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June 21, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
28:47
This Week in Stupid (21⧸06⧸2015)
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Hello everyone, welcome to this week in Stupid for the 21st of June 2015.
For those of you in foreign parts, today in the UK is Father's Day.
So happy Father's Day to any fathers watching this and here is a fist bump from my son.
My son is of course far too young to walk, let alone too many cartwheels, but when he is old enough to do them, he will also be forbidden from doing them, at least in primary schools in Devon.
So children at Old Priory Junior Academy in Plimpton, Devon were stopped from carrying out all gymnastic activities two weeks ago.
The school said it had made the decision after a number of minor injuries to wrists and backs.
Minor injuries, so, you know, nothing serious or permanent or, you know, debilitating or even really worth noting.
The parents obviously think this is ridiculous, but interim headteacher Emma Hernan Wright knows better.
She says, over a series of a few days, we've had quite a few injuries for the same reasons.
The children said they had been doing cartwheels and handstands and had fallen, and we thought it was causing us a problem at school.
So are you suggesting, Emma, that kids being kids and being a bit rambunctious and messing around in the playground and maybe scraping a few knees is a problem?
Because you sound like someone who has literally just been introduced to this thing called a child and doesn't really know how it operates.
She goes on to say that in PE lessons in primary schools, they are carefully supported and carefully controlled to help learn skills of this nature and we have very good gymnastic capabilities in our school.
Yes, you terrifying authoritarian.
Why don't you just let them play in the playground?
Do cartwheels and forward rolls and whatnot?
It's fine.
Yes, there are a couple of scrapes.
It's still fine.
very carefully controlled fucking they're kids you psycho At break times, we've got a lot of children in one go, and you can't be supporting every child for a backward roll, forward roll, cartwheel, handstand, or whatever they're doing at playtime.
You know what?
You unbelievably tyrannical micromanager.
You don't have to.
You absolutely don't have to.
Why don't you just leave the kids alone to play?
And if one of them scrapes themselves or falls over, you go, oh, it's okay.
You know, we'll put a bit of whatever TCP on it, patch it up, it'll be fine.
Nobody's going to really suffer any lasting damage.
But the thing is, I really hate this kind of soft totalitarianism, where this is for your own good, because then, like CSL says, they do it with the approval of their own conscience.
They do whatever they think is necessary to stop kids from, you know, having minor scrapes.
Because as she says, ultimately, the safety and well-being is our responsibility and is paramount to everything we do here.
And there is apparently no limits to which that will be upheld.
So yeah, it's fine, just fine to ban kids pratting around in a playground.
God forbid they do that and have fun and learn on their own.
God forbid.
They need their insanely paranoid and controlling head teachers to be watching over them like hawks the whole time.
But I suppose it could be worse.
These kids could be living somewhere even more backwards than Devon.
Somewhere in like rural Pakistan, where a 10-year-old boy has been found guilty of having an affair with a woman in her late 30s.
And not only that, the tribal court has ordered him to pay a fine of about $7,000.
I have no idea where they're expecting him to get this money from.
I mean, how much can he reasonably be expected to have in his piggy bank?
Wait a minute, what am I saying?
Of course, they don't have piggy banks.
That would be haram.
But seriously, the 10-year-old was caught having an extramarital affair with a lady from another tribe, which created bad blood between the two tribes.
A local police official requesting anonymity told AFP, I wonder why he wanted anonymity.
The tribal court obviously ordered the boy's family to pay the fine.
But the thing is, the tribal court itself isn't legal in Pakistan.
And I'm sure it will come as no surprise to you that under Pakistani law this woman has done nothing wrong.
What I personally would consider to be a paedophile preying upon a young child is in Pakistan actually completely legal.
The real problem here was that she was married.
I think it is important to know though that the woman could potentially be prosecuted for sexual assault or unnatural sex acts.
Speaking of unnatural sex acts, have you been paying attention to Game of Thrones?
More specifically, what feminists have been saying about Game of Thrones?
Needless to say, there will probably be spoilers, so if you don't like it, well, skip forward in the video, I guess.
So if you hadn't noticed, feminists are getting really butthurt about Game of Thrones, and they're asking the question, will people keep watching?
Well, yes.
The question they need to be asking is, will feminists keep watching?
And the answer is probably no.
Many critics have thrown up their hands during this season of Game of Thrones, as female characters have been brutalised over and over again.
Only female characters.
Sansa's rape, in particular, was so far beyond the pale that Senator Claire McCaskill declared she's done with the show, and feminist genre website The Mary Sue announced it would cease all promotion of Game of Thrones.
Yes, Time magazine is telling us what The Mary Sue does, as if anyone gives a fuck.
Game of Thrones has a long history of sexual violence, and yet this season has felt more abusive to women than previous ones.
Yes, there have been hard-to-watch scenes, but there were also few scenes of female empowerment to balance them out, and that marks a departure from previous seasons.
So what?
The issue is, of course, that these things are happening to women.
Of course, the world of Game of Thrones is a horrible place, where cutting off hands, fingers, and even penises is practically routine.
But the rape of Sansa and the burning of Shireen, both of which diverged from the show's source material, went too far for some viewers.
Well, who were those viewers?
Oh yes, whiny internet feminists.
That's who.
There have been fair critiques levelled against both scenes.
Uh, no, I don't believe these are fair critiques.
I believe these are feminist critiques, and if you're not a feminist, they sound really retarded.
But there were two scenes of almost rape that earned less critical attention, but to me, were equally disturbing.
Listen, love, right?
I don't really care that if to you it was equally disturbing.
I mean, if you want to, if you want to talk subjectivity, I mean, to me, the cutting off of penises being, quote, practically routine is rather more disturbing than someone almost being raped.
Do I go on the internet and petition for it to be changed?
No.
Why?
Because it's fucking fiction.
I didn't really like seeing what's his name's head being popped by the mountain, but I don't go and petition against it.
It's fucking fiction.
And it's Game of Thrones.
I know what I'm getting into when I start watching it.
First, there was Jilly, who had to be saved by Sam.
While I don't think she slept with him because he saved her, it was unfortunate, not to mention cliché, that a violent instance is what finally brought the two together.
No, it's entirely because he saved her that she slapped with him.
He had had the shit beaten out of him, and as a reward, George R.R. Martin played out the fantasy of every beta white fucking knight.
It was really fucking embarrassing, that scene, in fact.
The guy's all like, oh, we're just going to rape you now.
And she was like, oh, no, please no.
And he was like, no, stop.
I shall protect the fair maiden.
And they were like, no, we'll beat you up.
And so he got beaten up, and then the wolf chased off the attackers.
And then, as a reward for him being so brave and standing up for her, she decided to put his penis inside her vagina.
Was it pathetic?
Yes, it was absolutely pathetic.
Do I want it changed?
No, let it stand and let it be pathetic.
Perhaps worse, though, is the moment when it looked like Arya might be sold into sex slavery.
She was pulled out of that situation so quickly that for a moment I wondered whether the scene had been recut after the Sansa backlash.
And that's the problem, isn't it?
That's really the problem.
They are literally they want to kind of control Game of Thrones through Outrage.
I mean I doubt that it was cut after the Sansa backlash, but I really think that that's ideally what they are aiming for.
It felt like the writer saying, look, both Stark girls could have been raped, but they weren't.
We're not that cruel.
But they don't get bonus points for subbing in a nameless character in Arya's place.
Listen, they had a guy who got tortured for days and days and days and days, got his cock cut off, and is now forced to serve the guy who did it to him as a slave.
Remember who you're fucking dealing with, idiots.
That's at least four different opportunities when viewers could have given up, which is a lot even for thrones.
There have been plenty of controversial sexual violence in previous seasons, dating back to when Daenerys first had sex with Carl Drogo to when Cersei was raped by Jamie.
Yeah, but the thing is, you don't really care about any of those characters because those characters aren't victims.
And while plenty of other shows and films have recently handled the same problems in a better way, Mad Max Fury wrote is a film about escaping from sexual slavery that never depicts an actual assault.
Now that's very interesting.
This is a very interesting point, isn't it?
Because you just, you're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, art.
We can talk about the subject, but we can't see it because that would be triggering.
It's like, well, look, there's nothing wrong with displaying graphic content in art.
There's nothing wrong with that at all.
Just because you are a special fucking snowflake and you don't like it, doesn't mean that it should be censored for other people.
The problem is not with them.
The problem is not with Game of Thrones.
The problem is with you.
And I love this bit as well.
There are enough moments of female empowerment on the show to somehow balance the scales.
Really, does one wipe away the other, does it?
Daenerys emerging from a fire with her baby dragons, Brienne taking down the hound.
These were glorious moments that reminded fans these abused women had personalities, motivations and the potential to best their enemies.
Look, no one needs reminding that they are women with personalities, motivations and the potential to best their enemies.
No one, apart from feminists, think this.
People do not need to be reminded that the characters on the show are women with personalities, motivations and potential.
They know this already.
This is already assumed, even if it isn't the subject of what's going on.
Our author goes on to whinge that the women of Game of Thrones have felt impotent.
Sansa and Shireen have had no control of their respective fates.
Listen, Shireen is a fucking child, and Sansa has just been married to a psycho.
And even then, the so-called powerful women have been neutralized.
The sand snakes who are touted as a feminist force and potential fan favourites.
For feminists, you fucking idiots.
Potential fan favourites.
Why would a bunch of pouty women in a desert be fan favourites with anyone but feminists?
They're really, really shallow characters.
But, as we go on to see, you've got Cersei.
Now, Cersei for me, as a fan, is one of my favourites.
And why?
Because she has been fleshed out as a fucking character, as you go on to describe here.
Cersei was so blinded by jealousy and greed that she couldn't see her own doom barreling towards her.
Same goes for Marjorie, who after deftly handling Cersei, walks directly into her trap.
Daenerys and her supposedly invincible army were constantly outwitted by some guys in masks.
Brienne has been sitting in a castle.
Arya spent nearly all her time washing dead men's feet.
Even the female wildling leader was killed by zombies.
Look, right?
This is what we call character development.
For any other fucking character, these would be a good thing.
But for feminists, when it comes to dealing with women, these are a bad thing.
Well, fuck you, alright?
The fact that Cersei was so blinded by jealousy and greed is good.
It shows depth of character for that character.
Yes, she's a human.
She's fucking fallible.
She was blinded by jealousy and greed, which means it's justified that she would barrel into her own doom.
For fuck's sake, you don't want women to be treated like people, like with these fucking sand snakes.
They're shallow and pathetic.
It's embarrassing watching the sand snakes.
They're not real fucking characters.
They're a feminist wank fantasy.
To be fair, many of the male characters have been spinning their wheels as well.
But at least Tyrion Dura, Jamie and Braun embarked on quests to reach far-off lands, and Jon Snow brokered peace deals and battled off white walkers.
Even Ramsey got to do his best ninja imitation and burned Stanis' supplies last week.
By contrast, the women feel caged in.
Some literally, yeah, but like you said, a lot of them haven't really been doing all that much.
Some of them have been doing things and others have been getting the shit kicked out of them and whatnot.
What you're arguing for is for the women in Game of Thrones to not be treated like the other characters in the series.
What you want is for the women of Game of Thrones to have everything going great for them.
Fucking brilliant.
While everything's going to shit for everyone else around them.
Basically what I'm saying is that this is a shit idea.
Stop being triggered by Game of Thrones, you idiotic feminists.
It's not fucking real.
And she finishes by saying in the finale, the writers should finally set them, the women, free.
No, what they should do is stop paying any attention whatsoever to idiotic internet feminists who can't stand to watch things that aren't real happening on TV.
That's what they should do.
So after wasting people's time by talking about Game of Thrones, let's talk about something that is actually of relative importance.
Shock European court decision.
Websites are liable for users' comments.
The ruling is likely to be influential on EU courts' thinking in future.
This sounds like a really fucking stupid idea.
In a surprise decision, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has ruled that the Estonian news site Delphi may be held responsible for anonymous and allegedly defamatory comments from its readers.
Wow, that's...
I'm actually shocked.
That's fucking retarded.
As the digital rights organisation Access notes, this goes against the European Union's e-commerce directive.
Of course it does.
Which guarantees liability protection for intermediaries that implement notice and takedown mechanisms on third-party comments.
As such, Peter Maikek, senior policy counsel at Access, says the ECHR judgment has dramatically shifted the internet away from the free expression and privacy protections that created the internet as we know it.
Well, I can't say I'm too surprised.
The EU being the EU being authoritarian and micromanaging?
What a surprise.
Now this is not quite as bad as it seems at first glance.
Today's decision doesn't have any direct legal effect.
It simply finds that Estonia's laws on site liability aren't compatible with the ECHR.
It doesn't directly require any change in national or EU law.
Indirectly, however, it may be influential in the further development of the law in a way which undermines freedom of expression.
As a decision of the Grand Chamber of the ECHR, it will be given weight by the other courts and by legislative bodies.
One of the worrying aspects of the ECHR decision is that it may encourage the idea that intermediaries are liable for, quote, manifestly unlawful content without specifying what's manifestly unlawful actually means.
It's also pointed out that something which may lead to a chilling effect where sites are overcautious in taking down material that might possibly be contentious.
It's apparently also troubling that the judgment upholds a finding that proactive monitoring of internet users can be required.
That contradicts the important decision of the Sabam case of 2012, where the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that forcing a hosting service to monitor and filter content online violated EU law.
Now I am of course absolutely no expert in any of these things, but it really does seem self-evident that this is a worrying development for the concept of internet freedom within the EU.
And it strikes me that this case will be used as justification further down the line for increasingly more draconian laws to be introduced.
Which is something they highlight at the end of the article when they say Delphi's unexpected defeat is likely to have important if subtle consequences, not on just the web, but also freedom of speech and privacy across the European Union.
Again, I'm no expert, but it strikes me that holding websites responsible for the comments their readers make on them is remarkably stupid.
But not only that, it strikes me as lazy.
It's not like you couldn't find the person who made the comment.
It's not like an IP can't be traced or something like that.
It's just that sort of thing takes time and effort.
Yeah, sure, it would be a lot easier just to go to the website themselves, punish them, and so either make it so they heavily moderate their comments or just remove comments altogether.
Be no, maybe I'm going too harsh on the EU, because, you know, I mean, the EU's here to prevent war in Europe, aren't they?
And also to meddle in your home life.
Men should do half of all the housework, says European Parliament.
Well, forgive me for saying this, European Parliament, but I rather believe that's a bit beyond your remit.
The European Union is being asked to make sure men do at least half the household chores as part of a strategy for equality.
Wow.
A committee of the European Parliament in Strasbourg wants the EU to launch a campaign to highlight the equal division of domestic work.
I can't believe they think this is any of their fucking business.
This, I swear, this is one of the problems with Europe.
They really think that they have the authority to be able to dictate to their citizens like this.
Can you imagine the British government ever saying, hey, we're going to tell you how you should run your house?
Fuck off.
The Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality, why does such a thing exist?
Claims the unequal division of family responsibilities needs to be tackled by introducing measures encouraging men's participation of domestic labour.
Look, love.
In fact, hang on, hang on.
Quote-unquote, equality campaigners point to research which shows that 70% of all housework is done by women and nearly two-thirds of all chores is done by them even if they work over 30 hours a week.
I can tell you exactly why that is.
Men have a much higher tolerance for mess than women do.
No one is forced to do housework.
There is no fucking quota.
There can be no quota.
It's never going to happen.
It's never going to work.
So you've got to ask yourself why are women doing the majority of the housework?
And it's because, frankly, they want to.
They want a tidier house than men want.
And to achieve this goal, they are prepared to do the majority of the housework.
You'll notice that men do a lot more in the way of bringing in wages to a household, because men are much more concerned with that, and so they end up working longer hours for more difficult jobs that have higher pay.
It's almost like men and women are different.
The rapporteur is calling on the Commission to consider whether it should lay down specific targets and penalties with a view to reducing the gender pay gap.
Furthermore, if a better work-life balance is to be achieved, men will have to devote more time to housework and caring.
Yes, but how exactly do you intend to make that happen?
You'd have to take some rather tyrannical measures to force men to do more housework.
You whinging woman.
Look, I don't want to be a dick about this, but isn't it rather excessively stereotypical that a bunch of women are in front of the Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality in the EU, complaining about the amount of housework that men do?
I mean, isn't that just a little bit stereotypically female?
This is classic, though.
The Fawcett Society, which campaigns for equality between men and women in the UK, declined to comment on whether the EU is acting appropriately, because they would have said, well, we think they are, and they would have looked fucking stupid.
But a spokeswoman said, What is appropriate is that the EU is striving to address the pay gap between men and women and improve the lives of children and families.
Yeah, that was a statement worth making.
Since we're talking about Europe and clearly taking their cues from Sweden, a UK water park bans bikinis and orders visitors to wear Islamically appropriate clothes.
A British water park has sparked fury by banning bikinis and ordering visitors to cover up in Islamically appropriate clothing.
This isn't quite as bad as it sounds.
Waterworld and Stoke on Trent plans to black out windows and provide a prayer room during a women-only night aimed at Muslims.
Only female lifeguards will patrol the park during the event, which has triggered a flood of complaints.
Staff will also guard the front entrance to make sure no one enters the facility.
But for some reason, idiotically, they've said the event would attract ladies of all religions/slash beliefs, as we invite you to visit our facility and enjoy its features while having the option of wearing a tire that our normal operating procedures prevent.
Well, you're aiming the night at Muslims, so why would women of other, I mean, what would you think Jewish women are going to go down there?
And be like, hey, yeah, I'll go for a swim.
One invitation to the Sisters Only Funday advises attendees to cover their AWA, which is nudity, by wearing full-length jogging bottoms and a dark coloured t-shirt.
Wow, sounds like someone's trying to avoid the male gaze.
Protesters are now planning to demonstrate outside the event.
I mean, is it really so important that it needs to be demonstrated against?
Waterworld owner Mo Chowdhury, well, there we go, says, I'm astonished that we've been targeted.
We feel that we've been victimised for offering something that we feel there is a demand for.
Well, if you feel that way, then I'm so sorry.
This is sounding remarkably progressive.
We feel that we've been victimised.
I mean, there's no getting around that, is there?
I mean, he does definitely feel victimised, therefore he must be a victim.
The thing is, I don't think that they should be restricted from holding this session.
I mean, it's scheduled to take place outside the centre's normal opening hours, so it's not like it's going to impede any regular users from using facilities.
So I think it's kind of pessty, really.
But the thing is, I think Mr. Chowdhury's right.
I think there probably is a demand for this sort of thing.
And that in itself is something that is well worth talking about, especially in the wake of Tal Asmal, 17-year-old who killed himself by detonating a car packed with explosives.
There are distinct Muslim colonies in Britain.
There's no guessing around it at this point.
The suburb of Saville Town has only got 48 white Britons, while the other 4,033 Seville town residents are of Pakistani or Indian heritage.
Now, I wouldn't have a problem with this if this segregated Islamic community wasn't producing radical Islamists.
But it is.
Dewsbury has in fact produced a number of domestic terrorists.
The leader of the gang of four bombers who attacked London on the 7th of July came from Dewsbury.
Britain's youngest convicted terrorist at 16 was from Dewsbury.
And now, Talhar Asmal went over to the Islamic State at 17 and became Britain's youngest ever suicide bomber.
Very well done.
And herein, of course, lies the problem.
The families of the two missing boys insisted they were vulnerable, impressionable teenagers brainwashed over social media.
Well, brainwashed over social media, they may well have been.
But Saville Town, which is a suburb of Dewsbury, is now one of the most racially segregated places in Britain, and has been so dangerously steeped in a violent brand of Islam that young men are encouraged to be suspicious of and even hate the West.
It also has the Markazi Mosque, which is the European headquarters of Tabili Gi Jamat, a global Islamic missionary movement with an austere ultra-conservative religious creed nurturing the belief that British values pose a threat to Muslims, which I suppose they actually do.
Not in a violent, destructive way particularly, but the fact that British values are far more appealing than Islamic values, as I know firsthand from living with British people and Muslims in the same city.
Their children, as I said in my conversation with Adam Baldwin, their children tend to become particularly British when mixed with other British children, and it is in fact only in very segregated communities like this that we seem to see such radical Islamization take hold and become the norm.
So it's no surprise that these communities actually do, as David Cameron has recognised, quietly condone extremist ideology instead of confronting it.
Indeed, when you have mosques like this that are teaching people that British values are bad and they have managed to segregate themselves from British people so the Muslims living in these communities can't even see for themselves that these extremist radical preachers are wrong.
Yes, you will end up with communities, colonies, that quietly condone extremist ideology.
Cameron apparently will argue that impressionable young people can slide into violence when Islamist extremist ideology, such as viewing women as inferior and homosexuality as evil, is not challenged by community leaders and in the case of Seville is actively propagated by them.
Now as much as I hate to agree with David Cameron, this is all perfectly rational.
We've stupidly allowed enclaves of Islamic extremists to flourish within the UK in certain towns.
It obviously needs to be dealt with as producing violent extremists.
And I think they've correctly identified that it's the ideology that's the problem.
So what does the Guardian have to say about this?
You cannot blame Islam as an ideology.
Fucking well done idiots.
Look, blaming Islam as an ideology is not only appropriate, I think it is preferable.
Because if you blame it for being a religion, that's something that A, you can't prove or disprove.
And B, you are then attacking God in essence.
The Guardian then goes on to say, it's obvious that ISIS imagines itself in Islamic terms, but there are many more Muslim voices raised against it, and no shortage of reputable Islamic scholars to denounce it.
Yes, well, there are also Islamic scholars who support it and Muslim voices who are in favour of it.
It is obviously Islamic.
It's retarded to suggest it isn't.
Listen, Guardian, I'm not really interested in your no true Muslim fallacy.
At the end of the day, you can be an apologist all you want, and to a certain degree, I am as well.
I don't think that, you know, Muslims are genetically programmed to rape kids or whatever the stupid shit the stormfags think.
And I do think it is deep ideological problems that Islam is having, and without them, and again, I think they can be fixed, and without them, then we wouldn't nearly have the problem with Islam that we're having.
The Guardian then goes on and says, the jihadi recruiters who groom their prospects online, like paedophiles, as one disgusted leads Imam described them, are the real enemies here, and we must fight them in the imagination of their victims.
Look, man, you cannot paint a suicide bomber as a victim.
That's ridiculous.
They know that blowing people up is wrong.
And the only reason they do it is because of ideological Islam that you began this article defending.
There are many, many passages in the Quran that support what these people are doing.
That's why ISIS can call themselves Islamic.
That's why these preachers find audiences.
The problem is that dogmatic adherence to the Quran is always going to produce people like this, just like dogmatic adherence to the Bible has produced the Westboro Baptist Church.
If Christians and Jews really were good Christians and Jews, they would be stoning to death adulterers.
The ideology of Islam is deeply, deeply flawed and was designed for a world that has passed on.
Islam is in need of a reformation, and while you have dipshits at the Guardian, thinking you can blame individual Muslims for the problems that Islam is creating, it will never happen.
What you are effectively doing is fighting the heads of the Hydra.
When you cut one head off, two more grow back in its place.
The time has come for moderate, rational and level-headed Muslims to reform Islam.
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