Patterico's Pontifications

10/14/2006

L.A. Times Columnist: Hooray for Violence! At Least They’re Doing Something!

Filed under: Dog Trainer,General — Patterico @ 5:08 pm



A controversial figure speaks at Columbia University, and students rush the stage, start a brawl, and shut down the speech.

And L.A. Times columnist Meghan Daum applauds:

THE EVENTS at Columbia University on Oct. 4, in which about a dozen students stormed a stage where the founder of an anti-illegal immigration group was speaking, didn’t exactly resemble those of April 1968. There were no arrests, no soundtrack by the Grateful Dead, no occupation of the president’s office. But considering that most young people are considered to be politically apathetic, you have to credit the Chicano Caucus and the International Socialist Organization for trying.

Is Daum unaware of the violence accompanying this thuggish display? No, she is fully aware of it:

Protesters later said Gilchrist was knocked backward and his glasses were broken. The student newspaper, the Columbia Spectator, reported that “one student was kicked in the head and bleeding.”

Yet she repeats her approval later in the column:

Still, I’ll give them an A (OK, maybe a B+) for trying.

It’s qualified approval; she seems to understand somewhere in there that the actions at Columbia were not ideal. Or does she? Well, she calls someone to talk about it, and the person she picks is a former terrorist:

Seeking answers to these questions, I called Mark Rudd. A founder of Students for a Democratic Society, Rudd was among the leaders of the Columbia revolt in 1968 and was later a member of the radical Weather Underground. No stranger to the ways in which protest can go astray — he was in hiding from 1970 to 1977 in connection with a bomb-making project that blew up a building and killed three people — he has since owned up to his mistakes and writes and speaks frequently on activism. I thought he could shed some light on the recent fracas at Columbia.

I’ll turn it over to Penraker:

Somehow, Daum glosses over what really happened. Three radical communists were killed when a bomb they were making exploded prematurely. Rudd and his fellow communists had declared war on the United States, and were trying to kill their fellow countrymen. Instead, they killed [some of] themselves.

(Link via See Dubya.)

The only thing that went “astray” was who they killed.

But hey, Meghan Daum gives them an A — well, maybe a B+ — for trying.

UPDATE: Thanks to Michelle Malkin and Instapundit for the links. You can bookmark the main page here and subscribe to this site via Bloglines by clicking this button and choosing the first feed:

Subscribe with Bloglines

UPDATE x2: See Dubya sulks here. (I’m just teasing him. In case you don’t know him, he’s a great guy.)

UPDATE x3: La Shawn Barber writes to remind me that one of the protestors at the rally called a black Minuteman the N-word. La Shawn wonders what Meghan Daum thinks of that.

I assume she disapproves, but I wish she’d said so.

North Korea and South Korea at Night

Filed under: General,International — Patterico @ 8:48 am



Here is a picture showing North Korea and South Korea at night. The difference is quite stark. (Via Pejman.)

Video of Waterboarding

Filed under: General,Terrorism — Patterico @ 8:06 am



Via Stuart Buck comes a video of a guy who gets waterboarded to see demonstrate what it’s like.

Interestingly, he lasts 24 minutes, when we had been told that the toughest people last only a few seconds, or perhaps 2-3 minutes at most. But the “interrogators” also appear to give him breaks, by taking the cloth out of his mouth.

I would have preferred more explanation of what is actually going on, and less philosophical debate about torture, which you can get anywhere. Still, it’s an interesting video.


Powered by WordPress.

Page loaded in: 0.0744 secs.