Palestinians Compensate for Lack of Jew-killing Opportunities by Turning Against Their Women

... because their husbands won't let them.

Er... I mean: all they need is another way to vent their energy, like more sports and hooliganism. Doesn't Palestina have a soccer competition?

More on the need to maintain honour: A fatwa against George Galloway and Big Brother.

this article is absolutely hateful. it's obviously motivated by a desire to demonise Muslims and Palestinians rather than any concern for the victims of honour killings.

Another article by Ms. Lapkin.

Her point in that other article: "The number of rapes committed by Muslim men against women in the last decade is so incredibly high that it cannot be viewed as anything other than culturally implicit behaviour."

or: "it's their culture, stupid!"

When you were inventing a comparable Christian story, archer, you used the term "Christian fundamentalist", ie extreme, non-representative Christians. This article just condemns Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians as all sharing a murderous, backwards culture.

If you actually want to talk about the plight of women in the Arab world, post a reasonable article. I suspect, however, that you don't.

The authoress of this article did not stoop to explain the word "lucrative" in this sentence. This doesn't speak well for her professionalism and tends to cast doubt on the fairness of everything that follows.

Somehow I didn't expect this thread would generate the same kind of outraged response...

Heavens! These Palestinians! If they insist on acting like animals, then we ought to round them all up in cattle cars, put them in cages, then slaughter and eat them. It is only reasonable.

That better?

I think I make an interesting point, but you're free to dismiss it.

xpost

one can be right and be a troll at the same time.

Something tells me the facts of this event have been simplified into a grotesque caricature, in the service of promoting misunderstanding. Nothing says "propaganda" like attributing motives to actions, without sufficient foundation.

In fact, this one sentence (presented as a stand alone paragraph) is a marvel of interesting technique. The victim is a "toddler", which is an emotionally-laden adjective chosen to promote sympathy. Nothing wrong with that.

However, the rapist is described quite neutrally "a 25-year old man" with no other attributes given, as if the mere drab fact of being 25 years old was the only worthwhile thing to convey about him.

Finally, the family of the victim is specifically described as "Palestinian" and they are lumped all together as a faceless, unanimous group who collectively "let" the toddler bleed to death.

This last bit is really lovely. That construction manages very artfully to imply that the entire family was equally responsible and equally heartless. They appear as a collective entity only, without individual thoughts or conflicting judgments. It even manages to imply that the death of the toddler was foreseen as the consequence of their actions, and therefore the choice was not to "treat the child at home", but rather "to let the child die".

archer, you've been had. This thing, the more I look at it, is a concoction, a recipe, a contrivance, a trap laid for the uncautious reader. You fell in.

-- StanM (Stan10...) (webmail), January 21st, 2006 2:15 PM. (StanM) (later) (link)

Well, Nabisco has to move to Massachusetts first.....

you're not making anyone a service by making such ridiculous comparisons.

there is no reason to try and equate them.

This paragraph says 'Arabs'. I'm confused - which group should I be outraged at - Arabs or Muslims??

but that doesn't mean that honor killing is the same as isolated murders. they're different in very important wasy, such as that there are justifications for honor killing, that it can be socially acceptable or encouraged, and that it sometimes goes unpunished. driving your kids into a lake in the us doesn't work that way.
honor killing is not something made up by racists who hate islam, even though this particular article is bullshit. it's really unfair to the women hurt by it to be so relativistic as to say that we can't say anything negative about it until our society is perfect and all inequalities between countries and ethnic groups vanish.

http://www.diamondtalk.com/forums/images/smilies/83/fite.gif

Too late.

(Give It Wings And A Quiff)

http://www.ffuniverse.nu/ffta/img/04.jpg

"Someone call for a good servicing?"

But black American culture doesn't celebrate the rape of white girls. Palestinian culture DOES celebrate the slaughter of Jews. It would be a good analogy otherwise.

http://wizardishungry.com/no/uncle_tom_banner.gif

No, it doesn't. That's just false.

Certain militant Palestinian factions, radicalized by decades of violent struggle with Israel, cynically exploit that struggle to try and gain the power they don't actually have diplomatically or militarily. These people are MARGINAL players in "Palestinian culture" despite grabbing the headlines as a result of their actions, and the vast majority of Palestinians do not favor suicide bombing, killing civilians, etc.

So you are going around the Internet, spreading hateful lies. Fiesta!

for Tracer.

I heard that, as Yasser Arafat lay on his deathbed, he wore a Newcastle United shirt, Spurs shorts and and Lazio socks. Apparently he wanted to be buried in the Gazza strip.

Now do let's shut up.

As far as double standards go, I still find this ludicrous: this argument ignores the fact that double standards are built into the situation. When a person says "Israel does X" he means something specific -- the actions and policies in question are being carried out by a democratic state, a single entity. When a person says "Palestinians do X," he is talking about nothing at all. When Israeli soldiers do something we're offended by, we aim our annoyance at "Israel," the state on whose behalf those soldiers act. When Palestinian militants do something we're offended by, it doesn't follow that we aim our annoyance at "Palestinians" (because militants act on behalf of no one but themselves) or "Palestine" (because there's no such thing).

The tone and the presentation of the stuff in the thread question proceeds from exactly that same logic. You learn something about Palestinians that's not acquired solely for the purpose of demonizing the group, and maybe then you have a little more room to start offering well-reasoned even-handed criticisms of a "culture."

In what you say, you implicitly recognise that a culture can have disgusting extremes. On what basis therefore are you denying that a culture can't be disgusting in its mainstream? Would you deny that Nazi culture was disgusting in its entirety, rather than it being just an extemist fringe element? Whether a similiar denunciation is appropriate with regard to the Palestinians is a matter of opinion. But why would you seemingly wish rule it out from the outset?

We don't?

In any case, which parts of:

As of 2004, honor killings have occurred in numerous countries, including: Albania, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Ecuador, Egypt, Germany, India, Iran, Iraq, Italy[4], Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Palestine, Sweden, Turkey, Uganda and the United Kingdom. In Europe, honor killings have been reported within the Muslim and Sikh communities. Many cases of honor killing have been reported in Pakistan, where it is known as KaroKari. It is also reported among Sikhs in the adjacent Indian Punjab.

In December 2005, Nazir Afzal, director of Britain's Crown Prosecution Service in west London—an area with a large number of South Asian residents—stated that the United Kingdom has seen "at least a dozen honor killings" between 2004 and 2005

did you fail to understand? That sure looks like "all over the world" to me.

Where did I even suggest that?

In Australia! It might be a hell of a lot more subtle but this shit's everywhere.

(I have no opinion on the rest of this thread, I honestly dont know enough about the current situ)

absolute bollocks. where the hell are you getting this from?

"allowed men to use provocation as a murder defense"

Did it allow women to use the same defence?Depends how the law defines provocation but Id have thought in some circumstances it would be a justified, no?

To be honest I don't know. I imnagine in theory yes but perhaps never put forward. I'd have to do some quick research.

but killing women for being raped or for having the wrong boyfriend is not.

60% of British muslims wish to see sharia law implemented in Britain

http://www.guardian.co.uk/islam/story/0,15568,1362591,00.html :

A special Guardian/ICM poll based on a survey of 500 British Muslims found that a clear majority want Islamic law introduced into this country in civil cases relating to their own community. Some 61% wanted Islamic courts - operating on sharia principles - "so long as the penalties did not contravene British law".

and

Also, 1 in 3 British muslims expressed support or sympathy with the London suicide bombers is usually quoted as "about 1 in 4" and is somehow based on these answers British Muslims gave in a Daily Telegraph poll.

DING. This is the problem point. NOT ALL MUSLIMS JUST LET THIS SHIT HAPPEN.

There is no mention of Honor killing in the Quran or Hadiths.... In Indonesia, generally believed to be the country with the largest Muslim population, honor killings are unknown, as also in parts of West Africa with majority-Muslim populations and many other Islamic countries like Bangladesh.

Can we agree on a definition - "NPR Rock" ??

I did however find this from a recent YouGov poll:

Nearly a third of British Muslims, 32 per cent believe that "Western society is decadent and immoral and that Muslims should seek to bring it to an end".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2005/07/23/npoll23big.gif

You don't mention this part: ", but only by non-violent means."

Sharia entails jihad and so is violent by definition - it is based on the verses of the sword in the Koran, and on the vile activities of the murderous 'epitome of moral conduct' Mohammed. From that foundation we get the sharia doctrine of jihad which for over a millenia, and to this day in all orthodox teachings of Islam, has prescribed that muslims must either convert, kill, or subjugate as persecuted second-class citizens, all infidels until Islam reigns supreme througout the world.

The MOST any decent muslim can do is to obfuscate about this unpleasant fact. There is no scriptural basis whatsoever for muslims not inclined to wage jihad to put forward an alternative interpretation of Islam. So the most they can do is to pretend that Islam is something other than it is. The result of which is merely to undermine those who are trying to portray Islam in its true light.

Am I wrong? Okay, name me ONE MUSLIM OUT OF A BILLION WHO HAS STATED THAT THE SHARIA JIHAD DOCTRINE AND ITS BASIS IN THE KORAN AND IN THE ACTIVITIES OF MOHAMMED ARE A SUPREMACIST MISREADING OF A GENUINELY PEACEFUL RELIGION. There are no such muslims because there is absolutely no theological basis upon which to make such a claim.

And here's the kicker. Even if, by some tortuous logic, Islam was reinterpreted as a fundamentally peaceful religion, do you suppose that within any substantial Islamic community there would not be a significant proportion who would still adhere to the religion as described in the Koran, as demonstrated by Mohammed in action, and as codified by over a millenia of Islamic jurisprudence?

In other words, there is NO alternative to protecting our tolerant Western societies from the evil supremracist religion of Islam other than refusing to tolerate the presence amongst us of large Islamic populations.

Archer quotes: Nearly a third of British Muslims, 32 per cent believe that "Western society is decadent and immoral and that Muslims should seek to bring it to an end", which would convince just about anybody who was already paranoid about this kind of thing because all they will think is: "see? they're all terrorists," but in the real poll that 32 is divided into:

... "if necessary by violence" : 1 percent.
... "but only by non-violent means" : 31 percent.

That's blatant statistics-rape and you are indeed deliberately doing this.

I'd again suggest ignoring Archer, whose mode of argument is just basically just begging for things to devolve to nowhere -- which is ironic, since the whole tactic seems to be to provoke devolution and then complain about it.

Thing is, if you ignore Archer, there's not much to talk about. Honor killings are terrible, yes. So are a whole lot of other things that sometimes get codified into extremist versions of sharia. These things happen lots of places -- quite a bit in the mid-east, sure, but I wouldn't exactly want to be a woman in northern Nigeria, either. We presumably all agree about this. Archer speculates that Palestinians, somehow frustrated in terms of intifada, are turning their energy toward shit like this, but then WTF: his evidence for this is an article with such an obvious demonizing agenda that it's incredibly difficult to receive it as actual agenda-free sociological "news" about an increase of honor killings in the occupied territories, leave alone as something fit to speculate on the causes of said alleged rise. So what are we even going to talk about? Shall we have a general discussion about how we feel about honor killings ("I don't like them either!")? Shall we talk about where they occur and what we can do about them? Shall we talk about the way that behaviors much like this (and less obviously wrong, like maybe arranged marriages at very early ages) have indeed been brought into the western world by immigrants from places where they're considered the norm? We could indeed talk about that, if someone wanted to.

Still, I think it pretty often treads on ridiculousness for anyone to do what Archer's doing, which is to goad people on their supposed lack of objection to something they already condemn -- something random people do which we all obviously wish they wouldn't. The reason it always leads to this argument is that what Archer's asking is for us all to aim our condemnation at an entire culture -- and if you really want to talk about "liberal values," one of those is to avoid condemning whole national or ethnic groups for some behavior that exists within them. This is pretty basic, really; we condemn actions and not cultures, ideas and not collections of very different people. (This involves having it in your head that people of the same color and nationality as you are not the only ones on the planet who are separable as individuals.) We can muster up a lot of objection to the specific actions or policies of a government, or the people acting on its behalf, but it does very little good beyond demonizing people to aim vague condemnation at a "culture" of separable individuals -- especially when the rhetoric behind it is clearly more interested in scoring demonization points than actually investigating the culture in question.

Looking forward to the publication of the Secret Protocols of Mohammed, fuckface.

Ah, "other messages were inserted", including archer's, which gives his real motives. Do fuck off.

And there's NOTHING in Sharia about it!

http://www.islamfortoday.com/terrorism.htm

http://www.rayhawk.com/classics/matusa/islam.html

Oh wait, now we know how to make Archer go away! I don't have Lexis-Nexis, though, I'll have to hop on email.

if no, why cant we condemn that just like we condemn racism?

Just point me to a single article by a muslim which denounces the orthodox doctrine of jihad and I'll slink away with my tale between my legs

to

pray tell, which of the 8 schools of othodox Islam have rejected the doctrine of jihad

Hopefully if he keeps backpedalling that quickly he'll miss the rapidly approaching cliff edge.

My guess: they not "real" Muslims.

Has anyone seen this new Marx Brothers box set? Stylin'!

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B0002SKT7Y.08.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

links please. But I know even before seeing the links that they won't put forward a version of Islam in contradiction to the orthodox schools. They simply can't because their is no theological basis upon which to do so. Their prophet was a murderous proto-jihadist psycho, so how could any muslim simply reject that heritage? So, even before reading the articles to which you refer, I'll confidently venture that they are simply disingenous about the nature of jihad rather than attacking the doctrine as being unislamic, for which there is no scriptural grounds. Am I right?

Yes, I was careless in missing that. But now that I've checked them out they only bear out what I said. The disingenuity of nominal muslims is completely fucking worthless. Or did I miss the attack on jihad as it has been practised for over a millenia, which was responisble for the greatest genocides in history (of hindus and armenians) and which remains the orthodox position of all non-nominal muslims to this day.

(Here's a fun fact: This picture appears elswhere on ILX and is one of the first pictures to appear in g00gle image search!)

Maybe the same way that Christians reject the proto-socialist collectivism of the early, Acts-era Christians and apostles? Just guessing.

While I understand the desire to avoid dangerous generalizations about other peoples, I feel like nobody wants to say that there's something seriously wrong with any culture that would permit this (and if it frequently or usually goes unpunished, then it is permitted, regardless of whether or not other people in the culture passively disagree with it). Yes, there is misogyny and violence against women in every country in the world, but this is particularly heinous, and it wouldn't be possible without a cultural imbalance of power between men and women so massive that men are actually able to declare women's lives worthless.

So you're saying "western societies" (whatever this even MEANS) are totally tolerant and free from this kind of criticism, we can and have done no wrong, and Islam is "evil". And you're a "liberal".

We're being trolled, this is stupid.

if this is really your view, then i hope that you brits deny pat robertson and jerry falwell entry into the UK.

"AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals."

"If we are going to save America and evangelize the world, we cannot accommodate secular philosophies that are diametrically opposed to Christian truth."

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B000BARCNC.08.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

The Thin Man Tries To Get Laid During A Marx Brothers Movie would rock bells, wouldn't it?

http://www.vgmuseum.com/pics/Mortal%20Kombat%201%20-%20Ingame%201G.gif

http://www.mame.net/wippics/0007/mk2_2.png

http://www.cyberiapc.com/vgg/stills/megadrive/mk3-1.jpg

http://www.consoleclassix.com/info_img/Cabal_NES_ScreenShot3.jpg

PAT ROBERTSON'S LAST WORDS

HOW DO I SOLVED MYSTERY?

http://xboxmedia.gamespy.com/xbox/image/article/574/574567/25-to-life-20041220041505929-000.jpg

God Tom will not stop playing Final Fantasy 7. WTF? Get one (1) 2006 already.

=

http://photos1.blogger.com/img/54/1194/1024/beard.jpg

=

http://www.vandammefan.net/vandammepics/movies/images/vandammepics_movie04_jpg.jpg

Ally, you and Tom at home on saturday night with him playing a game from, like, 1996 does not forecast well for your future together

RG I didn't get wake up until 5pm today, going out is a no go this Saturday night. Though the fucking game is really unbelievable.

xpost oh my god you dn't even know

at least he didn't die b/c of an "honor killing."

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B000BARCFA.08.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

xpost

i thought that was b/c someone was hungry for gyro meat?!?

http://gaykeywest.net/IMAGE%20FOLDERS/index%20images/gay_keywest_welcome.gif

Take on me, take me on
I'll be gone
In a day or two

So needless to say
I'm odds and ends
From the video
But that's me stumbling away
Slowly learning that life is OK.
Say after me
It's no better to be safe than sorry

Take on me, take me on
I'll be gone
In a day or two

Oh the things that you say
Is it live or
Just to play my worries away
You're all the things I've got to remember
You're shying away
I'll be coming for you anyway

Take on me, take me on
I'll be gone
In a day or two

And A-Ha seals the deal.

Ingredients:
1 lb chicken (like a breast or two, I dunno)
3 sausages
1 lb shrimp (these will be cooked separately because it's just easier to not overcook them that way--you will need 2 tbsp of Old Bay, 1 cup of white vinegar and 1 cup of water to cook these)
Olive oil (just enough to saute)
1 large sweet onion
1 green bell pepper
3-6 cloves garlic, minced (depends on how much garlic you like, I always put in 6)
2 celery stalks
1.5 cans tomato paste
1 16 oz can diced tomatoes
4.5 cups of chicken stock
2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp white pepper
1/2 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp basil
2 bay leaves
salt to taste
2 cups of rice

Directions:
Dice up the onion, pepper, celery, and chicken, and slice up the sausages. Set meat aside. Saute the onion, pepper, celery, and garlic in olive oil over high heat, until onions start turning translucent. Add the tomato paste and stir, letting the tomato paste brown a little. It'll start turning kind of a mahogany color after about 3-5 minutes. This is what makes it taste good, trust me. Add half of the stock to deglaze the pot, and add the can of tomatoes. Stir pretty good to make sure you get any paste that is left at the bottom of the pot! Add all your seasonings now, and let cook for about 5 minutes on medium heat, stirring occasionally. Add about another cup of stock and add the meat, and let cook for another 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the remaining cup or so of stock and now add the rice and stir. Turn heat to low and cover the pot. Let cook for another 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally to make sure the rice doesn't burn to the bottom of the pot and that you have enough liquid (if you need to add more stock or some water or some red wine go ahead, you know how rice is). You'll be able to tell when it's done because it'll look right, just make sure to take a bite of the rice and see if it's soft enough.

Towards the very end of the cooking, you'll want to do the shrimp. Grab a small pot, pour in the vinegar, water, and Old Bay and bring to a boil. Throw in the shrimp and cover the pot and let them cook for like 2-4 minutes (depending on size of shrimp, if they're little rock shrimp just cook for 2 minutes at most). Drain and then toss the shrimp on top of the servings of jambalaya.

This is enough for like 4 servings for Tom and I so you might want to double the recipe.

NOTES:
- Almost any type of sausage works ok in this recipe to be honest. The best is andouille or chorizo, I've made do with regular old brats though. I don't recommend Italian Sausage though because that tends to be very peppery and it will make the dish too spicy.
- If you don't have stock you can substitute with water, or half red wine, half water. You could also do water with chicken bouillion in it but make sure you do not add ANY salt later if you do this because there's already a lot of salt in those.
- When I make this I'm pretty free with my measurements on the meat, like I just let Tom cut up as much as he wants and put it in so I'm pretty sure you can just put in almost double the meat I have in this recipe, without having to double anything else in the recipe. FYI!

I disagree with Nabisco's idea (and it's not just his, it comes up time and again on these boards) that you can't make any generalisations about any culture (because there are exceptions within the culture, or because other cultures share some basic features). This idea suggests that we should either defer judgement until all the data is in, or show such a complex picture that no broad statements can be made. Clearly, that would also defer a lot of political speech, and a lot of moral judgement at times when it's exactly those things that a situation needs: we need to influence situations while they happen, not at some notional (and impossible) point in the future when all the relevant data is visible, and nobody has any vested interests any more. Above all, Nabisco's idea is framed by the notion that empirical data can be meaningful on its own, without theories or ideologies to organize it. It can't. And cultures are more like ideologies than they're like raw data. It's the ambition of every culture to be something you can make generalizations about. A culture that can't be generalized about is a culture which is failing in coherence or consistency.

So I disagree with Nabisco's "if you really want to talk about 'liberal values,' one of those is to avoid condemning whole national or ethnic groups for some behavior that exists within them". It's perfectly liberal to make moral judgements about cultural-ideological blocs (which might indeed sometimes correspond with national or ethnic groups), and indeed it's a moral obligation at times. If we don't do this we can't fight the things we disagree with; we become political eunuchs.

But I also disagree (of course) with Archer's position. He fails to understand why "asymmetrical multiculturalism" (or "double standards") are necessary. They're necessary because we have to take into account all the power power relationships in a situation. The situation he describes is a tricky one, because it contains conflicting victimhoods. The Palestinians are victims, oppressed by the Israelis. But Palestinian women are victims of the victims. The asymmetry ("unfairness") Archer wishes to focus on is the male-female one. He also wants to focus on the asymmetry by which people judge the Palestinians and the Israelis by different standards. He doesn't want to focus on the asymmetry between the Israelis and the Palestinians, though. And his failure to take that asymmetry into account shows that he has a right wing agenda rather similar to that of the fascists I denounce in my essay The secret life of Eurabia.

Was this a shot at me?

By Craig Goldwyn

Samuel Johnson wrote "Claret is the drink for boys, port for men, but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy." By that definition Swedish Julglögg, will make us superhuman.

Glögg, pronounced gloog, is a high octane, hot mulled wine made with a potpourri of spices and all three of the above: Claret (red wine), port, and brandy. It is the perfect cold weather drink, warming the body and soul from the inside out.

There are as many recipes for this old traditional winter beverage as there are for chili. Instead of brandy, the original Swedish recipe calls for aquavit, a distilled spirit frequently flavored with caraway seeds. I know of an Irishman who uses Irish whisky and I've tasted it made with bourbon and vodka. But I prefer the taste of glögg made with brandy.

The spices and flavorings change just as frequently, with most recipes calling for cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, orange peel, raisins, almonds, and sugar. Some people use dried cherries. Some swear by dried orange peel, others use fresh. Sugar content can be varied according to taste, and I have tasted it made with honey and maple syrup. Some brew it and drink it on the spot, and others age it. I usually do both. My wife and I like to make some for Thanksgiving, and age some for Christmas.

One thing is certain: the aroma in the kitchen of mulling glögg is heavenly, and when it is served steaming hot in a mug after a hard day of skiing or shoveling the sidewalk, the body offers thanks. Glögg also makes a good marinade for beef or venison. Here is my tried and true recipe.

Swedish Glögg
Makes about 1 gallon
1.5 litre bottle of inexpensive dry red wine
1.5 litre bottle of inexpensive American port
1 bottle of inexpensive brandy or aquavit
10 inches of stick cinnamon
1 Tablespoon cardamom seeds
2 dozen whole cloves
Peel of one orange
1/2 cup raisins
1 cup blanched almonds
2 cups sugar
Garnish with the peel of another orange

Notes
There is no need to invest in expensive wine or brandy because the spices are going to preempt any innate complexity of a fine wine, but don't use anything too cheap. Remember, the sum will be no better than the parts. Do not use an aluminum or copper pot since these metals interact chemically with the wine and brandy and impart a metallic taste. Use stainless steel or porcelain.

Cardamom comes in three forms: pods, seeds, and powder. Do not use powder. If you can only find the pods (the look like orange seeds), take about 2 dozen and pop them open to extract the seeds. Cardamom seeds may be hard to find, so you may need to order them from a spice specialist like Penzeys.com.

Assembly
Pour the red wine and port into a covered stainless steel or porcelain kettle. Add the cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, orange peel, raisins, and almonds. Warm gently, but do not boil. Boiling will burn off the alcohol.

Put the sugar in a pan and soak it with half the bottle of brandy. Warm the sugar and brandy slurry over a low flame. The sugar will melt and bubble until it becomes a clear golden syrup of caramelized sugar. If you wish, you can speed up the process a bit and create quite a show by flaming the brandy. Flaming will create a 2 foot high blue flame, so be sure there is nothing above the stove that can catch on fire. Then, stand back and light the brandy. Turn out the kitchen lights and watch it burn! This caramelization is crucial to developing complexity.

Add the caramelized sugar to the spiced wine mix. Cover and let it mull for an hour. Just before serving, strain to remove the spices, and add brandy to taste (about 1/2 pint). You can serve it immediately, or let it age for a month or two. If you are going to age it, make sure the bottle is filled as high as possible and sealed tight.

To serve glögg, warm it gently over a low flame or in a crockpot, and serve it in a mug. Garnish it with a fresh orange peel, twisted over the mug to release the oils.

You can easily tailor the recipe to your own tastes by changing the sweetness, potency, or other ingredients. Try brown sugar if you wish. Or Southern Comfort instead of brandy. The orange peel garnish, however, is essential to the fragrance. Drink while seated and give your car keys to a friend.

i guess that it would be kinda beside the point now to post the lyrics to method man's "p.l.o. style"?!?

I will make a lot more next time. I think I need to lower the amount of Brandy we used and use vodka.

In other words, I agree with you, but that was my whole point -- that there's a difference between those two things. What you're arguing for is calling out warps in a culture, opposing them, recognizing how they make a culture "worse." What Archer is doing is, as you probably realize, something very different. He or she is using the warp in a culture to condemn the culture itself -- not the ideology and not even the ideological bloc, but the people themselves.

:-(

Well, instead of definitions of the word "condemn", this just shifts the conversation to differences in the definition of the word "warp"! A warp can mean a fault, a squinty bent bit that deviates from the standard pattern (and this is where we come back to your idea of freak statistics deviating from the standard, and how they shouldn't be the basis for condemnations of a whole culture). But it can also mean an integral part of that culture, reproduced throughout it, as in the phrase "warp and weft". This is the sense I'm arguing for when I say that cultures want to be consistent, and are failing when you can't make generalisations about them.

This is pretty basic, really; we condemn actions and not cultures, ideas and not collections of very different people.

Again, I think this idea of "a few bad apples in the barrell" or "a few troublemakers spoiling it for everyone else" or "a few freak statistics outside the general pattern" is a convenient fiction. Of course it's something we hear politicians say time after time, to avoid sounding anti-populist or ethnocentric. But it completely ignores the fact that massive power asymmetries create very marked cultures of defiance and resistance in which it's very hard to sit on the fence somewhere in the middle of the bell curve (to mix metaphors a bit).

In the context of the radicalisation of the Muslim world that's been going on in the last few years, it's almost perverse to talk about isolating actions from cultures and ideas from the people who embrace them. What could you possibly want to achieve by doing this? Isn't it a way of disregarding the very history, and the asymmetries, that we should be focusing on? To solve our current problems we need to recognize that they're deeply embedded in cultural structure (warp and weft), not mere distortions of something otherwise neutral (warped).

And then you end up with events like the Cronulla beach riots here in Sydney the other week.

I agree, and that's why I don't want to take Archer's side here. But I think it's also dangerous to equalize all world cultures: "Hey, EVERYONE has misogyny, EVERYONE has terrorism etc. etc." yeah but not everyone forces women to cover from head to toe (certainly not even all Muslims by a longshot), and not everyone, as Archer did point out, lionizes people who make their primary aim to kill as many civilians, including children, as possible.

By gum, i KNEW i set my slsk to randomly search for "shoegazer" for a reason.

Starting to drift off my point, which is that this whole experience, plus an exceedingly strong sense of national myth leads to a very blindered view in a lot of Israelis -- some of whom seem very reasonable until they get on the subject.

But this is a fine line that I don't like to walk to much because people who don't know what they're talking about tend to take points like these and run with them.

The danger of this kind of argument is that it really can draw liberals over to the opposite camp. For instance, Nabisco certainly has liberal instincts, but I wonder if he can see that his "a few bad apples in the barrel" arguments map disconcertingly well to the Bush-Blair line on Iraq, that it's a war on a minority of insurgents and terrorists and not the whole country? Bush-Blair also use liberal arguments ("we're giving them democracy!") to conceal right wing motives.

The reason nobody uses overt right wing arguments is that they're pretty nasty: keep the powerful powerful, make the rich richer, grab what the other guy has, life's a Darwinian struggle, kill or be killed, etc etc. But clearly the whole history of reformism, civil rights, identity politics etc has not been to provide a rhetorical fig leaf for power plays and right wing realpolitik, flattered though we may be that they're interested in using our arguments to make them look better.

2D: Skinheads called Coxy, Rothmans, flicking the 'V' sign, er ... chips thrown against shop windows, being 'fick', Ronnie Barker saying 'naff orf', Tony Hancock, curtains. Ribbed pint glasses. Not knowing when to give up, and er ... giving up.

Gorillaz and Franz Ferdinand interview each other in the Observer.

Palestinian blood feuds follow Israeli pullout

Momus, I couldn't disagree more.

Everybody else, good show with the pictures & recipies.

No disrespect was intended, because his intentions were directed elsewhere.

Arf, yeah but see how everyone here is arguing against phantom liberal positions that no one has ever expressed? I haven't seen a single soul here claim to be so sensitive to culture that he or she approves of honor killings. My guess is that most people here would favor any practical actions that would bring them to an end; "cultural sensitivity" is not making anyone okay with this practice, or even making them suspend judgment.

But by analogy: I feel similarly (if to a different extent) about the death penalty in my own country. And -- similarly -- I wouldn't hesitate to point out that the reasons we have a death penalty involve a lot of pervasive culture stuff that's wound into every one of us: not "a few bad apples," but a way of thinking -- a way of thinking that I myself am a product of! So what do I condemn: the entire project of American culture? Including myself? No, I criticize the strains of thinking in this culture that create that stuff, the parts that make our culture "worse." This is the only way you can deal with culture, because you can't make it go away -- you can't replace it with some kind of neutrality, and you can't embarrass and condemn people into choosing a new one! The only fair rhetoric here is to condemn actions first and strains of thinking second; the only fair approach is to hope to advance and reshape a culture. Because when you tell a populace that its culture is simply wrong -- that you condemn each and every pocket of its thinking -- then you are implying that there's only one solution: you're implying that the culture needs to go away. And since the culture is inextricably linked with the people, you are advocating -- by a series of extensions -- something a little bit like genocide. This is the extreme of the project that Archer has going, see?

Yes. See my first post in re: cattle cars.

"Islam ... should be proscribed"

"should be banned"

"they should be barred from contact with more civilised people"

"there is NO alternative ... other than refusing to tolerate the presence amongst us of large Islamic populations"

how exactly this could be done s/he won't say, but history provides plenty of unfortunate examples.

(xpost HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA yes)

I find that completely ridiculous, considering the praise heaped on people who derailed the thread with accounts of their evening, recipes, etc. I was addressing Nabisco's points very precisely. And I still find his position shaky. For instance:

What I'm talking about is not an issue of "bad apples" or "a few troublemakers." It's about the difference between cultures and aspects thereof.

What does that mean, the difference between cultures and aspects thereof? Especially as Nabisco then proceeds to agree with my "warp and weft" definition of culture? Rather than explaining, Nabisco simply attacks a straw man version of me, dragging in "neutral cosmopolitanism":

What I think is peculiar is that your rhetoric is a bit baby-with-the-bathwater revolutionary; it presumes the possibility that people can abandon their cultures entirely and become a part of the supposedly "cultureless" western-cosmopolitan world you're consistently in favor of... What you're asking for should be cultural change, not cultural death

Where am I saying that people can or should abandon their cultures? Pure projection!

Nabisco's second statement is more reasonable -- I'm glad that he's abandoned the idea that condeming actions and not cultures, ideas and not people is "basic". It isn't basic at all, but extremely problematical. By agreeing to the "warp and weft" idea Nabisco seems to have retreated from the view that it's a simple separation to make. But his reformulation

The only fair rhetoric here is to condemn actions first and strains of thinking second; the only fair approach is to hope to advance and reshape a culture.

is wishy-washy in the extreme. The separation between actions and ideologies is less firmly stated, but persists as some kind of time gap. And it's still untenable. And how does a culture reshape itself when it's already expressing itself in everything it does? We know how cultures reshape other cultures; by invading them and imposing new governments on them: the US in Iraq. But is that "fair"? And didn't it involve, precisely, a certain amount of the genocide Nabisco is trying to discredit the cultural determinist position by associating it with?

I'd recommend this discussion about relativism, which touches on a lot of the issues in this thread (but not the recipes).

Momus makes an interesting point here - for the past, say, twenty years or so, right-wingers have had to 'package' their arguments through 'liberal' appeals. Why no one bothers to point this out to them, I dunno...

What this has done, in effect, is make the 'hard right' rather bitter and isolated, since to make any sort of argument that (superficially) validates personal freedoms and women's rights is somewhat emasculating to them.

But look, I'll clarify one thing. This thing should be fairly obvious, I'd think: it's quite possible to separate one aspect of culture from others, no matter how pervasive that aspect is. This is why abolitionists didn't need to argue that, say, men shouldn't wear pants, or American music should use a pentatonic scale: most pragmatic people start with the bits that are directly related to the problem, and work from there.

The bit where you're saying that people "can or should abandon their cultures" is the same bit where you think it's useful to "condemn" a culture based on its negative aspects. I mean, what the fuck, dude: what's the alternative? Usually when we "condemn" something it means we'd like people to stop doing it; apart from that the word is meaningless. And this is the difference I'm talking about: do you condemn the culture (and theoretically ask people to do the impossible, to abandon their culture), or do you condemn the specific strains of thinking you find problematic? Do you ask e.g. Palestinians to rethink their ideas of the roles and rights of women, or do you ask them to rethink the entire fact of their being Palestinian?

And yes, this means condemning actions and ideologies, not culture -- i.e., making the slightest bit of effort to separate the problems in people's ways of being from the entireties of their ways of being. (Just because this is "problematical" doesn't excuse us from the work of attempting it.) One thing you're gonna have serious trouble demonstrating to me here is how the latter has ever been anywhere near as effective in producing change as the former has.

When a person says "Israel does X" he means something specific -- the actions and policies in question are being carried out by a democratic state, a single entity. When a person says "Palestinians do X," he is talking about nothing at all.

You're only an "entity" if you have a specific form of government? Otherwise you're nothing, and nobody can say anything about your culture?

"if you really want to talk about 'liberal values,' one of those is to avoid condemning whole national or ethnic groups for some behavior that exists within them"

We can't talk about cultures, just individuals?

people of the same color and nationality as you are not the only ones on the planet who are separable as individuals... it does very little good beyond demonizing people to aim vague condemnation at a "culture" of separable individuals

Paradox: you're obsessed with judging individuals rather than cultures because you belong to the culture of the US!

(That bit was x-posted with your "simpler way of putting this".)

in most cases where cultures advance beyond their worst tendencies

Right, so we're getting to the idea of cultural condemnation here. But "worst tendencies" for whom? For you, outside the honor killing system, and outside the culture. Within Palestinian culture it may well be seen quite differently, as the word "honor" implies. So who is "stamping it out and working your way in"? It's a projected you, as you would be if you lived in that culture; a fiction, an impossibility. You from that culture would not be you as you think as an American today.

the fact that cultures consist of various individuals, all of whom can and do believe completely different things -- which has nothing to do with this "few bad apples" notion, and everything to do with Momus's strange hivemind notion that a culture cannot produce its own critics.

It's not a hivemind notion, it comes from the deconstructionist idea that language thinks us. And I don't think cultures consist of individuals who can and do believe "completely different things" -- as I said above, the fact that that's a specifically American view, and that you're an American saying it, tends to suggest otherwise.

I dont give a fuck about cultural sensitivity - the women themselves do not want to be raped by their own father and then killed because she dishonours him. They dont want their clitorises sliced off and vaginas sewn up. Please lets put this in a context of HUMANITY and not intellectualism or culture.

To be completely glib: won't someone PLEASE think of the women???

Killing yourself is also honor killing, alas.

Afghan women in the driving seat is a BBC news story in which a "liberated" (in every sense) Afghan woman takes a driving test. Her driving instructor, an ex-Taliban, fails her. She is then called a "prostitute", a "bitch" and an "un-Islamic whore" by some men who've gathered to watch.

"We have freedom now," she said. "But we are not free to enjoy it."

It's a sad story, and of course we "condemn" the men. But by invading this nation and offering a freedom which may finally only be illusory (because it's our conception of freedom, and at odds with the culture -- the freedom to drive around in cars rather than to get on well with one's fellow citizens), perhaps we've "condemned" it too.

And what would it take for this woman to become free to enjoy the freedom the Americans have given her by invading and restructuring Afghanistan? Isn't there a tiny hint of genocide in the idea that what stands between "having" and "enjoying" freedom is... Afghan men? Or, if not genocide, culturecide?

In other news --

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/01/22/international/22comics.xlarge1.jpg
Five of "The 99," from left: Mumita (speedy), Dr. Razem (a gem expert), Rughal (mystery powers), Jabbar (expandable) and Noora (sees truth).

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/international/middleeast/22comics.html

"The 99" is a new comic book with superheroes who embody the 99 virtues most Muslims believe God to possess. We can only assume that one will be called "Maher Shakirat (Palestinian woman killer)"

xpost Momus I have to say that last bit is brilliant

Invading countries wont fix it; declaring "our democracy" the solution wont fix it.

Women can, should, and will be the ones who will create their own empowerment and freedom, as we have always done and should never become complacent about.

I'd like to see more people far better versed in feminism than I obviously am not, put some of that focus on this issue, instead of going on about racism and culture and obscuring the real horror, the actual issue, as men always like to do.

"Let us refine your terms". No - let us, thanks.

Brilliant? Yeah see this is the part where I fail to see why Momus thinks he disagrees with me. My entire point of argument on this thread has been that putting "Afghan men" -- or even "Afghan culture" -- after those ellipses can lead minds toward genocide or culturecide, and even when it doesn't is completely useless in terms of solving the problem in question. My entire point of argument has been that what sits after those ellipses is something more like "ideas and behaviors pervasive among Afghan men/women and Afghan culture." And my entire point of argument has been that these problems get solved not by getting rid of Afghan people or Afghan culture, but by excising, as neatly as possible, the ideas and mentalities that are causing the problem.

but a part is not a whole, afghan men are made of more than oppression of women and so is afghan culture - for heaven's sake, afghan women are part of afghan culture too. yes, it is anti-relativist and probably insulting to people of a certain culture to attack certain types of behaviors or relationships, but i think it's ridiculous to imply that you can't separate that from the culture as a whole and therefore you must be attacking the culture as a whole. attacking discrimination against women in the us doesn't mean calling the entire economic, religious, and cultural history of the west worthless, it means trying to fix one element. it's wound up in many other things, but that doesn't mean it's monolithic and unchangeable.

But that is what I said! What I meant, in any case. I wasnt commenting against anything Nabisco said at all, I dont want to remove anyone from anywhere. I want women to gain empowerment.

I agree muchly with your post, all told, Maria :)

But this is a bit like saying "I want to increase public spending and decrease tax". If women are given more power than they currently have, it must come from somewhere. It must diminish someone else's power. Some forms of power might also diminish other forms of power.

For instance, the Afghan woman learning to drive gains the power of mobility (assuming she can ever pass the test) but loses the power a non-combative relationship with Afghan men gave her. Cost benefit analysis is required! And part of that calculation will be the question "Can the post-invasion administration guarantee the conditions under which I enjoy American-style empowerment, even when my fellow citizens, the men with whom I need to collaborate if Afghan society is to continue, resist it?" She might also ask: "Is the West really committed to my freedom, or is that just a figleaf used to conceal ethnocentric hatred of Afghan culture and religion and concern for the West's own strategic interests?"

"We don't like the way we treat women" = feminism.

"We don't like the way they treat women" = imperialism using feminism as a figleaf.

Just as

"We struggled to get the vote" = democracy.

"We bombed them to give them the vote" = imperialism using democracy as a figleaf.

The article that started this thread makes it very clear: criticizing other cultures (especially when backed up by superior military force, and actual invasion) is right wing aggression, whatever faux-liberal arguments it uses.

It's perfectly liberal to make moral judgements about cultural-ideological blocs (which might indeed sometimes correspond with national or ethnic groups), and indeed it's a moral obligation at times. If we don't do this we can't fight the things we disagree with; we become political eunuchs.

Yes, I'm conflicted on this. The relativist, non-interventionist part of me is at odds with the judgemental-political part of me. But I did follow that statement with a proviso:

But I also disagree (of course) with Archer's position. He fails to understand why "asymmetrical multiculturalism" (or "double standards") are necessary. They're necessary because we have to take into account all the power relationships in a situation.

This is where it comes down to "tough choices". Given the choice between Palestinian men oppressing Palestinian women, and Israel oppressing Palestine, the latter trumps the former. It is a vastly more worrying asymmetry, and what's truly offesive about the article at the top of the thread is that it not only fails to condemn the greater aysmmetry, but uses the lesser one to justify it. ("This... demonstrates the senselessness of blaming Israel’s Jews for the barbaric and primitive behaviour of Palestinian society.")