More sick cultures in rehab
LA Times engages the freaky dowry crimes in India, which, oddly enough, seem to involve an awful lot of woman on woman violence. This one involves women who beat and even kill their daughters-in-law to extort dowry or to punish them for inadequate dowry:
Yet Devi, 27, is one of the lucky ones: Her name was not added to the list of thousands of wives who are beaten to death, burned alive, electrocuted, poisoned, pushed out windows or otherwise killed horrifically every year because their husbands’ families are dissatisfied with the dowries they bring to the marriage and continue to demand more.
In 2005, the most recent year for which figures are available, a woman was killed over dowry every 77 minutes in India, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. The total of such homicides was 6,787, but experts suspect that the true figure is much higher, because many dowry killings are not reported. Even when they are, most of the killers go unpunished.
Another reminder that Western values have much to offer a world steeped in creepiness everywhere you look — much of it aimed at women. This includes China’s infanticide and abandonment of girls, genital mutilation by Muslims in Egypt and Africa, and, of course, the Indian issue outlined here.
The world’s tiniest violin …
… is wailing for Barry Manilow, who refuses to go on The View to be interviewed if Elisabeth Hasselbeck. The whiny butt of a million jokes has just coined a new one:
“I had made a request that I be interviewed by (co-hosts) Joy (Behar), Barbara (Walters) or Whoopi (Goldberg), but not Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Unfortunately, the show was not willing to accommodate this simple request so I bowed out,” he said in a statement on his Web site (http://www.manilow.com).
In an earlier statement to the news Web site TMZ.com, which broke the news, Manilow said Hasselbeck was “dangerous” and “offensive.”
Of course, it’s typical of the loony left to label as “dangerous” anyone who disagrees with them. But forget politics: here’s the question I want someone to as Barry: “Does listening to your own sappy saccharine pablum ever make you want to wretch?”
Viva la difference
Why can a floozy entertainer stand before the cameras and mock Jesus at the Emmy awards, whereas people everywhere walk on eggshells about Muhammad, and the Swedish government grovels across oceans to find someone to apologize to when a random journalist makes a borderline reference?
Here’s what the “entertainer” had to say upon accepting the reward:
In accepting the Emmy for her show “My Life on the D-List,” Griffin said that “a lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus.”
She went on to hold up her Emmy, make an off-color remark about Christ and proclaim, “This award is my god now!”
Of course, she’s factually out of line. I would be astounded — as in shocked — if anyone in recent memory had thanked Jesus for an Emmy. Just not that kinda subculture, ya know? Oh, for the record, we are told that E! edited her comments before airing. But I suspect that just means taking out the foulest allusion that didn’t make it into print. The gist of the slur would be unobjectionable. The Hollywood slobbering over sensitivity and diversity doesn’t encompass Christianity.
But what is the response to this affront? Some theater group in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee takes up a collection and buys a full page ad in USA Today. Asking for what? Nothing in particular. Basically just expressing disappointment, it seems:
Russ Hollingsworth, general manager of The Miracle Theater, said members of the theater’s cast were tired of celebrities joking attitudes toward Jesus. The theater is sponsoring a petition on its Web site, http://www.miracletheater.com.
“When word reached our cast that a Hollywood celebrity had stood before TV cameras and said such vulgar things about Christ, they were incensed,” he said. “It’s just not OK anymore to mock Christians and Jesus with impunity.”
Well, guys, you’re wrong. It is still OK. And it’s OK because they know full well that you aren’t going to riot and smash windows and burn flags and kill people over it. That’s the difference between you and the Islamists. Viva la difference.
You can equivocate, but it ain’t equivalent
So six black teenagers jump this white kid and beat the crap out of him in rural LA. This occurs subsequent to a handful of white teenagers hanging nooses from a tree, in a patently grotesque racist gesture that got them suspended from school, but they were not prosecuted for a crime because, apparently, they didn’t commit one. Now thousands of protesters are rallying in defense of the so-called “Jena Six.”
”What we need is federal intervention to protect people from Southern injustice,” Sharpton told the AP. ”Our fathers in the 1960’s had to penetrate the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, we have to do the same thing.”
The six black teens were charged a few months after three white teens were accused of hanging nooses in a tree on their high school grounds. The white teens were suspended from school but weren’t prosecuted. Five of the black teens were initially charged with attempted murder. That charge was reduced to battery for all but one, who has yet to be arraigned; the sixth was charged as a juvenile.
The symbolism of the noose there is horrific, and it cannot be countenanced. However, there is a vital distinction that the protesters seemed to have missed. The noose was symbolic. The beating was physical assault and battery.
If you want a white on black racial parallel, go to West Virginia, where an unthinkably sick and violent racist crime was perpetrated by a handful of white inbred hillbillies, and they should be locked away for life for it.
Making excuses for this kind of violence by pointing to offensive but nonviolent provocation sends a really, really bad signal. Assault and battery is inexcusable, and community leaders should be in the business of teaching self-control and peaceful problem-solving, not cathartic revenge.
I’m all for shining a harsh light on the obscure recesses of racism in the South or anywhere else. But Sharpton and the gang are not doing their friends any favors by excusing this behavior.
Oh, thank you, your highnesses
The Maryland Supreme Court has upheld the state’s longstanding ban on gay marriage, finding that it does not discriminate on the basis of gender nor violate any fundamental right. Then, as an aside, it notes the following:
The decision left open the possibility that the Legislature could still take action on the issue.
“Our opinion should by no means be read to imply that the General Assembly may not grant and recognize for homosexual persons civil unions or the right to marry a person of the same sex,” Judge Glenn T. Harrell Jr. wrote for the majority.
It’s an upside-down world when the courts have to tell the legislatures that they are free to make law and reporters find it worthy of note.
Who’s stupid now?
William Saletan in Slate has a good takedown on the self-congratulatory study that “finds” that liberals are more adaptable than conservatives by asking a bunch of college kids to push buttons. Whether they find a valid distinction between liberals and conservatives in their little button pushing game, I can’t say. But, as Saletan argues, any correlation that might exist between the games and life skills is laughable:
The conservative case against this study is easy to make. Sure, we’re fonder of old ways than you are. That’s in our definition. Some of our people are obtuse; so are some of yours. If you studied the rest of us in real life, you’d find that while we second-guess the status quo less than you do, we second-guess putative reforms more than you do, so in terms of complexity, ambiguity, and critical thinking, it’s probably a wash. Also, our standard of “information” is a bit tougher than the blips and fads you fall for. Sometimes, these inclinations lead us astray. But over the long run, they’ve served us and society pretty well. It’s just that you notice all the times we were wrong and ignore all the times we were right.
In fact, that’s exactly what you’ve done in this study: You’ve manufactured a tiny world of letters, half-seconds, and button-pushing, so you can catch us in clear errors and keep out the part of life where our tendencies correct yours. And now you feel great about yourselves. Congratulations. You haven’t told us much about our way of thinking. But you’ve told us a lot about yours.
I would add only one observation: (a) intelligence is so heavily DNA-driven that is might as well be exclusively hereditary, while (b) political ideology is equally heavily a result of family and social influences.
Do highly intelligent people raised in conservative families through adoption become less intelligent, or become liberals? Do relatively dull children raised in liberal families through adoption become more intelligent than their genetic endowment?
Not bloody likely. Nice try, guys.
Smoke-free casinos?
Not a big fan of gambling or smoking. Nor do I seek the company of the kinds of people who combine the two vices. So it’s hard for me to feel too bad about the New Jersey law that is forcing Atlantic City casinos to go smoke free on the gambling floor:
“We have customers who are very vocal on both sides,” said Tony Rodio, regional president for Resorts Atlantic City and the Atlantic City Hilton. “A number of customers are very frustrated, who say that if they can’t smoke, they won’t come here. I also have customers who tell me if it was 100 percent smoke-free, I’d come here all the time.”
It’s a win/win: clean your lungs while you squander your rent money.
A timely reminder that other cultures suck
So this woman in China has 26 sewing needle embedded throughout her body, some of them piercing vital organs, some within her skull. When did it happen? Before she was 1 year old. Why? Blame China’s one child policy–oh, and the girl’s grandparents, who were seriously disappointed to get a grandaughter instead of a grandson.
“They wanted her dead,” said Qu Rei, a spokesman at Richland International Hospital in Yunnan province, which has agreed to surgically remove the first six of the 26 needles in her body today. “The fact she is still alive is a medical miracle.”
Luo does not remember ever being stabbed. Relatives suspect her grandparents. They wanted a grandson instead of a second granddaughter.
“I was horrified,” said Luo, now 29, in an interview by phone Monday from her hospital room. “How could they do such a thing to me when I was so young?”
Those inclined to make snide condescending observations about the West’s inability to fully live up to its own ideals should face up to this kind of crap from a competing culture from time to time–any competing culture.
Balkanization is here to stay
Republican candidates are understandably chary about going on Univison, the dominant Spanish-language television network, for a GOP debate on Latino issues. In fact–brace yourselves–only John McCain accepted the invitation:
The major Republican candidates also refused invitations to address NCLR, the National Council of La Raza, at its annual conference in July. In June, the only Republican to show up at the convention of the National Association of Latino Elected & Appointed Officials was California Rep. Duncan Hunter, the patron of the border fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Politically, this is a very awkward situation. The Hispanic voting bloc is growing and growing fast–in part because unchecked illegal immigration, as the children of illegals become U.S. citizens. The Republican base ain’t too fond of illegal immigration, as you may have noticed.
But setting vote pandering left and right aside, there is something weird going on here:
What’s worse, in the eyes of national Hispanic leaders and progressives who are keeping count, this is the third time in recent months that Republican presidential candidates have dissed the fastest-growing part of the electorate by passing up chances to address Latinos’ concerns about the Iraq war, health care, the economy and immigration.
Please explain to me why Latino concerns about the Iraq war, the economy or health care are any different from any other group of Americans? OK, immigration’s a whole different ball of wax, but the others?
What I find most disturbing about this whole thing is that the mere fact of this Spanish language network, combined with its assertive posturing in political debate here, suggests a segment of the population that has no intention of assimilating.
Try to imagine an Italian or Polish language radio network in 1955, let alone such a TV network today. It’s a ludicrous proposition. Yet try to imagine the absence of a Spanish language network 30 years from now. Equally ludicrous.
After 200 years of successfully assimilating immigrants, cultural, linguistic and ethnic balkanization is here to stay.
A thin blue line
Oh. My.
I’ve known this was a classic for years, but I had never seen it before. Decided to watch it as background on the Duke rape fiasco. This film is gut-wrenching. It defies description.
Randall Adams spent 12.5 years in prison, much of it on death row.
You have a small island of sanity–three defense attorneys, a remarkably poised and articulate falsely-accused murder convict, and one cop who knew the real killer first hand. This core of sanity is surrounded by the most remarkable collection of crooked phonies you can imagine: a DA who thinks the highest achievement is to convict an innocent man, ’cause anyone can convict the guilty, a casual murderer who kills again while the innocent man he framed rots in prison, and perjured-for-payoff witnesses so kooky you would accuse them of gross overacting if this were fiction.
It is transparently obvious by the time the film is over who the real killer was. No rational person could question it. But it still took four more years before his conviction was overturned and he was released from prison.
I find it difficult, after watching this, to not question my position on the death penalty.
Mitt’s abortion baby steps
Kathryn Lopez at NRO’s The Corner, quotes and responds to Mitt’s comment on abortion in the debate last night, in which Mitt explained why changing our national perspective on abortion is matter of gentle persuasion, not straight up criminalization. Here is part of here comment:
For a presidential candidate to talk this way — to be adapting the “Women Deserve Better” message of Feminists for Life and co. is a civic contribution. I don’t know who’s going to win this nomination, but I know I’d like Republican nominee who opposes legal abortion and who understands why — that we must protect the sanctity and dignity of human life. And that there are real people — both who were not allowed to be born, and who are walking among us — who have been harmed the “choice” the liberal feminists and their fellow-travelers have put so much of their energy into. If you want to talk about changing hearts and minds, an infusion of this kind of talk is a substantial baby step.
Inclined to agree. K-Lo might be interested to know that Mitt’s perspective here is likely shaped, in part, by the words of the much-maligned founder of his religion, who wrote,
We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion. Hence many are called but few are chosen.
No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood. Only by persuasion, by long suffering, by gentleness, and meekness, and by love unfeigned. By kindness, and pure knowledge which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy and without guile.
The Crucible: the Duke case revisited
WSJ has a good review of Stuart Taylor Jr. and KC Johnson’s Until Proven Innocent, the definitive review of the pathologies that led to the Duke rape case travesty. The review is well worth reading, as is, it appears, the book:
The state attorney general–after an agonizing yearlong investigation, culminating in Mr. Nifong’s removal from the case–determined in April 2007 that Messrs. Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann were innocent of all charges. Nothing–absolutely nothing–had happened at the party. The players’ innocence had been apparent to their own attorneys from the outset. It should have been apparent to Mr. Nifong, too, given all the exculpatory details he knew. But he was desperate to win a close primary election and needed black votes, so he proceeded with an unjustified prosecution and publicly vilified innocent young men.
In this fundamental injustice, he was aided and abetted by others in Durham. Richard Brodhead, the president of Duke, condemned the lacrosse players as if they had already been found guilty, demanded the resignation of their coach and studiously ignored the mounting evidence that Ms. Mangum’s charge was false. He was clearly terrified of the racial and gender activists on his own faculty. Houston Baker, a noted professor of English, called the lacrosse players “white, violent, drunken men veritably given license to rape,” men who could “claim innocence . . . safe under the cover of silent whiteness.” Protesters on campus and in the city itself waved “castrate” banners, put up “wanted” posters and threatened the physical safety of the lacrosse players.
The details should, to borrow a phrase from John Kerry, be seared into our national consciousness. And we cannot allow the perpetrators to escape responsibility, nor the culture of vicious self-righteous conformity in which they wallow.
[Here’s the website of the boneless chicken who runs Duke and should have resigned in shame if he had any conscience at all.]
Something weird going on here
I think we are dealing with a weird cultural moment that I can’t quite put my finger on, but it’s awfully creepy.
In Oregon, we just had the bizarre case of two boys of thirteen being criminally tried for sexual harassment after then over-exuberantly joined in a stupid little seventh grade game known as “butt slap Fridays.”
Today, we have a British student who was arrested and criminally tried for resting her feet on the chair of a train, thereby endangering the upholstery.
A student who was taken to court for putting her feet on a train seat escaped a potentially career-wrecking criminal conviction yesterday after lawyers branded the case a “ludicrous” waste of time and money.
Kathleen Jennings, 19, wiped tears from her eyes as she was given an absolute discharge by Chester magistrates.
The university student, who is studying maths, had fallen foul of the train operator Merseyrail’s “zero tolerance” policy to protect its upholstery.
In both cases, they won, and, as they say, there is nothing quite as satisfying as being shot at and missed. But is this just a coincidence, or is there some kind of cultural pathology creeping in here on both sides of the Atlantic? My sense is that these are not really isolated cases. I think there is something going on here.
No, it’s not judgment day
Lunar eclipse tonight, in the wee hours. We’ll probably wake our kids up for it, which I think is crazy, but my wife is a sentimentalist. You can read about it here [the eclipse, that is, not my wife’s sentimentality.]
Unless you’re a Saudi.
One of my favorite stories from Hirsi Ali’s autobiography Infidel occured on September 16, 1978 when she was living as a child in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. There was a lunar eclipse, and her description of the reaction if breathtaking. People all over the city thought the end of the world was at hand. Neighbors began knocking on their door and asking if they were safe, the muezzin began calling prayer all over the city, people began apologizing to those they had offended.
“Finally, Abeh [Dad] came home, well after nightfall. “Abeh!” We ran to him. “It’s the Day of Judgment. You must ask Ma to forgive you!”
My father bent down till he was level with us and he hugged us. He said, slowly, “If you go to a Saudi and do this”–and he clapped loudly in our faces–”It will cause the Day of Judgment, for the Saudis. They are sheep.”
“So it’s not the Day of Judgment?”
“A shadow has fallen over the moon,” he explained. It is normal. It will pass.”
The 11th Century lives.
On being Australian
This isn’t the only country struggling with immigration and assimilation. The Aussies are giving a go at teaching people to be Australian as a prereq for citizenship.
Applicants for citizenship will also have to answer 20 questions - drawn at random from a pool of 200 - that examine knowledge of Australia’s history, governance and culture. Applicants will be asked to study a Government booklet that devotes several paragraphs to the Melbourne Cup, Australia’s best-known horse race, and also to the country’s obsession with cricket and other sports.
Among the lessons are how to be a “mate.”
Mateship is defined as a tradition “where people help and receive help from others voluntarily, especially in times of adversity. A mate can be a spouse, partner, brother, sister, daughter, son or a friend. A mate can be also a complete stranger.”
Sounds like one way to get a social disease.
The new tests for citizenship - which will include a requirement that applicants have lived for four years in Australia instead of the current three - are part of the Howard Government’s plans to promote Australian values further after violent beachside clashes in Sydney in 2005 between Muslim and white youths draped in Australian flags.
I guess it’s a step in the right direction, on an Australian beach, to find people draped in anything.
It takes a village to steal your child
When Tom Cruise filed his Minority Report, it was science fiction. Now, it’s news.
This is unbelievable. Flag it and fear it, because it’s possible anywhere the aggressive nanny state is [see book by Hillary Clinton]. England is suffering from a rash of preemptive child removals where no harm occurred and there is no indication any will. Seizures are being made on the basis on vague assessments by doctors who never met the mother or child.
In the case cited here, the mother was raped when she was sixteen and suffered emotional trauma from that for a few years. [Duh.] Now she is an adult and pregnant, and she shows no signs of being a risk to herself or anyone else. But some pompous pediatrician has announced, purely the basis of her past history, that she presents a risk of “Munchausen’s Syndrome by proxy,” where a parent harms a child to fake an illness and get attention. So the state is poised to seize the child from her at birth.
The horror, in part, is that it mimics the attitudes in extreme Islam, where a rape victim is treated as polluted and can never be whole–as if the crime against here were her own fault. Now England is doing this to rape victims too, under the guise of protecting children?
The case adds to growing concern, highlighted in a series of articles in The Sunday Telegraph, over a huge rise in the number of babies under a year old being taken from parents. The figure was 2,000 last year, three times the number 10 years ago.
Critics say councils are taking more babies from parents to help them meet adoption “targets”.
John Hemming, the Liberal Democrat MP and chairman of the Justice for Families campaign group, said the case showed “exactly what is wrong with public family law”.
He added: “There is absolutely no evidence that Fran would harm her child. However, a vague letter from a paediatrician who has never met her has been used in a decision to remove her baby at birth, while evidence from professionals treating her, that she would have no problems has been ignored.”
And some people wonder why libertarians [that’s libertarians, not librarians] fear and loathe government.
Some memorial
Blue Crab draws our attention to a great column by Peggy Noonan, where, in an elegant indirect rebuttal to TNR’s slander of American troops, she describes an encounter with an elderly Frenchman in Normandy who, upon learning they were Americans, toasted them tearfully because they were …
sons and daughters of, the men of the Normandy Invasion. The men who had fought their way through France hedgerow by hedgerow, who’d jumped from planes in the dark and climbed the cliffs and given France back to the French. He thought we were of their sort. And he knew they were good. He’d seen them, when he was young.
Then, by contrast, there is this:
But this makes me think of the statue I saw once in Vienna, a heroic casting of a Red Army soldier. Quite stirring. The man who showed it to me pleasantly said it had a local nickname, “The Unknown Rapist.” There are similar memorials in Estonia and Berlin; they all have the same nickname.
Some memorial.
[In particular, Noonan describes the systematic practice of rape in East Prussia, the part of Germany now absorbed into Poland, Russia and Lithuania. My family came from that region, and I know first hand that the rep of the Russian soldier goes back to WWI, not just WWII.]
Give the mullahs some credit
Iran has shut down two dozen decadent barber shops. Look, we like to pick on the Iranians, but give credit where credit is due. From a purely aesthetic standpoint, it’s hard to argue with shutting these buggers down, though how the West gets blamed for this nonsense is beyond me:
Eleven women’s hair-stylists were told to stop trading for offering customers’ tattoos. Tattooed eyebrows - in which the hair is shaved and replaced with elaborate patterns - are popular amongst many young Iranian women.
A further 13 barbers were closed for giving customers excessively eye-catching haircuts and plucking men’s eyebrows. Many young Iranian men wear their hair in a gelled-up bouffant that would look outlandish even in some western countries.
Celebrate good times, come on!
The Pakistani Supreme Court has declared that former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif can return prior to the elections, throwing the politics of the country into chaos and severely threatening Musharraf’s bid to stay in power:
Supporters of Sharif hugged each other and poured out of the white marble building onto the main avenue, where they slaughtered four goats in celebration. As blood spilled on the asphalt, backers of Sharif shouted: “Farewell, farewell, Musharraf, farewell.”
A good time was had by all. Except the goats. And the street cleaners.
The horror we face
[Whaaaaaat??? Egyptian-Aussie cleric tries to fathom what he said wrong. See below.]
[Warning: horror post. Read at your own risk.]
The horror that is Islamic culture utterly defies speech. It leaves you sick in your gut. But just because you are numb does not justify silence, and just because it gets wearying does not excuse shifting to more amusing distractions.
Michelle Malkin has been as fearless on this front and deserves a Medal of Freedom for her efforts. Read this post on the rape by a Somali woman by a Somali man in St. Paul, and note the indifference of the neighbors. Read this news account, if you dare, of a ghastly incident in Afghanistan involving a seven year old girl:
Rape is not uncommon in Afghanistan, but victims rarely come forward because a girl or woman losing her virginity out of wedlock is seen as disgracing her entire family.
“It’s not reported because of family honor. It’s very unusual that they’re bringing this forward,” said Naderi of Women for Afghan Women.
“No one in Afghanistan wants anyone to know their daughter has been raped because a girl’s virginity is so highly valued here. If a girl loses her virginity for any reason … she’s not a girl anymore. She’s a woman. Unmarriageable.”
Ayan Hirsi Ali writes in her autobiography that she was taught to fear males when in Saudi Arabia. A woman alone was viewed as asking to to be raped, and might very well expect it. She once got lost running home from school in a rainstorm, and a decent Saudi man stopped to help her. “Allah will witness what you do to me,” she screamed as she had been taught. [I am citing from memory.] The strict rules of never being in public without a male escort and covering all body parts for fear of provoking a rape are not without foundation.
The attitude toward rape is pervasive. The Egyptian-Australian imam [in picture] said as much with his infamous observation,
“If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it…whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat?”
Animals. By his own admission. But worse than animals. Cats don’t eat kittens.
Under a thin gauze of piety, it’s a culture obsessed with sex and the degradation of women. Egypt, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistani honor killings … Someone, please, convince me that this is not systemic. Convince me that “moderate” Islam has no part of this, and that all of these indications of a culture rotten to the bone are an illusion. I am sick at heart. I am numb.
