I can imagine progressives facing quite the dilema. On one hand, she is a woman, and black, and a Nobel laureate. On the other, she seems to hate gays. I’d be mighty entertained if her critics were denounces as racist and misogynist.
The Nobel peace prize winner and president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, has defended a law that criminalises homosexual acts, saying: “We like ourselves just the way we are.”
In a joint interview with Tony Blair, who was left looking visibly uncomfortable by her remarks, Sirleaf told the Guardian: “We’ve got certain traditional values in our society that we would like to preserve.”
Liberian legislation classes “voluntary sodomy” as a misdemeanour punishable by up to one year in prison, but two new bills have been proposed that would target homosexuality with much tougher sentences.
If the pope called for the destruction of all the mosques in Europe, the uproar would be cataclysmic. Pundits would lambaste the church, the White House would rush out a statement of deep concern, and rioters in the Middle East would kill each other in their grief. But when the most influential leader in the Muslim world issues a fatwa to destroy Christian churches, the silence is deafening.
On March 12, Sheik Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, declared that it is “necessary to destroy all the churches of the region.” (Read more)
New archaeological evidence suggests that America was first discovered by Stone Age people from Europe – 10,000 years before the Siberian-originating ancestors of the American Indians set foot in the New World.
A remarkable series of several dozen European-style stone tools, dating back between 19,000 and 26,000 years, have been discovered at six locations along the US east coast. Three of the sites are on the Delmarva Peninsular in Maryland, discovered by archaeologist Dr Darrin Lowery of the University of Delaware. One is in Pennsylvania and another in Virginia. A sixth was discovered by scallop-dredging fishermen on the seabed 60 miles from the Virginian coast on what, in prehistoric times, would have been dry land.
The new discoveries are among the most important archaeological breakthroughs for several decades – and are set to add substantially to our understanding of humanity’s spread around the globe.
The similarity between other later east coast US and European Stone Age stone tool technologies has been noted before. But all the US European-style tools, unearthed before the discovery or dating of the recently found or dated US east coast sites, were from around 15,000 years ago – long after Stone Age Europeans (the Solutrean cultures of France and Iberia) had ceased making such artefacts. Most archaeologists had therefore rejected any possibility of a connection. But the newly-discovered and recently-dated early Maryland and other US east coast Stone Age tools are from between 26,000 and 19,000 years ago – and are therefore contemporary with the virtually identical western European material. (Read more)
1) You are one of the leading dissident voices in the gender debate. Could you please explain your vision of individualist feminism, what are its main tenets and how it differs from mainstream feminism?
The main tenet of individualist feminism is that women and men deserve equal treatment under just law. A just legal system is one that seeks to protect the person and property of individuals equally, and it is applied to all individuals.
Mainstream feminism advocates social and economic egalitarianism, which necessarily violates the property rights of individuals. For example, affirmative action and non-discrimination policies dictate who should be hired by private companies, who risk sanctions such as lawsuits if they do not comply. Mainstream feminists applaud this use of governmental force to violate the property rights of individuals — including business owners — in order to distribute money and power within society from men to women.
2) Is the free-market enough to allow a full emancipation of women, or should the government intervene in order to reduce the gender gap and change things more rapidly?
The answer depends on what you mean by “full mancipation”; frankly, I think every individual has to decide its personal meaning for themselves. But if you mean “complete fairness” or “social justice,” then ‘no’, the free market will not provide that in and by itself. Other peaceful forces may well be necessary, such as moral suasion applied to those who are unfair, offensive, denigrating, etc.; this is largely what happened in the American civil rights movement before it was co-opted by government. What I do contend about the free market is that it delivers emancipation better than any other competing system, such as state interference. Indeed, any governmental interference aimed at providing social justice actually provides the opposite. That is to say, it violates individual rights which must be the basis of all justice.
3) In spite of the undeniable distance from mainstream feminism, libertarian feminists chose to contend the label “feminism” rather than picking a different name. Do you believe that this strategy is effective? Is there a risk this choice can reduce the appeal of your ideas among that silent majority who associates feminism and leftist statism, while hardly gaining ground among tradition self-identifying feminists?
Yes, there is not merely a risk but an inevitability that some people will automatically reject individualist feminism because of the word “feminist.” I have experienced this frequently.
Nevertheless, I persist in the label for a few reasons. First, I want the roots of American feminism to be recognized and acknowledged; those roots were profoundly individualist and grounded in the early 19th century abolitionist (anti-slavery) movement. Happily, this is happening. Individualist feminism was unheard of in academia when I started to write but it is now generally recognized. (Read more)
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This is a nice counter-point to the Stefan Molyneux video I posted a while back “Feminism is Socialism with Panties.” Here it is again:
Technically, I don’t think this is describing “rape” since the women accept it. Is this an example of multiculturalism in London?
A female former gang member has exposed the growing levels of sexual violence against young women who join them, saying that many are willing to risk being raped in return for the status of membership.
Isha Nembhard, who was part of an 80-strong gang in Peckham, south London, said some girls readily accepted that they would be sexually abused when associating with male gangs.
The 20-year-old said that the problem had reached a point where being raped was becoming “normalised” among many young women. “Girls who are getting treated very badly know what they are getting into. They sleep with a boy and the boy asks if she will sleep with all his friends. (Read more)
Historically, belief in an empire’s military supremacy outlasts the reality. Soldiers donning “empathy bellies” is a strong sign that the decline of American empire will be accompanied by humiliating military defeats.
he Army is ordering its hardened combat veterans to wear fake breasts and empathy bellies so they can better understand how pregnant soldiers feel during physical training.
This week, 14 noncommissioned officers at Camp Zama took turns wearing the “pregnancy simulators” as they stretched, twisted and exercised during a three-day class that teaches them to serve as fitness instructors for pregnant soldiers and new mothers.
Army enlisted leaders all over the world are being ordered to take the Pregnancy Postpartum Physical Training Exercise Leaders Course, or PPPT, according to U.S. Army Medical Activity Japan health promotion educator Jana York.
Developed by the Army in 2008, the course includes aerobics classes, pool sessions and classroom studies on the physiology of pregnant women. (Read more)
French president Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday threatened to wreck the European free travel zone unless there is a new pact to cut down on illegal immigration.
His warning in an election campaign speech threw a question mark over the future of the Schengen zone, regarded by Brussels as the EU’s second most important achievement after the single currency.
The 25 Schengen countries allow travellers to pass each other’s borders without checks or the need for visas.
But a wave of immigrants who began arriving in Italy and southern Europe following the Arab Spring last year has put the 27-year-old zone under unprecedented pressure. (Read more)
The Dutch government today promised to ban face coverings, including burqas or niqabs, by next year, Reuters reported.
The minority Liberal-Christian governing party denied, though, that the law is religiously motivated. The ban will also apply to such things as balaclavas, ski masks and helmets with shields worn inappropriately in public.
“People should be able to look at each other’s faces and recognize each other when they meet,” a statement from the interior affairs ministry said, according to Reuters.
The coalition government that rules the Netherlands, however, includes the pro-Dutch Freedom Party. (Read more)
1) His statements are vague and rambling. What I hear him saying is: “everything sucks, so you need me (and people who think like me) to set up a benign dictatorship.” He does not explain WHY things suck. That’s where I can educated him.
2) He speaks from two typical paradigms: profits and business vs. workers, and white vs. black. The first is Marxism the second is cultural Marxism, which, as a Ukrainian, I’m largely immune to :).
Both see not individual human beings but only “classes” — a vague, never-defined term at the center Marxism. There is no solidaridy within any class. Everybody struggles to be the best employer, the best customer, the best worker. Look closely, and his paradigm falls apart.
3) Inequality. Only if you accept the Marxist paradigm of class war, and stop seeing people as individuals can you make inequality a leading issue.
Rallying behind the idea of inequality is dangerous for three reasons: it calls for state-sponsored violence as a equalizing force, it inspires emotions useful to politicians — jealousy and hatred, it is impossible — thus lending it to what Lenin called “permanent revolution.”
No society in the history of the world has ever improved itself by taking money from one “class” of people and giving it to another. Many who’ve tried it turned into gigantic meat grinders. The Cambodian attempts at an agrarian based communist society slaughtered almost 1/3rd of the population.
Don’t believe the leftist claim that they simply didn’t do it right, and that we need to try again.
Inequality is also a very, very small price to pay for liberty and prosperity. Without exception, conditions for poor people have been best in the countries with the free-est economies.
4) He, quickly and loosely, attributes our economic crisis to freedom. Bullshit. The economic crisis was caused by inflating the monetary supply, a long history of bailouts which enouraged recklessness, and laws which **** REQUIRED **** banks to make bad loans. The only regulation that works is the free market regulation of letting people go the hell bankrupt when they’re irresponsible.
5) Quickly and loosely, he says that the people want gov’t insurance and that it’s opposed by big pharma and big insurance companies. I don’t want gov’t insurance. Don’t I count? I’ll remind you that one of the first things Obamacare did was REQUIRE people to buy medical insurance. That’s not exactly sticking it to the insurance industry. And no, finding a better, stronger, kinder, more benevolent dictator will not work. The search for one is called “the road to serfdom.”
6) His faith in democracy is charming. Reminds me of when I was a child.
7) When the hell were intellectuals on the side of free markets? It’s always been a heterodox movement.
Latvians have resoundingly rejected the option of making Russian the country’s second official language, results from a referendum indicate.
About two-thirds of those registered voted, the election commission said, many more than in previous polls.
The referendum, initiated by a Russian speakers’ movement, has exposed deep fault-lines in Latvia.
Ethnic Russians, who make up about one-third of Latvia’s population, have long complained of discrimination.
But many ethnic Latvians believe the referendum was an attempt to encroach on the country’s independence.
It was initiated by the Russian-speakers’ movement, Native Tongue, which collected signatures from more than 10% of voters to force a ballot.
Officials said that with more than 90% of votes counted, 75% of votes cast in Saturday’s referendum were against the proposal. (Read more)
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See Also:
Russia critical of Latvia language vote
Moscow has criticised Latvia for rejecting Russian as a second language in a highly emotive referendum that exposed the tensions lingering in the Baltic nation since its years under Soviet rule.
The Russian foreign ministry said on Sunday the referendum’s outcome was biased because it excluded so many Russian-speaking “non-citizens” from the vote.
“The referendum’s results far from fully reflect national sentiments because 319,000 ‘non-citizens’ were denied the right to express their opinion, even though many of them were born in Latvia or have lived there a long time,” the ministry said. (Read more)
A five-year-old girl is thought to have become the UK’s youngest victim of forced marriage.
(Read more)