Elsewhere (210)
Victor Davis Hanson on borders and the lack thereof:
Among elites, borderlessness has taken its place among the politically correct positions of our age — and, as with other such ideas, it has shaped the language we use. The descriptive term “illegal alien” has given way to the nebulous “unlawful immigrant.” This, in turn, has given way to “undocumented immigrant,” “immigrant,” or the entirely neutral “migrant” — a noun that obscures whether the individual in question is entering or leaving. […]
What we might call post-borderism argues that boundaries even between distinct nations are mere artificial constructs, methods of marginalisation designed by those in power, mostly to stigmatise and oppress the “other”… “Where borders are drawn, power is exercised,” as one European scholar put it. This view assumes that where borders are not drawn, power is not exercised — as if a million Middle Eastern immigrants pouring into Germany do not wield considerable power by their sheer numbers and adroit manipulation of Western notions of victimisation and grievance politics. Indeed, Western leftists seek political empowerment by encouraging the arrival of millions of impoverished migrants.
Inevitably, the issue of naked, often comical hypocrisy becomes hard to avoid:
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg offers another case study. The multibillionaire advocates for a fluid southern border and lax immigration enforcement, but he has also stealthily spent $30 million to buy up four homes surrounding his Palo Alto estate. They form a sort of no-man’s-land defence outside his own Maginot Line fence, presumably designed against hoi polloi who might not share Zuckerberg’s taste or sense of privacy. Zuckerberg’s other estate in San Francisco is prompting neighbours’ complaints because his security team takes up all the best parking spaces. Walls and border security seem dear to the heart of the open-borders multibillionaire — when it’s his wall, his border security.
See also, Simon Schama Syndrome.
Jennifer Kabbany spies yet another example of campus Maoism:
The diversity training is one of several sanctions [student government vice president, Rohini] Sethi has been handed down by the student government president, a punishment in response to the uproar among many students who accused her of insensitivity and divisiveness. Many students, including the Black Student Union, had called for her resignation or impeachment. Sethi’s five sanctions include “a 50-day suspension beginning Aug. 1, mandatory attendance of the Libra Project diversity workshop, mandatory attendance of three cultural events per month, a reflection letter and a public presentation in the Senate Meeting on Sep. 28,” the Daily Cougar campus newspaper reports. At that September meeting, Sethi is expected to detail what the diversity experiences have taught her about “cultural issues,” SGA President Shane Smith said in a statement announcing the sanctions.
Ms Sethi’s crime? Tweeting “all lives matter.”
Somewhat related, Paul Mirengoff on forbidden symbols:
Now, the government is going to determine whether an employer violates the law by permitting an employee to wear a hat with this anti-government slogan [i.e., the Gadsden flag]. To accomplish this, it will decide what, “in context,” the employee really meant.
And finally, in sexual objectification news.
Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
This just in. Wearing camouflage pants is, apparently, “anti-feminist.” And by wearing them you’ll risk traumatising brown people, who are oppressed enough anyway, while practically endorsing “human hunting” and “gunning down and killing other human beings.”
Slightly related, but one of the amusing things I read when I first mobilised to Nigeria was that wearing camouflage gear of any sort is a very bad idea in Nigeria (or anywhere else in Africa). Whereas in the West wearing camouflage pants generally means you work in IT or are Swampy’s best pal, in Africa it means you’re in some sort of militia which might also be an illegal one.
The pathetic comment about traumatising brown people aside, coming face to face with an illiterate African soldier wearing a “uniform” with missing buttons, a beret that’s been used to clear up an oil leak, fingerless leather gloves, aviator shades, and carrying an Ak-47 from the Biafran War is a genuinely scary experience. Especially so if he’s the clever one in charge.
This just in.
I note the author is “Annah Anti-Palindrome” previously discussed on these pages.
previously discussed on these pages.
She was indeed.
Wearing camouflage pants is, apparently, “anti-feminist.”
“Three powerful stories.” Powerful but inaccurate to the point of being complete fiction, and what is it with these morons that everything is “powerful”.
1. She reminded me that US border guards are often armed white folks dressed in full military fatigues…
Actually, the guys in the picture are a “militia” with no authority to do anything anywhere except their own property. The actual Border Patrol that would have been encountered is 52% Hispanic and looks like this:
Large lack of camouflage in those Texaco Man suits.
2. Needless to say, these troops weren’t there to provide aid. They were sent to establish military order and authority over a newly displaced community – the majority made up of low-income black folks…“[T]hese troops [in New Orleans] are armed as they would be in Iraq, with automatic rifles, guns strapped to legs, and pockets overflowing with ammo.”
Total and utter horseshit, this one just pisses me off. Those sufficiently interested can read about the whole thing here, (highly recommended) but the bottom line is that only one of the six Task Forces (TF DEFENDER) subordinate to Task Force PELICAN, the over all C2, was comprised primarily of MP units, and at that they functioned as much as a humanitarin aid distribution unit as MPs. The other TFs were aviation, (flying 6.500 missions tht rescued 9.600 people, transported, 35,000 locals, and delivered 2,100 tons of cargo in 11 days), engineer (responsible for restoring infrastructure), logistic (both internal to the TFs and external to the citizens). The only real patrolling was done in Orleans parish (New Orleans city, basically) out of 13 supported parishes, by a subordinate TF of TF Santa Fe, and that was only done because the locals couldn’t behave themselves.
“Pockets overflowing with ammo…” what utter overwrought horseshit, one does not carry ammo in pockets, and certainly not to the point of overflowing. It is amazing that these jerks can’t even see how stupidly nonsensical their comments are.
3. At that time, it was difficult to distinguish photos of police in Ferguson from images coming out of war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan. Armored vehicles driven by officers (dressed in full camouflage battle uniforms) patrolled the streets at all hours.
Yeah, no. The only cops dressed in camouflage were SWAT, and the only reason they were there was because the locals were burning their own town down and looting.
The humor value of these idiots is starting to wear off, but I guess I shouldn’t expect anyting rational from our old friend Annah Anti-Palindrome.
Total and utter horseshit, this one just pisses me off.
The problem is not that the horseshit appears in Everyday Feminism; its that it appears in the mainstream media on a regular basis. You and I can chuckle about “pocket overflowing with ammo,” but the NYT and others do their best to confuse semiautomatic and automatic weapons almost daily. The MSM knows most of its readers are too lazy or insulated to seek out the truth.
Another Ben Shapiro talk, at the University of Rochester.
R.Sherman,
For reasons that are not important now, I got direct info on the Katrina mess daily from people on the ground and this knee-jerk disparaging of troops who were doing a hard job in lousy conditions for frequently ungrateful people, I probably take too personally.
You are, however, of course correct, but the disinformation is like a cholera outbreak with no way to secure the Broad Street pump handle.
Farnsworth,
Katrina is something that disturbs me greatly, as well. It was used solely as a means of attacking a) Bush The Younger and b) deflected attention from the Democratic mayor and governor of LA who had truly fucked the first response up beyond recognition. Virtually everything negative which as reported was fabricated to one degree or another. (Remember the cannibals running amok in the Superdome) First disaster response is a state and local issue, not a federal one by statute, but only the feds took any blame while Ray Nagin and Mary Landrieu escaped scrutiny.
R.Sherman,
Plus all the millions in federal money provided over the years to raise and maintain the levees that was siphoned off to nothing but corrupt officials slush funds.
First disaster response is a state and local issue, not a federal one by statute…
Indeed, but active component planners not being idiots, they knew AC units would be deployed, orders were going out to AC units before landfall, and the only reason there was any delay was because Blanco’s refused to allow JTF-Katrina (DoD) to take over evacuation and command of the National Guard units in Louisiana.
…the constitutional counting of slaves to determine the number of representatives in Congress, a measure designed to diminish the legislative power of the more populous slave-holding states which wanted to count slaves as “persons” for some purposes without giving them rights or abolishing slavery as had already been done in the north.
There was a similar trick pulled in Australia with regard to Aborigines.
The colonies with the highest Aboriginal population were also the ones that didn’t permit Aborigines to vote. Upon Federation, the constitution held that (1) a state’s representation in federal parliament would be directly proportional to that state’s population, and (2) “population” was to be defined as only those people who were permitted to vote.
Thus, the newly-minted states of Queensland and Western Australia had to choose between maximising their representation at the federal level or a full extension of the franchise. They eventually caved in 1962 (Western Australia) and 1965 (Queensland).
But if you ask an educated Australian when and how Aborigines got the vote, they’ll tell you it was thanks to a referendum in 1967 – and they’ll probably repeat the canard that prior to this referendum Aborigines were “officially classed as flora and fauna”.
I’ve heard that line often enough, and in those exact words too, that I assume it must come from some official or respected source, despite it being total bollocks. (I’d say obvious bollocks, except that I didn’t twig that anything was wrong when my history teacher said it.)