Fearmongering at the border

David Brooks, attempting to mimic the human emotion of "compassion," in his column today offers the following analogy:

Suppose one night there is a knock on your door. You open it to find 100 bedraggled families shivering in your yard — exhausted, filthy, terrified. The first cry of your heart would be to take them in, but you’d know there were too many.

If there were any confusion, the "100 bedraggled families" are the "hundreds of thousands of people fleeing violence in Central America or seeking economic opportunity"[1].

But the math here does not remotely add up. Let's say there are "hundreds of thousands" of refugees at the southern border (the "yard.") There are 329 million Americans in our "household." A half a million refugees is not "100 bedraggled families" -- which would equate to 33 billion(!) refugees. It's 0.15% of the US population -- which is the equivalent of a family of four letting one person sleep on their couch for one weekend out of the year.

We are not one family facing a hundred impoverished families. We are the richest, most powerful nation in the history of human civilization, occupying the third largest territory (bigger than India! Bigger than China!), overwhelming populated by immigrants and their near descendants.

That so many conservatives are ready to exploit a humanitarian crisis of their own making to argue that the US is just helpless before the brown horde of the 0.15% percent is frankly pathetic at best, racist and deliberately disingenuous at worst.

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1. Aficionados of Zionist histories will recognize the strategic ambiguity of "fleeing violence…or seeking economic opportunity" as a near relative of the popular "fled or were expelled" to characterize ethnically cleansed Palestinians. "Centrists" love this phraseology because they can admit the awkward facts whilst giving their more bigoted readers an "out," eg "fled," "economic opportunity."

The last day

January 20th, 2017, marks the last day we will see for a long time -- perhaps ever -- when our nation was worthy of respect. In the coming years our leadership in the world, our moral authority, our economic and military power will all decline under this corrupt, incompetent regime.

Nevertheless, I do not despair. We will have new elections in less than 2 years, another presidential election in four. It may be that the collection of pus known as the Republican party is coming to a head so that it can finally be incised and drained.

We live in a system designed to a great extent with corrupt and incompetent leaders and stupid voters in mind. The coming years will be a race between the implosion of the GOP and its efforts to undermine democracy and free elections to the point that that implosion does not matter. If honest people step to the fight and refuse to cower in fear, I think we are likely to win this race.

The prize, I hope, will not merely be the saving of our democracy but the disgrace and dissolution of what is laughably called the conservative movement in this country, which could bring with it the potential for real substantial policy on climate among other things.

The key principle is resistance. Tyrants dissolve democracies not due their minority of passionate supporters, but due to majorities which are frightened into silence and denied the knowledge of their own strength. Do not be silenced. Do not be afraid. It's time for them to be afraid. They've grabbed a job they can't do by making promises they can't keep and the bills will rapidly come due. Then the people are coming for them.

Say not the Struggle nought Availeth

By Arthur Hugh Clough

Say not the struggle nought availeth,

     The labour and the wounds are vain,

The enemy faints not, nor faileth,

     And as things have been they remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;

     It may be, in yon smoke concealed,

Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,

     And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking

     Seem here no painful inch to gain,

Far back through creeks and inlets making,

     Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,

     When daylight comes, comes in the light,

In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,

     But westward, look, the land is bright.

Trigger warnings

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloister'd virtue, unexercis'd & unbreath'd, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary.

-- John Milton, Areopagitica

There continues to be discussion as to whether college courses should include “trigger warnings” for potentially upsetting content. No US college or university I know of requires this, one large survey found fewer than 1% of institutions of higher learning do, and the American Association of University Professors opposes them, so the discussion is largely hypothetical at this point, but as there is a vocal minority which argues they should be mandatory, it behooves us to consider whether or not that would be a good idea.

The arguments for trigger warnings are all over the map, but the main threads are:

1. This is a simple courtesy to wounded students; just basic politeness.

2. This is a medically necessary accommodation for students with PTSD and flashbacks.

3. Trigger warnings are necessary because presenting sexism, racism, etc. to students who may have suffered from it, without warning them that said horror is coming, normalizes the horror and thereby constitutes a microaggression against the sufferer which may contribute to silencing them and excluding their experience from the discourse.

The arguments against trigger warnings are also varied and include:

1. It is the responsibility of adult students to deal with their emotional responses to college coursework.

2. Requiring trigger warnings, and thus implicitly extending the promise that you will NOT be exposed to emotionally trying materials without forewarning and consent, damages the university as a location for the free exchange of ideas.

3. Trigger warning infantilize students.

Before I examine trigger warnings, let me define a few terms (It’s important to be precise. We’re not talking about potentially civilization-ending anthropomorphic climate change today; we’re talking about 18-year-olds trying to read Proust and Kant, in other words, something really important.) A text is used here to mean any cultural artifact students might make an object of study, including fiction and nonfiction, pictures and movies, TV scripts or poetry. PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder is a mental illness, estimated to effect between four and six million people in the United States, the symptoms of which can include flashbacks, which are technically referred to as re-experiencing symptoms.

In searching for information about trigger warnings I can find no evidence that they work in the sense of aiding those with PTSD, and no evidence of harm when they are incorporated into college coursework. In fact, as far as I can tell, neither question has been studied. Until and unless they are, I am reluctant to form a strong opinion about trigger warnings. When it comes to their effect on students as a whole, I almost despair of ever getting any data to work with, but if you are going to advocate for trigger warnings in the name of PTSD sufferers, the absence of any evidence that they help should trouble you.

Now, today, both potential benefits and potential harms from requiring trigger warnings can only be hypothesized.

Might trigger warnings not help those with PTSD? It might seem self-evident that as it is unpleasant to be “triggered,” a warning is preferable. It may not be so. If trigger warnings encourage avoidance, a common problem for sufferers of PTSD, they might do harm. Telling a sufferer a “trigger” is coming might blunt their reaction but it also might, by suggesting provocative content is coming, strengthen the reaction, “priming the pump” for re-experiencing symptoms.

Trigger warnings inevitably direct attention towards the PTSD-afflicted student. This may be good or bad. Some mental illnesses, such as somatoform disorders, benefit from frequent structured attention to the symptoms. Others, like borderline personality disorder or non-epileptic seizures, seem to get worse when the wrong kind of attention is given. Without data, it’s hard to say whether trigger warnings would help those with PTSD, hurt them, or make no difference at all.

I am talking as if the purpose of trigger warnings is to help students with PTSD and flashbacks (which might describe one out of a hundred college students, if that), but it’s clear that some advocates see a much wider role for trigger warnings than this. Consider the much-maligned and now suspended Oberlin trigger warning guidelines:

In an Oberlin class that contains 20 students, we estimate that there may be about 2 to 3 students in the class who have experienced some form of sexualized violence..  If 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have experienced IPV, there can be at least 5-6 survivors of IPV in the class.  In other words, you may have taught and may continue to teach individuals who have experienced significant trauma. . . .

Oberlin’s community cannot afford to ignore sexualized violence, including intimate partner abuse and stalking.  Faculty can make a serious impact on students’ lives by standing against sexual misconduct and making classrooms safer.

But this concern for sexual abuse survivors is quickly subsumed in a much larger set of issues:

·  Triggers are not only relevant to sexual misconduct, but also to anything that might cause trauma.  Be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression.  Realize that all forms of violence are traumatic, and that your students have lives before and outside your classroom, experiences you may not expect or understand.

·  Anything could be a trigger—a smell, song, scene, phrase, place, person, and so on.  Some triggers cannot be anticipated, but many can.

·  Remove triggering material when it does not contribute directly to the course learning goals.

The initial goal of warning the student so they can prepare themselves quickly evolves, in the Oberlin guidelines, to getting the bad stuff out of the picture entirely. When instructors cannot get rid of it, they are instructed to apologize for it, in such a way as to close off any potential exploration of whether or to what extent a work is racist, classist, elitist, and so on. It is definitionally unclean.

• ·  Tell students why you have chosen to include this material, even though you know it is triggering.  For example:
• “…We are reading this work in spite of the author’s racist frameworks because his work was foundational to establishing the field of anthropology, and because I think together we can challenge, deconstruct, and learn from his mistakes.”
• “…This documentary challenges heterosexism in an important way.  It is vital to discuss this issue.  I think watching and discussing this documentary will help us become better at challenging heterosexism ourselves.”

·  Strongly consider developing a policy to make triggering material optional or offering students an alterative assignment using different materials.  When possible, help students avoid having to choose between their academic success and their own wellbeing.

These quotes are from a larger policy which was roundly condemned and ultimately abandoned; there are certainly other ways to handle trigger warnings, but I think the Oberlin experience indicates that there is something much, much more complex and problematic going on in the debate over trigger warnings than simply being polite and considerate. There is a strong ideological perspective here which is presenting an agenda item as necessary to protect the mentally ill. 

Not only is the evidence that it will do so nonexistent, it further raises a concern any time people use the sick and vulnerable to define certain kinds of cultural expression as abusive or dangerous. 

This is a thing that always happens when something cannot be condemned in terms of the choices adults make, but which some people strongly dislike anyway, whether it is pornography, or violent video games, or homosexual characters in movies or television. The claim that “You and I are fine, but we must think of vulnerable” always seems to crop up in this context.

One interpretation of this debate, then, and I do not say this is the only one or the correct one,  is that for people wishing for the academy to more clearly and explicitly condemn racism, sexism, ableism, classism, etc. in the Western canon, this is a slightly modified won’t-somebody-please-think-of-the-children argument. Yes, they may posit, you could bring these texts into the classroom and let students and teachers tease them apart and find these aspects themselves, and decide what they think about them, but won’t-somebody-please-think-of-the-traumatized?

There are a number of things about mandatory trigger warnings I would describe as potentially harmful. Again, we haven’t gathered data on this and we don’t know. One, and this may be a minor matter, it makes more work for the instructors, who have to add the warnings to the syllabus. As a member of a profession (medicine) where we are being crushed by a mindset of "just one more" documentation requirement, this is near to my heart.

More seriously, introducing students to a text with a series of labels describing the ways in which it is potentially traumatizing encourages them to anchor upon the ways it which it is offensive even as they are first entering the author’s world and beginning to understand the author’s concerns and perspective. 

Labeling a text as traumatically racist, sexist, classist or even as containing violence or rape encourages people to approach a text via a prism of our modern values and concerns, prepared to be hurt and offended by what has been labelled hurtful and offensive.

The open-ended nature of what constitutes a trigger and which triggers are going to be labelled concerns me. Labeling rape and graphic violence, though it may be a good or a bad idea, is at least fairly limited. Extending trigger warnings to racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, elitism and so on seems like an open invitation to a giant clusterfuck of disagreement not only about what type of thing is a trigger but of what kind of reference to it (direct or indirect, graphic or abstract) constitutes a trigger. Does a battle in a history book require a trigger? What about a massacre? Or a description of a slave auction? A list of slave auctions? A map of the transatlantic slave trade?

Activists of one kind or another will press to have examples of things offensive to them labelled as triggers. Jewish students will describe Palestinian nationalism as triggering. Palestinians will describe Zionism as triggering. Arabs will be triggered by Orientalism and trans students by cissexism. No one will want to be left out, since that would imply that their pain from the oppression they have suffered is less significant than other folks'.

What concerns me about this is not so much that we will end up with the wrong triggers, or too many triggers, as that the process itself is likely to be vicious, viriputive, and most of all endless.

What’s more, if in fact the experience of the student determines what is traumatizing and we are to “believe the student” as the Oberlin guidelines mandate, can we imagine a day Christian students describe homosexual sex in a novel as triggering? At most of our colleges and universities such a claim would be howled down in outrage, but this just underscores the fact that formulating a list of legitimately traumatizing subjects is an inherently political act. Black students will be warned about discussions of the slave trade: Southern students will not get warnings before discussing Sherman’s March. Which may be very fine and good, but it indicates the presence of unspoken assumptions and premises in the implementation of “trigger warnings” that have no place in the explicit theory.

It’s concerning to me that some activists are asserting a position of radical vulnerability, in which triggering things as said to paralyze them with horror. That does not seem like a stance that is sustainable or emotionally or spiritually healthy. While this may begin as a pose or a way of advocating for others, as soon as activists “win” by showing evidence of being triggered, more of them will start to experience those symptoms. We all respond to positive reinforcement. If we encourage student activists to wear a mask of extreme vulnerability, to some extent that mask will become reality for some of them, which is not desirable.

The best case I think can be made for “strong” trigger warnings covering racism, classism, albeism, transexism, etc., is that our society, like many ostensibly free societies, sustains and reinforces privilege by quasi-objective measures of capability or application that don’t take into account the different place marginalized people are coming from.

Take a hypothetical case of a university with ten swimming scholarships for the ten fastest swimmers in Pittsburgh. The standards of the scholarship are objective – but when you look into it you may find 30 public swimming pools in predominantly white neighborhoods, and 2 in black neighborhoods. Our “objective” scholarship doesn't take into account that difference in infrastructure between the two communities in Pittsburgh.

Proponents of strong trigger warnings argue something similar occurs with the traditional back-and-forth of the academy. The ability to assert one’s beliefs, argue for one’s perspective, and recognize and vigorously refute slights directed at you, your community (or one of your communities,) is not distributed equally. One of the ways in which it is unequally distributed is that a larger proportion of marginalized people have experienced the kind of trauma that could cause them to be “triggered.”

An environment of traditional academic freedom to set one’s own readings, say or entertain discussions they touch upon painful and difficult topics, and trust that “the answer to free speech is more free speech” is, in this account, fine and good for those who have benefited from white privilege, they having been taught from a young age that their opinions matter, that they can express them without fear, and without their having to carry the burden of trauma that may be re-provoked by careless treatment of painful subjects.

Safe spaces and microaggressions, trigger warnings and affirmative action: all are premised in this basic (and I think in some measure correct) argument that we didn’t all get here from the same place, we are not all in fact here in the same here exactly, some of us got here hurt and damaged from wrestling with injustice, and a “fairness” that asks everyone to line up for a footrace when some have been kneecaped is not very fair at all, really. “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”

Accepting that there is something here, something that is not just self-pity, or a cunning attempt to dictate the terms of the classroom discussion by professions of weakness, it is still not clear to be that pre-labeling texts as racist or sexist or classiest is actually helpful. 

There is already in the modern American academy a strong tendency to interpret all texts through the prism of injustice and oppression. And that is an important frame, and I don’t wish to slight it, but a good text is so much, much, much more than that, that I am fearful that mandating labels before the student has taken that very first step toward interpretation risks making the true power and wonder of the text, of the author’s creation, harder to access, harder to know.

It is the responsibility of students and instructors to ultimately pick apart texts: to analyze, criticize, and place in context the authors ideas, subjects, words and context. One issue, alluded to above, is that trigger warnings take that work out of the students’ hands and present the answer to them in the syllabus: this work is racist, classiest, and sexist. It comes pre-judged.

Another issue, though, is that analysis and criticism should follow some sincere effort to inhabit the text and to understand the author’s world and concerns. A text should be approached, in other words, as if it might teach you something. It may be uncomfortable to approach a text in that way: exposing ourselves to different ways of thinking usually is. But we may do no good service to marginalized students by impeding this act of empathy: Fewer may be surprised by a textual “microaggression,” but by always beginning with their grievance placed between themselves and the text, will fewer grab hold of the texts and take ownership of them, fulling participating in the texts that constitute their cultural capital too? Will fewer be able to say, with Richard Rodriguez "I have taken Caliban's advice. I have stolen their books"?

I tend to think that we should strengthen marginalized students in other ways than this. The study of gender, race, ethnicity and so on in relation to the Western canon has exploded over the last 30 years; those pioneers were not silenced by the naked texts, and I would not expect their heirs to be paralyzed either. Leave warnings regarding disturbing content to the discretion of the instructors; support those with PTSD with better mental health services and case-by-case accommodations; increase minority attendance, and minority presence in the faculty and the administration, which will do more to un-silence marginalized communities in the academy than any doctrine of labeling. Absence evidence of benefit, don't impose scarlet letters of thoughtcrime on texts; this will impede good reading, which alone makes the text a part of the student and their story -- an act which is not only vital to education but is, especially for the young, especially the marginalized, a source of power, part of the flowering of them and their strength.

Intolerant protest and the lantern

Obstreperous protests are roiling campus at elite universities throughout the nation. At Dartmouth, a Rosa Parks for a new generation screamed “Fuck you, you filthy white fucks!” at students studying quietly in the library. At Yale, protesters fought for sensitivity and racial understanding by spitting on people. At the University of Missouri, protesters made nation news by variously harassing, threatening, and assaulting journalists trying to cover protests taking place in public on an open quad.

The debate over this behavior has unfolded predictably, with those on the hard left trying to draw our attention to the racial problems on these campuses and in society at large which inspired these protests (although the specific offenses cited can seem rather underwhelming) and the right professing simple outrage, unalloyed by any hesitation related to the age of these protesters, the nature of the problems being protested, or the difficulty of growing up and fighting for what you believe in in the era of cellphone cameras and outrage politics. Charges of fascism are leveled, indicating we are in a day whose name ends in a "y."

But both sides, it seems to me, are glossing over the key question which screams out from any reasonable mind reviewing these actions: What on earth were/are these people thinking? Why are people acting in reasonable and inoffensive ways -- people like Tim Tai, Nicholas Christakis and Ericka Christakis, and Tim Wolfe -- the targets of such fury and contempt?

Not for any acts of racism they have committed, for they have not, in the main, been accused of any. Not for any anger or contempt they showed themselves, as may naturally spark anger in return, as those we have on video confronted by protesters (all except Ericka Christakis, and we have her e-mail for comparison) exhibit almost preternatural patience while accepting horrible abuse.

The anger we are seeing, which at a few removes seems utterly disproportionate to any offense offered, is it seems to me best understood by looking at the dynamics of group hysteria -- specifically the way hysteria is deployed by groups to enforce conformity. EM Forster alludes to this in at a key moment in A Passage to India:

But the Collector looked at him sternly, because he was keeping his head. He had not gone mad at the phrase "an English girl fresh from England," he had not rallied to the banner of race. He was still after facts, though the herd had decided on emotion. Nothing enrages Anglo-India more than the lantern of reason if it is exhibited for one moment after its extinction is decreed.

It is sadly apparent that the behavior Forster attributes to Anglo-Indians can be seen in any community, but particularly a tightly-knit community with a strong sense of its own values (a strong sense which perhaps tends to be the stronger when people are conscious that those values may not be shared by all.

It is clear that the protesters believe that this is a moment of great crisis, of emergency, and they believe that they are subject to awful persecution as part of the larger problems of racism, sexism, ableism, etc., which are (as always) worse than ever before. Both the belief in the moment of crisis and that things are catastrophically bad have become markers of group identification for the protesters.

In this context, it does not take anger, or racism, or even indifference to the cause to spark rage. All it takes is a refusal to accept the tacit assumptions they we are in the midst of a crisis of the marginalized, legitimizing the most extreme passions and before which other concerns or other contrasting values or aspirations are but leaves blown about in the howling storm of righteous rage.

To politely remonstrate with the representatives such a community may enrage them more than anything; worse than a defiance of substance, those trying to address the protesters calmly and maintain a sense of proportion are guilty of a defiance of a collective mood. Once again the lantern of reason irritates and provokes those who have decreed its extinction.

This behavior is never laudable, though perhaps one could make an argument for it as one of many characteristics of groups which are morally and ethnically not defensible but which strengthen groups against hostile outsiders and, thus, are persistent. But its use here is particularly pointless and self-destructive, or, to quote another fine English novelist, "as frivolous as the application was ill-judged."

How are these tactics wrong? Let me count the ways. First, this sort of bullying emotional hysteria is by its very nature a tactic of majorities. And while the advocates of political correctness may form a majority of sorts on some campuses, in the wider society they are anything but. And the wider society is ultimately the place where decisions about funding, about regulation, about things such as whether affirmative action will continue to exist are taken.

Second, these protesters have chosen their enemies exceptionally poorly. Choosing the right enemies, and encouraging them to express themselves in the right way, is a critical part of what makes protest successful. Police dragging a tired old woman off a bus at the end of a long day's work; Bull Connor with his fire hoses and his police dogs; the comically evil hatred of the Westboro Baptist Church.

Compare, say, Ericka Christakis, whose firing the Yale protesters have written into their demands:

I don’t wish to trivialize genuine concerns about cultural and personal representation, and other challenges to our lived experience in a plural community. I know that many decent people have proposed guidelines on Halloween costumes from a spirit of avoiding hurt and offense. I laud those goals, in theory, as most of us do. But in practice, I wonder if we should reflect more transparently, as a community, on the consequences of an institutional (which is to say: bureaucratic and administrative) exercise of implied control over college students.

There is more to Christakis' letter, but it is all of a piece with the above; measured, judicious, a little bit boring; a liberal arts academic doing exactly what anyone who has spent five minutes with a liberal academic knows that they do: they take a concept or accepted line and "problematize" it. That's virtually their raison d'etre.

This was the e-mail that promoted the student in the first video to scream "You are disgusting! You should not sleep at night!" (They also decided to yell at the husband for something his wife wrote, which is an…interesting…choice for radical social justice advocates.)

This is worse than an error: it's a mistake. Protest, as Gandhi so succinctly expressed it, is about defeating physical force with spiritual force. It is about creating a moral story which is compelling to people on the outside of the dynamic. In this, these protests have failed spectacularly.

Protesters by their very nature don't have more physical (or legal or financial…take your pick, depending on the circumstances) power than their opponents. If they did, they would simply impose their will. So protest is inherently a matter of fighting a stronger opponent. To fight someone stronger, you have to be smarter. You have to be more disciplined. You have to pick your battles carefully and with an eye to the wider public who are not directly engaged. Because whether a rebellion is violent or nonviolent, they mostly share this feature: those that do not acquire external allies will fail.

I see few of these qualities in the current protests. They seem unable to acknowledge that while they may be discriminated against in important ways, that they are also, as students of elite American colleges, very privileged in their own right. They seem to believe they can bludgeon their teachers and their peers with hysterical anger at the slightest deviationism, and yet not spark a backlash.

Instead of focusing their outrage on the horrific racism and other disgusting offenses against modernity with which our society is amply supplied (see any GOP candidate for president), they stay snug and secure on campus, selecting targets of opportunity who on a political correctness scale of one to ten, would on their worst day score no lower than a seven. Rather than focus on police violence or income inequality or lack of representation in government or corporate America, these protesters demand "free expression" posters be prohibited -- and that they be excused from classes missed while protesting.

I am over forty, so take what I say about the young and their methods with appropriate skepticism. That being said, the Christakises are still in their jobs, Tai is still taking photographs, and reeducation classes for dissenters are still just a (disturbing) twinkle in PC eyes. I suspect we have seen the high-water mark of this particular wave of campus protest, and the academy's final verdict will be: "You have widely mistaken my character, if you think I can be worked on by such persuasions as these."

Climate denier/neo-nazi murderer Varg Vikernes wants you to know it's all natural cycles

NorwegianVarg Vikernes, a vicious racist and murderer who achieved notoriety by firebombing several churches, was recently arrested in France following his wife's purchase of four guns, which the French authorities feared were to be used in a mass shooting.

When the last Norwegian mass murderer hit the news, he turned out to be, among other things, a rabid climate denier. I was interested to see if his fellow right-wing terrorist shared this pathology, and here we are:

The Ice Ages come and go too; they stay for about 100,000 years, or perhaps about 120,000 years, and then they go and leave a warm period for about 10,000 or perhaps about 12,000 years. In the long run, there is no change there either, only a rhythm. We are now living at the end of a warm period, and of course the scientists believe that the changes in the climate is due to human activity, but it isn’t; we are entering a new Ice Age, that will cover all of Northern Europe with glaciers, and the climate changes we see now are a prelude to this. Man has no influence over climate.

In a recent interview, Mr. Vikernes elaborates:

You also talk about the "rape of Mother Earth". What do you do in your own day-to-day life to care for the environment?
Climate changes are caused by solar radiation and other natural phenomena, so I don't worry one bit about that. Nothing we do can change anything in the climate. The last Icelandic volcano eruption for instance polluted more than all of Europe put together has done the last 40 years. So I drive my Russian 4*4 with a clear conscience, knowing very well it uses far more fuel than most other cars (I am not driving a f***ing Land Rover when the Land Rover company is not even owned by the English and Russian 4*4s are better off-road anyway... ;-p). 

Mr. Vikernes would also like to inform us that all Roma are worthless trash, and Jews are incapable of producing original science. As I said after the Breivik case, and in regards to the disgusting pornographic and murderous threats against climate scientists and their families, "respectable" climate deniers are going to have to draw some bright lines between themselves and the right-wing terrorists and thugs that have taken up their banner. If they don't, the public will quite rightly judge them by the company they keep.

How I got excommunicated by the Galileo Movement

It's a sad, sad story:

Hot Air denizens: Bigoted, racist, and in denial

From the geniuses at Hot Air, whilst busily denying that the sea is rising:    

Racist, religiously bigoted, and a climate denier to boot! Ladies, form one line.

Really, "burrata" is just reflecting the general tenor of the conversation over there. The original post, by "Jazz Shaw," informs us that sea levels are not really rising, according to "sea level expert" and master dowser Nils-Axel Mörner. Yep, who are you going to believe, an occultist divination expert or your own lyin' eyes:

But what do I know. I can't even find underground water sources through divination. I don't even own a magic stick.

Denialism and racist hate -- the chocolate and peanut butter of teabagger Steven Milloy

Steven Milloy's Junkscience.com is the usual bland denialist gruel of lies and whining, but a more-than-usually odious screed deserves to be underlined:

Yesterday, the APS has answered to Dr Hal Lewis in a way that I consider breathtakingly arrogant and dishonest.

First of all, the answer to the important letter by a serious scientist was apparently composed by a secretary, a black female bureaucrat called Tawanda Johnson. Or is it a coincidence that she is signed under the reply and that the quality of the text suggests that indeed, no scientist was involved?

Wow. Just wow. You think he's done? He's not close to done:

Needless to say, she has no clue about science or research and it is self-evident that she is employed just and purely for the money.

After all, the record shows that she has never cared about anything linked to the scientific truth in her life. Her knowledge of physics is closer to the knowledge of an average dog than the knowledge of Dr Hal Lewis . . .

That's right; not only is it "breathtakingly arrogant" for a "black female" to be addressing the now-great Hal Lewis, but Milloy troubles to tell us that in her understanding she comparable to "an average dog."

His own readers are squeamish at this bigoted turn, but Milloy wants us to know he's the real victim here:

Please try to understand that I, my ancestors, or my nation, for that matter, have never held any slaves or anything of the kind. We've been mostly suppressed. Although it wasn't that bad, the suppression wasn't too different from that of other (often colored) nations from colonies and similar places, so if some people with English or other "imperial" ancestors play their games to regulate their feeling of guilt, could they please kindly notice that despite my or my countrymates' [sic] skin color, I/we have no feeling of guilt and no reason to participate in such a dumb game?

Please note, Steve, no one expects a racist piece of shit like you to feel guilt at your actions. Anybody with the slightest bit of sense can see that you lack the moral sense, to borrow a phrase, of the average dog.

CORRECTION; Via a helpful commenter:

Shouldn't Lubos Motl get the 'credit' for the original statements, per your link?

And Steven Milloy the 'credit' for passing it all on?

Yes.

No excuse

Andrew offers:

There is no excusing the senseless murder of an IDF soldier – shot while removing a tree on the Israeli side of the Israel-Lebanon border.

While there may be no excusing it, one could certainly make excuses for it, offense being the best defense, as Israel's excuses for the killings at the Gaza border have shown:

Excuse #1: Describe the attack as retaliation, every if the site attacked has no connection with the other side's supposed offense.

"Israel routinely responds to rocket attacks with air strikes targeting smuggling tunnels on the Gaza-Egypt border and workshops which Israel says are used to make rockets."

Excuse #2: Describe the attack as if it were an unplanned, mutual affair, "skirmishes" or "clashes":
(The headline) "2 Palestinians killed as IDF clashes with militants near Gaza border"
(The fine print) " Israel Defense Forces troop fired at suspected militants that had approached Gaza's northern border with Israel, Israel Radio reported on Wednesday, with two suspected militants reportedly killed in the incident."

Did the solider killed by the Lebanese "approach the border"? He most certainly did. Was he a "militant"? Worse than a militant, he was actually a uniformed solider of an enemy state. Is there a single righteous man in Sodom these days who would look at this incident and say "We've killed hundreds of Palestinians and Lebanese for nothing more than being armed and close to our borders -- who are we to throw stones?" There most certainly is not.

Excuse #3 Justify the killings by asserting the victim was just about to commit an attack – they are dead, they can't contradict you.
"At least one Palestinian terrorist, who attempted to plant a bomb at the Gaza border fence, has been killed by the Israeli army."

When you read the story, you discover no bomb was ever found.
Literally thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese have been killed by Israel while going about their business, no immediate threat to anyone. If they have a gun, if they belong to an armed group – both conditions the IDF solider met – even those on the far left will seldom raise a protest. If on top of that they are in a border area, well, that's the end of it. But when it is an IDF solider who is dead we suddenly remember certain things, like: being an armed enemy during a time of peace or a cease-fire is no excuse for murder. If it were, the idea of a "cease-fire" would be meaningless. Or: being next to the border is not the same thing as being across the border – that's why it’s a border. You are supposed to be able to live and work and cut down trees and even train for battle on your side of the border, and it's not a justification for deadly force or any force at all.

There's an element of colonialism here, make no mistake. In the eyes of Israelis and their enablers, an Arab with a gun is by definition a Jew-murderer in waiting, no rights at all. A Jew with a gun is a brave defender of his home. A Palestinian near the border is an infiltrator, shot on sight; but an IDF solider considers it his right to march right up to the edge of his territory, armed to the teeth. Sometimes he doesn't stop there. For all their fear and rage at "infiltrators," it's not unusual to read that an Israeli "patrol" went a couple of hundred yards or a half mile into Gaza, destroyed some property, shot at some suspected "militants," and came home. If an army tried this on Israeli territory, of course, the IAF would carpet-bomb their cities.

Double standards. That's the work-a-day answer to excusing the inexcusable.

Foxman: Loving the victims of mass murder means a pass on irrationality, bigotry

Classic idiocy:

Asked why the opposition of the families was so pivotal in the decision, Mr. Foxman, a Holocaust survivor, said they were entitled to their emotions.

“Survivors of the Holocaust are entitled to feelings that are irrational,” he said. Referring to the loved ones of Sept. 11 victims, he said, “Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted.”

The ADL has long since abandoned its roots as an anti-discrimination organization, and functions essentially as a group of unregistered lobbyists for the state of Israel. In world where amateur Zionists frequently equate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, these are the professional race-baiters. Still, they retain the shell of their past glories in a formal commitment to oppose racism -- the shallowness of which commitment Foxman's comment makes clear. Bigotry? Irrational hatred of the other? It's OK, Foxman has given himself a free pass, because he loves the victims of Hitler so damn much, he can't help being a bigot.

And his victimhood has also granted him the special power of evaluating the suffering of others and determining their worthiness to be deputized into the fellowship of those whose racist hate and irrational prejudices are excused, if not celebrated.

One wonders if the thousands of Palestinian widows and orphans Israel has made would qualify for Foxman's all-access pass to the concert of irrational bigotry.