Jan 20 2010

The good Islamic Republic President? 24 descends further into fable

Category: society — harmonicminer @ 9:22 am

Here is a crazy, evil man.

Here is the idealized actor who is playing the role of President of “the Islamic Republic” in season 8 of 24, where Jack Bauer plays the intrepid grandfather role.

So, we’re supposed to believe that a thinly disguised Iran is suddenly negotiating in good faith to cancel it’s nuclear weapons program?  And that this President of the “Islamic Republic” is opposed by radical forces including his own brother, when all he wants is peace and friendship with the west?

Well…  it IS TV.  Fantasy land.  Maybe the high forehead is supposed to convince us he’s the good guy.

What can you expect from a show that last season portrayed a private American security company (loosely modeled on Blackwater) as the villain that was launching bio-weapon missiles all over the place?

I’m afraid I’ve lost hope that TV shows can keep telling interesting stories based on who the terrorists actually are.

24 managed a couple of seasons that were actually about Islamic terrorists.  Out of 7 complete ones, so far.  It’s too early to know where this season is going…  but the Ahmindinewhackjob substitute is going to try to make us think he is equal parts Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr., with a bit of Thomas Jefferson thrown in…..  no, not the part about dedication to freedom and liberty, but the feet of clay where women are concerned.

Of course, on TV Superman can fly.

UPDATE:  The second episode has the necessary criminal cop, who is willing to torture and murder Jack Bauer without trial because he thinks he killed a cop.  It also has the innocent rookie cop who reluctantly stands by while the older, evil cop does the deed.  Gosh…  I wonder how they get such ground breaking ideas?   This episode isn’t over yet…  I’m sure they won’t kill Jack off this early in the season.  But Jack has already been hit with a double Tazer dose, kicked, then struck in the head five times very hard…  I’m sure after this commercial is over, he’s going to leap up in an amazing display of 50 yr old vitality and grandfatherly resilience, and triumph over the evil constables.

UPDATE 2:  It turns out I was half right.  Jack DID leap up and take down the older evil cop, but was delayed by the younger one, who, in a fit of conscience, seems to have decided to phone it in.  Of course, the evil older cop was a white, shaved head type, and the younger, nicer one is some kind of Asian with a nice face.  I expect central casting sent out for someone with the look of the White Aryan Brotherhood to play the older, evil cop.

Amazingly, Jack’s face does not even appear to be bruised.

On the other hand, the black CTU Director is obviously not the good-hearted, competent cliche we’ve seen in police Captain roles since the 1970s, trying to subdue unruly white detectives by yelling at them without really meaning it.  He seems to be pig-headed and easy to fool with planted evidence.  Oh well… can’t win ’em all.

The people who bought this show from the original creators at the beginning of year 7 have no apparent compunctions about resurrecting every Hollywood script cliche imaginable.  I wonder what will be next.  Maybe a criminally psychotic murderous priest?  Yeah, that’s the ticket.

When it first started, 24 was a really original show.  Now, it’s just an echo.

UPDATE 3:  Oh NOOOOOO!  It’s the Russians again!  Maybe this time the evil priest will be Russian Orthodox.

Jan 19 2010

Whose idea of “Social Justice”?

Category: left,society — harmonicminer @ 9:55 am

Reformed Pastor Kevin DeYoung has A Modest Proposal.

I’d like to make a modest proposal for Christians of all theological and political persuasions: don’t use the term “social justice” without explanation.

The term is unassailable to some and arouses suspicion in others. For many Christians, social justice encompasses everything good we should be doing in the world, from hunger relief to serving the poor to combating sex trafficking. But the phrase is also used to support more debatable matters like specific health care legislation, minimum wage increases, or reducing carbon emissions. If something can be included as a “social justice” issue then no one can oppose said issue, because who in their right mind favors social injustice?

So begins an interesting article (read it all) that makes the very simple point that “social justice” is not well-defined.  It is not a friendly term, nor a particularly honest one. That’s because just about anything that anyone thinks society “should do” can be called a matter of “social justice.”  It is a term designed to stop discussion, because who can be against “justice” of any kind?

More pointedly, it is a term that is used mostly by people who want the government to do something, generally something broadly redistributive, or some exercise of government power to force people to do something “for society” that they don’t want to do.

A few questions will make the point.

1)  Why isn’t the epidemic of unwed birth since LBJ’s “great society” programs began considered to be a matter of social justice? This is especially so since the best way to be a poor child in the USA is to be the child of a mother who is not married to the father. That’s also the best way to wind up in jail.

2)  Why isn’t protecting the lives of the unborn a matter of social justice?

3)  Why isn’t the unavailability of jobs for poor American citizens, due to illegal aliens taking the jobs, considered to be a matter of social justice?

4)  Why isn’t the negative effect on school performance brought on by the flood of children of illegal aliens in our schools, a negative effect which degrades the quality of education received by the children of American citizens, considered to be a matter of social justice?

You get the idea. Some things are matters of “social justice” in the minds of those who are fond of the term. Some things aren’t.

But the distinction has nothing whatsoever to do with “justice,” and has everything to do with Leftism.

When Leftist Christians use the term “social justice,” and specifically exclude the first two questions above, the smokescreen is suddenly very easy to see through.

Jan 18 2010

White privilege = having a father?

Category: government,politics,society — harmonicminer @ 9:32 am

I’ve written before about the real nature of the problem in “black America” (in quotes to make the point that there are MANY middle class black families doing just fine in the USA).  The articled linked here, Chicago’s Real Crime Story by Heather Mac Donald, covers the background of the problem of black crime in Chicago, most of which is black-on-black crime, of course. It’s a great article, worth reading completely for the perspective it brings. Here is how it ends:

Barack Obama started that work in a startling Father’s Day speech in Chicago while running for president. “If we are honest with ourselves,” he said in 2008, “we’ll admit that . . . too many fathers [are] missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. . . . We know the statistics—that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of school and 20 times more likely to end up in prison.”

But after implicitly drawing the connection between family breakdown and youth violence—”How many times in the last year has this city lost a child at the hands of another child?”—Obama reverted to Alinskyite bromides about school spending, preschool programs, visiting nurses, global warming, sexism, racial division, and income inequality. And he has continued to swerve from the hard truth of black family breakdown since his 2008 speech. The best thing that the president can do for Chicago’s embattled children is to confront head-on the disappearance of their fathers and the consequence in lost lives.

This kind of statement ought to be as obvious as 2+2=4.  It should be blindingly clear to everyone that when society and government provide incentives for bad behavior, we will get lots more bad behavior.  Nevertheless, the incentives to black women and girls to make babies out of wedlock are still there, despite “welfare reform.”  The lack of incentive to postpone sexual activity until marriage is also there, in the form of abortion mills ringing inner-city neighborhoods, making huge profits for white males who own them and operate them, and perform abortions in them.

The really tough fact to face is that even if we remove the incentives for early sexual activity and child-birth today, it will take a least a generation, perhaps two, to undo the damage that has been done by those incentives, however well-intended they may have been on the part of the politicians who enacted them.  It took us three innercity generations (about 15 years each, sadly) to get where we are today after the enactment of the Johnson Great Society programs that created those incentives, although the effects were obvious twenty years ago.

This means that it will take a degree of political will, in removing those incentives, that can withstand all of the horror stories, accusations that removing the incentives didn’t work and merely caused suffering, etc.  It will take about 20 years, at least, for the results to become unambiguously clear that removing incentives for bad behavior reduces the bad behavior, resulting in fewer births out of wedlock, fewer children abandoned by their fathers, fewer abortions, etc.

It’s much easier to blather on about environmental “sustainability,” without dealing with how well our culture can sustain itself with fewer and fewer fathers in the home, especially in minority neighborhoods.

We do need to do what we can do for those who are now in our society, but not at the cost of dooming yet another generation to the same circumstances.  But that is exactly the effect of nearly all current public assistance and welfare programs, because they encourage more people to engage in the behaviors that will create more and more people who “need” such assistance, and encourage the birth of more and more children in worse and worse situations.

There are many people now living whose situations we simply don’t have the power to fix, absent their own realization of their responsibilities, and determination to do something about them.  We DO have the power to reduce the number of people in the future who are born into similar circumstances, if we use it, simply by reducing the incentives to make babies who will be raised without fathers, and by increasing incentives to postpone sexual activity until marriage.

Sadly, I doubt that our politicians, of either party, will summon the necessary will to make the case with sufficient clarity and force that such changes in entitlement law are necessary, and are the only way to solve our current problems of poverty and crime.

Jan 07 2010

Forcing Virginia to recognize “gay marriage” in Vermont?

Category: judges,justice,left,marriage,religion,society,theology — harmonicminer @ 9:22 am

Christian Mother Fails to Transfer Daughter to Former Lesbian Partner by Deadline

A Christian woman in Virginia who was ordered to turn over her daughter to her former lesbian partner in Vermont did not do so by the set deadline, a lawyer for the second woman reported.Lisa Miller had been ordered by a judge in Vermont to turn over her daughter, Isabella, to Janet Jenkins by 1 p.m. Friday, but has not shown up, Sarah Star, Jenkins’s lawyer, told the New York Times.

Officer Tawny Wright, a Fairfax County police spokeswoman, meanwhile, said the Jenkins family had called the police and that a detective is investigating.

For the time being, the case remains a civil matter, Wright added.

Last week, Vermont Family Court Judge William Cohen, who awarded custody of Isabella to Jenkins on Nov. 20, noted that Miller appeared to have “disappeared with the minor child” and ceased communication with her attorneys.

For the past five years, Miller and Jenkins have been engaged in a custody battle over Isabella, who was conceived when the two women were living together in Virginia. Miller, a born-again Christian, had renounced her homosexuality just a few years after entering into a civil union with Jenkins in Vermont in 2000. Jenkins, on the other hand, is today still an active lesbian and has expressed disapproval in raising Isabella in a Christian home.

More at the link.

It’s about the welfare of the child, which I think is very clear in this case.

Dec 22 2009

Keep Infanticide Safe, Legal and Rare

Category: abortion,society — harmonicminer @ 9:56 am

You will have trouble believing this.

The authorities are calling their inability to prosecute the mother for murder a “loophole in the law.”

Mother Murders Child and Walks Away

In a shocking and heartbreaking story that seems to defy all reason, Angela Hatcher of NBC 12 in Virginia reported today that a mother who killed her newborn baby by suffocating it under bed sheets cannot and will not be charged of murder due to a loop hole in Virginia state law. According to the law, if a child is still connected to its mother by umbilical cord, it has not yet assumed its own identity, and is therefore the property of the mother.

Investigator Tracy Emerson said that the mother “could shoot the baby, stab the baby as long as it’s still attached to her in some form by umbilical cord or something and it’s no crime in the state of Virginia… Simply because the mother was there, and the baby had not taken its own identity allegedly at this point, it makes the baby not its own person.”

Emerson went on to say that the baby was full-term, healthy, and that the mother was aware of her pregnancy and had even received prenatal care. Could it get any worse?

Hatcher reported that there had been “similar case” in Campbell County before and investigators like Tracy Emerson had approached lawmakers about closing this terrible loophole. Apparently, no representatives were willing to alter the law because it was “too close to the abortion issue.”

Really? I’d like to see a normal person try to justify this heinous act of murder, or even justify ignoring it, because they were afraid to bring up “the abortion issue.”

This past summer, the federal appeals court in Richmond voted to uphold a ban on partial birth abortion. That means the horrific and gruesome practice of killing children in the womb is illegal, while at the same time, a woman who goes through the pains of labor is allowed to murder her child? It’s all infanticide, and it all should be illegal.

The partial birth abortion ban was a huge victory for pro-life forces in Virginia. How cynical that a victory for children in the womb would be followed by an injustice for those who have survived to make it out? Fortunately Governor-elect Bob McDonnell has said that he will sign any law that makes it to his desk regarding this issue. State Senator Steve Newman told local news reporters that he has already started drafting a bill.

The “pro-choice” position has so poisoned the conscience of America that I fear for our nation. If we will tolerate this, what won’t we tolerate?

I’m sure that Peter Singer sees no problem with this, no problem at all.

Dec 12 2009

Obama “Safe School” CZAR’s reading list: unsafe at ANY age

Category: education,Obama,society,White House — harmonicminer @ 10:06 am

Is this REALLY what you voted for?

Why it is that this story doesn’t get covered on ABC, CBS, NBC?  NY Times, Washington Post?

You know.

Dec 10 2009

The new fundamentalists

Category: environment,global warming,government,Group-think,socialism,society — harmonicminer @ 10:04 am

THE TOTALITIES OF COPENHAGEN: GLOBAL WARMING AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TRUE BELIEF

One of the deeper motivations that animate global warming true believers is the totalitarian impulse. This is not to say that global warmists are closet Stalinists, but their intellectual methods are instructively similar, says columnist Bret Stephens.

Revolutionary fervor:

* There’s a distinct tendency among climate alarmists toward uncompromising radicalism, a hatred of “bourgeois” values, and disgust with democratic practices.
* So President Obama wants to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 83 percent from current levels by 2050, levels not seen since the 1870s — in effect, the Industrial Revolution in reverse.
* Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, insists that “our lifestyles are unsustainable.”
* Al Gore gets crowds going by insisting that “civil disobedience has a role to play” in strong-arming governments to do his bidding (this from the man who once sought to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution).

Utopianism:

* In the world as it is, climate alarmists see humanity hurtling toward certain doom.
* In the world as it might be, humanity has seen the light and changed its patterns of behavior, becoming the green equivalent of the Soviet “new man.”
* At his disposal are technologies that defy the laws of thermodynamics; the problems now attributed to global warming abate or disappear.

Anti-humanism:

* In his 2007 best seller “The World Without Us,” environmentalist Alan Weisman considers what the planet would be like without mankind, and finds it’s no bad thing.
* The U.N. Population Fund complains in a recent report that “no human is genuinely ‘carbon neutral'” — its latest argument against children.
* John Holdren, President Obama’s science adviser, cut his teeth in the policy world as an overpopulation obsessive worried about global cooling.
* But whether warming or cooling, the problem for the climate alarmists, as for other totalitarians, always seems to boil down to the human race itself.

Today, of course, the very idea of totalitarianism is considered passé. Yet the course of the 20th century was defined by totalitarian regimes, and it would be dangerous to assume that the habits of mind that sustained them have vanished into the mists, says Stephens.

It’s fashionable to speak of “religious fundamentalists” in a phrase designed to obscure the essentially benign intent of Christian fundamentalists (if you can find one anymore), by using a single-breathed phrase that also includes Islamic fundamentalists of the Islamo-fascist variety.  A couple dozen leftist columnists and some government officials have darkly hinted that, before long, “sexist, homophobic, anti-choice Christianists” will be as dangerous as Osama bin Laden, if they aren’t already.  After all, didn’t they just shoot that nice abortion doctor who was just rescuing women from a difficult situation?

I think, however, that the only non-Islamic fundamentalists who pose a real danger to the West are the eco-pagan totalitarians, who believe they have the divine dispensation to control how the rest of us live our lives and conduct our businesses, because only they have the pure vision and the purer hearts to make the judgments about just how we should be using energy, how much we should be using, when we should use it, in what form we should use it, how much we should pay for it, and what our punishment should be if we don’t comply with their enlightened prescriptions…  not to say proscriptions.

It is difficult to think of a more anti-human agenda.

But these particular fundamentalists want a LOT more than a mere tithe.  They mean to control just about every aspect of your life, to one degree or another.

Baptism may continue to be a sacrament in the eco-totalitarian regime…  but it will be in cold water.

Nov 28 2009

Sexual fulfillment for terrorists

Category: Hizbullah,Islam,society — harmonicminer @ 9:16 am

If you want to recruit men to risk their lives repeatedly for relatively minor gain, Hezbollah thinks it knows the secret:

Mohammad, a 40-year old Lebanese Shiite who lives in Hezbollah’s stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburbs, was holding forth on the virtues of resistance, loyalty, and sex. “You could create the most loyal army by providing political power, social services and fulfilling the desires of your men — namely, sexual ones,” he declared.

“And Hezbollah has been very successful in this regard,” Mohammad continued.

It is hard to disagree.

Hezbollah liberated South Lebanon from Israeli occupation, expanded the Shiite community’s political power within the country, and has provided social services, such as health care and education, to its constituency since the 1980s. Today, it is also working to fulfill the sexual needs of its supporters, though a practice known as mutaa marriage.

Mutaa is a form of “temporary marriage” only acceptable within Shiite communities, one that allows couples to have religiously sanctioned sex for a limited period of time, without any commitments, and without the obligatory involvement of religious figures.

In conservative Muslim societies known for their strict sense of propriety, mutaa offers an escape clause. The contract is very simple. The woman says: “I marry myself to you for [a specific period of time] and for [a specified dowry]” and the man says: “I accept.” The period can range between one hour and a year, and is subject to renewal.

A Muslim woman can only marry a Muslim man, but a Muslim man can temporarily marry a Muslim, Christian, or Jewish woman, as long as she is a divorcée or a widow. However, those interviewed for this article confirmed that Hezbollah-the “Party of God”-has allowed the practice to spread to virgins or girls who have never married before, as long as the permission of her guardian (father or paternal grandfather) is obtained.

Presumably, if you allow your virgin daughter to engage in a Shiite-sanctioned “temporary marriage,” you aren’t then required to kill her to preserve your family’s honor, which has been a big problem in Lebanon, it seems.

Nov 25 2009

The Left at Christian Universities, part 15: Summer camp was never like this

Category: diversity,education,society — harmonicminer @ 8:34 am

The previous post in this series is here.

In Minnesota, future teachers may be sent to re-education camp. (more at the link)

Do you believe in the American dream — the idea that in this country, hardworking people of every race, color and creed can get ahead on their own merits? If so, that belief may soon bar you from getting a license to teach in Minnesota public schools — at least if you plan to get your teaching degree at the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus.

In a report compiled last summer, the Race, Culture, Class and Gender Task Group at the U’s College of Education and Human Development recommended that aspiring teachers there must repudiate the notion of “the American Dream” in order to obtain the recommendation for licensure required by the Minnesota Board of Teaching. Instead, teacher candidates must embrace — and be prepared to teach our state’s kids — the task force’s own vision of America as an oppressive hellhole: racist, sexist and homophobic.

What is this article doing in the “Left at Christian Universities” series?  Because it illustrates how thoroughly the buzzwords of “diversity” are owned and promoted by the secular, anti-American Left.  It illustrates the essential impossibility of separating those perspectives from the word “diversity.”

How can “Christian diversity activists” at Christian universities hope to separate the word “diversity” from all its baggage, regardless of the application of other qualifiers?

It is not at all uncommon for much of the language in the article that was referenced here to be heard in diversity and multi-cultural presentations at Christian universities and colleges.  If you are a person of the Left, that probably doesn’t bother you much.  For the rest of us, it is a clear sign that the desire to be well-regarded by the secular Left has triumphed over traditional Christian expectations.

Will all good Christians be required to confess their racism and general bigotry, in writing, as a condition of employment?  Not quite yet, it seems.  But it does not seem impossible, given the way that Christian institutions continue to ape secular ones.

The clear challenge for Christian colleges and universities with education departments or schools is this:  how to satisfy the demands of the state credentialing apparatus without surrendering traditional Christian perspectives on values, the worth of human beings, etc.?

h/t: JW

The next post in this series is here.

Nov 20 2009

Britain R.I.P.? Part three

Category: society — harmonicminer @ 10:45 am

The previous post in this series is here.

This is simply unbelievable.  The British have lost their minds, along with any semblance of common sense.  And the American Left wishes we were more like them.

But the once great nation, whose Glorious Revolution was the seed of American freedom, is dying, fast.  There may always be an England.  But it won’t be the England we knew.

Ex-soldier faces jail for handing in gun

A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police faces at least five years imprisonment for “doing his duty”.

Paul Clarke, 27, was found guilty of possessing a firearm at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday, after finding the gun and handing it personally to police officers on March 20 this year.

The jury took 20 minutes to make its conviction, and Mr Clarke now faces a minimum of five year’s imprisonment for handing in the weapon.

In a statement read out in court, Mr Clarke said: “I didn’t think for one moment I would be arrested.

“I thought it was my duty to hand it in and get it off the streets.”

The court heard how Mr Clarke was on the balcony of his home in Nailsworth Crescent, Merstham, when he spotted a black bin liner at the bottom of his garden.

In his statement, he said: “I took it indoors and inside found a shorn-off shotgun and two cartridges.

“I didn’t know what to do, so the next morning I rang the Chief Superintendent, Adrian Harper, and asked if I could pop in and see him.

“At the police station, I took the gun out of the bag and placed it on the table so it was pointing towards the wall.”

Mr Clarke was then arrested immediately for possession of a firearm at Reigate police station, and taken to the cells.

Defending, Lionel Blackman told the jury Mr Clarke’s garden backs onto a public green field, and his garden wall is significantly lower than his neighbours.

He also showed jurors a leaflet printed by Surrey Police explaining to citizens what they can do at a police station, which included “reporting found firearms”.

Quizzing officer Garnett, who arrested Mr Clarke, he asked: “Are you aware of any notice issued by Surrey Police, or any publicity given to, telling citizens that if they find a firearm the only thing they should do is not touch it, report it by telephone, and not take it into a police station?”

To which, Mr Garnett replied: “No, I don’t believe so.”

Prosecuting, Brian Stalk, explained to the jury that possession of a firearm was a “strict liability” charge, therefore Mr Clarke’s allegedly honest intent was irrelevant.

Just by having the gun in his possession he was guilty of the charge, and has no defence in law against it, he added.

But despite this, Mr Blackman urged members of the jury to consider how they would respond if they found a gun.

He said: “This is a very small case with a very big principle.

“You could be walking to a railway station on the way to work and find a firearm in a bin in the park.

“Is it unreasonable to take it to the police station?”

Paul Clarke will be sentenced on December 11.

Judge Christopher Critchlow said: “This is an unusual case, but in law there is no dispute that Mr Clarke has no defence to this charge.

“The intention of anybody possessing a firearm is irrelevant.”

The next post in this series is here.

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