Italian Consulate Burned in Lybia

[rogue yam]

Oh why don't you just shut the fuck up ya boring bastard.

Do you ever have an actual point to make on these boards?

I think perhaps you have made his point for him.

 

[mears]

It's a wonder that they manage to bomb and invade the right countries really. Imagine if he'd been working for the Pentagon when they invaded Grenada?

Andalucia here we come ...

Coming from a guy who lets a blogger speak for him (concerning Iran and the US)

There are a lot of similarities between the Iranian government and the Bush administration. I read it on the web dude

sucker

 

[vimto]

I think perhaps you have made his point for him.

And your point is what exactly freeper boy?

 

[vimto]

Hey Lockie...the Bushbot/Freepers are all defending you now...you should be proud

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Juan R. I. Cole is a Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History in the History Department at the University of Michigan. He maintains the progressive weblog Informed Comment, which covers the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq and other developments in the Middle East.

source I think I'd take his opinion over yours on Middle East issues any day mears.

 

[Lock&Light]

Hey Lockie...the Bushbot/Freepers are all defending you now...you should be proud

I have no need for defence. Neither do I reject everything a person thinks, just because some things he thinks are different from what I think. If you can see what I mean.

 

[rogue yam]

source I think I'd take his opinion over yours on Middle East issues any day mears.

Are you very familiar with Juan Cole? Here in America he is considered a crank, even among leftists.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

The way that the views of people who actually know something about the Middle East are marginalised by both far-right pundits and the idiots running the US is kind of interesting. No wonder that they got in such a horrible quagmire in Iraq. They simply excluded anyone with sensible advice from the policy discussions. See for example: Drinking the Kool Aid

A good deal of the hour-long meeting was taken up with a briefing by CIA Director George Tenet on a series of aerial photographs of sites inside Iraq that "might" be producing WMD. Tenet admitted that there was no firm intelligence on what was going on inside those sites, but at the close of the meeting, President Bush tasked Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Hugh Shelton to begin preparing options for the use of U.S. ground forces in the northern and southern no-fly zones in Iraq to support an insurgency to bring down the Saddam regime. As author Ron Suskind summed it up: "Meeting adjourned. Ten days in, and it was about Iraq. Rumsfeld had said little, Cheney nothing at all, though both men clearly had long entertained the idea of overthrowing Saddam." If this was a decision meeting, it was strange. It ended in a presidential order to prepare contingency plans for war in Iraq.

Surely, this was not the first time these people had considered this problem. One interesting thing about those at the meeting is that no one present or in the background had any substantive knowledge of the Middle East. It is one thing to have traveled to the area as a senior government official. It is another to have lived there and worked with the people of the region for long periods of time. People with that kind of experience in the Muslim world are strangely absent from Team Bush. In the game plan for the Arab and Islamic world, most of the government's veteran Middle East experts were largely shut out. The Pentagon civilian bureaucracy of the Bush administration, dominated by an inner circle of think-tankers, lawyers and former Senate staffers, virtually hung out a sign, "Arabic Speakers Need Not Apply." They effectively purged the process of Americans who might have inadvertently developed sympathies for the people of the region.

Instead of including such veterans in the planning process, the Bush team opted for amateurs brought in from outside the Executive Branch who tended to share the views of many of President Bush's earliest foreign-policy advisors and mentors. Because of this hiring bias, the American people got a Middle East planning process dominated by "insider" discourse among longtime colleagues and old friends who ate, drank, talked, worked and planned only with each other. Most of these people already shared attitudes and concepts of how the Middle East should be handled. Their continued association only reinforced their common beliefs. This created an environment in which any shared belief could become sacrosanct and unchallengeable. A situation like this is, in essence, a war waiting for an excuse to happen. If there is no "imminent threat," one can be invented, not as a matter of deliberate deception, but rather as an artifact of group self-delusion. In normal circumstances, there is a flow of new talent into the government that melds with the old timers in a process both dynamic and creative. This does not seem to have happened in the Bush 43 administration. Instead, the newcomers behaved as though they had seized control of the government in a silent coup. They tended to behave in such a way that civil servants were made to feel that somehow they were the real enemy, barely tolerated and under suspicion. There seemed to be a general feeling among the newcomers that professional intelligence people somehow just did not "get it."

 

[mears]

source I think I'd take his opinion over yours on Middle East issues any day mears.

Maybe you should take neither opinion and start forming your own.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Well mears, that's probably the first time I've ever been accused of *not* being opinionated. It's a refreshing change

 

[roundtheworld]

Poor people. Such a long way to go.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11383819/

yup

 

[newharper]

Are you very familiar with Juan Cole? Here in America he is considered a crank, even among leftists.

Well yes.

That says far more aout you and your take on modern day America.

As far as the rest of the world is concerned, it's you who is the crank.

 

[nino_savatte]

What do you think, VP?

What do you think, Lock?

I forget, you don't think.

 

[nino_savatte]

I have no need for defence. Neither do I reject everything a person thinks, just because some things he thinks are different from what I think. If you can see what I mean.

LOL!!!

 

[rogue yam]

As far as the rest of the world is concerned, it's you who is the crank.

You know, I expect you leftists to be arrogant and stupid and boring, but this "rest of the world" crap is just pathetic. Grow the fuck up already.

 

[Lock&Light]

I forget, you don't think.

Is your memory slipping, nino?

 

[nino_savatte]

Hey Lockie...the Bushbot/Freepers are all defending you now...you should be proud

Even good auld trusty L&L has come out to support the freeper-bots.

He doesn't hide his light under a bushel - does he?

 

[nino_savatte]

Is your memory slipping, nino?

Like I said, you don't think- do you?

This is too easy. It's like shooting fish in a barrel!

 

[nino_savatte]

You know, I expect you leftists to be arrogant and stupid and boring, but this "rest of the world" crap is just pathetic. Grow the fuck up already.

Hey Lock, what do you think of rogue yam's style? Your kind of thing - non?

 

[Lock&Light]

Even good auld trusty L&L has come out to support the freeper-bots.

Of course, what you're really saying is that as I don't agree with you, I must agree with your opponents. Your thinking is very shallow, nino.

 

[nino_savatte]

Of course, what you're really saying is that as I don't agree with you, I must agree with your opponents. Your thinking is very shallow, nino.

Weak, foolish, L&L...he can't quite get his head around the fact his brain cannae keep up with other folk. You over extend yourself...self righteous folk do that.

Lay off the pot, pal.

 

[TAE]

So he deliberately had t-shirts made that would piss off God knows how many people, in a context where the artwork used had become the final straw that sparked off (mixed metaphor-a-rama) violent demonstrations around the world, many of which cumulated in the burning of embassies and wore one in public.

Am I the only one who finds it hard to summon up sympathy for him?

So when wearing anti-Brown t-shirts causes a violent reaction from the new labour mob, you'll be blaming the person wearing the t-shirt for getting into trouble?

This isn't about cartoons or t-shirts, at least not once you get past the surface and look at everything else that is happening. To argue otherwise is idiocy at best and sophistry at worst.

Then they should protest against what is really bothering them.

 

[vimto]

I have no need for defence. Neither do I reject everything a person thinks, just because some things he thinks are different from what I think. If you can see what I mean.

You are an absolute gem Lockie

 

[Lock&Light]

You are an absolute gem Lockie

I'm almost beginning to like you, vimto. Please stop being so nice!

 

[vimto]

I'm almost beginning to like you, vimto. Please stop being so nice!

You are now my official apprentice boy Lockie...uniform will be supplied

 

[Lock&Light]

You are now my official apprentice boy Lockie...uniform will be supplied

Honoured as I might be, I absolutely renounce that offer.

But the uniform I'll accept.

 

[vimto]

Honoured as I might be, I absolutely renounce that offer.

But the uniform I'll accept.

Tough.

No debate...no uniform for you boy.

 

[nino_savatte]

Honoured as I might be, I absolutely renounce that offer.

But the uniform I'll accept.

The word is "decline" not "renounce".

 

[In Bloom]

So when wearing anti-Brown t-shirts causes a violent reaction from the new labour mob, you'll be blaming the person wearing the t-shirt for getting into trouble?

What was I saying about sophistry again

The differences there (in terms of target, of social context, of power relations) are so glaringly obvious, I'm almost reluctant to bother replying.

Then they should protest against what is really bothering them.

I'll repeat the crucial part of that sentence for you, since you apparently missed it:

at least not once you get past the surface

The protests are, superficially, about the cartoons, but there is a context to it and a recent history that created a situation where something so minor could spark off something so major.

Kind of like a potato, really