Another check from CrochetyOldBastard Danny:
Resolved, That this convention does explicitly declare, as the sense of the American people, that after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war, during which, under the pretense of a military necessity of war-power higher than the Constitution, the Constitution itself has been disregarded in every part, and public liberty and private right alike trodden down, and the material prosperity of the country essentially impaired, justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view of an ultimate convention of the States, or other peaceable means, to the end that, at the earliest practicable moment, peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union of the States.
Sounds a little - “oldish”? Yes, well, this is part of the 1864 Democratic National Platform.
Does it look familiar? Has anything changed in dumocrat thinking in 143 years?
COBDanny notes:
Even though the military fortunes of the North had started to make an ultimate victory more likely (Sherman closing on Atlanta and Lee pressed south to Richmond), the Democrat party seemed far more interested in gaining the Whitehouse than winning the war.
I’m not overwhelmed with the similarities - but I am whelmed.
April 25th, 2007
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As COBdanny noted, you just can’t make this stuff up.
I wonder what Hosy would say? Would she even notice the irony?
April 25th, 2007
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Jihadists |
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When Islamists think that they will have to be truly honest with their own doctrine and actually have to listen to someone discuss the extremes of their theology, they become “uncomfortable”. Such was the case when Robert Spencer, noted author of Jihad Watch, spoke yesterday at Boise State University. Spencer can quote any part of the Koran and its attendent hadiths freely and easily. He probably knows more about Islam than 95% of Muslims today. And he is very well informed on the particular parts of the Islamic version of the Bible that Islamic jihadists like to quote just before they cut off your head.
So to avoid having to hear such honesty, Muslim students have chosen to victimize themselves so that the bearer of bad news (Spencer) can be shown as someone who is attacking them personally. Trump the notion that Spencer is dangerous for what he says and you have the perfect excuse for Victimitis - Spencer is Islamophobic. And dangerous. At least according to Hosy Nasimi, a student at Boise State.
This noon time prayer is a daily practice for Muslims here in the Treasure Valley. It’s also a part of Hosy Nasimi’s everyday life. So is this, being a student at Boise State University. Combining the two can be tough, “There’s really few people who know anything about Islam, they have no idea.” Hosy is afraid that bringing author Robert Spencer on campus to talk about radical Islam won’t help. In fact, she says it has the potential of making campus life dangerous for her and other Muslim students, “I want the school to be a safe place for me and other Muslims, not a place to be afraid to go.”
I really like the victimhood Hosy embraces as she categorically denies that Spencer knows nothing about Islam (”There’s really few people who know anything about Islam, they have no idea”). No doubt in her own self important mind only a Muslim can you speak with any knowledge of Islam. Any infidels threaten her - especially those with knowledge. Spencer blogs about the talk he will give at Boise State:
Need this young Boise State coed fear for her life because of me? Well, let’s look at the record: just how many Muslims in America have I killed? None. How many have I called for to be killed? None. How many Muslims in America have been killed because they were Muslims? None. While Christians and other non-Muslims must live in fear for their lives every day in countries like Iraq (where Christians have been kidnapped and murdered), Indonesia (where those three Christian schoolgirls were beheaded), and Pakistan (where there was a spate of shootings in churches and church schools a few years ago), none of these things are happening to Muslims in the United States.
In this country, Muslims may practice their religion freely, and authorities often work to accommodate them. There are incidents of bigotry, but these are minor, and sometimes trumped-up. The only fly in the ointment is that sometimes people like me come around — with a message of hate, they say, but that is just manipulative propaganda designed to get people of good will to turn away. In reality, tonight I will deliver a message of reality, a real inconvenient truth, about how the jihadists use the core texts of Islam to justify their actions and make recruits among peaceful Muslims. Instead of wringing her hands and retailing outrageous libels and hyperbole about me on television, this Muslim woman would do better to work to combat that reality within the Islamic community.
And if she made any headway, all of us could breathe easier.
And in response to Hosy’s whining about her safety, Robert points out -
And it’s true — there will be guards at the event tonight. But not because Hosy’s life is threatened. Because mine is.
More than ironic.
April 24th, 2007
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When I read articles about the universe, I normally don’t have any biases about how it got here. But this came across a few months back and I hung on to it because it seemed so, well, different. It’s not that it forms any particular opinion but it great food for thought and conversation.
There was an NPR Public Radio show in Minnesota early in February that Harvard physicist Leonard Susskind, the author of The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design”, offers a view of a current debate in the theoretcial physics world - at least in some parts of it. Eric Black summarizes the main points:
Susskind describes the discoveries and mysteries disturbing physicists’ serenity as “a scientific tsunami” and “one of the most stunning reversals of fortune in science.” He says “[T]hings have been happening in the last decade that are changing the minds of many physicists” about whether life is a “mere coincidence.”
* Physicists have learned that the universe we dwell in is exquisitely fine-tuned to allow for life. It’s a Goldilocks universe - not too hot, or too cold, or too dense, or too diffused, but just right. If fundamental physical forces were any different than they are - to even an infinitesimal degree — no life could exist.
* This reality has physicists wrestling with questions, Susskind says, that baffle them - questions that raise the issue of “intelligent design” more widely heard from in debates about evolution and creationism. The “crazy fine tuning” of the universe, Susskind says, “seems very non-accidental.”
* One response among physicists is a mind-cramping concept called “the anthropic principle.” It’s the idea that we shouldn’t be amazed that our universe is just what it needs to be to support intelligent life because, if it weren’t, we wouldn’t be here to be amazed by it. Put another way, any universe intelligent beings find themselves in must by definition be the sort of universe that could produce intelligent beings. Susskind says the idea discomforts scientists because it suggests that the “universe somehow cared about us.”
* The theory of the multiverse suggests a more naturalistic, if not much less mysterious, resolution of the problem. It’s the theory that universes reproduce, rather like living things, and that many universes exist. Most are presumably unfit for life. But the sheer number and diversity of them makes it understandable how one, at least, got it just right, and produced us and our misplaced amazement at the improbability of our existence. Yet we will never see these other universes, Susskind says. They are receding from us so fast that their light can never reach us and they are “forever hidden behind an eternal cosmic horizon.” This, he says, makes critics complain that the theory is metaphysical speculation rather than science.
While this is all very interesting I find it more of an intellectual argument for the sake of purpose by those in an academic field who need to have relevancy to such purpose. It’s kind of like a stock market correction. News for now (very interesting news) and back to work later.
Eric Black points out in his article that theoretical physics is a field that constantly churns and needs that relevance to keep going:
Susskind’s presentation is a reminder that there seems to be a pleasing wild west quality about theoretical physics - or at least about the simplified versions of its disputes that reach non-scientists. Perhaps because their controversies have seldom been turned into political and cultural battles, or maybe because the mysteries they probe inevitably lead to the biggest of big questions, physicists often seem refreshingly open to the strangest possibilities.
You can listen to the call in show here. This isn’t really a debate but, as Black points out, what these guys work on eventually lead to these type of questions. Good food for thought.
April 23rd, 2007
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Science |
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This is about as crazy as it can get. National Review Online (NRO) had an article recently by Anne Bayefsky on just how completely worthless the United Nations has become. There’s a group called the U. N. Disarmament Commission - whose charter is, natch, disarmament, including nuclear. So it has to be a little more than surprising that the current Vice-Chairman of this committee is non other than Iran.
On April 9, 2007 there was a United Nations believe-it-or-not moment extraordinaire. At the same time that Iran’s President Ahmadinejad declared his country was now capable of industrial-scale uranium enrichment, the U.N. reelected Iran as a vice chairman of the U.N. Disarmament Commission.
Yes Ripley, the very U.N. body charged with promoting nuclear nonproliferation installed in a senior position the state that the Security Council recently declared violated its nonproliferation resolutions.
So in Iran at the Natanz nuclear facility Ahmadinejad gloated: “With great pride, I announce as of today our dear country is among the countries of the world that produces nuclear fuel on an industrial scale.” And in New York, courtesy of his U.N. platform, Iranian Disarmament Vice-Chairman Seyed Mohammad Ali Robatjazi railed against “noncompliance with the NPT [nuclear nonproliferation treaty] by the United States” and “the Zionist lobby.”
This isn’t irony - it’s insanity. But completely acceptable by the UN. And one of our esteemed Islamic radical enablers, Congressman Tom Lantos:
Congressman Tom Lantos, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, declared at a hearing on U.N. reform in February that “the U.N. provides vital support to core U.S. foreign-policy initiatives” including on Iran and the way forward is to “ratchet up our level of diplomacy there.”
“Ratchet up” suffers from some elementary numerical challenges — not to mention the netherworld where that ratcheting is headed. Congressman Lantos and his close friend former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan have long been drinking from the same well. The “reformed” Human Rights Council was Annan’s creation. Lantos is the leading advocate of the United States joining the Human Rights Council — where presumably we could jump up and down while exercising one vote out of 47. Annan, of his own volition, went to Tehran last September and urged the world not to isolate Iran immediately after the Iranian president had ignored a Security Council deadline to suspend its nuclear activities. Lantos confessed to the House Committee at the end of February that he has been begging for a visa to go to Iran for the past ten years and “will be among the first ones to do so once this visa is granted.”
We dump the most prolific and honest UN Ambassador we could have - ever - in John Bolton, replacing him recently with Khalizad, the former US ambassador to Iraq. And then we get all the skinny from the UN Human Rights Commission on how bad Israel is doing on human rights - to the Palestinians. Ignoring every other middle-east dictator and their penchant for Sharia Law combined with Semtex.
Now we welcome the fox into the henhouse with open arms (no pun intended).
Anne’s summary is almost morbid - but so true.
The line between U.N. diplomacy and farce has been crossed. The real tragedy is that the defensible border between our freedom-loving rights-respecting world and the cave of our enemies is fading along with it.
When are we going to let go of this third world governance comedy troupe and get a real UN? One that will actually deal honestly with evil.
April 23rd, 2007
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Danny at Crotchety Old Bastard has comments that need no editorializing:
Dear Senator Reid,
Thank you for finally putting this whole Iraq War mess to bed. The timing couldn’t be better for my family.You see, my son is serving in this “lost war” with the 82nd Airborne Division; actually on his third tour. My family will be very happy to have him home within 30 days because then he can attend my daughter’s graduation from college and Commissioning Ceremony.
My bride is skeptical of all of this but I reassured her that I know for a fact that he will be home soon because based on your statement and being the Senate Majority Leader, you will kill all funding for this “lost war” immediately.My bride was still unconvinced and I explained it to her this way.
If Senator Reid, based on the information that the Senate Majority Leader has, has determined that this war is lost; there is nothing left to do but come home. The way I see it, if you were to vote for anything less; you would be personally liable for any future wounded or God-Forbid dead soldiers.Although, I have the utmost confidence that you will do the right thing and de-fund this war immediately; I have retained legal council just in case.
So, know this Senator; if you don’t de-fund this war within seven days, I will hold you personably liable for any harm to American servicemen. If the war is lost and you have the power to end it then just do it. Stop whining like a bitch and just do it.
I have listened to your bullshit long enough. You, a person in high authority in the US government, have made a definitive statement that an action is occurring with no redeeming value. Said action is causing harm and death to US citizens. You have the unique power to stop said action and thusly stop the harm.So Harry, I say have the balls to actually do it or find yourself liable.
Governing is not just whining and pandering. At some point you have to actually govern. It is painfully clear that you have neither the intellectual power nor the fuzzy kiwis to actually do it.Feel free to share this with Neville Nancy as I plan the exact same action for her pathetic ass.
The soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen that you are endangering by either your idiotic statements that empower the enemy or your overt inaction that contributes to their danger; are American citizens. In either case, you have endangered them and you alone have the ability to correct it.See you in court.
Very sincerely,
Crotchety Old BastardPS: I am asking all veterans, friends and families of servicemen and simple good Americans to please add a comment to this post. I will forward it to Senator Reid.
PSS: I know that Senator Reid’s comments likely upset many of you as it clearly did me. I have my flesh and blood that has been endangered by this jack-ass so please forgive the salty nature of this post.
I’m with you Danny - jack-ass is a mild term.
April 20th, 2007
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Getting it Right |
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Now in a new blog, the Lasso of Truth, Wonder Woman makes several observations that do, in fact, make you wonder - all the way up to the last line. It seems the Soviets want to have a tunnel access to North America - connecting us directly to the mainland of the Far East for goods and transport. A $60 Billion project, though cheap when you compare it to Boston’s Big Dig (mile for mile). But with a lot more risk.
Russia’s ambassador in Ottawa says a $60-billion (U.S.) proposal to build a rail tunnel under the Bering Strait is no pipedream, and that Canada needs to be part of the megaproject.
[..]
the rail link would provide commercial freight deliveries from Asian markets to North America, and back again.
It could include energy pipelines that would feed Russian oil and/or natural gas into U.S. markets
That’s the playing field. They want to ship stuff to us - the “and back again” is a euphemism for a heftier trade imbalance. But that’s the small stuff. Go read her observations here.
And glad to see she’s back - her previous blog, A North American Patriot, was well worth reading.
April 20th, 2007
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Omar at Iraq the Model has his own take on Sadr’s decision to leave the Maliki government, which he has done by pulling six loyalists from the Iraq cabinet positions Tuesday. One observation from Omar:
Now that they have left the government, they’re going to take advantage of simple-minded people who will no longer blame them for lack of basic services, because the Sadrists are not part of this government anymore. They will redirect all the blame onto Maliki and the coalition, when in fact, it was the Sadr bloc ministers who were controlling three of the most important ministries in charge of basic services: Health, Education and Transportation, in addition to three others.
That’s a point dwarfed by the militia’s direct role in Iraqi’s suffering.
The Sadrists still retain 30 seats in the Iraqi Parliament and claim they will still align with the Shiite bloc which includes Maliki’s party. But the whole move by Sadr to remove the Cabinet Ministers is aimed at escalating the divisiveness between Sadr and Maliki - for control. That’s the key - Sadr wants control. He is only playing with this government thingy which is essentially foreign to him since it is secular. Unless a cleric (such as himself) is running the country, the country is not going the direction he wishes - certainly not leaning toward the Iranian extremists which is where Sadr is currently hiding out.
Omar has some erstwhile obsevations of Sadr’s moves:
One possible theory being circulated is the six ministers were already on their way to be replaced according to PM Maliki’s cabinet reshuffle plan. So the resignations were like quitting your job before your boss fires you in order to preserve your dignity and save face.
But this explanation strikes me as overly simplistic.
[…]
What I think is that Sadr is making a decision in which he plans to switch from half-government-half opposition status to all-out opposition.
This has not been declared explicitly so far.
Why? Because while Sadr’s followers are still quite strong, whether in the political wing or in the Mehdi army, they haven’t and appear incapable of acheiving the level of exclusive dominance they aspire to. They can make serious trouble and occupy the streets for a while when they want, but those periods of time aren’t enough for them anymore.
Thus far, the results of the war between Sadr on one side and the government and the coalition on the other side - particularly in the southern part of the country- have been a disappointment for Sadr. It’s likely that he’s considering adopting a new approach by openly declaring his party in the opposition.
[…]
Hints of this new policy are already in the air: the Sadrists organized large protests in Basra yesterday, in which reportedly thousands chanted against the local government in demand of better services and warning of an escalation if their demands are not met. Meanwhile the al-Fadheela Party, to which the governor belongs, said it was afraid some group might assassinate him. Of course, Sadr’s aides denied any involvement in the planning of the protests and protestors were carrying Iraqi flags instead of Sadr’s banners as usual. Still, not many people really bought the act.
Sadr is of the kind of tyrant who would try all methods he can to either control the entire nation of Iraq or, if he fails, destroy it altogether.
His inability to control the country from within the political process makes me think that he’ll try for the latter.
We should have popped this guy in 2004 after he openly assassinated a rival cleric. That we didn’t is a mistake. What happens next will be decidedly confrontational. And Sadr will love that part - all the way up to the part where he loses.
You can read all of Omar’s blog here.
April 20th, 2007
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Harry Reid has given up on the surge. Before it’s even halfway implemented - and unfunded - thanks to Pelosi’s and Reid’s “vacation”. They truly don’t think we are really at war if they can take time off while funding the troops goes to the back burner.
Then there’s Rocco DiPippo who writes an article for the American Thinker. DiPippo has been in Iraq for nearly eight months - long enough to know what it was like before the surge began and to witness the new ROE’s and security changes.:
I have observed first-hand the effects of the Bush Administration’s new Iraq security plan since it began two months ago. Street violence in Baghdad and surrounding areas has declined. Shops and markets once boarded up are reopening. Iraqi civilians are venturing out onto the streets again and living their lives with less fear of being persecuted, tortured, maimed or killed. To be sure, there is still plenty of terror and violence in Iraq, but since the “troop surge” began, it has lessened considerably.
So while the dumocrat left assumes the worst, the on-the-ground news is entirely different. No surprise but when are the dumocrats going to get some spine? And when will the Repubs get some cojones to call them on it?
Read Rocco’s article. It’s informative and chilling at the same time. But it is a wide ray of hope. His personal involvement working for a contractor puts him in a unique position to have day-to-day contact with a number of Iraqi’s and get their take on their own predicament.
Funny, they seem a lot like us.
April 19th, 2007
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Getting it Right |
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Well, it wasn’t intentional. Decided to take a few days off and RV to Lake Martin. Supposedly they had a wireless network that I could use to stay with the blog - and with satellite TV I’d stay in touch with the world.
Except the wireless network wasn’t working. And trees blocked the satellite. I could have moved but the wife liked the site. And, I thought, how much could I miss in 4 days?
Didn’t find out about the VT shooting until late Tuesday. And by then, the gun control freaks were coming out of the woodwork.
Not much to add to the shower of reaction other than to point out a few great posts on related VT information - stuff you won’t see on antique media because they are, well, antique.
Neptunus Lex takes down one of the complete idiots that somehow connects the shooter with American foreign policy. Simply put, when you hate Bush as much as the left does, common sense is not involved with any type of discussion. Lex also redresses the criticism of the Duke Womens Lacrosse team - because they stood up for the boys.
And if you want to see more of the looney left attaching stupidity to their thinking with glue, check out brainless Sherwood Ross’s column on the Iraq War and VT - somehow, he’s got a connection (in his own mind).
And Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive is asking for photoshop art of the idiot shooter so that he can give a little comuppance to NBC News for being so irresponsible with the material the shooter sent for his own glorification. I don’t watch NBC - and after reading about what they did, I haven’t missed a damn thing. But if you’re a photoshop kind of person, do it.
And the absolute best posts on the VT tragedy comes from Dafydd at Big Lizards. With additional comments from Jay Tea at Wizbang. These two posts are must reads. If we don’t get out of our sit-on-our-ass inertia and believe that we are a working, integral part of defending our country, our country will fade away - violently. You don’t have to read anything else on the VT shooting. Just be sure you read these two posts.
Lastly, there’s only one thought I can put to this tragedy. It’s a line from Natalie Merchant’s song - Judas Son - from the CD Motherland:
“There’s no greater evil than the darkness in your heart”.
April 19th, 2007
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I wasn’t going to say anything about Imus - so much has already been said. But after hearing a few things today, they’re worth repeating. Remember, Imus said the Rutgers basketball team looked like “nappy headed ho’s” - for which, in my opinion, he should have apologized to the basketball team. End of story.
Firstly, the righteous most reverend Missuh Al Sharpton is leading the fight to censor and eliminate Imus from the air. Let’s recall Sharpton’s previous attempts at painful but useless shellacking of those he considers “bigoted”. Does anyone remember Tawana Brawley?
On October 6, 1988, the Abrams Grand Jury released its extensive and thorough 170 page report concluding that Tawana Brawley (”Brawley”) had not been abducted, assaulted, raped and sodomized as had been claimed by Brawley and her advisors. The report further concluded that the “unsworn public allegations against Dutchess County Assistant District Attorney Steven Pagones” were false and had no basis in fact. To issue the report, the Grand Jury heard from 180 witnesses, saw 250 exhibits and recorded over 6,000 pages of testimony.
And from CNN:
But during the furor that preceded the investigation, Sharpton, Maddox and Mason leveled repeated, unsubstantiated charges that Pagones was among those who abducted and raped Brawley.
[…]
Speaking outside the Dutchess County Courthouse after the jury’s decision, Pagones said Sharpton, Alton Maddox Jr. and C. Vernon Mason had “hurt a lot of people.”
The jury found Sharpton liable for making seven defamatory statements about Pagones, Maddox for two and Mason for one. Pagones, a former assistant county prosecutor, is white; the defendants are black.
Page forward to today:
Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong, who charged three Duke lacrosse players with raping a stripper, apologized Thursday, acknowledging that this week’s decision of state prosecutors to dismiss all charges against them was correct.
Of course, this comes after missuh Sharpton and Jessay Jackson calls the whole incident a “rape” - though one was never proved. Jeff Jacoby has a litany of excrement about Sharpton and notes the Tawana Brawley case:
To this day, Sharpton refuses to recant his unspeakable slander or to apologize for his role in the odious affair.
Ann Coulter has it right:
Imus should apologize to the Rutgers women — and those women alone — send them flowers, and stop kissing Al Sharpton’s ring.
Don Imus wants to know when Sharpton is going to apologize to the Duke players.
I’m waiting……………… (chirp, chirp)………..
April 12th, 2007
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Deranged politics, Misfit Media |
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We all know the Islamists want the US to be governed under Sharia Law. Not Islam, but the Islamic radicals. There are those in Islam trying to change our perception of Islam by changing Islam itself. Such is the case of a PBS documentary, Islam vs. Islamists.
Except that we won’t get to see it.
PBS isn’t gonna let us.
Martyn Burke says that the Public Broadcasting Service and project managers at station WETA in Washington, D.C., excluded his documentary, Islam vs. Islamists, from the series America at a Crossroads after he refused to fire two co-producers affiliated with a conservative think tank.
The producer of a tax-financed documentary on Islamic extremism claims his film has been dropped for political reasons from a television series that airs next week on more than 300 PBS stations nationwide.
Key portions of the documentary focus on Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser of Phoenix and his American Islamic Forum for Democracy, a non-profit organization of Muslim Americans who advocate patriotism, constitutional democracy and a separation of church and state.
I think that once the St. Petersburg Declaration made the news at the Secular Islam Summit, the radical Islamic side, supported by CAIR, had enough of this democracy stuff. One has to wonder at the perception of the PBS film by the Executive Producer of Crossroads:
Jeff Bieber, WETA’s executive producer for Crossroads, gave a substantially different explanation. He said Burke’s film had “serious structural problems (and) . . . was irresponsible because the writing was alarmist, and it wasn’t fair.”
The “writing was alarmist”. And Mr. Burke is being “unfair” when he portrays the sword carrying, Semtex happy people whose heroes are the clerics and imams of radical Islam as something we should be concerned with. Though we hear almost nothing of people like Dr. Jasser who advocates the above mentioned common democratic principles.
Just keep us in the dark, PBS - and use our tax money to buy new blindfolds. We don’t wanna know this stuff.
Oh, and don’t bother asking me for more funding or support. I’m sure the dumocrats will appropriate plenty for you anyway.
UPDATE:
I noticed that Little Green Footballs did a post on this and has a link to an interview with one of the film’s producers, Frank Gaffney. The interview is disturbing on one particular point:
And in fact, the CPB at one point said we were going to be one of eight films. It’s now turned out to be one of eleven films that were going to be rolled out on the 15th of April, coming up very shortly. In fact, Robin MacNeil was on the Diane Rehm show, you played that tape earlier, for the purpose of promoting this series of films. Unfortunately, ours is not going to be one of them, as he said, in his own words, because it is alarmist, and extremely one-sided. And I just plead with Pat Harrison, a wonderful woman who runs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and who has been very helpful to us to this point, to help allow us to have the opportunity to show this film on another network, since PBS is not going to do it, as soon as possible, because frankly, it’s very timely. American people need to know about it, and I think frankly, they need to know about it more than they need to know about Robin MacNeil’s vision of Muslims in America, which it turns out, according to his website, he, by the way, got a film as part of this series when he became the moderator, that was not selected as part of the competition. It wasn’t even submitted as part of the competition. It was one of a number of examples, Hugh, of instances in which it appears that the people at PBS were so determined to keep our film from being shown, that they actually commissioned another film outside of the competition to cover some of the same subject matter. But interestingly enough, according to Robin MacNeil, the Muslims in America are the Muslims of the Muslim Student Association, a very well known Wahabi front organization, credited with recruiting terrorists on American college campuses. And that’s the subject of his film, his vision of American Muslims, as opposed to the anti-Islamist Muslims that are featured in ours. And that’s the man who’s deciding, it appears, at least in league with others, deciding as to which of the films is one-sided, or alarmist.
Did you get that? Robin MacNeil, one of the major thumbs up-down people for this series, has done two incredibly nauseous things - he blocked a film that for all intents and purposes was approved and supported through the entire process - and MacNeil decides to block Burke’s film and make his own film using the Muslim Student Association as its guide.
The MSA handbook for “Campus Activism” is here, complete with the “victimization” justification for political activism and the valued link to groups such as “ANSWER” and other “Anti-war” groups:
Silence or passivity in the current political climate is inevitably a form of incrimination and cause for societal disillusionment for the Muslim community in America. It must be recognized by all Muslims that because of our political inaction in the past, suspicion and unfair targeting of Muslims has resulted. Civil rights are being eroded and constitutional freedoms are being negatively redefined. Our misguided foreign policies continue to jeopardize our security interests domestically and abroad by exacerbating grievances and hostility. As the economic woes persist and only seem to get worse, it is no longer an option for Muslim students to remain disengaged from the political sphere.
How to get speakers:
Another useful example could be attempting to highlight the increasing impact of the funds that the American government donates to Israel annually and noting the responsibility that every taxpayer has towards restoring justice within the Palestinian territories.
The value of like minded speakers:
Researching past speakers at Islamic conventions or peace conferences proves to be the easiest method exercised to find specialists educated on a particular topic, such as MSA Zonal/Regional conferences, Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) and Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) annual conventions, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) banquets, Anti-Arab Discrimination Committee (ADC) conferences, International Solidarity Movement (ISM) protests or ANSWER anti-war rallies.
And this is at the “student” level.
April 10th, 2007
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Deranged politics, morons |
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