Strauss-Kahn's victim* transformed into AIDS predator
The original, from the NY Post:
She's not the likely victim of a known sexual predator, a lone woman - a woman with no whiteness, no institutional support, no citizenship, no wealth - with the courage to take on power in the person of Strauss-Kahn, one of the world's most powerful elites; Strauss-Kahn, an international seducer of women, and of weak and womanly nations. Nations such as feeble, incompetent, weak old crone - Ellada...
Nah, not that. It's not that simple. This isn't a story about an abuser of women, and an abuser of whole nations.
It's the story of a diseased black invasion, in the body of a serpent woman.
She's an "IMF gal." A groupie. A dangerous black lolita from the land of collective sins, of creeping and nefarious infections, of benighted backwardness, a stalking immigrant of doom, hailing from the sad dark continent, bearing the worst of pandora's filthy little secrets - the taint of AIDS. The red letter condemnation of HIV and the failure to give a powerful man his obvious due...
I wonder if they can be so transparent because the culture, the nation and the country are so brutal, and so brutalized....
* - alleged, alleged
17 comments:
First the jazz music, and now this!
Any culture that would damn a little girl for her belly button and knees is only a tabloid away from this. And this culture is supposed to be some kind of bulwark against Sharia. It is fucking Sharia.
Why did that asshole Cockburn post a huge photo of the accuser on 'Counterpunch'?
They rarely use pictures, and I thought there was some basic ethic of not publicising the identity and/or life story of alleged victims? Or is that just British law?
Good catch, Wayne. Published her name and picture, right in the middle of an argument wherein he pish-pahs (rightly) conspiracism.
Odd combo, that.
Randal,
Perhaps the soul and the story are related, somehow.
davidly,
At least religious Sharia is entirely voluntary, according to seventeen hundred years of Islamic interpretation and jurisprudence.
Good point about Sharia. Here in the UK we have racist hysteria about 'Sharia law on our streets', when its just an optional alternative to 'Law Law' in civil matters (marriage, business etc.). Islamaphobic bigot fucks pretend it gives Muslims carte blanche to amputate hands or force marriage (which is a national, not religious custom - like lethal injection or bank bailouts). As if British courts give special treatment to Muslims these days, or ever... quite the opposite.
Taking advantage of your wide readership with that issue Jack. Its a general assumption among a lot of otherwise reasonable-minded people, and it bugs me.
Double good point.
Oh children, don't ever grow up. You're all so dear when you whine this way.
Did anyone read the article (which was not linked to)?
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/imf_accuser_in_apt_for_hiv_vics_oZmUkbtouJ14RHw1434HvJ/1
If this is the bar for victim blaming, I'm probably guilty as anyone.
Also love the anti-social anarchists bitch about Cockburn's insensitivity in posting a victim's picture. Gasp, was that unethical? Or is it only a law in Britain? I didn't think anarchists believed in socially imposed ethics, or gave two shits about the law. But it's hypocrisy! Well then, string 'em up when the revolution comes. NY Post is a tabloid. Yes, obnoxious insensitivity go with that. I don't read it. If anything, they were indulging some schadenfreude, enjoying some poetic justice.
This whole thing makes PC heads explode. "...I immediately feared for his accuser’s life." Somebody's been watching to many movies. A person who "society" thinks is a non-person charges a modern demi-god of international finance. Could never happen, right? 'Cuz we're so evil, we'll wink, maybe throw her and her daughter a couple bucks. But no. The whole corrupted apparatus is moving on one of its own? Does not compute. At least the conspiracy theorists are consistent.
It is sharia... que? Sharia is voluntary... double que? Oh, I get it. Our atavistic and hypocritical notions a proper dress and sexual relations are the problem, and anarchy, the ending of social control, the shaming of shaming will free us all. Can't hardly wait. Jeebus, take me now.
I can't translate all of your rambling, Gabriel. But, Sharia is in fact voluntary.
Islam has no official priesthood. Faith can be personal, but priesthoods are always political.
And within Islam, a different template was laid by the lack of a clergy or familial priestly line.
Islam depends upon a non-mediated interaction between believer and the alleged divine. Sharia, as interpretation of the will of the divine, followed a path of jurisprudence which, according to the Quran itself, could never be imposed or forced, and still remain Islam.
Sharia, therefore, was almost universally understood to be voluntary. It is only with the (British Empire sponsored and funded) rise of the Saudi "purists" coming out of the Arabian peninsula, contemporaneous with George Washington, no less, did a unique strain of Sharia-as-State take some minor hold.
And it has only grown with support from Christian Europe and America, where else otherwise it would have died in its infancy, crushed by the normative Muslims who hated it then, and still hate it now.
Mr. Crow, Sharia may well be voluntary in pluralistic countries, but we haven't all gotten to Denmark yet, have we? I've got no beef with anything voluntary. I'll stand with you against crusades to the end, but let's not kid ourselves. You frequently take up the cause of womenfolk. Can you speak positively of Sharia as practiced in any non-pluralistic society, and look yourself in the mirror? And what about the dhimmitude? Or is that a perversion. Apostasy?
Would you point me in the direction of some sources regarding the support of the British, Christian Europe and America for a radical interpretation of Islam? Books would be preferable, as you cannot make a statement so absurd that there is not a vocal advocacy group for it to be found on this wonderful vehicle of ideas.
Also, hope you feel better.
Gabriel,
You are confusing the Salafist/Wahhabist innovation with normative Islam.
I'm not suggesting a No True Scotsman argument.
It holds that Quakerism and Roman Catholicism can both rightly be treated as Christian.
But it would be ahistorical to argue that Quakerism is the traditional, enduring, most pervasive, most believed form of Christianity, would it not?
So too with normative Islam, and not-incidentally, the Wahhabism which emerged at the same historical moment as Quakerism.
There are national-state codes which combine Napoleonic or British Common law with post-colonial "Islamist" interpretations of the hadith, Sura and Sunnah - especially in, well surprise surprise, post-colonial countries such as the Sudan, Pakistan, Yemen and the failed-states of the Sahel.
And the leaders of these states have attempted to rewrite Sharia as a napoleonic imposition upon captive masses, out of reaction to independence and the market predation which followed.
But that does not change what Sharia is and has been for the overwhelming majority of Muslims, across the Dar al-Islam: jurisprudence which a Muslim must choose to follow or reject according to conscience, which in Islam most of all the Abrahamic faiths, has primacy as the arbiter between person and the divine.
Well, all faiths talk a pretty good game about providing a direct connection to the divine, but give them a little worldly power and hold on to your hats. Do they have some sort of ceremony where children choose to follow sharia and join the society? What I'm getting at is, it's fine to trash western society for any number of reasons, but holding sharia society up as preferable because it's voluntary (especially if you're a man) strikes me as odd. A voluntary set of laws is an oxymoron, and the modern state did not invent coercion, oppression, and injustice.
I get what you're saying about the colonial role in this, although it seems a weaker claim than "The British created this perversion of Islam." The colonialists supplied the concept of the nation-state as the only source of legitimate force, and this was combined with sharia to toxic effect. Is there more to this story? I have not lived under a rock my whole life, so I'm trying to be open-minded and avoid unwarranted conclusions and existing patterns of thought.
Gabriel,
For most of the history of Islam, Sharia can be properly understood as the expectation of conduct from a voluntary professor of Islam.
Contrary to Western belief, a person cannot be born a Muslim. A person must decide to profess submission to the peace of God. Since Islam has been relatively free of mediating castes and priesthoods, this has generally meant a personal act of declaration, by someone who is socially understood to possess a mature enough conscience to make this declaration or assumption of membership in the Ummah of all believers, and later confirmed by a minimum of practices, most notably public and communal prayer, the month of fasting, the giving of alms and the undertaking of Pilgrimage.
Sharia was not a divine imposition, as with the Jewish law, nor a mediated priestly, pastoral and ecclesiastical salvation, as is common to Christianity.
Sharia is the perfect expectation of Allah. But, since no person nor collective humanity can know the mind of God, people must interpret it. There are those who train and study writ and tradition, but being human, their judgments are subject to error. Since all people are subject to error, all interpretations of the will of God risk being flawed. As all interpretations are flawed, the individual Muslim is not and cannot be enjoined to obey an interpretation of the expectation of Allah which violates conscience. Conscience, in Islamic theology spanning both major divisions, and including various Sufic and other sects, is a more honest, accurate assessment of the will of the divine than any external command or law. The individual Muslim's conscience, according to the earthly or non-divine understanding of Sharia, must supersede the expressions of Sharia, since conscience comes directly from Allah, while jurisprudence is intercessory, and therefore more likely to contain flaws.
That is what Sharia has meant for the majority of Islamic history, and still means throughout Muslim nations to this day.
I'm not suggesting that the combination of Sharia with post-colonial remnants of formal, codified European law was toxic.
I'm stating as plainly as possible that colonialism was toxic, and that where it took deepest root (the British Empire - see Egypt, Pakistan, Nigeria, Kenya, Afghanistan, the Sudan) it produced a new and virulent innovation upon normative Islam. A violent exportation deliberately encouraged by British factors, in Saudi Arabia. Without British arms, the house of Saud and its jurists were doomed to failure. With British arms and gold, they managed to carve out a resistance to the Turks especially in the territories once controlled by the Hedjaz tribes, the Mamluks and Adal.
OK, colonialism was toxic, didn't need any existing system to poison. But your picture of an Eden-like existence before it entered the picture is dumb-founding, coming from one who professes as much distrust of power as yourself. I wouldn't read this into your narrative, except that you explicitly reject my formulation in favor of yours. It wasn't the combination, colonialism corrupted an inherent good, a civilization based on voluntary good works, followed due to the individual human conscience, where those that didn't feel inclined to make a personal act of declaration existed in beautiful harmony with the Ummah, and likely made that declaration once they matured, all voluntarily. But those evil crackers had to ruin everything. Honestly, I would welcome the old way, if it was all that. But I'm skeptical.
I guess I just have to come to the conclusion that either you're a dishonest reader, Gabriel, or English is not your native tongue.
Here is your lance...------------>
The windmills are thataway...
I admire your commitment to defending true sharia, but I think you should be honest enough to say it, in English, through the front of your mouth. It's not a no true Scotsman argument, it's a majority of Scotsman, throughout history argument. And my lance is longer than that.
It is worth noting that Cockburn posted an article that described DSK's assaultive past in detail, including a comment that Sarkozy made to him upon his appointment to the IMF to the effect that he shouldn't, echoes of Gary Condit, ride alone with interns in elevators. So, he, unlike Mike Whitney, wasn't really defending the guy.
But there is an interesting question, why are there are so many purported leftists willing to redefine sexual assault as a conspiracy of neoliberalism and the national security state?
It seems to be a companion to the notion that any protests in Iran are instigated by the CIA and the Mossad, as if they had nothing else to be unhappy about. I just can't believe that replacement of DSK at the IMF is going to make that big a difference. It's sort of like claiming that replacing someone as the head of the Department of Corrections is important.
For liberals, maybe. For the rest of us, no.
"Anti-social anarchist"?
When did you ever invite me out for a beer?
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