A Poem

~~~
Flying saucers and Jews are shapeshifters

They search the culture when they arrive
To build a vehicle to drive
You see some thing familiar but not the whole truth
Behind image and projection is a booth

Flying saucers and Jews are history

Agents of change that demand respect
In the margins more often than you'd expect
At liminal times of anti-structure
There as catalyst and trickster

Flying saucers and Jews are religions

It matters not if disbeliever,
Doubter, faithful or hater
In praise or in bile
In worship or denial

Flying saucers and Jews are important

They affect the course of things
In radiating concentric rings
Everywhere and nowhere
It is important not to stare

Flying saucers and Jews are dangerous

To your employment and your sanity
To culture and humanity
Your life and home and such
And especially if you know too much

Flying saucers and Jews are secret

There are shadowy groups of men
Who have this as their ken
Causal forces are kept from you
Whether UFO or Jew

You'll lose family and friends
Who won't follow 'round the bends
They'll think you mad or cruel
Or just a hopeless fool
They will not hear your facts
And they will not have your back
Their worldview is their ground
So they must assume it's sound
They don't want to leave confused
Or think that they've been used
So they start on the offense
And say you don't make sense
The alternative seems bad
To learn and become sad
Ignorance is bliss
But there are some things they have missed

Have YOU heard the news?
Flying saucers and Jews!

Molyneux and UFOs

The Gentle Tyranny of Nathan Rambukkana

~~~

 Wilfrid Laurier University is the latest scandalous instance of the political weaponisation of academia.  A year after Jordan Peterson warned that changes to Canada's Human Rights Act and Criminal Code amounted to legally-compelled speech, a teaching assistant has in fact been censured by an ad hoc tribunal for presenting Prof. Peterson's argument without reflexively condemning it.  The old characterization of university as a neutral space for higher learning is now passé.  Social justice as an ideology has been fully institutionalised.

Clearly Lindsay Shepherd, the offending TA, is the hero of the day.  She had the foresight to secretly record her superiors, the presence of mind to cogently convey her position, and the courage to face down a hostile panel accusing her of gendered violence and the passive endorsement of evil.

Wilfrid Laurier will undoubtedly suffer for this episode, but it's her supervising prof Dr. Rambukkana who comes off the worst in Shepherd's recording.  He accuses her of creating a toxic teaching climate with her problematic opinions.  Nonetheless, perhaps partly because he hasn't yet given any interviews, Rambukkana does not present as a real person.  He is a caricature, an absurdly convenient condensation of trends that have worried people like Peterson.  He steps forth and offers himself as a stock character in the dramatic enactment of our collective troubles.

If it wasn't him, it would be someone else.  If it wasn't Wilfrid Laurier, it would be another university.  However outrageous this occasion may be, despite or even because of the concreteness of the evidence, the scandal functions chiefly as a target for the projections of people who have already made up their mind on these matters.  The whole thing is so unsurprising that it's tempting to damn, denounce and decry and be done with it.

I wish it were that easy for me.  You see, fifteen years ago, Nathan Rambukkana was my TA.  I remember a sweet, gentle soul, who you can almost hear behind the tremulous and uncertain tones of his inquisition.  The question that presents itself is how did a well-meaning academic end up an Orwellian villain?  This is perhaps a question for us all to ask ourselves.

Nathan, what happened?  When did justice become about revenge for hurt feelings?  How did the infinite multiplicity of possible perspectives reduce to mandatory Marxism?  Who made that argument for you, and why did you never share it with us?  It confused me then and it confuses me now.

You know, the problematising of my positionality left me a broken wreck, so I've had fifteen years of sorrow in which to try to reconcile your seeming friendliness with the antisocial angst of my later professors.  There is no rational argument to be found, as far as I can tell.

For what it's worth, I think the most helpful thing you taught us was that reading cultural studies sometimes requires letting it wash over you without trying to understand it.  In hindsight, that sounds a bit like brainwashing.

All of this hoopla is over a short clip attesting to the existence of a debate, a piece of critical thinking in a communication class that you deemed to be inappropriate for school.

Do you remember, Nathan, the time you made us watch an entire episode of The Young Ones in lieu of conducting a tutorial?  I don't know if you thought you were giving us a treat, or if you were just hungover that day, but the case you made for its relevance to our studies was extremely weak, everyone hated it, and I was offended.  But I didn't take it to your bosses, because I was under the misapprehension that you're a nice person.

Bearded Children Hitting On Canadian Girls

The parent added that the Syrians “have started on the girls in the year below who they are having success with. It’s really ugly, the Canadian boys are very frustrated but are too scared to speak up (they know how dangerous the ‘you’re a racist’ label will be for the rest of their lives).”

The Peaceful Donald

With increasing frequency over the last few months some of the most thoughtful left and progressive figures have begun to speak favorably of aspects of Trump’s foreign policy. Let us hear from these heretics.

Nosey Faces

Facebook's new head of policy and communication is a longtime senior advisor of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Virtual Reality and the Holocaust

A "virtual Holocaust survivor" who lived through an extermination camp and a death march will now be educating children by "upsetting the viewer’s sense of comfort." 

The interactive hologram and associated artificial intelligence answers questions with selections from 25 hours of footage of Pinchas Gutter, creating a vivid and convincing testimony intended to "jolt another world into your own." 

Historical investigation of the event remains verboten.

Fighting Radicalisation With Euphemisms

The Department of Homeland Security is requesting $100 million to do away with religiously-charged words like "jihad" and "sharia law" in an effort to deter young people from joining jihad groups hoping to enact sharia law.

Interior Minister Requested Word "Rape" Be "Cancelled" In Police Reports

Officials in Germany invited mass immigration from dysfunctional regions without consulting the populace, refused a request from the chief of police for more officers in anticipation of New Year's in Cologne, then actively worked to cover up the migrant riot that resulted.  Only the social media that Angela Merkel has been working to censor revealed the story, almost a week after the police reported it was an uneventful night.

Sweden’s public broadcaster bans the word “immigrant”

The language manual also warns staff against using the words “black“, “dark skinned“, or “African origin” in a negative context.

It says they should refer to them as “Swedish” if they have Swedish citizenship.

However, it tells SVT staff that using the term “white” or “fair skinned” in the same negative context is absolutely fine.

The Illusion of Western News

Patently, the censorship is correlated with specific sources of commercial advertising income, which is over-riding the Western public interest in knowing what is really going on in Yemen and how their governments are involved in violations of international law, including state-sponsored terrorism.

Google’s chairman wants algorithms to censor the internet for hate speech

“It’s our responsibility to demonstrate that stability and free expression go hand in hand,” he writes. “We should build tools to help de-escalate tensions on social media—sort of like spell-checkers, but for hate and harassment.”

Trump Calls for “Closing the Internet,” Says Believing in “Freedom of Speech” is “Foolish”

Trump obviously knows his audience well and uses his position as a cultural icon and skilled entertainer to embolden his fascist demagogue status… and Americans can’t seem to get enough of it.

Is Turkey at War With Free Speech? 100 Arrested for 'Insulting' Erdogan

The total number of those who have been taken into custody over human rights issues in the period from January 1 through October 7 has reached 5,795 people, according to statistics contained in the report.

We were wrong to try to ban racism out of existence, says former equality chief

"Mr Phillips insists people should be free to use racial stereotypes, such as that many Jews are rich or that black people are more likely to be convicted for robbery, because they are true. 

Explaining the issue, he said: 'The dividing lines of race, religion and culture are probably the most dangerous flashpoints in Britain today, but they're also the ones we find hardest to talk about in public.'"