Damn Radicals Are At It Again!
September 25, 2006
In regards to Hugo Chavez making comments about our fearless leader while standing on the soil of the motherland, I propose 2 new international laws. The 1st law requires that those people who would seriously respond to someone speaking facetiously be removed from our planet and made to colonize the moon so that they can no longer waste our precious oxygen. There they can converse with people who don’t joke with one another, where every word uttered is in complete seriousness and no tongue is ever in-cheek.
The 2nd proposed international law states that if you are a world leader and another government targets you for removal by sponsoring a coup in your country, you hereby have the right to say “bad” things about the head of that government.
Now you can call me a radical if you’d like but I think that if I was Hugo Chavez and senior members of the Bush administration supported a coup against my democratically elected government, I could quite possibly find myself publicly calling George Bush some naughty names (see “Venezuela coup linked to Bush team”).
Or if I was the President of a country that in the not-to-distant past had their democratically elected President removed by another country to install a King who was friendly to private oil interests, I think I still might harbor some ill feelings about the whole thing (see U.S. & British sponsored coup in overthrowing Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh to install Shah in Iran).
I know it would be tough but my dream is to get a 3rd international law that requires the public flogging with a wet noodle of people who incite tensions further by regurgitating information that is just plain wrong. When President Ahmadinejad allegedly said that “Israel must be wiped off the map” his words were misinterpreted according to Juan Cole, University of Michigan Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History (Informed Comment).
Simply put, Iranians don’t use the phrase “wiped off the map,” just like you’ll never hear a Ukrainian utter the phrase “let’s play ball.” The President of Iran was attempting to say that the Israeli regime occupying Palestinian land cannot and should not be legally recognized by the state of Iran. WHAT AN EXTREMIST!
As for his statement that the “holocaust” is a “myth” Ahmadinejad was pretty clear. It may be a semantical distinction but is it anti-Semitic to point out that 23 million Russians died in World War II at the hands of the Nazis but yet the word “holocaust” refers solely to the murder of 3 million Jews? Most people see a distinction between war and genocide but I think the idea of the “holocaust” as being a Jewish phenomenon lends support and sympathies in this country for the continued occupation of Palestinian land by Israeli forces.
And what is most unfortunate is that this continued regurgitation of incorrect information (i.e. Chavez is a dictator) has the effect of instilling in Americans that “we” are in some way fundamentally better than “them” which if you cut past the rhetorical bullshit is almost exactly what Ahmadinejad and Chavez are trying to point out, after all they have been literally on the “cutting edge” of our foreign policy formulated out of this hubris.
Damn radicals!
Bush Smells Like Sulphur?
September 21, 2006
In the days after the attacks on 9/11, I, like many Americans, rushed to the bookstore to find out the REAL reasons why we were attacked. Looking no further than its title and believing that it would give me a direct and simple answer, I picked up a copy of Noam Chomsky’s “Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs.” I had always suspected that there was much under the glossy surface of the patriotic image of our country but Chomsky’s book opened my eyes and thankfully, it didn’t offer any simple answers. I partially credit his book with leading me on the path of truth-seeking. Unlike the Limbaugh’s of our day who in essence, tell us what we want to hear making sure that we don’t question anything, Chomsky asks us not to believe him but rather to question everything. In contrast to men like George W. Bush, Chomsky appeals to my reason, not my fears and he is not trying to manipulate.
Hugo Chavez, the democratically elected President of Venezuela, stood the other day in the United Nations and told the assembly to read Noam Chomsky’s “Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest of Global Dominance.” It just so happened that I already own a copy of that book after receiving it from a donation I made to Democracy NOW! and Link TV (they also appeal to my reason, not my fears). While I am most of the way through it (not making excuses but it’s hard to finish when you’re a father, a student and a business owner) I highly recommend it.
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