A certain word has been replaced with the word "lesbanian" in order to circumvent filtering. My apologies to those who enjoy reading the actual word.
Controversial author and activist Irshad Manji, whom the New York Times describes as "Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare" and whose home has bulletproof glass and a special lock on the mailbox to prevent letter bombs, is the Lisa Simpson of lesbanian feminist Muslims.
Before you issue a fatwa against me, consider that the similarity runs far deeper than the roots of Manji's precisely pointed hair.
A self-styled Muslim refusenik and the bestselling author of The Trouble With Islam Today, Manji is intelligent and passionate yet preachy, earnest and yet so sincere as to be cartoonish.
In this documentary, which she co-wrote, narrates and stars in, she comes across as the snooty know-it-all at the front of the class who practically falls out of her seat trying to get Miss Hoover to see her raised hand. (In her defence, Manji also has a little Bart Simpson in her, too; she was once expelled from her religious school for being a shit disturber who dared ask why.)
As if to underscore that point, the opening credits of the film boldly declare that Faith Without Fear, which is all about Manji's "mission to find out how Muslims can change in the 21st century," is also "presented by Irshad Manji," much the same way Hero and Hostel II are presented by another famed egoist, Quentin Tarantino. Call it "Manji branding."
The film also includes several clips of Manji being interviewed on American and Canadian TV programs, including Bill Maher. And when she interviews pal Salman Rushdie, who knows a thing or two about pissing off the Muslim community, it comes across as little more than Rushdie giving her a gold star and telling her to keep up the good work.
A proponent of ijtihad, Islam's lost tradition of independent thinking, Manji paints herself as a freedom fighter. "I'm fighting for freedom of conscience," she states. No wonder Oprah honoured her with the first annual Chutzpah Award for "audacity, nerve, boldness and conviction."
There's no doubt Manji's is an important voice as a Muslim, a woman and a lesbanian. Unfortunately, all this Michael Moore-style self-aggrandizing gets in the way of Manji's very important message, that Islam is being twisted into an ideology of fear and that the Qur'an is being manipulated to promote violence. Of course, Manji has been accused of not playing well with others, and her detractors, of whom there are many both in the Middle East and at home in Canada, believe she is trying to undermine Islam.
Even Manji's mother, who, to continue the comparison, comes across a bit like the kvetching Marge Simpson in their staged-sounding debates, worries that her daughter is expressing herself way too much. Oh, and she's also concerned that Manji doesn't pray enough.
But if you can see beneath the burka of the film's Manji-ness, it manages to touch upon some thought-provoking subjects. In Yemen, the birthplace of Islam, she interviews a former personal bodyguard of bin Laden's whose only wish is for his young son to die a martyr. She also speaks with a California woman who is married to a Yemeni and who sees her decision to convert to Islam as the embodiment of the American dream the right to freedom of religion and expression even as it restricts her other rights as a woman and a human being.
But Manji chooses not to explore these apparent contradictions too deeply, and often poses her questions in such a way as to provoke precisely the answers she wants.
She turns the experience of wearing a burka into a flip joke when she casually says it should have pockets for gum or breath mints, before adding the astute observation that the all-black head-to-foot garment "erases my individuality." Too little too late.
Manji makes it difficult to disagree with anything she says about Islam, especially when she establishes a point while showing footage of women being stoned for committing adultery. She accuses the Muslim nation of putting unity ahead of individual identity, of putting conformity ahead of freedom of expression. But it's an old argument one that's been levied against just about every organized religion at one time or another and disappointingly, Manji fails to add anything new here.
And it's a shame she hasn't offered her critics more than token moments to express their views. She does include a lengthy confrontation with a demonizing protester outside one of her speaking engagements, as if this one ill-informed person speaks for all Muslims who oppose her position.
#1
OVER THERE vs. OVER HERE; 3000+ war dead in Iraq-ME vs. 200Milyuuuhn-plus dead Americans being "politely but necessarily" exterminated in future via USSA/State Planning once the Chicoms take over, for "living space".
An original opinion by SR-71
What is going on in our country? The Dems think that the voters gave them a mandate, but I believe that the 2004 election reflected the electorates general dissatisfaction with how things dont seem to work like they used to. There is a serious deficit of competence.
A short list:
1. Border Patrol that doesnt patrol. Mexican catch and release.
2. Prosecution of Border Patrol agents who attempt to enforce the borders when 70% of the voters demand it.
3. Both parties refusal to control our borders. Their contempt for electorate.
4. Visa Express program. A rotten Department of State.
5. The creeping coup detat at CIA. Leaks and manipulated intelligence.
6. Contempt for the law in the press. Publication of classified information.
7. Refusal to enforce voter registration. Stolen elections.
8. Wilson/Plame.
9. The TSA follies. Fear of profiling trumps common sense. The Flying Immams.
10. The failure to aggressively prosecute the war in Iraq.
11. Widespread prosecution of soldiers who fight.
12. 25,000 Iraq refugees (read Palestinians.)
13. Sharia in Minnesota.
14. Race hos like Jackson and Sharpton.
15. Nifong in Raleigh. Manipulated legal system.
16. Rosie ODonnell and the Loose Change crowd are now mainstream.
Multiculturalism that insists that the Somali cab drivers culture is equal to (read better than) Western culture. Political Correctness that rules the issues off limits and replaces plain English with Newspeak. Post modernism that denies that truth even exists never mind that it might be difficult to find.
If we do not reassert the existence of truth, our nation is lost. We are already no longer a great power. If we were, Ahmahnutjob and the Great Opthamologist would not dare.
#1
O'REILLY > The HARD/FAR LEFT + SECULAR PROGRESSIVES in America want "ANARCHY" + "BIG GOVT." IN AMERICA, including ANARCHY DISGUISED AS POPULAR LIBERALISM = LIBERTARIANISM.
#3
Nah, Mike. When the Roman civil wars broke out, Rome was on the rise not decline. And Rome wouldn't even peak till several Emperors and a couple hundred years later. It's sad/funny reading Livy and the other writers of the time and see that human behavior hasn't changed, only the issues they think are sooooooo important to rationalize their posturing for power. Getting back to the point of the post. We got crap for representatives cause we pay crap. It's a multi-trillion dollar economy that drives the world's economic health. We operate a multi-billion dollar international defense and security system. We have people earning on the ledger around 150K making decisions on multi-billion dollar programs from transportation, health, education, and safety. We got used car salesman and local political hacks to show for it. But I bet, you want your favorite team to fork out several million a year for that star athlete for a good season. A mill a piece for each representative, Senator, Prez, VP, and member of SCOTUS would be less than 600 mill a year, which is about a couple pork projects. I think we'd be better served by paying those salaries then what we'd get back collectively on the pork. For a mill, I think you'd get more than just the usual suspects to try for office.
Meanwhile, don't fret, the rest of the world has yet to come up with an economic engine as strong as the US to keep their economies from imploding in its absence. The new 'lingua franca' of the world is English and for good reason. Life expediency is rising as shown in each census. What was defined as middle class only forty years ago is now considered 'poor' by government bureaucrats.
The one change I do see is that because our economic engine has become so dominant and important to the rest of the world, the rest of the world is more interested in influencing it. I am very suspicious that we already have the best Department of State and CIA that Saudi money can buy. I doubt that there are nearly so many legislators on the Saudi payroll as bureaucrats. Nor do I think the Legislators would be as easily bought as the bureaucrats.
Likewise the legislators who are being influenced on border issues are being influenced by domestic contributors who want to see the flow of cheap labor continue. So they continue to accept campaign donations at a rate much greater than $1 million per year to push ads bribing voters with Social Security, Transportation Security, Homeland Security, and Universal health care (health security).
The American people have made the trade of freedom for security. It's hard not to once your have so much to secure. Like the Romans, it may take a long time to push us off the top of the pile. But in that trade lie the seeds of our destruction.
#5
Thanks for the history lesson, I'll admit to being a combination of rusty and lazy, but I'm not so sure I agree with the pay scale issue you brought up P2k
. How many Senators and Rep's come from money or have independent fortunes? The majority I'd wager. Power is the attraction not the money. Increasing the pay would very likely exaserbate the problem, the guys with the resources would just bend over further to retain their seats.
I couldn't even guess what a workable solution could be aside from term limits.
#6
Re: my comment on pay. While many in the existing seats my have pre-established fortunes in the Senate or post incumbent seniority seats in the House which correlate with something over a million [though junior Reps don't appear to be million dollar babies], the point was that it was an inducement for others to try for the office who'd otherwise just not even see the attempt for office to worth the hassle and public scrutiny that exposes the family and every blemish of one's life.
#7
We have crap for representation because we rely on the press to print facts, we rely on the courts to interprit law, we rely on the information we hear about candidates, and none of those things happen. Today, we must watch the courts and question their motives. We must divorce from the media for both facts and candidate information. These institutions have an agenda. Now we are aware of their leftist agenda, so we must spread the word and build grass roots support for our representation. We MUST rewrite campaign finance reform and tort reform and demand that voters get facts and all of the facts about an issue, and that leftist opinions be dumped into the shit pile. You wanna be a commie ? Swim to Cuba.
#8
A mill a piece for each representative, Senator, Prez, VP, and member of SCOTUS would be less than 600 mill a year, which is about a couple pork projects. I think we'd be better served by paying those salaries then what we'd get back collectively on the pork. For a mill, I think you'd get more than just the usual suspects to try for office.
The biggest reason for doing this is so that laws could be passed with provisions for hard jail time if bribes, gifts or other forms of graft are accepted. We desperately need to outlaw all forms of lobbying. Special interest groups are bleeding this country white. Our lawmakers should be so well compensated that they have ZERO excuse for seeking further wealth while in office. Additionally, politicians must be barred from serving as consultants with conflict-of-interest groups for five years after leaving office.
#9
I'm not so sure...the idea of representatives so-well compensated that they would never think of accepting gratuities or bribes...well, that just eludes me.
Human greed is human greed. There will always be people who crave more.
People who serve in government should crave nothing more than to serve their constituents in the best manner possible.
It's NOT a matter of money! It's a matter of character!
We elect too few people of character to be our Representatives, Senators, and Presidents who possess any character or strength of character. Thus, they are easily bribed, cajoled, and contravened once they get to the Hill in DC.
It is not the fault of Congress. They got there, for the most part, legitimately, by convincing an appropriate majority that they were worthy of serving, and by being voted for. That they are greedy, avaricious, money-grubbing whores, for the most part, is not their fault - their constituents elected them!!!
It IS the fault of their constituents who elected them because they were too stupid to do anything other than pull the lever or fill in the blank for the candidate their media told them to vote for.
Once again the Investor's Business Daily crew show they get it.
Maintaining a high level of vigilance against an enemy is wearisome business, especially in this war. We salute those who have not succumbed to 9/11 fatigue.
One tireless watchdog is Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., who earlier this year founded the Anti-Terrorism/Jihad Caucus to educate fellow lawmakers and Americans in general about the threat from militant Islam. "The general public doesn't understand the threats we face from radical jihadists who they are, what they want and what we can do about the threat," the feisty Myrick says on her Web site. "Americans are not being properly informed about the nature of the jihadist threat and their plans to do us harm."
"The jihadists have become incredibly advanced in their public relations efforts," Myrick lamented. And we have limited tools to counteract their propaganda, thanks to institutionalized religious tolerance even for creeds hostile to our way of life.
The Anti-Jihad Caucus dares to right that imbalance. Its main goal is to educate members of Congress about the Islamic threat so they can talk candidly to their constituents about it. Myrick has already recruited more than 80 members to join her including even some Democrats, such as Bud Cramer of Alabama and Ben Chandler of Kentucky. What a wonderful thought: more than 80 members, including Democrats. If I didn't mess up the arithmetic again, that's about 1/6th of the total membership.
"The group is currently learning about a variety of issues involving jihad, such as the history of Islam, the differences and similarities of Sunni and Shia Muslims, terrorist financing, terrorist use of the Internet, and terrorist infiltration techniques," Myrick said.
She has personally read numerous books on Islam and terrorism, as well as spoken to dozens of experts on the subject. Most striking in her own education, Myrick says, is discovering that jihad does not simply mean "internal struggle against sin," such as giving up smoking, as CAIR and other apologists have tried to sugarcoat it to mean.
Jihad, she says, is holy war against infidels. "It is the external jihad which should have everyone concerned," she said. "This jihad is used by groups like al-Qaida to justify killing innocent people they label 'infidels.' "
Another group is challenging Islamic apologists and terror supporters on college campuses. Led by Daniel Pipes, a Mideast scholar, the non-profit Campus Watch seeks to expose professors who gloss over the religious roots of jihad and blame America and Israel for Islamic violence.
Campus Watch aims to alert university regents, administrators, alumni and parents of students to "the problems in Mideast studies and encourage them to address existing problems," adding, "We challenge these stakeholders to take back their universities, and not passively accept the mistakes, extremism, intolerance, apologetics and abuse when these occur."
Campus Watch invites students to lodge complaints about such activities on campus, including those of the Muslim Student Association, which was founded by members of the dangerous Muslim Brotherhood, a worldwide jihadist movement whose motto is "The Quran is our constitution, the prophet is our guide; Death for the glory of Allah is our greatest ambition."
Education is key to winning this war, and the Anti-Jihad Caucus and Campus Watch are courageously doing their part. We need more like them.
#1
"Americans are not being properly informed about the nature of the jihadist threat and their plans to do us harm."
If Myrick gets this, why is Bush so numbingly silent on the issue? Islam's crapulence needs to be shouted from the rooftops. Meanwhile, all that comes from the White House is inaudible mumbling.
Over two decades ago, a visiting Indian journalist, charmed by the old world splendour of Lahore and the vigour and vitality of the bustling commercial city of Karachi, where I was then India's Consul General, described Islamabad as a city of "bureaucrats, bores and boulevards". Islamabad has always been a sanitised city, far removed from the reality of what is Pakistan. The Army and bureaucracy that have received preferential allotment of housing plots are comfortably ensconced there. It was always presumed that the capital would remain immune to ferment elsewhere in the country.
Two events in recent days have shattered this comfortable belief. The first has been the unprecedented solidarity of the legal fraternity, after Pakistan's Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry unexpectedly refused to bow when peremptorily sacked by President Pervez Musharraf, dressed up in his attire of a four-star General. The more ominous development has been the defiance shown by two clerics, Maulana Abdul Aziz and his brother Abdur Rashid Ghazi, who appear determined to challenge the established order and coerce it into adopting shari'ah in the capital.
While it was widely expected that the ouster of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 would lead to a reduction in Islamic radicalism in neighbouring Pakistan, the opposite seems to have happened. With Taliban and Al Qaeda supporters seeking haven in Pakistan, their radical supporters, particularly in the tribal areas (FATA) and elsewhere in the North-West Frontier Province and in Baluchistan, have risen to challenge the writ of the Pakistani state. These areas bordering Afghanistan are now becoming progressively Talibanised.
When Gen Musharraf deployed over 80000 troops in FATA to force tribals to end support for the Taliban, the Pakistan Army received a bloody nose, losing over 700 soldiers. More ominously, over 300 officers and men reportedly face disciplinary action for refusing to take up arms against fellow Pashtuns. Paradoxically, even as Pakistani soldiers were being killed by Taliban supporters in Waziristan, Gen Musharraf permitted Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders to seek haven in Quetta.
With Gen Musharraf's writ over the NWFP being successfully challenged, pro-Taliban elements soon established shari'ah courts, banned videos and music, forbade barbers from cutting and trimming beards and prevented girls from receiving modern education. In Peshawar and other places in NWFP that abut the tribal areas, local Taliban have threatened English language schools, warned schoolgirls to veil themselves and ordered men not to shave their beards. Elsewhere in FATA, armed Taliban stop vehicles and remove cassette players and radios and force men to grow beards. What is shocking is that the two clerics in Islamabad are threatening to enforce similar measures in Islamabad from the precincts of a masjid-madarsa complex they control, which is located barely one mile away from the Prime Minister's Secretariat, the Supreme Court and the Parliament.
Maulana Abdul Aziz runs Lal Masjid, set up with tacit approval of the powers that be, in the very heart of Islamabad. His brother Abdur Rashid Ghazi runs two madarsas - the Jamia Hafsa (for burqa-clad girls) and Jamia Faridia (for bearded male students). A few months ago, the girl students of Jamia Hafsa forcibly occupied a children's public library after the administration demolished seven illegally constructed mosques.
The two brothers then proclaimed their determination to enforce shari'ah in the capital. They set up a shari'ah court to hear public complaints, with their male students warning owners of video parlours and music cassette stores to close shop, while females driving cars were warned to stop doing so. They even issued a fatwa against Pakistan's gutsy Tourism Minister Nilofar Bakhtiar for being hugged by a paragliding instructor in Paris. A campaign against vice was launched with the abduction of a woman accused of encouraging prostitution and two of her family members. When the Islamabad police sought to rescue the kidnapped women, they had to beat a hasty retreat when their vans were seized in retaliation. In the meantime, the shari'ah court started entertaining petitions from women police personnel, complaining of sexual harassment.
There is an understandable disinclination to use force against the masjid-madarsa complex. Over 70 per cent of the students are Pashtun. They are evidently well-armed. Given the fact that around 20 per cent of the Pakistan Army is made up of Pashtuns and recent experiences in Waziristan, any significant loss of lives would provoke Pashtun outrage. Moreover, responding to appeals from the clerics, a large number of madarsa students from across Pakistan have converged on the site of Lal Masjid.
Gen Musharraf deputed the President of the Muslim League (PML-Q) Chaudhry Shujat, who is given to yielding to pressures from religious extremists, for talks with Maulana Aziz. Shujat has held talks with the clerics, with the Musharraf dispensation showing signs of buckling to their demands. The Government has agreed to reconstruct the seven illegal mosques it had pulled down. It has also agreed to act against alleged centres of prostitution. The clerics have refused to close down their shari'ah court and remain firm on their demands for the introduction of shari'ah. Measures to deal with this situation will figure prominently when Pakistan's real rulers, the Army's Corps Commanders meet in Rawalpindi this week.
Reflecting on developments in Islamabad, the Editor of the Lahore-based Friday Times, Najm Sethi notes: "More mullahs (across Pakistan) are likely to follow suit, if the issue is not 'closed' swiftly. Brothels, billboards, veils, music, film, haircuts, dress, and schools - there will be no end to 'concessions' demanded in the name of jihad and Islam." The process of Talibanisation moving eastwards from the NWFP appears to have commenced. In Lahore, the student wing of the Jamat-e-Islami, the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba, has beaten up "un-Islamic" students and proclaimed "Islamisation" of the campus. Can this process of creeping Talibanisation of Pakistan be halted?
It can, if Gen Musharraf and the Army establishment take a few crucial steps. These include an irrevocable break with their traditional partners - the Islamic political parties - an end to support for groups like Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, which declare "Hindus, Christians and Jews" as "enemies of Islam", and for the Taliban, apart from the secularisation of education, with mainstream political parties being allowed to function freely. Whether Gen Musharraf has the inclination, will or ability to undertake these measures remains to be seen.
On their first visit to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, many visitors are surprised to discover that a significant part of the display is dedicated to events much more up to date than the Second World War. For the last three years, the Museum has been drawing attention not only to the tragedy of the Jewish people but also to the near-genocide currently taking place in Darfur.
This is part of the museum's mandate not only to serve as a reminder of the millions killed by Germany in the Holocaust but also to warn the world whenever a people or nation is in imminent danger of mass murder.
On Wednesday, President George W. Bush visited the museum and while there announced that if the Sudanese government continues to aid the Janjaweed gangs that have murdered 200,000 people in Darfur and displaced another two million, they will be slapped by further economic sanctions. Should these measures fail to achieve their objective, he promised, "We will also consider other options."
Bush's initiative, which puts the US at the front line of yet another bloody and potentially intractable foreign conflict, is breathtaking.
Four years after Baghdad fell to the US Army, as coalition forces are still bogged down in a war of attrition in the badlands of Afghanistan, Iran continues to supply terrorists throughout the region while openly defying UN sanctions, and back in Washington, a hostile Congress is trying to limit Bush's power to pursue the elusive victory in Iraq, the president still found the time to put the crosshairs on another group of bad guys.
Mere rhetoric? Is Bush trying to deflect attention from the setbacks by conjuring up new bogeymen? His speech at least suggests otherwise. Addressing the Holocaust survivors in the audience, Bush said, "You who bear the tattoos of death camps hear the leader of Iran declare that the Holocaust is a 'myth.' You who have found refuge in a Jewish homeland know that tyrants and terrorists have vowed to wipe it from the map. And you who have survived evil know that the only way to defeat it is to look it in the face, and not back down."
But will there really be no backing down? Even if Bush, in the last quarter of his term, manages to go out fighting, how long will his successor stay the course?
In this context, what was the purpose of Defense Secretary Robert Gates's visit here, the first visit by a US defense secretary in eight years?
One Israeli newspaper raised the possibility that Gates is here to prepare the key Middle East players for an American pullout that could take place earlier than expected. However, Gates, at least in public, is singing a different tune. In Cairo, he said Iraq "is a responsibility we will not abandon, a trust we will not break."
Whatever assurances Gates has brought with him, he reserved his press conference at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv for taking aim at Syria.
The failures and miscalculations, the quagmire in Iraq, the obduracy of the "insurgents," the pusillanimity of allies and the loss of congressional support, none of it seems to have deflected Bush from his course.
Everything we hear from Washington points to the conclusion that if Israel and the US are going to foil Iran's genocidal plans, there is an 18 month window of opportunity: the time left to Bush in the Oval Office.
#1
HHHHHHHHHMMMMMM, interesting t'aint it, HITLER gets a public museum + constant degradation for a holocaust several times LESS than STALIN did to his own people before WW2, and or during WW2, yet all Stalin gets in America is minor = superficial MSM mentions or inferences. PESKY LEFTY "NEW MATH" AGAIN.
#2
As for Dubya, he's NOT gonna pull out = detrench from the ME-Muslim World, and IMO the US DemoLeft, anti-US GloboS and Radical Islam including Moud, etc. know it.
#1
This comment from the "gates of Vienna" kind of says it all:
"It is rather interesting how Cho Seung-hui is being proclaimed by the mainstream media as insane, as a paranoid young man driven by delusion, hatred, and violence. Such misogyny, such paranoia, such violence, such an Oedipus Complex a mile wide, and such a desire for fame to send his manifesto to a news organization before he murders innocent people on an industrial scale. We are told how such a mentality is so difficult to imagine, that no sane person could ever act like that reclusive student in Virginia.
Other men act just like Cho Seung-hui and they arent regarded as insane at all. Instead, these same acts are portrayed as acts of Muslim religious expression. For the rest of us, the actions of Cho Seung-hui are declared to be insane. Yet when Muslim fanatics act exactly the same way, any criticism of the insanity of such people is swept under the rug and declared to be Islamophobia. Were the mentality and actions of Cho Seung-hui really more insane than the rambling manifestos of Osama bin Laden or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Am I supposed to believe that when a man becomes a suicidal mass murderer, it means he is insane unless he is a Muslim? Must I regard such misbehavior as insane only when non-Muslims are doing it?
Either Cho Seung-hui is not quite so insane as the media portrays him to be, or there is something seriously wrong with Islam."
Posted by: no mo uro ||
04/19/2007 17:45 Comments ||
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I havent weighed in yet on Virginia Tech mainly because, in a saner world, it would not be the kind of incident one needed to have a partisan opinion on. But I was giving a couple of speeches in Minnesota yesterday and I was asked about it and found myself more and more disturbed by the tone of the coverage. Im not sure Im ready to go the full Derb but I think hes closer to the reality of the situation than most. On Monday night, Geraldo was all over Fox News saying we have to accept that, in this horrible world we live in, our children need to be protected.
Point one: Theyre not children. The students at Virginia Tech were grown women and if youll forgive the expression men. They would be regarded as adults by any other society in the history of our planet. Granted, we live in a selectively infantilized culture where twentysomethings are children if theyre serving in the Third Infantry Division in Ramadi but grown-ups making rational choices if they drop to the broadloom in President Clintons Oval Office. Nonetheless, its deeply damaging to portray fit fully formed adults as children who need to be protected. We should be raising them to understand that there will be moments in life when you need to protect yourself and, in a horrible world, there may come moments when you have to choose between protecting yourself or others. It is a poor reflection on us that, in those first critical seconds where one has to make a decision, only an elderly Holocaust survivor, Professor Librescu, understood instinctively the obligation to act.
Point two: The cost of a protected society of eternal children is too high. Every December 6th, my own unmanned Dominion lowers its flags to half-mast and tries to saddle Canadian manhood in general with the blame for the Montreal massacre, the 14 female students of the Ecole Polytechnique murdered by Marc Lepine (born Gamil Gharbi, the son of an Algerian Muslim wife-beater, though youd never know that from the press coverage). As I wrote up north a few years ago:
Yet the defining image of contemporary Canadian maleness is not M Lepine/Gharbi but the professors and the men in that classroom, who, ordered to leave by the lone gunman, meekly did so, and abandoned their female classmates to their fate an act of abdication that would have been unthinkable in almost any other culture throughout human history. The men stood outside in the corridor and, even as they heard the first shots, they did nothing. And, when it was over and Gharbi walked out of the room and past them, they still did nothing. Whatever its other defects, Canadian manhood does not suffer from an excess of testosterone.
I have always believed America is different. Certainly on September 11th we understood. The only good news of the day came from the passengers who didnt meekly follow the obsolescent 1970s hijack procedures but who used their wits and acted as free-born individuals. And a few months later as Richard Reid bent down and tried to light his shoe in that critical split-second even the French guys leapt up and pounded the bejasus out of him.
We do our children a disservice to raise them to entrust all to officialdoms security blanket. Geraldo-like protection is a delusion: when something goes awry whether on a September morning flight out of Logan or on a peaceful college campus the state wont be there to protect you. Youll be the fellow on the scene who has to make the decision. As my distinguished compatriot Kathy Shaidle says:
When we say we dont know what wed do under the same circumstances, we make cowardice the default position.
Id prefer to say that the default position is a terrible enervating passivity. Murderous misfit loners are mercifully rare. But this awful corrosive passivity is far more pervasive, and, unlike the psycho killer, is an existential threat to a functioning society.
#2
Mark, go ahead and spit it out. Why did we not hear an account of a young man (or maybe even two) at VT lashing out with a robust cheek slap to this POS?
Posted by: Asymmetrical T ||
04/19/2007 21:20 Comments ||
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#1
JIM BOHANNON > its PEOPLE whom kill people, NOT Things; + O'REILLY Radio Show > told a call-in listener [paraphrased] - "LIFE IS A RISK, LIVING AND SURVIVING IN A DYNAMIC FREEDOM-LOVING WORLD IS A RISK, and NOTHING IN GOVERNMENT OR AMERICA OR THE WORLD EXISTS NOR WILL EXIST TO PROTECT A PERSON = ANYONE FROM EACH AND EVERY KIND OF RISK. PERFECT = TOTAL PROTECTION MEANS NO AMERICAN OR ANYONE WILL HAVE FREEDOM OR RIGHTS". IOW, iff the Commies, Socialists, Governmentists + Totalitarians, etc. themselves DON'T wanna live under the same, WHY MUST THE REST OF US???
#2
JIM BOHANNON > its PEOPLE whom kill people, NOT Things; + O'REILLY Radio Show > told a call-in listener [paraphrased] - "LIFE IS A RISK, LIVING AND SURVIVING IN A DYNAMIC FREEDOM-LOVING WORLD IS A RISK, and NOTHING IN GOVERNMENT OR AMERICA OR THE WORLD EXISTS NOR WILL EXIST TO PROTECT A PERSON = ANYONE FROM EACH AND EVERY KIND OF RISK. PERFECT = TOTAL PROTECTION MEANS NO AMERICAN OR ANYONE WILL HAVE FREEDOM OR RIGHTS". IOW, iff the Commies, Socialists, Governmentists + Totalitarians, etc. themselves DON'T wanna live under the same, WHY MUST THE REST OF US???
#3
JIM BOHANNON > its PEOPLE whom kill people, NOT Things; + O'REILLY Radio Show > told a call-in listener [paraphrased] - "LIFE IS A RISK, LIVING AND SURVIVING IN A DYNAMIC FREEDOM-LOVING WORLD IS A RISK, and NOTHING IN GOVERNMENT OR AMERICA OR THE WORLD EXISTS NOR WILL EXIST TO PROTECT A PERSON = ANYONE FROM EACH AND EVERY KIND OF RISK. PERFECT = TOTAL PROTECTION MEANS NO AMERICAN OR ANYONE WILL HAVE FREEDOM OR RIGHTS". IOW, iff the Commies, Socialists, Governmentists + Totalitarians, etc. themselves DON'T wanna live under the same, WHY MUST THE REST OF US???
Soon after the press conference at which it was disclosed that NBC had received a package of print, photos and video materials from the Virginia Tech murderer, I interviewed Howard Kurtz about how NBC should handle it. We quickly agreed that any video should not be shown, and while I think that Howard thought perhaps a picture could be aired, I and the live audience I was broadcasting in front of disagreed. I would have published --instantly-- the text of the killer's statement's for the public to read, but I would have denied the killer the instant video glorification he so obviously desired, an immortalization which other deranged killers of the future will almost certainly seek to emulate. NBC decided differently.
Two days ago I shared a stage with NBC News president Steve Capus. Earlier today I commented on what I considered to be his cluelessness about the contempt in which MSM is held as well as my amazement at Capus' pride in MSM's Katrina coverage. Tonight I am dumbfounded by his --and his colleagues'-- decision-making in this matter. Instantly their decision to air the video and publish the pictures revolted vast numbers of ordinary Americans of all political opinions. (My sister-in-law, a very, very liberal individual, just said to me that "I don't recall ever hearing of anything so irresponsible.") I heard an outraged clinical psychiatrist from NYU University denouncing the decision in the harshest terms on Los Angeles radio station KNX. The airing of the pictures and video is obviously a hurtful and destructive act, one that will prime many killing pumps in the years ahead, and one obviously made on the fly by individuals of almost no experience with or curiosity about the deranged mind. Would it have killed Capus et al to ask around a bit about what to do? Of course not, but their decision could indeed kill others down the road. They acted as their own guides, because that is the way the business works. In their very, very closed world, it made sense. To the vast majority of Americans it was an appalling, horrific decision, far worse than what Don Imus had to say last week. As my producer asked this afternoon: Will Capus fire himself for the offense he has given the families of the victims and the rest of the country as well?
Other print stories may have harmed the country more --the New York Times' and Los Angeles Times' cavalier dismissal of national security in their stories that published national security secrets about our efforts to capture or kill terrorists come to mind.
But Dan Rather's and Mary Mapes' previous high-water mark in broadcast news' indifference to the public good has been trumped. NBC now stands for Nothing But Contempt for its audience. It was a shameful thing that the network did, and I doubt I will ever willingly watch NBC news again. Will even one "journalist" have the spine to quit?
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NBC made such a bad decision. This may be the only time that Rosie O'Donnell and I will ever agree - how irresponsible it was to broadcast the Cho tape. NBC and PMSNBC worked hard to receive the sneers and cricism they now receive. One would have to be a real professional to make a mistake that bad; an amateur would be unsure and ask around and would not broadcast the tape.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
