Patterico's Pontifications

4/17/2014

The Abyssmal Failure of Feminists

Filed under: General — Dana @ 8:38 pm



[guest post by Dana]

I am a regular reader of the remarkable Dr. Phyllis Chesler, and after the Ayaan Hirsi Ali debacle occurred, hers was one of the first commentaries I read. She summed up her distress thusly, “This is a terrible moment for academic freedom and critical inquiry on the American campus”. As I was strolling through the web tonight, I found that Dr. Chesler looked into the matter further. And in doing so, uncovered a shameful hypocrisy,

The Brandeis professors who demanded that Ayaan Hirsi Ali be “immediately” dis-invited wrote that “we are filled with shame at the suggestion that (Hirsi Ali’s) sentiments express Brandeis’s values.” The professors also castigated Hirsi Ali for her “core belief of the cultural backwardness of non-western peoples” and for her suggestion that “violence toward girls and women is particular to Islam.” The professors note that such a view “obscure(s) such violence in our midst among non-Muslims, including on our own campus.”

This is exactly what these professors are teaching the more than four thousand Brandeis students who signed a petition to rescind Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s award.

Are eight year-old girls being genitally mutilated at Brandeis or forced into polygamous marriages with men old enough to be their grandfathers? Are they being forcibly face-veiled or honor murdered for refusing to marry their first cousins? Perhaps they are being executed because they have been raped, for leaving an abusive marriage, or for daring to express an independent opinion?

Eighty seven professors or 29% of the Brandeis faculty signed this letter. These professors teach Physics, Anthropology, Near Eastern and Jewish Studies, English, Economics, Music, Film, Computer Science, Math, Sociology, Education—and Women and Gender Studies. Four percent of the signatories teach Anthropology, 6% teach Near Eastern and Jewish Studies, 9% teach Physics—and 21% teach Women and Gender Studies.

(emphasis added)

Feminists became multi-cultural relativists and as such, refused to criticize other cultures including misogyny within those other cultures.

Feminists have been attacking Ayaan Hirsi Ali for years as a “racist” and an “Islamophobe.” They are guided by the same false moral equivalents which the above Brandeis professors share.

Dr. Chesler closes with her own personal look at feminism,

I mourn the loss of an activist, vibrant, intellectually independent, and politically incorrect feminist Academy.

This is what modern feminism looks like: ugly, hypocritical, and wholly unbecoming. There is not enough liptstick in the world for this pig.

–Dana

143 Responses to “The Abyssmal Failure of Feminists”

  1. Ding. I’m all for feminism. I just don’t like the Stalinist part.

    Ag80 (eb6ffa)

  2. This is what modern feminism looks like: ugly, hypocritical, and wholly unbecoming.

    It’s not so much feminism per se as much as it’s leftism in general.

    The story out of Brandeis is merely one more illustration of why liberal bias makes a person absurdly immature and thoughtless (ie, a nicer word for “stupid”), and just the opposite of what they probably most fancy about themselves—assuming they don’t believe in forced genital mutilation or mandating that women run around in chadors, etc. So it’s not upholding their ideals or principles (assuming they have any) that really counts. It’s upholding their leftist emotions (and leftwing mind meld) that really matters.

    Mark (59e5be)

  3. Feminists will never, ever learn. Feminism be damned, they’re busy hating God, guns, America, western civilization, democracy, Catholicism, Christianity, Judaism, Capitalism, the military, men, the family, heterosexuals, freedom of speech, Conservatives, and most of all the unborn.

    UncleDan (efea20)

  4. i’d be afraid to go to Brandeis cause of I might get my clitoris removed and how do you not wake up screaming every night after that?

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  5. Martha Jane Canary would not let these ladies clean the buffalo dung off her boots.

    nk (dbc370)

  6. Perhaps they are being executed because they have been raped, for leaving an abusive marriage, or for daring to express an independent opinion

    The worst that happens, but not at Brandeis, but in certain (mostly southern) colleges, (or maybe this could also happen at Penn State?) is that if they get raped by a football player, the case may not be investigated properly.

    http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/16/sports/errors-in-inquiry-on-rape-allegations-against-fsu-jameis-winston.html?hp&hp&_r=0#

    Sammy Finkelman (caf2ab)

  7. why does some crappy over-priced whoremerican university have to have communal values anyway

    why can’t they just employ individuals what teach stuff to the momos who go there and call it a day?

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  8. I like to eat popcorn and sit back and enjoy the internecine battles between left wing victims’ groups. It’s the way I escape from reality.

    Peter (371d15)

  9. I’m thinking Camille Paglia’s general reticence and recent commentary on the repression of boy’s natural development turns on he disaffection with modern feminism.

    gary gulrud (e2cef3)

  10. I’d consider this a hopeful sign if she weren’t so fickle.

    http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/04/17/Ann-Coulter-Endorses-Cantor-Challenger-David-Brat

    gary gulrud (e2cef3)

  11. The multi-culties are only happy when they can cleanse their white guilt by absolving those who threaten to cut off their heads of all crimes.

    But it’s totally not about the spincter-puckering fear they feel towards the practitioners of “the religion of peace”. Nope, totally not about fear.

    Vivian Louise, AKA Mrs. The Everlasting Phelps (9cfa92)

  12. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a bona fide hero. Reading Infidel made me feel very small by comparison.

    carlitos (e7c734)

  13. Academia should just cut to the chase and create a College of Victimology, under which they can fold-in the Woymn’s Studies, Black Studies, Chican@ Studies, Asian Studies, Queer Studies, and the rest of the pseudo-disciplines. The hardcore leftists in other colleges can get joint appointments with this college so that they can add whining and political activism to their regular fields of research. This way, those academics are at least acknowledging up front where their interests truly lie.

    JVW (30a532)

  14. I’m sorry, what’s the shameful hypocrisy? I missed it.

    Leviticus (f9a067)

  15. Leviticus, I think the idea is that feminists who are outspoken about women’s equality when they are critical of easy targets, but essentially dismiss much more serious women’s equality concerns, or ignore the greater merit of the feminist taking the braver stand on them, are showing inconsistency to the principles they support when it’s easy.

    Dustin (303dca)

  16. To further delve into Leviticus’s question: A “feminist” who blasts the soft-targets like the Catholic Church and Republican Party for not being groovy with abortion and casting a gimlet eye at trendy social theory that comes from cushy and coddled agenda-driven academics are considered “courageous” while someone like Ms. Ali who actually lived through the horrors of Islamo-fascism and has the real-world bravery to openly criticize a fanatical religion that has already murdered her colleague and collaborator — why she is a voice who can’t possibly represent their whining, self-involved brand of feminism and thus should not get to speak to their over-indulged sheltered little brats.

    JVW (30a532)

  17. #11, VL, it isn’t entirely fear that’s behind Brandise’s apparent cowardise, there’s also the carrot side of the equation: major financial support evaporated when Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme went belly up. As a general rule, if you haven’t included consideration of the economic factors your analysis is incomplete.

    ropelight (75530e)

  18. I’m sorry, what’s the shameful hypocrisy? I missed it.

    Comment by Leviticus (f9a067) —

    Thanks, Leviticus. Hilarious.

    MikeK (cd7278)

  19. Dustin and JVW,

    These professors dislike Ali because of her views on Islam, not because of her views on women’s rights. That’s not hypocrisy. Agreeing with someone on one thing doesn’t obligate one to agree with them on everything, or to respect their general outlook.

    Leviticus (f9a067)

  20. But her view on Islam is informed by her experience with the lack of women’s rights in much of the Arab world,

    http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/2014/04/wendy-davis-didnt-know-when-she-announced-for-governor-documents-related-to-her-work-part-of-fbi-investigation-of-tollway-agency.html/

    interesting one of her major critics, Linda Sarsour, is also critical of the terrorist surveilance program that the NYPD maintained.

    narciso (3fec35)

  21. These people are just following Jesus’s admonition to tend to the mote in your own eye before you point out the beam in the eye of your neighbor.

    Or, something.

    Pious Agnostic (7eb3b0)

  22. What JVW at Comment 16 said. I have Muslims in the family and they’re not Somalis or Pakistanis or even Indonesians, so Hirsi Ali’s blanket condemnation of Islam does not resonate with me. Nonetheless, those “feminists” at Brandeis are not fit to launder her undies.

    nk (dbc370)

  23. A good deal of it, is oikophobia, contempt for the familiar, in our own culture, and a detached attitude toward other cultures,

    narciso (3fec35)

  24. “But her view on Islam is informed by her experience with the lack of women’s rights in much of the Arab world.”

    – narciso

    Yeah, but these professors disagree with the conclusions that she has drawn from that experience.

    Leviticus (f9a067)

  25. Let me state my position more clearly: there are plenty of ways to be contemptible without being a hypocrite.

    Leviticus (f9a067)

  26. Then you have a debate, but that’s not how it works in the modern campus,

    narciso (3fec35)

  27. ==These professors dislike Ali because of her views on Islam, not because of her views on women’s rights. That’s not hypocrisy.

    Leviticus–I am stunned at your comment. I originally actually thought you were being sarcastic. How does one even separate her views of Islam from Islam’s views on womens’ rights. Don’t you think one informs the other to a very large degree? Women in those countries have very few of what most of us consider “rights”. Wow. Just wow.

    elissa (4bccfc)

  28. It seems to me that, absent the contents of her ungiven speech, we cannot really know what Ms. Ali was going to say, about feminism, Islam, or cotton-candy.

    Which is sort of the point of contention, isn’t it?

    Pious Agnostic (7eb3b0)

  29. Above is who they will rally behind, time and again, Gosnell’s girl friday, a total fraud but that’s what they prefer,

    narciso (3fec35)

  30. You could say theer are Islams view of women’s rights, and then there is Al Qaeda’s, or some localities. (female genital mutilation does not actually stem from Islam.)

    But the professors are trying to say there’s not even a tendency, or that there are not some problems anyway with Islamic law, and that’s contrary to fact.

    Sammy Finkelman (caf2ab)

  31. They were not against her because of what she was going to say here now, but because of hoiw she was characterized by terrorist protecting groups like CAIR, and some previous comments that had bene brought to their attention, which maybe indeed painted with too broad a brush.

    Sammy Finkelman (caf2ab)

  32. Well isn’t it always so, CAIR is Hamas’s political outreach, they were making excuses as far back as the First World Trade Center attack,

    narciso (3fec35)

  33. elissa,

    Let’s look at this sentence for a moment:

    The professors also castigated Hirsi Ali for her “core belief of the cultural backwardness of non-western peoples” and for her suggestion that “violence toward girls and women is particular to Islam.” The professors note that such a view “obscure(s) such violence in our midst among non-Muslims, including on our own campus.”

    If I thought someone had a “core belief of the cultural backwardness of non-western peoples,” I wouldn’t want to associate with that person, or (perhaps more accurately) be affiliated with that person in an intellectual capacity.

    So are you mad because you don’t think these professors believe what they said about Ali, or mad because you DO think these professors believe what they said about Ali?

    Either way, they’re not “hypocrites.” At worst, they’re liars. At best, they’re right.

    Leviticus (f9a067)

  34. that may be one way of reading ‘Infidel’ or it could be the way they shut down debate, seeing as Islam is more prevalent then even Christianity in the world, it is hard to argue with the latter point,

    narciso (3fec35)

  35. Leviticus–lets look at this again more closely:

    The professors also castigated Hirsi Ali for her “core belief of the cultural backwardness of non-western peoples” and for her suggestion that “violence toward girls and women is particular to Islam.” The professors note that such a view “obscure(s) such violence in our midst among non-Muslims, including on our own campus.”

    Why do you so seemingly take “the professors'” word for it and accept their interpretation so willingly? Why not go to the actual words and the full context where Hirsi Ali has stated what “the professors” claim she said. Tell us how these mind reading professors know what her “core beliefs” are such that they can publicly castigate her for thought crimes. It seems that the source material to ascertain what she believes and thinks should be Hirsi Ali herself, like oh, maybe in a speech–not “the professors'” spin.

    Frankly, many like me are getting tired of the because–shut up huffiness on a variety of subjects that is coming out of our institutions that used to be institutions of higher learning. They used to be places where students were exposed to a variety of ideas (ranging from radical to classical) and where students were actually encouraged and taught how to think, instead of having all their pre-thinking already done and sanitized for them by someone else.

    elissa (4bccfc)

  36. The professors also castigated Hirsi Ali for her “core belief of the cultural backwardness of non-western peoples” and for her suggestion that “violence toward girls and women is particular to Islam.”

    Leviticus – Do you believe those are accurate summaries of Hirsan Ali’s views or a caricature designed to provoke a reaction?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  37. The professors note that such a view “obscure(s) such violence in our midst among non-Muslims, including on our own campus.”

    Leviticus – Which do people believe are more serious issues, the crime wave against women around Brandeis or the lack of women’s rights and violence against women under Islam.

    These are not difficult questions.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  38. Chesler makes the comparison between how Afia Siddiqui and Hirsi Ali are treated;

    http://counterjihadreport.com/2014/04/16/brandeis-feminists-fail-the-historical-moment/

    narciso (3fec35)

  39. “Why do you so seemingly take “the professors’” word for it and accept their interpretation so willingly?”

    – elissa

    I don’t take them at their word. You are accusing them of distorting Ali’s position. You may well be right. That doesn’t make them hypocrites – it just makes them dishonest.

    “Do you believe those are accurate summaries of Hirsan Ali’s views or a caricature designed to provoke a reaction?”

    – daleyrocks

    You are accusing them of distorting Ali’s position. You may well be right. That doesn’t make them hypocrites – it just makes them dishonest.

    These are not difficult distinctions.

    Leviticus (f9a067)

  40. “They used to be places where students were exposed to a variety of ideas (ranging from radical to classical) and where students were actually encouraged and taught how to think, instead of having all their pre-thinking already done and sanitized for them by someone else.”

    – elissa

    The woman named Tomorrow
    sits with a hairpin in her teeth
    and takes her time and does her hair the way she wants it
    and fastens at last the last braid and coil
    and puts the hairpin where it belongs
    and turns and drawls: Well, what of it?
    My grandmother, Yesterday, is gone.
    What of it? Let the dead be dead.

    Leviticus (f9a067)

  41. “You are accusing them of distorting Ali’s position. You may well be right. That doesn’t make them hypocrites – it just makes them dishonest.”

    Leviticus – I have not accused them of anything or called them hypocrites yet unless I made an earlier comment I am forgetting. I am pointing out the obvious you are ignoring in your leap to defend the professors who have taken the increasing common and cowardly position of retreating from the politically incorrect and uncomfortable truths of the world around them.

    White privilege!

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  42. The professors note that such a view “obscure(s) such violence in our midst among non-Muslims, including on our own campus.”

    Until they show me, that “on our own campus”
    — The parents of a co-ed held her down while a witch doctor removed her labia and clitoris with a sharpened tin can top;
    — She was then raped but there were not two witnesses so the rapist could not be convicted;
    — The rapist offered to marry her in order to preserve her honor;
    — She refused and as a consequence her brothers and her father killed her to preserve their honor;

    I call the Brandeis “feminists” many things, the mildest being “witless dips**ts”.

    nk (dbc370)

  43. fem·i·nism noun \ˈfe-mə-ˌni-zəm\

    : the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities

    : organized activity in support of women’s rights and interests


    Merriam-Webster

    “The Professors” are “feminists”, how? They are not hypocrites in calling themselves feminists while attacking Hirsi Ali for her work and defending Islam under the rubric of “feminism”, how?

    elissa (4bccfc)

  44. “I have not accused them of anything or called them hypocrites yet unless I made an earlier comment I am forgetting.”

    – daleyrocks

    I’m sorry. I forgot to give you an opportunity to state your belief that these professors have offered “accurate summaries of Hirsan Ali’s views.” I must have been too busy leaping to defend intellectual fascists, as is my inevitable liberal wont.

    Leviticus (f9a067)

  45. The professors also castigated Hirsi Ali for her “core belief of the cultural backwardness of non-western peoples”

    You can’t win with people like that.

    It is not, of course, “non-western people” who are generally culturally backward, but each is jdged on its own, and some western people can be culturally backward too, if by that you mean have worse moral values. It wasn’t so long ago that the most “culturally backward” place, in that sense, was the place that invented the Ph.D.

    This very idea that such an idea as she’s accused of having is off the table is crazy.

    Let’s say you believe in human equality and in democracy.

    Now where did that come from? Isn’t it a (broadly speaking) western value? At least in the last 3 millennia or so. This is crazy.

    Of course there is a wide variety of culturally beliefs, and I strongly doubt she thinks everything non-western bad is bad, and especially equally bad. She has very specific complaints against Islam.

    And I don’t think there’s anything to show that she proceeds from non-westerness and says therefore they have bad values – rather it is the other way around.

    This is a misrepresentation of what she is saying.

    and for her suggestion that “violence toward girls and women is particular to Islam.”

    Well, if that’s what she thinks then maybe she doesn’t think that non-western peoples in general are culturally backward, since they are not all Islamic.

    And besides which, Islam, being derivative of Judaism, belongs to the west!

    And not to Asian, Indian, sub-Saharan African, or western hemispherean or Polynesian cultures, because “western” does not mean the Continent of Europe, or areas that were predominantly Christian at the time of Columbus, but western means the continuing civilization that has ties to Babylonia that spread across the world.

    She does say there are problems is Islamic areas but she is hardly saying that’s the only place in the world anything bad can be found. And if she is, it’s a correctable mistake.

    The professors note that such a view “obscure(s) such violence in our midst among non-Muslims, including on our own campus.”

    She’s really saying that?? That’s a lie.

    BTW, probably not so much the campus, but off-campus, maybe in the black areas not so far away nearby – places people don’t go, like Roxbury.

    Sammy Finkelman (caf2ab)

  46. “They are not hypocrites in calling themselves feminists while attacking Hirsi Ali for her work and defending Islam under the rubric of “feminism”, how?”

    – elissa

    Because they believe that she’s more anti-Islam than pro-woman. It’s not hypocrisy for me to dislike a philosophy that overlaps with mine in some areas.

    Leviticus (f9a067)

  47. “I must have been too busy leaping to defend intellectual fascists, as is my inevitable liberal wont.”

    Leviticus – Given that the petition looks like it originated in the Women’s Studies Department based upon the earliest signatories, I am glad you recognize intellectual fascism when you see it. It just makes me sad to see you support it.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  48. ==Comment by Leviticus (f9a067) — 4/18/2014 @ 10:49 am=

    Your sweet poem illustrates that women have been moving forward and it recognizes and celebrates that I live a different, freer, more equal life in society than my grandmothers did. But how is that relevant to our universities taking steps backward in educating young people by denying them exposure to ideas which might actually force them to think? Sorry–apparently I am missing the point you were trying to make.

    elissa (4bccfc)

  49. If you live in a culture where bad things happen to people you like, ipso-facto, that culture is backward.

    If the bad things happen to people you don’t like, then the culture is enlightened.

    Pious Agnostic (7eb3b0)

  50. Comment by nk (dbc370) — 4/18/2014 @ 10:54 am

    She was then raped but there were not two witnesses so the rapist could not be convicted;

    That’s not Boston, that’s Florida.

    http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/16/sports/errors-in-inquiry-on-rape-allegations-against-fsu-jameis-winston.html?hp&hp&_r=1

    As the news broke, and before investigators could talk to them, Mr. Winston’s lawyer had the two witnesses, Mr. Casher and Mr. Darby, submit affidavits attesting to their recollection of that now-distant night. They gave similar accounts: A blond woman who was not intoxicated willingly left the bar with the three football players, they said, and joined Mr. Winston in his room. Because the door was broken and would not close, they looked in and saw the woman giving the quarterback oral sex…Three weeks after it began, with evidence lost and memories faded, the state attorney’s investigation was over.

    This was so, even though the victim recognized the rapist, and some of her account got corroborated by the fact it was the right person.

    Three weeks after Mr. Winston was publicly identified as the suspect, the storm had passed. The local prosecutor announced that he lacked the evidence to charge Mr. Winston with rape. The quarterback would go on to win the Heisman Trophy and lead Florida State to the national championship.

    In his announcement, the prosecutor, William N. Meggs, acknowledged a number of shortcomings in the police investigation. In fact, an examination by The New York Times has found that there was virtually no investigation at all, either by the police or the university.

    The police did not follow the obvious leads that would have quickly identified the suspect as well as witnesses, one of whom videotaped part of the sexual encounter. After the accuser identified Mr. Winston as her assailant, the police did not even attempt to interview him for nearly two weeks and never obtained his DNA.

    The detective handling the case waited two months to write his first report and then prematurely suspended his inquiry without informing the accuser. By the time the prosecutor got the case, important evidence had disappeared, including the video of the sexual act.

    The detective claimed she had refused to co-operate.

    Sammy Finkelman (caf2ab)

  51. Leviticus, are you saying that your only complaint is that word “hypocracy” is misused?

    If instead, the attitudes of the Brandeis folks were recast as “dishonesty” you’d be totally cool with that characterization?

    Pious Agnostic (7eb3b0)

  52. Feminism is a culture of gender hatred.

    paul a'barge (ceebec)

  53. I was referring to the Islamic law of rape as practiced in some places, Sammy.

    nk (dbc370)

  54. 12. I completely agree. Prolly another thing that incites jealousy among feminists.

    gary gulrud (e2cef3)

  55. Leviticus – What I would like to see is a statement from the erudite feminist scholars stating that they are perfectly fine with the treatment of women in most non-western Muslim majority countries. That they have no problem where there is essentially no separation between Islam and the law and women are treated like property, mere children can be forced into marriage, husbands can legally beat their wives, women can be denied educations and the right to drive and work outside the home and other freedoms we enjoy, because the cultures of those countries are different and we are preoccupied with the horrors of how women are treated in this country.

    That is what I would like to see, an acknowledgement of the truth.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  56. Sometimes these threads take strange and unexpected turns, don’t they?

    elissa (4bccfc)

  57. “Leviticus, are you saying that your only complaint is that word “hypocracy” is misused?

    If instead, the attitudes of the Brandeis folks were recast as “dishonesty” you’d be totally cool with that characterization?”

    – Pious Agnostic

    Yeah, pretty much.

    Leviticus (474b53)

  58. I think the gender studies warriors were intimidated by Ms Ali. She overcame actual obstacles and oppression, as opposed to fighting over an additional 12 cents an hour from the Obama admin, and free birth control.

    JD (3845bd)

  59. “Your sweet poem illustrates that women have been moving forward and it recognizes and celebrates that I live a different, freer, more equal life in society than my grandmothers did. But how is that relevant to our universities taking steps backward in educating young people by denying them exposure to ideas which might actually force them to think? Sorry–apparently I am missing the point you were trying to make.”

    – elissa

    Sorry – my point wasn’t clear at all. I was arguing against a tendency to glorify the past. It’s a piece of a Carl Sandburg poem that came to mind.

    Leviticus (474b53)

  60. it’s all deception, as with the Levick grp rehabilitation of gitmo detainee,

    narciso (3fec35)

  61. Let me state my position more clearly: there are plenty of ways to be contemptible without being a hypocrite.

    Comment by Leviticus

    Yes, like female genital mutilation. Being a hypocrite consists of ignoring that aspect of Islam while accusing someone like Hirsi Ali of being anti-Islam and not mentioning why.

    MikeK (cd7278)

  62. Well, female genital mutilation is pretty much a Northwest Africa thing.

    nk (dbc370)

  63. Very prevalent among the Kikuyus in Kenya. Our President’s aunt, may she rest in peace, was likely a victim of it.

    nk (dbc370)

  64. “I think the gender studies warriors were intimidated by Ms Ali”

    JD – Well, lesbianism is the highest form of feminism according to the rad fems and Ali ain’t on their team so they hate her for that to start with.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  65. I have my geography all mixed up, too. North and East Africa.

    nk (dbc370)

  66. I wonder what they’d make of this lady. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laskarina_Bouboulina

    nk (dbc370)

  67. Hey, nk, here is a list of past awardees:

    http://www.brandeis.edu/trustees/hdr/recipients.html#

    But yes, on campus, we do have a “shut up” culture toward ideas that don’t “fit” what the most vocal people champion. It’s ironic, really: those same highly vocal folks complain of identical actions used against the things they value in the past.

    That’s different,” with a foot stomp appears to be the strategy.

    Jonathan Swift would smile.

    Simon Jester (c8876d)

  68. Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 4/18/2014 @ 11:29 am

    That they have no problem where there is essentially no separation between Islam and the law and women are treated like property, mere children can be forced into marriage, husbands can legally beat their wives, women can be denied educations and the right to drive and work outside the home and other freedoms we enjoy, because the cultures of those countries are different

    They have a problem with saying we are better than them, or alternatively, they are worse than us. That cannot be allowed to be stated – or even implied..

    That is what I would like to see, an acknowledgement of the truth

    They can’t say it. That would be imply support for imperialism.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  69. Hey, nk… I saw this, and thought you might get a chuckle:

    http://www.badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?id=32109327065

    Simon Jester (c8876d)

  70. Heh! I could have used this when elissa insisted that Santa Claus was St. Nicholas during the Megan Kelly brouhaha.

    nk (dbc370)

  71. I have a Serbian friend whose slava, household patron, is St. Nicholas. I’ll share it on her Bookface page.

    nk (dbc370)

  72. Sinterklaaas nk. Good Allah, must we go through this again?

    http://www.sinterklaas.ca/history1.html

    elissa (4bccfc)

  73. “They can’t say it. That would be imply support for imperialism.”

    Sammy – What support for imperialism?

    It simply means acknowledging women have inferior rights other places and cultures in the world, which they are unwilling to state, because that would be judgmental, or something.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  74. Same thing. Eurocentric cultural imperialism. Not to mention cisexual and heteronormative. Oh, wait. Islam is cisexual and heteronormative. Patriarchical, too. Dang.

    nk (dbc370)

  75. That is what I would like to see, an acknowledgement of the truth.

    There’s nothing to be gained by admitting the truth. Retaining the power of silencing people with their victimhood™ is too great to overcome.

    Amalgamated Cliff Divers, Local 157 (f7d5ba)

  76. 74. Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 4/18/2014 @ 12:51 pm

    acknowledging women have inferior rights other places and cultures in the world, which they are unwilling to state, because that would be judgmental, or something.

    …which would tend to justify imperialism in the past.

    Given that it must be assumed to be terrible, or the worst thing, they can’t say that.

    Sammy Finkelman (caf2ab)

  77. In the real world, the independence of many countries after or about the year 1960 only led to a lot of tragedy. If anyone had preidcted what would actually happen, they could not have supported – there was no safety net for democracy or even basic civil liberties.

    Sammy Finkelman (caf2ab)

  78. In 1975, many people ran away from Surinam (to Holland) when they learned it was about to become independent and the door would shut after independence.

    This possible future tyranny factor may be a reason that independence votes have lost in Puerto Rico, Quebec and even Newfoundland.

    Sammy Finkelman (caf2ab)

  79. “…which would tend to justify imperialism in the past.”

    Sammy – Can you point to a U.S. declaration of war with a foreign country which used inferior women’s rights as a causus belli?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  80. failmerica doesn’t actually declare war anymore

    constitution lol

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  81. When it comes to doctrine, like imperalism is bad, it conclusion first, argument afterward, and these people can see an argument heading toward them that might undermine their position a mile away, so they can’t allow something to be said, that amounts to saying modern western culture is better, (and should rule.)

    Sammy Finkelman (caf2ab)

  82. Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 4/18/2014 @ 3:45 pm

    Can you point to a U.S. declaration of war with a foreign country which used inferior women’s rights as a causus belli?

    Maybe Afghanistan in 2001.

    http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=44432

    Women’s Rights a Priority; Humanitarian Aid Improves

    By Sgt. 1st Class Kathleen T. Rhem, USA
    American Forces Press Service

    WASHINGTON, Nov. 19, 2001 – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld today joined first lady Laura Bush in waving the banner for women’s rights in Afghanistan.

    Rumsfeld addressed the issue during the daily Pentagon press briefing. Bush used her husband’s weekly radio address Nov. 17 as a platform to bang the drum in support of Afghan women who have been brutally repressed in Taliban-held Afghanistan.

    “Afghan women know, through hard experience, what the rest of the world is discovering: The brutal oppression of women is a central goal of the terrorists,” Bush said during the nationally aired broadcast….

    Sammy Finkelman (caf2ab)

  83. Sammy – Can you please explain in plain English this imperialism theory on which you are fixated.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  84. —–She was then raped but there were not two witnesses so the rapist could not be convicted;

    That’s not Boston, that’s Florida.—–

    Sammy is clearly impaired tonight.

    Sharia law’s discounting of rape is not Boston or Florida (Or Europe or North America (yet)). We live in a western civilization that respects personhood of women and punishes rape. This is the point a university near the pinnacle of Western knowledge and philosophy refuses to face the challenge that Hirsi is describing. Because they have degraded the intellectual capital of our society.

    red (ac28a9)

  85. In a similar vein, Condi’s had her problems with leftist college thought police, too. Rich Lowrey has a good article up at Politico.

    When the University of Minnesota invited her to give a lecture Thursday as part of a series marking the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, the herd of independent minds that is the school’s faculty roused itself.

    Roughly 200 of them demanded that the invitation be revoked, mostly for her association with George W. Bush’s interrogation and detention policies, but also because she is unfit to be part of a civil-rights lecture series.

    What would give anyone the idea that a woman who was the nation’s first female African-American secretary of state, whose grandfather was the son of a sharecropper, who experienced Jim Crow firsthand during her childhood in Alabama, who was friends with one of the girls killed in the Birmingham Church bombing, whose parents instilled in her an ethic of striving despite the hatred around her would have anything relevant to say about civil rights?

    The Minnesota professors say that it is in a “spirit of free expression” that they ask for the reversal of Rice’s invitation. Because nothing says free expression like shutting down someone’s lecture.

    elissa (4bccfc)

  86. Here’re another couple of worthy paragraphs from the Lowrey article:

    The Rutgers faculty reacted in a similar vein to Rice’s selection as the school’s commencement speaker. It approved a resolution calling for undoing the decision that included a proviso explaining that “a Commencement speaker, who is entrusted with speaking to graduating students about the direction of their future lives, should embody moral authority and exemplary leadership.”

    Rice is not a natural lightning rod. She’s such a disreputable figure that she’s on the board of the Kennedy Center and the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. She’s such a lightweight that she’s a Stanford University professor. She’s such a yahoo that she once accompanied Yo Yo Ma on the piano.

    elissa (4bccfc)

  87. No mere professor, she was a provost, a polymath, Russian and Czech, one might take exception with some of her views, say with regards to the Palestinians, but they take exception to her very
    existence,

    narciso (3fec35)

  88. Fortunately, a modicum of sanity at the upper layers of both Rutgers and Minnesota has prevented Condi’s speeches from being cancelled. I only hope the students are mature enough, and the complaining faculty are able to restrain themselves sufficiently, so as not to ruin the events for others. But I have my doubts.

    elissa (4bccfc)

  89. Islamophobic Imperialists!

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  90. “The Brandeis professors…rote that ‘we are filled with shame’…”

    Shame is something they are never filled with.

    pst314 (ae6bd1)

  91. Leviticus “That doesn’t make them hypocrites – it just makes them dishonest.”

    But that is the meaning of “hypocrite”.

    People nowadays often call someone a hypocrite for failing to live up to the morality they espouse–for backsliding or yielding to temptation. But that is just the mushy modern usage.

    What Jesus inveighed against was not people who occasionally sinned against their own beliefs, but people who loudly proclaimed a morality they did not believe at all. Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s critics fall into this category, as they pretend to care deeply about the rights of all women everywhere, but silence and defame a real defender who has risked everything.

    “Everything they do is done for people to see…they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues…Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.”

    Contemporary academia bears more than a passing resemblance to a whited sepulcher…and the Left to a plague house.

    pst314 (ae6bd1)

  92. why is Ayaan Hirsi Ali slumming around with fascist whoremerican universities in the first place?

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  93. damn good question

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  94. No it’s not, as much as we dismiss the practical application , universities are where ideas are supposed to be debate;

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-lean/ayaan-hirsi-ali-neither-a_b_5175604.html

    the perfect post modern idiot.

    narciso (3fec35)

  95. In her adopted home of Holland, she saw women be abused, by this alien faith, hence Submission, she saw Theo Van Gogh murdered, and his murderer excused, that would jaundice your view of the faith you grew up in, no,

    narciso (3fec35)

  96. 46. …Because they believe that she’s more anti-Islam than pro-woman. It’s not hypocrisy for me to dislike a philosophy that overlaps with mine in some areas.

    Comment by Leviticus (f9a067) — 4/18/2014 @ 11:04 am

    Close, but not cigar. The “professors” at the gender studies department, a wing of what JVW rightly summarizes as the College of Victimology, are more anti-Western civilization in general and anti-American in particular than they are pro-woman. Teaching the truth about how Islamic countries are far, far worse than the US when it comes to women’s rights does not advance the cause of teaching students that America is the most evil country on Earth. And of course needs to be fundamentally transformed.

    http://www.city-journal.org/html/16_3_ed_school.html

    As Ayers wrote later, he took fire from Greene’s lectures on how the “oppressive hegemony” of the capitalist social order “reproduces” itself through the traditional practice of public schooling—critical pedagogy’s fancy way of saying that the evil corporations exercise thought control through the schools.

    It hadn’t occurred to Ayers that an ed-school professor could speak or write as an authentic American radical. “

    …Instead, critical pedagogy theorists nurse a rancorous view of an America in which it is always two minutes to midnight and a knock on the door by the thought police is imminent. The education professors feel themselves anointed to use the nation’s K–12 classrooms to resist this oppressive system. Thus Maxine Greene urged teachers not to mince words with children about the evils of the existing social order. They should portray “homelessness as a consequence of the private dealings of landlords, an arms buildup as a consequence of corporate decisions, racial exclusion as a consequence of a private property-holder’s choice.” In other words, they should turn the little ones into young socialists and critical theorists.

    All music to Bill Ayers’s ears. The ex-Weatherman glimpsed a new radical vocation. He dreamed of bringing the revolution from the streets to the schools. And that’s exactly what he has managed to do.

    These people are fundamentally dishonest because they have to pretend to care about one thing, women’s rights, because if they were honest about who and what they are they wouldn’t get the time of day from the vast majority of Americans.

    But as PST points out they are also hypocrites because they pretend to adhere to a and loudly proclaim a certain worldview when they don’t believe in that worldview at all.

    Steve57 (0124e7)

  97. These professors dislike Ali because of her views on Islam, not because of her views on women’s rights.

    Leviticus, for you to be rationalizing away the idiocy of the leftwing loons at Brandeis makes you, in effect, also a leftwing loon. I know you’re a liberal, but I didn’t think you were so extreme that you’d have any desire to sugarcoat the fools who are excoriating a women not because she’s blasting ultra-liberal secularists but because she’s blasting ultra-conservative Islamicists.

    The liberal goofballs on the university campus in question is the essence of what some wags have described is the nature of liberalism: A mental illness. Worse of all, an illness where many of its sufferers also live under the delusion that they’re humane, beautiful, generous, caring, tolerant, wonderful, compassionate human beings. [Snerk]

    Mark (59e5be)

  98. We live in the world. that Bill Ayers made, it is totally at odds with reality, but ‘that’s not important now,’ is it.

    narciso (3fec35)

  99. I thought I’d add, this is why dozens of political activists (not professors, hence the scare quotes) at Duke immediately signed a petition condemning the Lacrosse team members as rapists and demanded they be prosecuted based upon an allegation.

    They have never retracted or apologized for that petition, even though the state AG pronounced the Duke Lacrosse players not merely “not guilty” but “completely innocent,” the DA Mike Nifong was disbarred and spent time in jail for his prosecutorial misconduct, and the accuser Crystal Mangum is now in prison for murder.

    If you read Powerline you’ll know the Dartmouth alumni who contribute to that blog are dismayed that their alma mater is attempting to do away with due process and the assumption of innocence when a man is accused of sexual assault by a woman.

    Because it is teh White male Christian patriarchal and capitalist social order that is always the oppressor. It is women, gays, lesbians, minorities, and Muslims who are always victims (I’m sure I’m missing a few).

    As an aside, it is also why no one will speak up about Muslims slaughtering Christians throughout the M.E. Nothing can be admitted if it contradicts the narrative.

    If these activists admitted to being communists, as Bill Ayers does, they wouldn’t get anywhere. But they are cultural Marxists. Since Marxists didn’t get much traction defining the oppressed by economic class, i.e. the exploited proletariat, they had to come up with other categories to define the exploited. But the exploited and the exploiters must always remain the same.

    Hence, they can’t let Ayaan Hirsi Ali come on campus and tell the Brandeis students the truth about Islam. It destroys their narrative about how America is the worst country on Earth.

    Steve57 (0124e7)

  100. True dat, narciso. A dose of reality destroys the narrative. Students must be insulated from reality at all costs.

    Steve57 (0124e7)

  101. 62. Checkmate.

    gary gulrud (e2cef3)

  102. Can you point to a U.S. declaration of war with a foreign country which used inferior women’s rights as a causus belli?

    Maybe Afghanistan in 2001.

    So, planning the 9/11 attack was not reason enough ? Women’s right may have been a reason to stay but it wash;t good enough for me. I think we should have gotten out of there before Obama’s “surge.”

    Democrats seem to avoid US nation interests in war but prefer social work. Back when I was a subscriber to Foreign Affairs, they had a cover “Foreign policy as Social Work.” That was Clinton. When they began to fellate Obama, I dropped my subscription

    Mike K (cd7278)

  103. Well Halberstam, who was legendarily wrong about Vietnam, had a book about the ’90s, ‘war in a time of peace’ about the interventions in Somalia, Bosnia and Haiti, two of which were AQ staging areas.

    narciso (3fec35)

  104. I think I need all of this Voxsplained to me.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  105. It’s easy, daleyrocks. Boko haram. Western education is unclean.

    nk (dbc370)

  106. Comment by nk (dbc370) — 4/19/2014 @ 5:00 pm

    Boko haram. Western education is unclean

    Not “unclean” The word is the same as the Hebrew word “cherem” and I guess maybe a good translation would be “off-limits”

    The Arabic word has come into English with the word “harem” which refers to one aspect of it. No other men could go in there.

    Moslems also use the word to indicate food they cannot eat.

    Sammy Finkelman (ba30b8)

  107. halal is acceptable, haram is forbidden,

    narciso (3fec35)

  108. Moslems also use the word to indicate food they cannot eat.

    Yeah, that’s why I went with unclean. It’s also a commmon Greek expression meaning to waste.

    nk (dbc370)

  109. 106. It’s easy, daleyrocks. Boko haram. Western education is unclean.

    Comment by nk (dbc370) — 4/19/2014 @ 5:00 pm

    This.

    I can cite more authoritative sources if anyone likes but for convenience right now I’ll cite wikipedia.

    There have been exactly two muslim scientists who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for Science. Neither one did their research in the Muslim world. For good reason.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Muslim_Nobel_laureates#Sciences

    In 1974, the Pakistan parliament made a constitutional amendment that declared Ahmadis as ‘non-Muslims’. In protest, Salam left Pakistan for London. He is the first and only Pakistani to receive the award. He is also the first Pakistani scientist to be awarded the Nobel Prize.[54][55]

    The other guy was a chemist who did his work in the US.

    Because, Boko Haram.

    I can cite the surrah and the hadith if you like. Or maybe the more recently issued fatwah. But if you’re Muslim, you must believe that that the Sun sets in a mud puddle somewhere on Earth. Muhammad said so.

    If Allah wants the landing gear down,
    Allah will put the landing gear down!

    So said a Saudi student pilot to his American instructor, about to crash a very expensive AWACS. Because, Boko Haram!

    Getting back to the topic at hand, Western medicine teaches us that a girl after her first menstruation is not ready for sex. It means her body is just starting to get ready. Let alone a nine year old girl.

    But, Boko Haram! The prophet is the perfect man, and he took Aisha at nine.

    So they have a solution if the nine year old defies the will of Allah. Talk about genital mutilation. If the nine year old bride is a bit tight, carve her open with a knife.

    Naturally this means a certain proportion of nine year old girls don’t survive the wedding night. But Inshallah!

    Anyway, Leviticus, you were saying something about the wymyn’s studies “professors” not being hypocrites.

    Steve57 (0124e7)

  110. I probably wasn’t clear. Leviticus, earlier you stated:

    If I thought someone had a “core belief of the cultural backwardness of non-western peoples,” I wouldn’t want to associate with that person, or (perhaps more accurately) be affiliated with that person in an intellectual capacity.

    So who would you rather be associated with? Me, who believes it is culturally backward to marry nine year old girls. Or the non-westerner who is cutting up his nine year old bride so he can have sex with her.

    Steve57 (0124e7)

  111. Can’t like everybody, Steve. If Leviticus doesn’t want to hang out with us, he doesn’t have to hang out with us.

    nk (dbc370)

  112. 111. Steyn was hosting Rush’s Friday show and made a cultural analogy of our practice in having our President taking his oath of office, swearing, hand on Bible, with that of Liberia, when in 1980 President Tolbert was excused from service, his ears hacked off and eaten, and then, his organs of procreation, conferring to the ingestor his power, his life-force.

    Frankly, I find all these high-minded thoughts maintaining cultural relativism laughably obtuse and decadent.

    gary gulrud (e2cef3)

  113. 84. Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 4/18/2014 @ 4:04 pm

    Sammy – Can you please explain in plain English this imperialism theory on which you are fixated.

    Well, when you say (or say something that implies) that certain areas of the world are not so good culturally, it sounds to them like maybe you are ready to take up the “white man’s burden.”

    http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5478/

    In February 1899, British novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem entitled “The White Man’s Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands.” In this poem, Kipling urged the U.S. to take up the “burden” of empire, as had Britain and other European nations…

    Sammy Finkelman (ba30b8)

  114. True, nk. But it’s a simple question.

    Would Leviticus prefer to associate with people who based upon observation and experience consider some cultures inferior to western civilization?

    Or would he prefer to associate with members of those non-westerners who use their Jambiyas to mutilate their child brides into suitable sex partners?

    Steve57 (0124e7)

  115. Comment by Sammy Finkelman (ba30b8) — 4/19/2014 @ 9:53 pm

    Well, when you say (or say something that implies) that certain areas of the world are not so good culturally…

    Oh, do you mean like designating parts of the world that aren’t part of the caliphate Dar al Harb? The house of war?

    Steve57 (0124e7)

  116. But we’re the imperialists per Sammy and the College of Victomology.

    Steve57 (0124e7)

  117. Daleyrocks: Can you point to a U.S. declaration of war with a foreign country which used inferior women’s rights as a causus belli?

    SF: Maybe Afghanistan in 2001.

    Comment by Mike K (cd7278) — 4/18/2014 @ 7:49 pm

    So, planning the 9/11 attack was not reason enough ?

    Bush wanted something more.

    Now by November 17 and 19, 2001, Congress had already authorized the use of force in Afghanistan, so that wasn’t really a casus belli, unless it brought up before. The bombing started about Oct. 19, and the dates of these remarks is about when U.S. forces went in, so it is designed to motivate the troops.

    Women’s right may have been a reason to stay but it wash;t good enough for me. I think we should have gotten out of there before Obama’s “surge.”

    The real problem was that they didn’t do anything about Pakistan.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/magazine/what-pakistan-knew-about-bin-laden.html?_r=

    It was, of course, Pakistan’s rogue military intelligence agency, the ISI, that did the whole thing. I don’t think too many people in Pakistan actually wanted any of this. I think the reason is they were bribed, and the only possible bribers are Saudis or other Gulf Arabs, or China.

    Bush and Rumsfeld let bin Laden escape, on the grounds Pakistani troops were taking care of the other side of Tora Bora. There was a problem with the way Tora Bora was handled, but it wasn’t the problem that John Kerry claimed was the problem in 2004.

    Carlotta Gall didn’t just write a magazine article. She’s written abook, which just came out:

    The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014 by Carlotta Gall

    http://www.amazon.com/The-Wrong-Enemy-Afghanistan-2001-2014/dp/0544046692 (although using ths search box would help Patterico if you buy it)

    Sammy Finkelman (ba30b8)

  118. “Well, when you say (or say something that implies) that certain areas of the world are not so good culturally…”

    Comment by Steve57 (0124e7) — 4/19/2014 @ 10:02 pm

    Oh, do you mean like designating parts of the world that aren’t part of the caliphate Dar al Harb? The house of war?

    Oh, these professors don’t even think about that, if theyeven realize it, because it gets in the way of pat answers.

    But actualy that is the same thing. hey are saying another area is backward, and they use that to support imperialism. Except it’s Islamic imperialism.

    Actually just conquest, as the word imperialism is used when there is a vast technological disparity between the two places, with the place doing the ruling being much more militarily and technologically advanced – so much so, it’s not even really war.

    Sammy Finkelman (ba30b8)

  119. 117. Comment by Steve57 (0124e7) — 4/19/2014 @ 10:03 pm

    But we’re the imperialists per Sammy and the College of Victomology.

    Well, of course, it is not realistic for al Qaeda.

    Sammy Finkelman (ba30b8)

  120. Al Qaeda by the way, may have split. Not only is there fighting going on in Syria betwene different al Qaeda factions, but this also has taken place in Pakistan between different Taliban factions, although that might be because the ISI can’t tolerate Taliban members who want to stop fighting:

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/19/taliban-civil-war-looms-as-peacemaker-is-shot.html

    Sammy Finkelman (ba30b8)

  121. 120. 117. Comment by Steve57 (0124e7) — 4/19/2014 @ 10:03 pm

    But we’re the imperialists per Sammy and the College of Victomology.

    Well, of course, it is not realistic for al Qaeda.

    Comment by Sammy Finkelman (ba30b8) — 4/19/2014 @ 10:27 pm

    You must work for the Obama administration, given your refusal to acknowledge who has the upper hand in parts of North Africa and the Middle East.

    Steve57 (0124e7)

  122. You’re not making any sense to me Sammy, but that’s not very unusual.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  123. Speaking of the Abysmal Failure of Feminists. Per Ace and the ONT.

    http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i288/lauraww/zverushki-crazy-pets-animals-TheSuiteWorld-7_zpsa4c20998.jpg

    I’m figuring European Lynx based upon the size and the Russian sounding surname in the link.

    But I don’t care.

    Guys, a dating tip. Don’t get mixed up with ladies who keep Bobcats as pets. Especially ladies who are a couple of thou in the hole after getting a gender studies degree. And wondering why employers aren’t beating down their doors to offer them a job.

    Stroll casually to the elevator. Don’t run. That will just trigger the predator/prey response from the cat.

    Steve57 (0124e7)

  124. Me: I’m just going outside for a smoke.

    Her: But you can smoke on the balcony.

    Me: It might bother the Anaconda. Nice snake, by the way.

    Snake: Hisss!

    Me: I can tell it likes me. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.

    Her: Her. Not it. She’s a she.

    Me: Right. Her. She. The elevator is which way?

    Her: To your right.

    Me: Taxi!

    This roughly approximates a near death experience I had with a feminist back in the early ’90s in the suburbs of DC.

    Steve57 (0124e7)

  125. Lest we forget.

    Easter Sunday Raid

    Steve57 (0124e7)

  126. A raid is one thing. The Japanese could put six carrier decks together and have the finest raiding force in the Pacific in early ’42. An invasion is another thing. This is one of the factors that set the Japanese up two months later at Midway.

    Steve57 (0124e7)

  127. Looks like we’re going to have to learn a bunch of hard lessons all over again. And you know what? It serves us right.

    Happy Easter.

    Steve57 (0124e7)

  128. 126..128. Don’t worry, our government is on alert:

    http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/04/domestic-terrorists-rally-at-nevada-ranch/

    gary gulrud (e2cef3)

  129. Via Larwyn, “Truth? You can’t handle the truth.”

    http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/May-2014/Chicago-crime-rates/

    gary gulrud (e2cef3)

  130. McCarthy is a POS. But he’s not the first. Cops have been “killing crime” with fraudulent statistics in Chicago for as long as I’ve been aware. Homicide and car theft were supposedly the most difficult to fake, but not impossibly so by the time the Index crimes are compiled. Nobody really knows Chicago’s crime rate. And I doubt New York’s, LA’s or any other big city’s for that matter.

    It’s all part and parcel of the Aaron Alexisization of society you see imposed by liberals who deliver cakes to bisexual weddings in limousines in such diverse places as Ulan Bator, Lichtenstein, Venezuela, Greece, and San Marino.

    nk (dbc370)

  131. Ulan bator? I wouldn’t think the Mongols would be down with that kind of thing.

    I know that in Japan, if you’re a boy and want to marry anything other than a flesh and blood girl, you’ve got to fly to Guam to do. It’s one of those “only in America” things.

    I say flesh and blood girl because not only do the Japanese frown on boys marrying boys, girls marrying girls, and anyone marrying a toaster, but they also frown on boys marrying Sailor Moon. Or any other fictional female manga character.

    You’ve got to fly to Guam to do that.

    Steve57 (0124e7)

  132. Comment by Steve57 (0124e7) — 4/19/2014 @ 10:49 pm

    your refusal to acknowledge who has the upper hand in parts of North Africa and the Middle East

    I was referring to them wanting to take over the United States. Imperalism is ruling a different kind of place.

    I was not thinking of the fact that Al Qaeda or some splinter of it, does control some territory, and is maybe even gaining. (the recovery of territory by al Qaeda/Taliban etc. started a little before Obama became president in Pakistan/Afgahnistan. You may remember they were threatening Pskistan in 2009. In Iraq it’s after.)

    But that territory is more like its base, and, even stretching the definition, I wouldn’t call that imperialism.

    Maybe Mali was the closest thing to imperialism.
    In terms of the power behind Al Qaeda there, probably Qatar, which was assembling an empire in Africa. But they were pushed back by the French, after overruning Timbuktu.

    Yemen seems to be where it was. There has been sme recovery of territory from al Shabab in Somalia, and now they are attempting acts of terrorism in Kenya. Nigeria has a big problem.

    Sammy Finkelman (ba30b8)

  133. ==It’s all part and parcel of the Aaron Alexisization of society you see imposed by liberals who deliver cakes to bisexual weddings in limousines in such diverse places as Ulan Bator, Lichtenstein, Venezuela, Greece, and San Marino.==

    By jove, nk. I believe you may be on to something.

    elissa (330c50)

  134. “I was referring to them wanting to take over the United States. Imperalism is ruling a different kind of place.”

    Sammy – How the heck does that square with referencing Kipling’s poem? Are you arguing all sides once again?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  135. 137.“I was referring to them wanting to take over the United States. Imperalism is ruling a different kind of place.”

    Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 4/20/2014 @ 2:02 pm

    Sammy – How the heck does that square with referencing Kipling’s poem? Are you arguing all sides once again?

    I was talking about several different things.

    I said these professors at Brandeis (provided this is not just a cover for some form of self-interest in not wanting to be contradicted, or worse, maybe losing money hey are getting from some place) when they made the accusation that Ayaan Hirsi Ali had a “core belief of the cultural backwardness of non-western” (which she probably never put that way) did not like such beliefs.

    They didn’t like sch a belief because it would then promote taking over these countries, which, accprding to their doctrine, is the greatest evil, and thay can’t stand anytning that could undermine that proposition. So that’s where Kipling comes in.

    It’s not even that anyone would be proposing doing that (Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s cause actually is not places with such beliefs should be taken over, but that such beliefs should not be imported from there elsewhere, and that there’s a danger of that happening)

    But it would support that action if anybody did propose it. And even if theydidn’t, they’d have to not condemn some colonial powers, and regret cerftain countries became independent. And that’s a no-no with them.

    The other statement I made was that that Al Qaeda’s hopes of taking over (I meant non-Islamic) places was unrealistic.

    And I further later stated that what they actually did could not be covered by the term imperialism.

    ….Except that maybe the attack on and attempted takeover of Mali was imperialism, and the imperalists in that case were probably in Qatar.

    Sammy Finkelman (ba30b8)

  136. 132. He’s not fooling Muslims.

    gary gulrud (e2cef3)

  137. we think in terms of decades if that, peoples in the East, whether Saracens or Turks think in terms of Centuries, the latter warred against Venice, for about two centuries before they lost the last of their colonies, in the Aegean,

    narciso (3fec35)

  138. 118. More on the Civil War within Al Qaeda (which is possibly Pakistan’s rogue military intelligence agency trying to kill Taliban fighters intereste3de in giving up the fight, at least in Afghanistan:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/21/world/asia/pakistani-taliban.html?hp&_r=0

    Taliban fighters ambushed each other’s camps, bombed convoys, and took prisoners over six days of tit-for-tat bloodletting in the same remote, forested valleys where C.I.A. drones have attacked militant compounds. By the time tribal elders brokered a hasty truce at the weekend, 40 to 60 people had been killed according to most estimates

    Sammy Finkelman (ba30b8)

  139. A little premature, as that happened in the aftermath of the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan,
    and earlier, after the US retreat from Lebanon, which led to battles between Hezbollah and Fatah,

    narciso (3fec35)


Powered by WordPress.

Page loaded in: 0.1459 secs.