as to what happens if you decide to get together with your friends and sexually assault, rob and rape women in Germany or in any other European country.
	I hate to talk in such crude terms, but don't you think that the lack of vigour shown by the authorities in the West towards these crimes is kind of encouraging others.
	I mean, do you not think they'll be saying to each other, look, I didn't even get punished?
	They found me guilty and they let me go.
	And would that be the treatment for all people irrespective of race or religion?
	I'm also a bit perplexed about Germany's updating of their rape law.
	Now, don't get me wrong, it sounds like the German rape law desperately needed updating.
	The Parliament has passed a new law defining rape, clarifying that no means no, even if the victim did not fight back.
	Which is fine, I mean, it sounds like Germany had an outdated definition of rape.
	But they say the issue was brought again to the fore after a number of sex attacks on women in Cologne on New Year's Eve.
	But the women in Cologne did fight back, and their attackers have been convicted for the attacks.
	So this isn't actually a solution to that at all.
	I don't know anything about the ins and outs of German rape laws, but the way the media has been portraying it has really made it sound like if someone can't consent, you can't rape them in Germany.
	Now, I'm sure that's not accurate, but frankly, I'm starting to wonder, because there seem to be lots of Germans who have really strange ideas.
	For example, left-wing German politician who was raped by migrants admits she lied to the police about her attackers' nationality because she did not want to encourage racism.
	I mean, that is a commitment to political correctness that is just above and beyond, isn't it?
	And what do you think the migrants are thinking from all of this?
	I molested and raped these girls, and not only did I get let off, but the person who I raped decided to lie to defend me!
	I mean, it seems ridiculous.
	It seems that they think that people having just a background prejudice against a certain group is worse than an individual being violated.
	I mean, personally, I would prefer it if individuals and groups would have prejudices that they didn't act upon, instead of ones that they did.
	It doesn't really matter what, say, German nationalists think of refugees, as long as they don't act on these thoughts.
	And it doesn't really matter what refugees think of women, as long as they don't act on these thoughts.
	But when they do, the actions are always worse than simply holding the beliefs.
	Surely.
	Selen Gorin, a national spokeswoman of the left-wing youth movement Solid, was attacked by three men in January in the city of Mannen-Mannheim, where she works as a refugee activist.
	She was ambushed late at night in a playground and was forced to perform a sect act on her attackers.
	After the assault, she went straight to the police, but she did not tell them the ethnic makeup of the men, or that they were speaking Arabic or Farsi.
	She was aware of the backlash that migrants suffered off the events of Cologne in New Year's Eve, when hundreds of women were sexually assaulted and robbed by marauding gangs of immigrant youths, and instead said she was robbed and said her attackers spoke German.
	So she's made sure that the police cannot arrest the correct men, because the men that raped her did not speak German.
	However, she went back 12 hours later to tell them the real story.
	Why?
	She'd been talked into it by a friend because another woman had been raped in the area.
	But that accusation was later retracted by the alleged victim.
	So who knows, maybe she was like, Jesus Christ, those migrants are really getting hammering.
	No, no, it was totally consensual.
	She wrote an open letter to a fictional refugee and posted it on Facebook.
	Why not just write a letter directly to the guy who did it?
	It said, I'm really sorry that your sexist and line-crossing treatment of me could help fuel aggressive racism.
	I think we're seeing the progressive stack in progress there.
	Gender is less important than race.
	I'm going to scream.
	I will not stand by and watch.
	And it can happen that racist and concerned citizens name you as the problem.
	You're not the problem.
	You're usually a wonderful human being who deserves as much as any other to be safe and free.
	Okay, yeah, but you were actually raped by one of these people, or a group of these people, and many other women have had this as well.
	So yeah, let's not worry about talking to the people who haven't done anything wrong.
	Why don't we talk to people who have done something wrong, so the ones who haven't yet done anything wrong know where we stand on these actions?
	I will not stand by and watch and let it happen that racists and concerned citizens name you as the problem.
	She says now people must never twist the truth, even if it is politically expedient to do so.
	Oh the fucking irony.
	A group called Active Together Against Sexual Violence says that sexual assaults by many male migrants have increased.
	The perpetrators often come from cultures with a different image of women, said Steffi Burmeister of the Geyser, the organisation.
	They are alone and looking to banish the humiliation of flight with confirmation of their masculinity.
	This is neither to apologise nor to accept their actions.
	It is how it is.
	I'm finding this all rather amusing.
	From a regressive Black Lives Matter defense of Islam, to Islam being defended by the very people it's victimizing, back to Black Lives Matter victimising the very people who defend them.
	Earlier this week, Black Lives Matter supporters in Toronto decided to block a Pride parade, because on the progressive stack, being gay has tumbled down the hierarchy.
	So Black Lives Matter briefly halted the Pride Parade today, holding up the marching for about 30 minutes.
	The parade didn't restart until Pride Toronto executive director signed a document agreeing to the group's demands.
	The organisation was given the status of honoured group for the parade, which is the grand finale of Pride Month.
	It did not give Pride Toronto advanced notice of their planned sit-in.
	Alexandra Williams, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto, told CBC that they held the sit-in because they wanted to hold Pride Toronto accountable for what she called anti-blackness.
	And Williams defended the group's actions.
	It's always the appropriate time to make sure folks know about the marginalisation of black people, black queer youth, black trans youth, and the black trans people, she said.
	I don't think it was a racially segregated Pride parade, so I have no fucking idea why she's talking as if it was.
	Call me crazy though, but is this a case of social justice co-opting itself?
	We are not taking any space away from any folks.
	When we talk about homophobia transphobia, we go through that too.
	It should be as a cohesive unit, not one against the other, so why are you defining yourself against them?
	Anti-blackness needs to be addressed and they can be addressed at the same time in the same spaces.
	We didn't bully our way into Pride, we made space for ourselves in a place where we had been erased.
	This is the most transparent horseshit I've ever heard.
	You did absolutely bully the entire parade into stopping for you, then you gave them a fucking list of demands making you the honoured group within the fucking privileged identity sphere.
	And now you're saying, no, no, no, this isn't us bullying you.
	This is you bullying us.
	Because Pride Toronto has shown little honour to black queer trans communities and other marginalized communities.
	Over the years, Pride has threatened the existence of black spaces at Pride that have existed for years.
	The group released a list of demands, including a commitment to increase representation among Pride Toronto staff.
	They're colonizing you, Pride Toronto.
	And to prioritise the hiring of black transgender women and Indigenous people.
	Amazing.
	These Black Lives Matter are literally taking over your movement.
	They're eating you from the inside because it's your own cancerous ideology that permits this.
	And what are you going to do?
	You're going to smile and go along with it because you have no fucking choice, do you?
	Pride Toronto, in response to the sit-in, said it welcomes the opportunity to continue the conversation with Black Lives Matter Toronto.
	Hmm, that's very convincing.
	Maybe you should spout out some SJW rhetoric.
	During the parade, BLMTO started a conversation with us to explore how we can create an even more inclusive and safe festival.
	More buzzwords, please.
	We, like BLMTO, have a commitment to ensure our most marginalised communities feel safe and welcome at the festival.
	I don't think there's going to be enough to pull it back.
	I think they've got you by the balls and they're going to start making more and more demands.
	It's really pissing me off how this triumvirate is playing into itself.
	You've got Islam, you have Black Lives Matter, then you have the regressives all feeding each other and supporting each other, despite the fact that the person that wins is going to oppress the rest.
	You will of course be aware of Micah Xavier Johnson, the gunman who shot 11 cops and killed 5 at a Dallas protest.
	Micah was a US Army veteran who had served in Afghanistan.
	But the information we're getting on him is rather contradictory.
	Apparently he acted alone in the Dallas attack and had no known criminal history or ties to terrorist groups, according to authorities.
	However, here's him giving a black power salute while dressed like some kind of pan-Africanist.
	Vice magazine reports that three other suspects in the shooting spree are currently in custody.
	And The Guardian reiterates that Dallas Police Chief David O. Brown said, Johnson told negotiators before he was killed that he was acting alone and was not affiliated with any group.
	Chief said Johnson cited the fatal shootings of black men by police officers in Louisiana and Minnesota, which prompted the protest march in Dallas and many other cities.
	Yeah, okay, by Black Lives Matter, I mean are you saying that he just happens to have been there at the same time with the same intent, but not a part of the Black Lives Matter protest?
	The suspects said he was upset with white people and wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.
	Well, this is rhetoric we've heard many times from Black Lives Matter activists.
	Not all of them, as they say here.
	Activists with Black Lives Matter, whose peaceful march police were guarding as he opened fire, repudiated the shootings, and it wasn't immediately clear if Johnson had any connection to the movement, which has disavowed violence.
	Well, some of them have disavowed violence.
	Others have taken to Twitter and praised it.
	One of the groups Johnson liked on Facebook, the African American Defense League, posted a message earlier in the week encouraging violence against police in response to killing in Louisiana.
	The pig has shot and killed Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
	You and I know what we must do, and I don't mean marching.
	Make a lot of noise or attending conventions.
	We must rally the troops.
	It is time to visit Louisiana and hold a barbecue.
	So I don't know about anyone else, but it doesn't really sound like he was operating alone.
	It sounds like him saying he's operating alone is him trying to cover for other people.
	I mean, there were three other suspects taken in, apparently.
	But again, maybe not, maybe this is just all wrong information.
	I can't be sure.
	No one seems to fucking know.
	But according to the BBC, the area that Micah Xavier Johnson comes from isn't a ghetto.
	Apparently it's characterized by nice houses and well-kept gardens, and the neighbours say they are shocked that someone could come there and kill the police officers.
	Probably in much the same way that people were shocked that some chap from a nice middle-class estate in England would go over and try and shoot Donald Trump.
	His sister said, the news will say what they think, but those who knew him know this wasn't like him.
	This is the biggest loss we've had, and I'm sure it is.
	And I'm sure this is out of character for him, because, like with the kid who tried to kill Donald Trump, This seems to be the product of getting invested in an echo chamber where the same ideas are bounced around and justified and rejustified constantly until the situation is magnified beyond reasonable proportion to where they are actually saying,
	well, look, okay, we need to go and kill some police now because they are deliberately murdering black people as part of systematic racism because they live in a white supremacy.
	If you believe those things to be true, holy shit, of course you are going to shoot cops.
	If this is what these people believe to be true, and I think that we can agree that it is, then of course they don't find attacking those who are quote-unquote oppressing them to be in any way immoral.
	In fact, it becomes their duty to do it.
	The problem is they've lost their grasp on reality.
	They ignore the fact that a large proportion of police and administrators in these areas are black.
	They ignore the fact that whites are also victimized.
	Mexicans are also victimized by cops in this way.
	And now there are people that are literally turning it into a race war like Micah Xavier Johnson when he says he hates white people and wants to kill them.
	This is the product of echo chamber mentality.
	It's a product of ideological certainty where he's just so fucking sure.
	The evidence is incontrovertible.
	He doesn't even want to listen.
	This is what happens.
	I'm sorry this week's episode's been a lot more preachy than usual, but I'm just seeing people saying and doing the wrong thing all over the place.
	And this is just not funny anymore.
	You know, this is just...
	I would love to be making jokes about this all the time, but this is just not fucking funny.
	I'll tell you, these Islamist and black supremacist groups are going to be a real problem.
	And they are going to be fostered, they have been fostered, by the regressive left.
	We should not accept a lesser punishment for anyone committing these crimes than we would for anyone else committing any other crime of comparable nature.
	If it's a white guy, like an IRA terrorist, blowing something up, they should get as bad a punishment as the Muslim terrorist or the Black Lives Matter terrorist.
	We shouldn't make distinctions between these groups.
	But that's exactly what the regressive left are doing.
	And I don't want to go after them so hard.
	I really don't.
	I would rather there not be so much of a problem with these groups that I don't have to go, oh, these groups are totally wrong.
	Because, you know, not everyone in them is totally wrong or anything like that.
	But you've got to look at what the group is producing at its most extreme and violent and damaging capacity to say whether it's fundamentally going to be causing more problems than it's worth.
	And I'm sorry, but these groups are causing tremendous problems.
	I mean, there are other concerns that I have.
	I mean, one of the major concerns I have is with how the police dealt with Micah Xavier Johnson.
	They killed him with a drone.
	He was killed with what's described as a bomb robot.
	So the robot was used after an hours-long standoff to kill Micah Johnson, who police believe did some of the shooting.
	This is an unprecedented act in the history of American policing and raises concerns about due process and the use of remotely triggered lethal force by law enforcement.
	And I agree, and I genuinely worry about the steps the United States is taking in this direction.
	The police had exchanged gunfire with Johnson on the second floor of a parking garage.
	We saw no other option than to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension to detonate where the suspect was, Brown said.
	Other options would have exposed our officers to grave danger.
	Brown raises an obvious question that US military has grappled with.
	If a shooter is holed up in a building, who do you send?
	A person or a bot?
	Well, this is really kind of my problem.
	You're not in a military situation.
	you're in a domestic police situation, even with an active shooter.
	Other options might be something like waiting them out, or talking to them and trying to get them to surrender so no one else gets shot.
	And don't get me wrong, I understand that the officers are going to make the argument that, well, we've got the right to protect our lives at all costs and minimize the risks as much as we see fit.
	Well, no, you don't, actually.
	Because if that's the case, you may as well lock everyone up in a giant prison compound and prevent them from having any freedom whatsoever.
	If that's the line of thought you want to go down, you can justify the most totalitarian police state imaginable by saying, well, we've got to protect the officers first.
	We don't have to protect the officers first.
	I'm sorry.
	I don't want the officers' safety to be ignored, but it's not the most important thing in this situation.
	And I genuinely think that setting the precedent that killing citizens without due process using a drone or something approximating as much is a dangerous precedent that you really want to make sure doesn't happen again.
	This should be where you say no, police officers will not murder the public with drones, even no matter how much they think it's justified.
	No matter how justified it looks, that is not an option.
	Because leaving that as an option opens the door to a world of possibilities, none of which are good.
	Again, I don't blame the officers, and I don't think they should be retroactively punished, but I really think that this is opening the door to something quite dystopian.
	And so I really think that it's just worth not going this way.

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