Disqus - Latest Comments for dumbummm

Re: Religion of Peace: take 14,350 | fsunews.com |

dumbummm — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:46:03 -0000

Here is an example of a Muslim apologizing for Hasan's killing spree:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2...

Re: Wild, wild Wilders

dumbummm — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:42:13 -0000

Wilders is a hero. Standing up against facism and at risk to his life.

Here's Islam's idea of free speech:

"Saudi journalist sentenced to 60 lashes," by Mohammed Jamjoom for CNN, October 24:

(CNN) -- A Saudi court sentenced a female journalist Saturday to 60 lashes for her work on a controversial Arabic-language TV show that aired an episode in which a man bragged about his sex life, two sources told CNN.
The court in Jeddah also imposed a two-year travel ban on Rosanna Al-Yami, according to a Saudi Information Ministry official, who could not be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media. The ban prevents her from traveling outside Saudi Arabia.

Re: Why hate speech?

dumbummm — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:37:52 -0000

I wonder if the following is what Eloshy would like to see in America?

"Saudi journalist sentenced to 60 lashes," by Mohammed Jamjoom for CNN, October 24:

Re: Why hate speech?

dumbummm — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:44:52 -0000

No doubt this is more to your liking:

"Saudi journalist sentenced to 60 lashes," by Mohammed Jamjoom for CNN, October 24:

Re: Will Columbia professors continue writing for Al Ahram?

dumbummm — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:58:52 -0000

SAS,

Is it any wonder Egpyt's human rights record is never a topic before the UN, while everytime Israel belches it is brought up for condemnation by that same esteemed body. Gosh, you do not think this is because of the 57 member Islamic block that votes like a mindless zombie for every anti-Israel action it can dream up.

If Israel defends itself against the intifada attacks on its buses and children, Israel is condmend by the 57 member Islamic block. If Israel defends itself against rockets fired at its civilians by a terrorist group, Israel is condmend by the 57 member Islamic block. But if Hamas throws Fatah members off of rooftops or severs Fatah members heads off the UN looks the other way. Are you suggesting Hamas did not do exactly this?

If Islamists in Sudan create 2.5mm refugees and rape and slaughter 400,000 Christians and Animists in Sudan What happens? That's right, the leader of Sudan is invited and warmly embraced at the most recent Arab League Summit in Qatar. And, of course, the UN looks the other way.

If Coptic Christians are daily harrassed and murdered by the "occupying" Egyptian Muslims, (the Coptic Christian community lived in Egypt a thousand years before Muslim warriors arrived on the scene) the UN takes yawns..

If "occupied" Chaldean Christians (they lived in Iraq close to a thousand years before Muslim invaders arrived on the scene) are murdered and driven from their homes the UN takes a nap.

If Sunni Yemites kill hundreds of Shia Yementies the UN pretends it's nothing more than a little disagreement among friends. (Let's not forget the 1,000,000 Sunnis and Shias killed during the Iran/Iraq War. I'd guess the UN would describe that is a whole lot to do about nothing.)

If Islamists in Southern Thailand kill 4,000 Buddhists, the UN meditates on its navel.

So don't give me your vaunted UN resolutions and violations. The UN is a corrupted, Islamic controlled entity. The Islamic block at the UN is far more powerful than the Soviet Union's block was in the 60's.

And off course Israel is the brunt of endless accusations, tribunals and puported violations of War Crimes while Hamas and Hezbollah are protrayed as "good neighbors". (The same Hezbollah, by the way, that has killed countless Christians in Lebanon, all of which is ignored by the UN.)

When the UN is driven by the Islamic block what would one expect?

Let the killing go on endlessly in Islamic countries while blaming Israel for every made-up infraction Islam can conjure up.

"War is deceit" said Mohammed. That is exactly what happens everyday in the UN.

Re: Administration quiet about Massad

dumbummm — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:58:01 -0000

Joseph Massad's Warsaw Ghetto Complex
by Winfield Myers • Oct 12, 2009 at 11:09 am

The October 2 death of Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against the Nazis, is for Columbia University's Joseph Massad yet another opportunity to equate Israelis with Nazis.
An article posted today in the Socialist Worker quotes Massad's latest effort to belittle the Holocaust and delegitimize the modern state of Israel by claiming that contemporary Israelis are to Palestinians what the Nazis were to the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto. He even manages to sneak in some praise for the Palestine Liberation Organization back in it's "heyday"--that would be when it was more effective at killing Israelis, one assumes. (Perhaps he has reminisced about the good old days with his Columbia colleague Rashid Khalidi, who was a PLO spokesman back in the day.)
The Socialist Worker is happy to provide the latest platform for this insidious, ahistorical comparison by raising it in the second paragraph of the piece--hardly a shock given the hard left's rank anti-Semitism and alignment with radical Islam:
For occupied people the world over, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising has long been a symbol that resistance is possible, even in the face of an overwhelming military odds. During the Israeli assault on Gaza this past January, many Palestinians saw their own struggle in parallel with the Warsaw Ghetto fighters.
Palestinian scholar Joseph Massad recalled, 'Their uprising was always inspirational to the Palestinians. In the heyday of the PLO as a symbol of Palestinian liberation, the organization would lay flower wreathes at the Warsaw Ghetto monument to honor these fallen Jewish heroes [emphasis added].'
Such a touching story.
This isn't the first time Massad has played the Warsaw Ghetto card. Writing in Electronic Intifada in January, he made the following claims:
• "The Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto executed Jewish collaborators with the Nazis and bravely faced up to the Nazi army with what little weapons it had before being massacred."
• "On 12 May 1943, after he received word that the resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto was finally crushed and many of its fighters killed, [Szmul] Zygielbojm [who tried in vain to tell the Allies about the slaughter of Polish Jews] turned on the gas in his London flat and committed suicide in protest against the indifference and inaction of the Allies to the plight of the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe."
• "Mahmoud Abbas, having provided so many dishonorable services to Israel, lacks Zygielbojm's integrity and noble principles and would never follow in Zygielbojm's footsteps."
Comment: Massad called for PA president Mahmoud Abbas to commit suicide or, barring that, excuses efforts by his Hamas opponents to kill him and his supporters.
• "As Palestinians are murdered and injured in the thousands, world powers are cheering on. This is hardly a new development. It happens often in the context of other populations being murdered by allies of the US and Europe, and it even happened during World War II as the Nazi genocide was proceeding. On 19 April 1943, Britain and the US met in Bermuda, presumably to discuss the situation of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. That was also the day when the Nazis had launched their war against the remaining Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto but were met with unexpected courageous resistance."
• "The Gaza Ghetto Uprising will mark both the latest chapter in Palestinian resistance to colonialism and the latest Israeli colonial brutality in a region whose peoples will never accept the legitimacy of a racist European colonial settlement in their midst."
This past April I compiled a record of Massad's more outrageous statements, "Will Columbia Tenure Joseph Massad," from which the above examples are taken.
Gross distortion of the historical record to advance political causes, the defense of violence against civilians, calls for political leaders to commit suicide--it's all in a day's work for the shameless Massad, the leader of the most intellectually and morally vulgar wing of the Middle East studies establishment.

Re: Will Columbia professors continue writing for Al Ahram?

dumbummm — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:26:16 -0000

SAS,

Could you substantiate any of your "facts" or are you going to hide behind unsupported generalizations?

Your write, "...in his case using crass anti Muslim propoganda as a means of deflecting..."

Could you specifically tell us of at least two examples of my using "anti Muslim propoganda".

You also wrote, "..from its (Israel) mass ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians..."

Could you site sources on demogrpahics supporting this claim?

Finally could you compare the religious diversity of Israel compared to countries like Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Libya, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey and Pakistan? This might be helpful and informative --and also poke holes in your unsupported, incendeary claims of fact.

Re: Students call for Indigenous People’s Day

dumbummm — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:29:45 -0000

Lindsey,

I'm a little confused by your comment. Were Muslims really the indiginous people of Algeria?

It's my understanding the Muslim hoardes did not invade and "occupy" Algerian until something like the 8th century. Tell us how it is you think Algeria is rightfully Muslim.

You also wrote, "Muslims immigrants do not launch large scale wats aimed at total annihilation and/or assimilation."

Wow! That's a mouthful. So tell us what you understand to be happening today in Sudan. Is that not a perfect example of Muslims waging a war of complete nnihilation of the indigious people?

And what of the Armenian Genocide? Over 1,000,000 Armenian Christians were wiped off the face of the earth in and around 1915 bu Muslims. Is that an example of Muslims "assimilationg" into a diverse culture?

And while I'm on a roll, what about the Arabian Peninsula? Tell us what happened to all the indigious Christians, Zoroastrians and Jews that once called it home? Where did all these people go?

In the Koran and Hadiths we can read all about where these people have gone. Mohammed, the warrior, killed many of them, raped their women, and forcibly converted others to Islam. Lindsy, is this your idea of assimilation? Tell us how you distinguish between the "occupiers and the occupied" and between the "colonialists and those being colonized"?

Re: Will Columbia professors continue writing for Al Ahram?

dumbummm — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 21:06:57 -0000

JJ,

You write quite well for an elementary student and your logic is consistent with your writing skills.

Let's not forget the billions in AID we send to delightful countires like Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey and the like.

Let's see what we find of we google "Egypt and Christian Coptics". What! Don't tell me Muslims are forcing Christian Coptics to live like scared animals! How could that be? Aren't Muslims tolerant, compassionate and peaceful people? That's what Yasir told me just the other day.

And what about Iraq? If I google "Chaldean Christians and Iraq" how is it possible I find these people --people who have lived there longer than the religion of Islam has existed-- are under threat of life? Why just the other day Ahmed told me Islam was a religion of peace, tolerance and compassion so why are Muslims killing all those Chaldeans in Iraq? JJ, tell me how this could be.

And all that aid we piss away in Pakistan, it must be going to a fair, just, and noble society, no? What's that? You say all non-Muslims are being treated as second-class --make that fourth-class citizens? How could that be? Just the other day Ayanna told me Islam is a peaceful, tolerant and compassionate religion how could it be all non-Muslims are not treated with tolerance and compassion I ask you. JJ? I'm asking you.

There is not one single non-Muslim citizen in Saudi Arabia. Not one. Why is that?

Turkey has less than 1% non-Muslims citizens. Muslim Turks killed around 1.5 Armenian Christians to help skew this demographic anomaly.

But wait, you tell me this is not an anomaly? JJ is this right?

In Iran the indiginous Zoroastrians are under threat of being eliminated. And don't ask about the homo-sexual community in Iran because there are not any living there. They were all hung.

In Yemen one of the oldest Jewish communites is down to a handful of people. That leaves the Shia under threat from the Sunnis. Really. Goodle "Sunni/Shia conflict in Yemen."

Of course almost all the Jewish communities throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa have been destroyed but let's not talk about that. OK?

In Sudan...I wonder if we send aid there...any remaining Christians or Animsts are either six feet underground or living in squalid refugee camps. And Islamists brought us this genocide and huge refugee crisis. Oh silly me! I'm confused. It was really Israel who did this. Right JJ?

In Southern Thailand the Buddhists sleep fitfully fearing more murders at the hands of Muslims moving up from northern Malaysia. Google it and you will find over 3,000 Buddhists have been killed in the last few years. I guess they chant too loud and disturb those tolerant Muslims to the point of, well, murder.

In Kashmir and Mumbai Hindus sleep fitfully too. Can you guess why? I wonder if we send aid there?

In Somalia nobody sleeps well thanks to....Thanks to all those noisy Ilsamists. I guess Israel made them that way.

In Kosovo, Chechnya, Bangladesh, Malayasia, Indonesia, the list goes on and on and on. Fortunately everyone sleeps well at the site of the World Trade Towers becuase nobody lives there anymore. They're all dust as in "From dust to dust" thanks to Muslims.

But we all know that everything Is Israel's fault. Let's not blame Hamas or Hezbollah 'cuz they're just simple, kind-hearted people trying to eke out a living kidnapping Israeli soilders for ransom.

JJ, what's that you said?

Re: ‘Fatima’ author speaks on conflict | Columbia Daily Spectator

dumbummm — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:49:15 -0000

We were faced with something inprecedented...the destruction of our history."

This brought to you by a relgious member of a relgion that destroyed the Banyam Buddhist statues in Afghanistan. I wonder how she managed to overlook that!

This also brought to you by a religious member of a religion that destroys all in its path. Simply ask the 2.5 million refugees created in Darfur by this "Religion of Peace". Why oh why doesn't this "over;y sensitive artist" write a book about the 400,000 innocent civilians killed in Darfur? And what of the 2.5 million refugees? When is going to get around to write a book about these poor souls? Thanks to Islam, of course, she has plenty of material to pour her heart out on in her next book.

Surprising that this "Oh so senstive" artist fails to mention the destruction of Joseph's Tomb in Hebron. I wonder how the Jews feel about that?

That's the thing about Islam, you know. It's famous for re-writing history. After all, how could Muslims claim Kashmir, Southern Thailand, Sudan, Egypt, Iraq all belongs to them when everyone knows Mohammed was born late in the 7th century long after there were actually non-Muslims living in ALL these countries. Israel too, by the way. There really were Jews living there before the savage warrior, Mohammed, was born.

Of course we'll leave Israel out of the question. The fact that Jews lived there more than a century before a conquering horde of Muslims swept into the area we all know is "beside the point".

Pretty soon, who knows, we may find out the Netherlands is rightfully Islam's too. The way things are going that would not surprise me one bit.

Re: Will Columbia professors continue writing for Al Ahram?

dumbummm — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:41:20 -0000

SAS,

Do you know how to read? Do you know how to process information?

If so, then you did not read my comment even though you responded to it.

You see what you want to see. You hear what you want to hear. You feel what you want to feel.

Your reality has nothing to do with reality because you are closed to anything approaching reality.

Live on in your make-believe world but quit bothering me with your madness.

Re: Will Columbia professors continue writing for Al Ahram?

dumbummm — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:29:26 -0000

Kassandra writes, "A boycott of a rogue country that does not honor international law..."

Ho hum, Kassandrum. For you beat the drum of dum-dums.

Israel endured two years of rocket fire from Gaza aimed at its citizens. What other country would show this patience?

Israel allowed aid into Gaza during the conflict. What other country would show this concern?

Israel forewarned Gaza citizens of impending attacks. What other country would do this?

During the Gaza conflict some 1,300 Gazans were killed despite it being an urban, crowded area where the enemy shot at Israel from Mosques and schools.. What other country would show such restraint and care?

Kassandra, your crocodile tears do not fool me. If you really cared about rogue states then you would begin with Islamist Sudan, and then proceed to Islamist Afghanistan, and then proceed to Islamist Iran, and then proceed to Islmiast Iraq, and then proceed to Islamist Saudi Arabia before even touching on the "rogue" state of Israel.

For it is in these truly "rogue" states where all norms of civilized, international behavior are ignored. Hell, in a good week in Sudan more helpless civilians are killed by Islamists than in the past five years by the IDF. Or, in a month in Iraq more helpless civilians are killed in markets shopping for pita and killed by Islamists than in the past five years by the IDF.

And in two years in Iran more homo-sexuals and non-Muslims are brutalized and killed than what ever happens in Israel, i.e., killing non-Jews simply for being, well, non-Jews.

And let us not forget all the Shias brutalized by Sunnis and vice-a-versa, and all the Christians brutalized in Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria and Somalia. Or all the Buddhists brutalized in Thailand and Afghanistan. Or all the Hindus brutalized in India, Pakistan and Kashmir.

So, Kassandra, go cry your crocodile tears in a more private forum because we're tired of seeing the pretense of them flowing in a public space.

Re: Letter to the editor | Columbia Daily Spectator

dumbummm — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:51:03 -0000

Sometimes repression can come in small ways, but the small changes when taken in total have a profound impact on a woman's ability to live as an independent individual instead of as a scared animal. The following is an example of this incremental loss of freedom and is from today's news:

Hamas bans women from motorcycles
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
GAZA CITY

Hamas has banned motorcycle riders from carrying women on the back seat - the latest in the Islamist group's virtue campaign in Gaza.

SLIDESHOW: Israel & Region | World The ban was posted on Hamas Interior Ministry Web site on Tuesday, in an effort "to preserve citizen safety and the stability of Palestinian society's customs and traditions."

Hamas wants to impose a strict interpretation of Islam. Its other efforts have included breaking up mixed couples on the beach and obliging female lawyers to wear headscarves in court.

The group insists compliance with the campaign is voluntary and reflects Gaza's conservative ways, but reports have surfaced of offenders being beaten or arrested.

Map: Estimated Prevalence of Female Genital Cutting (FGC) in Africa. Data based on uncertain estimates.Whilst FGM is widely practiced out in the open by Africans of varied faiths, it is practiced in secrecy in some parts of the Middle East. In the Arabian peninsula, Types I and II FGM is usually performed, often referred to as Sunna circumcision especially among Afro-Arabs (ethnic groups of African descent are more likely to prefer infibulation). The practice occurs particularly in northern Saudi Arabia, southern Jordan, and northern Iraq (Kurdistan) [34][35]. In the Iraqi village of Hasira, a recent study found that 60 percent of the women and girls reported having undergone FGM[36]. Before the study, there had been no solid proof of the prevalence of the practice. There is also circumstantial evidence to suggest that FGM is practiced in Syria and Kurdistan.[37][38] In Oman, a few communities still practice FGM; however, experts believe that the number of such cases is small and declining annually. In the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, it is practiced mainly among foreign workers from East Africa and the Nile Valley.

Re: Letter to the editor | Columbia Daily Spectator

dumbummm — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 22:04:05 -0000

Sing it Sistah,

For purposes of clarification do you consider the following (female genital mutilation) to be an act of violence against women? 90+% of FGMs happen in Islamic countries.

Female genital mutilation

key facts
•Female genital mutilation (FGM) includes procedures that intentionally alter or injure female genital organs for non-medical reasons.
•An estimated 100 to 140 million girls and women worldwide are currently living with the consequences of FGM.
•In Africa, about three million girls are at risk for FGM annually.
•The procedure has no health benefits for girls and women.
•Procedures can cause severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later, potential childbirth complications and newborn deaths.
•It is mostly carried out on young girls sometime between infancy and age 15 years.
•FGM is internationally recognized as a violation of the human rights of girls and women.

Female genital mutilation (FGM) comprises all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.

The practice is mostly carried out by traditional circumcisers, who often play other central roles in communities, such as attending childbirths. Increasingly, however, FGM is being performed by medically trained personnel.

FGM is recognized internationally as a violation of the human rights of girls and women. It reflects deep-rooted inequality between the sexes, and constitutes an extreme form of discrimination against women. It is nearly always carried out on minors and is a violation of the rights of children. The practice also violates a person's rights to health, security and physical integrity, the right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and the right to life when the procedure results in death.

Procedures
Female genital mutilation is classified into four major types:

1.Clitoridectomy: partial or total removal of the clitoris (a small, sensitive and erectile part of the female genitals) and, rarely, the prepuce (the fold of skin surrounding the clitoris) as well.
2.Excision: partial or total removal of the clitoris and the labia minora, with or without excision of the labia majora (the labia are "the lips" that surround the vagina).
3.Infibulation: narrowing of the vaginal opening through the creation of a covering seal. The seal is formed by cutting and repositioning the inner, and sometimes outer, labia, with or without removal of the clitoris.
4.Other: all other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes, e.g. pricking, piercing, incising, scraping and cauterizing the genital area.

Amnesty International estimates that over 130 million women worldwide have been affected by some form of FGM, with over 2 million procedures being performed every year. FGM is mainly practiced in African countries.[32] It is common in a band that stretches from Senegal in West Africa to Ethiopia on the East coast, as well as from Egypt in the north to Tanzania in the south. It is also practiced by some groups in the Arabian peninsula. The country where FGM is most prevalent is Egypt, followed by Sudan, Ethiopia, and Mali.

Re: Letter to the editor | Columbia Daily Spectator

dumbummm — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:48:39 -0000

Sing it Sistah,

I am looking for answers. How do you explain the common brutality against women in Islamic societies? I am not saying in Christian dominated countries a woman's position is always a cake-walk, but there seems no arguing the positive difference women experience in Christian societies versus Muslim.

The following articel is from today's news. It's interesting to note that the demogrpahics in Guinea show the population is 85% Muslim.

"A brutal army crackdown on an opposition rally in the Guinean capital of Conakry, in which more than 150 people were killed and scores were raped, has left the west African country seething. One week on, witnesses of the bloodbath described their ordeal to FRANCE 24's reporters in Conakry.

“They raped me. I went out of the stadium naked, naked, naked,” said one political activist, recalling the brutal clampdown by the soldiers of Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, Guinea's new strongman.

Another eye-witness told FRANCE 24 that she saw a group of soldiers gang-rape five girls. "I went back behind the gate, I found another soldier there. He took his gun (…) and he forced it into the vagina of a girl,” she said.

Around 30 women have given testimonies to human rights activists corroborating these accounts, saying they were raped and beaten during a massacre of opposition supporters in a Guinea stadium on September 28.

They are a horrifying array of claims. Unable to run and escape soldiers’ shots, the women say they were beaten and raped, their clothes stripped off with knives and their genitals mutilated with guns..."

Re: Letter to the editor | Columbia Daily Spectator

dumbummm — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:51:52 -0000

1. The Qur’an likens a woman to a field (tilth), to be used by a man as he wills: “Your women are a tilth for you (to cultivate) so go to your tilth as ye will” (2:223);

2. It declares that a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man: “Get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her” (2:282);

3. It allows men to marry up to four wives, and have sex with slave girls also: “If ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four; but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one, or (a captive) that your right hands possess, that will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice” (4:3);

4. It rules that a son’s inheritance should be twice the size of that of a daughter: “Allah (thus) directs you as regards your children’s (inheritance): to the male, a portion equal to that of two females” (4:11);

5. It tells husbands to beat their disobedient wives: “Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them” (4:34).

Re: Perspective on Pakistan | Columbia Daily Spectator

dumbummm — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 08:36:55 -0000

No I do not, but thanks for asking. I sometimes wonder though whether Muslims j-o-t-t-h-4-us. Didn't some of the nineteen 9/11 mass murderers spend time with Vegas prostitues shortly before killing 3,000 innocent civilians?

The point of my post was simply to illustrate that maybe there was more to why the elderly woman decided friendship with Henna did not feel right. That is to say given the history of horror Hindus have experienced --and continue to experience-- at the hands of Muslims, maybe this history factored into her decision to not fully trust Henna's friendship. I'm not saying this was the correct decision only that there may have been more to it.

As an addendum let me just say Henna's history of events between Pakistan and India conveniently leaves out the history before Pakistan was created. Prior to that, and going back centuries, we could easily list dozens of incursions by Muslims into Greater India in which millions of Hindus ended up losing their lives as a result of these acts of Islamic aggression. Finally just let me say my hands were on the keyboard the entire time I wrote this post.

Re: Perspective on Pakistan | Columbia Daily Spectator

dumbummm — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:19:42 -0000

"....discussion of Pakistan-India relations. The event will feature a panel discussion by notable scholars who will assess what feasible approaches can exist for peace in the region."

You might add to this event the feasability of peace in Sudan, Somalia, Southern Thailand (where Muslims have killed close to 4,000 Buddhists), southern Russia.Chechnya, Israel, Nigeria, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and for the few remaining Christians living in Iraq and Egypt, and for the few remaining Jews in Yemen and Algeria, and for the few remaining Hindus in Bangladesh, and for the few remaining Buddhists in Aghanistan.

What is interesting to note about all the above mentioned zones of violence is the common denominator: Islam.

The panel might start by discussing why a religion founded by a ruthless warrior who preached the need to spread Islam across the globe, and who in his lifetime eliminated most of the Christians, Zoroastrians and Jews from the Arabian Peninsula would expect anything other than endless conflict and mistrust. But of course in your feigned naivete you wonder why this might be.

Re: Letter to the editor | Columbia Daily Spectator

dumbummm — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:44:26 -0000

Joe,

I think the answer is more nuanced than that and let me state upfront I don't pretend to know what the answers are.

Cleopatra ruled Egypt something like three millenium ago, eh? And there are those who would say, "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." Maybe women in power is nothing new, even if it is often behind the scenes. Think also of all the Queens of England.

In Western countries we have had many women leaders: Golda Mier, Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkle as just a few recent examples. And even in Islamic countries there have been a couple of women rulers, albeit mostly in Pakistan and some of these women have been assassinated.

It's hard to know what to do, but I think it is safe to state that a more forward-looking, less repressive, less brutal, less cruel culture than we see in Islamic countries such as is found in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan Afghanistan, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Yemen, Libya, Algeria, is a basic starting point to assure us that we can have a sense of hope about our future.

Re: Letter to the editor | Columbia Daily Spectator

dumbummm — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 09:52:18 -0000

Joe,
You're almost right. Muslim women are not forced to wear potato sacks in sun-drenced, scorthed climates. It is not as if the friendly local Iman holds a gun to their head when they put on their burkas in the morning. It's only if they choose to walk outside when the gun to their head appears. I imagine they could go to their local Gap Store if they really wanted to get a halter top and short shorties instead, no?

Of course we all know the Koran and Hadiths are filled with chapter and verse making it quite clear the woman's place is subservient to man's in Islam and I dare anyone find us an Islamic dominated country where this is not the case.

A more hideous example of women's lower status in Muslim societies is the genital mutilation (the forced removal of women's clitoris) so common in places like Egypt and Jordan. I'm guessing these women don't push and shove to be the next in line to have this joyous surgery performed on them (often without anesthesia.)

Re: The persistence of the Massad question

dumbummm — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:48:12 -0000

A very different take than Umm's on Massad's academic achievments.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

JUDITH MILLER: MASSAD GOT TENURE (DON'T TELL ANYONE)
By Judith Miller
Published in: Minding the Campus September 18, 2009

http://www.mindingthecampus...

Fourteen Columbia professors are protesting the university's apparent decision to award tenure to Joseph A. Massad, a controversial anti-Israel professor of Arab studies.

The professors are from the schools of law, business and public health. They expressed their concern in a five-page letter to the incoming Provost, Claude M. Steele. The letter asserts that the university's decision to guarantee Massad a life-time teaching post "appears to have violated" Columbia's own rules, thus raising profound questions about the university's academic integrity. The university's administration, weirdly, still refuses to confirm or deny that Massad won tenure, but yesterday the Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures department let the cat out of the bag---it announced a
beginning-of-term party next week congratulating Massad on gaining tenure.

This week Provost Steele belatedly issued a polite, noncommittal response. In a four-paragraph "Dear Colleagues" letter to the fourteen professors, Steele, a former Stanford psychologist, says he would "welcome" a meeting to discuss their concerns. After he learns more about Columbia's tenure process, Steele writes, he may "want to make some changes in our procedures." But nowhere does he state that Massad has, in fact, been awarded tenure. Nor does he acknowledge that the professors raise deeply troubling concerns, that if true, go to the heart of what many regard as the core of a university's integrity.

The exchange of letters is the latest chapter in a long controversy over Joseph Massad's activities and status at Columbia, a tumult that has been intensified by Columbia's stubborn insistence on total secrecy. In the name of safeguarding its academic independence,Columbia's administration has declined to answer most questions about Massad's nomination for tenure from the public, or even its own faculty.

Nevertheless, Provost Steele's willingness to give the concerned professors a hearing suggests that the controversy is likely to continue, at least for a while. For underlying the professors' procedural concerns about the tenure award is not only their objection to adding yet another stridently anti-Israeli voice to Columbia's lopsidedly pro-Arab Middle Eastern studies department, but also dismay about their administration's abject unwillingness to reject a tenure candidate whose academic record is notably thin. Still, Massad has managed to turn himself into what his critics call a poster boy for academic freedom on campus.

Assertions that Massad, rejected for tenure in 2007, had belatedly been granted tenure in a rare second review, were initially reported last spring by Martin Kramer, an Israeli-American scholar on his blog, Sandbox, and in June by reporter Jacob Gershman in an article in the New York Post. Gershman also reported that Columbia President Lee Bollinger and then Provost Alan Brinkley, fearing an outcry from Jewish alumni and donors, had taken "extraordinary measures" to keep the tenure review secret. Finally, Gershman, who has reported critically about Massad for many years, alleges that the trustees rubberstamped the tenure award, though questions they were reported to have raised about the tenure process went unanswered.

In separate interviews, four trustees, all but one of whom declined to be quoted for this article, denied that they had been stonewalled on facts relating to Massad's review. Stephen Case, a trustee and a major donor to the university, said that university procedures had not been violated. The secrecy, he said, was essential to safeguarding academic independence. "A university is the one place in America where people can say what they think without fearing for their jobs," he said.

Columbia had followed what Case called a "business judgment rule," that is, assuming that "what goes on inside the board room is ok unless someone produces proof that the process was tainted or negligent." He had no reason to believe that Massad's review had been tainted, he said.

Mark Kingdon, another trustee, responded in an email that he and others on the 24-member board had been "instructed not to speak to the press" about the case.

David Stone and Robert Hornsby, spokesmen for the university, declined repeated requests for specific information about the Massad review or the history of tensions between Jewish faculty and students with respect to its Middle Eastern studies department. Neither President Bollinger nor then Provost Alan Brinkley would grant an interview to discuss, more broadly, the university's controversial invitation to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other actions that were widely criticized and that antagonized in particular many Jews among Columbia's faculty and students. Bollinger's office turned down an interview request in July, pleading an overly full calendar.

Provost Steele also declined to comment on his letter. No university official or spokesman would address the university's tenure process in general. Instead, they referred this reporter to the university's Faculty Handbook which discusses its tenure rules and procedures and also to articles about tenure and the Massad affair in the Columbia Spectator, the campus newspaper.

Massad did not respond to email and telephone requests for an interview over the summer. Friends said he was overseas. A 45-year-old Christian secularist of Palestinian descent, Massad has been the subject of intense debate about both his teaching style and the quality of his academic research for several years. He has long argued in his scholarly and journalistic work that Israel is a "racist Jewish state" and a "colonial settlement" whose "ultimate achievement" is the "transformation of the Jew into the anti-Semite, and the Palestinian into the Jew." In Desiring Arabs, the book described by colleagues and friends as his most important work, he also portrays gay activists,whom he calls the "Gay International" as part of an insidious Western hegemonic plot to undermine Arab culture.

In 2004, he was accused of having intimidated and bullied students who disagreed with his views, in particular, his alleged comparison of Israelis to Nazis and his charge that American Jews exercised an undue, unhealthy influence on American foreign policy. Deena Shanker,then a student, accused him of having threatened to eject her from his class two years earlier after she had asked him if Israeli soldiers warned civilians to leave before bombing their houses. Massad said he did not remember Shanker, and in an interview with The New York Times,said he had never asked any student to leave a class. "I never lose my cool. I make it my business not to," he told the author of a sympathetic profile of him.

Later that year, however, an academic panel convened to examine such allegations concluded that Ms. Shanker's charge was "credible." While the panel found no evidence that Massad had made anti-Semitic statements in class, it nonetheless concluded that he had "exceeded commonly accepted bounds" of academic conduct by failing "to show respect for the rights of others to hold opinions differing from his own."

In a lengthy response to the committee's report posted on his Columbia web site, Massad said that the panel's review suffered from "major logical flaws, undefended conclusions, inconsistencies, and clear bias in favor of the witch-hunt that has targeted me for over three years." He did not recognize the panel's "legitimacy," he wrote, calling the panel "an instrument in the ongoing campaign to suppress academic freedom on the campus."

Finally, Massad said that Columbia Unbecoming, a polemical film by a pro-Israeli group documenting what it alleged was anti-Israeli sentiment among professors on campus, which featured him, had lied in claiming that he had equated Israel with Nazi Germany. Calling the allegation "abhorrent," he wrote, he had "never made such a reprehensible equation." In their letter, however, the professors cite in a footnote an article by Massad posted on the "Electronic Intifadah," in January, 2009,entitled "The Gaza Ghetto Uprising." In the article, they note, Massad likens Israel's military operation in Gaza to the Nazi crushing of the Warsaw Ghetto. Equally critical of the Palestinian Authority that works with Israel, Massad likens Palestinian chief Mahoud Abbass to a Nazi collaborator and proposes that he salvage his honor by committing suicide.

The letter to Provost Steele, however, does not dwell on alleged shortcomings in Massad's academic resume. Rather, it focuses on alleged violations of Columbia's own procedures in having granted Massad tenure. They note, for instance, that Columbia's rules say that only in "rare instances" should candidates be reconsidered for tenure after having failed their initial review, and that such a review should occur only when there is "evidence of substantial scholarly growth." But in Massad's case, they argue, such evidence is lacking, since the manuscript that became Desiring Arabs "must have been part of the original record considered by the first ad hoc" tenure committee. They also argue that Massad may have "misrepresented the status of his work in 2005" by stating that Harvard University Press had agreed to publish it, whereas the book was published by Chicago University Press. (In the preface to his book, Massad explains that he switched publishers after realizing that Harvard and he "had differing visions for the book" and "parted ways.")

Based on Gershman's allegations in the New York Post, they also question why the professor who led the first unsuccessful review of Massad's tenure had "refused to serve again," why Columbia's trustees were denied a list of the members of the two review committees, and why the trustees were given a set of "helpful facts" about the university's Jewish student center after they supposedly requested information about the unusual second review.

Another concern is that the university may have violated its de facto "up-or-out" rule by permitting Massad to teach for an additional year beyond what should have been his last teaching year in 2007-2008.

The professors warn that if such irregularities are true and "not unique to this case," they write, "they may return to haunt us in the years to come." Professor Massad's review is "history," they say, appearing to concede that it is unlikely that Columbia will revisit or reverse Massad's tenure decision, "but new faculty come up for review every year."

In Jewish circles, Columbia's department of Middle East studies, known as MEALAC, or Middle East and Asian Languages and Culture, has long been seen as Martin Peretz, of The New Republic called it, "a center of anti-Israeli ideology" and "politically inbred."

Awi Federgruen, a tenured professor of management at Columbia's Graduate School of Business who helped spearhead the protest, noted that although the list of signers represents a wide range of professional schools at Columbia, not one of them comes from MEALAC. "Nobody in the arts and sciences was willing to sign on," he said in an interview.

In his book, Massad boasts of his intellectual kinship with another key critic of Israel and Zionism who was long a Columbia fixture - the late Edward Said, a tenured professor of English whose savage critiques of Israel and its treatment of Palestinians made him revered by Arabs and detested by Israelis and their Jewish supporters. Massad describes Said, who died in 2003, as his mentor, friend, colleague and "surrogate father."

Writing in his blog, Sandbox, Martin Kramer denounced Massad as a "thoroughly Columbia creation." "Columbia gave him his doctorate. Columbia University Press published it, and Columbia gave him his tenure-track job." Massad himelf recognized, Kramer added, that Columbia couldn't disown him without somehow disowning itself."

Columbia has long struggled to balance its famously pro-Palestinian Middle Eastern studies department with the city's and its own substantial Jewish population and donor base. Tensions soared in 2007 when President Bollinger permitted Iranian President Ahmadinejad to deliver a speech at Columbia in which the Iranian asserted that there were no homosexuals in Iran. Bollinger was widely criticized for permitting the visit, and then insulting the Iranian leader in his introductory remarks.

Several of those who signed the letter said they were not optimistic that Steele would in fact change any of Columbia's tenure procedures. Judith S. Jacobson, of the Mailman School of Public Health, said she feared that while he might use the meeting simply to defuse tension rather than to address the internal problems that in her view had permitted someone with Massad's slight academic credentials to begranted tenure.

The university clearly fears that incidents like this may adversely affect fund-raising. Herbert London, class of 1960 and the president of the Hudson Institute, and Geoffrey Thompson, class of 1963, who has also generously supported the university, told The New York Post in July that the Massad affair would prompt many Jewish donors to reconsider their giving. Despite declining interviews about his tenure review and other sources of friction with its Jewish donors, Columbia's spokesmen were quick to deny any effect on fundraising. "Despite the economic environment of the past year," a statement they gave me asserts, "Columbia continues to be ahead of pace" in its $4 billion campaign. "Generous alumni and friends" have already contributed $3.2 billion, and the university has maintained its triple-A bond ratings "when some others have not," the statement says.

Odds are that the controversy over Massad will not end any time soon.

Re: The persistence of the Massad question

dumbummm — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:00:25 -0000

What else would one expect. The 57 countires aligned with the Islamic block of nations has turned the UN into a stooge of that 57 block of nations. This is why the UN's focus is on Israel while Sudan, Somalia, Kashmir, Nigeria, Iran, North Korea, China, Russia, yes and even America etc...are rarely the focus of its attention.

N Report A Victory for Terror
By: Michael Oren
Boston Globe | Friday, September 25, 2009

Consider this scenario. In response to the atrocities of 9/11, the United States invades Afghanistan and battles non-uniformed Taliban terrorists who fight within densely populated areas. Though American forces do their utmost to avoid inflicting civilian casualties, many innocents are killed - not the least because the Taliban uses them as human shields. Nevertheless, the United States carefully investigates each civilian death and, in the case of misconduct, punishes those soldiers responsible.

But then an international organization notorious for its one-sided condemnations of America launches an investigation into US “war crimes.’’ The inquiry is held under Taliban auspices, and Taliban commanders - disguised as civilians - are interviewed. Inexorably, the organization finds America guilty of mounting a pre-meditated campaign to inflict the maximum amount of civilian deaths and of failing to try those responsible. The final report calls for punitive action against the United States for its “crimes against humanity.’’

If true, this scenario would mark an unparalleled victory for terror and deal a crippling blow to any democracy trying to defend itself. Yet, this is precisely the catastrophe created by a UN report on Israeli military actions against Hamas in Gaza last January.

The UN Human Rights Commission, which has condemned Israel more frequently than Libya, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea combined, undertook to investigate “all violations of international human rights law’’ in the Israeli operation - essentially presuming Israel’s guilt. The judges, one of whom had already denounced Israel in print, conducted their hearings in Hamas-controlled Gaza and interviewed witnesses, including several Hamas operatives posing as civilians, selected by the regime. They ignored Israel’s deeply-probing investigation into its own force’s conduct and found only the evidence that confirmed their preordained conclusion. Israel was found guilty of attacking “the people of Gaza as a whole,’’ of violating their “fundamental rights and freedoms,’’ and arbitrarily killing them.

Just as the United States entered Afghanistan in response to an unprovoked attack on American civilians in 2001, so, too, did Israel’s intervention, which followed more than 7,000 Hamas rocket and mortar strikes on Israeli towns and villages since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. Given the UN Human Rights Commission’s silence in the face of this aggression, and Hamas’s rejection of Israeli offers to renew a cease-fire, Israel exercised its unassailable right to defend its citizens.

Despite Hamas’s cynical use of civilians as human shields, the Israel Defense Forces repeatedly called off operations deemed too dangerous to civilian populations and endangered its own troops by warning Palestinian neighborhoods of impending attacks. Yet even the most moral army can make mistakes, especially in dense urban warfare; for every Serbian soldier killed by NATO in 1999, for example, four civilians died. By comparison, more than half of the Palestinian casualties in Gaza were military. Still, Israel launched investigations into some 100 cases of alleged misconduct by its soldiers, 23 of which continue. If found guilty, as one soldier already has been, the perpetrators will be brought to justice under Israel’s internationally respected legal system.

But the UN report is not about justice. Rather, it is the latest initiative designed to delegitimize Israel and deny its right to self-defense.

The UN report not only endangers Israel. It bestows virtual immunity on terrorists and ties the hands of any nation to protect itself.

Ironically, the greatest victim of the UN report is not Israel’s ability to wage a moral war but its willingness to make an historic peace. If asked to take immense risks for peace, Israelis must be convinced of their internationally recognized right to self-defense should that peace be broken. Deprived of that right, even after being subjected to years of murderous rocket attacks, an Israeli electorate will understandably recoil from such risks.

The UN report must therefore be rejected by all those who understand that democratic states must have the legitimate means to defend themselves from complex 21st-century threats. No less critically, the report must be rebuffed by all those who care about peace.

Re: The persistence of the Massad question

dumbummm — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 09:50:30 -0000

Joachim.

How does the following example of threats and intimidation rank on your scale?

Allah says you can hit your wife. These are the consequences. "Afghan women hiding for their lives," by Atia Abawl for CNN, September 24:

KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Shameen's brown eyes seem lost as she thinks about the one day she wants to forget, but it is all she can think about.
Still traumatized, she recounts the events that led her to a safe house in Kabul.
She was raped and nearly stabbed to death by her husband just seven days before we met her.
Her lips are quivering and her eyes full of fear.
"He forced himself on me," she said. "All I could do was scream."
She was married off 15 years ago when she was a teenager.
Throughout those years she was tortured and abused, suffering daily beatings with an electrical wire or the metal end of a hammer.
This was her normal life.
"He chased after me with a hammer. He said if I made any noise he would put holes through me," Shameen said.
Shameen and her husband could not conceive a child. And in Afghan society, it seems, the blame always falls on the woman.
After one severe beating, she ran from her home and to the police station. Her husband promised the police he would not attack her anymore, so she gave in and agreed to go back home with him.
Days later, Shameen's husband took her on a trip to visit her sister's grave -- a 15-year-old sister who was burned to death for displeasing her husband.
Shameen says her younger sister was 11 years old when she was forced to marry an older man. He would beat and abuse her until one day he killed her.
As Shameen walked along the graveyard with her husband he took her near a shrine where he forced her to the ground, lifted her burqa and raped her. He then threatened her with a knife and asked her who was going to help her now. She was screaming as he slashed her throat and body.
A passerby saved her.
Now, she has no one to turn to -- not even her own parents. In their eyes, she has brought them shame, an offense punishable by death. [...]
Afghanistan is a country where for centuries women have been considered property -- not equals, like the constitution states. They are often beaten, raped and even sold to the highest bidder. There are very few places women can turn to.
Nearly 90 percent of Afghan women suffer from domestic abuse, according to the United Nations Development Fund for Women.
Despite that, there are less than a dozen shelters like this one in Afghanistan, usually run by non-governmental organizations.
Abusers are rarely prosecuted or convicted, and most women are afraid to say anything.
"Their mothers are beaten by their fathers. They're beaten by their fathers, by their brothers. It's a way of life," said Manizha Naderi, director of WAW.
Naderi is an Afghan-American who grew up in New York and has returned to Afghanistan to work with other women in hopes of bringing a change, although she said it will take generations.
"They see their mothers being beaten, they see their sisters their aunts, everybody," Naderi said. "So that's what they expect."...

Re: The persistence of the Massad question

dumbummm — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:59:28 -0000

There is nothing like going to the ballpark on a hot sunny day. Watching the Yankees or Mets. Chilling out. Having a beer (unless I'm with my Muslim friends). You know what I mean. Relaxation at its finest!

But yesterday we find out from the FBI that...

By HASANI GITTENS and JONATHAN DIENST
Updated 8:37 AM EDT, Wed, Sep 23, 2009

Print Email Share Buzz up!TWITTER FACEBOOK

AP: Counterterrorism officials have issued security bulletins to police around the nation about terrorists' desire to attack stadiums, entertainment complexes and hotels — the latest in a flurry of such warnings as investigators chase a possible bomb plot in Denver and New York.

So Joachim what am to do? Should I believe the FBI that they have uncovered plot(s) by Islamists to blow up stadiums? Gosh. I just don't know. Heck, Joachim, I won't take this as a real threat or as real intimidation so much as another "stab" at humor by those comedic, fun-loving Islamists.

Gosh, if it had been Jews or Menonites who were suspected of the same threats then you sure wouldn't catch me at another Yankee or Mets game. No way. No sir.

Threats and intimidation? Joachim unless you truly live in a fantasy world the facts speak for themselves. Islam is the king of threats and intimidation, and of course on following through on their threats too. Remember the twin towers? I do.

Re: The persistence of the Massad question

dumbummm — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 11:54:56 -0000

"War is deceit" is what Mohammed, the prophet of peace, said and Joachim learned the lesson will.

Intimidation? The masters of that are Muslims, not Jews. There is not a day goes by that we do not see this on display. Just today in 8 civilians were killed in Mogadishu when Islamist threatened and then attacked African peacekeepers. Of course also today Ayman al-Zawahiri threatened Obama and said (and this was directed to Obama), "God willing, your end will be at the hands of the Muslim hation, so that the world and history will be free of your lies and crimes."

I wonder if either of these rate as intimidation in Joachim's twisted mind.

And as far as the "Intentional infliction of emotional distress" I wonder what Joachim considers endless suicide bombings. Let's leave Israel out of this example just to keep the emotional leverl palatable. Let's instead look at Mosul where Chaldean Christian have been subject to an endless wave of suicde bombings lasting the last five years. Or, maybe we should look at Southern Thailand where Budhhists have also been victims of Islamist aggression that has gone on for years leaving close to 4,000 Buddhists (and this includes Buddhist Monks) dead.

I suppose in Joachim's twisted mind these examples do NOT count.

I do agree with Joachim on this point: "other torts and breeches that do not come to mind". That's probably because he cannot fabricate any other make believe "torts and breeches".

What a guy! He learned his lessons well. "War is deceit" said Mohammed and he specifically meant this to apply to propoganda and lies before and after armed conflict. Yes indeed Joachim practces what the big guy preached.