The Harry’s Place blog is being sued by Mohammed Sawalha, President of the British Muslim Initiative.

Mr Sawalha says that the attribution of the phrase “Evil Jew” to him implies that he is “anti-semitic and hateful”. Notably, he does not take issue with our reporting of the revelation, made in a Panorama documentary in 2006, that he is a senior activist in the clerical fascist terrorist organisation, Hamas. The BBC report disclosed that Mr Sawalha “master minded much of Hamas’ political and military strategy” and in London “is alleged to have directed funds, both for Hamas’ armed wing, and for spreading its missionary dawah”…

Mr Sawalha is a man who prefers to conduct political debate by means of litigation. He hopes to bully those who oppose his vicious theocratic politics with threats of writs. I suppose that I should be relieved. Hamas’ usual technique is to murder those with whom it disagrees.

If you can help out, please do.

Update: Bearing in mind the house rules, the comments are now open again.

Readers of this blog may be familiar with the Guardian’s Julie Bindel, who thinks “[get] men off the streets” is “a fabulous slogan” and then wonders why some male readers find her rather stupid and objectionable. Ms Bindel insists on “naming men as the problem” and believes that “sexual violence is the only thing in the world that affects all women.” She also thinks that “male violence towards women and children… is pandemic” and “all women know that if we have not been raped, we are lucky.” Nuance of thought is not, it seems, Ms Bindel’s strongest suit, or an obvious aspiration.

As a riposte of sorts to such adamant idiocy, and to broader claims of “male privilege,” Ballgame has produced a Female Privilege Checklist, which highlights some of the less remarked benefits of being female. Among them,

My chance of suffering a work-related injury or illness is significantly lower than a man’s.

If I shy away from fights, it is unlikely that this will damage my standing in my peer group or call into question my worthiness as a sex partner.

If I attempt to hug a friend in joy, it’s much less likely that my friend will wonder about my sexuality or pull away in unease.

If I interact with other people’s children – particularly people I don’t know very well – I do not have to worry much about the interaction being misinterpreted.

Steve Schofield photographs British science fiction fans who like to dress up.

I rather like the images, the discomfort and the hint of tragicomedy. But I’m less convinced by the predictable spiel about “globalisation and America’s ongoing ability to infiltrate all cultures via various channels of media.” Are we supposed to believe that these people are in some way being oppressed by international mass culture? Why don’t artists fret quite so much about the globalisation of, say, Chinese restaurants? Or doesn’t that count? And why does no-one want to dress up as Naomi Klein?

Via Coudal.

Some time ago, in discussing multicultural ideology and its effects, I wrote: 

During a conversation about the ‘cartoon jihad’ uproar, I used the phrase “emotional incontinence.” This did not go down well. I was promptly told, in no uncertain terms, that I mustn’t “impose” my own cultural values. Apparently, to do so would be a form of “cultural imperialism,” an archaic colonial hangover, and therefore unspeakably evil. I was, apparently, being “arrogantly ethnocentric” in considering Western secular society broadly preferable to a culture in which rioting, murder and genocidal threats can be prompted by the publication of a cartoon.

I was informed that to regard one set of cultural values as preferable to another was “racist” and “oppressive”. Indeed, even the attempt to make any such determination was itself a heinous act. I was further assailed with a list of examples of “Western arrogance, decadence, irreverence, and downright nastiness.” And I was reminded that, above all, I “must respect deeply held beliefs.” When I asked if this respect for deeply held beliefs extended to white supremacists, cannibals and ultra-conservative Republicans, a deafening silence ensued.

At some point, I made reference to migration and the marked tendency of families to move from Islamic societies to secular ones, and not the other way round. “This seems rather important,” I suggested. “If you want to evaluate which society is preferred to another by any given group, migration patterns are an obvious yardstick to use. Broadly speaking, people don’t relocate their families to cultures they find wholly inferior to their own.” Alas, this fairly self-evident suggestion did not meet with approval. No rebuttal was forthcoming, but the litany of Western wickedness resumed, more loudly than before.

[…]

In terms of leftist political rhetoric, cultural equivalence has broadly come to mean than no objective judgment should be made as to whether [a given set of] practices and beliefs are better or worse than any other, or have consequences that are measurably detrimental given certain criteria. The actual moral and practical content of a given worldview is, of course, to be studiously ignored, as this would imply some kind of judgment might be made. In common usage, this assumption reduces analysis to mere opinion and is corrosive to critical thought for fairly obvious reasons. In order to maintain a pretence of ‘fairness’ and non-judgmental equivalence, there are any number of things one simply cannot allow oneself to think about, at least in certain ways.

Diana West, author of The Death of the Grown-Up, was recently interviewed by the National Review. The following extract seems relevant to the above:

I would describe PC life in a multiculti world as being marked in part by self-censorship based in fear – fear of professional failure, opprobrium or social ostracism. I would also describe this same self-censorship as a form of childishness… The fact is, buying into multiculturalism – the outlook that sees all cultures as being of equal value (except the West, which is essentially vile) – requires us to repress our faculties of logic, and this in itself is an infantilising act. I mean, it’s patently illogical to accept and teach our children the notion that a culture that has brought liberty and penicillin to the masses is of no greater value than others that haven’t. In accepting the multicultural worldview, we deceive ourselves into inhabiting a world of pretend where certain truths are out of bounds and remain unspoken – even verboten.

More.

The American Family Association experiences technical difficulties. // Sweden’s classroom esteem police. // Excuse me, sir – do you have any cigarette in your marijuana? // Medical mannequins. // Kubrick. // Abandoned hotels. (h/t, Things.) // Impressive swimming pools. (h/t, Coudal.) // Pencil sculptures. // A very large drawing. (h/t, 1+1=3.) // The Metzo School, Doetinchem. // Undersea internet cables. // The Amazon bookstore browser. With virtual shelves and everything. // Vintage comic book covers. // Vintage gay paperback covers. // Porn for the blind. (sfw) // Two decades of party flyers, 1987 – 2007. // Hey, mobile DJ. // 120 years of electronic music. // Faces and pocket contents, scanned. (h/t, Quipsologies.) // Octopus jewellery. Precious tentacles. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s Ms Greta Keller.