The News Thread

[number8]

Attacking a religious person based solely on their religion is bigotry.

Attacking a religion itself is not.

[Robby P]

Harris' neoconservatism is hardly confined to his theoretical endorsement of torture. I, too, can think of completely implausible scenarios where the use of torture is morally justified. That hardly means that its actual implementation is, in almost every conceivable circumstance, completely immoral not to mention a violation of international law. He was a hardline supporter of the Iraq war under the pretense that we were acting as civilized liberators of an oppressed people intent on spreading democracy and no amount of revisionism can change that fact. He has demanded that we "tolerate, advocate and practice ethnic profiling". He believes, fundamentally, that we are "at war with Islam" and that there are no geographic or temporal limits to that ambiguously defined conflict. He supports the Western doctrine of militarism and the expansion of American hegemony in the Middle East. I fail to see how any of this could be described as anything other than neoconservative. In regards to my "selective reading" of his Zionism, Harris believes that Israelis have the moral high ground in the conflict in Palestine, childishly believes that only Muslims engage in the practice of murdering noncombatants and delightfully accuses Muslims of "genocidal language" toward Jews while conveniently neglecting Israel's own policies of apartheid politics and forced relocation.

Harris' defense to all of these claims is that people are "quote mining" and taking his words out of context, which is a very clever rhetorical device used to avoid having to actually defend the things that come out of his mouth. No amount or quality of context can make some of the things that he's said any less ridiculous or reprehensible.

[Robby P]

Additionally, my claim was not that Harris conflates the actions of a fanatical minority with those of all Muslims but that he drastically overstates the amount of Muslims who abide by those extremist beliefs. Thus when he makes outlandish claims like "Islam has all the makings of a cult of death" and that there are "tens of millions of Muslims scarier than Dick Cheney" he's guilty not of indiscriminately judging all Muslims as a whole but of grossly misrepresenting the extent of fanatical influence in the Muslim world.

[Fezzik]

http://www.theonion.com/articles/wre...ciating,32002/

[

Show Spoiler

"At press time, the WWE had reviewed the officiating at WrestleMania 29 as well as other events, and announced plans to vacate every single match result for the last 60 years."

] :lol:

[B-side]

Additionally, my claim was not that Harris conflates the actions of a fanatical minority with those of all Muslims but that he drastically overstates the amount of Muslims who abide by those extremist beliefs. Thus when he makes outlandish claims like "Islam has all the makings of a cult of death" and that there are "tens of millions of Muslims scarier than Dick Cheney" he's guilty not of indiscriminately judging all Muslims as a whole but of grossly misrepresenting the extent of fanatical influence in the Muslim world.

Take a look at this comprehensive polling of actual everyday Muslims before you go insisting they're mostly peaceful and rational.

If you can't face the fact that Islam is simply a different beast in this day and age, then you're simply being naive. I'd respond to your previous post, but you're clearly not interested in learning or addressing context. You've already demonized him and refuse to be convinced otherwise, which I guess is fine, but I like to be challenged to think differently.

[B-side]

Uruguay overwhelmingly approves same sex marriage AND adoption

France approves both as well, but with slimmer margins

Interesting to think that a country that not long ago banned abortion entirely is now ahead of most major countries on civil rights issues.

[Raiders]

Is it just me, or are Ben Carson's comments on gay marriage less idiotic and more sad? As an African American who has become famous for his work in a field he would have never been allowed to enter into 60 years ago, that he would use the "foundational pillar of our society" argument is very tragic to me. It just shows that when its your own views, bigotry is perfectly acceptable.

[B-side]

If republicans think he's going to win them minority support, they're more delusional than I previously thought.

[Acapelli]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/04/op...k.html?hp&_r=0

The present darling of the right wing, Dr. Benjamin Carson, is a distinguished neurosurgeon who went from the depths of Detroit poverty to the heights of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. But his current status among conservatives isn’t so much rooted in Carson’s redemptive rise from rags to respectability, as it is in the belief that he is, in the long winter of Obama, the one they’ve been waiting for.

Last week, Carson came under attack for comparing advocates of same-sex marriage with advocates of bestiality and the North American Man/Boy Love Association. He then cast himself as a victim of political correctness, besieged by white liberals — “the most racist people there are” — who could not countenance his heterodoxy and wanted to keep him on the “plantation.”

The plantation metaphor refers to a popular theory on the right. It holds that the 95 percent of African-Americans who voted for a Democratic president are not normal Americans voting their beliefs, but slaves. A corollary to the plantation theory is the legend of the Conservative Black Hope, a lonesome outsider, willing to stare down the party of Obamacare and stand up for the party of voter ID. Does it matter that this abolitionist truth-teller serves at the leisure of an audience that is overwhelmingly white? Not really. Blacks are brainwashed slaves; you can’t expect them to know what’s in their interest.

Benjamin Carson is that Conservative Black Hope of the moment. His rise began with a meandering speech that mixed policy, humor and victimization in February at the National Prayer Breakfast, mere feet from the president of the United States, who was forced to take his medicine in a way that Clint Eastwood could only dream of. When Sean Hannity interviewed Carson about his speech he dispensed with the policy and simply dubbed the segment “Lecturing Obama.”

Since the dawn of the Obama era, conservatives have been on the lookout for such a man. In 2004 they dispatched Alan Keyes cross-country to take up the mantle of the Conservative Black Hope and deliver an early knockout to Obama. Keyes had never lived in Illinois and his voters barely knew him, and voted accordingly. But it did not matter who he was. What mattered was their plan.

“We needed to find another Harvard-educated African-American who had some experience on the national political scene,” said Steven J. Rauschenberger, a Republican who was then a member of the Illinois State Senate. “We need that because the Democrats have made an icon out of Barack Obama.”

Having seen their icon thrashed in 2004, in 2009 conservatives looked to Michael Steele, the first African-American to head the Republican National Convention, to face off with the first black president. But Steele had an on-again off-again relationship with the party line, and was thus ill suited to be a Conservative Black Hope, even if the hip-hop Republican often talked like one.

In 2010, Allen West, a congressman from Florida, arrived promising to lead black people off the Obama plantation like a “modern-day Harriet Tubman.” More like Harriet Miers; West was defeated in the very next election.

In 2012, Herman Cain took up the cape and cowl, proclaiming that the first black president had “never been part of the black experience in America” and insisting that Obama was “not a strong black man.” But Cain was not a strong presidential candidate, and the wait for the Conservative Black Hope continued. Things were looking up at the Conservative Political Action Conference this year when a black Republican, K. Carl Smith, ran a session for attendees who were “tired of being called a racist.” Among those answering in the affirmative was a man who proceeded to defend slavery.

Not all black conservatives see it as their job to tell white racists that they embody the dreams of Martin Luther King Jr. It is certainly possible to oppose Obamacare in good conscience. No one knows this more than Ben Carson. In the late 1980s and early ’90s, he may have been the most celebrated figure in the black communities of Baltimore. Carson responded to that adulation by regularly giving his time to talk to young people, who needed to know that there was so much more beyond the streets.

I was one of those young people. I don’t doubt that Carson was a conservative even then. I knew plenty of black people who loved their community and hated welfare. But white conservatives were never interested in them, and they were never as interested in Ben Carson as they are right now. When the presidency was an unbroken string of white men, there were no calls for him to run for the White House. And then he put on the mask.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, a senior editor at The Atlantic, is a guest columnist.

one of my favorite writers

[Derek]

If you can't face the fact that Islam is simply a different beast in this day and age, then you're simply being naive. I'd respond to your previous post, but you're clearly not interested in learning or addressing context. You've already demonized him and refuse to be convinced otherwise, which I guess is fine, but I like to be challenged to think differently.

:lol:

Yes, this post clearly demonstrates how you love to think differently. Categorically dismiss the opposing the viewpoint, post a link to do heavy lifting for you, then pompously declare that you're the one with the moral and intellectual highground. Don't get me wrong, I admire the cajones that takes.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I think the main point here is that Muslims are wrong.

[number8]

I think the main point here is that Muslims are wrong.

Right.

[B-side]

:lol:

Yes, this post clearly demonstrates how you love to think differently. Categorically dismiss the opposing the viewpoint, post a link to do heavy lifting for you, then pompously declare that you're the one with the moral and intellectual highground. Don't get me wrong, I admire the cajones that takes.

Not at all. I used to hold Robby's viewpoint about torture. I refused to even entertain the idea that there was ever a point in which torturing somebody was not only preferable, but ideal or necessary. In fact, I was initially kinda disgusted at the little snippets I read in the Al Jazeera column. Of course, then I realized that Harris is an otherwise highly intelligent and reasonable person, so I decided to inform myself of the context and understand his justification before writing him off as a war-monger. That kind of stuff helps. And I never claimed to have the moral or intellectual highground here. I claimed to have a different point of view informed by a clearly differing understanding of Harris' writings and ideas. Robby's standpoint on torture and his visceral disgust at anyone even toying with the idea of torture as acceptable or the war in Iraq not being an entirely stupid idea are understandable responses, but Harris deals primarily in the abstract. He uses thought experiments to challenge neo-liberal ethical stagnation and willful ignorance. He's not advising policy. It's Harris' goal to trouble the waters, and he's clearly done so since he's made me re-evaluate my own previously strongly held convictions. Maybe that makes me the fool.

[Winston*]

And I never claimed to have the...intellectual highground here..

You clearly did.

If you can't face the fact that Islam is simply a different beast in this day and age, then you're simply being naive. I'd respond to your previous post, but you're clearly not interested in learning or addressing context. You've already demonized him and refuse to be convinced otherwise, which I guess is fine, but I like to be challenged to think differently.

[B-side]

You clearly did.

When it comes to addressing Harris' writing in context, yeah, I believe I do have the intellectual highground. But in terms of the overall debate, no, I wouldn't presume to have all the answers.

[Winston*]

When it comes to addressing Harris' writing in context, yeah, I believe I do have the intellectual highground. But in terms of the overall debate, no, I wouldn't presume to have all the answers.

You could just apologise to Robby P, who has nothing if not demonstrated himself an intelligent and well-read person on this site, for needlessly condescending to him.

[B-side]

You could just apologise to Robby P, who has nothing if not demonstrated himself an intelligent and well-read person on this site, for needlessly condescending to him.

I'm not going to apologize for thinking he's wrong or misguided in his approach. The debate was never whether or not he was intelligent -- and he certainly is -- it was whether his liberal leanings were obfuscating his ability to register Harris' work clearly. I don't think he's really grasping Harris' frame of reference or position as a thinker first and foremost. I'm quite liberal myself, so it's not like I don't get where he's coming from. I just happen to think he's being a bit naive.

[Robby P]

"Gitmo is Killing Me"

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/15/op...anamo-bay.html

Mandatory reading. It's this generation's Letter From a Birmingham Jail.

[number8]

By the way, there were also multiple bombs going off in 3 cities in Iraq today. A total of at least 33 people killed.

So there's that.

[Milky Joe]

By the way, there were also multiple bombs going off in 3 cities in Iraq today. A total of at least 33 people killed.

So there's that.

also this:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...n-wedding.html

At least 30 members of an Afghan wedding party were killed and many more wounded when a U.S. plane bombed a village in the central province of Uruzgan today, Afghan officials and residents said.

The bombing happened today in a village in the rugged, mountainous region 175 km (105 miles) northeast of the southern city of Kandahar, residents said.

They told the local Pashtu service of the BBC at least 120 people had been either killed or wounded.

A Defence Ministry official said celebrants were firing into the air, as is traditional in Pashtun weddings.

"There was no-one to help last night," resident Abdul Saboor told the BBC. "We managed to transfer some of the wounded to Kandahar in the morning. Some of the foreigners' choppers also came to help.

"There are no Taliban or al Qaeda or Arabs here. These people were all civilians, women and children."

[Pop Trash]

also this:

Uhm. Read that date again Joe.

[Robby P]

Massive earthquake hits Iran. Death toll expected to be in the hundreds. This week is not off to a good start.

[Milky Joe]

Uhm. Read that date again Joe.

Huh, I swear that date wasn't there when I first looked at it. Oh well. Point remains.

[Robby P]

The irony of a taxpayer funded funeral for Margaret Thatcher is almost too much to bare.

[Winston*]

New Zealand passed gay marriage.