by Patrick Lang
“Hamas extended big local election gains from the fractured ruling Fatah party Friday, buoying the group ahead of a Palestinian parliamentary election next month. Israel said that if Hamas achieved political dominance it would spell an end to all hopes for peace talks.”
“Preliminary results issued Friday by the electoral commission showed Hamas won control of the West Bank city of Jenin, taking more than half of the council seats after Thursday’s vote. Hamas overwhelmed Fatah in the northern West Bank city of Nablus, capturing 73 percent of the vote and 13 of 15 council seats. The other two seats went to a coalition of Fatah and independent candidates. Hamas won eight of 15 seats in the West Bank town of Jenin. Hamas also won 72 percent of the vote in Al-Bireh, a large suburb of Ramallah.” Beirut Daily Star
Stephen King, in his apocalyptic novel “The Stand” makes repeated references to the “Beast” coming slowly out of the west.
We are in the presence of another “beast” this one coming out of the East. The “beast” is Islamist government and it is approaching assumption of power assisted by the misguided policies and judgments of the Bush Administration.
Islamist movements, political parties and enthusiasts all have two things in common. One is a determination to install the nightmare of medieval and anti-humanist Sharia law government wherever they can, and the other is un-remitting hostility to the United States as the leader of what the Islamists see as the anti-Islamic and heathen West. Any person knowledgeable of the nature of such movements knows that this is true. Muslims know that it is true. The Bush Administration does not seem to grasp this simple truth.
Instead, the Bush people assure us that the principle problem in the Islamic World is a lack of constitutional democracy and that fair elections and the rule of law will bring forth the “better angels” of peoples’ natures and that having been released from the grasp of dictatorial republican or monarchical rule, the Muslim peoples wil become Western in attitude and abjure support for Islamist Jihadis who wish to attack the United States. Presumably these “evolved” and “new” Muslims would also no longer desire to eliminate Israel as a factor in the world. The conjunction of the Bush view of this and the Israeli view is not a coincidence.
What do we see in the world? … Below, a rundown on the state of politics in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Egypt, Palestine, and Iraq …
- In Lebanon, the “Gucci Revolution” has resulted in a re-distribution and re-confirmation of the roles and power of the existing power structure. The only exception to that is the marked increase in the power and political weight of Hizballah, the Shia surrogate of Iran in Lebanese politics and militia muscle flexing.
- Syria has now looked at the menace of French and American power and decided that there is less there than it had earlier feared. In particular, the UN “Mehlis Report” concerning responsibility for the death of Rafik Hariri has been revealed to be unsubstantiated, ambiguous, vague and dubiously sourced. Syria judges its adversaries incapable of bringing down the Assad government through street action and agitation. It also sees that the Bush Administration has not yet “imagined” a substitute government and hesitates. The Bush Administration has also begun to worry about the possibility of a successor government in Syria being an Islamist government. The House neocons who agitated for the Syria Accountability Act have lost the ability to do anything but write creatively.
- Iran is the major Middle Eastern power about which the neocons have assured us for several years now that pro-American and anti-Mullah sentiment has been so prevalent that a “Youth Revolution” (not enough Gucci types there) was about to sweep the theocracy from power and that the new Iran (Shia and therefore beloved of the neocons) would serve as the “earthquake” that would make the “tsunami” of modernism sweep the region. As the reader recalls there was a general election in Iran recently and the Bush/neocon theory of the sacramental and transformational power of elections tranformed the Iranian government into one that demands the end of Israel and hoots enthusiastically for theocracy in Iraq. How did that happen? Well, folks, elections don’t “transform.” If fair, they simply reveal what people really are and want. What was revealed in Iran was that discontent with severe Sharia law is not enough to make people vote the way we would like.
- Egypt After an election in which the process of campaigning was badly “tilted” in favor of the Mubarak government, the result was that the Muslim Brothers group increased their representation in parliament from 11 to 88. This will enable them to propose people for cabinet posts as well as to participate in parliamentary business in a serious way. Do the gullible stil believe the statements of these MB zealots when they attempt to seduce with soft words and protestations of a love of democracy? Are we really that foolish?
- Palestine I wrote some time ago that Fatah’s star was setting and that the Palestinian people would choose Islamist rule. Now we see that this is coming to be evident. The trend will continue unless the Palestinian or Israeli government resorts to chicanery in the matter.
- Iraq ……. I will write on this when the vote is final or has been re-counted enough to be interesting.
Pat Lang
Col. Patrick W. Lang (Ret.), a highly decorated retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces, served as “Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism” for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and was later the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. Col. Lang was the first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point. For his service in the DIA, he was awarded the “Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive.” He is a frequent commentator on television and radio, including MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann (interview), CNN and Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room (interview), PBS’s Newshour, NPR’s “All Things Considered,” (interview), and more .
Personal Blog: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005 || Bio || CV
Recommended Books || More BooTrib Posts
Novel: The Butcher’s Cleaver (download free by chapter, PDF format)
“Drinking the Kool-Aid,” Middle East Policy Council Journal, Vol. XI, Summer 2004, No. 2
Instead, the Bush people assure us that the principle problem in the Islamic World is a lack of constitutional democracy and that fair elections and the rule of law will bring forth the “better angels” of peoples’ natures and that having been released from the grasp of dictatorial republican or monarchical rule, the Muslim peoples wil become Western in attitude and abjure support …
I’m of George Bush’s generation, and I think it’s true to say that in that post-WWII era, kids like us were thoroughly indoctrinated in the belief that our country — and, most of all, our system of government — is superior to all others.
If one grows up, and reads a lot and/or travels, one realizes, in time, that that air of superiority is rather silly.
But, since George is still in elementary school intellectually and emotionally, it makes sense that he’d believe this crap.
I think George Bush despises much of this country and finds more capitalistic common ground than geographic. I think he, like many of his class and breed, love the story of America – the self made man, the rugged individual – and despise the reality.
Wow! You said a lot in a just few words. Very penetrating.
And his intuition is inerrant. He does not revisit such decisions since he is correct, of course.
Analysis is not his strong suite. He reads people and does not accept disagreement.
Hitler functioned much the same way, for much the same reasons. Neither were accepted by the intellectual society as capable of performing at an acceptable level.
Intellectual society was correct in both cases.
Thanks again for sharing your time and experience in these matters. A better understanding of this is an important goal.
I have questions to ask in learning more about the Islamist government threat potential. Before any of those answers can be understood, first an understanding of the other forces behind these events is necessary.
Do you think that all events claimed by the administration(s) to be done by and for the Islamist or similar terrorist force are as presented or are they done by other entities and presented to shape the course of events?
Can we honestly discuss and define the actual terrorist and religious threats the world faces in these times?
And democratically elected governments are safer for us because they don’t launch wars against other nations. Yeah, right. Just loike our democratically elected government doesn’t launch wars against other nations.
When George was announcing his goals for Iraq, they were 1) a democratically electerd government which would be 2) pro American, 3) tolerant of Israel, and 3) disinterested in Nuclear weapons. To which some of us asked, “Whatcha going to do if it is democratically elected, anti-American, anti-Israel, and obsessed with obtaining nuclear weapons?”
I’m struck with the history of the great powers between the wars when the wwI winners attempted to dictate the strength of other nations naval forces. That worked so well. And so I’m very concerned about our current attempt to dictate who may or may not have nuclear weapons. How will that go, I wonder?
Imperialistic aims in the middle east have helped create extreme forms of Islam. IMO …oh and USSR.
don’t forget France either!
oh…ya. But Spain and France seem to be on the losing end.
One more thing…they have never been allowed to evolve into a 21 century government on their own….we have played them like puppets on a string. The same in South Americia.
Certainly, I think that imperialism has been devastating for the people of the ME. I just wasn’t letting France off the hook.. Algeria, Lebanon (although many Lebanese adore French culture/speak French).
VOILA! Mattes.
My mind is at ease. Feuchtwanger, too. 😉
What do you (briefly if possible) suggest as for US policy in Iraq and the mid East?
FYI — interestingly enough — Dick Cheney just embarked on a 5-day trip to many of these countries.
Doubtless to spread democracy.
Somewhere along the way the wires got switched on the words “democracy” and “fascism”, replacing the quaint concept of state with something a little more forward leaning. I have no doubt that the Straussians believe their own doublethink and no doubt believe that their “better angels” are at invincible.
That’s the nature of fundamentalism, be it religious, ideological or political. Our “better angels” are better than your “better angels”. Anything that threatens that reality must submit or die.
I am afraid that for all of your “credentials” as a middle east analysist you continue to display everything that is wrong in the way in which Americans interpret the middle East.
On Palestine, you like many in the US Unitelligent Service fail to comprehend the multi-faceted nature of Hammas that results in its gaining political power. Yes it has its legalistic interpretation of Sharia but the Palestiniam people are not the monotheistic nation you seem to think. In many ways, they provide a pregamatic balance of “the people of the Book” and it is highly unfortunate that one of those groups has chosen to establish country dominated by religious extremists and removed themselves to Israel. Actually the Jewish Palestinians were not those who established Israel, rather the country was established by refugees from post-Nazi Europe who found their own “liebensraum” on the east coast of the Med. Indeed the tensions between Jews and Muslims and Palestinians of all religions stem from 1948.
In many ways it is not the Palestinians or Hammas who are responsible for the success of Hammas in local elections, it is Israel. Their blockade of the West Bank and previously the Gaza Strip meant that what industry there was in Palestine (or for Palestinians in Israel or the occupied territories) was decimated causing unemployment rates reminiscent of that current in central Iraq. Israel consistently destroyed the infrastructure of the Palestinian Authority. They bombed police stations then complained that the Palestinians would not arrest “terrorists”. Water resources are diverted from Palestinian villages to be exported in Jaffa oranges and lemons. Gaza Airport was ploughed up by armoured earth movers the Israelis brought from Catapiller. Arafat did not help by failing to address corruption in the PA early enough – although that has now significantly decreased following oversight by the EU.
Into that vacuum stepped the charitable side of Hammas which provides hospitals, schools and social services including basic provisions for the poorest. Again failing to understand the complex nature of a religious organisation that is obliged to provide charitable works by its own teachings but at the same time has a political side is difficult for Americans to comprehend with their supposed separation of state and church. Charactarising this organsiation as either “wicked” or “terrorist” or “islamist” is such a drastic oversimplification as to be unworthy of anyone claiming expertise in the area. Palestinians are not exclusively muslim and if anything are more secular in outlook than Isreal or the US.
Maybe you could take time to explain your reading of the dynamics in Syrian politics which again is not a simplistic as US analysis seems to think it is. To a large extent Assad is a figurehead and the real power lies with the military elite which include some of the less desirable members of Assad’s own family. The US of course fails to get beyond the name “Baathist” as it is the same name used in Iraq by Saddam’s party. Saddam moved the Iraqi version far from the pan-arabist movement it was founded on to become a mere instrument of his exercising power. Baathist politicians in Syria are to a large extent powerless because of the military/security service dominance. Removing that can be achieved by strengthening Assad, not trying to topple him ala Saddam. The EU is trying to enocourage proper governance by exercising its soft power and any US blundering or blustering could well undermine that.
Syria of course is the “usual suspect” when it comes to the destabilisation of Lebananon but there is an equally strong arab street opinion that the bombs are being organised by Israel in an attempt to both destabilise Lebanon and point the finger at Syria. Finally getting Israel to withdraw from the areas of Lebanon it still occupies would be a highly effective move for the US to broker. Unfortunately they do not have that imagination and the areas will still be used by Israel to launch “revenge” attacks. It would also help if the US recognised the basically democratic nature of Lebanese elections and stop using the formula that “Iraq will be the first democracy in the middle east outside Israel” canard.
In Egypt we have had years of the US complaining that elections are not democratic. trangely enough it is a country considered so democratic and respecting of human rights that the US feels it can safely fly people to when subject to “extraordinary rendition”. Now we have you complaining that when there is a degree of multi-party competition, the wrong people get in. Well you can either choose democracy and acknowledge sometimes you will not like the results or donate some Diebold machines.
In all your doom and gloom analysis you have completely ignored one of the most encouraging developments in the Arab world this year. Morocco’s truth commission has given its report to the King who commissioned it. It details the human rights abuses committed under his late father and proposes compensation to the victims. As the report has been leaked, it is highly likely that this will be acted on. It will be criticised for not naming abusers but it was based on the South African idea of immunity in exchange for complete candour. Although it may have detailed flaws, King Muhammed’s initiative may provide a future model for use in places like Egypt where the Muslim Brotherhood has increased in militancy as a reaction to the repression of the regime.
Well, at least Pat Lang knows how to spell “analyst”. Your insulting, juvenile stab at analysis reveals much about the shallowness of your intellect. Also, the word is “pragmatic” not “pregamatic”. You accuse Pat of believing things that are not reflected in his writing. I suggest you enroll in a critical thinking course at your earliest convenience.
ANYthing that people post in your diaries, might it be possible for you not to be insulting and shitty?
— care to comment on how/why my comments on Friday were worse than this, name-calling-wise??
I am sorry: I just have to step in here, not so much on the substance of the argument, but on theLACK of substance in your rebuttal.
First of all: this is a blog, for god’s sake, not the New Yorker–to call people out on “typos” (especially in the context of an otherwise well-reasoned post) is itself “juvenile”–at best, it is “nitpicking.”
Furthermore, while you do refrain from any overt signs of “prickishness”, suggesting that someone posting such a well-thought-out post needs a course in “critical thinking” is an unjustified slam.
The only point that is valid in your own post is that the author accuses “Pat of believing things that are not reflected in his writing.”
(Oh, and by the way, according to both MLA and CMOS, the comma precedes the closed quote in standard American English! Want to continue splitting hairs?)
The Jews/Israelis in 1948 were extremely suspicous of anyone who opposed them, with good reason considering their then recent history as a race/nationality/identified group. Both the British and the Arabs were anti-Jew at that time, and the Arabs proved it when immediatealy after the British withdrawal they attacked the new Jewish state.
Was the Israeli state any less legitimate than the Iraqi or TransJordian state at that time? All were based on borders and societies set up by the colonists, particularly the British. Lebanon was a separate state from Syria because the French so decreed. Egypt’s borders were those decreed by the British. So were those of Saudi Arabia.
In 1948 Egypt, Jordan and Syria supported by all the arab nations plus Iran contested the borders and the very existence of Isreal. They lost. They tried again in 1967 and 1973, and again lost – twice more. If they tried again to day they would lose again.
Except for the Egyptians, all of the Arab and Iranian governments have been autoritarian. The primary requirment for an authoritarian government to exist is an enemy, and the primary enemy for these governments has been the Israelis and the western government, primarily America, who support the Israelis.
The real problem that all of those muslim governments has is the rise of fundamentilist Islam. Those governments use the existence of Isreal and the Isreali threat to the Palestanians to maintain their power against the fundamentalist Islamists. Egypt and Jordan finally made peace with Isreal and now focus on their real internal problem, the Islamists. Saudi Arabis is moving that direction, but as the caretakers of Mecca and Medina, it is more difficult for them. Iran has been lost to the Islamists, and Syria is not clear where they are going yet. Iraq is up in the air because of Bush/Cheney’s idiotic invasion.
America has two roles. We are the defenders of Isreal’s existence, and we are the major force who should oppose Islamicism. Democracy will not occur in threatened nations, so democracy comes after the defeat of Islamicism.
That makes the Bush drive toward democracy a self-defeating proposition. Right now, Islamist governments would appear across the Middle East if we required real democracy to take place. That’s assuming we had the power to actually cause democracy to happen.
The Bush administration seems to have no clue regarding what they are asking. It is self-defeating for us at best. Mostly it is purely stupid. But what do you expect from conservatives? Simplistic stupidity based on ideology and ignorance.
The first Arab-Israeli war is hard to boil down to “the Arabs attacked the Israelis.” To the Palestinian people who were living there, they didn’t think that over night they were in a new country, so in their eyes neighboring countries were coming to prevent them from being under Israeli rule. On a side note, I personally think war should have been avoided.
Your description that “All Arab nations have been authoritarian” is simplistic in my opinion. I’m not sure exactly what you mean, even in our Republic there have been times when our country has been authoritarian like the internment camps for Japanese Americans. But assuming you mean that outside Egypt all countries are essentially authoritarian I don’t think this is very accurate. Lebanon has many democratic aspects of its political system and has improved over there years. Obviously Saudi Arabia’s political landscape is different than say Jordan’s. The ladder countries aren’t model Jeffersonian Democracies, but neither is Israel, although Israel has progressive aspects to its political system. We should look at them analytically and not just group them all together.
You write, “Those governments use the existence of Isreal and the Isreali threat to the Palestanians to maintain their power against the fundamentalist Islamists.” This implies that Israel actually doesn’t do anything unjust to the Palestinians which is clearly not true. Although it is true that many predominately Arab nations play the Palestine card for domestic political reasons. It should be noted that Israel is not the only nation that violates international law.
Israel attacked in 1967.
“In June, 1967, we again had a choice. the Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”
–Prime Minister Begin, August 8, 1982
“I do not think Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent to the Sinai in May [1967] would not have been sufficient to launch an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it.”
-Yitzak Rabin in Le Monde, February 29, 1968
I’ll limit myself to these comments.
Each paragraph was a response to something.. not meant to flow from one to the next. I hope I wasn’t rude at all either.
peace.
dean
The Arabs still attacked the new state of Israel. The Israelis did not attack them. The decision process may be in debate, but the facts on the ground were still the Jordanians, Egyptians and Syrians attacked the newly established state of Isreal.
Regarding the level of authoritarianism vs democracy in the Arab/Persian states, I am not writing a lengthy disertation on the governments of the Muslim states. In 1948 Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Jordan were kingdoms with relatively little power held by what passed for Parliaments. Iran was the kingdom the British created. When shortly later they tried to act as a democracy the British and Americans squelched that and reinstated the Shah and his secret police. In 1948 Egypt was, I think, still a kingdom and remained so until Nasser overthrew the King a few short years later. (1952? Forgive me if I miss the year.) I forget the status of Syria, but I think it was still a kingdom as created by the French when they pulled out. Even Turkey was primarily dominated by the army, even though they had a functioning Parliament. I equate the use of secret police and military rule with low power of the Parliament and lack of effective democracy with authoritarian rule. [And yes, I think the U.S. has moved rather sharply towards authoritarian rule since 2001.]
The authoritarian aspects of Israel are more easily attributed to the threat of attack they live under each day than any innate characteristic of the nation itself. The reaction of the American government under Bush to 9/11 is an example of the way any society reacts to being attacked. It automatically moves to the right and becomes more authoritarian. From what I can see, the Israelis have resisted this impulse more that post 9/11 America has.
My comment, at slightly over 400 words, was a succinct description of the situation. I challenge you to respond to that comment and provide the extended specificity you are demanding in less that 500 words and still make sense.
Your comment is irrelevant to mine. The Israeli reactions to the threat they faced are without doubt sometimes over the line of morality and international law. Considering the provications and threats they faced, such reactions are not a bit surprising. The Israelis faced (and still face) an enemy who wishes to totally destroy them, and that enemy cannot be totally destroyed by the Israelis. There is not an equality of threat here. That the Israelis may overreact on occasion is not surprising. The threat they face demands such overreaction. The Muslims do not face any such threat to their existence.
The situation in 1967 was rather clearly a severe threat to the very existence of Israel. The after action reports may have indicated that the preemptive attack against the Egyptians were an over-reaction to the threat they faced. But if the actual threat at that time were real, then the preemptive attack would have been totally justified. The decision needs to be compared to the threats each side believed they faced. The Israelis appeared to be threatened with possible extinction. The Arabs simply did not face such a threat.
Did the Israelis overreact to the perceived threat in 1967? Certainly that is possible. But under the threat of national extinction, what else could they do? You bitch that the Israelis were the attackers in 1967. I will say that the Arabs were fools to threaten the Israelis so severely that such a preemptive attack seemed to many the only way to preserve the nation of Israel. If you corner a rat and then get bitten, you deserve it.
The Israeli decision-makers of 1967 were the veterans of the 1948 invasions and of the Holocaust. The Eichmann trial had been only six years earlier. I read the promises of the Arab leaders to sweep the Jews into the sea or kill them all at that time. I also well remember that prior to the 1967 War, Christians and Jews were not permitted into Jerusalem by the Muslims.
Was the situation all angels on one side and devils on the other? Of course not. Were the Arabs all angels and the Israelis all devils? Of course not. But your defense of the Arabs could be read that way.
So could my defense of the Israeli position. That would similarly be too strong a reading. Serious mistakes appear to have been made on both sides. But the Israelis have been under the threat of extinction since 1948, and still are. The Arabs have not faced any such threat. This is the real difference between the two positions. You don’t appear to recognize this. Instead you suggest a parity between the two peoples that does not in fact exist.
Then you cherry-pick post-action statements that suggest that the actions taken in 1967 were not necessary. You ignore the actual information available to the decision-makers who decided on the preemptive attack on the Egyptians. I was living in Europe in 1967, and it was not at all clear that the Israeli reaction was an overreaction.
I challenge you to respond to my comment here and provide the extended specificity you are demanding in less that 500 words and still make sense. My previous comment is more accurate than yours for such short statements.
Geez, I wouldn’t even know how to go about responding to all you have written right here where it would be appropriate for this thread.
One could write the history of say Deir Yassin here, and get into a point by point detailed account of the history of the last 60 years. Yet I’m not sure if that is going to be productive, especially after my post described as “bitching.”
Yet I don’t know if all your “challenges” are meant to be productive, and I assume you can read through what I wrote and I still stand by each point that I made a)not all Arab countries are the same with regards to authoritarianism (the resorts on the shores of Lebanon with women sun bathing in bikinis are much different scene that women in Saudi Arabia b)there is truth in criticism of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians both currently and historically (although I did mention that this goes on in other places with other countries and people as well, and it can be exagerrated and lies can be made as well..) c) Two former Israeli Prime Ministers disagree with your description of the 1967 war. Even if their opinions, one’s who have had access to intelligence, are wrong it doesn’t change the fact that you wrote:
Which is factually incorrect, as you have written that Israel’s attack was pre-emptive.
On a sidenote: My position isn’t “pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian” of which I have been accused of being both on progressive blogs. Its just hardly anyone ever speaks up for the Palestinians, so I felt it proper to address a few of your points. I don’t mean to create any bad blood, you raise some interesting issues.
Yet, I tend to disagree with positions that try and defend all Israel’s actions in relation to security. Clearly bulldozing homes and many of the collective punishment measures are not necessary and do in fact increase animosity towards Israel (just as most all progressive blogs argue that America’s torture policies create or further resentment). I see the resentment as mostly a symptom of occupation.
Thanks for replying. I don’t think we disagree very much, and I’ll agree that the Palestinian position gets a lot less Press here in the States. You made me rethink some ideas that I thought I had settled, and that’s always good.
Your statement above could be interpreted to say that the Israelis preemptively attacked in 1948, 1967 and 1973, when the correct answer is that was only true in 1967.
Regardless of what some politician said about the intelligence after the fact, 19 years earlier the Arabs almost wiped Isreal off the map at its birth. In 1967 aerial surveillance was in it’s infancy, so Intelligence on troop movements would have been mostly from spies on the ground. The distinction between only two divisions and the entire Egyptian army would be almost impossible to get in real time. Even today, real time Intelligence on enemy intentions is always the weakest part of any intelligence estimate.
That, plus the experience only 19 years earlier on top to the bellcose nature of the statements from all the Muslim nations were [in my opinion} very probably sufficient reason for the Israelis to try to disrupt an attack they saw forming on their west.
Regarding those two quotes you mentioned above – if Nasser did not want war, why did he send those two divisions into the Sinai? Egypt an Israel were always on the edge of war, and such a major move of troops had to be evaluated as threatening by the Isrealis. If there was a peaceful reason, then diplomacy has a number of ways of signaling that such troops movements are not intended to be threatening. Even once shooting started out, Nasser could have gotten someone to call off the hostilities because they were not intentional[assuming that the Egyptian populace would have let him, of course.]
Had I been an Israeli and knew those troops were moving east, I would have felt very threatened even if I had someone in Nasser’s office reporting in real time that Nasser didn’t mean to start any war. The best way to deal with an attack is to preemptively take out the troops in their staging area, rather than wait for them to attack and try to absorb it.
I really doubt that once those Egyptian troops began moving, war could have been prevented. The issue then for the Isrealis was how to win. But I am open to further proof that the war was preventable once the troops had started moving east.
As for the Palestinians, they have been used and abused by both the Muslims and the Israelis, including especially their own putative leaders, and they are into the third generation of it. It needs to be ended.
Damned shame there is not Ghandi or Martin Luther King to help them. But the politics are so nasty there that one faction or the other would kill he before he got started.
But thanks for discussing stuff with me and challenging my assumptions. I search that out whenever I can find it.
I wonder why you, a person whose resume assures us that you are capable of critical thought respond to such a person who is not capable of critical thought.
Mmmmm. That’s something to think about.
Bear
You are clearly a Middle Eastern or South Asian person. No. I take it back. You are an Egyptian. Sorry, but Nasserism is dead. Arab nationalism is dead. All that is left as opposition to the oligarchs like Mubarak are groups like the MB. I think you are probably more than a little sympathetic to these groups if not a member.
My comments were intended for people who have some sympathy for the West. You, clearly, do not and you recite all the tired cant of the Islamist. pl
Actually you are again incorrect. I just happen to have studied the position for five minutes which is obviously what your training did not do. Just because feel your anaylsis of the situations in the various counties is entirely based on the training your previous employers sub-contracted from the Israelis does not mean that I have to be “not with you therefore against you” in terms of the USA. It’s just that relying on one version of events is what got the USA into the quagmire of Iraq. It is also precisely what caused the US forces to regard the Iraqis as “towelheads” and anyone travelling the roads as a threat to their safety.
My allusion to Baathism was to point out that there is a historical political connection between the two countries (and indeed others in the region). Again Nasser shared much of the aspirataions in terms of pan-Arabism but the situation has moved on since the 1950s and 60s, rather in the same way that the Communist parties in say Italy and the Soviet Union were very different. Baathism in Iraq became a personality cult just as Communism did in the USSR under Stalin.
The Balfour declaration was a huge mistake which could only have been produced in the context of a imperial view of the UK’s right under its League of Nations mandate to ignore 1400 years of history. Israel’s claim over the land is as bad a legalist interpretation of a work of “victor’s history” in the Torah as Sharia is an extreme interpretation of the Koran. The Stern gang are only idolised as “Liberators” and founders of Israel because of the mythology generated round them. They were just as much murdering thugs and criminals as the terrorists in Al Qaeda and their Iraqi followers. I do not pretend there is one side or a monochrome view in the middle east. Unfortunately you have shown in your response precisely my point that you do.
And I have kept the typing errors in that for your amusement especially as neither would have been picked up by a spellcheck!
Interesting aside to you Londonbear: I have elsewhere advanced the theory that all the world’s misunderstandings might be traceable to one of three types of errors:
In light of that, go figger! 😉
I would agree with you that much of the problem is one of translation and that this has coloured the response of the west (and specifically those trained withing the context of “intelligence services” and the US in particular) to what the perceive as the “threat of Islam”. Indeed the “angels dancing on the head of a pin” distinction they draw between what I called “Islamic ethos” and “Islamicism” is just one. They see similar responses to a wide variety of circumstances and call it a unified movement or philosophy.
The difficulty comes where there is no simple translation or explanation of an internalised emotion or concept so conclusions are drawn from an inadequate understanding of the context in which the word is used. Even in western languages concepts like the German “heimat” and the Welsh “hiraeth”. The usual translation of the German as “homeland” and the Welsh as “longing for home” are without the cultural and full emotional contexts that make the words have far more resonance in the two languages.
In Islam there is the concept of the Ummah. There is a draft entry in wikipedia which gives some of the background. The analogy they give with “christendom” is just one of its major faults. As well as its use to translate the western concept of nations, the term more accurately describes the combined concepts of equality (before Allah), community and brotherhood that is promoted by the fasting during Ramadan and taking part in the Haj. As the wikipedia entry alludes, this community is not constrained by adherence to Islam but extends a special relationship to the other “peoples of the book” – which is what is really so sad about the conflict between Israelis/Jews and Muslims. One aspect, what might be shorthanded and “muslim solidarity”, has a lot to do with the hostility towards the USA and leads to fatal flaws in analysis. Thus Bush makes the assumption that the “Ayrabs” will be grateful that a tyrant is deposed whereas the “Arab street” peceives an attack on fellow muslims and has its sense of outrage and injustice reinforced with every new expose of torture and war crimes.
The American reaction to the concept of Ummah is bound up in the 20th century need to have an “ism” to oppose and to a large extent the failure to properly examine the nature of being an American citizen. There is an inherent tension in US society between loyalty to the many ethnic and racial groups that have overwhelmed the First Peoples and the forced unity expressed in “the American Dream” or “the melting pot” concepts. Just as the promotion of one of those groups within the US is seen as internally divisive, solidarity with a wider community outside the USA is immediately perceived as treasonous and a threat. You can see that in the visceral reaction of the neocons to the UN and to some extent in the long historic suspicion of Roman Catholics in politics. What happens then is the trans-national solidarity explicit in the Ummah becomes confused with a sort of Islamic imperialism. Pan-Arabism as a reaction to the dominance of the Ottoman and European empires is confused with an “Islamicism” supposedly promoted by Iran. Those coming up with the theory usually completely forget that most Iranians are not Arabs, even though the political hostility to the West is a result of similar attempts at imperial control by both the UK and US.
The problem I have with many external analyists, inluding Pat Land is that either they do not fully understand the dynamics in Islam or have to simplify them so much and express them in western terms that they distort the complexity of the situation. For example they never explore the tension between the Sharia tradition (in both Shia and Sunni branches of Islam) and the Suffi. The Sharia is one of adherence to practices and obligations (a bit analogous to believing that attending church every Sunday will get you to Heaven) whereas the Sunni is a more spiritual exploration of Islam. When you add to that mix the challenges of adapting to the changed political aspirations of many in response to western ideas of democracy, you start to understand how there can be very different but apparently similar movements in different countries.
Yep, and is it any wonder then that this country is NOTORIOUS for producing very bad translators? 😉
I also agree that Israel should never have been formed. It this has nothing to do with Jews. It was just a bad idea and badly executed. Actually it wasn’t an idea it was a demand.
I have to agree with the new Iranian leader that if they were going to give land to the Jews it should have been German Land or some other land. But that’s just ridiculous too.
Now we have a nuclear state in Israel that is absolutely willing to destroy itself….and everything living thing with it. Because, despite all the rational arguments, the religion itself Judiasm seems be impelling itself toward it’s own self destruction. Christianity and Islam are versions of Judiasm which is a version of another ancient religion preceding it. But Chrisitianity is milder than Judiasm and Islam ….generally speaking….but it too seems to call for it’s own destruction and this is clearly represented in Jesus’s crucifixion….one he allowed and by all accounts willed to happen.
If that is the basis of Western culture, and underpinning an, element even ….things look very grim.
Pat, You sound like a rascist with your “You are an Egyptian and you, Pat write for “Mericans”.
I have always thought you not to be an expert but rather another tired mind who works for the CIA ….or used to work….or something like that.
But you are clearly far more intelligent than I could ever be. Just look at your credentials.
Thanks for answering some of my questions. I’ve been finding information to support 2 sides of this coin.
I was curious to see some sort of substantive response to your post from our expert front-pagers Johnson and Lang. Instead we get spelling flames from one and accusations of being an Islamist from the other. I assume that somehow those replies meet the general frogpond rule about not being prick-like.
Yeah, maybe it’s just the result of holiday stress.
I’m just one of millions who are new to this and forming opinions of global politics I would rather not get involved in but have a responsibility to now, as a concerned citizen.
While I agree with some of the detailed points you raise in your comment, (I have quite a few friends here in the US who’s families in Palwestine and Israel have benefitted enormously from the humanitarian side of Hamas, for instance), I have to say I agree with Pat Lang that Islamist government is ultimately inimical not only to the peoples it would seek to rule directly but also to the broader world at large.
But before you go ballistic, I would see a Christian-based government or a Jewish-based government or a Hindu-based government in the same way; anathema to it’sown people and an implicit threat to any of it’s neighbor’s who don’t subscribe to the same set of beliefs.
Religious authority is always dictatorial in nature and, in the modern world at least, those who would use such authority for their own advancement must constantly aggress against “non-believers” in order to prop themselves up and keep hold of the reigns of power. Such a dynamic is certainly not exclusive to those who would use Islam to achieve this end. Here in the US we have certifiable lunatics like James dobson and Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson who abuse the tenets of Christianity in the same way as many in the Muslim world abuse and defame Islam.
I think you do yourself and whatever your cause may be a disservice by gratuitoously bashing Mr. Lang’s quite thoughtful analysis here. Rather than acknowledging that much of what he was saying rang true you seem to have chosen to assume he has points of view which he in fact did not display and you then went on to attempt to discrdit his views by bringing up things unrelated to what he was saying in the first place.
I happen to disagree with things Pat Lang and others say occassionally, but gratuitously bashing them for it instead of responding responsibly and with substantive argument on their specific points is not how I define and then debate those differences.
Please, first define “bashing” and then point to gratuitous instances of it….
Then, I will point YOU to some things the site manager have to say about expressing dissatisfatction with either of those two things.
I regard this opening sentence;
as a form of “bashing”. I appreciate that many might disagree, but that was the genesis of my remark; the “snideness” of it seeming to me to be unnecessary, (hence) gratitous.
As to the rest, as I thought I made clear, I said that while I agreed with some of the points expressed that those points, while being used as in a sense to refute Pat Lang’s views, were actually points that had no direct relation to what Pat Lang was even saying in the first place. For me, I don’t see the efficacy of engaging debate by conspicuously not addressing the points asserted by one’s “opponent” and instead bringing up other issues that had nothing directly to do with what was said in the first place.
While I appreciate your view, and the explanation thereof, this:
Is just about as subjective and slippery as “don’t be a prick”. If LondonBear’s perceptions were such that what he wrote was the result, then who are you, or anyone else, to say that it has “nothing directly to do with what was said”?
If the responses from Lang and Johnson had b4en different, perhaps I would be more willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, but as poco has point out, the underlying assumptions in the piece DESERVE some comment.
In the spirit of better understanding, I’d be interested in learning which assumptions by whom you feel are deserving of comment, and then which comments by whom directly relate to those presumed assumptions.
For instance, what assumptions has Pat Lang made in this post that Londonbear’s remarks specifically address substantively? And then, what assumptions, (if you identify any), were made by Londonbear that were in any way negated by anything Pat Lang said in the diary?
If someone says to me; “James Dobson is a dangerous Christian psychopath”, and I perceive from this that the persom speaking is saying; “Christianity is a dangerously psychopathic religion”, who is responsible for the misinterpretation?
To my mind I read Londonbear’s critique of Lang as based not on what he did say but on things that weren’t said, and while there’s nothing wrong with presenting a dissenting opinion based on what’s absent from someones perspective in itself, he/she didn’t present his argument that way. Instead he/she chose to challenge Lang by attributing to Lang statements and opinions that Lang in fact did not say or allude to.
I hope this comment lands in the right spot in th order. It seems to be all goofed up in sequence.
Religious authority is always dictatorial in nature and, in the modern world at least, those who would use such authority for their own advancement must constantly aggress against “non-believers” in order to prop themselves up and keep hold of the reigns of power. Such a dynamic is certainly not exclusive to those who would use Islam to achieve this end. Here in the US we have certifiable lunatics like James dobson and Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson who abuse the tenets of Christianity in the same way as many in the Muslim world abuse and defame Islam.
There seem to be drastic inconsistencies in the versions of events concerning the Islamic terrorist attacks of the past few decades. It’s more noticeable in the past 10 years.
Given that analysis similar to this diarist’s is based on claims that are somewhat unverifiable, wouldn’t it be reasonable to question the conclusions that are consistently reached?
What if the ‘Islamic terrorist attacks’ of the last decade or so have not been carried out on religious grounds but rather a type of false flag operation?
We could be facing a very real terrorist threat but misidentifying it from the beginning.
You pose this question;
If such attacks as you refer to are not religion-based then they shouldn’t be referred to as Islamist attacks. This seems to me to be self-evident. (I would note here that neither the diarist here nor anyone else has referred to “Islamist attacks”. Pat Lang does refer to the existence of “…Islamist Jihadis who wish to attack the US…”, but so far I have encountered no one who disputes that such people exist. Similarly, I have yet to encounter anyone who does not believe that there are Christian and Jewish extremists who likewise would like to attack and murder Muslims. But none of this thinking bears directly on anything Pat Lang refers to in his post.)
I happen to believe that bin-Laden’s attacks against the US were not religion-based but were rather motivated by US foreign policy interference in the affairs of other soverign governments. I suspect bin Laden’s mentor Zawahiri’s agenda was quite different as he has a well know history of religious zealotry.
I don’t know specifically what you are referring to here so I don’t know how to reply.
The foundation of almost all foreign policy discussion is based on the threat of terrorism or in this case, the threat of Islamic extremism or generally the inseperable package of Islamic and terrorist that is presented to us.
It is rarely distinguished to be seperate forces. The average American equates one with the other because that’s how it’s almost always represented.
Do you have any opinions on the work of Robert Dreyfuss? Does anyone have any opinions on this?
Given that analysis similar to this diarist’s is based on claims that are somewhat unverifiable, wouldn’t it be reasonable to question the conclusions that are consistently reached?
There is very little actual, verifiable evidence that the bin Laden-religious terrorist story is true but it’s the foundation of all foreign and domestic policy not to mention an all around culture of deception and hatred. This isn’t new, evidently but it seems it has no place in discussion. That’s more troubling than the evidence of it happening in the first place.
US foreign policy has always been primarily founded on avarice, not terrorism or perceived threats. Even the policy underpinning the invasion of Iraq was not based on terrorism or making the US “safe” but based on exercising control in a vital region of the world rich in energy reserves. It was sold as a terrorism thing, but that’s not what drives the lunatics running the Bush regime.
I used to occassionally read the Dreyfuss Report, and from what I remember I generally agree with his characterizations of the virtually complete failure of the neocons running the Bush regime to understand anything at all about the operative dynamics within the greater Middle East, and their incompetence to deal with things there once the catastrophic invasion took place.
I disagreed with Dreyfuss, and indeed with a large majority of other people as well, in that while there is clear evidence of what appears to be massive bungling with respect to the prosecution of the Iraq war, I see these instances not as incompetence but as deliberate “screwups” designed to make sure that we will be there for a long long time and that peace and security will never have the chance not break out expectedly. This is because I believe the neocons have no intention of ever leaving the MidEast militarily; that it is their intention to remain there in perpetuity and to gain control of all the energy reserves there.
i think they thought they could put a friendly grateful government in place with relative dispatch.
The point that always gets lost is the long history of training-supposrting-funding terrorist type activities covertly as a way to influence foreign policy. That’s bad enough but then we compound that business and financial corruption that further aggravates the situation.
Nobody seems to want to include these factors as part of a realistic vision of how we arrived to this place and what can be done.
The perception management causes worse problems in public perception and chances for improvement are missed.
There are millions like me who are no threat but due to the government’s actions and continued avoidance of the truth we are perceived to be. By considering that ‘enemy parties’ worldwide are actually more of a force for good than harm and trying to discuss our government’s illegitamite aspects, we are dismissed by a variety of names.
The official story of 9/11 and the Islamic terrorist forces lacks credibility by taking an honest look at the evidence. The possible myth and manipulation that follows casts doubt on govt agencies credibility. We can overcome this by open discussion but that means letting go of long held misconceptions concerning the threat and exploitation of Islamic people. Is this possible?
Rumi,
Since you mentioned Dreyfuss, I stumbled across this article in Pakistan’s Daily Times about his new book, which, if the article is accurate, must be a pretty good read.
Here’s the link.
Sbj,
I don’t think there is any disagreement between us regarding the dangers of a regime based on messianic, theocratic, fundamentalist principles. Wherever it occurs, it creates havoc, as is occuring right now in the US and Iran. occurred a few years ago in India, etc.
But Pat Lang’s post did not do this type of analyses, nor did it attempt to understand the cause, the rise, and the attraction of such regimes other than through thinly veiled racism. How else to explain terms like “the Beast” to refer only to Hamas, or suggesting that the only reason to hate the US is because the United States is “the leader of what the Islamists see as the anti-Islamic and heathen West.”
Really–given all the misery that US has wrought upon the region, that is the only reason to oppose it???
An analysis like Pat Lang’s depends on the unspoken assumption that those people–the ones who hate us — are irrational and their concerns may easily be dismissed cavalierly.
LondonBear tried to point out a different way of interpreting the issues and the gratuitous bashing, as James Benjamin points out, is in the response of Larry Johnson and Pat Lang.
Attacking Bear for spelling typos, and for his assumed ethnic identity!! That, I have to say, is prickishness, however you define it.
I don’t think Mr. Lang was singling out Hamas for “beast” status in the way you describe. also, I don;t think the intent of Lang’s post was to describe the entire causative skein of events that have led to the situation we see today. I think he was pointing out that the rise to power of groups who advocate violence against civilians as justified in pursuit of their goals is something we all should be concerned about. The fact that he didn’t explicitly make the distinction between those within Hamas who do such important humanitarian work in the face of such grinding oppression and those who willfully kill non-combatants as part of their agenda is something I don’t think is cause to fault him for. (I’ve written several other comments in this thread that seak to various other aspects of this issue and I hope you might look for them to get a more comprehensive sense ofwhat I’m trying to say.)
I did think the spelling remarks were pretty lame.
look, the US helped Sadaam stay in Power, then they got rid of him, then they put in this Pro-Iranian government….now guess what…..they want to get rid of them
JUST GET THE FUCK OUT OF IRAQ. PAT LANG AND LARRY JOHNSON ARE INCOMPETENT. JUST LIKE THE GOVERNMENT.
I would agree with you that personally I would hate to see a legal system based on the interpretation of Sharia law that is prevalent in say Saudi Arabia or Iran. Many of those least desirable elements do not arise from Islam but regional or tribal traditions. In Saudi Arabia for example women are (in theory) forbidden to drive cars for “Islamic reasons”. In practice that law is ignored in rural areas where economic necessity dictates. As you may know, Saudi has an appointed “Consulatative Assemby” but even a member of that is now arguing that the women driving law has no basis in Islam. A very small step but it does show that the detailed laws of even one of the most repressive “Islamic” regimes can be challenged.
My problem comes when we get the same McCarthyite hysteria over governments with an Islamic ethos being elected that we had in the 60s and 70s over “communist” governments being elected in South America. To run around, like a headless chicken, shouting “the Islamists are coming” is much the same. Yet we have a strange hypocracy about this in US government (in the broadest sense) circles. Repressive governments and laws are fine in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan but not Iran. A government based on Islamic principles is fine in Iraq but parties wanting stricter adherence to those principles are not OK in Palestine or Egypt. The truth is the objection is not that they are repressive, abuse human rights or are undemocratic, it is that they do not slavishly comply with any demand a US President might make upon them and they object to being told what to do.
Now as I said, I would personally oppose any party that sought to impose religious adherence on anyone. It would be right to campaign against their policies. If, however, they were democratically elected in free ballots, what objection is there? I would find none providing the basic rights set out in the European Charter were not violated.
We are really in a bind when it comes to dealing with the possibility of democratically elected governments in the middle east.
I think Pat is right that the neo-cons are delusional about the short-term consequences of such a revolution. It is likely to result in a lot of governments that are overtly hostile to American interests, plus the governments are likely to be fairly repressive in their own right. But, it has to happen some time, and the longer it is put off the worse it will be for us.
I think we would prefer that Turkey was the model for the Arab world, but that is just not going to happen. Yet, over time, the ability to elect one’s representatives would have many beneficial effects for both the U.S. and for the Arab people. It just will require a very uncomfortable interlude.
In my opinion, one of the difficulties of the Arab world have successful democracies is the ad-hoc borders and artificial nature of the countries. Yugoslavia and the Causcuses are models for what we might expect. It is a tragedy for the Arab people that they have no easy solutions.
My hope is that the first wave of Islamist governments will be followed by a second wave of pragmatists that are much better at picking up the garbage, attracting investment, and creating jobs.
Yes! If the emergent Islamist regimes give way to more pragmatic and reality-based governments, it means we too here in the US also have the chance to finally get rid of the neocon autocracy and replace it with a more functional democratic form like we’re used to.
I’m looking forward in the near future to the Iranian Mullahs finally first muzzling and then disposing of the lunatic Ahmadinejad. Once they take him off the map the signals from the MidEast will change dramatically and a lot of the Bush regime fear-mongering will lose it’s effectiveness.
Until then, the chances the entire region will go up in flames remain very high.
My hope is that the first wave of Islamist governments will be followed by a second wave of pragmatists that are much better at picking up the garbage, attracting investment, and creating jobs.
Yes. Wisely said.
But how much does our mucking about in their affairs prevent this from occurring sooner?
Our own governmemt is working hard to prevent the possibility of pragmatic governance that is socially and economically beneficial to the indigenous populations in the region from manifesting, because if such social and economic stability does occur there wil be no way to justify keeping our large military presence in the region and there will be less leverage we can apply on such governments that would lead to our ability to acquire greater control of the energy resources (oil) in the region.
Peace and stability in the Middle East is anathema to the neocon agenda, IMHO.
I agree with much of what you say here, but here’s my point. Pat Lang, as far as I can see, is in no way encouraging or otherwise fanning the flames of the kind of hysteria you seem to attrinute to him. If you read back through many of his posts either here or on his own site he displays an indisputable equanimity and respect for Islam, and he is not hesitant to point out the insanity of the US government with respect to US policies in the Middle East and the incredible damage they have done. It was Pat Lang’s recent commentary about the Baath party that clued me in to the fact that the myth I’d fallen for that the Baath party had some terrible religiously dominated agenda that was inimical to the region and to the west was completely bogus.
As to the use of the word “beast”, I think it’s possible that in overreacting to this word it’s possible to lose track of an important point, that point being that the rise of any sort of fundamentalist-oriented religious-based authority is ultimately bad for the countries in which such power ascends and bad for their neighbors, whoever those neighbors might be. When you add in the preponderance of weaponnry and the propaganda that seeks to demonize others based on ethnic, national, or religious affiliation, it only gets worse. In this context, I regard the US government as the single biggest and most destructive “beast” on the planet right now, and I suspect there might be some disagreement about that between me and Pat Lang on some levels. But even so, the US is not the only “beast”, and I think it’s completely legitimate to characterize the rise of aggressive murderous ideologies, (even when they masquerade behind a religious facade) as beast-like. (As far as I know, Hamas, for instance, a much misunderstood yet very valuable organization in Palestine, has yet to renounce violence against innocents as a permissible course of action to advance their agenda. Even though they have much justification for retaliating against unconscionable Israeli aggression, the murder of innocents is still apparently OK. [Maybe I’m wrong about this and if so please correct me].)
I regard the rise of Islamist governmental power the same way I regard the rise of Christian fascist influence on the US government, as a serious threat to the welfare of civilization going forward. Personally I regard my own government as more of a threat than I do the violently aggressive forces on the rise in the MidEast, but just because my own givernment is the worst transgressor doesn’t mean we should not call out the others for what they are when they raise their ugly head.
I make no judgment about Hamas specifically except to say, as I would say about any powerful entity. if they advocate for or legitimize the murder of inmnocents then they should be opposed by any and all who want a better life for their children. Ghandi was probably the last of the great leaders whjo understood this and it’s been all downhill ever since.
Rereading through this thread something else struck me, and your comment here illuminates it.
You refer to;
Pat Lang is talking about Islamist governments, not governments with an Islamic ethos, and there is a very important diffenece between the 2 terms.
Wikipedia has a pretty basic definition and history of what’s defined as “Islamist”, and I would urge all here to at least acquaint yourselves with this very clearly defined term as it might be helpful in avoiding misinterpreting other people’s remarks.
Link here.
Excellent Response to the “experts” Larry, Moe and Pat.
But as Larry pointed out you misspelled pragmatic so you entire response is not credible. Wait did I misspell mispell or is it misspell…oh damn!
And as Pat pointed out you are an Egyptian whether you like it or not. So if you are not you must become one. That is the way the CIA works. Please start preparations to “Walk like and Egyptian”. The CIA through it’s paranoia makes it paranoia come true.
I like you, London Bear, misspell everything because I don’t care about spell checking and don’t maybe not like you don’t review every little word on posts, because I don’t want to spend the time. I am more interested in the idea getting across.. I am more interest in understanding. But Larry who was an excellent student in grammar school. His teachers liked him. He was a very good boy.
“Walk like an Egyptian.” God. Now I’m going to have that song stuck in my head. Thank you so very much. :-p
Alkydy gonna gitcha, make yer daughter wear a burka
Ayrabs gonna gitcha, cause yer Ayrabs hate yer ‘Merka
They’ll make ya eat that hummus shit
And sheep meat in yer pita
Send their camel out to bite ya
And a camel ain’t no skeeta
Alkydy gonna gitcha, gonna make ya pray to mecka
Ayrabs gonna take yer gas and then you’ll hafta call the wrecka
They’re hidin’ in a sleeper cell
They’re comin’ cross yer border
They’re workin’ at yer Taco Bell
So double check yer order
Alkydy gonna gitcha, better bomb the Eiffel tower
Ayrabs parly voo Fransay, they’re gettin too much power
They’ll make ya grow yer beard out long
Wear a ghutra and an egal
You’ll have to talk Ayrab-ian
Cause English won’t be legal
Alkydy gonna gitcha, make yer daughter wear a burka
Ayrabs gonna gitcha, cause yer Arabs hate yer ‘Merka
Goddammit!
This time it’s chardonnay, all over the keyboard, AND the screen.
I swear to god, allah buddha and the Great Spirit, YOU, yes, you my Sticky One, will someday come in here and personally clean up the mess you have made on my entire operating system (Mac OS 10!).
RFLMAO, with kleenex and Johnson&Johnson multiwipes for electronics in hand!
You know, the really expensive kind from Evil France that makes you feel all Egyptian.
😉
Honey, anyone who knows anything about wines and whining KNOWS that the domestics are the best (neither wines nor whines fare well in transport). Rest assured that the Chardonnay was the best California vintage money can buy!
lol.
Now, wenn it comes to Cab and Bordeaux, we are dealing with a horse of an entirely different COLOR!
Real wine comes from France.
When in Rome……
After ten years (give or take a few) back in the USS, back in the USS, back in the USSof A, I am convinced of one thing, and one thing only: Californiaa Chardonnaay is superior (NOTE: this does not prevent me from seriously pining after a good godammned glass of cheap [by italian standards] of Frascati and/or Soave.
Indeed, as I have repeatedly written all my European friends of late:
Ich bin Europareisereif! 😉
Can we raise an Eagle Feather to that?!
preferably a good Irish stout.
omigod, I cannot resist the snark: you fucking PROL, you, how dare you even think to place BEER on a par with WHINE, the nectar of the gods!?
(I take no responsibility for typos or other ensuing misunderstandings from this post. I have long since admitted that yes indeed, where the hell is DS when you need him, I am compleetely SLOSHED!).
That’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it.
I don’t place beer merely with wine, but above it. 🙂
As for being a prol – “hey I resemble that remark!” 🙂
In the interest of full disclosure, I will confess that I prefer red wine as a rule.
My exceptions are:
Tej from Ethiopia
Retsina from Greece
Chardonnay from France, but only the costly ones that have the aforementioned sandalwood note.
The rest of it tastes like Gewurztreminer, some less grapefruity than others.
I am now officially too sloshed to engage in any form of flame war on any subject whatsoever, in fact, at this point I would probably need a spellcheck to prevent myself from misspelling wegürztraümer (yes, that typo was intentional, but I can’t guarantee the next one WON’T be).
Once again, my STicky One, you have succeeded in defiling my screen!;) (I arrived at this comment by way of your link down thread).
We are all in serious danger of either taking ourselves too seriously or of not taking ourselves seriously enough.
I see Hamas morphing into what has happened to the Irish Republican Army.
Neither of these people is able to understand what is obvious.
The United States is incompetent. Larry and Pat are representative of that.
THey are concerned that a Pro Iranian government is not good for the Iraqis.
Think about this…….
This is none of our business. Tough Shit! We put them in power. Too bad.
Now, leave them alone and things will be better than if you continue to muddle about in Iraq.
Iraq is not going to be any more dangerous to the US than it was with Sadaam. Just leave them alone.
The dangers of a Pro Iranian Iraq are always overstated. But whatever danger there is, is as always in that area a product of incompetent people handling foreign policy, people who are very good speller, but not very good at thinking and understanding.
Stu-
You have to find a way to make your points that is respectful of the other members of this site.
And you know you can make a critique without calling Pat and Larry incompetent.
comments both of these “gentlemen” made in response to LondonBear??
Where?
Pat and Larry agree to have their posts here. In return for this generous consideration they get called unintelligent, incompetent, everything that is wrong with America, etc.
We can either have them post here and be respectful or we can abuse and insult them and then get upset when they respond in kind.
But it’s okay for them to insult this blog’s posters? Just trying to make sure I’m clear.
i have a choice of cross-posting their stuff or not. I don’t have a lot of clout to tell them how to respond to being abused. Either I decide not to post their writing because the community is incapable of being respectful to people in the intelligence community that may not be as liberal as the community would like, or I have to expect that they will occassionally lose their temper.
In that sense there is a double standard for Larry and Pat. But in the larger sense there are a group of people that think its great fun to nitpick and insult the front-pagers and then get upset when they get as good as they give. That is mostly trollish behavior and from my point of view has rarely been a matter of substance or principled disagreement.
And the same people seem to comment on every attempt of mine to get people to be respectful, as if I should rehash every prior dispute every time.
Was Londonbear being abusive? I think not. Did Lang & Johnson’s replies seem appropriate? I think not. If Londonbear had come off with something along the lines of a couple of Stu Piddy’s remarks much later, I might offer a different opinion. But they weren’t responding to Stu (yet anyways). They were responding to someone who one might say has a legit point to make.
A postscript to the previous: Lang and Johnson’s contributions have certainly been enlightening – in large part as they provide insight into how the beltway folks view the world. I certainly do appreciate those contributions, any agreements or disagreements I may have notwithstanding.
Did you read theri comments? Did you LOOK at the timestamps?? YES! that matters?
Are you trying to tell me that Londonbear has a history of “absuing frontpagers’?
OK, wait a minute, I don’t give a rat’s ass about any of that — did you just say that Lang and Johnson’s posts are acceptable because they were “giving as good as they got”???
Really? And so what, exactly, did I do (except exactly that) to get my posting “privledges” cut off on Friday?
Really?? There are?? Well, then by all that is blog-holy, fucking CALL THEM OUT! You run the place don’t you?
you are one of them
Or at least my ability to delete them reinstated??
You are incredibly paraniod if you consider me “one of them”….
you are obviously in the process of doing exactly as I described. How could I not consider you one of them.
Take a break. You can’t win this disagreement.
I would like my diaries removed — if you want to cancel my account, that is up to you.
Saying that I am doing exactly as you described after you have been a TOTAL PRICK, you’re right, I can’t win, don’t want to win, don’t give a shit — just delete my diaries.
So ARE they??
Nice not answering the question…
Aside from calling Stev/phenD out on Friday — do you have another example??
Or are you going to now blame catnip’s departure on me as well — yes, brinn nitpicked her to death and that’s why she left the front page.
PLEASE. This is pathetic, pathetic.
I fully expect to be banned, but before I am, delete my diaries (or, give me the ability to do it).
your diaries are archived. I can’t delete them right now. I probably can if it is important to you but I will have to talk to Andy about how that is done.
As for banning you, I am asking you to take a voluntary break or chill out because you don’t seem like yourself at all and I am honestly worried about what is going on with you.
If you really want to be banned of course I can do that. But I don’t want to.
I can’t seem to find “them”, but I’m sure you know who all “of them” are.
Hmm. Booman, I must respectfully concede that I think your application of the double-standard in favor of your “front-pagers” is perhaps “skewed”–perhaps “pragmatically” so.
I’ll concede to not having double-checked the “real world”-credentials of these posters–but here in the Blogosphere, this “front-page” poster status seems to take on a sort of larger-than-life significance that is utterly incongruent with “real world” credentials and standards of measure.
You’ve got some academic “heavy-hitters” posting on this site whose “real world” credentials might put those of your “front pagers” to shame (and the same is true of similar sites).
But that’s not the point–despite my PhD and my own “real world” credentials, I remain totally bound to the welfare-class world that are my roots–and I am perhaps MORE interested in what “less-credentialed” people than in what academic heavy-hitters have to say (otherwise, why would I be here: shit, if I were interested in “credentialed people”–I am surrounded by them, all the way up to the Nobel Prize level!). Unlike most, “up by the bootstraps”-academics, I do not consider my roots in the welfare class a mark of shame, and I will not EVER leave “my people” behind.
That said: is my “objective” perspective on the workings of this and other prominent liberal sites that these “front page posters” are afforded a greater degree of latitude–that they are, in many ways, inflated into “larger than life” personalities–and anyone who dares to express criticism of them (however reasoned and/or respectful said criticism may be) is subjected to community (and/or administrative) censure, while, at the same time, these folks are granted free rein to dole out insulting, condescending, often paternalistic comments to others who do not share the “reflected glory” of “frontpager” status. This is the “double-standard” that applies here.
I think this is a mistake–because, after all, you never know (except in my case! lol.), just exactly who you are dealing with in these anonymous cyberfictional screennames. Who knows? Might be someone whose real world “credentials” would trump the shit out of the frontpagers’!
But those credentials should NOT matter when it comes to respectful commentary–and in fact, I would expect that a frontpager–given his “status”–be more inclined to “charitable” commentary and reading and response to commentators.
At any rate, being a “frontpager”–as with all positions of privilege–real, imaginary or cyberfictional–comes with rights as well as responsibilities, and I frankly think that it is incumbent on all diarists to subject comments to a “charitable” reading, but it is especially incumbent upon “front pagers” to do so.
Calling people to the carpet for typos and the like is NOT the job of a frontpager on a liberal blog–that is the job of professional editors of top-notch refereed journals, and in my experience, this is generally done with the utmost sensitivity and care.
Any front-page poster on a blog such as this who resorts to these tactics by way of rebuttal seriously calls into question his own “credentials” as a writer and political commentator, to say nothing of his credentials as a human being. I hesitate to speak in terms of front-page posters revealing their own personal “infieriority and/or superiority complexes,” though I must admit, as someone who is de facto in possession of said credentials in the real world, this is the term that comes to mind.
What I appreciate about this site is that it is one site that has demonstrated a great degree of openness to those of us (however credentialed or uncredentialed we may be) who tend to think OUTSIDE the “401 K liberal”-box. That is a great credit to you and SusanHu. My hoope is that the “pragmatics’ of the situation will not force you to change your ways.
Please do not let pragmatic considerations stand in the way of your objective judgments regarding posters and postings on this site. It would be a loss to the liberal blogosphere indeed.
First: thank you for your thoughtful post.
Second: Larry Johnson and Pat Lang are not front-pagers here like Susan, Steven, and Jerry are.
They write entirely for their own blogs and they agree to cross-post their material here and at TPM Cafe.
They do not write for this audience, which can cause some disconnect, as people have that expectation.
Now, this is an unusual situation unlike anything that takes place at Daily Kos, for example.
I can’t tell Pat Lang or Larry Johnson how to respond to comments. I can decide that their contributions are valuable, or I can decide that they are too controversial. Or they may just rescind their kind offer to post here.
The problem is that there a few people that hate out intelligence agencies that seem to be drawn to their diaries like a moth to a flame, and they heap abuse on them.
And they frankly don’t care for it.
I think Pat and Larry probably overreacted to Londonbear. But Londonbear chose to be snide in his intitial paragraph. The post was thoughtful, but unfortunately it comes as just one more disrespectful slap to Pat’s generous contribution.
There are ways to make your points without being disrespectful and this site is generally very good at it.
Anyway, that is how I see it.
My point, BooMan, is that I would like to see more “objectivity” in your criticism of postings. Admittedly, this is easier said than done, especially as a casual observer, but I felt like the responses to Londonbear’s highly considered responses were totally uncalled for and should have been “reprimanded” by site administrators according to the standards of this site. That is all: calling people out on typographcal errors as opposed to engaging the substance of the argument is just LAME, imo, and the insulting tone of the posts should have elicited at least a “warning” from site administrators.
It is my sense that the putative “prominence” of the posters had an impact, and that’s where I see D.A.N.G.E.R.
I cannot stress enough my appreciation of the service you provide and my understanding of the difficulties involved in “being all things to all people”.
Kudos to you and Susan for having to deal with these issues in the midst of your own “real world” crises, catastrophes and cataclysms.
to cloud the issue, or you forgot to look at a couple of timestamps?
Stu’s posts notwithstanding, WAAAY BEFORE he even posted on this thread, LondonBear was responded to QUITE RUDELY by BOTH of them — did you miss that?
I’m sorry, but my respect for you has PLUMMETED in the last 48 hours — whatever it is, Martin, it lloks like BIG TIME favor and the difference is, who is the target of the prickeshness — at least be honest and say:
THESE are the sacred cows.
Londonbear’s post was certainly curt, but it had plenty of substance to it. The experts replied with spelling flames and remarks that one could safely say bordered on racism – it certainly wasn’t what I would have expected from either of the experts, and certainly given my understanding of the frogpond’s golden rule, prickish.
My respect for you has also plummetted Brin. I think your treatment of Steven, although initially of substance, was a disgrace, and I think your treatment of me and Susan for the next 8 hours was totally inexcusable.
You created new accounts while temporarily cut off so that you could taunt me and try to entice me to ban you. And if I ban you then I will have a bunch of people telling me about my double standards.
This is a notice. Deal with your personal problems if they are what are causing you to suddenly act like a troll and then come back to the site. If you continue your recent behavior I am going to have no choice but to suspend your account.
I think maybe you should deal with YOUR personal problems — anyone who has tried to be honest on this site since the begining of the month is called a troll and dealt with in a completely fucked up manner by you.
I created ONE account: mobuisshit in order to reply to Anomolous who expressed concern — though I could have easily gone around “taunting you” with that separate account, I did not, and you had damn well better come up with some PROOF after all of your bitching about slader and libel if you are not going to retract that statement.
If you choose to suspend my account (actually, go ahead adn delete them both) then you had better delete….actually, on second thought, no matter what you do, delete the rest of my diaries. I tried to do it the other day, but the system would not let me — I expect to see them gone before tomorrow.
You think this “community” is going to thrive when no one is contributing to it?
Carry on.
This is an obvious taunt as you are fully aware that creating that account was a bannable offense.
Later that night another account was created by a user named BannedintheUSA which then posted hostile comments about your suspension. I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that this was you as well.
In any case, your behavior has become nothing more or less than intentionally disruptive and abusive.
It can’t continue this way.
accounts?? Maybe other banned and/or insulted people??
BannedintheUSA was not me, but damned funny handle — did you suspend the account immediately for supporting me??
She’s upset. She doesn’t understand why there was a double-standard between your treatment of her and of Chamonix. She hasn’t received a particularly satisfying response as near as I can tell. Seems to sum it up. I think threats and accusations are likely to make someone who’s already upset even more so, and likely will escalate matters. That would be my take on what’s going on between you and Brin. Best thing would be to step back, calm down, and then rationally hash things out – not sweep under the rug – after the anger subsides. You might even call this expert opinion (just so happens I study human aggression a bit in my professional life). Take it or leave it. Just my two cents. Salaam.
this is what happens when you come in in the middle of something James.
That flamewar had nothing to do with Chamonix.
It had to do with Brin’s behavior over an entire day. It started in the morning when Steve posted an article that was insulting to Texans. Brin objected in a pretty hostile way, which Steve didn’t react to very well.
He posted a diary acknowledging Brin’s point and apologizing for causing offense.
But six hours later Brin was still posting hostile posts disparaging me and Susan.
That is what Chamonix was responding to.
Am I going to treat his comment, as prickish as it was, in the same manner as an 8 hour flame war directed at me and Susan and Steve, and now Pat and Larry?
Obviously not. I don’t intervene everytime someone makes a prickish comment, I don’t even read most of the comments. I respond to patterns of behavior overtime, and especially to behavior that does not modify itself when nudged or reminded or warned.
in the middle — first of all, if you think that what I posted in response to that was hostile and a reason to dog my ass all day (not you, Chamonix1, you heeler).
You’re damnded straight you don’t read “most of the comments” — you don’t even the comments that are in any way related to what you might want to pontificate about — you just take someone out, pot a bunch of bullshit, without links, without quotes or proof….
Beauty and good luck.
Are my diaries gone yet?? I tried again and the system still won’t let me, they are in “show” mode.
I also respond to patterns over time (btw I am aware of Steve’s offending article in question here – and being an Okie I’ve received my share of barbs from folks who are convinced that we red-staters are a bunch of savages). I’ve had some dealings with Cham that have left a bad taste in my mouth, and have noticed that I am not alone in having shall we say checkered dealings with that particular individual. So it goes.
Sometimes, when you have an upset community member, it’s good to listen, to try to understand where that person is coming from. Maybe that would have helped here. Maybe it’s now too late. Maybe not.
Ignore or flame away as you desire. Salaam.
Brin gets into it with jpol
Brin abuses Susan
Brin objects to StevenD’s diary
Brin reacts to StevenD’s first attempt at an apology
Brin hijacks the open thread
Brin hijacks the Booswarm thread
Brin comes back
of these examples —
Not that I expect you to be fair, and I could take the time to put together a bumch of links for you, but you know what?
The people who will agree with you already do, and the people who give a shit otherwise already do — have fun hoisting me up as your next witch in the fire.
Whooo HOOO!
…..
I got better.
Newt or otherwise — you were fine to begin with — ya got comments feature over at Left End, right?
Yup. I most certainly do. Feel free to hop on over.
The first one:
me getting “into it with jpol”
was not about jpol (who had already been brought to taks in her breif stint as frontapger and NOT by me) but with the poster anmed Lad the Dog (who I’m sure you already banned, right?)
this was me abusing Susan it what way??
Really, Chamonix1 had quite a bit to say about this also — but what is here from my per5spective (not that THAT matters one bit) is someone asking me why I am not speaking to people on a blog as I would my own children and then implying (and not so subtly) that what I have written has made them burn themself…
what am I missing? is there soemthing in ivisible ink/pixels??
James, you don’t know what you’re talking about here. As BooMan kindly said.
Aren’t you like a professor of psychology or something? Surely you can see … there’s some seriously tragic and sad stuff going on here.
And, every comment does not require a reply. Just a thought. Sometimes people need not be encouraged.
I respectfully disagree. Salaam.
The problem isn’t that you disagree.
It’s that you don’t see.
Then spell it out.
Are you saying that she is mentally unstable?
becuase I won’t toe the BMT line.
If this wasn’t so funny, it’d be hilarious! Oh wait!
Oh, please!! Open everyone’s eyes!
Respectfully and in solidarity with you, I say:: step back and let others say what need be said ( I speak from having learned the hard way!) 😉
a “tragic case” in need of help? How about you? Do you need to be encouraged? I think BooMan wrote something recently about writers needing to be encouraged, yes? But not me? I need help?
I think James knows plenty — but hey, whatever it takes to make you feel good about yourself, hon.
Did you win your Koufax?
Sorta semi-off topic. I’ll be back to my computer later tonight.
Will do!
Sssshhhhh. Hush. Step back……. watch, listen for a minute, you.
but I don’t think it’ll work, every direct question I have been asking has been IGNORED.
The backend emails are flying furiously….
Yes, I know, I know how it goes….but just step back….you are not “mentally instable”… but the nature of this medium lends itself to insanity….sometimes it helps to step back for a moment……(play fucking computer games if you have to. I recommend Apeiron, lol!).
Salaam a laikum to that! 😉
my “abuse” of you and Susan for 8 hours.
That is a very serious charge and NOT one that I take lightly at all.
Brinnainne, so many people have tried to be kind and warm with you…. but we can’t do what’s needed here on a blog. Please get off the computer and call a crisis help line. I want you to feel better.
and turn it back ’round. A crisis hotline?? That’s what you have come up with to be “caring”??
Ohmifuckinggod!
ROTFLMAO!
YOu told me Friday night that reading my posts caused you to burn yourself. Think they have a hotline for that?
First, I’m NOT Brinnainne posting under another name. Put your paranoia back in a box, Booman.
Brinnainne is referring to a rather disturbing comment that SusanHu made on this diary:
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2005/12/15/133626/28
Now, what is interesting is that there are supposedly 90 comments on that diary, yet Booman has excised (deleted) a long exchange in which SusanHu said some things that would call into question her emotional/mental stability. The deletions have reduced the 90 comments to about 25 or so–and the deletions were obviously done to save SusanHu’s reputation.
Unfortunately for her, I took the effort to archive these comments. I didn’t save the entire exchange with Brinnainne, but here’s a bit of it:
==
=
=
=
=
=
=
==
Re: NO. You stop with (none / 1)
Please.
Stop.
You would never talk this way to your own beloved children … how can you talk this way to any other human being?
And I clearly need to stay away from all of this — so bash me again, and I won’t reply because I was reading your hurtful posts at the same time I was striking a match and managed to burn three fingers, and the pain is killing me. I need to stay away from negative vibes.
Hickok: “You know the sound of thunder. Can you imagine that sound if I ask you to? Ma’am, listen to the thunder.”
by susanhu (susanhuatearthlinkdotnet) on Thu Dec 15th, 2005 at 08:08:15 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Would I say: NO (none / 0)
to my own children?
Of course I would. What the hell are YOU about this evening Susan?
I’m sorry you cut yourself, I’m sorry you’re hurting for other reasons, but you are NOT a child and I don’t appreciate the guilt trip.
I want something else, to get me through this, semi-charmed kinda life..
Third Eye Blind
by brinnainne on Thu Dec 15th, 2005 at 08:15:43 PM EST
[ Parent ]
It is NO WONDER that Booman got rid of THAT. It’s completely embarrassing, and in my opinion are the words of someone who has some serious “issues”–and I DON’T mean Brinnainne.
if it is deleted then what is this?
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2005/12/15/133626/28#66
You covering your tracks?
It was deleted and now you put it back in.
Good work!
Thanks for presenting the evidence that it’s SusanHu who needs to “take a break” and has emotional issues–to be kind–that need resolution before she’s permitted the responsibility of administering a website that has, shall we say, some contention? SusanHu is NOT helping you but is rather hurting this site.
As for one who is so concerned with “slander” (actually it’s libel, but we’ll let the lawyers sort that one out), perhaps you ought to be very concerned with the libelous nature of SusanHu’s accusation, printed on this diary and distributed by you, that Brinnainne is emotionally or mentally disturbed? Talk about damaging somebody’s reputation!
If I were Brinnainne, I’d sue you.
No, the original comments I referred to are gone. You didn’t delete the entire diary, just PART of it.
They are NOT there. Good thing I copied them.
Everybody go to that link Booman provided. There’s supposed to be 90 comments there.
Count them. I defy you to find 90.
The missing ones are the ones in which Brin and SuHu argued, and SusanHu accused Brin of causing SuHu to burn three of her fingers.
And no, I’m NOT Brin. Really.
That was the last time I let myself be sucked into your deep pool of anger…. accidentally burning my fingers was a wake-up call that I shouldn’t get sucked into your angry world any longer. It’s too negative and destructive.
Look at the deterioration of this thread. It’s sad. A lot of good people have tried to communicate with you, to no avail. You just hurl words back at them. There’s no way to communicate– you can always find one or two other moths who get attracted to the same flame. No one else wants any part of it.
burned your fingers through my…umm, her’s where I get a bit lost…what did I do again??
Ah, yes, it it is all my foult tha tthis thread has “deteriorated” as well — ok, feel better hoist me up as the “troublemaker” “wallshitter” — whatever you are calling me this hour. And are you now presuming to speak for other people?!
All of you “lot of good people have tried to communicate with you, to no avail” — please show yourselves — and please let me know what email; address you’re using because I’m not getting all of this “to no avail” pleading that you’ve been doing…
No takers? No?
Then screw you, Susan.
people who have gone beyond TRYING to be caring and actually suceed…what is it exactly that you think I need??
By all means PLEASE let me know — certainly, you are qualified in the midst of your own PERSONAL probelms to publicly declare what I need.
Hurtful, yes, you too.
I rescued the “burnt fingers” accusation from the Memory Hole, Brin.
You owe me a (Diet) Coke! Do I need to come to Austin to claim it?
there is something weird with that Open Thread.
I looked up Susan’s comments using the time stamp in your post. And there is her comment ready to be opened up and read.
However, the link to that comment and subthread doesn’t work if your type it into the address bar or link to it.
What I think is causing this is that some comment in that thread got hidden through ratings, but I can’t verify it because our hidden comments function is still broken.
I guess I will have to bug Andy to fix that feature now that we have more troll ratings floating around.
But, in any case, the comment is not deleted and can be accessed through Susan’s comments page.
Hm, something weird this way comes?
You deleted those comments. Admit it. You deleted a LOT of them, all of them related to SusanHu completely embarrassing herself.
i didn’t delete it. It still exists and I told you how to access it. Deleted comments cannot be retrieved that way.
If you require proof, I can delete a comment of yours and then you can check to see if it still shows up in your comments page.
Delete all of them if you wish.
As I just posted elsewhere, I’ve archived this page and its libelous comments against Brinnainne by both you and SusanHu.
If I were you, I would issue an apology and hope Brinnainne’s not a lawsuit sort of person. I suspect she’s not, but you certainly are taking quite a chance by supporting SusanHu in her statements. You are not ordinary commentators, but rather the site’s administrators and therefore its “publishers”–and you wil be held to the highest standard in court.
From Wikipedia:
In English and American law, and systems based on them, libel and slander are two forms of defamation (or defamation of character), which is the tort or delict of publishing (meaning to a third party) a false statement that negatively affects someone’s reputation. “Defamation” is the term generally used internationally, and is accordingly used in this article where it is not necessary to distinguish between “libel” and “slander”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel
you should have displayed your email: minionsof welshman@something.com
Geezus — maybe Susan has a crisi hotline for you too??
that’s his email and his IP is protected.
However his IP is off the same host as a Lord Farquatt, a troll from a week or so ago.
that BannedintheUSA was not me??
You do seem to have the tools.
well. I can’t be sure even now. But I never checked the IP’s. I just tried to ignore it.
When you said you only created one account I went and checked and there were different IP’s so I take you at your word.
I don’t really care. You know that you are not supposed to create multiple accounts and certainly not after I suspended your posting privileges.
I am hoping you will cool down eventually.
(i.e., you have to take “my word” that I’m not creating multiple accounts) then good luck with your future witchhunts — jezzesH.
Susan, this is so condescedending coming from you. Puh-leassse.
Really, it is so unbecoming of your position as a site administrator.
I think Susan’s response is dead on the money. If you have witnessed the change in Brin’s behavior over time it is very worrying, and trying to make it out to be about a change in my behavior, or Susan’s is totally missing the issue.
It may seem condescending but it is genuine concern.
Just so you know…I’ve archived this entire page in case Brin wants to use it in court. Libel suits are quite expensive to defend, aren’t they?
thanks.
You’re welcome, ma’am (rides off into sunset to the tune of “Happy Trails”).
Who was that masked blogger?
Grow up and get a life.
If it is so gadmned “genuine” why haven’t I gotten an email from either of you — Martin, YOU personally, have never received or sent an email to me, nor do you know a thing about me, except what you think you know, and that is all baed on your ASSUMPTIONS — same with Susan, thoug she has spoken to me on the phone and echanged an email or few, all based on ASSUMPTIONS.
For you all now to “worry at change of behavior” and call it “genuine concern”, while ignoring everything that has gone on here on this blog since the beginning of the month makes me sick to my stomach — but you go on blame it on me and my problems…
Whateverthefuckwhatever.
Are my6 diaries gone yet?? It really can’t be that hard — I’m thinking, change the ststud from “show” which doesn’t allow edits, to the one that does…
I am very worried … I think back to last summer, say, or earlier, and Brin’s posts were very different. And she and I talked on the telephone during the times at Camp Casey, and she was TERRIFIC! I instantly liked talking with her and she helped me reach another BooTribber one night.
But in the time since, Brin, you seem angrier and angrier. Particularly at night. And you take what people write in the wrong way — overly sensitive to what they write, and you respond in an angry way.
So, yes, I worry about you. Such anger is very consuming, and it can affect everyone around you — including the people on this blog.
I don’t want to be around it much, so I usually avoid it — tonight, for example, I’ve been reading Bob Johnson’s old diaries and laughing my head off while listening to C-Span2.
It’s important that the blog also be an environment that is not full of angry comments and accusations, but a rational, calm, friendly environment.
I just come in here to check on things and then I leave. I have no desire to be around this kind of talk. But I still worry about you. If you’d rather I didn’t, I won’t. It’s your life.
for giving me permission to live my own life, of which you know exactly what about?
Yes, you’re right since the summer, I have transformed from TERRIFIC! to mentally unstable – Susan, I never called you a friend, because I don’t know a thing about you outside of what you have made public here — in emails we exchanged you have not revealed anything more.
For you to come out publically on this blog, where you are a sitemaster/mistress who can crack her whip whenever and imply that a) I’m mentally unstable b) that I have “abused” you and c) CONTINUE on with the “since last summer she is so different” BULLSHIT…
Just making me shake my head. I made assumtions about you too — I do so apologize.
may be so –and if the concern is genuine, I appreciate it; however, for my part, if the concern were genuine, it’s a concern I personally would have expressed privately, not publically (esp in consideration of rececent developments concerning a certain individual [alpizo?] who was shot by federal marshals, the justification being he was ( I quote my own notes from MSM reports) “troubled, mentally imbalanced, disturbed,” etc.).
My point: making public statements of this nature about people (and, incidentally, the same statements have been made about me, ad nauseum in public forums in recent weeks) is currently being used by this fascist administratiion as justification for putting BULLETS through people’s heads.
If a site administrator (or another member of this community) is genuinely concerned about the well-being (temporary, permanent;mental, spiritual, physical or otherwise) of an individual poster, my wish would be that this genuine concern be expressed in private email exchange.
Otherwise, it is very difficult for the outside observer to distinquish between an attempt to publically question the mental health of the poster and a genuine concern for the same.
Since I was not party to any of the disputes at issue here, I speak, of course as an “outside observer.”
I understand and you are probably right.
But Brin is still here because we got to know her through her comments over a decent interval of time. And we’re making an effort because we are concerned.
Well, and the fact that you have gotten to know her over an extended period of time also means that she has a VESTED INTEREST in this site (that is, ultimately, in the good work that you do).
I know from experience (MUCH! and over many years) that coming under attack in an internet community in which a person has a vested interest can be a very painful thing–real world painful.
Obviously, that is the case here. And I think “behind the scenes” communications (whether by phone or email or in person) can work wonders in that regard, but making posts questioning the “mental stability” and expressing “concern” for someone’s frame of mind does not seem very productive–because we all know how these kinds of statements can be manipulated.
If there’s anything I can to do Intervene or mediate between parties here (by email, phone or otherwise) please let me know. My number and contact coordinates are obviously available in plain sight.
Again, kudos and strength to both of you for juggling a difficult job in difficult times.
(Brin, pls take the personal “crises” of both Boo and Su into account in your own assessment of the situation–everyone pls give everyone a fucking break here!).
Humiliate me by suggesting that I should call a crisi hotline??
Still waiting on an apology for TYAT one, but, I know, not forthcoming.
Concerned?
About what? That I might point out some inconsistencies in your site management and the way that you treat various posters?
Sorry that I tried. Thought you might actually listen … never mind!
Speak differnt, be slandered. It’s the American way!!
PS If you want see see a “pattern” — take a look at “pete richards'” postings over the same period that you are concerned about “me”.
Private communications have been tried numerous times.
It wouldn’t have mattered what I’d said because you’d attack whatever I wrote.
My concern now is that, almost every time you post, it’s in anger against some imagined problem the other person has. And then the entire diary or story’s threads get ruined in a big shouting match between you and whoever it is. It’s negative and nobody but those who like such ugly attacks wants to be around it.
Post the “privat emails that you tried” — you are full of it.
yes, lets take another look at pete richards postings. I must admit, he seems to be more presciently on target every time I reread his wisdom… and guilty of far less trollishness than given credit for, ihho.
Please reread especially the diary pete did about internet addiction.
— if cutting off my ability to defend myself when people are throwing around BS like “you need help” is your way of expressing concern, thanks, but no thanks.
It’s the custom of the country, doll. Think of how Shadowthief feels, being characterized as an “angry dude” who is capable of forcing profanity from other people’s pens with his emails. Or Parker, who receives a single non-response to her email only to be described as “un-responsive.” It’s so much easier to characterize people when they’re not able to defend or describe themselves. I wonder how I will be characterized when I am permanently silenced for calling spades spades.
We’ve all been tiptoeing around this for months — like small frightened children around a lot of anger.
We’ve all tried to understand and to be understanding. We have been respectful and private.
I’ve sent several e-mails. Others have too.
But when PUBLIC thread after PUBLIC thread gets taken over by such anger, spoiling the discussion and getting into personal attacks (always) — then bringing in other angry people to goad things along, as appears to have occurred tonight — it can’t go on forever.
We’ve all tried everything — listening, responding, cajoling, joking, complimenting, being kind, ignoring, being sarcastic, returning the anger — the gamut has been tried. Nothing works. It’s beyond us to intervene here. Nor is a blog a place for such efforts … if someone is that angry all the time, it might be good to vent to someone in real life, not in a blog in nearly every thread in which one participates. That was what I was suggesting. It has to stop here, however.
Are you talking about me? If not, what/who have you been tiptoeing around??
Because I CALL BULLSHIT on you, if you are. If you aren’t, I’m sure the ministered to could just do with a bit of you laying off.
here: you had BETTER not be trying to pass ME off as the target of your ministrations: (bold mine)
What is going to stop here?? Please tell me it is you (I know, it isn’t, never hurts to ask…)
You two did the same thing to Parker, your painting of shadowthief as just ‘some angry dude’ — and Brinn is a sad, angry person, who needs to call a crisis line – you two are a fucking piece of work you are, really.
Have fun wallowing in your denial of your OWN responsibility for what your nce anf uture site may have become. Community my ass.
last call Brinnainne.
My patience, for tonight, is expended.
person I have ever come across in my life. I Tried to make things better between the both of us Here and the response was to receive a Troll rating by you or your buddy (bannedintheUSA) and then to totally ignore my plea to be civil and friendly to each other, and then to continue troll rate me and bash me…You should really get help..unless this is just a trollish act that you and some of your buddies participate in to cause flame wars and try to disrupt liberal blogs. You highjack diaries almost wherever you go, and continue to call names and pick fights. I don’t know what your gig is but your behaviour is unbelievable and you and a couple others tell people to go back and look at my behaviour and writing…I wish they would. I would love for any sane person to go back and read what has transpired in past diaries and threads with you and others. I can only wish you get the help that you need and it happens fast. If you can not see that there are several people that really cared about you and only wanted the best for you, then you really haven’t got a clue as to what friends who care and real feelings are about. Susanhu did in my mind…a great service to you but suggesting you call a hotline for help. In the real world..that is called a friend and someone who is using tough love to help out someone they care about. Having read Susanhu for over a year now..she is not the type to make a statement like that, and risk her reputation as just being a smartass, and someone who is a cold hearted person. Anyone who knows her work knows that suggesting something like that could only come from a place of genuine care and concern and could possibly help someone in crisis or save a life..But you turn the tables and start being nasty and hateful and then a buddy of yours comes on and starts to demean her and talk about lawsuits and slander and other bullshit..yes..that’s what it is..a big game and Bullfuckingshit. Take your anger and direct it towards the right people…Bush, Gonzales, Rice, Cheney, Rove and the people who are trying to distroy our democracy, while lying about bringing one to Iraq. Please take a break from blogging and go be at peace and try to stop being so angry. It really helps no one. I hope you can really find some peace. I realize it is not only me that you had a run in with, and I fear the list will just continue to grow if something isn’t done soon.
First of all, you have NEVER MET me. Second of all, your descriptions of me are not only inaccurate to my postings here online, but certainly bear NO similarity to ME the person, who you know absolutely nothing about.
So, you’ll excuse me while I don’t buy for one second: “all of this is coming from a place of caring” — pulease. There are a few people on this site that I call friends, and that has everything to do with OFFSITE interactions, and nothing to do with what goes on here. You are not among them and you have no standing to say ANYthing about what I know or do not know about friendship.
Second of all, I have no idea who BannedintheUSA is/was — but you believe what you want, people always do.
As I said yesterday, denial is a wonderful thing — if it makes you feel better to paint me as a “troubled” person, rather than deal with the issues that I bring up, more power to you.
Personally, I think it’s sad.
and recorded some great songs.
how’s life on the triangle dude?
do you ever think you’ll get enough?
you run the bases better than anyone i’ve ever seen.
em press ive
pot? meet the boot-licking kettle, name of chammy.
Holiday Drama
Is this one of those deals like being born on third base and thinking you hit a triple?
Or is it some other bush league family’s dysfunctional dynamic?
yeah both of those things!
i always like to look on the bright side though.
maybe since there’s three of him,
he can get a group rate on the transactional analysis.
Boy oh boy, there’s a lot of meat in this comment, and I’ll try to keep it short (without regard for whether this is the “appropriate” place for these comments on this or not).
Inthe first place: anger initself has developed an extremely bad rap in this country over the past 50 yrs or so.
Personally, I don’t necessarily put “anger” in the category of negative emotions as is the practice of most Americans to do. Anger has its place, and when it is justified, can be a very powerful force (as the generation of “wow. I’m finally waking up to the truth about America”-liberals is finally realizing). I have long been an advocate of the “power of outrage” (and have been as outraged over the LACK of outrage I see in this country as I have been about the things that give cause for that outrage).
I work with African American and other “minority” youth, and one of the biggest mistakes I see many of my colleagues making is denying the validity of outrage and anger in young people in this population or seeking to get the kids to just shut up about it. Call it “anger management” if you will, call it whatever: what it amounts to is once again DENIAL. Denial that there is any reason for anger or outrage,and even if there is, better to suppress it because anger, well, that’s just not acceptable.
“Oh will you just stfu about the things that piss you off–whether justified or not? Just suppress it because anger is NEGATIVE, it’s a BAD thing, not something anyone in this country wants to deal with–or is even willing to deal with.” Shut up. Don’t worry, be happy, And if you’re not, pretend that you are, goddammit, because no one likes a person who is ANGRY, for god’s sake.
My approach to “anger management” in these communities is considered “unique” (and by many, considered highly effective): I refuse to DENY my students the right to be angry. Au contraire. My approach is, “hey, you have every right to be angry, in fact you, as African and/or Native Americans, you have every reason to be eternally pissed off and outraged. Your anger is justified. Entirely. Question is: what are you going to do with that anger? Let it eat you up? Or are you going to channel it into things that might help future generations of your people have less to be angry about? You really want to piss people off: succeed. Succeed in ‘their’ world, cause honey, I tell you, they’re EXPECTING you to fail. And denying the validiy of your anger is part of their strategy for goading you into failure.”
My main point: I refuse to DENY my students the right to express their anger. I refuse to be paternalizing and arrogant enough (in my relatively privileged position) to tell them they have no RIGHT to be angry and/or that anger is not an appropriate response, i.e. that anger is inherently negative.
Anger, when it is justified, is NOT negative. In fact, the inability to get angry or to experience outrage in the face of injustice (any injustice, however great or small) is, imo, a highly negative thing. If a person cannot be riled into anger or outrage on another’s behalf (when that person has experienced injustice, however great or small), frankly, I pity that person. (And yeah, I’ve been doing a hell of a lot of “pitying” of people these days in light of the many instances of injustice–both great and small–around me, and the lack of outrage and anger in response to them).
So, the point of all that: I get the sense that Bri has attempted again and again to express anger and/or outrage at what she perceives to be injust treatment of herself and others on this site. Those attempts have been met either with ridicule or dismissal or with the idea that “anger is bad” (and since THAT little bit of bullshit is commonly accepted by 99% of the populace and probably 95% of posters on this site, it works to shut down any expression of anger or outrage in seconds flat), she is now attempting to express that anger and/or outrage wherever she can just so that it will be heard and acknowledged as valid.
Irony of ironies, Susan: your sig line reads:
And yet you say, w/ re Bri’s angry young woman attitude:
What I don’ see anyone but the “other angry people” (that would be me and perhaps James?) who are “goading things along” doing is
acknowledging the anger, accepting the part of the site admins in fueling that anger (by participating in obvious application of double-standards) and apologizing for that, hence seeking to move collectively beyond the anger. You want her to get over the anger and quit posting it publically all over the place: maybe consider that some of your actions have understandably caused that anger, fueled that anger, justified that anger.
Sorry, but I don’t see anger as being intrinsically bad. I do see the LACK of anger and the lack of outrage over certain things as being intrinsically bad.
I deal with people who have “anger management” issues every day. Most of them are young people who are entirely justified in being batshit loony angry over the injustices they experience on a daily basis. I will not and cannot deny that their anger is justified. I can only seek, as I have said many a time to my clients, “to help them prevent that anger from getting them incarcerated or killed” (and on that note, I teachand speak from real-world experience, not from “academic credentials”).
I see a carry-over in this philosophy to what is going on on this site (and in the so-called “liberal” blogosphere in general):
From what I can see of the exchanges here (I have not followed them blow-by-blow), Bri has some very legitimate reasons for being angry at the way she has been treated here. Dismissing her anger or portraying her as mentally disturbed for being angry is not the solution–and it only serves to fuel the anger (in my view, justifiably).
That said, I agree that it is inappropriate to let that anger and those issues bleed into every topic and to hijack other threads, but that is what happens when justified anger and outrage is ignored, dismissed or simply categorized as “negative” and therefore not legitimate.
Just my 2 bucks (inflation).
again.
This is a several month long thing that you are categorizing as somehow about double standards.
It’s not about that for me. It’s about Brin.
In any case, the double standard is that Brin has not been banned for behavior 10 times worse than any behavior than any displayed by the few people that have been banned.
And that is because we care about her. For shame. No one is attacking me for not banning her, when much less got other people banned. But that is exactly the situation.
I concede, I haven’t followed blow-by-blow, can only say that I have de facto seen double-standards AND the flatout refusal to deal with “anger issues” on this site (oh, let’s just call anger bad, sweep it under the rug and hope it goes away, spread the love, man, spread the love).
again, I haven’t been following blow-by-blow, and without knowledge of the pre-history and behind-the-scenes exchanges, would not be qualified to judge anyway.
All I’m saying is that–as a third-party observer–I do see how these two factors have played a role in escalating this conflict (and perhaps others?) on this site.
what de facto double standards have you seen and why do you think that I have flat-out refused to deal with them?
God, I knew you were going to come and ask me to provide “evidence”–rightly so, and I’m just too tired to do the searches on that: I recall in my own “spats” instances in which you did NOT intevene when I was being subjected to ad hominem attacks of the basest sort, and then the word from you was “to your corners” — as if the “offenses” were equal, when actually I was being called an asshole and was not responding “in kind”; and I seem to recall you letting any number of those kinds of ad hominem attacks against me “slide” (but I don’t hold it against you, sincerely I don’t, it was a helluva mess!)
But even in these ongoing battles between others here (and I’m sorry, Boo, there’s just been so MUCH of it, I can’t go back and find specifics), for me it’s been clear as someone “just passing through” that there’s been a double standard and a clear tendency to “go easy” on big-name posters. Others have seen the same tendency. Shouldn’t that be enough to at least consider that there may be something like that going on (even without people pointing to specific examples?)
As far as “flatout refusal”–that statement referred to dealing with refusal to deal with anger issues and the expression of justifiable anger, and was more directed at Susan’s responses than to yours. I don’t see you as being someone who shies away from conflict or anger, but I do see that coming through in much of what Susan has said in response to Bri and in general statements about the site.
I don’t think suppressing anger is the way to deal with it: wade through the shit if you want to get BEYOND it is my philosophy; if you don’t, it will just keep rising to the top (and/or invading-infecting every thread).
Well, I’m signing off now for the night, so I won’t see any response to this until tomorrow, but…
As I recall, you came to this site after already being embroiled in a fight over there. And it brought the fight here. You were not responsible for that, or for my impatience with the overflow of Kos-fights onto this site.
So, you walked into something that you were unaware of.
I remember posting an angry post about being sick and tired of people using this site to bash Kos. I had posted several hints and pleas about this before.
Parker’s constant bashing of Chris Bowers was also bothering the shit out of me.
Whatever the controversy over that, that is what you walked into. And so, your perception is probably heavily influenced by that.
But the bottom line is that I don’t get involved in every dispute. But when people get in disputes all the time I do notice. And those people tend to be the ones that get warnings or reminders to be civil.
Some then get a persecution complex because I seem to be picking on them. But if you don’t act like a prick I will never have to remind you not to act like a prick. And some people think the only way to express their outrage is to be a jerk to other people. That’s bull.
And we also have been under attack as a site from a series of trolls that like to jump into every dispute or warning and turn it into a flamewar.
I’m pretty bored by the whole thing. But I don’t see any double standards at all.
Actually, I came to this site long before any “dispute” over there. I came in with a diary that scrolled unnoticed off the radar screen over there–and you were the first one to recommend it before it quickly hit the rec list.
It was only weeks later that a shitstorm ensued over there, with a completely different diary. And that was when the Orange brigade followed me over here.
And yes, I stepped into something I had no idea I was getting into (to this day, I have no idea what the Pie Wars were about, for example; and I did not follow the whole Parker thing closely enough for informed comment; in this particular thread, I did feel like PL came down very heavily on Londonbear and should have gotten a slap on the wrist, at the very least).
W/ re my particular “case”: I felt like I was already a “bona fide” member of this site by the time the “Stark Wars” broke out and so would have perhaps expected a bit more support than I got when the shit hit the fan in an incident that many “veterans” of these kinds of flamewars have described as being far beyond the pale of ANYTHING they have ever seen on the Net–and, according to my records, there is no instance whatsoever in which I was the one calling names or engaging in ad hominem attacks on posters at either location. Not a one.
I did my best to respect your wishes about Kos-bashing here, and refrained from posting my response to the debacle on this site (I posted it here instead)–even that piece is more generally a comment on the dynamics of left-wing liberal blogs and the tactics being used by “liberals” to “eat their own”–that is, to trash people like me who are on the far left, i.e. further than even Michael Moore.
But most of the Kos-bashing I saw going on on the various threads had very little to do with me or with the so-called “Stark Wars”–at the same time, I got the sense both here and over there that many of these old festering issues between posters were then conveniently projected onto the “scandal” surrounding my diary and the “Stark Wars”–even though from the posts in your diary on the subect it is clear that these issues had absolutely nothing to do with me. It was more about old, long-standing unhashed-out disputes betweenn various posters on the sites.
I still feel like you could have been more forceful in coming out against this comment and others made by the same poster (some of which have apparently been troll-rated out of view), and the fact that you didn’t feels like something of a “double-standard” compared to things for which other posters have actually been banned from this site.
As far as I can see, I’ve never acted like a prick here and have never gotten any reminders from you to this effect: however, when I was clearly being treated with prickish behavior (as by the poster cited above), I was asked by Susan in private mail to “let it go”–when in fact I wasn’t the one acting like a prick. That to me was evidence of a double-standard: people came in here bashing the hell out of ME, and I was the one asked to “cool it.” Hmmm. (As far as I can tell, said poster followed me in here and has since decided to stay. Great, so the scandal brought you at least one regular–glad to see someone got something out of it! 😉
At any rate, I don’t think the “double-standard” issue is nearly as severe here as it is elsewhere–if it keeps coming up and/or gets out of hand, I guess, then I would take the time to dig up the “evidence” from posts.
to tell you the truth, I didn’t want to get involved in that fight because I felt like I would need to go over and read the thread at Daily Kos to understand what was going on.
You refreshed my memory a little, which was obviously somewhat off. And I do remember stepping in to ask people to go to their corners.
That was my way of telling people to stop flaming without taking is sides in a dispute I understood poorly and did not want to have to educated myself about.
If it felt like I wasn’t sticking up for you it was true. But I didn’t have enough information to take sides and I didn’t want to deal with it.
And that is what I am talking about when I say that you walked into a preexisting sore point with me. I lost my temper when that flamewar came here, but I was careful not to blame you for it because I knew you were not responsible for the problem.
I don’t need all this drama and it is bad for the site. People get in fights in other communities and then they come here to air their grievances. And if I object to this I am stifling free speech and taking the side of the big boys. But that is not fair to me or to this community. The site aims to be civil and bitter threads about other sites are not conducive to civility.
Yeah, it was complicated and a helluvamess–can’t really blame anyone for “not wanting to get involved” (even though I sincerely believe this “not wanting to get involved” is one of the almost uniquely American character traits that has allowed us to get ourselves into the mess we are in politically–it’s what I call the “FEMA standard”).
Some good writing came out of the fiasco–and frankly, in the end, after every detail of my real life and real identity was ultimately outted and aired on both sites, I felt it was a good thing to drop the veil of anonymity, put my name, my credentials, my job (and my life?) on the line for what I REALLY think. So fuck it (Hi, King George, you reading this? Better get out your dictionary, if you have one! ;-).
So anyway, been meaning to ask: can you at least list my blog on the “sidebar” as a Frog Stalker? (The blog address is in the sig line Historical Footnotes).
that you have a bunch of people telling you about double-standards because you are running the site by double standards??
And maybe that that isn’t MY fault??? Worth thinking about.
I was interested in this diary until it turned into a free-for-all. While I realize that many things have brewed of late, I’m getting rather tired of the off topic airing of grievances in diary after diary. Take it outside.
“Gentleman, you can’t fight in here. This is the War Room!”
No discussions allowed?
HIJACKING a diary, the ULTIMATE sin…here’s MY deal:
If I post something that the DIARIST says “hey, take it outside/away from my thread”, I respect that and do it. OTHER PEOPLE who come in and tell me to, meh and shrug, not yours to get indignant about in the first place.
Look at all the “disrespectful” things that everyone…or almost everyone here says about Bush.
You cannot have open discussion, where people express themselves in the way they have been accostomed to if you create rules about what is “acceptable” or who it is that it is acceptable to criticize or insult.
We all should be able to accept that we will probably be insulted, that is something that is a normal occurrence almost daily for everyone if you are at all social. You don’t have to accept it, but you should be able to respond freely with your own insult if you choose to. People are not loving, they may be….but that’s not our essence. it’s a big mix. We are not wonderful to each other or to ourselves. The Earthly environment we live in is not conducive to that. So we have to…in my opinon allow for people to be free and diverse and different…otherwise you have lots of problems…like wars.
Let people express themselves. If they are insulting to other people then that is probably intended and a reflection of thier depth of the REAL sentiment. It’s also possible somebody is having a bad day and they take it out on someone else or someone is disturbed. But that’s the way it goes. In my opinion you ought not try to control expression. I mean if someone threatens someone….then thats significant. But if you can’t take a little name calling, then I think that’s stifling, and a kind of censorship.
Boo man is certainly more liberal in allowing people to express themselves than Daily Kos…it seems to me…But perhaps not as liberal as some people would like.
I didn’t hear anything…maybe I missed something….that Brianne said that sounded like a big deal.
Well said. I think that efforts to create a conflict-free environment are simply doomed to failure from the get-go. Really doesn’t take a psychologist to say that. Basic street-level observation teaches that lesson early on. Yes, humans are a mixed bag. Conflicts, when they do happen, are seldom pretty even when “civil.” It’s in how we handle those conflicts that counts. Sweeping conflict under the rug, or trying to suppress the conflict will typically make those who are already upset even more so, as their outlet for airing their grievances has been frustrated (i.e., blocked, and there is tons of experimental and field evidence that suggests that a very NORMAL response to frustration is to get angrier and more aggressive). Condescending remarks about one’s “mental well-being” are under such circumstances acts of provocation – whether wittingly or unwittingly they serve only to further anger someone who’s got a legitimate grievance.
Oh well, I’m sure my opinion on the matter is hardly a popular one, nor will it be well-received by those who could really use it. So it goes.
Well, your comments are well-received by me, but my opinion doesn’t count for much here either. I’ve all but completely removed my presence from this site because I am so disturbed by the passive aggression and the use of banning to solve conflicts. Repressing dissent is effective in the short term but the negative consequences outweigh the benefits. Brinn, btw, had her mic cut again.
Who can tell?
Were you able to remove your diaries? I was, the most recent few, but most of them are still there, and I would really like them gone.
When it becomes blatantly obvious that my value to this place is NIL, then, I would like my contributions back, ya know? I wish there were a way to download and delete all of my comments as well, but thee doesn’t appear to be.
Anyway — your opinions matter to me, where have you been posting them the last 10 days or so?? I’ll go read them there!
You’re on my email list now, so prepare yourself. I do periodic missives on politics and such, so you shall be receiving them. I may also need to start a new blog, or newsgroup, or something. I had one on my site, and I’ll either kick it into gear again, or start something new. I don’t know. I enjoy these sites, because they don’t require me to mind them, or write with a constancy that my schedule doesn’t allow. Besides, I don’t envy anyone running an enterprise such as this. Believe it or not, I sympathize with Boo’s position. It’s very hard to have to moderate differences and be “fair” all the time. We can’t all have the wisdom of Solomon. That’s what democratic processes are for, checks/balances, peer review… There are tools to make the process less partial. Otherwise it goes… well you can see where it goes.
Yeah, I knew her mic got cut off late last nite. Already happened again this afternoon? Geez.
Or as Emily Litella would say…”never mind.” 🙂
comments and PROMPTLY had my access cut off. Just checked back in and it seems to be back on again…so, 3 times in less than 48 hours — just know that if I don’t respond, that may be the reason. Fates know that there were RAFTS of things said about me in the past two days that I couldn’t respond to. Some of them quite nasty (whether or not the purported to be “coming from a place of caring”), at this point though, I have no desire at all to respond to disrepectful bullshit. Life is waaay too short!
I have been accused of “bringing people ’round” to advocate on my behalf, you and I and anyone else who spoke up know that isn’t true, so I say thanks to you!
You sound pretty friendly to me Brianne. More friendly than me online!
I don’t understand what this is all about. Yes, I thought the Lang and Johnson both got a little threatened by London Bear. Just reading the beginning of what he had to say I felt he was much more authoritative sounding than they. There was nothing critical of them on a personal basis.
As things get bigger they get more a little more commercial and less idiosyncratic. There should be room for everybody in the world of ideas, Lang, Johnson and everyone else.
Londonbear’s only crime in that post was being British. Brits tend to be very dry and to-the-point. When they disagree with you, they don’t bother with a lot of niceties. They just start deconstructing your rhetoric, which is what he did, starting with the diarists ethos/credentials. He did not deserve such a personal attack. But, I think it’s partly a culture clash.
In case anyone cares, Pat Lang actually posted a response at the end of this thread and he is fucking bang on in saying we are not “civil” here. We aren’t.
And I really don’t give a fucking shit at this point if this comment gets me banned or put on time out, or what, but Bri, you are out of control.
It’s quite amusing you would bring catnip into this discussion (somewhere in the hundreds of comments you keep posting telling everyone else they are full of shit).. do you remember slamming here a few months ago for no reason and then having to apologize because she wouldn’t take your shit? Do you remember slamming alohaleezy and then making up? Do you remember slamming ghostdancersway? You and I got into it too, but I decided to take the time to see your point of view vs. getting sucked into name calling, which seems to be your MO these days. It’s easy to point fingers.
The pattern is there and it’s open for all to see if they chose to wade through the tons of comments posted to find it.
Hell, reading all this bullshit on thread after thread, even after people apologize to you (did you see that katiebird was okay with Boo & Steven’s apologies for slamming entire states?… but you continued the attack for some reason), it is making my fucking blood boil. It’s not productive. And really, yes it is highjacking threads for your own selfish reasons. As AP pointed out in Steven’s thread… the REAL story was about a poor woman who DIED at the hands of the State… but you made it all about you. Even after people apologized. That is just disgusting behaviour. And I do think you need to take a time out, or stop posting, or whatever, just chill out man.
Case in point… Boo says your diaries are archived and he’ll figure out how to let you delete them, yet you continue to post comment after comment demanding he delete them immediately… seems like even when someone gives you an answer you can’t let it go. Sometimes you just need to take a step back and walk away.
But feel free to pile on me now for pointing this shit out.
I do care about you and I want you to stick around, but this stuff is just nasty and beneath you… and it is sick that people who have no vested interest in this fight come to your defense with “libel suits are expensive to defend”… for what purpose other than to continue to keep you riled up and prove their “point” about the liberal blogosphere and to keep us from actually talking TO each other and instead keep us talking AT each other. Typical Republican tactic actually.
I’m sorry your privledges got cut off, but you were just jumping on anyone and everyone in that thread and it was starting to turn into a FreeRepublic thread. Not what I come to the site for, or what most others come here for. So maybe you did need a time out.
And yes, it would have been nice had Boo actually stuck to his “don’t be a prick” motto and called out the ignorant comments by Pat Lang and Larry Johnson because they were totally out of line. But hey, it ain’t my site, so I recognize there will be double standards. That’s just life.
Please consider that I am only posting this because I want you to stick around and because I have seen a lot on this site that I agree and disagree with, but fighting about it and name calling is just stupid… and yes, I think Susan was wrong to tell you to seek help. The correct thing to do would have been to send you an email to that effect and not bring it into the thread… but no one is perfect and sometimes we all reach our breaking points.
So realize this isn’t your living room and you can’t throw anyone out… and the people whose living room it is do have that right… whether we like it or not. All we can do is point out the hypocrisy, politely, and then move on.. stay and post, or go elsewhere… really only the two options available. And community is what we make it. Even in light of the above I still consider this place a community. But that’s just me, I’ve been known to be wrong.
Nicely done, folks.
Pat who?
Said what?
The magician waves his hand in the air,
While all the while he plys his trade with the other one.
Someone in the audience says “Look!!! Look!!! The OTHER hand!!!”
And the magician replies by saying “You don’t dress very well. Are you an ENEMY!!!???”
And we all bite.
Blah blah blah blah blah.
NASTY magician.
ILL BRED audience member!!!
The owner of the theater comes out and warns the customers.
“This act is here by invitation!!! Be nice or be gone!!!”
Evincing yet MORE blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Meanwhile, the magician does his best trick.
He disappears.
And once again, no one looked at the other hand.
Stop all of this.
The theater owner has made it quite clear that if you do not like any of the acts in this theater, just shut up and go away.
No heckling.
And the poor performers!!!
Ganged up upon.
Who’s to blame them if they get a little…testy.
It’s his theater, and his choice of acts.
So it goes here in 2005.
Have fun.
AG
keep it burning for me, won’t you Arthur??
(((you)))
Randy Newman, in his ode to the day the Cuyahoga River got so polluted it caught fire in Cleveland. Around 1969. The same time the REST of the U.S. was burning, one way or another.
And the Lord can make you turn
And the Lord can make you overflow
But the Lord can’t make you burn
Yup.
I can’t keep it burning.
Spontaneous combustion is the only way to go.
Collective spontaneous combustion.
Is it hot in here, or is it you?
Have fun…
AG
I’ve added a lovely story about the life of John Spencer and comments from his co-stars on “West Wing” — in the story below, about 5 stories down …
and there’s a Bob Johnsonathon up top
Timothy Egan, one of my favorite reporters for the NYT, has written a new book about the Dust Bowl — “the nation’s worst prolonged environmental disaster” — and it’s reviewed here
Wilderness Wench has written a critique of NPR here: “To NPR’s Ombudsman: I’ve Had It
Limelite has put together a well-sourced diary on the Iraqi elections
Aaron Barlow has begun a wonderful series of diaries. The first is “Phil Ochs and the Invasion of Iraq
and much more …
ACK!!!
I have graciously started a very important flame war
which I have graciously decided to join. Wine. Ack. I’ll take a pint of Guinness any day. slainte.
I was curious as to whether or not Ductape Fatwa’s remedy–another part that was excised by Booman–of using a half-sliced tomato placed sliced side down on the three burnt fingers helped ease the pain. Sometimes those old home remedies work very well.
So, anyway, about those 9/11 inconsistencies and the demonization of the Islamic people in general…
I’m not going to have any of my questions answered, am I?
tap-tap-tap
…Hello?……tap-tap-tap
Is this thing on?
Thank you for that.
Umm, anybody got a cup of sugar that I can borrow?
.
I usually don’t read through comments of anger, because I take a spoon of sugar to sweeten the insulting remarks. Thus, I ran out of sugar many hours ago and am eating sweets next door. You’re welcome to come over.
Better yet, we can share pizza …
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼▼▼ READ MY DIARY ▼▼▼
wow! comment #187 - I'm jealousSounds good to me.
Folks,
Glad to see you are all having a good time.
A few points:
-The Israelis would be astonished to learn that some of you think I am accepting of their analysis. I spent a career opposing it.
-My simplistic views? Try to get your minds around the idea that what I wrote is the bottom line on an intellectual process that has lasted 40 years and been informed by a great deal of time on the ground rather than in the university library.
-My former employers? They fought me continuously over my unwillingness to accept their views in analytic positions.
Consider the possibility that people can have opinions that are different than yours and still be worthy of an audience. You seem to forget that I have been opposing the administration’s interventionist policy from the start, and in public. My name is on all this. Where is yours?
Civility? Most of you don’t have it.
Egyptian intellectuals are the most doctrinaire “academics” I have ever known. If “Londonbear” is not an Egyptian, I apologize for calling him that.
Pat Lang
I don’t think you agree with the Israelis. But do they have a monolithic outlook anyway? It would appear to me they are investing in Kurdistan.They would like to eliminate Iran, and perhaps keep parts of Iraq and the middle east unstable. Peace through instability. So it seems anyway. Israeli support creates problems with Turkey, I suppose, but Israel could act as a restraining force if such as thing is possbile. Or possibly as an agitating subversive force, depending on whose in power and how militant and threatened they may be feeling.
Iraq is in fact now broken into 3 sections. With Iran supporting the south, Israel and the US the Kurds and the center is simply a war zone for Americans who have been utterly defeated to get killed in.
Civility? How about getting out of Iraq. That would be civil. How about leaving them alone. You can’t keep saying we are doing it wrong, but we need to stay so that we can do it right. The CIA….I don’t know what you did there….but that is an intrusive organization. It goes where it isn’t invited and subverts. i’m sorry. I don’t think the CIA has anything to do with civility. What benefits have they accrued for the U.S.? If any, what benefits that were not at the horrific expense of another organization or nation or people?
Would you allow a car mechanic who didn’t know what he was doing continue to screw up your car, crossing wires, installing the wrong parts…simply because he keeps saying he won’t stop until he get the job done? That’s what the U.S. is doing in Iraq.
You colleague Larry seems to think we should start supporting the secualr Insurgents who we are now fighting against the people who we are now allied with.
It’s too late for any of that. There’s no way to unravel this situation. We must simply leave. It’s a failure.
Sometimes Patrick, the academics don’t know anything because they have no Applied Experience. That’s typical. But the Folks who have the most Applied Experience are the people who know, it’s best to stay out of other peoples business.
You can be a peasant a president or even a housepet and know that. When a being smells the presence of death and decay and they have sensibility (formal education or even critical thinking is not required) they generally will choose to avoid the situation. Unless, of course, they are predators or scavengers. But scavengers discriminate between what is dead and what might still be dying and dangerous. Predators are another matter, but they are looking to eat something weaker than they are, not something inedible or posionous that can destroy them.
Iraq is inedible. It is poisonous
Stu-
Pat worked in the Defense Intelligence Agency and Larry worked as a case officer in the CIA for 4-5 years and then at the state department in their counterterrorism division.
Pat didn’t work at the CIA. That may seem like a minor distinction but I think the people that work in those departments consider it a big distinction.
It’s like telling a marine that he is an army veteran.
Boo-
For the record… it Marine… always… unless you’re speaking of fish. 😉
good point
Or calling a psychologist a sociologist (or calling a Cubs fan a White Sox fan). May seem trivial to someone else, but just try telling that to a Cubs fan. 😉