Letters to the Editor
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You just think you can.
Besides if you can't recognize an LWM post immediately then your not really trying ;-)
-- Paul Dirks
I was at the dentist today. I only posted as anonymous once before I left. It was that link to WingNutDaily. Asher Steinberg was being a putz. I didn't have time to find a really good YouTube of Christian Warrior kids' cartoons but they are out there.
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Preaching to the choir
Yeah, JKalos, I hear you. My favorite idiocy is Well, he just doesn't know how to do television. As you say, neither did Kant.
To those very savvy folks, I usually reply, Nu, you'd prefer Tim Russert, then? Because, bubbeleh, that's what you're gonna get. That's ALL you're gonna get.... Thin gruel by any standard.
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@Kovie
In regard to Obama not taking the debate I would refer you to this interesting piece from Electronic Intifada that I posted a little earlier
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6619.shtml
Here's an excerpt I find particularly appropriate since it was written last year, when Obama was still voting like a senator.
"If disappointing, given his historically close relations to Palestinian-Americans, Obama's about-face is not surprising. He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in power. Palestinian-Americans are in the same position as civil libertarians who watched with dismay as Obama voted to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act, or immigrant rights advocates who were horrified as he voted in favor of a Republican bill to authorize the construction of a 700-mile fence on the border with Mexico....
"...Only if enough people know what Obama and his competitors stand for, and organize to compel them to pay attention to their concerns can there be any hope of altering the disastrous course of US policy in the Middle East."
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Gator90
You appear to be saying, Glenn, that Palestinians are justified in murdering and maiming Israeli civilians, including inside Israel itself, due to your perception of the nature and history of Israel's occupation. Is that your position? (If I misunderstand you, I welcome correction.)
No, this isn't what I think. Violent actions in the context of war rarely fit snugly into two neat boxes -- "justified "or "not justified." It's almost always more morally ambiguous than that. No honest discussion of, or questions about, the Israel/Palestinian conflict is possible if one excludes the Israeli occupation of their land from the question (just as no honest discussion is possible if one excludes Palestenian attacks on Israeli civilians). One can usually recognize morally blind partisans on either side by the exclusion of one of those factors.
In the moral calculus, the nature of Palestinian attacks against Israel change if Israel is occupying their land and if they're not. If they're not, then such attacks are without any justification whatsoever. That isn't the case if there is an occupation. That doesn't mean it's "justified," but it's also not without any justification whatsoever. If you're looking for some two-dimensional answer, I can't help you.
If you have trouble understanding the point, just imagine if a foreign army tomorrow invaded and then occupied the U.S. and proceeded to do so for the next 35 years -- controlling travel, commerce and pretty much every other aspect of our national life. Would you morally assess the propriety of attacks on that country in the same way under those circumstances as you would in the absence of any such occupation?
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Now that I think of it
Andres Serrano
YouTube wasn't around then and Video cams were still rare. I bet there were plenty of wingnuts who wanted to kill Serrano.
This cracks me up. Who here hasn't seen Sister Wendy on PBS? I lover her shows.
The piece caused a scandal when it was exhibited in 1989, with detractors, including United States Senators Al D'Amato and Jesse Helms, outraged that Serrano received $15,000 from of the taxpayer-funded National Endowment for the Arts for the work...
Sister Wendy Beckett, an art critic and Catholic nun, voiced her approval of Piss Christ. She explained in a television interview with Bill Moyers that she regarded the work as a statement on "what we have done to Christ" - that is, the way contemporary society has come to regard Christ and the values he represents.
That's one cool nun. I bet she'd grab those wingnuts, Alfonse and Jesse, by the ears and rap their knuckles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ
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The Most Wanted List: International Terrorism
by Noam Chomsky
On February 13, Imad Moughniyeh, a senior commander of Hizbollah, was assassinated in Damascus. “The world is a better place without this man in it,” State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said: “one way or the other he was brought to justice.” Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell added that Moughniyeh has been “responsible for more deaths of Americans and Israelis than any other terrorist with the exception of Osama bin Laden.”
Joy was unconstrained in Israel too, as “one of the U.S. and Israel’s most wanted men” was brought to justice, the London Financial Times reported. Under the heading, “A militant wanted the world over,” an accompanying story reported that he was “superseded on the most-wanted list by Osama bin Laden” after 9/11 and so ranked only second among “the most wanted militants in the world.”
The terminology is accurate enough, according to the rules of Anglo-American discourse, which defines “the world” as the political class in Washington and London (and whoever happens to agree with them on specific matters). It is common, for example, to read that “the world” fully supported George Bush when he ordered the bombing of Afghanistan. That may be true of “the world,” but hardly of the world, as revealed in an international Gallup Poll after the bombing was announced. Global support was slight. In Latin America, which has some experience with U.S. behavior, support ranged from 2% in Mexico to 16% in Panama, and that support was conditional upon the culprits being identified (they still weren’t eight months later, the FBI reported), and civilian targets being spared (they were attacked at once). There was an overwhelming preference in the world for diplomatic/judicial measures, rejected out of hand by “the world.”
Following the Terror Trail
In the present case, if “the world” were extended to the world, we might find some other candidates for the honor of most hated arch-criminal. It is instructive to ask why this might be true.
The Financial Times reports that most of the charges against Moughniyeh are unsubstantiated, but “one of the very few times when his involvement can be ascertained with certainty [is in] the hijacking of a TWA plane in 1985 in which a U.S. Navy diver was killed.” This was one of two terrorist atrocities that led a poll of newspaper editors to select terrorism in the Middle East as the top story of 1985; the other was the hijacking of the passenger liner Achille Lauro, in which a crippled American, Leon Klinghoffer, was brutally murdered. That reflects the judgment of “the world.” It may be that the world saw matters somewhat differently.
more: much more at:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/27/7322/
One of his best; current; and on topic with Glenn's post today.