How I became a target for America's zealots (Euro-barf)

The Independent (U.K.) ^ | 09/26/2002 | Anita Roddick

[mhking]

"Years ago, I discovered... that Anita is a 'watermelon' (green on the outside and red on the inside)."

Didn't this comment originate from FR? Sounds like she's been looking for the contrarian commentary in order to fuel her angst-ridden diatribes. What a sad woman...

[Skwidd]

Wow, what an interesting piece of self-congratulation. "I am such a free thinker! A rebel!"

[TheBigB]

"It was comforting to know, however, that I was suddenly reviled alongside such admirable thinkers as Norman Mailer, Noam Chomsky, Erica Jong, Susan Sontag, Robert Fisk and Ralph Nader."

This witch is so out of touch as to be little more than pathetic.

[dighton]

It was comforting to know, however, that I was suddenly reviled alongside such admirable thinkers as Norman Mailer, Noam Chomsky, Erica Jong, Susan Sontag, Robert Fisk and Ralph Nader. Again, good company to find yourself in!

Off-her-chump bump.

[Congressman Billybob]

When you think like a moron, and write like a moron, it stands to reason that some folks who can think will condemn you as a moron. This woman has the geopolitical understanding of a house plant.

A real newspaper would not have printed her drivel. Much less her drivel about the response to her drivel.

Ah, but this is the Independent in the UK.

Ne-VER-mind.

Post Script: FReepers, be sure to try at least the second link below. This was written with YOU and FR in mind.

Congressman Billybob

Click for "Til Death Do Us Part."

Click for "to Restore Trust in America"

Click for "I am almost out of ideas"

[Shermy]

"the suppression of public dissent"

Babelfish ...translate "Lefty to English"...translating

"no one is listening to us, and when they do, they argue to us our errors, and we don't like argument, and we have very little to say, but we feel we should, so we say we're being "suppressed".

[GaryMontana]

What did we (in America) learn from September 11, 2001 and the deaths of 3,000 of our fellow citizens. I am tempted to admit: Absolutely nothing.

Among the many unlearned lessons of Day-Which-Will-Live-In-Infamy-II-- the necessity to control our borders, the need for a patriotic renewal and the importance of combating multiculturalism -- the most significant is the nature of Islam. You will note that I do not say militant Islam, or radical Islam, or Islamic extremism or other such weasel words – but Islam, period.

Every one of the hijackers who flew airliners into the World Trade Center and Pentagon were professing and practicing Moslems, as is Osama bin Laden. The Al Qaeda terrorist network, is based in Moslem countries and supported financially by the so called pious Moslem leadership of Saudi Arabia.

The overwhelming majority of Moslem religious authorities who have spoken out on the subject, including those at the main mosque in Mecca and Egypt’s prestigious Al Azar University, either endorse or rationalize acts of terrorism. On a day when Americans were incinerated or buried under tons of rubble, Muslims from Nigeria to Indonesia, celebrated in the streets.

Sept. 11 was one chapter in a 1400-year jihad. Every day, the World Trade Center massacre is reenacted on a smaller scale somewhere in the world. Jewish women and children are burned alive in a bus in Israel. A missionary is beheaded in the Philippines, gunmen shoot up a church in Pakistan (deliberately firing into the prostrate bodies of women trying to shield their children). Ancient monasteries and convents are destroyed in Kosovo. Women are sentenced to death for adultery in Nigeria, Hindus are murdered in the Kashmir. In Denmark, the Muslim community there has put a $30,000 bounty on the heads of Jews and those who support Israel. Nuns are beheaded in Baghdad, Christians in Sudan are forced into slavery, and in Britain, Islam openly states it is going to take over not only the UK, but the whole world -- and the beat goes on.
Genocide in the Sudan, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, religious persecution in Saudi Arabia, calls for another holocaust in mosques from Mecca to Gaza, the imposition of Islamic law in Nigeria, forced conversions in Indonesia, synagogues burned in France, Jews attacked across Europe – these are everyday events, as Third World and much of the First slowly turns Islamic green.

Sadly our leaders, from President Bush on down, insist on peddling the absurdity that Islam is a religion of peace – a creed of kindness and benevolence tragically and inexplicably corrupted by fanatics.

Why is the leadership of the West reluctant to confront manifest reality? The reason lies partly with our absurd foreign policy. We have declared certain Moslem nations to be our loyal allies – including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. We would not want to offend these dear friends by saying something unflattering about their bloody, butcherly, dark ages faith.

Americans are naturally benevolent. Most of us are taught from childhood that is religion is good (and it does not matter which religion). As long as little Johnny believes in God and goodness, it’s inconsequential whether he lights candles, wears a skull cap to services or prays in the direction of Mecca.

This works with every religion except Islam.
Consider the following: Of the three major western religions: one was started by a lawgiver who helped to free slaves; one by a man of peace; the last one by a man who loved war and having sex with children. Mohammed not only led men into battle, he enjoyed marrying girls as young as six years old (it is in the Koran). The essence of his message is sick and disgusting. A holy war where you slaughter your enemies, while at the same time encouraging followers to have sex with the children they capture (as he did) for the glory of Allah. He even advised his followers to negotiate false peace treaties in order to lull their enemies.

For almost 1,400 years, that has been the reality of Islam. Within a century after the death of Mohammed, Islam spread throughout the Middle East and across North Africa. It overran the Iberian peninsula and was finally stopped in southern France. It spread eastward as far as the southern Philippines. It was not propagated by fresh-faced young men knocking on doors and announcing: “Hello. I’m from your local mosque. Have you considered the Koran?” It was and is spread by force – conversion by the sword or death. This is still in practice today.

Some will respond that all religions go through periods of violence, usually in their infancy. Christianity had its crusades and Inquisition, its forced conversions and expulsions. The evil committed in the name of Christ happened centuries ago. The evil committed in the name of the Prophet is going on now, as you read these words. Of 22 conflicts in the Third World, 20 involve Moslems versus someone else. Coincidence? In his brilliant book, “Clash of Cultures and the Remaking of World Order,” Samuel Huntington speaks of Islam’s “bloody borders.”

There is no Methodist Jihad, no Jewish Hasidic holy warriors, no Buddhist monk wanting to have 72 virgins waiting for him after a suicide bombing, no Hindu holy men planning to kill, no Southern Baptist suicide bombers, no Mormon elders preaching the annihilation of members of other faiths.

Islam is a warrior religion – the perfect vessel for fanatics, the violence-prone, the envious and haters of all stripes. This is one reason why Islam is making so many converts among the peaceable denizens of our prison system.

Still, much of the West is addicted to a fairy-tale version of Islam. Christian and Jewish clergy fall all over themselves to have interfaith services with imams. Representatives of Moslem groups are invited to the White House. The president signs a Ramadan declaration. In California, public schools ask children to role-play at being Moslems. Our universities take carefully selected verses from the Koran and present them as the essence of the faith. All that’s needed is a Moslem character on “Sesame Street.” Look – it’s the Jihad Monster!
This perspective engenders a fatally false sense of security.

Imagine, in 1940, Winston Churchill taking to the airwaves to announce “Nazism is an ideology of peace which, regrettably, has been perverted by a few fanatics like Hitler and Goebbels. But most storm troopers and SS men are fine follows – your friends and neighbors.”
For the first thousand years of its history – from the death of Mohammad to the 17th. century decline of the Ottoman empire, Islam was an expansionist force. For the next 300 years, as the West rose to preeminence, Islam receded. For the past four decades – fueled by Arab oil wealth, a surplus population in the Middle East, the waning of the West and the rise of more virulent strains of the faith (Shiism, Wahhabism, Sunni fundamentalism) – Islam is expanding once more.

Due to Moslem immigration and aggressive proselytizing, Islam is being exported to the West. Moslem populations are burgeoning throughout Western Europe. (In southern France, there are more mosques than churches.) In Judeo-Christian America, Islam is the fastest growing religion. It is also spreading down the coast of West Africa, through the Balkans (after Serbia, Macedonia is the next target) and up from Mindanao in the Philippines.

Wherever it comes, Islam brings its delightful customs – child marriages, female circumcisions, rabid hatred toward Christians, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists and every other non-muslim, terrorism and support for terrorism and a virulent intolerance of other faiths.

Am I suggesting we declare war on over 1 billion million Moslems? The question is moot – Islam has declared war on the rest of the human race. When one side knows it’s at war and the other thinks peace and brotherhood prevail, guess who wins?

Ultimately, it is not about Jews in Israel, or Orthodox Serbs in Kosovo, or Hindus in Kashmir, Buddhists in Thailand, or Maronite Catholics in Lebanon, Taoists in China, or Christians in Sudan and Nigeria, but all of us. As Ben Franklin would have it – Either we will hang together, or surely we shall all hang separately

[mhking]

[RichInOC]

"...as if I'd made a fortune in the United States (hardly!)"

Anita, if you're not making huge money over here, then how come I see a Body Shop in nearly every mall and on nearly every major city shopping street? You have the right to your opinion, and the right to have it heard and discussed. Yes, even over here. Still. What you don't have is the right to be protected from being called a lying fool when some people think that's what you are. Because that's their opinion, whether you like it or not.

[Ditto]

So how long did she spend in jail for making her comments? What? She didn't go to jail? Did the government shut down her business? Harass her children? Through them out of school? Audit her taxes? Did they do any of that to Mailer, Chompsky, or her other poor, persecuted friends? No?

I'm confused. How is it she is losing her 1st amendment freedom of speech? It seems she is saying exactly what she thinks and other citizens are telling her exactly what they think. Sounds like the Bill of Rights is working just fine to me. But being a leftist elite, she probably thinks the 1st only applies to her, not to those dirty "little people" who wrote her those letters.

[3AngelaD]

What a twerp, and apparently a thin-skinned twerp at that. The products she sells, supposedly healthly, pure, and plant-based, are actually full of the cheapest, nastiest ingredients -- a lot worse in some cases than what you'd get at the drugstore. This woman's problem is that, whether it be in business or what passes for political debate, she would not recognize the truth if it fell off a tree and hit her on the head.

[Burkeman1]

I would love to see the article she penned which caused this second one. I was willing to read this until I came to this line:

that I was suddenly reviled alongside such admirable thinkers as Norman Mailer, Noam Chomsky, Erica Jong, Susan Sontag, Robert Fisk and Ralph Nader. Again, good company to find yourself in!

Anyone who considers Noam Chomsky, Sontag, or Fisk to be "good company" hates this country and can't be taken seriously.

[dead]

What a boring, self-absorbed, silly woman.

[PsyOp]

"admirable thinkers as Norman Mailer, Noam Chomsky, Erica Jong, Susan Sontag, Robert Fisk and Ralph Nader. Again, good company to find yourself in!"

If I found myself in such company I'd pull the pin on a grenade and walk away.

[Steve Van Doorn]

I keep seeing this number 5 posted in different ways. I must of missed something? What does this mean?

Thank you.

[Mr. Silverback]

One of the "support from America" letters she quotes in the article:

One read: "I am alarmed that George Bush is taking away our right to free speech in the guise of defending our country against terrorists. Just because Bush has said that 'you're with us or against us' doesn't make it so."

My mind boggles so much more at this garbage than at any of the fallacies and self-aggrandizement in this kludge Anita Roddick calls an essay. How did the person who wrote this feel when his/her Congress told him/her that s/he can't get a group of friends together and buy political ads within 90 days of an election? How does that fit with "free speech" in his/her mind? We live in a nation now where you can put "virtual" child porn on the 'net but you can't pay for someone to say "Dick Durbin is really bad on abortion issues" unless tha government likes your timing, and this twit thinks G.W. is the problem! Never mind that none of the initatives by the administration that civil libertarians hate so much have anything to do with free speech. The last line really shows what's wrong: This person lives in a sound bite world and doesn't do any thinking for him or her self. The twit hasn't any clue that G.W. was talking to the leaders of other countries when he made the "us or them" declaration. And "Us" means America, not the Bush White House. And you know what? It is so. This is a fight over the existence of civilization and even about what that civilization will be like after the war is over. Every nation must choose a side, or Al-Qaida will choose for them.

Some folk are just usin' their brain as a paperweight, yaknowwhattamean?

[Mr. Silverback]

If I found myself in such company I'd pull the pin on a grenade and walk away.
LOL!!

[stop_fascism]

Let me try to explain:

To these people it is not enough to let them freely state their views. One must embrace those views, kiss the feet of the writers and celebrate them as the greatest polical thinkers since John Locke...

And most of all, no one should ever dream that those who disagree with them have the right to criticize their drivel.