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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
TinaS1
Published Letters: 780 Editor's Choice: 21
all the possibilities--for drama, for humor, for absurdity...and they came up with what?
none of the above.
part of the problem is the whole laziness of the creators. Last week, we saw the panel with the inner ear canal analogy, and in the next panel saw Kansas writing this page, with the picture of the ear included, into her diary.
This week, they have her diary, in which last week she supposedly wrote flat out "I am a spy", and they hold it up and ask, "are you a spy"?
Is this just a disconnect? Is it supposed to be funny?
We don't know. It's too carelessly put together.
Hate it. Kill it now.
Or next week, put her in the men's section of the prison (like, is that an option or something? The cop seems to feel a need to specify the women's section. If he doesn't, do they toss a gal into the guy's side? or what?), so she has to seduce her way out, Modesty Blaise style. Sticking the little pug-nosed dream into the slammer with the boys can't fail to be entertaining, no matter how badly it's done.
But I bet they'll find a way to make it...well, stupid and dull.
Dr. Cole is an old-school liberal meaning that everything, absolutely everything, that's wrong with the planet has to be the fault of the U.S. and Israel, the two most evil entities in the entire history of the whole universe.
America is worse, much worse, than the Nazis, Pol Pot, Stalin, and Idi Amin all rolled together. It's the inverse of American exceptionalism--instead of believing that America is somehow unusually noble and good, these people believe America is unusually murderous and immoral. There's no middle ground; no stating that America is just another powerful country that has behaved in exactly the same way as other powerful countries throughout history.
Look, there's about a billion things wrong with Pakistan that have nothing to do with America, not least is Pakistan's obscenely wealthy, utterly ruthless, corrupt feudal/industrial ruling class. Needless to say the 40% of the country whose children are malnourished do not like them very much.
And give a working class Pakistani a chance, and almost any of them would love to get an American visa, or a visa anywhere, just as long as its out of Pakistan. Is the fault of the U.S.?
Sure recent American policy towards Pakistan has been stupid and counterproductive, but so has Bush regime policy towards everybody.
But Bush didn't create Pakistan, he doesn't even have much to do with Pakistan's real, baseline problems, and saying the U.S. is responsible for all of Pakistan's miseries is playing right into the hands of the Islamic extremists, who say exactly the same thing.
You know, most of Pakistan's problems have to do with Pakistanis, even though that's a very unpopular thing to say. Bhuttos represent feudal landlords, Sharif is an industrialist (steel mills), Musharraf is the army. There are no other real contenders. The common people have nothing except the mullahs promising them something if they fight. Power, fuel, foodstuffs are all in short supply in Pakistan recently and very expensive. People are literally hungry.
Yes, this is all going to blow up in our faces very soon, but to say, like one of these letter writers did, that the CIA is somehow doing all this is patently ridiculous. This is isn't the U.S.'s fault. It's the fault of the Pakistani army which has never allowed any civilian government to stand, and sixty years of civilian politics run by medieval feudals who buy votes from their serfs with a chicken apiece. It's the fault of illiteracy, and a religious way of thinking that glorifies ignorance and the self-same feudals (who often hold some claim to sainthood or religious authority). It's the fault of the whole basis on which Pakistan was founded, an exclusionary state for India's most extremist Muslims who did not want to live with people of other religions. It's the fault of the excesses and atrocities of Partition.
It's the fault of a lot of things, but not the CIA or even America (although America's support of Zia is probably on the short list of things that were fatal for Pakistan). Grow up, people.
Pakistan has already had a popular cross-dresser talk show host, a young man who nettled the establishment by posing as the widow of an Army officer. Not sure if she's still one the air or not; they've tried to censor her a couple of times.
There have been a couple of BBC articles about it. You can check them out in their archives.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
