Assorted

We have an embarrassment of riches today, from a number of DextroSpheric contributors. This is always a welcome development, since it means I get to have an easy day at the keyboard!

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1. The Revolution That Fires No Shots

Mike Hendrix comments on Connecticut's overwhelmingly-ignored anti-assault-weapon law:

To the liberal-fascists who still seem to believe that waving the magic legislative wand solves all problems: we defy you. You will never take us all down–NEVER. Some of us will never kneel to you and your goddamned meddling government; some of us will resist you to our dying breath, in as many different fashions as there are individuals among us. Some of us will openly fight you, with all the violence we deem necessary and can bring to bear; some of us will seek to clandestinely and quietly undermine you, or sabotage you and your works and constructs. Some of us will mock you, and scorn you, and pretend to fealty while teaching our children the exact opposite. ALL of us despise you, and will work against you just as hard as we possibly can, by any means available to us and appropriate to our situation.

In the long run: You. Can. Not. Win. We defy you. Try as you like to mow us all down; pat yourselves on the back in smug satisfaction at each and every seeming victory by your hollow Grey Men: in the courts, in the Congress, in the media, in all the places where empty suits gather to spin their webs, make their sordid deals, and dictate to their betters. We will still be there, forever out of your reach. We defy you. We always will.

Count on it. Leave us alone; it’s not too much to ask. Just leave us the hell alone. If you know what’s good for you, if you care about what’s good for this nation, just keep your noses out of our affairs, mind your own business, tend to your own knitting. Some of us don’t wish to be turned into New Progressive Man, and won’t go along with your totalitarian program no matter what you do; some of us don’t want your silken fetters around our necks; some of us don’t want or need your “help.” And some of us aren’t afraid of you, no matter how much illegitimate power you glom onto for yourselves, or how many petty little laws you pass, or how many militarized Gestapo squads you send to our homes to bring us under your heel temporarily.

All such power is, as Tuccille says, illusory, dependent on ratification by our consent and compliance. That compliance is not forthcoming, which simple fact renders you and your henchmen and minions buffoonish and absurd: clowns in jackboots, punks pretending to manhood, usurpers of a throne that not one of you is strong enough to seize on your own.

This is a hopeful, heartening vision of things to come...but it's not guaranteed to work out that way. As I noted yesterday, one consequence of the steady militarization of state and local police forces is a qualitative unbalancing of firepower to the advantage of the police. Yes, private citizens determined to hold onto their weapons will have a numerical advantage...but the Mahdists at Omdurman had a huge numerical advantage over Kitchener's forces, too.

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2. All The News That's Allowed, We Print

Via Nice Deb, we have a look at the swelling outrage of the one remaining decent news outlet on American television:

On Wednesday night’s On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, a panel discussed the Obama Regime’s latest power grab – an FCC pilot program that would send “researchers” to newsrooms to grill reporters, editors and station owners about how they decide which stories to run. Former FCC Commissioner AJIT PAI wrote about the plan in his Wall Street Journal piece, The FCC Wades Into the Newsroom.

The purpose of the CIN, according to the FCC, is to ferret out information from television and radio broadcasters about “the process by which stories are selected” and how often stations cover “critical information needs,” along with “perceived station bias” and “perceived responsiveness to underserved populations.”

How does the FCC plan to dig up all that information? First, the agency selected eight categories of “critical information” such as the “environment” and “economic opportunities,” that it believes local newscasters should cover. It plans to ask station managers, news directors, journalists, television anchors and on-air reporters to tell the government about their “news philosophy” and how the station ensures that the community gets critical information.

Susteren is outraged. She had on The Hill’s AB Stoddard, The Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty and the Washington Examiner’s Byron York to discuss the Regime’s stealth attempt to bring back the Fairness Doctrine, and they all agreed that it was a horrible idea that no self-respecting newsroom would tolerate.

But how many "self-respecting newsrooms" are there? How many station owners will tell an FCC "researcher" to "get the hell out and come back with a warrant, or not at all?" How many will risk the wrath of the FCC, which can arbitrarily revoke a station's license to broadcast?

Perhaps FOX News will do so. Perhaps.

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3. The Gender War Feminists' Battle Of The Bulge.

Random Nuclear Strikes notes that the "angry ugly-girl" wing of the Left (thank you, Duyen) needs to be slapped down hard:

Yet another reason to send your son to a Trade School. Are nearly all male students at the University of Maryland “potential rapists”?

Women in a feminist art class here apparently believe so. About 10 of them plastered the campus with fliers last week listing the names of virtually every male student under the heading, “NOTICE: THESE MEN ARE POTENTIAL RAPISTS.”

Their decision to walk the murky line between libel and free speech sent the campus into an uproar. Yesterday, reporters, photographers and TV crews flocked to the sprawling campus in search of outraged students on both sides of the issue.

University officials are trying to determine whether some members of the “Current Issues in Feminist Art” class or their teacher violated their codes of conduct, said Roland H. King, the university’s spokesman.

I know that if it were my photo on one of those posters, I would be serving them with papers.

This is why there are no “Masculinism” courses. A smart man would take these women’s photos and put them on posters stating “These women are potential prostitutes”

This isn't the first time gender-war feminists have done exactly this. I cannot recall whether the earlier perpetrators were reprimanded or punished. But note that even after the accused "Duke Lacrosse Case" students were absolutely and incontrovertibly cleared of all possibility of guilt, the 88 Duke professors and instructors who'd carried on a vicious campaign of defamation against them, all but demanding that the accused students be lynched, were utterly unapologetic about their actions.

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4. "Professional Organizations."

Not all of them are of positive value to their members...and some are decidedly nasty. Sarah Hoyt narrates her own humorous tale about the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA):

So, in the mid eighties, I started writing sf/f, and I was so green that I sent submissions to the subscriptions address. I still managed to get a personal rejection asking for more, but I thought “I need help.” And then I heard about SFWA and how it was supposed to help SF/F writers and as a newby, just arrived in the country, with no contacts or connections, I was like:

Yay, they’ll help me. That’s their whole purpose. Yay.

So I sent them a letter and they were like: You need to have three pro short story sales or one pro novel sale.

Not so fast, bitch

So, I was like “But how do I get that if I don’t know how and no one has invented google, yet?”...

And I finally started selling. And I sold two shorts, and then, before the third I sold the novel, and I was like “Now I qualify for SFWA!”

And then I had some problems with my agent, and some problems with my publisher, and SFWA was like “oh, no. If we get involved in all that type of thing, the publishers will stop publishing us. There’s nothing we can do. And besides your agent and your publisher are members.”

Please read the whole thing. Not only is it a cautionary tale about the difference between an organization's veneer of purpose and what it actually stands for and does, with the embedded pictures it's a BLEEP!ing laugh riot.

Bravo, Sarah. I hereby forgive you for Darkship Renegades.

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5. Potential Retirement Destinations.

Most of us approaching our, ah, leisure years don't seriously entertain the possibility of retiring off-planet. Myself, I see it as a very attractive option, at least if someone would put a decent habitat at Lagrange 5 and forget the artificial-gravity nonsense. Sigh. All things in their appointed time, I suppose.

However, Mars is starting to look really good:

A Fatwa has been issued against living on Mars by clerics who say that trying to set up home there would be un-Islamic.

The fatwa – or ruling – was issued by the General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowment (GAIAE) in the UAE after the Mars One organisation announced that it would try and establish a permanent human settlement on Mars.

The committee argued that an attempt to dwell on the planet would be so hazardous as to be suicidal and killing oneself is not permitted by Islam.

According to Khaleejtimes.com it said: ‘Such a one-way journey poses a real risk to life, and that can never be justified in Islam. There is a possibility that an individual who travels to planet Mars may not be able to remain alive there, and is more vulnerable to death.’

Just think of it:

• No Muslims on Mars, ever.
• Therefore, no risk of Islam-powered terrorism, which is the only significant sort.
• Therefore, no "security state" BS, at least until nations start to form...
• ...and who says nations will form?

And with that, I'm off. Have a nice day.