We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Barbie ban This news has been all over the place. I first found it here:
Saudi Arabia’s religious police have declared Barbie dolls a threat to morality, complaining that the revealing clothes of the “Jewish” toy – already banned in the kingdom – were offensive to Islam.
And God forbid anybody should be offensive.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
Brian,
Your (very) late conversion to secularism is more than welcome, however still a bit puzzling too…
Whatever nationality you may claim to be, the USA has been steadily, permanently supporting the most retarded régime of the World: a nouveau-riche, cruel, greedy, uneducated tribe made up of brainwashed, superstitious, vulgar ignorants. Exactly what the primitive USA love to fray with…
It’s too late. The Frankenstein creature may well seem somehow disgusting to you, now. But it’s your cretaure & it’s here to stay. You’ve got to live with it. Good luck !
At least the 2 countries (USA + SA) have a common point: death penalty.
Any explanation why the mutawwa thinks Barbie is Jewish? I think the frum end of Judaism might have trouble with her immodest trousseau too.
If Global Idiot is to be believed, the Saudis already have their own so-called ‘burqa dolls’, intended as role models for their womenfolk… autres pays, autres moeurs.
And note that the fact that Islamic clergy claim that Barbie dolls look like sluts does not necessarily mean that Barbie dolls do not look like sluts.
See:
http://www.globalidiot.net/ImamInHotWater.html
Well Brian M. has been an atheist as long as I have known him – so the idea that he is some recent convert to secular thought is nonsense.
As for Saudi Arabia. Well the present ruling House gained control of most of the area back in the 1920’s (although they started their rise to power in 1913). No the United States was not behind it all (neither was Brtain – we would have most likely prefered the rival House [that went on to provide the Kings of Jordan and Iraq] to keep control).
As a matter of fact the main opposition in Saudi Arabia thinks that the regime is too soft and has betrayed the strict vision of Islam it claims to support. American diplomatic policy at least used to be (it may be changing) “keep a hold of nurse, for fear of meeting something worse”.
Death penality? Interesting that people who rant on about “democracy” oppose the will of the people – most people support the death penality.
I suppose that Kodiak has a Guardian or New York Times view of democracy – elections, different political parties, but whoever wins the election following the same “liberal” policy and ignoring what the people want.
Although, I admit, it is possible that ignoring what most people want in Saudi may be a defendable point of view.
Guy Herbert:
She can’t be jewish – Ken looks nothing like a dentist.
It is useless to argue with Kodiak:He just ignores whatever he can’t argue with.
None the less,let it be said:USA did not turn the Saudis into Jew-hating,religious fanatics.They were like that before the nasty Yankee ever saw Middle East.
But Kodiak and the Saudis have a common point:
To Kodiak,everything that’s wrong in the world is America’s fault.
To the Saudis,everything that’s wrong in the world is the Jews’ fault.
Both the Left and the Wahhabis ran out of new ideas long time ago.Now all they have left is their old bogeymen:USA and Israel.If they can not be competed with,then at least,the thinking goes, they can be destroyed.
Just what he said *points up*
And the USA is so primitive, isn’t it? Where do these people come from?
All I hear these days is ‘stupid Americans…blah…blah’. So dumb they’re the richest and most powerful nation on earth…pass me some stupidity, please.
Of course barbie’s lewd. Why, she’s entirely naked under her clothing!
I’d really love to know why they think Barbie is Jewish? What about her friend Ken? Is this doll banned as well? I bet ‘GI Joe’ is banned 🙂 !!
Dress Barbie in head to toe ‘approved’ clothes, glue them on, and no problem. Use the doll clothed this way as an inspiration for little girls. I’m sure all the little girls over there can’t wait to walk around enclosed in a sack all day.
Yes, Kodiak, let’s dish out a heapin’ helpin’ of moral relativism, without which the moron Left can’t form a single thought process or sentence.
The US executes murderers, and usually only those who have comitted murder under “special circumstances”, i.e. child killers, serial killers, sex killers. Saudi Arabia executes people for “crimes” like adultery, sorcery, blasphemy and “fighting against God.” See any differences?
Oh wait, the morally and socially retarded European Left doesn’t really believe in “differences.” All cultures are equally valid.
Sorry I brought it up.
(Rolls eyes in disgust).
What a maroon!
–B. Bunny, Brooklyn, NY
Susan: of course there’s a difference between the USA & demented Saudi Arabia. Still I wouldn’t say that all human beings killed by the US system are necessarily criminals: some are innocents. For that reason alone, for one single innocent alone, the USA & Saudi Arabia do share something in common.
Steve: I didn’t say the US people are stupid. I said the USA is primitive, ie: death penalty. Human life preservation as nothing to do with a political system (democracy): it’s a value.
JH: “the USA did not turn the Saudis into Jew-hating,religious fanatics” >>> that’s right, but the USA gave this nightmarish régime everything they need to bring obscurantism & instability. The USA is a superpower, so it is bound to make supermistakes: there’s nothing Saudian in admitting & denouncing this. The USA & Israel as bogeymen for Islamists & lefties: you’re just performing witch-hunting & refusing criticism.
Paul Marks: don’t tell me the US has no responsibility in the development of the Saudi régime, a criminal, fanatical autocracy.
As someoe remarked elsewhere: Funny, she doesn’t look Jewish.
Please stop encouraging the bad news bear.
Perhaps Kodiak could let us have the names of those innocents executed under a cruel American system that allowed them 10 years of taxpayer funded appeals?
The death penalty is not primitive. The non-death penalty is primitive and cruel in that it deprives the people who loved the murdered person of a sense of justice and leaves them with an open wound. (Even in “primitive” Saudi Arabia, they allow the closest relative of the murder victim to decide on the murderer’s fate.) America has the will to enforce justice. Europe isn’t “civilised”, it is weak. It lacks the will. Europe is tired and worn out.
Verity,
You’re mixing everything.
Europe isn’t weak: she’s strong enough to show the World where Humanity is. The USA is feeble: it has a middle-age mentality regarding “retaliation” which is the exact opposite of justice.
Many European families involved as victims in horrendous crimes perpetrated against their children don’t require death penalty to quench a thirst for vengeance. Those families aren’t weak, nor tired nor worn out. They’re so strong they keep their faith in Human values rather than demanding more blood. I admire them & I envy them. I wish I could do the same at their place.
I find your “taxpayer” argument when cogitating about Human life absolutely pathetic to the core.
I may as well come in swinging, I always do.
First, intros: Bob King, long-time Netizen, libertarian because my mind is open but my brain has a safety-belt so it won’t fall out. Hence – I can be neither left nor right. :>
Ob Death Penalty: When Canada abolished the death penalty they went through the penal code and adjusted sentencing. As a result, first degree murder gets an average of 25 years. Which is served.
Now, this was horribly controversial at the time, but it was rammed through. And to pretty much everyone’s surprise – the murder rate DROPPED! Plummeted, actually.
You see, those in the age-range likely to commit murder can’t really comprehend death – but they sure as hell can comprehend being BORED to death!
By contrast, in the US, if you commit a murder and the death penalty is not sought – which is the case most times that the election cycle isn’t looming – you will serve an average of six years incarceration.
But as I said, nobody expected it, far as I know.
Anyway, vengeance is not the proper business of government, nor is it my duty, nor the government’s duty (me by proxy) to offer “closure” to anyone. If you feel the need for vengeance, take it in your own hands, do what you feel necessary, and take responsibility for that act.
As I guessed. An orthodox writer feels that: “In my current environment, Barbie symbolizes everything that I, as a newly observant woman, rejected about Western culture.”
Steve:
“All I hear these days is ‘stupid Americans…blah…blah’. So dumb they’re the richest and most powerful nation on earth…pass me some stupidity, please.”
To quote the great PJ O’Rourke:
“Why are some parts of the world rich while others are poor? It isn’t brains. No place is dumber than Hollywood, yet its residents are wading in gravy. Meanwhile in Russia, where chess is a spectator sport, they’re boiling stones for soup.”
Kodiak,
I have become tired of your smug self righteousness so for the record.
The fact is that the government of the United States is the oldest secular nation in the world. All of the examples that you have brought up trying to prove the contrary are pathetic. Yes their are some references to god on our money and at the swearing in of the president, opening of congress, and opening of the supreme court, but this is simply tradition.
For example the Supreme Court is opened with the words, “The Honorable the Chief Justice and the Associate Justices of the United States. Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! All persons having business before the Honorable, the Supreme Court of the United States, are admonished to draw near and give their attention, for the Court is now sitting. God save the United States and this Honorable Court!”
This is not however some attempt to shove religion down the throat of the unwilling, it is a nod to tradition. English courts have been opened with this same call for almost a thousand years. Its antiquity is shown by the fact that the word Oyez is Middle English, from the Anglo-Norman, hear ye, imperative plural of oyer, to hear. I who am a fairly militant atheist would oppose changing this tradition.
The fact is the Republic has existed for almost a quarter of a millenia, the oldest extant republic since the fall of the Venetian republic. We have traditions that go back to the time of the founding of the Republic when religion was more of a part of the common experience. Should we change them just to conform to your idea of the politicly correct?
We may have some ceremonial mention of religion, but our constitution forbids a religious test for holding office and forbids the establishment of a state religion. To take one example of religious toleration, there are protestants, catholics and jews who are justices of the Supreme Court. For another protestants, catholics, and deists have served as presidents of the Unites States. Members of all the aforenamed groups as well as mormons and atheists have served as members of Congress. The current commander of the U.S. Army in Iraq is a Lebanese American.
To say the United States is a theocracy is just an attempt on your part to distort history. You should be frightened by the fact that the only people who agree with you those who want to turn the Republic into a theocracy.
France in contrast can’t keep a government together long enough to have traditions. Since the founding of our Republic you have had three absolute monarchies, three constitutional monarchies, and five republics. France can hardly organise a government for longer than a generation.
As for religious toleration what can France say, there is the Driffus (sp) affair, collaboration with the Holocaust, and the current rash of burnings of jewish houses of worship. Has their been a jewish member of France’s high court? Dose the french army have Muslem members of the chaplain’s corps in addition to members of all the other religions I have named as the US Army does or are they all Roman Catholics?
In reguard to the US support for Saudi Arabia, I agree that it is a foolish policy, but then so is France’s close relationship with a long list of despicable regimes in Africa and the Middle East.
I am also interested in your description of the house of Saud as “nouveau-riche, cruel, greedy, and uneducated.” I notice you put nouveau-riche first in your list of damnations. Is being newly rich worse than being uneducated? Are either of those as bad as being cruel? What a very aristocratic attitude for an alleged democrat such as yourself.
As for the death penalty, it is no reason for you to be smug. An unwillingness to impose the death penalty is not as you think a mark of civilization, but rather the mark of a decadent unwillingness to make judgements and uphold justice.
How should a society treat someone who has knowingly and wilfully taken the life of a fellow human with insufficient provocation? A person who commits murder has stated in a form stronger than words that he does not believe that humans have a right to life. To my mind, justice, treating people in accordance with what they deserve, demands that the murderer be taken at his word and treated as if he has no right to life. Either the person should be declared out side the protection of the law or put to death. This is not vengence, but treating the murderer as he has treated others. It is justice.
As to the question of mistakes, they are simply inevitable, because humans are not omnipotent. However, the process in the United States does give the defendant a fair shake. He must be convicted by a jury of his peers who have to conclude he is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. He can then appeal the judgement if their was a legal error made in his trial. If all else fails he can appeal for clemency from the governor of the state. Will there still be occasional errors? Yes of course there will be, but that is not just the US system, but all systems.
Is it any kinder to hold innocent people in jail for the rest of their lives than to put them to death? When an innocent person is held in jail for the whole of his life, his life has been taken from him wrongly just as surely as if he had been put to death. Both systems will commit this injustice. The difference is that one acknowledges the fact and the other tries to hide from it. Denial is hardly a virtue.
France must do what it believes to be in its own interest. I recognise that as does almost every poster on this board. However we do have a right to react with contempt to what we believe to be spinelessness on the part of your government. From my point of view, France will not lead, will not follow, and will not get out the way. The US does not have street protests every time France sends the foreign legion into Africa. We respect you right to do what your government thinks is best. You and the French government are not treating the US with the same respect. That makes me and alot of other people angry.
I do not hate France. I and most Americans remember the aid we received from Lafayette and France, and remember that we fought together in two world wars. We remember the great French liberals like J.B. Say and Fredric Bastiate (sp). However that makes our belief that France has completely wandered from the path of liberalism and embraced the immorality of socialism hurt all the more. Nothing is worse than seeing a nation like France that could be a piler of liberal civilisation act in a foolish and self destructive manor. It is like watching your brother embracing self destructive forms of behavior.
In closing, you are not helping Franco American relations with your posts. Time heals all wounds as long as you do not pick at the scabs. 911 and the French government’s behavior are a big scab and you are picking at it. I would not normally express contempt toward France, but you keep poking at a deep emotional injury.
It is my hope and I think the hope of all on this board that this to will pass and that relations between the English speaking nations and France will become closer on the basis of shared liberal values and the willingness to fight for them. However, until then we will just have to so the best we can with out you.
France is dead, Long live France
Stephen: thanx for your consideration.
First, vague deism –yet haunting & State-supported- can’t be reduced to entrenched folkloric traditions (1). It’s a serious matter since refusing to change that kind of “old-fashioned customs” is more than laziness or abdication: it’s also overt consent to an amorphous Judeochristianoid ideology highly detrimental to credibility when your country is engaged in a war against religious fascism. Technology & determination are nothing compared with the lack of impartiality. “Good vs Evil” & “God bless America” will do the USA more harm than 10.000 Ben Ladens combined. The Islamism-tyrannised people within the Arabomuslim galaxy aren’t evil. They’re on our side & we never helped them. Reductionist rationales will only make the enemy stronger. If the USA is willing to act as a globalisating engine & prepared to endorse a UN-law enforcement role, my view is that it ought to aim at more universality & drop references to religion.
You mentioned the commander in chief of the US expeditionary force in Iraq to highlight his Lebanese origin: no one doubts the US society is opened to any nationality. Then you mentioned several confessions & atheism. Secularism isn’t multiconfessionality nor atheism. I’m saying the USA isn’t that secular. I mentioned rampant deism as a feature of public matters in the USA, certainly not theocracy as epitomising US political system.
I, too, see the establishment of the Republic of the USA as a very positive Human achievement with uncountable good consequences on World politics. AND uncountable bad consequences too. The first being this incredible arrogance in lecturing others about almost everything & rare ability to develop myths in order to ostracise insubordinate countries, ie: French anti-Semitism (2), French Nazism, French Islamicisation, French socialism, French decadence etc –the list is endless…
French citizens of any religious background (whatever their actual observance) or stemming from immigration may be found in all circles of political, social & economical life up to highest charges. Jews were granted full French citizenship as early as 1791, & so were any Jews living in Napoleonic Europe. French Jewish life is extraordinarily rich due to, partly, the size of the community which is the 2nd biggest outside Israel ( ~ 650.000 people). The French Jewish community isn’t monolithic: a part of it is a very old mosaic including descendants of Yiddishophones, Sepharads & Marranes, all three tracing back to times much anterior than Revolution. French citizens of Jewish background/religion are found everywhere in public life: presidents, ministers, ambassadors, prefects, magistrates, officers etc. Likewise you can find Moslems in the army or ministries. France is highly secular. It doesn’t mean, though, that all French people are wearing berets with a baguette under their arms & a piece of cheese in their mouths while riding a bicycle with a garland of onion or garlic floating in the wind…
The appellation “nouveau riche” is no connection to my alleged “aristocracy” (I’m a Republican). Was just a reference to what blind greediness can lead to: cruelty, cynicism. Uneducatedness being just an aggravating factor.
I still don’t comprehend what death penalty has to do with justice. What you call “justice” (sic: “(…) treating the murderer as he has treated others») is merely symmetry: you’re in turn performing the very crime you want to condemn. A failure.
French spinelessness. Shall I remind you that France was Islamism’s very first adversary & saved Europe from Islamicisation many times in the past? Have you ever heard of 1066? Do you know French kings of France & England were leading the crusades & implanting kraks (château-forts, strongholds) in Levant? Do you remember the French army in 1776? Does Napoléon tell you something? Have you forgotten French infantry has conquered a bunch of Islamic countries including Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Mauritania, Soudan, Djibouti, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon without resorting to surgery strikes delivered by flying computers? Did you know that between 1939 & 1940 (defeat) the weekly rate of Frenchmen killed at war was superior the one of Verdun (a sadly famous butchery)?
Your love affair with French liberals (= conservatives) is your business. But France is a bit more than a bunch of liberals… Just like Anglosphere is a bit more than conservatism.
(1) “Oyez” is indeed the imperative-plural, 2nd-person form of “ouïr” (OldFr + ModFr, but unused today) or “oyer” (AngFr), both meaning “listen”.
(2) It’s the Dreyfus affair (a French officer, initially victim of official racism because of his Jewish faith, eventually victorious & rehabilitated after years of imprisonment in exile). The Dreyfus affair (1894-1899) preceded the adoption of new secular laws (1905) still in force today.