In the midst of a rambling blog post arguing that a large terrorist attack on American soil before November “puts Trump in the White House for certain,” former Twitter activist Andrea Hardie makes a rather startling pronouncement: She would support nuking Mecca if she thought it would be an “effective” way to strike a blow against Islam.
No, really:
I don’t think Trump will nuke Mecca or anywhere else, for the simple reason that it won’t be effective. Nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved millions of lives and ended the war decisively, because it brought Japan to its knees. Nuking Mecca won’t bring the Islamic world to its knees – quite the opposite. Trump isn’t going to do it for that reason. If nuking Mecca stood a chance of being effective, I’d be fully in support of the measure.
Emphasis mine.
In addition to being the birthplace of Muhammad and the most sacred city for the world’s 1.57 billion Muslims, Mecca is home to roughly two million residents, and the number of people in the city “more than triple[s] every year during the hajj (“pilgrimage”) period,” as Wikipedia notes.
In other words, Ms. Hardie, better known on the Internet under her pseudonyms Janet Bloomfield and JudgyBitch, would support the murder of as many as six million people of a particular religious persuasion if she thought it would be an effective way to rid the world of that religion.
Six million, where have I heard that number before?
Despite being permabanned from Twitter, Hardie is still listed on A Voice for Men as the site’s “Director [of] Social Media,” and she was one of the speakers at last month’s International Conference on Men’s Issues in London, organized by AVFM and Mike Buchanan of the UK’s spectacularly unsuccessful Justice for Men and Boys party.
I’m not quite sure how murdering three million Muslim men and boys — in addition to another three million women and girls — would enhance the rights of men, or boys, or anyone.
@Virgin Mary: The thought of these yokels thinking “Jewish” means “kind of like a Jew, but not really” is unreasonably funny to me.
“I mean I don’t go to Synagogue, but I like a bagel once in a while. I guess I’m sort of Jew-ish.”
@Virgin Mary:
@leftwingfox:
Hah! Thanks for that, it made me giggle for longer than is reasonable.
For Virgin Mary and admirers of Soviet space technology generally.
A love letter to the finest chemically powered space vehicle ever conceived.
Louis Armstrong must be rolling in his grave about this thread.
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/youtube.png
@Moggie: Er… I think you mean Neil Armstrong. Not that I think Satchmo would be any happier about it.
That’s the joke.
@Alan:
And the lowest birthrate. (Zero.)
@Sinkable John:
Congratulations, young-un.
@Pavlov’s House:
I vaguely recall watching that on TV when it happened. (Yes, when I said young-un earlier, I meant it.) A major feat of international co-operation at the time, not to mention a major feat of logistics. Getting two pieces of equipment launched from different locations to actually connect in orbit is not easy, even if you can do course corrections in orbit. It may look less impressive than landing on the moon, but I don’t think it was easier.
Regarding the ‘hoax’:
Has anybody else here read Daryl Cunningham’s ‘How to Fake a Moon Landing’?
D’oh! I’m sorry.
Still, any excuse to listen to Louis Armstrong is a good one…
@Virgin Mary:
Correct! I’ve occasionally wasted time trying to explain to those who want to ‘critique’ political correctness that it would be more effective to do so without falling back on an antisemitic conspiracy theory like ‘Cultural Marxism’ but it’s to no avail.
Their claim that ‘that was then, this is now’ (i.e. ‘we’re not like that anymore!’) sounds hollow, considering how many still prefer their ‘Cultural Marxism’ undiluted, that is with a strong dose of the ‘evil Jewses’.
No doubt many of Israel’s most ardent supporters are dyed in the wool racists, often deeply antisemitic. The state of Israel doesn’t seem to be bothered one iota by this kind of support though.
@moggie:
That’s hilarious, that toon! Nicked! 🙂
“shitferbrains”!
@EJ (The Other One):
Also referred to as Arabia or teh Muzzies, teh Mohammedins etc.
@alan
Cool. That has led me on to look at the Buran shuttle. It’s a shame these never saw active use.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)
Seems like they would have actually improved on the U.S. designed space shuttle, rather like Tupelov was an improvement on Concorde (having canards allowed it to manoeuvre better at sub sonic speeds)
Sinkable John – Happy birthday, ya Pansy Ass Pinko!
As a 56 year old American housewife, you really impress me because when I was 24, I was a party girl who just did my gig in the USAF in my spare time. It took roughly 20 more years to mature myself to the level of thoughtfulness you display today. You really gave me something to think about in that last comment thread and I left a response, so thanks!
Mazel Tov!
@ Virgin Mary
Yeah it’s a real shame about the Buran. A very undignified ending for a beautiful piece of kit. It was by far superior to the shuttle and genuinely parallel development. In fact, when its similarly to the shuttle became apparent the Sovet govt and the designers weren’t very happy about it as they knew everyone would assume they’d just copied.
The Tupolev was a bit of a rip-off (albeit an improvement). There was one poor chap whose job was to paint fake tyre marks on the runway as they knew the KGB were taking samples to try to copy the tyre formulation. I’d like to see that in a James Bond movie.
@alan
I’m not sure about the Tupelov 144 being a rip off of Concorde, it was more likely to have been the other way round, as the first prototypes flew in 1968. They sure went to great lengths to destroy the prototype at the 1977 Paris air show, to prevent it going into service as a passenger aircraft. NASA seem a fan tho.
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/news/FactSheets/FS-062-DFRC.html
@ Virgin Mary
The russkies may have got their prototype into the air first (by 2 months) but Concorde was definitely the earlier concept. The design dates back a really long time. It was adapted from the Avro 730 which itself was intended as a replacement for the Vulcan (hence the similarities).
Unfortunately they never got round to building a flying 730 (the V bomber concept was pushed onto the back burner in preference for Polaris) but this model kit seems reasonably accurate based on the drawings.
http://www.fantastic-plastic.com/Avro730-V2-Starboard.jpg
Of course we abandoned some other great concepts like HOTOL and various other hypersonic planes; which ironically they’re now dusting the plans off again.
The Buran has to at least have been designed to similar/identical specifications as the Shuttle, which is weird as hell. You don’t casually decide your spaceship is going to have that large a bay and 1000 mile cross-range capability. That’s very specific to the less publicized mission for the Shuttle in case of interestingness of launching from Vandenberg, getting to orbit, snagging a satellite and getting back down to Vandenberg without completing an orbit. This the wings and large boxy bay, which did horrid things to its efficiency as a launch platform.
@pavlov’s house
It’s interesting, I’ve seen this fetishisation of girls from the former USSR first hand, as a friend of mine was ‘catfished’ by a Romanian woman he met on facebook. Since the break up of the USSR, a lot of these countries have backslidden, and average literacy for women has become very low. There is a lot of alcoholism as well, plus cyber crime. (Especially dating scams)
The history of women’s rights in Russia is complicated, because originally Lenin and Trotsky wanted equal rights for both women and homosexuals, but Stalin unfortunately took this away, and also banned abortion. Marx wrote about ‘coercion’ within the family, and the way women were used as unpaid slaves, plus as the progenitors of the next wave of workers. Trotsky encouraged women to become politically involved and educated in the class struggle, also run women’s communist groups and write articles for Pravda to tell of their struggle. There were a lot of women in the Red Army, who were particularly skillful snipers, and Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space in 1963. However, women’s skills in the home were more lauded than their skill in STEM positions, and certain jobs were banned due to possible risks to women’s reproductive systems, including both military and industrial work.
@ xthetenth
That’s exactly the mission profile the Buran was designed to replicate.
The Russian military got highly suspicious when the preliminary shuttle specs were announced. They couldn’t see any civilian uses that needed that configuration so decided it must have been intended for military use. So the Buran had to fulfill the same criteria. Wind tunnel tests showed that once you’d committed to the large cargo bay you were pretty much stuck with that shape.
One thing the Buran test vehicles could do though was this, which is highly cool (who needs a 747?)
This one is pretty funny.
There seems to be Anime Commies too.
http://media.moddb.com/images/groups/1/5/4702/10985868_896390523717360_7359667383173550181_n.jpg
Re: JB’s ‘thoughts’
This is conservatism in a nutshell: every solution they can offer is not just morally wrong, but also unworkable.
@Virgin Mary
And I’ve seen threads on conspiracy sites go on and on about how the Jews are making everyone sterile with chemtrails and water fluoridation is a Soviet mind-control plot. My best advice to you is to not go to those sites anymore, or at any rate not to take their claims any more seriously than the crap MRA trolls spout. Also, I’m going to let you in on a little secret: When David Icke talks about ‘lizard people’, he means Jews. Practically every conspiracy in the Western Hemisphere ends up being about the Jews when you dig a bit. It’s pretty pathetic actually.
Sounds like both probably influenced S.M. Stirling’s Emberverse novels (Steven Boyett’s Ariel is also a part of this heritage), which y’all might enjoy. The premise is pretty similar: On March 17, 1998, at 18:15 Pacific Standard Time, every technology that relied on electricity or combustion (simple fire excluded) simply stopped working. There’s now a dozen doorstopper novels which have carried the narrative three generations past the original event, with new nations and societies forming, wars, peace, etc. Most of the action is centered around Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, but there are epic treks across the continent, sea voyages, and all manner of cool stuff. There are some problematic bits, and some CNs for references to sexual violence (and all sorts of ‘on screen’ violence of course), and Stirling indulges in his taste for villains who are a touch too overdone for proper verisimilitude, but overall I’d definitely recommend them.
@Virgin Mary,
Wow, I hadn’t seen that Anime graphic before. What’s it supposed to mean? One could read it as sarcasm intended to make the points of Soviet Nostalgia…or just a pro-Russian-women statement trying to convey that post-Soviet Russia does even less than the USSR did for women.
The most important perspective on Russian women for me personally are those of the lived experience of the particular Russian woman in my life, my brilliant and beloved (and smoking hot) Mrs. Pavlov’s House. She’s only one person and I have no wish to essentialize her but, you know, feminism is about women’s voices and I sure love hearing hers. She’s told me much about the awful institutional sexism of the Soviet system…she came to this country willingly, made a life and has been a US citizen for a long time but even she speaks with pride of some old Russian and Soviet accomplishments.
Mrs. Pavlov’s House was a Soviet Army nurse long long ago….our chronological calculations revealed that our much younger selves we just missed facing each other literally across Cold War lines (my own active duty time in the US Army was on the very tail end of the Cold War)
>attempt to make important point about radio data
>accidentally call Neil Armstrong “Lance Armstrong”
GOD DAMNIT
@Virgin Mary:
That character looks a lot like Mio from K-On. Who… well, if you accept that the original four girls are supposed to be Beatles expys, is the Paul McCartney analogue. Business-like, always wanting the rest of them to practice more, and tends to write silly love songs. Seems an odd one to use for a communist poster.
Regarding the Buran:
I once attended a talk by Dr. Georgi Grechko, a cosmonaut who held the human endurance in space record for a while, and later worked for the aerospace agency. He had some interesting comments on Buran. In that amazingly dry Russian humor, he said, “I will never understand the thinking of those who designed the Buran, the Soviet shuttle. When the Americans built their shuttle, they thought it would be the most efficient way of getting into space. When we built ours, we already knew it wasn’t.”
My understanding is that at least part of it comes from their having been two different space agencies in Russia at the time, one answering to the military and one answering directly to the party in government. The two had their rivalries.