Unbelievable.
Martin Wisse
and my mother phones askig whether I heard the news about Pim Fortuyn,
the rightwing politicus who was gaining so much support here.
I hadn't. So she told me. He had been shot and killed about 3 hours ago,
just after he had finished doing an interview. As of now, there isn't
any evidence made public yet whether or not the murder was politically
motivated, but the possibility is there.
I'm stunned.
This is not something I had ever expect to happen here.
If I'm honest, I have to say I feel little sorrow about his death. He
was a dangerous man, a spiteful man, a hateful man.
-- But he didn't deserve to be murdered.
Martin Wisse
--
In my world, the most exciting part of a first date is finding out where
each other's favorite bookstores are.
-Jeffrey C. Dege, rasfw
Joshua Hesse
[...]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1971000/1971423.stm
--
"I have also mastered pomposity, even if I do say so myself." -Kryten
"You scream at them at the top of your lungs and then hit them over the head
with an immense wooden mallet? You're weird, sir." -Dave Brown on girls.
Dave Weingart
>So I come home from having had a nice dinner with Sandra,
>and my mother phones askig whether I heard the news about Pim Fortuyn,
>-- But he didn't deserve to be murdered.
Few people do.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1971000/1971423.stm
--
73 de Dave Weingart KA2ESK "There were no wrecks, and nobody
mailto:phyd...@liii.com drownded. I' fact, nothing to laugh
http://www.liii.com/~phydeaux at at all!"
ICQ 57055207 -- Marriott Edgar
Omega
<phyd...@liii.com> writes
>One day in Teletubbyland, mwi...@ad-astra.demon.nl (Martin Wisse) said:
>>So I come home from having had a nice dinner with Sandra,
>>and my mother phones askig whether I heard the news about Pim Fortuyn,
><snippage>
>>-- But he didn't deserve to be murdered.
>
>Few people do.
>
well. I do not think this was a professional job though, just one nut
who took his political feeling too far.
--
Omega
Marilee J. Layman
Wisse) wrote:
>So I come home from having had a nice dinner with Sandra,
>and my mother phones askig whether I heard the news about Pim Fortuyn,
>the rightwing politicus who was gaining so much support here.
>
>I hadn't. So she told me. He had been shot and killed about 3 hours ago,
>just after he had finished doing an interview. As of now, there isn't
>any evidence made public yet whether or not the murder was politically
>motivated, but the possibility is there.
>
>I'm stunned.
>
>This is not something I had ever expect to happen here.
>
>If I'm honest, I have to say I feel little sorrow about his death. He
>was a dangerous man, a spiteful man, a hateful man.
>
>-- But he didn't deserve to be murdered.
I saw it on the WashPost front page when I looked up the Spidey
article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40353-2002May6.html
--
Marilee J. Layman
Bali Sterling Beads at Wholesale
http://www.basicbali.com
Joshua Hesse
http://webcenter.newssearch.netscape.com/aolns_display.adp?key=200205061751000265362_aolns.src
Jason Stokes
>So I come home from having had a nice dinner with Sandra,
>and my mother phones askig whether I heard the news about Pim Fortuyn,
>the rightwing politicus who was gaining so much support here.
>
>I hadn't. So she told me. He had been shot and killed about 3 hours ago,
>just after he had finished doing an interview. As of now, there isn't
>any evidence made public yet whether or not the murder was politically
>motivated, but the possibility is there.
>
>I'm stunned.
>
>This is not something I had ever expect to happen here.
>
>If I'm honest, I have to say I feel little sorrow about his death. He
>was a dangerous man, a spiteful man, a hateful man.
>
>-- But he didn't deserve to be murdered.
Alive, he was just another right-wing Europollie (and not one I'd heard of
before.) Dead, he's a martyr to the cause and proof of the left's inquity.
Assassinations always make things a /lot/ worse.
Lis Carey
<3cd6d3b0...@news.demon.nl>:
>So I come home from having had a nice dinner with Sandra,
>and my mother phones askig whether I heard the news about Pim
>Fortuyn, the rightwing politicus who was gaining so much support
>here.
>
>I hadn't. So she told me. He had been shot and killed about 3 hours
>ago, just after he had finished doing an interview. As of now, there
>isn't any evidence made public yet whether or not the murder was
>politically motivated, but the possibility is there.
A political motive seems a near-certainty, from the circumstances as
described.
>I'm stunned.
>
>This is not something I had ever expect to happen here.
>
>If I'm honest, I have to say I feel little sorrow about his death.
>He was a dangerous man, a spiteful man, a hateful man.
>
>-- But he didn't deserve to be murdered.
My first reaction to the news was that this is disgusting, outrageous,
tragic, and a profoundly anti-democratic act on the part of whoever did
it (who is apparently already in custody, thankfully.)
My second reaction was that, because all of the above is true, it's
going to have the unintended and extremely unfortunate effect of
boosting Fortuyn's party.
--
Lis Carey
Re-elect Gore in '04
Lee Ratner
He was kind of famous because he was an open homosexual.
Pete McCutchen
Stokes) wrote:
>Alive, he was just another right-wing Europollie (and not one I'd heard of
>before.) Dead, he's a martyr to the cause and proof of the left's inquity.
>Assassinations always make things a /lot/ worse.
If you'd never heard of him before, then how do you know that he's
"just another right-wing Europollie"?
I'd read about him for the first time a couple of weeks before he was
assassinated. So far as I can tell, he wasn't "just another
right-wing Europollie." For one thing, he's an openly gay sociology
professor, not the sort you'd typically associate with neo-fascism.
His position, so far as I can tell, was that unassimilated Muslim
immigrants threaten Western values. European values of tolerance for
religious and sexual diversity, for example. That is, well, almost
self-evidently true. Europe's gays and lesbians probably wouldn't
fare particularly well under Sharia law. Sure, many racists may
object to immigration by people of a darker hue for racist reasons,
but Europe faces real issues with Muslim immigrants, particularly
given its generous welfare states and lack of an assimilationist
tradition. One of the reasons that politicians like La Pen have some
appeal is that the political establishment wants to just pretend these
issues don't exist.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,482-289331,00.html
--
Pete McCutchen
Joel Rosenberg
There's a real, and significant -- it seems to me -- difference in the
subtext of how people can raise the same issues, and a large part of that
involves some important distinctions. Naturally, that's used as an
apologia for bigots.
To digress for a moment, note the use of some of the radical religious
right of the Catholic church molestation scandal. There's obviously some
real issues here -- mostly, as far as I can tell, involving repeated and
systemic coverups; I don't know of any reason to believe that priests are
more or less likely to be molesters than others -- but note the glee that
some of the religious right showing in seeing this as a matter of
"homosexuals molesting boys."
Are some of the molesting priests gay? Probably. The majority? Almost
certainly not. But how do you measure it honestly.
Outside of the theoretically celibate world, the majority of
molesters-of-boys are heterosexual in their other practice. In the case of
priests, given that they can't have a normal hetero or gay relationship
with consenting adults ("normal" includes not having to hide it). So we
simply don't and can't know, and the folks who are eager to gaybash have,
basically, a free-fire zone.
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------
From Mary McGrory in The Washington Post to Mark
Shields on CNN, a falafel curtain has descended
across our continent, transmogrifying the Arab
aggressor into the victim.
--William Safire
Omega
<czar...@aol.com> writes
>
> He was kind of famous because he was an open homosexual.
Could have been personal then. Once sex is involved you get a lot of
overkill and it certainly looks like far more force was used than needed
just to kill the man.
Just checked the news and it says they've got someone for it but they're
saying nothing more than sex, age, race and country (male, 33, white,
Dutch).
--
Omega
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> I don't know of any reason to believe that priests are
> more or less likely to be molesters than others
People who are forbidden from having any kind of sex life, and told over
and over again that sex is bad and sinful and only admissible for
producing kids, I'm not particularly surprised if their sexuality comes
out warped.
--
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
http://www.fantascienza.net/sfpeople/elethiomel
Steve Glover
<p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> writes
>His position, so far as I can tell, was that unassimilated Muslim
>immigrants threaten Western values.
What I heard, but can't find a cite for, is that when he said that Islam
was a backwards society, he also went on to say "~but so, of course, is
Calvinism, or any other faith-based society~"...
It'd be interesting to know if this is true, or else where it started.
Steve
--
Steve Glover, Fell Services Ltd. Available from - 01/02/2002
Weblog at http://weblog.akicif.net/blogger.html
Home: steve at fell.demon.co.uk, 0131 551 3835
Away: steve.glover at ukonline.co.uk, 07940 584 653
Joel Rosenberg
> Joel Rosenberg <jo...@ellegon.com> wrote:
>
>> I don't know of any reason to believe that priests are
>> more or less likely to be molesters than others
>
> People who are forbidden from having any kind of sex life, and told over
> and over again that sex is bad and sinful and only admissible for
> producing kids, I'm not particularly surprised if their sexuality comes
> out warped.
>
Well, except that the decision to become a priest is made long after sexual
orientation is well-established. At least arguably -- if not more than
that -- you're selecting for people for whom a normal, reasonably SGBL sex
life is not a priority, but you may well be selecting for folks for whom
there are higher priorities.
So: I dunno. How do you test?
And that said, my understanding -- limited thought it is; and I'm not, by
any means, an apologist for the Catholic Church -- is that the Catholic
Church does indeed consider sex between some people incapable of producing
children (married couples with one or more partner known to be sterile,
"natural family planning", etc.) to be completely admissable. (Arguably,
again, in both cases, extraordinary events -- a miracle, say, if the man
has too low sperm count or the woman has had a hysterectomy -- would make
procreation possible, but the whole origin of the Catholic Church is based
on the notion that a child can be born via a miracle, after all.)
Richard Kennaway
> My second reaction was that, because all of the above is true, it's
> going to have the unintended and extremely unfortunate effect of
> boosting Fortuyn's party.
I always feel uneasy about statements like this. With all respect to
those making it, to me it sounds glib. But over the next year or so we
have the opportunity to make a comparison of the practical merits of
assassination and democracy. Fortuyn killed, Le Pen trounced at the
polls. How will their respective parties fare?
-- Richard Kennaway
Martin Wisse
>In article <59117524.02050...@posting.google.com>, Lee Ratner
><czar...@aol.com> writes
>>
>> He was kind of famous because he was an open homosexual.
Not really. He was famous because he was a pundit, a sort of Dutch
Andrew sullivan. I certainly didn't know he was gay until recently.
>Could have been personal then. Once sex is involved you get a lot of
>overkill and it certainly looks like far more force was used than needed
>just to kill the man.
>
>Just checked the news and it says they've got someone for it but they're
>saying nothing more than sex, age, race and country (male, 33, white,
>Dutch).
Also that he was a member of the environmental activist group Millieu
Offensief. Whether that had anything to do with Fortuyn's murder is
unknown.
Michalak
> I'd read about him for the first time a couple of weeks before he was
> assassinated. So far as I can tell, he wasn't "just another
> right-wing Europollie." For one thing, he's an openly gay sociology
> professor, not the sort you'd typically associate with neo-fascism.
>
> His position, so far as I can tell, was that unassimilated Muslim
> immigrants threaten Western values. European values of tolerance for
> religious and sexual diversity, for example. That is, well, almost
> self-evidently true.
I will chime in with reluctant agreement, that Muslim immigrants could
be a threat to civil liberties if they have hard line views. However
I think they are no worse a threat than any other 'conservative'
religious group. For example Mormons, Catholics, or Baptists. I can
hear the cries now, "but hey, not all Baptists/Catholics/Mormons are
against gay rights". Exactly my point. There is an issue with Muslim
immigrants, but in my personal experience as an openly gay individual
the Muslims I have encountered are not more hostile as a group than
many other mainstream religions. I even have a good friend who is a
faithful Muslim. I don't try to push alcohol on him, he doesn't
comment about my boyfriends. We are in the same roleplaying group and
do other social things.
There is an issue, but I doubt that ending immigration is a good
solution. There is a failure of the mainstream parties to deal with
the issue at least some extent, but in the end I think the movements
to ban immigration springs from fear rather than well founded logical
conclusions.
Comrade Director Michalak
Devner Area SF Association
http://dasfa.org/
Martin Wisse
<p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>On Tue, 07 May 2002 02:17:52 GMT, js...@bluedog.apana.org.au (Jason
>Stokes) wrote:
>
>>Alive, he was just another right-wing Europollie (and not one I'd heard of
>>before.) Dead, he's a martyr to the cause and proof of the left's inquity.
>>Assassinations always make things a /lot/ worse.
>
>If you'd never heard of him before, then how do you know that he's
>"just another right-wing Europollie"?
Because he is?
>I'd read about him for the first time a couple of weeks before he was
>assassinated. So far as I can tell, he wasn't "just another
>right-wing Europollie." For one thing, he's an openly gay sociology
>professor, not the sort you'd typically associate with neo-fascism.
He wasn't a fascist, he was a racist populist demagouge.
>His position, so far as I can tell, was that unassimilated Muslim
>immigrants threaten Western values. European values of tolerance for
>religious and sexual diversity, for example. That is, well, almost
>self-evidently true. Europe's gays and lesbians probably wouldn't
>fare particularly well under Sharia law. Sure, many racists may
>object to immigration by people of a darker hue for racist reasons,
>but Europe faces real issues with Muslim immigrants, particularly
>given its generous welfare states and lack of an assimilationist
>tradition. One of the reasons that politicians like La Pen have some
>appeal is that the political establishment wants to just pretend these
>issues don't exist.
He went further then that. He talked about Islam as a "backward
culture", he stated that if it was up to him no more muslims would enter
the Netherlands and he stated that he would like to do away with Article
1 of the constitution, which forbids discrimination and is at the heart
of our democracy.
He used the language of the "respectable" extreme right, couching his
views in seemingly moderate language but underneath there's the same
message as that of more crude rightwingers: strangers are not wanted
here.
Martin Wisse
Not necessarily. Fortuyn wasn't a party, it was a one man show, with
supporting acts. Even before there was a party, a candidates list,
aparty program people said they would vote for Fortuyn, so the question
is if they will still vote for his party now he's gone.
Joel Rosenberg
> On Tue, 7 May 2002 12:56:57 +0100, Omega <om...@menageri.org.uk> wrote:
>
>>In article <59117524.02050...@posting.google.com>, Lee Ratner
>><czar...@aol.com> writes
>>>
>>> He was kind of famous because he was an open homosexual.
>
> Not really. He was famous because he was a pundit, a sort of Dutch
> Andrew sullivan. I certainly didn't know he was gay until recently.
>
When did he come out, though, and how publicly? (Not knowing something
about either politics or popular culture doesn't mean the thing in question
isn't widely known. I only heard of Lisa "Left Eye" Lopez after her car
crash the other day, for instance.)
Arthur D. Hlavaty
wrote:
>In article <59117524.02050...@posting.google.com>, Lee Ratner
><czar...@aol.com> writes
>>
>> He was kind of famous because he was an open homosexual.
>
>Could have been personal then. Once sex is involved you get a lot of
>overkill and it certainly looks like far more force was used than needed
>just to kill the man.
Why does homosexuality make it likelier that sex was involved? I've
always liked Neil Belsky's theory that the guy on the Grassy Knoll was
Joe DiMaggio.
--
Arthur D.Hlavaty hla...@panix.com
Church of the SuperGenius in Wile E. we trust
E-zine available on request
Kip Williams
>
> Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message news:<phgfdukos88a4gl7n...@4ax.com>...
> > I'd read about him for the first time a couple of weeks before he was
> > assassinated. So far as I can tell, he wasn't "just another
> > right-wing Europollie." For one thing, he's an openly gay sociology
> > professor, not the sort you'd typically associate with neo-fascism.
> >
> > His position, so far as I can tell, was that unassimilated Muslim
> > immigrants threaten Western values. European values of tolerance for
> > religious and sexual diversity, for example. That is, well, almost
> > self-evidently true.
>
> I will chime in with reluctant agreement, that Muslim immigrants could
> be a threat to civil liberties if they have hard line views. However
> I think they are no worse a threat than any other 'conservative'
> religious group. For example Mormons, Catholics, or Baptists. I can
> hear the cries now, "but hey, not all Baptists/Catholics/Mormons are
> against gay rights". Exactly my point. There is an issue with Muslim
> immigrants, but in my personal experience as an openly gay individual
> the Muslims I have encountered are not more hostile as a group than
> many other mainstream religions. I even have a good friend who is a
> faithful Muslim. I don't try to push alcohol on him, he doesn't
> comment about my boyfriends. We are in the same roleplaying group and
> do other social things.
Back when I lived in Houston (ca 1983-4), my friend Mike said that
his lover, who was Iranian, would most likely have been quietly
killed by his family if he hadn't come to the U.S. I didn't
cross-examine him on the point.
--
--Kip (Williams) ...at members.cox.net/kipw
"Gosh, Captain Patronizing! We're really in a pickle now!"
"(Chuckle) That's right, Billy!"
David G. Bell
st...@fell.demon.co.uk "Steve Glover" wrote:
> In article <phgfdukos88a4gl7n...@4ax.com>, Pete McCutchen
> <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> writes
> >His position, so far as I can tell, was that unassimilated Muslim
> >immigrants threaten Western values.
>
> What I heard, but can't find a cite for, is that when he said that Islam
> was a backwards society, he also went on to say "~but so, of course, is
> Calvinism, or any other faith-based society~"...
>
> It'd be interesting to know if this is true, or else where it started.
You know all the fuss about women's clothing in Afghanistan? It's being
reported today that the Saudi Religious Police have been seizing
insufficiently modest clothing from the manufacturers.
--
David G. Bell -- Farmer, SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.
Mr. Punch's Advice to a Young Man About to Become a Farmer:
"Marry, instead."
Feorag NicBhride
<mwi...@ad-astra.demon.nl> wrote:
> the Netherlands and he stated that he would like to do away with Article
> 1 of the constitution, which forbids discrimination and is at the heart
> of our democracy.
I get the impression that he supported freedom of speech, and that he felt
that there was a part of the Dutch constitution which guaranteed that, and
bits of Dutch law which meant you could be done for "hate speech". He felt
thet he should be free to insult Muslims, and that they should be free to
insult pooves.
His supporters are apparently not so subtle.
On the whole, I get the impression that he was about as right wing as
Margaret Thatcher (which is far-right but not admitting it), and that his
working class support would be utterly screwed if he had achieved power.
bb
Feorag
--
Remove clothes to reply ******
Jason Stokes
<p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>On Tue, 07 May 2002 02:17:52 GMT, js...@bluedog.apana.org.au (Jason
>Stokes) wrote:
>
>>Alive, he was just another right-wing Europollie (and not one I'd heard of
>>before.) Dead, he's a martyr to the cause and proof of the left's inquity.
>>Assassinations always make things a /lot/ worse.
>
>If you'd never heard of him before, then how do you know that he's
>"just another right-wing Europollie"?
Well, because I'd been reading the reports on the web, and there was a
detailed profile on him on the ABC by a reporter who was covering him in the
two weeks leading up to his assassination and could pull together a profile
quickly when he got killed. I'm not claiming any expert insight about Pim
Fortuyn, just that he's considered on the right, which is surely accurate.
Every report said so, and the Independent, predictably enough called him
"far right."
Certainly on the political spectrum he's no JÖrg Haider. A comparison with
Andrew Sullivan seems pretty apposite. As far as his views on Islam went,
as a cultural critique it sounds like a lot of stuff that's being said on
the left right now, but as far as his populist policies on freezing
immigration go, that placed him firmly on the right as far as I'm concerned.
Simon van Dongen
>On Tue, 07 May 2002 14:15:32 GMT, Pete McCutchen
><p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>>On Tue, 07 May 2002 02:17:52 GMT, js...@bluedog.apana.org.au (Jason
>>Stokes) wrote:
>>
>>>Alive, he was just another right-wing Europollie (and not one I'd heard of
>>>before.) Dead, he's a martyr to the cause and proof of the left's inquity.
>>>Assassinations always make things a /lot/ worse.
>>
>>If you'd never heard of him before, then how do you know that he's
>>"just another right-wing Europollie"?
>
>Because he is?
>
>>I'd read about him for the first time a couple of weeks before he was
>>assassinated. So far as I can tell, he wasn't "just another
>>right-wing Europollie." For one thing, he's an openly gay sociology
>>professor, not the sort you'd typically associate with neo-fascism.
>
>He wasn't a fascist, he was a racist populist demagouge.
>
Whether he was a racist himself is debatable. But his public
pronouncements did have the effect of legitimising racist public
sentiments.
>>His position, so far as I can tell, was that unassimilated Muslim
>>immigrants threaten Western values. European values of tolerance for
>>religious and sexual diversity, for example. That is, well, almost
>>self-evidently true. Europe's gays and lesbians probably wouldn't
>>fare particularly well under Sharia law. Sure, many racists may
>>object to immigration by people of a darker hue for racist reasons,
>>but Europe faces real issues with Muslim immigrants, particularly
>>given its generous welfare states and lack of an assimilationist
>>tradition. One of the reasons that politicians like La Pen have some
>>appeal is that the political establishment wants to just pretend these
>>issues don't exist.
>
>He went further then that. He talked about Islam as a "backward
>culture", he stated that if it was up to him no more muslims would enter
>the Netherlands and he stated that he would like to do away with Article
>1 of the constitution, which forbids discrimination and is at the heart
>of our democracy.
>
He said some very stupid things. What he clearly meant to attack was
not the principle of equal rights regardless of creed, colour or sex
(or sexual preference), which is what Art 1 is about. He was making a
point about freedom of speech, and saying that if Art 1 limited
freedom of speech (which it doesn't), we ought to change it.
Rather typical of his grandiose, simplistic rhetoric in the Ross Perot
'just get under the hood and fix it' style: fix the health service by
getting rid of all those useless managers, split huge schools back
into much smaller units, and so on.
Many fairly laudable aims, but a distinct disinclination to spend any
time worrying about how we get there from where we are now. Of course,
if more conventional politicians point out how many schools there are
now, and how many new buildings we'd need, and what that would cost,
and asked politely how we're going to pay for those new buildings,
they were being boring and obstructive and 'old politics'.
>He used the language of the "respectable" extreme right, couching his
>views in seemingly moderate language but underneath there's the same
>message as that of more crude rightwingers: strangers are not wanted
>here.
However, it *is* a bit of a problem that the (fairly small) crude and
really neofascist right has polluted the discussion to such an extent
that all sorts of non-crude and certainly not racist opinions are
interpreted as code even when they're not intended to be.
Simon
--
Simon van Dongen <sg...@xs4all.nl> Rotterdam, The Netherlands
'Bear courteous greetings to the accomplished musician outside our
gate, [...] and convince him - by means of a heavily-weighted club
if necessary - that the situation he has taken up is quite unworthy
of his incomparable efforts.' -Bramah, 'Kai Lung's Golden Hours'
Simon van Dongen
My reaction was a sort of sputtering "but, but, but, but, but we don't
*DO* stuff like that over here."
As of this evening, it seems to be single guy who just flipped. Had
what sounds like a reasonably satisfying job fighting bio-businesses
in court (fairly successfully), a girlfirend and a very young child.
Decidedly not an militant of the raids-on-labs, threats against people
school. He'd been complaining about stress recently.
What I do hope is that, after the shock wears off, this doesn't
completely wreck the relaxed atmosphere that surrounds Dutch politics
and politicians. When Netanyahu came here on a state visit as PM of
Israel a few years ago, he brought a flock of security types with him.
They, of course, surrounded the Dutch PM's office in the parliament
buildings where the PM's would meet, and stopped some guy coming in
from the street heading to that office, and demanded to know who he
was and where he thought he was going, only to be told 'I work there,
I'm Wim Kok, prime minister of this country.' Ooops.
Till now, it was not at all unusual to cross the square all the
parliamentary offices and chambers are grouped round and encounter the
leader of a major polical party enjoying an ice cream cone, or having
a chat with a journalist, or to see a senior politician running to
catch a tram or muttering over a flat bicycle tire. Ministers get
chauffeur-diven cars, but don't all use them.
Dorothy J Heydt
Simon van Dongen <sg...@xs4all.nl> wrote:
>>
>My reaction was a sort of sputtering "but, but, but, but, but we don't
>*DO* stuff like that over here."
Mine was something like that. "What? In the Netherlands?
But they're civilized there!"
>Till now, it was not at all unusual to cross the square all the
>parliamentary offices and chambers are grouped round and encounter the
>leader of a major polical party enjoying an ice cream cone, or having
>a chat with a journalist, or to see a senior politician running to
>catch a tram or muttering over a flat bicycle tire. Ministers get
>chauffeur-diven cars, but don't all use them.
Someone upthread somewhere mentioned that most Dutch
politicians don't have bodyguards, but that Fortuyn did,
and I'm afraid my reaction was "Much good that did him."
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
Lawrence Watt-Evans
wrote:
>To digress for a moment, note the use of some of the radical religious
>right of the Catholic church molestation scandal. There's obviously some
>real issues here -- mostly, as far as I can tell, involving repeated and
>systemic coverups; I don't know of any reason to believe that priests are
>more or less likely to be molesters than others -- but note the glee that
>some of the religious right showing in seeing this as a matter of
>"homosexuals molesting boys."
Um... this is interesting selective reporting, I think. Many of the
molestation victims were girls; it depends which priest you're looking
at in the current rash of scandals.
--
The Misenchanted Page: http://www.sff.net/people/LWE/ Last update 4/15/02
My latest novel is THE DRAGON SOCIETY, published by Tor.
Pete McCutchen
wrote:
>Someone upthread somewhere mentioned that most Dutch
>politicians don't have bodyguards, but that Fortuyn did,
>and I'm afraid my reaction was "Much good that did him."
Actually, I think he had complained about not getting adequate
security.
--
Pete McCutchen
Michalak
> Michalak wrote:
> >
> > I will chime in with reluctant agreement, that Muslim immigrants could
> > be a threat to civil liberties if they have hard line views. However
> > I think they are no worse a threat than any other 'conservative'
> > religious group. For example Mormons, Catholics, or Baptists. I can
> > hear the cries now, "but hey, not all Baptists/Catholics/Mormons are
> > against gay rights". Exactly my point. There is an issue with Muslim
> > immigrants, but in my personal experience as an openly gay individual
> > the Muslims I have encountered are not more hostile as a group than
> > many other mainstream religions. I even have a good friend who is a
> > faithful Muslim. I don't try to push alcohol on him, he doesn't
> > comment about my boyfriends. We are in the same roleplaying group and
> > do other social things.
>
> Back when I lived in Houston (ca 1983-4), my friend Mike said that
> his lover, who was Iranian, would most likely have been quietly
> killed by his family if he hadn't come to the U.S. I didn't
> cross-examine him on the point.
That is a credible assertion from what I have heard. There would
definitely be social pressures to do something extreme to homosexual
offspring as there is also to daughters who have sex before marriage
(even if she was raped), and other practices we in the west find
repugnant (and for good reason I think!).
I'm just saying that Muslim immigrants as a group don't seem
particularly hostile to 'liberal' social policies and democracy.
After all, they did choose move here! And there is some amount of
'group think' that makes it acceptable and the right thing to kill
members of ones own family who have violated a religious taboo. It
seems from various sociological experiments that a majority of humans
will murder from by just being pressured to do it by an athority.[1]
So I think it quite possible that while some immigrants will hold fast
to the hard line, many in the new environment will moderate in their
actions and words to conform. I think that the Muslim immigration to
Europe is no more a threat to the European way of life than Mexican
immigration to the United States. I personally do not see them more
dangerous as a group than Catholics.
Comrade Director Michalak
[1] The famous experiments of Stanley Milgram where 60% of people were
apparently willing to break their own moral code and do something they
thought would seriously hurt probably even killing another person.
There have been numerous other experiments showing similar effects in
the conformity of human thought and action in a group.
David G. Bell
<859bef64.02050...@posting.google.com>
mich...@diac.com "Michalak" wrote:
> [1] The famous experiments of Stanley Milgram where 60% of people were
> apparently willing to break their own moral code and do something they
> thought would seriously hurt probably even killing another person.
> There have been numerous other experiments showing similar effects in
> the conformity of human thought and action in a group.
There's a piece in the new issue of Radio Times -- one of the other
famous experiments of this sort, about prisoners and guards, has been
re-done for TV. The claim is that the result was rather different, but
I wonder how much the conditions had been changed. The claim is that
it's good science and good TV. I'm a little sceptical about that claim,
and there could be a lot of arguments about the ethics: they'll do stuff
for TV which wouldn't get past an Ethics Committee.
Lee Ratner
> Joel Rosenberg <jo...@ellegon.com> wrote:
>
> > I don't know of any reason to believe that priests are
> > more or less likely to be molesters than others
>
> People who are forbidden from having any kind of sex life, and told over
> and over again that sex is bad and sinful and only admissible for
> producing kids, I'm not particularly surprised if their sexuality comes
> out warped.
I really do not understand why people criticize Christianity and
Islam for a puritanical view on sex but not Buddhism, Hinduism, and
Jainism, three religions that place much importance on celibacy. Some
people merely do not believe that sexual indulgence is healty or moral
and feel that there is a certain value to be place in virginity. This
does not make their opinions wrapped.
Tom Scudder
> Martin Wisse wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 7 May 2002 12:56:57 +0100, Omega <om...@menageri.org.uk> wrote:
> >
> >>In article <59117524.02050...@posting.google.com>, Lee Ratner
> >><czar...@aol.com> writes
> >>>
> >>> He was kind of famous because he was an open homosexual.
> >
> > Not really. He was famous because he was a pundit, a sort of Dutch
> > Andrew sullivan. I certainly didn't know he was gay until recently.
> >
>
> When did he come out, though, and how publicly? (Not knowing something
> about either politics or popular culture doesn't mean the thing in question
> isn't widely known. I only heard of Lisa "Left Eye" Lopez after her car
> crash the other day, for instance.)
His sexual orientation was mentioned fairly prominently in the
articles the Economist ran on him (first after his success in the
local elections in the Netherlands, then in a post-French-primary
survey of the new European right), as well as on the BBC in a similar
context. And it IS a distinctive feature for a right-wing politician
anywhere to be openly gay.
Lis Carey
<o13hdugcg4336jkgf...@4ax.com>:
He complained about not getting "enough" security in a country where
most politicians have either none, or very little. And, according to
what I was reading and hearing yesterday, he was blaming Wim Kok
personally for the threats he was getting, and rejecting the
possibility that his own rather extreme rhetoric could possibly have
provoked some of those threats.
Maybe some of those threats needed to be taken more seriously, and
maybe Fortuyn should have gotten more security. But even in the US,
with the vastly higher degree of security provided to the president,
it's as much luck as skill and professionalism on the part of the
Secret Service that neither Gerald Ford nor Ronald Reagan, to name the
two most obvious examples, were killed by the would-be assassins that
went after them.
Maybe Fortuyn's security should have been better--presumably that
question will be looked at seriously now. But even if it had been
better, the outcome might have been the same.
--
Lis Carey
Re-elect Gore in '04
Lis Carey
<Pq1C8.2438$Yi6....@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net>:
>On Tue, 07 May 2002 09:28:19 -0500, Joel Rosenberg
><jo...@ellegon.com> wrote:
>
>>To digress for a moment, note the use of some of the radical
>>religious right of the Catholic church molestation scandal.
>>There's obviously some real issues here -- mostly, as far as I can
>>tell, involving repeated and systemic coverups; I don't know of any
>>reason to believe that priests are more or less likely to be
>>molesters than others -- but note the glee that some of the
>>religious right showing in seeing this as a matter of "homosexuals
>>molesting boys."
>
>Um... this is interesting selective reporting, I think. Many of the
>molestation victims were girls; it depends which priest you're
>looking at in the current rash of scandals.
It's the boys' cases that seem to be getting close to 100% of the media
attention.
Leo Breebaart
tom...@spidernet.com.cy (Tom Scudder) writes:
> [Pim Fortuyn's] sexual orientation was mentioned fairly prominently in
> the articles the Economist ran on him (first after his success in the
> local elections in the Netherlands, then in a post-French-primary
> survey of the new European right), as well as on the BBC in a similar
> context. And it IS a distinctive feature for a right-wing politician
> anywhere to be openly gay.
Nevertheless, I think Martin's original point still stands (but is in
danger of getting snowed under): in the Netherlands, Fortuyn was famous
because he was a controversial and flamboyant
politician/demagogue/buffoon, not because he was openly gay.
I suppose it's impossible to make the point without sounding smug -- and
it *is* a generalisation that has exceptions -- but over here sexual
orientation of public figures really is much less of an issue than I
understand it to be in other countries (cf. Melissa Etheridge, Ellen
DeGeneres, George Michael), and it is a bit odd to see this one aspect
of Fortuyn's personality get singled out for so much attention,
especially when it leads to the "oh well, that probably explains the
murder, then" type of conclusion seen earlier in this thread.
(Tangent: for years there have been persistent rumours that one of the
Queen's sons is gay. Those reached such a level that it did eventually
lead to an official denial from the palace, but I dare say that if he
were to come out of the closet after all, the reaction of the vast
majority of the people here would be an amused or indifferent shrug.)
--
Leo Breebaart <l...@lspace.org>
A.C.
news:abb33u$j26$1...@news.tudelft.nl...
> (Tangent: for years there have been persistent rumours that one of the
> Queen's sons is gay. Those reached such a level that it did eventually
> lead to an official denial from the palace, but I dare say that if he
> were to come out of the closet after all, the reaction of the vast
> majority of the people here would be an amused or indifferent shrug.)
Hence the oft-used phrase, "He's not gay--he's just British."
--
nomadi...@hotmail.com | http://nomadic.simspace.net
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other
countries because you were born in it."-- George Bernard Shaw
Lis Carey
<Pq1C8.2438$Yi6....@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net>:
>On Tue, 07 May 2002 09:28:19 -0500, Joel Rosenberg
><jo...@ellegon.com> wrote:
>
>>To digress for a moment, note the use of some of the radical
>>religious right of the Catholic church molestation scandal.
>>There's obviously some real issues here -- mostly, as far as I can
>>tell, involving repeated and systemic coverups; I don't know of any
>>reason to believe that priests are more or less likely to be
>>molesters than others -- but note the glee that some of the
>>religious right showing in seeing this as a matter of "homosexuals
>>molesting boys."
>
>Um... this is interesting selective reporting, I think. Many of the
>molestation victims were girls; it depends which priest you're
>looking at in the current rash of scandals.
It's the boys' cases that seem to be getting close to 100% of the media
A.C.
news:4o5iduo62tsosbm24...@4ax.com...
> Leo, being Dutch, is talking about the Dutch royal family.
Oops, laziness on my part, assumed he meant the Brits.
Unfortunately I have no taunts to use against the Dutch.
Kip Williams
> [1] The famous experiments of Stanley Milgram where 60% of people were
> apparently willing to break their own moral code and do something they
> thought would seriously hurt probably even killing another person.
> There have been numerous other experiments showing similar effects in
> the conformity of human thought and action in a group.
I saw footage of the faux-electrical-shock experiment from the 60s,
on NBC, or perhaps one of its cable services. Kind of chilling. The
subject was uncomfortable, but he still wanted to follow orders.
Colette Reap
>"Leo Breebaart" <l...@lspace.org> wrote in message
>news:abb33u$j26$1...@news.tudelft.nl...
>> (Tangent: for years there have been persistent rumours that one of the
>> Queen's sons is gay. Those reached such a level that it did eventually
>> lead to an official denial from the palace, but I dare say that if he
>> were to come out of the closet after all, the reaction of the vast
>> majority of the people here would be an amused or indifferent shrug.)
>
>Hence the oft-used phrase, "He's not gay--he's just British."
Leo, being Dutch, is talking about the Dutch royal family.
(waves> Hi, Leo
--
Colette
* "2002: A Discworld Odyssey" * http://www.dwcon.org/ *
* August 16th-19th, 2002 * Email: in...@dwcon.org *
Vicki Rosenzweig
[fx: tongue in cheek] Well, I'll attempt to unwrap it anyway[/fx]
People are looking at the specific situation of a required-to-be-
celibate group that has been protecting group members who not only
are not celibate, but have been molesting children.
Some of us have noticed that sexual indulgence has, until very recent
times, been a necessity to the continued existence of the human species.
You're free not to believe it's healthy--you're also free not to believe
that regular bathing is healthy, but the facts don't support you.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig | v...@redbird.org
r.a.sf.f faq at http://www.redbird.org/rassef-faq.html
Jason Stokes
> I really do not understand why people criticize Christianity and
>Islam for a puritanical view on sex but not Buddhism, Hinduism, and
>Jainism, three religions that place much importance on celibacy.
Well I've actually heard a few things about the sexual abuse of children in
Buddhist monasteries. If we pay much more attention to the current child
abuse scandals in the Christian churches, that is surely because these are
closer to home, and the lid has been blown off the scandal here, not because
sexual abuse in other religions is less important.
I don't think there's any hypocrisy here. Those who think the institution
of celibacy is linked to problems of clergy sexual abuse are perfectly happy
to apply this to other ascetic religions like Buddhism.
Joel Rosenberg
And this is also one of the places where size does matter. The Catholic
Church is a big institution, with a visible presence in every major city in
the US, and most smaller cities and towns, as well; and the church has been
active and visible on both religious and cultural matters in the US for
rather more than a century. The Catholic Church is also heirarchical, far
more so than any other religious institution of significant size, and part
of the scandal here is how at least parts of the heirarchy have
systematically aided in the coverup.
David Dyer-Bennet
Well, epidemiologically speaking, this does not appear to be the
case.
And most of us in this group encounter more christians and even
muslims than we do hindus or buddhists. Furthermore most of the
buddhists are of the American varieties, which so far as I can tell
aren't heavily into celibacy.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, dd...@dd-b.net / Ghugle: the Fannish Ghod of Queries
John Dyer-Bennet 1915-2002 Memorial Site http://john.dyer-bennet.net
Book log: http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/Ouroboros/booknotes/
Photos: http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/
Per C. Jorgensen
news:phgfdukos88a4gl7n...@4ax.com...
> His position, so far as I can tell, was that unassimilated Muslim
> immigrants threaten Western values. European values of tolerance for
> religious and sexual diversity, for example. That is, well, almost
> self-evidently true. Europe's gays and lesbians probably wouldn't
> fare particularly well under Sharia law.
When PC was a big news issue I did hear a lot of savoury stories
about people actually falling for the "Only White Heterosexual
Males of Nort European descent can do wrong, because they
are doing all the oppression" line, and then discovering that, oops,
the imam from Somalia or the Vietnamese Catholic
wasn't exactly thrilled when they told them about such a great lesbian
commune they lived in...
I also knew a woman my age who worked with immigration/
asylum issues and immigrant/minority support for several years,
and at one instance actually sighed: "you know, African men really
do make it hard to be pro-immigrant sometimes..."
> object to immigration by people of a darker hue for racist reasons,
> but Europe faces real issues with Muslim immigrants, particularly
> given its generous welfare states and lack of an assimilationist
> tradition. One of the reasons that politicians like La Pen have some
> appeal is that the political establishment wants to just pretend these
> issues don't exist.
True, but some people here don't want to tackle it because the waters do get
instantly muddied...
PCJ
Pete McCutchen
>> His position, so far as I can tell, was that unassimilated Muslim
>> immigrants threaten Western values. European values of tolerance for
>> religious and sexual diversity, for example. That is, well, almost
>> self-evidently true.
>
>I will chime in with reluctant agreement, that Muslim immigrants could
>be a threat to civil liberties if they have hard line views. However
>I think they are no worse a threat than any other 'conservative'
>religious group. For example Mormons, Catholics, or Baptists. I can
>hear the cries now, "but hey, not all Baptists/Catholics/Mormons are
>against gay rights". Exactly my point. There is an issue with Muslim
>immigrants, but in my personal experience as an openly gay individual
>the Muslims I have encountered are not more hostile as a group than
>many other mainstream religions.
Selection bias. You live in a country where many Muslims have either
come here because they're more-or-less alienated from the mainstream
of their own culture, or have become assimilated into this culture.
You cannot assume that the Muslims whom you have encountered are
representative of Muslims as a whole.
The ugly fact is that the concepts of tolerance and religious
pluralism are distinctly Western concepts, concepts that are not yet
accepted by the majority of the world's Muslims. Compare, for
example, the reaction to the film _The Last Temptation of Christ_ and
the reaction to _The Satanic Verses_.
Some religious Christians considered _The Last Temptation of Christ_
to be blasphemous and insulting to Christianity. A few called for a
boycott of the film, and some demonstrated. Other Christians objected
to those who objected to the movie, and there was some controversy.
Yet not even Pat Robertson called for the assassination of Marten
Scorsese or Nikos Kazantzakis. The film was shown in the US, and both
the film and book are available on Amazon.com.
Some Muslims believed _The Satanic Verses_ was blasphemous. The
Ayatollah Khomeni "sentenced" Rushdie to death. Far from considering
this to be an outrage, many Muslims supported this. Translators of
the book were attacked, and one was murdered. Many British Muslims
actually objected to the government's decision to give Rushdie
protection. There's a real difference here, both in terms of the
level of intolerance and the willingness to spill over into actual
violence.
Let me hasten to add that Christianity has a history of brutality and
repression. Many Christians still wish to impose their religious
beliefs on others. However, in the West, most Christians have
accepted the notion of religious tolerance and pluralism. Yes, in the
US, there are fundamentalists, and they make up a significant,
politically powerful minority. What's lost, however, is that by
Muslim standards, US fundamentalists are mainstream.
In the US, there are also a few fringe nutcases, known as "Christian
Reconstructionists" who want to reconstruct civil society as a
theocracy. They're a lunatic fringe movement, rejected even by most
fundamentalists. But they are basically the Christian equivalent of
Wahabbi Muslims, who control whole countries, and who are now using
oil money to spread their version of Islam around the world,
attempting to supplant more tolerant strains of the faith.
Assimilated Muslims who accept religious tolerance and who go to the
Mosque every now and then are no more or less threatening than
followers of any other faith. But the unassimilated Muslim immigrants
who subsist on the generosity of European welfare states and who live
in what are basically the equivalent of American ghettos are indeed a
danger. Both to Europe and to the United States. European
politicians do themselves no favors when they ignore the issue or cede
the issue to racist idiots.
--
Pete McCutchen
Pete McCutchen
>I'm just saying that Muslim immigrants as a group don't seem
>particularly hostile to 'liberal' social policies and democracy.
>After all, they did choose move here! And there is some amount of
>'group think' that makes it acceptable and the right thing to kill
>members of ones own family who have violated a religious taboo. It
>seems from various sociological experiments that a majority of humans
>will murder from by just being pressured to do it by an athority.[1]
>So I think it quite possible that while some immigrants will hold fast
>to the hard line, many in the new environment will moderate in their
>actions and words to conform. I think that the Muslim immigration to
>Europe is no more a threat to the European way of life than Mexican
>immigration to the United States. I personally do not see them more
>dangerous as a group than Catholics.
Two differences. First, the US is better at assimilating immigrants
than most European countries, with the possible exception of Britain.
It's a trick we've basically mastered, and we do it still, despite the
efforts of "multiculturalists" to sabotage the idea of assimilation.
Second, Catholicism itself helped lay the foundation for the
Enlightenment, the scientific method, and even the separation of
church and state. Aquinas made room within Catholic theology for
human reason, and its products. There was no Muslim Aquinas,
unfortunately.
--
Pete McCutchen
Lawrence Watt-Evans
wrote:
>lawr...@earthlink.net (Lawrence Watt-Evans) wrote in
><Pq1C8.2438$Yi6....@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net>:
>
>>Um... this is interesting selective reporting, I think. Many of the
>>molestation victims were girls; it depends which priest you're
>>looking at in the current rash of scandals.
>
>It's the boys' cases that seem to be getting close to 100% of the media
>attention.
I find this depressingly unsurprising.
Martin Wisse
wrote:
>(Tangent: for years there have been persistent rumours that one of the
>Queen's sons is gay. Those reached such a level that it did eventually
>lead to an official denial from the palace, but I dare say that if he
>were to come out of the closet after all, the reaction of the vast
>majority of the people here would be an amused or indifferent shrug.)
And the reason that was even an issue had miore to do with succession
then with anything else...
Martin Wisse
--
The Dutch aren't an advanced form of life. But if I've got to be tied
naked, covered in $100 bills and dropped in the middle of a city, I'd
rather it be Amsterdam than New York.
-William Davis, rasfw
Martin Wisse
wrote:
>Martin Wisse wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 7 May 2002 12:56:57 +0100, Omega <om...@menageri.org.uk> wrote:
>>
>>>In article <59117524.02050...@posting.google.com>, Lee Ratner
>>><czar...@aol.com> writes
>>>>
>>>> He was kind of famous because he was an open homosexual.
>>
>> Not really. He was famous because he was a pundit, a sort of Dutch
>> Andrew sullivan. I certainly didn't know he was gay until recently.
>>
>
>When did he come out, though, and how publicly? (Not knowing something
>about either politics or popular culture doesn't mean the thing in question
>isn't widely known. I only heard of Lisa "Left Eye" Lopez after her car
>crash the other day, for instance.)
The thing is, he never "came out"... He was always out of the closet,
ever since his student days. He was gay, people knew he was gay and it
never came up, unless it had some real revelance to a discussion.
It's just not an issue here, the sexuality and sex life of our
politicians. You know a minister is gay only if he and his partner both
showed up at an official function and the newspaper saw fit to mention
them both.
What he built his fame on, were his columns for Elsevier magazine, in
which he often attacked the government from a neoliberal or libertarian
point of view, his books and later his appearances in various tv
programmes on commercial television.
Martin Wisse
--
British SF is full of rain and cooked cabbage, is gloomy, introspective and
obsessed with the underclass. Pratchett, who is half of the industry
all by himself, writes this sort of stuff all the time, not at all like that
cheerful and shiny left-pondian cyberpunk stuff. --Julian Flood, rasseff
Martin Wisse
("David G. Bell") wrote:
>On 7 May, in article
> <859bef64.02050...@posting.google.com>
> mich...@diac.com "Michalak" wrote:
>
>> [1] The famous experiments of Stanley Milgram where 60% of people were
>> apparently willing to break their own moral code and do something they
>> thought would seriously hurt probably even killing another person.
>> There have been numerous other experiments showing similar effects in
>> the conformity of human thought and action in a group.
>
>There's a piece in the new issue of Radio Times -- one of the other
>famous experiments of this sort, about prisoners and guards, has been
>re-done for TV. The claim is that the result was rather different, but
>I wonder how much the conditions had been changed. The claim is that
>it's good science and good TV. I'm a little sceptical about that claim,
>and there could be a lot of arguments about the ethics: they'll do stuff
>for TV which wouldn't get past an Ethics Committee.
I couldn't believe the BBC had actually pulled this stunt. Wasn't this
onme of the experiments famous for having to be stopped midway through,
because the subjects got so involved in their roles they actually
believed they were guards or prisoners?
Martin Wisse
--
[How to kill and humiliate the Draka]
"Oh, Lord. The Draka vs. Ally McBeal. I think we have a winner..."
John Schilling, rasfw
Michael J. Lowrey
> I also knew a woman my age who worked with immigration/
> asylum issues and immigrant/minority support for several years,
> and at one instance actually sighed: "you know, African men really
> do make it hard to be pro-immigrant sometimes..."
It's mostly African-American women who tell me that.
--
Michael J. Lowrey
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
I'm not critising Christianity. And I happen to have a remarkable
respect for parts of the Catholic Church. I'm observing that we have on
the one side a body of people indoctrinated on the sinfulness of sex and
supposed to keep celibate for the duration of their natural life, and on
the other side, a lot of, well, let's say undesirable sexuality in that
same body. Might there be a connection?
I'm not telling you the principles are wrong: I'm opining that
repressing a very natural and terribly potent instinct like that is
difficult and could lead to undesirable outcomes. Dams might be
perfectly all right things, but not if they are managed so that ten
percent of them overflow, break down, and generally kill a lot of people
downstreams.
Of course, one might question the necessity of the dam itself but that's
a completely _different_ problem.
--
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
http://www.fantascienza.net/sfpeople/elethiomel
Martin Wisse
<p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>Two differences. First, the US is better at assimilating immigrants
>than most European countries, with the possible exception of Britain.
>It's a trick we've basically mastered, and we do it still, despite the
>efforts of "multiculturalists" to sabotage the idea of assimilation.
I doubt this assertion, actually. It's the accepted myth in the US, but
is it really true? Would a nation that prides itself on being a melting
pot need to discuss whether or not a Jewish vice president is a good
thing? (Remember the discussion about Lieberman in the 2000 election?)
Martin Wisse
--
By 2000 we were supposed to have computers bright enough to argue
with us, but that doesn't mean the way Word does it.
-Jo Walton-
Randolph Fritz
>
> The ugly fact is that the concepts of tolerance and religious
> pluralism are distinctly Western concepts, concepts that are not yet
> accepted by the majority of the world's Muslims.
>
At times they have been; there was a time when the Dar-al-Islam was
the most civilized and tolerant domain on earth (which does not make
it either of those things by modern standards.)
The Islam that is so powerful in the Middle East is called Wahhabi
Islam. To understand our current problems, it is perhaps helpful to
imagine that, say, a large amount oil was discovered in lands owned
by, say, extreme members of the Assembly of God, and that these people
were well-funded for a century or two. (Any resemblance to Texas is,
um, well, er... I didn't intend it when I started out.)
I perfer to believe that a moderate Islam is possible; the alternative
is Usama bin Laden's genocidal holy war.
Randolph
Irina Rempt
> It's just not an issue here, the sexuality and sex life of our
> politicians. You know a minister is gay only if he and his partner
> both showed up at an official function and the newspaper saw fit to
> mention them both.
A friend of mine, a reporter for a local paper, once called the (female)
mayor of Haarlem on the phone late at night and got the (also female)
mayor of Nijmegen instead. When one died, the other was explicitly
treated as her widow.
Irina
--
Vesta veran, terna puran, farenin. http://www.valdyas.org/irina
Beginnen can ick, volherden wil ick, volbringhen sal ick.
Martin Wisse
<feo...@clothes.antipope.org> wrote:
>On Tue, 07 May 2002 18:42:55 GMT, Martin Wisse
><mwi...@ad-astra.demon.nl> wrote:
>
>> the Netherlands and he stated that he would like to do away with Article
>> 1 of the constitution, which forbids discrimination and is at the heart
>> of our democracy.
>
>I get the impression that he supported freedom of speech, and that he felt
>that there was a part of the Dutch constitution which guaranteed that, and
>bits of Dutch law which meant you could be done for "hate speech". He felt
>thet he should be free to insult Muslims, and that they should be free to
>insult pooves.
That was the spin, yes... but Article 1 has nothing to do with that. It
doesn't lay any restriction on free speech at all.
>His supporters are apparently not so subtle.
>
>On the whole, I get the impression that he was about as right wing as
>Margaret Thatcher (which is far-right but not admitting it), and that his
>working class support would be utterly screwed if he had achieved power.
Oh yes. He was further to the right then the current government was on
economic policies, on privatisation and such.
Martin Wisse
--
I suspect that you are insufficiently acquainted with the folks who
make good living as consultants. They're almost clueless enough to
cause me to question my faith in free markets.
-Pete McCutchen, rasseff
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> It's just not an issue here, the sexuality and sex life of our
> politicians. You know a minister is gay only if he and his partner both
> showed up at an official function and the newspaper saw fit to mention
> them both.
>
> What he built his fame on, were his columns for Elsevier magazine, in
> which he often attacked the government from a neoliberal or libertarian
> point of view, his books and later his appearances in various tv
> programmes on commercial television.
He wants to be buried close to my home area, Friuli. Now I already feel
suspicious about people who get enthusiastic about my area of origin,
because I'm, basically, not much. But what I'm finding sort of evilly
amusing (one should no be amused by such things, I know) is that Friuli
is solidly in the hands of Bossi's people, the same that are so dead set
against gays, who thunder about the horror and unspeakable unaturalness
of letting gays adopt children (which is impossibile in Italy), and had
billboard printed with ash-blond kids and the slogan "Poofters! No
Thanks! Italy needs babies!" and that go on at length on how evil
Europe is foistering this conspiracy to pollute our gene pool and sap
our genetic stregth by sneaking gays rights law on us.
Omega
Hlavaty <hla...@panix.com> writes
>On Tue, 7 May 2002 12:56:57 +0100, Omega <om...@menageri.org.uk>
>wrote:
>
>>In article <59117524.02050...@posting.google.com>, Lee Ratner
>><czar...@aol.com> writes
>>>
>>> He was kind of famous because he was an open homosexual.
>>
>>overkill and it certainly looks like far more force was used than needed
>>just to kill the man.
>
>Why does homosexuality make it likelier that sex was involved? I've
>always liked Neil Belsky's theory that the guy on the Grassy Knoll was
>Joe DiMaggio.
>
Because of the weapon. I may have my figures wrong but women are far
less likely to use a firearm. I also wondered about the sex side after
I'd read about his orientation , up until then I figured it to be
political again because of the sex of the killer. I may well be wrong
here but AFAIK there are not that many female political assassins in
history. If the killer had been a woman then I would have figured sex
before politics again because of the degree of overkill but I would have
been slightly more surprised about the method. I would have expected
something a little more personal than a gun. This may all be skewed due
to the lack of easily available firearms in Britain of course (unless
you happen to know the right man down the pub of course...).
--
Omega
Omega
<db...@zhochaka.demon.co.uk> writes
>On 7 May, in article
> <859bef64.02050...@posting.google.com>
> mich...@diac.com "Michalak" wrote:
>
>> [1] The famous experiments of Stanley Milgram where 60% of people were
>> apparently willing to break their own moral code and do something they
>> thought would seriously hurt probably even killing another person.
>> There have been numerous other experiments showing similar effects in
>> the conformity of human thought and action in a group.
>
>There's a piece in the new issue of Radio Times -- one of the other
>famous experiments of this sort, about prisoners and guards, has been
>re-done for TV. The claim is that the result was rather different, but
>I wonder how much the conditions had been changed. The claim is that
>it's good science and good TV. I'm a little sceptical about that claim,
>and there could be a lot of arguments about the ethics: they'll do stuff
>for TV which wouldn't get past an Ethics Committee.
>
came out different was they were a lot more aware of how it could go
wrong and they pulled the plug a lot faster than last time.
I'd check the archive on the site but unfortunately I can't read Harry's
writing in our password notebook so I can't get in to it.
--
Omega
Omega
<sg...@xs4all.nl> writes
snip
>
>As of this evening, it seems to be single guy who just flipped. Had
>what sounds like a reasonably satisfying job fighting bio-businesses
>in court (fairly successfully), a girlfirend and a very young child.
>Decidedly not an militant of the raids-on-labs, threats against people
>school. He'd been complaining about stress recently.
>
That puts a new light on things. I didn't know anything about the mans
background before this. It's going to be interesting to hear his
defence when this comes to trial.
--
Omega
Martin Wisse
wrote:
>On or about Tue, 07 May 2002 18:42:55 GMT, Martin Wisse wrote:
>
>>On Tue, 07 May 2002 14:15:32 GMT, Pete McCutchen
>><p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>
>>>On Tue, 07 May 2002 02:17:52 GMT, js...@bluedog.apana.org.au (Jason
>>>Stokes) wrote:
>>>
>>>>Alive, he was just another right-wing Europollie (and not one I'd heard of
>>>>before.) Dead, he's a martyr to the cause and proof of the left's inquity.
>>>>Assassinations always make things a /lot/ worse.
>>>
>>>If you'd never heard of him before, then how do you know that he's
>>>"just another right-wing Europollie"?
>>
>>Because he is?
>>
>>>I'd read about him for the first time a couple of weeks before he was
>>>assassinated. So far as I can tell, he wasn't "just another
>>>right-wing Europollie." For one thing, he's an openly gay sociology
>>>professor, not the sort you'd typically associate with neo-fascism.
>>
>>He wasn't a fascist, he was a racist populist demagouge.
>>
>Whether he was a racist himself is debatable. But his public
>pronouncements did have the effect of legitimising racist public
>sentiments.
He was either racist, or very irrational on the subject of Muslims.
>>>His position, so far as I can tell, was that unassimilated Muslim
>>>immigrants threaten Western values. European values of tolerance for
>>>religious and sexual diversity, for example. That is, well, almost
>>>self-evidently true. Europe's gays and lesbians probably wouldn't
>>>fare particularly well under Sharia law. Sure, many racists may
>>>object to immigration by people of a darker hue for racist reasons,
>>>but Europe faces real issues with Muslim immigrants, particularly
>>>given its generous welfare states and lack of an assimilationist
>>>tradition. One of the reasons that politicians like La Pen have some
>>>appeal is that the political establishment wants to just pretend these
>>>issues don't exist.
>>
>>He went further then that. He talked about Islam as a "backward
>>culture", he stated that if it was up to him no more muslims would enter
>>the Netherlands and he stated that he would like to do away with Article
>>1 of the constitution, which forbids discrimination and is at the heart
>>of our democracy.
>>
>He said some very stupid things. What he clearly meant to attack was
>not the principle of equal rights regardless of creed, colour or sex
>(or sexual preference), which is what Art 1 is about. He was making a
>point about freedom of speech, and saying that if Art 1 limited
>freedom of speech (which it doesn't), we ought to change it.
You could say that as a (very stupid) mistake, or a slip of the tongue.
It's a silly mistake to make for somebody who had the ambition to become
minister president. I at least took it to be a slip of the mask, a small
insight in his real views.
>Rather typical of his grandiose, simplistic rhetoric in the Ross Perot
>'just get under the hood and fix it' style: fix the health service by
>getting rid of all those useless managers, split huge schools back
>into much smaller units, and so on.
>Many fairly laudable aims, but a distinct disinclination to spend any
>time worrying about how we get there from where we are now. Of course,
>if more conventional politicians point out how many schools there are
>now, and how many new buildings we'd need, and what that would cost,
>and asked politely how we're going to pay for those new buildings,
>they were being boring and obstructive and 'old politics'.
And not even all that original points. The original Leefbaar Nederland
program was largely cribbed from other parties and the Lijst Fortuyn
program was about the same.
The SP has an analysis still up of his views on their website:
<http://www.sp.nl>, in Dutch of course.
>>He used the language of the "respectable" extreme right, couching his
>>views in seemingly moderate language but underneath there's the same
>>message as that of more crude rightwingers: strangers are not wanted
>>here.
>
>However, it *is* a bit of a problem that the (fairly small) crude and
>really neofascist right has polluted the discussion to such an extent
>that all sorts of non-crude and certainly not racist opinions are
>interpreted as code even when they're not intended to be.
Perhaps, but I do think that most of those opinions are either code or
attempts to take the wind out of the sails of the extreme right.
Martin Wisse
--
I took the points most people spend on common sense and spent it on
body and luck.
-James Nicoll
Martin Wisse
<p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>On Wed, 8 May 2002 02:03:17 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt)
>wrote:
>
>>Someone upthread somewhere mentioned that most Dutch
>>politicians don't have bodyguards, but that Fortuyn did,
>>and I'm afraid my reaction was "Much good that did him."
>
>Actually, I think he had complained about not getting adequate
>security.
He couldn't afford around the clock bodyguards, and he couldn't get
police protection.
Martin Wisse
--
Oh, sure. We're a thriving commercial republic. What do you expect?
<...>
Civilization.
Pete McCutchen and Jo Walton, RASSEFF, talking about the US
Joel Rosenberg
Okay, but I'm not at all sure that the analogy holds. After all, a huge
proportion of molesters are either married or in other apparently stable
heterosexual relationships. What made Mary Kay LeTourneau unusual is that
she was a woman, but she otherwise fit the profile.
>
> Of course, one might question the necessity of the dam itself but that's
> a completely _different_ problem.
>
Sure. On the other hand, it's not unreasonable to consider that somebody
who is a predatory pedophile (I'm trying to make a distinction between
somebody who is attracted to children and somebody who chooses to try to
have sex with children) might well choose a profession where there is
frequent intimate contact (and I mean that in a nonjudgmental way -- there
are obvious sorts of non-sexually-intimate relationships between adults and
children that are unexceptionable) with children, and then decide what to
do about that.
Organizations like the Boy Scouts have been rather diligent in dealing with
accusations of abuse (their stupid notion of only permitting closeted gays
to serve as Scout Leaders is another matter), and there's no reason that
the Catholic Church can't, issues of celibacy aside.
(And, has been pointed out, there are married Catholic priests -- married
Episcopal priests who want to become Catholic priests aren't required to
divorce or separate, although I presume that should they become widowers,
they wouldn't be allowed to remarry.)
Mark Atwood
>
> It's the boys' cases that seem to be getting close to 100% of the media
> attention.
Never trust anything you read in the newspapers or see on TV. When
they get things right, its more by accident than by profession.
--
Mark Atwood | Well done is better than well said.
m...@pobox.com |
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
Joel Rosenberg
> On Wed, 08 May 2002 04:52:25 GMT, Pete McCutchen
> <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 8 May 2002 02:03:17 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt)
>>wrote:
>>
>>>Someone upthread somewhere mentioned that most Dutch
>>>politicians don't have bodyguards, but that Fortuyn did,
>>>and I'm afraid my reaction was "Much good that did him."
>>
>>Actually, I think he had complained about not getting adequate
>>security.
>
> He couldn't afford around the clock bodyguards, and he couldn't get
> police protection.
>
> Martin Wisse
And even if he had, the chances of a reasonably-sized bodyguard contingent
being able to protect a politician who goes out in public a lot from a
determined assassin are pretty minimal. The POTUS doesn't mix with the
public a lot -- although he does some, sure -- and then only in very
carefully controlled circumstances, with a huge security apparatus, and
there's been at least four incidents during my lifetime where somebody's
been able to get in a position to shoot the President, and at least three
of the four would-be killers weren't very smart about it.
Lawrence Watt-Evans
Dal Dan) wrote:
> But what I'm finding sort of evilly
>amusing (one should no be amused by such things, I know) is that Friuli
>is solidly in the hands of Bossi's people, the same that are so dead set
>against gays, who thunder about the horror and unspeakable unaturalness
>of letting gays adopt children (which is impossibile in Italy), and had
>billboard printed with ash-blond kids and the slogan "Poofters! No
>Thanks! Italy needs babies!" and that go on at length on how evil
>Europe is foistering this conspiracy to pollute our gene pool and sap
>our genetic stregth by sneaking gays rights law on us.
What I find fascinating in this post...
Well, there are two things. First, "Italy needs babies!" I know that
in fact there's something of a demographic crisis in Europe (and to a
lesser extent here, and a greater extent Japan) pending, with the
existing population breeding below replacement level, but I grew up
with the horrors of the Population Explosion being drummed into me,
and it's kind of weird to see that reversing.
Second, your reference to "Europe," rather than "the rest of Europe,"
has me rethinking how Europeans see themselves and the EU.
Lawrence Watt-Evans
<oran...@uwm.edu> wrote:
>"Per C. Jorgensen" wrote:
>> I also knew a woman my age who worked with immigration/
>> asylum issues and immigrant/minority support for several years,
>> and at one instance actually sighed: "you know, African men really
>> do make it hard to be pro-immigrant sometimes..."
>
>It's mostly African-American women who tell me that.
I've heard it from a white woman, myself -- one who worked at the U.S.
embassy in London and who came to almost loathe West African men who
wanted to get visas.
Bernard Peek
<p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> writes
>On 7 May 2002 11:30:59 -0700, mich...@diac.com (Michalak) wrote:
>
>>> His position, so far as I can tell, was that unassimilated Muslim
>>> immigrants threaten Western values. European values of tolerance for
>>> religious and sexual diversity, for example. That is, well, almost
>>> self-evidently true.
>>
>>I will chime in with reluctant agreement, that Muslim immigrants could
>>be a threat to civil liberties if they have hard line views. However
>>I think they are no worse a threat than any other 'conservative'
>>religious group. For example Mormons, Catholics, or Baptists. I can
>>hear the cries now, "but hey, not all Baptists/Catholics/Mormons are
>>against gay rights". Exactly my point. There is an issue with Muslim
>>immigrants, but in my personal experience as an openly gay individual
>>the Muslims I have encountered are not more hostile as a group than
>>many other mainstream religions.
>
>Selection bias. You live in a country where many Muslims have either
>come here because they're more-or-less alienated from the mainstream
>of their own culture, or have become assimilated into this culture.
>You cannot assume that the Muslims whom you have encountered are
>representative of Muslims as a whole.
>
>The ugly fact is that the concepts of tolerance and religious
>pluralism are distinctly Western concepts, concepts that are not yet
>accepted by the majority of the world's Muslims. Compare, for
>example, the reaction to the film _The Last Temptation of Christ_ and
>the reaction to _The Satanic Verses_.
The concept of religious pluralism was inherited from Muslim Spain.
There are certainly intolerant Muslim countries, I don't know enough to
be able to say whether they are in the majority.
[...]
>Some Muslims believed _The Satanic Verses_ was blasphemous. The
>Ayatollah Khomeni "sentenced" Rushdie to death. Far from considering
>this to be an outrage, many Muslims supported this.
And many didn't.
[...]
>Let me hasten to add that Christianity has a history of brutality and
>repression. Many Christians still wish to impose their religious
>beliefs on others. However, in the West, most Christians have
>accepted the notion of religious tolerance and pluralism.
I know that many of those that self-identify as Christians accept other
religions. I'll believe that the US as a whole accepts it when the law
is changed to permit "bigamous" Muslim and Mormon marriages.
--
Bernard Peek
b...@shrdlu.com
In search of cognoscenti
Joel Rosenberg
> On Wed, 08 May 2002 19:36:24 GMT, Pete McCutchen
> <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Two differences. First, the US is better at assimilating immigrants
>>than most European countries, with the possible exception of Britain.
>>It's a trick we've basically mastered, and we do it still, despite the
>>efforts of "multiculturalists" to sabotage the idea of assimilation.
>
> I doubt this assertion, actually. It's the accepted myth in the US, but
> is it really true? Would a nation that prides itself on being a melting
> pot need to discuss whether or not a Jewish vice president is a good
> thing? (Remember the discussion about Lieberman in the 2000 election?)
>
>
> Martin Wisse
Well, perhaps "mastered" is an overstatement, but it's not much of one,
particularly by comparison with elsewhere. We've had huge waves of
immigration, over the past century or so, and while I think "assimilation"
is an overstatement, most members of most groups have, by the second
generation or so, largely adopted the core values and behaviors of the
general culture, usually with adding elements of their former one.
Joel Rosenberg
That latter, most likely, would have to be done over the strong objections
of the Mormons.
David T. Bilek
>Anna Feruglio Dal Dan wrote:
>
>> I'm not telling you the principles are wrong: I'm opining that
>> repressing a very natural and terribly potent instinct like that is
>> difficult and could lead to undesirable outcomes. Dams might be
>> perfectly all right things, but not if they are managed so that ten
>> percent of them overflow, break down, and generally kill a lot of people
>> downstreams.
>
>Okay, but I'm not at all sure that the analogy holds. After all, a huge
>proportion of molesters are either married or in other apparently stable
>heterosexual relationships. What made Mary Kay LeTourneau unusual is that
>she was a woman, but she otherwise fit the profile.
>
Wasn't the kid in the LeTourneau case 15 at the time? I'm not sure
statutory rape with a willing and active teenager is what most people
would consider "child molestation".
It's still wrong, but not comparable to a serial molester abusing 7
and 8 year olds. One is a psychological illness, the other can be
simply an enormous lapse in judgment. Though in her case she had a
kid, kept seeing him after being caught, etc, so we're probably
veering into illness territory.
Many but not all of the priest cases also involve teen-agers which.
Of course you also get sickos like Gaughin. Did nobody stop and
think maybe an active member of NAMBLA wasn't the best guy to be
ministering to kids?
-David
Dorothy J Heydt
Lawrence Watt-Evans <lawr...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>On Wed, 08 May 2002 15:19:53 -0500, "Michael J. Lowrey"
><oran...@uwm.edu> wrote:
>
>>"Per C. Jorgensen" wrote:
>>> I also knew a woman my age who worked with immigration/
>>> asylum issues and immigrant/minority support for several years,
>>> and at one instance actually sighed: "you know, African men really
>>> do make it hard to be pro-immigrant sometimes..."
>>
>>It's mostly African-American women who tell me that.
>
>I've heard it from a white woman, myself -- one who worked at the U.S.
>embassy in London and who came to almost loathe West African men who
>wanted to get visas.
When I was working at UC Berkeley, the unit manager told
me of the time an African student (don't know if West
African or whatever) had written a paper whose English
usage, let's say, was not of the best. So the
chairman asked one of the typists to recast it into
better prose. This made the paper acceptable but
infuriated the student. He came raging into the
chairman's office. "A WOOman has rewritten my paper!"
he shrieked. "A WOOOOman!!!"
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
David T. Bilek
>On Wed, 08 May 2002 19:36:24 GMT, Pete McCutchen
><p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Two differences. First, the US is better at assimilating immigrants
>>than most European countries, with the possible exception of Britain.
>>It's a trick we've basically mastered, and we do it still, despite the
>>efforts of "multiculturalists" to sabotage the idea of assimilation.
>
>I doubt this assertion, actually. It's the accepted myth in the US, but
>is it really true? Would a nation that prides itself on being a melting
>pot need to discuss whether or not a Jewish vice president is a good
>thing? (Remember the discussion about Lieberman in the 2000 election?)
>
Lieberman's religion was not an issue in the election, period.
Really. Think France will be electing any Jews to their higest office
these days?
-David
Joel Rosenberg
> lisc...@attbi.com (Lis Carey) writes:
>>
>> It's the boys' cases that seem to be getting close to 100% of the media
>> attention.
>
> Never trust anything you read in the newspapers or see on TV. When
> they get things right, its more by accident than by profession.
>
Oh, I suspect that the facts in most major newspapers are right the great
majority of the time. It's that small minority that are dead wrong that
trips them up, issues of editing out relevant facts aside, in the interests
of either length or agenda. (Agenda may or may not be political -- a good
narrative is a large part of the agenda of many reporters, and omissions
and occasional out-and-out bad reporting can lead to what may be a good
story, even if it isn't accurate reporting.)
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Well, there are two things. First, "Italy needs babies!" I know that
> in fact there's something of a demographic crisis in Europe (and to a
> lesser extent here, and a greater extent Japan) pending, with the
> existing population breeding below replacement level, but I grew up
> with the horrors of the Population Explosion being drummed into me,
> and it's kind of weird to see that reversing.
Italy has had a serious demographic decrease for decades. We've got
negative growth and have had for some time. The fact that it's nigh on
impossible for a woman to go on working and have a baby _and_ the fact
that most young people don't earn enough on one salary to live passably,
_may_ have something to do it it.
We're held stable - and our pension fund can go on - by the influx of
immigration. Which is still a lot less than in the rest of Europe.
> Second, your reference to "Europe," rather than "the rest of Europe,"
> has me rethinking how Europeans see themselves and the EU.
_Some_ Europeans. I was quoting Bossi. These people have only about 4%
of the votes. They're all-out loonies. They dictate our national policy
because we don't, alas, have anybody with the moral fiber of Chirac on
our right. (Boy, do I wish that was irony!)
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Okay, but I'm not at all sure that the analogy holds. After all, a huge
> proportion of molesters are either married or in other apparently stable
> heterosexual relationships. What made Mary Kay LeTourneau unusual is that
> she was a woman, but she otherwise fit the profile.
Yes, but it does seem that the Catholic Church has a problem with
peadophily. We don't know how serious it is because they're basically
refusing to look at it. Self-selection? Possibly. I do think - because
I've had frequent dealings with them at a formative age - that the
Catholic Church does not encourage a clear and frank self-examination
(just the fostering of guilt trips) and tends to be morbid about
sexuality. _All_ of my friends, when first coming to confession, have
been closely questioned about masturbation. So have I - only I was so
dense about it that I never could see where the priest was trying to
lead. I was nine at the time. This wasn't, understand, a peadophile
priest - it was just that despite all the lofty things they told me
about sin, when it came down to it sex was _the_ concern.
> > Of course, one might question the necessity of the dam itself but that's
> > a completely _different_ problem.
> >
>
> Sure. On the other hand, it's not unreasonable to consider that somebody
> who is a predatory pedophile (I'm trying to make a distinction between
> somebody who is attracted to children and somebody who chooses to try to
> have sex with children) might well choose a profession where there is
> frequent intimate contact (and I mean that in a nonjudgmental way -- there
> are obvious sorts of non-sexually-intimate relationships between adults and
> children that are unexceptionable) with children, and then decide what to
> do about that.
Oh, sure. All that harping on what you mustn't think about, no, no way,
you don't have to think about sex, ever, did we mention that sex is bad?
You must not think about it... You must ask yourself every morning and
every night if you thought about it, and confess and make a penance...
all of this can't be helping, can it?
The Catholic Church has lots of good things going for it, but I still
think their attitude towards sex is terrible, and also a lot
counterproductive for their ends. I also think their doctrine makes no
sense on this issue, but that is, as I said, a different issue.
Joel Rosenberg
> Joel Rosenberg <jo...@ellegon.com> wrote:
>
>>Anna Feruglio Dal Dan wrote:
>>
>>> I'm not telling you the principles are wrong: I'm opining that
>>> repressing a very natural and terribly potent instinct like that is
>>> difficult and could lead to undesirable outcomes. Dams might be
>>> perfectly all right things, but not if they are managed so that ten
>>> percent of them overflow, break down, and generally kill a lot of people
>>> downstreams.
>>
>>Okay, but I'm not at all sure that the analogy holds. After all, a huge
>>proportion of molesters are either married or in other apparently stable
>>heterosexual relationships. What made Mary Kay LeTourneau unusual is that
>>she was a woman, but she otherwise fit the profile.
>>
>
> Wasn't the kid in the LeTourneau case 15 at the time? I'm not sure
> statutory rape with a willing and active teenager is what most people
> would consider "child molestation".
I didn't follow the case closely, but I believe he was twelve when they
started having sex.
>
> It's still wrong, but not comparable to a serial molester abusing 7
> and 8 year olds. One is a psychological illness, the other can be
> simply an enormous lapse in judgment.
I think there's all sorts of gray areas, sure. And the law, often in
practice, ignores them, leaving the good sense of prosecutors, judges and
juries to work that out, as they sometimes do. (There was a jury
nullification, fairly recently, in the case of a senior citizen who
mistakenly brought his briefcase, gun inside, through airport security. By
letter of the law, he was clearly guilty, but the jury simply said
otherwise, having been apprised of what he'd be sentenced to -- something
like ten years.)
(As I may have mentioned before, back when I was a kid, there was a
theoretical legal situation under CT law in which the same two people could
have sex three days in a row, and have it be a felony for only one of them,
and only on the second day.)
Though in her case she had a
> kid, kept seeing him after being caught, etc, so we're probably
> veering into illness territory.
Oh, she clearly had some sort of obsession, and judging from the risks she
took in scratching it, she was, at the least, wackily void of basic
instincts of self-preservation.
Then again, she had, in a sense, gotten away with it after her first
conviction. I don't imagine that a male teacher, having had an "affair"
with a twelve-year-old girl, would have been given probation.
>
> Many but not all of the priest cases also involve teen-agers which.
> Of course you also get sickos like Gaughin. Did nobody stop and
> think maybe an active member of NAMBLA wasn't the best guy to be
> ministering to kids?
>
> -David
Well, if somebody thought about it, whoever that somebody was didn't do
much of anything useful about that thought.
Ken MacLeod
<p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> writes
[Catholicism and Islam]
>
>Second, Catholicism itself helped lay the foundation for the
>Enlightenment, the scientific method, and even the separation of
>church and state.
Only in a very limited sense. It would be more true to say that the
struggle against Catholicism, and the struggles between the different
denominations of Protestantism, laid the foundation for all these
things.
> Aquinas made room within Catholic theology for
>human reason, and its products. There was no Muslim Aquinas,
>unfortunately.
>
Averroes.
Christ, man, refreshing my memory with a glance at the entries for
Averroes and Aquinas in Encarta 97 was all it took.
--
Ken MacLeod
Lawrence Watt-Evans
Dal Dan) wrote:
>Lawrence Watt-Evans <lawr...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> Well, there are two things. First, "Italy needs babies!" I know that
>> in fact there's something of a demographic crisis in Europe (and to a
>> lesser extent here, and a greater extent Japan) pending, with the
>> existing population breeding below replacement level, but I grew up
>> with the horrors of the Population Explosion being drummed into me,
>> and it's kind of weird to see that reversing.
>
>Italy has had a serious demographic decrease for decades. We've got
>negative growth and have had for some time.
I know this in an intellectual sense -- though I haven't known it for
anywhere near as long as it's been happening. It just hadn't really
registered what it _meant_.
> The fact that it's nigh on
>impossible for a woman to go on working and have a baby _and_ the fact
>that most young people don't earn enough on one salary to live passably,
>_may_ have something to do with it.
That's been cutting the birthrate here, too, of course.
>We're held stable - and our pension fund can go on - by the influx of
>immigration. Which is still a lot less than in the rest of Europe.
Is it? I've read a good bit about Italy being the gateway to Europe
for a lot of immigration from North Africa, and immigrants sleeping in
Italian parks and the like. Is there a serious mismatch between
theory and reality here somewhere? I mean, is Italy failing to
acknowledge and deal with its immigrants?
>> Second, your reference to "Europe," rather than "the rest of Europe,"
>> has me rethinking how Europeans see themselves and the EU.
>
>_Some_ Europeans. I was quoting Bossi. These people have only about 4%
>of the votes. They're all-out loonies. They dictate our national policy
>because we don't, alas, have anybody with the moral fiber of Chirac on
>our right. (Boy, do I wish that was irony!)
Yeah, but until I read your post it hadn't occurred to me that it was
_possible_ for _anyone_ to distinguish between "Italy" and "Europe" in
quite that fashion.
Joshua Hesse
:And many didn't.
Except for the Sheik profiled on Nightline a few months back,
the silence has been deafening.
Back to what started this thread:
It now looks like the gunman is an animal rights looney:
>According to press reports, Van der Graaf is a vegan animal rights
>activist who fights against fur and factory farming. He may have
>taken issue with Fortuyn's plans to lift an incoming ban on fur
>farming in the Netherlands.
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020508/1/2p6qd.html
--
"I have also mastered pomposity, even if I do say so myself." -Kryten
"You scream at them at the top of your lungs and then hit them over the head
with an immense wooden mallet? You're weird, sir." -Dave Brown on girls.
Mark Atwood
>
> Then again, she had, in a sense, gotten away with it after her first
> conviction. I don't imagine that a male teacher, having had an "affair"
> with a twelve-year-old girl, would have been given probation.
On one of the fathersrights websites, they are gearing up to gun for a
(female) judge, who in one county that has had something like *3*
"female teachers have sex with early teen male students" in the last
decade, has in all the cases let the adult off with probation,
specifically saying "a woman having sex with a boy is not the same as
a man having sex with a girl".
I'll try to find the link...
David T. Bilek
>Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
>>
>>The ugly fact is that the concepts of tolerance and religious
>>pluralism are distinctly Western concepts, concepts that are not yet
>>accepted by the majority of the world's Muslims. Compare, for
>>example, the reaction to the film _The Last Temptation of Christ_ and
>>the reaction to _The Satanic Verses_.
>
>The concept of religious pluralism was inherited from Muslim Spain.
>There are certainly intolerant Muslim countries, I don't know enough to
>be able to say whether they are in the majority.
>
Well, what are one or two of the tolerant Muslim countries?
-David
Dorothy J Heydt
David T. Bilek <dbi...@attbi.com> wrote:
>
>Well, what are one or two of the tolerant Muslim countries?
<wild guess> Egypt? </wild guess>
Trinker
Pete McCutchen wrote:
[...]
> The ugly fact is that the concepts of tolerance and religious
> pluralism are distinctly Western concepts, concepts that are not yet
> accepted by the majority of the world's Muslims. Compare, for
> example, the reaction to the film _The Last Temptation of Christ_ and
> the reaction to _The Satanic Verses_.
I think you're overstating when you say "distinctly Western".
Just for the record.
[...]
> There's a real difference here, both in terms of the
> level of intolerance and the willingness to spill over into actual
> violence.
So. What do you think of the extremist fringe of Christian
anti-abortion activism?
[...]
> Assimilated Muslims who accept religious tolerance and who go to the
> Mosque every now and then are no more or less threatening than
> followers of any other faith. But the unassimilated Muslim immigrants
> who subsist on the generosity of European welfare states and who live
> in what are basically the equivalent of American ghettos are indeed a
> danger. Both to Europe and to the United States. European
> politicians do themselves no favors when they ignore the issue or cede
> the issue to racist idiots.
As far as the idea that Europe's issues with Muslim immigrants
don't match the U.S.'s issues, I have no disagreement.
--Trinker
David T. Bilek
>Joel Rosenberg <jo...@ellegon.com> writes:
>>
>> Then again, she had, in a sense, gotten away with it after her first
>> conviction. I don't imagine that a male teacher, having had an "affair"
>> with a twelve-year-old girl, would have been given probation.
>
>On one of the fathersrights websites, they are gearing up to gun for a
>(female) judge, who in one county that has had something like *3*
>"female teachers have sex with early teen male students" in the last
>decade, has in all the cases let the adult off with probation,
>specifically saying "a woman having sex with a boy is not the same as
>a man having sex with a girl".
>
You know, I probably shouldn't say this, but my first thought when I
hear these things is to wonder where all these teachers were when *I*
was 16.
-David
Pete McCutchen
Wisse) wrote:
>On Wed, 08 May 2002 19:36:24 GMT, Pete McCutchen
><p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Two differences. First, the US is better at assimilating immigrants
>>than most European countries, with the possible exception of Britain.
>>It's a trick we've basically mastered, and we do it still, despite the
>>efforts of "multiculturalists" to sabotage the idea of assimilation.
>
>I doubt this assertion, actually. It's the accepted myth in the US, but
>is it really true? Would a nation that prides itself on being a melting
>pot need to discuss whether or not a Jewish vice president is a good
>thing? (Remember the discussion about Lieberman in the 2000 election?)
Um, no. I don't remember this discussion. I suppose some twits from
_The New York Times_ might have made some stupid noises about how
"brave" Gore was being, but, truth be told, it wasn't brave because
_nobody cared_. Lieberman's serious religiosity was a plus for him;
the fact that he's Jewish didn't harm him at all. Really, I doubt if
it cost Gore/Lieberman a statistically significant number of votes.
--
Pete McCutchen
Trinker
Martin Wisse wrote:
>
> On Wed, 08 May 2002 19:36:24 GMT, Pete McCutchen
> <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> >Two differences. First, the US is better at assimilating immigrants
> >than most European countries, with the possible exception of Britain.
> >It's a trick we've basically mastered, and we do it still, despite the
> >efforts of "multiculturalists" to sabotage the idea of assimilation.
>
> I doubt this assertion, actually. It's the accepted myth in the US, but
> is it really true? Would a nation that prides itself on being a melting
> pot need to discuss whether or not a Jewish vice president is a good
> thing? (Remember the discussion about Lieberman in the 2000 election?)
I would contend that Pete's vaunted "better at assimilating immigrants"
only extends to light skinned folk with European origins, but he'll
probably tar me with that "multiculturalist" brush.
--Trinker
Michael J. Lowrey
Same here, except I would have said 13, not 16. I remember
very clearly what my fantasies were like at that age...
--
Orange Mike
Joel Rosenberg
Yeah, I had that thought, too. If Betsy Bosson had hit on me -- not a
terribly likely prospect, other than in my dreams -- I suspect that she
would have been able to get away with a lot of felonies. Gorgeous, bright,
good listener, intelligent -- and, yes, she was probably was an ancient
twenty-three or so at the time I was sixteen, but she did carry her years
very well.
That said, sixteen isn't twelve.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Is it? I've read a good bit about Italy being the gateway to Europe
> for a lot of immigration from North Africa, and immigrants sleeping in
> Italian parks and the like. Is there a serious mismatch between
> theory and reality here somewhere? I mean, is Italy failing to
> acknowledge and deal with its immigrants?
Well, Italy has a lot of coast, and lots of people _enter_ Europe
through Italy. Few stay. We're not exactely the treasure box of Europe.
Besides, even if before the current lot of crooks, fascists and loonies
came into power we didn't have the kind of laws that basically consider
immigrants as cattle, we didn't have any guarantees either. Italy still
doesn't have a law on political asylum, frex. It's not a matter of bad
will as much as indifference. Anyway, people tried hard to reach Germany
or France or Sweden or the UK as soon as possible.
There _is_ a serious mismatch between the perceived presence of
immigrants and their actual number, if compared to the percentage in
other European nations: it is _vastly_ overstimated. People have the
clear and urgent perception that there's a deluge of delinquent
house-robbing raping foreigners. (They also have a perception of crime
rate going sharply up, while it's actually taken a slow but steady dip).
There's a problem now with small industry in the North-East clamoring to
have more immigrants because it needs workers, and the League clamoring
over the pollution of our bodily flui... err, well, sort of. It's
complicated and ugly. But, in short, for the time being, yes, we have
nothing like the amount of immigration Germany has, not to mention
France or the UK. I don't have the figures handy right now, though I
guess they can be found.
David Dyer-Bennet
> I'd check the archive on the site but unfortunately I can't read
> Harry's writing in our password notebook so I can't get in to it.
If you're running windows, look at
http://www.counterpane.com/passsafe.html
--
David Dyer-Bennet, dd...@dd-b.net / Ghugle: the Fannish Ghod of Queries
John Dyer-Bennet 1915-2002 Memorial Site http://john.dyer-bennet.net
Book log: http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/Ouroboros/booknotes/
Photos: http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/
David T. Bilek
Sure, me too, but as I said I think that regular ol' healthy people
can fuck up and fall for a 16 year old. 13 is really pushing it.
-David
Trinker
I heard a bit of muttering about Lieberman's religion and
religiosity, and witnessed more than a few people saying that
they wouldn't vote for him because of it.
--Trinker
Beth Friedman
<k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk>,
<sqaXFDA5...@libertaria.demon.co.uk>, wrote:
>In article <22oidugsdavcvkv7t...@4ax.com>, Pete McCutchen
><p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> writes
>
>> Aquinas made room within Catholic theology for
>>human reason, and its products. There was no Muslim Aquinas,
>>unfortunately.
>
>Averroes.
>
>Christ, man, refreshing my memory with a glance at the entries for
>Averroes and Aquinas in Encarta 97 was all it took.
I'm not sure that counts, though -- my understanding his that he had a
considerable influence on Christian and Jewish philosophy, but very
little on Muslim philosophy.
--
Beth Friedman
b...@wavefront.com
Joyce Reynolds-Ward
wrote:
snip
>Wasn't the kid in the LeTourneau case 15 at the time? I'm not sure
>statutory rape with a willing and active teenager is what most people
>would consider "child molestation".
No. He was in the 6th grade, 12-13 years old.
That is *way* different from a 15 year old (I have one of those in the
house now and can tell you the differences firsthand). 6th graders
are still closer to 7/8 year olds in some respects than teens.
There's a *lot* of maturity and changing which goes on between 12 and
15.
jrw
Joyce Reynolds-Ward
Dal Dan) wrote:
snip
>Yes, but it does seem that the Catholic Church has a problem with
>peadophily.
It's not just the Catholic Church; the problem exists in other
denominations. Two reasons why the Catholic Church is the focus on
it--first of all, the stupidity of the coverup (although, dear God,
Father Andrew Greeley's been writing fiction about it for years and
explicitly saying that it's going on folks, do something ABOUT IT. It
shouldn't be news to anyone, reeally...but the coverup has done it).
Secondly, it's been grabbed onto by activists within the Church to
promote various agendas--all the way from the anti-gay contingent to
those who would like to do away with the celebacy requirement, to
those who'd like to allow married priests and women.
jrw