The Weekend Australian’s review section yesterday was almost entirely devoted to rantings about Islam and the war on terror/clash of civilisations, etc. I won’t bother to deconstruct the weekly instalment of the official Murdoch/Bush line as interpreted by its antipodean fellow travellers, as Andrew Bartlett has already done so with panache. So go read his post.
The point I wanted to make is that this ideological superstructure rests for its legitimacy on the base of a number of murderous acts of terrorist violence. But the ideological temperature raising is not the only possible response. It’s interesting indeed to look at the lived experience of survivors - in this case, Australian woman Gill Hicks, who lost both her legs in London in the 7/7 tube bombings. Hicks tells her story at the website of the Forgiveness Project.
Help did come and each person who ’saved’ me did so not knowing who I was. It didn’t matter if I was rich or poor, black or white, female or male, muslim or jew, religious or not – what mattered to each of them – the police, the ambulance, the paramedics, the surgeons, the nurses –was that I was a life that hung in the balance, a life they were so desperate to save. I arrived at the hospital as ‘One Unknown’ – an estimated female.
When I awoke I was euphoric to be alive and to have survived. I feel like a very blessed person – filled with emotions of love and compassion and joy. I am able to appreciate life – but a different life than I had before, one that is rich and fulfilled and not consumed by anger and hatred.
I am committed to building Peace – to endeavour to eradicate ignorance in the world and to encourage mutual understanding. I don’t want to accept terrorism, we all deserve to live in a world that is not plagued by war and famine and poverty and oppression. We can change that – each and every one of us – each ‘one unknown’.
You can also hear Hicks describe her work for peace on a video posted on YouTube by Peace Direct.
Oh Goodness. This is just terrible.
Look Kim. What are you talking about with the FORGIVENESS project.
Get the theology right. We are not in the position to forgive these people. Because they have not redeemed themselves and their contrition is not genuine.
In fact there IS NO contrition. The terrorist states and the jihadists want us all dead.
Nor is there likely to be people changing their point of view until we’ve won this war.
Nor can we win without fighting back and winning. Hopefully mostly through proxy war/political warfare and air warfare.
So where is this forgiveness business coming into it.
While you’re at it forgive Hannibal Lector and Jack-The-Ripper as well.
Girl you just aren’t even on the right planet here.
Ever heard of the Christian gospel, Birdy? You know - the religious basis for the “civilisation” Huntington would claim we’re defending? More broadly, breaking the cycle of violence, as Hicks desires, is surely the only route out. Bombing stuff and killing people leads to - well, bombing stuff and killing people in return. You shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss what is no doubt something she has reflected on in some depth arising out of her own experience at the hands of mindless terrorist violence.
In Matthew’s Gospel, when asked by Peter how often you should forgive someone who offends against you, Christ replies “not seven times but seventy seven times”.
I’m sure Ms Hicks doesn’t suggest that those who perpetrated the horrors of violence which so marked her life and body ought not to be brought to justice. But read what she wrote and what she says about cycles of violence, rather than a reflex ideological response to the post…
I don’t argue myself that there can never be a justification for military action (for instance in Afghanistan), and I know Kim has articulated that position too, but you can’t kill and bomb ideas and mentalities out of existence. The latter are the causes of the violence which led to Ms Hicks’ injuries, those of many others, and many deaths in the London Tube.
Having said all that, I shouldn’t have taken Birdy’s word as gospel.
I’ve taken my own advice and read the link - she says:
This is just all lunatics talk Mark.
And you don’t believe that Christian stuff anyhow. And you and I are not any of the twelve disciples, nor either is Kim. I think you lefties are having some sort of identity crisis here.
Lets get this right. Forgiveness comes AFTER repentance which in this context comes after victory. This is something in the way of things. And its not going to change its natural order on the basis of leftist ego problems.
There is no cycle of violence to speak of here. This is not a cycle of violence situation. The bomb victim isnt representative of any community that brutalised these Pakistani boys.
This cycle of violence business has no bearing on the situation. And getting your legs blown off doesn’t suddenly give you a Masters in terrorism and international relations.
Its pretty ridiculous to just up and diagnose every violent situation as akin to those warring families in Huckleberry Finn.
Yeah, there’s no cycle of violence at all (my emphasis at end);
Well I agree, TyroRex but frankly everyone here except for Bird knows that the Iraq war had nothing to do with the War on Terror. All the Iraq invasion did was promote Iran’s interests. There is even speculation that Chalabi was a tool of the Iranian mullahs. I wouldn’t be surprised. The Afghan intervention is a better example and there practical effects have been achieved.
But I do take Bird’s point. There is nothing of practical value to be learnt about statesmanship from the New Testament - look where it got its propounder! What matters is deterrence. Morality is bunk in international relations. Speak softly and carry a big stick, the Powell Doctrine, and even the Old Testatment itself is a more practical guide that some personal meditation about forgiveness which is not going to deter any terrorist.
Yes, Jason. the appropriate word is “practical”.
In point of fact, as Tyro’s extract informs us, supporters of the Bush policy are objective proponents of terrorism.
In international relations, morality is indeed bunk. In fact, it is bunk an all human relations where it is impossible for one party to insist that other parties conduct their affairs according to their conception of morality. That is what is meant by a saying a government in a civil society possessing “a monopoly of violence”.
But Bushites have tangled morality and their infantile conception of power politics to such an extent that they cannot distinguish between the two. Then they accuse their opponents of a want of “moral clarity”. Risible.
The only way to defeat terrorists is to convince the people among whom they live and learn that it is not in their interests to tolerate, or worse, foster terrorists.
Bombing, invading, occupying and humiliating these people makes matters worse when the aggressor power demonstrates it is either too weak or too stupid to carry through on its threat or promise to extirpate terrorists by military means.
And now Bush is so wedded to a repetition of this oft-repeated mstake of history, he is frozen into a restricted range of obsessive-compulsive rituals. Pathetic.
Where is forgiveness in this?
A clever mass movement in the US would frame its rhetoric around the modalities of therapy for Bush’s obsessive-compulsive behaviour.
Bush would be informed: “We don’t blame you. You’re not well. It’s not your fault. We just want you to recover.”
Anyone who believes that Bush & Co are the CAUSE of terrorism, and that terrorism would stop if Bush & Co were to go up in smoke, well, such persons are insane.
Demonstrating your habitual nuance SATP…
1. Please point to any quotes that assert that “Bush & Co are the CAUSE of terrorism”.
2. Please point to any quotes that assert that “that terrorism would stop if Bush & Co were to go up in smoke”.
Otherwise you might like to post such comments at:
[link]. Bash-up-a strawman.com
Jason: “but frankly everyone here except for Bird knows that the Iraq war had nothing to do with the War on Terror.”
That’s a big call. I take it then that no else here puts any credence on Christopher Hitchens views, or those of Stephen Hayes (whose latest article in the Weekly Standard seems to me to set out excellent reasons to be sceptical of the US Senate’s recent report on Saddam/al Qaeda links.)
From my reading of the post and the quoted remarks from Hicks, these statements don’t directly bear on the war on terror. You can ‘forgive’ terrorists all you like, but still act sensibly and do all you can to stop their acts and lock them up.
The closest she comes is in her statement that we need to ask ‘why’ we have become the victims of terror - which does lead into shaky moral territory. The terrorists can rant and rave all they want about foreign policy and Israel, but that’s no bloody excuse for killing innocent civilians. Their idea of politics is clearly much closer to fascism or communism than any modern democratic system of governance, and for me, that’s why we won’t come to understand terrorists by ‘forgiving’ them; we’ll only come to understand them when we realise that the basis of their thinking is, essentially, violence.
So in order to ‘break the cycle of violence’, they have to be put in jail.
And Bird makes a good point - ‘forgiving’ terrorists hardly seem more than a self-satisfying gesture when the terrorists don’t ask for forgiveness themselves, and fail to see the reasons for contrition.
One final point:
The review section I picked up must have been very different to that picked up by Kim. From what I could see, there were only two articles on terror; one of them was a feature article, a sympathetic interview with an Australian Muslim author who from what I could gather was writing from the perspective of a young Australian Muslim citizen, and I don’t think she even talked about the war in terror - except in passing.
But then again, maybe this was a fair representation of the ‘official Murdoch/Bush line’??? ;p
I think Kim meant the op/ed section or whatever it’s called - the one with the Paul Kelly rantings and ravings and sundry others described in the link to Andrew Bartlett’s post - ie the second section after news. I note though, Tim, that the excellent article you refer to about the author was “balanced” by a box with rantings and ravings from Martin Amis - no doubt an expert on Islam and terrorism.
The terrified bleatings of a vocal few are the surest sign of victory any terrorist could want, but as far as al Qaeda is concerned, we’ve already won. Bush’s statement that he no longer cares about Osama gets a lot of play and a lot of flak, but really Osama is indeed irrelevant. He overreached and his organisation is now considerably disrupted in its ability to plan, finance, or execute any action outside of Iraq and, with the continued assistance of the Taliban, Afghanistan. As far as the War on Terror ™ is concerned, it’s time to declare victory and move on. Yes, we’re still stuck in Iraq and likely to be in Afghanistan for an indefinite period, but meanwhile, global terrorism is changing, and while the bedwetters are pulling their putrid covers over their heads and trying to do the same for everyone else, we need to be looking at changes of our own. It’s never been enough to impose freedom from the business end of a gun, so while it was right enough to go into one Middle Eastern country and destroy state sponsorship for terrorists, that couldn’t be the only method employed for a truly effective solution. Not everything’s a nail, and there are more tools available than just hammers.
Hence the confusion, Mark!
The op/ed section referred to is probably ‘Inquirer’. The arts-review section is actually called ‘Review’ … which led to my confusion!
I hadn’t noticed the Amis article, so can’t comment on that. The only other piece I noticed in the arts review section was by Salusinzky, where he offered a literary assessment of two books with terrorists as the main characters. He didn’t seem to be pushing anyone’s line.
Greg:
This was news last February:
[link]
So, besides guns and money, what other non-hammery-style tools were you thinking about?
The power of prayer perhaps?
The arts pages are reasonably diverse, Tim, I’d agree.
But the total conformity of the features and op/ed content with the current ideological campaign(s) is pretty staggering.
So, Katz, you think war is the answer after all? Or are you just exemplifying the same toolbox mentality as the Bushistas?
If you really want to talk about what could have been done with Iraq, there are any number of proposals that might have worked, including continued containment, although they often presuppose a lack of corruption on the part of the administrators. But what I was trying to suggest is that military force shouldn’t be the first option, regardless of actual or the pretence of reconstruction, and this is an important consideration as we head towards the next confrontation, whether it’s Iran or Lebanon or even, given recent developments, back to Somalia.
We’re not still fighting the Cold War, or World War 2 for that matter, and while elements from the conduct of either may be useful, we do ourselves a disservice acting otherwise. Money can indeed be useful, particularly if it’s used to promote progressive reforms. If the Saudis were spending anything on anyone but their ruling elite other than funding the fundies, that could provide a substantial improvement in the region overall. We could be encouraging this.
Most of the oil-producing nations have nothing to their economy besides oil exportation, but if they could be encouraged to develop other sources of GNP, a larger variety for their population to participate in, this would surely be of substantial benefit, and it could be done not just in Saudi Arabia, but elsewhere as well. Much of the big picture activities we’ll have to deal with to face global warming are going to have to go into the Third World, and those nations, including those of the Middle East, are going to be more satified participants if they’re driving the change themselves as much as or more than they’re forced into it.
Diplomacy, too, has a substantial role to play, as you well know, though too snarky to even think of it before sending off your riposte, and a serious effort at a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an obvious requirement for progress in the Middle East.
We have an opportunity, if we stop reacting, stop running scared, and we should take it.
Meanwhile, do try not to snap at everyone coming through, Katz, or we’ll be bound to think you’re nothing but a crank.
This is not a new type of war. This is a very old type of war. We already know how to win it because yea it is so very old and it has repeated itself so very many times.
This is a war where states for one reason or another find it advantageous to aid UTOPIAN ESCHATOLOGISTS.
If we destroy all the States that do so it will be easier to round up the relatively few number of individuals involved in these UTOPIAN ESCHATOLOGIST movements. And the other thing we must do is find a form of capitalism that is fairer and is perceived to be so.
Since ultimately people become UTOPIAN ESCHATOLOGISTS when they are quite young because they perceive the status quo to be unacceptably unfair. And they get stuck in that groove and addicted to their daydreams and they never get out of that groove.
What Kim, Mark and the rest of you leftists must realise is that you come out of a school of thought that is derived from UTOPIAN-ESCHATOLOGIST-CHRISTIAN-HERESIES.
A typical idea in these heresies is that “WE SHALL BE AS GODS.�
And even in the watered down form of utopian eschatology that haunts your minds we see the remnants of these cultural tendencies transmitted over the centuries.
You guys are simply in no position to forgive anyone who has murdered some third parties kids, deliberately and for no good reason and not as part of legitimate military operations where all due care was taken.
I am no Christian but if I was I would reserve this power to forgive to the saviour and do the right thing and take up the responsibility to avenge unto myself.
Ann Coulter pointed out this tendency of the left to wheel in characters and set them up and put them on a pedastal.. And they would be characters who conservatives… due to their good nature… would find very hard to criticise.
So they scour the earth for Vietnam Veterans, for leftist 9/11 relatives of victims, and for leftist lunatics whose kids died in Iraq.
And it makes it very hard.
And now you’ve come up with some Sheila whose lost both her legs and her eardrums but if her eardrums weren’t perforated she STILL wouldn’t listen.
But I’ll just brush all that aside and say that this women who crawled on in and started talking about ‘wake-up calls’ and such has not woken up. And she says that its time to listen but she is not listening still.
She is not listening to the demands of the UTOPIAN ESCHATOLOGISTS who are the relevant people to listen to in this context.
She wasn’t listening before she was hurt and she’s not listening now.
But SHE has a valid excuse!!!!!!
She may find comfort thinking she can salvage something from this horrific thing that these bastards have done to her and if it was up to me I’d bring them back one thousand times so that I could kill them slowly again. I’d do it so that everyone knew there was no 70 virgins to be found when you do that to a woman but only a thousand drawn-out deaths.
Now I hope she’s fine. And perhaps we should let her live with these delusions. And perhaps even some nice man will tell her she’s gorgeous every day of her life. And that would be a good thing too.
But YOU AND I have no such excuse. Our wake-up call should be that we have to make the status quo of capitalism fairer (at the same time as making it more capitalist) and figure out which guys can be persuaded and which can’t and we have to kill those folks that cannot be persuaded away from the UTOPIAN ESCHATOLOGY.
I have endless forgiveness. One day I might forgive you leftists for this massive moral support that you are always giving to our enemies. For you failure to give all human beings their base level dues. For your failure TO LISTEN to your betters, and to the enemy, instead of putting words into the enemies mouth.
And as nations its even right that we should have provisional forgiveness for a monster like Gaddaffi. Since he’s given up killing our sheilas, or appears to have.
The French say that “To understand all is to forgive all� But what do the fucking French know. They know fuck all. Because anyone who understands terrorists or hardcore Utopian Eschatologists knows that the more you understand the less you can forgive.
I’m tapped out of forgiveness when it comes to that crowd.
And the rest of you should be too.
1. Actually, I agree with some of your yaddas.
2. Military option? Whatever works. I’m no bed wetter. Problem is, it was never going to work in Iraq, and that ruined many of the opportunities to exercise your better yaddas.
3. I’m not running for a popularity contest. People can think what they like. (As long as they don’t think I’m a bed wetter. I’d hate that.)
Katz: I’ll take that as lawyerish gobbledegook for “You are right Steve, anyone who thinks Bush is the problem is insane”
Bird
you can be terribly eloquent in your own way. I’ll buy most of what you’re selling in that comment, except I don’t really think of Mark and Kim as UTOPIAN ESCHATOL0GIST-CHRISTIAN-HERETICS, just fuzzy at the edges Catholic leftist-libertarians.
It’s your choice SATP.
But whoever else might have been reading out little conversation is likely to be able very quickly to spot your mistake.
PS Bird, I’m pleasantly surprised, you’re even starting to sound like a ‘root causes’ man with this:
Except the ’status quo’ in this case which these proto-UTOPIAN ESCHATOLOGISTS are dissatisfied with isn’t really about capitalism.
But a marvellous polemic.
Jason’s correct.
Birdy’s eruptions are like Waiting for Godot’s Lucky coming to terms with the fact that he’s got off Pozzo’s leash.
He doesn’t know yet whether he likes the experience of freedom. He is free to do what he wants, but he continually returns to Larvatus Prodeo, his Pozzo proxy, begging, daring someone to tie the rope round his neck again.
A fascinating existential predicament.
Great theatre.
Yeah Birdy’s got your number alright.
You’re all UTOPIAN ESCHATOLOGISTS.
UTOPIAN ESCHATOLOGISTS who want to live in incredibly cheap, incredibly spacious SKY HOUSES…where the world seems huge again like in pre-historic times and pay for it all with diamond nanorods.
Oh you dreaming fools. Sleepers awake!
Mark wrote:
Actually, Mark, you can. Fascism was killed and bombed out of existence. (I realise you still have these tiny little pseudo-nazi groups in many countries, but fascism was eradicated from the political mainstream of the Western world by, um, killing and bombing.)
To the ‘why can’t we all just get along’ people: one question. Going back to the decade before 9/11, what more could the West have done for the Islamic world? We had:
. intervened to save muslims in Bosnia
. intervened to save Kuwait and Saudi Arabia from a secular Arab dictator
. supported Islamic guerillas in Afghanistan
. and bought the Gulf States’ principal export in such vast quantities that it had made those countries insanely wealthy.
On the negative side, OK, they weren’t happy about our support of Israel. Nevertheless, on any rational basis, didn’t the positives above outweigh the one negative?
So much for Mr Nice Guy.
The difference, Paulus, is that fascism was a movement which sought to hold, and held successfully, state power. It also lacked a genuinely militant base - unlike Communism.
Islamism is not a movement which primarily seeks state power. Treating it as if it is leads to the fallacy behind the invasion of Iraq, which the US’ own intelligence estimates now suggest has created a huge new swarm of terrorists. Afghanistan is a different case - military intervention there made sense for a range of reasons. But the ball was dropped after all the resources were diverted into the insane neo-con adventurism in Iraq.
Though acknowledging the diversity of Islamism, I’m still having difficulties accepting this assertion.
Qutb, the intellectual progenitor of modern Islamism, was in no doubt that his movment was vying not only for the hearts and minds of Muslims, but also for the Treasuries of Muslim nations.
[link]
And OBL’s call for the return of the Caliphate is no mere rhetorical flourish.
That said, Islamism does pose a very different problem from Nazism or communism in that its claims cannot be falsified in this world.
Pre WWII Germans never had strong liberal democratic traditions. But neither were they blind to the affront that Nazism represented to civilised values. Nazism seduced them at a weakened moment. Its early successes seemed to justify pragmatic acceptance. When the Allies crashed in on the 3rd Reich, very few Germans defended it to the last ditch.
Similarly, Soviet communism dissolved from the bottom up. Even troops of the special KGB divisions mutinied when their officers ordered them to shoot on demonstrators.
The methods used by the COW in Iraq and elsewhere aren’t perceived as the power of the COW. They are perceived as the impotence of the COW. The fact that the COW removed Saddam Hussein, its evil puppet, appears to be a replay of the role played by the West in aiding the rise of Islamism by their support of Islamists against the Soviets in Afghanistan. The fact that the COW failed to achieve a quick victory in Iraq and Afghanistan and is now suffering reverses is exploited by Islamists as proof of Allah’s will that Islamism will succeed.
Rumseld grievously underestimated the manpower and resources necessary to perform neo-con tasks in Iraq. The Bush administration is now shackled to that rosy scenario because they recognise that to repudiate it would spell political death. Hence COW troops are now like ducks in a sideshow shooting gallery.
But the interesting now hypothetical question is whether the COW would ever have had sufficient manpower to perform neo-con tasks in Iraq.
When you watch vox pop shots from Baghdad, look at the women in the background. They are becoming more and more completely veiled. Islamism is a rising tide. The US blew down the levees that held held it back in Iraq.
George Bush is Allah’s gift to Islamists.
Yes, but Qutb was hanged, and none of OBL’s actions are realistically aimed at the goal.
“primarily”? … “realistically”?
Are you suggesting that an effective way to counter Islamism is to stay out of Islamists’ way so that they can demonstrate to the world in general and to their Muslim supporters in particular that they really don’t want actually to run anything? And perhaps even ifthey do want to run something that in fact they aren’t very good at it?
Very recent events in Somalia would suggest that the local Islamists want to run something. Could it be a government?
These people aren’t nihilists. That’s a word that irritates me when used in the context of Islamism. Islamists’ methods look like classic nihilism of the Dostoyevsian variety when viewed through the lens of the West. Dostoyevsky’s nihilists sought to destroy everything and to leave nothing. That’s the root of the word ‘nihilist”. Islamists’ methods are simple and efficient. Rather than simply to destroy all authority, they attack and undermine institutions deemed to represent ungodly authority, seeking to replace them with clerical authority.
These methods are stunningly successful. Again, look at Baghdad. The city is now a Shiite theocracy built right under the noses of 140,000 US soldiers. How amazing is that?
Read Riverbend, who is now very late with her September instalment. I fear the worst for her.
[link]
Tell Riverbend, if she’s still alive, that Islamists don’t “primarily” or “realistically” aim to run a government.
Mark wrote -”The difference, Paulus, is that fascism was a movement which sought to hold, and held successfully, state power. It also lacked a genuinely militant base - unlike Communism ”
As you have said above that -”you can’t kill and bomb ideas and mentalities out of existence. ”
Qutb lives on through the power of his ideas. And his ideas I gather , were specifically aimed at removing the corruption of the secular or accommodating state and imposing theocracy.
Total control of the state ,the caliphate re-established , the end of the 800 ( or thereabout ) year old battle.OBL aimed to wrest state control from those he perceived to have lost their way.
I find the title of this thread intriguing. The case of this victim of violence is incredibly sad and I wish the her the best and admire her response on an individual level. However I don’t think many of are suitably experienced or knowledgable enough linguistically to come close to ” understanding ” Islamists.
I’m not sure what the Islamists are up to in Iraq and Somalia is the same as wanting state power, Katz, though your point is well made. But I invite you to reflect on the contrasts with late 30s Germany, Spain and Italy.
I agree, boredinhk - there’s an invitation there to a different discussion from the one that transpired…
That’s more or less the debate I was hoping for.
Internal contrasts?
Yes, Spain is the odd one out in at least two important respects.
1. Francoism was achieved after a bloody civil war. The experience of civil war kept alive civil hatreds. Ordinary Francoists had much more invested in the survival or Francoism than pro-Hitler Germans and pro-Mussolini Italians. Francoists feared reprisals from their neighbours. That’s much worse than an occupying army. That fear nourished enthusiasm.
2. Francoism allied itself with Catholicism. New polity and old faith nourished each other. In Germany and in Italy fascist regimes threatened and even persecuted traditional religion. Spanish Catholics could well believe “No Generalissimo, No Church”. This was an additional reason for Spaniards to identify with Franco.
And Iraq?
Religious enthusiasms also drive Iraqis toward civil war. But as yet the Shiite Franco has not appeared.
Franco rebelled against a government discredited by its associations with secularist world communism.
In Iraq Islamism sets itself against the illegitimate, secularist, US sponsored state.
But there’s something deliciously piquant about Iraq. It concerns the role of the invading superpower. Islamists a clever enough to recognise that they can use governmental institutions to destroy civil government. Bush had no choice but to let them in. The advent of “democracy” in Iraq is Bush’s only boast. He cannot afford to acknowledge that “democracy” opened the door to theocracy.
Nothing like that happened in Italy, Germany, or Spain.
“But there’s something deliciously piquant about Iraq.”
Oh yes, this mob-handed claque of jock-sniffing, pork-headed, Blackberry-hooked DC fixers have come up headfirst against the subtle ruthless culture that refined chess.
“Shah mat”
“But the ball was dropped after all the resources were diverted into the insane neo-con adventurism in Iraq.”
No thats bullshit Mark.
It went wrong after week 3 when the left, with relentless political warfare, boxed the administration in, and then the killing of solidiers and Iraqis began.
Because the left and Jihadists had this sort of meeting of minds. Being as they were both spawned from similiar origins.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Watching HELLBOY last night…. When confronted with this creature…. when you killed it two more would be born….
HELLBOY immediately says… We have to kill them all at once!
Damn simple when you think about it.
There is no mystery if they go to war with you…. then you go to war with them… and then for some reason you CIRCUMSCRIBE the geographical territory of your operations…
The second you do that the other side is winning.
And WE could be winning and Jihadia losing and its just a matter of enlightenment and a change in perspective.
Katz on 25 September 2006 at 10:02 pm
Bird
you can be terribly eloquent in your own way.
Jason’s correct.
Birdy’s eruptions are like Waiting for Godot’s Lucky coming to terms with the fact that he’s got off Pozzo’s leash.
He doesn’t know yet whether he likes the experience of freedom. He is free to do what he wants, but he continually returns to Larvatus Prodeo, his Pozzo proxy, begging, daring someone to tie the rope round his neck again.
A fascinating existential predicament.
Great theatre.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Katz you weirdo.
I know for a fucking fact that this just HAS TO BE leftist-projection.
But tracing it back its hard to see just what a twisted and tawdry life you lead.
And I’m not sure I have the motivation to chase that rabbit.
Thank you all for such lively debate about, it makes interesting reading! Can I just say that I do feel that a lot of you are either completely missing the point - or mis interpreting what, I believe, is a very clear message. I am not FORGIVING the act of terrorism, I sat with dying people, 26 in my carriage in fact, I have seen FIRST hand the destruction and the carnage and the senseless nature of terrorism. I live every day now as a disabled person - it leaves me with NO an idiot, I am not simply smiling and rolling over and shrugging my shoulders to say ‘oh gee, that’s too bad’ - far from it!
I talk about the cycle of violence as being my way to TRY and find an end point to this - IT is ridiculous to think that all terrorists can be caught and jailed - they cant - so what else can be done, what other ways can we combat this growing concern……
I work closely with Muslim communities, this is where I LISTEN. I am in constant discussion with the British Government, many in the Met Police are now close friends. I just dont believe that FORCE as the only strategy is going to solve this problem, a problem that faces us ALL.
I am really very sad at some of your comments directed at me / my actions - I have to do SOMETHING - I have seen too much to turn my head and say nothing.
I wish you all very safe days
Gill
Thanks very much, Gill, for dropping in. My intention, as I said, wasn’t for the comments thread to develop as it did - and I, for one, (and I’m sure many others reading) - are fully supportive of your actions!
Gill, several of the posts above did address this point, at least indirectly, and with some pessimism, given the passions driving actions on both sides:
Islamists: grievances arising from identification with groups asserted to be repressed, hopes associated with the success of global jihad; no one in this thread endorses these ambitions or methods
Bushites: arrogant belief in violence as a technological fix for cowing and/or killing people with unappealing ideas and methods. Panelbeaterbird, against all evidence to the contrary, in his saner moments continues to assert that these methods will be sufficient for the task. At other moments he seems actualy to relish the pain and torment necessitated by this approach.
A huge burden has been laid upon you and you have proven yourself to be strong enough to carry it. It’s not this burden but your subsequent courage that gives you the moral authority to say things and to do things that the rest of us cannot do. People will listen to you because they recognise that you have much invested in the task of making sense of what happened to you and how that relates to what is happening in the world.
You can never shrug that burden. Either you carry it or it will crush you.
The rest of us can afford to be pessimistic, but not to despair. I venture to suggest that pessimism would be a more dangerous state of mind for you.
I wish you enduring strength.