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January 27, 2005

Peace Profesor Embedded With Terrorists [Say Anything]

Like many colleagues at Colgate, Victoria Fontan is spending her time between semesters hard at work. For the visiting assistant professor of peace studies, that means trekking halfway around the world and potentially putting herself in harm’s way.
Fontan set out for Iraq at the end of December to study and to interview members of the country’s insurgent organizations. On the way to Baghdad, she conducted research in Beirut and Jordan before negotiating to be “embedded” in one of Iraq’s resistance groups.

Fontan’s academic focus is on political violence in post-conflict situations, and she has conducted field research on the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Basque nationalist group ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna), and various warring factions in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.

During the past 15 months, she has taken several trips to Baghdad and is preparing a book on the polarization between the occupying forces and the people of Iraq. She also is gathering information for her Introduction to Peace Studies course.

Hey, maybe she'll come back with damning stories about how the terrorists use children to shield themselves. Maybe she'll fill us all in on the "insurgents" desire to indoctrinate the world in radical Islam and their willingness to cut the head of anyone who gets in the way. Maybe she'll give is in-depth coverage of Zarqawi and Osama and their struggle against the spread of democracy.

But somehow I doubt it. Something tells me this professor of "peace studies," whatever that is, will probably regale us with stories of our oppressive soldiers and the terrible things they've done to the Iraqi people while managing to leave out the fact that Iraq is moving toward its first free election and now has more running water, operating hospitals and running electricity than it ever did under Saddam Hussein.

Which, to me, would classify this woman a traitor to her country during a time of war. Not that we could ever prosecute her for such a thing. These days "rooting for the enemy" is defined as "political dissent."

(via Wizbang)

[Cross-posted at Say Anything]

posted by Ace at 11:30 AM

Comments

Gee, I hope nothing happens to her.
/sarcasm

Posted by: John from WuzzaDem on January 27, 2005 11:56 AM

Victoria Fontan, professor of "Peace Studies" at Colgate? Liberals just keep getting worse and worse and will continue to as long as we do nothing. We must stop them and the only tool we have is to boycott their livelihoods the same way the Left has boycotted the silent majority into submission.

THE RIGHT MUST BOYCOTT!!!

Posted by: 72VIRGINS on January 27, 2005 01:06 PM

If only our grandparents had been enlightened enough to embed journalists with the Nazis.

Posted by: TallDave on January 27, 2005 01:46 PM

No, this is just a refresher course for the indoctination she has already been through.
University liberal thought where failed idear's are memorized.

Posted by: Screaming Eagle on January 27, 2005 02:15 PM

Peace Studies.

Here's another reason that liberalism is failing and has become the home of lazy crackpots.

Posted by: lauraw on January 27, 2005 02:58 PM

We can only hope her last interview is with a bulldozer.

Posted by: ccwbass on January 27, 2005 03:17 PM

It seems my alma mater has gone downhill in the past few years. We had the peaceniks in the 1980's, of course, and even a Ralph Bunche House. We sure as hell didn't have a "Peace Studies" program, though.

Oh well, guess there won't be a 4th generation of my family at Colgate, at least not until they correct the present case of recto-cranial inversion.

Posted by: Captain Ned on January 27, 2005 03:20 PM

Captain Ned,
I urge you to make your intentions known to the administration of Colgate. I am dead serious when I say that the only way to stop Liberal insanity like this is to boycott. Consider this: precisely what is it that companies fear so much from Liberals? Protests? So, what? Bad publicity? Who cares? Boycott? Whoa, what'll it take to make 'em go away?

THE RIGHT MUST BOYCOTT!!!

Posted by: 72VIRGINS on January 27, 2005 05:59 PM

Captain Ned,

As a fellow alum (class of '86), I can sympathize. The looney left and limo libs of 80's Colgate helped make me the conservative I am today.

That assumes that she does come back. What makes her think that some extremist Muslims will accept an American woman. If they don't kill her outright, they could use her. I can see it now. "You want to see how we work? Fine. Put on this special coat and stand by the police station. We'll keep in contact with you using the special 'radio' that's part of the jacket. What? Oh, don't worry. You'll be able to see what happens just fine."

Posted by: mutantman on January 27, 2005 09:21 PM

Actually the way the "insurgents" have mastered the use of their United States public relations organization (Also known as the MSM) I wouldn't doubt that they're smart enough to put together a special team just for her visit. They'll be really nice, show her all the things and people the "Ugly Americans" have done wrong, all of their own humanitarian efforts and then share a little herbal tea together before they send her home. And neither she nor the rest of her ilk have the depth to know that they've been had.

Posted by: Chuck on January 27, 2005 10:34 PM

I would really like to see the expression on her face when she is captured by our troops during an engagement with the terrorists. I could see it now, "I'm an embedded reporter with the Iraq resistance group and protected by the Geneva Convention!" Yea right, send her to Abu Ghraib so that she would have something to write on what is like to be an inmate at a military prison in Iraq!

Posted by: Mike D on January 28, 2005 01:54 PM

Please see www.sa4c.com for more information about Victoria Fontan at Colgate University and the school's leftward lurch to political correctness.

Posted by: warrior on January 31, 2005 01:19 PM

For all you Colgate alums: we are starting a conservative student paper on campus called The Colgate Review. If you're interested in our first issue, or our paper in general, get in touch with us at thereview@mail.colgate.edu for more information.

-Executive Editor

Posted by: The Colgate Review on February 16, 2005 10:56 PM

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Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*

Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
The Gascon nobleman inspired Alexandre Dumas's hero in "The Three Musketeers" in the 19th century, a character now known worldwide thanks to the novel and numerous film adaptations.
D'Artagnan was killed during the siege of Maastricht in 1673, and there is a statue honoring the musketeer in the city. His final resting place has remained a mystery ever since.

A lot of Dumas's stories are based on bits of real history. The plot of the >Three Musketeers, about trying to recover lost diamonds from the queen's necklace, was cribbed from the then-almost-contemporaneous Affair of the Queen's Necklace. And the Man in the Iron Mask is based on real accounts of a prisoner forced to wear a mask (though I think it was a velvet mask).
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A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR?
Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR.
Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
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The Hobbit Challenge: Read two more chapters. I didn't have much time. Bilbo got the ring.
I noticed a continuity problem. Maybe. Now, as of the time of The Hobbit, it was unknown that this magic ring was in fact a Ring of Power, and it was doubly unknown that it was the Ring of Power, the Master Ring that controlled the others.
But the narrator -- who we will learn in LOTR was none of than Bilbo himself, who wrote the book as "There and Back Again" -- says this about Gollum's ring:
"But who knows how Gollum had come by that present [the Ring], ages ago in the old days when such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said."
In another passage, the ring is identified as a "ring of power."
I don't know, I always thought there was a distinction between mere magic rings and the Rings of Power created by Sauron. But this suggests that Bilbo knew this was a ring of power created by Sauron.
Now I don't remember when Bilbo wrote the Hobbit. In the movie, he shows Frodo the book in Rivendell, and I guess he wrote it after he left the Shire. I guess he might have added in the part about the ring being a ring of power created by "the Master" after Gandalf appraised him of his research into the ring.
I never noticed this before. I know Tolkien re-wrote this chapter while he was writing LOTR to make the ring important from the start. And also to make Gollum more sinister and evil, and also to remove the part where Gollum actually offers Bilbo the ring as a "present" -- Bilbo had already found it on his own, but Gollum was wiling to give it away, which obviously is not something the rewritten Gollum would ever do.
But I had no memory of the ring being suggested to be The Ring so early in the tale.

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