New York Daily News Writer Wants Every NRA Member Jailed as Terrorists

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Once in a while someone has a name so perfect that you can hardly believe it's possible.  For example, who would have thought that an outright, sociopathic fascist who wanted to have her political opponents jailed would be named Linda Stasi.  It could hardly get more fitting.

Anyway, Linda Stasi has a dream - a dream in which the National Rifle Association will be declared a terrorist organization and all of its members will be interred at Guantanamo Bay.  I am not misstating her position - here she is in her own words:

One terrorist group is responsible for more civilian deaths since December 2012 (the Sandy Hook massacre) than Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Hamas and the Taliban. Yet it is the only nearly-state sponsored terrorist group that is not listed by the U.S. State Department as such.

I'm not entirely sure I understand her logic here.  The four groups she listed (and ISIS is conspicuously absent since they have killed so many people that she can't hysterically pretend the NRA is responsible for more deaths than they are) are groups which actually murder other people - which set off explosives in market squares, which gun down innocent people in the street, which decapitate their enemies, sell little girls into sexual enslavement, and conduct political assassinations.  The NRA, on the other hand, supports the right of the individual to possess firearms for target shooting, hunting, or self-defense.  I am having a difficult time understanding the connection, but I'm sure she will explain it to me.

It is the National Rifle Association and for their unending lobbying that’s kept a lid on gun control we now have 428 times more American deaths by gun than deaths by foreign terrorists.

This entire argument rests on a series of assumptions, all of them ridiculous.  Assumption a) if we implemented gun control laws it would be guaranteed to result in fewer murders, even though our attempts at prohibiting other items (such as drugs and alcohol) have not only failed, but have actually led to higher crime rates.  Assumption b) the only reason gun control laws aren't stricter is because of the NRA.  It has nothing to do with the desires of actual Americans, you understand, even though at present more than half of Americans think it's more important to protect gun rights than to implement gun control.  According to Pew Research, 52% of Americans support protecting the right to bear arms, so this writer apparently believes half of our country is comprised of terrorists who ought to be jailed.

Stasi does appear to have a rather difficult time with analogies though, as she continues in a similar vein:

 No? Between 2012 and 2015, according to University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database, ISIS has murdered approximately 12,138 civilians, Boko Haram,10,092, the Taliban 9,427 and Hamas, 85.

In that time, Americans have murdered or spree killed via gun and assault rifle, 87,423 people in the United States.

First of all, her statistics are wrong.  In the United States of America, the total number of people murdered annually (through all methods, not just guns) is about 16,000.  That means that between 2012 and 2015 (which is 4 years) we could expect there to have been about 52,000 total murders in the United States through all methods.  However, the gun murder rate is about 3.6 per 100,000.  That means that in a country like America, where we have approximately 320 million people, there would be about 11,500 murders annually with firearms.  In four years, that means the number of Americans murdered via gun would be 46,000, not 87,423.  Now, I ask you, if someone manages to use a number that is actually twice the number which exists in reality, should you trust that person?  Or should you consider that, just maybe, they are an untrustworthy liar purposefully falsifying statistics in order to justify their fascist revenge fantasy in which all their political opponents are murdered by the state?  I leave it to the reader to decide.

And on to the false equivalencies!

In contrast, terrorism killed 28 Americans per year on both U.S. soil and abroad according to the Global Terrorism Database.

Of course terrorism kills relatively few Americans which is why I think it's highly irrational for Americans to worry too much about being attacked by terrorists.  However, terrorism does not kill a small number of people globally, particularly in the seriously terrorist impacted nations of the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Northern Africa.  Terrorism is responsible for the overthrow of the Central African Republic's government, which subsequently plunged that country into anarchistic, blood soaked violence.  Islamist kill squads have butchered hundreds of thousands in the last two years alone in Syria, Yemen, Nigeria, Somalia, Libya, and southern Thailand while also launching periodic attacks into India, into Kenya, into Tunisia, and into a large number of other currently stable nations which could very easily be shortly destabilized by encroaching Islamic terror.  Saying that only 28 Americans have been killed is therefore disingenuous - we are not the people primarily being slaughtered by this ideology, so if you wish to make comparisons you should compare American fire arm deaths to people killed by Islamists globally.  If you were to do that, we'd come off looking comparatively good.

Those murdered Americans killed by our own lunatic gun slingers include terrified children calling for their mothers, teachers begging for the lives of their students, students begging for not just their own lives but the lives of their classmates, moviegoers looking for escape, bystanders cheering for athletes, athletes trying to be the best they can be as the worst we ever could have imagined struck them down in cold blood.

Therefore the NRA should take its rightful place on the State Department list of terrorist organizations, because its influence is more of an immediate threat to the lives of our citizens than foreign terrorists.

Notice the shell game she's playing - according to her, the NRA is personally responsible for every person shot in America, even though there's no reason to believe fewer people would be murdered if the NRA had never even existed, therefore the NRA should be treated like a terrorist organization not because they as an organization have killed anyone, but because she believes policies they support has led to unnecessary death.  There's a clear problem here - if we used this standard to determine who counts as a terrorist, virtually everyone could be considered a terrorist.  For example, did you support the Iraq War, as the vast majority of Americans did?  Well, the Iraq War resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.  So should everyone who supported that war be jailed as a terrorist?  How about the Libyan intervention?  Should everyone who supported the overthrow of Qaddafi, which has ended catastrophically for the Libyan people, be considered a 'terrorist?'

How about the War on Drugs?  I personally believe the War on Drugs is responsible for the deaths of thousands of people - deaths caused not only by the WOD being largely responsible for the advent of Mexican and Colombian cartels, but by street gangs fighting turf wars in order to control the sale of illegal contraband.  Therefore, should I be allowed to blame every person who is against decriminalizing drugs and declare that all of them are terrorists who should immediately be shipped off to Guantanamo?

If your answer to the above questions was "no," as any rational person ought to answer those questions, then you should see why the aptly named Stasi is such an obvious moron.  By this logic, I could declare all of my political opponents to be terrorists by nebulously asserting that some policy they favor has killed thousands of people.  Then I could argue that because they supported this murderous ideology, they should all be locked up.  It is hard to describe what a fascist ideology this truly is.

Her grasp of the actual shooting also appears rather weak:

On his visit, the Pope declared America to be the “Land of the free, home of the brave.” Really? 

How brave was it for a sexually frustrated, racist freak with six guns to shoot and kill eight students and a staffer at a college?

First off, this point is clearly idiotic.  The fact that one cowardly scumbag does something is not evidence that a particular land isn't the 'home of the brave.'  For example, Anders Breivik of Norway murdered 77 people.  Now, if I were to say that Norway is a very safe country (which, objectively, it is) would that claim be negated by the fact that one man committed a mass murder?  No, because we understand that when you are talking generally about a collective group, your generalities will not apply to every member of that group.  It therefore does not prove that America isn't 'home of the brave' just because one member happened to be a cowardly murderer.

Secondly, this man was not a racist.  He was half black and half white.  According to witness accounts, he was actually targeting Christians for murder.  Why would this writer claim that his motivations were race based when he was actually an anti-Christian murderer?  Either she doesn't know the facts of the case or is operating from some sort of unknown agenda.

Regardless, I am very sick of leftist caterwauling and crocodile tears. This woman doesn't care about dead people.  After all, if she were opposed to violence, how could she be advocating that millions of Americans be immediately declared terrorists?  If everyone involved in the NRA were declared a terrorist, the US government would be obligated to go after them with the full force of the state.  This would mean that a large number of people would die in hails of gunfire and those that did not would be hauled away in chains and locked in cages for the next decade or two.  So what this woman is advocating is visiting an immense amount of violence upon her fellow citizens...because she doesn't like violence?  So she's so opposed to murder that she plans to murder tens of thousands of people?

This is how emotion rots your brain and leads you to support immensely evil policies under the guise of doing good.  This woman does not care in the slightest about nine corpses, she just wants to make sure a couple thousand of her political enemies join them in the morgue.  If anyone ought to be called out for defending terrorist violence, it should be her, given that she is actively advocating for it.



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The Minimum Wage Has Destroyed Puerto Rico

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Debates on the minimum wage tend to be relatively circular - the people who are in favor of an increased minimum wage tell those who oppose it that they are evil 1%ers who love poverty and want the poor to suffer and most of the debate consists of those of us who oppose increases in the minimum wage defending ourselves against accusations of selfishness.  Unfortunately, not often enough are actual facts and statistics brought into the discussion because by and large people are too busy shouting at each other.

Thankfully, I recently found a pretty interesting fact that I think could add a great deal to this debate.  One of the problems with discussing the minimum wage is that it is very difficult to determine what impact minimum wage increases have on employment.  The reason for this is because wage increases tend to be a) relatively small and b) phased in over long periods of time.  What this means is that you normally can't pick out the actual effect of the wage increase itself because it is swamped by the overall movement up and down of the economy.

Today, though, I found the perfect example of what happens when the minimum wage is increased immediately and the increase is a large one.  Prior to 1974, Puerto Rico had its own minimum wage and was not tethered to the general American wage.  Then, in their infinite wisdom, the US Congress decided to normalize the minimum wage across all US territories and passed legislation making Puerto Rico's minimum wage the same as the American wage had always been.

Well what happened next, you might ask?  The economy imploded.  Puerto Rico had an unemployment rate around 12% and an employment to population ratio of approximately 78% pretty much continuously between 1960 and 1974.  The numbers had gone up a bit - they had come down a bit - but overall, year in and year out, you could look at Puerto Rico and be sure that the unemployment rate would be between 10 and 14 percent and the employment to population ration would be between 75 and 80 percent.  You could set your watch by this kind of consistency.

Then Puerto Rico's minimum wage was raised substantially beginning in 1974.  The Puerto Rican unemployment rate then proceeded to increase for four consecutive years until it peaked at 20%.  It roughly plateaued for half a decade or so, and then it went up again until Puerto Rico had an unemployment rate of 25% by 1984.  Meanwhile, the employment to population ratio fell from 78% to 60% and has never recovered.

It is not just me pointing out the absolutely catastrophic consequences of the minimum wage increase in Puerto Rico - the National Bureau on Economic Research agrees.  According to them:

 Imposing the U.S.-level minimum reduced total island employment by 8-10 percent compared to the level that would have prevailed had the minimum been the same proportion of average wages as in the United States. In addition, it reallocated labor across industries, greatly reducing jobs in low-wage sectors that had to raise minima substantially to reach federal levels. (3) Migrants from Puerto Rico to the United States are drawn largely from persons jobless on the island, with characteristics that make them liable to have been disemployed by the minimum wage. As the Puerto Rican minimum rose toward U.S. levels, the education of migrants fell below that of nonmigrants. (4) Migration was critical in allowing Puerto Rico to institute U.S.-level minimum wages and played a major role in the long term growth of real earnings in Puerto Rico by reducing the labor supply and raising the average qualifications of workers on the island. 

In other words, the minimum wage increase caused massive unemployment, forced hundreds of thousands of unemployed Puerto Ricans to flee the island because there were no jobs, and the only reason the entire territory wasn't rendered destitute is because the poorest Puerto Ricans all moved to Chicago or New York rather than choosing to remain unemployed on the island itself.

For some reason, there are people in America currently arguing that the American minimum wage should be almost doubled - that it should be raised to $15.00 an hour.  Were this to occur, every poor community in America would suffer the fate of Puerto Rico - it would see unemployment skyrocket, it would see a drastic increase in poverty, and it would slowly become completely depopulated as the unemployed engaged in a forced exodus from their homes which they could no longer afford to live in due to the stupidity of their fellow voters.  More importantly, if a $7.00 minimum wage can wreak this kind of havoc in Puerto Rico, imagine what would happen to the Puerto Ricans if our minimum wage were increased to $15.00 while they were still forced to have the same minimum wage as the rest of the country.  It would be disastrous.  What we are talking about is essentially destroying Puerto Rico and hurling every person living on that island into crippling poverty.

Somehow, I doubt they will thank you for destroying their lives.  Maybe you should actually look into the facts, you do-gooders, before you act without thinking. Follow @jrireland1

Why are Ahmed Mohammad's Parents Letting Him Associate With Arabic Tyrants?

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Initially I supported Ahmed the Clock Kid - I assumed this was yet another example, and there are limitless examples of this kind of thing if you're willing to look, in which an innocent kid was mistreated as a direct result of ridiculous zero tolerance policies adopted by American schools. However, something about his behavior following his ordeal has deeply concerned me - if Ahmed and his family care so much about civil rights, why is Ahmed Mohammed traveling around the world and meeting with oppressive theocratic dictators?

For example, Ahmed Mohammad was absurdly invited to the United Nations for reasons that I fear will remain forever unclear.  Was he treated unfairly?  Very possibly, but it was such a minor mistreatment in the grand scheme of things, particularly given the sort of atrocities occurring globally every minute of every day, that there is no reason whatsoever to treat this as if it is a seriously important issue deserving of UN sanction.  It was therefore completely ridiculous that he was invited to the United Nations in the first place (particularly given that the UN allows murderous, misogynistic, homophobic terror states like Saudi Arabia to chair their human rights council), but his behavior at the UN was even more disconcerting.  Below, you will find a picture of Ahmed Mohammad taking a selfie with the prime minister of Turkey:

Ahmed Mohamed shares a selfie with Turkish PM Ahmet Davutoğlu, saying "Every Ahmed is great" http://t.co/JCYdzGv29F pic.twitter.com/jfAELcin06

— DAILY SABAH (@DailySabah) September 26, 2015

To grant the reader some perspective, Ahmet Davutoglu is an Armenian genocide denier who has been accused in his role as foreign minister of supplying ISIS and other Jihadist organizations and who also appears to want to reinvent a Pan-Islamic Ottoman Empire.  Is he the worst the Middle East has to offer?  No, and by comparison to the leaders of other Muslim states he's destined for sainthood, but if I were complaining about my own civil rights violations I would not be palling around with the Prime Minister of a country that has arrested dozens of journalists in the last 10 years, virtually all of them on trumped up charges, continues to deny that a genocide against the Armenians ever occurred, blasts gay rights marchers with fire hoses and have clamped down on political opposition and media that is critical of the government.

What the Turks do on a day to day basis is worse than anything that happened to Ahmed and it is absolutely grotesque that he is giving a Turkish prime minister this sort of photo opportunity.

That's not all though!  Ahmed is not merely meeting with the Turkish PM, who is bad enough, but is also meeting with the Qatari government, as reported by the Dallas Morning News.

Everyone was expecting North Texas’ most famous teen to return home from his national tour this week. A Dallas public relations firm hoping to sign Ahmed Mohamed had even made plans for a limousine to pick him up at the airport when they flew in from New York. 

But they’ll have to wait a little longer, because Ahmed and his family are detouring for Qatar, per a statement the family released this morning. 

“The last few weeks have been truly life-changing for my son Ahmed and for our family,” Mohamed Elhassan Mohamad said in a prepared statement announcing the trip. 

After Ahmed met the prime minister of Turkey at the United Nations last week, a foundation offered the boy a tour of “Education City”—a 5-square-mile cluster of universities and think tanks in the Qatari capital, Doha.

Okay, let's discuss Qatar.  Qatar is literally a slave society.  They have been forcing Nepalese immigrants into actual forced servitude, including refusing to allow Nepalese workers to return to Nepal for the funerals of relatives who had died in earthquakes.  According to the International Trade Union Confederation, at least 4000 workers will die building the stadiums for Qatar's 2022 World Cup.

Now for a lightning round of horrific abuses from Qatar.

On the subject of gay rights, in Qatar homosexual sex is illegal and carries with it a five year prison sentence.  Qatar actually plans to scan for gay World Cup fans in an attempt to keep them out of the country.

Now let's discuss labor rights.  In Qatar, you actually need an exit visa to leave the country.  What this means is that employers are actually able to stop workers from leaving by refusing to grant them exit visas.  Here is how Human Rights Watch describes the situation:

Law No. 4 of 2009, which regulates the sponsorship, employment, and residence of expatriate workers, requires they obtain residence permits, and exit permits when they wish to leave the country. Under the kafala system, these permits are provided by “residence sponsors,” who can effectively prevent those they sponsor from leaving Qatar. 

The law does not require residence sponsors to justify their failure to provide an exit permit, instead placing the onus on the sponsored expatriate to find another Qatari national willing to act as an exit sponsor. Alternatively, the expatriate must publish a notice in two daily newspapers and then provide a certificate 15 days later showing that he or she faces no outstanding legal claims. The exit visa requirement cannot be justified as a means of preventing foreigners fleeing court cases in Qatar, as the Interior Ministry has separate powers to impose travel bans on non-citizens facing criminal charges or civil claims in Qatar’s courts.

This is outright slavery.  Businesses in Qatar are capable of making it essentially impossible for their employees to leave.  This is a grotesque assault on the freedom of movement of individual human beings and cannot be justified in any sense.

How about women's rights?  Again according to Human Rights Watch:

Provisions of Law No. 22 of 2006, Qatar’s first codified law to address issues of family and personal status law, discriminate against women. Article 36 states that two men must witness marital contracts, which are concluded by male matrimonial guardians. Article 57 prevents husbands from hurting their wives physically or morally, but article 58 states that it is a wife’s responsibility to look after the household and to obey her husband. Marital rape is not a crime.

Qatar therefore not only codifies female responsibilities in a highly patriarchal manner, but they actually allow men to commit rape at will against their wives.  

Why am I bringing all this up?  Because the immense, inexcusable, vile, disgusting hypocrisy of Ahmed Mohammad's family must be brought to public attention because I am beginning to suspect that these are bad people not worthy of our respect or admiration. Let me be clear: I am not criticizing Ahmed himself, since he is 14 and cannot be expected to understand exactly what is occurring.  I was an idiot when I was 14 and am highly grateful I was not held to the same moral standards as adults since I would have been completely incapable of meeting those standards.

However, what are Ahmed's parents doing?  They cannot conceivably be stupid enough not to know about the human rights abuses of the men who they are using Ahmed's new-found fame to legitimize. They cannot possibly be unaware that they are allowing their child to visit with and befriend international tyrants, murderers, rapists, slave holders, genocide deniers and despots of every sort. This is morally inexcusable and it is particularly inexcusable and hypocritical when you consider that this family is only famous because they allege that they were mistreated by American police officers. Compared to the violations Ahmed had to deal with, the daily violations of Turkey and Qatar are immensely more important in every conceivable way.  Yet this family, these people who complain about the mistreatment of their son, see no problem whatsoever in aligning themselves with some of the most brutal, anti-liberal tyrants on the planet.

As I said, I initially sympathized with Ahmed Mohammad, but the behavior of his family and their willingness to link themselves to the absolute worst men on the planet makes me think that there is something very shady going on here, something we might not yet be aware of.  Regardless of their reasoning, Ahmed Mohammad's idiot parents should not be allowed to escape deserved criticism for their support of tyrants, bigots, monsters, and dictators merely because Americans feel guilty about the mistreatment of their son.


Note: This post originally had a title which referred to Mohammad's family as 'scumbags.'  I decided that was mean and overly harsh, so I changed the title.  Their behavior is still deserving of criticism, however.

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Ex-Muslim Banned from Speaking at University While Islamic Fascists Speak on the BBC

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This is almost as bad as people saying mean things about Islam. Almost.

It's getting very, very difficult to pretend that I have any respect for the progressive left.  I would like to respect them, at least on matters related to religion, given that their beliefs regarding religion are, at least supposedly, more reasonable than those of the right-wing.  Unfortunately, whenever I begin to suspect that it is possible I could make common cause with the progressive left, they proceed to support some action so horrific that I am immediately driven away in a state of outright, total disgust.

For example, you would think that on the matter of religious supremacy and right-wing, ultra-conservative religious domination the left would be on the side of angels; that they would look upon any attempt to enforce religious dogma in a secular society with disgust, and would dutifully police the bounds of separation of church and state and refuse to allow the religious sphere to intrude upon the irreligious aspects of a modern society.  Unfortunately, a large portion of the left is no longer willing to stand up to religious bullying and bigotry because in most Western nations the fastest growing religion consists mostly of people who are not white.  Since Islam is a religion comprised mostly of Arabs, Persians, Africans, and Southeast Asians, the Western left has idiotically determined that this particular religion, and this religion alone, must not only be allowed to bully at will, but that any criticism of this religion, no matter how anodyne, is actually evidence of racial bigotry.  This means that the very people who should be standing up to religious conservatism have actually allowed themselves to become its most loyal and most numerous enforcers, gleefully allowing religious psychosis to infiltrate and undercut secular civil society.

This leftist madness reached its apex a few days ago when an ex-Muslim named Maryam Namazie had been scheduled to speak in front of a secular student organization at the University of Warwick and was then banned on the grounds that her criticism of that religion was effectively hate speech.  Specifically, it was determined that her presence might be an insult to the religion and she must therefore be banned so as to protect the precious feelings of any Muslim students who might be terribly triggered should she be allowed to make arguments they personally disagreed with.  The Student Union explained that this ban was justified because:

"There a number of articles written both by the speaker and by others about the speaker that indicate that she is highly inflammatory, and could incite hatred on campus. This is in contravention of our external speaker policy".

There are a number of articles she has written which could prove 'inflammatory.'  Well, what has she actually said which the student union determined to be so inflammatory?  I am personally not entirely sure since they didn't bother quoting any of her ostensibly inflammatory or hate-filled writings, and apparently believe I should unquestioningly believe their assertions about her immoral spewing of racist hatred.  Reading the rest of their statement is no more instructive since even they don't appear to have any idea what they are talking about.  Here is the rest of their statement:

The President (or equivalent) of the group organising any event is responsible for the activities that take place within their events.  All speakers will be made aware of their responsibility to abide by the law, the University and the Union’s various policies, including that they:

• must not incite hatred, violence or call for the breaking of the law

• are not permitted to encourage, glorify or promote any acts of terrorism including individuals, groups or organisations that support such acts

• must not spread hatred and intolerance in the community and thus aid in disrupting social and community harmony

• must seek to avoid insulting other faiths or groups, within a framework of positive debate and challenge

• are not permitted to raise or gather funds for any external organisation or cause without express permission of the trustees.

In addition to this, there are concerns that if we place conditions on her attendance (such as making it a member only event and having security in attendance, asking for a transcript of what she intends to say, recording the speech) she will refuse to abide by these terms as she did for Trinity College Dublin.

You'll notice that at no point did the writers of this statement bother quoting what Maryam Namazie had said which supposedly 'spread hatred' or 'insulted other faiths or groups,' but regardless it doesn't really matter.  After all, this is an unmeetable standard that basically allows them to ban whoever they want at the leisure of whatever 8th rate despot currently runs the Warwick Student Union.  Virtually anything can conceivably 'insult other faiths or groups' since many people are incapable of understanding the difference between criticism and an insult.  In my experience, this is a particularly common misconception among the religious.  They are so obsessed with their faith, and feel their faith to be such an integral aspect of themselves, that any criticism of the religion is considered a personal insult rather than a critique of doctrine.  As a result, having a university policy that allows people to be banned for 'insulting other faiths' basically guarantees that any critic of religion can be banned should they be determined sufficiently controversial.

But this is not the worst aspect of this sordid ordeal.  No, the worst aspect is the absolutely pathetic gloating, the prancing about and giggling happily, that British Islamists engaged in following Maryam's banishment from the halls of the University of Warwick.  A man named Dilly Hussain, who appears to me to be one of the least respectable human beings on planet Earth, actually tweeted at Ms. Namazie to insure that she would be well aware of just how happy her expulsion had made him:

Extremist speaker @MaryamNamazie of @CEMB_forum banned from @warwickuni due to her inflammatory views. Great news. https://t.co/7k1XUvYbyB

— Dilly Hussain (@DillyHussain88) September 26, 2015

And:

Militant secular atheist Islamophobe @MaryamNamazie banned from @warwickuni.A great day for tackling extremism. http://t.co/e979kMriLC

— Dilly Hussain (@DillyHussain88) September 26, 2015

Now who is Mr. Hussain?  Is he some random internet troll whose opinion can be disregarded and ignored since he is completely and utterly irrelevant?  Unfortunately, no he isn't.  Instead, he is a writer for an organization called 5 Pillars, a Muslim news organization based in the United Kingdom, and he has been a guest on the British Broadcast Corporation, where, as can be seen in the video below, he has debated the merits of British history and discussed the alleged superiority of Islam:



Now in that video, Hussain, who begins speaking on the subject of British pride around the 21 minute mark, asserts that he cannot think of a single aspect of British history which he is proud of.  This is a country which, despite the crimes of its empire, played an integral role in the elimination of the global slave trade, was a major proponent of the sort of free speech rights which are now ubiquitous in all civilized societies, and which gave the planet the wonder of parliamentary democracy.  I myself am not British, but other than maybe Holland or France I can think of no nation which I would be prouder to represent than the United Kingdom.

Who does Dilly Hussain support and identify with?  Answer: Islamic caliphates, particularly the often brutally repressive Ottoman Empire!  He later made this explicit in an article he wrote about his encounter on The BBC.

5. Why do I honour and identify with the Ottomans? 

I identify with the Ottomans, just as I identify with the ‘Rightly Guided’ Caliphs, the Umayyads and the Abbasids, as an integral part of Islamic history and my Muslim identity. 

6. Were the Ottomans perfect?  

Far from it. 

7. Did the Ottomans make mistakes? 

Of course the Ottomans made mistakes, some serious ones, and the Prophet Muhammad prophesised the shortcomings and failures of future Caliphates. 

8. Why do I affiliate and identify with the Ottomans and not the British Empire? 

It’s quite simple; because the Ottomans were a major part of Islamic heritage, and it goes hand-in-hand with being a Sunni Muslim to acknowledge their achievements. I had no control over where I was born (Britain), but I do have a choice in the religion I follow (Islam).

This is a farcical and ludicrous joke.  The Ottomans did not merely make 'some mistakes,' they practiced slavery on a society wide scale for decades after it had been abolished by the British.  They waged continual wars of aggression against their neighbors and were actually such colonialistic imperialists that they would have made the British blush.

Moreover, think about what he is saying here - Dilly Hussain is asserting that he supports violent, imperialistic sociopaths because they happened to follow the same religion he follows.  Were he to say that the Ottomans were just as bad as the British Empire (though personally I believe they were vastly worse since they did not have anywhere near the tradition of liberty that came out of Great Britain) then I could at least say that he is being fair.  However, he isn't being fair - he is actively apologizing for a brutally repressive, imperialistic, anti-Democratic authoritarian state of slavers and warmongers because they were Muslim slavers and warmongers.  There are almost no words for this sort of anti-logical psychopathy.

And boy does Mr. Hussain just love slaving murderers provided they follow the proper religion!  This Islamist fascist has written multiple articles for the UK affiliate of the Huffington Post in which he supported Islamic caliphates and argued that they are superior to democracy.  No, that isn't a joke.  Here's a man who supports the elimination of democratic governance and its replacement with Islamic authoritarianism and he is treated as just another talking head by the BBC.  Here he is holding court on the magnificent glory of Islamic caliphates:

The term "Caliphs" and the subsequent statement of "fulfil allegiance to them one after the other" indicates that the governing structure post-prophethood is a Caliphate. The Prophet Muhammad is commanding Muslims to fulfil their allegiance to every Caliph. This quote demonstrates that the only governing system he recognised and specified is the Caliphate. This command is not restricted to a particular generation of Muslims and will always exist, thus a Caliphate today would include all the familiar characteristics of a modern 'state'. 

Supporters of secular liberalism often misquote Imam Shatibi (as Mehdi did). It seems that my fellow journalist is unaware that Shatabi also said, "In the absence of the Caliphate, a state of anarchy and lawlessness would prevail and this would usher in a great corruption and disorder". Thus, Shatibi did not mean to discard Islam as a political structure, nor did he suggest seeking these social principles by any political means, rather they could only be achieved through a Caliphate.

Unfortunately, many Muslims in the field of politics, academia and journalism have adopted a secular framework that has skewed their understanding of the relationship between politics and Islam. This is no surprise since the West invested heavily pre and post Ottoman Empire to ensure that Muslims would no longer desire Shariah law to play a pivotal role in their governance, since they were well aware that men die but ideas endure. 

Due to this secular mentality that dominates and influences their approach to interpreting Islamic texts, they have divorced themselves from the orthodox teachings of Islam and have, as a result, become fringe themselves among the Muslim community.

There are almost no words.  Here is a man outright supporting the elimination of secular liberal democracy and its replacement with an authoritarian, autocratic Islamic Caliphate.  This man is an outright Islamic fascist, who, as far as I am concerned, is no better than the average neo-Nazi.  He also wrote an article in which he expressed concerns about condemning ISIS:

What frustrated me even more were the 'prominent' Muslim apologists who appeared in The Sun's exclusive anti-ISIS feature, in order to provide some level of credibility - as if the British Muslim community aren't aware of the organisations and figures that parrot whatever the establishment wants them to. Such a shady politically motivated campaign isn't worthy of an intellectual response; rather it deserves the primitive treatment that The Sun applies to the Muslim community.

So coming out publicly and condemning ISIS is 'parroting whatever the establishment wants them to.'  That's odd - I was under the impression it was basic human decency.

Hussain continues:

There was no mentioning of Britain's catastrophic foreign policy, which played a pivotal role in the destruction and destabilisation of Iraq in 2003 that subsequently gave birth to ISIS. There was no mentioning of MI5 chiefs who advised against military intervention in Iraq because it would have a blowback at home. There was no mentioning of the failures of the British government in saving the lives of its citizens by negotiating like France, Germany, Italy and Turkey. There was no mentioning of the fact that the British government is arming the Kurdish PKK Peshmerga, a listed terrorist organisation by Nato and EU. There was no mentioning of Alan Henning's brother-in-law, Colin Livesy who was angry at the British government for not doing enough for Alan's release, or Dr Shameela Islam-Zulfiqar, the humanitarian aid campaigner who said the government "handed Alan's death sentence" by joining the US-led air strikes against ISIS. 

As Muslims, we need to question why we are expected to condemn ISIS purely on the basis of being adherents of Islam. Is it a test to see how loyal we are to Britain over Islam? Like most Muslims, I am appalled by the criminality of ISIS, but when I'm pressured to publicise my disgust, I perceive this to be an act of conformity which legitimises the idea of guilt by association of faith.

 He's appalled by ISIS' criminality, you understand, but he does support their goal of establishing an anti-Democratic caliphate as Prophet Mohammad intended.  Moreover, he is more than willing to explain to you all the millions of reasons why he despises Great Britain, but he can't quite bring himself to criticize Ottoman slave holders or ISIS mass murderers.

And so on.  For the record, these are the first three articles by Mr. Hussain that I managed to find.  So I found three articles and in those articles he a) supports the establishment of an authoritarian Islamic Caliphate, b) argues in favor of Ottoman imperialists and slave owners and c) says he's annoyed when people ask him to condemn ISIS.  This man would never be kept from speaking at a British university because he is a Muslim psychopath and Muslim authoritarians are allowed to spew whatever hate-filled nonsense they so desire without once being called to any sort of accounting for their bigotry and support for fascism.  Meanwhile, reasonable ex-Muslim secularists who simply support basic human rights for everyone (including Muslims) are castigated as extremist hatemongers and are banned from speaking at Western colleges on the grounds that their very presence might emotionally damage Muslim students.

Let me put this succinctly: Fuck Islam.  I no longer want to hedge out of fear that some idiot will pathetically attempt to declare that I am a bigot because I despise their religion.  I despise Catholicism too, and desperately wish we lived in a world where fewer Africans had died of AIDS thanks in part to the Catholic Church's antipathy towards condoms.  I wish we lived in a world where the Indian caste system had not caused young girls to be sentenced to be gang raped because their brother had eloped with a woman outside their caste.  There are almost an infinitely high number of evil ideologies currently active in the world, and one of those ideologies just so happens to be Islam. Not radical Islam, as so many people desperately try to pretend, but Islam itself - the Islam that causes a large number of ostensibly moderate Muslims to support the muzzling of critics of their religion; the Islam that allows men who support religious dictatorships to pretend they're moderates simply because they don't plan on strapping on a vest of plastic explosive and taking an express explosion to the land of the 70-something virgins; the Islam that enables and advocates the misogynistic oppression of women, the brutalization of homosexuals, and the complete abolition of the separation of church and state.  These are not extremist aspects of modern Islamic ideology, these are aspects of Islam which are the majority opinions among Muslims globally.

Furthermore, this brand of Islamic fundamentalism is winning, not merely in Middle Eastern backwaters but in Europe.  It is winning because the people who should be standing up for secularism and against religious conservatism are too busy banning secularists from college campuses to even criticize Islamic fascists like Dilly Hussain.  When you have a large number of Muslims entering your country, as is currently occurring because of the refugee crisis, it is particularly imperative that you tell them, in no uncertain terms, that they will abide by secularist ideals if they want to live in your country, that they will not have their precious Islamic caliphate in liberal democracies so long as one Western liberal is still breathing, and that if they attempt to implement Islamic fascism in Western society, they will be met with the sort of opposition against which their pathetic, anti-intellectual, barbaric, savage, iron-age fairy tales will be powerless.  That is what we should be telling them, and instead we ban intelligent, rationalistic secularists from colleges because we're worried their petty little feelings might be hurt.

If the west is ever buried it will not be them who buried us; we'll dig our own hole and jump in with giddy assertions of how goddamn tolerant we are. Follow @jrireland1

Why I Hate the Pope: How Religion Destroys the Mind

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Well, at least the Pope doesn't support burning women to death anymore.  I guess that's a step in the right direction.

This morning, as I was intermittently pretending to work while checking Twitter, I realized that I kept getting more and more miserable but could not understand why.  It didn't make sense - nothing much was happening and certainly nothing to explain why I kept growing ever more unhappy.  Then I realized what was going on.  It was all that goddamn Pope talk.  Everywhere I looked it was nothing but Pope, Pope, Pope, Pope, Pope, just Popeing around like no one's business.  CNN wouldn't stop talking about the Pope and Fox wouldn't stop talking about the Pope; conservatives wouldn't stop talking about the Pope and liberals wouldn't stop talking about the Pope; Catholics wouldn't stop talking about the Pope, protestants wouldn't stop talking about the Pope, atheists wouldn't stop talking about the Pope - the Pope, for at least this morning when he arrived in Washington, D.C. was as ubiquitous and as omnipresent as the non-existent God he pretends to worship.

Then I got to thinking what it is that makes me hate the Pope so much.  It's not like he's a bad guy and he actually seems rather nice.  I'm sure he'd be kind as can be if I actually got around to meeting him, so it can't really be anything personal.  So why do I hate the Pope?  What's he ever done to me?

That's when it really struck me - the reason I hate the Pope is because I'm always being told I should listen to and care about his opinions, yet he's given me no reason to pretend he knows what he's talking about.  For some inexplicable reason, I am constantly being told that I should care what the Pope's political opinions are, but no one has ever bothered explaining why.  What ideas does the Pope have that are worth listening to?  What evidence does he provide for these ideas?  Do his arguments make sense, or are they merely high sounding, platitudinous balderdash that should be rejected out of hand by all sane people?

All the rules about normal political arguments are immediately eliminated whenever the Pope is talking.  We're supposed to pretend that whatever he is currently saying is good and noble and just for no other reason than that he is the Pope - in short, all of society has irrationally determined that we should turn our brains to molten goo and gaze in slack-jawed, yokel-like awe and amazement whenever the Pope is speaking, despite the fact that there is absolutely no reason to believe the Pope's opinions are any more valuable than a random hobo off the street.

Compounding this problem is an issue that is particular to Francis himself - the fact that he is an incredibly dull-witted and mediocre thinker, a man who seems incapable of having an interesting, original, or, indeed, valuable thought.  I don't want to insult him, really, since he seems like a very nice man, he just isn't a particularly bright one.  For example, consider the following statements taken verbatim from a number of Pope Francis' public addresses:

Mr. President, I find it encouraging that you are proposing an initiative for reducing air pollution. Accepting the urgency, it seems clear to me also that climate change is a problem which can no longer be left to a future generation. When it comes to the care of our “common home”, we are living at a critical moment of history. We still have time to make the changes needed to bring about “a sustainable and integral development, for we know that things can change” (Laudato Si’, 13). Such change demands on our part a serious and responsible recognition not only of the kind of world we may be leaving to our children, but also to the millions of people living under a system which has overlooked them. Our common home has been part of this group of the excluded which cries out to heaven and which today powerfully strikes our homes, our cities and our societies. To use a telling phrase of the Reverend Martin Luther King, we can say that we have defaulted on a promissory note and now is the time to honor it.

This is his argument about climate change.  You will notice that he provides no actual argument here from a scientific or a rationalistic perspective - everything he says about the subject that has any value is torn from religious dogma.  He quotes no scientists.  Instead, he quotes a) a reverend who was talking about a subject completely unrelated to climate change and b) a Catholic encyclical.  And that is all he gives us on the subject - Catholic dogma in the place of any actual argument, mindless religious pablum where the actual evidence and proof ought to be.  Here is the rest of his discussion on climate change:

We know by faith that “the Creator does not abandon us; he never forsakes his loving plan or repents of having created us. Humanity still has the ability to work together in building our common home” (Laudato Si’, 13). As Christians inspired by this certainty, we wish to commit ourselves to the conscious and responsible care of our common home. The efforts which were recently made to mend broken relationships and to open new doors to cooperation within our human family represent positive steps along the path of reconciliation, justice and freedom. I would like all men and women of good will in this great nation to support the efforts of the international community to protect the vulnerable in our world and to stimulate integral and inclusive models of development, so that our brothers and sisters everywhere may know the blessings of peace and prosperity which God wills for all his children.

These are all meaningless platitudes with less value than the ramblings of a precocious third grader. There is no information here.  I did not leave this speech with any valuable ideas that I did not enter it with.  On the subject of climate change, therefore, the Pope's comments are worse than useless - he jammed religious argle bargle where the evidence ought to have been, and then pretended he'd made a point when all we were given was platitudinous babble.

And he's just as bad on every other political subject he pathetically tries to discuss.  Here's the Arch Papist on the subject of cruel and vulgar capitalism, given to us from the New York Times:

His speeches can blend biblical fury with apocalyptic doom. Pope Francis does not just criticize the excesses of global capitalism. He compares them to the “dung of the devil.” He does not simply argue that systemic “greed for money” is a bad thing. He calls it a “subtle dictatorship” that “condemns and enslaves men and women.”

He doesn't give us evidence or arguments, you understand - he gives us 'Biblical fury' and 'apocalyptic doom' he splutters about 'subtle dictatorships' that 'condemn and enslave men and women.'  You can literally read entire Pope Francis speeches and not come across a single verifiable fact or a single actual argument.  He just babbles, often for hundreds of words, usually without ever approaching a point which could stand up to even the most cursory sort of scrutiny.

There is nowhere where Francis' obvious anti-intellectualism and lack of learning is more evident than in his wholly irrational critiques of capitalism.  Here is an actual quote from Pope Francis which he gave to a youthful crowd in Paraguay:

"Make a mess, but then also help to tidy it up. A mess which gives us a free heart, a mess which gives us solidarity, a mess which gives us hope."

What on Earth does this even mean?  What is he trying to say?  Make a mess but then tidy it up? There could not be a sentence more meaningless - it is such an outright inconsequential banality that it almost slides through your ear, across your brain, and out your other ear as if it came pre-lubed with Vaseline.  Then there's that second sentence - it must be a mess which 'gives us a free heart,' a mess which 'gives us solidarity, a mess which 'gives us hope...' well how are we supposed to do this and what are you actually telling us, your Holiness?  None of these words actually mean anything. This is not advice, it's nonsense masquerading as advice for the edification of barely literate morons. There is no way to put any of the Pope's ideas into practice because he has no ideas and prefers the banal, inconsequential epigram to the construction of any sort of program or the propagation of any sort of idea.  Furthermore, his Popishness continued:

"We don't want young weaklings. We do not want young people who tire quickly, who live life worn out with faces of boredom. We want youths with hope and strength."

Anyone could have said this.  Literally anyone.  It actually sounds an awful lot like speeches I've heard from various minor celebrities.  For example, when Conan O'Brien left the Tonight Show, here are some parting words he graciously gave to his listeners:

And all I ask is one thing...and this is...I'm asking this particularly of young people that watch...please do not be cynical.  I hate cynicism. For the record, it's my least favorite quality.  It doesn't lead anywhere.  Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get.  

So the Pope said 'we do not want young people who tire quickly, who live life worn out with faces of boredom,' and Conan said we do not want young people that are 'cynical' because it 'doesn't lead anywhere.'  These are virtually identical opinions expressed in very similar language, only in the first instance it came from a man who is inexplicably treated with the utmost seriousness and in the second case it came from a late night talk show host and comedian.  This, I think, illustrates the general problem - Pope Francis has no original thoughts or ideas about any subject and if he were not the Pope, a position he only has because cardinals determined he ought to have it, there is not a single person who would listen to this burbling, mediocre nonsense with anything other than boredom and contempt.

Furthermore, when he does finally get around to saying something which can be verified, he is almost always wrong.  Take his position on capitalism.  The Pope is constantly whinging about how unvarnished greed has led to a decline in the fortunes of the poor and about the degradition of the impoverished at the hands of the wealthy and blah blah blah blah blah.  Unfortunately, as is usually the case when the Pope tries to make an actual argument, he is completely wrong about every concrete fact.  Below, you will find a graph of the global poverty rate since 1970:

Since 1970, the global percentage of people living below $1.00 a day has fallen by 80%.  Yet the Pope is constantly claiming that modern capitalism is 'rapacious' and is 'leaving the poor behind.'  Strangely enough, if you look at actual statistics regarding poverty over the course of the last 40 years, the global poverty rate has fallen continuously and continues to fall.  This does not seem quite so rapacious as he is pretending it is.

What is especially irksome about all of this is that not only is the Pope wrong, but he seems to be positioning Catholic orthodoxy as some sort of alternative.  In other words, the idea is that capitalistic excess has failed, and we must therefore return to the spiritualistic sorcery of Roman Catholicism.  The problem here is that the Pope's own church has constantly failed to address the issue of poverty and want as well as capitalism has.  Por ejemplo, here is another graph regarding global income over time that is most instructive:

Since 1750, the per capita GDP of the richest countries has increased 30 times, the per capita GDP of the second richest has increased 25 times, the third richest has increased 20 times, the GDP per capita of the fourth richest has increased 10 times, and even the per capita GDP of the poorest countries has more than doubled.  Prior to this explosion of wealth which occurred since the 1700s, there had been virtually no growth in the per capita GDP of the human species stretching back 2000 years.  Human beings had made about $2.00 a day since the beginning of civilization, until the capitalistic industrial revolution freed us from the bonds of poverty.

This is important because of what it says about the Catholic church - since the Catholic church was founded it has done literally nothing to end or even to alleviate poverty.  Nothing.  If the Catholic church had never existed, there would not be any significant difference in the wealth of the average person.  Catholics like to talk about how much they help the poor, but capitalism has done more for the poor in the last 300 years than Catholicism did in its 2000 year existence.  This is why I don't want to hear Catholic figures like Pope Francis telling me about how great his economic ideas are - if the economic ideas of Catholicism were so great, then why did the Catholic church spend 1700 years failing miserably to improve the lives of the poor, before being bailed out by the wonder of capitalism?

The Pope therefore believes we should do less of what works (Capitalism) and more of what doesn't work (Catholicism).  The fact that people take this seriously reflects horrendously on human nature.

And what gives him the authority to hold court on subjects he does not understand?  What reason is there to even care what some religious figure has to say about subjects of which he has no unique information to add to the conversation?  The answer is that there is no reason to take him seriously, but we do anyway because of the nonsensical belief, still strangely prevalent in America, that religious figures should be treated respectfully, rather than mocked when they are provably incompetent.

But think about where this guy actually comes from and what his credentials actually are.  Really think about this.  How is the Pope chosen?  Well, he's chosen in what is known as a 'Papal Enclave.'  In the Papal Enclave, the College of Cardinals comes together and elects the new Bishop of Rome!  Hosanna in the highest!  They have been doing this in exactly the same way for 1000 years, meaning that the ritual for choosing the Pope actually predates the Crusades.  This is literally an iron age ritual, that continues to be taken seriously by the Catholic Church to this day.

So the Pope isn't elected through any reasonable, modern method such as a vote of all Catholics on Earth or even of a vote of everyone in Italy or in the Vatican - he's elected through a ridiculously ancient ritual so ludicrous that it would be laughed at if anyone tried to invent it in 2015.

That's it.  That's the source of the Pope's moral authority - a gathering of various sorcerers and grand Warlocks of the Catholic church in which only the elite have the opportunity to vote.  The Pope is the rough equivalent of a witch doctor; his election is barely more modern than that of a high priestess of Quetzalcoatl.  And this sorcerer, this witch doctor, this heir to a tradition of myth and magic and irrationality and stupidity and delusion, is treated as if his opinions actually matter by secular governments and by major media organizations in secular societies.  Well, to be frank, I don't think the Pope's opinions are any more important than those held by a tribal alchemist from the Congo or a head shrinker from some lost Amazonian tribe that would die of small pox if they ever came in contact with modern society.  As far as I'm concerned, the Pope is the heir to ancient wizardy, to an era before science and before enlightenment; to a time before man truly knew how to think and how to discover the truths of the world around him.

To listen to the Pope for moral guidance, or as anything other than a novelty, is to give yourself over to thousand year dead magicians who believed the menstrual blood of prostitutes could be used in longevity potions and necklaces fashioned from the body parts of albinos could ward off the plague. No intelligent person should care about anything the Pope says until he proves that he has something of value to say beyond the fact that he happens to be the Pope.  He has yet to do this, and I doubt he's intelligent enough to manage it in the future.




Follow @jrireland1

Islamists Have a Debate about Beating Your Wife, Feminists Get Called Islamophobes by Other Feminists for Protesting

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Woman caned in the Aceh Province of Indonesia while a crowd of mostly men watches.  Or as the Guardian would call it, feminism!

One would think that debating whether or not beating women is okay would get all the feminists, no matter what their internal disagreements might happen to be, to rise in unison against this sort of obvious abuse against the rights of females.  Unfortunately, when the people debating whether or not it's okay to beat your wife bloody are Muslims, apparently there are a number of feminists who feel it's kind of gauche and imperialistic to protest against the brutal mistreatment of Muslim women.  Who really cares if Muslim women get beaten to a pulp once in a while because their husbands believe such mistreatment of women is justified in the Koran - it's far worse for white people to criticize this behavior, since that proves we are insufficiently deferential to non-Western cultures and their wife-beating ways.

I know some people will think I am exaggerating, however I can assure you I am not.  Supposed 'feminists' in the Western world really and truly do believe that it's worse to protest Muslim wife beaters than it is to be a Muslim wife beater.  This was cast into pretty sharp relief recently when the feminist protest organization Femen protested against a debate about wife beating held by Muslims in France.  Their shtick has always kind of irritated me - basically, they just take their tops off and run around with body paint yelling at religious people and periodically dousing them in glitter.  It's really rather counterproductive.  If you're trying to end religious oppression of women, I've always thought that acting like a nudist 12 year old isn't a very good way of doing so.

However, their hearts are in the right place and when I saw that they were protesting a Muslim conference I was actually very impressed since most feminist organizations give Muslims a wide berth and would rather bitch about minor sexist remarks from evangelicals than systematic rape, mutilation, and abuse in the Muslim community.  Unfortunately for Femen, other feminists, being completely unwilling to criticize anyone who isn't white and preferably Christian, decided that those mouthy broads really should have kept quite while the men were talking.  For example, The Guardian's Susan Carland declared that Femen's protest was "condescending" and further asserted that "Islam doesn’t require women to love misogyny as a religious duty – not that Femen would know."

Really?  Islam doesn't require women to love misogyny as a religious duty?  That would certainly come as a surprise to this actual verse from the Koran:

They question thee (O Muhammad) concerning menstruation. Say: It is an illness, so let women alone at such times and go not in unto them till they are cleansed. And when they have purified themselves, then go in unto them as Allah hath enjoined upon you. Truly Allah loveth those who turn unto Him, and loveth those who have a care for cleanness.

So Allah doesn't appear to have been a big fan of those filthy, menstruating harlots.  What else did he have to say about women?  Well:

 Women who are divorced shall wait, keeping themselves apart, three (monthly) courses. And it is not lawful for them that they should conceal that which Allah hath created in their wombs if they are believers in Allah and the Last Day. And their husbands would do better to take them back in that case if they desire a reconciliation. And they (women) have rights similar to those (of men) over them in kindness, and men are a degree above them. Allah is Mighty, Wise.

Women do have rights that are 'similar to men,' unfortunately men are 'a degree above them.'  You know, kind of like how children have rights but not to the same extent as adults!

Allah isn't done though.  He also yearns for you to know men should inherit twice as much property as the women:

 Allah chargeth you concerning (the provision for) your children: to the male the equivalent of the portion of two females, and if there be women more than two, then theirs is two-thirds of the inheritance, and if there be one (only) then the half.

To Allah, women are therefore filthy, unclean, menstruating whores who have fewer rights than men and can expect to inherit half as much property.  The Guardian, however, wants to make sure that you know there's nothing misogynistic about the Muslim religion.  Absolutely nothing at all.

The Guardian continued and went out of their way to dishonestly describe the event in the following manner:

The latest antics of Femen at a French Muslim conference allegedly discussing wife-beating and proper womanly pursuits are a case in point. Running on stage in front of the two shocked male speakers after tearing off the abayas they had worn as a disguise, they stripped to the waist with slogans such as “I am my own prophet” and “no one subjugates me” scrawled across their naked torsos. They then shouted at the crowd until they were forcibly removed by security.

Security didn't just 'remove them' - the women were actually beaten by the men in attendance at the event.  I also love the manner in which she glosses over the wife-beating aspect of this sordid tale. That is the only time in the entire article when the subject of spousal abuse will even be mentioned. The Guardian therefore devoted hundreds of words to castigating Femen for their criticism of Islam, while not really bothering to criticize the Muslim supporters of wife-beating who were attending the conference in question.

The Guardian proceeds to make this explicit by arguing that the 'worst part' of this whole ordeal isn't the actual support for wife-beating, but is instead that "two voices were propped up as the only two in the conversation."  The wife-beating thing therefore isn't really that big a deal, per The Guardian - it is far, far worse that Femen was given press attention for bringing the wife-beating up in so cruel and patronizing a fashion.

The Guardian writer then proceeds to cherry-pick a few timeworn instances of Muslim women attempting to combat this misogynistic oppression at the hands of their own religious clerics, as if these three anecdotes somehow have a point:

Aisha, the prophet’s wife, lacerated her male contemporaries with, “You make women worse than animals?!” for believing (wrongly) their prayers were nullified if a woman walked in front of them during worship. It was a woman who challenged, and beat, the second Caliph in a debate in the mosque about women’s financial rights in marriage. And today, lawyers like Asifa Qureshi use blisteringly strong sharia arguments to fight against rulings that punish rape victims in Pakistan and call for the stoning of women in Nigeria.

The argument is basically this - between 700 AD (around when Aisha would have been having her conversation) and the present, the writer of this piece has managed to find three examples that can be shoehorned into a Muslim feminist narrative.  Moreover, in all of those cases you see simply atrocious Muslim bigotry towards women, yet that horrifying bigotry is apparently irrelevant because in those individual instances there were Muslim women who attempted to stand against it.  What happened, I wonder, when a woman who wasn't Mohammad's wife was attacked by Muslim men for walking in front of them during worship?  I imagine the men wouldn't have cared much if she attempted to castigate them for their behavior since, unlike Aisha, they would have had no link to the prophet.  What you're actually seeing in the Aisha story, therefore, is an example of nepotism - they cared when she upbraided them because she was the prophet's wife.  They wouldn't have given the slightest fuck had she been any other woman from the village.

And then there's that last part, which I frankly cannot believe.  The argument from the Guardian is that we should be impressed because one woman is standing up against institutionalized rape in Pakistan and the stoning of women in Nigeria?  I'm sorry, how successful has she been at that?  Last I checked, Pakistan had 1000 misogynistic honor killings every year while women in Nigeria were being kidnapped by Boko Haram and either forced into sex slavery or used as unwilling suicide bombers.  Ah, but there's one woman who issues 'blisteringly strong sharia arguments' against the constant rape and murder of innocent women all over the Muslim world, so clearly we should just ignore the whole thing and leave her to it.  I'm sure the next woman assassinated in Pakistan by her own family for refusing to marry the person they chose for her will be just gleeful as can be when she finds out that the Guardian says there's one woman in the entire Arab world speaking out on her behalf.  Thank Christ for that, I guess.

Don't worry though - the writer has other ridiculous anecdotes not backed up by any facts or evidence:

Far from seeing Islam as a barrier to liberation, a majority of the women in my investigations use Islam to help them in their fight against sexism and shockingly, many named Muslim men (husbands, fathers, teachers) as some of the biggest supporters of their endeavours.

Oh, you asked random women (who you don't name, so we can't even be sure they exist) and in your completely unscientific survey some of them said the fight against sexism was being aided by the men in their lives?  Well I'm convinced!  Your unnamed, random women you can't be bothered to actually quote are clearly a better source for understanding the state of Islamic misogyny than the Pew Research polls that found hundreds of millions of Muslims support stoning women to death for adultery.

Really, who are you going to trust - a Guardian writer with an obvious agenda who claims that something is true based on alleged interviews she had with unnamed women or a scientific poll from a global research service which found hundreds of millions of Muslims are in favor of beating women to death with rocks?  I guess it's kind of a toss-up.

She babbles on, as if she has a point:

When I’ve told non-Muslims about my findings, they were often baffled, even infuriated. The belief that women can pursue advancement and emancipation as Muslims will be dismissed by many as a kind of “false consciousness”, so certain are they that there is only one way to understand the issue.

No, see, this isn't my position, nor has it ever been.  I believe there are many Muslim feminists, and I support their activities in the face of the sort of violent misogyny that whiny western feminists never have to deal with.  However, in my experience, these Muslim feminists have been continuously betrayed by feminists in the rest of the world.  Muslim feminists all over the Islamic world have been fighting for basic rights and basic dignities that have been denied to them by the leaders of their own religious faith, an absolute betrayal of Muslim feminists by Muslim men and by the Muslim women who believe this sort of mistreatment of female 'apostates' is wholly justifiable.  I recently happened to stumble across a blog post by an actual Muslim feminist who, unlike the Guardian writer's vague and forever unnamed sources, I am actually going to link to.  Her name is Sevinc Karaca and her opinion on Western feminist abandonment of Muslim women is even more scathing than my own:

Sevinc Karaca, a Turkish anarchist and feminist, describes the fine line that Muslim women must navigate between Islam and the West. “In all Muslim countries, women had to wait until the 1970s and 1980s for a feminist movement that questioned the practise of religion and its role in the oppression of women. As Feminists in the West beat around the bush with an air of multi-culturalist political correctness and go out of their way to show respect for exotic religions, there is a growing number of feminists in countries like Turkey and Iran and among the diaspora in non- Muslim countries whose policies and strategies for feminism do not take the route of Western Liberal Feminism. The majority of feminist ideologies and activism in the developed world today do not address and support the struggle of their Muslim comrades openly, directly or sufficiently.”

So here is a woman actually living in the Muslim world, as opposed to collecting checks from her posh little job at the Guardian newspaper, who believes that western feminists are essentially completely useless due to their politically correct incapacity to acknowledge the misogyny inherent to modern Islam.  The writer continues along:

There are so many examples of brutality and oppression against women in Muslim countries that if we were to imagine women and men as two nations, we would end up with the longest, most ruthless invasion and war of the history of humanity. It is this longstanding hostility that needs explanation first. It is important for Western feminists to have first hand knowledge of these events in their communication with Muslim Women to let them know first of all that “they are aware” and “interested” and secondly, that they will support them in their struggle to end this brutality. It is not difficult to compile a list of atrocities and human rights violations against Muslim women, there were two major news reports in the Guardian alone in the week during which this article was being written, about brutalities against women in Iraq and in Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, interest in such stories in the mainstream media only appeared after the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, and these atrocities are often simply used as excuses by the American war machinery. The rhetoric against the oppression of women that they use does not serves to the benefit of women in places such as Afghanistan but to their detriment. The plight of Afghan women is used in turn as a warning by regimes such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries against women who demand more freedom.

What I find most interesting about this excerpt is the difference between The Guardian's news reporting and their editorial section.  In the news reporting, they discuss the 'brutalities against women in Iraq and Saudi Arabia,' while in the opinion pages they declare that "a majority of the women in my investigations use Islam to help them in their fight against sexism."  There does seem to be a bit of a gap between the actual facts as portrayed in Guardian news reports and the opinionated blather from Islamic apologists who editorialize about the glorious equal rights provided to women by the Prophet Mohammad.

Yet the Guardian writer does not appear to get the general point, as evidenced by her ever more irrational editorial:

Of course the scourge of sexism exists within Muslim communities and societies, just as it does in every community. The very fact that there are Muslim women fighting against it proves that we are not in denial. Yet Femen, for all its self-righteous stripping and screaming about women’s rights, is actually in the same ideological camp as the misogynist Muslims they rail against.

This paragraph is among the most confused jumbles of unreason that I have ever come across.  She first attempts to argue that Islamic misogyny is just like sexism that exists 'in every community,' which strikes me as a bit unlikely since I don't recall the last public stoning of an adulteress that we held in my sleepy little Chicago suburb.  She then professes that the fact that 'Muslim women' are fighting against misogyny is proof that 'we are not in denial,' which is a complete lie since this entire article is based on nothing more noble than an outright denial of basic facts.  And for the coup de grace, she asserts that Femen is 'in the same ideological camp as the misogynist Muslims they rail against.'  That is quite the accomplishment - the writer has managed to equate people protesting against wife beating with the actual wife beaters!  There's no difference anymore, in the mind of this writer, between those opposed to violent misogyny and the violent misogynists themselves.  The logical contortions necessary to reach this conclusion are, if I'm being frank, completely breathtaking and very much inspirational.  If I set out in the morning to write something this morally dubious and intellectually unsound, I don't think I could manage it.

And how did she reach this bizarre conclusion?  Well:

Both reinforce the idea of a “real” sexist Islam, an idea to which the broader public conversation so often unquestioningly gives support.

The wife beaters, according to this writer, believe Islam to be misogynistic and support Islamic misogyny.  Meanwhile, Femen believes Islam to be misogynistic, but opposes Islamic misogyny. The Guardian believes, apparently with conviction, that a group opposed to misogyny and a group in favor of misogyny are secretly identical because they both believe misogyny exists.  I personally have a difficult time following the train of logic from station to station, but if the Guardian says it is so, it doubtlessly must be true.

She finishes with a real flourish:

But the stories of Muslim women, in my research and beyond, show there is a third way, and there always has been. It’s a belief in an Islam that is egalitarian and empowering to women, and is strongly rooted in authentic, classical interpretations of the faith.

Bullshit.  If such an interpretation exists with any legitimacy, then why are there no Muslim countries that provide women with the same rights expected by women who live in Western nations?  It is telling that the Muslim women with the most rights are those who aren't living in Muslim societies.  So if this 'classical interpretation' of the faith is so convincing, why is it not currently practiced anywhere on Earth?

It isn’t just the Islam of a lucky few women who grew up in the west in the last 50 years, but women and men through Islamic history in countless Muslim communities across the planet who firmly believed that gender justice was a divine mandate. And if people actually spoke to Muslim women, instead of about them, as the incident at the conference in France perfectly encapsulates, this would be known.

I just quoted a woman in a Muslim country up above, and she seemed to have quite a different opinion than a privileged white Muslim living in a Western country like Susan Carland.  I must ask, given that Susan Carland was born and raised in Australia, how much time has she actually spent interviewing women in Afghanistan?  How about Pakistan?  Indonesia?  Nigeria?  Malaysia?  Maybe talk to some women who have had their genitals mutilated and are no longer capable of achieving orgasm.  Talk to a girl on the run in Pakistan because her family intends to kill her for refusing their forced marriage.  A woman in Bangladesh with her eyes burned out from acid.  A Nigerian sex slave. Talk to them, if you please, Ms. Carland, and then get back to me.  Because as it stands, based on your own arguments, you appear to have interviewed some other women living in a Western, developed nation and believe, completely against all evidence, that this is the state of Islamic womanhood - Western, privileged, lucky to live in Australia.  I want you to look a Bangladeshi women in the empty sockets left behind when her eyes were melted out of her skull and I want you to tell her all about your findings that Australian Muslim women often find that the men in their lives are secret feminists.  I'm sure you'll share a laugh, assuming they haven't cut her tongue out, too.

So, respectfully, I'm going to have to reject your petty little denunciation of feminists who are actually trying to do something about brutality and violence in the world, rather than collecting pay checks from major media organizations while putting down actual activists actually attempting to do some good.  If you had any actual feminist bona fides to speak of, you would have been on that stage criticizing forcefully the men who thought it was legitimate to seriously debate the merits of wife beating.  Maybe then you could have proven that Muslim women really do care about these things.

Strangely enough, however, there were no Muslim women protesting this gathering - maybe their husbands had been successful, and taught them to know their place.





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Puritanical Leftists Ban Pornography from Australian College

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OH NO!

There is nothing on Earth funnier than liberal progressives freaking out about pornography.  The reason this is so immensely funny should be obvious to everyone - because in order to justify their hatred of porn, they need to jump through such an immense number of hoops, need to engage in so many different, varied types of mental gymnastics, that by the time they're finished they will have twisted themselves into grotesque pretzels of flop-sweat addled, incoherent impotence.  This isn't like conservative worries about porn where they just say "God said it's wrong" and leave the conversation with comparative elegance.  No - when leftists find that porn gives them the heeby-jeebies, they need to spend 4,000 words explaining to you how, when you look at gender relations from the perspective of Marxist theories about exploitation, you will come to realize that all sex is secretly rape in the patriarchal hell-scape in which upper-middle class white western women are forced to make their home.

It's all good fun until they declare that all men jerk off to gang rape fetish porn and lust after the violent abuse of innocent women.

The reason I bring this up is because an Australian college in Melbourne called Ormond College recently made the executive decision to ban pornography from campus on the grounds that is somehow 'exploitative' of women.  Of course, many women also enjoy porn, with recent surveys finding that approximately 30% of all viewers of online pornography are female, but admitting that fact would undermine the self-righteously unearned sense of moral superiority, so doing so is studiously avoided.

What's been interesting isn't only that a college actually decided to intrude so far into its students' social lives as to control their personal choices of sexual gratification, but that the justifications provided for this action have been so absurd as to almost beggar belief.  A Canadian website called Rabble.ca, a website that appears to be run by actual Marxists who actually still support Marxism in the year 2015, published a particularly hysterical denunciation of pornography in which it was declared, always without evidence, that watching porn inevitably leads to gang rape and domestic violence.  According to the Rabble:

In what might be deemed a radical move, The University of Melbourne's largest residential college banned access to pornography on campus. This means students at Ormond College will be blocked from accessing "adult sites" on Wi-Fi networks. 

The reason for this is straightforward. As college master Dr. Rufus Black stated, pornography is exploitative and "presents women primarily as sex objects who are a means to the end of male pleasure." 

Simple, right? 

Wrong!

And we are off to a simply roaring start.  To begin with, this isn't 'simple' because it isn't true.  If porn only presented women as sex objects, then why are nearly a third of the viewers of pornography women?  Furthermore, what about gay pornography?  Is that presenting men as sex objects and, if so, why do I never see these goony anti-porn activists worrying about the ravages gay porn is inflicting on the psychology and sexuality of homosexuals?  There seems to be a bit of a double standard here when it comes to mindless neo-Marxist fears of sexual exploitation.

 Continuing right along:

While Black told Jill Stark at The Age that "allowing the college's 400 students to access porn on its network would be condoning the objectification of women," some students felt the ban limited "freedom of expression." Apparently, for men, facials are an art form.

Well, no, to my knowledge no one is claiming that pornography is an 'art form,' however something need not be an art form in order to be 'freedom of expression.'  If I were to call someone a bitch, that would not be 'art,' but it would certainly be an example of me exercising my free speech rights, and I ought not be punished legally for saying it.  This woman therefore does not appear to know what freedom of expression actually is and for some reason imagines that free speech only exists to protect artistic expression, when this is clearly not the case.

But, in truth, it isn't "sexual expression" that's being banned (if that's the line of argument we're going with), it's just men's "right" to access websites that sell female degradation. So "expression" is not limited in the least. No one has banned masturbation and, of course, men are still free to think about gang raping women or to sexualize "schoolgirls" inside their own heads as always. Vive la liberté!

Her argument here is tremendous - I don't like what you have to say, I disapprove of the expression you are engaged in, therefore I maintain the right to declare your expression illegitimate and to argue that it should be banned.  I could just as easily argue that feminist arguments have a damaging impact upon both men and women, that, in particular, left-wing feminist ideals tend to result in the fraying of relations between men and women while painting men as evil, despicable rape monsters who should be caged and snared for the betterment of female kind.  Therefore, based on this argument, I could take it one step further and say that left-wing feminism should be made illegal because of the damage I imagine it is doing.  I would never actually make such an argument because I'm one of those evil 'free speech fundamentalists' that leftist whiners are always babbling about, but using the exact same logic as this writer, I could very easily argue in favor of banning gender studies courses from American universities.

It is at this point that our petulant, angsty writer begins to attack a group I had not expected - liberal feminists, a term which appears to mean 'any feminist who doesn't despise human sexuality.'  These people are, according to the writer of this piece, only slightly less vile than Adolf Hitler:

Luckily, male students angered by the ban have liberal feminism to fall back on, so they don't need to defend their misogynist interests as such. 

Stark reports that first year law student Thibaut​ Clamart​, 24, "wrote a newsletter response objecting to the ban, saying it was a 'moralizing statement' and that not all pornography was demeaning." 

"We all agree there is an issue with the current state of mainstream porn but banning it is not the answer. It won't educate people, it is condescending and paternalistic," he told her. 

Do "we all agree," Thibaut? Oh good. Good. I'm so glad to know "we all agree." 

Let's just quickly test that statement though... Just to be sure. We're all in this together, right Thi? 

He tells Stark, "If their argument is that it's about respecting women and enabling young people to discover their sexuality without having the repressive influence of porn, that makes the assumption that looking at porn is going to perpetuate those attitudes and you're going to behave like a porn actor."

Oh, Thibaut, you've made a tactical error.  Never, ever give an inch to the anti-sex feminists when it comes to this issue.  Don't say things like 'there is an issue with the current state of mainstream porn,' because such an assertion will only serve to empower these people.  And it is certainly not a good idea to say that looking at porn won't cause people to behave like a porn actor, since the anti-sex feminist will just say that this isn't true.  The proper argument to make is simply this - that it is none of their goddamn business how I behave provided I do not infringe upon anyone else's rights; that they are not at liberty to tell me what my sex life should entail; and that any attempt to restrict the rights of adults to view pornography that was produced by other consenting adults is a clear assault on the sort of basic liberties that should not be eroded in a Western society.

Certain types of porn are not for everyone - every person will have different tastes.  However, so long as no one is harmed in the making of pornography or is forced into it against their will, it is no business of anyone else what type of erotica I want to watch and whiny fascists have no suzerainty over my sex life.

Unfortunately, because Thibaut made these basic mistakes, he provided an opportunity for this writer to hold court on the grand, infernal, self-evident evils of porn assisted masturbation:

Hmm... Seems like we may not all agree, after all. First, it's very clear that the media we consume impacts our worldview. This is how advertising works, for example. Simply, we receive messages about products which convince us we need to buy said products. It is through advertising (as well as other forms of media, but ads were the first to do this) that we learn about supposed "flaws" we must fix -- yellow teeth, perspiration, body hair, cellulite, visible pores, etc. Media teaches us how we are supposed to look, what "sexy" means, which body parts we are to sexualize, how thin we should aspire to be, and even, yes, appropriate ways men should behave towards women. To pretend as though porn has no impact on our ideas about sex, sexuality, women and men is silly.

So let's ban advertisements, I guess.  After all, if T.V. ads have such terrible consequences, then why not just make those illegal in the same way you want to get rid of porn?  

Secondly, I like that this woman's view of the world is so completely contrary to reality.  If it weren't for advertisements, she thinks that no one would want to have white teeth, smell good, or have smooth skin.  Of course, those were attributes that people wanted well before advertisements told us to want them - it isn't as if people were walking around with green and rotten teeth in 1914 without being somewhat embarrassed by the state of their dental hygiene.  Moreover, this once again dodges the point - even if porn does teach people to behave in certain ways, you have no right to ban porn in order to force people into behaving the way you want them to.  Porn doesn't force anyone to behave in any way, whereas the writer of this piece, and the college in question, are trying to force behavior upon other people.  It is therefore a basic fact that the authoritarian would-be banners of porn are greater threats to humanity than any behaviors that might possibly be picked up through the viewing of pornography.

Black, too, understands that the messages in porn are clear, arguing that his decision was based on a "well-held view that pornography depicts women for the gratification of male sexuality." 

Interestingly, Stark points out that back in the 90s, when Dr. Alan Gregory, former Master of Ormond College, was accused of sexual harassment, he responded to the complainants by accusing them of "puritan feminism." Sound familiar?

That is a tremendous false equivalence.  Sexual harassment is bad because it actually involves abuse of power, particularly when it is coming from a Master of a college and it is his female underlings being subjected to it.  On the other hand, a man masturbating alone in a college dorm room is not forcing himself on women or doing any real world damage.  She is conflating actual mistreatment of women with online sex fantasies and she is doing so without any sense of self-reflection.

And now we are into the humorous portion of our anti-sex feminist diatribe: 

Liberal feminism: the gift that keeps on giving. To misogynists.

Golly, that sure is a smart take on this whole thing and witty, too.  At first I thought the writer was seriously saying that liberal feminism is 'the gift that keeps on giving,' but then she sarcastically added 'to misogynists' and I realized I was not only dealing with a brilliant political philosopher, but one of the great comedic minds of the 21st century.  I am in awe of her many and varied talents.

Even more, I am in awe of her continual construction of false equivalencies.  There is not a single analogy in this article which isn't patently absurd.  For example:

What's clear is that "consent" is not enough. People consent to unethical things all the time. Technically, women have "consented" to abuse for eons. They marry abusers, they agree to participate in rape porn, they go on second dates with men who've sexually assaulted them. We know now that women's consent does not necessarily negate rape -- they can say "yes," but what actually goes down after that may very well constitute assault.

So allow me to see if I understand this - because there have been women, both in the past and in the present, who remain in relationships with men who beat them, it is impossible for a woman to consent to appear in pornography?  First of all, remaining in a relationship with a man who hits you is not consent to being hit - you're consenting to take part in the relationship, but aren't consenting to the beatings.  On the other hand, if a woman were to consent to be whipped during sex, she would be getting hit in a situation where she has consented, and therefore there would be no problem.  

Secondly, in what sense does a woman's consent not negate rape?  If a woman is capable of consent and agrees to an act, then she has not been raped.  If a woman is passed out or does not consent to a particular act, then she has been raped.  You can't consent to an act and then call it rape, since the act of consenting by definition makes it not rape.  I do not even know what she is trying to tell me at this point in the article since she appears to have completely lost the plot.

There is also the fact that she apparently believes women have no right to consent to rape porn.  But rape porn isn't real rape - it's simulated rape in which no one is actually being sexually assaulted. The third most popular sexual fantasy that women have is actually the rape fantasy.  This is because rape fantasies aren't about real rape (since the women who have them don't want to literally be raped), but are instead about sexual submissiveness and role play.  Rape porn therefore does not mean the men who watch it will actually rape anyone, any more than female rape fantasies mean that those women literally want to be dragged into a back alley and raped at knife point.

So please give me a break with this "men have a right to porn, we'll just teach them about consent" garbage. Not only do men already feel entitled to jack off to abuse, but now they've learned about "consent" from liberal feminists and are using that discourse to defend their right to degrade, exploit, and oppress us. Because we "consented."

This woman appears deeply confused about what consent is, and also does not appear mentally stable.  As a result, I understand if someone might look at this and say 'gee, Jon, why are you bothering to refute the claims made by an obviously crazy person.'  The reason is because, although this sort of simpering insanity is still a minority view point, this sort of idea is not only becoming more popular and more common, but is a belief system that appears to exist among people in positions of power to a disproportionate degree.  People who run colleges or people with major newspaper columns appear to be the ones most likely to believe in this utter nonsense, and their belief in these ideas are not innocuous since they are in positions of power and can therefore act on these ideals.

Not only did a writer for Rabble whine for 1000 words about this subject, but a writer for The Guardian also decided to take a few wild, drunken swings at the patriarchy.  Per the Guardian:

 Male students can argue that banning access to porn is a limit on their free expression. But I’d prefer to fight for the freedom of women to feel safe

I don't know how men masturbating alone in their dorm rooms makes women feel unsafe, but I'm sure you'll explain it to me.

In extensive research I did for a magazine article (and later a book) on Australian colleges, I interviewed many students of Sydney university colleges. 

Many young men and women I spoke to reported environments that were subtly, and not so subtly, anti-women. 

One student wondered if the set of circumstances in her college would fall under the definition of domestic violence – students urinated on her door after parties, banged on her door in the middle of the night and cat-called her as she crossed the quadrangle. There were thresholds of the dining room at certain times of the day that she didn’t like to cross because a group of guys would hiss at her. There were lots of times and lots of places in the college – her home – where she did not feel safe.

 People urinated on my door after parties and banged on my door in the middle of the night when I was in college.  It was my understanding that this was because they were drunken idiots.  If only I had known at the time that I was the victim of sexual harassment, maybe a third rate Guardianista would have written a book about me.

When I went to a Melbourne university co-ed college in the 1990s, women were called “fur”. First year students were freshmen and second year and above were called “gentlemen”. It didn’t matter that half these “gentlemen” were women, and that the college administration had banned – or at least strongly discouraged – the use of those terms. Students were in thrall to traditions and traditions dictated that terms left over from the start of the 20th century remained in use.

Which has to do with pornography because...

Others talked about O-week humiliations: the “sex-exercises” where fresher girls had to do push-ups over a guy, or shave their head, or drink until they were sick.

This also has nothing to do with pornography.

Students didn’t have to watch porn to objectify women – this objectification was already buried deep within the colleges’ DNA.

So you admit that "objectification" has nothing to do with pornography then, right?

To start to unravel and destroy the objectification of women is the great task of college administrators here and in the US, where one Columbia student carried her mattress to graduation to protest the handling of her sexual assault case.

Again she is talking about something that has nothing to do with porn.

Her entire article is like this.  Basically, sometimes things happen to women that they don't like or that are damaging to them.  Sometimes women are abused.  Sometimes they are sexually harassed.  Unfortunately, sometimes they are raped.  She essentially just points out a series of bad things that have happened to women at some point in the past, and then argues that, for some reason, the solution is to ban porn, even though porn had nothing to do with any of the problems she is talking about. Porn is essentially magical in this worldview - it is so evil, so atrocious, so noxious, so vile, that the very existence of pornography somehow seeps into the minds of impressionable men and degrades them so thoroughly that all that is left for them is to rape and abuse all the women around them with conscienceless and orgiastic glee.  Porn is the world destroyer, the rape-maker, the incubator of all that is sexist and abusive and possessed of toxic masculinity.  They'll never provide you with any evidence that this is the case, of course, because it is far better to order you to take it on faith.  Why construct a political movement based on rationality when you can build a religion based on mindless belief in the ineffable evil of the male sex drive?

What this is, at bottom, is an attack on freedom of expression, free speech, and sexual liberty.  It is an attempt to so thoroughly pathologize normal human sexual behavior (since there really is nothing more normal in the annals of human history than enjoying smutty images) that you can eliminate the rights of porn loving westerners and people will irrationally thank you for it.  It based not on evidence, but on religious conviction and upon the shaming of sexuality, particularly male sexuality which a distressingly large portion of the feminist left has unilaterally determined is irrecoverably evil and destructive by nature.

This is how our rights, whether they are our rights to freedom of expression or sexual liberty or any other sort of human right I have not mentioned, will be taken from us - through the stoking of irrational fears, through the assertion that we will actually be somehow 'freer' after the state has taken our liberties from us, and through the construction of authoritarian ideals held with the sort of fervent disregard for truth that you generally see from wild-eyed religious lunatics.  That is how we will be led away to bondage and these sorts of beliefs must be combated every step of the way.

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