All the Lonely People. By Ross Douthat. New York Times, May 18, 2013.
On Suicide, Does Density Disprove Durkheim? By Ross Douthat. New York Times, May 21, 2013.
The Trajectory of Suicide. By Ross Douthat. New York Times, May 23, 2013.
The Suicide Epidemic. By Tony Dokoupil. Newsweek. The Daily Beast, May 22, 2013.
The Lethality of Loneliness. By Judith Shulevitz. NJBR, May 14, 2013.
Male Suicide: Where’s the Outcry? By Walter Russell Mead. NJBR, May 14, 2013.
Another Explanation for Male Suicide. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, May 20, 2013.
The Surge in Suicides Has Nothing to Do With Marriage or Religion. By Nate Cohn. The New Republic, May 20, 2013.
The Talent Society. By David Brooks. NJBR, January 22, 2013.
Douthat:
OVER
the last decade, the United States has become a less violent country in every
way save one. As Americans commit fewer and fewer crimes against other people’s
lives and property, they have become more likely to inflict fatal violence on
themselves.
In the
1990s, the suicide rate dipped with the crime rate. But since 2000, it has
risen, and jumped particularly sharply among the middle-aged. The suicide rate
for Americans 35 to 54 increased nearly 30 percent between 1999 and 2010; for
men in their 50s, it rose nearly 50 percent. More Americans now die of suicide
than in car accidents, and gun suicides are almost twice as common as gun
homicides.
This
trend is striking without necessarily being surprising. As the University of
Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox pointed out recently, there’s a strong link
between suicide and weakened social ties: people — and especially men — become
more likely to kill themselves “when they get disconnected from society’s core
institutions (e.g., marriage, religion) or when their economic prospects take a
dive (e.g., unemployment).” That’s exactly what we’ve seen happen lately among
the middle-aged male population, whose suicide rates have climbed the fastest:
a retreat from family obligations, from civic and religious participation, and
from full-time paying work.
The
hard question facing 21st-century America is whether this retreat from
community can reverse itself, or whether an aging society dealing with
structural unemployment and declining birth and marriage rates is simply
destined to leave more people disconnected, anxious and alone.
Right
now, the pessimistic scenario seems more plausible. In an essay for The New
Republic about the consequences of loneliness for public health, Judith Shulevitz reports that one in three Americans over 45 identifies as chronically
lonely, up from just one in five a decade ago. “With baby boomers reaching
retirement age at a rate of 10,000 a day,” she notes, “the number of lonely
Americans will surely spike.”
There
are public and private ways to manage this loneliness epidemic — through social
workers, therapists, even pets. And the Internet, of course, promises endless
forms of virtual community to replace or supplement the real.
But all
of these alternatives seem destined to leave certain basic human yearnings
unaddressed.
For
many people, the strongest forms of community are still the traditional ones —
the kind forged by shared genes, shared memory, shared geography. And neither
Facebook nor a life coach nor a well-meaning bureaucracy is likely to
compensate for these forms’ attenuation and decline.
This
point is illustrated, richly, in one of the best books of the spring, Rod
Dreher’s memoir, “The Little Way of Ruthie Leming,” an account of his sister’s
death from cancer at the age of 42. A journalist and author, Dreher had left
their small Louisiana hometown behind decades before and never imagined coming
back. But watching how the rural community rallied around his sister in her
crisis, and how being rooted in a specific place carried her family through its
drawn-out agony, inspired him to reconsider, and return.
What
makes “The Little Way” such an illuminating book, though, is that it doesn’t
just uncritically celebrate the form of community that its author rediscovered
in his hometown. It also explains why he left in the first place: because being
a bookish kid made him a target for bullying, because his relationship with his
father was oppressive, because he wasn’t as comfortable as his sister in a
world of traditions, obligations, rules. Because community can imprison as well
as sustain, and sometimes it needs to be escaped in order to be appreciated.
In
today’s society, that escape is easier than ever before. And that’s a great
gift to many people: if you don’t have much in common with your relatives and
neighbors, if you’re gay or a genius (or both), if you’re simply restless and
footloose, the world can feel much less
lonely than it would have in the past. Our society is often kinder to
differences and eccentricities than past eras, and our economy rewards
extraordinary talent more richly than ever before.
The
problem is that as it’s grown easier to be remarkable and unusual, it’s
arguably grown harder to be ordinary. To be the kind of person who doesn’t want
to write his own life script, or invent her own idiosyncratic career path. To
enjoy the stability and comfort of inherited obligations and expectations,
rather than constantly having to strike out on your own. To follow a “little
way” rather than a path of great ambition. To be more like Ruthie Leming than
her brother.
Too
often, and probably increasingly, not enough Americans will have what the
Lemings had — a place that knew them intimately, a community to lean on, a
strong network in a time of trial.
And
absent such blessings, it’s all too understandable that some people enduring
suffering and loneliness would end up looking not for help or support, but for
a way to end it all.
Monday, May 20, 2013
Whose Israel Is It? By Douglas Bloomfield.
Whose Israel Is It? By Douglas Bloomfield. Real Clear World, May 19, 2013. Also at the Jerusalem Post.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
America the Isolated? By Fareed Zakaria.
America the Isolated? By Fareed Zakaria. Time, May 27, 2013. Video at GPS.
The Kissinger Question. By Brett Stephens. Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2013.
Zakaria:
Conservatives are—of course—mad at Barack Obama, but they are also outraged at a country that isn't outraged enough at him. This frustration is now taking over mainstream and intelligent voices within the movement.
Bret Stephens, columnist for the Wall Street Journal, laments that President Obama is not paying a price for a foreign policy that Stephens describes as “isolationist.” The problem, he writes, is that Americans have no sense of history, don’t see the importance of an active American foreign policy and are about to repeat the lessons of the 1930s, when isolationism led to Adolf Hitler and World War II.
Our isolationism will surely come as a surprise to the diplomats, soldiers and intelligence officers working on American foreign policy. Washington spends more on defense than the next 10 great powers put together—and more on intelligence than most nations spend on their militaries. We have tens of thousands of troops stationed at dozens of bases abroad, from Germany to Turkey to Bahrain to Japan to South Korea. We have formal commitments to defend our most important allies in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
And our vast footprint has been expanded under the Obama Administration. The White House has extended America’s security umbrella to include defending Israel and the moderate Arab states against the threat posed by Iran's possible development of nuclear weapons. It is enlarging the U.S. military presence in Asia with a new base in Australia to deal with China's rise. To call this isolationism is to mangle both language and logic.
In fact, President Obama’s worldview is rooted in American exceptionalism. The fundamental pattern of international relations is that as a country becomes powerful and asserts itself, others gang up to bring it down. That's what happened to the Habsburg Empire, Napoleonic France, Germany and the Soviet Union.
There is one great exception to this rule in modern history: the United States. America has risen to global might, and yet it has not produced the kind of opposition that many would have predicted. In fact, today it is in the astonishing position of being the world's dominant power while many of the world's next most powerful nations—Britain, France, Germany, Japan—are all allied with it. This is the exception that needs to be explained.
The reason surely has something to do with the nature of American hegemony. We do not seek colonies or conquest. After World War II, we helped revive and rebuild our enemies and turned them into allies. For all the carping, people around the world do see the U. S. as different from other, older empires.
But it also has something to do with the way that the U.S. has exercised power: reluctantly. Historically, America was not eager to jump into the global arena. It entered World War I at the tail end of the war, late enough to avoid the worst bloodshed but still tipping the balance in favor of Britain and France. It entered World War II only after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. It contained Soviet aggression in Europe but was careful not to push too far in other places. And when it did, as in Vietnam, it paid a price.
There is a long and distinguished school of American statesmen—from Dwight Eisenhower to Henry Kissinger to Robert Gates—who believe that America helps enlarge the scope of freedom around the world by staying strong; husbanding its power; creating a stable, liberal order; and encouraging economic and political reform. (The most brilliant academic exponent of this view, Kenneth Waltz, died May 13 at 88.) It is central to this mission that America is disciplined about its military interventions.
Perhaps because the U.S. has had no rival since the end of the Cold War, some seem to believe that any bad thing that happens in the world could be stopped if only the American President would act. Stephens bemoans the fact that Vladimir Putin is putting opponents in prison. What exactly should the U.S. do about this, other than protest, which it has done? President Bush was not able to stop the Iraqi government—while the entire country was under American occupation—from doing the very same thing.
We have just gone through a decade devoted to a very different idea: that American power must be used actively, pre-emptively and in pursuit of expansive goals beyond the narrow national interest. The result was thousands of American soldiers dead, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians dead and millions ethnically cleansed, $2 trillion spent and the erosion of American influence and goodwill across the globe. Can we get a few years of respite to rebuild our economic, political and moral capital?
The Kissinger Question. By Brett Stephens. Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2013.
Zakaria:
Conservatives are—of course—mad at Barack Obama, but they are also outraged at a country that isn't outraged enough at him. This frustration is now taking over mainstream and intelligent voices within the movement.
Bret Stephens, columnist for the Wall Street Journal, laments that President Obama is not paying a price for a foreign policy that Stephens describes as “isolationist.” The problem, he writes, is that Americans have no sense of history, don’t see the importance of an active American foreign policy and are about to repeat the lessons of the 1930s, when isolationism led to Adolf Hitler and World War II.
Our isolationism will surely come as a surprise to the diplomats, soldiers and intelligence officers working on American foreign policy. Washington spends more on defense than the next 10 great powers put together—and more on intelligence than most nations spend on their militaries. We have tens of thousands of troops stationed at dozens of bases abroad, from Germany to Turkey to Bahrain to Japan to South Korea. We have formal commitments to defend our most important allies in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
And our vast footprint has been expanded under the Obama Administration. The White House has extended America’s security umbrella to include defending Israel and the moderate Arab states against the threat posed by Iran's possible development of nuclear weapons. It is enlarging the U.S. military presence in Asia with a new base in Australia to deal with China's rise. To call this isolationism is to mangle both language and logic.
In fact, President Obama’s worldview is rooted in American exceptionalism. The fundamental pattern of international relations is that as a country becomes powerful and asserts itself, others gang up to bring it down. That's what happened to the Habsburg Empire, Napoleonic France, Germany and the Soviet Union.
There is one great exception to this rule in modern history: the United States. America has risen to global might, and yet it has not produced the kind of opposition that many would have predicted. In fact, today it is in the astonishing position of being the world's dominant power while many of the world's next most powerful nations—Britain, France, Germany, Japan—are all allied with it. This is the exception that needs to be explained.
The reason surely has something to do with the nature of American hegemony. We do not seek colonies or conquest. After World War II, we helped revive and rebuild our enemies and turned them into allies. For all the carping, people around the world do see the U. S. as different from other, older empires.
But it also has something to do with the way that the U.S. has exercised power: reluctantly. Historically, America was not eager to jump into the global arena. It entered World War I at the tail end of the war, late enough to avoid the worst bloodshed but still tipping the balance in favor of Britain and France. It entered World War II only after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. It contained Soviet aggression in Europe but was careful not to push too far in other places. And when it did, as in Vietnam, it paid a price.
There is a long and distinguished school of American statesmen—from Dwight Eisenhower to Henry Kissinger to Robert Gates—who believe that America helps enlarge the scope of freedom around the world by staying strong; husbanding its power; creating a stable, liberal order; and encouraging economic and political reform. (The most brilliant academic exponent of this view, Kenneth Waltz, died May 13 at 88.) It is central to this mission that America is disciplined about its military interventions.
Perhaps because the U.S. has had no rival since the end of the Cold War, some seem to believe that any bad thing that happens in the world could be stopped if only the American President would act. Stephens bemoans the fact that Vladimir Putin is putting opponents in prison. What exactly should the U.S. do about this, other than protest, which it has done? President Bush was not able to stop the Iraqi government—while the entire country was under American occupation—from doing the very same thing.
We have just gone through a decade devoted to a very different idea: that American power must be used actively, pre-emptively and in pursuit of expansive goals beyond the narrow national interest. The result was thousands of American soldiers dead, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians dead and millions ethnically cleansed, $2 trillion spent and the erosion of American influence and goodwill across the globe. Can we get a few years of respite to rebuild our economic, political and moral capital?
DC’s PC Commissars Lose Touch With Common Sense. By Walter Russell Mead.
DC’s PC Commissars Lose Touch With Common Sense. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, May 18, 2013.
Mead:
Asking a fellow student on a date may now get you kicked off a college campus. Following a year long investigation into the University of Montana’s handling of several sexual assault cases, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) issued a joint letter to the university in which they stretch the definition of sexual harassment beyond anything comprehensible. The new guidelines, according to the departments, should “serve as a blueprint” for universities across the country.
The letter chastises the University of Montana for the stricter terms by which it originally defined harassment:
No more, apparently. The sacred right to take umbrage now triumphs over common sense.
Today’s American campus is a diverse place. Some people come from very conservative homes where grace is said before meals, sexual activity before marriage is unthinkable, and no foul language or sexual innuendo is ever heard. These students will be shocked and offended by conduct or remarks that Americans who grow up watching debased popular entertainment think are perfectly normal and unexceptionable. Students from some Muslim or immigrant families have very different ideas about how the sexes should behave than students from other backgrounds. Few 18 year olds of any gender can decipher the complicated social codes that Americans from different backgrounds carry around with them. Many 18 year olds of all genders get confused and make mistakes. But the right to take umbrage is absolute; the Commissars of Correctness have issued their decree.
We’ve written before on the “kangaroo courts,” the OCR’s new policy that allows universities to circumvent regular due process laws in cases of sexual assault. According to these new regulations, all a university tribunal needs to show in order to convict a student of sexual harassment is that he or she more likely than not (by a preponderance of evidence—50.01 percent) committed the crime. These new regulations are alarming enough on their own, but now that the DOJ and OCR are widening the definition of what constitutes harassment in the first place. This new reality is genuinely Kafkaesque.
Sexual harassment is wrong, and anyone who spends time on an American campus knows that the problem of improper and unwanted sexual advances and conduct is both serious and real. But the clumsy efforts of bureaucrats to regulate the romantic lives of millions of teenagers and early twenty-somethings by ill judged official decrees will not help.
The Obama administration seems to be doing its level best to convince the American people that a large and powerful federal government is a threat to liberty. From IRS zealots blatantly using their powers against political enemies to prosecutors overreaching in attacks on journalists to deranged bureaucrats attacking fundamental standards of fairness on campus, the federal government is daily demonstrating the danger of giving it too many missions.
This is not a Tea Party blog and there are no pictures of Ayn Rand in our boardroom. With George Washington and Alexander Hamilton we believe in a federal government that is active and strong enough to secure the general welfare. But the sprawling, overreaching, under-managed, over-priced clumsy behemoth stumbling across the American landscape today is something very different from the government the United States needs.
Mead:
Asking a fellow student on a date may now get you kicked off a college campus. Following a year long investigation into the University of Montana’s handling of several sexual assault cases, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) issued a joint letter to the university in which they stretch the definition of sexual harassment beyond anything comprehensible. The new guidelines, according to the departments, should “serve as a blueprint” for universities across the country.
The letter chastises the University of Montana for the stricter terms by which it originally defined harassment:
More simply, what this means is that any verbal comments may qualify as harassment if a particular student happens to find them offensive—even if other students of the same gender saw nothing wrong with the comments. This new definition stands in direct contradiction to the 2003 OCR’s guidance on sexual harassment, which stated that harassment must “include something beyond the mere expression of views, words, symbols, or thoughts that some person finds offensive.”[The University of Montana’s] Sexual Harassment Policy 406.5.1 improperly suggests that the conduct does not constitute sexual harassment unless it is objectively offensive. This policy…states that “[w]hether conduct is sufficiently offensive to constitute sexual harassment is determined from the perspective of an objectively reasonable person of the same gender in the same situation.” …As explained in the Legal Standards section above, the United States considers a variety of factors, from both a subjective and objective perspective, to determine if a hostile environment has been created.
No more, apparently. The sacred right to take umbrage now triumphs over common sense.
Today’s American campus is a diverse place. Some people come from very conservative homes where grace is said before meals, sexual activity before marriage is unthinkable, and no foul language or sexual innuendo is ever heard. These students will be shocked and offended by conduct or remarks that Americans who grow up watching debased popular entertainment think are perfectly normal and unexceptionable. Students from some Muslim or immigrant families have very different ideas about how the sexes should behave than students from other backgrounds. Few 18 year olds of any gender can decipher the complicated social codes that Americans from different backgrounds carry around with them. Many 18 year olds of all genders get confused and make mistakes. But the right to take umbrage is absolute; the Commissars of Correctness have issued their decree.
We’ve written before on the “kangaroo courts,” the OCR’s new policy that allows universities to circumvent regular due process laws in cases of sexual assault. According to these new regulations, all a university tribunal needs to show in order to convict a student of sexual harassment is that he or she more likely than not (by a preponderance of evidence—50.01 percent) committed the crime. These new regulations are alarming enough on their own, but now that the DOJ and OCR are widening the definition of what constitutes harassment in the first place. This new reality is genuinely Kafkaesque.
Sexual harassment is wrong, and anyone who spends time on an American campus knows that the problem of improper and unwanted sexual advances and conduct is both serious and real. But the clumsy efforts of bureaucrats to regulate the romantic lives of millions of teenagers and early twenty-somethings by ill judged official decrees will not help.
The Obama administration seems to be doing its level best to convince the American people that a large and powerful federal government is a threat to liberty. From IRS zealots blatantly using their powers against political enemies to prosecutors overreaching in attacks on journalists to deranged bureaucrats attacking fundamental standards of fairness on campus, the federal government is daily demonstrating the danger of giving it too many missions.
This is not a Tea Party blog and there are no pictures of Ayn Rand in our boardroom. With George Washington and Alexander Hamilton we believe in a federal government that is active and strong enough to secure the general welfare. But the sprawling, overreaching, under-managed, over-priced clumsy behemoth stumbling across the American landscape today is something very different from the government the United States needs.
The Islamist War on Women. By Lee Habeeb.
The Islamist War on Women. By Lee Habeeb. National Review Online, May 18, 2013.
Islamists Rely on TV Sheiks to Woo the Masses in Egypt. By Matt Bradley. Wall Street Journal, May 8, 2013. Also here. Video.
Habeeb:
The facts just keep coming out of Ohio. It is hard to comprehend what they went through, those young women. What they felt while trapped by a monster through those lost years of their early adulthood is almost impossible to fathom. How did they cope? How did they get through each day?
A close friend of mine was sexually abused as a teenaged girl. It was a man she knew. It lasted for years. She never told anyone — not her mom, not her friends. She didn’t tell because, like so many women who are abused, she blamed herself. She didn’t tell because she was ashamed. Because she was afraid. Because she just wanted to move on. For all kinds of other reasons she will never know, and no longer cares to know, she never told anyone. Until she told me.
Why did it last so long? Why didn’t she just call the police? Unlike those Ohio girls, she wasn’t chained or locked up. But he had chained her mind. Besides abusing her body, he had burrowed into her mind and abused her trust. He provided alcohol and a pathway to adulthood, but he stole her childhood. And her heart.
Her monster — and too many women in this world have a monster in their lives — told her he was doing it for her own good. He told her she was different from the other girls. He told her she was sexy. And he told her she was bad, too. He told her all kinds of things, all of them manipulations to serve his own evil purposes. She believed him.
Stockholm syndrome prevailed as the survival mechanism for my friend, and quite probably for those young women in Ohio. Thank God, they are free today. They will have those horrible memories for a long time. But maybe, just maybe, those beautiful young women in Ohio will be able to trust a man again. It took my friend 15 years to do it.
I know. I married her.
Last week, my wife rushed into my office and showed me an article in the Wall Street Journal. It was about the rise of TV preachers, known as sheiks, in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East, and one popular TV sheik in particular, Khaled Abdullah.
His brand of Islam is a retrograde brand, a form of Islamism that spews hate toward women. Christians, Jews, gays, and Americans are not far behind. Two paragraphs had caught my wife’s eye. This was the first:
“The Salafi TV preachers advocate restrictive views on women, railing against female protesters and even advising audiences of what they see as the Islamically correct way for a husband to beat his wife.”
That’s right. To some Muslims — to too many — there is a correct way to beat your wife. And this show gets big ratings. And no protests from enraged mobs.
Then came the second paragraph:
“Even so, many viewers of TV preachers are women. In the most conservative Egyptian households, women rarely leave their homes and account for nearly two-thirds of television viewers.”
The women rarely leave their homes? How could that be? It took my wife to connect things I was incapable of connecting.
“Don’t you see,” she explained. “These women are prisoners. And on those rare times they are permitted to leave the house, they wear burqas. And a burqa is just a prison made out of clothing.”
But why do so many Muslim women watch these sheiks on TV? And wear the burqas?
“It makes sense,” my wife told me. “These Islamist men convince women that this way of living is for their own good. It is for their protection. And the women believe it, because they don’t know what else to do. Or are afraid to do it.”
And they say there is a war on women in America?
All over the world, it’s that Ohio house for millions of Muslim women every day. And yet we hear too little about this horrifying state of affairs from feminists in America. Or from the media.
No one has written more eloquently about women and Islam than Ayaan Hirsi Ali. As a young woman, Ali escaped an arranged marriage in her native Somalia by emigrating to the Netherlands. She went on to write the screenplay for Theo van Gogh’s movie Submission. They both received death threats; van Gogh ended up being brutally murdered.
Back in 2010, she told a remarkable story about her early life in Mogadishu in a column called “Not the Child My Grandmother Wanted.” She recalls being six or seven years old and being lectured by her grandmother about how to be a proper Muslim girl.
When the young Ali asked her grandmother why such strict rules didn’t apply to her brother Mahad, she got an earful. “Mahad is a man! Your misfortune is that you were born with a split between your legs. And now, we the family must cope with that reality!”
Her grandmother continued: “Ayaan, you are stubborn, you are reckless and you ask too many questions. That is a fatal combination. Disobedience in women is crushed and you are disobedient.”
Then came the most harrowing part of the lesson. Ali’s grandmother pointed to a piece of sheep fat on the ground. It was covered with ants and flies. “You are like that piece of sheep fat in the sun,” she warned her granddaughter. “If you transgress, I warn you men will be no more merciful to you than those flies and ants are to that piece of fat.”
Women are like a piece of sheep fat?
And this advice from — a grandmother?
Where are the voices of feminism reaching out to all of these Muslim women? Is it right to ascribe such treatment to cultural norms? Or to shield it in the name of religious tolerance? Where is the National Organization for Women? And Michelle Obama? Is political correctness regarding extreme elements of Islam trumping the bond of the worldwide sisterhood?
Last March, the Hudson Institute’s Nina Shea published a survey of the world’s worst offenders on the women’s-rights front. Here is how she described life for Saudi women:
But it gets worse. Here is how Ms. Shea described the state of women’s rights in Afghanistan:
The world is upside down when it comes to how our leaders and our media elites address the abuse of too many Muslim women around the world. One Christian preacher who doesn’t even have a real church talks about burning a Koran, and the story becomes an international sensation. But rape, torture, and imprison your own women as a fundamental part of daily life, and the world hardly yawns.
In the weeks and months to come, as we learn more gruesome facts about what happened to those poor girls in Ohio, pray for them. But let’s also pray for all the subjugated girls and women in places like Somalia, Afghanistan, Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia whose suffering is so tragic because it is so utterly ordinary. Whose suffering is so tragic because it is met with such silence.
Say a prayer for all the women in the world trapped in cages built on the foundation of depraved cultural norms, and a warped take on Islam.
Islamists Rely on TV Sheiks to Woo the Masses in Egypt. By Matt Bradley. Wall Street Journal, May 8, 2013. Also here. Video.
Habeeb:
The facts just keep coming out of Ohio. It is hard to comprehend what they went through, those young women. What they felt while trapped by a monster through those lost years of their early adulthood is almost impossible to fathom. How did they cope? How did they get through each day?
A close friend of mine was sexually abused as a teenaged girl. It was a man she knew. It lasted for years. She never told anyone — not her mom, not her friends. She didn’t tell because, like so many women who are abused, she blamed herself. She didn’t tell because she was ashamed. Because she was afraid. Because she just wanted to move on. For all kinds of other reasons she will never know, and no longer cares to know, she never told anyone. Until she told me.
Why did it last so long? Why didn’t she just call the police? Unlike those Ohio girls, she wasn’t chained or locked up. But he had chained her mind. Besides abusing her body, he had burrowed into her mind and abused her trust. He provided alcohol and a pathway to adulthood, but he stole her childhood. And her heart.
Her monster — and too many women in this world have a monster in their lives — told her he was doing it for her own good. He told her she was different from the other girls. He told her she was sexy. And he told her she was bad, too. He told her all kinds of things, all of them manipulations to serve his own evil purposes. She believed him.
Stockholm syndrome prevailed as the survival mechanism for my friend, and quite probably for those young women in Ohio. Thank God, they are free today. They will have those horrible memories for a long time. But maybe, just maybe, those beautiful young women in Ohio will be able to trust a man again. It took my friend 15 years to do it.
I know. I married her.
Last week, my wife rushed into my office and showed me an article in the Wall Street Journal. It was about the rise of TV preachers, known as sheiks, in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East, and one popular TV sheik in particular, Khaled Abdullah.
His brand of Islam is a retrograde brand, a form of Islamism that spews hate toward women. Christians, Jews, gays, and Americans are not far behind. Two paragraphs had caught my wife’s eye. This was the first:
“The Salafi TV preachers advocate restrictive views on women, railing against female protesters and even advising audiences of what they see as the Islamically correct way for a husband to beat his wife.”
That’s right. To some Muslims — to too many — there is a correct way to beat your wife. And this show gets big ratings. And no protests from enraged mobs.
Then came the second paragraph:
“Even so, many viewers of TV preachers are women. In the most conservative Egyptian households, women rarely leave their homes and account for nearly two-thirds of television viewers.”
The women rarely leave their homes? How could that be? It took my wife to connect things I was incapable of connecting.
“Don’t you see,” she explained. “These women are prisoners. And on those rare times they are permitted to leave the house, they wear burqas. And a burqa is just a prison made out of clothing.”
But why do so many Muslim women watch these sheiks on TV? And wear the burqas?
“It makes sense,” my wife told me. “These Islamist men convince women that this way of living is for their own good. It is for their protection. And the women believe it, because they don’t know what else to do. Or are afraid to do it.”
And they say there is a war on women in America?
All over the world, it’s that Ohio house for millions of Muslim women every day. And yet we hear too little about this horrifying state of affairs from feminists in America. Or from the media.
No one has written more eloquently about women and Islam than Ayaan Hirsi Ali. As a young woman, Ali escaped an arranged marriage in her native Somalia by emigrating to the Netherlands. She went on to write the screenplay for Theo van Gogh’s movie Submission. They both received death threats; van Gogh ended up being brutally murdered.
Back in 2010, she told a remarkable story about her early life in Mogadishu in a column called “Not the Child My Grandmother Wanted.” She recalls being six or seven years old and being lectured by her grandmother about how to be a proper Muslim girl.
When the young Ali asked her grandmother why such strict rules didn’t apply to her brother Mahad, she got an earful. “Mahad is a man! Your misfortune is that you were born with a split between your legs. And now, we the family must cope with that reality!”
Her grandmother continued: “Ayaan, you are stubborn, you are reckless and you ask too many questions. That is a fatal combination. Disobedience in women is crushed and you are disobedient.”
Then came the most harrowing part of the lesson. Ali’s grandmother pointed to a piece of sheep fat on the ground. It was covered with ants and flies. “You are like that piece of sheep fat in the sun,” she warned her granddaughter. “If you transgress, I warn you men will be no more merciful to you than those flies and ants are to that piece of fat.”
Women are like a piece of sheep fat?
And this advice from — a grandmother?
Where are the voices of feminism reaching out to all of these Muslim women? Is it right to ascribe such treatment to cultural norms? Or to shield it in the name of religious tolerance? Where is the National Organization for Women? And Michelle Obama? Is political correctness regarding extreme elements of Islam trumping the bond of the worldwide sisterhood?
Last March, the Hudson Institute’s Nina Shea published a survey of the world’s worst offenders on the women’s-rights front. Here is how she described life for Saudi women:
Talk about a story that is almost too horrible to imagine!Women are required to have male guardians whose permission is necessary for traveling outside the home — even for emergency hospital visits. The state dictates their appearance with dress codes that enshroud them in anonymous black robes from head to toe. Apart from lingerie stores, they are barred from retail jobs and most service work. Under a code unique to Saudi Arabia, they are also banned from driving. They cannot mingle with unrelated men. A special police force, mutaween, patrols streets, shopping malls, and other places to enforce such laws; the mutaween captured rare international attention in 2002 when, during a fire at a girls’ school in Mecca, they caused the death of 15 girls by pushing them back into the blazing building because, in their panic, the girls had run out without their veils.
But it gets worse. Here is how Ms. Shea described the state of women’s rights in Afghanistan:
That’s right. In some parts of Afghanistan, families settle scores by sending their daughters off to a lifetime of rape and slavery. And Sandra Fluke thinks America is hostile to women because many of us don’t want to pony up for her birth control?Afghanistan applies, in some areas, tribal law that gives women few rights. The New York Times detailed one particularly abusive tribal law that is said to be “pervasive” in Pashtun areas, aptly named “baad.” It is the abduction, lifelong enslavement, and rape of a girl — who was eight years old in the Times’s story — by a family in compensation for a wrong committed by the girl’s relatives.
The world is upside down when it comes to how our leaders and our media elites address the abuse of too many Muslim women around the world. One Christian preacher who doesn’t even have a real church talks about burning a Koran, and the story becomes an international sensation. But rape, torture, and imprison your own women as a fundamental part of daily life, and the world hardly yawns.
In the weeks and months to come, as we learn more gruesome facts about what happened to those poor girls in Ohio, pray for them. But let’s also pray for all the subjugated girls and women in places like Somalia, Afghanistan, Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia whose suffering is so tragic because it is so utterly ordinary. Whose suffering is so tragic because it is met with such silence.
Say a prayer for all the women in the world trapped in cages built on the foundation of depraved cultural norms, and a warped take on Islam.
Terrorism as Therapy. By Victor Davis Hanson.
Terrorism as Therapy. By Victor Davis Hanson. National Review Online, May 13, 2013.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Syria: Without Water, Revolution. By Thomas L. Friedman.
Without Water, Revolution. By Thomas L. Friedman. New York Times, May 18, 2013.
Rise of the Militias in Syria. By Michael Weiss. Real Clear World, May 18, 2013.
In the Hills of Alawistan. By Alia Malek. Foreign Policy, May 17, 2013. Alia Malek website.
Rise of the Militias in Syria. By Michael Weiss. Real Clear World, May 18, 2013.
In the Hills of Alawistan. By Alia Malek. Foreign Policy, May 17, 2013. Alia Malek website.
The Expulsion of the Moors. By Mike Konrad.
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Expulsion
of the Moriscos at the port of Dénia, by Vincente Mostre. Wikipedia. |
The Expulsion of the Moors. By Mike Konrad. American Thinker, May 18, 2013.
Latin Arabia: A World You Never Knew Existed. Website by Mike Konrad.
The Moriscos of Spain: Their Conversion and Expulsion. By Henry Charles Lea. Philadelphia: Lea Brothers and Company, 1901. Also here and here.
The Muslim Expulsion from Spain. By Roger Boase. History Today, Vol. 52, No. 4 (April 2002). Also here.
Spain’s Ethnic Cleansing. By Matt Carr. History Today, Vol. 59, No. 2 (February 2009).
A Conquistador Society? The Spain Columbus Left. By John Edwards. History Today, Vol. 42, No. 5 (May 1992).
The Moriscos: An Ottoman Fifth Column in Sixteenth-Century Spain. By Andrew C. Hess. The American Historical Review, Vol. 74, No. 1 (October 1968).
The expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain in 1609–1614: the destruction of an Islamic periphery. By Már Jónsson. Journal of Global History, Vol. 2, No. 2 (July 2007).
Managing Disaster: Networks of the Moriscos During the Process of the Expulsion From the Iberian Peninsula Around1609. By Gerard Wiegers. Journal of Medieval Religious Culture, Vol. 36, No. 2 (2010).
Empathy for the Persecuted or Polemical Posturing? The 1609 Spanish Expulsion of the Moriscos as Seen in English and Netherlandic Pamphlets. Journal of Early Modern History, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2013).
“Men of the Nation”: The Shaping of Converso Identity in Early Modern Europe. By Miriam Bodian. Past and Present, No. 143 (May 1994).
The GOP’s Hispanic Opening. By Arthur Brooks.
The GOP’s Hispanic Opening. By Arthur Brooks. Wall Street Journal, May 15, 2013. Also find it here.
Larry Kudlow interview with Arthur Brooks. Audio. The Larry Kudlow Show. 77 WABC Radio, May 18, 2013. Interview runs from 39:22 to 51:35 in the audio file.
AEI’s Arthur Brooks: GOP can win Hispanic voters. By Matt K. Lewis. The Daily Caller, May 16, 2013.
Immigration Reform Is Pro-Growth. By Larry Kudlow. National Review Online, May 10, 2013.
Mark Levin on the Immigration Bill. Full Show, May 9, 2013. Audio. Douglas Woods, May 10, 2013. YouTube.
Laura Ingraham: Marco Rubio Has Betrayed Conservatives. Audio. Real Clear Politics, May 16, 2013. Also at Mofo Politics, YouTube.
Conservative Opposition To Immigration Reform Driven By Lack Of Trust. By Jon Ward. The Huffington Post, April 21, 2013.
The Fiscal Cost of Unlawful Immigrants and Amnesty to the U.S. Taxpayer. By Robert Rector and Jason Richwine. The Heritage Foundation, May 6, 2013. PDF.
The crucifixion of Jason Richwine. By Michelle Malkin. MichelleMalkin.com, May 9, 2013.
Debating the Heritage Foundation’s Immigration Study. By Jonathon Moseley. American Thinker, May 14, 2013.
Larry Kudlow interview with Arthur Brooks. Audio. The Larry Kudlow Show. 77 WABC Radio, May 18, 2013. Interview runs from 39:22 to 51:35 in the audio file.
AEI’s Arthur Brooks: GOP can win Hispanic voters. By Matt K. Lewis. The Daily Caller, May 16, 2013.
Immigration Reform Is Pro-Growth. By Larry Kudlow. National Review Online, May 10, 2013.
Mark Levin on the Immigration Bill. Full Show, May 9, 2013. Audio. Douglas Woods, May 10, 2013. YouTube.
Laura Ingraham: Marco Rubio Has Betrayed Conservatives. Audio. Real Clear Politics, May 16, 2013. Also at Mofo Politics, YouTube.
Conservative Opposition To Immigration Reform Driven By Lack Of Trust. By Jon Ward. The Huffington Post, April 21, 2013.
The Fiscal Cost of Unlawful Immigrants and Amnesty to the U.S. Taxpayer. By Robert Rector and Jason Richwine. The Heritage Foundation, May 6, 2013. PDF.
The crucifixion of Jason Richwine. By Michelle Malkin. MichelleMalkin.com, May 9, 2013.
Debating the Heritage Foundation’s Immigration Study. By Jonathon Moseley. American Thinker, May 14, 2013.
Dimyana Abdel-Nour, 24-Year Old Egyptian Christian Woman Charged with Blasphemy. By Maggie Michael.
Egyptians targeted with blasphemy charges. By Maggie Michael. AP. Yahoo! News, May 18, 2013. Also find it here.
Dimyana Abdel-Nour, 24, a Coptic Christian teacher in the southern Egyptian city of Luxor, went from classroom to jail after lawyers and parents of three students filed a lawsuit accusing the teacher of insulting Islam. Freed on Tuesday, May 14, 2013 on a 20,000-pound (nearly 3,000 dollars) bail after nearly a week in detention, Abdel-Nour is due to stand trial later this month. Criminalizing blasphemy was enshrined in Egypt’s new Islamist-backed constitution adopted in December.
Dimyana Abdel-Nour, 24, a Coptic Christian teacher in the southern Egyptian city of Luxor, went from classroom to jail after lawyers and parents of three students filed a lawsuit accusing the teacher of insulting Islam. Freed on Tuesday, May 14, 2013 on a 20,000-pound (nearly 3,000 dollars) bail after nearly a week in detention, Abdel-Nour is due to stand trial later this month. Criminalizing blasphemy was enshrined in Egypt’s new Islamist-backed constitution adopted in December.
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An undated photo of
Dimyana Abdel-Nour provided by her lawyer. AP Photo. |
Casual Sex: Why It’s Important After a Split.
Casual Sex: Why It’s Important After A Split. By Jennifer Cullen. The Huffington Post, May 16, 2013. Also find it here.
The Rescue of Jessica Buchanan. By Scott Pelley.
The Rescue of Jessica Buchanan. By Scott Pelley. Video. 60 Minutes. CBS News, May 12, 2013. YouTube. Transcript.
Jessica Buchanan recounts hostage nightmare. Video. Hannity. Fox News, May 17, 2013. Also here and here.
Kidnapped! By Jessica Buchanan. Marie Claire, May 13, 2013.
Interview with Jessica Buchanan. Video. Marie Claire, May 15, 2013. YouTube.
American aid worker describes her 93 days of hell at the hands of Somali bandits who kidnapped her and the dramatic Navy SEAL rescue mission that freed her. By Rachel Quigley. Daily Mail, May 12, 2013.
Impossible Odds: The Kidnapping of Jessica Buchanan and Her Dramatic Rescue by SEAL Team Six. By Jessica Buchanan, Erik Landemalm, and Anthony Flacco. New York: Atria Books, 2013. Amazon.com.
Too Big to Fail Students. By Mary Kissel and James Freeman.
Too Big to Fail Students. By Mary Kissel and James Freeman. Video. Wall Street Journal, May 10, 2013.
Dear Class of ’13: You’ve been scammed. By Brett Arends. Market Watch, May 17, 2013.
Dear Class of ’13: You’ve been scammed. By Brett Arends. Market Watch, May 17, 2013.
Friday, May 17, 2013
Horror Stories from the Place Formerly Known as Syria. By Walter Russell Mead.
Horror Stories from the Place Formerly Known as Syria. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, May 17, 2013.
Yes, Iraq Is Unraveling. By Michael Knights. Foreign Policy, May 15, 2013.
Syria’s savagery will thwart reconciliation. By Oliver Holmes. Reuters, May 14, 2013.
Syria Begins to Break Apart Under Pressure From War. By Ben Hubbard. New York Times, May 16, 2013.
Savage Online Videos Fuel Syria’s Descent Into Madness. By Aryn Baker. NJBR, May 16, 2013.
Yes, Iraq Is Unraveling. By Michael Knights. Foreign Policy, May 15, 2013.
Syria’s savagery will thwart reconciliation. By Oliver Holmes. Reuters, May 14, 2013.
Syria Begins to Break Apart Under Pressure From War. By Ben Hubbard. New York Times, May 16, 2013.
Savage Online Videos Fuel Syria’s Descent Into Madness. By Aryn Baker. NJBR, May 16, 2013.
Civil Liberties, Press Freedom, and America’s Global Role. By Stephen M. Walt.
Civil liberties, press freedom, and America’s global role. By Stephen M. Walt. Foreign Policy, May 16, 2013.
The Jobs Question: Work Is a Human Right. By Walter Russell Mead.
The Jobs Question: Work Is a Human Right. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, May 16, 2013.
Homeland Security Guidelines Advise Deference to Pro-Shariah Muslim Supremacists.
Homeland Security guidelines advise deference to pro-Shariah Muslim supremacists. By Charles C. Johnson. The Daily Caller, May 17, 2013.
It’s Bigger Than Obama – We’re Witnessing What Happens When Liberalism Rules. By Rush Limbaugh. RushLimbaugh.com, May 17, 2013.
Rush:
I have a story in the Stack here about the government, ladies and gentlemen. “Homeland Security Guidelines Advise Deference to pro-Shariah Muslim Supremacists.” This is the Daily Caller. Now, I think this is an important point to make. “The Department of Homeland Security, which under Secretary Janet Napolitano has shown a keen interest in monitoring and warning about outspoken conservatives, takes a very different approach in monitoring political Islamists, according to a 2011 memo on protecting the free speech rights of pro-Shariah Muslim supremacists.”
The Obama regime, the federal government, has more tolerance, more deference, more respect for Islamic extremist Muslims than they do for their own citizens who happen to be conservative or Christian. This administration considers conservative Americans and Christians and pro-lifers and people who care about the social issues, to be greater enemies of the state and not worthy of respect or deference. However, militant Islamists and extremist Muslims are accorded all of that.
“The Homeland Security document also seems to discount evidence unearthed by the Justice Department about the aims of some mainstream Muslim organizations . . .” Instead, Big Sis sends out memos warning everybody at DHS: Make sure you do not infringe upon the free speech rights – the constitutional free-association right, whatever – of pro-Sharia Muslim supremacists. But when it comes to American conservatives and American Christians, this administration is willing to trample all over their constitutional rights and continue denying them – and then warn everybody that it is they, these conservatives and these Christians, who pose the real threat to America.
And, folks, they mean it.
They really mean it.
It’s Bigger Than Obama – We’re Witnessing What Happens When Liberalism Rules. By Rush Limbaugh. RushLimbaugh.com, May 17, 2013.
Rush:
I have a story in the Stack here about the government, ladies and gentlemen. “Homeland Security Guidelines Advise Deference to pro-Shariah Muslim Supremacists.” This is the Daily Caller. Now, I think this is an important point to make. “The Department of Homeland Security, which under Secretary Janet Napolitano has shown a keen interest in monitoring and warning about outspoken conservatives, takes a very different approach in monitoring political Islamists, according to a 2011 memo on protecting the free speech rights of pro-Shariah Muslim supremacists.”
The Obama regime, the federal government, has more tolerance, more deference, more respect for Islamic extremist Muslims than they do for their own citizens who happen to be conservative or Christian. This administration considers conservative Americans and Christians and pro-lifers and people who care about the social issues, to be greater enemies of the state and not worthy of respect or deference. However, militant Islamists and extremist Muslims are accorded all of that.
“The Homeland Security document also seems to discount evidence unearthed by the Justice Department about the aims of some mainstream Muslim organizations . . .” Instead, Big Sis sends out memos warning everybody at DHS: Make sure you do not infringe upon the free speech rights – the constitutional free-association right, whatever – of pro-Sharia Muslim supremacists. But when it comes to American conservatives and American Christians, this administration is willing to trample all over their constitutional rights and continue denying them – and then warn everybody that it is they, these conservatives and these Christians, who pose the real threat to America.
And, folks, they mean it.
They really mean it.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Chris Matthews Accuses Obama Critics of Supporting White Supremacy.
Matthews: “Right-Wing” Opposition To Obama Due To “Sense The White Race Must Rule.” Real Clear Politics, May 15, 2013.
Chris Matthews Says 10 Or 20% Of Obama Opposition Rooted In “Sense That The White Race Must Rule.” By Tommy Christopher. Mediaite, May 16, 2013.
Chris Matthews and Al Sharpton: Obama’s Scandals Prove “Racism” and “White Supremacy” in GOP. Video. WeAreTheSavageNation, May 15, 2013. YouTube. Also here.
The Last Gasp of Aging White Power: But Time Is Not on Your Side. By Tim Wise. PoliticalArticles.Net, November 12, 2010.
Why Dummies Want to Forget the Tea Party Ancestry. Video. MockTheDummy1, June 2, 2010. YouTube.
Chris Matthews Says 10 Or 20% Of Obama Opposition Rooted In “Sense That The White Race Must Rule.” By Tommy Christopher. Mediaite, May 16, 2013.
Chris Matthews and Al Sharpton: Obama’s Scandals Prove “Racism” and “White Supremacy” in GOP. Video. WeAreTheSavageNation, May 15, 2013. YouTube. Also here.
The Last Gasp of Aging White Power: But Time Is Not on Your Side. By Tim Wise. PoliticalArticles.Net, November 12, 2010.
Why Dummies Want to Forget the Tea Party Ancestry. Video. MockTheDummy1, June 2, 2010. YouTube.
Savage Online Videos Fuel Syria’s Descent Into Madness. By Aryn Baker.
Savage Online Videos Fuel Syria’s Descent Into Madness. By Aryn Baker. Time, May 12, 2013.
Baker:
The video starts out like so many of the dozens coming out of the war in Syria every day, with the camera hovering over the body of a dead Syrian soldier. But the next frame makes it clear why this video, smuggled out of the city of Homs and into Lebanon with a rebel fighter, and obtained by TIME in April, is particularly shocking. In the video a man who is believed to be a rebel commander named Khalid al-Hamad, who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Sakkar, bends over the government soldier, knife in hand. With his right hand he moves what appears to be the dead man’s heart onto a flat piece of wood or metal lying across the body. With his left hand he pulls what appears to be a lung across the open cavity in the man’s chest. According to two of Abu Sakkar’s fellow rebels, who said they were present at the scene, Abu Sakkar had cut the organs out of the man’s body. The man believed to be Abu Sakkar then works his knife through the flesh of the dead man’s torso before he stands to face the camera, holding an organ in each hand. “I swear we will eat from your hearts and livers, you dogs of Bashar,” he says, referring to supporters of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Off camera, a small crowd can be heard calling out “Allahu akbar” — God is great. Then the man raises one of the bloodied organs to his lips and starts to tear off a chunk with his teeth.
Two TIME reporters first saw the video in April in the presence of several of Abu Sakkar’s fighters and supporters, including his brother. They all said the video was authentic. We later obtained a copy. Since then TIME has been trying to ensure that the footage is not digitally manipulated in any way — a faked film like this would be powerful propaganda for the regime, which portrays the rebels as terrorists — and, as yet, TIME has not been able to confirm its integrity. Abu Sakkar has not commented on whether the man in the video is indeed him because he is currently fighting on the front lines in Syria, according to fighters under his command. The video became public on May 12 when it was posted online by a proregime group and is indeed now being used as propaganda by regime supporters (and has already been shared 1,115 times on Facebook and has over 46,000 views on YouTube). These 27 seconds of footage provide a glimpse at how brutal the Syrian war has become — and a startling example of how technology appears to be fueling that brutality.
War is rarely anything but violent, but in Syria, where more than 70,000 civilians have been killed in the conflict since it started as a peaceful uprising inspired by the Arab Spring more than two years ago, the savagery has reached ghoulish proportions. And it seems that soldiers on both sides of the war are committing what appear to be crimes of war at least in part so that those acts can be viewed on the Internet. The ubiquity of camera phones and social media are enabling a mixture of propaganda, intimidation and boastful exhibitionism. In this, the first YouTube war, videos have driven the conflict even as they document its horrors.
Many videos from the Syrian battlefield, including the one that shows the man slicing out the dead soldier’s organs, also show the sectarian hatred that many fear is driving the war in Syria, especially the tension between the majority Sunni population and the minority Alawites. Assad is an Alawite; most rebels are Sunni. “Look at the heroes of Baba Amr,” shouts the man believed to be a rebel commander in the video, referring to a ferocious battle fought in 2012 between the rebels and regime forces near Homs, “slaughtering the Alawites and eating their hearts.” The anonymous blogger who posted the video on YouTube, attributing the video to al-Qaeda-affiliated Syrian rebel states: “These are the freedoms they want to import to our country.” The man in the video has been identified by another proregime group as Abu Sakkar, who commands the Al Farooq al-Mustakilla Brigade, a 60-man fighting force that is active in and around Homs, about 97 km north of Damascus and near the Lebanese border.
Videos like this prompt a troubling question: How do countries who want to support Syria’s rebels make sure they’re not unintentionally aiding rebels who might commit war crimes? Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are already providing the rebel forces with military aid, and the U.S. is helping with nonmilitary aid. There is an ongoing debate in Washington about whether the U.S. government should provide further aid to the rebels, possibly including weapons. Eating an enemy’s liver may be an extreme example of what appears to be a rebel atrocity, but there is enough documented evidence of extrajudicial killings, torture and desecration on the part of the rebels that it would be near impossible to know for certain who, exactly, are the “good” guys, says Peter Bouckaert, director of emergencies for the New York–based group Human Rights Watch. “In this context, where different rebel groups are fighting alongside each other, and sharing weapons, it’s difficult to control where the weapons end up. It is very likely that some of the weapons will end up in the hands of the likes of Abu Sakkar.”
Brigadier General Salim Idris, head of the Syrian Military Council (SMC), which oversees — according to its leadership — about 90% of the rebel forces, says such violence is unacceptable, and that no soldier under the council’s command would be allowed to get away with such actions. “Look, it is very clear that these kinds of behaviors, this cutting of bodies, is not allowed. If there is evidence that fighters from the FSA are doing something against human rights or international law, they will be brought before the court,” says Idris, referring to the Free Syrian Army, an umbrella name for the anarchic consortium of defected government soldiers, volunteers, jihadists and opportunists that make up most of the opposition fighting force, and nominally pledge allegiance to the SMC. Idris, who has not seen the video, but was told of its existence, questions the value of videos as proof, pointing out that they can be digitally manipulated. Furthermore, he maintains that the SMC has a watertight command-and-control structure in place that prevents these kinds of atrocities. He suggests that if they are happening, they are being perpetrated by the fighting groups not under his jurisdiction. Then he lashed out against Western journalists who focused on the human-rights abuses of the rebels, when “the regime is massacring women and children with knives. Where is international law when it comes to 200,000 martyrs and millions of refugees?”
The
video featuring the man believed to be Abu Sakkar is symptomatic of the blend
of brutality and technology on the Syrian battlefield. According to several
rebels interviewed by TIME, fighters from both sides no longer simply brag
about their exploits on the battlefield; they film them and share them,
competing in gruesome games of one-upmanship. This trading in trophy
atrocities, played up for the camera and passed from phone to phone, has a
desensitizing effect, says Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights, a pro-opposition U.K.-based organization that tracks fatalities
and human-rights abuses in Syria. When a 13-year-old boy is filmed beheading a
man and when footage of rape, torture and amputations are passed like trading
cards, it escalates the cycle of honor-driven revenge, as each atrocity, so
publicly shared, demands a response from the opposing side, according to Nadim
Houry of Human Rights Watch. “When people see these acts of brutality and
mutilation, it leaves deep scars, and there will be a temptation to replicate
it in revenge,” says Bouckaert. “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.
Quite a few fighters in Syria interpret that literally.”
Rahman
says violent videos are showing up with increasing frequency. “I’ve seen
hundreds of videos like that from both sides,” he says. “They cut off limbs and
heads. They cut out hearts and livers, ears and tongues. They cut off private
parts and put them places. It’s abnormal. It’s inhuman what is happening.”
The
apparent rise of such incidents — or at least their documentation — is an
indication that the Syrian conflict is going in a very dark direction. And it
could get worse. Many Syria scholars say the regime — and the war — could last
for years.
There
are no good options for the international community. Western intervention on
behalf of the rebels could exacerbate sectarian tensions. Foreign boots on the
ground could incite an Iranian response in support of the regime, which it backs,
sparking a wider regional proxy war. Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has
encouraged all jihadists to join in the fight against the Syrian regime;
further instability, with its rich recruitment pool and increased lawlessness,
is the terrorist group’s ideal incubator. And as more horrific videos emerge,
the rebels may find it harder and harder to persuade the international
community that they represent the best bet for a country descending ever
further into chaos.
Video: Syrian Rebel Commander Abu Sakkar Appears to Cut Out, Bite Heart of Dead Assad Soldier. By Brett Wilkins. Moral Low Ground, May 13, 2013.
Video purporting to show Syrian rebel atrocity highlights challenges facing West on aid. By Loveday Morris. Washington Post, May 14, 2013.
An Atrocity in Syria, With No Victim Too Small. By Anne Barnard and Hania Mourtada. New York Times, May 14, 2013.
Syria: Brigade Fighting in Homs Implicated in Atrocities. Human Rights Watch, May 13, 2013.
Syrian Truth | English | Facebook.
The Abu Sakkar Video. MegaWorldWideNews, May 16, 2013. YouTube. Also here.
Watching Syria’s War. Videos. Edited by Liam Stack. New York Times.
A Tangle of Bodies, All Women and Children, in a Darkened Room. Video. New York Times, May 14, 2013. YouTube.
Liam Stack:
This graphic video posted online shows 20 members of one family, including nine children, said to have been killed by government forces in al-Bayda, a village in the Baniyas district. Rebels said the government killed at least 322 Sunnis in Baniyas last week, and hundreds are missing. This video shows dead women and children in a darkened room. One woman’s body is surrounded by five children, while another woman’s head slumps back, a baby on her shoulder. The cameraman repeats, “Oh God, oh God.”
Baker:
The video starts out like so many of the dozens coming out of the war in Syria every day, with the camera hovering over the body of a dead Syrian soldier. But the next frame makes it clear why this video, smuggled out of the city of Homs and into Lebanon with a rebel fighter, and obtained by TIME in April, is particularly shocking. In the video a man who is believed to be a rebel commander named Khalid al-Hamad, who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Sakkar, bends over the government soldier, knife in hand. With his right hand he moves what appears to be the dead man’s heart onto a flat piece of wood or metal lying across the body. With his left hand he pulls what appears to be a lung across the open cavity in the man’s chest. According to two of Abu Sakkar’s fellow rebels, who said they were present at the scene, Abu Sakkar had cut the organs out of the man’s body. The man believed to be Abu Sakkar then works his knife through the flesh of the dead man’s torso before he stands to face the camera, holding an organ in each hand. “I swear we will eat from your hearts and livers, you dogs of Bashar,” he says, referring to supporters of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Off camera, a small crowd can be heard calling out “Allahu akbar” — God is great. Then the man raises one of the bloodied organs to his lips and starts to tear off a chunk with his teeth.
Two TIME reporters first saw the video in April in the presence of several of Abu Sakkar’s fighters and supporters, including his brother. They all said the video was authentic. We later obtained a copy. Since then TIME has been trying to ensure that the footage is not digitally manipulated in any way — a faked film like this would be powerful propaganda for the regime, which portrays the rebels as terrorists — and, as yet, TIME has not been able to confirm its integrity. Abu Sakkar has not commented on whether the man in the video is indeed him because he is currently fighting on the front lines in Syria, according to fighters under his command. The video became public on May 12 when it was posted online by a proregime group and is indeed now being used as propaganda by regime supporters (and has already been shared 1,115 times on Facebook and has over 46,000 views on YouTube). These 27 seconds of footage provide a glimpse at how brutal the Syrian war has become — and a startling example of how technology appears to be fueling that brutality.
War is rarely anything but violent, but in Syria, where more than 70,000 civilians have been killed in the conflict since it started as a peaceful uprising inspired by the Arab Spring more than two years ago, the savagery has reached ghoulish proportions. And it seems that soldiers on both sides of the war are committing what appear to be crimes of war at least in part so that those acts can be viewed on the Internet. The ubiquity of camera phones and social media are enabling a mixture of propaganda, intimidation and boastful exhibitionism. In this, the first YouTube war, videos have driven the conflict even as they document its horrors.
Many videos from the Syrian battlefield, including the one that shows the man slicing out the dead soldier’s organs, also show the sectarian hatred that many fear is driving the war in Syria, especially the tension between the majority Sunni population and the minority Alawites. Assad is an Alawite; most rebels are Sunni. “Look at the heroes of Baba Amr,” shouts the man believed to be a rebel commander in the video, referring to a ferocious battle fought in 2012 between the rebels and regime forces near Homs, “slaughtering the Alawites and eating their hearts.” The anonymous blogger who posted the video on YouTube, attributing the video to al-Qaeda-affiliated Syrian rebel states: “These are the freedoms they want to import to our country.” The man in the video has been identified by another proregime group as Abu Sakkar, who commands the Al Farooq al-Mustakilla Brigade, a 60-man fighting force that is active in and around Homs, about 97 km north of Damascus and near the Lebanese border.
Videos like this prompt a troubling question: How do countries who want to support Syria’s rebels make sure they’re not unintentionally aiding rebels who might commit war crimes? Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are already providing the rebel forces with military aid, and the U.S. is helping with nonmilitary aid. There is an ongoing debate in Washington about whether the U.S. government should provide further aid to the rebels, possibly including weapons. Eating an enemy’s liver may be an extreme example of what appears to be a rebel atrocity, but there is enough documented evidence of extrajudicial killings, torture and desecration on the part of the rebels that it would be near impossible to know for certain who, exactly, are the “good” guys, says Peter Bouckaert, director of emergencies for the New York–based group Human Rights Watch. “In this context, where different rebel groups are fighting alongside each other, and sharing weapons, it’s difficult to control where the weapons end up. It is very likely that some of the weapons will end up in the hands of the likes of Abu Sakkar.”
Brigadier General Salim Idris, head of the Syrian Military Council (SMC), which oversees — according to its leadership — about 90% of the rebel forces, says such violence is unacceptable, and that no soldier under the council’s command would be allowed to get away with such actions. “Look, it is very clear that these kinds of behaviors, this cutting of bodies, is not allowed. If there is evidence that fighters from the FSA are doing something against human rights or international law, they will be brought before the court,” says Idris, referring to the Free Syrian Army, an umbrella name for the anarchic consortium of defected government soldiers, volunteers, jihadists and opportunists that make up most of the opposition fighting force, and nominally pledge allegiance to the SMC. Idris, who has not seen the video, but was told of its existence, questions the value of videos as proof, pointing out that they can be digitally manipulated. Furthermore, he maintains that the SMC has a watertight command-and-control structure in place that prevents these kinds of atrocities. He suggests that if they are happening, they are being perpetrated by the fighting groups not under his jurisdiction. Then he lashed out against Western journalists who focused on the human-rights abuses of the rebels, when “the regime is massacring women and children with knives. Where is international law when it comes to 200,000 martyrs and millions of refugees?”
Video: Syrian Rebel Commander Abu Sakkar Appears to Cut Out, Bite Heart of Dead Assad Soldier. By Brett Wilkins. Moral Low Ground, May 13, 2013.
Video purporting to show Syrian rebel atrocity highlights challenges facing West on aid. By Loveday Morris. Washington Post, May 14, 2013.
An Atrocity in Syria, With No Victim Too Small. By Anne Barnard and Hania Mourtada. New York Times, May 14, 2013.
Syria: Brigade Fighting in Homs Implicated in Atrocities. Human Rights Watch, May 13, 2013.
Syrian Truth | English | Facebook.
The Abu Sakkar Video. MegaWorldWideNews, May 16, 2013. YouTube. Also here.
Watching Syria’s War. Videos. Edited by Liam Stack. New York Times.
A Tangle of Bodies, All Women and Children, in a Darkened Room. Video. New York Times, May 14, 2013. YouTube.
Liam Stack:
This graphic video posted online shows 20 members of one family, including nine children, said to have been killed by government forces in al-Bayda, a village in the Baniyas district. Rebels said the government killed at least 322 Sunnis in Baniyas last week, and hundreds are missing. This video shows dead women and children in a darkened room. One woman’s body is surrounded by five children, while another woman’s head slumps back, a baby on her shoulder. The cameraman repeats, “Oh God, oh God.”
Is There a Path Forward for Egypt? By Walter Russell Mead.
Is There a Path Forward for Egypt? By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, May 16, 2013.
Christians Uneasy in Morsi’s Egypt. By Stephen Glain. New York Times, May 15, 2012.
Morsy and the Muslims. By Shadi Hamid. Foreign Policy, May 8, 2013.
Christians Uneasy in Morsi’s Egypt. By Stephen Glain. New York Times, May 15, 2012.
Morsy and the Muslims. By Shadi Hamid. Foreign Policy, May 8, 2013.
Physically Strong Men Tend to Have Right-Wing Political Views.
Men who are physically strong are more likely to have right wing political views. By Emma Innes. Daily Mail, May 16, 2013.
Political Motivations May Have Evolutionary Links to Physical Strength. Press Release. APS, May 15, 2013.
The Ancestral Logic of Politics: Upper-Body Strength Regulates Men’s Assertion of Self-Interest Over Economic Redistribution. By Michael Bang Petersen et al. Psychological Science, published online before print, May 13, 2013.
Abstract:
Over human evolutionary history, upper-body strength has been a major component of fighting ability. Evolutionary models of animal conflict predict that actors with greater fighting ability will more actively attempt to acquire or defend resources than less formidable contestants will. Here, we applied these models to political decision making about redistribution of income and wealth among modern humans. In studies conducted in Argentina, Denmark, and the United States, men with greater upper-body strength more strongly endorsed the self-beneficial position: Among men of lower socioeconomic status (SES), strength predicted increased support for redistribution; among men of higher SES, strength predicted increased opposition to redistribution. Because personal upper-body strength is irrelevant to payoffs from economic policies in modern mass democracies, the continuing role of strength suggests that modern political decision making is shaped by an evolved psychology designed for small-scale groups.
Political Motivations May Have Evolutionary Links to Physical Strength. Press Release. APS, May 15, 2013.
The Ancestral Logic of Politics: Upper-Body Strength Regulates Men’s Assertion of Self-Interest Over Economic Redistribution. By Michael Bang Petersen et al. Psychological Science, published online before print, May 13, 2013.
Abstract:
Over human evolutionary history, upper-body strength has been a major component of fighting ability. Evolutionary models of animal conflict predict that actors with greater fighting ability will more actively attempt to acquire or defend resources than less formidable contestants will. Here, we applied these models to political decision making about redistribution of income and wealth among modern humans. In studies conducted in Argentina, Denmark, and the United States, men with greater upper-body strength more strongly endorsed the self-beneficial position: Among men of lower socioeconomic status (SES), strength predicted increased support for redistribution; among men of higher SES, strength predicted increased opposition to redistribution. Because personal upper-body strength is irrelevant to payoffs from economic policies in modern mass democracies, the continuing role of strength suggests that modern political decision making is shaped by an evolved psychology designed for small-scale groups.
Caveman Cold Case PBS Documentary.
Caveman Cold Case. Video. Secrets of the Dead. PBS, May 15, 2013. Also at in four parts at YouTube: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
About the episode:
A tomb of 49,000 year-old Neanderthal bones discovered in El Sidron, a remote, mountainous region of Northern Spain, leads to a compelling investigation to solve a double mystery: How did this group of Neanderthals die? And, could the fate of this group help explain Neanderthal extinction? Scientists examine the bones—buried over 65 feet below ground—and discover signs that tell a shocking story of how this group of six adults, three teenagers, two children and a baby may have met their death. Some bones have deep cuts, long bones are cracked and skulls crushed—distinct signs of cannibalism. Was it a result of ritual or hunger? Neanderthal experts are adamant that they were not bloodthirsty brutes. Will this investigation challenge their views? What happened here 49000 years ago will take us on a much bigger journey—from El Sidron to the other end of the Iberian Peninsula where scientists are excavating beneath the seas off Gibraltar in search of Neanderthal sites. Scientists working here had theories—but no proof—for why Neanderthals went extinct. El Sidron may change this.
Late survival of Neanderthals at the southernmost extreme of Europe. By Clive Finlayson et al. Nature, Vol. 443, October 19, 2006.
Last of the Neanderthals. By Stephen S. Hall. National Geographic, October 2008.
Neanderthal Code. Video. National Geographic, September 23, 2008. YouTube.
Neanderthal: BBC Documentary. Video. SpooksBBC, January 16, 2013. YouTube.
“One Small Step for Man . . .” The Humans Who Went Extinct. Chapter 8. By Clive Finlayson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
See also: Decoding Neanderthals NOVA Documentary; Becoming Human NOVA Documentary.
Watch Caveman Cold Case on PBS. See more from Secrets of the Dead.
About the episode:
A tomb of 49,000 year-old Neanderthal bones discovered in El Sidron, a remote, mountainous region of Northern Spain, leads to a compelling investigation to solve a double mystery: How did this group of Neanderthals die? And, could the fate of this group help explain Neanderthal extinction? Scientists examine the bones—buried over 65 feet below ground—and discover signs that tell a shocking story of how this group of six adults, three teenagers, two children and a baby may have met their death. Some bones have deep cuts, long bones are cracked and skulls crushed—distinct signs of cannibalism. Was it a result of ritual or hunger? Neanderthal experts are adamant that they were not bloodthirsty brutes. Will this investigation challenge their views? What happened here 49000 years ago will take us on a much bigger journey—from El Sidron to the other end of the Iberian Peninsula where scientists are excavating beneath the seas off Gibraltar in search of Neanderthal sites. Scientists working here had theories—but no proof—for why Neanderthals went extinct. El Sidron may change this.
Late survival of Neanderthals at the southernmost extreme of Europe. By Clive Finlayson et al. Nature, Vol. 443, October 19, 2006.
Last of the Neanderthals. By Stephen S. Hall. National Geographic, October 2008.
Neanderthal Code. Video. National Geographic, September 23, 2008. YouTube.
Neanderthal: BBC Documentary. Video. SpooksBBC, January 16, 2013. YouTube.
“One Small Step for Man . . .” The Humans Who Went Extinct. Chapter 8. By Clive Finlayson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
See also: Decoding Neanderthals NOVA Documentary; Becoming Human NOVA Documentary.
Watch Caveman Cold Case on PBS. See more from Secrets of the Dead.
Game of Thrones: The Bear and the Maiden Fair.
Fashion’s unlikeliest couple: Designer Giles Deacon said to be dating fearsome Game of Thrones star, Gwendoline Christie. By Ruth Styles. Daily Mail, April 12, 2013.
Game of Thrones’ Worst Scene Yet? By Ross Douthat, Spencer Kornhaber, and Christopher Orr. The Atlantic, May 13, 2013. Dismemberment, disappointment, and dragons: Our roundtable on “The Bear and the Maiden Fair,” the seventh episode of the HBO series’ third season.
Discussion of Game of Thrones Season 3, Episode 7: “The Bear and the Maiden Fair.” Panel with Ben Mankiewicz, John Iadarola, and Brett Erlich. Video. What the Flick, May 13, 2013. YouTube.
More on Game of Thrones here and here.
Game of Thrones 3x07: Jamie Lannister Saves Brienne of Tarth from a Bear. Video. GameOfThrones2013, May 12, 2013. YouTube Also here, here, and here.
Game of Throne 3x07: Tywin and Joffrey. Video. GameOfThrones2013, May 12, 2013. YouTube. Also here and here.
Game of Thrones 3x07: Daenerys at Yunkai. Video. Jaqen H’ghar, May 13, 2013. YouTube. Also here and here.
Game of Thrones’ Worst Scene Yet? By Ross Douthat, Spencer Kornhaber, and Christopher Orr. The Atlantic, May 13, 2013. Dismemberment, disappointment, and dragons: Our roundtable on “The Bear and the Maiden Fair,” the seventh episode of the HBO series’ third season.
Discussion of Game of Thrones Season 3, Episode 7: “The Bear and the Maiden Fair.” Panel with Ben Mankiewicz, John Iadarola, and Brett Erlich. Video. What the Flick, May 13, 2013. YouTube.
More on Game of Thrones here and here.
Game of Thrones 3x07: Jamie Lannister Saves Brienne of Tarth from a Bear. Video. GameOfThrones2013, May 12, 2013. YouTube Also here, here, and here.
Game of Throne 3x07: Tywin and Joffrey. Video. GameOfThrones2013, May 12, 2013. YouTube. Also here and here.
Game of Thrones 3x07: Daenerys at Yunkai. Video. Jaqen H’ghar, May 13, 2013. YouTube. Also here and here.
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