Thursday 1 March 2007

Apparently I'm angry...


This is good. 18 Doughty Street have responded to the Independent's leader on the link between terrorism and the Iraq war. It's anti Islamic polemic from start to finish. Its first word is a typo and it goes downhill from there. The typo will probably be fixed when they read this, but the fact that they didn't spellcheck doesn't say much for their factchecking...

"Your are not the only ones grieving" "All your base are belong to us"
1. Increase in Terrorism
The Independent’s leading story has laid the blame for the rise of terrorism at the feet of America. Well actually, it lays the blame at the feet of Britain and America, but the 18DS boys are off fundraising factfinding in DC this week, so they need to play to their audience... It argues that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have radicalised a new generation of young Muslims who are angry about the treatment meted out to their fellow Muslims.
Further, the paper claims that its view is backed up by evidence provided by the United States National Intelligence estimate. Outrageous! As if the US Government would say such a ridiculous thing!

One should ask, even if these claims are true, which they are do they justify the slaughter of innocent women and children? Sorry, which innocent women and children are we talking about here? All of them? Or just the Christian ones? Why is it that the rest of the world is expected to ‘understand’ the anger of these radicalised Muslims? Oh right, just the Christian ones. Are they the only ones who are angry?

2 Africans are Angry
Black Africans are angry that Condoleezza Rice was described as a black monkey by Palestinian newspapers because she supports Bush’s policies. Dear oh dear. First of all, she wasn't described as a black monkey, she was described as a "black woman". cf. "Black Africans" above. The monkey element comes from a cartoon. A racist, unfunny cartoon, for sure... but who but a fundamentalist would be outraged by a cartoon? Eh? Oh.

Also, there doesn't seem to be any evidence (certainly from that link) that this has anything to do with Africans, black or otherwise. The link leads to a US right wing nut-job blog. The story tells the reaction of conservative Americans to Middle Eastern newspaper editorials on Condoleezza Rice. Africa isn't mentioned once.

They are angry that black people
Right, I see where we're going here. The rest of this paragraph will be about how "Islamists" and "Muslims" are attacking "Black People" and the "Black People" are angry. Therefore Africans are angry. QED.
This is geopolitics for primary school students.
Stupid primary school students.
Would this be a good moment to point out that 45% of Africans are Muslim?
are being killed in Sudan by an Islamist government.
Hmm. look at this: "Characterising the Darfur war as 'Arabs' versus 'Africans' obscures the reality": Alex de Waal, international expert on Darfur.
They are angry that black people were killed when Tanzania and Kenya were bombed by Al-Qaeda.
I think they're angry that people died, not that "black people" died.
They are angry that black people are taken as slaves by Muslim Arabs
Those "Muslim Arabs" are the Baggara tribe - Black Muslim Arabs.
They are angry that when the Trade Towers collapsed, killing black people, there was rejoicing by Muslims on the streets of Gaza. Never mind that 9/11 also killed a great number of Muslims. Pointing that out would ruin the article.
So, with all the problems in Africa, what really makes Africans Angry (according to the fine journalists at 18DS) is Muslims: taking slaves, blowing up a US Embassy almost ten years ago, and 9/11. Oh, and drawing crap cartoons about Condoleezza Rice.

3 The British are Angry
The British people
Ah the "British people" - a term that covers an amorphous group upon whom you can hang any view you like safe in the knowledge that to challenge it would be "unpatriotic". Choice Esperantory
are angry that they have offered hospitality to Muslims fleeing persecution in their home countries only for clerics to call for the destruction of Britain in return.
No, the Daily Mail is angry. But the Daily Mail is angry about everything - fat children, skinny children, bikinis, Charlotte Church, the Human Rights Act, speed cameras, David Cameron...
The British people are angry that British Muslims whose parents were welcomed to this country decided to blow up the underground trains killing over 50 people
This is a great line of argument - it skips the fact that the bombers were British and focuses on the fact that the bombers' parents were foreign. That's the great thing about British xenophobics - even when examining their own, they know that you only have to go back a couple of generations and you find a foreigner...
The British people are also angry that during the cartoon protests, Muslims carried banners warning Britain to expect another terrorist attack.
But the British people are absolutely NOT angry that they were taken to war alongside a chimp in a cowboy hat...

4 The Americans are angry (well, duh)
The Americans are angry that despite intervening at the cost of their lives to prevent genocide in Kosovo, Muslims cheer when America is called the great Satan ("forget Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Guantanamo, all that stuff - we lobbed 1,000 tomahawk missiles with NATO flags on em into central Europe in 1999! We spent three months doing it! That's gotta count for something...") .
The Americans are angry that despite the huge amounts of financial aid they provide to Pakistan and Egypt, the populations of those countries hate America.
"We're angry that you hate us, so we're going to carry on doing exactly the same stuff. That'll learn ya."
The Americans are angry that despite the fact that they provided security to the Arab countries when Saddam Hussein threatened to attack them
This wasn't exactly altruism was it though? It was because those countries were providing support for America to attack Hussein. And, to be fair, Hussein was threatening to attack them with weapons that the Americans had sold him...
people danced in the streets during 9/11.

5. We are all angry
Well, Independent, as you can see, there are a lot of people angry on the planet. Therefore instead of appeasing fundamentalist anger,
(but hold on, I thought you just said "We are all angry"... and you're definitely a fundamentalist... I'm confused)
it would be perhaps more advisable to explain to these people that they should join the peacful political processes in Iraq
(Er, peaceful? Iraq?... loving that typo by the way...)
Afghanistan and Palestine. Other groups (check the link - he's talking about the apartheid regime in South Africa. My, how the Tories have changed their tune over *that* little lot) have done the same and thus they have no excuse for murdering innocent people in the name of ‘grievance’. After all, they do not have a monopoly on ‘grievance’.
(But we, apparently, do.)

Great stuff. Pure fundamentalist claptrap of the first water...

2 comments:

Marcusian said...

Good to see someone else flying the anti-18foxstreet flag...

Anonymous said...

That's the great thing about Tories: you only have to back a few generations until you find an impossibily fucked-up line of thought...