I really should not have laughed out loud when reading an article by regular Times columnist Jenni Russell entitled “Women victims still can’t get a fair hearing”. These are serious matters. Judge me not; this bit would get a laugh out of a stone:
Even men without high standing tend to be seen as more credible than the women they attack. That’s why grooming gangs in Rochdale, Rotherham and many other towns could rape girls with impunity over years, as police and social services dismissed it. “Believe the men,” has always been the instinctive, effective, protective response of the male-dominated power structure.
The grooming gangs in Rochdale and Rotherham had an “identity” trump card all right, one that sent the police and social services scurrying away with their tails between their legs. And it did begin with M. Perhaps Ms Russell could ask her Times colleague Andrew Norfolk what the following letters were?
The rest of the article is about US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, recently accused of attempting to rape Christine Blasey Ford thirty-six years ago when he was seventeen and she was fifteen. She made this claim a couple of months ago in a letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein (D). However it seems to have slipped Senator Feinstein’s mind to bring the issue up during the weeks of nomination hearings convened for the express purpose of assessing Kavanaugh’s suitability to be a Supreme Court judge. As this letter (Hat tip: Instapundit) from the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Chuck Grassley, says,
There were numerous opportunities to raise the serious allegations made in the letter during the course of this nomination process.They could have been raised in your closed-door meeting with Judge Kavanaugh on August 20.Sixty-four other senators also met with Judge Kavanaugh prior to his confirmation hearing. These senators could have asked Judge Kavanaugh about these allegations if you had shared the letter.
Your staff could have raised these allegations during routine background investigation phone calls in late-August. Questions about these allegations could have been asked of Judge Kavanaugh during his more than 32 hours of testimony before the Committee over the course of three days. You could have asked him about these allegations during the closed session of his confirmation hearing, where sensitive material can be discussed. But you did not attend the closed session. Finally, these allegations could have been addressed in one of the nearly 1,300 written questions issued to him after the hearing-more written questions to any Supreme Court nominee than all prior Supreme Court nominees combined.
Fortunately Senator Feinstein did eventually remember to bring up this allegation, just in time. Funny how that happens, isn’t it? It’s like the way I only just remembered to tell you about the rest of Jenni Russell’s article in the Times for the benefit of those who don’t have a subscription. It did make one point with which all should agree. Professor Ford has been subjected to harassment and threats. These should be treated like the crimes they are. Apart from that, well, let us say that the evidence for Jenni Russell’s instinctive, effective, protective response being “Believe the women” is a great deal stronger than the evidence that the Muslim grooming gangs in Rochdale and Rotherham raped with impunity because they were men. Russell writes,
Dr Ford’s life has been shipwrecked. She has had so many death threats that she has had to go into hiding, take leave of absence from work, send her children away and employ security guards. No such danger has troubled Kavanaugh, who has a security detail provided by the state and whose wife has been giving out cupcakes to the camera crews outside their house.
No such danger has troubled Kavaugh? Given how close left winger James T. Hodgkinson came to killing House Majority Whip Steve Scalise in his attempt to massacre as many Republicans as he could at a charity baseball game between politicians, I would not dismiss the danger so lightly. And of course, Kavanaugh’s wife handing out cupcakes shows how untroubled she is at having her husband accused of rape. Why should that trouble her? Why should it trouble him? How can they be treated unjustly? They’re Republicans!
And (though I haven’t yet checked the news today) “DiFi” (Sen. Feinstein) et cie. are trying to run out the clock by insisting on waiting for the FBI to investigate this report — or possibly confabulation — before voting on the confirmation.
I suppose she didn’t get the memo that the FBI already investigated Judge Kavanaugh sometime prior to the current allegation, and reported that there was nothing to investigate. The gent got a clean bill of health.
ETA: Also, I understand that Ms. Ford tried hawking her story to the NYT, before shooting it on to DiFi. Apparently the NYT decided not to print it — or at least to wait.
In the Rochdale and Rotherham case the ‘always believe men’ effect even extended to the feminists of the ‘always believe women’ faction. They remained, and still remain, completely silent.
Same with FGM. We have a 0% conviction rate for that crime but that never seems to bother the same campaigners who often tell us that the higher conviction rate for rape is far too low.
Julie n C. AIUI, the FBI have correctly pointed out that the allegations are a State matter, and they have no jurisdiction, so they cannot investigate the allegations, any more than a motoring offence in Montana is a matter for them (off of Federal land anyway). In their background checks, it is not particular crimes that matter (or allegations of them) but the situation of the subject, e.g. like our Mr J Corbyn and his remarkable ability to share platforms, podiums, pedestals and funeral parlours with terrorists or their sidekicks, without committing any crimes at all.
The correct approach is to say ‘This is late, it is your Senator’s fault. Perhaps a Chinese spy in her entourage hid it. You have had the chance to come here and testify, you have sought to dictate to the Senate when you should appear, and under what terms, you may not do so. No one is above the law, you may wear your Pussy Hat when testifying but the Senate will also require to hear of all communications that you have had in respect of this matter, including phone records, accounts of phone calls, the persons involved, and dates and locations of meetings and discussions, emails, payments or offers that you have made and any threats that you have received. You have 12 hours to get on an airplane to Ronald Reagan National Airport.‘
Just to keep it straight, i am going to write separate comments on distinct aspects of this.
First of all, i must say that Andrew Norfolk looks like a fine fellow, a role model (not the only possible role model) for young British people.
By contrast, Jenni Russell, based on the OP*, should serve as a negative role model.
* I have no Times subscription, and people such as Jenni Russell make me happy about that.
WRT Kavanaugh: i am handicapped by my ignorance of US Senate procedure; but if i were to dictate the rules, i would hold a straight Senate vote on the following motion:
The vote on Kavanaugh to be postponed for a week, with the possibility of a further delay;
Ford to be subpoenaed to testify on Monday;
Feinstein to be censured and barred from ever sitting on a Senate committee ever again.
The rationale being that, if the Ford letter is serious enough to be considered, then Feinstein is guilty of gross negligence for hiding it for so long.
One more comment, with apologies for steering off topic.
To me, and i guess to many people outside the bubble, Serena Williams’ outbursts at the US Open final seemed to confirm the (admittedly wrong) prejudices that i grew up with, about American manners; just as John McEnroe’s outbursts did, more than 30 years earlier.
To Jenni Russell, however, Serena is probably a role model, for teaching women to be hysterical.
Mr Ed, as to the FBI: Yes, good point.
I am quite sure that your approach suggested in your second paragraph is an excellent one. Suggest Sen. Grassley be sent it at once. Also Sen. McConnell (Senate Majority Whip) and Christopher Wray (FBI).
As a concerned US citizen, I should further point out that Ms. Ford deleted her entire social media history before coming forward. Someone? also has taken all her school yearbooks offline for the years she attended. Screen caps of those paint a picture of a school culture celebrating sexual activity and binge drinking until passing out. Curiouser and curiouser, isn’t it?
George Atkisson:
Regarding the contents of the yearbooks, it’s pretty ugly:
http://cultofthe1st.blogspot.com/2018/09/why-christine-blasey-fords-high-school_19.html?m=1
If anything could be more when all is most, I feel most sceptical about the following two points.
Firstly, as per my Boy who cried Wolf post, is it even remotely possible that Jenni Russell, while thinking, believed her argument, or is this an example of what Orwell called duckspeak, stringing together the PC cliches while “arousing the minimum of echoes in the writer’s mind” – so that a point as obvious as Natalie’s can pass unnoticed because no thinking was involved?
Secondly, is it even remotely possible that Christine Ford was, in any sense worth discussing, traumatised by an incident whose year, let alone month, week or day, she cannot identify? The absence and presence of trauma affects events before and after its cause, so the victim (maybe with the help of a friend – or therapist) can narrow down the time of trauma from datable incidents: “that happy family holiday must have been before; that term when I could never concentrate on work from brooding and was threatened with flunking – that was after”.
As her ‘deleted’ (but the web is forever) yearbooks show, a brief moment of excited drunken play (involving the removal of no items of clothing from either party) was quite tame for the teenage girls at Christine’s elite school. Judging by the yearbooks, the incident seems very likely – unlike the casting of Brett K as ‘the boy’, which seems seems very unlikely. But if it had been traumatising, she’d be able to date it to a term and then better.
If Rochdale – and the 15 other towns where underage girls have been systematically raped – were examples of male violence and privilege, doesn’t it then follow that we shouldn’t import thousands of similar men from places and cultures with particularly extreme misogyny?
Of course, it does. But the same people who are especially upset about misogyny are exactly the same people who support mass migration from misogynistic cultures.
These are not rational people. More like plants or mice that are conditioned to respond to certain stimuli.
Marxist media.
“Always believe the men” had absolutely to do with the Rotherham and all the other rape-industry towns. It was “investigating Muslims is racist” that was (and is) the problem. Even though Islam is a religion and a political philosophy – it has nothing to do with biological race (although Muhammed himself was noted for being pale and for sometimes saying nasty things about black people – calling them “raisin heads” and claiming they looked like Satan). As for infidel women – the teaching of Muhammed is clear, they may be taken by the right hand of the faithful (his followers) regardless of age or marital status. Indeed this was one of the things that attracted young men (and older men to) to the movement Muhammed created. The laws of Islam can not be changed because, according to the faithful, they are the direct word of God (unlike the Bible which is a lot of different books written by different people) so, for example, the rule that anyone who mocks Muhammed must be killed (even if they are an old blind poet, or a pregnant poetess protesting against the killing of the old blind poet) is as valid today as when Muhammed gave judgment on these cases – as he was not expressing his own will, but (rather) the will of God.
Of course nice people who call themselves Muslims have always existed – in some periods of time (no doubt) the great majority of people who call themselves Muslims. Muhammed called them “hypocrites” and declared (again this was, supposedly, the will of God) that the “hypocrites” should be killed – as they claimed to be Muslims but did not follow his clear teachings (such as that all people who mocked him should be killed). They even made excuses rather than take part in raids against non Muslims to take goods and women to enslave (Muhammed himself favoured surprise attacks after promising peace and friendship to the community he then attacked – from a military point of view this was sound thinking on his part, although it did give his movement a reputation for treachery that they had from the 7th century A.D. to the 1960s – when knowledge of this, and many other subjects, was shoved down the Memory Hole). Clearly the movement could not prosper if such an attitude (paying lip service to submission to Allah – whilst not actually doing anything) was allowed to grow unchecked. The logic of Muhammed on all this is actually perfectly sound – as long as one makes the ethical assumption that whatever aids his movement is morally good and whatever harms his movement is morally bad.
The above paragraphs must, of course, be reported to South Yorkshire Police (Rotherham and so are part of their area) as possible “hate crimes”. As their website helpfully reminds the world, even non crime “hate” should be reported as South Yorkshire “will not tolerate hate” – gang rape and forced prostitution is fine (South Yorkshire police have no problem with that at all – as recent history shows) but “hateful thoughts” will not be tolerated.
Turning to the United States – far from “always believe the men” and the “male power structure” (which has, somehow, produced a legal system radically biased AGAINST men in family law) the “Me To” has in the past only had to make an accusation to get a man to resign (of be fired0 and for the company concerned to donate large amounts of MONEY to the “Me To” activists (it is so nice when being a leftist activist comes with being WELL PAID by Big Business – something the Jesse Jackson and Al Franken extortion rackets understood long ago).
The lady making the charges has been invited to put them to the Senate Committee – let us see if she turns up. Then there will be some possibility of judging the truth, or otherwise, of her claims.
By the way the man who emerges from the various sources (the Koran, the Hadiths [of various degrees of reliability] and the life…) knew a lot about “hate” – he understood the dark side of the male mind (the fantasies and so on) very well indeed, and just how to exploit them.
He was a clearly a genius – and I am not being sarcastic, I mean it as a deserved complement in relation to Muhammed. Although so many “feminists” choosing to cover up for his movement is rather depressing – I suppose they put hatred of the West (of “capitalism”) above any real concern for women.
From Senator Grassley’s website:
https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/grassley-committee-can-and-should-investigate-ford-allegations
The letter itself, which explains why Sen. Grassley intends to reopen the Hearings despite the Dems’ request that he not do so, follows this introduction. This includes the point that Judge Kavanaugh has a right to be heard on the matter.
Here
https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2018-09-19%20Grassley%20to%20Katz%20-%20Ford%20Testimony.pdf
is the letter Sen. Grassley wrote to Ms. Ford’s attorneys Katz and Banks regarding their request to have the FBI investigate the C.B. Ford allegations against B. Kavanaugh.
It states what the FBI has done and what it cannot do further, and why.
The final sentence in the letter ends:
Paul, I do not believe that Islam can use this as an excuse for its bloodthirstiness.
We’re back to the idea (at least amongst most American Protestant branches) that (in part) the Protestantism that you’re used to in England differs from the Protestantism in America in the emphasis Americans hold to sola scriptura. If one holds to sola scriptura, the words of the Bible are every bit “the direct word of God” as those that Mohammad put down.
And yet, all over America, and even in the more rural areas which hold to a more fundamental view than the modernized churches of the cities, we find very few non-Muslims acting barbarically and pointing to their religion as their excuse.
It’s not so much that non-Muslims don’t believe that their holy writings are “the direct word of God”. It’s that the non-Muslim gods never wrote such barbaric directions to their followers. Islam, unlike most other religions, espouses hate and conquest and power, and so is simply barbaric.
Has she? I remember following Cathy Newman’s disgraceful interview of Jordan Peterson she complained of the same, but nobody went into details of what form they came in. As Peterson himself pointed out, every public figure these days gets thousands of tweets an emails and a small percentage will contain threats of some sort, but they are not credible threats, i.e. they’re just some loudmouth on Twitter of Facebook saying “I hope you die”. It appears to have become a common tactic for feminists who manage to generate a lot of distaste and anger to immediately declare their lives are being threatened to make themselves the victim. If Ford is being threatened she needs to contact the police and allow them to investigate. If they don’t, and there is not so much of a caution issued, we can assume the threats were not credible and they’re being cited for political reasons.
One should note that Scalise didn’t receive any death threats, none that were reported anyway.
Recent study found men are more likely to be abused online but less likely to consider it a problem.
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/media/2016/sep/06/higher-proportion-of-men-than-women-report-online-abuse-in-survey
bobby, re “sola scriptura” as, to quote you, the basic belief “(at least amongst most American Protestant branches)”, it might — might — be true if you are counting every last Protestant church, regardless of affiliation with a named denomination and if you include, as many do, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormon Church, even though in fact both of those are Christian heresies.
But I’m not so sure about the general American Protestant population. As one who was reared Christian and who has lived mostly among Christians (admittedly including Catholics and ex-Christians) and Jews, some of them in or from the Bible Belt*, I can’t say I have that impression.
In my own small, rural hometown in northern Illinois, there were Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists, and Congregationalists, plus a small contingent of Jehovahs. The closest bunch to believing in the Bible as being wholly the direct word of God were, as I remember it, the Lutherans. Very strait-laced. But I don’t think that even they thought that every word of it was Holy Writ.
*When I was a young-married, and naïve ex-Christian, I lived for awhile in West Lafayette, Ind., toward the northern extent of the Indianan Bible Belt I believe. I worked with another young woman, who was almost a caricature of the sterotypical slack-jawed knuckle-dragging Biblical redneck (though she otherwise seemed relatively normal). She was distinctly racist as regards the inferiority of the Negro as such. I was shocked — really I was! I said, “But Christians believe that all men are brothers, equal in the sight of God.” Her response: “I don’t believe that.”
That shut me up! I thought, Some Christian! But IIRC (never a safe bet), Jesus himself says something like that in the Bible. If so, this already shows that even she did not buy the Bible as sola scriptura. –Or, I suppose, she might have been ignorant of such a passage, or forgotten it; but still.
**By the way, remind me to hunt up and relay what Miss R. had to say about religion in general in one of her books. The self-styled Objectivists who believe O’ists must revile all religion need to re-read their heroine. And perhaps watch on UT the video of her interview by Tom Snyder… still my favorite among her interviews.
Julie, I buy Hutterite chickens, Mennonite beef, and Amish (I think) veggies, and my driving around in the Dakotas, MN, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, etc. may have biased my views on “national” forms of Protestantism. I’m maybe just being too regional in my view about this.
(I’m picturing an old Hutterite guy I know stroking his beard and telling me he doesn’t hold much with what those reformist Illinoisians might think about The Bible. 😀 )
@Snorri Godhi – September 20, 2018 at 6:57 pm
I disagree about the weeks delay. Feinstein allegedly had the letter since July BUT had she publicised it back then, there would have been ample time to thoroughly investigate the allegations and either clear them up or discredit them. The fact that she delayed until just before the decision is a standard leftist tactic. They want to delay the decision until after the November primaries when they hope that they will sufficient seats to force their own choice of Supreme Court justice through and have a left wing biased panel for the next 30 or 40 years.
Besides, IF (and it’s a VERY big “IF”) the incident took place, he was a juvenile at the time and hence cannot be taken into account in his adult life. The records are sealed and are considered (in an English sense) spent.
However there is THIS:
https://twitter.com/SallyMayweather/status/1042116472724709376/photo/1
(Click on the picture to embiggen).
Tim Newman, September 21, 2018 at 3:31 am, I agree that a Jenni Russell endorsing a claim of harassment by a Christine Ford does not in itself offer good grounds for thinking that harassment happened, or that it was serious. Over and above the ordinary caution of politics, neither woman emerges as a credible source.
That said, in today’s world, a just suspicion that both these woman will exaggerate and misrepresent, and that whatever volume of threat Ford is receiving pales in comparison to the left’s standard treatment of whoever threatens its narrative, must coexist with the statistical probability of some threatening tweets or whatever having actually happened. Christine (and, indeed Jenni) have given cause for just anger and contempt, so, statistically, some ill-restrained, indulged, anger and contempt is likely. Our behaviour is much better than that of the PC in a statistical sense, but sometimes only in a statistical sense.
It’s a minor point but it can inform the exact phrasing of how one calls out such claims. Something along the lines of, “Like the original claimed incident, I’ll condemn harassment when you produce the evidence of it.”
Phil: the delay is taking place whether we like it or not; but i want to stress that the way i set it up, it’s a trap for the Democrats.
If they vote for a delay, they also vote to bar Feinstein from any Senate committee, with no guarantee that the delay will be more than 1 week.
If they vote against a delay, the Republicans can claim that the Democrats are not serious about sexual violence.
What the Republicans did, instead, was to grant the delay that the Democrats asked for, without extracting any concession in return. Typical!
@Julie do you have a source for your statement that she tried to sell her story to the NYT?
The grooming gangs get a free pass because they are even now supplying British elites in Parliament, the Civil Service and major corporations.
bob sykes, you write,
“The grooming gangs get a free pass because they are even now supplying British elites in Parliament, the Civil Service and major corporations.”
Ridiculous. If a member of “the British elites in Parliament, the Civil Service and major corporations” wants to have illicit sex with an underage girl, do you think they choose to arrange it via a Mirpuri taxi driver in Bradford? Do you think they go for “troubled” girls from children’s homes?
May I point out that it was not simply the girls who were ignored in Rotherham and other like happenings. It was also many of their fathers, and many male sympathisers.
I presume the author will pay attention to Tommy Robinson in future. Sure he’s uncouth – but he of times has a point.
bobby, not to change the subj, but by “Hutterite chickens” do you mean chickens who are Hutterites 😀 ?
I doubt that, but I am wondering whether by any chance they are corn-fed. I’ve always assumed that the white chickens that have been standard in the grocery stores since the ’70s or possibly before, have been the result of the breeders’ mucking about with hybrids.
But not so long ago I saw a show w/ “Gordon F***ing Ramsey” (so referred to, lately, by some percipient Samizdata commenter), in which his youngish daughter pointed out that the chickens he was preparing were yellow, and she asked, How come?
He said the reason was that they were corn-fed. Aha! That might also be part of the reason why today’s birds are, IMO, pretty flavorless. You can get corn-fed beef online, if you’re independently wealthy. So I looked for corn-fed chicken.
Yes, you can get it online. If you live in Great Britain.
Sigh….
Suggestions not merely welcome, but begged for.
Here is what I don’t understand. If any woman with a vague association with a man at any time in his life can make a vague, unsubstantiated accusation against him for one of the unforgivable sins (sexual misconduct, child molestation or racism) even if she offers no proof at all, no corroboration, is inconsistent with the details and refuses to answer any questions, delicate little flower that she is. If that is possible due to the actions of the democrat party, why exactly would any man ever vote democrat again, unless self immolation is his goal? Moreover, why would any woman who has suffered actual abuse not be so offended at having her trauma weaponized and politicized, ever vote democrat again? And finally, why would any woman who has a father, brother, son or boyfriend that she loves and see what danger this puts him in, ever vote for these people again?
This is about as extreme a case as we can imagine. Five years ago it would have been used as a reductio ad absurdum. But yesterday’s absurd is today’s earnest New York Times headline. Truly, for the unforgivable sins, innocence is no longer a defense.
This should be a watershed. But it won’t be.
Side note, FWIW, I have no idea is something bad happened to Dr. Ford. Perhaps it did, and even taking her description of events on the face it might have been quite horrible, but it is barely even actionable even with no passage of time and real evidence. But even so, the plain fact is that she was drunk at the time, it was more than thirty years ago, and her story is inconsistent. Which means no serious person would rely on any specific detail (such as the identity of the participants — particularly when this is one area she has specifically been shown to be inconsistent on.) So maybe something bad did happen to here, but no serious objective observer would take a specific claim like “Kavanaugh did it” seriously.
Niall, I have followed your link to duckspeak.
Are you positive that 1984 was not intended as an instruction manual? Do we really think the PC crowd are bright enough to have thunk their style up by themselves?*
*By the way, I see that Orwell claims that “corn passes undigested through the chicken.” I hope he’s wrong, and that chickens do indeed digest what the UK tribe seem to insist on calling “maize.”
.
Fraser, please do not ask embarrassing questions, because the Great Frog insists that I answer honestly.** My source, at this point, is my highly fallible memory. So far I have only found reference to a WaPo publication of the Letter sometime in the last week or so.
Should fortune present me with a more reliable source, I will publish it here.
**Samizdatistas: Can anyone point me to the essay, or chapter, in which Kant presents his argument that it is not kosher to lie about your child’s whereabouts in order to save him from being murdered? I would like to examine that in context.
Very well, Fraser. It wasn’t the Times; per the WaPo, it was their own sweet self.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/california-professor-writer-of-confidential-brett-kavanaugh-letter-speaks-out-about-her-allegation-of-sexual-assault/2018/09/16/46982194-b846-11e8-94eb-3bd52dfe917b_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e8bfe58ef22a
Excerpt:
And now, dratted Cricket, get off my back!
1) Some people have had some pretty dark shit done to them that takes a long time to deal with. It might be decades before they can even talk about it.
2) Some people are attention seeking flakes seeking to cash in and/or score political points.
3) Very occasionally these two categories can even overlap.
4) If no or evidence is available, I do not believe accusers should expect criminal convictions. They may be able to win civil proceedings. I don’t think it is reasonable to expect victims to stay silent.
I don’t feel qualified to untangle this bird’s nest and declare what did or did not happen, nor do I feel able to ascertain the motives of the accuser in this case. I do however share the other commenters’ disgust at Feinstein’s utterly shameless and opportunistic behavior. Surely there must be a legal recourse since she can be shown to have known about the accusations during legal proceedings in which they were directly relevant, and yet kept them a secret in order to gain the biggest strategic advantage?
That should read “no or little evidence”. The edit timeout beat me by just a few seconds 😉
No such danger has troubled Kavanaugh, who has a security detail provided by the state and whose wife has been giving out cupcakes to the camera crews outside their house.
Yeah, I’ve heard reports that Kavanaugh and his family have also received death threats.
But That Doesn’t Count Or Something, naturally.
Oh yeah. Richard (Epstein)’s “The Libertarian” podcast was posted today, I think before the latest news — that Chrissy refuses to show up Monday, and Grassley-McConnell &c. have agreed to give her until Thursday to tell her story — came out. Nothing earthshaking really. He stands strong behind Kavanaugh vis-á-vis La Ford’s accusation.
https://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/libertarian
By the way, PowerLine.com has CNN’s report on the negotiated deal to hold off till Thursday. Also a short squib to the effect that Ed Whelan has retracted his “irrefutable evidence” that Kavanaugh isn’t guilty. (I read Whelan’s “bombshell” yesterday, and didn’t find it very convincing. –It turns out there’s this house, see, and inside is the “short stairwell [photo], and here’s a map showing where the alleged party attendees lived, and the thing of it is, see, here are side-by-side photos from their High-School yearbook of young Brett and the kid whose folks owned the house, and gosh, they do look alike, so probly La Ford has confused the owner-kid with Brett. I guess you might say that Whelan’s firecracker turned into a damp squib.)
Naw, they smoke and drink and generally carry on like chickens are wont to do all over the world. They just happen to be raised on a commune of Hutterites who sell to known customers (without FDA approval, I imagine) the best-tasting free-running chickens you can find anywhere, for a little less than unremarkable chickens in grocery stores. Dried corn does make up a good portion of their diet – their gritty gizzards allow them to break down the kernels just fine.
Similarly, the Mennonite colony near my sister in SD sells wonderful corn-fed beef halves, without regard to the individual cow’s piety and sobriety. I’m thinking that the smarter cows should loudly declare their conversion to Mennonitism and thus be saved from their planned fate.
The FDA makes it tough to find tasty and healthful foods, as they have always tried to establish the huge distribution lines and shut out the small individual growers and handlers. I can understand this in one regard – it’s easier to supervise food hygiene in one huge plant than in fifty small operations. But, dang, chicken and beef are supposed to be flavorful, so you have to work around the FDA sometimes.
bobby b – there are indeed parts of the Bible to claim to be the direct word of God, for example the Ten Commandments.
However, most of the Bible makes no such claim – it is clearly the work of different people at different times (it says so).
Even the Gospels were written by different people – and they do not give the same account.
The Gospel of Mark presents a dark and empty tomb – the women are distraught and do not at first recognise Jesus due to their eyes being filled with tears.
But the Gospel of Matthew has a Angel of Light sitting on top of the tomb – there is no way that anyone could not know that a great supernatural event had occurred.
Now either account could be true – but they can not BOTH be true.
As for sexual assault – Congressman Keith Ellison (Vice Chairman of the Democratic National Committee) had sexual assault claims made about him – there were 911 calls to the police about his attacks.
But no one in the media cares – because he is a Democrat.
There is also another reason the media do not report much about Keith Ellison (for example his association with groups that want to wipe out Jews) – Minnesota is very similar to Sweden (modern Sweden) in this respect.
Paul, there’s another similarity to Sweden.
Keith Ellison is a black Muslim and therefore from two groups which the Democrats instinctively protect, no matter what the accusation. The multiple women who have reported him for sexual assault have 911 calls made at the time and medical records detailing their injuries. The media and the Democrat party consider all of that to be a non issue. Compare and contrast with their treatment of Ms. Ford’s utter lack of evidence and their ‘righteous’ calls for justice.
demonize and antagonize the one group that might actually side with you besides the feminuts by slandering all straight white males as eeeevil rapists. the misogynists win another victory without having to move a muscle.
if someone plotted a conspiracy to discredit women’s rights, they could not do a better job than women are doing on their own.
Much of the Bible is pretty barbaric, especially the Old Testament. There are fewer direct exhortations to do barbaric acts but plenty of examples that show that God thoroughly approves of such behaviour. I think that the issue with the Bible is that while the Koran is boring and repetitive, the Bible is boring and over a thousand pages long. Hardly any of the faithful have actually read it.
George Atkisson – yes, agreed.
Stonyground – I repeat the point I have already made (twice). The Bible is not one book – it is many books written from many different points of view. Someone doing X in the Bible does NOT mean that God wanted them to do it – it is just saying what X person did (or was said to have done).
God does speak directly in the Bible – but very rarely, HIS words do not take up much of that “1000 pages”.
Nor does this change totally between the Old Testament and the New Testament – for example (as again I have already said) even the Gospels are written by different with different opinions.
Imagine the scene at the tomb – “Mark” presents it as a dark night, with an empty tomb. The reaction of the women is (at first) despair – and with the darkness (and their own tears) they do not at first recognise the living Jesus who walks up to them.
But “Matthew” has a great Angel of Light sitting upon the tomb – it is obvious that a great supernatural event has taken place, there is a Angel of Light sitting there. “His face was like lighting, his robe as white as snow” and he (the Angel) “speaks to the women” – he tells them that Jesus has risen. The women are filled with “awe and joy” (not grief and despair).
Neither of these two accounts is “barbaric” – but they are not compatible either. “Mark” and “Matthew” can not BOTH be right.
Who do I believe?
Well I do NOT believe “Matthew” – after all that is the same writer who has the Jews say (when demanding the death of Jesus) “His blood be upon us and our children” in reaction to Governor Pilate telling them that Jesus is an “innocent man”.
Hang on a minute…..
Say, for the sake of argument, that a mob of wicked Jews was demanding the death of an innocent man – who would say “His blood be upon us and our children!”?
No one would publically say that – they would maintain that Jesus was GUILTY, and they would certainly not take blood-guilt upon themselves, let alone “our children”.
Matthew might as well have them say “we are guilty, and as you are reading this after we are dead – persecute “our children” as we are not around to be persecuted” – it is obvious nonsense. “Matthew” is not Jesus – he was a writer who produced a book that was included in “The Bible” by a Church Council centuries after Jesus died – at a time when the Church was seeking to be the main religion of the (Jew hating) Roman Empire. There were many other accounts of the life of Jesus that were not included by that Church Council.
“Matthew” clearly MADE UP those words – and if made that up (which he clearly did), it is not a stretch to assume he made up other stuff as well. The original story is clearly too bare (“boring”?) for “Matthew” – so he adds stuff, he MAKES STUFF UP.
None of this means that Jesus did not exist, or that He was not the incarnation of God – it just reminds us that MOST of the Bible (both Old and New Testaments) is the work of MEN not of GOD.
The Koran presents itself as something totally different – it presents itself all as the direct word of “Allah” (God). It does NOT present itself as the work of men.
The Bible and the Koran are NOT the same sort of work – not at all.
@Paul Marks
> bobby b – there are indeed parts of the Bible to claim to be the direct word of God, for example the Ten Commandments.
FWIW, that isn’t true. The Apostle Paul made the claim that “all scripture is God breathed”, god-breathed being the English translation of a combo word of “God” and “breath”, out of the mouth of God, so to speak. This is the basis of the doctrine of the infallibility of scripture. (I think it is in 2Tim 3:16, but my scriptural references are a little rusty.) One may argue over what counts as “scripture” in fact the church did argue about this for four hundred years. However, they didn’t argue about the core books. At Paul’s time “scripture” certainly referred to the Tannakh and its Greek translation the Septuagint (which Paul widely and freely quotes from.) As to the status of the New Testament, well that is a point you can argue about. But sola scriptura is not a particularly new doctrine even if it popped in and out of relevance with access to books and the skills to read books. Early churches employed lectors to read the scriptures to the illiterate congregants. For sure it went dark during the dark ages as the Catholic church crushed the power of the individual under the weight of the ascendant clergy. But it was no mistake that they were so deeply threatened by Luther and the infernal printing press.
Which is to say that those who advocate the Christian religion have to do so with respect to the whole Bible, with some sort of justification over some of the nonsense in the Bible (such as the creation account) and the barbaric cruelty in the Bible. For example, God’s command to Saul concerning the Amalekites in 1Sam 15: “put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’” I find this particular instruction especially horrifying because, as you see, it uses two separate words for “children”. The second word — translated infants here — is directly related to the Hebrew word for “suck”, and refers specifically to babies still being nursed by their mothers. The horror of thinking of an army, full of self righteousness, chopping up babies still attached to their mothers’ breasts is about as horrifyingly evil as one could possibly imagine. And to think that King Saul’s failure to fully complete this mission was the reason that God rejected him from being King? It seems to me to be a good reason for any decent person to reject God from being God.
In war there is always dreadful collateral damage, but to specifically seek to kill the utterly innocent as a core part of the mission is a war crime of the most dreadful proportions.
Paul — well said. (As always on this issue.)
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bobby — Well, I’m just as happy to hear that those are normal, six-pack-loving chickens and not some sort of commie-lite chickens. After all, the Commies preferred vodka, which isn’t good for much except bathing your feet. (Tastes like rubbing alcohol & is properly used for the same purposes.) Give me good old gin any day. (Chilled. With tonic & lime, or else an olive, walk past carrying a vermouth bottle.) Unless I’m supposed to do something useful, like fixing dinner or playing the piano.
As for the chickenly use of the crop, come to think of it I knew that perfectly well. I grew up surrounded by chickens for eggs and food (never had to Do the Deed, but I sure saw Dad and Grandpa do it often enough; I had the delightful job of plucking the critters after the hanging & scalding. The smell was a bit off-putting. Next step, dealing with the innards thereof; thankfully, by some adult — I just watched. And my 4-H project was raising broilers for market.)
I am glad to hear that in the Northern Midwest one can still get real chickens and real beef, providing juicy, flavorful meat, hopefully not bred to be “lean.” Now tell me where I can get real, old-fashioned pork, you know, the “other RED meat,” not with the fat and the flavor bred out of it, and you will make a lady of mature years almost as happy as if you arranged to send me some.
Go forth, my son, and eat well of Real Food. :>)))
Paul Marks (September 21, 2018 at 8:15 pm), when Dorothy Sayers, detective story writer, dramatised the gospels (‘The Man Born to be King’), she said that applying ordinary detective story reasoning to the different viewpoints of “a bunch of startled people running about in the dawnlight between Jerusalem and the garden” easily resolved a raft of alleged inconsistencies. (That play’s astringent preface and act notes are a great read. She also has a very intelligent discussion of the crowd’s behaviour.)
I agree with you on the key issue:
– The Koran claims to be every word the word of Allah, dictated to Mohammed, and the rule of abrogation merely ensures its yet more brutal later passages are preferred over its earlier ones in any apparent conflict.
– To a Christian, the statements of Jesus are ‘dominical’, but just how to be edified by all else in the bible has a variety not open to Muslims. It was written by fallible men, some of whom warn the reader they ‘see through a glass darkly’.
Of course, the statements of one who killed often, including killing dancing girls for laughing at him, differ quite a lot from the statements of one who never killed. That is another difference between the two.
Seriously Sykes? Do you know a lot of people in ‘major corporations’?
Totty of negotiable virtue are abundantly available to people with dosh within London’s Zone One, but I suspect anything comparable is in extremely short supply in Rochdale and Rotherham. People who work for ‘major corporations’ shop at Harrods Food Hall or at least Waitrose, not the CoOp, if you get my meaning.
Frasor Orr – the Bible is written by different men with different opinions.
It can not be entirely the work of God – unless God is suffering from a form of mental illness that causes Him to have fundamentally different (and opposed) opinions on various matters.
I have already pointed out how (even leaving aside opinions) the same basic EVENTS are described in incompatible ways by different writers in the Bible. For example the scene at the tomb is different in “Mark” and in “Matthew” – one could believe one or the other (or neither), but one can NOT believe both accounts. It is either a dark night with the despairing women at first not knowing who Jesus is when he walks up to them – or there is a Angel of Light sitting on the tomb who explains everything to the women so they are filled with joy (BEFORE they meet Jesus). Both accounts can not be true – they are in flat contradiction.
You cite Paul – who is (in turn) contradicted on salvation by faith (if that really is the position of Paul) alone by James (Letter of James). Martin Luther called the Letter of James “Am Epistle of Straw” – so much for that bit of the Bible being “God breathed”, but Dr Luther did NOT take the Letter of James out of the Bible – so if everything in the Bible is true then BOTH Paul and James must be correct (at the same time) – good luck with that. And you will be aware that Martin Luther took books OUT of the Bible if he did not agree with them (and could find any excuse to take them out). Books could have been in the Bible from the start, but if he did not like them (and could find an excuse) out-they-went. So we can assume that Dr Luther looked really hard for an excuse to kick “the Epistle of Straw” out of the Bible – but he-could-not-find-an-excuse to kick it out of the Bible. And even the mistranslation trick (when in a modern Bible one sees by faith “alone” the “alone” bit is not from the Greek original – it is from the German and was put there by Dr Luther) will not work on the Letter of James (because to get the Letter of James to agree with the theology of Dr Luther one would have mistranslate it so wildly that anyone would notice the fraud).
Still I am getting side tracked (a sign of my old age) – Niall Kilmartin has the truth of the matter and expresses it a lot better than I do – alas I have all the eloquence of an old raven, croaking away.
The Bible is the work of a lot of men who often contract each other – but all of them are (yes Fraser) all doing their level best to express what they sincerely believed to be the view of God. One can a believer in God and someone who accepts Jesus Christ as their saviour (as I do) and still accept the obvious truth that the Bible is written by lots of different men with lots of different (and opposed) opinions.
The Koran, by contrast, is fairly consistent – and where there are contradictions it lays down a rule to solve them. The historically later verse trumps the historically earlier verse – when Allah was telling Muhammed to be tolerant, Muhammed was still in Mecca and had no army. When Allah is telling Muhammed to rob, kill and enslave – Muhammed has moved to Medina and has built up an army. And it is the latter verses that are valid TODAY – although Islamic scholars (quite sensibly) tell Muslims to NOT attack (or every publically talk about it) if they are heavily outnumbered by TOUGH infidels.
If one is surrounded by tough infidels who are quite likely to kill you if you talk about robbing and enslaving them – then one is told (by Islamic scholars) to cite the early Mecca verses about love, tolerance, kittens (whatever), only if the infidels are WEAK (or UNWARY – i.e. the infidels belief the lies told to them and let down their guard) should the velvet gloves come off – the lies about friendship (the later verses clearly forbid real, as opposed to FEIGNED friendship with infidels – regardless of how nice those infidels may be) stop and the attack be launched. That is perfectly sensible and is backed up by various Hadiths and the “Life” as well as the historically later verses of the Koran – one can not fault the basic logic of Islam, it is without doubt the religion with the clearest military logic that has ever been created. It is perfect for war – both “hot war” and “cold war”. I remain of the opinion that although he lacked a formal education, Muhammed was a genius – one of the most intelligent (practical intelligence – as opposed to book learning) human beings who ever lived. His achievements are remarkable – utterly remarkable.
One can say one admires a man’s achievements without AGREEING with that man – for example Winston Churchill said he admired how Adolf Hitler had come from nothing (no where in life) and made himself master of Germany and had mad Germany feared all over the world. That, contrary to the ignorant left, does NOT mean that Winston Churchill supported Adolf Hitler. No more than me saying I admire the achievement of Julius Caesar in conquering Gaul (modern France) means that I SUPPORT his killing a third of the population and enslaving another third – yes it was evil, but still an astonishing achievement. One should indeed fight to the death against tyrants such as Hitler or Julius Caesar – but it is stupid to deny their achievements (their genius).
Ouch – I just wrote a long comment and then I pressed the wrong key and lost it all.
I will not have brief break (to “have a paddy” – i.e. fly into a rage as I did yesterday when I dragged my fat lump of a self several miles and then could not find an entrance to the place I was asked to go to) and then try and reconstruct what I wrote.
I should not have typed the word “not” – but then I have a problem with that word (when to type and when … not to type it).
Anyway – reconstruction.
It is often pointed out that Christians do not follow parts of the Old Testament (for example the laws on what to not to eat) – but Jews do not take a literal view of much of scripture either, and did NOT centuries ago either. The Talmud is the analysis of scripture by various rabbis – about how to bring the stories in the Bible into line with moral reason (implanted in us by God). The idea that Jews would look at a story in the Bible about the killing of women and babies and say not “yes this may have happened – and God weeps over these wicked deeds, by our ancestors or anyone else” but rather say “this is in the Bible – so it must be how God wants us to behave” is the theological level of a six year old child, one might as well believe the lies of the National Socialists as to believe that this is what Judaism is about.
Why, almost one and half thousand years ago, was one of the early battle cries of the Muslims attacking the Jews “raise your hand”? Were the Muslims calling upon the Jews to surrender? No they were not. The Muslims were referring (in a mocking way) the Jewish practice of placing their hand over offending passages in scripture (IF there was no time to explain that these passages did NOT mean that God wanted the listener to do these things) so as not to read them aloud by accident. In short if there is no time to explain these passages (to explain that Joshua, or whoever, was getting something wrong) it was better not to read them out loud at all – in case a weak minded person took them literally, hence a rabbi would place his hand over such a passage to avoid reading it aloud by accident (if he had no time to explain it). What Islam was saying by “raise your hand” was “read this passage – and DO THAT”. For example, if a women commits adultery stone-her-to-death (“look it says so, right here…..”). Unlike Judaism and Christianity, mainstream Islam has denies the role of moral reason in JUDGEING scripture. That is why Islam was called (and rightly called) a “revolt against the Talmud”.
To fall into theological slang – mainstream (mainstream) Islam is “voluntarist” in the sense of how it sees God and ethics, what God commands is the DEFINITION of moral good, and what God forbids is the DEFINITION of what is bad. So if scripture says X then X is (by DEFININTION) morally good. Moral reason is not a guide (measuring stick) by which one judges scripture – not in mainstream Islam.
When a mainstream Jew or Christian says “God is good” they mean – God does morally good things and wants people to do morally good things. When mainstream Islam says “God is good” it is saying that God’s commands are the DEFINITION of moral good. So when the Scholastics said “natural law is the law of God – but if God did not exist the natural law, moral good and moral evil, would be exactly the same” Islam would be baffled as to what they were talking about. And when the Protestant (Anglican) theologian Richard Hooker talked about the “three legged stool” (chair), of (yes) scripture, but also Church tradition (like the tradition of the Common Law – the moral reason of centuries of people working on something is likely to be superior to the moral reason of one person approaching the problem for the first time), and moral reason, the “voluntarist” who defined moral good and moral evil in terms of simply what God commands and what God forbids, would (again) be baffled.
Of course as both Richard Hooker knew in theology and Sir Edward Coke knew in the Common Law, just because something has been said often before (is part of the tradition) does not make it automatically correct. One has to pick and choose in tradition (as Coke did with what old cases in cited in his legal judgements) – using moral reason a guide, but also seeing the tradition as pointing out things one would not otherwise have thought of.
For example, it had often been said that there was no salvation for someone who denied the authority of the Roman Church – but Hooker showed that the implication of the Scholastics own arguments was that such a thing was “indifferent” to God (not vital to Him as they supposed). That a Roman Catholic could be saved (here Hooker angered Puritans) and a non Roman Catholic could be saved (here Hooker angered Roman Catholics).
Judaism takes the argument one stage further (whilst pointing out that this development is implicit in the arguments of various thinkers Jewish and Christian – even if they did NOT reach this conclusion).
Take the example of the “just person” who has, tragically, no religious faith – who spends their life defending the weak from attack and so on, but who (tragically) does not believe in the existence of God (as a good man once said “the thing I want to believe in most of all is God – but I do NOT believe”) what happens to such a person on their death?
If “God is good” and this is more than a mere TAUTOLOGY (i.e. “God is good – by definition”), then is it just for the just person to go to Hell? Or to wink out of existence? Would a good being (if “God is good”) not save someone whose only real “crime” was lack of religious belief? What sort of God would not love people just because they did not believe in His existence? Certainly not a God who was good.
Would “Doubting Thomas” really have gone to Hell or winked out of existence, if had remained “Doubting” (which he would have done – has Jesus not personally appeared in front of him and shown Thomas the wounds)?
Obviously, if “God is good” (in more than a tautological sense) the answer to such as question is “no”.
The just person (NOT the sinless person – there are no sinless people, we are all sinners) is saved by God, even if that just person does not believe that God exists.
“I am the way, the truth and the life – there is no way to the Father, but through me” does not mean that everyone has to KNOW that. What of people who have never heard of Jesus at all? Do they go to Hell or wink out of existence on death? God (to Christians Jesus) saves those who try and be just – even if they have NEVER HEARD OF HIM, let alone believe in Him.
For those interested…..
“Matthew” has an angel of light with a face like lighting – the women then run to tell the disciples.
“Mark” (second gospel – but historically older) has a young man, who gives the women no reason to believe him, and so they do not tell anyone, till Mary of Magdala actually sees Jesus. Had the men turned up at the tomb (not the women) they would have assumed the “young man” was a grave robber and killed him – I certainly would have made that assumption and acted accordingly (so perhaps it was well that the women, not the men, went there).
“Luke” has two men – the women tell the disciples (who do NOT believe them). By the way “Luke” does (not does not) mention Mary of Magdala – contrary to a BBC programme I watched some time ago.
“John” has two angels – who have a conversation with Mary of Magdala, who even though she has just met two angels still first mistakes Jesus for the gardener.
In short the accounts in the Gospels are garbled, confused and contradictory – certainly not “God breathed”. Actually this leads me to the view that something very important DID happen – if the thing was a fraud then the accounts would be more coherent and would be in accord.