University of Calgary Sociology textbook peddles excuses for bin Laden and lies about Israel

A trio of Brock University blowhards, Marxist professor Murray Smith, the late Judith Blackwell, a Women's Studies professor who died in 2005 at the age of 61 from cancer, and John Sorenson, who teaches Critical Animal Studies (yes, you read that right) authored a textbook which is currently in use at The University of Calgary's Sociology Department that offers a morally relativistic approach to Osama bin Laden's terror campaign.

Published by The University of Toronto Press, Culture of Prejudice: Arguments in Critical Social Science is not only anti-Western, but is tinged with anti-Semitism and filled with blatant falsehoods:

One section reads:

One thing leads to another. Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist organization presented three conditions for ending their “holy war” against the United States both before and after the events of September 11, 2001: first, that Israel retreat from the territories that it occupied in 1967 and that an autonomous Palestinian state be recognized; second, that the trade sanctions imposed upon Iraq that have cost the lives of over one and a half million people, most of them children, over the last decade be lifted; and third, that United States military bases established in Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf War of 1991 be closed. An overwhelming majority of humankind would likely sympathize with these demands, even as they would condemn bin Laden's methods and reject his program of establishing repressive, fundamentalist theocratic states throughout the “Islamic world.” At the same time, most inhabitants of the Third World-and a great many people elsewhere-would consider the terrorist methods of al Qaeda no more “evil” (to use President George W. Bush's favoured term) than the methods employed by the US and other major powers in maintaining a global order that serves the interests of huge transnational corporations while perpetuating the grinding poverty of billions of people.

Bin Laden's "Letter to America" and his demands are a litany of hysteria but did not include that Israel withdraw to its 1967 lines but implies that it should not exist and the land should belong to "the Muslims."

The textbook also promulgates a number of falsehoods about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict designed to instil its readers with a heavy bias against Israel, stating in another section:

  ...More recently, supernatural sanctions have been invoked by Israelis who violently dispossessed the population of Palestine. As Israel came to be defined as a Jewish state, promised to them long ago by a supernatural being, most of the Palestinian population was expelled; approximately 4.5 million still live there as refugees. Millions of Palestinians remain under military occupation, under constant surveillance and regular attack by Israeli forces, including tanks, fighter planes, and helicopter gunships. Their houses and land have been destroyed or expropriated and given to hundreds of thousands of armed settlers.

Thus the textbook characterizes Israeli-Arab citizens as "refugees" a status that even the ridiculous definition in use by the vociferously anti-Israel UN Relief and Work Agency for Palestine would not encapsulate. Beyond that, the grossly inflated number exceeds the total number of Palestinians in The West Bank and Gaza combined, most of whom are not considered refugees.

More of the ideologically inspired nonsense in Culture of Prejudice: Arguments in Critical Social Science is discussed and refuted at the blog Elder of Ziyon.

The use of this textbook discredits any program and university employing it. Whether the University of Calgary's Sociology Department continues to use it will be an indicator of the credibility of the program and its graduates.  Unfortunately, as is evidenced by a disgraceful 2009 incident at the University of Toronto's Social Work Department, instigated by a professor there, it seems academic Social Sciences have too often become politicized arenas for under-qualified polemicists. 

Toronto Star: Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka aren't murderers, they're freedom fighters

The Toronto Star puts these two on the same moral plain:
One fought to defend Osama bin Laden and to keep women from the right to education
and the other fought for racial equality

What's that?  The Star hasn't quite bestowed the term `freedom fighter` on Bernardo and Homokla yet?

It's probably just a matter of time. I always thought The Star's columnist Thomas Walkom was an idiot and now the element of doubt has evaporated. 

Because Nelson Mandela used violence, apparently in Walkom`s tiny bubble of comprehension, any bloodthirsty murdering maniac or moral imbecile who supports killing, as long as that killing is for a cause, is potentially a freedom fighter.

And because Mandela supported totalitarian dictators like Ghaddafi and Castro and terrorists like the PLO, they're probably pretty good too, because after all, Mandela was an infallible god, wasn't he?

Removed from Walkom's thought process, such as it is, is any moral compass or standard of values, to say nothing of tactics, that differentiate terrorists from people legitimately fighting for liberty. Also removed from that equation is the heresy that while Mandela was a man of courage, dignity, and determination, and exhibited great wisdom in many instances, in many others he was emotionally and philosophically married to some reprehensible ideologies and individuals.

So, just so it's easy, here's a simple rule-of-thumb that even someone so thoroughly stupid and morally bankrupt as a Toronto Star editorial columnist should be able to understand:

If you kill and commit violence against innocent people for political purposes, you're a terrorist. Similarly, if you're fighting to support or aiding people who do that, you're a supporter of terrorism. 

It's pretty easy. The old, vapid, banal saying 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter' is something idiots say to try to justify their moral bankruptcy and intellectual limitations.

George Washington was not a terrorist, because he never ordered or condoned the killing or systematic mistreatment of civilians. The government of Iran are terrorists because they have ordered and executed the killings of innocent people with no connection to any military or political role, far from any combat area, for political ends. And if, like Castro, you throw someone in jail or have them executed for publicly disagreeing with you, then you're on that same sunken moral plain.

See? It's simple.

I don't really expect anyone at The Star to actually follow a rule as straightforward as this though. Because with it, there's just no way Rob Ford can fall into that terrorist category.

The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald inadvertently argues that every Muslim in the west should be interred or deported

Basically making the banal and morally vapid argument that 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter,' The Guardian's columnist Glenn Greenwald wrote on Thursday that the horrific beheading of an off-duty soldier on the streets of London was not an act of terrorism.

Greenwald's reasoning boils down to his question: "Can it really be the case that when western nations continuously kill Muslim civilians, that's not "terrorism", but when Muslims kill western soldiers, that is terrorism?"

The ramifications of the position taken in Greenwald's column are staggering if indeed he and more significantly, if Muslims living in the west genuinely believe it.

Employing a puerile moral equivalency, Greenwald maintains that "it's true that the soldier who was killed yesterday was out of uniform and not engaged in combat at the time he was attacked. But the same is true for the vast bulk of killings carried out by the US and its allies over the last decade."

But there's a matter of major significance that Greenwald's thinking postulates. The terrorists who murdered Lee Rigby as he was innocently walking in the London suburb of Woolwich were converts to Islam of Nigerian origin. If they are not terrorists, if they are behaving the same way he says western nations do in Islamic countries, then on whose behalf were they acting? The west hasn't attacked Nigeria, nor were the Woolwich terrorists wearing Nigerian or any military uniforms.

Speaking of terrorism, Greenwald wrote, "the term at this point seems to have no function other than propagandistically and legally legitimizing the violence of western states against Muslims while delegitimizing any and all violence done in return to those states."

By that logic, when US or UK soldiers launch attacks against the Taliban, or al Qaida, or during the wars against Iraq, if a Muslim is killed, then it is an attack against all Muslims.

Greenwald's position only makes sense if one holds the view that the west is in a war against all Muslims and more to the point, that the reverse is also true.

And if that's the case, if Glenn Greenwald is correct, then every single Muslim in the west is an enemy soldier walking among us, which gives western countries the right to deport or inter them in prison camps until the war is over.

Of course Greenwald is wrong. Like most moral relativists, he hasn't the capacity to think through the implications of the rhetorical contortions he distorted himself into while acting as an apologist for terrorism.

All Muslims are not at war with the west. The vast majority find the Woolwich terrorists as repugnant as anyone else.

Nor is the west at war with all Muslims. Neither western civilians nor military personnel living in Islamic states  go around randomly killing Muslim soldiers or civilians for the sake of their being Muslim, nor is anyone in their right mind claiming they have such a right. If a Catholic is murdered by a Muslim terrorist, as often happens, the Pope does not give dispensations that allow the killing of any available Muslim in retaliation.

But this recent horror in Woolwich does highlight another aspect of the dilemma the west faces in dealing with its growing Muslim population.

Sunder Katwala wrote in The Globe and Mail:

The hearts of the vast majority of Britain’s three million Muslim citizens will have sunk on hearing the news of the Woolwich killing. The condemnations came quickly, yet many were also scratching their heads wondering how Britain’s Muslim majority could ever get their voices heard more powerfully than the dramatically newsworthy preachers of hate.

The "preachers of hate" to whom Katwala refers are embedded in many of England's and the west's mosques. Just as in the movie Trainspotting, his friends warily accepted the sociopathic villain Begbie, similarly many Muslims may find the Jihadist "preachers of hate' scary and deplorable, but tolerate them nonetheless because to their co-religionists, they are "one of us."

Until all western Muslims and the rest of us shun and ostracize the preachers of hate, be they in the mosques or on the editorial pages of The Guardian,  then we will remain a long way from seeing the end of terrorism in our streets.



UPDATE: This post originally identified the Woolwich terrorists as Nigerian Muslims who had immigrated to England. Thanks to information from readers that has been corrected to "converts to Islam of Nigerian origin." Thank you to the readers of this blog and your comments are always welcome.

A "root causes" music video dedicated to Prince Bonehead Trudeau

h/t Doug D.

Think Prince Bonehead's instincts are scary? Take a look at what two of his terrorist-loving advisers have to say

Trudeau adviser Sacha partnered with the world's leading state-sponsor of terrorism.

His other adviser, Omar Alghabra, is a fan of Hamas and Hezbollah.

More Here

al Starzeera news equates illegal aliens with legitimate immigrants to Canada

A commentary in today's Toronto Star decrying Canadian Border Security Services Agency cooperation with a COPS-like show about rounding up illegal aliens describes them as "immigrants" who are being treated badly by the federal government.

The Star equates them with legal immigrants to Canada who voluntarily participated in a mock swearing-in session for Sun News last year.

Moral relativism and cultural equivalence, every day, courtesy of al Starzeera news.

Blogwrath among the Khadrites

From experience, I warned Blogwrath that a night with the asinine moral and cultural relativists who advocate for convicted terrorist Omar Khadr would be inane and boring.

An apology is owed.

I grossly understated the risks. Sorry Blogwrath. I should have warned you enduring the tedium of a Rick Salutin lecture falls somewhere between water-boarding and having your fingernails pulled in terms of cruel and unusual punishment.

The National Post`s Jonathan Kay wrote about Salutin before the latter was dismissed from the Globe and Mail, ``After 17 years as a Globe columnist, one suspects, Salutin apparently has gotten to the stage where he simply throws a bunch of buzz phrases in the air — imperialism, Guantanamo, oil, Omar Khadr, "honest broker" — and lets his readers write their own column``

Evidently not much has changed.  The rest of the panel didn`t sound any more interesting, but Blogwrath`s colorful account is excellent and will make you grateful he attended on your behalf. 

Michael Coren: Canada is not Switzerland

So why is it some Canadians want to emasculate our military, pretend we are not who we are, and create this revised, foolish history of the country as a North American Switzerland, sitting out conflicts no matter how obvious the necessity of intervention?

It is not because they want peace and pacifism; it is because they want neutrality and, ultimately, the triumph of our enemies.

We saw this during the Cold War when, in the guise of peacefulness, various fellow travellers and leftist agitators actually wanted the Soviets to dominate.

Today we see something similar in the struggle against Islamofascism.

From special interest groups, to writers at the Toronto Star, to commentators on the CBC, we are drenched by waves of anti-American propaganda, explaining the war on terror is a costly failure, and we should be the honest broker in all this and not take sides.

If only we understood Islam, we are told by patronizing dullards, all would become clear.

Well, I do understand Islam, and the Middle East, and unlike these extremists I also understand the U.S.

It’s not about Canada taking sides, it’s about Canada being Canada.

The whole article is at The Sun

Chomsky again proves articulate ≠ smart

An interesting analysis by Werner Cohn:  Chomsky and the Art of Special Pleading

Christopher Hitchens on Chomsky's Follies

Christopher Hitchens can't speak with his mouth right now due to esophageal cancer, but he still speaks loudly and forcefully with his pen.

His column on the stupidity of Noam Chomsky's moral relativism and misrepresentation appears in the current issue of Slate:

The professor's pronouncements about Osama Bin Laden are stupid and ignorant.

Anybody visiting the Middle East in the last decade has had the experience: meeting the hoarse and aggressive person who first denies that Osama Bin Laden was responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center and then proceeds to describe the attack as a justified vengeance for decades of American imperialism. This cognitive dissonance—to give it a polite designation—does not always take that precise form. Sometimes the same person who hails the bravery of al-Qaida's martyrs also believes that the Jews planned the "operation." As far as I know, only leading British "Truther" David Shayler, a former intelligence agent who also announced his own divinity, has denied that the events of Sept. 11, 2001, took place at all. (It was apparently by means of a hologram that the widespread delusion was created on television.) In his recent article for Guernica magazine, however, professor Noam Chomsky decides to leave that central question open. We have no more reason to credit Osama Bin Laden's claim of responsibility, he states, than we would have to believe Chomsky's own claim to have won the Boston Marathon.

I can't immediately decide whether or not this is an improvement on what Chomsky wrote at the time. Ten years ago, apparently sharing the consensus that 9/11 was indeed the work of al-Qaida, he wrote that it was no worse an atrocity than President Clinton's earlier use of cruise missiles against Sudan in retaliation for the bomb attacks on the centers of Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. (I haven't been back to check on whether he conceded that those embassy bombings were also al-Qaida's work to begin with.) He is still arguing loudly for moral equivalence, maintaining that the Abbottabad, Pakistan, strike would justify a contingency whereby "Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush's compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic." (Indeed, equivalence might be a weak word here, since he maintains that, "uncontroversially, [Bush's] crimes vastly exceed bin Laden's.")

Read the rest here at Slate

UPDATE : Alan Dershowitz on bin Laden's defender

Israel and the Surrender of the West by Shelby Steele

"..the entire Western world has suffered from a deficit of moral authority for decades now. Today we in the West are reluctant to use our full military might in war lest we seem imperialistic; we hesitate to enforce our borders lest we seem racist; we are reluctant to ask for assimilation from new immigrants lest we seem xenophobic; and we are pained to give Western Civilization primacy in our educational curricula lest we seem supremacist. Today the West lives on the defensive, the very legitimacy of our modern societies requiring constant dissociation from the sins of the Western past—racism, economic exploitation, imperialism and so on."

An important article that you can read in its entirety here.

An interesting Noam Chomsky interview

Noam Chomsky is an interesting fellow. He is a moral relativist, which of itself suggests hypocrisy and lack of insight, so he becomes an easy target for mockery.  But nonetheless, he is, by several orders of magnitude, more intelligent and nuanced than his acolytes, such as Naomi Klein and Norman Finkelstein.

He has done some very positive things, such has his campaign for East Timor, that helped draw attention to the situation there, and he was about as wrong as a person could have been regarding the Cold War and the approach to the former Soviet Union, which would still exist if Chomsky's counsel had been followed.

Here is an interesting interview where he discusses his take on aspects of the Israel/Palestine issue, boycotts and the legitimacy of states in general. I disagree with much of what he says, but this provides a good window into his mind:



A Conversation with Noam Chomsky on Palestine/Israel from Frank Barat on Vimeo.


h/t TVO's Agenda blog