Return of the Warblog

Thanks for the compliment, Matt. I was just as disinterested in the navel-gazing bickering myself, but sometimes you just get sucked into things... glad to be free of it now!

If I may pick a nit, I think you kids are uninterested, not disinterested.

Don'tcha have better things to do, Yglesias? Like looking for a job, or getting yer site to load more than a page & a half at a time on browsers like mine? ... (Everyone should go over to Matt's site for a more thorough explanation of my language cock-up)...

Matt

Did you read Charles' response to this? Frankly, it makes me doubt what Anil says.

Whoops! I see you just updated.

My opinion is that LGF is a good resource for keeping up with the absolute worst the Arab and Moslem worlds have to offer (which can get pretty bad when you add inflexible religious megalomaniacs or corrupt leeches masquerading as national leaders into the mix).

The comments section can get pretty bad in another way though. Generally no clear distinction between the great majority of decent and upstanding moslems and the extremist filth is made (or recognized when people try to make the differnce).

Calls for what amounts to genocide against Palestinians doesn't raise any eyebrows. Knee-jerk anti-semitism is (rightly) slapped down, knee-jerk hateful anti-islamic comments are barely noticed and certainly not censured.

Anil,

You say "disinterested".

The rest of the blog world says "you got your (self-described) big brown ass bitch-slapped down one side of the street and up the other".

A while back when John Scalzi and Richard Bennett had their little tiff, I proposed to them that they try the "Spartacus Solution" to solve their differences.

Here's how it works: the adversaries (Charles and Anil) put on loin cloths, oil up, and square off in the sawdust pit, no rules, last man standing wins. The winner buys a round of drinks for the audience.

All this hot air over nothing is a scream. You have to admit, these blogger pissing matches are more entertaining than professional wrestling-- the difference is that wrestling has a deeper and much more substantive intellectual meaning, heh-heh.

Uh, Mat did you see the ghastly HHH necrophilla segment on RAW this Monday and then the news that the Big Show (!!!!) is supposed to be challenging Brock Lesnar for the WWE title? ;)

You've got to wonder about the whole commenting thing sometimes.

Thomas -- Henry Copeland, for one, is an aggressive comments-deleter, should people even wander off-topic. I think things have been pretty manageable here, helped (I think) by people's willingness to use their own names. I've found it's a great way to discover new blogs, and get more varied feedback. But if my traffic was doubled, who knows how it would be?

Heh. Having just done the increased traffic thing (not quite doubled, but significantly higher than usual) I can say that the change in comments depends a lot more on *who* is visiting than on how many.

I can't see that Anil Dash makes much of a case for his position.

Here is a portion of his reaction to the LGF flap: "But the reality for me is that I feel like the relative lack of domestic terrorist attacks has left things such that I'm as endangered by an American extremist as I am from an Islamic extremist. Apparently, I'm not alone; I've family and friends of various ethnicities in the Washington, D.C. area who tell me they feel the same way right now."

Since Nov. 4, 1979, Islamic terrorists have apparently killed about 3800 people (including bystanders) in attacks directed at the United States. Almost one every two days, on average. Does Anil Dash really think "American extremists" are likely to kill about one person every other day?

Meanwhile, with exquisite timing, the police captured someone who was a danger to Dash and family in the DC area. It's almost embarrasing to have to point out that John Muhammed's 'extremism' apparently had nothing to do with his being American.

In another para., Dash refers to "the several thousand evil muslims who pervert the religion and the millions who live peacably around the world." According to my sources, the numbers of those already recruited into terrorist organizations is several TENS of thousands, at the least. And how many of the peaceable millions were there dancing in the street in celebration on Sept. 11th?

Dash says MSNBC was "merely asking if the site [LGF]is hateful." Wrong. MSNBC asked if the site was so hateful it ought to be removed from the 'Best of the Blogs' list. That LGF was hateful was assumed.

I won't speculate as to why Anil Dash's remarks are so far from the facts. It does seem clear that he intends to promote a vision of Islam as a mostly peaceful religion. It is unclear to me whether that vision is correct. It is clear that Dash can't be bothered to get his facts straight.

Stephen's post above I think underscores a point that Anil was trying to make.

He doesn't hesitate calling Anil an apologist for Islam using a wide brush that puts together all 'brown asses' as Muslims and thus America hater.

Convenient to put together all those who you hate for whatever reasons; label them as Islamo-fascist and then hey aren't they the bad ones and you standing up for life, liberty and apple pie!