Shining the Light on Those Crooked, Sadistic Dutch

The news is out. Those progressive, peace-loving Dutch are really torturers. Abu Ghraib has nothing on their methods. Here’s the quoted report from ¡No Pasaran! about what Dutch Military Intelligence did in Iraq (my emphasis):

According to De Volkskrant, the interrogations were carried out by members of the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service in November 2003 in buildings of the Coalition Provisional Authority in the town of Samawah, on the Euphrates River about 230 miles southeast of Baghdad.

Prisoners were forced to wear darkened goggles then exposed to bright lights when the goggles were removed, De Volkskrant reported. They also were kept awake for long periods by being doused with water or subjected to high-pitched noises.

The MSM really does use the same tactics the world over. Truth is expendable in the name of whatever an individual considers to be the justice of the moment.

This particular “truth” is the leftstream Dutch media’s attempt to spin stories for the coming elections. As ¡No Pasaran! so delicately puts it:

There’s been yet another attempt at an infantile pre-electoral surprise. This time it’s by a bunch of dim bulbs in the Netherlands. The newspaper De Volkskrant reports on a torture scandal with the politically potential usefulness greater than abu Greib ever was since we’re talking about Europeans who have convinced themselves that the dozen prisoners abused at abu Greib was a chamber of horrors on the scale of Auschwitz.

What is it with world-wide leftist journalists? (Sorry for the redundancy). Do they get some kind of inoculation in graduate school which makes them immune to reality? Are they all such ditzes that when they spin the news this way, they end up a bit wobbly themselves?
– – – – – – – – – –
It would be funny… but unfortunately, they don’t just spin the “news.” They actually believe the garbage they create. Either that, or they follow the old dictum that the ends justify the means, especially if the ends involve keeping anyone to the right of Che Guevara out of power. In other words, they’re either truly naive or basely cynical.

As ¡No Pasaran! puts it (my bold):

If there is anything that’s to be though of as “senseless” it’s the left’s abuse of a military trying to restore a civil society after justly deposing a warmongering dictator.

The insurgents are the ones behind the killing of innocent civilians, and by some great leap out from the shackles of morality and common sense, the “peace” camp can’t seem to countenance shining a bright light in the eyes of 15 men in the effort to put a stop to it.

Just to reiterate: in the caring, loving Netherlands, buggery, an abuse of animals for non-consensual personal jollies for no productive reason is completely legal, but shining a light in the eyes of military prisoners with information that can save lives isn’t.

Well, for heaven’s sake, Joe. It doesn’t actually hurt the animals, does it? I mean, it’s not like using them in laboratories to test cosmetics, for heaven’s sake. And no one is actually cutting the poor animal up to eat it, now are they? Besides, a truly caring person – one who one speaks truth to power every morning — would dream of shining a light in the animal’s eyes or anything. Now that would be cruel and inhuman.

Crooked ManThere was a crooked man
And he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence
Upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat,
Which caught a crooked mouse.
And they all lived together
In a little crooked house.

It is indeed very difficult to keep the moral metric straight if you’re a journalist… or a legislator making up the latest buggery laws.

Hidden Word: Jihad

Some strange doings have emerged this week from Smithfield-Selma Senior High School in Smithfield, North Carolina. It seems that a Spanish teacher has exceeded the bounds of the course curriculum:

Khalid Chahhou’s hidden wordsKhalid Chahhou, who was in his first year of teaching in Johnston County, gave students a worksheet in which they were to translate words and find them within a word-search puzzle.

Some students started uncovering strange words in the process.

“There were words like ‘kill,’ then I saw it said ‘destroy America,’” Eric Herrera said.

Khalid Chahhou’s hidden wordsAs they read on, students found the puzzle contained a paragraph that contained the following phrases:

  • “Sharon killed a lot of innocent people,” a possible reference to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
  • “Palestine is not a terrorist group.”
  • “Allah help destroy this body of evil making humanity miserable.”

– – – – – – – – – –
Khalid Chahhou’s hidden wordsThese images of the hidden-word puzzle were all screen-capped from a WRAL (Raleigh) news video. I had to enlarge and enhance them somewhat to make the words legible. Strangely enough, “Palestine” seems to be misspelled.

Based on his name and the gist of the hidden words, it’s no surprise that Mr. Chahhou is Muslim. He has another job teaching Arabic at a school affiliated with the Islamic Association of Cary. Last February the Association denounced the Danish Mohammed cartoons — no surprise there, either.

His name is unusual, so it’s fairly easy to find other references to Mr. Chahhou on the web. Last August he participated in a Washington D.C. pro-Lebanon (read: pro-Hizbullah) rally along with Ramsey Clark. According to Canada’s National Post:

Speaking at a pro-Lebanon rally a stone’s throw from the White House Saturday, attended by thousands, Khalid Chahhou, from North Carolina, said Bush’s comments do not promote the U.S. government’s fight against terrorism.

“All those people here are against terrorism and we are against fascism also, so to classify Muslims and fascists, that’s unfair and unjust, and it doesn’t make America in the eyes of many Muslims respectful,” he said. “If Mr. Bush means by ‘fascists’ terrorism, then we are all against terrorism.”

The spelling of his last name, coupled with its pronunciation (“Shah-hoo”) indicates a Francophone transliteration, and hence a Moroccan or Algerian background. Sure enough, according to this CUNY doctoral program listing (in Spanish), he is from Morocco. At the time of the listing, he was at CUNY specializing in “Hispanic socio-linguistics”, and planned “to do his doctoral thesis on the linguistic attitudes of the residents of the Moroccan community in Andalusia, Spain.”

No word on how all that turned out. But somehow he developed a linguistic attitude of his own, and let it show in his little Hispanic socio-linguistic puzzle.

Khalid Chahhou has now been fired by the school district. Mr. Chahhou told WRAL that he never meant to upset anybody by what he did. But what did he think would happen? Did he expect that he would inspire his young charges with righteous zeal on behalf of the Palestinian cause? Or that no one would even notice?

How many more Khalid Chahhous are out there in the United States, teaching our children, loading baggage at the airport, or driving armored cars? It may be that Mr. Chahhou’s mental state is a little unstable, and he tipped his hand. But there must be thousands of others out there who are cool and cautious, who are never foolish enough to write out in plain English the words “DESTROY AMERICA”.

The high school turned the matter over to the Johnston County sheriff’s office, which looked at the case, and declined to file charges. That’s as it should be — it’s a free country, and Mr. Chahhou can say what he likes, though not necessarily within the school system.

But I hope the sheriff’s office wrote the case up carefully and thoroughly, and then passed it on up the chain to the FBI.



Hat tip: reader JB, via email.

That Bright, Bright Morning

We’ve posted so many Al Stewart lyrics in the last few weeks that you’d think we were getting kickbacks from the guy. But there’s no payola for Gates of Vienna; we just like Al Stewart. And, judging by our email, readers seem to like him, too.

As noted previously, Mr. Stewart is a devotee of history, and seeks to recreate through his songs the atmosphere of bygone eras. He is particularly fascinated with the time just before he was born, and devoted a whole album to those years, called Between the Wars.

Charles Lindbergh lands at Bourget Airport, May 21st, 1927My favorite from that collection is “Lindy Comes to Town”. When I was a child, thirty years after Charles Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic and landed at Le Bourget Airport near Paris, the event continued to resonate through the culture, and Lindy was still a shining icon in our collective memory.

So here’s a song to evoke that lost time. I wish I could provide the music as well as the lyrics — it’s got a great Tin Pan Alley feel to it, exactly appropriate to the material.
– – – – – – – – – –

Lindy Comes to Town
by Al Stewart

Lindy flew his plane across the dark Atlantic
Put her down near Paris and the crowds went frantic
They raced across the field, to touch the wings and wheels
And reach inside the cockpit just to see if he was real

Back in New York City people watched and waited
The news came down the wire and they celebrated
And in that time so brief, it was everyone’s belief
That the world had grown no bigger than a pocket handkerchief

When Lindy comes to town and all the bands are playing
When Lindy comes to town and all the flags are waving
Mr Coolidge he will say, it’s a public holiday
You can see them ride down Wall Street in a tickertape parade

I want to be there in that crown upon that bright, bright morning
And I can tell the world I saw a new day dawning
With my baby by my side in among that human tide
I want to be right there when Lindy comes to town

Every day is better than the one before it
If I see a raincloud then I’ll just ignore it
Everbody says it’ll get much better yet
It’s 1927 and my whole life lies ahead

Gonna get myself a car and find a place to park it
Get a little cash and put it in the market
And on my wedding day I will turn around and say
There never was a better time than this one anyway

When Lindy comes to town and all the bands are playing
When Lindy comes to town and all the flags are waving
Mr Coolidge he will say, it’s a public holiday
You can see them ride down Wall Street in a tickertape parade

I want to be there in that crown upon that bright, bright morning
And I can tell the world I saw a new day dawning
With my baby by my side in among that human tide
I want to be right there when Lindy comes to town

Lindy

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   


I had wondered why the title of this song wasn’t simply “Lindy”, which seemed the more natural choice. Then I started searching the web for “Lindy” songs and discovered that there was already at least one song by that title. It was actually written in 1927, during the great Lindy craze, and is a “Fox Trot with Ukulele Accompaniment.”

Wonder what it sounds like?

Compare the lyrics with Al Stewart’s and decide which you prefer:

Lindy — Youth with a Heart of Gold
Sheet music by Norman Leigh and George L. Cobb
Published by Walter Jacobs Inc., Boston 1927.

Whose name do the people shout?
Who’s the boy we’re all wild about?
Who’s the wonder of the day?
Who’s the Ace of the U.S.A.?
Lindy, Lindy, youth with the heart of gold —
Lindy, Lindy, spirit — so bold —
Others talk about tryin’
You just stuck to plain flyin’
Till you flew straight through the blue —
So here’s our hand to you.

Charles Lindbergh survived until 1974, but during my time he was mostly out of public life. Think of all the events that followed the climax at Le Bourget — the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, the Great Depression, Lindbergh’s involvement with America First, the War, the Cold War, the advent of space flight — and 1927 seems a different epoch indeed. But consider this: there are people alive today who were born the same year as Charles Lindbergh.

It’s been an interesting century.



Update: Lumberjack has found an mp3 of the song here.

The Fate of the Moderate Muslim in a Non-Moderate Islamic State

Salah Uddin Shoaib ChoudhurySalah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury is on trial for his life.

What was his crime? Robbing and killing shopkeepers? Raping schoolgirls? Plotting the overthrow of the government?

No, Mr. Choudhury faces the death penalty for advocating better relations with the state of Israel, and for saying nice things about Christians.

You see, Mr. Choudhury is a Bangladeshi journalist, and, in Bangladesh, printing such opinions “defames Islam”. It is considered sedition, and is a capital offense.

According to the Asian Tribune:

Choudhury has been under attack by his government for publishing articles that warned his country about the growth of radical Islamists there, urged Bangladesh to recognize Israel, and advocated genuine interfaith dialogue based on religious equality and mutual respect. For these “crimes,” he was arrested and tortured and his family harassed.

When his younger brother, Sohail Choudhury, went to the police to complain that he was beaten, they responded that it was the Choudhurys’ fault for their “alliance with the Jews.” Even after we were successful in getting him released from prison, Choudhury faced continued harassment from the Bangladeshi government and Islamist radicals.

Europe, Bangladesh. Different continent, same message: If only you would stop being so friendly with the Jews, we wouldn’t have to hurt you.
– – – – – – – – – –
Moderate Muslims are considered to be rare birds, but Mr. Choudhury is one of them. His investigative journalism found no takers in the established Bangladeshi press, so he founded his own newspaper, The Weekly Blitz, and published news and opinion as he saw fit. The consequences he has since faced illustrate why most moderate Muslims remain silent:

The government “discouraged” advertisement in Choudhury’s paper, Weekly Blitz; it refused to let him travel and for a while held his passport. Thugs — including members of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) — beat and threatened him while police aware of the attacks, did nothing. In fact, after one beating, the police went after Choudhury and let the attackers occupy his newspaper office.

Then on September 18, 2006, a judge with Islamist connections ruled that Choudhury would stand trial for “Sedition, Treason, and Blasphemy.” “By praising Christianity and Judaism,” the judge and prosecutor said, Choudhury “hurt Islam… and by [calling for] relations between Bangladesh and Israel [he] offended the sentiments of Muslims.” For this Choudhury could lose his life.

Mr. Choudhury has been consistently critical of the radical strain of Islam that has been on the rise lately in Bangladesh. The Australian tells the story:

From his home in Dhaka he told The Australian he watched, with apprehension, the massive expansion of what he calls kindergarten madrassas. “I discovered they were teaching almost the same thing that was being taught in the other madrassas, spreading the message of religious hatred and jihad.” He is talking about children as young as five to up to 18 from both poor and affluent families being indoctrinated with Islamist revolution and the implementation of sharia law.

When mainstream newspapers refused to carry his investigative reports, he set up The Weekly Blitz. From May 2003, his newspaper, handed out in local markets and published online to an international audience, carried reports on the rise of Islamic militancy in Bangladesh and the propaganda campaign waged against Jews. Choudhury pressed for inter-faith dialogue between Jews and Muslims. Soon enough he started receiving threats from local radicals on a daily basis.

The political situation in Bangladesh has denied Mr. Choudhury any protection from the state. An interim government, under a supposedly moderate party, is in charge of Bangladesh pending elections early next year. But the government depends upon a coalition which includes two Islamist parties, and the Islamists are widely expected to gain in the next elections.

As a result, no one within the existing political structure is eager to come to Mr. Choudhury’s aid.

Two months after his release from prison on bail, a radical sheik phoned Choudhury, threatening his life and telling him his office would be bombed. Choudhury told the police but they did nothing. A few days later, in early July, Choudhury’s office was bombed. No arrests were made. Two months later, when Choudhury’s case came to court, the prosecution admitted there was no evidence. But the judge, who is associated with a radical Islamist party, decided the trial for sedition would proceed.

In the past I have bemoaned the lack of audible opposition to the Jihad by moderate Muslims. Well, it seems I just wasn’t listening closely enough, because Salah Choudhury has been willing to put his life on the line since at least 2003 in order to oppose the Islamists.

The New York Sun gave this account of an interview with Mr.Choudhury:

Why hasn’t Mr. Choudhury fled Bangladesh despite having had the opportunity? Because, he says, “if I leave I will be proved to be a coward … I want to fight the matter to the last.” Many of Mr. Choudhury’s colleagues have fled the country, but Mr. Choudhury, a practicing Muslim, wants to live free in his own country and beat the case set against him. “There is no pride, no honor, and no dignity in retreating,” he says.

Mr. Choudhury’s pre-trial run hasn’t been easy. He spent 17 months between 2003 and 2005 in prison without trial. Just this year he’s been attacked twice. In July, his office was bombed and in October he was assailed in person. Both times the police did nothing. But he has received support from some quarters of Bangladeshi society. The “Bangladesh Minority Lawyer’s Association” has been especially supportive. He said there are “many good Muslims who are silently expressing solidarity” but they fear repercussions from the radicals.

Fortunately, Mr. Choudhury has found a champion in Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL). Rep. Kirk intervened in order to get Mr. Choudhury released from prison, but he still faces trial on the sedition charge.

The opinion of an American congressman does carry some weight. Bangladesh relies on the good will of the United States, not just because of $63 million in annual foreign aid, but also because of the low-tariff export of garments to this country, on which the Bangladeshi economy depends.

The State Department, for inscrutable State Department reasons, has not taken up the beleaguered editor’s cause. There’s no oil in Bangladesh. Are we worried about “stability” in South Asia? Or is it maybe a facet of multicultural outreach?

In any case, Bangladesh is poised on a razor’s edge. It could go the way of Somalia, and begin the steep drop into the 7th century that is the inevitable condition of Islamist polities.

Or it could become something else, something new: a modern Islamic country.

Pervez Musharraf is harassing Al Qaeda in Pakistan, and there are indications that the terrorist organization is moving to set up shop in Bangladesh. There are 150 million people in Bangladesh — half the population of the United States crammed into that tiny country — and almost all of them are poverty-stricken Muslims. It’s a real opportunity for the Great Jihad to recruit lots of new cannon fodder eager for the embrace of the 72 Black-Eyed Ones.

It’s also a great opportunity to show support for Muslims who oppose the radicals.

Here’s a man who is willing to put his life on the line for the sake of his principles. For moderation within Islam. For modernity.

What can we do to assist him?

More on the Wren Chapel Cross

W&M pluckedOn Wednesday I wrote about William and Mary’s surrender to the forces of Multiculturalism, and the removal of the cross from the Wren Chapel by the College administration.

The student group Save the Wren Cross is still fighting to have the cross rescued from a locked closet and returned to its proper place on the altar of the chapel in the Wren Building.

The Board of Visitors of the College is meeting today, and on the agenda will be a petition presented by students concerning the cross. According to yesterday’s press release from Save the Wren Cross:

The William & Mary Board of Visitors is meeting in Williamsburg, VA today and tomorrow at their first quarterly meeting following the decision last month by William & Mary’s new President Gene R. Nichol to order the removal of the 100 year-old Wren Cross from the university’s historic Wren Chapel in order to make the ancient chapel “more welcoming”.

At the start of their deliberations this morning, students opposed to the removal of the Wren Cross presented members of the Board of Visitors with the 1,400+ signatures of their petition calling on W&M’s president to reverse his decision. They also presented the board with an information package that can be found on SaveTheWrenCross.org that contains questions the board should consider in their discussions about President Nichol’s decision.

W&M Junior Joe Luppino-Esposito called the removal order “offensive to Christians and an action that should shock the conscience of all people of faith” and marveled at the Orwellian language used to defend the order. “In the name of tolerance, we have intolerance; in the name of welcoming, we have hostility; and in the name of unity, we now have division,” said Luppino-Esposito.

The press release also includes a series of comments from alumni. My favorite was from a member of the class of ’94, who asked whether William and Mary students are “so fragile that the mere symbol of a religion, which they may or may not agree with, should reduce them to pool of blubbering Jell-O?”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

If you’re an alumnus or alumna of the College, or simply a resident of the Commonwealth of Virginia, please drop by and sign the Save the Wren Cross Petition.
– – – – – – – – – –

Removing the Wren Chapel cross


Even if the cross gets the brush-off today, the issue isn’t dead yet. There are almost 2,700 signatures on the petition as I write this, and the number is still growing.

The most encouraging thing is that the protest wasn’t organized by a bunch of ancient wheezing alumni who want to stop progress and bring back the good old days. This is being spearheaded by the students themselves.

Somehow, despite thirteen years of PC indoctrination in primary and secondary schools, despite the all diversity training and multicultural awareness seminars, despite the ubiquitous propaganda saturating the mass media — despite all this, these young kids, these wet-behind-the-ears punks, have managed to see through the smoke and mirrors and discern the truth for themselves. They deserve our support.

The Multicultural World War can only be won as a succession of successful information skirmishes. Each of them seems small and inconsequential, hardly worth expending energy on, but they are important in the aggregate.

This is one of them. Residents of the Old Dominion, please go over and sign the petition.

We’re Moving

OkiesWell, not really. I’m in the process of moving my office from downstairs to upstairs. In fact, I’m typing this at my desktop up in the new upstairs office, although much detritus remains in the old one.

So posting will be light for a while, until all is moved and everything has settled down again.

The Future Baron Bodissey is graduating from college this year, so I am taking over his enormous and well-lit bedroom, and he will be moving to a smaller room downstairs. To make up for the cramped quarters, he’ll have his own bathroom and a private door to the backyard so that he can sneak his bimbos in walk outside and enjoy Nature whenever the mood strikes him.

Let’s hope I uncover all those long-lost items I’ve been looking for, under the dust bunnies and behind the piles of empty beer cans in the old office downstairs…

The Background of Multiculturalism

The Fjordman Report


The noted blogger Fjordman is filing this report via Gates of Vienna.
For a complete Fjordman blogography, see The Fjordman Files.

This post is a continuation of two of Fjordman’s previous posts on Multiculturalism and Political Correctness.



I’ve been trying to analyze the roots of Multiculturalism and Political Correctness. The conclusion I’ve come up with so far is that it needs to be understood as a combination of forces and influences, different but not mutually exclusive.

One view is that Multiculturalism “just happened,” an accidental result of technological globalization. Although global migration pressures and modern communications definitely contributed, this thesis is, in my view, almost certainly too simplistic. There is mounting evidence that Multiculturalism was deliberately encouraged by various groups. If anything, it is an indirect result of globalization through multinational corporations and the creation of an international political elite whose mutual loyalty increasingly supersedes national interests.

Lars HedegaardI’ve heard some commentators say that all the most destructive ideologies of the modern era have originated in Europe. But frankly, I’m wondering whether Multiculturalism is the one stupid idea that was actually exported from the United States to Europe. Danish writer Lars Hedegaard claims Multiculturalism comes from the United States following the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. After thinking about it, I find this to be a plausible explanation.

Perhaps Multiculturalism partly is an anti-European ideology, with the United States – and later Canada, Australia and New Zealand – distancing themselves from their European heritage, whereas Europe has distanced itself from itself. I noticed on one conservative American blog that it was perfectly permissible to trash European culture in any way possible, but when I carefully asked some questions about whether the cultural impact of massive Latin American immigration would be exclusively beneficial, I was accused of being “racist.”

Some readers of my essays have suggested that Multiculturalism originated in Canada. Author Claire Berlinski even believes that it was invented in Switzerland. But, with all due respect, the impact of Swiss or Canadian cultural influences abroad has been rather limited. The United States, however, has exerted powerful cultural influence all over the world since WW2, and has been in the position to export such an ideology.
– – – – – – – – – –
Chicago 1968The Civil Rights movement took place against a backdrop of a Western youth rebellion with Marxist influences. Although Multiculturalism may not be directly rooted in Marxist teachings, which helps explain why it has received support by some right-wingers, its anti-Western attitudes and radical Egalitarianism are at least compatible with ideas of forced equality, and aspects of Multiculturalism are sufficiently similar to Marxism to explain why its most ardent supporters are left-wingers, and why Political Correctness, the soft-totalitarian form of censorship employed to enforce Multiculturalism, is so appealing to them.

Karl MarxIf we postulate that Multiculturalism and Political Correctness were initially born out of a Western loss of cultural confidence, but have since been largely utilized by the Western Left, this would explain why it exists all over the Western world, but strongest in Western Europe, which has had a more powerful Marxist influence and a greater historic loss of self-esteem than the USA. It would explain why Eastern Europeans, who have just experienced decades of Marxist indoctrination, are somewhat more resistant to it than are Western Europeans. Eastern Europeans have also been much less exposed to the Eurabians of the European Union, who champion Multiculturalism for their own reasons.

The best summary I can come up with thus looks something like this: Multiculturalism originated in the United States during the Civil Rights movement in the 60s, which triggered a complete re-thinking of American cultural identity in favor of repudiating the European aspects of its heritage to transform into a “universal” nation. Multiculturalism was exported to the rest of the Western world through American cultural influence, and was picked up by a Western Europe, still with deep emotional scars following its near self-destruction during two world wars, which was then in the process of leaving its colonies and suffered from a post-colonial guilt complex and the identity crisis associated with this.

Multiculturalism thus originally had its roots in a cultural identity crisis in the West, but it was quickly expropriated by groups with their own agendas. This period, the 1960s and 70s, was also the birth of the Western Cultural Revolution, a hippie youth rebellion against the established Western culture and institutions that was deeply influenced by Marxist-inspired ideologies. The anti-Western component in Multiculturalism suited them just fine. Following the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s and early 90s, when economic Marxism suffered a blow in credibility although it didn’t die, larger segments of the Western political Left switched to Multiculturalism and mass immigration as their political life insurance, and wielded the censorship of Political Correctness and “anti-racism” as an ideological club to beat their opponents and continue undermining Western institutions.

Che GuevaraOn top of the Marxist influences, in Western Europe we had another groups of Euro-federalists and Eurabians, with a different but overlapping goal of breaking down the national cultures through the promotion of Multiculturalism in favor of a new, artificial identity. The process of globalization didn’t create these impulses of Western self-loathing, as indicated by the fact that non-Western countries such as Japan have not been overwhelmed by immigration to the same extent as the West, but it reinforced some of them.

Technological globalization has increased migration pressures to unprecedented levels, but it has also enabled a global political and economic elite of individuals, including some centrists and right-wingers, who no longer feel any close attachment to their countries, but mainly to the international elites who provide them with career opportunities.

The IslaminternThese centrists, rightists and Big Business supporters may not be as actively hostile to Western culture as some left-wingers are, but they don’t do anything to uphold it, either, and use Multiculturalism to hide the fact that they have lost or abandoned control over national borders. Globalization has thus simultaneously created more migration and less political will to control migration.

The combination of all of these factors, in addition to the resurgence of a global Islamic Jihad, is gradually creating a demographic and democratic crisis in the West. Many Westerners sense that their media and their politicians are no longer listening to them, and they are perfectly correct. Those who feel a loyalty to their culture and their nation states feel betrayed, because they are.



Credit for Lars Hedegaard photo: Steen of Snaphanen.

A Little Breathing Room for Pakistani Women

Neo-Neocon informs us that Pakistan has finally begun to move against the harsh anti-female laws that have been in effect in for almost thirty years. The infamous legislation, known officially as Offence of Zina (Enforcement Of Hudood) Ordinance, 1979, provided sentences of death by stoning for married men or married women who were found guilty of adultery. The unmarried were merely flogged.

Here is the precise wording:

(3) Whoever is guilty of zina-bil-jabr liable to hadd shall subject to the provisions of this Ordinance,

(a) if he or she is a muhsan [married person], be stoned to death at a public place; or

(b) if he or she is not muhsan, be punished with whipping numbering one hundred stripes, at a public place, and with such other punishment, including the sentence of death, as the Court may deem fit having regard to the circumstances of the case.

Of course, there is much dispute on what constitutes “zina” – Islamic scholars disagree as to whether it is the term for adulterous sex, or can be applied to any consenting adults, not married, who engage in sexual congress. If you want to fall asleep trying to figure out the differences, try this site on stoning.

What is surprising is that this bill, reducing the sentences of those caught in flagrante delicto, got through the Pakistani legislature at all. The MMA, a loose coalition of the extremist Islamic groups, has been fighting a rearguard action for some time, dragging its feet as Musharraf tries to bring the country within shouting distance of the modern world.

Back in June, 2005, Gates of Vienna reported on the MMA, noting its logistical problems:

MMA chief Qazi Hussain AhmadThey [the MMA] have succeeded in defeating attempts to repeal the Islamic penal provisions that date from the 1980’s. Thus, a woman still needs four men to testify for her when she’s raped. They’ve also been successful in defeating Musharraf’s attempts to repeal blasphemy laws. But they failed to stop bus service into Kashmir and they are in crisis since the government has begun negotiating with Benazir Bhutto’s PPP. If Musharraf can bring off a successful negotiation, it will end his dependence on the MMA for parliamentary strength.

Back then, the MMA was up in arms over the idea of women jogging. There were huge demonstrations at the time. In fact, the notion of women being allowed to even move fast seemed more than the extremists could tolerate —
– – – – – – – – – –

…they didn’t want their “sisters and sisters-in-law” running around the country in their t-shirts and knickers. So when the women showed up [to run] in their traditional salwar kameez and wearing high heels, the MMA retreated to another tack: no running with men. When that didn’t work, they got down to it: no running at all for women, not even during the Haji rites.

This week, the night before this latest legislative furor, Musharraf marshaled his forces, and the new, less stringent laws (carrying fines and jail time but eliminating death and flogging) were passed by the National Assembly.

Of course, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the outer darkness. Here’s the report from Dawn (sign in required) a Pakistani newspaper written for English readers:

The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) has said that it will shortly convene the party’s supreme council to discuss the situation arising out of the passage of the Protection of Women’s Rights bill.

“We have decided to consult our legal advisers and religious scholars to see whether or not the reservations expressed by the government-appointed panel of ulema have been addressed. We will then take a decision [on resigning from assemblies],” said Maulana Fazlur Rahman, leader of opposition and MMA secretary-general, while speaking at a press conference after the passage of the bill here on Wednesday.

In a recent meeting of its supreme council, the MMA had announced that it would quit the assemblies if the government passed the PWR bill without addressing its reservations.

Of course, now that the bill has passed, the MMA is saying Pakistan will become a “free sex zone.”

As if laws ever managed to curb the hardwiring in the human brain – and heart – which demands that we “be fruitful and multiply.” Our synapses do not listen to those who demand sanctioned liaisons; they never have and they never will. Anyone who thinks otherwise is living in a fool’s paradise. For untold millenia, men and women have paid the consequences of illicit love. Just google “Abelard and Heloise” to see.

Good on Musharraf — not only has he managed to survive physically, he is slowly moving his country in the right direction, using the wiles of any good politician:

Government spokesmen had earlier said the bill, taken up on Wednesday about two months after it was put on ice because of the controversy, would be passed by Friday. But the ruling coalition, led by the Pakistan Muslim League (PML), decided to finish the job in one day after President Pervez Musharraf apparently gave a pep talk to Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and other party leaders at a dinner meeting on Tuesday night.

Let’s see what the MMA does next. Does anyone really think that they’ll resign en masse, huffily walking out of the National Assembly, never to darken its doors again?

If they are so foolish as to do so, as they march out, I hope they are chased by a battalion of women clad in their salwar kameezes and running in high heels, waving victory banners. And I hope someone has a camera.

The waves of Mukhtar Mai’s rebellion against a muderous, shame-based sytem continue to wash against and erode a cruel tradition. What she started cannot be stopped now. It can be delayed, but it cannot be brought to a halt.

Guess what? The MMA knows this. They are fighting a losing battle, but for all their talk of leaving the battlefield, that’s all it is: talk.

Putting Christ in the Closet

Skull torchWhen I was at William and Mary in the early 1970s it was a tradition — and probably still is — for enterprising thrill-seekers and scofflaws to mount expeditions into the steam tunnels that run under the campus.

The steam tunnels form a network of catacombs connecting the steam plant behind Trinkle Hall with all the older buildings on campus. Sources among current undergraduates tell me that the tunnels have been improved, with lighting and more adequate ventilation. They also carry the backbone of the College’s computer network cables.

But in my day they were pitch-dark and carried nothing but steam, in thick insulated pipes that ran along the ceiling of the tunnel. They were so cramped and low that you couldn’t walk normally; you either moved in a continuous crouch, or crawled. God help you if the batteries in your flashlight gave out.

There were occasional leaks in the pipes, so that visitors had to skirt certain spots cautiously in order to avoid being scalded. The whole place was dusty and quite hot, even in the winter — a real taste of the underworld, with the troglodyte college boys filling in for imps and daemons.

Campus rumor had it that certain fraternities required aspiring members, as part of the initiation process, to negotiate the steam tunnels all the way to the crypt under the chapel in the Wren Building, and prove that they had been there by bringing back a bone from one of the tombs. There was a legend that a skull from the crypt was on display in a special locked “trophy room” in one of the frat houses.

The student newspaper, The Flat Hat, decided to send a reporter down into the tunnels to see if there was any truth to the rumors. Photographing those cramped places would have been difficult at best, and none of the staff photographers was willing to go down there. The reporter needed an artist who was brave (or foolhardy) enough to join the expedition as an illustrator, so the job fell to me.

We entered the steam tunnels through a rotted wooden door in a service room in the basement of Monroe Hall, a residence hall for male upperclassmen. The reporter had a fairly accurate schematic diagram of the route we needed to follow — a hundred yards forward, right into the main trunk line under the big sidewalk, another hundred yards and take a left into the adit leading to the crypt — but it in no way prepared us for the oppressive heat and claustrophobia of the experience. We finally made it to our destination, passing through a broken-down wooden door and climbing through a hole in a brick wall before entering the crypt itself.
– – – – – – – – – –
Whatever skeletons had once lain in that dark grotto were long gone. All the brick tombs were broken and empty. We shone flashlights into each of them and saw nothing but dust and the buckled remnants of the lead liners that had once been inside the rotted-away coffins.

It was obvious that the crypt had had many previous visitors — there were initials carved on the walls with dates going back into the 19th century. Blackened spots of wax drippings on the brick ledges indicated that some of our predecessors had been in here with candles rather than flashlights. But no bones and no skulls, alas. I found a single human tooth on a ledge, and theorized that a previous visitor had placed his trophy skull there for a moment before climbing back out through the hole in the wall.

The Flat Hat eventually published the reporter’s story with my illustrations, causing the College no small embarrassment about the lack of security for the Wren Chapel crypt. The following year, when I went down in the tunnels again, the old wooden barrier had been replaced with a steel-reinforced door set in a cinderblock wall. No more excursions into the Wren Chapel crypt!

The old rumors lost some luster when someone researched the history of the crypt and found out that the College had removed the human remains from the tombs many years ago, and had them re-interred in the Bruton Parish cemetery. So those frat brothers with their trophy skulls were probably noting but an urban legend.

On the other hand, there was that tooth I found — so who knows?

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *


Up the stairs and through a locked door from the crypt lies the Wren Chapel, a venerable institution of the Church of England, and later the Episcopal Church of the U.S.A. The chapel is located at the southern end of the Wren Building, the oldest and most famous of William and Mary’s buildings. It was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, completed in 1699, and has burned three times — at least once to a shell — and been reconstructed.

In colonial times, regular services were held in the chapel, but it is now only used for special occasions. If you’re a William and Mary alumna of a certain background, the Wren Chapel is the only place you will want to have your wedding.

And now the Wren Chapel is the focus of yet another campus controversy. It has become an opportunity for the College to abase itself once more before the altar of political correctness. It seems that the gold cross on the altar is not inclusive enough to please the gods of Diversity, so it has to go.

It’s not as if any Wiccans or Buddhists complained about the offensive symbol — the College just wants to demonstrate its multicultural sensitivity by pre-emptively removing the cross.

On October 27th — during Homecoming weekend, mind you — after some weeks of controversy and rumor, the President of the College sent out this email:

Dear Fellow Members of the William & Mary Community:

Questions have lately been raised about the use of the Wren Chapel and the cross that is sometimes displayed there.

Let me be clear. I have not banished the cross from the Wren Chapel. The Chapel, as you know, is used for religious ceremonies by members of all faiths. The cross will remain in the Chapel and be displayed on the altar at appropriate religious services.

But the Chapel is also used frequently for College events that are secular in nature — and should be open to students and staff of all beliefs. Whether celebrating our happiest moments, marking our greatest achievements, or finding solace during our most profound sadness, our Chapel, like our entire campus, must be welcoming to all.

I believe a recognition of the full dignity of each member of our diverse community is vital. For this reason, and because the Chapel is surpassing [sic] important in William and Mary’s history and in the life of our campus, I welcome a broader College discussion of how the ancient Chapel can reflect our best values.

Sincerely,

Gene R. Nichol
President

Notice the PC keywords larded throughout this missive — “welcoming”, “dignity”, “diverse”, and “values”. Those little markers trump other words like “tradition”, “history”, and “public opinion”, and lead you into the mind of a full-fledged multicultural college administrator. President Nichol thus demontrates that he wants to lead a quiet life during his tenure, and then claim the Golden Parachute when his time is up.

Will Coggin — the young man who organized the Homecoming feather protest described in my previous post, and who has now given permission to use his name — tipped us to a website that he and his associates have set up to protest this outrage. It’s called “Save the Wren Cross”, and you’ll notice that Mr. Coggin and his friends have left the feathers in the William and Mary logo used on the site.

There is an online petition you can sign, if you are a W&M student, faculty member, or alumnus, or simply an interested resident of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

The Wren Chapel cross being removed


There is also a video of the Wren Cross being removed from the altar and locked away in a closet. In a closet. Christ asked us to pray in a closet — but did He want His holy rood to be locked up there, too?

The Wren Chapel is a Christian institution, and the College’s original charter designated an explicit association with the Church of England. The association was transferred to the Episcopal Church (then the Church of Virginia) after the Revolution, and a partnership with the local Bruton Parish Church continues to this day.

The removal of the cross is offensive in the extreme, not just to Christians, but to all alumni and friends of the College of William and Mary. It denies history, tradition, and the part of the Christian faith in the making of William and Mary and the Commonwealth of Virginia.

If you’re on vacation in Thailand and visit a wat, do you object to taking off your shoes at the door? Are you offended by the burning of candles? Do you feel excluded by all those statues of the Buddha?

When I visit a synagogue during Hanukkah, the menorah is not “unwelcoming”. It doesn’t offend me; it reassures me that I am in a Jewish house of worship, and that everything there is as it should be.

This crusade against the cross is more evidence — as if we needed any — of the inherent racism of the Multicultural Left. We, the educated, literate, sophisticated savants of the West, we’re able to handle all the religious icons of other faiths. No problem; we’re hip and savvy intellectuals. We’re modern and tolerant and ready to include anyone and everyone.

But, according to the reigning PC orthodoxy, those other people, those idol-worshipping heathens, are too primitive to be able to tolerate evidence of other religious faiths. They simply can’t bear the sight of the cross. They run bug-eyed from the room when they see it, because it’s so big and powerful and scary and offensive, and so, well, Christian.

And there are other undercurrents to this issue. Ultimately, for the members of the Anointed who run the academy, the important thing is to install Orthodox Atheism as the institutional religion. We must at all times remain on our guard against the Christers and the fundies, who wait in the wings, ready to overthrow secular modernism and institute theocracy at the drop of a hat.

Give me a break.

This PC-multicultural nonsense — which aims to eliminate all refernces to Judaism and Christianity — has passed the point of ludicrousness and reached the realm of demonic insanity. It’s time to put a stop to it.

Phoenix Feathers

W&M, pluckedHere’s brief follow-up to my earlier report about the removal of the feathers — a ptilonectomy, perhaps? — from the logo of William and Mary’s sports teams.

The alumni were not the only people who were upset by the College’s decision to appease the forces of PC and ban the feathers. I’ve been corresponding with a W&M senior — I’ll call him “Bob” — who is also a campus libertarian. He says that a large number of students were unhappy about the situation.

So Bob decided to do more than bitch about it; he took action. He and his associates first obtained 25,000 feathers. Then on Saturday, October 28th, at William and Mary’s Homecoming football game, they handed the feathers out to spectators as they entered the stadium, with instructions to throw them up in the air whenever the Tribe scored.

His efforts even made the local TV news. Unfortunately, there are no photos available yet of the phoenix feathers rising. None of the game photos available on the internet shows the crowd at the moment of touchdown.

But Bob says that people followed his instructions, and it my warms my heart to think of all those naughty politically incorrect feathers flying up into the air at the same time.

A Religion of One

Members of a religious minority are complaining that the United States government and the military are treating them in an exclusionary and discriminatory manner.

You thought I was talking about Muslims, didn’t you?

Well, not this time. According to the Associated Press:

Wiccan pentangleThe widows of two Wiccan combat veterans sued the government Monday, saying the military has dragged its feet on allowing the religion’s symbols on headstones.

The Department of Veterans Affairs allows military families to choose any of 38 authorized headstone images. The list includes commonly recognized symbols for Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism, as well as those for smaller religions such as Sufism Reoriented, Eckiankar and the Japanese faith Seicho-No-Ie.

The Wiccan pentacle, a five-pointed star surrounded by a circle, is not on the list, an omission the widows say is unconstitutional.

– – – – – – – – – –

Wiccans worship the Earth and believe they must give to the community. Some consider themselves “white,” or good, witches, pagans or neo-pagans. Approximately 1,800 active-duty service members identify themselves as Wiccans, according to 2005 Defense Department statistics.

Some consider themselves “good witches”? What about the rest? Do they have pointy black hats and fly on broomsticks?

Witches, like any other group with a grievance, have organized themselves, hiring lawyers, publicity consultants, and — one assumes — lobbyists. Complaining to the media and filing lawsuits are, after all, part of the American Way.

[Isis Invicta Military Mission, a California-based Wiccan and pagan congregation] claims that the VA has made “excuse after excuse” for more than nine years for not approving the symbol and that by doing so, it has trampled on the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights of freedom of speech, religion and due process.

[…]

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington, D.C.-based group representing the plaintiffs in court, is seeking an order compelling the VA to make a decision.

“After asking the VA on a number of occasions to stop its unfair treatment of Wiccans in the military, we have no alternative but to seek justice in the courts,” said the Rev. Barry Lynn, the group’s executive director.

Now that Barry Lynn is involved, the VA just might as well surrender. It doesn’t have a chance.

One thing I’d like you to notice is how much the Left approves of military widows. Goodness knows, liberals don’t approve of the way those widows are created — “Bring our boys home! No blood for oil!” — but once it finds a few of them, it milks them for all they’re worth. And then there are the grieving parents to be exploited — think of Cindy Sheehan.

They’re kind of like children: lefties don’t have many of them, and like to dispatch them while they’re still in the womb, if they can’t be prevented entirely. But you’ll notice that every progressive public policy — from setting up after-school gay sports programs, to saving the endangered Northeastern Amorphous Salamander — is designed for “the sake of the children.”

Funny about that.

But back to the witches. Here’s a quote to send chills down your spine:

“I’m hoping it’s going to open the door to allow other pagan faiths to be approved,” [plaintiff Roberta] Stewart said.

That’s exactly what it’s going to do. Do you know how many different religions there are in this country? The Veterans’ Administration will have to employ a full-time battalion of stone-chiselers just to learn and execute all the designs for the headstones.

If we can have Eckankar, why not the Moonies? Why not Scientologists? Why not the Avowed Disciples of Ung-Noth the Serpent God? Excluding them is discriminatory and unconstitutional, too.

Then there’s the Church of the Sub-Genius. Not to mention the Church of Bob. Okay, I admit, there probably aren’t that many members of the military who profess these faiths. But you never can tell…

There are a lot of hole-in-the wall churches in this country, because plenty of savvy charlatans have realized that the best way to do what they like to do without the IRS vacuuming out their strongbox is to incorporate as a religion. Every single one of them has a legal right to claim the same privileges as the Wiccans.

Driving this process to its logical conclusion would force the government to recognize the existence of no religions whatsoever, since it can’t possibly “include” them all. And that result would be perfectly fine with Barry Lynn and People for the American Way and the ACLU, because it’s exactly what they want.

Atomize us all, divide us from one another, and drive religion out of the public square. Each of us could have his own personal and idiosyncratic religion, entirely private, never to be mentioned in public.

Call it “A Religion of One.”

Watcher’s Council, November 3rd

The winners for the November 3rd Council nominations are as follows:

Watcher’s CouncilGates of Vienna took first place for Female Genital Mutilation in Georgia: Who is the Perp? . Since the writing of that post, there is now a website devoted to Khalid Adem, who was found guilty of the mutilation of his daughter. I said before, and still believe, that while Mr. Adem may have had knowledge of this crime, he had neither the know-how nor the opportunity to commit it without being discovered. To me it still looks like the pediatric nurse maternal grandmother and the mother herself who were most complicit in this barbarity. They should have been on trial, too.

Just goes to show our cultural ignorance that anyone would believe two males would carry out this procedure. It’s definitely an operation performed on little girls by other women.

This was a travesty.

Here are two websites with further information:

Khalid Adem is Innocent, and

Free Khalid Adem.

Done With Mirrors was second for You Would Weep. And when you think deeply on this flaw that runs through the American character, you realize how ancient it is, and perhaps how intractable. It is certainly evidence of our original sin, one which is being played out in Iraq today:

A little more than 200 years ago, a bombastic U.S. agent named William Eaton (today he would be special op) led a handful of U.S. Marines, several hundred foreign mercenaries scraped from the taverns and brothels of Alexandria, and a pack of hired bedouins in a march across a desert that hadn’t been crossed in force since classical times. They captured Tripoli’s second largest city, then defended it against counter-attack and won a tremendous victory.

The tyrant of Tripoli had captured a U.S. warship and enslaved its 300 sailors. When they died in captivity, the Bashaw Yussef threw their bodies to the dogs in the street. The Jefferson administration wanted them free. America in those days had not entirely forgotten what “honor” meant.

The White House approved Eaton’s mission, but didn’t expect it to succeed. Until then, the only thing the Marines had going for them was a Washington, D.C., marching band which the citizens loved but the violin-playing Jefferson despised. Instead, he trusted the wily diplomats, who played the game the European way. Headlines in the administration mouthpiece newspaper blared “Millions for Defense but not a Cent for Tribute,” but secretly Jefferson authorized ransom for the sailors.

– – – – – – – – – –
When you go to read the rest, you will see history and you will see the present situation in Iraq. Our leaders are a disgrace…especially the “negotiators.” We rush in to the rescue and then we rush out again, leaving people who believed us to their own fate.

I was so sure the U.S. could not be so stupid, so craven, as to cut and run once again. But it is and they are. The elites in this country, beginning with Thomas Jefferson, have never gotten over doing things the way their betters in Europe do.

So once more, people are left to die:

Worst of all, it sold out every honest ally the U.S. had in Libya. All the North Africans and Bedouins who had cast their lot with the Americans, all the residents of Derne who had helped the Americans defend it, the Arab women who had slipped between the lines and warned Eaton of their enemies’ plots and plans, were left to their fate. Everyone knew the town would be looted and the inhabitants massacred when the Americans left. Eaton wrote from Derne to a friend describing his feelings when he read the diplomatic order to withdraw the American forces and the details of the deal that had been cut:

You would weep, Sir, were you on the spot, to witness the unfounded confidence placed in the American character here, and to reflect that this confidence must shortly sink into contempt and immortal hatred…

Yes, indeed: “the unfounded confidence placed in the American character.” Plus ça change…

And if you do go read the rest, be prepared to weep. Or at least for the knot in your stomach…

Taking first place in the non-Council was Isis’ Guide to Sensible Islam Posting ink10|http://smartandfinalisis.wordpress.com/2006/10/27/isis’-guide-to-sensible-islam-posting/. His post dealt with one of my favorite, if somewhat prickly, Muslims, Ali Eteraz.

Ali doesn’t respect us much, I don’t think. But I still like him, and I think he’s a fine writer. This winning post is a long one and hard to extract from without losing the context, but here is a snip.

Isis explains Ali’s role in attempting to gain more freedoms for Muslim women:

[

Ali] obtain[ed] a letter describing the execution of an Iranian mother witnessed by her son. LGF is obviously unaware of Ali’s involvement in attempt to secure greater freedoms for women in the wider Muslim world. Ali is the classic example of a Humanist (the word he and I both prefer to “Moderate”) Muslim that the Rightosphere pundits seemingly desire to see (but more often silence).

The story Isis tells is well worth reading. Be sure to clink on the link just to read that first paragraph!

Michael Fumento was second for his …what should I call it? Perhaps a meditation of sorts?” In his essay, Covering Iraq: The Modern Way of War Correspondence, Fumento asks some pointed questions about our “war” “correspondents”. Here’s the first one:

Ramadi, Iraq

Would you trust a Hurricane Katrina report datelined “direct from Detroit”? Or coverage of the World Trade Center attack from Chicago? Why then should we believe a Time Magazine investigation of the Haditha killings that was reported not from Haditha but from Baghdad? Or a Los Angeles Times article on a purported Fallujah-like attack on Ramadi reported by four journalists in Baghdad and one in Washington? Yet we do, essentially because we have no choice. A war in a country the size of California is essentially covered from a single city. Plug the name of Iraqi cities other than Baghdad into Google News and you’ll find that time and again the reporters are in Iraq’s capital, nowhere near the scene. Capt. David Gramling, public affairs officer for the unit I’m currently embedded with, puts it nicely: “I think it would be pretty hard to report on Baghdad from out here.” Welcome to the not-so-brave new world of Iraq war correspondence.

Vietnam was the first war to give us reporting in virtually real time. Iraq is the first to give us virtual reporting. That doesn’t necessarily make it biased against the war; it does make it biased against the truth.

Compare his story with the one Callimachus tells in the Council section. It does make you want to weep – in frustration, in shame, in sorrow for our military.

Like the other elites —- academia and career consular officers in the State Department – the MSM grows daily more dangerous to the welfare of our country. Yet they are so entrenched what are we mere villeins to do? France’s evil view of how the world works is rampant among those in charge.

All the others remain here at The Watcher’s Place. As usual, it is full of variety.

The Thing Without Feathers

I graduated from the College of William in Mary in the early 70s, and back then it was different from other colleges. It wasn’t just that W&M was smaller, and had higher academic standards. It had also resisted a lot of the modern educational fads, and just wasn’t “with it” like other schools. It was full of geeks and nerds and studious types. In fact, that’s what we hippies used to complain about.

The years went by and the school continued to resist the zeitgeist. Every hole-in-the wall teachers’ college or secretarial school started calling itself a “university”, but W&M stuck to its traditions and remained “The College”. Oh, it had to add “diversity seminars” for its freshman and mandatory “date rape awareness training” for all those bad, bad, boys. But still — William and Mary was resisting the post-modern wave of politically correctness.

But not any longer . My alma mater has surrendered to the “Placate the Noble Savage” fad. I refer, of course, to the PC inquisition against colleges and schools that dare to use Indian-related names, logos, and mascots for their sports teams.

W&M logoWilliam and Mary’s athletic teams are “The Tribe”, and the W&M sports logo features a pair of feathers with the College’s initials. The NCAA has been fighting the school over those feathers for quite awhile. It could barely gulp the word “Tribe” down its PC craw without gagging, but the feathers were too much. They had to go.

The administration resisted for a long time, but it has finally caved. I don’t know if it has anything to do with the arrival of the new college president, Gene Nichol. But last month President Nichol raised the white flag and notified the students and alumni of the decision:

October 10, 2006

Dear Fellow Members of the William & Mary Community:

I write concerning the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s dispute with the College over our nickname and logo.

During the past several months, the NCAA has reviewed William & Mary’s athletic insignia to determine whether they constitute a violation of Association standards. On the more important front, the Committee concluded that the College’s use of the term “Tribe” reflects our community’s sense of shared commitment and common purpose. Accordingly, it will remain our nickname. The presence of two feathers on the logo, though, was ruled potentially “hostile and abusive.” We appealed that determination. The decision was sustained and has become final. We must now decide whether to institute legal action against the NCAA or begin the process of altering our logo.

I am compelled to say, at the outset, how powerfully ironic it is for the College of William & Mary to face sanction for athletic transgression at the hands of the NCAA. The Association has applied its mascot standards in ways so patently inconsistent and arbitrary as to demean the entire undertaking. Beyond this, William & Mary is widely acknowledged to be a principal exemplar of the NCAA’s purported, if unrealized, ideals.

– – – – – – – – – –

Not only are our athletic programs intensely competitive, but according to the Association’s own Academic Progress Reports, the College ranks fifth among all institutions of higher learning in scholastic excellence. Each year, we graduate approximately 95% of our senior student athletes. During the past decade, two William and Mary athletes have been named Rhodes Scholars and 42 elected to membership in Phi Beta Kappa, the national honorary society founded at the College in 1776. Meanwhile, across the country, in the face of massive academic underperformance, embarrassing misbehaviors on and off the field, and grotesque commercialization of intercollegiate athletics, the NCAA has proven hapless, or worse. It is galling that a university with such a consistent and compelling record of doing things the right way is threatened with punishment by an organization whose house, simply put, is not in order.

Still, in consultation with our Board of Visitors, I have determined that I am unwilling to sue the NCAA to further press our claims. There are three reasons for my decision. I’ll explain them in order.

First, failing to adhere to the NCAA logo ruling would raise the substantial possibility that William & Mary athletes would be foreclosed from competing at the level their attainments and preparations merit. Two years ago, for example, we hosted a thrilling semifinal national championship football game against James Madison University. At present, we are barred from welcoming such a competition to Williamsburg — in football or any other sport. I believe it is our obligation to open doors of opportunity and challenge for our students, not to close them. I will not make our athletes pay for our broader disagreements with a governing association. We have also consulted with our coaches and student athletic advisory council on the matter. They are of the same mind.

Second, given the well-known challenges that this and other universities face — in assuring access to world-class education, in supporting the research and teaching efforts of our faculties, and in financing and constructing twenty-first-century laboratories and facilities — I am loath to divert further energies and resources to an expensive and perhaps multi-faceted lawsuit over an athletic logo. Governing requires the setting of priorities. And our fiercest challenges reside at the core of our mission. I know, of course, that more than one member of our understandably disgruntled community would likely be willing to help finance litigation against the NCAA. Those dollars are better spent in scholarship programs.

Third, the College of William & Mary is one of the most remarkable universities in the world. It was a national treasure even before there was a nation to treasure it. I am unwilling to allow it to become the symbol and lodestar for a prolonged struggle over Native American imagery that will likely be miscast and misunderstood — to the detriment of the institution. Our challenge is greatness. Our defining purpose is rooted in the highest ideals of human progress, achievement, service, and dignity. Those are the hallmarks of the College of William & Mary. They will remain so.

I know this decision will disappoint some among us. I am confident, however, that it is the correct course for the College. We are required to hold fast to our values whether the NCAA does so or not. In the weeks ahead, we will begin an inclusive process to consider options for an altered university logo. I invite you to participate. And I am immensely grateful for your efforts and energies on behalf of the College.

Go Tribe. Hark upon the gale.

Sincerely,

Gene R. Nichol

President

In this case, as in so many others, the Indians themselves don’t object to the use of Indian-related symbols. There are two local Indian tribes just northwest of Williamsburg, the Pamunkey and the Mattaponi (pronounced Matta-Poe-NYE, in case you’re interested).

Neither of them objects to the feathers.

Va. Indians OK with W&M name

“When we take care of some of the poverty and crime and drug problems and that sort of thing in this country, then we’ll worry about names,” said William P. “Bill” Miles, chief of the Pamunkey Indians, whose reservation is in King William County.

[…]

“It’s a tribe. We root for those,” said Gertrude Minnie-Ha-Ha Custalow, historian for the Mattaponi Tribe, which lives on a reservation in King William. “I’ve never heard of any other tribes who think it’s improper.

“You know, sometimes this type of thing can get a little bit ridiculous.”

No kidding.

I’ve been to visit the museum on the Pamunkey reservation, and it’s a very interesting and informative place. History, archeology, cultural artifacts, and old photos — plenty of tribal material for the visitor to look at. But when you see the photo of the Pamunkey chief dressed up for a ceremony in a full-length feather headdress, you know it’s a put-on for the tourists. Anyone who has seen the 17th-century engravings of the Tidewater Indians made by the early settlers at Jamestown knows that the Virginia tribes didn’t look anything like the buckskin-and-feathers Indians. Those were much farther west, maybe on the Great Plains, but not on the Pamunkey river.

If anybody but the Indians themselves were to place such a getup on an Indian, it would be considered racial stereotyping and maybe even a hate crime. But Indians like to do that sort of thing.

In any case, I don’t have much hope, with or without feathers, for the future of William and Mary under the current PC onslaught. It doesn’t seem to matter what students, alumni, Virginia citizens, or local Indians think. The PC gods must be appeased. The feathers must go.

W&M logo, pluckedWith that in mind I have joined the “inclusive process to consider options for an altered university logo”. I present this design to the College free of charge. It is a logo befitting W&M’s new status as a craven appeaser of the forces of political correctness. A new mascot is in order, too — let’s call him “Plucky”.

Go, team!

I Swear on the Koran… I Mean, Bible

Sheikh Yasin Abu BakrJamaat al Muslimeen is an Islamic organization in Trinidad and Tobago. Its founder and leader, Sheikh Yasin Abu Bakr, is currently being tried on a charge of conspiracy to murder two expelled members of his group, one of whom was his son-in-law. In 2005, a trial on the same charges ended in a deadlocked jury. Sheikh Abu Bakr is now in the process of being retried.

Those are the bare bones of the situation. If you want to make sense of what’s happening, you have to browse through the T&T newspapers online and follow the crime news and politics (which is sometimes the same material). You can traipse all day through the Byzantine network of local crime and corruption and still never quite understand what’s going on.

Earlier in the trial two female jurors were excused from duty after they broke down in tears during jury selection. One said she was confused and agitated by the process, and the other said she missed her family. The news story does not state how many female jurors were finally empanelled.

Now comes the latest twist in this bizarre case:

The main witness in the State’s case against Jamaat al Muslimeen leader Imam Yasin Abu Bakr yesterday admitted he would rather deal with “his maker in the hereafter” and lie to the court, than face the power of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to imprison him.

Big Brent MillerBrent ‘Big Brent’ Miller, the State’s main witness in its conspiracy to murder case against Bakr, yesterday admitted once more to the open court presided over by Justice Mustapha Ibrahim in the Port-of-Spain Third Criminal Court, that the immunity agreement he signed with the DPP was “strangling” him. He admitted that he “fraid jail” and dreaded “the thought of the hangman.” Miller was granted an immunity for offences he committed in exchange for testimony in the Bakr case. It also emerged that when Miller had originally testified in the Magistrates’ Court during the preliminary inquiry, he had perjured himself by swearing an oath on the Holy Koran, when he was in fact, a Catholic. Miller admitted under Bakr’s lead counsel Pamela Elder’s questioning that at the time the Holy Koran had “no meaning” to him.

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“I knew nothing about it,” he said. And although Miller was once described as the “third in command” of the Jamaat, Elder suggested — he was not even a genuine member of the Jamaat. Elder put to the witness that he wanted his freedom so badly under the terms of the State’s immunity agreement that he was even willing to lie about his religion if that meant his story would have been more believable.

“In fact, Brent Miller, you went so far in the Magistrates’ Court as to put aside your religion as a Roman Catholic and profess you were a Muslim,” she said. The day’s lengthy questioning of the witness quickly turned into a series of exchanges in which Miller would be questioned by Elder, deny her accusations claiming that he could not “remember” and then have to be reminded of what he had said before in the Magistrates’ Court by having the official court transcript read to him.

So this bozo was third in command of Jamaat al Muslimeen, without even being a Muslim? What kind of wussy Islamist group is this?

It’s doubtful that Big Brent is real big on Catholic theology, and he doesn’t sound like the kind of guy a prosecutor wants for his star witness:

Whenever the transcript was read to him, he would then retract his original denial and then agree with Elder. At some points during this questioning, Elder had to constantly remind the witness that honest answers to her questions would not affect his immunity.

Lead prosecutor Sir Timothy Cassell QC had on Wednesday warned the jury about Miller’s credibility.

None of this makes sense. Why would the prosecutor want to warn the jury about the credibility of his “main witness”? How does it buttress his case?

Jamaat al Muslimeen, based on the activities of its top leadership, has always sounded like a criminal mob and extortion racket, rather than a hotbed of Islamic zealotry. It turns out that Big Brent has a history of larceny and violence, and is more of a common or garden thug than a dedicated mujahid. To top it all off, it seems that he was probably unable to read, even in translation, the Koran that he swore on:

…Elder went on to draw from the witness a barrage of procedural improprieties that took place surrounding his signing of a witness statement in exchange for immunity. It emerged that Miller had signed the statement without being able to read and that when he had gone to the DPP’s office on the day he signed his immunity agreement, no one asked him about the conditions under which he had signed the statement, no one asked him if he could read, no one asked him about crucial details that were contained in his statements.

This trial would have to rise a few fathoms to reach the level of a farrago.

The most interesting aspect of it is the idea that swearing on the scripture of a religion you don’t believe in constitutes perjury. If the sheikh swore on a Bible, his testimony would be perjury, too.

So how do you empanel an atheist? What book would he swear on in the courtrooms of Trinidad and Tobago?



Hat tip: Uncle Pavian.