Perhaps december is suggesting she should prostrate herself before the doors of the conference rooms to bodily prevent those with unacceptable differences from entering? Hmm, where have I heard of something like that happening before?
**
Google is a capricious mistress. See the link I provided earlier to http://www.divestmentconference.com/ for the organizers of this conference. Still a remarkably level-headed group and any parallels drawn to the KKK would be the product of either paranoia or an unworthy attempt to smear the organization.
I apologize for the leading question in my first paragraph in my last post. I did not mean to make it sound like december would stoop to such levels to censor those with different opinions.
I would like, if december continues to hold the opinion that the University should have done something else, an example of what they could have done without violating their own mission statement and guiding principles.
Mtgman, the fallacy of bifurcation applies to formal logic. However, sometimes political issues pretty much are black and white. In particular, one’s tolerance for atrocities.
Suppose a campus group discussing lynching said, “As a solidarity movement, it is not our place to dictate the strategies or tactics adopted by the Ku Klux Klan in their struggle to maintain order.” This would be a black and white issue (in two senses.)
The suicide bombings are as bad as the lynchings were. Jews are being murdered for being Jews.
Let’s not re-debate Cuba. Cites demonstrated that during a certain period the Cubam gopvrnment promoted sex tourism, and they also had also lots of child prostitution. I was unable to find a cite specifically confirming that they promoted child prostitution. However, that was a big part of what they offered; it’s reasonable to assume that that their customers got the message.
As far as the Universty promoting the conference, the fact that it’s an official university function held at the university proves that. I’m glad to know from your search that the university isn’t making additional effort beyond permitting it.
Regarding the distinction beteen student functions and university functions, I don’t buy it, and neither do you. If a student group organized a university conference saying it was OK to burn gay people, you wouldn’t calmly say, “Oh, that’s just a student issue.”
Mtgman, the fallacy of bifurcation applies to formal logic. However, sometimes political issues pretty much are black and white. In particular, one’s tolerance for atrocities.
Suppose a campus group discussing lynching said, “As a solidarity movement, it is not our place to dictate the strategies or tactics adopted by the Ku Klux Klan in their struggle to maintain order.” This would be a black and white issue (in two senses.)
The suicide bombings are as bad as the lynchings were. Jews are being murdered for being Jews.
Let’s not re-debate Cuba. Cites demonstrated that during a certain period the Cubam gopvrnment promoted sex tourism, and they also had also lots of child prostitution. I was unable to find a cite specifically confirming that they promoted child prostitution. However, that was a big part of what they offered; it’s reasonable to assume that that their customers got the message.
As far as the Universty promoting the conference, the fact that it’s an official university function held at the university proves that. I’m glad to know from your search that the university isn’t making additional effort beyond permitting it.
Regarding the distinction beteen student functions and university functions, I don’t buy it, and neither do you. If a student group organized a university conference saying it was OK to burn gay people, you wouldn’t calmly say, “Oh, that’s just a student issue.”
On preview I see you have asked a question. IMHO the university should have prevented the conference, just as they would prevent a conference that expressed tacit approval of buring gay people or lynching African Americans.
The Michigan League charges rent. Doesn’t matter whether it’s a official student group or an off-campus group wishing to use the facilities–they pay for the privilege. They also pay for food and beverages, any extra security or fire protection that in the opinion of UM is required, and any special cleanup afterwards. All the UM provides is the building.
See the chart of rental charges–scroll down past the blurb.
The Michigan League Facilities Use Policy, a selective list. Heh.
DSeid, I’m not gonna get into whether Palestine Solidarity does or does not condone terrorism, because I’m aware that what it says on a website can be very different from what’s in actual practice. But, ya know, reading through the Facilities Use Policy for the Michigan League kinda puts it all in perspective for me somehow–I don’t see a bunch of foaming-at-the-mouth anti-semitic bomb-throwing radical terrorists, I see a bunch of college kids and talking heads getting together for a few meetings in the UM After-Prom venue. Ya know? “Any music in the Vandenberg and Hussey Rooms must end no later than midnight…”
be back in a minute with the rest of the post–I discovered vBulletin does have a size limit after all
who knew?
You really shouldn’t try to use analogies december they’re not your strong suit.
:confused I don’t see an issue there december. What action are you saying should be taken. They can’t talk about what the KKK does? They can’t NOT talk about what the KKK does? Oh, and fallacies happen in debates too. Would you like this to turn into a lovely little chat over tea where we can say anything we like however we like and not get called on it? Eh, I’ll stick with debate forms thanks. Someone may be reading this and I want to be sure I’m coming across as someone who can think straight.
YAY! You’re just racking up victories against those straw men! Go you! Now let’s look at what would happen if that were really me on the other side of the arguement instead of some figment of your imagination.
december: A student group organized a university conference saying it was OK to burn gay people. What do you think about that?
Mtgman: Sad they feel that way, but there’s this whole “free speech” thing in the world I live in. As long as they keep it to words instead of actions, I’m fine with it. When is it? I may go and discuss it with them if they have an open forum.
RE: The “promotion” of prostitution in Cuba. I’ll find some time soon to post to the pit thread where we discussed this. I’ve been meaning to, but haven’t found the time. For now I’ll just say you have no idea of the mechanics of the sex industry and how it’s “promoted” if you seem to think governments are involved.
So I guess I’d need to see a cite of some kind that proves that the group that’s organizing the event actually does condone terrorism. See, I have a problem with getting all my facts about this from the Jerusalem Post article. This quote, for example, is slanted:
Yes, it’s true that he was fired after the reports surfaced, but they’re not telling the whole story–they’re only telling the part that reinforces their agenda. So to me the obvious next question to me is, is this quote also slanted?
I have only the Jerusalem Post’s word for it, and I’d like to see it in context, too.
All I can find by way of an actual agenda for the conference is this:
Okay, so I’m gonna go look up all these people and find out who they are, see if they’re advocating terrorism. Question: Are we looking at the Symbionese Liberation Army?
[ul]
[li]Speech by Nasser Abufarha, March 15, 2002 [/li]
[li]Mark Perry[/li]Lotta “Mark Perrys” out there. Assuming that it’s not Mark Perry, Canadian folk musician, I’ll go with what Googling “mark perry palestine” turns up and assume it’s this guy.
[/ul]
Okay, so, I’ve been sitting here for quite a while now this afternoon, looking up all these people on the Web, and I sure don’t see any of them sounding like they’re advocating terrorism. Even the “electronic intifada” guy doesn’t sound like a bomb-throwing radical, he just sounds angry.
Overall, the conference actually sounds like a rather dull weekend–speeches, talking heads, and a lawyer to discuss “land issues”. The food better be good…
Oh, Steven, pleeeeeeease, don’t, it was mercifully lost in the server crash and reboot from backup. Let it stay dead, please. Or else start a serious GD thread, that can maybe stay halfway sensible. Or even just as a GQ question–“Does Cuba have state-sponsored child prostitution?” and then we can say, “No”, and that will be the end of it.
Thaaaaaank you.
*Permit me to say how deeply stupid this is. Do you truly fail to grasp the principle that just because something takes place on a university campus, that doesn’t mean the university in question is “promoting” it? UM has a gay/lesbian group–by your logic, every time they have a “do” in the Vanderbilt Room, the UM is sponsoring homosexuality. :rolleyes:
I see there’s still a “Students for Gore 2000” club on the list–by your logic, every time they had a meeting, UM was promoting Al Gore for president. :rolleyes:
And boy howdy, lookit the religious groups…By your logic, every time the Hindu Students had a meeting, UM was promoting Hinduism. Or when the Adventists meet, that’s a big vote for Seventh-Day Adventism from Mary Sue Coleman.
DDG it looks like they’ve done a good job of finding prominent/knowledgeable people. A bit one-sided perhaps, but we can’t expect people who are organizing an event like this to pay for transportation and speaking fees for people to play devil’s advocate. Their bias is evident, and they’re fine with it. The Jerusalem Post is biased and they’re fine with it. As usual, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
I certainly don’t mean to downplay the atrocities of the Nazi party, but I happen to agree with Urban Ranger with regards to the term that should apply to such situations. Racism, pure and simple. Here’s why.
I don’t agree with labels. Labels seperate us as humans from one another and perpetuate stereotypes. Having a seperate name for hatred of Jews based on their race as opposed to using the same name we use for hatred of other people based on their race keeps Jews in a seperate category. I’d rather see this artificial distinction torn down and everone understand that Racism, of any stripe, is unacceptable. Hatred against Jews for being Jewish is every bit as unacceptable as hatred against Africans for being Africans, or Frenchmen for being French. They’re ALL problems of RACISM, not Anti-Semitism, Anti-Negroism(I just made that up, sorry about that), or Anti-Caucasionism. Why make distinctions without differences? To perpetuate narrow-minded and shallow stereotypes of your own people? I don’t see an advantage in that. Call a spade a spade. Someone who hates a person based on their race is a racist. No matter what the race is. If you replace the term “Anti-Semitic” with “Racist” in pretty much everything written about Nazi Germany, it’s every bit as horrifying. And it strikes home to people who can identify with being the victim of racism, but who can’t identify with being the victim of Anti-Semitism.
NOOOOOO!!! Damnit Damnit DAMNIT! I gave ignorance a great big lump on the head in that thread and now you’re telling me that it’s lost to posterity? I’ve sent the hampsters looking for it, I hope they find it. The promotion of prostitution is a very interesting process and it deserves to be in the annals of knowledge that is the SDMB.
“Deeply stupid” I love that phrase! It’s just got a je ne sa quois that appeals to me.
Aw, well, now don’t have a cow, Steve, the thread itself is still in the archives, but–maybe you weren’t here–the server crashed Monday September 16, mid-morning, and was down until Thursday the 19th (I think), and Jerry the Tech God finally had to restore it from the last backup, which was at 3:00 a.m. Monday morning, CDST (Chicago time, which is where the server is.)
So when the boards came back, it was as if everything since the wee hours on Monday had never happened. The thread is still there somewhere, but it looks like a good deal of the “Cuban child prostitution” hijack with all its posts is basically gone. The last post shows on Sunday morning September 15.
And it was originally a hijack, remember, so maybe it’s just as well. Let it lie, is my advice.
Anyway…
Well, yeah, but that’s kinda my point–that they’re knowledgeable and prominent people–it’s hardly just a bunch of radical pro-terrorism people, come to speechify and rabble-rouse and just generally spread some anti-semitic Zionism and racism around Ann Arbor.
And I don’t have any problem with their obvious pro-Palestinian bias–what I do have a problem with is the people who are imputing to them a pro-Palestinian-terrorism agenda, which I just don’t see.
[hijack]
Whee! It wasn’t lost. The post I want to make is still possible. Thank you DDG, the hampsters didn’t find it for me(to be fair searching for “december” in the pit probably overloaded the poor little things). Even bigger thanks to Jerry the Tech God and the Chicago Reader for having and executing on a good backup schedule. You guys rock.
With all due respect DDG I just can’t let this one lie. Five years or so of lurking in the adult entertainment community has to have some benefit. I welcome the chance to enlighten my fellow humans without putting them through what I went through to learn how the other half lives. If I could think of another place/way to post this information without bumping that damn thread I probably would. But I don’t think it’s pointless, so no MPSIMS, it’s not really a IMHO kind of thing, nothing really debatable, no questions in it, just sharing of knowledge. Not flaming anyone. Really don’t have a springboard for it except that discussion where the nature of the “promotion of prostitution” came up. I know a lot about how prostitution is promoted, and a lot of people, including our beloved december, know little to nothing about it.
[/hijack]
Obligatory On Topic Point.
From the cites DDG provided regarding the cost of the conference, I would surmise the University is NOT defraying the costs of the conference. There is the possibility the student organization recieves a small budget from the University to help pay for events, but I would be amazed if it would cover the costs this conference looks like it would require.
As a former officer of a club at a University, I can say that we recieved a stipend to spend on promotion of our events and things like refreshments/entertainment(man what a laugh that was since it was the Chess Club) but we were not responsible to the University for HOW we spent it except to provide receipts from legitimate businesses. IF the University of Michigan has similar practices, then the students are probably also free to spend it as they will and simply give copies of receipts to the student group’s Faculty sponsor. The University would undoubtedly consider student group budgets spent on renting their own facilities as a legitimate expense.
So now it looks like the students are gathering to say things they’re legally allowed to say, per the University’s guidelines and the legal definition of free speech, and paying for the gathering’s expenses with either their own monies or a budget they are allowed to use at their discretion. So where’s the debate?
Oh right, december says it’s not their right to say those things.
Thanks for your answer. You are consistent in your views. Of course, you’re safe in taking this position, since no major university would permit such a conference. I wonder whether you similarly defend the use of the Confederate Flag or the right of Bob Jones University to ban interracial dating. I would assume that you are an enemy of campus speech codes, as I am.
I don’t agree with you, although I do support free speech. Some speech is inappropropriate in a university.
How about you, DDG. Is it OK with you if a state university hosts a conference by some group that says it’s OK to burn gay people and OK to lynch blacks?
Indeed, and we call religious bigotry directed against Jews “antisemitism”.
And, it clearly exists as a discrete and apparently immortal entity. Antisemitism has been present for centuries. Once its proponents and practitioners have identified someone (or something) as Jewish, that someone or something becomes to them de facto inferior, suspect, or evil. Whether they direct their bigotry against a practising Jew, a one-month old child of a Jewish mother, or someone who’s converted from Judaism decades ago, the common thread is the “Jewishness” of each. And, this “Jewishness” would have been sufficient in each case to ‘justify’ their murder by the Nazis.
To make make some semantically contrived, disingenuous argument to suggest that “there is no such thing as antisemitism” is absurd and flies in the face of recent and ancient history.
is at the heart of it. The debate here is not over whether or not some college kids and self-important talking heads can get together and spout off idiocies at each other. Boy, if we outlawed that there’d be no college classes at all. But at what point does it cross the line to hateful speech? “Zionism equals Racism” isn’t crossing the line. It is stupid, it is ill-informed, it is ironic coming from the mouths of an Arab, but in itself it is not hateful. Like you, all I have to go on is the quote in the op, and while The J. Post might not put a quote in full context, they are usually accurate in what they do quote. I’ve tried to find another source to see if the quote could be put into further context to no avail (although I did find reference to Al-Arian shouting a rallying cry of “Death to Israel” … “In 1991 Al-Arian spoke at a rally, and what he said has gotten a lot of media attention. The phrase frequently reported is “death to Israel.” The full quote is, ‘God is one; Muhammad is the leader; the Qur’an is our constitution; struggling for God is our approach, victory is for Islam; death to Israel; a revolution, a revolution until victory; a march, a march towards Jerusalem; a revolution, a revolution until victory; a march, a march towards Jerusalem; and there is no deity but God, and Muhammad is His messenger. God is great, and victory is for Islam.’” This in a very pro Al-Arian article, http://grove.ufl.edu/~uff/nolandman.html , which claims that he meant only death to the occupation … AND claims that he supports attacks on military targets and armed settlers and not on other Israeli citizens or Jews everywhere)
The full context of that J. Post quote is key. State clearly that you condemn attacks on “Jews everywhere” (called for by some imans and practiced by some Jew-hating Arabs throughout the world) and terror attacks in Israel and I have no problem with your getting together with likeminded folks to diparage the alleged evils of Israel. Stand in unwavering “solidarity” with those who advocate bombing of temples everywhere in the world, who bomb cafes and schoolbuses, who murder little girls in their sleep, and you cross the line.
Steven,
NO they aint all racism. The French are not a race. The Jews are not a race. (Despite one dictionary def. that would make me puke if it is quoted again!) And hatred may be unacceptable across the board but it is a disservice to lump it together entirely. For example, in America today bigotry against Jews plays out differently that it does against blacks. Cabs will stop for me. I don’t have to worry about being called a name by “my own” for wanting to achieve academically. I disrespect the problems that many blacks still face today if I were to say that it is all the same. We share histories of oppression, of dispossesion, of being the targets of mass murder, but we would be insulting to each others histories if we did not respect the differences in our situations both historically and today.
That december continues to confuse opposition to the Israeli political state with hatred of people who follow the Jewish relgion is baffling. That he continues to label anyone who dares to criticize the very apartheid-like policies of that political state an antisemite is both ridiculous and insulting. Israel has gotten a free-ride politically for far too long in this country. Now that people finally realize the problems that state poses and are openly criticizing it, the Zionists and thier supporters are throwing out accusations of antisemitism in an attempt to throw their opponents’ reputation into moral question.
If the American Indians had held conferences about how to stop their ancestral lands from being stolen, and refused to condemn the raids on US Cavalry forts because they felt the tactics of an occupied people seeking liberation were for them to decide, would you be calling that racist and inappropriate? Surely not.
Fortunately, your side is starting to lose. The years in which interest groups bully our government into supporting the Israeli political state are going to come to an end. Conferences like this are just the start, an indicator of how the political tide has turned in the last year. The moment will someday come when a US President publicy denounces Israel and brings the threat of terrorism to a screeching halt.
RexDart, if you typed that post with a straight face, I suspect that the SDMB needs a new Forum: The True Believers Forum, where you and december and a few others can sit in a circle and hurl meaningless phrases at each other, totally convinced that the world is starkly divided between “those who agree with my positions in every detail” and “those who are wrong.”
Your odd prediction (and the underlying beliefs needed to support it) is no more accurate than december’s continuous-loop, unconsidered declarations.
Hmmm? We have had many debates here regarding whether anti-Israel equates to anti-Semitism. Pteh Palestinians promote both. Arabs in the US, Europe and other places who continue to attack Jews and Jewish institutions are practicing anti-Semitism. At the very least, you are standing shoulder to shoulder with these anti-Semites.
Your slogan “apartheit-like” is remarkably false. Arab citizens of Israel own property, vote, serve in the Knesset, make contracts, etc. the same as Jewish citizens. OTOH it’s virtually impossible for a Jew to even live in most of the Arab countries, and it has been difficult for a non-Israeli Jew to even visit some of them.
Yet, Rex, you call Israel “apartheit-like” Can I ask you where you received that bit of misinformation?
Gee, injecting actual facts into a discussion is so much fun.
