Thursday, November 19, 2015 | Charles Gardner
That so many civilians enjoying an evening out should suddenly find themselves face to face with a virtual firing squad almost defies the imagination. But there was evidently an elephant in the room, a great unmentionable that dare not speak its name.
London Mayor Boris Johnson referred to the perpetrators – Islamic State terrorists – as a ‘death cult’, which it certainly is. But what commentators seem deliberately to have missed – along with the Bataclan concert hall’s Jewish connection – was the link between such evil extremism and the dark nature of the concert that claimed most of the lives lost last Friday night.
The Eagles of Death Metal band had apparently just started a song called Kiss the devil when the gunmen opened fire and the auditorium morphed into the devil’s domain. Fantasy became reality, with one witness describing it as “hell”.
There was mention of prophecy in the Mail on Sunday, who recalled their “prophetic” report in May headlined “Med boats’ secret cargo: jihadis bound for Britain”. The same paper also reported the “chilling prophecy” of a controversial film about a terrorist rampage in Paris – about to open in French cinemas – that has now had to be withdrawn twice in the wake of the actual thing happening instead. (It was also due to be screened earlier this year, but was pulled following the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine and Jewish supermarket.)
Hardly anyone in the media talks of biblical prophecy, however. Yet that would shed an awful lot of light on this dark subject! Just one example of this is that the world would be full of violence – as in the days of Noah – in the time immediately preceding the return of Jesus to set up his kingdom of peace.
Politicians have referred to the Paris massacre as an ‘attack on civilization’. But my response is: what civilization? We seem obsessed with dark and lurid fantasy, and with images of violence in our living rooms. We congratulate ourselves on our culture of ‘freedom’, bought at a great price in two world wars and, before that, with the blood of Christian martyrs who went to the stake for the cause of publishing God’s Word, now discarded and thrown to the winds, only to be replaced by moral relativism where there are virtually no rules for living; where we promote death (through abortion and euthanasia, for example) and set about ‘redefining’ marriage, family and society as a whole.
Homophobia and Islamaphobia are among the many politically-correct don’ts to have replaced the Ten Commandments. As I write, a highly respected Northern Ireland preacher is facing trial on allegations of breaking the latter rule. It’s possibly only a matter of time before we are denied the freedom of saying that Jesus is the only way to God (a claim he made about himself) for fear of offending other religions. But our civilization was built on this very statement! We believed him, because he was totally authentic, and rose from the dead. We don’t have to force anyone else to believe him; we simply declare the truth about him.
Tragically, however, our moral defences are down, our walls have been breached, and the foundations of our Judeo-Christian civilization have been undermined. That is why we are wobbling as a society in grave danger of collapse.
I can’t speak for France and the rest of Europe, but as far as Britain is concerned, time is running out. The iconic Big Ben clock, which has become a symbol of the UK throughout the globe, has recently undergone repairs amidst fears that it is rapidly becoming beyond repair. It is, of course, part of the complex comprising our famous Houses of Parliament, which is itself in danger from crumbling foundations with talk of MPs possibly having to move out. Even some of our great houses, so loved by tourists, are under threat for lack of finance.
We were once a great nation sending missionaries around the world to share the life-changing (indeed, nation-changing) good news about Jesus. But now we have thrown out what was once most precious to us. Jesus told us to build on the rock. But we have built on sand.
Instead of building on the rock that has stood the test of time, the sure and certain foundation that is Christ, the certainty of his resurrection from the dead and his coming again to set up an everlasting kingdom, we have built on the shifting sand of appeasement, uncertainty and short-term comfort.
We need to repent and return to the Lord!
http://www.israeltoday.co.il/Newsheadlineslist.aspx
Yazidi Women Tell of Rape and Enslavement at Hands of ISIS
KHANKE CAMP, Iraq — The grandmother lifted her face to heaven and let out a high wail.
"I pray for this hell to end," the 64-year-old said before crumpling onto the floor of her hut.
Her story echoes those of countless others across this vast tent city full of Yazidis, a tiny and ancient religious minority reviled and persecuted by ISIS.
More than 3,000 women and girls were taken captive when ISIS attacked ancestral Yazidi villages around northwestern Iraq's Sinjar Mountain in August 2014. Nearly half-a-million people have been displaced since, according to the Kurdistan Regional Government's Yazidi Affairs Directorate.
Today, community leaders say around 2,000 women and girls are still being bought and sold in ISIS-controlled areas. The young become sex slaves and older women are beaten and used as house slaves, according to survivors and accounts from ISIS militants.
"Aveen" was among the countless who were taken. She told NBC News how ISIS fighters separated the men from women and children when her village was attacked.
"They took young girls, seven, nine and 10 years old," said Aveen, whose name has been changed and face hidden to protect her identity.
The women and children were held in a school where, she said, the guards would come at night to take away women and rape them.
Aveen said she spent most of her time with ISIS in Raqqa, held by a fighter who raped and beat her repeatedly. The 23-year-old escaped after nearly a year in captivity.
"Every time a woman escapes we learn more about how they are using Yazidi women," he said.
Domle said the women, especially those who end up in ISIS strongholds in Syria, tend to be traded or sold three or four times as fighters move to different locations and leave the women behind.
"Some are sold for weapons, or for just $10, or 10 cigarettes," Domle said.
Some ISIS fighters send pictures of the women and girls to their families, either to taunt them or demand a ransom.
"Jeelan," whose name also has been changed to protect her identity, escaped her ISIS captors in August, along with her nine-year-old sister.
Her 11-year-old sister, though, was still being held.
"She is very beautiful," Jeelan said. "ISIS are asking for $25,00 to $35,000 for her freedom."
In rare cases, the government of semi-autonomous Kurdistan will pay for the release of women or girls. However, most of the captive women are reliant on a small network of underground activists, or sympathetic guards or even other wives to smuggle them out.
Aveen, for example, escaped after her captor's wife took pity and released her to a neighbor. She said she was smuggled across at least six safe houses in ISIS territory before ultimately reaching freedom.
More than 1,000 Yazidi women and girls have escaped ISIS control, but the battle isn't over once they get back.
The regional government offers basic medical check-ups and psychological support for the escapees, but anything more is hard to come by.
The Jiyan Foundation for Human Rights runs a small clinic in the Kurdish city of Duhok where Yazidi women can receive medical care and psychological treatment.
Psychotherapist Shahla Hesein said there are challenges in convincing women to come for treatment in the first place.
"They don't want to tell their families," she said. "They feel ashamed."
Related: One Yazidi's Battle to Chronicle the Death of a People
In conservative Yazidi culture, rape victims often are stigmatized and shunned by their families and communities — even despite an edict from the religion's highest authority last year ordering families and communities to embrace former ISIS captives.
Occasionally, though, love flourishes after tragedy. Take 16-year-old "Reem," who escaped from ISIS in 2014 after being kept for four months.
Reem told NBC News she now has Barzan to protect her. Both Reem and Barzan asked NBC News not to use their names for fear it would endanger family members still being held by ISIS.
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-uncovered/yazidi-women-tell-rape-enslavement-hands-isis-n462091
How political correctness rules in America’s student 'safe spaces’
A student backlash against hearing words and ideas that oppose their own, citing emotional "trauma", is changing the culture of the American campus writes Ruth Sherlock, US Editor from Harvard University
Harvard Law School Photo: Alamy
As the law professor prepared for her class on sexual assault, she opened her emails to find a strange request: could she give assurances that the content of the class would not be included in the end-of-year exam, her students asked?
They were concerned there might be victims of sexual assault among their classmates, they said. Anyone in that position could be traumatised at being confronted with such material in the exam hall.
Across the United States, lecturers have received similar messages from students demanding that modules of academic study – ranging from legal topics to well-known works of literature – be scrubbed from exams, and sometimes from the syllabus altogether.
Jeannie Suk, a professor at Harvard Law School, which numbers President Barack Obama among its many notable alumni, cited an example where a student had asked a colleague “not to use the word 'violate’ – as in 'does this conduct violate the law’ – because the term might trigger distress”.
Far from the bra-burning, devil-may-care attitudes at universities in the Sixties and Seventies, today’s generation of American students increasingly appears to yearn for a campus ruled by dogmatic political correctness, in which faculty members assume the role of parents more than purveyors of academic rigour.
The lexicon of college has changed: students now speak about “micro-aggressions”, “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces”.
The notion of the “safe space” first emerged to describe a place of refuge for people exposed to racial prejudice or sexism. But the phrase has changed meaning to the point where now it often implies protection from “exposure to ideas that make one uncomfortable”, according to Nadine Strossen, a prominent law professor and former head of the American Civil Liberties Union.
At Brown University – like Harvard, one of the eight elite Ivy League universities – the New York Times reported students set up a “safe space” that offered calming music, cookies, Play-Doh and a video of frolicking puppies to help students cope with a discussion on how colleges should handle sexual assault.
A Harvard student described in the university newspaper attending a “safe space” complete with “massage circles” that was designed to help students have open conversations.
Brown University Photo: Alamy
This hesitancy to engage in the dialogue of debate – and, in its most extreme form, the sense that hearing opposing opinions can cause damage to the psyche – has seeped from the campus to the classroom.
About two years ago, Prof Suk said her Harvard students began reacting “noticeably differently” to lectures on sexual assault that make up part of her criminal law class. “There would be some element of nervousness about approaching the discussion that was more pronounced than before,” she said.
And there were curious questions from the students: “'Why did you choose to show this film’ or 'Why did you choose to assign this reading without giving us a warning of what they contained?’” Prof Suk said.
The introduction of “trigger warnings” may have been designed to protect people who have suffered serious trauma, but critics fear they are now a means to prevent the free discussion in class that is an essential part of academic learning. “The language of trauma, which started as a term to describe extreme events, started to be used much more loosely,” Prof Suk said. “So trauma is now colloquially used to mean lots of different things including non-extreme, even everyday events.”
In this new environment, lecturers in some English departments have started to warn of the potentially traumatic effects of reading material.
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald Photo: Alamy
Literary classics are now considered potentially “unsafe” for students to read. Reading lists at some universities are being adapted to come with warnings printed beside certain titles: The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald (Trigger: suicide, domestic abuse and graphic violence) and Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (Trigger: suicidal tendencies).
In some colleges, professors have been known to tell students that if a book makes them feel unsafe, they are allowed to skim it, or skip it altogether, a Harvard Law professor told this newspaper.
• Sexual violence at university: don't be afraid to speak up
Lecturers unhappy with this state of affairs blame the US department of education for allowing student angst to morph into a tyranny that has many professors running scared.
The department of education’s office of civil rights, the OCR, recently enforced professional misconduct policies designed to deal with issues such as the sexual harassment of students on campus. But that policy, said Anita Levy, senior programme officer at the American Association of University Professors, is being misapplied in some cases to cover charges that are not clearly related.
The policy has led to a sharp increase in dismissals, and in some cases students have the power to bring about the sacking of professors who have committed the most minor of offences. A professor of English and film studies at San Bernardino Valley College in California was punished for requiring his class to write essays defining pornography, according to Ms Strossen.
This summer, Louisiana State University sacked a professor of early childhood education because she swore and used humour about sex when she was teaching about sexuality, often to capture her students’ attention.
Louisiana State University Photo: Alamy
The policies caused such anger that 28 Harvard Law School professors signed a petition criticising the department of education’s measures as unfair to professors. Sexual harassment should be dealt with, they said, but this policy vilified staff and put them on the chopping block. That in turn spawned a backlash from some students, who accused the teachers of trying to halt progress.
In this new hyper-politically correct environment, comedians have pulled out of performing on what used to be the lucrative campus circuit. Jerry Seinfeld, one of the country’s most popular comics, said in a radio interview that he had been warned by colleagues to avoid universities because “they are too PC”. These days, comedy must be barb-free and squeaky clean for student ears.
Faculty members have sought to comprehend the desires of this generation of pupils, whose behaviours and beliefs differ so markedly from those of previous generations. “I don’t think this is for us to say, 'Oh, just toughen up’,” said another Harvard law professor who asked not to be named for fear of a backlash from students.
“I think it’s for us to figure out what we are talking about here.”
• Can universities ever get rid of boozy, sexist lad culture?
One possible explanation is that American society is producing mollycoddled children who, when they arrive at university, have not yet developed a sense of defiant independence.
Today’s university students, according to the professor, are the “9/11 generation”.
“There are real reasons why people in college and university today would feel anxious,” the professor said. “This is a generation whose childhoods were transformed by 9/11; this is a generation whose adulthoods were transformed by the economic crisis; this is the generation for whom the unpaid internship was invented.
“We live in a security-saturated era, and so it doesn’t surprise me that they would speak in the language of security, which they translate as safety.”
Prof Suk agreed that in an age in which America has felt itself under attack, parents might react by giving their children a “bigger sense of security”. While her generation was able to play relatively independently, today’s students would not have been allowed out alone on the streets.
But advocates of the “safe spaces” phenomenon say this is not the expression of hypersensitive, mollycoddled youth, but rather the development of a movement that is advancing the goals of racial and sexual emancipation.
“People say, 'In my day we were tough’,” said one female Harvard student, who asked not to be named. “Well no: your generation was racist and sexist. We are changing things – this is what progress looks like.”
The student angrily criticised those citing “cuddly toy” safe rooms and oversensitive proscriptions of certain terms. These are the extreme, “frivolous” examples, she said, and distract from the main purpose of the project, which is to change culture in a way that better accepts ethnic minorities and people with different sexual orientations.
A gay person or a black person, she said, is always “working overtime” to justify themselves in a predominantly white environment.
“It’s tough because there are people, usually straight, white and from privilege, who benefit from open debate on these issues. But that means the minority is constantly being questioned on subjects that hurt,” she said. “It’s exhausting.”
Many of the “trigger” issues pushed by students are met with sarcastic eye-rolling from outsiders, but for those involved they hold a deeper significance that speaks of social justice.
For instance, a group of students has begun a campaign to persuade Harvard Law School to change its seal, arguing that the current crest belonged to a family of slave owners, the Royall family, who “burned 77 slaves alive, tortured folks, and became the largest slave owners in the state of the Massachusetts”, said one student who asked not to be named.
“I am in the bicentennial class. It would be quite a powerful sign if on the 200th anniversary of the law school we decide to change the seal to something that is representative of the ideals that this institution now stands for, as opposed to its slave owner past.”
But faculty members maintain that while students are right to push social boundaries, this is not the way to do so. Far from advancing social justice, they are limiting freedom of speech, they say.
“I do have concerns about the broader appetite for debate – that speech is being limited by making speech unsafe to listen to,” the Harvard law professor said.
Ms Strossen said: “There is a fundamental mistake in the function here. Robust freedom of speech is a prerequisite for equality.”
Ms Strossen, the Harvard law professor who asked not to be named and Prof Suk all said they had refused to bow to the demands for trigger warnings in their classes.
“I tell my students the entire course is one painful, horrifying episode of human misery after the other,” the professor said. It is impossible to know which part of the class might trigger trauma. “Is it going to be divorce? Is it going to be a child born without an intact nervous system? Is it going to be getting falsely accused of a crime? Is it going to be having a war break out in your neighbourhood?”
If students want a rounded education that best prepares them for the world, these lecturers believe, then they must leave their need for “safe spaces” and “triggers” at the door.
The lexicon of college has changed: students now speak about “micro-aggressions”, “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces”.
The notion of the “safe space” first emerged to describe a place of refuge for people exposed to racial prejudice or sexism. But the phrase has changed meaning to the point where now it often implies protection from “exposure to ideas that make one uncomfortable”, according to Nadine Strossen, a prominent law professor and former head of the American Civil Liberties Union.
At Brown University – like Harvard, one of the eight elite Ivy League universities – the New York Times reported students set up a “safe space” that offered calming music, cookies, Play-Doh and a video of frolicking puppies to help students cope with a discussion on how colleges should handle sexual assault.
A Harvard student described in the university newspaper attending a “safe space” complete with “massage circles” that was designed to help students have open conversations.
Brown University Photo: AlamyThis hesitancy to engage in the dialogue of debate – and, in its most extreme form, the sense that hearing opposing opinions can cause damage to the psyche – has seeped from the campus to the classroom.
About two years ago, Prof Suk said her Harvard students began reacting “noticeably differently” to lectures on sexual assault that make up part of her criminal law class. “There would be some element of nervousness about approaching the discussion that was more pronounced than before,” she said.
And there were curious questions from the students: “'Why did you choose to show this film’ or 'Why did you choose to assign this reading without giving us a warning of what they contained?’” Prof Suk said.
The introduction of “trigger warnings” may have been designed to protect people who have suffered serious trauma, but critics fear they are now a means to prevent the free discussion in class that is an essential part of academic learning. “The language of trauma, which started as a term to describe extreme events, started to be used much more loosely,” Prof Suk said. “So trauma is now colloquially used to mean lots of different things including non-extreme, even everyday events.”
In this new environment, lecturers in some English departments have started to warn of the potentially traumatic effects of reading material.
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald Photo: AlamyLiterary classics are now considered potentially “unsafe” for students to read. Reading lists at some universities are being adapted to come with warnings printed beside certain titles: The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald (Trigger: suicide, domestic abuse and graphic violence) and Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (Trigger: suicidal tendencies).
In some colleges, professors have been known to tell students that if a book makes them feel unsafe, they are allowed to skim it, or skip it altogether, a Harvard Law professor told this newspaper.
• Sexual violence at university: don't be afraid to speak up
Lecturers unhappy with this state of affairs blame the US department of education for allowing student angst to morph into a tyranny that has many professors running scared.
The department of education’s office of civil rights, the OCR, recently enforced professional misconduct policies designed to deal with issues such as the sexual harassment of students on campus. But that policy, said Anita Levy, senior programme officer at the American Association of University Professors, is being misapplied in some cases to cover charges that are not clearly related.
The policy has led to a sharp increase in dismissals, and in some cases students have the power to bring about the sacking of professors who have committed the most minor of offences. A professor of English and film studies at San Bernardino Valley College in California was punished for requiring his class to write essays defining pornography, according to Ms Strossen.
This summer, Louisiana State University sacked a professor of early childhood education because she swore and used humour about sex when she was teaching about sexuality, often to capture her students’ attention.
Louisiana State University Photo: AlamyThe policies caused such anger that 28 Harvard Law School professors signed a petition criticising the department of education’s measures as unfair to professors. Sexual harassment should be dealt with, they said, but this policy vilified staff and put them on the chopping block. That in turn spawned a backlash from some students, who accused the teachers of trying to halt progress.
In this new hyper-politically correct environment, comedians have pulled out of performing on what used to be the lucrative campus circuit. Jerry Seinfeld, one of the country’s most popular comics, said in a radio interview that he had been warned by colleagues to avoid universities because “they are too PC”. These days, comedy must be barb-free and squeaky clean for student ears.
Faculty members have sought to comprehend the desires of this generation of pupils, whose behaviours and beliefs differ so markedly from those of previous generations. “I don’t think this is for us to say, 'Oh, just toughen up’,” said another Harvard law professor who asked not to be named for fear of a backlash from students.
“I think it’s for us to figure out what we are talking about here.”
• Can universities ever get rid of boozy, sexist lad culture?
One possible explanation is that American society is producing mollycoddled children who, when they arrive at university, have not yet developed a sense of defiant independence.
Today’s university students, according to the professor, are the “9/11 generation”.
“There are real reasons why people in college and university today would feel anxious,” the professor said. “This is a generation whose childhoods were transformed by 9/11; this is a generation whose adulthoods were transformed by the economic crisis; this is the generation for whom the unpaid internship was invented.
“We live in a security-saturated era, and so it doesn’t surprise me that they would speak in the language of security, which they translate as safety.”
Prof Suk agreed that in an age in which America has felt itself under attack, parents might react by giving their children a “bigger sense of security”. While her generation was able to play relatively independently, today’s students would not have been allowed out alone on the streets.
But advocates of the “safe spaces” phenomenon say this is not the expression of hypersensitive, mollycoddled youth, but rather the development of a movement that is advancing the goals of racial and sexual emancipation.
“People say, 'In my day we were tough’,” said one female Harvard student, who asked not to be named. “Well no: your generation was racist and sexist. We are changing things – this is what progress looks like.”
The student angrily criticised those citing “cuddly toy” safe rooms and oversensitive proscriptions of certain terms. These are the extreme, “frivolous” examples, she said, and distract from the main purpose of the project, which is to change culture in a way that better accepts ethnic minorities and people with different sexual orientations.
A gay person or a black person, she said, is always “working overtime” to justify themselves in a predominantly white environment.
“It’s tough because there are people, usually straight, white and from privilege, who benefit from open debate on these issues. But that means the minority is constantly being questioned on subjects that hurt,” she said. “It’s exhausting.”
I do have concerns about the broader appetite for debate – that speech is being limited by making speech unsafe to listen to
Harvard law professor
Many of the “trigger” issues pushed by students are met with sarcastic eye-rolling from outsiders, but for those involved they hold a deeper significance that speaks of social justice.
For instance, a group of students has begun a campaign to persuade Harvard Law School to change its seal, arguing that the current crest belonged to a family of slave owners, the Royall family, who “burned 77 slaves alive, tortured folks, and became the largest slave owners in the state of the Massachusetts”, said one student who asked not to be named.
“I am in the bicentennial class. It would be quite a powerful sign if on the 200th anniversary of the law school we decide to change the seal to something that is representative of the ideals that this institution now stands for, as opposed to its slave owner past.”
But faculty members maintain that while students are right to push social boundaries, this is not the way to do so. Far from advancing social justice, they are limiting freedom of speech, they say.
“I do have concerns about the broader appetite for debate – that speech is being limited by making speech unsafe to listen to,” the Harvard law professor said.
Ms Strossen said: “There is a fundamental mistake in the function here. Robust freedom of speech is a prerequisite for equality.”
Ms Strossen, the Harvard law professor who asked not to be named and Prof Suk all said they had refused to bow to the demands for trigger warnings in their classes.
“I tell my students the entire course is one painful, horrifying episode of human misery after the other,” the professor said. It is impossible to know which part of the class might trigger trauma. “Is it going to be divorce? Is it going to be a child born without an intact nervous system? Is it going to be getting falsely accused of a crime? Is it going to be having a war break out in your neighbourhood?”
If students want a rounded education that best prepares them for the world, these lecturers believe, then they must leave their need for “safe spaces” and “triggers” at the door.
