Alas, a Blog | Feminist, anti-racist, pro-fat, plus whatever else we feel like talking about.

The Weather Outside is Frightful

Posted on February 21, 2009 by David Schraub

Another blizzard is coming through Chicago.

Julie’s post on the ADL’s 2009 European anti-Semitism survey inspired me to read the survey memo for myself [UPDATE: You know what would rock? Actually linking to the survey memo!]. The data can be a little hard to parse at times, but overall paints a rather disturbing picture.

The survey was conducted over 7 European countries: Austria, France, Hungary, Poland, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom (500 questioned in each country, MoE +/- 4%). The heart of the survey was contained in these four questions:

1) Jews are more loyal to Israel than to this country. (49%)
2) Jews have too much power in the business world. (40%)
3) Jews have too much power in international financial
markets. (41%)
4) Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in
the Holocaust. (44%)

Percentages are of respondents who labeled this statement “probably true” across all countries. Each country’s response rate for each question was also broken out individually. The worst case country-to-stereotype was Spain’s answer to “Jews have too much power international financial markets” — a whopping 74% agreed. For every question, the UK demonstrated the lowest levels of support. As noted though, the statement which got the highest overall level of support was “Jews are more loyal to Israel than to this country” (high: Spain 64%, low: UK: 37%).

The ADL then charted what percentage of respondents agreed with at least three of the above four statements. The “winners” were Spain, Poland, and Hungary, with 48%, 48%, and 47% (respectively) fitting this criteria. Austria came next at 30%, followed by France and Germany (20%) and finally the UK (10%).

The ADL also asked several follow-up questions which were not included in evaluating the overall levels of anti-Semitic sentiment. For example, 23% of Europeans believe that Jews are responsible for the death of Christ (Poland is the far and away leader in this category, at 48%). The survey also asked respondents if they felt that violence directed against Jews in their country was the result of anti-Israel or anti-Jewish sentiment. For the most part, they believed it was due to anti-Jewish feelings (38% to 24%). The exception was Spain, where “anti-Israel” held a 38% – 26% lead over “anti-Jewish”.

Finally, the ADL also tried to get a feel for whether Jews were being blamed for the global financial crisis. They asked

How much blame do you place on Jews in the financial industry for the current global economic crisis? Do you blame them a great deal, a good amount, a little or not at all?

The ADL here charted those answering “a little” or higher, and found that 31% of respondents blamed the Jews at least “a little” for the crisis. Hungary led the way with 46%, followed by Austria (43%) and Poland (38%).

Finally, these were the questions that elicited the strongest levels of support for each country:

More loyal to Israel: France (38%), Germany (53%), Poland (63%), UK (37%)

Power in business: Hungary (67%)

Power in international markets: Spain (74%)

Too much talking about the Holocaust: Austria (55%)

And the least support:

More loyal to Israel: Hungary (40%)

Power in business: Austria (36%), Germany (21%), UK (15% — tie)

Power in international markets: France (27%), Poland (54%), UK (15% — tie)

Too much talking about the Holocaust: Spain (42%)

Posted in Anti-Semitism | 12 Comments

Quote du Jour

Posted on February 20, 2009 by Jeff Fecke

“Swear to God, if [Israelis] ever want a Gentile prime minister, my first order would be to deploy the IDF in a north-south line, facing east. My second order would be ‘forward march’ and the order to halt would not be given until it was time for the troops to rinse their bayonets in the Jordan. After a brief rest halt, the order ‘about face’ would be given, and the next halt would be at the Mediterranean coast.

“That’s my ‘Middle East peace plan,’ and until it’s carried out, there will be no peace.”

—Robert Stacy McCain

McCain writes this genocidal diatribe as part of a post explaining that Glenn Greenwald is a “stereotypical self-hating Jew” for his post decrying the tactic of conflating anti-Semitism with being opposed to some Israeli politcies.

McCain, as he himself says, is a gentile. Which makes the hurled epithet all the worse, and rather underscores Greenwald’s point:

People like Jeffrey Goldberg — and his comrades at places such as Commentary and the ADL — have so abused, over-used, manipulated and exploited the “anti-semitism” and “anti-Israel” accusations for improper and nakedly political ends that those terms have become drained of their meaning, have almost entirely lost their sting, and have become trivialized virtually to the point of caricature. That behavior has produced serious harm. Their trivialization and misuse of those terms have severely diminished the ability to stigmatize and attack real anti-Semitism, because legitimate accusations of anti-Semitism are now conflated with and discredited by the neocons’ cynical attempts to wield it as a cheap debating weapon. That’s a particularly dangerous — and ironic — outcome given that it has been spawned by many who have long claimed proprietary ownership over the “anti-Semitism” term in order, ostensibly, to protect it from trivialization.

Anti-Semitism is real and, unfortunately, still commonplace, even among those of us on the left who should know better. And I think David has done a great job with his pieces on this site talking about that. But Greenwald is also correct in saying there is a certain segment of far-right hawks who use the charge of anti-Semitism as a cudgel, wielding it not in support of equality for Jews, but in support of genocide against Palestinians. That’s about as far from working for equality as possible.

Posted in Conservative zaniness, right-wingers, etc., Jews and Judaism, Palestine & Israel | 2 Comments

Well, at least it’s not racial. Sorta.

Posted on February 20, 2009 by nojojojo

Saw this article today, about an “emergency” rape law passed in Italy:

Italy’s government has rushed through a decree to crack down on sexual violence and illegal immigration after a spate of rapes blamed on foreigners.

What’s “a spate”? Must be quite a few, to justify the swift passage of a new law, I’m thinking. A virtual epidemic. But no. It’s three. They happened in one weekend, but still. Three.

The decree sets a mandatory life sentence for the rape of minors or attacks where the victim is killed.

Well, that sounds good to me. Harsh sentences for rape are exactly as they should be. And further along in the article it mentions that trials for rapists will be speeded up, and more resources will be focused towards helping the victims. All good, in my book.

But then I saw this…

It also establishes rules for citizen street patrols to be conducted by unarmed and unpaid volunteers.

Wait just a damn minute.

Is the Italian government now seriously authorizing citizen vigilante squads? Which will ostensibly target any immigrant who might rape somebody? Is it just me, or does this sound like an unbelievably stupid fucking idea?

Oh, wait, it’s not just me.

Critics say the measures could effectively legitimise vigilantism and xenophobia. The Vatican has warned against anything that turns innocent foreigners into convenient scapegoats.

::foreheadslap:: Oh, well, OK, as long as the Vatican agrees with me.

what is the world coming to

This is stupid. This is all kinds of stupid. This is a license for mass bigotry. Not that this kind of bigotry needed a license:

Many recent rapes have been blamed on foreigners, especially Romanians. Violent attacks on immigrants have since been reported.

Police say a mob of around 20 masked men beat up four Romanians outside a kebab restaurant in Rome on Sunday in an apparent vigilante attack.

The government has pointed to official statistics saying immigrants committed as many as 35% of crimes in Italy in 2007.

But analysts and opposition parties say many of these are related to breaches in immigration rules, and that foreigners have often been unfairly targeted amid a xenophobic backlash from right-wing politicians and the media.

The Roma (Gypsy) community, many of whom are long-standing Italian residents, have often borne the brunt of this reaction, they say.

Authorities in the capital began dismantling unauthorised camps housing Roma groups amid an outcry over recent rapes earlier this week.

Officials statistics put Italy’s Romanian community at more than 600,000, making it the largest immigrant group in the country.

Some Roma are Romanian, but many are from other Balkan countries and some hold Italian citizenship.

They can’t even keep Roma and Romanians straight. How the flying frilly fuck does this make sense?

No one can control a lynch mob. It is impossible to impose “rules” on violent vigilantes. Berlusconi must be smoking the good stuff if he honestly thinks he can regulate hate. It just doesn’t work that way.

My prediction: there will be deaths as a result of this. There will be more rapes of Italians, and they will go unpunished because now all an Italian rapist has to do is gibber something in Romanian to confuse the victim and the system will run off to scapegoat some poor schmuck who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and have the wrong accent. Rapes of immigrants will also increase and go unpunished, because that’s what happens when you unleash a mob on an oppressed population; some of these “citizen vigilantes” will decide on an eye for an eye. Not to mention that I doubt any of those new resources being allocated towards victims will actually be applied to all victims, regardless of national origin. No one will be safer, but Berlusconi’s popularity ratings will probably go up, because he will be seen to have “done something”. Even though it’s something abysmally stupid.

I visited Italy — Sicily, specifically — about 5 years ago. Beautiful country, great food, lovely people. The only ugly note in the trip was my encounter with a convenience store shopkeeper, who was quite hostile until I opened my mouth and mangled some Italian with my American accent. Then she went Dr. Jekyll on me in an instant, smiling and pleasant. But as I went outside to drink my cappuccino and noodle this, a fellow shopper — a black man from Sierra Leone — spoke to me and pointed out to me that she’d charged him twice as much as she charged me. “That’s how it is here,” he said. “Pretty on the surface, crazy underneath.”

Sounds like it’s about to get a whole lot crazier.

Posted in Syndicated feeds | 5 Comments

Let's Put It In a Different Context

Posted on February 20, 2009 by David Schraub

Working off this conservative ad against the stimulus, Ezra Klein writes the following:

Ever watched a parent explain math to a child? “Imagine Johnny has three power rangers, but you only have one power ranger…” That’s sort of the tactic “The American Issues Project” is taking in its attempt to attack the stimulus. Except instead of power ranger, sub in the Baby Jesus himself. “Suppose you spent $1 million every single day starting from the day Jesus was born — and kept spending through today,” says the announcer over a diorama picture of the three wise men and a camel. “A million dollars a day for more than 2,000 years. You would still have spent less money than Congress just did.” Call it Jesus-nomics.

But I’m still confused. Can you please phrase your answer in the form of anti-semitism? Seconds after the Son’s unexpected cameo (think he’s SAG-registered?) the ad plays a final clip of Chuck “Jew” Schumer scheming to take your money nasally explaining the bill while gesticulating wildly.

I’m genuinely curious what folks think of Klein’s allegation here. Ezra Klein, from my readings of him (and I think Klein is one of the best young progressive bloggers out there), would I suspect be sympathetic to the idea that “anti-Semitic” is an overused charge vis-a-vis Israel. Yet, I think one could make a solid case that Klein’s allegation here is flimsier than much of the charges that certain branches of anti-israel rhetoric are, in one way or another, anti-Semitic.

I think, to the extent that this ad, shall we say, sets my anti-Semitism antennae buzzing, it’s because of the juxtaposition. Any time you couch political argumentation in terms like “from the day Jesus was born”, there is an implicit alienation of Jewish (and other non-Christian) members of the polity flowing from the assumption that all Americans find that date meaningful. The resonance it is supposed to bring out amongst the viewers is profoundly Christian, giving the entire ad a Christian overtone. So when viewing the ad, I’m already primed to view myself as alien, making it more likely that I’ll interpret the Schumer clip with reference to his and my Jewishness.

I find the above argument compelling enough for me to find Klein’s charge “reasonable”, which isn’t to say that I think it is “true” in some transcendental sense. I just think that Klein is responding to something “real”, non-trivial and non-paranoid, and that makes it worth taking into account alone.

Posted in Whatever | 18 Comments

Joss Extravaganza: Commentary! The Musical (and the Dr Horrible Sing-a-long-blog DVD)

Posted on February 20, 2009 by Maia

So continuing my Joss extravaganza I thought I’d review the Dr Horrible DVD, and most importantly Commentary! The Musical.

For those of you who don’t know, Dr Horrible’s Singalong Blog was Joss Whedon’s internet musical phenomena of last year. I don’t think it’s Joss’s best work, but it has some very funny moments. ((I’ve been thinking about Penny and the feminist implications of her character. I think I’ve decided I don’t mind the story from that point of view. Jane Espenson makes a great point on her blog that dramatic characters are intentionally funny and comedic characters are unintentionally funny. Penny makes jokes – she’s a dramatic character in a comedic series. For me that works with the idea that these ridiculous men are fighting over her (it just doesn’t make the story any more resonant with me).))

The DVD came out just before Christmas, and is absolutely awesome. It’s geared very much to the focused fan, with lots of very difficult to find easter eggs (I’m lazy so I just went on-line and found all sorts of pretty things). There’s everything you could expect a commentary and making of documentary.

But there’s also “Commentary! The Musical”, which is what you’re sound. If you’re a Joss fan I’d recommend getting the DVD even if you didn’t like Dr Horrible, because Commentary! The Musical is awesome. They rarely talk about what’s actually going on on screen, so it’s less a commentary and more a musical radio play, without much of a plot.

But the song are brilliant. Most importantly to me is the song about the writers strike. Clearly Joss songs about strikes are my favourite things.

Most of the rest of the songs are about the personas that various creative people involved take on. Felicia Day’s overactive brain is as hilarious as Zak Whedon’s who wants to be street wise. Although Nathan Fillion as a self-important asshole is funnier than bother of them (his song is called “Better than Neil,” and is just as great as you’d think it would be).

Like the greatest silly humour it’s extremely random – there’s a song dedicated to the iphone game Ninja ropes. And another song which is about itself (“It has internal rhyme, but not in every instance and the meter is occasionally a little bit bizarre).”

Most of the humour is silly and hilarious (there’s a great Nathan joke which revolves around the hammer being his bpenis). But there’s also some good satire. Maurissa Tancharoen (one of the co-writers and one of the groupies) sings “Nobody’s Asian in the Movies”, which I love as much for it’s faux resolution as anything else.

Although one of the people who co-wrote Commentary! The Musical, has executive produced 4 TV shows, and written and directed a movie. This gave him some power to determine how many Asians there were on movies and TV. Buffy was on for seven seasons and 144 episodes – and the largest recurring Asian part was Chao-Ahn, a Chinese potential slayer. One of Cordelia’s friends was played by an Asian actress, but she was a very minor character. And that’s it, in seven seasons (and if I’ve missed anyone it’s someone who was as part was as minor as the Cordette). Angel had precisely one recurring Asian character (Gavin) and Firefly/Serenity had no Asian characters at all (as far as I can tell from imdb – there might have been a small one shot). Writing funny songs about problems is a lot less impressive if you have had the power to do something about those problems and didn’t.

Then finally there’s Joss’s song about creation itself:

A CAVEMAN PAINTED ON A CAVE
IT WAS A BISON, WAS A FAVE
THE OTHER CAVE-PEOPLE WOULD RAVE –
THEY DIDN’T ASK “WHY?”
WHY PAINT A BISON IF IT’S DEAD
WHEN DID YOU CHOOSE THE COLOR RED
WHAT WAS THE PROCESS IN YOUR HEAD
HE TOLD THEIR STORY
WHAT CAME BEFORE HE DIDN’T SHOW
WE’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO

I think cavemen probably did get asked why they used the colour red. The division between artist and audience is a new concept, as it was only possible or expected due to the development of one to many technologies such as the printing press, radio, TV etc. That’s now been reversed by the many to many technology of the internet. To reify one sort of relationship as the natural state between artists and audience to ignore the material basis for these relationships. ((I still haven’t decided how serious this paragraph is, if I figure it out I’ll let you know.))

After listening to Commentary! The Musical, I’ve decided that should dollhouse fail I want Joss to make an internet radio show. That way I’d get my serial storytelling from him, and it wouldn’t need to be massively resource intensive, the way an internet (or actual) TV show is.

Posted in Buffy, Whedon, etc., Class, poverty, labor, & related issues | 17 Comments

The New York Post cartoon: this is my unsurprised face.

Posted on February 19, 2009 by nojojojo

By now most of you have heard about the racist cartoon published in The New York Post. There’s a lot of good commentary out there on this already, and some calls to action, which I strongly urge all of you to heed.

That said, I haven’t said much about this before today because my feelings pretty much match Ta-Nehisi Coates’: meh. Maybe it helps to provide some “local context” here, because I think a lot of people don’t get what most New Yorkers do: the Post is crap. It’s a step above the National Enquirer in terms of quality, and that’s only because it doesn’t talk about aliens and its inanity has a focus — which is to be the voice of the substantial contingent of conservatives in this famously liberal city. It’s the paper version of Fox News, which isn’t surprising because it’s owned by the same guy. And because of this, I do not believe for one moment that the editor who approved that cartoon didn’t know exactly how it would be received. I think the Post is getting exactly what it wanted here.

Think about it. These are hard times for the Republicans right now. They’re struggling to find a way to reformat themselves in the wake of the backhand slap they received on November 4th. While the party’s leaders flounder in search of a vision/purpose/direction, however, the party’s ideologues don’t have this problem; they’re still repeating the same message they’ve been parroting for the past 20+ years. But with the leadership gone silent, the ideologues’ broken record is suddenly much more audible than it has been for the past couple of (campaign) years. Which is why we’ve heard so much lately from Rush “Crackhead” Limbaugh. He hasn’t been in rehab all this time, as I had naively assumed; he’s just popular again, largely because many Republican voters are desperate to hear someone, anyone, speak up for their side.

Likewise Fox News and, now, the Post. These media entities are jockeying for control of the party’s soul, in hopes of pushing back the darkness — pun intended — that might, just might, cause the Republican party to reform into something a little more representative of America and less representative of the angry white men who’ve been the party’s guiding light. So naturally we can expect some blatant appeals to the paradigms that have proven so effective for this group in the past. They’re gambling that this “back to basics” strategy will work. And it might. Despite all the slightly creepy “post-racial” camaraderie we’ve been seeing in the nation since Election Day, most of us know full well that racism isn’t dead and that a substantial percentage of the 46% who voted against Obama did so because they hate black people (even the ones who are half white). How does one rally this group in the wake of a national defeat, and let them know that somebody in Republican Land still loves them? This cartoon is one rallying cry. Expect more.

That said, I’m not certain this strategy will still work the way that Rush and the gang think. Sure, there are plenty of folks out there who will respond positively to this appeal to their baser nature. But there are also a lot of Republicans who are taking a hard look at themselves right now, and asking some hard questions about the tried-and-true ways of doing things. Already we’re seeing signs of an unheard-of revolt by some Post staffers in the wake of this cartoon. The Republican base might be OK with it, but the base is still the minority within the party, and it’s growing smaller as time passes. The rest of the Republicans, I’m guessing, are starting to read the writing on the wall: the old ways of doing things have got to change.

Before they do, though, I’m sure we’ll see a lot more dead monkeys.

Posted in Syndicated feeds | 9 Comments

Criticism as Punishment: Retribution, Utility, and Outrage

Posted on February 19, 2009 by David Schraub

In the field of criminal law, there are two main philosophical schools on how society is allowed to punish offenders. The first is the retributive school — basically arguing that we can punish people solely based on how much they “deserve” to be punished, no more and no less. Punishment is seen as a matter of just deserts, apportioned to the moral culpability of the offender. We can’t raise or lower punishments because might make society better off (a more severe punishment might serve as a superior deterrent, a less severe one might allow a brilliant scientist to continue his work unhindered by a jail term).

The second school is utilitarian (or consequentialist) — it says we can punish because and only when society benefits from it. Deterrence (preventing further crimes) is a utilitarian rationale, as is incapcitation (preventing the criminal from committing more crimes) and rehabilitation (making the criminal a productive, socially beneficial member of society). We can punish up to point where all parties continue to reap a net benefit, but no further. This might mean we can’t punish at all, in certain situations, where the social consequences of punishment would outweigh its gains. Alternatively, it might mean we’d be justified punishing completely out of accordance with moral fault if there were socially compelling reasons to do so. Hanging an accused thief by his entrails may be wildly out of sync with just deserts, but it would probably make other accused thieves think twice before picking pockets.

Retributivists and utilitarians are not friends. Utilitarians allege that punishment without social benefit is barbaric — solely seeking to quench the victim’s or society’s thirst for blood. Moreover, punishment that isn’t tailored to increase social benefit imposes huge costs on society by, for example, missing critical opportunities to change behaviors. Insofar as we are missing opportunities to, say, deter rape, a utilitarian would say that we are in a lot of ways responsible for the rapes we could have prevented but didn’t. Retributivists counter that utilitarian punishment has no checks to insure it products the basic human dignity of the condemned and risks devolving into state-sponsored torture if the state claims a net benefit from it. On the other hand, it also provides an out for politically or economically-powerful individuals to escape liability for even the most horrific of crimes, if they claim that society would suffer more by their removal than it would gain through punishment. Because the idea of “social gain” is always indeterminate, punishment becomes solely the province of the poor and marginalized, and even can become a collateral weapon against social dissidents who are labeled “undesirable”. This a just a sampling — the literature in this field is rich and dense, and won’t be resolved in the space of a blog post.

Outside the academy, though, I suspect most of us blend together elements of both schools. We want our mechanisms of punishment to achieve social goals — make us safer, rehabilitate wrongdoers, recompense victims — while still staying at least tied to some rational conception of culpability.

One other function of punishment that I think sometimes gets elided in these categories is the function punishment serves of communicating social outrage. When we punish someone by, for example, sending them to prison, we are implicitly communicating a message by society that the behavior they were convicted of is deeply offensive and wrong to our communal sensibilities. The longer or harsher the punishment, the more outrage we are communicating. In its simplest form, I think this can be folded into a retributive model. The claim that X conduct “deserves” Y punishment is another way of communicating the degree the wrongdoer has deviated from communal norms, and our ensuing anger. You could argue that this expressive function of punishment also serves utilitarian ends in the form of social catharsis, or checking the potential for vigilante justice.

I don’t think this is per se invalid. One of the reasons I support hate crimes legislation is because I think it is important for society to send a message that such actions are not “taken in our name”, are not silently endorsed by the majority, but represent an egregious violation of community standards whose voice is communicated most clearly through law. But sometimes, the expressive element of punishment bursts beyond the constraints of either retributive or utilitarian considerations and takes on a life of its own.

Continue reading →

Posted in Anti-Semitism, Jews and Judaism, Palestine & Israel, Prisons and Justice and Police | 23 Comments

Tab Dump

Posted on February 19, 2009 by Ampersand

Please go sign the petition for single payer health care. And (more importantly), go see if your congressional representative is on this list, and if they are, contact them and ask them to co-sponsor HR 676, the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act.
The torture conducted by the U.S. government includes rape.
Dollhouse first episode reviews at What A Crazy Random Happenstance, Art At the Auction, Constant Thoughts, and Art At the Auction again. If you only read one of those links, I’d highly recommend the last one.
Oh, and this post, arguing that Echo from Dollhouse is thematically the opposite of Dawn from Buffy.
Headless fatties. (The first use of the term?)
The Connection Between Blacks As Apes And Police Brutality.
Imaginary Fat Toys As Cautionary Tales
Slut Shaming And The Politics Of Tight Clothes
Madinkbeard analyzes a panel from an old David Mazzucchelli comic, “Discovering America.” For my tastes, “Discovering America” is the single best-drawn comic I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, it’s long out of print, and copies are expensive.
I am bored by sports, but sometimes enjoy sports writing. This NYTimes Magazine article, about a great basketball player whose greatness is invisible to conventional basketball stats, is quite good.
Over at Fat Chicks Rule, in comments, an employee of the Rudd Center responds to fat activist criticism of the Rudd Center, and the fat activists respond in turn.
Celebrate Black History Month At Walmart.
I love this gastric bypass t-shirt. A shame it’s not available in sizes above XXL.
Ten Cartoons from Sean Delonas. I’ve seen them before, but the awesome extent of his bigoted asshattery becomes clearer when seeing them all collected together like this.
Reflections by an Arab Jew. (I know this and the above link came from “Alas” comments, but I’m too lazy right now to go find out who I should give credit to, so apologies for that.)
The 1965 Dewey’s Lunch Counter Sit-In’s. “It’s the first documented instance of people protesting over anti-transgender discrimination. … It was an African-American GLBT production.” Curtsy: TransGriot.
The Case For A Public Health Care Plan. A public health care alternative isn’t just worthwhile as a trojan horse for an eventual single-payer system; it’s a necessary element of making private plans work well.
Immigrant in “detention center” denied health care because it was assumed he was faking, dies of cancer. I hope the family’s lawsuit is successful. And see also: Abuses Rampant In U.S. Detention Centers.
On The Indefensibility of the Filibuster
Boldly sacrificing Mexican lives in order to make it marginally more difficult for Americans to get high.
Hilzoy explains why the Democrats never make the Republicans actually do a filibuster — it’s much harder on the majority party than on the party doing the filibuster.
Why Michelle Obama’s Vogue Cover Matters
In France, heterosexuals are flocking to the “marraige light” alternative created to avoid letting same-sex couples marry. So much for preserving marriage.
Our taxes pay for “you can’t rape a slut!” abstinence only messages.
Anti-earmark ideology hurts the country.
Free book on free range kids. We’re raising our kids to live fearful, constrained lives, and we shouldn’t be.
More responses to “Why Tom Zarek Was Right.”
Rape victim blamed for mistaken ID caused by a racist justice system, bad police practices and a DA ignoring evidence.
How Not To Write Science.
The idea that one should learn standard English in order to not be discriminated against is poisonous.

Posted in Link farms | 16 Comments

Breaking the Seals, Part II

Posted on February 19, 2009 by David Schraub

Eamonn McDonaugh responds to my post:

….I find it hard to understand why he might take seriously the weird notion that any but the most mealy-mouthed critique of Israel risks being tarred with the brush of antisemitism. No one who thinks seriously about the issues involved can possibly believe this. Some criticisms of Israel are indeed antisemitic in nature and some aren’t; each instance has to be judged on its merits and, sometimes, reasonable people can come to different conclusions.

Not only is it not all criticism of Israel antisemitic, sharp and searching criticism of its policies and actions is essential….

This being the case, I’d even argue that the recent waves of anti-Israel protests arising from events in Gaza, deeply stained and profoundly distorted by antisemitism though they were, served some good purpose in that they placed the actions of Israel under such a level of scrutiny that it had to take great care about how it used its military power.

The problem isn’t really that people take to the streets of London, Paris and Barcelona in a bid to place limits on the exercise of military power by Israel; it’s that they generally fail to do so when other states behave in comparable ways. It’s not that every single alleged violation of human rights ought to get everyone equally worked up all the time. That would, obviously, be impossible; no one could keep up with all the horrors being committed throughout the world on a daily basis.

However, if those who recently made the effort to protest about Israel’s attack on Hamas in Gaza were primarily motivated by an interest in human rights, that is to say, the rights of all human beings to live free from oppression, violence and the like, then we would expect to see a very great deal more of protests about the deaths of civilians in armed conflicts in other parts of the world.

Generally speaking, one sees no remotely comparable level of concern for humans whose rights are being violated by people who are not Israeli Jews. It’s therefore difficult to avoid the conclusion that many of the anti-Israel protestors of recent weeks may have been motivated by less noble sentiments than a desire to defend human rights.

I’ll have more to say on this later, but I thought it was worth flagging.

Posted in Whatever | 3 Comments