[Rhodes22-list] what is list etiquette? Ignore That!

[Cheryl O'Grady]

Brad, these are excellent articles....supports my belief that religion was =
invented by cynical opportunists to keep themsleves in power.  don't know w=
hy the western world developed more tolerance for insults to our religions,=
 but we did, and it is pretty crummy to yank some poor ignorant slob's chai=
n by insulting his religious beliefs.=20

If the U.S. wants to claim the high ground, we need to take the high road.

did that make sense to you guys, or is it just my 1am sensibilities?

Cheryl=20=20




> Slim,
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> You're a bad, bad boy.  I had that one coming!
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> Speaking of ghosts, I'm in the middle of a great book
> "Ghost Wars" that specifically deals with the whole
> lead-up to this Islamic extremism issue we're
> discussing.  It dove-tails neatly with "Charlie
> Wilson's War", another book about Afghanistan.  Here's
> another article along the same vein as the one this
> morning.
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> May 17, 2005, 1:07 p.m.
> The Smug Delusion of Base Expectations
> Count me out of the Newsweek feeding frenzy.
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> We're in the grips of a pathology. And it's not media
> bias.
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> Here's the late-breaking news (you'll want to be
> sitting down for this): The mainstream media is
> ideologically liberal and instinctually hostile to
> George W. Bush, U.S. foreign policy, and the American
> military.
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> No kidding. Really. If you want to throw the
> off-switch for the cognitive part of your brain =97 as
> many conservatives seem only to happy to do this week
> =97 then, by all means, that is the story you want to
> run with in this latest media scandal.
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> Newsweek, in reckless pursuit of a scoop that might
> score the daily double of embarrassing the Bush
> administration while heaping more disrepute on the
> Left's favorite punching bag, Guantanamo Bay, falsely
> reported a martial toilet-flushing of the Koran. Oops,
> I'm sorry, I mean the Holy Koran =97 after all, I don't
> want to be left out of the new, vast right-wing "we
> can be just as nauseatingly pious as they can"
> conspiracy.
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> The false report, according to the New York Times,
> instigated "the most virulent, widespread
> anti-American protests" in the Muslim world
> since...well, since the last virulent, widespread
> anti-American protests in the Muslim world =97
> particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where at
> least 17 people have been killed.
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> That's right. The reason for the carnage is said =97
> again and again, by media critics and government
> officials =97 to be a false report of Koran desecration.
> The prime culprit here is irresponsible journalism.
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> Is that what we really think?
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> Here's an actual newsflash =97 and one, yet again, that
> should be news to no one: The reason for the carnage
> here was, and is, militant Islam. Nothing more.
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> Newsweek merely gave the crazies their excuse du jour.
> But they didn't need a report of Koran desecration to
> fly jumbo jets into skyscrapers, to blow up embassies,
> or to behead hostages taken for the great sin of being
> Americans or Jews. They didn't need a report of Koran
> desecration to take to the streets and blame the
> United States while enthusiastically taking innocent
> lives. This is what they do.
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> The outpouring of righteous indignation against
> Newsweek glides past a far more important point. Yes,
> we're all sick of media bias. But "Newsweek lied and
> people died" is about as worthy a slogan as the
> scurrilous "Bush lied and people died" that it
> parrots. And when we engage in this kind of mindless
> demagoguery, we become just another opportunistic
> plaintiff =97 no better than the people all too ready to
> blame the CIA because Mohammed Atta steered a hijacked
> civilian airliner into a big building, and to sue the
> Port Authority because the building had the audacity
> to collapse from the blow.
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> What are we saying here? That the problem lies in the
> falsity of Newsweek's reporting? What if the report
> had been true? And, if you're being honest with
> yourself, you cannot say =97 based on common sense and
> even ignoring what we know happened at Abu Ghraib =97
> that you didn't think it was conceivably possible the
> report could have been true. Flushing the Koran down a
> toilet (assuming for argument's sake that our
> environmentally correct, 3.6-liters-per-flush toilets
> are capable of such a feat) is a bad thing. But
> rioting? Seventeen people killed? That's a rational
> response?
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> Sorry, but I couldn't care less about Newsweek. I'm
> more worried about the response and our willful
> avoidance of its examination. Afghanistan has been an
> American reconstruction project for nearly four years.
> Pakistan has been a close American "war on terror"
> ally for just as long. This is what we're getting from
> the billions spent, the lives lost, and the grand
> project of exporting nonjudgmental, sharia-friendly
> democracy? A killing spree? Over this?
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> In the affirmative-action context, conservatives have
> written trenchantly about the "soft bigotry of low
> expectations" =97 the promotion of a vile
> dependency-ethos that says "you don't need to strive
> for better," as a result of which many people who
> might, don't. Our cognate sense of the Islamic world
> has become the smug delusion of base expectations.
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> Someone alleges a Koran flushing and what do we do? We
> expect, accept, and silently tolerate militant Muslim
> savagery =97 lots of it. We become the hangin' judge for
> the imbeciles whose negligence "triggered" the
> violence, but offer no judgment about the societal
> dysfunction that allows this grade of offense to
> trigger so cataclysmic a reaction. We hop on our high
> horses having culled from the Left's playbook the most
> politically correct palaver about the inviolable
> sanctity of Holy Islamic scripture (and never you mind
> those verses about annihilating the infidels =97 the
> ones being chanted by the killers). And we suspend
> disbelief, insisting that things would be just fine in
> a place like Gaza if we could only set up a democracy
> =97 a development which, there, appears poised to
> empower Hamas, terrorists of the same ilk as those in
> Afghanistan and Pakistan who see comparatively minor
> indignities as license to commit murder.
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> "Minor indignities? How can you say something so
> callous about a desecration of the Holy Koran?" I say
> it as a member of the real world, not the world of
> prissy affectation. I don't know about you, but I
> inhabit a place where crucifixes immersed in urine and
> Madonna replicas composed of feces are occasions for
> government funding, not murderous uprisings. If
> someone was moved to kill on their account, we'd be
> targeting the killer, not the exhibiting museum, not
> the "artists," and surely not Newsweek.
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> I inhabit a world in which my government seeks
> accommodation with Saudi Arabia and China and Egypt,
> places where the practice of Christianity results in
> imprisonment...or worse; in which Jews have been
> driven from almost every country in the Middle East,
> and in which the goal of destroying their country,
> Israel, is viewed by much of the globe as legitimate
> foreign policy; and in which being a Christian, an
> animist, or the wrong kind of Muslim in Sudan is
> grounds for genocide =97 something the vaunted United
> Nations seems to regard as more of a spectator sport
> than a cause of action.
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> In my world, militant Muslims, capitalizing on the
> respectful deference of others, have been known
> tactically to desecrate the Koran themselves: by
> rigging it with explosives, by using it to secrete and
> convey terrorist messages, and, yes, even by
> toilet-flushing parts of it for the nuisance value of
> flooding the bathrooms at Guantanamo Bay. Just as they
> have used mosques as sanctuaries, as weapons depots,
> and as snipers' nests.
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> There's a problem here. But it's not insensitivity,
> and it's not media bias. Those things are condemnable,
> but manageable. The real problem here is a culture
> that either cannot or will not rein in a hate ideology
> that fuels killing. When we go after Newsweek, we're
> giving it a pass. Again.
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> =97 Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, is
> a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of
> Democracies.
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> And one more interesting little tidbit -
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> MAY. 17, 2005: MISCHIEF MAKERS
> Imran's Con
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> Newsweek is taking a pasting over the Koran abuse
> story, and surely the magazine was indeed careless,
> even reckless. But is the pasting quite 100%
> justified? A number of readers have written to make
> the point that ultimately the blame for the rioting
> has to be fixed on the rioters. I'll quote just one:
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> "When a college basketball team loses (or wins, it
> doesn't much matter which) and some students from that
> school use that as an excuse to riot, is the
> basketball team to blame?
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> "Newsweek doesn't have 16 deaths on its hands, the
> rioters do.
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> "I think the real question is, why should Koran
> desecration be such a big deal anyway? If a book that
> important to me were desecrated, my response would be
> more along the lines of a defiant 'fine, there's
> plenty more where that came from.'"
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> That last question is a powerful one. But something
> needs to be understood here: The riots in Afghanistan
> were not a spontaneous response to the Newsweek item.
> It did not happen that some pious Afghan spotted the
> offending story while reading Newsweek at his coffee
> house. The riots in Afghanistan were incited for
> political gain.
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> Readers of the British gossip press know the name of
> Imran Khan, the one-time Pakistani cricket star and
> international playboy. In 1995 Khan made headlines in
> Britain by marrying Jemima Goldsmith, daughter of the
> late British billionaire Sir James Goldsmith. In
> recent years, Khan (who also happens to belong to one
> of Pakistan's largest landlord families) has turned to
> politics. Unfortunately for him, his background is not
> exactly a sure-fire vote winner in the Pakistani
> context. Unbearded, Oxford-educated, a notorious
> skirt-chaser, Khan has lacked appeal to the Pakistani
> values voter. The fact that Khan's wife was Jewish by
> background and socially acquainted with Salman Rushdie
> did not help either.
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> So in 2002, Khan divorced Jemima and set about
> reinventing himself as the devoutest of the devout. He
> has fiercely criticized the Musharraf regime's working
> relationship with the United States, and repeatedly
> criticized the war on terror as an attack upon Islam.
> Unlike the Afghan rioters, he probably does read
> Newsweek or anyway employs people who do. And when
> that item appeared in the May 9 issue of the magazine,
> Khan saw a political opportunity. He staged a press
> conference on May 6 and denounced the article in
> blood-curdling language. He announced that he had
> introduced a motion in the Pakistani National Assembly
> to condemn desecration of the Koran.
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> Khan's words, broadcast on Pakistani television, were
> taken up by Taliban sympathizers in Afghanistan,
> inspired by their own political agendas.
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> Whatever one thinks of the reactions of the poor and
> probably uneducated Afghans who rioted in response to
> this incitement, from a political point of view it's
> important to keep one's eyes on the motives and
> actions of the sophisticated urban politicians who put
> the mob in motion. The story of the Afghan riots - and
> Khan's role in them - is one more reminder that much
> of the extremism and violence of Middle Eastern and
> Central Asian politics is the handiwork of cynical
> local power-seekers pursuing selfish advantage.
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> -------------------------------------------------------------------------=
-------
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> --- Steve Alm <salm at mn.rr.com> wrote:
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> > > You've left such jucy low hanging fruit!
> >
> > Jeez, if I had a nickel for every time I've heard
> > that...  8-)
> >
> > The Germans and the Japanese attacked with the full
> > force of their sovereign
> > nations' military.  Yes, I acknowledge we were
> > attacked on 9/11, but it was
> > conducted by a small handful of unseeable "ghosts"
> > rather than a sovereign
> > nation.  Your point is taken but I don't think your
> > comparison is useful in
> > this case.  I'll bet their motives are the same as
> > mine:  I just want to be
> > left alone and go about my life.
> >
> > Slim
> >
> > If only I
> > > had the discipline to resist!  You're not sailing
> > > because of the weather and I'm not sailing because
> > of
> > > house boy/Mr. Mom duties, so what the hell, here
> > goes.
> > > > You wrote, "Violent reactions are as predictable
> > as
> > > the sunrise when some country half way around the
> > > world strips you of your entire life/value and
> > crams
> > > their own ideology down your throat.  What did we
> > > expect?"
> > > > Who were you referring to  Germans or Japanese? Did
> > > you gain your insight interviewing Holocaust
> > survivors
> > > or Chinese at Nanjing?
> > > > Frankly I'd like to click my heels and make the
> > > evening news go away as much as anybody.  Yet,
> > even
> > > Bill Clinton sees progress in Iraq.
> > > >
> >
> http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050518/ap_on_re_mi_ea/clinton_iraq_1
> > > > Ok, I'll go back to cooking now.
> > > > Brad
> > > > --- Steve Alm <salm at mn.rr.com> wrote:
> > > >> Brad,
> > >> >> Thanks.  I mostly agree with the article however
> > >> calling for "perspective
> > >> and objectivity" is a waste of breath.  By
> > >> definition, "extremists" are
> > >> incapable of that.  (And I don't just refer to
> > >> Muslim extremists.)
> > >> >> As I understand it, Islamic fundamentalists
> > object
> > >> to Democracy because it
> > >> puts men in charge of the law instead of Allah
> > and
> > >> the Koran--(Qu'ran?)  So
> > >> if the shoe were on the other foot, it would be
> > like
> > >> flushing the Bible AND
> > >> the Constitution.  That's the perspective WE need
> > to
> > >> keep in mind.  It's
> > >> easy for us to sit back and condemn the Muslim
> > >> extremists for over-reacting
> > >> to a tiny little blurb that may or may not have
> > been
> > >> true, but if the Koran
> > >> IS your whole world, how could you not protest?
> > >> They already view
> > >> themselves as the losers and they're getting
> > >> desperate.  Violent reactions
> > >> are as predictable as the sunrise when some
> > country
> > >> half way around the
> > >> world strips you of your entire life/value and
> > crams
> > >> their own ideology down
> > >> your throat.  What did we expect?
> > >> >> What bugs me is what Don Rumsfeld had to say:
> > "Oh,
> > >> you've got to be very
> > >> careful what you say..."  WHAT?  Look who's
> > talking?
> > >>  Frankly, I wouldn't
> > >> doubt that the story was indeed true and Newsweek
> > >> was pressured to retract
> > >> it.
> > >> >> Slim
> > >> >> On 5/18/05 11:01 AM, "brad haslett"
> > >> <flybrad at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > >> >>> Ric,
> > >>> >>> I was responding to your post when my daughter
> > put
> > >> her
> > >>> elbow on the keyboard (I'm home all week playing
> > >> Mr.
> > >>> Mom.)  Ignore that first post.  At least she
> > >> didn't
> > >>> call 911 like she did when she was 1 1/2.  Those
> > >> cops
> > >>> still think I'm lying.
> > >>> >>> Anyway, I've been too busy to make any pithy
> > >> political
> > >>> comments but not to busy to read.  Here's an
> > >> article
> > >>> from today's Chicago Tribune.  Not only is it
> > >> funny in
> > >>> its own way but dead on the money correct.  This
> > >> is
> > >>> neither left nor right folks, just a fastball
> > >> straight
> > >>> down the middle.
> > >>> >>> Brad
> > >>> "CoraShen"
> > >>> >>> >>> Seeking sanity in the asylum
> > >>> >>>   >>> >>> By Kathleen Parker
> > >>> >>> May 18, 2005
> > >>> >>> Reaction to an inaccurate Newsweek report that
> > led
> > >>> recently to rioting and death in Afghanistan
> > >> suggests
> > >>> that hysteria is, indeed, contagious.
> > >>> >>> To briefly recap, Newsweek reported in a small
> > >> blurb
> > >>> May 9 that American interrogators at Guantanamo
> > >> Bay
> > >>> had flushed a Koran down a toilet in attempts to
> > >> get
> > >>> Muslim terror suspects to talk. Once the
> > Newsweek
> > >>> story was broadcast abroad, the usually reticent
> > >>> hate-America crowd erupted in mass pique. Havoc
> > >>> ensued. At least 15 Afghans died and many more
> > >> were
> > >>> injured.
> > >>> >>> All because of a story that may not have been
> > >> true.
> > >>> The "knowledgeable U.S. government source" who
> > >> told
> > >>> Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and John Barry about
> > >> the
> > >>> flushing apparently wasn't so knowledgeable. At
> > >> the
> > >>> risk of seeming insensitive, may I suggest that
> > >> c'est
> > >>> la guerre and urge everyone to follow Dr.
> > Lamaze's
> > >>> always-useful advice: Breathe deeply and focus.
> > >>> >>> What we need here is a little perspective.
> > >>> >>> First, we all can agree that flushing a Koran
> > down
> > >> a
> > >>> toilet, if physically possible, would be both
> > >>> insensitive and rude, though Westerners
> > generally
> > >> have
> > >>> a higher tolerance threshold for such offenses.
> > >> Put it
> > >>> this way: You could flush a Bible down the
> > toilet
> > >> in
> > >>> front of Goober in Kabul, and it's unlikely that
> > >>> Mayberry suddenly would be awash in blood.
> > >>> >>> Without disrespecting true believers of Islam,
> > one
> > >>> also could debate the relative miseries of
> > seeing
> > >> our
> > >>> favorite scripture disappear into the plumbing
> >
> =3D=3D=3D message truncated =3D=3D=3D
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"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.=
"  Edmund Burke, Irish philosopher