Arabian Knights

I was lucky enough to be given Siouxsie and the Banshees' Juju for Christmas.  While I still prefer A Kiss in the Dreamhouse, Juju is nonetheless an amazing album.

Here is some trivia about what is (as of now) my favorite song on the album, "Arabian Knights."

According to Siouxsie Sioux, the song's melodies were inspired by The Doors.  And the lyrics are indeed about the plight of Muslim women: "It's nothing to do with a 'feminist' thing, it's like a humane thing. Like how the Muslim women cope, I don't know.  The way women are treated in some religions, if it was a race being treated like that and not a sex, there would be uproar about it. I still haven't overcome being a girl yet, as far as other people see me, and that's very important. I think it's happened a bit, but not enough" (15/8/81).

Some of the more stirring lyrics: the haunting refrain, "I heard a rumor / It was just a rumor / I heard a rumor / What have you done to her?"  One commenter thinks this is a suggestion of female circumcision. While there is no explicit reference to clitorectomy, this interpretation certainly fits, as there is obviously some violence being done to the woman, although it is not clear what.

The last verse is simply magnificent: 

"Veiled behind screens / Kept as your baby machine / Whilst you conquer more orifices / Of boys, goats and things / Ripped out sheeps eyes-no forks or knives."

The meaning couldn't be clearer: the woman is secluded at home and covered in veils, her role reduced to reproduction, whilst the man goes out and fucks boys and goats.

The comments page linked above criticizes Siouxsie for her "primitive" view of Arab culture and her "massive racial stereotyping." Based on my personal experiences with Arab and Muslim culture, though, Siouxsie isn't too far off the mark.

FISA Amendments Act

Well, at least no one can accuse California Senator Dianne Feinstein of being inconsistent.  It's not just your Second Amendment rights she's after; Feinstein wants to gut the Fourth Amendment, too.

After an "unusual special session," Congress voted to reauthorize the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which "allows for the federal government to spy on U.S. citizens without a warrant, without probable cause, and without even informing the allegedly relevant oversight bodies in Congress as to the number of Americans being spied on." Read more from Reason.

Feinstein urged her colleagues to vote down proposed amendments (by Senators Rand Paul and Ron Wyden) that would have strengthened constitutional protections.  In Feinstein's opinion, the government would never abuse its FISA power (no, of course not), and desperately needs to continue surveillance operations in the aftermath of 9/11…eleven years ago.

Slowly but surely, we are moving closer and closer toward becoming the police state that Feinstein wants America to become.  As long as liberals keep electing goons like Feinstein and Schumer, the gradual erosion of our constitutional liberties will continue unabated into the future.

"Bloomberg, LaPierre, and the Void"

In what is perhaps the most sensible op-ed I've read in The New York Times in ages, Ross Douthat had the nerve to criticize mainstream American liberals.

Using Mayor Bloomberg as a figurehead for "the self-consciously centrist liberalism of the Acela Corridor elite," Douthat emphasizes Bloomberg's provincialism, and "his bedrock assumption is that the liberal paternalism with which New York is governed can and should be a model for the nation as a whole."

Appropriately, Douthat suggests that popular liberal proposals, such as a renewed "assault weapons ban" and crackdowns on "illegal handguns," would come with a tremendous cost.  In order to ensure effective enforcement, criminalizing harmless behavior (such as the mere possession of a weapon) requires the infringement of other Constitutional rights (in addition to the Second Amendment).  Further, at a time when our nation's prisons are full of non-violent offenders, weapons bans will ultimately place even more non-violent people behind bars, destroying communities in the process.  As Douthat writes, "cracking down hard on illegal handguns, for instance, would probably involve “stop and frisk” on a huge scale, and might throw more young men in prison at a time when our incarceration rates are already too high."  Liberals, however, seem completely ignorant of this practical reality, and instead advocate increased criminalization of firearms without realizing that proper enforcement would necessitate an expansion of law enforcement practices that they find to be objectionable.

Douthat's summary of contemporary American liberalism is spot on. "The establishment view is interventionist, corporatist and culturally liberal," he writes. "It thinks that issues like health care and climate change and immigration are best worked out through comprehensive bills drawn up by enlightened officials working hand in glove with business interests. It regards sexual liberty as sacrosanct, and other liberties — from the freedoms of churches to the rights of gun owners — as negotiable at best. It thinks that the elite should pay slightly higher taxes, and everyone else should give up guns, SUVs and Big Gulps and live more like, well, Manhattanites. It allows the president an entirely free hand overseas, and takes the Bush-Obama continuities in foreign policy for granted."

On foreign policy, today's liberals are the direct descendants of the liberal imperialists who spurred America's involvement in Vietnam.  The New York Times takes for granted that the United States should exert its military presence throughout the world, and only bothers to criticize the abuses of imperialist excess when a Republican occupies the White House.  Domestically, liberals favor civilian disarmament, secularism, political correctness, and excessive government regulation of all human behavior save what goes on the bedroom.  Ultimately, their faith in the power of the State to correct social problems is unwaverable (provided, of course, that the Democrats are in power).

What is perhaps most frustrating, however, is how liberals are incapable of accepting the fact that they might be wrong about something.  They know that they are right and that their views should prevail over those of others because they are smarter than everyone else (having attended the best schools and the best universities).

Living in NYC, most of the people I interact with are die-hard liberals who follow the opinions of The New York Times and The Huffington Post to the letter.  When they encounter someone (like me) who possesses different views, their reactions feature a combination of disbelief (how could anyone not agree with me?) and anger.  They are remarkably quick to turn to insults because they are not used to conversing with people who are not liberals--as Charles Murray shows in Coming Apart, they spend their lives in carefully guarded enclaves surrounded by other members of the liberal elite.  For them, I am insane for believing in the right to keep and bear arms, paranoid for not trusting my government, and anti-American for opposing U.S. imperialism.

As Radley Balko tweeted in a reaction to Douthat's piece, "I wonder if the angry commenters responding to Douthat's NYT column today realize that they're only proving his point."

In the posts that at least advanced some sort of argument, commenters parroted many of the anti-gun left's favorite cliches, arguing that no one "needs" an "assault weapon," that there is no reason for them "unless you are planning a massacre," and that any notion of resisting the almighty government through armed resistance is futile.  Joel Frielander from Huntington Station, NY bemoans "the tiny little brains of many of the gun owners," who mistakenly believe that "if you take one gun away from them you are taking away all of their weapons."  In her own column, Fellow Op-Ed contributor Maureen Dowd follows many liberals in misinterpreting the Second Amendment as applying only to hunters: "Hunters can have their guns without leaving Americans so vulnerable to being hunted by demented souls with assault rifles that can fire 45 rounds per minute."

Of course, the Second Amendment is not about hunting, but about self-defense and defending the nation from tyranny and foreign invaders.  Urban liberals who are not gun owners would of course fail to realize that, in a rural setting where the police are far away and the territory is much larger than a suburban lot, an AR-15 with a 30-round magazine would be a much better self-defense weapon than a handgun.  In that case, their provincialism can be forgiven.  But their defeatism in suggesting that an armed populace would be powerless to resist domestic tyranny never ceases to shock me.

Unfortunately, liberals will never understand that the government is not infallible, and that a massive, armed guerilla uprising could bring the government to its knees.  Although they see America as a force of good in the world, they nonetheless assume that the government would unleash the full force of the U.S. military on its own population (thereby destroying the very society and infrastructure that it wishes to govern over), and that all members of the military and law enforcement would just go on following orders in the face of armed resistance.  The right to own semi-automatic rifles with thirty-round magazines is at the very core of the Second Amendment, in that a well-armed populace ups the ante for the government and makes it think twice before oppressing a disfavored minority or the population as a whole.

King Cuomo Hates the Constitution

Andrew Cuomo hates guns. Well, not really. He hates YOUR guns. His security detail and police force can keep their guns, but he wants to take yours, and stop you from buying guns he doesn't want you to have.

 

According to the Daily News and Syracuse.com, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is trying to capitalize on the Newtown massacre by further eroding the gun rights of law-abiding New Yorkers.

Cuomo's proposals include reducing the magazine capacity limit from the current ten rounds to seven rounds.  This would effectively ban semi-automatic handguns in New York State, as very few (aside from 1911s, the Sig P220, and several compact pistols) accept seven-round magazines.  While manufacturers do make ten-round magazines to comply with the laws of New York and other anti-gun states, it is very unlikely that they will make seven-round magazines just to sell to New Yorkers.

(Of course, criminals will continue to use standard-capacity magazines that hold 15 rounds and more, because, well, they're criminals and they don't follow the law.)

Cuomo's proposal means that such treasured pieces of American history as the M1 Garand and the Winchester 1892 lever-action rifle will be illegal in New York State, since both hold eight rounds.

It's not surprising that Cuomo, an authoritarian populist, would want to keep the Garand from New Yorkers, since it was used to defeat the Germans in WWII. I'm not sure what he has against 19th-century cowboys, though.

In addition, Cuomo is proposing to make the new ban retroactive, and to confiscate guns from law-abiding New Yorkers. I'm not sure exactly how he would go about confiscating these weapons, since upstate New York (unlike New York City) does not require registration of rifles.  Perhaps he will just have his Storm Troopers go door-to-door and search every home in the state?

Come to think of it, there might be some resemblance between Cuomo and der Führer.

He's certainly got that sinister look down pat.

And here he is giving a very Hitler-esque salut:

In addition to guns, Cuomo seems to hate law-abiding New Yorkers.  But he loves criminals. In fact, Cuomo has gone on record saying that he wants to close state prisons and send the perps to Harvard. 

You can't make these things up. They say we get the leaders we deserve, but I have no idea what I could have done to deserve having this asshole as my governor.

Liberal Academics Hate Guns: DeBrabander

I swear, if I hear one more whiny, wimpy liberal whisper in a solemn voice that "we need to have a conversation about guns," I'm going to puke.

The gun prohibitionists have been preparing for this since their disappointment at the reaction to Aurora.  They carefully organized in advance in anticipation of the next mass murder in order to sway American public opinion against gun owners.  This is the equivalent of their Tet Offensive.

Well, what a surprise: liberal academics are capitalizing on the Newtown tragedy to advance their arguments against civilian gun ownership.

Wasting no time to capitalize on the massacre, Firmin DeBrabander published an opinion piece in Saturday's New York Times. DeBrabander is Chair of Humanistic Studies (what?) at the Maryland Institute College of Art (where?), where he teaches such helpful courses as Capitalism and its Critics, Modern Political Theory, and History of Psychoanalysis. Nice idea having a European Marxist tell Americans why they should surrender their guns, huh?

In his essay, DeBrabander argues that "an armed society. . .is the opposite of a civil society," taking a stance against the oft-repeated mantra that "An armed society is a polite society." "As ever more people are armed in public," DeBrabander writes, "even brandishing weapons on the street - this is no longer recognizable as a civil society. Freedom is vanished at that point."

Perhaps DeBrabander would do well to step outside the Ivory Tower (and the state of Maryland) to places like New Hampshire, Vermont, or Pennsylvania.  In these Northeastern "Blue States," law-abiding citizens have the right to bear arms in public, and often do.  That's a big part of their freedom.  You see, in those states (as in Colorado, Nevada, Washington, and a few other places), the government does not seek to oppress its citizens by imposing its own view of what is proper and acceptable.  People have the freedom to live and love as they choose, and the public carrying of guns in no way detracts from that; rather, it allows them to protect their freedoms should threats arrive in the public sphere. 

DeBrabander completely misinterprets what the saying "an armed society is a polite society" actually means.  For DeBrabander, "the suggestion is that guns liberally interspersed throughout society would cause us all to walk gingerly - not make any sudden, unexpected moves - and watch what we say, how we act, whom we might offend."  This is completely inaccurate.  All "an armed society is a polite society" means is that people will be more respectful of one another in public if they suspect that the other person might be armed.  This does not mean that free speech will be curtailed, or that no one would want to risk offending the political or religious views of another for fear of being shot.  Instead, it means that anti-social behavior would be kept in check.

When you suspect that the other person might be armed, you are less likely to try to rob, threaten, assault, or sexually harass her in public.  Firearms in public do not lead to a proliferation of "Wild West" shootouts; if they did, we would expect to see such occurrences on a daily basis all over the U.S., where most states allow citizens to bear arms in public.

But DeBrabander does not acknowledge this because, in all likelihood, he has never met a law-abiding gun owner.  Like many gun prohibitionists, DeBrabander consistently demonstrates his lack of familiarity with law-abiding gun owners, and instead engages in a fantastic rendering of what anti-gun liberals imagine gun owners to be like. For him, "guns by their nature. . .don't mix with taking offense. They are combustible ingredients in assembly and speech."  Again, how many incidents have their been in places like Washington, Colorado, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere--states whose populations hail from a variety of religious, ethnic, and racial backgrounds, and where the people possess widely divergent views on such controversial issues as abortion and gay marriage?  Contrary to what DeBrabander imagines in his fantasy world, in the real world, law-abiding gun owners do not whip out their weapons and start shooting when confronted with debate or argument.

As a collectivist, DeBrabander also imagines gun owners to be "extreme individualists" : "Private gun ownership invites retreat into extreme individualism. . .and nourishes the illusion that I can be my own police, or military, as the case may be."  Obviously, DeBrabander has never been to a target range or shooting club, but instead imagines millions of lonely isolationists shooting at targets in the woods.  Target shooting and hunting are fundamentally SOCIAL activities that bring together people from all different backgrounds to share in a mutual pastime.  But, like most gun prohibitionists, DeBrabander is so terrified of guns that he can't even conceive that they could be used in a non-violent, social manner.

As a counter-example to the violent, anti-social individualism of gun owners, DeBrabander points to the "power of the Occupy Wall Street movement, as well as the Arab Spring protests," which "stemmed precisely from their non-violent nature."  If the Occupy Wall Street movement had any power or accomplished anything whatsoever, I'm unaware of it.  As for the Arab Spring protests, how's that working for you now? Now that Islamist regimes have proliferated in the region, further increasing its instability.  Those uprisings only occurred because the military was ready for a regime change in Egypt and Tunisia.  In Libya and Syria, the military chose to remain loyal to the dictator, making armed rebellion the only viable option.

DeBrabander goes on to make some contradictory statements regarding government power.  With regards to the Occupy Movement, he writes that the power of free speech "was made evident by the ferocity of government response to the Occupy movement. Occupy protestors across the country were increasingly confronted by police in military style garb and affect."  While I share DeBrabander's uneasiness with paramilitary police forces, the militarization of law enforcement seems to me an even stronger argument in favor of an armed populace.  The dispersal and disappearance of the Occupy movement under the threat of force also seems to demonstrate the WEAKNESS of protest when not supported by the threat of violence: the government gives you free speech to say whatever you want because it knows that YOUR WORDS DO NOT MATTER and are powerless to change the status quo.

Continuing with his fantastic musings, DeBrabander goes on to imagine what would have happened if the Occupy protesters had been armed: "Imagine what this would have looked like had the protestors been armed: in the face of the New York Police Department assault on Zuccotti Park, there might have been armed insurrection in the streets."  Or, perhaps, the NYPD would have simply let them stay there and continue their peaceful protest.  For DeBrabander, "the non-violent nature of protest in this country ensures that it can occur." In reality, the absence of the mere possibility of violence ensures that the forces in power will be able to quash protests whenever they decide the time has come, so that protests will remain pointless exercises rather than mechanisms for meaningful change.

At the same time that he criticizes the militarization of law enforcement, however, DeBrabander thoroughly rejects the notion "that guns provide the ultimate insurance of our freedom, in so far as they are the final deterrent against encroaching centralized government, and an executive branch run amok with power."  Instead, in DeBrabander's view, "it goes without saying that individually armed citizens are no match for government force."  It's tough to respond to such a conclusory statement, but world history seems to show that armed populations succeed in resisting tyranny, while unarmed populations have no choice but to succumb to state terror.

However, in DeBrabander's fantasyland, armed citizens remain as isolated individualists, and would never band together to resist oppression.  Which is why he reiterates that "guns undermine…community. Their pervasive, open presence would sow apprehension, suspicion, mistrust and fear, all emotions that are corrosive of community and civic cooperation. To that extent, then, guns give license to autocratic government." Why DeBrabander uses the conditional tense here is beyond me, as guns are already pervasively present in many states, with little effect on community or civic cooperation. Of course, in reality, the open presence of guns makes DeBrabander apprehensive, suspicious, mistrustful, and fearful, which is why he doesn't want anyone to have guns.  Individual gun owners do not feel these things, WHICH IS WHY WE GET TOGETHER WITH OTHER GUN OWNERS AND GO SHOOTING. Nothing says "trust" so much as standing next to someone who is shooting a "high caliber weapon."

(For the record, DeBrabander further shows his ignorance when he says that "high caliber weapons" were the "weapon of choice" in Newtown, apparently unaware that the .223 Remington is on the lower end as far as calibers go.)

An armed populace forms the bedrock of our freedom as Americans.  It is the final assurance that our government will not turn against us; our guns are our last line of defense against tyranny.  As a community, American gun owners know this: we are trustful of each other, but distrustful of our government, for the precise reason that the tendency of government is toward despotism.

The New Assault Weapons Ban

The usual suspects have spoken again. Before the blood has had the chance to dry at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Senators Dick Durbin and Dianne Feinstein are going to propose an "Assault Weapons" Ban on the first day Congress reconvenes in January.

According to Feinstein, the bill will ban the sale, transfer, importation, and possession of whatever  she declares to be an "assault weapon." The proposed ban will function prospectively and not retroactively, so individuals who currently own such weapons will apparently not face government confiscation.  (So NOW is the time to stock up on ARs and AKs.) And the bill will also limit magazine capacity to ten rounds.

The Democrats should be ashamed of capitalizing on a tragedy to further their own anti-gun agenda. The facts aren't in yet on the Newtown massacre, but it seems that the killer took three guns from his mother--a 10mm Glock, a 9mm Sig, and a .223 Bushmaster--and used them in the shooting. No word yet on the magazine capacity of the rifle, either (although it probably wouldn't have made much of a difference given that he was shooting at unarmed children).

Sandy Hook is not about the particular weapons used. It's about an irresponsible mother who somehow allowed her mentally ill son to have access to her firearms.  She paid for it with her life, and dozens of innocents paid for it with their lives as well.  There is simply no law that can be enacted to prevent this sort of tragedy.  The government simply cannot protect us from everything, despite all we've been taught by our state-run schools and our liberal media. Tragedies will happen in a free society; lives will be lost as a result of all our civil liberties, and not just the right to keep and bear arms.  (Unfortunately, all the media attention to these killers virtually assures that another tragedy is already in the making.)  

Thankfully, this new "assault weapons" ban has zero percent chance of making it through Congress.  The Senate will pass it, but the Republican-controlled House most assuredly will not.  And any Blue Dog Democrat who sides with the party leadership can be assured of losing his or her seat in 2014.  Although the internet is ripe with anti-gun hysteria in the aftermath of Sandy Hook, it's safe to say that those calling for gun bans were not the ones voting for Republicans anyway.  (In fact, the majority of the internet anti-gunners probably live in liberal Democrat districts, with Representatives who would have supported the ban in any case, regardless of any mass-mailing campaigns.)  So it is very unlikely that any Republicans will be swayed to back the bill.

Senators Feinstein, Durbin, and others like them fail to recognize the need for semi-automatic rifles like the Bushmaster, or for magazines that hold more than ten rounds.  As urbanites, they fail to realize that, when you live in a rural environment, an AR-15 is a much more appropriate weapon than a handgun for defending yourself against attackers.  As privileged urbanites who have never had to live in a dangerous neighborhood, they fail to recognize that an AR-15 or similar weapon would be vital in the event of a riot.

More importantly, as collectivists and statists, liberals fail to realize that the population needs "military-style" rifles to keep the government's tyrannical impulses in check.  We're not asking for machine guns, tanks, surface-to-air missiles, or nuclear weapons: all we're asking for is our right to possess and use the same rifle that is standard issue for our infantrymen (minus the fully automatic option, of course).  That way, if a Hitler or a Pol Pot ever rises to power here, we citizens should at least be able to give his mercenaries hell long enough to turn the tide. (Guerilla warfare only works if the guerillas have access to the semi-automatic rifles used by their adversaries.)  You don't have to look too far back in American history to find a time when members of a disfavored ethnic, racial, or religious minority were persecuted, lynched, or herded into camps, either by the government or with its cooperation or tacit approval.  The right of the people to keep and bear arms makes it increasingly unlikely that such travesties will ever occur again.

We need our AR-15s and AK-47s to help keep you guys in check, Senators Durbin and Feinstein.  You will not take our Second Amendment rights from us.

In the Aftermath of Tragedy

Friday's mass killing of elementary school children and teachers was certainly tragic.  But the media-fueled frenzy to the incident brings to light some disturbing aspects of American culture.

Every time an incident happens that briefly cracks that façade of complacent consumerism under which we live, Americans enter into a moral panic of existential proportions.  The problem is that, for most Americans, the violence that our society depends upon is completely externalized: it occurs only in our gang-ridden ghettos or on the outer fringes of our Empire, and never within the cozy comfort of white suburbia.

Every time some middle-class psychopath engages on a mindless killing spree, we are suddenly reminded that something is rotten in the state of suburbia and that violence does exist within our midst.  But we remain blind as to how interwoven our everyday lives are with violence.

In the past year, President Obama's drones have killed upwards of 200 children in Pakistan alone.  Civilians, including children, continue to be slaughtered by American bombs in Afghanistan, their deaths as mindless and tragic as those in Newtown, Connecticut.  Thirty thousand children starve to death each day around the world, while Americans gorge themselves to the point of obesity.  Young women and children destroy their health working in factories and sweatshops throughout the developing world, so that we can purchase yet another cheap garment, yet another electronic gadget. Americans are even oblivious to the violence that takes place against animals in order to put meat on their dinner tables.

As Americans, we all have blood on our hands, at all times.  Yet we choose to remain blissfully ignorant of the costs of Empire, of the costs our lifestyle exerts on the rest of humanity.  Instead, we only care when it is our fellow American suburbanites who are murdered.  And then we turn our pathetic eyes to the government, and beg them to protect us from ourselves by further restricting our freedoms in the name of increased public safety.

America, imagine what it would be like to have a Sandy Hook massacre every single day.  Then maybe, just maybe, you could begin to sympathize with the people of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and elsewhere, and you might begin to understand for a moment why groups like Al-Qaeda can rely on a boundless army of recruits.

It's well past time to wake up.

Watch Out, Colorado & Washington!

Obama the drug warrior is on his way.  The Feds' best bet would be to use the DEA and federal law to go after low-level users. Massive waste of government resources, of course, but what else would you expect from our hypocritical, power-hungry despot of a President? Obama doesn't want anyone lighting up but him.  A pre-emption challenge just won't work in this case. 

Another option would be to cut off federal grants to CO & Washington, perhaps by getting Congress to pass a law tying law enforcement funds to marijuana illegality.  That worked with the drinking age.

Personally, I'm waiting for Obama to send in the predator drones.

Essam Attia

Artist Essam Attia was due in court on Dec. 3 after he was arrested and charged "with 56 counts of criminal possession of a forged instrument, grand larceny possession of stolen property and weapons possession after allegedly having an unloaded .22-caliber revolver under his bed at his Manhattan apartment when he was arrested early Wednesday" on November 28.  Read more: NY Daily News.

Back in September, Essam posted fake NYPD posters around the City to raise awareness about the surveillance state, drone assassinations, and the fact that both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are murderous imperialists who are determined to take away our civil liberties.

While Essam was expressing the truth, he should also have a First Amendment right to express himself.  The NYPD and the Manhattan D.A. obviously think otherwise.  That gun possession charge for the .22 just makes it even more obvious that the Bill of Rights simply does not apply in New York City.  Most likely, the police barged into his home at 6am with a no-knock warrant as well.

"Welcome to New York City.  Please surrender your First, Second, and Fourth Amendment rights upon arrival."