A combination of physiology and Real Life have taken over Helena’s brain and ability to blog today. I was going to post an open thread so y’all could post comments about Iraq (like Yankeedoodle used to before he brought in Matt and friendly Fire as his excellent ‘guest writers’.)
But then I moseyed (?sp) over to Riverbend’s blog and just loved this post on Iraqis’ new exposure to US Big Media:
- The first time I saw 60 Minutes on MBC 4, it didn
Instead of regular Bush supporters, I would like to see Blizer, O’Reilly, Jennings, Brokaw, Rather, Brown, Judith Miller, and a few other big-name media types who were all pro-war and failed to uncover the real story *before* *during* and *after* the war…….. and that continues to this day.
I would pay money to see that one!
oh, and Thomas Friedman, and all those other “humanitarian” hawks out there!
Let them live in a “humanitarian” war zone!
Aaron Brown once said to me (via email) that all I see is black and white, while he sees shades of gray. But he never could define those “shades of gray” around 9/11. (of course, the skyline does look better, but what a price!!!!) He also said (after I forwarded something by riverbend to him)that maybe she will be able to make “lemonade out of the lemons” that events served up.
I never understood how you can make lemonade out of bombs and bullets, but then I don’t understand how you can deliver democracy by bombs or bullets either, unless you are talking about the democracy of death.
I’d like to see them all.
I’d even turn on the tv for it.
anona – us of a
Indeed. The US media is so sanitized and disinfected that the public doesn’t see who the enemy is, what they say, what their religious leaders preach, and the common thread of what they do. I wish every American watched Al-Jazeera instead.
A similar disconnect exists at the two big religions, one is occupied by irrelevant one-off cases of pedophilia, euthanasia, and the ceremonial minutia of Pope replacement, while the other is actively involved in political evangelism and the mass production of suicide bombers.
E. Bilpe
Bilpe, this time you really have outdone yourself, with your blasé public articulation of a piece of grossly stereotyping, Islamophobic hate-speech.
All of Islam, you aver, is “actively involved in … the mass production of suicide bombers”?
I’ll give you few hours to find a way to retract/rephrase your comment and apologise to the community of JWN readers.
(Your comment was also extremely dismissive of the grievous harms suffered by many thousands of people, primarily Catholics in the US and eslewhere, as a result of pedophilic behavior by ordained priests and ministers; and of the broader wounds this whole issue has caused within many, many church communities. “One-off” and “irrelevant” by no means aptly describe the state of this issue in the churches.)
“I wish every American watched Al-Jazeera instead.”
Do YOU watch Al Jazeera, Bilpe?
I second Shirin’s question. When do you last watch Al Jazeera, Bilpe?
The last time I saw you, Bilpe, you were interrupting a conversation to insist that we all drop what we were doing to join you in a discussion of how the murder of a Coptic immigrant family in New Jersey proved just how irredeemable Islam really is. It has since turned out that that murder had nothing to do with Muslims. You don’t seem to learn from experience.
Friends, don’t wait around for Bilpe to respond. Yesterday he finally forfeited his right of access to my bandwidth.
Note to the reader – running statistic – in my 11 posts here, twice my IP address has been blacklisted without due explanation, 7 posts have been censored because Helena disagreed with the contents, and 4 posts have been allowed. This post is a repeat of deleted material.
Tony – This has got to be the funniest, most eager nonsense I’ve read since Juan Cole’s famous “transcendent nationalism” in reference to Muqtada’s ill-fated and ill-conceived campaign back in 2003 (see his remarkably silly Le Monde Diplomatique piece at the time). You’ve just repeated that laughable line. Please get over yourself and your ideological premises (and all the [arab] nationalist mixed with Third Worldist undertones). It’s quite the silly spectacle.
Beautifully said Tony.
The problem that the nihilists and leftist-fascists have in their analysis of Iraq is that they deny that Iraqis (and by extension human beings) have aspirations besides power grabbing, ideological and opportunistic ruling on others, and cheap false nationalism (nationalism is better described as social egotism).
For Helena, Iraqis or the socially conscious layers of their society have no desire to bring about civil society and inter-sectarian justice. History is simplisticially reduced down to grab for oil, cheap nationalism, anti-Americanism, and 3rd worldism.
The progress the Iraqis are making in bringing about civil society must be condemened by the Cole-Cobban axis, as it eats away right at their ideological upbringing and biases, and also livelihoods and Entitle VIs. If there are no blood conflicts in Iraq, then who needs these “scholars”?
For them, a thug carrying an AK-47 is a far more romantic and vivid expression of social justice, than all the liberties, elections, parliaments, constitutions, laws and institutions that an Iraqi civil society may ever achieve or require.
Unlike what the piece implies, inter-sectarian political rivalries, in a civil setting, is the only way for Iraqis to reckon with their identity. This sad piece reflects – as us middle easterners like to say – “the camel who dreams of cotton seeds”. A lot of wishful thinking about religious, fascist, and opportunistic thugs to come together and rule over the civil and conscious segments of Iraqi society.
Iraqis have made a conscious choice through their participation in the election that they prefer construction of a civil society over cheap cries of “gut independence”.
Posted by Razavipour3 at 10. apr