Somebody has been reading too much buzzfeed

Because it's Right... and Because it's Tactically Sound

A few days ago, an NBA player of no particular note came out as gay...

Which, really, should also be of no particular note.

But then ESPN decided to put a moronic bigot (whose name I won't mention and whose video I won't bother linking to here... why publicize idiots like this) to discuss the issue... and predictably he spouted moronic bigotry all over the screen, and made it an even BIGGER spectacle...

Now, the intarwebs are full of folks reacting against the reaction against the reaction against etc... etc...

They're caught up in the noise, and not the issue.

I try not to do that... and to smack it down when I can.

I take issue with the way issues surrounding homosexuality in public life are covered by the media, and often with the strategy and tactics employed by activists... but I believe in, and work for equal rights and equal protection for homosexuals (and before anyone gets offended by my use of a single word... you're an idiot... YOU are part of the problem... because you are offended stupidly by nothing, and not working towards a real solution).

Chris Kluwe, NFL Punter, wrote a post in support of the gay community in HuffPo yesterday... I normally don't link to them, but I think this is a rational and correct position, reasonably well put...

Really, my position and reasoning are simple...

I speak in support of equal treatment for homosexuals, not because I am one, but because it is the right thing to do.

Because I believe in equal rights and treatment for EVERYONE.

Whether I approve of them or not.

Further, I do so, because anything which can be used against those you disapprove of... can also be used against those you DO approve of...

...or YOU.

Adultery, Prostitution, Rape, and Islam

This post is a consolidation and recapitulation of a couple of comments made across a couple of posts from the week or so, on the subject of rape in the islamic world.

Last week, Clayton Cramer posted a piece about the Beslan terrorist attack, in which he noted that the personal testimonies of the victims that some of the hostages were raped, seemed to have been scrubbed from official records, and regional reportage of the incident; and that Wikipedia had a pretty transparent apologia over the incident (go read the linked piece for the full context, I'd have to excerpt the whole thing to make sense here) quoted here:

The lack of food and water took its toll on the young children, many of whom were forced to stand for long periods in the hot, tightly-packed gym. Many children took off their clothing because of the sweltering heat within the gymnasium, which led to rumors of sexual impropriety, though the hostages later explained it was merely due to the stifling heat and being denied any water.

In his last paragraph he wrote:

The two sources that this paragraph gives for this claim says nothing that indicates that the claims of rape were incorrect. I find myself troubled by how many books and articles refer to this claim, which seems unfortunately quite plausible--and yet I can't find any immediate newspaper accounts that refer to it. Can you help me?

As someone who is familiar with the region, I responded:

You almost certainly won't; and you can guarantee any Chechnyans will edit out any mention of it in wikipedia.

Cultural rape shame in the region is EXTREME (both islamic, and christian), and it will almost certainly never be acknowledged in local sources, or by Ossetians.

This is a cultural pathology very familiar to those who know islamic culture, and balkan and transcaucasian culture; but is really not well understood here in the United States (not that rape shame isn't a huge problem here as well, it's simply an entirely different order of magnitude).

Apparently my comment (and those of the other commenters) triggered some further interest on Claytons part about rape in the muslim world; particularly in the context of Surah 23:1-11

The believers must (eventually) win through,-
Those who humble themselves in their prayers;
Who avoid vain talk;
Who are active in deeds of charity;
Who abstain from sex,
Except with those joined to them in the marriage bond, or (the captives) whom their right hands possess,- for (in their case) they are free from blame,
But those whose desires exceed those limits are transgressors;-
Those who faithfully observe their trusts and their covenants;
And who (strictly) guard their prayers;-
These will be the heirs,
Who will inherit Paradise: they will dwell therein (for ever).

This passage is taken by many muslims, as a commandment to be chaste except in marriage OR with slaves and captives. It has been used as justification by muslims to rape slaves, prisoners, hostages etc...

A few days later, Clayton posted a further missive on Sharia law and Rape:

I spent some time this evening researching the claim that sharia law requires four male, Islamic, adult eyewitnesses to get a rape conviction. This turns out to be true, but slightly misleading, or at least, incomplete. Sharia law, with its very severe punishments, does apparently require four male, Islamic adult eyewitnesses for the crime of zina (which includes rape, adultery, and premarital sex, and does not distinguish them clearly). In some countries, eight adult females can provide the testimony, or some combination of men and women.

It turns out that the standard, which may have been intended primarily to prevent a person accused of adultery from being executed without extraordinary evidence, is so demanding that a non-sharia based-law is used to punish rape, with much less severe punishments, in many Muslim countries. The reported rape rates in Muslim countries are so astonishingly low that I am inclined to think that these crimes are just not being reported.

I felt I needed to expand greatly on my previous comment about rape and shame in the islamic world:

Unfortunately, yes.

Actual rape is shockingly common in the islamic world, particularly in Africa and the Arabic portions; particularly among the lower economic classes, and among what are effectively lower caste populations of indians, pakistanis, afghanis, indonesians, africans, and other darker skinned or mixed race muslims; who are imported into the arabic and other lighter skinned muslim countries as cheap labor (because many of them speak arabic, and have no resources or education to help them protect themselves).

These people are effectively made into indentured servants, or even slaves; and their masters take the "masters privilege".

Rich arabs, particularly "royalty" (though the arabic definition of royalty is... expansive. There are thousands of Saudi princes for example) tend to view the lower class staff as fair game, or even as their due, or just reward.

Often rape is used as a means of control, or shaming, of either a woman or her family (which may "force" the family to kill the woman to "restore their honor"). It can even be used to gain business advantage.

Also, gang rape, by roving bands of young men, is sadly not uncommon. Usually, they excuse their behavior as "punishing the wicked temptress" for "tempting" them with their wicked bodies, uncovered ankles and wrists etc...

You will find, if you look closer into it, that most muslim women who are punished for "adultery", are in fact rape victims.

Sadder still, the rape gangs have moved into europe with large scale lower class muslim immigration; particularly in Germany, Sweden, and France. The city of Malmo in sweden has essentially been declared a no-go zone for white women. They have even seen some rape gang activity in Canada and the UK.

I can't even get into Africa without getting angrier than hell... In the sudan, tanzania, djibouti, eritrea, somalia, ethiopia, the congo, sexual violence is so commonplace as to be beneath notice. Again, you'll find that most women in Muslim africa punished for "adultery" or "prostitution" are in fact rape victims.

The final major factor is the cultural rape shame. It's so severe in the islamic world that there is a near 80% death rate from it; either by suicide, murder, stoning and other "punishment", and honor killings.

Frankly, I haven't even begun to touch on this subject. I personally could write a short book on it, never mind a real expert on this subject. I know there are several books on the subject of sexual violence in Islam, and sexual violence in africa; generally first person accounts by refugees, or serious scholarly/governmental report type things. I don't know of any books that seek to be serious reportage, commentary, and analysis on the subject.

For some reason, Americans in general know very little about this.

The false statistics of sexual abuse in the United States (and believe me, if you've seen a statistic on sexual violence in the American media, it's almost certainly false. This topic is so politicized as to be completely unreliable at this point) are ridiculously well publicized; but the actual genocidal horror (and yes, it is very much a part of the African and eastern European genocides, and for genocidal reasons) of sexual violence in Islam and particularly in Africa is basically unknown.

That idea simply dumbfounds me, never mind making me angry.

More Good Stuff from Camille Paglias' Mailbag

Remember a few months ago I mentioned I have a great deal of respect for Camille Paglia? Well here she goes again:

Something very ugly has surfaced in contemporary American liberalism, as evidenced by the irrational and sometimes infantile abuse directed toward anyone who strays from a strict party line. Liberalism, like second-wave feminism, seems to have become a new religion for those who profess contempt for religion. It has been reduced to an elitist set of rhetorical formulas, which posit the working class as passive, mindless victims in desperate need of salvation by the state. Individual rights and free expression, which used to be liberal values, are being gradually subsumed to worship of government power. The problems on the American left were already manifest by the late 1960s, as college-educated liberals began to lose contact with the working class for whom they claimed to speak. (A superb 1990 documentary, "Berkeley in the Sixties," chronicles the arguments and misjudgments about tactics that alienated the national electorate and led to the election of Richard Nixon.) For the past 25 years, liberalism has gradually sunk into a soft, soggy, white upper-middle-class style that I often find preposterous and repellent. The nut cases on the right are on the uneducated fringe, but on the left they sport Ivy League degrees. I'm not kidding -- there are some real fruitcakes out there, and some of them are writing for major magazines. It's a comfortable, urban, messianic liberalism befogged by psychiatric pharmaceuticals. Conservatives these days are more geared to facts than emotions, and as individuals they seem to have a more ethical, perhaps sports-based sense of fair play. Probably the main reason for my unorthodox view of politics (as in my instant approval of Sarah Palin) is that I had much more childhood contact with working-class life than appears to be the norm among current American columnists. One of my grandfathers was a barber, and the other was a leather worker at the Endicott-Johnson shoe factory in upstate New York. Thanks to the G.I. Bill, my father was able to attend college, the only one in his large family to do so. I was born while he was still in college and mopping floors in the cafeteria. Years later, he became a high-school teacher and then a professor at a Jesuit college, but we never left our immigrant family roots in industrial Endicott. To this day, I have more rapport with campus infrastructure staffers (maintenance, security) than I do with other professors or, for that matter, writers. Don't get me started on the hermetic bourgeois arrogance of American literati!

Read the whole thing; it's definitely worth a few minutes of your time.

A Perception Issue

If you ask most people in this country whether we have gun control, they'll say no we don't. If you ask them why, they'll say something like "because the NRA keeps it from passing.

This may seem impossible to those of us in the gun world, but the vast majority of people in this country are entirely ignorant about gun laws... in fact I'd wager to say the majority of gun owners are even ignorant.

Frederik Pohl is a quite well known science fiction author; who has recently decided to start a blog. In one of his first posts, he mentioned his wife was a college professor, a former state rep, and worked with the teachers union in her state; and in the comment thread someone made some disparaging comments about such unions.

She responded with a defense of her union; but also an attack against the NRA, and gun rights supporters:

"So I take exception to my union’s being linked by my husband with an organization like the National Rifle Association. I admit, their members are primarily not lobbying for financial gain either, but I also do not believe that the majority of people who are card-carrying members of that organization are as fanatic as their leadership in defending the right of anyone to bear automatic assault weapons. Many of their members are simply hunters or collectors who want to join an organization which is supposed to defend their right to own rifles and shotguns."

I see this thing everywhere, all the time. It is completely and utterly false; but usually it is motivated not by bigotry, but by ignorance; as most people are informed only by those hostile to gun rights, and their accomplices, the media.

As gun owners, as gun lovers, as gun rights activists, and as those who support human freedom; we MUST correct such perceptions wherever they arise.

We must do so politely, and in an informed manner; and we must engage anyone who is willing to listen; rather than simply shouting "what part of shall not be infringed don't you understand" and "from my cold dead hands" over and over again.

I left this rather long comment; which I hope they choose to publish (update: they did publish it) but even if they don't perhaps at least one or two people will be more informed, and will not take the medias pronouncements to heart so uncritically:

I realize you mean well here, and you make your comments out of ignorance; but as you are angered by people speaking about teachers unions without direct knowledge or understanding; you should recognize that your statements on guns and gun rights are similarly ill informed.

From what you have said, and how you have said it, I'll wager your information and perceptions of the NRA, gun rights, gun owners and shooters are primarily created and informed by media and lobbying groups hostile to guns and gun rights.

Oh and by the way, there is no functional difference whatsoever between a hunting shotgun or many hunting rifles, and the so called "assault weapons" banned under various state laws (and federally from 1994-2004); excepting that the banned weapons are in fact LESS powerful than weapons typically used for hunting.

The common perception, falsely created by anti-gun lobbying organizations, and reinforced at every opportunity by an uncritical and largely anti-gun media; is that such laws keep machine guns out of the hands of criminals. This is completely and utterly false.

Machine guns are legal in the United States (in about 40 out of 50 states)for civilians to own by the way; and always have been. Since 1934, they have been subject to strict federal regulation and background checks; and they cost enormous sums of money (the cheapest are around $5000 and they can easily exceed $100,000).

Since machine guns were specially regulated in 1934, only two crimes have ever been committed using lawfully owned machine guns; and both were by police officers (both were instances of domestic violence).

These "assault weapon" bans;and there is sure to be another proposed shortly now that Obama has been inaugurated; do nothing more than restrict lawful access to law abiding citizens, weapons that LOOK LIKE machine guns.

There are constant calls for "reasonable gun control" when in fact we already have a HUGE amount of gun control in this country.

Most people hear this repeated propaganda about "easy access to guns" etc... and simply assume that it's a wide open field for everyone to buy guns willynilly out there with no control. This is also utterly false.

It is illegal for a felon, the mentally ill, the legally incompetent, substance abusers, and anyone who has been convicted of a crime of domestic violence, or has a domestic violence restraining order against them; to own, purchase, or possess any firearm. It is also illegal to sell, give, or loan a firearm to those people.

Firearms can only be sold across state lines by federally licensed dealers. Firearms cannot be sold mail order. Firearms cannot be purchased over the internet without first being shipped to a federally licensed dealer (unless both the buyer and seller are in the same states, and that state allows private sales without a dealer).

All firearms purchases from federally licensed dealers must be approved through the national instant background check system; which verifies that the person the gun being sold to is not prohibited from owning or possessing firearms under the law.

And that's just federal. There are 28,000 federal, state, and local gun control laws in this country.

And not one of them has any impact at all on criminals. Criminals don't buy guns from federally licensed dealers. They don't buy guns from law abiding citizens. They buy guns from other criminals. The law doesn't do a thing to stop them, BECAUSE THEY ARE CRIMINALS.

I could go on like this for hours, but I hope I have illustrated my point. If you want to make such a comparison, please educate yourself first; and don't count the media or those who oppose that which you'd like to talk about as valid sourcees. You wouldn't treat any academic subject in such a manner, you shouldnt treat this subject as such.

If we don't do this, we lose. It's that simple.

NRA Press Conference

Last week, the gunbloggers at the Gunblogger Rendezvous, were asked by the NRA to cover the final press conference of their McCain endorsement announcement event.

They started the day out in Pennsylvania, then proceeded through several critical swing states as the day wore on; hitting Springfield MO, Denver CO, and finally Reno NV.

You might note, all four are heavy hunting states, and critical swing states for this election.

It would have been a great day long event, but for the fact that they gave essentially the same announcement speech in each location. They ran through a littany of Obamas poor record on firearms, and announced their official endorsement of John McCain.


Not exactly a huge surprise.

After the event I spoke with the media relations rep, Ashley Varner (a great lady by the way), and I expressed my concern that they had wasted an opportunity there, by not staggering out more interesting bits throughout the day; instead basically blowing that major cross country effort, since AP had the story at 8am eastern.

Frankly, we were hoping for something bigger.

After the announcement, we had some time for Q&A with Wayne LaPierre and Chris Cox.

Unfortunately, there were a lot of members of the audience, who didn't quite understand that the NRA is not an ANTI-OBAMA organization, they are a GUN RIGHTS organization; and some time was wasted dealing with people asking why the NRA wasn't trying to prove Obama was really a closet muslim, not an american citizen, and a communist.

To his credit, Wayne LaPierre made it very clear, the NRA isn't anti-democrat, or pro-republican by nature. The NRA is non partisan, caring not for party, only for the position of a candidate on gun rights.

When then right wing nutjob questions were over, this woman stood up:


Her name is Ly Chho, and she escaped from Cambodia as a child. She stood up to say that she had seen communism, how fast it moved from soft socialism to death camps, and that Obama made her frightened, because it had happened before... it could happen here (Kevin Baker has more).

I was able to ask three questions of Chris Cox and Wayne LaPierre:

1. Is the NRA currently pursuing, or will they pursue, an FEC complaint against the Annenberg foundation, for their actions in Chicago, and their explicit advocacy for a candidate within six weeks of an election, in violation of the BCRA (McCain Feingold); as well as their unlawful co-ordination with the Obama campaign directly.

2. Is the NRA currently pursuing, or will they pursue, an FEC complaint against the Obama campaign for their actions in Missouri, and other states, to influence and intimidate media outlets, and voters, through the improper use of state agencies and officials; as well as the unlawful direct co-ordination of the campaign with elected officials.

3. Is the NRA currently pursuing, or will they pursue, a civil complaint of malfeasance or misfeasance of office, ethics violations for abuse of public trust, or criminal complaints of conspiracy to deprive individuals of their civil rights; against those public officials involved in the actions of the Obama campaign.

Cox was unable to give me a direct positive or negative answer; saying that they were strongly pursuing all opportunities and avenues open to them.

I got the impression from the response that they WOULD be pursing an FEC complaint, and ethical complaints; but most likely they would not be pursing a civil suit, or criminal complaint.

After the questions were over, Chris Cox came up to me and personally thanked me for asking the questions (apparently no-one else had asked him that day), and for what I was doing for gun rights, with the various websites I write on.

Finally, we had a photo opportunity with Cox and LaPierre.


The first photo was taken by Ashley Varner, and includes me; and I took the second here, including Ashley in the picture:

Oh Yeah, I Forgot

Conserving valuable resources

So I mentioned that one of my projects for the week was rewiring the home theater. Well, I've (mostly) finished, except for two last things:

First, I still need to rewire the surround speakers; but I have to pick up some wire concealing channel before I do that (I'm moving my surrounds from a shelf behind our heads, to ceiling mounts to the side of our listening positions).

More importantly, I need to re-program the radio presets.

Now, for someone as anal as me, radio presets are a limited resource, not to be wasted. Unfortunately, Mel and I have very varied listening tastes. Although we have a large overlap of things we both like, and a relatively small section of styles and stations only one of us listens to; together we listen to a BUNCH of different styles of music...

..and as I said, I'm anal about that sort of thing. I hate having my presets out of order; and I order them by style, and listening frequency.

My receiver has three bands; FM, AM, and Sirius. I don't actually listen to any terrestrial radio except the local talk stations; and I haven't since I first got Sirius almost 5 years ago.

Sirius is just plain better: Better quality, better selection and variety, better playlists, better DJs, and of course, NO COMMERCIALS.

I can't wait for the Sirius/XM merger to finally go through. There are a couple stations on XM that I'd like, and that don't overlap with Sirius.

Mel on the other hand still listens to local radio a lot (lord knows why).

Anyway, most receivers give you a relatively limited set of presets, say 8 or 10 per bank; but they usually give you a bank or two per band. My receiver is a little different, in that it gives me 40 presets, but they're mixed across all three bands.

That's pretty cool actually, because it means no wasted presets. I only listen to two terrestrial radio stations, one AM and one FM, and Mel listens to maybe a half dozen more. If it was one of those "4 banks of 10, assigned per band" things, we'd have a bunch of blank presets, which as I've said, I'm anal about.

Of course some genius in designing this receiver made it so you can't set presets from the remote, you have to get down on your hands and knees and press a combination of tiny buttons under a cover on the faceplate.

Joy... but livable. I don't change presets very often.

What's been the issue, is winnowing down to 40 presets, and figuring out how to order them.

Again I freely admit, I am anal about this stuff.

Obviously, unless you're a Sirius subscriber, these won't mean a thing to you; and even if you are, there's still the local terrestrial stations for Phoenix mixed in there; but here's our list of 40 ( winnowed down from the 70 or so we originally had listed - like I said, very varied):

1. 157 - Phoenix traffic and weather
   
2. 144 - Patriot - Conservative and Libertarian talk
   
3. 145 - Fox talk - Nationally syndicated conservative talk
   
4. 131 - Fox news - News
   
5. 92.3 - KTAR talk - Local and syndicated conservative/libertarian talk
   
6. 550 - KFYI talk - Local and syndicated conservative/libertarian talk
7. 104 - Raw dog - Dirty comedy
   
8. 105 - Laugh break - Clean comedy
   
9. 14 - Classic Vinyl - Early classic rock
   
10. 15 - Classic Rewind - Later classic rock
    
11. 16 - The Vault - Deeper cuts of classic rock
    
12. 93.3 - KDKB - Classic rock
13. 100.7 - KSLX - Classic rock
14. 74 - Sirius blues - Blues
    
15. 23 - Hair Nation - Hair metal, hard rock
    
16. 19 - Buzzsaw - Classic hard rock
    
17. 20 - Octane - Hard rock from the late 90s on
    
18. 28 - Faction - Hard rock, alt hiphop and underground, ska, grind, punk, metal
    
19. 29 - Punk - Mixed punk from all genres and eras
    
20. 27 - Hard attack - Mixed metal from all eras
    
21. 21 - Alt Nation - 2000s alternative
    
22. 22 - First Wave - 70s and 80s alternative
    
23. 24 - Lithium - 90s alternative
    
24. 70 - Disorder - Random jam, alt, semi-punk, garage, and indie
    
25. 72 - Pure Jazz
26. 80 - Symphony
27. 86 - Pops
28. 60 - New country
29. 61 - Prime country
30. 63 - Outlaw country
    
31. 102.5 - KNIX - Mixed country
32. 107.9 - KMLE - Mixed country
33. 12 - Super Shuffle - Popular selections from all Sirius channels
    
34. 09 - pulse - Mixed rock, alt, pop from the 90s-today - youth/pop oriented
    
35. 10 - Bridge - Mixed rock, alt, pop from the 90s-today - adult/indie oriented
    
36. 96.9 - KMXP - Mixed rock, 80s-today
    
37. 97.9 - KUPD - Mixed contemporary rock
38. 98.7 - KKLT - Adult contemporary and soft rock 70's-today
    
39. 99.9 - KESE - Soft Rock

Hah! One left over. During football season, that one is reserved for NFL radio, but for now it remains empty.

Seriously, this stuff actually takes up cycles in my brain. No, you really don't want to see what else is going on inside there.

Crass Commercialism

There is an Amber alert going on right now in Arizona, and the sheriffs department has activated the media alert contingency.

This is where the local broadcast media break into their programming, and let everyone know about the alert, and the pertinent details, so if you see the abducted child, or the suspect or vehicle, maybe, just maybe you will have heard the alert and be able to alert law enforcement.

All in all, it's a good system, and hopefully is very helpful in recovering abducted children before it's too late.

Here's the part that inspired the title however:

My local NBC affiliate broadcast the alert of their feature programming (at the time it started, it was Heroes), but they stopped the alert broadcast for commercial breaks, and then restarted it once the commercial breaks were over.

So... it's important enough, that to help save a childs life, they break into normal programming (which I absolutely agree with); but it's not important enough that they interrupt the GOD DAMN COMMERCIALS!