Comments on: Condi and Tony take chapter from Thomas Friedman

By: Wallsy

Wallsy — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 03:56:49 +0000

Yes, thanks Toby

By: Wallsy

Wallsy — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 00:02:57 +0000

Jonathan, could you recommend me a good work by Susan Sontag please? I read something in Beck’s Risk Society on how she critiqued construction of AIDs in the 1980s as “not, Apocalypse Now, but, Apocalypse now and forever”. I am quoting from memory so apologies. I have always respected Sontag as one of those postmodernists with her feet on the ground, somewhere.

By: Deep Blade

Deep Blade — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 09:48:57 +0000

Glad you liked it, Toby. Credit is due to Rumsfeld’s psyops shop.

By: Toby Petzold

Toby Petzold — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 03:46:28 +0000

Great image. Thanks.

By: Wallsy

Wallsy — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 15:08:09 +0000

“Yep, we’ll be fighting this battle again and again. Now is a moment many may listen. The Brits apparently think Iraq is causal of the recent attacks by 2 to 1. But Blair’s numbers are way up too, go figure.”

Yes, I can’t work it out either. It’s curious, Blair was given a right royal grilling on SkyNews the other day and he squirmed like the proverbial snake. He actually got very heated and was about to explode. All this belied the false disconnection between the 7/7 attacks and “pillion ride” with Bush and he could not squirm out of it. Yet, his ratings are again up? Well, the alternatives to a leader in “war time” (what war?) are very poor. I mean we have the Tory leader, Howard, a rabacious bloody racist, and then there’s Charles Kennedy from the SDLP who just doesn’t seem to have that cuting conviction, not even when he’s lying (or maybe it’s because he doesn’t lie enough). There is, however, George Galloway; but the chances of an anti-war MP displacing Blair are slim at present. As you Americans say: “go figure”

By: Deep Blade

Deep Blade — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 10:16:48 +0000

Yep, we’ll be fighting this battle again and again. Now is a moment many may listen. The Brits apparently think Iraq is causal of the recent attacks by 2 to 1. But Blair’s numbers are way up too, go figure.

On the other hand, nobody in America will be listening if there is some sort of new attack on US soil. The mood will be kill the messenger attempting to tell the truth about those reasons.

That Galbraith piece on Iraq is something too…

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 09:59:15 +0000

The issue comes down to the same one that Susan Sontag wrote uphill against right after 9/11. Saying there are REASONS for why these people act this way is not the same as JUSTIFYING their behavior. And if we do NOT understand reasons or purposefully pretend there aren’t any, then we are flying blind in trying to deal with them.

Excellent article on Friedman in the latest NYRB.

By: Wallsy

Wallsy — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 03:44:52 +0000

It would be nice too if the eWestern Media ta least showed some of the atrcities we have committed; in the same way we, quite rightly, show the aftermath of suicide bombigs. Can we not, in accordance with that traditon, show the aftermath of our actions too? By goly, there’s enough data out there to display or recount.