useful idiots Re: [LINK] madness - or un-australian behaviour

[Brendan Scott]

Deus Ex Machina wrote:
> Howard Lowndes [lannet at lannet.com.au] wrote:
>>
>> Deus Ex Machina wrote:
>>> grove at zeta.org.au [grove at zeta.org.au] wrote:
>>>> On Tue, 29 Aug 2006, Deus Ex Machina wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> the geneva convention does not stop you from putting prisoners on trial.
>>>> No, but it has a lot to say about detaining people without charges
>>>> for several years, denying access to a legal counsel, not telling the
>>>> detainee the nature of the charges and using torture to elicit a 
>>>> confession.
>>> hicks has a charge sheet, has been provided with a lawyer. why are you
>>> on the side of a terrorist?
>> No he doesn't.  The SCOTUS ruled that the military commissions are 
>> illegal, therefore any charges raised by those commissions are thus 
>> void; so at this stage Hicks has not been legally charged with anything, 
>> and Australia has already admited that he has committed no crime under 
>> Australian law.
> 
> 
> http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/012877.php
> 
> "Islam enjoys a large and influential ally among the non-Muslims: A new
> generation of "Useful Idiots," the sort of people Lenin identified
> living in liberal democracies who furthered the work of communism. This
> new generation of Useful Idiots also lives in liberal democracies, but
> serves the cause of Islamofascism-another virulent form of totalitarian
> ideology. 
> "Useful Idiots are na?ve, foolish, ignorant of facts, unrealistically
> idealistic, dreamers, willfully in denial or deceptive. They hail from
> the ranks of the chronically unhappy, the anarchists, the aspiring
> revolutionaries, the neurotics who are at war with life, the disaffected
> alienated from government, corporations, and just about any and all
> institutions of society. The Useful Idiot can be a billionaire, a movie
> star, an academe of renown, a politician, or from any other segment of
> the population. Arguably, the most dangerous variant of the Useful Idiot
> is the "Politically Correct." He is the master practitioner of
> euphemism, hedging, doubletalk, and outright deception"

And there I was thinking that Useful Idiots were those naive, foolish, paranoic people, ignorant of the facts, (or wilfully in denial or deceptive) who support demagoguery and McCarthyist witchhunts.  

How silly of me to think that 300 odd years of constitutional democracy with respect for institutional safeguards was actually valuable.