Henry George

Australia's prime minister has been booed and shouted at by protesters during a visit to the country's largest mosque. Anthony Albanese and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke attended Eid prayers at Lakemba Mosque on Friday morning

Holy shit, Islamist extremists tried to lynch the Australian Prime Minister this morning at Lakemba Mosque.

I can't get over the fact that Dune is about an oppressed people fighting for their homeland, waging a jihad to bring down a hegemonic empire by threatening to cut off the flow of their most precious commodity after the empire had assassinated their religious leader's father.

NOW - Netanyahu: "Jesus Christ has no advantage over Genghis Khan. Because if you are strong enough, ruthless enough, powerful enough, evil will overcome good."

Netanyahu seems to be quoting the historian Will Durant here. The meaning of Durant’s quote is that without having power, being righteous doesn’t save you from tyrants in the temporal world. Agree or not with the quote or with Netanyahu’s actions, bear the intentionally obfuscated context in mind. What I find especially interesting is that some of the people who are taking issue with this quote routinely echo its sentiment. This applies both to people who make the sensible point that you cannot ignore power politics and the more third-worldist types who idolise hard power while blaming the “weak and decadent west” for hiding behind idealistic moralisms and being unwilling to wield hard power; and who by the way now detest western powers for using hard power. Notice how the latter group often dismiss moralistic criticisms as naive and pathetic. But they are not willing to be consistent in applying this to their own commentary. People in power need to be criticised. But performative outrage is counterproductive. The fact that this is characterising discourse more and more is very tiring and annoying.