The Republic of Dissent

Women as human shields

Sugary excerpt of the day or rather of the night from Juan Cole:

Note to Muslim-hater Bill Maher, who should know better: It is not true that women cannot vote in 20 Muslim countries, and please stop generalizing about 1.5 billion Muslims based on the 22 million people in Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, the only place where women cannot drive and where men can vote (in municipal elections) but women cannot. It would be like generalizing from the Amish in Pennsylvania to all people of Christian heritage and wondering what is with Christianity and its fascination with horses and buggies.

I have to admit that I have stopped watching Bill Maher years ago because I couldn't take him seriously. He is exactly like the people he criticized, arrogant and fanatically persuaded to be on the right side except that his views are  seen more fashionable and more 'cultured' (some forms of inculture in America and elsewhere are tolerable/fashionable than others when they lead to more palatable conclusions).

Bill Maher doesn't care about the status of women in the "Muslin world," to use an expression that I hate. He is using it to make a cheap point to win an argument that isn't about women, but about a group of people he considers as savages.  My own point here isn't that there is no there there, but to make the assertion that consistency matters when being self-righteous.

I will not foolishly assert that women in America are not privileged compared to others or that foreign countries especially those in certain parts of the world have a 'woman problem.' I will just argue that saying that isn't saying much for the question remains what is the ideal, what are absolute and universal values, and to stop using women as human shield, as props to win ideological wars.

It isn't about color

Ahhh or should I sa nooo ?:

Why is it that cab drivers–who are sometimes they themselves Black–still refuse to pick up Black people on a Saturday night?

Here are some of the reasons I’ve heard from other people when I’ve  posed the question:

1.-the fear that Black people won’t have the money for a cab.

2.-not wanting to go into a “bad” (read: Black) neighborhood.

3.-the overwhelming belief that White people give really huge tips.

Maybe I shouldn’t be so shocked that this kind of thing still happens but I am surprised because I’m not sure where it comes from. It should be so hard for two black girls to find a cab that we’re forced to go the other side of town to find one.

One word on the neighborhood issue: Overwhelmingly, it turns out that a lot of White people are going to the exact same destinations as Black people when it’s time to go home–especially in the advent of gentrification. So that can’t be it.

Or is it?

Insignificant disclosure: I just spent a few days in a land here most people are black and it was difficult to get a cab if you weren't well dressed or didn't look you are supposed to look when you have money. My point isn't that racism doesn't exist, but that it isn't extraordinary for it is about social prejudices and stereotypes.

The racism of lower expectation

Sugary excerpt of the day from Anjad Khan:

Essentially, Islamists have been successful in the UK where they have failed elsewhere. They have duped the establishment into thinking that they represent Muslims and Islam, all the while using that as a guise to promote divisive and potentially explosive identity politics. Their job has, of course, been made easier by soft deluded “liberal” multiculturalists who are in fact guilty of  the racism of lower expectation and who don’t apply universal norms to the ‘exotic’ others who we can’t expect to behave like us.

Legitimacy and emotional reactions

Over at the OUPblog, Elvin Lim has the best article(and the last one I will quote) on the whole NPR and Juan Williams episode. Sugary excerpt:

But NPR, in firing Williams, wasted an opportunity to make such a pedagogical statement. It wrapped up its reasons in faux reasons of journalistic standards and objectivity, and ironically, ended up implicitly endorsing the legitimacy of Williams’ first, emotional, reaction. Indeed, I suspect that Juan Williams was fired because his bosses at NPR were, in turn, uncomfortable that he had articulated his own discomfort. And that is the problem. One reflex knee jerk begot another, but no reasonable explanation followed.

One thing we do know is that emotions cannot be bottled up. We either feel them or we don’t, and Juan Williams apparently feels them when he sees someone dressed up in Muslim garb. What NPR did, in firing him, was send the emotional message that his emotions were illegitimate. But – and here was their mistake – NPR said nothing about either the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the reasons which provoked Williams’ particular emotional reaction.

Emotions indicate the salience and intensity of issues, and they should be addressed even – and,  in fact, especially – when they are based on bad reasons. NPR pushed a discussion of the legitimacy of these emotions under the carpet by firing Juan Williams under the faux reasons of journalistic objectivity and this is why in one fell swoop they lost both a journalist and a teaching moment. If NPR wanted to be politically correct, it might as well have gone all the way.

What has been alarming about the whole episode is the realization that America is under a strong emotional dictatorship, one where feelings ,especially when at their center is outrage or pain giving one the perception that s/he is victimized, are seldom questioned as the basis for political and other important decisions. I still remember George W. Bush responding to Al Gore's legitimate criticisms of his record as Texas's governor by saying that he was hurt that his heart was being questioned. Just take the one of Obama telling Democrats to either get over their disappointment or not to feel discouraged because it is only the first quarter of the game. In short, emotions are the center of every debate because they make it so difficult to think or rather so easy to shoot from the hip and to indulge on junk without even considering the need to exercise or to eat healthy.

The dangers of subjective analysis

Jay Rosen on the Juan Williams's firing from NPR:

Here is what I, Jay Rosen, New York Jew, liberal Democrat, and professional student of the press think... Given its existing codes NPR was in an untenable position from the moment Juan Williams started working for Fox, where his job is to be a liberal foil for the conservative alternative in news. There was no way he could abide by NPR’s rules–which insist on viewlessness as a guarantor of trust–and appear on Fox, where the clash of views is basic to what the network does to generate audience, and where Williams relished the give and take with outsized personalities like Bill O’Reilly.

NPR recognized the problem but tried to finesse it by re-classifying Williams as an “analyst.” Big mistake. The job of analyst, as NPR defines it, is so tightly constrained that it excludes almost everything Williams was doing for Fox. So why didn’t NPR simply get rid of Williams years ago when he began to generate view-from-somewhere controversies with his appearances on Fox? The likely reason was identified by Farai Chideya, who used to work at NPR: a diversity problem. NPR had almost no black men on the air.

Jay Rosen is right, but I'm also convinced that the focus on the 'whys' of the Juan Williams episode is convenient because it puts the essential question on the back-burner and that question is what does it mean to be a journalist in America. There are a lot of bad and discomforting answers to that question, but no sustainable attempts to provide thoughtful answers.

Acceptable biases and fears

Quote of the day from Glenn Greenwald about the firing of Juan Williams from NPR for expressing his fears over 'Muslims' 'who look Muslims' in certain situations:

The principal reason the Williams firing resonated so much and provoked so much fury is that it threatens the preservation of one of the most important American mythologies:  that Muslims are a Serious Threat to America and Americans.

I have to say that the whole thing makes me more than uncomfortable. America has entered an age where free speech is about content precisely because it is no longer possible for Americans to have a dialogue about issues. The goal of political or social discussions is to shut up the opposition and to make the argument that it is either simply or solely bigoted or dumb. Where there is a prevalent notion in a society that people have to be careful about what they say, it is in general because there also exists the prevalent and uncomfortable one that people can't change, that people are their vilest thought, and that education and dialogue don't matter.

Rebelling against the smart guys

Quote from Russel Kirk via Professor Bainbridge:

A Populist, whose basic conviction is that the cure for democracy is more democracy, conserves nothing - even though he may wish to do so. Populism, in effect, is what Walter Bagehot called the "ignorant democratic conservatism of the masses." It is the tendency later called Populism that Tocqueville dreaded when he wrote that the triumph of democracy might lead to the stagnation of the society of the future, all change being resisted by the conservatism of mediocrity and complacency. ...

Populism is a revolt against the Smart Guys. I am very ready to confess that the present Smart Guys, as represented by the dominant mentality of the Academy and of what the Bergers call the Knowledge Class today, are insufficiently endowed with right reason and moral imagination. But it would not be an improvement to supplant them by persons of thoroughgoing ignorance and incompetence.

Hummmm... For some reason, although I agree with Kirk and with Bainbridge, I found myself increasingly wondering whether the smart guys should escape responsibility, sanctions because their opposition is 'stupid,' 'scary' or simply inadequate. It seems to me that the fact that one is a smart guy means indeed that one has greater responsibilities and obligations than those who don't know better or don't even try to know better because they assume that normalcy and ordinariness mean stupidity and inculture. People would be and should be harsher on Einstein for asserting that 2+2=3  or for not having good results than on Forrest Gump especially if Einstein asserted that he was better, smarter and his opposition was just dumb. I have to say that I no longer believes that being smart makes one the best possible leader especially in an America where being cultured can be a burden or simply give the false sense that one knows better than anybody else. I used to like Blair for that reason because he sounded and was smart until I realized that his total certitude on his own smartness and sense of superiority led him to the darkness. Smartness shouldn't be a religion.

I woke up (I had a long Sunday) to headlines of Christine O'Donnell and the I dabbled into Witchcraft quote. I have to say that it made me laugh and then regret with a sadness that is vain that there is such a contempt for O'Donnell and whatever she represents that the other side doesn't even feel that it has to rise up and to make the case for reason or simply for their own ideals. Is the most troubling thing about O'Donnell really the fact that she believes in witchcraft? What does it say about the Left, the smart guys that they focus on side and wedge issues instead of offering an alternative view and defending their 'America?"

Politics in America and France is now about being against something, someone that has to be demonized. I guess most politicians like O'Donnell do believe in the Devil.

Aggressiveness and extremism

I don't agree totally agree with Mehdi Hasan on this, but the fact that I can't say he is just wrong, shows that he has a point:

On Thursday the US president said Pastor Jones's plans to burn the Qur'an would be a "recruiting bonanza" for al-Qaida. Yet he fails to recognise how the west's war in Afghanistan provides a similar boost to extremists – on both sides. The "enemy" in Afghanistan, concluded the IISS report released on Tuesday, is "incentivised by the presence of foreign forces". And inside the US the likes of Jones and rightwing Republican bigots, frothing at the mouth over the "Ground Zero mosque" take their cue from aggressive leaders like Blair, Bush and Obama – who send more and more troops to fight and die abroad, in faraway Muslim countries, while denying any link between Islamic militancy and western foreign policies.

Unjustified offense and the “Ground Zero Mosque”

Brilliant stuff from Ilya Somin on the "Ground Zero" mosque:

I lost half a dozen relatives in the Holocaust. But I don’t see any inherent problem with having a German cultural center near the site of a former Nazi death camp. So long as the center does not interfere with the operations of the memorial established at the camp, does not promote anti-Semitism, and doesn’t advocate the sort of virulent nationalism that helped cause the Holocaust, it should be unobjectionable. As Krauthammer notes, Germans as a group are not to blame for the Holocaust. And German culture is not reducible to Nazism and anti-Semitism. A center promoting elements of German culture that are not implicated in those phenomena does not somehow offend against the memory of Holocaust victims. A German cultural center that actually condemns Nazism and extreme nationalism while celebrating positive elements of German culture could actually make a useful contribution to reducing prejudice and honoring the victims. 
I recognize, of course, that some Jews might still be offended, and avoiding such offense might be a pragmatic justification for not building the center. But the issue is whether the offense-taking would be justified. No one has a moral obligation to change their plans merely because others take unjustified offense. 
The same points apply to the proposed Islamic Cultural Center near Ground Zero. Islam is not reducible to terrorism and oppression. A Muslim center near Ground Zero that promotes positive aspects of the Muslim tradition is unobjectionable. One that also denounces terrorism and radical Islamism would be a positive good.

It is difficult to say, but this controversy is just another proof that in America, it is increasingly becoming difficult to have serious conversations because too many are persuaded to have either "god" or "the truth" on their side and those who oppose them are just stupid or simply evil. The alarming thing is that the POTUS, the decider chose to avoid the debate even though he has always described himself as a man who isn't afraid of doing the right thing even if it means losing. Bush used to talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations, in Obama's case, I think we should talk about the flashy arrogance of great expectations.

Spots of brilliance

I'm probably late to the game, but I was impressed by Obama's speech on Friday on the controversy over the construction of a Mosque near Ground Zero. I heard about it in the Cab that was taking me from JFK to Manhattan for I spent Friday in two airports and in a plane. My first thought was to say "at last, the Potus does something impressive that isn't solely self-serving." I thought the speech was on point and unlike the other flashy speeches Obama gives, I believed that it had meaning.

So was I disappointed by the fact that Obama "retreated" from his comment the next day? No and I wasn't even surprised. I expected him to do it for two reasons. The first is that Obama is a great politician and that as all great politicians of our era, he knows that it is difficult to educate the electorate or to lead on a issue when  the real issues are fear and resentment. Obama said what was in his heart on Friday, but then had to clarify it because he did the math and realized that once again, being himself, saying what he meant wasn't going to be good for him politically in the short term.

The second reason why I expected Obama to kill the greatness of his Friday's speech with clarifications is that he isn't an ideologue in the good sense of the word. There are few things Obama is willing to die, politically, for, I would write that there is nothing, but I have decided to be nice because I'm still infected by the Parisian atmosphere.

Obama knows that he has to get reelected for his presidency to become meaningful and to be something more than a symbol of what America wanted to be when it elected him without of course having to work for it. I always thought to Obama was an attempt by a symbolically out of shape America to put itself back in shape by having surgery instead of course of exercising and deciding to have better eating habits.

I have never thought that Obama was too good for America, to the contrary, I have always thought that America didn't have enough faith in itself, in its ability to repair the wounds of its early and recent history (Bush's eight years) for it to choose Obama blindly knowing full well the odds of a rookie quarterback doing well without years of training are slim. But again, America loves believing in the improbable and it is also one of the reasons why it is a country to I love passionately.

Defined down bigotry

The sugary excerpt of the day is from Norman Geras on the attempts to define down anti-Semitism:

(...) there are people who, keen to deny the scope of the problem of anti-Semitism, want to limit it to overtly anti-Jewish hostility of mind. 'Since I don't have the hostility,' they will confidently assure their audience, 'how can anything I say or do be anti-Semitic?' Such people fail to explain why the assumption behind their rhetorical question doesn't apply to other forms of racism; or why they temporarily forget the insight which elsewhere they recognize quite freely - as Howard Jacobson has lately expressed it, that 'language has a mind of its own'.

One of my favorite Paul Eluard's quote is "les mots ne mentent pas (words don't lie)", however I have to say that I have come to wonder whether the trouble isn't so much in defining down anti-Semitism or any form of bigotry than in making the end of any discussion, when it seems that bigotry always requires explanations and cannot be washed away or even just condemned with the idea of good or bad faith or with the idea that it is the end of something when it is its beginning.

Defining tolerance

Robin Hanson offers what is, I believe, an excellent definition of tolerance:

“Tolerance” is a feel-good buzzword in our society, but I fear people have forgotten what it means.  Many folks are proud of their “tolerance” for gays, working women, Tibetan monks in cute orange outfits, or blacks sitting at the front of the bus.  But what they really mean is that they consider such things to be completely appropriate parts of their society, and are not bothered by them in the slightest.  That, however, isn’t “tolerance.”
“Tolerance” is where you tolerate things that actually bother you.  Things that make you go “ick”, or that conflict with strong intuitions on proper behavior.

That means of course that most societies, even 'modern societies,' are pretty intolerant places.

Uganda, homophobia, and the responsibility of the 'West'

I agree almost totally with Ken McLaughlin's assertion that Uganda's homophobia has been exacerbated (not created) by outside influences:

Care needs to be taken not to overstate the influence of three extreme and objectionable American evangelical Christians. Ugandans are not empty vessels waiting to be filled with whatever nonsense such people pour forth. The reasons for the current anti-homosexual climate are complex, influenced by historical, social, religious and cultural factors. However, the role of the West, from the colonial to the contemporary period, is of relevance when considering what is happening in Uganda today.
Attitudes to homosexuality in Uganda, as in most countries, have varied historically – at points being tolerant, at others intolerant. However, the current criminalisation of homosexuality is a legacy of British colonialism, whereby the colonial powers sought to punish local practices that they deemed to constitute ‘unnatural sex’. More recently, the US administration under George W Bush praised Uganda’s heterosexual, family-values policies and donated millions of dollars to sexual abstinence programmes. And now, Uganda finds itself being used as a proxy site for Western culture wars, with politicians, church leaders, gay and anti-gay activists getting involved in the debate and escalating the situation.

It is indisputable, in my opinion, that homophobia in Uganda and elsewhere has become a major political issue in part because of outside factors and influence. In those countries, it is used as both a political and an identity tool (identity politics here again is key); it is a way to reaffirm the omnipotence of traditional values which are seen as the basis of an imagined 'Africanity' which is seen as under assault from the outside world and oneeds to be revived to fix all problems including the one of development. I don't believe that the world should remain silent in front what is happening to Uganda, but rather that it should not make it an issue as one between the 'West' and the 'rest' by moralizing it, but rather should simply humanize it to avoid stupid debates about colonialism, neocolonialism, cultural imperialism, and every other silly pretexts used to justify the unjustifiable.

When feminists ally themselves with bigots

Quote of the day from Haroon Siddiqui commenting on the recent controversies around the Niqab in Québec:

We are witnessing an unholy alliance of leftist feminists, right-wing bigots and Quebec nationalists. That's why Lucien Bouchard, former PQ premier, publicly warned his party last month against playing identity politics, something he said René Lévesque would never have approved of. Picking on Muslim women smacks of hypocrisy or, worse, the pathology of "bigots and chauvinists who, like bullies, direct their vitriol toward the weak,"

Coulter and Canada

As always, Ann Coulter knows how to be dignified after suffering 'a setback' in Canada, here is her reaction:

You guys used to be so cool. You were smokers. You had epic hockey fights. We had half our comedians from Canada. Now you’re all a bunch of girls named Francois.

I wish Coulter had been able to speak in Ottawa and  that Canadians to the contrary of American had been able to put her down nicely by showing her that she doesn't deserve to be taken seriously even though she is entitled to speak and by not taken the bait of antagonism and just ignoring. I will bet by favorite left toe that Coulter isn't going to have the guts to go through with her threat to file a human-right complaint alleging that she was the victim of hate speech. That would be a further proof that she is commercial figure who only believe in her principles when they protect her or earn her a few bucks.

Burka, right wing ideology and feminism

Mona Eltahawy on the ban of the Burqa/burka,right-wing Muslim Ideology and women's right(hat tip: Norm Geras):

I abhor the rightwing Muslim ideology behind the veils but I equally abhor the political rightwing xenophobes of Europe. The European political right – be it President Nicolas Sarkozy, his ultra-right rival Jean-Marie Le Pen (who did alarmingly well in the first round of those regional elections) or Dutch provocateur Geert Wilders – do not give a rat's ass about Muslim women or their rights: they are merely using the issue in an attempt to win votes.
The racism and discrimination that Muslim minorities face in many countries — such as France, which has the largest Muslim community in Europe, and Britain, where two members of the xenophobic British National party were shamefully elected to the European parliament — are very real. But the silence of the left wing and liberals isn't the way to fight it. The best way to support Muslim women would be to say we oppose both the racist right wing and the niqabs and burkas which are products of what I call the Muslim right wing. Women should not be sacrificed to either.

My disagreement with Eltahawy comes from the fact that I don't view women as victims or particular creatures that have to remain clean, pure, and always make good choices. I consider that they have the right to be whoever they want to be even if it means becoming an object and making disturbing choices. My point on the burka/burqa/niqab debate is simple, women are instruments to fight Islamic ideology or to promote secularism, they are normal individuals whose rights to individuality should be judge by the usual criteria used in a society to decide when individuality becomes criminal and dangerous to a society. I'm not against a burqa ban in France and elsewhere in the name of feminism, because I don't think that women's rights (whatever that expression means) is the issue, but that the right of women as human beings to define their womanhood and their femininity is in question. I'm still waiting for somebody to tell what is the male's equivalent of the burqa to reconsider my position.

Black Mammies and other 'positive' stereotypes

I agree with Adam Serwer on this:

Mammy" is not a "positive" stereotype. There are no "positive" stereotypes, all stereotypes are created with a dehumanizing flip side that is inseparable from the faint "compliment" used to justify their invocation. But the legacy of the Mammy in particular is a grotesque one. Like every other carefully engineered old-school caricature of black people, it's meant to reinforce notions of what kind of behavior is appropriate--in this case, a docile, even happy acquiescence to white authority. "Mammy" was meant to depict black women as ugly and asexual, content to exist as surrogate mothers to the saintly white children of their owners or employers. Mammy's false happiness assures white people that the institutions of slavery and later Jim Crow have black people's consent and approval, her rotund body an alibi for the rampant exploitation of black women by their white slave masters. 
There's simply nothing "positive" about it. Mammy may give some people the warm fuzzies, but that has to do with whom the stereotype flatters. It sure as hell doesn't flatter black women.

Religious strife in Haïti

This is the last thing that Haïti needed:

Their cult, a form of west African polytheism that came to Haiti with the slave trade, is being blamed by some followers of the rapidly growing Christian denominations - evangelicals, Seventh-Day Adventists, Baptists - as the cause of God's anger in smiting their country.
"They say we're the ones who caused the earthquake. But we know ourselves that we didn't cause the quake, because it was a natural catastrophe," said Willer Jassaint, one of the priests, or houngans, leading the Voodoo ceremony.
Matters came to a head February 23, when a group of Protestant Evangelicals attacked a Cite Soleil Voodoo ceremony with a hail of rocks.
Max Beauvoir, supreme head of Haitian Voodoo, said two days afterwards that a repeat of the violence would lead to "open war," with his followers told to meet aggression with aggression.

Whether it is Voodoo or whatever else, it seems that religions always divinize the most potent, backwards, and fultile traditions in a society, which might explain its inabilities to progress and move forward by letting behind its heavy past. I'm trying to say diplomatically that the religious strife among Haitians based on whether a cult, a sect, a religion or whatever else caused the earthquake is indicative of wider problem and who the fact that in those societies it is difficult not to believe that someone/something else is in charge of one's faith because things are so chaotic and so despairingly dark otherwise.

Geert Wilders as a freedom fighter

Toby Young, my favorite judge of Top Chef, defends Geert Wilders in the Daily Telegraph by arguing that he is a freedom of speech warrior:

are the Dutch people just fed up with being told they’re not allowed to criticise Muslim extremists because to do so is “Islamophobic”? As a defender of free speech, I don’t believe for one moment that the Koran ought to be banned. But if I was a member of the Dutch electorate I would vote for Geert Wilders’ party nonetheless because I don’t think he deserves to go to jail for 16 months just for arguing that it should.
Wilders doesn’t really want to ban the Koran, of course. It’s a theatrical gesture — a situationist move — designed to underline the absurdity of trying to limit freedom of speech on the grounds that certain words or phrases or images might move people to violence. What Wilders is saying is that if you believe the critics of Muslim extremism should be silenced because their words might incite religious hatred, then, logically, you ought to ban the Koran on the same grounds. It’s not a serious suggestion, so much as a reductio ad absurdum of a completely untenable, illiberal position.

It is for precisely this reason that I have always believed that European countries are wrong to attempt to censor what they consider to be hate speech or speech denying certain historical events such as the Shoah. Hate-speech laws or any other laws that try to limit free speech based on its content always make the extremist the victim. Moreover, they force people such as Toby Young who likes to provoke and who believe that freedom of speech is the most sacred of values to defend Geert Wilders without seeking to see behind the trees. Guided by his orthodoxy about free speech,  Young is convinced that Wilders can only be right because that it is always absolutely unjust to try to shut somebody hate because society doesn't like what he is saying or finds it too distasteful. It isn't an erroneous positon to take, just a limited and an absurd one because the conclusion seems to be that victims of censorship are always and absolutely right or rather they cannot be right or even extremist.

Deconstructing Geert Wilders

The Daily Telegraph has a portrait of Geert Wilders, the Dutch far-right politician whose party is calling for the stop of the Islamization of the Netherlands and increasing its popularity with that message. Sugary excerpt:

Wilders describes his far-Right label as "nonsense".
"My supporters say: 'At last there is someone who dares to say what millions of people think'. That is what I do," Wilders said before the European elections last year, in which the PVV took four of the 25 Dutch seats.
"People are fed up with the government; the leftist elite that has failed them," said Wilders.
(,,,).Arguing that "Islam is the Netherlands' biggest problem," Wilders has urged parliament to ban the Koran, comparing it with Hitler's "Mein Kampf."
He also wants a total ban on the burqa as well as a halt to immigration from Muslim countries and the construction of mosques in the Netherlands.
He is awaiting a hate speech trial trial at home and was barred from entering Britain last year to stop him spreading "hatred and violent messages."
"I want to defend freedom, which I think will disappear into thin air the moment the Islamic ideology gains a stronger foothold on this country," Wilders, who is married to a Hungarian, told AFP.

I'm not alarmed by the ascension of Geert Wilders because his ascension and his views are not new in Europe, Extremism, both on the left and the right, tends to rise everywhere especially in times when there is so economic, social, and political distress, which none of the "legitimate" parties seem to be able to address to the satisfaction of an increasingly impatient and radicalized electorate. One only has to analyze the short, but tumultuous and tragic political career of  Pim Portuyn in the Netherlands or even the long and flashy one of Jean-Marie Le Pen to realize that politicians such as Wilders are always very opportunistic, but that they are rarely able to leave any serious political marks or even to ascend to power without cleaning up their message or at least expanding because soon or later two things happen. The first is that their message is co-opted by other political parties who start to pay attention and to realize that they must find less "intolerant" ways to deal with the concerns of the voters who may be unsavory, but are very real. Sarkozy did it very effectively in 2007 and beat Le Pen at his own. The second thing that happens when politicians such as Geert Wilders are actually very good at politics or very ambitious is that soon or later, they come to the realization that they have to widen their message and that Islamization or any other message exploiting the fear of others and of unwelcome change is not enough to be more than a pestilent gadfly.
For these reasons, what I'm really wonder is whether Wilders is ever going to be willing to form a coalition with other Dutch parties of the right if his party becomes a political force or whether he will be content to remain on the margins believing that the system will collapse. I'm also wondering what is Ayaan Hirsi Ali's opinion of Geert Wilders.

Georges Frêche and the need to create a socialist Le Pen

John Lichfield has an article in the Independent, which proclaims solemnly Geoges Frêche, the sulfurous President of the Languedoc-Roussillon region, the Jean-Marie Le Pen of the Left:

Originally, the Socialist Party, at national level, had agreed reluctantly to back Mr Frêche's centre-left coalition, or "list". Last month, Mr Frêche once again outraged the leadership of the national party – and many other people in France – by making what appeared to be an anti-Semitic remark about the former Socialist prime minister, Laurent Fabius.
Mr Fabius is from a Catholic family of Jewish origin. After he had criticised Mr Frêche during a radio interview, the president of Languedoc-Roussillon retaliated by saying that the former prime minister had a "tronche pas très Catholique" – literally a "not very Catholic mug or hooter".
This may seem a trivial insult. Mr Frêche says that it was a version of a well-known phrase in the French south, "pas très Catholique", meaning not entirely straightforward. This is disingenuous. By referring to the "tronche", the face or nose, of Mr Fabius, Mr Frêche was indulging in just the kind of insidious, nudge-nudge anti-Semitism which still thrives in bourgeois, Catholic France, north and south.
This was far from Mr Frêche's first lapse. He has been accused of making anti-Semitic remarks before, despite being a strong supporter of Israel. He once referred to two ex-"Harkis" – Algerians who fought on the French side in the colonial civil war – as "sub-humans". In 2007, he repeated a complaint once voiced by the far-right leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, that there were too many black players on the France football team.

The trouble with Lichfield 's article is that it remains purposely on the periphery of the Frêche's issue. It does so in order to create a new monster and  then to make the case with ease simply one of an anti-Semitic and racist socialist who shows that Le Pen is not an anomaly within the French political system. This is, in my opinion, a voluntary misreading of the situation for the Frêche's issue is neither about anti-Semitism and racism, but rather about the fracture of the French left between those who consider that politics is about management (the modernists) and the others who believe that it has to be  also about values and the nation (the traditionalists). The French socialist are excluding Frêche and his supporters not because they believe they are racist but solely because there is a witch hunt that has begun in the party ahead of the next presidential election whose goal is to make sure that only a modern (Martine Aubry or Dominique Strauss-Kahn) is the socialist presidential candidate. It is a shame that John Lichfield because it is more flashy and more politically correct.  to sell the story that French is Le Pen didn't dig deep enough to give his readers the whole context by pointing out for example that the most important French Jewish organization supported Frêche and that many influential socialists  (Gérad Collomb, the mayor of Lyon and François Rebsamen, the one of Dijon) who can hardly be called racist or anti-Semitic have campaigned for him.

Zuma is just another powerful normal man

Ah, so people just have a narrow mind to see the need to defend "Africanity" even though it is an illusion and more importantly when their first instinct should be to condemn vile behaviors instead of focusing on the fact that they come from a particular group. Those were my first thoughts  when I read this op-ed in the Mail&Guardian by Verashni Pillay  :

Zuma's contravention of a certain public and cultural standard by having an extramarital affair is unlikely to earn him more than a slap on the wrist by his party and alliance.
In the double standards that attend reporting on our very African president, the international media seems to forget that dodgy behaviour on the part of men in power is hardly an exclusively African trait. Sex scandals are ubiquitous as they are deliciously satisfying media fodder.
The fact of human nature is that we can all be corrupted.

I need to take a moment to resist the urge to vomit.

Poland, France, and Anti-Semitism

Interesting comparison between Poland and France and the way their society deals with anti-Semitism from Konstanty Gebert;  he seems to imply that France deals well with Anti-semitism I disagree strongly with him because I don't think that laws can eradicate bigotry, on the contrary they tend to victimize the bigots thus giving them  too much of the spotlight, which enable them in turn to become larger than the hate they spread:

Because Polish anti-Semitism is as widespread as it is skin-deep. Let me explain. Take France. In France they had very strong laws against public expressions of anti-Semitism. If you express anti-Semitism in public you can be seriously penalised. This doesn't necessarily affect what Monsieur Dupont says at his dinner table (and I've sat at some of those dinner tables – I know) but in public if somebody makes an anti-Semitic statement you'd better believe he or she is serious, because they are willing to take the rap.
In Poland, anti-Semitism is not penalised, period. Just recently, the public prosecutor in the town of Krakow closed the investigation into soccer fans yelling "Gas them!" to the fans of another club which is labelled as Jewish because, historically, like 70 years ago, it had been Jewish. So they yelled "Gas them," and they yelled, "We'll always triumph over you, you fucking Jews," and the public prosecutor decided such contents do not constitute a crime and dropped the case. And this comes in the wake of similar statements by different public prosecutors. So anti-Semitism isn't penalised, therefore it becomes a convenient venue for the expression of frustration. So if somebody says in public it's all the fault of the Jews and they should be kicked out of the country, this does not necessarily mean, as it probably does in France, that he is a dyed-in-the-wool and dangerous anti- Semite. It might mean that he had a bad day at work, full stop. This is no less excusable morally...

Social status, education, diversity, and intolerance

Chris Dillow has a post in Stumbling and Mumbling, which argues that richer people are more “civilized” than poor people are. He uses the example of the fact that the crowd in Bucharest booed black players during a soccer football game between Arsenal and Steaua Bucharest to prove his point:

[…] the rich know better than the poor that diversity is a source of wealth. Differences in tastes and abilities are what lie behind the division of labour, comparative advantage and hence prosperity. As the cliche goes, it takes differences of opinion to make a market. Instinctively, therefore, we rich people regard people of different ethnicities as providing opportunities to get rich, not threats to our status. We know better than the poor - and certainly better than those brought up under Communism - that the economy is a positive-sum game.
This mechanism predicts that those who got rich from trading will be more tolerant, on average, than those who got rich in other ways - through inheritance, say.  How much evidence is there for this? Here's one datapoint.
What's more, this suggests there might be another growth trap. Poverty causes intolerance. But intolerance also retards growth.

I disagree strongly with Dillow for two simple reasons. The first reason is that Dillow is confusing wealth and education and that wealthy people in my opinion are less intolerant only if they are more educated and have more contact with different people. In other words, the variables here are education and diversity not wealth. The tragedy here is that it costs more to gain an education. and that diversity is not a fact everywhere. The second reason I take issue with the argument that wealthy people are more “civilized” than poor people is because it implies than wealthy people are better and that tolerance and “civilization” can only be attained with wealth. I will bet anything that there are differences between the threshold of tolerance between countries with a more diverse population and the one in countries with a more homogenous populiation. The racist chants and boos in the Bucharest game have less to do with the fact that the poor don’t know better and can't be tolerant because of their social status, than with the fact that they are less blacks in Romania than in England.

Moreover, I am willing also to push the point even farther by arguing that the following gross generalization is more accurate than Dillow's: in countries with diverse populations, the wealthy tolerate diverse population not only because they understand that diversity and immigration is good for wealth, but also because they don’t have to mix and to live next to the immigrants and people who have a different skin color or religion than them. In those countries, I am willing to predict than the most integrated neighborhood are not wealthy neighborhood, but the poor and middle class one. The point is that wealth makes it possible to “tolerate” difference most of the times because it inoculates the wealthy from having to experience the changes created from that difference and because they don’t have to change since they can afford to build walls between them and people that they don’t like. However, the poor learn to “accept” difference when they have to live next to it and when they have no other choice than to learn to trust their neighbor. It is for this reason, that some of the banlieues of Paris and more particularly of Marseille are both poor, but also the most integrated places in France.

Ennui, Spleen, ignorance, and the right to insult

I am all for provocation when it is based on something more than a childish attempt to attract attention and when it doesn’t use stereotypes and reinforces ignorance. That’s what Hugh Fitzgerald does in the following quote while trying to make the point, which I agree with that there are no excuses for terrorism. What is sad is that Fitzgerald uses Baudelaire and Gogol to try to cover up his ignorance and biases:

Ennui. Baudelaire's "Spleen." Gogol's "Skuchno na etom svete, gospoda" at the end of "Nevskij Prospekt." That's the ticket now.

First it was "poverty." But they all turned out to be middle-class or rich, far better off, and far better educated, than the run-of-the-mill Muslims, so it couldn't be that.

Then it was "sexual tension." But then there were those who pointed out that Bin Laden and many of his pals had all the wives they could afford, and then some, so it couldn't be that.

Now it's "boredom." So what are we Infidels to do? Shall we all become a race of Noel Cowards, with "a talent to amuse," and make sure we keep Muslims all around the world -- not known for their sense of humor -- constantly in stitches, or occupied with things to do, so that they don't, heaven forfend, become "deadly bored" with the "bored" part applying to them and the "deadly" part applying to us, their victims?

Might it, could it, just possibly be that Muslims, whose ideology covers everything, that is a religion and a politics and an economics and a geopolitics and a book of etiquette and a social order and a manual of hygiene and a guide to the right sports and a clothing guide and a guide to hairstyles and to everything under the sun, and who grow up in societies, or in families, suffused with Islam, or if they are new converts, are smothered by their minders -- they are assigned minders in the first period just after their "reversion" to make sure that there are no hitches, no backsliding, no finding out of something that might cause someone to change his mind -- with Islam, Islam, Islam, with what those texts-- Qur'an and Hadith and Sira -- say, actually have an effect on the minds of Believers, when those passages are known to all Muslims, when they are the stuff of the khutbas at Friday Prayers, when they are known or if not known by heart, known in their essence, known by the attitudes they create, the atmospherics that they give rise to.

All one needs to do to understand why Fitzgerald’s words are more insulting than provocative is to replace Muslims with another group and imagine what one can say that is horrible about it to make the point that they are responsible for their own faults. That said Fitzgerald has the right to write whatever he pleases about religion because religion isn’t sacred, that is something that can't be challenged and yes even made fun of or insulted, and that the religious, like all of the rest of the people, can be the victims of ignorance and foolish attacks masquerading as cultured analysis.

Truth and the last believer

Gwyn Tophan has a great article on David Pryce Jones who wrote what I believe to be the most fanatical anti-French book of the last few years, Betrayal: France, the Arabs and the Jews. Since I’m incapable of saying anything remotely objective about Pryce Jones although in spite of my lack of objectivity I believe that I’m fair and right when I state that Pryce Jones’s anti-French sentiment takes the form of fanaticism, which is similar to Chávezism, I’m just going to quote what Tophan writes:

But it turns out that if there's one group worse than the French, it's Muslims. Pryce Jones says "the Islamisation of France" has now becomes an electoral factor. The rise of Le Pen is indisputable, though any implication that Muslims are a crucial electoral force might be news to those in the banliueues.

It doesn't appear though that the latter have his sympathy. "100 cars are burnt every night in France. Who is burning cars? It is Muslims. They cry allahu akbar as they burn them." Does Pryce Jones really wander the streets of France listening to the cry of arsonists, or is he taking his thesis a little bit too far?

Protesting against Gay Penguins

The Guardian had an article yesterday about the controversy, which a children book about gay penguins And Tango Makes Three has created in the US because some feels that homosexuality is an inappropriate topic for children. I wonder if the argument of those who protest is that homosexuality is a disease, which children can catch by just reading it about it. Sugary excerpt:

Though Parnell is keen to emphasise the story's connection with classic children's tales, Richardson, who is an assistant professor of psychiatry at Columbia and Cornell universities in New York, focuses on the need that the book answers for many parents. "One of the areas that parents find very difficult to discuss with their children is homosexuality," he points out, "yet many children have classmates who live in families with two Dads, for example." His description of the book as a useful tool for parents will doubtless alarm its critics. When it comes to homosexuality, admits Judith Krug, director of the ALA's office for intellectual freedom, in the US, "people go a little crazy".

Last year the ALA was notified of 546 formal requests for books to be removed from libraries, most of which came from individual parents. The role of the ALA, Krug explains, is to help librarians resist these requests.

"We fight," she says, "to keep these books on the shelves. People who complain about And Tango Makes Three really believe that homosexuality is wrong, that it's against God's commandments, that it's harming society. The problem is that these children are growing up in a society where some of their classmates are going to come from same sex couples."

When hugging a Frenchman becomes dangerous

Well, we can really see that Pakistan has reached the bottom now that hugging a Frenchman can lead to the resignation of a politician. Nilofar Bakhtiar, Pakistan's Minister of Tourism, has been forced to resign after the furor created by the hug that she gave to her French tourist instructor. Clerics called her act obscene and issued a fatwa against her. The fact that such events can happen in Pakistan isn’t just shameful, but intolerable but the silence that is going to follow this resignation shows that for too many countries some behaviors, which if they happened in their own countries would lead them to blast cultural relativism, multiculturalism, and radical leftism, are acceptable because they are happening elsewhere. I disagree. Geography doesn’t determine morality neither does culture. There isn’t something holier something different about Pakistan and Pakistani air that would make it acceptable that a hug to Frenchman whether he is old or not (he was in this case in his sixties and some have argues that because of his age, the hug wasn’t obscene), unacceptable.

Wit, religion, and death

Is it acceptable to speak ill of the dead? After seeing this video, I wonder if crossing certain boundaries isn't tolerable and even necessary if the act isn't as much of a transgression as it is about learning something or saying something that has to be said. But still, I'm not sure that I'm right.

Fascism, color, and identity

The most intriguing article I read yesterday was the one in the Guardian, which discussed about the fact that Lawrence Dennis, one of the leading  figures in the American fascist movement was black, but was able to pass himself as white for most of his life without ever divulging the fact that he was a black to his feloow fascists and even to his family. The revelation is made by Gerald Horne in his new book, The Colour of Fascism, which states that Dennis’s mother was African American and that  it is unknown whether his father was too even though thef act that he was able to pass as white suggests that he wasn’t. I think this is fascinating because it shows that the controversial nature of the link between race and identity. The article in the Guardian also makes important point about “Passing” that is the phenomenon during essential the old South, which made light-skinned African Americans passed themselves as white:

"Passing" was common in American society at the time. Despite laws against miscegenation, the pervasive practice of masters raping their slaves had produced a large number of light-skinned people. Under America's rigidly enforced codes of racial supremacy, any child of a mixed-race relationship was deemed "black", regardless of their complexion. They called it the one-drop rule: one drop of "black blood" made you black.

Given the manifest benefits of life on the other side of the colour line, black people who could pass as white often did, even though doing so meant cutting themselves off from their family and their past. Passing has provided the dramatic tension for many a novel, including Philip Roth's The Human Stain, Walter Moseley's Devil in a Blue Dress and, most pertinently, Nella Larsen's Passing. "Every year approximately 12,000 white-skinned Negroes disappear," Walter White, the former head of the civil rights organisation, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, claimed in the late 1940s. "People whose absence cannot be explained by death or emigration ... men and women who have decided that they will be happier and more successful if they flee from the proscription and humiliation which the American colour line imposes on them." White, who was light-skinned, used to pass himself as white at times when investigating lynch mobs in the South.

The dehumanization of politics

Here is a comment, a reader of townhall wrote regarding the announcement that Elizabeth Edwards’s cancer is recurring. My point isn’t that all townhall readers are as hateful as this reader is for they are not and I’m sure that you could find as hateful and despicable a comment of sites from the left. However, I am always astonished when I realize that how low and how far people are willing to go in their attempt to dehumanize whom they consider their political foes. Sugary excerpt:

Unfortunately Ann took a lot of heat for describing the bundle of sticks as a "faggot" which was suddenly determined by the PC police to be a 'slur' regarding ones manhood or something like that.
John Edwards, your would be president, is also the man who has borne the moniker 'the Breck girl' for several years now. A lable bestowed upon him by yet another satirist with great effect, a lable that has obviously 'stuck' to him like oh so much glue.
There are some who might think the 'Breck girl' tag to be an unfair attack delivered by a partisan commentator. A reasonable man might even conclude that having 'perfect hair' is a curse for Edwards, a heavy cross for him to bear. But then the reasonable man drawing such conclusions surely hasn't yet seen THE video. Oh yes, there is a video, and a goodly number of people have seen it in the past week or so. The coincidence, the timing, is not lost on the reasonable man. […] Watching him at the press conference I was struck by the idea that he had done the very same thing as the video portrayed just before stepping in front of the cameras to 'break the news' that wasn't Exactly the news that was expected. The new, manly John Edwards reassured us that he is "ready to be president" because he is "able to focus" under this type of pressure. It made me want to scream at the television...Earth to John! It's your wife who is feeling the pressure!
We were reassured that the "campaign goes on strongly" and, for good measure ever the Breck Girl sprinkled several other manly words into his performance. He said the Edwards' would be "tough", and "strong", that they would 'not go cowering in a corner'.
A corner? Hardly! Look for Edwards to make the rounds, Oprah, Today, GMA, you name it, he'll be there. Already News Anchors, reporters, print journalists and bloggers are using words and, phrases never before mention with the name John Edwards in the same sentence. Words like courage, determination and, guts. Phrases that make HIM out to be the martyr when it is her and, her children who needs our prayers.
If the Breck Girl was any type of man and wanted to prove he is presidential material he would withdraw this go round and try again another time. He is young enough to wait. He should also want to spend as much time with his wife as possible. A man this power hungry is dangerous.

Defending the memory of Lucie Aubrac against bloodthirsty flies

David Pryce-Jones has a post on the Contentions blog attacking the memory of Lucie Aubrac, the French Résistance member whose courage and dedication to her country is not only legendary, but unquestioned and unquestionable. He accused her of tipping off Klaus Barbie who deported thousand of French Jews as to the whereabouts of many French members of the Résistance:

The Lyons Gestapo was headed at the time by Klaus Barbie, a hardline Nazi and a sadist who personally tortured his victims. He and a Gestapo detachment burst into the house at Caluire, arresting Jean Moulin and eight others, among them Raymond Aubrac. According to Lucie’s story, she then visited Barbie in his headquarters and persuaded him to let her see her husband. During a visit, she and Raymond planned his escape, which took place that October when Lucie led an ambush on the prison van escorting her husband and others to a different prison. Moulin died under Barbie’s torture without giving away any secrets.

How did the Gestapo know that Jean Moulin and the others were in that house in Caluire? That someone tipped them off has always been evident. Suspicion fell on the Aubracs, but in preliminary investigations they were cleared. They were also unpopular because of the zeal and frequency with which they had accused people, after the war, of collaboration with the Nazis.

And then Klaus Barbie was captured in Bolivia, and brought to trial in  France. He declared that Lucie Aubrac had, in fact, tipped him off. Prisoners did not escape the Gestapo, he emphasized with authority, unless the Gestapo wanted them to escape.

I know that for Pryce-Jones French heroism is an oxymoron and that he sees evil and cowardice everywhere when he sees someone French, but to repeat allegations made by members of the French far right who are the same one who argue that the German occupation of France was wonderful and that the Shoah is a minor detail of history is disgusting. By repeating Klaus Barbie’s allegation, Pryce-Jones is in fact saying that a person whose participation in the killing of thousand of French Jews has more credibility in his eyes than Lucie Aubrac, a French woman who fought for her country. In order words, to slander the memory of Lucie Aubrac, Pryce-Jones is choosing to believe the man who was called le boucher de Lyon, the Butcher of Lyon for his taste for blood over everything and everyone one. What to think of a man who would rather believe a member of the Gestapo because he is German than to believe a woman of the Résistance because she is French? Pryce-Jones should be ashamed of himself for going in the sewer to find slanderous and unproven allegations to defecate on the memory of a French legend who died as she lived her life, gracefully. If I believed in violence, I would seek David Pryce-Jones and challenging to a duel just to show how cowardly and vile it is to do what he just did in his post just to get some cheap thrill as spitting of the corpse of legend just because she is French. 

Irène Némirovsky as a self-hating and anti-semitic jew

Stuart Jeffries investigates in the Guardian the charge that Irène Némirovsky, the author of Suite Française, a book, which I think is one of the best French books of the past 10 years, was anti-Semitic or a self-hating Jew in spite of the fact that she is Jewish and that she died in a concentration camp. This controversy has been created by a book, which she wrote before her death in Auschwitz and some of the things that she did to avoid being sent to a concentration camp. Jeffries concludes that the evidence is mixed and that there is no clear evidence that she was anti-Semitic even though it is clear that she has some issues with her Jewish identity as she did with Catholicism, a religion, which she chose for herself:

[…] Némirovsky excoriated Catholics even more than Jews or mothers. Smith finds a passage in Suite Française depicting wealthy Madame Péricand fleeing Paris from the Nazis and preventing her children giving away chocolates and sweets to starving folk they find on their way. Némirovsky writes: "Christian charity, the compassion of centuries of civilisation, fell from her like useless ornaments, revealing her bare, arid soul. She needed to feed and protect her children. Nothing else mattered any more."

But maybe this is no proof of anti-Catholicism, just as David Golder offers no conclusive proof of its author's anti-semitism. Instead, what interested Némirovsky most in these two portraits is the specific and sometimes shabby ways people behave in extremis. Hers was a novelist's eye, not a bigot's.

That said, what accommodations she made with anti-semites in France is another story and what she felt about doing so something that she took to her grave. We will never know if she hated herself for what she did. "She certainly mixed with people who were anti-semites, but she ignored it. She certainly made a lot of mistakes, but given her times and her circumstances, they might well be excusable," says Callil. "Who are we to judge?".

I agree with Jeffries. Who are we to judge her? After all, she isn't here to defend herself against those who are accusing her of being anti-Semitic even though she died in a concentration precisely because she was Jewish. Was Irène Némirovsky a saint? Of course, she wasn't and I'm sure that she was an individual like the rest of us with many faults and contradictions. However, isn't that the point of Némirovsky’s story and what we should learn from her story and from the Holocaust? That more than 60 years ago more than six millions people who were just people like us died in the most horrific ways precisely because too many people denied their humanity.

Dirty games

The New Times has an article about a game, “to catch an illegal immigrant” which a group of College Republicans started on the New York University’s campus and the protests that it drew. The purpose of the game was for one student to chase a student with an illegal immigrant tag and to catch him. Many students protested and argued that the game is racist and disgusting. I’m not sure that it is a racist game, but it is a disgusting and offensive game not because of its point of view, but because it caricatured an important issue by making it seem as though it is fun to catch illegal immigrants and by dehumanizing them.

Science, gay sheep and homosexuality

The Guardian has an article on what the impact of the research of gay sheep will add to the homosexuality debate and it will prove that homosexuality can be prevented in sheep and in humans. Sugary excerpt:

Which brings us to the animals whose breeding we really care about: our children. Passing on genes is life's deepest drive. You don't just want kids. You want grandkids. To many parents, "I'm gay, Mom" means "No grandkids."

Roselli offers evidence that human homosexuality is linked to biological conditions, some of them genetic. If he figures out how to manipulate sexual orientation in sheep, will others try to manipulate it in humans? Doctors used to "treat" homosexuality with hormone injections. Some still do. This idea failed miserably in adults, but it might work in foetuses. And if we can't engineer sexual orientation, maybe we can select it. In Asia, millions have used modern tests to identify female foetuses so they could be aborted. If we learn how to recognise gay brains in development, look out.

The rightness of being a homophobic

Michael Medved argues that Tim Hardaway was right (hat tip: Andrew Sullivan) because it is understandable and natural  to hate male on male sexual attraction. Sugary excerpt:

Tim Hardaway (and most of his former NBA teammates) wouldn’t welcome openly gay players into the locker room any more than they’d welcome profoundly unattractive, morbidly obese women. I specify unattractive females because if a young lady is attractive (or, even better, downright “hot”) most guys, very much including the notorious love machines of the National Basketball Association, would probably welcome her joining their showers. The ill-favored, grossly overweight female is the right counterpart to a gay male because, like the homosexual, she causes discomfort due to the fact that attraction can only operate in one direction. She might well feel drawn to the straight guys with whom she’s grouped, while they feel downright repulsed at the very idea of sex with her.

Many gay activists suggest that this near-universal straight male repulsion at the idea of sex with another man is merely the product of cultural conditioning: a learned prejudice that ought to be unlearned. This represents the core message of gay pride parades and even the drive for same-sex marriage: an effort to persuade all of society that gay sex is as beautiful as straight sex, and to “cure” men of their visceral disgust at the very thought of what two (or more) male homosexuals do with one another.

Censorship and political correctness

Maria Grasso has an article lamenting the fact that students in Oxford can only use the word “gay” to designate a gay person. Sepia Mutiny had a post last week on the expulsion of a Student from American University for calling using a homophobic slur after being told to “go back to India.” All of this leads me to wonder where the proper balance between freedom of speech and decency not only on a college campus, but also in a democratic society. It seems to me that by censoring someone for using offensive or inappropriate, Universities are in fact giving up on their primary mission, which is to educate. Censorship or attempts to impose political correctness through inflexible rules are in fact asserting that you are not only what you say, but more importantly, that one is born a bigot and thus can never be change.

Goode is bad

I think that there is just one thing to say after watching this video and that is : unbelievable!

Holocaust denial and free speech

“I’m opposed to Holocaust denial laws for three reasons. First because I believe in free speech. Governments should make no laws limiting free speech, because it is never good when that happens. Second, because these laws turn Holocaust deniers into martyrs. Look what happened to David Irving when he was released from jail in Austria– he became a media darling, given room to spout his misinformation. We should ignore them rather than chasing them down. And thirdly, and most importantly, such laws suggest that we don’t have the history, the documentation, the evidence to make the case for the Holocaust having happened. They suggest we don’t trust the truth. But we do have the evidence, and we should keep on developing it and deepening it, and we should trust it.”Deborah Lipstadt, Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University.

The truth about skin color

Naina has a great post at Sepia Mutiny on Skin Color and the fact that it still makes a difference. I wonder whether it makes a difference because of aesthetical reasons or because people associate skin colors with certain characteristics and a certain class status.

Europe, blood and identity

“What bothers me in Europe is not the lack of assimilation, or the trouble caused by muslims. What bothers me is the disappearance of my own people. European governments are organizing a population replacement. European babies are replaced by immigrants' babies. Even if muslim immigrants later convert to catholicism, no one in Europe is going to mistake them for our own children. Personally, I won't feel I have anything in common with them, and I'd rather they spoke another language than me. It would give me some cultural protection.

I will make a comparison: When a European couple comes out of the hospital after having a baby, they usually won't be happy if there has been a mistake and they were handed an African baby instead of their own baby. Knowing that the baby is not muslim makes no difference at all. I realize this is incredibly racist, but this is how I feel, and how most Europeans and Americans feel.” Armor, a commentator at the Brussels Journal.

Bitch is a compliment...

The Guardian has a review of an interesting book by Kate Figes titled, "The Big Fat Bitch Book " which focuses on the word, its history, its present, and its usage. Sugary excerpt:

Many of us are still so constrained by conventional stereotypes of how women should be - selfless, kind, enabling of others, calm and supportive - the good girl essentially, that the real girl inside gets denied. We take insults on the chin and say nothing. We find it hard to compete or ask for that pay rise because we are not sure we deserve it. We are not supposed to shout or get angry about all the inequities we face as women. We become the bitch, the bad girl, when we want more, when we are not prepared to make do with what we have and when being heard is more important than being liked. That is a liberating feeling. If we fear being labelled as a bitch, we still seek validation from men on their terms rather than ours.

Well, I wonder whether a word stops being a slur because its targets succeed in making it a compliment. Would anybody make the case that the N-word is no longer a slur and should be more accepted? Who decides the meaning of a word the person who uses it or the person who hears it?

Bias and stupidity

The stupidly anti-French post of the day comes from Captain Ed who is using his wild imagination and his great knowledge of French politics to assert that the French foreign Minister Philippe Douste Blazy rebuked Chirac's appeasement stand against Iran. This assertion is outrageous and stupid. It shows that Captain Ed knows so little about Chirac to think that he will stand for a rebuke by one of his ministers at a time when his sole obsession is to end his president without sharing the power with Sarkozy (Douste Blazy has given his support to Sarkozy) and without having him become his successor to undo much of what he considers to be his political legacy.

HIV rape and race

I just read this comment on a post at the Brussels Journal and it made me realize that we still live in a world where race matters. The comment was posted by somebody calling himself Kapitein Andre. Judge for yourself:

Similar acts [the one of infiecting people with Aids] have been committed by Black males against White females in Sweden, the United Kingdom, Canada and other countries. In the case of Canada, there were two such incidents, one in which the perpetrator was not even an immigrant but a Canadian Black whose ancestors emigrated from the American Confederacy. Nor do these crimes take into account the tremendous rates of rape committed by Blacks in Europe and the United States on White females. While HIV rape can be attributed in Africa to tribal beliefs about the diseased man curing himself through intercourse with a virgin, this excuse cannot be used by Mol or his fellow rapists and murderers. Mol immediately set to work attempting to infect the widest possible range of Polish women before his arrest, and used political correctness to force (or "persuade") sex and unprotected sex at that. Unfortunately, White fetishism is not limited to Muslims and has little to do with whether or not a woman wears a burqa. White women are trophies for those who feel inferior because of their skin color, and mixed children are a vain attempt for the male to change his own color by having lighter or Whiter children. Nor are White men left alone, because White women are increasingly finding their men won over by aggressive East and Southeast Asian females, who are equally interested in mixing. While not every non-White longs for a White partner or mixed child, this fetishism exists to such an extent that interracial relationships (if involving a White person) cannot be viewed as based upon equality, as the non-White side has a conscious or sub-conscious agenda. Only White people believe that skin color no longer matters, but unfortunately, even if they do not believe they are superior, enough non-Whites believe that they themselves are inferior enough to carry this perversion on. And notice that Mol was also an activist for refugees and anti-racism. Any non-White advocating for open borders, miscegenation, and the like must be viewed with suspicion.

Dinesh D'Souza, 9/11 and terrorism

Dinesh D'Souza's new book will accuse the cultural left for being responsible for 9/11 as its title, “The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11” implies. However, it isn’t necessary to read his book to know the arguments he uses to justify his monstrous thesis that the left is responsible for 9/11. He has enumerated them in many of his articles, including one in world magazine where he argues that the cultural left has made America culture decadent thus causing Muslims to hate for its depravations and to want to kill Americans. The solution to stop Muslims and terrorists for attacking America is to reject the ideas of the cultural left such as abortion, homosexuality, and sexual liberation and to return to traditional values. In other words, D’Souza advocates a return to purity so that the Taliban and other religious extremists will realize that they have more in common with America than they think and will stop to consider it an enemy. Sugary excerpt:

Many American liberals view the great social revolution of the past few decades—freedom for abortion, divorce, and homosexuality—through the prism of an expansion of civil liberties, "freedom of choice," and personal autonomy. But from the Muslim perspective these same trends appear as nothing less than the shameless promotion of depravity. So it is not surprising to see pious Muslims react with horror at the prospect of this new American morality seeping into their part of the world and potentially destroying their religion and way of life.

So what should America do about this? First, we should recognize how our domestic culture war and the war on terror are linked. The restoration of American culture will not only be better for our children, but will help America's image abroad. As a practical matter, of course, such a restoration will not be easy. At the very least, it is a task that will take a couple of decades. The best we can do is to show Muslims, and traditional people around the world, the other America that they often don't see. The Bush administration should do more to highlight the presence, and values, of conservative and religious America. Moreover, we should do what we can to export this America, which is good America, to the rest of the world.

Pigs and a Mosque

I don't find this story amusing, but worrisome because it shows that intolerance, fear, and refusal to know or to accept the other is becoming prevalent in our modern societies. I wonder what to these people thought that a pig race would accomplish and why they didn't simply try to talk so that their fears and their concerns would be addressed. Maybe they didn't want to start a dialogue and simply wanted to pick a fight and to win it to show that Katy, Texas will never become a multi-ethnic town and that they were going to resist the invasion of their traditional town by Muslims whose real aim, they believe, is to conquer it.

Little Mosque on the Prairie

I wonder if this show will succeed, but if it doesn't, it won't be because for want of material But I have the feeling that we are going to see a show such as Little Mosque on the Prairie in American TV (more likely on cable) pretty soon.

Goode extremists

The most disturbing article I read this year so far is Virgil Goode, the representative from the 5th district of Virginia, who in an attempt to justify his bigotry towards Muslims and certain type of immigration argued in USA Today's yesterday that America needs to protect itself from extremists who want to change into a non-Christian Nation. I would argue that extremists such Goode represents a menace to America because they have no understanding of the world and because their patriotism is conditional on America being what they want it to be. Money quote:

Immigration is arguably the most important issue facing the country today. At least 12 million immigrants are here illegally. And diversity visas, a program initiated in 1990 to grant visas to people from countries that had low U.S. immigration at that time, are bringing in 50,000 a year from various parts of the world, including the Middle East.

Let us remember that we were not attacked by a nation on 9/11; we were attacked by extremists who acted in the name of the Islamic religion. I believe that if we do not stop illegal immigration totally, reduce legal immigration and end diversity visas, we are leaving ourselves vulnerable to infiltration by those who want to mold the United States into the image of their religion, rather than working within the Judeo-Christian principles that have made us a beacon for freedom-loving persons around the world.

David Irving and Mel Gibson

This story is the reason why I believe that censoring or rather criminalizing speech even when it is hateful and denies the Shoah doesn't work. As soon as he got out from jail in Austria for denying the Shoah, David Irving has said that Mel Gibson was right when during his drunken tirade he accused Jews to be responsible of all the wars of the word:

In many respects Mel Gibson was right. [..] They (Jews) should ask themselves the question, 'Why have they been so hated for 3,000 years that there has been pogrom after pogrom in country after country?' and it's the one question they seem to be very shy of.

There is no amount of jail, which can kill or rather cure hatred.

The video du jour: Muslim Invasion and Virgil Goode