651. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #245905 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 11, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Sorry, root:
would defend your society because you want to survive, you want to pass on your genes.
However, patriotism is an enabler in dividing people into societies/countries. Not the only one, but certainly one.
It may be effective in building a strong society, but that does not make it right since there is no darwinian fight going on among societies, countries.
652. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #245893 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 11, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Bonzai, maybe it's just my straightlaced African upbringing, but I don't think that sex is a subject that should be discussed at any point before the kid's twelve.
I also have this wierd idea that children's stories should be entertainment for the kids, not some seedy pc creep's idea of what's wholesome propaganda. Richmal Compton, Sir Walter Scott, and so on are fine enough for kids. For that matter, so are guys like Tolkien.
653. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #245888 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 11, 2008 at 1:45 pm
If that is how some try to make the case for same sex marriage, I would agree that it is stupid
654. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #245880 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 11, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Bonzai, there have been cases of pointing to gay penguin couples as a positive example, or to the fact that these sometimes raise young (which they've usually kidnapped, but that bit get's left out...). My point is: they're stinkin' penguins. Whatever the good arguments for gay marriage, the antics of penguins ain't one of them.
655. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #245869 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 11, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Oh, thank goodness: someone sensible to argue with.
root,
I'm pretty sure all the Islamic fundamentalists are very proud of their societies/countries. So I will definitely disagree here and say pride has nothing to do with how good a society is.
656. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #245862 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 11, 2008 at 1:19 pm
One more point about gay marriage:
It is my firm conviction that there should be no gay marriage, no civil unions, nothing, until the advocates of the same quit pretending that the antics of penguins are in any way relevant.
Yes, I'm homospheniscophobic. I hate hearing about gay penguins and I'm proud of it!
657. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #245855 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 11, 2008 at 1:13 pm
BS I was talking about the United Kingdom - and I was also making the point that anyone who thinks Shariah courts can be voluntary needs their head examined.
Now, do you get that? Or are you so bloody stupid as to be unab - what am I saying? Of course you are that bloody stupid.
N.b.: Vis a viz gay marriage, I have no problem with it, but it isn't a matter of civilizational survival, so I'm none too fussed either way. I am too busy being worried about the ones who want gays' heads cut off.
658. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #245840 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 11, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Roger Stanyard, how about actually thinking for yourself for once and trying to refute my points?
659. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #245839 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 11, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Allow me to demonstrate something basic about this creature: BS has not a word about what is actually going on in the Sudan, or for that matter in the streets of London thanks to those 'voluntary Shariah' courts she likes so much. She only cares to whine about myself, al, & Bush.
"Pathetic" doesn't even cover it.
660. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #245835 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 11, 2008 at 12:59 pm
N.B.: BS - I said these streets, here in the UK. I don't know about the US, though I hope they have the sense to put a stop to that nonsense.
661. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #245831 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 11, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Frankus, I'm guessing that their criteria for human development make about as much sense as their criteria for the human rights tribunal.
root, I see where you're coming from, but there are two problems:
1) We owe a huge debt to the society we're born into in terms of the ideas we are even capable of developing, and the options we can explore, and our standard of life. That's not nothing.
2) Even more basically, the pride and group-solidarity that is expressed by patriotism is a society's first bastion of defence. Pride in your society is one of the barometers of that society's strength. Or to put it another way, if you aren't part of a society that teaches its men - and, yes, they'll be predominantly young men in this scenario - that when push comes to shove, you need to fight "for King and Country", you will be eaten alive by those societies that do do this.
662. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #245818 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 11, 2008 at 12:46 pm
I'm slamming anyone dumb enough to believe that any Shariah court is 'voluntary'. Not in these streets, girly, not in these streets.
663. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #245801 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 11, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Frankus, the UN is the group that put the Sudan on their Human Rights Commission, so it's unsurprising that they're getting other things wrong too.
664. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #245799 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 11, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Why am I not surprised that BS is defending 'voluntary' Shariah courts. Yeah, gotta love how they're 'voluntary'. "See here miss fifteen year old muslimah: would you like to volunteer to be under our Shariah, or would you prefer complete social ostracism, constant harrassment, and probable violence and even murder?"
See BS's modus operandi: bitch, bitch, bitch when al & I call the farcical feminist organizations to account, but defend 'voluntary' Shariah courts.
This is really much less of an issue than people on RD.net make it out to be
665. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #245320 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 10, 2008 at 1:54 pm
decius, have you ever read "The Gulag Archipelago"? No? Well, it would be worth your while.
It is difficult to drag people away in the middle of the night when those people are armed.
666. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #245304 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 10, 2008 at 1:46 pm
My two cents on this issue is as follows: Apparently Scotland and England are more violent places than America - by far - so nuts to the more social violence argument. The more basic argument is this: there is only one surefire safeguard against tyranny, and that's an armed citizenry.
Anyway, poking around online, I found out that apparently alot of the charges against Sarah Palin are utter bullshit:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/157986
Comment #244638 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 9, 2008 at 9:21 am
Very well written. It is surprising how many otherwise intelligent people fall for this post-modernist guff.
668. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244623 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 9, 2008 at 9:05 am
al, thank you. It's nice to see someone getting it.
I am a capitalist, a laissez faire capitalist. That means I would oppose, absolutely, any attempt to make prostitution or pornography or anything similar illegal. That doesn't mean I approve of it, anymore than I approve of peddling crystal nonsense.
On to you, GoatBoy:
I'm not sure what to make of this. Wouldn't a real dyed-in-the-wool Christian (like Sarah Palin) or a dyed-in-the-wool Islamist (like Ayman al-Zawahiri) say that their values, and not yours, are what is "required" in order to make sense of, and to make the best of, human life
669. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244580 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 9, 2008 at 7:13 am
Al, you know you're pushing at an open door with me. I did say that the choice in most elections was that of a man on a raft having to decide between drinking seawater or his own urine.
670. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244560 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 9, 2008 at 6:41 am
GoatBoy, yeah I saw it. I don't think it's really relevant. Slips of the tongue happen to everyone, and given the 'Obama-is-a-secret-Muslim' guff that's being trotted out, I don't really care about that.
Apart from anything else, it distracts from the real issue.
decius, sorry if I am being dense, but I took the statement literally. If I misread it, please correct me.
671. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244499 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 9, 2008 at 12:03 am
Dispiracist, the 'Politically incorrect guid to Islam' is a good book, if it is a little easy on Christianity in it. Nonetheless the author, Robert Spencer, is first rate on the subject of Islam.
More generally, I don't trust most of the 'Pol. Incorr.' guides, because they also include a creationist screed. That does little to inspire confidence.
EDIT: Just heard from the grapevine that Robert Spencer, on attending Freedom Fest, said "I'm not an atheist, but Hitchens almost turned me into one". :-D
672. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244497 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 11:57 pm
It seems to me you feel that way about morality as well -- that there is a moral truth, a "correct" right and wrong, to arrive at. To understand.
And it's here where the disagreement lies.
What I'm getting at is this: in that comparison, let's say you make a decision on which values are "more correct." On what basis did you make that decision? What formed that basis? When you get down to the nitty-gritty -- the most rudimentary foundation of your value system -- I want to know a single absolute that makes a claim about "good" and/or "evil" -- the currency of morality.
That's their private choice. By no means do those people serve as a paragon of morality, decency or dignity, just because you say so.
673. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244372 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 3:31 pm
An addendum: In the same way, I might add, that becaue you're true to your standards, you have to attack me now. If you honestly don't see this as a matter of human degradation, then it follows that I'm being grotesquely unjust, and you therefore have to attack me for saying this. Whereas I would consider it unjust not to say it.
So we're stuck.
EDIT:
decius, I hope that my comments above will clarify this. It isn't about what consenting adults , or about homosexuality, or about transsexuality, or about any of this. It's about having seen how people in the lousiest of circumstances fight to maintain their dignity - and not being able to stand seeing others throw it away for no reason.
674. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244370 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Not wishing to be pedantic here, Sciros, but I don't see any emphasis :-).
but rather an effort to point out to you that your morals are no more infallible than ours, or potentially anyone else's, even if they should differ
675. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244329 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Okay, Sciros, here's my defintion of Justice: it's a recognition of the fact that human beings have an absolute, independant existence, that they are what they are that appraising a human being requires the same kind of study as does a cell or a molecule. And further: that dealing with them means dealing with them as they are, and that my moral appraisal is what I owe all human beings, that to withhold my admiration from human virtue won't make it any less great, or to withhold my contempt from human vice won't make it any less obscene. The admiration I feel when I look up to my heroes comes from the same source as the contempt I feel for BS.
As I said, I'm sorry it ruffles feathers, because I do respect you, Sciros & Elli & Bonzai & al. But I simply cannot do otherwise. To 'play nice' would be to me a grotesque betrayal of everything I value and everything that has always inspired me.
EDIT:
Why don't our rapid pro capitalism moralists here get as worked up about sweatshops?
676. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244314 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Bonzai, I have no coercive power, nor do I seek it. So cut that damn stupid 'Mullah' stuff out.
No, quite a few of my closest friends are homosexual. I respect them profoundly, for their qualities of character.
Just answer me one question though: How come you demand that I respect BS's choices, but you won't respect my choices to live by a certain set of values?
EDIT:
Bonzai, I support capitalism. Capitalism means no government regulation of free trade. Of course, pornography and sex-work would be legal in such a situation. I never said that I sought legal or any other coercive power about this. I simply stated my views on the matter.
677. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244309 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 2:35 pm
al, with respect, I'm not a Christian. I don't believe in 'judge ye not, lest ye be judged'.
As I said, I believe in Justice. I cannot feel admiration for human greatness without feeling contempt for human corruption. It really is that simple. I am sorry if this ruffles feathers, but, as you may have noticed, there are things I place above being liked.
678. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244302 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Elli to paraphrase Fermat, there is a truly marvelous proof of this that, unfortunately, this chatboard is too small to contain. Not least because it is getting very late for me, and I have work the next day.
So, instead, I'll observe one thing: you chide me for speaking my mind, but you don't seem to grant the same tolerance to my choice to live by the recognition of certain values.
679. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244294 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 2:20 pm
mord, correct, they don't have to.
680. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244289 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 2:15 pm
What Brandy chooses to do to make money, and whether or not it involves genitalia, should not be the source of people's scorn
681. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244270 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 1:58 pm
teapot, there is such a thing as decency. As self-respect. As human worth. As value.
Or what is your argument? That it's okay to critise someone's religion, but not their self-degradation?
682. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244266 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 1:54 pm
You are a whore. You're not even a whore by desperate necessity, but by conscious choice of self-degradation. How dare you try to speak to your betters - and, yes, everyone here is your better.
Growing up in Africa I knew women who worked as maids while bringing up five kids, and they wouldn't have let you in their two-room houses even by the back door.
683. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244260 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 1:46 pm
al another question:
What the heck does kthxbai mean?
684. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244256 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Call that feminism? I rest my case. Whores, liars, and hypocrites - oh, the suffragets would have wept to see what the modern movement has become.
685. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244236 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 1:17 pm
al, I'm less nice than you. A good friend of mine is trans, so that's not a problem. However, I have a loathing of whores like this one.
686. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244226 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 1:11 pm
BS noone gives a damn. A Porn Star? So you're a whore, plain and simple.
687. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244220 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 1:04 pm
You'll agree, BS? Took you long enough.
688. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244213 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 12:54 pm
al I never thought I'd say this, but I kinda feel nostalgic for joe after dealing with this.
BS, $10 a month to the Ayaan Hirsi Ali security fund, £50 a month to the Iranian dissidents organization, and a hundred quid every so often to JihadWatch and some sundry donations here and there. I scatter my donations.
689. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244206 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Okay, it's official: BS is a lying little troll, and such an incompetent liar that she can't even make up one that's believable for two seconds. Noone, noone who reads my comments could believe that I didn't defend Ayaan Hirsi Ali or the nascent women's rights organizations in the Islamic world. Which mainstream feminists have completely failed to do.
It think I can see why: BS can't get it through her thick skull that the organizations she keeps defending have betrayed everything they once stood for. And she also can't believed that a rightist could possibly be fighting for human rights.
690. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244204 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Feminist organizations, you simpering little fool. A while back I wrote this:
my hostility to the mainstream feminist organisations is that they, one and all, are completely gutless when it comes to Islam. When real, actual threats to women's rights emerge, they turn tail and run. Here's an example: a while back the head Mufti of Australia passed a fatwa saying that in 90% of the cases where a woman is raped, it's her fault, not the man's. What did the feminists do? Sweet eff-ay. They were too busy showing solidarity with the 'palestinians' and chanting 'We are all Hezbollah!' (as NOW did).
Or when Ayaan Hirsi Ali was hounded out of government on bogus technicalities because she was defending the rights of Muslim immigrant women - where were the feminists? Where are their large-scale campaigns to pay for her protection, now that she has had her bodyguards stripped from her? (BTW, I am proud supporter of that charity, and I urge everyone to do likewise).
Phyllis Chesler has written very powerfully about the abject failure of feminists to confront Islam's gender apartheid. "The Death of Feminism" a very good book. And she is continually proved right. A journalist risked his neck to show what is being preached in British Mosques - such things that the Woman is eternally deficient, incapable of reasoning, the man is set over her, and that marriage of a nine-year old girl to a fifty-year old man is perfectly acceptable. Once again, where were the feminists?
Oh, and you might have noticed Germaine Greer saying that Clitorectimonies need to be respected as a cultural practice.
The feminist establishment is rotted right to the core. It is corrupt, incompetent, mendacious, and cowardly.
Fortunately, this doesn't apply to the rank-and-file who vaguely call themselves feminists. And, even more fortunatelly, real heroines, who actually do give a damn about women's rights, and human rights, and the continuation of civilisation are emerging. They have names like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Nonie Darwish, Brigitte Gabriel etc.
[...]
Let me give you another example: friend of mine in Edinburgh is a feminist, active - I think - in one of the organisations of that city. Anyway, she had never heard of Ayaan Hirsi Ali until I sent around, asking people do donate to her protection.
What is that? What is that? What is it when a member of a feminist organisation hears about one of the bravest women alive today not from the organisation, but from an outsider such as myself?
The reason is, and I've made this point before, that a depressing amount of the feminist establishment just are interested in a kind of fantasy role-play, that paints them as the Brave Heroes Defying The Evil White Kristian Kapitalist Patriarchy! For this kind of masturbatory self-glorification it helps to have an 'enemy' against whom fighting not only entails no risk, but also no controversy. There is a reason we hear little complaints about the 150 rapes per day in the New South Africa.
Taking on something like Islam requires real courage, the willingness to stake your life. And if you read people who have fought against real oppression, such as Nelson Mandela or AHA, you see that they didn't do it to glorify themselves, but because someone had to do it.
691. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244198 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 12:36 pm
*winces* Oh for... al, that was unecessary.
BS find one single goddamn quote of mine defending Islam. Just try it.
692. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244178 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Fanusi plays both the skin flute and rusty trombone, perhaps you two should do a duet?
693. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244154 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 11:27 am
Because their idiots who don't understand this war. On the other hand, JihadWatch had a link up even before this site, and everyoen worth spit donated
694. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244150 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 11:25 am
Why the hell would I defend an ideology I wish to see wiped from existence? But your the one who's defending these simpering hypocrites.
695. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244146 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 11:20 am
*nods* Good. Then you're at least not a complete fool. Then how do you account that on the website of one of the largest feminist organizations in the world, there is not one mention of her? Explain that one to me, and I'll explain why I'd like to see these defunct dinosaurs dismantled from the top-down.
696. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244140 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 11:16 am
The evils of feminist organizations you poor little fool. I provide you with a link to NOW's website where, in response to a very specific search, I recieved the following reply:
Sorry, your search for ayaan hirsi-ali did not find any results.
697. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244131 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 11:09 am
The hell...? Do they issue you lot with talking points or something?
That selfsame comment was whipped, thrashed and utterly dismembered by my rightist blogs just a few days ago.
698. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244130 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 11:07 am
Why am I not surprised?
699. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244123 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 11:04 am
Oh, Jesus, I thought we'd chased her away. Brandy out of interest, what was that degree in?
700. Palin: average isn't good enough
Comment #244122 by Fanusi Khiyal on September 8, 2008 at 11:03 am
Just since this thread is, at least nominally, about Palin, I was watching, utterly unsurprised, the way the feminists threw their principles out the window the instant a woman with an R after her name appeared on the political scene. But if you really, really want to see why I loathe them with an intensity bordering on madness, follow this link:
http://www.now.org/cgi-bin/search.cgi?q=ayaan hirsi-ali&s=RPD&ul=