Is the woman even still alive? If we're talking about anything like old-style Royal Navy lashes, or even Singapore caning, I can't believe she survived.
Posted at 2007-11-21 15:10:08 [PermaLink]According to the NYT, the rapists will receive between 80 and 1,000 lashes.
Posted at 2007-11-21 15:52:24 [PermaLink]I wonder if the MSM will attack this type of shit the way they continually attack every other thing in Iraq??????
Posted at 2007-11-21 16:14:52 [PermaLink]Saudi is an Ally of the U.S so the left will protest the sentence, if it was Iran, the left would say we should butt out of their affairs.
Posted at 2007-11-21 16:38:58 [PermaLink]Feminists defend the Saudi regime because they admire total control over people. It's the reality all left leaning people seek. There is no injustice within such systems, they just have to do these things for their greater good. That is all.
Posted at 2007-11-21 19:32:40 [PermaLink]Just wait until Dan McTeague writes a strong letter warning the Saudis that if they do it again he'll send another letter .
Posted at 2007-11-22 02:23:33 [PermaLink]"Feminists defend the Saudi regime because they admire total control over people."
The Left's relatively muted response to what's going on in Saudi Arabia is disappointing (and surprising, considering the Sauds' relationship with Chimpy McHitlerBurton). But I have to admit, I've never seen a feminist *defend* the country...
"Muted response," Damian? How do you gauge such things?
Posted at 2007-11-22 07:55:42 [PermaLink]I don't know how muted feminist reaction to this outrage is, but in general (with notable exceptions) the feminist movement has been remarkably quiet about the treatment of women, especially rape victims, in Islamic countries. On the Left, women's rights are thrown under the bus when they collide with multicultural political correctness.
Posted at 2007-11-22 10:02:27 [PermaLink]That's complete nonsense about feminists remaining largely silent about the treatment of women in Islamic countries. See, for example, [External Link]for a feminist reaction to this lashing. I also seem to recall that before the fall of the Taliban, it was primarily feminists and feminist organisations that were highlighting the treatment of women in Afghanistan.
Posted at 2007-11-22 10:14:33 [PermaLink]Graeme: I agree that feminists and their organizations protested the treatment of women by the Taliban, but if my memory is correct, the protests were usually in the form of diplomatic protests, the UN, letter writing, etc. The Taliban of course just told them to piss off. It's my current observation that various feminist groups are by and large left wing and are opposed to the current military action in Afghanistan which have driven the Taliban out. Kind of like sucking and blowing at the same time.
Yes, I know the current status of women in Afghanistan is far from perfect and the Taliban are still around (thanks Pakistan), but most would agree that women are in a far better situation now than seven years ago.
C'mon, John, you've conceded the argument. The first group to mount an international protest was feminist. They were acting before anyone on the right even noticed. What would you have had them do? Create their own army?
RAWA sounded the alarm, and the left listened. RAWA is still sounding the alarm, and we're still listening. Are you?
[External Link]
On gender apartheid in Afghanistan:
Gallagher, Nancy (2000-2001). The International Campaign Against Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan
In UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs, 5, p. 367.
and on Iran:
[External Link]
From a 5/8/06 column by Christopher Hitchens on Ayan Hirsi Ali:
"Before being elected to parliament, she worked as a translator and social worker among immigrant women who are treated as sexual chattel—or as the object of "honor killings"—by their menfolk, and she has case histories that will freeze your blood. These, however, are in some ways less depressing than the excuses made by qualified liberals for their continuation. At all costs, it seems, others must be allowed "their culture" and—what is more—must be allowed the freedom not to be offended by the smallest criticism of it."
[External Link]
Yeah, the Left has been right out in front on this -- blocking reform at every turn.
Gosh, Bruce, one person in one country--and then we have this, quoted also by you:
"These, however, are in some ways less depressing than the excuses made by qualified liberals for their continuation. At all costs, it seems, others must be allowed "their culture" and—what is more—must be allowed the freedom not to be offended by the smallest criticism of it."
You know very well how to parse this stuff. Which "qualified liberals?" [Never mind the ambiguity, by the way]. And then, ""At all costs, *it seems*..."
I smell the sweet smell of straw nearby.
Dawg: I've no problem with admitting women's groups were the first expose the Taliban's misogynistic treatment of women. Blowing the whistle is different than doing something. In Afghanistan's case it took real soldiers, with guns - and the willingness to use them.
I have noticed the absence of the same feminist groups willing to tackle the treatment of women in the Congo.
"Eastern Congo is going through another one of its convulsions of violence, and this time it seems that women are being systematically attacked on a scale never before seen here. According to the United Nations, 27,000 sexual assaults were reported in 2006 in South Kivu Province alone, and that may be just a fraction of the total number across the country."
“The sexual violence in Congo is the worst in the world,” said John Holmes, the United Nations under secretary general for humanitarian affairs. “The sheer numbers, the wholesale brutality, the culture of impunity — it’s appalling.”
"According to victims, one of the newest groups to emerge is called the Rastas, a mysterious gang of dreadlocked fugitives who live deep in the forest, wear shiny tracksuits and Los Angeles Lakers jerseys and are notorious for burning babies, kidnapping women and literally chopping up anybody who gets in their way."
"United Nations officials said the so-called Rastas were once part of the Hutu militias who fled Rwanda after committing genocide there in 1994, but now it seems they have split off on their own and specialize in freelance cruelty."
"Mr. Holmes said that while government troops might have raped thousands of women, the most vicious attacks had been carried out by Hutu militias."
[External Link]
It's going to take more than the blue helmeted peace keepers favoured by Jack Layton to solve this disaster.
Dr. Dawg, a straw man argument is a logical fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. If you believe I have committed a logical fallacy or misrepresented an argument then please indicate where I have done so.
Yes, there was the occasional (largely symbolic) feminist denunciation of female circumcision, but even that largely disappeared after 9/11.
Until very recently feminists were almost entirely silent on the treatment of women in immigrant communities in the west and Islamic countries. Ayan Hirsi Ali was vilified, not because she was telling untruths about the immigrant community in the Netherlands, but because she was highlighting uncomfortable truths and couldn't be ignored
Or is it your position the Left was active in protecting immigrant woman's rights before Ali (and van Gogh) made an issue of it?
John:
Feminists have been trying to make the military uses of rape a crime, and they have been lobbying internationally for that for some time.
[External Link]
[External Link]
On the Congo, feminists have been onto this for years:
[External Link]
(sorry about the cached version--the original has been hacked)
But all this attention to what feminists have and haven't been doing is just so much rhetoric. What, for example, have conservatives been doing to defend the rights of the Chechen Christian minority? Aha! Nothing. (I raise this only to point out the silliness of the tactic.)
Bruce:
The strawman wasn't yours, except by proxy--it was the author's, who set up unnamed "qualified liberals," attributed a position to them, and then knocked the strawman down..
It is not a position that any of my friends and allies hold.
I wasn't referring to female "circumcision," either, but to gender apartheid, most notably under the Taliban. It was also, I recall, termed "femicide" by prominent feminists.
I don't see feminism as a monolith, in any case. Nor can I speak for "the Left." I don't know what involvement the Left has had in immigrant communities in NA before Hirsan Ali. Neither do you. I do know that there is a lot of grassroots work going on that doesn't get reported in National Review.
I think it's rich, in any case, criticizing feminists for not being feminist enough. Next you'll be asserting that US involvement in Afghanistan was all about women's rights, and the possible invasion of Iran will be on behalf of gay rights, with rainbow flags flying from the tanks.
Meanwhile, some rape that you folks have been mighty silent about:
[External Link]
[External Link]
I'm getting whip-lash from the sudden change in topic...
I don't know much about the case other than that Smith is a U.S. Marine who was convicted of raping a Filipino, who was found to be too drunk to give her consent, and was sentenced to 40 years by a Filipino judge as an example -- which is essentially a death sentence. He's now in the U.S. embassy, with the apparent cooperation of the Philippine's government, pending some sort of review.
Oh, and when someone writes, "The presence of the US military in countries like the Philippines impacts on the women and can be directly connected to women’s exploitation," or that "60% of women (in the military) have experienced military sexual trauma" they're signaling they have a rather large axe to grind.
Sorry about the sore neck, Bruce, but threads do seem to get derailed around here when you and I are debating. I won't assign blame at this point.
There's some interesting stuff about US military bases and their local effects in Cynthia Enloe's "Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics."
Yes, before Afganistan was invaded feminists launched diplomatic protests against the treatment of Afgani women.
Where the fuck is the courage in telling people something they already knew?
As for CONCRETE actions? They've done absolutely nothing.
In fact, many feminist groups are part of a larger "anti-war" coalitions that if successful would see the withdrawal of troops from Afganistan and the return of Afgani women to a state of virtual slavery.
As Mr Rheinstein pointed out, it's a case of suck 'n blow.
I can remember the days when feminists would go JUST APESHIT if they thought or had the impression a straight white male was *undressing* them with his eyes.
Remember those days?
But when millions of women are reduced to the status of virtual slaves, it is then OK because the women oppressed are opressed by non-white, 3rd world males.
The definition of opression, your see, is contingent on race and power-structures.
IN fact, were we to send feminist stalwarts like Judy Rebbick to Adfganistan, she'd probably come back as Yvonne Ridley......swallowed whole by the very attitudes and misogynist mindset she once set out to destroy.
It's all pretty depressing.