Hillary. McCain. Obama. Romney. Lots of other hats in the ring.
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Vote early and vote often! Well, once a week, anyway — at the Pajamas Media Presidential Straw Poll.
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From Turkish Press comes this account of the murder last Friday of an ethnic Armenian journalist in Istanbul:
Leading Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink was shot dead outside his newspaper office yesterday by an unknown assailant, sending Turkey into deep shock and prompting foreign criticism and statements of concern.
“This heinous attack is against all of us; on our unity, our integrity, our peace and stability,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoðan said at a hastily arranged press conference. “This is an attack against freedom of thought and our democratic way of life.” Erdoðan cut short a Cabinet meeting to upon the news of Dink’s murder and said he had told his justice and interior ministers to shed light on the killing.
In a statement the Foreign Ministry expressed deep regret at murder of Dink, “a distinguished member of Turkey’s Armenian community,” and went on: “We strongly denounce and condemn this heinous attack. … The perpetrator(s) of the attack will be caught in the shortest time possible and brought to justice.”
The phrase that stands out in that last paragraph is “Turkey’s Armenian community”. If the Turks haven’t managed to exterminate their Armenian community, it isn’t for lack of trying.
News reports said Dink had been shot three times in the neck. An 18 or 19-year-old man was sought as a suspect, and unconfirmed reports said police have detained two people in connection with the murder.
Since the Turkish Press report, a 17-year-old has been arrested and has confessed to the shooting; he is thought to have acted as part of a group. One of the other suspects in custody is Yasin Hayal, who was charged with bombing a McDonalds restaurant in Istanbul in 2004 and later released.
Hrant Dink had been a thorn in Turkey’s side for quite a while, and did time in prison for insulting the Turkish race:
Dink, a 53-year-old Turkish citizen of Armenian descent, had gone on trial numerous times for speaking out about World War I events, which Armenians claim amount to a genocide. He had received numerous threats from ultranationalists, but authorities said he had never demanded state protection.
Ah, yes, the genocide. These quotes, remember, are from a Turkish publication, so that the genocide is described as an “Armenian claim”. Turkish Press is too respectable to put the word in quotation marks, but you can tell that’s what they’d like to do; after all, the event is only “alleged”:
Dink’s murder comes as Armenians step up efforts to win international recognition for the alleged genocide and is set to sour political atmosphere in the international scene, something that would complicate Turkey’s efforts to counter the claims. The United States and the European Union immediately expressed concern over the attack.
“It’s meaningful that this attack comes as the Armenian allegations are on the agenda,” Erdoðan said. “It is meaningful that bloody hands targeted Dink.”
Turkey denies allegations of genocide and says the killings of Armenians took place as the late Ottoman Empire was trying to quell civil unrest sparked by riots of Anatolian Armenians, who then sided with the invading Russian army.
That last paragraph is the Turkish party line on the Armenian Genocide. Those restless Armenians got out of hand back in 1915, and, a few over-zealous lesser officers in the Turkish army went too far, but, hey, there was a war on, you know?
– – – – – – – – – –
In the EU, denying the Nazi genocide against the Jews is a crime. In Turkey, which dearly wants to join the EU, denial of the Armenian Genocide is official state policy. There are also plenty of private groups echoing the government’s position.
But that’s not the way the Armenians and the rest of the world see it. Before the Great War there were about 2.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. By the time the war was over, there were about 100,000 left. Non-Turkish estimates of the number of deaths range from 800,000 (the contemporary American estimate) to 1.5 million (the Armenian figure). It would be difficult to account for even the smaller number without a systematic genocidal effort on the part of the Turks.
There is ample documentation of the preparation for and execution of the Armenian Genocide by a faction within the highest ranks of Turkey’s government.
By 1915, although the Ottoman Empire still existed, the sultan was a mere figurehead and a group of military officers known as the Young Turks was running the country. The more radical of these officers formed the “Committee for Union and Progress” (in Turkish Ittihad ve Terakki Cemiyet), and under that bland and Soviet-style sobriquet began quiet preparations for a Final Solution to the Armenian problem.
First they took into custody or killed all the Armenians in the Turkish army, to make sure that there would be no sabotage at the front, nor any armed Armenians behind the lines. New Armenian recruits were either routed to slave-labor battalions or killed.
On April 24, 1915 — the day that Armenians memorialize as Genocide Day — several hundred prominent Armenian intellectuals were rounded up, arrested, and later executed.
The CUP’s next step was to order the release of hundreds of criminals from prison, carefully choosing the most brutal and violent murderers. These men were to form the core of the units that actually carried out the genocide.
Under the cover of “relocation”, Armenians from all over the country were rounded up and moved to camps. The forced marches under terrible conditions and without provisions killed many thousands, in addition to those who died from beatings, rapes, and outright slaughter. Those who survived the trek were left to die in the most bestial of circumstances in desert camps on the borders of Syria and Iraq.
Turkey later acknowledged the culpability of the CUP — its leaders were tried and convicted after the war. But the Turks downplay the number of fatalities, and continue to deny that the crimes ever rose to the level of genocide.
The rest of the world has never agreed. The genocide was condemned at the time not only by Britain and France, which were Turkey’s enemies in the war, but also by the United States, which was neutral, and by Germany and Austria, which were Turkey’s allies. Some of the most detailed accounts of the genocide came from German consuls and military attachés stationed in Turkey. At least one German officer disobeyed orders and took extensive photos of Armenian victims, which he then smuggled out of the country so that evidence of the atrocities would be preserved.
Many of the Armenians who were saved from death owed their lives to the tireless efforts of American Christian missionaries working in Turkey during the period when America was still a neutral in the war. Most Armenian-Americans today are descended from these survivors of the Armenian Holocaust.
It’s true that the Armenians were Christians, and their persecutors and murderers were Muslims. But the perpetrators were Turkish nationalists, and there was a large component of simple ethnic hatred in their treatment of the Armenians.
Nonetheless, a jihad component of the events cannot be ruled out.
Turks are not Arabs, and the Turkish version of Islam differs somewhat from the Arab version. However, the Turks imported a lot of Arabic words and customs — in the title Ittihad ve Terakki Cemiyet, ittihad is a borrowed Arabic word meaning “union”. The first-hand accounts of the massacres often reported that the epithet gâvur — the Turkish version of the Arabic word kaffir, or “infidel” — was applied to the victims by their tormentors.
According to one eyewitness report:
I was standing behind the door and crying, because Grandma had died three days earlier. Mother saw a cart-full of children who were being taken away to be buried alive, for the Mohammedan Turks said: ‘Who kills a gâvur, his soul goes to paradise.
Or consider this account by a German witness:
The German Vice Consul at Erzerum, Count Max Erwin von Scheubner- Richter, summarizes the Armenian Genocide quite succinctly in a report to his superiors:
I have conducted a series of conversations with competent and influential Turkish personages, and these are my impressions: A large segment of the Ittahadist [Young Turk] party maintains the viewpoint that the Turkish empire should be based only on the principle of Islam and Pan-Turkism. Its non-Muslim and non-Turkish inhabitants should either be forcibly islamized, or otherwise they ought to be destroyed. These gentlemen believe that the time is propitious for the realization of this plan. The first item on this agenda concerns the liquidation of the Armenians. Ittihad will dangle before the eyes of the allies the specter of an alleged revolution prepared by the Armenian Dashnak party. Moreover local incidents of social unrest and acts of Armenian self-defense will deliberately be provoked and inflated and will be used as pretexts to effect the deportations. Once en route however, the convoys will be attacked and exterminated by Kurdish and Turkish brigands, and in part by gendarmes, who will be instigated for that purpose by Ittihad.
If the Young Turks had had their way, Turkey would have been free of Armenians more than nine decades ago.
In his last column for Agos, Dink complained that he had become famous as an enemy of Turks and wrote of threats against him.
“My computer’s memory is loaded with sentences full of hatred and threats,” Dink wrote. “I am just like a pigeon … I look around to my left and right, in front and behind me as much as it does. My head is just as active.”
In an interview with Reuters news agency, Dink said last July: “I will not leave this country. If I go I would feel I was leaving alone the people struggling for democracy in this country. It would be a betrayal of them. I could never do this.”
In Dink’s view, the state of Turkey is still “struggling for democracy”. Not there yet, but still struggling.
This is the same Turkey that the Pope urges be admitted to the EU, that the United States officially promotes for EU membership, and that has been flooding Europe with hundreds of thousands of “guest workers” for the last fifty years.
To paraphrase Benjamin in the movie The Graduate: This plan isn’t half-baked. It’s completely baked.
Armenian National Institute
Wikipedia: The Armenian Genocide
Fact Sheet: Armenian Genocide
Eyewitness Accounts
The Danish counterjihad group SIAD isn’t rolling over in the face of intimidation by the Islamists and their useful idiots, the autonomes.
From yesterday’s Jyllands-Posten (thanks to Zonka and the 910 Group Blog for the translation):
Political group files charges against police and minister
Minister of Justice Lene Espersen (Cons.), Chief Police Inspector Per Larsen and Police Director Hanne Bech have been reported to the police.
On Friday the political action group Stop the Islamification of Denmark (SIAD) filed charges against Lene Espersen and the Copenhagen Police, represented by Chief Police Inspector Per Larsen and Police Director Hanne Bech. The step was taken because SIAD is furious that the police, according to the group, have not utilized enough resources to solve a violent attack against several members of the party, and because the Copenhagen Police have disallowed a demonstration by the party on Blågårdsgade in Nørrebro.
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As many of you already know, a couple of months ago Bill at InDC Journal turned in his pajamas for body armor to become an embedded journalist in Iraq. He’s in Fallujah right now, and his reports are definitely worth reading.
In his post last Wednesday he talked about why he decided to stay in Fallujah rather than move on to Ramadi:
I’ve come to the conclusion that to have an idea of what’s going on in either city, you need to spend at least two to three solid weeks, ideally four, in each. Compounding the complexity is that the two cities and regions surrounding them are vastly different. All this makes the concept of authoritatively writing about either from Baghdad or DC, as some are inclined to do, all the more unrealistic. It’s perhaps possible with a wealth of contacts, but access to first-hand local perspectives is pretty helpful.
I think that’s an understatement.
Another piece from last week you’ll want to read is his interview with a Fallujan police officer. It’s too long to excerpt from effectively, so go over and read the whole thing.
Bill was just a regular blogger like me — except for being two or three decades younger — who decided to stop kibitzing from the sidelines and do something meaningful. He could have rested on his laurels from his journeywork in the Rathergate affair, but he didn’t.
Now he’s over there at the epicenter of the struggle against the Great Jihad, not to mention the epicenter of the civil war within our own culture. Unlike the Big Media journalists who hole up at the Palestine Hotel and never leave the Green Zone, he can give you some idea of what’s really going on in Iraq.
Bill took a leave of absence from his day job to go to Iraq. His travel expenses there and back were covered, but everything else he needed he had to raise on his own. Readers are advised to stop by InDC Journal and put something in the tip jar — it’s for a good cause.
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The consensus in the comments seems to be that this dust up in Britain the Baron wrote about was merely a publicity stunt, and not just plain old Kiplingesque racism. Darn.
Here’s the first part, as the plot thickens. It’s from a piece in Daily India:
Channel 4’s decision to screen a Diary Room interview with Shetty in which she retracted her earlier claims of racism also came in for flak.
Shilpa had said: ‘Actually, I take that back. People say things in a fit of anger and I stand corrected, so I don’t want people to think and feel that way. Please clarify and put this as a statement — that I don’t feel there was any racial discrimination happening from Jade’s end.’
Isn’t that nice? She’s taking back her little fit. But here’s the second scene, as the plot sickens:
– – – – – – – – – –
…now her popularity ratings have soared suddenly — thanks to the controversial Channel 4 reality TV show “Celebrity Big Brother” in which she was the target of alleged racial abuse.
The long-legged Indian beauty has hogged international media headlines after her sobs found an echo in the House of Commons and also got the Indian government into action to defend her against the alleged racial abuse targeted at her by her housemates on the TV show.
Yawn.
This “story,” complete with pretend slander and much emoting from the balcony bears similarities to the buzz about those American babes who were having candid photos snatched — sans underwear — as they entered or exited their vehicles.
Since I don’t have a TV and actively avoid celebrity news I don’t have the names of any of these pathetic tarts stars. To show the depths of my ignorance, I’ve never seen a reality show (except for the one I’m immersed in right here in real time) and I’m not sure what “American Idol” is, though I do believe I would be held accountable on the grounds of incipient stupidity if I did have, floating about in my brain, original source images of such arcana.
On the other hand, I will admit that I stole an October, 2005 People magazine from the doctor’s office the other day. Haven’t read one in years, but late that night its worn and torn pages were a diversion from the pain that had driven me to the doctor’s office in the first place. The magazine was crammed with improbable looking women, all dressed and sculpted to look alike, their botoxed lips giving them a certain K-Mart Lolita air. The Stepford Wives have nothing on these creatures; they are merely messier looking versions of their legendary suburban foremothers. And the men? They all seemed to need a shave and a job and a trip to Good Will for some clothing.
Plumbing the depths of People didn’t take the pain away, but it did create a diversion of sorts as I attempted to figure out the ramifications of a culture of women with lots of money, ratty hair, and clothing that seemed to have been grabbed off the street from passing hookers.
I’m still working on this puzzle, though I did notice a central part of their belief system: repeated stays at drug rehabilitation center as a swinging door rite of passage. Their in-and-out-the-rehab-door-dramas brought to mind those clocks or barometers with little German dolls that used to lurch woodenly out of their tiny spaces to announce the time… or did they forecast the weather?
At any rate, this whole episode of faux race-baiting appears to fall into the same “I-am-a-famous-personality-famous-for-my-fame” genre: trifling “news” about trifling people whose narcissism is so insatiable it demands constant attention, no matter how deep the slime or how thin the reality. Isn’t there just one law in these cases: the “journalists” have to get the names spelled correctly? With a last name like Shetty, I suppose they have to be particularly careful.
Feh.
M. Simon, who blogs at Power and Control and Classical Values, has notified us several times, both by email and in his comments, about his post on Christian Zionism. It puts me in mind of Luke 18:1-8:
“Once upon a time,” [Jesus] said, “there was a magistrate in a town who had neither fear of God nor respect for his fellow-men. There was a widow in the town who kept coming to him, saying, ‘Please protect me from the man who is trying to ruin me.’ And for a long time he refused. But later he said to himself, ‘Although I don’t fear God and have no respect for men, yet this woman is such a nuisance that I shall give judgment in her favor, or else her continual visits will be the death of me!’“
Then the Lord said, “Notice how this dishonest magistrate behaved. Do you suppose God, patient as he is, will not see justice done for his chosen, who appeal to him day and night? I assure you he will not delay in seeing justice done. Yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find men on earth who believe in him?”
Persistence pays off!
M. Simon’s post refers to an Israpundit article, written by a Christian, about an event last Sunday at Capital Washington Hilton in which Christian Zionism was discussed:
The chatty crowd quieted as Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), spoke eloquently about the past and the present world climate of anti-Semitism. Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor serving in Congress, disclosed, “l assumed naively that the chapter [Holocaust] of human history would be a dark nightmare moment of the past but that is not the case.” He continued, “We have a new dimension, a convergence of historic anti-Semitism coupled with Muslims and the intellectual elite. This makes for a powerful cocktail yet, we have a powerful antidote [for anti-Semitism]; the decent Christians who learned the lessons of the Holocaust. The antidote to Auschwitz is the Christian community in the United States. We cannot tell you how precious you are to us. We deeply love and respect you more than you’ll ever know because you represent the finest of civilization.”
Rep. Lantos then said, “All Christians, please stand.”
Christians don’t advocate for Israel to gain accolades, yet when we stood, the sustained applause from Jewish hands settled on me like a crown. It’s safe to say that other Christians in the hall, who have advocated for Israel much longer than I, felt the weight of the crown even more profoundly. With a noticeable contingent of evangelicals, including ICEJ Executive Director Rev. Malcolm Hedding, Earl Cox, (founder- Israel Always) and Ben Kinchlow, Co-hosts of Front Page Jerusalem Radio, I reveled in this historic moment in time; a moment which culminated 25 years of work and relationship-building between evangelical Christians and the state of Israel, pioneered in part by the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem who planted a small seed of Christian Zionism in 1980. (Most world embassies had vacated Jerusalem in protest when modern day Israel declared Jerusalem as her eternal Capital).
– – – – – – – – – –
Since then, Christian Zionism has grown exponentially with organizations and movements taking root all across the world. While the words “Christian Zionism” may represent new terminology, the foundations of the movement are even older than the Western Wall beginning with God’s words in Genesis 12:3, “I will bless those who bless you…” Scripture is peppered with God’s clarion call, which reminds non-Jews to stand with the “apple of His eye.” The gala celebration represented a zenith in the mountain range of cooperation now rising between Jews and Evangelicals, significant among them on the Jewish side of things, the Knesset’s Christian Allies Caucus. I felt humbled to witness the outpouring of appreciation from Lantos and other Jewish attendees who recognize the strengthening trust and respect between the ancient faiths of Judaism and Christianity.
This new Christian Zionism is based in scripture. The scripture hasn’t changed for almost two thousand years, yet Christians managed to spend most of the intervening centuries hounding, persecuting, forcibly converting, and killing Jews. During that time the best the Jews could hope for was indifference from the Christians amongst whom they lived.
So why now? What has changed?
Some kind of convergence is unfolding, with Christians and Jews remembering what they hold in common, and Islam standing in stark contrast as the enemy and persecutor of both. The Lord works in mysterious ways.
I’ll leave you with this thought from M. Simon:
Every country that has welcomed the Jews has prospered. Every country that has persecuted them has over time declined. It probably has more to do with the value of tolerance rather than just the Jews. As people have noted many times before — Jews are the canaries in the social coal mine.
Shilpa Shetty, the actress pictured at right, is new to me, but she’s a big star in India, and has appeared in a number of Bollywood productions.
And now Channel 4 — the UK television network which broadcast the undercover mosque report earlier this week — is in hot water because of what happened on to Ms. Shetty on one of its television programs. It seems that the Indian actress was the victim of “racism” while she was a participant in the popular reality TV show, “Big Brother.”
It may well be time for Britain to apologize for its racist behavior towards India. According to this Fox News report:
LONDON — Tony Blair and Gordon Brown mounted a diplomatic offensive to protect Britain’s reputation in India and the sub-continent yesterday as a television racism row grew into an international crisis.
India threatened to make a formal protest about the racist bullying of the Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty on the reality show Celebrity Big Brother.
Effigies of the show’s organisers were burnt and in Britain there were 22,000 complaints to Ofcom. The Channel 4 program had become the most complained about in the broadcasting watchdog’s history.
Brown, who is on his first visit to India, described the comments on the show as offensive and condemned anything that harmed Britain’s reputation as a tolerant country.
So what was the awful racist insult that Ms. Shetty experienced at the hands of her bullying fellow contestants?
Three of Shetty’s housemates, including Jade Goody, her principal tormentor, are alleged to have taunted her because she is Indian, including making gibes about her cooking, suggesting that she was dirty, imitating her accent and asking whether she lived in a shack.
Shetty and Goody exchanged insults again last night after Goody accused Shetty of being a “princess” and thinking that she was better than others. Shetty replied: “Oh please, learn some manners. You know what you need? You need elocution classes, Jade.” Later, Goody said: “Go back to the slums and find out what real life is about lady.”
Before I get myself in trouble again, I must emphasize that I find the above comments boorish, tasteless, and unwarranted. But do they constitute a crisis in international relations? Should they be a casus belli between Great Britain and the former Crown Jewel of the British Empire?
Ms. Shetty is not some waif just in off the streets — she’s a big-time movie star with major resources and a wealth of experience in public relations. Can’t she just let this one roll off her back?
– – – – – – – – – –
Apparently not, and Tony Blair is right in there with her, ready to pick up the sword of St. George and slay the dragon of racism:
Blair said little initially. Questioned in the Commons, he said that MPs should oppose racism in all its forms. But after protests poured in he authorised a No. 10 statement saying that Britain would not tolerate racism in any way. His spokesman said: “What clearly is to be regretted and countered is if there is any perception abroad that in any way we tolerate racism in this country.
“What the response to the program has shown is precisely the opposite — that there is no level of toleration in this country for anything which, rightly or wrongly, is perceived to be racist. The message should go out loud and clear that we are a tolerant country and we will not tolerate racism in any way.”
There’s no First Amendment in Britain, and plenty of laws against racist speech, so I assume he intends to bring the full power of the state down on Channel 4. That will make a pretty picture, especially in the wake of all those sound bites on the same channel of hateful imams raging against the filthy Jews and kuffar.
Britain is only a generation or so away from the “wogs” and “fuzzy-wuzzies” type of humor in its public culture. Yet the government expects to cleanse the population of such atavistic sentiments all at once, by administrative fiat.
It would be laughable if Britain were not facing a looming cultural disaster at the hands of Islamic zealots. When sharia takes over on the nook-shotten isle of Albion, Ms. Shetty will no longer have to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous racists on reality TV, because there will be no more reality TV, and no more shameless infidel women in their scanty outfits.
It’s candied apples and ponies with dapples
you can ride all day!
It’s girls with pimples and cripples with dimples
that just won’t go away!It’s spics and wops and niggers and kikes
with noses as long as your arm!
It’s micks and chinks and gooks and geeks
and honkies (Honk! Honk!) who never left the farm!
And now here’s the renowned Yippie and gonzo musician Ed Sanders with the Johnny Pissoff Credo [I used to have a link for this, but it’s no longer extant]:
I, Jonathan Abner Tobias Pissoff, in the presence of the
Universal God of Salvation, do solemnly affirm that I’ve
been chosen to beat up queers! I further affirm that although
I’m a decent god-fearing man with family and propitty,
Wellll ah, Ah wanna kill-rape-ravage-plunder-pillage-stomp
devour-destroy-hack-smash-blast-blesh-and bash, heh-heh!
All queers, commies sheenies howlies and honkies
All greaseballs, mockies, pollacks, lepers and litvacks
All bohunks, eggheads, fudgesickles an’ high-slants
All poets, micks, frogs, queers, peace-creeps, cajuns,
Dwarfs, dipshits, an’ teenage loose women!
In the name of Jesus Christ, this I do affirm.
Are we offended yet?
Reader DR sent this link to a full-length video of Monday night’s Channel 4 (UK) report on radical preaching in Britain’s mosques.
This one is 48 minutes long, and you can watch the entire program with a single click. Anyone who hasn’t watched it already is well-advised to do so.
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I know everyone will be relieved when I drop the “The Jews Killed Christ” and “We Must Apologize for Slavery” memes, but before I do I have a couple of things to say.
First of all, I don’t like it when my intentions are not clear to readers. I was clarifying (not apologizing) because a person who is already on our side was concerned. I don’t care if I offend the moonbats, but I do care if I offend people who are normally my staunch allies.
If they’re still offended after my clarification, then there’s not much else I can do. But at least I tried.
Secondly, all the brouhaha caused even among our regular readers proves my point — you can’t make light of these things, or treat them off-handedly, or discuss them without the utmost gravitas, and expect not to get in trouble. Stray from the pious platitudes, and you risk opprobrium from all sides.
People are on a hair-trigger, ready to be offended, especially when it comes to race. It’s a wonder we haven’t had a race war already.
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I’m typing this post with one hand while attempting to remove my foot from my mouth with the other.
A reader wrote me this evening to say this:
Do not alienate the Jewish community. I personally do not know how many Jews read your blog, but we are your natural allies. Who is a stauncher ally than Israel against the threat of militant Islam? Americans have only been attacked on US soil twice. Israel lives with the reality, not the threat, but the reality of constant terror. Death to America is chanted all over the Islamic world, but not as much as Death to the Jews is chanted.
Referencing your post, “Beyond the Pale,” why would you feel the need to toss away such a natural ally? There is no call for belittling anti-Semitism. If I am not mistaken, you say that freedom of speech should be protected. I would die for Hargrove’s right to say Jews killed Christ, wrong as it may be. However, I think you need to make it more explicit that you are ridiculing Hargrove for adding offense to an unrelated party (Jews) in addition to ridiculing the state of Virginia for apologizing for slavery. Indeed, I understand you are making fun of the PC police. Still, the way you phrased your original post made it seem you meant that you supported Hargrove’s sentiments.
I know you mean well. As a moderate Democrat, I know you are not a crazy right wing intolerant Christian lunatic as the bleeding heart liberals would call you. You are a secular humanist, full aware of the dangers Islamofascism poses to the enlightened world. Are you a crusader? I should say so, though not in the vein the jihadists would accuse you. You crusade against an inhumane evil, against those would limit free speech in a misplaced sense of decency. When WWII threatened democracy all over the world, it was people who spoke up and fought against the Fascists that saved freedom.
Allah loves ya! (irony~)
His point is well-taken. Del. Frank D. Hargrove’s little aside about the Jews was so self-evidently ludicrous that I didn’t think I needed to point it out.
But now I know that I should have, and I will be clear: I do not support any version of the old canard about the Jews and Christ; I consider it a close cousin to the Blood Libel. Mr. Hargrove’s mention of it is at least as embarassing as the politically correct high dudgeon that arose in response to the rest of what he said.
Mel Gibson has managed to drive the idea into the mainstream, so that it is no longer obviously ridiculous.
When I’m feeling sardonic I get carried away, and obviously I’m not paying enough attention to how my words appear to you, our loyal readers.
I’m glad you all are keeping me in line; don’t hesitate to take me to task. I rely on you for it.
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Move over, Virgil Goode! You have just been ousted from your position as the most racist, bigoted, hateful Rethuglican politician in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
The new holder of the title is state delegate Frank D. Hargrove, of Hanover County. Here’s what our local rag, the Daily Progress (known to its more dyspeptic readers as “the Regress”), has to say about Del. Hargrove’s deeply offensive behavior:
RICHMOND — A Hanover County delegate’s comments that Virginia’s black residents should “get over” slavery and discussing whether Jews might “apologize for killing Christ” drew angry and emotional rebukes Tuesday on the floor of the House of Delegates.
Del. Frank D. Hargrove, R-Glen Allen, responded to a tearful Jewish delegate from Alexandria whose ancestors came to America from Nazi-occupied Poland by telling him, “I think your skin was a little too thin.”
Stunned delegates gasped as Hargrove responded with two comments about “thin skin” to his seatmate, Del. David L. Englin, D-Alexandria, who had spoken moments earlier about his family having been “driven from their homes by people who believed that as Jews, we killed Christ.”
No wonder they gasped. Mr. Hargrove has dared to utter one of those sentiments which simply cannot be said. It just isn’t done. I’d say that his political career is in jeopardy, but, since he’s seventy-nine years old, that may not be of great concern to him.
The Coalition of the Easily Offended was quick to get to the microphones:
“It’s an inflammatory statement that causes a lot of pain to a lot of people,” Englin said. He then held up a picture of his 7-year-old son, Caleb, and said that Hargrove “means no harm [but false statements such as that] mean that my 7-year-old son is that much more likely to be verbally attacked, to be physically attacked.”
Ah, yes, the children. The poor wee bairns, how that awful man has hurt them!
– – – – – – – – – –
Del. Dwight C. Jones, D-Richmond and chairman of the Black Legislative Caucus, called Hargrove’s comment that black Virginians should get over slavery “an absolute offense.”
“When somebody tells me that I should get over slavery, I can only express my emotions by saying I am appalled, absolutely appalled, that someone would take the worst institution that has ever faced Americans and tell the [descendants] of those individuals that they should just get over it,” Jones told fellow delegates.
What brought this topic to the fore? How did a distinguished Virginia politician get himself into such hot water?
It seems that there’s a move afoot in Virginia to apologize for slavery:
Hargrove, a 79-year-old veteran of the House since 1982, had said in the interview published Tuesday that he opposed a resolution apologizing on behalf of the state to the descendants of slaves because “the present commonwealth has nothing to do with slavery.”
An eminently sensible remark; nothing offensive there.
Bill Clinton is the undisputed master of apologizing for something he didn’t do to people who were not harmed by the offense. It was a cost-free publicity stunt for him, and had no downside. The fact that it made no sense was no impediment to his teary photo-ops.
But Mr. Hargrove is cut from a different cloth. He not only offended the gods of PC, he went and got himself a twofer:
Hargrove said in the interview that slavery ended with the Civil War and added, “I personally think that our black citizens should get over it.” He also asked how far back apologies should go and wondered, “Are we going to force the Jews to apologize for killing Christ?”
Blacks and Jews in one go! He should have brought up Little Big Horn and the Indians, plus the Alamo and the Mexicans. Then he could have offended four Official Designated Victim Groups at once.
And his lily-livered gonad-impaired Republican colleagues displayed their accustomed courage in the face of such controversy:
Republicans later declined to defend Hargrove’s comments but insisted he meant no harm.
“I know he didn’t mean offense, but I can see how people would be offended,” said House GOP Leader H. Morgan Griffith of Salem. “The general gist of Frank’s comments is he certainly didn’t mean any offense to his seatmate, whom he likes.”
Griffith called the issue of an apology for slavery “a difficult issue. … I can’t say it’s a clear-cut, easily decided issue.”
When you join the Republican Party, they give you a welcome basket containing a red-white-and-blue top hat, an elephant lapel pin, and a bag of meal for your mouth.
This was as far as the state GOP would go:
Keith Drake, chairman of the Albemarle County Republican Committee, issued a statement Tuesday saying a resolution expressing appreciation “to recognize the significant contributions of slaves” would be more appropriate and positive.
Because no slaves or slaveholders are alive, “it is unclear who is apologizing to whom,” Drake said. He said the Marsh and McEachin resolution “serves no useful purpose. It merely opens old wounds.”
Mr. Drake has stated the problem in a nutshell: “Who is apologizing to whom?”
I have two grand-nephews of mixed racial ancestry. Their great-great-great-great-grandfather owned slaves. Their great-great-something-grandfather was a slave. What do they do, apologize to each other?
As a matter of fact, my great-great-grandfather returned from the Recent Unpleasantness to find his plantation in Southside Virginia burned out by the Yankees. Don’t New York and Maryland owe me an apology?
How far back can these ethnic and sectional grievances be extended?
Chinese-Americans deserve an apology for their virtual enslavement in our Western territories during the late 19th century. But you don’t hear much about it — do you think they’ve “gotten over it”?
On the one hand, the Serbs haven’t forgotten their defeat at the hands of the Turks at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. And the Arabs still pine for Al-Andalus — known to its current inhabitants as España — from which they were driven in 1492.
On the other hand, Denmark seems to have recovered from the loss of Skåne to Sweden in 1658. Alsace-Lorraine is no longer a major bone of contention between Germany and France.
So what’s the statute of limitations on such things?
I think the Hittites have a good case for reparations against the Egyptians and the Assyrians for all the atrocities committed during the 13th century B.C. And don’t you think the Welsh should demand the return of Londinium from the Anglo-Saxons?
Take a look at the Imperial History animation at Maps of War. How many more ethnic grievances can be extracted from all that conquest and slaughter?
Every existing human culture lives on land taken by their ancestors from another culture. And, with the possible exception of the Australian Aborigines, all the supplanted peoples had in turn taken the land from their predecessors.
Probably more than half of the world’s ethnic groups were enslaved by some other ethnic group (usually the Arabs) at one time or another.
This grievance process can be continued ad infinitum. Everybody is owed an apology by somebody else.
So let’s just keep fanning the flames of resentment. There’s plenty of fuel there, and lots of tinder.
A good racial bonfire is just what everybody needs.
Having endured as a spectator three and a half years’ undergraduate work by the future Baron, I am disgusted with what passes for higher education in our country. I am particularly disgusted with the culture of the academy itself: insular, feudal, anti-democratic, and parasitical. It could not survive without huge infusions of government “loans” which impoverish students, and large endowments of petrodollars which pollute the environment of the purportedly non-partisan university.
“Higher” education is insidious in its reach. It has strained to credentialize areas of work where once on-the-job training sufficed. It has lured into its intellectual stream students who are unable to swim. Who in academia cares about the failures, the suicides, the alcoholism rate of its student population? So many children are enrolled there who should not be.
This has cut into vocational training, providing information without knowledge or development of critical thinking and analysis. Academia wouldn’t dare teach students how to think: consider the consequences if young, impressionable students were given permission to ask contrary questions, to argue with the received knowledge of the campus classroom, to go up against tenured slackers who have slaveys teaching assistants to do the heavy lifting while they get the credit.
University professors are grossly overpaid and underworked. They are a closely guarded guild with a very small portal and a very large gatekeeper. They are the nobility, untouchable and out of touch with the average American. They are mandarins arguing over minutiae no one cares about.
In a recent essay, Victor Davis Hanson called our universities “corrupt.” He’s right:
What are we to make of this increasingly corrupt institution, whose health is so necessary to the welfare and competitiveness of the United States? It brags that American higher education is the strongest on the globe, but that is largely true only because of the non-political and still untainted hard sciences, engineering, and informational and computer sciences — and despite the humanities, particularly literature, philosophy, and history that have become increasingly ideological and theoretical.
I was thinking of all this the other day, remembering the Larry Summers fiasco, eighty-eight of the Duke faculty weighing in through a public letter against their own students unjustly accused, the Ward Churchill mess, and the assorted outbursts of professors since 9/11.
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There have been many “outbursts” in the last decade. The feminists have built their own ghetto and their weapons of destruction are lethal. Ask Larry Summers.
But they aren’t the only ones with questionable scholarship and trivial, trifling pursuits. The psychologists and their findings grow more grotesque every year. The politicization of psychology is truly astounding when universities support idiotic research claiming to show that conservatives are less intelligent than liberals. Tell that to William F. Buckley.
Then there are the extremist ethicists, Singer at Yale being one, who slide down the slippery slope of where life begins and ends until there is nothing left but utility: you may live if you don’t inconvenience others. Moral thinking has slipped through into the void. Like God, or the military, or conservative thought, ethics — as the average person would conceive it — has disappeared from the university campus.
Which may be why the men are leaving. I don’t know where they’re going, but women now outnumber men in undergraduate schools. This, the old-fashioned anthropologists will tell you, is a worrisome thing, for when women dominate a field the quality of that endeavor lessens. This is not misogyny; it is simply hardwired into the human brain.
Notice, though, that while there is a preponderance of women in higher education, they do not dominate the hard sciences. Nor can they. This is one area — again, because of hardwiring — in which men are relatively safe; women are free to enter as long as they can keep up… and many of them do. But they don’t predominate.
However, we are not allowed, in PC Utopia University, to talk about differences between men and women. I’ll amend that: we arepermitted to talk about those differences if we are portraying the victimization of women. Then, the grievances and animosity are not only permitted, they are encouraged. Hatred of men is perfectly acceptable and there is no such thing as extremism when it comes to vilification of one half of our population.
This is more than arrogance. It is dangerous to the wellbeing of the coming generation. Feminism, unfortunately, has never been about mutual respect. It was founded on hatred of “patriarchy” and a desire for revenge. On that basis it has reaped a sour harvest.
The chance to help underclass women rise above the limits of poverty was dismissed by a narcissistic demand for “equality.” This constant drumbeat has degenerated into — for example, with female firefighters who cannot pass the minimum strength requirements — women in jobs who don’t carry their share of the load. It has resulted in women who scream “sexual harassment” at the drop of a handkerchief. It has devalued the idea of egalitarianism in the name of a false ideology.
Feminists, along with their fellow-traveling diversity pimps, have demolished higher learning. It is a travesty. Now, with the influx of billions of petrodollars from Saudi Arabia and the huge quantity of federal monies doled out as loans that will impoverish students for years, the university has become hopelessly mired in corruption.
It may be beyond repair.
Last night’s Channel 4 (UK) broadcast, “Undercover Mosque”, investigated the dangerous and seditious preaching that can be heard in “mainstream” British mosques. These mosques and their affiliated organizations have been praised by Tony Blair for their interfaith outreach, and local police forces coordinate with them.
But consider these quotes from the imams’ sermons, as recorded by the undercover reporter:
Muslims shouldn’t be satisfied with living in other than the total Islamic state.
There will be no House of Commons. From that White House to the Black House — we know that we have to dismantle it… You’re in a situation where you have to live like a state within a state until you take over.
Readers will want to watch the whole thing.
Various readers and commenters have supplied links to online videos of the report. Steen at Snaphanen embedded three of the videos at his blog. You may have to scroll down to see them, because Steen is allergic to permalinks.
All six parts are linked individually below:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
The 910 Group supplied these three links. I haven’t had time to check all of them out:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
If anyone has links to better or more complete versions of the program, feel free to leave them in the comments.
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A couple of weeks ago I posted about the chilling effect on the First Amendment exerted by “hate speech” provisions. Even though the issue has not yet been codified by law, many people — university students, government employees, corporate employees, etc. — have felt the cold breeze of enforced silence as brought in by anti-harassment policies and “diversity” rules.
In order to end “exclusion”, speech which offends protected groups must be curtailed, and the list of the protected keeps expanding. First were African-Americans, then Hispanics, then women, then homosexuals, disabled people, and so on.
The latest protected group, of course, is Muslims. Those who speak out against any aspect of Islam instantly join the ranks of bigoted racists. Just ask Virgil Goode.
A similar process seems to be at work in Denmark. The Danish blogger Exile posted last Saturday about the selective suppression of free speech in Denmark:
She fears the demonstration would cause public disorder because these peaceable demonstrators would be attacked by their opponents.
The organisation is called SIAD. Which freely translates into English as “Stop the Islamification of Denmark”.
I find it strange, that Hamas, Hezbollah and any other Islamic group can freely demonstrate in the middle of Copenhagen, waving their terrorist flags and carrying their hateful banners, burning our flag and inciting to murder unopposed, while a home grown grass roots movement that opposes the Islamification of their own society is banned from the same right to protest. Has Denmark gone mad? No. Only the politicians, especially Lene Espersen.
Holger Danske seems to be stirring — notice his appearance on SIAD’s logo. Modstandsavisen means “Resistance Newspaper”, and Fem-i-Tolv means “Five minutes to Twelve”.
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The 910 Group, working through some of its Danish members, took up the issue of SIAD. I have adapted the excerpt below from the 910 Group blog; it was translated from the Danish by Zonka from an article on the SIAD website:
An attack on all of Danish Democracy
SIAD is a legal and peaceful democratic party that supports democracy as we know it: democracy, freedom of speech, equality between the sexes, and animal welfare. Lately we have become mostly known in the media because of our demonstrations that pay homage to the Danish freedom of speech (look here). But countless times the Minister of Justice, Lene Espersen, has refused permission for our demonstrations in Gellerup [A suburb of Aarhus, with a majority of muslim immigrants — translator], Vollsmose [A suburb of Odense, with a majority of muslim immigrants], and Nørrebro [A part of Copenhagen that has a strong influx of muslim immigrants] and recently, since she has found that §79 in the Danish Constitution supports our side (read below), the Ministry of Justice has invoked emergency laws against SIAD.
Thus has she denied us our constitutional rights and indirectly legitimized the autonome attack on SIAD’s meeting at Valby Medborgerhus yesterday afternoon [Saturday] where we discussed SIAD’s bill. When the State demonstrates that one cannot freely speak all places in the country, and doesn’t support constitutional rights, the foggy brains can’t help but perceive that freedom of speech is a bad thing if it upsets immigrants. So, all in all, the spineless government has legitimized the attack on SIAD.
At approximately 3pm there was a forceful knock on the door to SIAD’s closed meeting. The door was opened and then the doorway was filled with hooded and masked autonomes armed with bottles which they threw at the people in the meeting, while yelling “Now you shall die, pigs!” But four courageous SIAD members jumped directly at them and thus saved the rest of the participants at the SIAD meeting, of whom some were elderly people. They took the fight into the hallway, but three of them were severely injured by thrown bottles. Despite being outnumbered and with blood running down their faces they forced the autonome gang of about eight people to flee.
The three wounded will later be rewarded with SIAD’s newly instituted medal for being wounded in battle against Islam. This event shows that Islam and the autonomes have shaken hands on fighting the democratic society, and attack people who dare to reveal the problem that Denmark faces today: Islam versus Democracy. The autonomes have found themselves comfortable in their dhimmi-status, useful idiots for Islam in the fight against freedom of speech. Thus it has been shown that the autonomes have become errand boys and shills for Islam.
Now is the time for society to react. This is not just an attack on a democratic and non-violent party, but on the Danish freedom of speech and assembly.
A note from Zonka:
As many are not familiar with the term autonomes I’ll explain: The autonomes are a spinoff of the BZ movement in the 70s and 80s who were squatters and very leftist youngsters, punkers and general troublemakers. They are a part of an alternative and rather aggressive youth movement found in many major cities in Europe.
There was a link to Den Danske Forening in the excerpt above, so Vicktorya, the 910 Group’s founder, wrote to a leader of the group with a message of support and encouragement. This is what he wrote back:
There is some kind of misunderstanding. Den Danske Forening is a serious anti-immigration movement. We have nothing to do with the self-promoting person who recently started SIAD, and we do not want to have anything to do with him. We have been fighting for Denmark and western democracy for 20 years against all odds.
In this connection we would like to cooperate with you and all other serious people.
It’s no surprise that the Counterjihad in Denmark has its factions and infighting, just as we have here in the U.S.A. Since my grasp of Danish is rudimentary, I can’t make out the subtleties of the politics involved. But Zonka had this to say in an email:
It seems that [the leader who wrote] is not affiliated with SIAD but Den Danske Forening (The Danish Society). There are several right-wing groups and anti-immigration groups in Denmark, and unfortunately they are often at odds with each other, as they are “fighting” for position and often the same potential members. From the 910 Group’s perspective, they may both be coalition partners, as we are not playing favorites here but trying to embrace all those who oppose the dangers of Jihad and Sharia.
Zonka’s right: the 910 Group is a “network of networks”, dedicated to coordinating and communicating with all those groups that oppose the Great Jihad. It must of necessity include under its umbrella various organizations which share common goals but would not otherwise be speaking to each other.
It’s painful to watch Holger Danske take up arms against himself. Will there come a time when these differences will have to be put aside in the face of a common enemy?
Quite a few Danish readers stop by here from time to time. If any of you want to weigh in on the pros and cons of these different groups, or supply additional stories, please feel free to do so.