BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE
IN FLORIDA, CELEBRITY IN CHIEF BARRY O'S APPROVAL RATING HAS FALLEN TO 40%.
THEY DON'T CALL IT THE SUNSHINE STATE FOR NOTHING.
ALL THAT SUNLIGHT HAS EXPOSED A STILL NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME PRESIDENT.
ACROSS THE NATION, THE LATEST POLL FINDS ONLY 41% APPROVAL FOR BARRY O.
WHITE HOUSE PLUS-SIZE SPOKESMODEL JAY CARNEY TOLD THESE REPORTERS TODAY THAT ACTIONS ARE BEING CONSIDERED, "WE'RE EITHER GOING TO ARRANGE CASUL TOPLESS SHOTS OF POTUS -- THOSE WERE SO POPULAR IN 2009 AND STILL SHOULD BE BECAUSE HIS MANBOOBS FULLER THESE DAYS. OR WE'RE GOING TO SEND OPRAH ON A NATIONAL TOUR TO INSIST ANY CRITICISM OF THE PRESIDENT IS RACIST. WE'RE SURE EITHER ACTION WILL FIX THE PROBLEM."
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
Did you hear about those awful Gittes?
Those people are just evil. They just want to take over the world. The whole region would be better off without them.
Thank goodness, we know that they are inherently evil, right?
Now we know the cause of all the violence.
And since it's just those damn Gittes, there's no reason to look to what anyone else is doing wrong, certainly not a government.
It's just those Gittes, they have death and destruction on the brain -- it's in their blood.
So now that we know the problem we just have to figure out if we're going to arrest them all or just kill 'em? Hunt em down, exterminate them, right?
There are no Gittes.
The above is stated for a reason (and Gittes because I had Chinatown on the brain -- script by Robert Towne and Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway star with Jack Nicholson playing private investigator JJ Gittes).
For the second day in a row, RT has allowed John Wright to blame Sunnis for the violence in the Middle East including Iraq.
How stupid or hateful is he?
Does he even know what the situation is in Syria?
But Wright tells you the problem is Sunnis. Sometimes he says "Sunni fundamentalists."
There are some Sunnis who do resort to violence - -they're not the only group in the rgion that does -- and it apparently is 'cute' to call them "fundamentalists." But 'cute' or not, that's also inaccurate. Fundemantalists are one thing -- in any religion, in any area. They take their religion very seriously. Doing so means they don't usually resort to violence. In the US, we have some religious fundamentalists who are opposed to this or that. Religious fundamentalist in the US do not, for example, kill abortion doctors. The ones who do that are extremists or fanatics; however, they aren't really "fundamentalists." Fundamentalists would take to prayer not to bombing an abortion clinic.
Fundamentalists are different than I am. I live a secular life with modern toys and amusements. But they're being different from me -- or me being different from them -- doesn't give me the right to misdescribe them. And pay really close attention here because this is the part that effects all of humanity: When you hold up violence as a form of religious fundamentalism?
The grown ups who are fundamentalists blow you off. They know better.
They know that they have strict observance of their faith and that's what makes them fundamentalists.
Kids?
Kids are always trying to make sense of the world and figure out where they fit in -- that is what growing ups about. So you take a confused kid with religious leanings -- especially one shocked by some new development or modernity -- and you raise him -- via the media -- to believe that religious fundamentalism -- strict observance of your faith -- means bombing and killing people?
You've just created a generation of people who now believe this is how you express your faith.
That's especially likely in Iraq where there are so many orphans as a result of the illegal war. In November of last year, Caroline Hawley (BBC News) reported "that between 800,000 to a million Iraqi children have lost one or both of their parents." That's a huge number. It's also probably an undercount -- 4.5 million is probably closer to reality., the Iraqi Orphan Foundation estimates the number to be 3 million and, at the start of 2009, Timothy Williams (New York Times) reported 740,000 widows in Iraq -- not all widows have children or children under the age of 18 but there are a huge number of orphans in Iraq without any parent and that was 2009. The violence hasn't ceased since 2009 and, in fact, it has picked up. Regardless of whether the number is four million or one million, that's a huge number -- especially in Iraq where the population is estimated.
The teenage years are fraught with confusion -- bodies change, hormones rage, you're still a child but confronted with adult situations. For some teenagers, that period can be one where they find salvation in religion or retreat deeply into it, however you want to see it. Do you really want to create the message for this group of children that bombing and shooting -- killing -- is religious fundamentalism?
John Wright's uninformed and ugly stereotype is not only false, it is highly damaging.
But it is false as well.
By blaming Sunnis for the problems in Iraq, Wright's able to ignore so much including how Nouri al-Maliki fuels the violence.
The mass arrests of Sunnis fuel the violence. Monday, for example, 85 people were rounded up in Wasit Province alone. The mass arrests would be disturbing in any country.
They're especially disturbing in Iraq.
There is no speedy justice. People linger in jails, detention centers and prisons with the no court appearance and, in fact, often with no charges brought against them.
Some held in prisons, jails and detention centers can't be charged. They were arrested but they were arrested for no real reason. They aren't even suspects. But, in Iraq, when you can't find the suspect, you're allowed to arrest their wives or mothers or siblings or fathers or children or grandparents.
They're rounded up and arrested with no one believing they broke a law. They're arrested, taken from their homes and thrown behind bars because they're related to a suspect.
The disappeared (into the 'legal system') are among the issues fueling the ongoing protests. As Mayada Al-Askari (Gulf News) observed Monday, "In the past two years, demonstrations have increased in Baghdad and other governorates as people have been calling for better services, the release of women detainees and more civil rights."
Now if the problem is just these 'bad' Sunnis, as John Wright keeps insisting, then we don't have to worry about what Nouri's doing, we don't have to worry about a minority population being disenfranchised.
RECOMMENDED: "Iraq snapshot"
"The oversimplifiers"
"Responding to masculinist Mary Wendy Roberts"
"Gloria Steinem explains she was a CIA agent"
"To God's ear"
"michael moore's an idiot"
"The stupid New York Times columnist"
"Laura Nyro"
"Revolution"
"Arrow"
"Happy Birthday, Barack!"
"That idiot Harry Reid"
"So much free time, so little work"
"THIS JUST IN! BARRY O WANTS TO HELP!"
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