January 31, 2005

JOHN KERRY'S WORLD: IT'S ALWAYS XMAS IN CAMBODIA

John Kerry remains a hero in his own mind. His magical mystery Xmas in Cambodia in 1968 now includes a new fantasy element. Not only was he shot at by the Khmer Rouge, but he was secretly running arms to them!

"Mr. President, I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the President of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia.
I have that memory which is seared-seared-in me, that says to me, before we send another generation into harm's way we have a responsibility in the U.S. Senate to go the last step, to make the best effort possible in order to avoid that kind of conflict..."
--John Kerry, on the Senate floor, 132 Cong.Rec. S3564-02.

MEET THE PRESS: 1-30-2005

MR. RUSSERT: And you have a hat that the CIA agent gave you?

SEN. KERRY: "I still have the hat that he gave me, and I hope the guy would come out of the woodwork and say, "I'm the guy who went up with John Kerry. We delivered weapons to the Khmer Rouge on the coastline of Cambodia." We went out of Ha Tien, which is right in Vietnam. We went north up into the border. And I have some photographs of that, and that's what we did. So, you know, the two were jumbled together, but we were on the Cambodian border on Christmas Eve, absolutely..."

January 26, 2005

MADRASSA ON MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS (CONT.)

So far, the story of Columbia's administration and its nest of anti-Western, anti-Semitic professors is one of Dhimmitude*. The administration appears intent on a whitewash, while claiming the high moral ground of defender of academic freedom. A common and current technique of intellectual cowards is to launch a highly personal attack and then claim victim status while assuming a tone of aggrieved moral superiority. We've come to expect this from political leftists like Barbara Boxer, but it is also a common practice by members of the Israel hating academic left. Here's one student's response to an anti-semitic professor. Let us hope Lee Bollinger can screw up his courage and learn from Victor Luria.

Student Intimidation Here and Now

By Victor Luria
January 26, 2005

The New York Times recently reported that there is little evidence of student intimidation at Columbia. Really?
On Sept. 27, 2004, I wrote a letter to faculty member Hamid Dabashi protesting his article in Al-Ahram (an extremist Egyptian governmental publication) that he signed as a member of the Columbia faculty.

Dabashi de-legitimizes Israel, never calling it by name and instead, only referring to Palestine. It is constantly described as an occupied country (the Ben-Gurion airport is a “checkpoint” or a “garrison” where travelers are “inmates”). Dabashi describes Israelis in truly frightening terms, saying that “a subsumed militarism, a systemic mendacity with an ingrained violence constitutional to the very fusion of its fabric, has penetrated the deepest corners of what these people have to call their ‘soul.’”

The presence of soldiers is emphasized, although he makes no mention of the fact that soldiers are on the streets to prevent Palestinian terror attacks. Israeli soldiers, when not described as “teenage ninjas with German shepherds,” loot a bank (Dabashi fiction). In one egregious paragraph, he describes a “white” Israeli officer and two “black” Israeli soldiers. The “white” is described as a “mighty cobra”, while the two “black” soldiers and himself are “pigeons.” These analogies are shocking and dehumanizing, and so are Dabashi’s racial categories. His accusation that the Israeli soldiers are racist is false. I served in the Israeli army under the command of a black officer. These categories are a product of Dabashi’s mind—in Israel, we never refer to people as whites and blacks.

The general accusations in Dabashi’s article are pure, unadulterated anti-Semitism, which is what I wrote to Hamid Dabashi and, in a separate letter, to the Columbia administration..."
See the rest here.

Also, see Martin Kramer on Columbia, here.

For a definition of dhimmitude see Dhimmi Watch.

January 25, 2005

MADRASSA ON MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS

The distinct aroma of cowardice wafts over Low Library:

An Alumnus's Disgust With Columbia

By Robbie Majzner
January 24, 2005

"...I am disgusted with the Columbia community. I am not disgusted because of threats to academic freedom, or because students may feel harassed. What disgusts me is the silence of this community in response to a statement about Israelis made by MEALAC professor Hamid Dabashi in an article in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram. The statement reads: “Half a century of systematic maiming and murdering of another people has left its deep marks on the faces of these people, the way they talk, the way they walk, the way they handle objects, the way they greet each other, the way they look at the world. There is an endemic prevarication to this machinery, a vulgarity of character that is bone-deep and structural to the skeletal vertebrae of its culture...”
See the rest here.

January 20, 2005

"EPPUR SI MUOVE"-BUT IT MOVES

Summers: 'I Was Wrong'
President apologizes for comments on women in science

"Facing mounting pressure on campus and in the national press, University President Lawrence H. Summers issued last night his most extensive apology since suggesting on Friday that “innate differences” between the sexes may account in part for the underrepresentation of women on elite science faculties.
“I deeply regret the impact of my comments and apologize for not having weighed them more carefully,” Summers wrote in an open letter to the Harvard community..."

        When Galileo, using the scientific method of observation, argued in favor of the heliocentric theory, Church scholars indignantly demanded he recant. A leader among them was Cardinal Bellarmin. "...He was earnest, sincere, and learned, but insisted on making science conform to Scripture. The weapons which men of Bellarmin's stamp used were purely theological. They held up before the world the dreadful consequences which must result to Christian theology were the heavenly bodies proved to revolve about the Sun and not about the Earth. Their most tremendous dogmatic engine was the statement that "his pretended discovery vitiates the whole Christian plan of salvation." Father Lecazre declared "it casts suspicion on the doctrine of the incarnation." Others declared, "It upsets the whole basis of theology. If the Earth is a planet, and only one among several planets, it can not be that any such great things have been done specially for it as the Christian doctrine teaches. If there are other planets, since God makes nothing in vain, they must be inhabited; but how can their inhabitants be descended from Adam? How can they trace back their origin to Noah's ark? How can they have been redeemed by the Saviour?" Nor was this argument confined to the theologians of the Roman Church..."
        Legend has it that after recanting before the Inquisition and thereby saving his life, Galileo rose from his knees and said “but it moves”. Will Summers be stripped of his academic honors by the feminist inquisition? Will Summers's multiple apologies be enough? The Inquisition spared Galileo death at the stake. Now that Summers, to save his job, has thoroughly emasculated himself by abandoning his defense of the scientific method, perhaps his politically correct feminist accusers will be satisfied. However, President Summers, Galileo was right: 'eppur si muove'.

January 19, 2005

INTELLECTUAL BROWNSHIRTS ON THE MARCH AGAIN

Pull down the shades! Lock the doors! Hide the books! The intellectual brownshirts are on the march again. This time it’s the cadre of women professors who have been outraged by the idea—by an idea, mind you—uttered by the head man of Harvard, Lawrence Summers. (Click HERE)

During a conference in which a group of intelligent men and women were brought together to exchange ideas about why it was so difficult to recruit women into science, mathematics, and engineering and why there was such a large discrepancy between the number of males and females in the field, Summers raised the possibility that there might be a biological factor that might help to explain the facts.

The reaction among a group of women attending was to become outraged and either walk out or make some other attempt at destroying the idea. If you don’t like an idea, destroy it. Burn the books, rage and intimidate, threaten, stamp out the idea.

Intellectual discourse has been stunted for the past thirty years by two major issues—the factors that play a part in the development of homosexuality and its forms and vicissitudes; and the factors that play a part in the differences in the cognitive behavior between men and women.

Gay activists want to stamp out the idea that homosexuality may be influenced by experience. They want the world to believe that gayness is primarily a biological factor and cannot be altered—like skin color. And for thirty years the rich, powerful gay-activist lobby have shut down the possibility that research might investigate in this area or that discourse might be conducted in an open forum. Whoever tries it will be given the brown-shirt treatment by members of the gay-faculty or student body and their allies on the radical left.

Feminist activists have more or less accomplished the same thing in the sphere of gender cognitive function. In this field it is forbidden to believe that any differences in mental functioning between men and women are caused by biological factors. All differences, if they exist, must be attributed to experience and not biology. If there are fewer women in science than men, it must be because men somehow keep them out of science.

This field of discourse has been stopped too by brown-shirt techniques. The phenomenon described by the Boston Globe and The New York Times is only one tiny example of a widely occurring but unacknowledged censorship.

Perhaps Mr. Summers will lead a return to the possibility of open discourse about ANY topic in the academy. That’s what higher education is all about, isn’t it?

January 18, 2005

HANOI JOHN- BACK AT WORK

Horsefeathers thanks the Swift boat veterans that this man is not being inaugurated on Thursday. Perhaps he'll vote for her before he votes against her.

CAPITOL HILL Senator John Kerry says he still doesn't know if he'll vote to confirm Secretary of State designate Condoleezza Rice.
During her confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill today, Kerry told her that her approval by the Senate was almost certain -- but that his own vote is "yet to be determined..."
See the rest here.

BOXER VS. RICE

        Instead of wasting bandwidth on the loathsome Barbara Boxer, Horsefeathers gives the final say on her encounter with Condeleeza Rice to Dr. Johnson:
"...there is no proportion between the two (wo)men; they must not be named together. A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still..."

January 16, 2005

ABU MAZEN'S JUSTICE: NO TORTURE INVOLVED

        Newly elected leader Abu Mazen's Fatah killers won't be hearing howls of outrage and condemnation from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch,the UN, or the Editorial boards of the NYTimes and Washington Post. As designated victims of the cruel Israelis, they can't possibly be perpetrators of crimes against humanity. Only countries like Israel and the United States can be reproached for using torture. Wrapping a suspected terrorist in the Israeli flag is just too horrible a humiliation to inflict, and elicits handwringing outrage from the usual self indulgent moralists, like Andrew Sullivan. Meanwhile as the Palestinians go about the business of murdering suspected collaborators with Israel, Fatah assures one and all that these public executions involve no torture. How considerate, how humane! After pumping 25 bullets into suspect Ali Mansour's head, a Fatah spokesman said Mansour had confessed to all the accusations against him. He hastened to add, "We didn't use any form of physical pressure...The confession was videotaped and the fact that there weren't any signs of abuse on his body shows that he hadn't been tortured." At the same time, its unlikely this story will ever make it to the NYTimes front page or the newsdesks of the MSM. There's no easy way to blame it on the United States.
See the full story here.

January 15, 2005

THE TRIUMPH OF HOPE OVER EXPERIENCE

        Mahmoud Abbas or Abu Mazen (his proud 'nom de guerre'), is 69 years old. He has a long history of savagery which his Western enablers are trying desparately to ignore. It is truly extraordinary to read the NYTimes praising this well coiffed thug. (Has anyone inquired how Mr. Abbas/Mazen got the money to pay for those suits?) Anyone remember the Munich Olympics? Apparently not the investigative reporters at the NYTimes and CBS who have persuaded themselves that 30+ years as a Jew hating terrorist makes him a 'moderate'. Amazingly, Sports Illustrated did remember, and in 2002, 30 years after the murders, they tracked down Abu Douad, the admitted coordinater of the massacre. Douad, then living in Syria, asserted that "...Abu Mazen, was responsible for the financing of the Munich attack. Abu Mazen could not be reached for comment regarding Abu Daoud's allegation. After Oslo in 1993, Abu Mazen went to the White House Rose Garden for a photo op with Arafat, President Bill Clinton and Israel's Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. "Do you think that ... would have been possible if the Israelis had known that Abu Mazen was the financier of our operation?" Abu Daoud writes. "I doubt it."
        Abbas/Mazen's relationship to Yasser Arafat has been approximately that of Heinrich Himmler to Adolph Hitler. Abbas/Mazen, Arafat's chosen successor, is in fact a holocaust denier who authored a book titled: The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and the Zionist Movement.
        The efforts by Israel and Western fantasists to invest Abbas/Mazen with the trappings of moderation and statesmanship call to mind the story of the Frog and the Scorpion: After convincing the frog to carry him across a pond, the scorpion bites him half way to shore. As he dies, the frog asks why he did it as they both will die. The scorpion replies, "It's in my nature." Utopians would rather die than face such truths.

SANDBOX DEMOCRATS: SORE LOSER DEPT.

Horsefeathers maintains that the contemporary liberal imagination has regressed from maturity into childish utopianism. Part of maturation, learned in the playground by approximately age 10, is how to handle defeat graciously. Tantrums are unacceptable. Grown ups carry that knowledge with them in the form of disdain for sore losers. It has been instructive to watch the behavior of liberals since the defeat of their candidate. Here's the latest bit of childishness:

ANTI-INAUGURATION

"An "alternative inaugural ball" scheduled in Washington for Jan. 20 appears to have lost its top two attractions: Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean.

Obama and Dean were featured in mailings sent to Democratic contributors for the event at the National Press Club. However, fund-raiser Ted Westervelt told this column that Obama, originally pencilled in, has become a "maybe." Dean has been removed entirely because, said Westervelt, "he decided he had to do other things because of his run" for chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York promised only to "drop by" the event briefly. The one absolutely certain guest is Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts. Elizabeth Edwards (wife of 2004 vice-presidential nominee John Edwards) and talk-show host Al Franken will likely attend."

January 10, 2005

OUR FRIENDS THE SAUDIS

"...According to an article in the official government newspaper of Saudi Arabia, Al-Watan, U.S. soldiers have been harvesting the organs of their Iraqi victims. The mission in Iraq has turned into “a profitable trade in the American markets,” reporter Fakhriya Ahmad writes..."
See the rest here.

January 08, 2005

THE UN GIVES NEW MEANING TO "PEACEKEEPING"

While Kofi Annan and his fellow utopians insist on the noble strivings of selfless UN "peacekeepers", those with first hand experience tell a different story:
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - "Sexual abuse of girls by U.N. peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was widespread and ongoing despite many revelations and probes, the U.N. watchdog agency reported on Friday.

The peacekeepers over the last year have been accused of gang rapes, sexual harassment and bribing children as young as 12 or 13 with eggs, milk and a few dollars to have sex in bushes, on the bare ground or under mango trees..."
See the rest here.

January 06, 2005

OUR CHARITABLE FRIENDS THE SAUDIS

The oil ticks who rule Saudi Arabia have pledged the sum of one Prince's Saville Row shopping spree-10 million dollars- for victims of the Tsunami. Last year they donated 150 million dollars to families of suicide bombers as a reward for murdering Jews.
(Hattip to A. Hopewell)

<< Back to Horsefeathers