from the nothing to say thread
Annie, in the item that starts “Iraqi historian Toby Dodge explains….”, where Cole links directly to the Daily Star (and I have no idea why my own links aren’t working; I’ve typed the tags correctly).
Posted by: alabama | July 9, 2005 06:26 PM | #
its a great article
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=16&article_id=16373

Posted by: annie | Jul 10 2005 0:37 utc | 12

C’mon people why the insistence to see Muslims and/or Arabs as a bloc complete with shared ideals, aims and methods? Even those heavily edited Vox Pops the Fox Trots do around Bagdhad reveal just as diverse a range of views as any reporter would get on the streets of New York London or Paris.
I have no great worries about any Pan Arabist movement because even in the ’50s when Nasser was preaching to a much less divided Arab community than now, pan-arabism became subsumed by the day to day political/nationalist needs of regions.
Where does Iran fit into pan-arabism? SCIRI and the Badr Brigade are definitely Arab yet their closest supporters (Iranian Shia) are not.
The foul bigotry we have witnessed in the last few days flourishes when a large group of people with diverse motives can be reduced to a few broad brush strokes.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jul 10 2005 1:23 utc | 14

This fifth generation warfare is curiously similar to the nihilist movement in 19th century Russia. They weren´t an organisation, they just followed the same ideal and used violence in trying to achieve it.
I do not know why really, but this term “x:th generation warfare” makes me irritated. Asch, of to dreamland I go instead of working it out.

Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Jul 10 2005 2:14 utc | 16

@ askod
It goes without saying that I was not referring to your post.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jul 10 2005 2:29 utc | 18

@Kane
Peace.
There’s just a little extra ‘sensitivity’ after a day and a half of grossly offensive trolls trawling threads.

Posted by: Outraged | Jul 10 2005 3:11 utc | 20

“mexicans,” spoken by non-mexican americans, is an epithet. just the way it is.

Posted by: slothrop | Jul 10 2005 3:24 utc | 22

@Debs is dead
Hmmm, it could have been written better. However, what they are getting at is not unreasonable and a parallel to the increased sophistication and depth of the Al-Qaeda like offshoots.
To avoid ‘profiling’ by Police and Intelligence servcies, the ‘terrorists’ plan and finance the Op and then hire criminals/mercs to do the dirty work. The actual act fulfills the terrorists objective (terror/political) but is actually performed by unknown, unsurveilled entities, what the Police call ‘Clean Skins’, no existing record etc.
Not much different to a nation state or Intelligence agency using paramilitaries or effectively mercs as proxies in the ‘war on drugs’, numerous Latin American endeavours, etc …
If proven, it shows a substantially more sophisticated and therefore considerably more lethal threat … much more difficult to target and defend against … damn terrorists using crims/mercs jsuts as nation states have done … how dare they (sarcasm)

Posted by: Outraged | Jul 10 2005 3:29 utc | 24

Sloth: Lived down in the Southwest or in a hispanic neighborhood? WTF do you want people to say when they are identifying people from the nation of Mexico? “No dude, he’s not Columbian, that guy’s from down some crazy village in Oaxaca, you know, in the country with the football team beaten by the South Africans?” Maybe we should say “she’s a chilanga” or “she’s from the same country as the chilangos, but not she’s one”, but the chilangos consider themselves to be above such issues of nation, since, in their eyes, they come from the blessed city around which the entire universe revolves. How’s about “he’s a Mexican-American, but like, without the American part”? Tough problem. Apply dialectics and electricity.

Posted by: citizen k | Jul 10 2005 3:50 utc | 26

Hahahahahahahaahah.
In my family its mexicano.

Posted by: razor | Jul 10 2005 4:00 utc | 28

Oh I thought he meant Mexican nationals, you know, as in Spanish-American war, Mexican Revolution, and all that stuff. Mexican as in “a citizen of Mexico”. Was trying to figure out why the heck these folks should be seen as any less fiercely independent than any other nationality, unless this is some new form of French-bashing. Referring to chicanos/as in the US as “mexicans” is usually a marker of some degree of redneckitis where I come from, though it may not be intended to offend, whereas “wetbacks” and worse epithets are definitely intentional offence.

Posted by: DeAnander | Jul 10 2005 4:13 utc | 30

This Independent article speculate with Muslims from Balkan (Bosnians or Albanians)…Police is obviously following some lead on terrorist being a white people. Well yes Bosnians and Albanians are WHITE and yes they recently did fight war and are experienced with explosive etc. And yes those “dogs of war” are unemployed now. most of them being criminals for their all life ( just like anywhere on the Balkan or anywhere after war for that matter)…Also during wars they did brought mudjahedins to fight against Serbs for them for money or for religion , who knows, and yes you can read here and there about connections with Al Qaida even on a state level…If that’s the case knowing Bosnians and Albanians these terrorist may fight for money but also they may fight for Islam ( all tho they are not “immune” on money, haha) .Albanians used to be more “secular” and they are “proud owners” of significant worldwide mafia so money could have played with them. Just remembered few days ago we have seen few explosions aimed on UN rulers in Pristina …probably no connection here…but who knows…
I don’t remember tho that during our history Bosnians actually used terrorist’s methods (as for example Ustashi – Croatian extremist did very often)…
But then again times has changed and what is terror is seen much differently now when we have greatest nations fighting illegal wars and killing hundred of thousands innocent civilians in a process…Would you call it “state terrorism”? Or is it more convenient to call it “collateral damage”? This world has changed a lot…or at least our understanding of events…

Posted by: vbo | Jul 10 2005 4:26 utc | 32

The common derogatory terms a while ago were “spic” and “wetback” (for “Mexican”) and “gringo” (for “citizen of the United States”). Those terms probably aren’t used any more, which isn’t to say that the derogatory attitudes have disappeared–only that speakers with those attitudes have refined upon their terminology. For example, they may refer to Mexicans as “Mexicans”, thereby posing a challenge to the Politically Correct among us, who find it easiest (more stable, more useful) to correlate an attitude with the usage of a suspect term.

Posted by: alabama | Jul 10 2005 4:38 utc | 34

In southern California, people from Mexico are Mexicans. A more general term for all those from latin america is Hispanics. Mexican is not derrogatgory. I’m not aware of any synonym that is less offensive. I have never employed any. Except for my ex-brother in law, I can’t count any among my best friends either. I have, however, helped build houses, and collect 10’s of thousands of dollars of used clothing for the poor in Tijuana. DeAnander, the only reason they should be seen as less fiercely idependent than most others, is….because they are. The lack of success of the Zapatista movement, even after Chiapas, proves that point. Almost 100 years after the revolution, the goverment is still corrupt, and the vast majority of Mexican citizens tolerate it.

Posted by: Kane | Jul 10 2005 4:39 utc | 36

geez
my sister’s last names is chavez. but no way do you ever refer to her husband or his family as mexican because his family has lived multi generations in albuquerque and call themselves spanish. my son was born in taos. that’s the way it is there also. new mexico was settled by the spanish coming up from mexico and they are fiercely not mexican.(some weird pride in not screwing any of the indigenous people) i lived on the border in bisbee az for a few years people coming over the border who lived in mexico, are mexican, but all the locals are locals or hispanic which is also what i call my neices and nephews even tho most of them have a dad from chile. i don’t think the word mexican is racist . but that sentence certainly set off my racist radar.

Posted by: annie | Jul 10 2005 4:48 utc | 38

Kane, you’ve given me an idea that I could never have thought up on my own (for which my thanks). It’s this: the term “spic” may be an abbreviation of the term “Hispanic,” as thus: (Hi)sp(an)ic….Not beyond the realm of possibility, would you say? We ought to look it up in an etymological dictionary. “Gringo,” of course, is a famous crux; no one seems to know where that one comes from!

Posted by: alabama | Jul 10 2005 4:55 utc | 40

The Iraqis remain, like most of the world, with the possible exception of Latinos, fiercely independent people.
Oops. I don’t think this one is working out too well.

Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Jul 10 2005 5:11 utc | 42

Dammit! for those that hadn’t guessed that was me back on the laptop above. Sorry

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jul 10 2005 5:38 utc | 44

not that anyone will care, but I have to say that the tone here is really, really not productive…too much sniping…and this has been going on for a while…anyone who shows up here gets attacked, rather than people talking to one another, no matter what differences.
And people who show up here and immediately start making stereotypical remarks… that’s really useful.
fwiw- some people from Spanish-speaking countries do not like the designation Hispanic, because it doesn’t really describe them.
maybe “Kane” is a friend of the Roper, the therapist in Texas, who just got a big govt grant and is located in the Rio Grande area, as well as Groucho, who employed many people from Mexico.
Who knows who Harry Potter’s glasses was. If it was a therapist posing as a disgruntled homosexual…that would be really bizarre. Not saying that’s so, but the cluster of newcomers…Harry Potter glasses didn’t say, did he/she/it?, do seem to possibly share some geography.
Roper, or whatever his name is, never did answer my questions about war.
Maybe it’s time for me to take a break elsewhere…both in the online world and in the real one. Those monks the other day got to me. Not because I believe in reincarnation or any other religious belief, but because of the understanding of the uses of “magic” in life to bring forth the goodness in humans…something that I do not see in any of the world’s fundamentalist religions.
While working on a silly translation, I had c-span on in the background. The guy who wrote South Park Conservatives was on, making statements that were lies to me. Now the guy, David Shipler, who wrote The Working Poor is on. No doubt the South Park guy would find Shipler’s conclusions equally unreal.
There is no middle ground that holds any longer in this country, is there?
The right has been very effective in their attempts to demonize the left…and now they’re getting back what they’ve given. I no longer think it’s impossible that this country could split apart, just as the Soviet Union could not hold, because those of us on the blue and those on the red do not want to live in the same sort of world.

Posted by: fauxreal | Jul 10 2005 5:54 utc | 46

Back in the day I was involved in delivering training to people who were visiting traditional aboriginal communities in Northern Australia for the first time. Most communities required that all visitors apply for and obtain a permit to visit their community from the community council which was usually the tribal council of the original landowners. Successive governments and missionary organisations had encouraged the tribes to move together onto one site to make delivery of services ‘easier’. Easier for them not for the aboriginal people who generally felt compelled to defer to the wishes of the original owners. Etiquette is pretty strict in societies that date back 40,000 plus years.
I digress of course the point I wanted to make was that these ‘newbies’ would be encouraged to refer to the traditional people as ‘yolgnu’ and non-aboriginal people as ‘balandas’. Yolgnu means, in the language of one of the tribes from around Yirrikala, “our people” Balanda is considered to be a corruption of ‘Hollander’ and proof that the first european visitors to Northern Australia were dutch traders coming down from what is now known as Indonesia.
As I said the only people who initially really understood/used this terminology were one mob in east Arnhemland but most of us were content to let the overly PC trainers from the public service and presbyterian church send out this message because after a time it came to signify to traditional people that they were dealing with keen but probably well meaning greenhorns.
The reason for all this was that traditional people referred to us as ‘whitefellas’ and themselves as ‘blackfellas’. Now I have no idea whether this terminology was grounded in prejudice or descriptiveness but had pretty neutral connatations at the time we all used it.
It didn’t for the good keen people up from down south to ‘help’ the aboriginal people tho. In fact although I had no problem with either of those two fellas there was one I baulked at and that was the third category of fellas ‘yellafella’.
This word was used to describe the urban aboriginal people that visited communities who were for a range of reasons, many unfounded, some as a result of whitefella divide and rule all classed as yellafellas.
The assumption always was that the first ‘yellafellas’ were the descendants of chinese goldminers from the 1890’s and local aboriginal women. These unfortunates were generally rejected by the blackfellas and the whitefellas. The whitefella establishment started using them to liase between the two main ethnic groupings probably because they could usually trace a blood relationship to the clans they were working with and because the whitefella establishment saw them as having better literacy skills than the average blackfella. (nb this is not my judgement but what I perceived to be the judgement of a lot of whitefella society at that time)
Anyway yellafella came to be the term for any aboriginal person who was obviously neither fullblood (I don’t much like that term either but can’t think of another) nor raised in traditional culture.
The problem I had with it was that unlike the other two collectives it did have pejoratives attached to it by many in both the other two collectives.
I’ve always believed that is what all of this ‘pc’ debate should be determined on. Although we shouldn’t do it; from time to time most of us do group races/cultures en masse. The words we use are least effective if they carry a lot of historical prejudice. Mexican can be just such a word, as can be when profoundly speech impaired people are desribed as ‘dumb’.
Yes some people, often those who talk the talk far more than they walk the walk, use this PC terminology in a way that stilts the free flow of communication, but I reckon those that use MoA are sensible enough to apply just a little nous and if they must ‘herd’ people, to do it with non-judgemental metaphors.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jul 10 2005 6:38 utc | 48

Well what on earth am I supposed to call a Mexican? Ah, I got it, I’ll just say Méxicain! That will suit.
Robin Cook in the Guardian, 8 july 2005:
Excerpts:
In the absence of anyone else owning up to yesterday’s crimes, we will be subjected to a spate of articles analysing the threat of militant Islam. Ironically they will fall in the same week that we recall the tenth anniversary of the massacre at Srebrenica, when the powerful nations of Europe failed to protect 8,000 Muslims from being annihilated in the worst terrorist act in Europe of the past generation. (…)
Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally “the database”, was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. (…)
So long as the struggle against terrorism is conceived as a war that can be won by military means, it is doomed to fail. The more the west emphasises confrontation, the more it silences moderate voices in the Muslim world who want to speak up for cooperation. Success will only come from isolating the terrorists and denying them support, funds and recruits, which means focusing more on our common ground with the Muslim world than on what divides us. (…)
Link

Posted by: Noisette | Jul 10 2005 10:24 utc | 50

Lupin: Young people are drawn to the genuine and repelled by fraud – but are not too sophisticated in distinguishing authentic from attitude. The rise of fundamentalism draws some power from the gap between the rhetoric of human rights and freedom and the reality of CIA and multinationals. As long as bloated toads like Blair and Chirac are poisoning the words of the Enlightenment with their pious lies, smart and naive kids will be open to persuasion to join terror movements.

Posted by: citizen k | Jul 10 2005 11:45 utc | 52

@ fauxreal (an interesting pseudonym from my point of view)
I don’t recall your “question” about war, I must have skipped over it. I do in fact, work with abused children/adolescents, and abusers of children/adolescents and abusing children/adolescents as well as adolescents who abuse a fairly wide variety of substances. I did not as an anonymous poster said, “recently” or at any other time get a “large government grant” however, I have had in the past contracts with government agencies to work on a fee for service basis. I do live in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas and have for many, many years; and? Roper is my real name; and?
@ Jassalasco Jape I’m delighted that you think by me posting here that “there is some prospect for his redemption.” I also note that you have posted a number of comments on my blog so may I return the favor? There is apparantly, some hope for your redemption. 😉
I did post on the “open thread” a number of times yesterday, I was curious as to why a number of hits on my blog were showing up as having come from this blog/forum. There I discovered your note that your initial posting on my blog was a “stealth” posting that you suspected might be deleated in a short while. I posted here wondering if

likewise deleated a poster for objecting to his style or to his ideas. Bernhard responded with a large number of links that then went to the same comment by the glasses fellow and I wondered in a comment if that was an error or proof that “glasses” was banned for expressing ideas. Bernhard then corrected the links and I determined that indeed “glasses” was a troll with really foul language. I noted in a post that I withdrew my comment, that I would have done the same thing that Bernhard did if “glasses” did not change his language usage.
fauxreal and a couple of others, outraged I believe and maybe one or two others objected to my presence, called me a troll and worse and indicated that they didn’t appreciate my presence and I should stick to my own side. Not gonna happen folks. If Bernhard asks me to not come back, I won’t, but discourse between folk having differing belief systems is a whole lot better than throwing rocks at each other. I do admit being snarky and opinionated from time to time, but I generally try to control that (sometimes more successfully than others).
At any rate, Bernhard, the start of this post, before it delved into a discussion about Mexico/Hispanics etc. was a good post, one well worth thinking about as I noted above.
Cheers!!!

Posted by: GM Roper | Jul 10 2005 14:50 utc | 54

Roper- I did not call you a troll. I questioned if you were more than one person, above, and, yes, I repeated what someone else had said. I asked you a serious question about why those who support war as an answer to terrorism have not signed up, en masse, to defeat terrorism, if this is how you and others think it is best achieved.
As for internet psychoanalysis of screen names…beyond the obvious ridiculousness of such a statement, I would remind you of Frist and Schiavo…not exactly an ethical position.
But here is a brief explanation of the screen name:
Fauxreal imo is funny…in a sad kinda way. Word play…somthing some people find interesting…fake real…like writing pixelated text on a screen…like democracy in America…like po-mo.
like a “Man [Humanity] is condemned to be free” sort of paradox of word juxtapositions that have meaning because of this paradox.
like being of French ancestry but obviously not French.
so, make of that what you will…psychoanalysis has had a great run of “just so” stories…Freud’s explanation of hysteria, his famous phrase…”what do women want?” –duh..how about equal rights… Bettleheim’s expert “understanding” of autism…the “problems” with breast feeding children from male child care experts of the 50s….not to mention other areas that are not part of my life.
ta ta for now

Posted by: fauxreal | Jul 10 2005 15:56 utc | 56

@ fauxreal
“Fauxreal imo is funny…in a sad kinda way. Word play…somthing some people find interesting…fake real…like writing pixelated text on a screen…like democracy in America…like po-mo.”
I had that understanding, my statement was a curiosity as to why/how people assume pseudonyms… nothing more and by the bye, I am not a freudian. Though I recognize he was a genius, he was so totally wrong on everything, it is laughable today. But at the time, it made sense to folk. We have learned a lot. If I have a therapeutic outlook, it would be cognitive restructuring with a touch of humanism and rational-emotive approaches.

Posted by: GM Roper | Jul 10 2005 16:13 utc | 58

GMRoper
maybe, just read awhile, and no more.

Posted by: slothrop | Jul 10 2005 16:53 utc | 60

or perhaps a photocopy of my passport with the entry stamp at the port of St. Petersburg?
Your cynicism is not becomming.

Posted by: GM Roper | Jul 10 2005 17:08 utc | 62

not that anyone will care, but I have to say that the tone here is really, really not productive…too much sniping…and this has been going on for a while…anyone who shows up here gets attacked, rather than people talking to one another, no matter what differences.

Things have been a little fraught for a while. A lot of people here are basically watching the world slide down the precipice we’ve been predicting for a while, and those in power seem to want only to accelerate the slide: they think that Nirvana rather than Gehenna is at the bottom. As J Jape suggests above, many of us don’t have much opportunity to shout at the people responsible, and anyone who gives any opportunity to people to uncork their emotions is likely to get drenched in something other than champagne.
People react in different ways: some tend to withdraw, some just get snippier. I tend to do both simultaneously, which leads to long periods of silence interspersed with short cranky periods of commenting.

Maybe it’s time for me to take a break elsewhere…both in the online world and in the real one.

Don’t do that. If all the reasonable people go it’ll be only the loonies left.

Posted by: Colman | Jul 10 2005 18:03 utc | 64

by the bye, I am not a freudian. Though I recognize he was a genius, he was so totally wrong on everything, it is laughable today. But at the time, it made sense to folk. We have learned a lot.
For reasons explained so very clearly by Monolycus @ 5:49 PM yesterday on the OT, the words cited above are the drivel of a troll (see his link to “attention whore”). GM Roper is a troll, period–the word “period,” in this context, meaning that the point has been decided (absolutely, finally, and without appeal, so far as I’m concerned).

Posted by: alabama | Jul 10 2005 18:48 utc | 66

Eek.
I was describing a situation in my post on the open thread as I saw it, but I was unaware at that time that J Jape had inititiated this by posting on Mr. Roper’s site. Flash had asked why they (trolls) were coming here, and in this particular case, the answer might be that one of our members here unintentionally invited them. This isn’t a criticism of anyone, but it does eliminate the randomness from Mr. Roper’s sudden contributions. This is not to say that he is not an attention whore (I stand by my original observations), but there is nothing sinister about that.
Tensions have been high lately. I think debs, for example, might have gone a little ad misericordian with his/her suggestion that internet trolls are cut from the same cloth as child molesters (Open Thread, 9. July, 08.57), and a bit of perspective and moderation might be called for. While I disagree with the bulk of deb’s supporting arguments in that particular post, I agree entirely with his/her conclusions: the civil thing to do would be to simply ignore those things which are transparently designed to be inflammatory.
Unlike the Cheney administration, I am not so convinced of my rectitude that I am unwilling to listen to others’ views. If someone wants to debate civilly, then I think there is potential for good to come of it. If they are just a noisy idiot, I simply skip past their posts. But it is not my place to regulate who is or is not welcome at MoA. I am here at Bernhard’s hospitality, and it is entirely his discretion to weed his garden as he sees fit.

Posted by: Monolycus | Jul 10 2005 20:09 utc | 68

sorry that should either have been “failures” or “proves“.

Posted by: DeAnander | Jul 11 2005 0:57 utc | 70

Some day, when I have lots of time and not much else to do, I’m going to try an work out the intricacies of US nomenclature for the assorted ethic and immigrant groupings. It all seems terribly complicated.
As a Japanese having spent much time in America as well as in the UK and living presently in Australia, most ethnic and immigrant labels are are just shorthand referrals whose meaning are purely dependent upon when and what hostile baggage they carried at origination. Growing up, I always thought that “Jap” was simply a contraction as would be “Nip”, and also knew that as such should not have bothered me. Not so simple though. Most Japanese will recognize these as offensive. The real difficulty is in recognizing to what extent there is any hostility in the usage. Interestingly enough I can say categorically that in the UK “Jap” is a more often than not just a harmless contraction and in the US Jap is equivalent to say “Spic”. I’ve never had the nerve to refer to myself as Jap though compared to the lengthly Japanese it is a lot easier to say. “Nip” is a totally different nomenclature, which ironically is closer to being a contraction for the Japanese language identification of Japan. Never the less this appears to be more rooted to usage directly related to WWII context. But both technically are just shortened versions of what should not cause offense at all. There is a strange mirror to this, unrelated probably, in Japanese culture which while rich in vocabulary and expression is incredibly devoid of ugly epithets and derogratory expression of the richness and variety found in English. Why the referral in English speaking countries is just a plain and simple contraction of “Japanese” as opposed to something that at least sounded more hateful (such as gook) always has puzzled me.

Posted by: YY | Jul 12 2005 5:24 utc | 72