CAIR Spokesman Invokes Terrorism to Silence Speech

So a pastor down in Florida wanted to have a bonfire of Korans and this is protected speech under the first amendment.  But Ibrahim Hooper spokesman for the Counsel of American-Islamic Relations apparently doesn’t believe that, by this passage in a New York Times national feed story:

An Islamic group in England has also incorporated his efforts into a YouTube video that encourages Muslims to “rise up and act,” widening a concern that Mr. Jones — though clearly a fringe figure with only 50 members in his church — could spark riots or terrorism.

“Can you imagine what this will do to our image around the world?” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington. “And the additional danger it will add whenever there is an American presence in Iraq or Afghanistan?”

So apparently the man is choosing to use the efforts of terrorists to serve his own goals.  The mask has slipped, huh, you fat fuck?

WTF?! Middle School Designates That Certain Class Officer Positions are Only Available to Members of... One Race [Update: The School Responds!]

There is so much wrong with this, I don’t know where to begin.  So at Nettleton Middle School, in Nettleton, Mississippi, they say that if you want to be Class President you have to be white and if you want to be Vice President, you have to be black.  And on down the line.  They also segregate in other areas.

Yes, really.

Oh, and if you are Asian, or a Native American, you are shit out of luck, I guess.  I would go on pointing out the many contradictions, but sheesh, I think most of ya’ll get it.

By the way, that sound you are hearing right now is the rest of the entire state of Mississippi simultaneously smacking itself in the face to do a facepalm.

You know these things boggle the mind.  How did things get so completely wrong there?  I mean you think racism is dead, or on its death bed, but then one day you are fishing and you draw in a Coelacanth of segregation.  And you look at it in astonishment and say, “how do you even exist in 2010?”

But let me take a moment and express a deeper thought than just, “what the fuck?”  I mean every now and then these “living fossils” turn up.  A few years back I remember where a principal segregated the prom.  When a biracial girl asked him, presumably sarcastically, what prom she was supposed to go to, he told her that her parents made a mistake in creating her.  And I remember watching news footage of one black woman crying at the thought that her children would have to go to that same school the next year—she had no other options.  She was too poor to have other options.

In the linked article, the woman, Brandy Springer, decided to move to take herself out of the system.  That is great.  Seriously that is wonderful.  She has withdrawn both her children and her tax dollars from that Jim Crowe district and I applaud her for it.

But most people can’t do that.  Most people are stuck with what they got.

I have alluded to the fact that I am learning disabled.  I don’t remember if I have shared with you that when I was living in Charlotte, North Carolina, that I made the “mistake” of seeking the most reasonable accommodations.  They not only refused to do so, but they engaged in active forms of discrimination until I gave up and dropped out.

Now the story ends alright.  I later got my GED, went to a mid-level University and then on to a one of the best law schools in America.  And in business and in life I do pretty well for myself.  But in that time when my dreams were broken, when I believed I had no future, the most bitter thought was that these bastards took away my right to an education, but my parents still had to pay for it.

Our current “free” education system is wrong.  It is wrong to create a set of economics that make it easy for the richest students to escape the public schools, that makes it hard for the middle class to afford that, and positively traps the poorest in them.  I know about the founding of the current free school system and I know it was motivated by the best egalitarian ideal: that every person deserved a square chance at success in life.  But like most government programs, it is losing sight of its original purpose.

And when the only game in town is the government, as it is for most people seeking to educate their children, then when that government entity is taken over by bigots, it can be devastating.  Most people can’t move.  Most people can’t afford to send their children to private school.  So their children will face discrimination in their education, even denial of their right to an education, and have nowhere else to go.

What we need is a radical privatization of our school system.  What I propose is this.  it balances the need to give everyone a square chance at life, while also introducing some market competition.

First, every parent would receive a voucher.  Now it is often argued that vouchers never pay for much.  I agree.  So let’s make it pay for a lot.  For instance, I once heard it said that in America we spend an average of $6,600 per student per year.  So let’s get them a voucher for that amount.

Second, every public school would be converted to a tuition basis for funding.

And of course measures would be adopted to make sure that the states still offered a viable alternative, just in case every private school refuses to admit black students, or more reasonably they all become religious schools leaving no secular alternative.

It is often objected that many private schools are religions and this would raise establishment clause concerns.  First, it is illogical to assume that if private schools are now overwhelmingly religious that they will remain so if most children go to private schools.  Second, even if most of the money goes to religious schools, it is at the direction of the parents, not the government.  In that sense it is no different than a state employee receiving a paycheck and giving the majority of it to his church.  It is his money and his right.  Same with the parents; it becomes effectively their money.

And that is not just my opinion.  That is the opinion of the supreme court.  There have been cases where states would offer to, say, deaf children free sign interpreters to help them go to school wherever they chose to go to school.  Believe it or not, someone had a problem with that, claiming that if a deaf child used a state-sponsored interpreter, that this amounted to aiding religion and the court reasoned exactly as I did: that is it no different than a state employee putting his own earned salary into the coffers of a church.

Right now, our schools are socialist institutions.  That is the reality of it all.  And they are inflicted with the classic failings of socialism: prices go up, salaries go down, and quality goes down the tubes.  What I am proposing is a radical injection of capitalism into that system.  It won’t eliminate bigotry like we saw in this story or what I personally faced.  But it will limit its effects.  And most importantly it will fundamentally change the relationship between schools and parents.  Rather than being people seeking their benefits from the state, they will be customers.  They can say, you will educate my child, or by God, I will take that money somewhere else.

In Nettleton, Mississippi, Brandy Springer as so offended by the racism in her school she moved her whole family to withhold her child and the money associated with her child, from that school.  Every parent, rich or poor should be able to do that.

Update: The school tries to explain itself in a press release:

After being notified of a grievance regarding upcoming student elections at Nettleton Middle School, research was conducted that evidenced that the current practices and procedures for student elections have existed for over 30 years. It is the belief of the current administration that these procedures were implemented to help ensure minority representation and involvement in the student body. It is felt the intent of these election procedures was to ensure African-American representation in each student office category through an annual rotation basis.

So in short, this started as affirmative action.  Which goes to show something else: how often affirmative action can end up looking like just plain racism.

Further they explain:

Therefore, beginning immediately, student elections at Nettleton School District will no longer have a classification of ethnicity. It is our intent that each student has equal opportunity to seek election for any student office.

Oh well, that is good.  Apparently they have learned their lesson, right?  Right?

Future student elections will be monitored to help ensure that this change in process and procedure does not adversely affect minority representation in student elections.

Ah, crap.

Slipping a Little Politics into Miss Universe’s Presentation

You know, I haven’t watched a beauty pageant in years but with all this stuff going on in them, I might have to change my mind.  IBD explains that

On her final catwalk, the ranking Miss Universe, Stefania Fernandez, suddenly whipped out a Venezuelan flag in a patriotic but protocol-breaking gesture.

Fernandez waved her flag for the same reason Americans waved theirs after 9/11 — to convey resolution amid distress. Her flag had seven stars, significant because Chavez had arbitrarily added an eighth, making any use of a difficult-to-find seven-star banner an act of defiance.

Now they go on to suggest that this is all about violence in the country.  Well, I am skeptical of that, but certainly it seems like a rebuke of Chavez of some kind.

Now of course starlets, models, singers, etc. are not the best students of political theory.  I mean, gee, Madonna, can you explain to us the merits of capitalism v. socialism as you pretend to finger yourself on stage?  And, um, you are pretending, right?  Right?

And further the recent politicization of these pageants need to stop.  Its all elaborate bullshit, to tell the truth and these things are struggling to stay relevant.  I mean look, this started out as a way for men to oogle women, okay?  But they wanted to at least pretend it wasn’t just that so they started asking the kids how they would feed the world and similar crap.  So then for some reason people misinterpreted it as these women having a point of view that mattered.  No, sorry ladies, you don’t.  There I said it.

Which is not to say they are all stupid or something like that.  But they are not selected for their intelligence, now are they?  Its like a Paul Westerberg song went, “You’ve got brains...  all the way down.”  So if the winner is smart, its coincidental.  Yeah, I said it.

Which is why they find themselves today in such a predicament.  As porn, well, its probably got the same problem all porn has these days: endless free porn on the net.  And if you take away the porn factor, well, what is left?

And then if you inject politics into it, well, then it gets really tedious.  The fact is I don’t care what Miss California thinks about gay marriage.  I also don’t get why Perez Hilton is judging a female beauty pageant.  Its like a Priest claiming to be a marriage counselor.  There are some jobs a person is just not qualified for.

But that begs the question, why did I post this at all?

Honestly I have a soft spot for anyone standing up to a dictator.  Crazy that.

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Oh, and then why did I make a big deal about Miss USA opposing the mosque?  Because regardless of who she is, she rebuts the claim that all opponents of the GZM are bigots just because of who she is.  And how can I say this.  AQ would force her to wear a burqa, and putting that picture up reminds you of the stakes, of what kind of society we are fighting for in this war on terror.

Like Thinking you are Squeezing Lemons: A Different Take on the Attack on Ahmed Sharif.

Ahmed H. Sharif was the New York City cab driver who was attacked by Michael Enright and Mr. Sharif gives us a much longer account to the New York Times, and you won’t hear me say this very often, but its worth reading.  Yes I know, the New York Times.  I am as surprised to write that as you are to read it.

Anyway, as you read this I want you to keep a few facts in mind.  Bear in mind that Enright was embedded with a unit in Afghanistan, to shoot a documentary.  He was in film school.

It was the first fare of the cabdriver’s shift. A young man hailed him at the corner of Second Avenue and East 24th Street, wanting to go to 42nd and Second. It was 6 p.m. on Tuesday; the traffic was dense.

Once the fare, Michael Enright, a 21-year-old film student who had been recently trailing Marines in Afghanistan, settled in the back, he started asking friendly enough questions: Where was the driver from? Was he Muslim?

The driver, Ahmed H. Sharif, 44, said he was from Bangladesh, and yes he was Muslim.

Mr. Enright said, “Salaam aleikum,” the Arabic greeting “Peace be upon you.”

“How’s your Ramadan going?” Mr. Enright asked, Mr. Sharif said.

He told him it was going fine. Then, he said, Mr. Enright began making fun of the rituals of Ramadan, and Mr. Sharif sensed this cab ride might not be like any other.

“So I stopped talking to him,” Mr. Sharif said. “He stopped talking, too.”

As the cab inched up Third Avenue and reached 39th Street, Mr. Sharif said in a phone interview, Mr. Enright suddenly began cursing at him and shouting “This is the checkpoint” and “I have to bring you down.” He said he told him he had to bring the king of Saudi Arabia to the checkpoint.

“He was talking like he was a soldier,” Mr. Sharif said.

That is when the attack started, but I want to stop there.  Especially to a lawyer this account has a certain familiarity to it.  It starts to sound like an absolutely classic scenario in pleading insanity.

A lot of people think that the insanity defense will basically say that if you are diagnosed as “nuts” in any way then you get out of jail free.  This is not even remotely true.  Generally (and each state varies) you have to be a very specific kind of nut.  One common variety is where the person is so far gone they literally have no idea what they are actually doing.  And there is a classic example given to make you understand it intuitively.  Imagine you are so given to hallucination that you are thinking that you are squeezing lemons to make lemonade, when in fact you are actually squeezing a person’s neck and killing them.  In that scenario you can truly say that the person literally didn’t understand what they were doing.

And isn’t that maybe what was happening here?  As you read his account you really start to think that he literally thinks he is in Afghanistan, and somehow he is trying to get the King of Saudi Arabia through a checkpoint.  I mean I suspect you might get a brain strain if you try too hard to understand, but it seems like at the beginning of the ride he was alert and oriented, in touch with reality and somewhere along the way, he entered Afghanistan in his mind. 

Of course that is assuming that Mr. Sharif is telling the truth but there is no reason to doubt him.  And it is assuming that Enright was not putting on an act, which is much less certain.  But if you believe Sharif is telling the truth, and Enright was not putting on a nutty act, then this might be equivalent to the lemon squeezing example.

Obviously that means he might have the insanity defense available but I have a deeper point to make.

Everyone is so eager to turn this attack into a larger symbol.  But the truth suggested by this account might very well be simply this.  Enright was so insane he didn’t even know where he was, or what was going on.  And for everyone, including the New York Times, to pretend this says something about our culture is simply wrong.

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Oh, and its hypocritical, too.  Remember when Maj. Hasan shot up Ft. Hood?  What was the New York Times’ favorite explanation?  The trauma of treating patient who served in war, sort of PTSD by proxy.  But here is a man who actually was in a war zone, and mentally might have been back there when he committed the attacks and what do they attribute this to?

The violence that erupted during the cab ride came amid a heated and persisting national debate over whether to situate a Muslim community center and mosque two blocks north of ground zero. Upon learning of the attack on the cabdriver, some Muslim groups called for political and religious leaders to quiet tensions.

Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement: “As other American minorities have experienced, hate speech often leads to hate crimes. Sadly, we’ve seen how the deliberate public vilification of Islam can lead some individuals to violence against innocent people.”

Oh and not for nothing, but it turns out that Mr. Sharif is one of those knuckle dragging bigots who is opposed to the GZM:

Recently, some passengers asked him about the center planned near ground zero, he recalled, and he replied that he was against it, that there was no need to put it there.

But we will ignore every fact that undermines “Teh Narrative” right?

GZM Supporter Curses Out Holocaust Survivor, Accuses him of Wanting a Holocaust of Muslims

I wonder if Juan Cole will blame his side for this anti-Semitic asshole?

The really ugly crap was at around 2 minutes in.  And I liked the closure of seeing the man singing God Bless America and showing off his pro-Israel shirt.

On Collective Blame and “Root Causes” and Juan Cole

So, Mr. Cole, help me out here.

So on September 11, nineteen Muslims murdered around 3,000 Americans.  You know, like this guy:

But, Mr. Cole tells us, it would be wrong to blame all Muslims for that.  On a different subject he said, “[c]ollective guilt and collective punishment are always wrong[.]”  And he is right.  Collective blame is wrong, and leads to a lot of other wrong things.

And then he takes it further and says that to oppose the GZM is collective guilt, stating that opponents of the mosque “identify Islam with the attackers (even though Usama Bin Laden openly said of the hijackers that ‘those young men had no fiqh [Islamic law]‘– i.e. they were lawless secret operatives rather than proper Muslims.)”

(Yes, that is right.  He is trying to claim that Osama bin Laden said the nineteen hijackers were not proper Muslims.  What crap.  I mean, I can accept a moderate Muslim saying that, but no, not bin Laden.) 

Now I have to part ways with them on that, but my opposition to that is not, contrary to their silly claims, based on collective blame but the belief that this will hand our enemies a propaganda victory and because this particular group appears to be radicals in moderate clothing.

But then along comes a man named Michael Enright who allegedly viciously attacks a cab driver, allegedly because he is a Muslim.  So then Mr. Cole wants to wants to tar all conservatives, or at least the Republican party as being to blame for the actions of one emotionally disturbed man.  Um, isn’t that collective blame?

Oh, and if that isn’t contradiction enough, he is also one of those people on the left who wants us to look into the “root causes” of terrorism,” by which he means that we should realize that terrorism is caused by deep injustice and if only we eliminated that injustice there would be no more terrorism.

“What the citizens of the U.S. fail to understand is that the battle against the 9/11 terrorists is not their battle. It is a Muslim battle.”

That is a quote in a very interesting editorial by Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, Al-Arabiya TV’s director-general.  Translated from the indispensible Memri, he discusses the issues around the GZM and its worth reading the whole thing.  I was tempted to do another “here’s another anti-muslim bigot opposed to the mosque” type of thing, but most people capable of grasping that point have already grasped it and I think the material is best presented more straightforwardly.

A lot of the analysis is strange.  First, he makes the mistake of thinking Obama endorsed creating it, but hell, he wouldn’t be the first.  And also contra the people who claim that this controversy is spreading hate, he says that building the GZM “is unnecessary and unimportant, even for the Muslims. This mosque is not an issue for Muslims, and they do not care about its construction.”

But, to be blunt, by the end of the article, I got the feeling he was talking about how he felt, and mistakenly assuming the rest of the Muslim world feels the way he does.  But that is just opinion, and given that it is his job to understand the Muslim community, maybe I would be wrong to second guess him.  He then says something else that, if true, would drain the air out of liberals’ tires on another issue:

Sen. Max Baucus: I Wrote the Health Care Law, But I Didn’t Actually Read it

Today’s beat-your-head-on-the-nearest-wall moment comes from Max Baucus (Democrat-Mont.-Derelict-in-his-Duty).  Apparently he wants us to believe he somehow wrote it without reading it.  And I know I have been saying this a lot, but, yes, really:

Judy Matott asked Baucus if he would work to improve Libby’s image, and then asked him and Sebelius, “if either of you read the health care bill before it was passed and if not, that is the most despicable, irresponsible thing.”

Baucus replied that if Libby residents assembled an economic development plan, he would do what he could to help, and he took credit for “essentially” writing the health care bill that passed the Senate.

“I don’t think you want me to waste my time to read every page of the health care bill. You know why? It’s statutory language,” Baucus said. “We hire experts.”

So I guess he is like a monkey at a typewriter, then, bashing the keyboard and hoping something good happens.

And I will note that most versions of that metaphor state that it will take at least a million monkeys at a million typewriters, typing for a million years to produce anything of value.

So you wrote it, but the actual reading, etc. was done by experts?  Well, gee, Mr. Baucus, WHY DON’T WE HIRE THEM TO BE OUR SENATORS?  I mean if you guys don’t read, understand and vote on bills based on that understanding, why don’t we pick senators who will?  You know, cut out the middle man.

Seriously, if you don’t actually read the bills, what are you doing there, you waste of space?

And don’t worry kiddies its not like those experts could ever slip anything past those congressional idiots, right?  So you don’t have to worry about those experts taking advantage of their inattention to slip something vile into the law..

And, if you are one of those experts, do America a favor and embarrass these people.  Trick these people into passing something with a line like, “And Congresspersons shall hereby wear clown-noses when debating bills involving appropriations.”  You will show the people in charge are not paying any attention, and Democracy will thank you, and who knows?  Really funny crap could happen.  They might have to wear clown noses when they debate, which is ironically appropriate.

Objecton, Relevance: Stupidity Regarding Fox News and Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal

You know, given how often liberals denounce corporations, you think they would understand some basic truths about corporate law and governance.  Or maybe their hatred is born out of ignorance, come to think of it.  But here are some basic facts missing from this discussion.

First, Al-Waleed didn’t “fund Fox News” as you often hear claimed—not unless he was part of the IPO, which has not been claimed.  Let me explain.  News Corp is a publicly traded company.  So this is what happened.  At some point in the history of the company they had an initial public offering.  At that time various people bought the stock.  Those people put money into News Corp’s treasury.

Then they sold the stock to someone else.  And how much did New Corp get out of that transaction?  Nothing.  And then the stock probably changed hands several more times, and finally 7% ended up in the hands of Al-Waleed.

Think of it like selling a car, because in a real sense it is no different.  When you sell your car to someone, that person is “funding you” in the sense that he is giving you money.  But if that person sells the car to another person, and that person sells to another person, those transactions literally have no effect on your finances.  Its precisely the same way with stocks.

And yeah, you read that right.  He owns a paltry 7% of the company.  Which leads me to my next point:

Another Intolerant Anti-Muslim Bigot Writes About the GZM

Let me quote him at length:

Let us remember that the project organizers themselves created this controversy by announcing that the groundbreaking would take place on the ten-year anniversary of the attack, and that the exact site was selected because of its proximity to Ground Zero. Given that fact, the current media meme that this is not a “Ground Zero mosque” is dishonest spin....

More importantly, the mosque will come to symbolize in the radical Muslim world the triumph of Bin Laden’s attack, and provide a kind of heavenly validation for his approach to spreading radical ideology. For what other reason could the tenth anniversary have been chosen for the groundbreaking?

It is not hard to see that this will only inspire more attacks. The logic will be: “If Allah gave us one miracle, maybe He’ll give us more.”

If some Americans are suspicious and fearful of Muslims, it’s not without good reason, and nothing their self-appointed leadership has done or said in the nine years following 9/11 has allayed those fears. Non-Muslim Americans have yet to see any clean line of demarcation between radical and moderate Muslims. Everywhere around the globe Muslims are the cause of so much bloodshed and turmoil, making life on this planet a living hell.

What are people to think when they see a group of World Cup fans blown up in Uganda by Somali Muslim psychopaths? Closer to home, a U.S. Army Major shoots his fellow soldiers! What are they to make of a Pakistani national given U.S. citizenship just last year attempting to set off a car bomb in Times Square? And the self-taught “American” sheikh, Anwar al-Awlaki, who from his cave somewhere in Yemen calls on Muslims to murder Americans, and they listen?

The underlying problem in this bitter controversy is that Muslims in America suffer a deserved trust deficit, wherein they are seen as a foreign and dangerous element. Perhaps if the $100 million being spent on this mosque were used to build, say, a hospital, this perception would begin to change.

Ah, who is this evil, bigoted jerk.  I bet his name is John-boy, or Bubba.  Well, look below the fold: