Postingan menarik, dear Mbak Angel! Walikota London, the Lord Mayor of London "Red" Ken Livingstone anggota Labour Party, krn "sangat kiri" pendapatnya 2 tahun yg lau kena skors, entah sdh diampuni oleh partai atau bahkan hengkang dari Labour yang dibawah pimpinan Tony Blair sedang tergonjang-ganjing karena banyak anggotanya menentang kebijakannya yang sangat pro-AS dalam invansi di Iraq.
"Red" gelarnya krn oleh sayap kanan di UK dikatakan sbg komunis. Nyatanya Ken tetap saja menang dlm pilkada untuk Walikota di London, salah satu pusat kapital global dengan selera tinggi borjuis bahkan tradisi kebangsawanan yang kuat.. Tentu sbg politikus "lokal" dia tidak akan dapat melawan debat para profesor sayap kanan dalam dikusi terbuka itu. Ken menurut CNN bahkan kini sedang di Davos, Swiss, untuk temu tahunan politisi dan bigbiz sedunia, dia disana men-sosialisasikan pungutan "tol" cukup tinggi untuk kendaraan bermotor bila masuk downtown London, yg ternyata sanggup mengurangi polusi di tengah kota tsb secara sangat signifikan. Seluruhnya, saya anggap "Red" Ken di Eropa sbg salah satu tokoh "underdogs", wong cilik, yang mencuat. Spt seorang petani Prancis, lupa namanya, yang berkumis cambang dan lugu penampilannya membela petani gurem dan juga sangat sadar ekologi, tukang demo barangkali kayak Lae Hariman Siregar di RI, keluar masuk tahanan polisi, dan sudah lama menjadi pahlawan, dan "hati nurani" rakyat Prancis. Bagaimanapun, didunia ini kadang-kadang lahir tokoh seperti Robin Hood, Janosik di Cekoslowakia, Jeanne d'Arc, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela yang berani berkorban melawan kekuasaan brutal "demi-gods and semi-evils" dan berpihak pada wong cilik. Tentu kita tidak lupa pada Nabi Isa yang pengaruh ajarannnya sangat kolosal. B.rgds., Mbak Angel, bdg ----- Original Message ----- From: angel_fire_20042000 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007 6:19 PM Subject: [nasional-list] Debating Clash Civilisation in London Noted: Radical islam is a Problem, Moderate islam is a solution http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=debate12007.htm Dr. Daniel Pipes And Douglas Murray Triumph Over "Red" Ken Livingstone In London Debate By Beila Rabinowitz and William A. Mayer January 21, 2007 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Saturday's much anticipated squaring off between noted Middle East scholar Dr. Daniel Pipes and London's leftist mayor Ken Livingstone - billed as the "Clash of Civilisations or World Civilisation?" - was a rout, with Pipes - teaming with Brit Douglas Murray - besting the far less articulate Mayor's team while drawing considerable applause on decidedly hostile ground. Livingstone and his partner Birmingham Councilwoman Salma Yaqoob were rendered speechless on occasion, unable to challenge Pipes' professorial delivery and Murray's oratory. Dr. Pipes presented the idea that radical Islam is the problem and moderate Islam, the solution. He dramatically quoted a Quranic text to show that the tenets for civil society were also to be found within Islam, and in concluding his remarks, brought the audience to their feet. He critiqued Samuel Huntington's theory of clashing civilizations explaining how the struggle was more properly a conflict between civilization and barbarism. According to eyewitness accounts, Murray "came out with guns blazing" and attacked Livingstone for his claims that all the ills of the world should be blamed on the West, challenging his belief that jihad is "our fault." Murray called multiculturalism an abject failure and pointedly asked why Livingstone had chosen Salma Yaqoob an Islamist, as a debating partner, noting that she is the Vice Chair of the Respect Party [a group which prides itself of being "Zionist Free"] and had openly campaigned for the release of terrorists and referred to the 7/7 bombings "as reprisals." In stark contrast to Pipes and Murray, the London Mayor's speech was standard leftist boilerplate, alleging the Cold War was part and parcel of the United States' hegemonistic designs for dominion over all and in what must have represented a Stalinist flashback moment for many in the audience, actually blaming America for victimizing the Soviet Union. He then expanded his comments into a general attack on Western values, though he was careful to delimit his espoused multiculturalism, cutting short of endorsing the practice of cannibalism. Contrary to the evidence provided by London's 7/7/05 bombings, a similar but failed plot two weeks later and a seething population of Islamists advocating jihad, Livingstone also proclaimed that the city's considerable Muslim population had contributed much that was good. The Mayor's debate partner Yaqoob was even less restrained calling Dr. Pipes an Islamophobe and, offering no factual basis, attempting to directly link him to the Bush administration's war policies. In keeping with Livingstone's bogeyman attitude toward the West in general and the U.S. in particular at the conference Yaqoob denied that Islamism presents any threat at all, claiming that terrorist attacks are motivated - and presumably justified - because of Western actions, "imperialism" et al. The sense of those who witnessed the event was that Dr. Pipes and Douglas Murray won a clear-cut victory, defeating Livingstone and Yaqoob on their home turf and in front of an audience of 5,000. ©1999-2007 Beila Rabinowitz/William A. Mayer/PipeLineNews.org LLC http://pryce-jones.nationalreview.com/post Saturday, January 20, 2007 Debating Clash Michael Wharton, a satirist of genius who wrote under the pseudonym of Peter Simple, liked to describe some of the people about whom he fantasised as "genial, unpopular." Such a fellow is Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London. He specializes in being genial and unpopular, probably attracting more general hatred than any other politician in Britain. Not at all the tribune of the people he pretends to be, he is an old-style Communist or more exactly Trotskyist, who never passes up the chance to wage class war, to slam the United States, to swipe at Israel and Jews, and to promote today's hard Left. He is planning a festival in honour of his hero Fidel Castro, and lately visited Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in search of cheap oil. He also supports anything and everything on the Muslim agenda, for instance inviting the egregious and retrograde Sheikh Qaradawi, spokesman of the Muslim Brotherhood. Islamists and the hard Left in fact have nothing in common except hatred of the West, and their alliance is unnatural on both sides. It must have seemed a good idea to this sinister clown to hold a conference sponsored by London, and to participate himself in a debate on whether or not there is a clash of civilizations. He no doubt saw his chance to make more anti-American mischief, and perhaps pin the blame for everything on the "neo-cons," a portmanteau phrase for everything the hard Left hates. Inviting Daniel Pipes to come from Philadelphia and fit the role of scapegoat, he in fact got more than he bargained for. This morning, the large hall and two overflow halls were filled. Many in the audience were Muslims. As expected, Livingstone praised multi-culturalism as the source of peace, love and (Muslim) brotherhood. Here was really an updating of the old Comintern doctrine of internationalism whereby the Soviet Union waged war on everyone and called it peace. The Cold War was all the fault of the West, and he charged that we were making the same mistake with the Muslims. A young lady in a hijab seconded him, shrilly repeating that the real terrorists were America and Britain. Scholar that he is, Daniel Pipes explained that the war is actually between civilization and barbarism. Carefully he distinguished the religion of Islam from Islamism, a totalitarian ideology with which there could be no compromise. He was looking for victory over it. He and his seconder, Douglas Murray, a brilliant young British intellectual, made the point that moderate Muslims had to be supported against extremist Islamists. And suddenly their arguments began to shift the audience away from Livingstone, and to attract a lot of applause. The war on terror has a long way still to go, but victorious battles like this one in a debating hall may mean fewer, or even no, future battles in the field or on the streets. 01/20 04:08 PM
