Essays on Psychology: an epigrammatic index

Appetizer-excerpts.  Click on the link for the full essay.

Les faits ne pénètrent pas dans le monde où vivent nos croyances;  ils peuvent leur infliger les plus constants démentis  sans les affaiblir.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-psychology-of-meteorology.html

Our hunch now is that the subnatural [i.e., quantum] inputs  do not “make sense” – that is, no moral sense, no sense beyond themselves.  It will all (within its own world) dutifully trot along in the path laid out by the Schroedinger equation, while its inputs to our world look to us like clowns piling out of an infinite Volkswagon: but it will not, pace philosophers from Protagoras to Penrose, supply or even heighten our humanity, our morality, our free will.  Indeed, from our present vantage,  the subnatural is somehow even more alien to the noösphere, than is the shadow play of Newton, or the passion play of Darwin.  He who would seek the key to our humanity there, seeks the stars in a mudpuddle.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2010/12/theologia-mathematica-i.html

Thus, in the speed-dating improv (as we shall call it, so as not to dignify it with the title of “experiment”), it is unsurprising (especially to a Freudian) that, placed into a normally masculine role and given license by the experimental milieu, women might act out their fantasies, and the men might play along:  even outside of the ‘experimental’ situation, such techniques are sometimes used in flirting (witness "Sadie Hawkins day").  But it is no more telling for Darwinian theory than is the Woody-Allen/Diane-Keaton shtick in “Sleeper”, in which they respectively channel (with convincing authenticity) respectively Blanche du Bois and Stanley Kowalski.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/01/la-nostalgie-de-la-boue.html

The converse of an acolyte is an intellectual ancestor.  Here a historian, and admirer of Freud, notices an anomaly …
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/02/chomsky-freud-and-problem-of-acolytes.html

Now I hold it in the left hand ...

... and now I hold it in the right.

Now -- I wouldn’t wish to press this suggestion too hard.  At the very least, one would have to concede, that if therapy this be, there were severe problems with the counter-transference.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/06/gimme-shelter-further-updated.html

“So this -- this doctrine, or this dogma, or this whatever you guys call it -- phrase it however you like, this mystical Thing:  do you -- do you believe it?   You?  Honest Injun?  For real?”

     Murphy frowned.   “Look, Solly -- I don’t want to squirrel out, here;  but it’s kind of the wrong question.   -- No I mean, it’s a perfectly okay question, just on a friendly level, like Do you think Amanda’s hot, and Whadaya think about the chances for Brooklyn this year.  But nothing eternal depends upon your fluttering, or my flickering, moods of belief or unbelief.  

http://murphybros.blogspot.com/2014/03/murphy-on-meaning-of-belief.html

The world we think in,  and the world we live in,  are no longer the same.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/12/update-to-goldberg-variations-variations.html

So greatly are brains befuddled, when confronting the politics of sex, that I almost despair of getting the point across.  So let us remove to an analogy.   Tom shoots at John, missing him.  Or, Tom beats John to a pulp.  Or, Tom announces on national television that he intends to kill John.   Then Tom is charged with murder, because, though his intended victim is still among the living, what Tom did  was “just as bad”.  And if you imply otherwise, you are insulting the murder-victims community.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/08/semantics-of-laffaire-dsk.html

The latest excrescence:  The Princess sues the Pea.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-gluttony-of-delicacy-ii.html

“… Ernest Jones, the docile and deferential My Dear Watson  to the Sherlock Holmes of the Unconscious … “

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/05/freud-and-holmes-re-updated.html

“Vergebens, dass ihr ringsum wissenschaftlich schweift:

Ein jeder lernt nur, was er lernen kann.”

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/03/de-stultitia-updated.html

… that faulty inference  from the plausible view of the cognitive sovereignty of sense, to the absurd conclusion that explanatory models of human conduct must be in terms of elements similar to ‘sensation’ or ‘stimulus’.  The inference is quite fallacious, though an entire movement in psychology (Behaviourism) is based on the failure to see this.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/04/eliminative-materialism-expanded-update.html

So komme ich mir vor:  der Bube ohne Eigenschaften. 

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/06/de-musica-de-gloria-continuat.html

To reach the penetralia of the psyche’s secrets, Freud first tried hypnosis, then developed instead his own methods, involving free-association and dream-interpretation.   Lorne, too, has his own patented method of seeing through the mists of mind and fate:  that of tragoidoscopy…

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/12/freud-and-lorne.html

"Dieser rasche Rundgang  durch Schuchardt’s mehr als 50 Jähre umspannende Wirksamkeit  zeigt, daß wir es tatsächlich mit einer  in sich geschlossenen, “runden” Lehre  zu tun haben:  das Bild des Kreises scheint mir am ehesten geeignet, Schuchardt’s Gedankenweben zu versinnbildlichen."

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/03/on-what-is-round-ter.html

This struck me as implausible, and likely influenced by the researcher/dreamer’s desire to prove his point.  Had the correlations been random, he would have had no famous paper to publish -- no tenure -- no job, no prospects, hounded by beggars through the streets of the city:  instead of marrying the department chair’s buxom daughter, and having his way with the secretaries on the side.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/10/appendix-to-appendix-on-oneiric.html

“Einen Traum?  Aber weshalb stören Sich mich, ein so erbärmlich kleinliches Ding, oder Unding vielmehr!  Das ist alles ja doch nur sovieso Quatsch im Kopf -- vergessen Sie das lieber!”

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/03/from-case-files.html

“You seem to have mistaken these lodgings for those of my esteemed colleague Herr Doktor Freud, who practices in the next street over.  He is an alienist by training, whereas I am a detective.  My practice concerns the investigation of crime;  while his, by contrast, is the unearthing of the concealment of a crime.”

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/03/rocking-boat.html

The prototypical example of an indisputably extant entity is you.  You are physically coherent, you have purposes and plans, you are self-aware from moment to moment; ontologically, it doesn’t get better than this.  And if you’re Donald Trump, you’re done:  end of ontology.  You slide through life like a bubble down the duodenum, a blob of solipsism. http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/09/on-what-there-is_28.html

“My experience in porn has been nothing but supportive, exciting, thrilling, and empowering,” Knox — she chose the last name in a weird homage to Amanda Knox, the college student accused of murdering her roommate in Italy — wrote on the Web … http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/05/feminarcissism.html

That a movement may be emasculated by an embrace, was well known to the antiwar movement:  we called it coöptation.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/09/psychology-porn.html

I personally was not surprised:  the secret of his inversion was something he had been carrying about in his bosom for many years, no doubt since the first fumblings at Eton, and as a physician I can report that, though such a habitus may, in a well-regulated gentleman such as our visitor, be imperceptible to a layman, yet the sufferer himself goes through life as self-consciously as though covered richly in pimples.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/03/from-case-files.html

Of desirelessness (technically:  anhedonia), I almost dare not speak …

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/09/poetological-exegesis.html

Whoever was raised upon Marx, or Freud, or Chomsky, and who writes in their wake, is forever looking over his shoulder.   But occasionally -- as indeed with those masters, who after all had, for a time, masters of their own -- there is a clean break with the past, and no looking back.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/02/chomsky-freud-and-problem-of-acolytes.html

Ontologically, perhaps, we are back where we began, though psychologically it is quite otherwise:   You can fall in love with Juliet;  you cannot fall in love with that x such that x julietizes  and, for all y, if y julietizes, then y = x.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/10/reification-substantive-and-trivial.html

 

For here the adolescing child is poised upon the cusp between pre-literate bliss and orthographic regimentation:  the schoolbench contribution to that shaping, shaving, repressive process that gives rise to Civilization, with all its Discontents.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/05/der-wortwitz-und-seine-beziehung-zum.html

She turns out to play a pivotal role between the sanity of the wife  and the madness of the husband,  until (as I shall argue)  her own mite of a weight upon the psychical balance-pan  at last causes the bar to kick the beam, as a folie à deux becomes a folie à trois, by infection.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/01/take-shelter-re-updated.html

The meaning for us, of Freud as of Holmes, is more a matter of a lingering taste, that we savor, than of any substance remembered and assimilated in detail.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/02/freud-and-holmes-updated.html

The enigma of a woman’s heart,

finally espied  by a Private Eye,

for less than the price  of a Valentine …

This Rose

[Kindle]  [Nook]

This killer is not a victim.  He may well be (literally) possessed by the Devil:  but he invited the Devil in.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/03/consciencectomy.html

Magistricide !  An arrow, fledged and fleshed  --

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/02/chomsky-freud-and-problem-of-acolytes.html

Before we can come up with clever schemes to measure something, and evaluate each test on how well it accomplishes its goal, we need to know what we are measuring -- antecedently, independently of the tests (which, at this stage, are themselves being tested.)

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/02/iqgq.html

The attempts by such scoundrels as Rick Perry or Donald Trump, to impeach the basic honesty of a significant proportion of climate scientists, is -- putting it at a minimum -- implausible simply on psychological grounds.   The motivations for scientists include recognition by their peers, the discovery of truth, the fun of solving puzzles, not having to wear a necktie, etc.  Very few get into the game for hope of fame or fortune;  and nobody goes into climatology (meteorology, geology….) for such reasons.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/02/climate-change-re-updated.html

I myself had quite a nice childhood, with storytime and Pooh-bear and my very own coonskin cap.   But my idea of the Afterlife  is purely that of doing math, with the insight of angels.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/01/psychological-epigrams-erweitert.html

The psychiatrist could blurt out the literal origin of the patient’s neurosis ("You thought your mom was hot!" or whatever), yet this bare statement, though given lip-service or intellectual assent, by itself breaks no bonds.  Neither is the neurosis thereby cured, nor are the symptoms abolished (although, caught in the act as it were, they may transmogrify).

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/01/take-shelter-re-updated.html

Which Wikipedia d’ya read?

[Expanded with further examples]

In an earlier essay (Shabbos goy), we pointed out the parallel between Schutzverwandte and dhimmis, noting in passing that the English Wikipedia entry for the latter presents a curiously euphemistic portrait of the disabilities of dhimmitude, by contrast with the fully informative German Wiki entry, which documents the vicissitudes of these marginally tolerated non-Muslim minorities throughout history,  not supressing mention (entirely absent from the lo-cal English version) of the persecutions of Jews and Christians under the Abbassid caliph al-Mutawakkil, their houses marked by black death’s-heads, their persons by a special yellow garment that forshadowed the yellow Judenstern of Nazi notoriety.

And now it appears that there might be a pattern here.

Desiring an elucidation of the phrase “al-Wala’ wa-l-Bara’”, I looked it up in English Wikipedia.  The entry reads, in its entirety:

Al Wala' Wal Bara' is an Arabic phrase. Within the context of Islam, the phrase means, on one hand, drawing near to what is pleasing to Allah and His Messenger and, on the other hand, withdrawing from what is displeasing to Allah and His Messenger.

Almost tautological in its po-faced uninformativeness, that entry also jars by its stilted style, and a certain cognitive naivety it is hard to put your finger on.
[The use of "Allah" instead of "God"  is also a tipoff  that something is amiss.  But I'll let Murphy tell it:   Murphy on the Allah/God question. (In the column to the right.)]

The German entry lets you enter an entirely different world.  Instead of the apple-pie-and-motherhood English Wiki Care Bears formulation, we learn just what these things “displeasing to Allah” are, that Muslims are enjoined to “withdraw” from:

Al-walāʾ wal-barāʾa (arabisch ‏الولاء والبراءة‎) ist ein Rechtsbegriff und muslimischer Grundsatz im Umgang mit den Anhängern anderer Religionen. Übersetzt heißt es etwa „Freundschaft/Unterstützung und Meidung“. Gemeint ist damit der Grundsatz, sich von allen Nichtmuslimen fernzuhalten

Zur Begründung wird häufig folgender Koranvers herangezogen:

    „Ihr Gläubigen! Nehmt euch nicht die Juden und die Christen zu Freunden!"

[Sura 5, verse 51.]  In other words:  Christians and Jews.

(Note, b.t.w., that the German transcription of the Arabic is much superior to the amateurish English one.)

This all is backed by scholarly footnotes, and a contrast between the relatively latitudinarian attitude of the Egyptian TV preacher Yusuf al-Qaradâwi, versus that of the Saudi grand mufti `Abd-al-Azîz bin Bâz: “Per se sei freundschaftlicher Umgang mit Nicht-Muslimen verboten.”

In short, the English Wikipedia entries have been neutered by Political Correctness.

~

By now rather intrigued, I looked up the word jihâd, whose meaning has been the subject of great contortions by the apologists, to blandish the kuffâr.   These are often promulgated in particular by women, who depict jihad as  a purely non-violent, muslimy matter of spiritual growth and Finding the Inner You. 

The German version pulls no punches:

Im Koran und der Sunna bezeichnet dieser Begriff primär militärischen Kampf.

Bingo.   Trust me on this one:  When al-Qaeda and their sympathizers speak of “waging jihad”, they are not referring to singing kumbaya at an interfaith service;  nor, in that milieu (or in virtually any) is the term commonly “applied to the fight for women's liberation”,  in the words of the English Wikipedia.

~

For a patient take-down of linguistically illiterate P.C. whitewash of the plain (though uncomfortable) meaning of the Koran as regards a certain aspect of marital relations, cf. this:

http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Beat_your_Wives_or_%22Separate_from_Them%22%3F_%28Qur%27an_4:34%29

For another examination of the pressures of Correctness, which yet lead to self-exposure through self-contradiction, cf:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/02/which-paragraph-dya-read.html

~

[Update 29 September 2014]

And now khilwah.

Again, the English is po-faced.  Here is the entry in its entirety as of this date.

Khilwa, in Shariah law, is an offense consisting of being caught alone in private with a member of the opposite sex who is not an immediate family member.

Now, back in my day, something similar existed in well-regulated suburban households:  Infringing this prohibition meant you could get grounded.  In the better sort of colleges, a similar rule held:  e.g., No gentlemen up in your rooms at all (Radcliffe);  or, the door must be left ajar.  

(One gathers that, nowadays, colleges have reverted to the law of the jungle.  My aim is merely to point out, as a courtesy to Islam, that a similar notion once held in Christendom.   Back when there was a Christendom.)

The French version is more painfully explicit:

La khilwa est une infraction au droit islamique consistant, pour un homme et une femme n'appartenant pas à la même famille immédiate, à se trouver seuls ensemble en privé. Dans certains pays appliquant la charia (Arabie saoudite, Iran), cette infraction est punie de peines allant de coups de fouet à de l'emprisonnement.

No other language-version of Wiki has an article by this title.   Mum’s the word.

~

For apostasy, the English article is, by contrast, very full and scholarly indeed, and does not mince words.   It is superscripted, however, by the following warning:

The neutrality of this article is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page.

The French article is nowhere near as full nor as footnoted, but doesn’t really edulcorate either.   Ditto for the Spanish, which is skimpier still, though still informative.  And likewise the Arabic.

The German article lies midway between those in thoroughness, but curiously finesses the question of the death penalty for apostasy, and does not devote a separate section to the subject.  Indeed, if you string-stearch on straff (‘punish’), all you find is straffrei!

[Update 29 Jan 2015]  The English wiki entry has been gingerly updated as follows:

Al-wala' wa-l-bara' (Arabic: الولاء والبراء‎) is an Arabic term meaning "loyalty and disavowal". Al-wala' wa-l-bara' is generally referred to as the Islamic concept of friendship toward fellow Muslims, and never loving nor praising the Non-Muslim.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Wala%27_Wal_Bara%27

[Update 31 March 2015] Issue #8 of Dabiq (the ISIL organ), just out, calls "wala' and bara' ... a great fundamental of the religion."

Geopolitics: updates to essays

The global political crisis continues to snowball.   These just in.

(1) Of renewed relevance, now that (in our estimation) ISIL’s basic strategy  is nothing to banal as to seize Damascus or what have you -- but to foment an interconfessional World War:

Nor did the Germans or anyone else have any idea how deadly and how interminable the conflict would turn out to be:  soldiers from several nations marched off to the front with cockades on their caps, figuring the bloody thing would be over and done with  in time for tiffin.

[ See http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/01/mental-health-and-gun-control-updated.html ]

(2)  Re “What to call the ISIL”: now this:

Les autorités françaises, fer de lance dans la guerre contre l'organisation de l'État islamique, ont officiellement adopté l’acronyme "Daech" pour désigner l’EI dans leurs discours officiels. Une décision qui n'a rien d'anodin.

http://www.france24.com/fr/20140916-daech-etat-islamique-EI-hollande-fabius-france/

[ See http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/09/francophonic-footnote-to-what-to-call.html ]

(3)  They’re getting closer …

The largest counter-terrorism operation in Australian history,

Police allege the suspects were planning to snatch and behead a random member of the public, then drape them in the flag of Islamic State.

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/terrorism-raids-carried-out-across-sydney-brisbane-20140918-10igft.html

[ See http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/09/on-psycho-theatrics-of-beheadings.html ]

(4) Not shuffling, but compressing the deck:

[Update 19 September 2014]  In light of yesterday’s events in Sydney … The order of vulnerability listed above  remains valid;  but the overall level of threat is now further elevated.  Further, the practical distance beween adjacent levels may well be compressed, given the potential for the face-off between civilizations to go global rather quickly.

[ See http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-islamic-state-911-2014.html ]

(5)  Historical forerunners:

Hitler was a master of diplomatic intransigence. 

In the run-up to Munich, Neville Chamberlain scurried around Europe trying to put together a package of Czech surrender that would satisfy the dictator, and finally managed one -- or so he thought.   He went back with his sacrificial offering, beaming…

[See http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-power-of-intransigence.html ]

(6)  News  tailored to your individual tastes:

From this perspective, we can conveniently assess the results of yesterday's referendum:

Scotland just voted unanimously for independence !!

For, anyone who voted against independence  is No True Scotsman.

[ See http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/12/no-true-scotsman.html ]

(7) What the “F-word” is, depends on where you live.   Here, the latest from Switzerland:

Der dunkle Schatten des F-Worts

Mit dem Faschismusvorwurf verschärfen die SP und die BDP ihre politische Gangart markant.

«Die Politik der SVP der letzten Monate hat klar faschistoide Tendenzen», sagte Levrat. Damit ist Levrat nach BDP-Präsident Landolt der zweite Chef einer Bundesratspartei, der die SVP in die Faschismus-Ecke stellt.

http://www.nzz.ch/schweiz/der-dunkle-schatten-des-f-worts-1.18385772

[ See http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/06/f-word-of-day-fournee.html ]

(8) Instructions for confronting a surly mob:  beat breast and apologize.

Here, apologize no longer means ‘to express repentent regret for something bad one has done’, since the man in question had done nothing wrong to begin with.  Rather, it means ‘to grovel for reasons of political correctness; to genuflect in the direction of a victims’ lobby’.

[ See: http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/06/in-forecast-scattered-apologies-heavy.html ]

Apple is Evil

Don’t get me wrong -- Apple isn’t particularly more evil than a lot of other tyrannical behemoths;  it has a lot of competition in that department.   But with the news of the iPhone6 with i0S8 offering semi-unbreakable encryption with no law-enforcement back door, it has brazenly allied itself with criminals.

Already the new phone has led to an eruption from the director of the F.B.I., James B. Comey. At a news conference on Thursday devoted largely to combating terror threats from the Islamic State, Mr. Comey said, “What concerns me about this is companies marketing something expressly to allow people to hold themselves beyond the law.”

He cited kidnapping cases, in which exploiting the contents of a seized phone could lead to finding a victim, and predicted there would be moments when parents would come to him “with tears in their eyes, look at me and say, ‘What do you mean you can’t’ ” decode the contents of a phone.

“The notion that someone would market a closet that could never be opened — even if it involves a case involving a child kidnapper and a court order — to me does not make any sense.”

Apple declined to comment. But officials inside the intelligence agencies, while letting the F.B.I. make the public protests, say they fear the company’s move is the first of several new technologies that are clearly designed to defeat not only the N.S.A., but also any court orders to turn over information to intelligence agencies. They liken Apple’s move to the early days of Swiss banking, when secret accounts were set up precisely to allow national laws to be evaded.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/27/technology/iphone-locks-out-the-nsa-signaling-a-post-snowden-era-.html?_r=0

If that kidnapping scenario should come to pass (and that is not in the least far-fetched;  we’re in the middle of one right now in Charlottesville), and someone dies because of Apple’s giving the finger to law enforcement, they will be in the position of Dr Strangelove, whose very clever Doomsday Machine  had unanticipated consequences.   Only, these are easy to anticipate.   Felony accomplice before the fact?  Apple execs in handcuffs, or assaulted by an enraged mob?

(Justy to clarify, in case it isn’t obvious:  It’s fine that everything on the phone is encrypted, bravo; fine that a court order should be required to obtain the keys to unlock the encryption.  What is not fine, is that the keys should nowhere exist.)

~

To get hold of a perp’s cell, you usually have to catch the perp;  and that cuts down on the number of times a “ticking bomb” scenario could arise.  But there are plenty of possible scenarios in which law enforcement would have a legitimate reason to access the contents of a cellphone, even one that did not belong to the criminals or their accomplices.

Thus, to stray no farther than the University of Virginia case already mentioned. …

[To be continued]

 

For some schadenfreude:

http://www.euronews.com/2014/09/26/launch-of-iphone6-staggers-from-disaster-to-derision/

For Cato the Elder’s take on other evil Apple antics:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/08/flash-apple-declares-bankruptcy.html

[Disclosure:  Writing this on a Mac … ]

Islandia delenda est !

This site was the first (and actually the last) to report  the all-out seaborne assault of the formidable Icelandic navy, against the freedom-loving people’s popular emirate of the liberationally-empowered populistical Islamic State of Azawad:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/04/breaking-news-iceland-declares-war-on.html

Swiftly, AQMI and Abu-Mitt ag-Romney formed a coalition to repel the onslaught:

And what of the enemies of the free and independent Caliphate of People’s Liberated Azawad, such as the blood-sucking Icelandic warmongers (whom Allah confound, and to whom the Azawadis refer to pejoratively, with an ethnic epithet, as  “Vikings”) ?

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/04/romney-aqim-to-join-forces-in-free.html

Yet now, in the face of the latest shameless provocation islandaise,

Des poussières volcaniques islandaises polluent le nord de la France

http://www.lefigaro.fr/sciences/2014/09/25/01008-20140925ARTFIG00256-pollution-des-poussieres-du-volcan-islandais-au-dessus-de-la-france.php

Riemannistan can only call for:  War to the Knife !!

Iceland's merciless plutonic onslaught

Phrase of the Day: «Nous sommes aussi de “sales Français”»

In response to the recent taunts of the ISIL -- or, to give it its French name, Daech -- urging beheadings of Westerners, and of “dirty Frenchmen” in particular (a call that was quickly acted upon, in Algeria), some Muslims in France have come up with a notable riposte: «Nous sommes aussi de “sales Français”»

Read about it here:

Un collectif de musulmans de France : «Nous sommes aussi de “sales Français”»

http://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/societe/2014/09/25/31003-

20140925ARTFIG00105-un-collectif-de-musulmans-de-france-nous-sommes-aussi-de-sales-francais.php

The text of the proclamation is reminiscent of the Gettysburg Address, as regards its sheer weight and sobriety:

Un de nos compatriotes, tombé entre les mains d'un groupe de barbares fanatisés, vient d'être assassiné et a rejoint ainsi la liste des otages qui ont servi d'exutoire au nom d'un prétendu islam dans lequel aucun de nous ne se reconnaît nullement. Nous musulmans de France, ne pouvons qu'exprimer notre répulsion et dénoncer avec la dernière énergie des crimes abominables perpétrés au nom d'une religion dont les fondements mêmes sont la paix, la miséricorde et le respect de la vie.

Nous dénions à ces êtres sauvages le droit de se revendiquer de l'islam et de s'exprimer en notre nom. Les supplices et la mort qu'ils ont infligés à nos frères chrétiens, yazidis ou musulmans, en Syrie, en Irak, au Nigeria et ailleurs, nous ont révulsés et nous ont rendus encore plus malheureux de ne pouvoir faire rien d'autre que d'exprimer notre solidarité et notre immense compassion.

Anyhow -- You all can read, you don’t need me to link to this stuff; so why post?  Because of a footnote, plutôt dans mon rayon, et peut-être pas dans le vôtre -- literary history.  To wit:  This phrasing echos that of the celebrated Le Monde editorial, immediately following 9/11: “Nous sommes tous Américains”.

http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2007/05/23/nous-sommes-tous-americains_913706_3232.html

That, in turn, echoes JFK’s  immortal “Ich bin ein Berliner”;  which in turn … which in turn …. culminating in:  “I’m Spartacus!” -- “I’m Spartacus!”

Footnote to the Francophonic footnote to "What to call the ISIL"

(Getting rather meta-meta here… Anyhow, the original footnote is here, and the original essay which that annotates is here.  The version below has been snarked-up.)

Bonjour les gars.   I do pay attention to the searchstrings which the Blogspot stats kindly provide, indicating how people find this site, and what are their particular interests.  This just in:

how do the french pronounce isil

Alas, our googler must have been disappointed, since the French don’t use the term ISIL (nor ISIS) at all.   The only acronym they use is EI, which stands for état islamique, ‘Islamic state’.

Now, you will notice a little wedgie-thingie atop that “é”.  It is called an acute accent, or accent aigu,  and it causes the bare letter “e” -- which, in French, by itself is often no more than a low groan, or even (as e muet) quite silent --  to sharpen boldly, to something like the English long-a as in able or acatalectic or acategorematic or … or… well, no doubt you can come up with other examples yourselves.  So by rights, the French should pronounce EI as something close to English “ay-ee”.  But instead, what they say -- callously ignoring that acute accent -- is a sort of barely articulated “euh ee”, as though the term referred, not to a berserker band of heads-choppers-offers, but to some senior-citizen auxiliary to the Icelandic Stamp-Collector’s Pacifist Society -- a sort of squashy squooshy sound, as though the speaker were mooshing a mouthful of brie.  Worse yet, when preceded by the definite article, the initial sound (such as it is) can get swallowed up (as though the cheese-wad had gone down the wrong way), leaving what sounds like a single letter, “le I”.

 

Frenchman, sucking on a piece of cheese

(depicted in yellow)

and accordingly incapable of properly enunciating

the vowels

The other acronym used at present is what is etymologically acronymic in Arabic, but which is not perceived as such in French, and which is transcribed Daech -- which, if these cheese-eaters had any sense at all of the language whose European study was so nobly pioneered by the great Silvestre De Sacy in the late 18^th century, 

 

The great man himself

would be pronounced disyllabically as   da-èche,  but which, in the mealy-mouth of President François Hollande (who is no scholar, let alone a gentleman), comes out bleating as a mere monosyllable,  dache.  (Les présentateurs de Medi1, plus compétents, arrivent bien à marquer le hiatus.)

O tempora, O ... well you know the rest.

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Pour d’autres friandises

de la confiserie 

du docteur Justice,

consultez:

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justice.html

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For additional, ultra-scientific guidance to orthoëpic etiquette, click here:

            How to pronounce “Boehner”

            Orthoëpy of ‘Monostich’

            The proper pronunciation of “Quinean”

~ The World of Dr Justice ~

~~ Science U Can Trust ™  ~~

Banned in France

We earlier reprinted the cover of a comic book parody, Banned in Belgium.  And you are all by now familiar with the French-condemned gesture of la quenelle.

Here is the latest forbidden image;  tweeting it in France  brought a hefty fine and a prison sentence to the satirist.

[Trigger Warning:  very very bad !!]

[Disclaimer:  If you lie within the long reach of French law, you are strictly forbidden from viewing this.]

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Bike-time for Bonzo

 

(That one gives a whole new meaning to the expression “dirty French postcards”.)

Some French observers objected to the harsh sentence handed down (though many bien-pensants objected that it was too lenient):

Alors que nombre d’hommes politiques se voient ridiculisés de la même manière par des dessins agressifs voire odieux (Le Pen, Sarkozy, et autrefois Mitterrand par exemple).

http://medias-presse.info/repression-policiere-les-meandres-europeens/15328

That objection, however, ignores the Fundamental Tenet of the French Legal System:

Un Poids -- Deux Mesures

(Translation:  Don’t you dare put the goose-sauce on that gander!)

Since, however, we ourselves are not subject to Gallic interdictions, we herewith reproduce some other pleasant depictions of our primate cousins astride a bike.

Appreciate your American freedoms, while they last.   In France, those could land you in jail.

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Si cela vous parle,

savourez la série noire

en argot authentique d’Amérique :

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justiceexcerptdivorce.html

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