68 CommentsNews is coming hot and heavy these days on fallout from October 4th (Bwog’s new name for the Minuteman Protest), so we thought we’d do a little digest on the latest.
Item # 1: The Republicans are going ahead with their event Wednesday evening featuring ex-PLO jihadist Walid Shoebat, along with a former Lebanese terrorist and a member of the Hitler Youth. The headliner–whom Princeton didn’t even allow to speak–may even be more wacko than Gilchrist, and this time, they’re not taking any chances. If you want to go, RSVP soon at the CU GOP website, where you may reserve and print out one (1) ticket in advance–but you might be lonely. Chabad brought Shoebat to Columbia in 2004, but this time around Hillel hasn’t even put it on their online calendar, and word is that other student groups are planning on boycotting the event entirely. “We want pretty pictures of empty chairs,” said one Bwog source. “Forty people attend, and the thing collapses.”
Item # 2: We’re not sure where Karina Garcia is getting the 3,000 figure for letters sent to PrezBo in support of the protesters–University Spokesman Robert Hornsby couldn’t confirm the number. Then again, he also wouldn’t answer any of Bwog’s other five questions, saying only that the administration “will make no further comment at this time.” Ah, stonewalling.
Item # 3: Even though YouTube has gone corporate, they’re still providing us with lots of fun new video. Here’s what we’ve found:
Lou Dobbs to CU: “You ought to be ashamed.” Can’t you see the breastbeating?
CTV National Media analysis: We RULE.
Protesters on CTV: All about the message, baby.
Finally, Dols v. Kulawik on Fox
Item # 4: Statements by World Can’t Wait and the Working Families Party after the jump.
– LBD
Working Families Party
The Columbia University Working Families Party strongly condemns the violent attacks by members of the Minutemen against Columbia students during the protest in Roone Arledge Auditorium. The tapes clearly show that violence was instigated by Minutemen supporters and there is no excuse for that under any circumstances whatsoever. Blaming the protestors for violence they did not cause is wrongheaded and absurd. The protestors were the victims and not the initiators of the violence, and we call for a full investigation against the aggressors. Furthermore, we salute those students that did not resort to violence even after being attacked, and believe that the Minutemen must be held accountable for their actions.
Furthermore, whatever one might think of the tactics of the protestors, we support the inalienable right of a student to protest when their conscience demands it. The Minutemen are a racist vigilante organization whose previous speeches would violate
Columbia’s own policies against hate speech, and the protestors were standing for antiracist principles. We call on the administration to refrain from punishing the protestors for standing up for their beliefs.
World Can’t Wait: Stop the Harassment of Protesters at Columbia
No human being is illegal. The Minutemen, an armed vigalante group, had no intention of engaging in serious academic debate when speaking at an event hosted by the Columbia University Young Republican Club. The group’s platform of normalizing racism and taking up arms to preserve white supremecy is a dark path that the world has seen before. Images of night riding Klansmen and Nazi storm troopers comes to mind.
When students dare to take action against groups such as the Minutemen and remain unapologetic in the face of administrative threats and right-wing media campaigns, they must be defended and their voice must be supported. On the night of October 4th, students unfurled a banner that read: “No one is ever illegal,” in both Arabic and English, on stage during a speech by Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist at Columbia’s Roone Auditorium. The moral clarity embodied in this simple act of resistance is urgently needed on college campuses across the country. What would it have meant if Columbia’s student body remained silent as the founder of an armed vigalante group spoke at their school?
Following the protest and cancellation of the event, the media has gone on a rampage to vilify and grossly distort the protests while New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has publicly criticized Columbia University’s President Lee Bollinger for not moving fast enough in reprimanding the Minutemen protesters. The terms of debate surrounding the Minuteman protests at Columbia University are utterly intolerable and need to be dramatically altered. It is an alarming and disturbing sign of the times when the press labels an openly racist armed vigalante group that operates in the public eye as merely “controversial”. As debate rages over the Minuteman’s speech, it must be acknowledged that the Minutemen speak through guns and through actions fueled by bigotry and intolerance.
The discourse and debate over the Minuteman protest has been completely abstracted from the context of a country currently undergoing radical changes in governing laws and norms that date back to the very foundation of this country. It cannot be ignored or denied that the Minuteman’s appearance comes at a time when the Bush administration is rounding up thousands of immigrants and is moving ahead with the unprecedented legalization of torture. Isn’t the Minuteman’s appearance coming at a time when the government has just shredded the constitutional right of due process and the President of the United States has vetoed stem-cell research based on religious grounds? It would be out of step with reality to narrowly equate the Minuteman Project with the Bush agenda. But so would discussing the Minutemen disconnected from the facistic direction the United States is moving under the Bush administration.
The attacks and possible disiplinary action directed at the student protesters by Columbia University are part of an increasingly repressive atmosphere that is aiming to rid American universities of critical thought and dissent. From the professors who have come under fire for expressing progressive or oppositional views, to the Bush administration’s attacks on objective scholarship when it challenges its aims – this must be brought to a halt. We demand that the students under investigation for protesting Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist face no threats of expulsion or any disiplinary actions! The World Can’t Wait – Drive Out the Bush Regime!
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68 Comments
@Anonymous I can’t believe a bunch of over-indulged, adolescent Trotskyites have been able to effectively censor public debate and only allow the views that they endorse to be put forth without intimidation. This is the antithesis of what a college atmosphere should be, it looks more like a scene from Lord of the Flies then a legitimate academic institution.
Columbia’s pathetic slide continues…
@Slapnuts Monique Dols ia a vapid dolt.
The only people who think she made a good impression of herself on TV are her fellow moonbat socialist protestors.
Normal people found her very childish and smarmy, interrupting every two seconds, ignoring the questions asked and just talking about whatever she felt like.
If brains were chocolate Monique wouldn’t be able to fill an M & M. I am surprised that she can even tie her own shoes in the morning.
You idiots cheering her on on here do realize how smug and misinformed she came off while spreading her left wing propaganda don’t you?
@V47 The post above is so not me. My spelling is way better than that.
@I don't think monique is really concerned with how shes going to explain this to the good people at Goldman Sachs.
@surprisingly employers outside of investment banks do also occasionally care about potential employees’ character
@V47 employers in the revolution also care about how your dispose of the fox news bodies. deep in the harlem river is perferrible.
@fox guy seriously thinks that the real issue with disruption is it hurts our chance to get a job afterwards? so funny… at least the free speech argument sounds principled.
monique was excellent, as before, not taking shit from the double-teaming of kulawik and fox guy
@sure Well his statement regarding jobs is actually practical advice. Do you think most organizations are going to want to hire someone who stirs up trouble and is defiant in the face of widespread condemnation? Don’t think employers won’t find out about it either, especially if you’re going on the news to act childish. Of course NGOs with socialist ties will always be an option… but there isn’t much opportunity for career advancement in that path.
@yeah cause employers don’t know how to google and they’ve never checked facebook
all monique was make disrespectful interruptions for no reason. it could have been worse though. you could tell she was holding it iin
@My true colors? No, actually, since the US provided arms, funds, and needed political cover to Saddam Hussein – not to mention having the CIA turn over lists of internal dissidents to be murdered – I would say that the US is pretty damn responsible. The regime couldn’t have lasted without western support, and certainly couldn’t have launched the invasion of Iran.
It’s funny that you talk about the misappropriation of funds – I assume you mean from the oil for food program. This was a major issue with the sanctions although not in the way that you mean.
The revenue from oil sales allowed by the Iraqi oil for food program went directly into a UN account. The US and the British demanded that about 30%(after 2000, 25%) go to paying for damages allegedly incurred during Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Another 1/10 went to pay for the UN’s operating expenses in Iraq.
The rest was controlled entirely by a UN controller who appropriated funds to contactors and suppliers of food stuffs and medical supplies.
So only about half went to humanitarian supplies for Iraqis. That’s how the most advanced country in the Middle East (in terms of living standards though not human rights) ended up as one of the worlds poorest countries.
The general consensus among human rights observers is that the sanctions killed a half million to a million and a half Iraqis. That’s why two different UN humanitarian coordinators in Iraq resigned. Because the US – through the UN – was committing genocide there.
And as for this: “otherwise, its not a big step to claiming the entire world, at least all of europe was responsible for the holocaust or that marx was responsible for the ukranian purges, etc”
Well, that’s completely nonsensical. What are you talking about?
@not sure why responsibility has to be exclusive… if I order a hit and you carry it out, is either of us less guilty than if we’d just killed someone on our own?
@um, yeah Ummm, you don’t think the US was responsible for the sanctions in Iraq.
Just because the sanctions existed under the auspices of the UN, doesn’t mean that the US isn’t responsible. It’s like saying that the US isn’t responsible for the Korean War, because technically it was the UN.
It’s sort of missing the point.
And yeah, if you include the First Gulf War, sanctions period, and the current war/occupation, we’re probably talking well over 1 million.
The most conservative UN estimate of the sanctions period suggests that there were 300,000 excess deaths of Iraqi children alone because of the sanctions.
All of this ignores, of course, US responsibility for the entire Hussein regime and of course the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s (known at the time as the “Gulf War”) where the US was arming both sides than just the Iraqis, the US’s ally Israel sold Iran about 100 million dollars worth of weapons, and the US gave Iraq all the political cover it needed to use chemical weapons and kill random groups of Kurds and Shi’ites.
@ok. so the US is now responsible for the UN and the misappropriation of funds and dicatatorship and evils of saddam hussein.
you’re true colors are showing
@this is an unsupportable argument. iraq’s dictator is reponsible for his own heinous actions.
otherwise, its not a big step to claiming the entire world, at least all of europe was responsible for the holocaust or that marx was responsible for the ukranian purges, etc
@To Ron Ronny, when did Muslims ever try to convert by the sword? You mean when the Ottomans ruled Greece for hundreds of years and didn’t try to convert anyone?
Or maybe in Spain, right? I know that the Muslims there forced Jews to convert or die. No, wait, that wasn’t the Muslims, was it.
How about the fact that Jews lives in predominantly Muslim countries for about 1300 years without any serious problems, certainly nothing like the discrimination faced in European (Christian) countries.
The US has killed a bit over a MILLION Iraqis (roughly) in the last 15 years. How many American citizens have the Iraqis killed? Who’s rocking the sword exactly?
Man, bigots are dumb.
@how has the US killed a million iraqis? are you one of those sanctions killed iraqi and the US is responsible folks? you really need documentable evidence or non tangential arguments to sound reasonable and not to just summarize a statement w/like ‘bigots are dumb’
@event isn’t cancelled. just a bunch of trolls trying to mess it up. you can still go at 7 and line up to get in
@shoebat in jail? yo if shoebat did all this shit then why isn’t he in jail?
@Am I the only one... who thought Monique kicked ass on that Fox News clip linked above?
@I agree I agree, but that may also be because the entire Fox News style of interviewing makes me sick
@wow Karina is beautiful and intelligent
@kulawik prob called it off because it conflicted with his weekly appearance on hannity and colmes
@bwog wtf! cancelled? oh well, no riot tomorrow :(.
@event registration closed
the event is cancelled!!!
@shoebat has been jailed in jerusalem and used to counselor for the Arab Student Organization at Loop College in Chicago.
however there are still legitimate calls for why he hasn’t been investigated in the US
http://www.counterpunch.org/youmans05052004.html
@i love how people think the dems would oppose shoebat. the dems are the biggest zionists on this campus. i’m surprised they haven’t cosponsored.
@hmmm “he’s had no formal theological training. ”
Nor do a majority of Muslims…
Even some terrorists DO have such backgrounds
@has shoebat not read the koran? i’m pretty sure he has as he was a pretty hardcore believer. Not to mention he lived with fellow terrorists who were very dedicated muslims.
its very hard to reject him for not having ‘formal theological training’ just becuase he didn’t study an imam who you support. In fact, i’ll wage shoebat has more crediblity on the are of terrorism than just about anybody you can get. This doesn’t mean his anti-muslim/pro christian views are any good, but he can certainly provide insights into the mind of a terrorist.
@neither gilchrist nor shoebat have any authoritative experience or credentials to speak about their topics. gilchrist has watched the border, but he cant speak to the effects that those immigrants crossing the border have on america. he’s no economist, or sociologist, or anthropologist. same with shoebat. he doesn’t know jack about islam. he’s had no formal theological training. he’s a nutjob with an opinion. whoopdeefrickindoo
@repeating something doesn’t make it true. what gives you authoritative expereience? reading a bunch of books by people who are exactly like you and base their views on interviews of people like shoebat or newpaper clipping?
Shoebat can at the very least provide the very relevant details of his mindset as a terrorist who actively killed people in the name of religion.
Gilchrist is also someone who lives right by the border and has his life affected by it deeply. He also has firsthand knowledge of numerous tricks of illegal immigrations, methods by which they’re snuck in and the effect the have on teh immediate area, all of which relevant. I know you only talk to people w/phd’s but a former marine who is actually actively part of a movement definitely is a good enough perspective.
your snobbery is disgusting
@if shoebat killed so many people… why isnt he in jail?
@that's what i want to know. i’m interested in hearing him speak. but shouldn’t he be behind bars or executed?
@wirc the anti-intellectualism of this thread is despicable. Why can you not realize that the people who study society look at first-hand sources like Shoebat and then they look at other people’s information, who also have lived similar lives. Then they look at history. Then they look at original sources quoted by their other sources. Then they look at their sources again. And then they look at peers. And then they release the book or thesis, and it is analyzed and critiqued and sometimes it is accepted.
Neither of these people have that kind of thouroughness. Yes, they know anecdotally about what happened. Shoebat knows what his imams taught him and what the PLO further taught him. His experiences are valid and interesting, but it does not mean he understands the whole situation. And it’s certainly not as simple as his book would like to say, and we’re not even sure whether everything he claims since sourcing is spotty.
Let me give you some examples:
Is Kim Jong-Il the most repuable source about the DPKR? He does know what’s going on in his country! But he is also highly biased and lies compulsively.
When the CIA or the Pentagon gets information, they get sources inside organizations, and then check that data against other kinds of sources and check it aginst other informants. They then analyze it the same way that academics do and make a decision from there.
Academics and the military have accountability. This dude does not.
@47 people show up and kulawik stops getting the auditorium for every fricking event
@yeah. screw the quality of the speakers or he’s actually getting voices you’d never hear here. Lets continue our personal vendetta against him and the republicans.
5 bucks the commentator is either nadler, jacob taber or jon siegel.
@not me sorry
@nice so the dems have decided they’re just not going to attend events of those who they disagree w/
@Ron Lewenberg People at Columbia regularly either demean Christianity or take things out of context. They are either ignored or praised. Were is V47 those times?
It seems to me that this is simply leftist anti-anti-Islamism.
We are at war and soem people can’t stand to hear anything bad about our opponents.
Heaven help you if you say bring up the life and actions of Mohammed.
Instead of screaming, why not find some Muslims to refute Shoebat and explain how normative Sunni Islam is non-violent.
@the onus should not be on Sunni Islam to be “non-violent”
The onus should only be on Sunni Islam to show restraint and good moral judgment. after all, the bible you hold so clear and dear says:
Cursed be he who does the Lords work remissly, cursed he who holds back his sword from blood. (Jeremiah 48:10 NAB)
“If a man lies with a male as with a women, both of them shall be put to death for their abominable deed; they have forfeited their lives.”
(Leviticus 20:13 NAB)
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword. For I have come to set a man ‘against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s enemies will be those of his household'”. (Matthew 10:34-36 NAB)
Not discrediting the Bible or Christianity, or Western Civilization–simply pointing out that the elements of resistence to oppression and immorality in Islam are parallel to those in Christianity and Western Tradition.
@agreed i completely agree with you and will even submit that during the crusades and afterwards christianity as an insitution was spouting some really, really violent and intolerant stuff. however, right now, christianity has been sanctioning or at least been keeping quiet about widespread violence in its name like islam is. I don’t think islam is a violent religion, or the people who believe t are. But its disconcerting that there is still no substantial formal opposition from teh muslim community against the violence and intolerant actons of others who claim to do the things they do in the name of islam.
@what constitutes substantial formal opposition?
do christians have substantial formal opposition? other than the catholic church (for which muslims have no counterpart), there is no christian equivalent of that.
what about jews, do they have the ability to substantially and formally oppose something?
in the muslim world, it seems even opposition against the united states is non-formal, and in many countries, unsubstantial
@not really if you go to polls of public opinion in every country or more importantly (and you completely ignore this) statements by leaders of some of the officially ‘muslim’ countries you’ll see there is very little in terms of people speaking out against violence by some of their peers
in general, there’s not the same amount of violence curreently in teh name of other religions and when there is it is immediately repudiated by other members of their religion
@Ron Lewenberg Jews don’t have a theological desire to conquer the world.
Christians have given up converting by the sword.
Sadly, this remains the norm in Islamic lands.
@monique is a pretty legitimate representation of the protestors who stormed the stage, as she was one of them
she’s not an accurate representative of columbia’s left though, though it was odd as heck to actually hear kulawik kind of defending columbia
@wait what’s wrong with questioning religions that have widespread sects which encourage practices which seem at odds with modern day human rights (i’m not talking terrorism only). This goes for christianity, islam, etc. Executions becuase of homosexuality , treating gays as inhuman, honor killings, self immolations. How is bwog defending these religions again?
what burns me is that these idiots went from being fundamentalists of one religion and decided salvation was in being fundamentalists of another.
@could bwog simply be pointing out the fact that kulawik and co. can’t seem to get a single academe to come and support what they say?
Atleast Finkelstein is a professor with a PhD from Princeton, a book published by University of California press, and a presentation that claims to be based on research and academic work and not emperical evidence.
Shoebat’s claim to being an expert is his own perspective. He’s a dude who tells it like he sees it, which is also what Gilchrist was. Santorum is different, like Ashcroft, he carries credentials.
Bwog is right to point out that the Republicans keep trotting out the latest unqualified fool to espouse their (CR’s) agenda.
That criticism is valid whether you agree with CR/Kulawik or not on the issues.
@hahahah are you serious. maybe the reason th republicans are inviting these people is they have real life experience on the issues they’re talking about and aren’t just glorified thesis writers in ivory towers. Shoebat has actually killed people as a legit terrorist. Gilchrist and his group actually have done surveillence on the border. I don’t know why elitism and snobbery is held in such high regard on this campus.
By the way, I could have sworn that D’Souza and Scruton count as intellectuals and that repubs planned on bringing other profs to campus this year too.
@ok lets see who has real life experience. A guy who actually has talk, eaten and lived w/terrorist and killed in the name of the ideology or some guy who spent 8 years editing a book using those glorified first hand sources about why terrorist dod what they do.
All your post showed is you actually have a warped perception of reality and obviously need to rethink how the world works.
Either way. you and bwog. keep grasping for straws guys. it only hurts your reputation
@not as much of a shithead as monique dols.
@Bwog glazes over The ridiculousness of these speakers:
Formerly “real Muslims,” Anani, Walid Shoebat and Ibrahim Abdallah—the latter two were once affiliated with the Palestine Liberation Organization—have all renounced Islam and become fundamentalist Christians. How they arrived at their epiphanies was unclear, but now the three men, whose mission was once to kill Jews and die as martyrs, travel the U.S. preaching a doctrine of intolerance toward Islam and support of Israel. They speak wherever they’re allowed—often in churches, to groups that know very little about the Quran and the Islamic civil code.
V47 got it right. Shoebat’s a shithead.
@Bwog sucks The headliner–whom Penn didn’t even allow to speak–
the link goes to Princeton
Moreover, they weren’t kept away because of their message but because the two organizations had different ideas as to how to promote the event.
Read the articles at least once before posting your crap Bwog… or were you too busy at an Art History event?
@dude, ron shoebat wasn’t allowed into CANADA. and they’ll let anyone in.
he’s clearly a wacko.
@Zac lives in Canada
@the exact quote “but this time around Hillel hasn’t even put it on their online calendar”
that’s hardly calling it a conspiracy.
@Dols Is an naive, self-righteous fanatic who mindlessly follows an monolithic ideology. Someone send her a one-way ticket to a totalitarian regime so she can see how much she enjoys a life without the freedom she hates.
@whoa did chris just invoke a right to privacy in that heartland video?
@Anonymous It is nice to see that you are honest about no longer being a non-partisan journal and newsite. You have gone from reporting news and commenting to trying to make news.
Calling Shoebat a “whacko” for questioning whether a religion can co-exist in the modern world is both immature and hypocritical. People do this all the time about Christianity.
Then again in the neo-marxist script, followed by the useful idiots, Christianity is evil, Islam is saintly, and logic is irrelevant.
Your open support for the student groups trying to undermine the event betrays you no less than the putatively “Jewish” Hillel joining the boycott betrays its members.
O’Reilly was over the top in his condemnation of Columbia as a leftist institution, but you seem hell bent on proving him right.
@I don't think Hillel is boycotting; they didn’t cosponsor last time – probably not their cup of tea. For Bwog, however, this means “CONSPIRACY!!!LOZ1!/!1”
@Amazing Only Bwog (read: white, hipster art history majors) would think they have the right to criticize the views of two former terrorists – one of which, apparently, killed quite the number of people.
@ARR Wait, are you talking about me? I’m white. I work for The Blue and White. I am an Art History major. But a hipster?
@DHI “No human peeing is illegal”
(For those vigilante public-urination enforcers)
@i hate that woman monique dols is a moron.
@Could Bwog’s political leanings be any clearer?
@DHI “No Human Being Does Anything Illegal”
“No Human’s Being Here Is Illegal”
“No Human Bean Is Illegal”
(Invasion of the Body Snatchers)
“Cloned Human Beings Are Illegal”
“No Human Being Is An Eagle”
@Jesus Monique looked pretty terrible – first refusing to answer the question the guy asked which clearly had nothing to do with the views of the minutemen, and later being even more condescending to Kulawik than that asshole on fox was to her. It seems clear that this was an intentional choice on the part of Fox to bring her back because she made the protestors look bad. The thing is, Fox is always going to do that. What is interesting is that none of the media outlets are covering it with a liberal bias – it would be very easy to spin “Minuteman Beat Protestors” to the left since both sides have a lot to blame.
@Anonymous Fox News could’ve had any 1 of the protestors on and all would have looked bad.
Anytime you silence dissenting speech by intimidation & violence, it makes you look bad (ref: Taliban).
You’re doing a great job of destroying the prestige UC so assiduously built up over the last 350 yrs.
@RUMORS have it that a columbia security guard may have kicked a student and didnt report it and that’s why the administration is not saying anything….uh oh.
VIDEO!!!
@keb Is it bad that I find myself agreeing with Chris when I watch the Fox video. Ugh, I never thought I’d see the day.