The Blood Moon could have been a great symbol for something or other. Regrettably, the vestiges of the Polar Vortex weather pattern that kicked our ass so thoroughly through the course of the last unlamented winter are back. I peered out the window at 0215 last night- having cleverly set my alarm to document the phenomenon- but there was nothing in the dark sky except water vapor.
I padded back to bed, disappointed that the portents of the unknown are going to remain exactly that.
There is so much that is unknown this morning. What’s up with eastern Ukraine? Mr. Putin, having had no resistance to his annexation of the Crimea peninsula, now appears to be sending his troops into another portion of what was a sovereign nation. I can’t imagine what unilateral action could be taken- though apparently both Vice President Biden and CIA director John Brennan have stopped by Kiev lately.
That makes me queasy, like the Deputies Committee meeting this week that is supposed to sort out the differences between the Pentagon and the State Department about a Russian overflight of United States military facilities with a specially configured reconnaissance jet. Such flights are permitted under the 1994 Open Skies treaty, but there is some new gear the Russians want to fly. The Pentagon is reportedly on record as saying “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot,” while the cookie-pushers at Foggy Bottom are apparently in favor of it for reasons best known to themselves.
I have no idea what to think, but you really wouldn’t need a brain to figure out that permitting Mr. Putin to slide another one by, at this particular moment in the resurgent Russian Empire, is sort of…well, you know.
Of all the things one could think of to disagree about- militias and militarized land management officials, and deranged murderous anachronistic KKK whack jobs, I would think we could agree that the mutilation of little girls is a bad thing. Stop me if I have said anything controversial there.
After 9/11, I became aware of the resurgent trend of female genital mutilation across a broad swath of the Islamic world. I made a contribution to one of the groups committed to fighting the practice, and wore a t-shirt for years that announced I was an Afghan feminist. As I told someone the other day, you cannot have a mother like mine and not be one.
So it was with dismay that I got used to the idea that this barbaric practice was not the subject of mass outrage by the West. I honestly don’t understand it. There is a strand of
“relativism” abroad in the land that holds the West to a higher standard than other places.
There is nothing relative about cutting up women’s genitals. Sorry. That is just so wrong on so many levels that it is unconscionable. Uncivilized. Barbaric.
Oh, forced marriage, honor killings and rape are sort of wrong, too. I am mystified that the very people who would be the first to have their heads cut off by the practitioners of these things are their apologists. It is frankly mind-boggling.
But of course outrage is selective, since there is one of the Great Faiths involved in all this, and we are supposed to believe that everything is just fine, Religion of Peace and all that stuff. I mean, I believe in live-and-let-live, but that is one of the three impossible things we are supposed to believe before breakfast.
I am sure you have seen the latest. It is so bizarre that I have a hard time accepting that it is happening. Here is the deal: Somalia-born Ayann Hirsi Ali was to receive an honorary doctorate from Bandeis University. You know, the renowned institution of higher learning founded by Justice Louis Brandeis.
Personally, I think she is a pretty courageous woman. She was mutilated as a girl, forced to marry some creepy old guy, and took charge of her life and fled Africa to the Netherlands. She spoke the truth about what happened to her, and to the other girls in the Horn of Africa. She published her story in the book “Infidel.”
She was persuasive enough that she was elected to Parliament, and film-maker Theo van Gogh, a descendent of the great painter, took up her story and made a film called “Submission” about the plight of women. It was a controversial event in the newly multi-cultural Low Country, which had happily accepted thousands of immigrants in search of a better life, which they promptly rejected. Ronald Rovers of Salon tells the story of what happened this way:
(Theo van Gogh. Photo from Salon).
“On the morning of Nov. 2 in a busy street in east Amsterdam, a 26-year-old Dutch Moroccan named Mohammed Bouyeri pulled out a gun and shot controversial filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was riding a bike to his office. Van Gogh hit the ground and stumbled across the street to a nearby building. He didn’t make it…. the Moroccan didn’t stop. He shot him again, slit van Gogh’s throat and stuck a letter to his chest with a knife. He was slaughtered like an animal, witnesses said.”
“The letter pinned to van Gogh’s chest contained accusations aimed not at him but at Ayaan Hirsi Ali.”
“Written in Dutch, the bloody letter called Hirsi Ali an “infidel fundamentalist” who “terrorizes Islam” and “marches with the soldiers of evil.” With her “hostilities,” she “unleashed a boomerang and it’s just a matter of time before this boomerang will seal your destiny.” In capital letters it said: “AYAAN HIRSI ALI, YOU WILL SMASH YOURSELF ON ISLAM!” The letter ended with a kind of chant: “I know for sure that you, O America, are going to meet with disaster. I know for sure that you, O Europe, are going to meet with disaster. I know for sure that you, O Holland, are going to meet with disaster.”
Hirsi Ali had to leave the country, in fear for her life, and she wound up in the United States, where she has continued to write and speak about the issues confronting women across the Islamic world.
When word of the prospective honorary degree emerged last month, the predicable happened. CAIR, a Hamas front group widely regarded as a “civil rights” organization, managed to get 7,000 names on a petition protesting the award to Ms Hirsi Ali. Brandeis hemmed and hawed for a while and then caved, announcing that they were retracting their offer of the degree, since what the brave lady was going to say- and they didn’t know what she was going to say, BTW- was “incompatible with the core values of their institution.”
Brandeis, of all places. Just when you think the madness and stupidity can’t get any worse, they circus of our society manages to make things loonier and imbecilic.
You want a war on women? Guess what. There is a real one. And I think we are losing.
Disclaimer: All the Great Faiths are fine. Freedom of religion- and particularly of the freedom from it- are enshrined as the basic tenets of our Republic. Ditto with Freedom of Speech. Without it, how could you run a Broadway Musical mocking the Church of Latter Day Saints? Well, better said, you can make fun of two out of three of them. One of them not so much.
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocota.com
Twitter: @jayare303