What a Mouthful

[Shama Khan]

'Brutality smeared in peanut butter'
Why America must stop the war now. By Arundhati Roy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,579196,00.html
Dare to read this long essay. It is full of research that would take me years to accumulate.

[Bartholemu Smith]

Hrm....Interesting essay

I dont know what to thank anymore...Someone stop the insanity please.

[Michael Ernest]

Observation 1: It's in the guardian. 'Nuff said.
Observation 2: Propaganda's first aim to replace the reader's thinking with the writer's. It's synonymous with shouting in a conversation where the other parties are forced to whisper. It's quite effective.
Observation 3: Reasoning with a propagandist is like asking a fire if it would like some blankets to put itself out. One understands why they post their stuff, but the magic of propaganda is that people respond to it even after they can see it for what it is.

[Nanhesru Ningyake]

Observation 1a: The writer is a Booker Prize winner. 'Nuff said.

[Michael Ernest]

Speaking as a literary scholar in a previous life, I don't see your point.

[Mapraputa Is]

LOL... Michael, not to see a point - was that what you were trained in as "a literary scholar"?
Now I am in trouble.
[This message has been edited by Mapraputa Is (edited October 23, 2001).]

[Jason Menard]

Is it me, or do the people who write this stuff just all keep repeating what each other has already said?

[Michael Ernest]

Jason -- well, it *is* war. What much is left to say beyond "we should stop this" and "we will continue"?
Mags -- ?? Ok, I'm definitely missing something. Is there something about "Booker prize winner" you infer that I don't. My point was that skill in writing really shouldn't be confused with skill in analyzing political issues. It's a common American mistake to confuse celebrity with credibility.
John Updike, of all people, once equated Roy's winning the Booker to an feat similar to Tiger Woods. To which I say, huh? Tiger Woods has trained for *years* in his sport, some say relentlessly. He is a product of intensely hard work on top of some obvious talent.
Roy, by contrast, is a shooting star. She's written one book, and like so many events in the literary world, winning the Booker tends to rewrite an author's history. She can certainly see elements of a fictional style in this essay, but honed craftsmanship? Puh-leeeeze. Shama takes the essay as an example of erudition, but I can't see it. You can the same half-baked opinions and hearsay facts from any leftist writer....
...come to think of it, I must have missed Nanhesru's point altogether. Now I'm just not sure in what direction I missed.

[Petr Igorovich Kurchatov]

Does co-authoring a technical certification guide make one an authority on literature ?

[Michael Ernest]

Nope; it doesn't even make one an authority on technical certification. Just means you wrote a book.

[Mapraputa Is]

Originally posted by Michael Ernest:
...come to think of it, I must have missed Nanhesru's point altogether.

Michael, if I were you, I would not be so ceremonious with NN's name - it is one big semantic atrocity.
Of course, my own name is a sheer act of onomatopoeic vandalism, so what am I complaining about?

[Andy Ceponis]

When are people gonna stop posting this crap?
Its all recycled bullshit. Get over it. I bet you wouldnt feel that way if 5000 of your countrymen just died by a bunch of religious morons.

[Shama Khan]

Come on guys. I was expecting some debate on the topic of
the defense and oil industry.
I was expecting some debate about our government being in bed with the corporations. I don't know why a tax payer shouldn't be bothered about that.
Ok, following is not from Guardian but from NY Times:
Ban The Bonds by PAUL KRUGMAN
When the patriotic fervor abates a bit � which it will; even the most justified war is inevitably followed by disillusionment � the war-bonds proposal will probably be regarded as a prime example of post-Sept. 11 hypocrisy, of politicians' belief that as long as they vigorously wave the flag nobody will notice that they are busy catering to special interests.
.....
Which brings us back to those war bonds. The government not only isn't calling for shared sacrifice; it is "very pleased" with a proposal to give billions in handouts to corporations. And in that case, what is someone who buys a war bond really helping to finance? Put it this way: If the House has its way, the government will give far more in tax breaks to corporations over the next year than it will spend fighting terrorism. Yet somehow one suspects that people would not rush to buy "corporate tax-cut bonds."
In an ideal world Congress and the White House would stand up to the special interests, and give us no reason to be cynical. Oh, never mind. But at least let's not add insult to injury. Ban those bonds.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/24/opinion/24KRUG.html
(provided text because they have a silly registration policy)
Final point:
Can you imagine the "women beating" Talebans were brought into U.S. to make oil deals.
Americans who believe that U.S. is bombing Afghanistan to avenge the deaths of WTC tragedy or to bring justice to the terrorists can not be more wrong. It is never about people it's always about policies. People always lose - whether by dying in a falling building or by falling bombs and stepping on mines.

[Michael Ernest]

Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:
Michael, if I were you, I would not be so ceremonious with NN's name - it is one big semantic atrocity.

Are you sure? Now that I think about it, I distinctly remember ordering 'Nanhesru' once at a sushi place in the Bowery...

[Andrew Shafer]

Long live American arrogance and ignorance!

[Nanhesru Ningyake]

>I must have missed Nanhesru's point altogether
Actually, I should have conveyed my point better by replacing the with a . I think, if I got your point right, my point is in the same direction. I meant to point out, being a Booker Prize winner doesn't imply she's good at these such essays, and I assume you meant to point out, that being in the Guardian doesn't mean this should be considered an essay worthy of consideration. Have our respective points been disentangled now? If you think I am rambling, you should see the latter section of this thread
>my own name is a sheer act of onomatopoeic vandalism
Absolutely. Here's that discussion
>I distinctly remember ordering 'Nanhesru'
LOL - must have been something else - when you google my name (first or last), the only pages that come up are here at JavaRanch - pretty unique name, eh?

[Amitabh Sharma]

Arundhati Roy won the bookers prize and now she is aiming for the Nobel prize. She should first go and live under taliban for sometime then come back and write articles. i am afraid that her moral values may be changed then.
US is actually doing the Afghanistan's people and the world a HUGE favour by whatever it is doing....
Pakistan is by far the biggest winner (;-

[Mapraputa Is]

Originally posted by Petr Igorovich Kurchatov:
Does co-authoring a technical certification guide make one an authority on literature ?

Hmm... "Igorovich" should be "Igorevich", I suppose?

[Petr Igorovich Kurchatov]

Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:
Hmm... "Igorovich" should be "Igorevich", I suppose?

Yes. You write it as Igorovich and pronounce it as Igorevich.
That is the Russian way of writing names . I dont mind whether people call me Igorovich or Igorevich as long as they dont call me Igorevna.
[This message has been edited by Petr Igorovich Kurchatov (edited October 25, 2001).]

[Rosie Vogel]

Originally posted by Shama Khan:

Americans who believe that U.S. is bombing Afghanistan to avenge the deaths of WTC tragedy or to bring justice to the terrorists can not be more wrong. It is never about people it's always about policies. People always lose - whether by dying in a falling building or by falling bombs and stepping on mines.

I am not sure about this. But even if the US have ulterior motives for being in Afghanistan, as long as they manage to eradicate the Taliban, I am with them all the way. On top of all the absurd things I've read in the past few weeks, a few days ago I read that a woman in Afghanistan can be arrested for laughing inside her house. It was in a Dutch newspaper so there isn't much point in quoting the text here, but it was an interview with two ladies from the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan. One of them was beaten once for walking down the street in white shoes (huh?). Women can get beaten (if they're lucky) or executed for just about anything you can imagine. It's just plain disgusting.
I know the US aren't in Afg. out of compassion with Afghan women but if, in the process of retaliating for 9-11, they can make those maniacs lose their power, the world will be a better place. That is not to say that I'm happy about the war or about all those people who have fled their homes. I'm not trivializing their suffering. War is never nice but as Justin pointed out, can anyone who is not an anti-Western fanatic think of an alternative? (I'm not saying there isn't one. I'm just saying I haven't heard it yet, and Roy hasn't offered one either.)
What I'd like to know is: what is going to happen to Afghanistan when all this is over? Will they be able to form a more humane government? Is there a chance that in time, things will improve for them?

[Mapraputa Is]

Originally posted by Petr Igorovich Kurchatov:
I dont mind whether people call me Igorovich or Igorevich as long as they dont call me Igorevna.

Some explanations: "Igorevna" refers to a female

[Junaid Bhatra]

Good point raised by Shama. Just came across this today.

"The U.S. government is due on Friday to pick either Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE:LMT - news) or Boeing Co. (NYSE:BA - news) to build its next-generation fighter jet in a program that could be worth well over $200 billion, the richest contract in military history."

200 billion ???

Originally posted by Shama Khan:
[B]Come on guys. I was expecting some debate on the topic of
the defense and oil industry.
I was expecting some debate about our government being in bed with the corporations. I don't know why a tax payer shouldn't be bothered about that.

[Andrew Shafer]

This war in Afganistan is a good advertisement for war planes.
Being American means never having to say you are sorry and really mean it.

[Jason Menard]

Originally posted by Andrew Shafer:

This war in Afganistan is a good advertisement for war planes.
Being American means never having to say you are sorry and really mean it.

And for some people, being American means that you can take every opportunity available to attack your own country. Of course if you're not American, then you really have no insight into what being American means and therefore your assertion is baseless.