North Coast Online

It Never Ends

We're accustomed in the United States to the oppositions party's "response" to the President's annual State of the Union Address.  They're even given time each week to rebut his weekly radio address.  Did you know that in the UK, the Queen gives an annual Christmas speech and the BBC provides time for a "counterpoint."

A veiled Muslim woman will deliver this year's alternative Christmas speech on Channel 4, the broadcaster has said.

Khadija, a Zimbabwean-born British citizen who has been wearing the full veil - or niqab - for 10 years, has been given the slot.

The message will reflect a year in which the wearing of religious clothing and symbols have "dominated the news agenda", said a Channel 4 spokesman.

A counterpoint to the Queen's Christmas speech first appeared on C4 in 1993.

Sheesh.

Simplistic Is As Simplistic Does

A social sciences professor from Medaille adds his two cents on Bush's "fear-mongering."

Bush's simplistic and inflammatory rhetoric concerning his war on terror helped re-elect him in the first election after 9/11, but made some Americans consider Muslims and Arabs the new "they" to their "we."

Bush's rhetoric can be considered inflammatory only if you're of the opinion that there is no threat from Islamic terrorism.  Indeed, Bush has consistently played down the role of Muslims in committing acts of terrorism.  But the inconvenient truth for people who share the views of the good professor is that all acts of terrorism committed against Americans and the West in general have been committed by Muslims.

Americans are quite capable of discerning that fact on our own, Bush needn't say a word. If any argument in this debate is simplistic, it's that of the detached academics who want so to believe that if it weren't for the Republicans we'd all agree with them.

¿Can You Say Idiota?

By the time it's all over, the nincompoop who dreamed up the idea of a Spanish Star Spangled Banner will have done more to hurt his cause than anything the demonstrators or La Raza could have thought of. 

This Time Paris *Is* Burning

For over a week now Paris has been rocked by violent and deadly racial riots.

Young rioters set fire to at least 50 vehicles in an eighth night of unrest in the impoverished suburbs of northeastern Paris as exasperated local officials criticised politicking by national leaders. Rioting erupted again late on Thursday despite hopes that festivities ending the fasting month of Ramadan would calm rioters, many of them Muslims of North African origin protesting against race bias they say keeps them in a second-class status. About 1,000 riot police patrolled poor areas but gangs of hooded youths roamed the streets threatening to strike again later in the night.

As the Netherlands found out before them, the existentialist  French are discovering that tribalism doesn't disappear when you adopt a policy of "multi-culturalism," it only grows stronger.  Anyone cognizant of the most basic rules of logic has understood that for decades. But France, Europe in general, and many in America (um, that includes Canada, too) have evaded that simple truth.

Glorifying the differences between cultures cannot lead to a utopian convergence of mankind, but can only divide it more deeply.  Culture is man-made.  While we can debate whether or not man's brain results from intelligent design or random selection, we should realize that we are all capable of rational thought.  It isn't rational that one group of people thinks itself innately superior to another.

The French in their supreme confidence have created a nasty ghetto of unemployement and dependence in their Muslim-dominated suburbs.  They provided the material needs but kept the newcomers at arm's-length.  The "newcomers" played along for the first generation -- after all it's better in Paris than in Tunis -- but the kids are getting antsy.

Cultures are certainly interesting but in the end the human brain is capable of transcending tribalism.  It may sound sappy to some, but it's what made America great.  Your origins weren't unimportant.  But compared with your potential, in a country where origins didn't matter, potential won.

Europe still needs a big lesson about the potential thing.

All Cultures Are Equal

A woman is ordered to marry her rapist and to become her husband's mother.