P.B.S. = Predictable Bullshit

Tragic how neo-fascist thinking has poisoned every corner of America.

Tragic. But on the whole, not surprising.

From Kamiya's piece:

"But Manji's attitude toward her religion seems so perversely critical that it's hard to believe she really believes either in Islam or any institutional religion at all."

to:

"But MoveOn's attitude towards its country seems so perversely criticial that it's hard to believe they really believe either in America or have any patriotic feeling at all."

and you see how specious it is. To criticize something, even harshly, is to hate it? This is the same rhetorical bull the far right is playing with those of us who oppose the war.

Okay, so Tomlinson had to quit. But as with the DOJ, the EPA and any number of other entities in the alphabet soup of government, the question is how many ideologues the administration was able to sneak into the CPB under the radar, functionaries who are left making decisions that favor the neocon agenda and driving into disgusted retirement the people who made the instutition what it was -- and what it was meant to be -- from the beginning.

And it don't rain in Indianapolis in the summertime.

The main stream media, which indubitably include PBS among thier number, has made 21 films which suffer from the flaws of the main stream media: intellectual flacidity coupled with crippled, superficial, manipulative propaganda instead of desperately needed information and insight. Nonetheless, the series is being given significant play because Bush cronies infiltrated and perverted the institutions that are responsible for its production.

Quelle surprise!

Bravo to Salon for unveiling this wretched spectacle. But I cannot say that anyone who has been paying attention should be surprised...

Forget PBS and watch Lawrence of Arabia with Peter O'toole. That is all I needed to know about the middle east and understand why we do not mess with it. Too bad Bush and his idiots were too stupid to look back in history and learn from mistakes. I am not a historian, but I know enough that when he talked of Iraq, I knew it was doomed from the start. Pride, tribal territories and historic repression all make for a strong and unbending culture.

that's what his article threatens. she is VERY careful to say she's not an apostate - why? she's received death threats, REAL death threats, not troll slime. she's a lesbian and not completely critical of israel (READ her "far out" article, link on pg 2 of kamiya's (i'll copy it at the end, it's long). here's what kamiya says, "But Manji's attitude toward her religion seems so perversely critical that it's hard to believe she really believes either in Islam or any institutional religion at all. Her attacks on Islam seem oddly gratuitous. As an atheist, I can't argue with what seems to be her corrosive view of religion." that's enough have her sentenced to death. read about her in wiki. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irshad_Manji what kamiya would evidently like is for israel (read "jews") be crushed. why else would anyone say, "The intellectual father of this position is the eminent Princeton Arabist Bernard Lewis, and some of its prominent advocates include Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol and (with some differences) Thomas Friedman." EVERYONE jewish. NO MENTION OF ANYONE WITH REAL POWER! NO BUSH! NO CHENEY! NO CHRISTIAN RIGHT! and the inciting paragraph just before, "On the one hand, there are the "essentialists," who argue that Arab/Muslim rage against the West is pathological and peculiar to Islam. It is driven not by real political grievances, which they see as trumped up, but by humiliation at the failure of Islam to keep up with the West, the sickness of Arab civil society, a festering hatred of Western liberalism, democracy and secularism, and the desire to establish a universal Muslim state throughout the world, one that would surpass the glorious days of the Caliphate. Islamist terrorism is simply evil, full stop, and must be destroyed. Any attempts to ameliorate it by political or economic moves are naive at best and appeasement at worst."

manji's not so critical article about the wall, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/18/opinion/18manji.html?ex=1300338000&en=5bcee9d86aa4e6c5&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

Your analogy is flawed. Kamiya's sentence isn't specious at all. He doesn't imply that she hates Islam, just that she's upset at its conservatism. Wondering how she could believe in the dogma of any institutionalized religion is reasonable given her issues with her own. She seems to want Islam to be something it never has been before, something that it unlikely ever will be. User feedback generally isn't part of determining the core "truths" of a religion. Certainly not when the original instruction manual is considered too holy to update.

However your new sentence certainly is specious. I'm not saying it hasn't been uttered/typed/spewed, just that it's loathsome and flat out wrong. Moveon's members' statements are less critical of their country than of those who are running the country and the actions they are taking. Moveon's members seem to want America to be something it was before, at least in some ways, and something that it definitely could be in the future, because they will help determine that future. Strangely, in our disheveled democratic republic, user feedback is a big part of determining what America is and what it should be.

In 2002 (I believe), British documentarian Adam Curtis produced a three hour series titled THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES. It is available for viewing in Quicktime format at Archive.org (http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares). While covering much of the same material on Al Qaeda as Sunday night's PBS program, it adds depth by exploring the parallel development of the NeoCons in the US. It is definitely worth watching if you have a broadband internet connection.

Dear Gary,

I think that your comments on Irshad Manji are dead on. I've had a lot more exposure to Ms. Manji here in Canada, and her personal experiences have - not surprisingly - coloured her perception of Islam to an irreparable degree. The best analogy I can think of is think of a lapsed Catholic, someone who was abused by a priest or a nun, and whose hostility towards the Church is irrevocable and irrational. This hostility may be understandable, but it is also impossible to argue against.

I read Ms. Manji's piece in the NYT that you referenced, and I must say that I was appalled. Certainly, her point about the purpose of the wall is valid, but her absolute failure to address the fact that Israel built the separation wall all over the Occupied Territories, taking yet more Palestinian land, is incomprehensible. When it comes to the wall, very few people would object to it if Israel had only built the thing within its own internationally-recognized borders. Given that Israel's insistence on building settlements in the OT is -arguably - the single largest obstacle to peace between the Palestinians and Israelis, Manji's failure to address this obvious point is unconscionable.

Re: the larger point of your article, I'm sorry to hear that "America at the Crossroads" has so little to say about the history of the Middle East in the 20th century. Quite frankly, anyone with even a passing familiarity with the destructive meddling of the Western powers in the region will begin to develop an understanding of where Islamic/Arab antipathy is coming from. I wonder how many Americans know that the Zionist movement was trying to displace Palestinians from Palestine long before the Holocaust, or even that Palestine was occupied land long before the Zionists appeared on the scene? How many Americans know about their country's role in overthrowing the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953, or how the Shah maintained control over his population, with the support of the US? How many know that Saudi Arabia was a creation of the West and that the map of the region was redrawn to satisfy British and French colonial interests after WWI? The failure to talk about Western history in the region is a failure to talk about the problem of terrorism at all.

Sincerely,

Shaun Narine