UD has already, uh, sung the praises of Harvard 大人物 Charles Lieber here. He has now been found guilty (max. sentence five years) of
two counts of making false statements to the U.S. government about whether he participated in Thousand Talents Plan, a program designed by the Chinese government to attract foreign-educated scientists in China. They also found him guilty of failing to declare income earned in China and failing to report a Chinese bank account.
See, you’re not supposed to take millions and millions of OUR dollars for your scientific research and secretly subsidize it with millions of dollars from our rich, interested-in-our-secrets, non-friends.
But for UD the real fun here is the whole vulgar bag-man thing, the image of Hahvahd lugging its piles of dirty cash onto airplanes. Will the TSA discover (sweat sweat) the C-Notes in my Louis Vuitton steamer trunk?
…it’s time to hear from the law-abiding citizens of Quebec. Here’s one.
It would be safe to conclude that a statement of identity for many Muslim women who promote the hijab is perhaps more important than following religious dicta. One can, for example, easily argue that many of these women don’t believe the hijab to be a religious requirement. They could easily remove the piece of cloth while at work but choose not to. One must ask why... Why the restrictive, chauvinistic, and patriarchal garb has assumed this much importance for these individuals is a puzzlement.
Indeed, nuns, priests and even monks are perfectly able to remove their religious garb; why not non-clerical women? What makes these women more rigid in their refusals (in Quebec, they are asked only to remove it while in the public-facing act of public positions) than clericals?
The hijab is undoubtedly a garb rooted in patriarchy. It should be discouraged rather than enabled, touted, and promoted wherever possible. Bill 21 seeks to do precisely that…
Touted reminds us of the recent hijab-promoting ad campaign in Europe that came to grief. Western democracies are willing to tolerate the hijab, but – in Quebec, and in Europe – not in all settings, and not in all forms of its presentation.
The New Democratic Party leader in Canada is refreshingly honest about his view of federal/provincial powers. By an impressive 65% majority, Quebec’s citizens favor a recently enacted secularism bill which enforces religious neutrality on some categories of public employees for the daily duration of their public duties. As in: For the hours during which you are teaching, or presiding over a courtroom, you must remove your hijab or other form of religious garb.
“How would an immigrant of Palestinian origin, contesting a conviction, feel in front of a judge wearing a kippah? Inversely, how would a young driver wearing a kippah feel faced with a policewoman wearing a hijab who just gave him a ticket?”
A minority of Quebecers disagree with this approach, and the NDP guy thinks federal Canada should just go ahead and align itself with them. Screw the strong majority of people in that province who think some secular workplace rules are reasonable.
What do you think are the chances federal Canada will prevail? For background, recall what’s going on elsewhere.
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Justin Trudeau will not intervene; and asked whether “he thinks Bill 21 fosters ‘hatred’ and ‘discrimination’ against minorities, Mr. Trudeau answered straightforwardly: “No.”
… and he can’t remember when he puts a loaded gun in his work bag. But the US House of Representatives has been relying on Jeffrey Allsbrooks to be its Logistics Manager. Your tax dollars at work, mes petites.
In a remarkable ten-minute propaganda clip, Eric Zemmour chooses the Seventh for his presidential announcement. Given the SUPER-chauvinistic, SUPER-French nature of his announcement, it’s head-scratching that he chooses a German composer for his soundtrack, non?
I mean, yes, the heavy-meaning-bearing second movement gets trotted out constantly — background music for The King’s Speech, background music for the end of the world — but what’s it doing in a hyper-nationalistic French politician’s presidential statement?
Obviously the haunting major/minor of this movement conveys seriousness and sorrow, gravity and dignity. It is both foreboding and, in its tenacious maintenance of its waltz-like tempo, somehow resolute. And since Zemmour’s whole thing is that France is dying – practically dead – it makes sense that this anxious sorrowing resoluteness would appeal to him. Joshua Bell comments:
I’d call the second movement the ultimate expression of despair, … especially as it reaches its peak. It’s the ultimate crying of lament. The slow movement even ends with an unresolved chord with no root, just as it begins. It leaves you feeling a kind of longing right from the beginning and it leaves you with that same feeling as it ends with an unstable chord.
Yet Beethoven is so un-French; Zemmour spends the entire ten minutes trumpeting the unique brilliance of French culture, and can’t come up with a French composer whose work adequately conveys his message?
It is not too late for the Zemmour campaign to align its values with its soundtrack. With no trouble at all, UD has come up with an equally famous and celebrated French composition that conveys, as does Beethoven’s, growing anxiety/intensity in the context of a beautiful melody. A piece that “has a pulsation that … is very close to that of, you know, the heartbeat. And … it grows in that sort of inevitable manner – something that, you know, cannot be stopped. It sort of unfolds and sweeps you away with it.”
PS: To render Zemmour’s entire announcement totally French, we’d also need to remove his reference to Johnny Hallyday (half Belgian), and have him quote from someone other than Abraham Lincoln (“by the people,” etc.).
She forgot to mention his steadfast defense of Andrei Shleifer, his taking over Harvard’s endowment and promptly losing $1.8 billion, his hedge-fund freelancing while president of Harvard, etc., etc. Summers is a-fucking-mazing.
[The] gun lobby [has grown] more powerful and darker… The N.R.A. … has worked hard to leave the impression that the ideology of gun ownership has been constant, emphasizing a Second Amendment politics that flattens the distinction between the eighteenth century and the present, and marketing AR-15s as if they were made for hunting. [By] the time of Sandy Hook, the gun culture … was all new: the treatment of lobbyists as charismatic leaders, the black-rifle influencers, the military weapons in the stores, and the military imagery used to market them. [This is] the world that the N.R.A. built…
The allegations against [Wayne] LaPierre may weaken the N.R.A., but the tactical culture that consolidated under his watch appears more durable. The sort of people who, not long ago, [one] might have characterized as “couch commandos” are everywhere on the American right — in power, and also on the fringe. Kyle Rittenhouse, … at the age of seventeen, got an AR-15-style rifle from a friend and brought it to Kenosha, Wisconsin, where he killed two men and wounded another … Representative Lauren Boebert, a Republican from Colorado, … owns a gun-themed restaurant in Rifle, Colorado; supported the storming of the Capitol; and has posed frequently with AR-15-style rifles.
In her wonderfully diplomatic way, Yale student Sude Yenilmez notes how moral relativism and political correctness drive indifference – even among the best and the brightest – to the suffering of millions of women all over the world.
Can she really be saying that her fellow students think global forced veiling is unimportant?
The ultraorthodox lads are in there swinging. But score one for the godless harlots.
MK Yulia Malinovsky’s amendment to increase fines for ripping up images of women on the streets of Israel seems to have riled another MK, who passionately defended the vandals. He also took offense at Malinovsky’s description of ultraorthodox motive and behavior:
“What interests them is to build a Taliban state. First of all, they vandalize and exclude women from the public sphere… Whoever does this is degrading himself, hurts women and equality for women. Then it slides into segregation between men and women. … The extremist organization that took over Afghanistan banned women from riding bicycles. It forbade displaying figures of women in the public space. They decide what a woman should look like and at what length her sleeves should be… “
Rather than owning his fanaticism, her opponent shrieked and sputtered… though since the amendment passed, I guess it didn’t work. Let’s see what he said.
“She said Taliban and you did not respond? A Knesset member is standing here calling us the Taliban, and that’s okay? There is a party in the Knesset whose sole purpose is not to allow the ultra-Orthodox to live here… What a disgrace that such an antisemite comes up [to speak] here! Taliban?! This is an antisemitic party. You’re antisemitic. Disgrace. Are we Taliban?”
I wonder why no one responded.
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UD is inclined to look on the bright side of this particular interaction. Malinovsky’s opponent acknowledged her existence in the chamber. He did not rip her face off. Good boy. Getting there.
As in Europe (see my various posts below about the ill-fated, taxpayer-funded love the hijab campaign), so perhaps in not too long a time in America, we must prepare for training in the proper attitude toward women who cover themselves and their children.
Actually, America seems to be tolerating burqas (we’re one of fewer and fewer countries where they haven’t been outlawed) and hijabs quite well – incidents of intolerance/violence appear to be rare. We don’t have laws that permit some employers under some circumstances to keep their employees from wearing a hijab; we don’t have laws that ban hijabs in the public sector. You’ll see such laws in parts of Europe and Canada. Stories about European schools banning the hijab are rampant. Several Muslim countries have significant legal restrictions on burqas, niqabs, and hijabs.
Our need for training derives from two false perceptions:
Covered women are oppressed.
Covered women need “white saviors” to liberate them from their veils/oppression.
Hafsa Lodi explains that “Women who follow traditional guidelines of hijab keep their bodies and hair covered while in the presence of men who aren’t close kin, usually from the age of puberty.”
Is a pubescent girl a woman? The average age of puberty for girls is eleven. Is an eleven year old a woman? Some girls begin puberty at eight. Is an eight year old a woman? Do I feel comfortable concluding that parents who put their eight year old in face and body coverings are oppressive? You bet I do.
Lodi writes: “As a Muslim woman who doesn’t cover her hair, I have a tremendous amount of respect and admiration for young women who have the courage to commit to wearing the hijab. It takes guts and an impressively strong conviction of faith to cover your hair in a [looks-based] society.” Here is a person who admires the courage of ten-year-olds who wear the hijab because their parents mandate it. I think we must also conclude that she respects and admires parents who can look at their ten year old child (not their boy, of course; their girl) and swathe her, morning, noon, and night in clothes that tightly cover her head and body. Respects and admires parents who “deprive [their daughter] of her childhood.” We are to take moral instruction from this person.
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Do I think it’s twisted that some people think girls from eight to twelve years old (though to be sure plenty of parents put their five and six year old girls under hijabs) are such sexual threats to men that they have to be covered? Do I think that the understanding of herself such a child will adopt over time is twisted? Yes, and yes. Do I think that this form of upbringing is in any way preparing this girl for life in a liberal democracy? No.
