Toubabou

I and My Brother Against My Cousin

The Yahi were fierce predatory raiders–as were hill tribesmen the world over with their remote sanctuaries and a lack of property to defend. Lowland Indians feared them, and the Yahi offered the stiffest resistance to the flood of settlers who entered California during the 1850s Gold Rush. In the end all but a few dozen of the several hundred Yahi were killed, and the survivors vanished into the remotest parts of their mountain territory, living a life of concealment, at bare subsistence level, for 40 years. The renowned anthropologist Alfred Kroeber dubbed this refugee group “the smallest free nation in the world.” Ethnologists of the day considered the Yahi way of life during the four-decade concealment “the most totally aboriginal and primitive of any on the continent.”

The amusing thing about this quote, of course, is that the Yahi were not living an aboriginal lifestyle. It was a new lifestyle to them, different than the lifestyle they had previously had. Aboriginal is just a fancy word for original, and this was obviously not the Yahi’s original lifestyle, since they were driven to it.

Unfortunately, this tells us almost everything we need to know about the presuppositions of anthropologists.

Erotic Jesus sparks art debate in Austria | U.S. | Reuters

Boehler, like Hrdlicka, says the art debate can be compared to the Danish cartoon row, where an image of the Prophet Mohammad with a bomb in his turban enraged some in the Muslim world who saw it as blasphemous. The angry reaction to Hrdlicka’s work has only been verbal and the museum says some Christians have been balanced and support the exhibition, despite disagreeing with the artist’s approach.

If this exhibit can be compared to the "Danish cartoon row", it is only in this way:

1. The Danish cartoons weren’t blasphemous. They were of Mohammed, who isn’t God, even according to Muslims. Jesus, on the other hand, is God.
2. The Danish cartoons demonstrated the link between Mohammed and a bomb, as fully illustrated by the reaction to the cartoons. Homosexual perversion is not linked to Christian doctrine and practice, and the reactions to this, while passionate, have been measured.

In short, the comparison shows, like the title of Robert Spencer’s book, why Christianity is a religion of peace, and Islam isn’t. But I wouldn’t expect Reuters to pick up on that…

BBC NEWS | Africa | ‘Ex-slave’ takes Niger to court This is the sort of story that really needs to be seen in the US, where people seem to think that slavery began in the United States and ended in the Civil War.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Pregnant US man hails ‘miracle’ Well, apart from the fact that she’s not a man… Step one, mutilate a woman to look more like a man. Step two, inseminate the woman with sperm. Step three, call it a miracle?

Jihad Watch: Fitna Rage in Indonesia: “The Dutch government must arrest him. Wilders must be killed because he has declared war on Muslims.” The money-quote must certainly be:

“We hope the protests by Muslims all around the world can be taken as our disapproval against any insult and attempts to deceive the world of the true picture of Islam,” the party’s youth leader, Salahuddin Ayub, said in a statement.

Indeed, we are not deceived of the true picture of Islam. These protests and attacks make it abundantly clear.

RNC Chairman Mike Duncan On Why Conservatives Who Want To Sit Out The Election In 2008 Are Making A Big Mistake. - Right Wing News (Conservative News and Views)

The biggest problem with what Mike Duncan says here, is that we aren’t given a credible alternative in McCain. It’s all very well to say that the democrats would ruin the country. In fact, it goes without saying. But that is a reason to vote against them, not a reason to vote for McCain. If the Republican National Committee wants to get their party out of the minority in government, they’ll need to start thinking of reasons for us to vote for them, rather than always trying to scare us into voting against the democrats.

Look at all the programs that were introduced during that period of time that we’ve had trouble managing, that were are expensive, that have caused us to raise taxes.

Well, why have the republicans had so much trouble managing these programs? Because they were willing to raise taxes to pay for them. If the republican party had the courage to stand against the big-government dems, we would have a chance. The party in general, and McCain in glaring particular, have not shown that.

McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy, McCain-Lieberman, McCain-Edwards. Any questions?

BBC NEWS | Europe | French euthanasia-row woman dies

The woman said suicide was needed to end her suffering. At this point we can’t say how she died, and it’s possible she found some way of killing herself. (People do, after all, commit suicide without assistance all the time.) However, it strikes me that in the absence of an indication of suicide, the counter to her point has been proven. We just don’t know how long our lives will be, and these medical decisions based upon emotional arguments fall down because they assume that we do know.

We humans need a whole lot more humility in dealing with ourselves than is our custom, because we show ourselves to be ignorant way too often.

The atheist delusion | Review | guardian.co.uk Books

This is a marvelous article exposing many of the flaws in the secularist arguments against religion which have arisen over the last few years. The author is clearly not a theist, yet he is able to see the evils done in the name of Marxist-Leninism as clearly as those done by, say, the Inquisition. Ironically, as he has just pointed out that “liberal values” (in the traditional understanding) are a heritage of Judeo-Christian faith, and has praised the clear-sightedness of Nietzsche in pointing this out, he produces this:

Religion has not gone away. Repressing it is like repressing sex, a self-defeating enterprise. In the 20th century, when it commanded powerful states and mass movements, it helped engender totalitarianism. Today, the result is a climate of hysteria. Not everything in religion is precious or deserving of reverence. There is an inheritance of anthropocentrism, the ugly fantasy that the Earth exists to serve humans, which most secular humanists share. There is the claim of religious authorities, also made by atheist regimes, to decide how people can express their sexuality, control their fertility and end their lives, which should be rejected categorically. Nobody should be allowed to curtail freedom in these ways, and no religion has the right to break the peace.

While, on the one hand, he is arguing that religion is an enduring part of human character, he then goes on to reject religious restraint upon unproductive, unhealthy sexual behaviors, the murder of the unborn and the murder/assisted suicide of the elderly. On what basis? He doesn’t say, but merely states that “no religion has the right”. These ideas of universal rights are also a heritage of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and it is amusing to see a clear perception of this in one area, and a great myopia in another.

Well, this is where I feel like a French learner rather than a teacher. Apparently, the factory of Lenoir-et-Mernier at Bogny-sur-Meuse has closed down. I believe that the company has resources elsewhere, but am not positive about that.

Anyway, the workers feel that they have been cheated by the bosses, and when they complained to the tribunal commercial (Commercial Court), their complaint was rejected. They want money, but for now they’ll settle for a mediator. (Whether they would abide by his decision is another question.)

So, back to the headline. If a mediator isn’t appointed by the end of the day on Friday (which is today, I believe), they will dump 30,000 liters of hydrochloric acid into the Meuse River.

Since the French government doesn’t seem to be prepared to deal with this, a Belgian mayor is going over to talk with the people, to try to talk them out of it.

I suppose the rather messy follow-through on the French Revolution has made the French people kind of squishy on dealing with home-grown terrorism of this sort, but I would hope that in a sane world these people would now be subject to some pretty serious criminal charges based solely on their threat, and unrelated to their seizure of the factory, etc. Of course, even the United States isn’t sane, and the european powers, crippled beneath a half-century of socialism, can’t be expected to rise to this occasion.

It is encouraging to see the anonymous feedback at LeSoir seems to be relatively sane.