Regardless of how broad the definition of rape is, it's still disproportionately committed by immigrants, and not just rape, all crime - which was the point I was making, that there is a correlation between immigration and crime.

I got the stats from here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA9yjrqtWG0


Also your linked Global Mail article states "Refugee shelters are terrible, dangerous places, whoever is in them". LOL if living in a camp is so dangerous, it's down to the people living there right? Tents don't commit crime.

Actually that author has interpreted the statistics with what is called survivor bias.

EDIT: also the global article has some very good comments by C.Ben and vikki 4U

You did good on that joke and on its explanation. I got it just fine without the commentary though.

I left your whole commentary here, because I make it a practice to delete all comments from my wall. Your essay needs to be saved for posterity.

So here is a quirk of Videosift.

If you are ignoring someone, and they make a comment on one of your videos, you will never get another email saying that comments have been made.

I had no idea of the implosion on that comment stream. Dear god in heaven.

What is really sad is I only wanted a temp ban. I honestly didn't know of @gorillaman's propensities. I am all for second, third and fourth chances -- even though some people have left the Sift in the past because the worst abusers were allowed back. I understood their pain, but I'm still all for more chances. If you love something enough, maybe you will change your behavior. I certainly don't change immediately. I will accord others the opportunity to learn over time.

So no edit help, huh? I think I'll use this:

As "Homeland Security" says, if you see something, SAY something. (Because here is the truth: As Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel wrote, "Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.")

Much cleaner. Don't need the snark bit. Quote marks. Gotta love 'em. (Quote marks, not parentheses, to denote snark. I'm getting old.)

I didn't address your tendency to tread lightly with me in my first response. I figured it was made up of three things:

1. My early days on the Sift, I had really thin skin. I was easily hurt and upset. One of the biggest gifts to me in my life was learning on the Sift to be clearer and stronger in my communications. And to walk away from the abusers. And to use the ignore button. I figured that my early reactions were in your brain pan still.

2. That tone of voice thing. It is real. What is a simple, clear declarative sentence in my head can be read as a whine-fest by others.

3. I think it is great that you write carefully when you write to me. Keep it up! It's called caring about the person you are talking to. I have zero problem with that. In fact, I see it as a Great Good. (Because if you aren't, and I lay my own internal tone of voice onto your words in a way that doesn't match the words in your head, you will be hearing from me. And I am just as verbose as you, my friend! A punishment worse than death!)

And yes. We are people who hang in there. It is a blessing and a curse.
Well, only a curse to those who roll their eyes and snort "good grief, just shut up!" I'm cool with it.

Thanks for hanging in with me. And I am truly sorry about gorillaman. He did it to himself, though. He did have other choices.

In solidarity, I say to you -- Fuck Homeland Security and ginned up xenophobia and racism.

(A poet? Do you write epic odes? Surely not haikus!)

Okay

I just took a long walk to have lunch. As I walked, I noodled and noodled on my Homeland comment (if it isn't obvious by now, I use that comment all the time.) How to give it context so as to not give the wrong impression? How to keep it short, given how complicated the context is?

Finally realized the power of the snark. Parentheses. Those communicate quickly.

Still needed more. Has to be short.

I sat to eat my lunch, and opened the book of essays I was reading. (I always read while eating if alone.) And there it was.

So. Would you be interested in being my editor for this project? Help me hone it? Get it succinct? (If you are interested, I have a great story about the Broadway musical Guys and Dolls struggles to be succinct. Came to mind when I stumbled on the idea of parentheses.)

Okay. Here goes. Let me know if you would like to help me get it right:

As "Homeland Security" says, if you see something, SAY something. (Meant to be read snarkily. Because here is the truth: As Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel said: "Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.")


It is still long. I'll have to copy and paste a long time before I remember it. But it provides context and I hope it communicates that you cannot confuse me with a Brownshirt.

Yeah I watched this once a few years back and that was enough for me. The road manager or stage manager was convicted as he lit the pyros, he did some time but nobody in the band did. Some of the victims families asked for leniency for him as he showed remorse but from what I understand the club owners were prosecuted and people weren't so sympathetic with them. I worked in eastern Connecticut at the time and some coworkers knew many of the survivors. It was painfully ironic because the reporter was there to report on club safety because there was a club fire a week earlier in Chicago.

I've heard this revisionist history BS so many times now I just can't stand it anymore. There was no magical 'gifting' of Palestinian land to invading European Jews. That's a completely baseless self justification for Middle Eastern anti-jewish hate mongering.

Jewish people were a significant percentage of the population in Palestine long before the Nazi's and their ilk started making Europe look unpleasant. They were Palestinians themselves, not invaders. Both Arab and Jewish Palestinians lived side by side in Palestine for a long, long time before the 1940s. Clearly, come the 1940's there was a large influx of Jewish people from Europe. Calling them 'invaders' versus refugees though seems an easy call given the holocaust and Nazi occupation of the whole of Europe. Still, you insist on calling them invaders. I don't have words for how disgusting that is.

So, in the mid 1940's we have a Palestine loaded with Jewish and Arab Palestinians, plus a good number of Jewish refugees. The tensions between those groups escalates into a full on civil war. Not an invasion, but a civil war between Jewish and Arab palestinians where the only group remotely fitting the 'invader' role are holocaust survivor refugees now in a country were there is AGAIN a war against them on the basis of being Jews. I'm not sure I think they are as callously the aggressor. What is more, upon the UN mandating a two state solution to the whole mess, the Jewish Palestinians immediately accepted. The Arab Palestinians though appealed to the Arab league, and many of the leaders within it that stood alongside the Nazi's pontificating solutions to 'the problem'. So now a fledgling independent Jewish state spent it's first day receiving a join declaration of war upon it by all it's neighbouring countries that each out numbered it grossly. I again can't but see the Israeli fighting as defensive. In fact, I must insist it was an existential fight that, should they have lost, would have us discussing the second and even worse holocaust of the European Jews that fled to Palestine.

But I know it's popular today among pseudo intellectual circles to just declare Israel an invasion and occupation by a foreign army of vastly militarily superior super jews. It's a fantasy though, and it's one that was scripted up by hateful racists to justify their hatred. None of that says anything about white-washing Israeli policies in the decades following. If you want to call them invaders from the start though you are speaking a truly horrific set of lies.

k, I'm going Wednesday Addams on yall, so fair warning if you can't stomach the grotesque. It's just my sense of humor is very dark. This is one of the few times I'll do you a favor by breaking the fourth wall of my videosift persona. Mainly because I enjoyed this video and the concept is really neat; but, I can't help my brain from going where it goes in its logical conclusions. It's tldr so you'll skip it anyway. Doesn't matter to me, first and foremost, I post for me, not you -- though I acknowledge it is public and therefore for the public's consumption, it is so purely for reasons of science:

Is there a section at the Empathy Museum for empathizing with EMT drivers? Seeing dead and dying bodies in every conceivable way on a daily basis. How do you try on those shoes?

A friend of mine who was a technician for many years told me he witnessed dozens of different forms of decapitation and loads of ways a person can lose one or more or all of their limbs; or, how about this one -- a man who squatted over a plunger he had suctioned to the bottom of a tub because he was too much of a prude to buy a dildo, slipped in the tub while he was pleasuring himself anally...

It tore up through his bowels and punctured out of his abdomen. He was still alive but out cold from the shock while his bowels flooded his insides; dead not long after his wife had made the call.

Listening to an EMT driver discuss their years of experience is one of the best ways to empathize with the human condition.

Or here's another good one: Go work in a nursing home and learn what being old and dying is like.

But cool, I get to wear oversized women's shoes... wait, I already do that. Here, empathize with me: wear pumps and stockings for an hour, then chuck tailors and socks for two hours, then pumps, then chuck tailors, then pumps, then chuck tailors.

I'm gonna open myself a true empathy museum in collaboration with the Holocaust Museum. Could you imagine if the Holocaust Museum had you wear the shoes of dead Jews? Would anyone take that seriously? I seriously doubt it.

Aside from alternating between gender-based shoes, my empathy museum will also allow you to interact with people who have low functioning autism and have a discussion with a man who has severe brain damage because his dad was involved in organized crime and the price of not paying a debt on time was that his family got murdered before his very eyes. Lucky for him, only brain damage. Sole survivor. Let him regale you with tales of woes made entirely of spitting sounds and aimless staring.

Empathy's a crazy thing. Makes you want to crawl inside a hole sometimes. But if you emerge sane and ready to TRULY empathize by doing a goddamn thing about it -- and not just proclaim your civil rights and be angry at the injustices of the world and how unfair your lot or the lot of other pitiful humans are -- maybe you'll have what it takes to gain an iota of true humanity. That's what my empathy museum is all about.

Not that I'm against this form of chic empathy. I quite enjoy art installations.

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CCN anchor reads Survivor's Statement on air has been added as a related post - related requested by bareboards2 on that post.

http://videosift.com/video/CCN-anchor-reads-Survivors-Statement-on-air

Don't watch this, hunny bunny. Maybe read the statement if you are curious. But it is really hard to listen to.

"Letting them know that you're about to have a lecture on very sensitive material is totally fine. I mean, I've done that."

Then congrats, you're OK with trigger warnings.

And like most instances where people panic about them, Oxford hasn't made any sort of official policy. Professors are able to do so at will or ignore the use of the warnings all together. Much like they have been doing for years and years.

Curious how victims of sexual assault that often develop PTSD for periods following are somehow "coddled censors", yet the same doesn't apply for any sort of accommodation for other mental or physical ailments. We don't see people freaking out about warnings of flashing lights in various media for the epileptic, we don't mock the soldier suffering from PTSD who asks for accommodations, and we don't mock the migraine sufferers who avoid certain situations, food, etc to prevent attacks.

But somehow, the physical effects triggered by certain stimuli of a lingering sexual assault is different. Better alert the news media, the PC police rape survivors are here to ruin everything with their asks for "Hey, maybe consider my physical issues?"

Shock seems more likely to me. As for the swimming, stroke survivor isn't out of the question, nor is any chest/shoulder operation.

@enoch, words are important. You should know as you seem to be unable to edit any of them out.

Briefly (because responding to your entire post would put us considerably closer to the entropic death of the universe) yes, I used to respect Frys opinions, now I don't. This is called changing your mind in light of new evidence.

Previously he was eloquent and compassionate, saving his ire for those deserving of it. Here he's just spiteful and grouchy, and his target is abuse victims??

As I said, even he realised how completely wrong he was.

But more importantly, you (and everyone else on this particular"anti-PC" bandwagon) seem to have confused criticism with censorship.

Go back and read my posts. Did I ever call for him to be censored? No, I responded to what he said and called it stupid. That is the essence of free speech.

I don't even fully disagree with him on a lot of his points. I don't really believe in "safe spaces" (I can understand the desire for them, but university is not an appropriate venue for them. I'm not keen on trigger warnings either, but OTOH, I haven't suffered that kind of trauma, so ultimately, I really don't think they do any harm, (although I would argue that a few seconds research should render many of them unnecessary). I would certainly never say that you can't study Titus Andronicus in class, but I don't see the harm in warning a rape survivor of the content either.

Basically, you and he are inventing boogeymen. There are a few instances of stupidity out there, but they are always there.

As I've said before, the "dangers of PC" are vastly outweighed by the dangers of people using the so-called dangers of PC as an excuse for racist, sexist bullshit. This is how it works. They get to say their shit and we get to call them on it.

Oh no, really? I'm shattered...

Actually, the sad thing is that Frys opinion used to mean something, but this is just so fucking stupid.

Baseball caps?
Superhero movies?

Tell you what, Steve. I'll wear whatever the fuck I want and I'll take my movie going advice from someone who wasn't one of the worst parts of the awful Hobbit movies.

So if that means I (shock, horror) actually have sympathy for sexual abuse survivors, well, I guess I'll just have to learn to live with myself somehow.