Monday, December 19, 2016

Rage, Anarchy

"This late twentieth-century Islam appeared to raise political issues. But it had the flaw of its origins - the flaw that ran right through Islamic history: to the political issues it raised it offered no political or practical solution. It offered only the faith. It offered only the Prophet, who would settle everything - but who had ceased to exist. This political Islam was rage, anarchy." - from 'Among the Believers' by V. S. Naipaul [1981]

Sunday, November 27, 2016

Bad Manners?

"Besides being accused of blasphemy, I have been accused of bad manners. But good manners should not be confused with free speech. Having good manners means that when I meet a closet Islamist like the Oxford professor Tariq Ramadan, I don't pour my glass of water on his head and call him names. Exercising free speech means that I can call his book, In the Footsteps of the Prophet, a badly written piece of proselytism and say that he doesn't deserve the title of professor or a university chair from which to propagate his program of medieval brainwashing. All this will no doubt offend Ramadan, but you cannot subject Karl Marx to scrutiny and give the Prophet Muhammad a free ride. Free speech is the bedrock of liberty and a free society. And yes, it includes the right to blaspheme and offend." - Ibid.

The Culture Wars Have Already Been Won

"Here is something I have learned the hard way, but which a lot of well-meaning people in the West have a hard time accepting: All human beings are equal, but all cultures and religions are not. A culture that celebrates femininity and considers women to be the masters of their own lives is better than a culture that mutilates girls' genitals and confines them behind walls and veils or flogs or stones them for falling in love. A culture that protects women's rights by law is better than a culture in which a man can lawfully have four wives at once and women are denied alimony and half their inheritance. A culture that appoints women to its supreme court is better than a culture that declares that the testimony of a woman is worth half that of a man. It is part of Muslim culture to oppress women and part of all tribal cultures to institutionalize patronage, nepotism, and corruption. The culture of the Western Enlightenment is better. - Ibid.

Islam: The Religion of Violence

"Islam is not just a belief; it is a way of life, a violent way of life. Islam is imbued with violence, and it encourages violence. Muslim children all over the world are taught the way I was: taught with violence, taught to perpetrate violence, taught to wish for violence against the infidel, the Jew, the American Satan." - Ibid

Enemy [#1] of Islam

"It is not only the prohibition against criticizing the Quran and the Prophet that closes the Muslim mind, and not only the life-long socialization of learning by rote. It is also the continuous construction of conspiracy theories about enemies of Islam who are determined to destroy the one, true religion. The chief enemy is the Jew. ..." - from 'Nomad' by Ayaan Hirsi Ali [2010]

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

'Mystery Gum' by Wanna Piece [Aberdeen, WA]

I only got my [Zamplebox] box today so haven't tried Mystery Gum yet, but for now the REAL mystery is how come 10 of the eleven e-juices in my box come from 7 e-juice companies all based in Aberdeen, WA? Only ONE - poor little 'Flying Monkey' by Possum Trot - is the "out-of-towner', that's from Olathe, KS.

Sunday, November 20, 2016

Sick Culture II

"Controlling women's sexuality and limiting men's access to sex with women are the central focus of the code of honor and shame. Muslim women are chattel, and every Muslim girl must be a virgin at marriage. Once wed [with or without her consent], she must be faithful to her husband, who, in traditional societies, she will never refer to by his first name but only has rajel, my lord. In case of divorce or widowhood, the job of monitoring her sexual activities is assumed by her new guardians: her sons, if they are adults, or her husband's father and his male bloodline. These men may select a new husband for her. Few Muslim women are ever free to choose whom they will have sex with. An element as powerful and potent as a Muslim girl's virginity also has great commodity value, which means that virginity is above all a man's business. Daughters are bait for attracting alliances, or they can be reserved for the highest bidder. Power, wealth, and the solidifying of clan relations may hinge on marriage alliances, so raising daughters of quality who are modest and docile is important. Using violence to ensure obedience and to warn them against straying is a perfectly legitimate reminder of the law in a system of values in which women have only a little more free will than livestock. There must be blood on the wedding night from her broken hymen or she will be condemned as a slut." - ibid.

Sick Culture :P

"A man's honor within a clan society - and these societies are, largely, about men - resides in his authority. Men must be warriors; shame consists in being seen as weak. Women are the breeders of men, and women's honor lies in their purity, their submission, their obedience. Their shame is to be sexually impure, and it is the worst shame of all, because a woman's sexual disobedience defiles herself, her sisters, and her mother, as well as the male relatives whose duty it is to control her. No Muslim man has any standing in society if he does not have honor. And no matter how much honor he builds up through wise decisions and good deeds, it is destroyed if his daughter or his sister is sexually defiled. This can happen if she loses her virginity before she's married, or if she engages in sexual intercourse outside of the marriage - and that includes rape. Even the rumor that she may have had sex is reason enough to label her "defiled" and lead to loss of honor for her whole family. A father who cannot control his daughters, a brother who cannot control his sisters, is disgraced. He is bankrupt socially and even economically. His family is ruined. The girl will not fetch a bride-price, and neither will her sisters or her cousins, because the mere suspicion of independent feeling and female action in their family taints them too. Such a man suffers a social death, exclusion from the mutual assistance and respect of the clan - the worst possible fate that could befall a person, whether child or adult, male or female." - ibid.

Submissiveness, Collectivism vs. Individualism, Libertarianism

"Can you be a Muslim and an American patriot? You can if you don't care very much about being a Muslim. If you squint and look away, you can avoid thinking about the very basic clashes between the submissive, collectivist values of Islam and the individualist, libertarian values of the democratic West." - from 'Nomad' by Ayaan Hirsi Ali [2010]

Saturday, November 19, 2016

Muslim Schools

from 'Nomad' by Ayaan Hirsi Ali [2010]

Islamic Genital Mutilation

"Whenever I spoke, American listeners gasped in indignant surprise at the very concepts of child marriage, honor killing, and female excision. Rarely, if ever, did it occur to these audiences that many women and girls suffer precisely these kinds of oppression in houses and apartment buildings all over the United States. "Roughly 130 million women around the world have had their genitals cut. The operation is inflicted on an estimated six thousand little girls every day. If 98 percent of Somali women are cut, 95 percent of women from Mali, and 90 percent of Sudanese, how many women does that make in every subway car in New York, on every freeway in Colorado and Kansas? If 97 percent of Egyptian girls are genitally mutilated, what percentage of Egyptian girls born in the United States are cut? None? I don't think so.* But my audiences couldn't believe that." - from'Nomad' by Ayaan Hirsi Ali [2010] * All figures come from Integration of the Human Rights of Women and the Gender Perspective/Violence Against Women (2003), Report of the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Its Causes and Consequences, Radhika Coomaraswamy, submitted in accordance with Commission on Human Rights Resolution 2002/52/.

Thursday, November 17, 2016

Saturday, November 12, 2016

Nasty 'P' of 'S' Allah :P

"In the hell described in the Quran, flames lick the flesh of the sinful; burning embers will be placed under their feet, their scalps will be scalded and their brains boiled. These tortures are endless, for as their skin is burned it is replaced and burned again. In the suffering of my father on his deathbed, my mother believed, Allah and his angels were giving him a taste of the punishments to come for his wrongdoings." - from 'Nomad' by Ayaan Hirsi Ali [the 'My Mother' chapter] If true, Allah is a NASTY FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT.

Islamic Polygamy

"We who are born into Islam don't talk much about the pain, the tensions and ambiguities of polygamy. (Polygamy, of course, predates Islam, but the Prophet Muhammad elevated it and sanctioned it into law, just as he did child marriage.) It is in fact very difficult for all the wives and children of one man to pretend to live happily, in union. Polygamy creates a context of uncertainty, distrust, envy, and jealousy. There are plots. How much is the other wife getting? Who is the favored child? Who will he marry next, and how can we manipulate him most efficiently? Rival wives and their children plot and are often said to cast spells on each other. If security, safety, and predictability are the recipe for a healthy and happy family, then polygamy is everything a happy family is not. It is about conflict, uncertainty, and the constant struggle for power." - from 'Nomad' by Ayaan Hirsi Ali [2010]

Thursday, November 03, 2016

Salaam and Squawk [Five Times a Day]

"By God! Don't you see that all these Ousamas Bin Ladens consider themselves authorized to kill you and your children because you drink alcohol, because you don't grow the long beard and refuse the chador or the burkah, because you go to the theater and to the movies, because you love music and to sing a song, because you dance and watch television, because you wear the miniskirt or the shorts, because on the beach and by the swimming pool you sunbathe almost naked or naked, because you make love when you want and with whom you want, or because you don't believe in God?!? I am an atheist, thank God. And I have no intention of being punished for this by retrograde bigots who, instead of contributing to the improvement of humanity, salaam and squawk prayers five times a day." - Oriana Fallaci - 'the Rage and the Pride'

Sunday, October 16, 2016

Islam : The Most Stupid Religion

"In France, Muslims have actually taken an author to court for calling Islam "the most stupid religion." Apparently he's inciting hate. ... What about the Koran's incitement of hate against Jews? Shouldn't Muslims who invoke the Koran to justify anti-Semitism be themselves open to a lawsuit?" - from 'The Trouble With Islam' by Irshad Manji

Sunday, October 09, 2016

Heretic II

"It simply will not do for Muslims to claim that their religion has been "hijacked" by extremists. The killers of IS and Boko Haram cite the same religious texts that every other Muslim in the world considers sacrosanct. And instead of letting them off the hook with bland cliches about Islam as a religion of peace, we in the West need to challenge and debate the very substance of Islamic thought and practice. We need to hold Islam accountable for the acts of its most violent adherents and demand that it reform or disavow the key beliefs that are used to justify those acts. At the same time, we need to stand up for our own principles as liberals. Specifically, we need to say to offended Western Muslims (and their liberal supporters) that it is not we who must accommodate their beliefs and sensitivities. Rather, it is they who must learn to live with our commitment to free speech." - - Ayaan Hirsi Ali from the Introduction to her 2015 book Heretic

Heretic

"Why are these people impelled to try to silence me, to protest against my public appearances, to stigmatize my views and drive me off the stage with threats of violence and death? It is not because I am ignorant or ill-informed. On the contrary, my views on Islam are based on my knowledge and experience of being a Muslim, of living in Muslim societies - including Mecca itself, the very center of Islamic belief - and on my years of study of Islam as a practitioner, student, and teacher. The real explanation is clear. It is because they cannot actually refute what I am saying. And I am not alone. Shortly after the attack on Charlie Hebdo, Asra Nomani, a Muslim reformer, spoke out against what she calls the "honor brigade" - an organized international cabal hell-bent on silencing debate on Islam. The shameful thing is that this campaign is effective in the West. Western liberals now seem to collude against critical thought and debate. I never cease to be amazed by the fact that non-Muslims who consider themselves liberals - including feminists and advocates of gay rights - are so readily persuaded by these crass means to take the Islamists' side against Muslim and non-Muslim critics." - Ayaan Hirsi Ali from the Introduction to her 2015 book Heretic

Sunday, August 28, 2016

*Blub!* Dept. - Triggered!

I've just about finished reading an excellent book about oxycodone and Mexican black tar heroin, and it also touches on something I've noted from being involved in the 'zine world', especially these last few years - the glorification of infantilism known as "Trigger Warnings": "Keeping kids cooped up seems to me connected to the idea that we can avoid pain, avoid danger. It doesn't surprise me to hear that in universities, students, raised indoors on screens, apparently lived in some crystalline terror of any kind of emotional anguish. A 2015 story in the Atlantic called "The Coddling of the American Mind" reported on the phenomenon of college students - kids who grew up in the era of hyper-protection from physical pain - demanding to be protected as well from painful ideas. They were demanding professors provide "trigger warnings" in advance of ideas that might provoke a strong emotional content - for example, a novel that describes racial violence. This new campus ethos, the authors wrote, "presumes an extraordinary fragility of the collegiate psyche, and therefore elevates the goal of protecting students from psychological harm. The ultimate aim, it seems, is to turn campuses into 'safe spaces' where young adults are shielded from words and ideas that make some uncomfortable." - from the Author's Afterword in the 2016 edition of 'Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic' by Sam Quinones [2016]
More on "Trigger Warnings"... But wait! Even the word "trigger" might trigger somebody! Like it does for the 99% fat-free milksops over at Everyday Feminism [If I didn't know better, I would swear it's a parody!]: "Editor’s Note: ...Everyday Feminism definitely believes in giving people a heads up about material that might provoke our reader’s trauma. However, we use the phrase “content warning” instead of “trigger warning,” as the word “trigger” relies on and evokes violent weaponry imagery. This could be re-traumatizing for folks who have suffered military, police, and other forms of violence. So, while warnings are so necessary and the points in this article are right on, we strongly encourage the term “content warning” instead of “trigger warning.”"

Friday, February 05, 2016

The Zine Explorer's Notebook #6 [Winter/Spring 2015]

22 pages, 11" x 8.5", $2.00/Trade/Stamps/Letter >>> Doug Harrison, PO Box 5291, Richmond VA 23220, USA "Letters, reviews, editorials, real mailing addresses, typographical refinements, art & illustrations, esoteric notions" it says in a box next to the title on the cover. We're in the Zine Zone of No Computers here - a world also populated by Fred Woodworth's The Match!; Anthony Walent's Communicating Vessels; and Jason Rodgers's Media Junky. The format, size, and level of 'slickness' of these zines may differ, but one thing they all share is a passionate opposition to modern technology, especially the internet. These guys may actually even use the internet sometimes, but it sure doesn't take centre stage in their life. To put it another way, don't hold your breath for them to switch to a blog format; or a downloadable PDF. The Zine Explorer's Notebook has come a long way since I last reviewed it [tZEN #3] - doubling in size, for one thing. The letter column is also a treat, and one letter in here especially - the one from a prisoner who admits to beating an 'alleged' pedophile and leaving him for dead, and being proud of it. In his response, Doug objects to this guy's self-righteous braggadocio. Another fascinating letter is from Al Fry, who seems to be some kind of militant gardener, with his vigorous writings on weeds, Monsanto, and fluoridated water ["rat poison"]. I really appreciated the zine reviews too. Every zine really should contain reviews of other zines. You've probably heard that before, but for those who make a zine and don't include zine reviews in their zine, they need to hear it a few more times, at least until they wake the fuck up and start putting zine reviews in their own zine. Wake up! Grab a brush and put on a little make-up!