Re: Good luck, Obama

On Jan 20, 4:53 pm, Frogwatch <ohara...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jan 20, 3:06 pm, george <gbl...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:



On Jan 21, 6:37 am, Alan Lothian <alanloth...@xxxxxxx> wrote:

Just saw the inaugural speech live. Well, you USians have sure got
yourself an orator. Cynical old Scotsman practically crying his eyes
out, that's me: always was a sentimental old sod.

Yup.
I wish him luck when he gets away from the speeches and has to work
with all those politicians.

Now let's see if he can walk the walk. I surely hope so, and wish his
new administration absolutely nothing but well.

Must be pretty strange to go to the lavatory after just having two or
so million people eating out of your hand.

I sure as hell wouldn't take his job, no way, gentlemen.

He's a target for the domestic terrorists and from now on nothing he
does will be right

Those of us who dont like him dont want to see him killed.  We think
that a living Obama is better proof of the folly of his "ideas" than
dead one.  I can actually imagine a leftist trying to kill him though
to make him a martyr for big govt.
Lothian, you aint much of a cynic.

Now there goes the understatement of the new year. This is written
right after 9/11. It is possible that Alan has taken holy orders and
lives the life of a cloistered calligrapher in a cold damp monastery
next to the swills of the upper Thames. But I doubt it.



... stuff, snipped

Anytime. My question is does the firing by your government of its
cruise missiles mean that it as guilty as the US of indiscriminate use
of force?

I don't think it's indiscriminate. I worry that it may not work.I am
reasonably confident that many of the vermin have found what they
thought was a safe haven in a collapsed state; we will probably have
to do something about this. Nobody is shooting missiles off at random,
though.

I have no desire to see more Americans die nor to see more Americans
make themselves do stupid and utterly pointless things like commit the
very same crimes that they accuse these nasty terrorists of having
done. The mere fact that so few Americans who post here appear to be
thinking with their brains rather than their dicks, would seem to
indicate that those marvellous crazy people are losing the marvellous
part of the description and resembling the crazy part, more and more.

There's a lot of crossposting here. (Call me s.m.n; the rest is
commentary) So I'd be a fool to disagree with you about the dickheads;
who like the poor are always with us. I'm not a dickhead, and neither
are you. But if you really believe that trying to destroy important
parts of an extremely dangerous network is "committing the very same
crimes that they accuse these nasty terrorists of having done" then
you must be have a dangerous dickhead tendency at work. I particularly
like your phrasing: "the ..crimes they accuse these nasty terrorists
of having done." So WTC was an illusion?

By all means, kill terrorists but please start to learn to differentiate
between a terrorist and a poor bloody Afghani whose only contact with
the United States or the UK might be via a banned video which they have
surriptiously watched one evening.

Nobody, not even *** Cheney, wants to kill poor bloody Afghanis.
What's left of their state is sheltering enemies not just of the US
but of anyone who wants to buy a beer or read a book, or all persons
who piss sitting down. That has simply got to stop. Sure, we {tm}
should have stopped it years ago. But it looks like we are stopping it
now.

The mere fact that the American people and the American leader appear
unable to grasp the reasons why they are hated by so many,

Actually, I don't think you understand why they (you, us) are hated by
so many. That's the real issue here, and I agree that we have to do
something about that hatred. We are hated because we are free, because
we are rich, because our women wear short skirts. (Sometimes: it's up
to the women, here.) We are hated because their are schools all over
the Islamic world (these schools are not, rpt, not authorized or
approved or accepted by grown-up Islamic teachers, as in Cairo's
universities, but that's another story.) We are hated because a lot of
poor people are abused by a lot of other poor people, and they think
they are poor because we are rich. Look up some trade statistics
sometime, if you are ever tempted to believe that to be true.

Read VS Naipal's book Among the Believers. He's a sour, old brilliant
writer who has few friends but mysteriously won the Nobel Prize for
Literature a few days back. In that book he describes the madrassas of
Iran and Pakistan in a telling, chilling phrase: "The poor teaching
the poor to be poor." Please think about that. If you still cannot
shed your liberal guilt, then read George Orwell's essays and then go
and work in the Islamic world.

We in the west don't want to kill anyone. We just want to be rich, and
fat, and happy. We offer opportunities of richness, fatness and
happiness to damn near everyone. Some people just don't want to know.

And it's no use accusing Islamic terrorists of being medieval. In
1350, Islam underlay the most glittering, tolerant, hopeful and
advanced societies on Earth. It was not, repeat not, Cantor Fitzgerald
who reduced them to the whimpering tyranny, corruption and poverty
that distinguish them on this planet.

not because

they give them food but because when they give them food they also give
them hope that the American leader and people will live up to the
rhetoric they espouse of freedom and justice.

You mean: the US would come and sort out all their problems of the
last 500 years minimum and make everything OK? Mommy will kiss it
better? Please, get about a bit. Very few people are evil (arguably,
since I write from an agnostic viewpoint) none: just fucked-up. I
don't think even Mohammed Atta, the driver of the first plane into the
WTC was evil. Let us just say that he was seriously mistaken in all
sorts of ways.

But it is not the responsibility of the US, or indeed the West, to
socially toilet-train a big chunk (I won't say a majority, but it sure
as hell isn't a small minority) of the billion Muslims on this planet.

Problem is, they don't.
They favour one side or the 'tother in so many international disputes,
particularly in the Middle East and keep on doing so, despite the
obvious and gross injustice of doing so.

The US, like all other great powers (never mind superpowers) has
attempted to use its foreign policy to advance its national interests.
Sometimes, wise decisions have been made; sometimes decisions less
wise.

But the Middle East is a giant red herring. It is quite true that the
Israelis have needed their backsides whacked for a while. But have you
ever been to Israel, talked to people? Christian Arabs on the West
Bank? It always gets more complicated on the ground.

I'm not surprised that people hate America, I'm surprised that more
people don't take that hatred and turn it into real, raging, red-hot
anger of the type which has obviously fueled the group which carried out
these atrocities.

You still haven't explained why some people *hate* America. You seem,
like so many Western guilt freaks -- I many be doing you an injustice;
you argue mainly rationally but you miss certain important logical
links -- to assume that's just the way things are. It's very easy to
see why people can be annoyed by Americans. As I said in my original
post, though not in these exact words, I have had years of pleasure
out of feeling snobbishly superior to foolish American.

But why should certain people hate the most generous, open society
that has ever existed? I can understand why they might dislike it, and
seek ways to feel superior to it; consider the French; or indeed
myself on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. (The rest of the week I
bitch about the European Union).

Is it because of the imperfections of that society -- which most
certainly exist, and which create splendid job opportunities for
people in America and elsewhere to expound. Or has it crossed your
mind that there just might be something significantly wrong with the
haters, and those who have trained, taught and lied to them?

Think of those AMERICA MUST DIE kids in Pakistan who raise enough dosh
to go to an InterNet cafe and download pics of *** they will never
see in real life. It can be as crude as that, you know.

I am posting this via google, not my usual server (which is in any
case astonishingly crap) and because I will be travelling around a
bit, hoping not to be blown up or otherwise consigned to eternity by
some fuckwit. I'll let you know if I survive the Channel Tunnel. (If
it gets blown tomorrow evening, [unlikely, of course] raise a glass;
don't burn down your local mosque, but hassle your local imam into
talking sense.)

Point is, I won't necessarily be able to maintain my posts for about
ten days. So if I am silent, please do not imagine that I am avoiding
an argument.

this being from google, rather than home, I have to type my .sig from
memory. It's a quote (freely translated to make it cool English) from
a very great Muslim scholar and historian.

"The past resembles the future as water resembles water." Ibn
Khaldun.

This damned google thing will give away my email address to the
spamsters. Oh, what the hell. The address is alan dot lothian at
blueyonder dot co dot uk
.

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