The Village Idiot I agree with some of your comments.You should check out an article published on Sept.1/07 at http://www.bollyn.com,I think you might find it informative.

#117340 by ntc: “And hey Village Idiot, being criticial of the actions of others doesn’t mean we aren’t critical of our own people and policies.”

That’s my whole point. “We” may be critical of ourselves at this blog or another, but “we” are hardly scrutinizing ourselves at all in the mainstream media, which is the source of most of the stories we end up commenting on at these ‘alternative’ media sites. I was just wondering why “these” but not “those” stories in general; it’s a problem that’s been with us for a long time, and now it seems to be turned up to maximum.

Anyway, the idea that I am in any way “politically correct” is hilarious (quote from Frank: “Your absurd politically correct apologist rant"). I suggest you read slower next time, and formulate a response after reading something, not during. I never said this was not an important story, even though in the grand scheme of things it isn’t, and I also in no way condoned what was reported with “blind tolerance.”

And then there’s this: “Somehow, posting an article about barbaric stupidity in a poor country is supposed to equate to whitewashing the crimes of empire. It’s as though the thought of criticising BOTH is inconceivable, as though denouncing one means finding accommodations for the other.”

Substantive criticism of both is indeed inconceivable; I see cherry-picked stories of events impacting a few individuals being reported over major events that impact either a far greater number of people or that implicate the US government in actions classifiable as war crimes. What is going on in Sudan is bad; it’s ignorant and embarrassing to me as a human. However, it is not directly affecting me, other than to attempt to color my opinion of Muslims. Notice the lack of “feel-good” stories involving Muslims, but plenty of this kind of thing.

When I look at the numbers, I find it interesting that I’m the one being told to “wake up.” Desert nomads, cave-dwelling fanatics, and impoverished people stuck in third world conditions are going to gather up and somehow take over the world with their ideology and maybe some suicide vests? I guess that’s possible, but when I look at death tolls, infrastructure damage, environmental destruction, or any other comparative indices of this culture war I have to say the West is clearly still on top, and the probable winner. Sure, Europe is regretting its open-door policy at this point, but I never made any comments about immigration (and I do think that what’s going on in Europe and the US regarding immigration is a big problem, for what it’s worth).

One last example: Depleted uranium has been used so extensively by our troops around the world that “More than ten times the amount of radiation released during atmospheric testing (of nuclear bombs) has been released from depleted uranium weaponry since 1991,” according to Leuren Moret, formerly employed for five years at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and also at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Cancer rates in Iraq and Afghanistan are soaring, as are birth defects, thanks to the radiation. This is far worse than an extremist ideology (DU lasts eons longer, for one thing), AND it’s a direct threat to Americans since so many troops are being sickened by it as well, not to mention we’re scattering pieces of a dirty bomb all over the place, only needing to be gathered up and put to use by one so suicidally inclined. But no, an angry mob in Sudan gets the column space. Wake up indeed…

#117251 by Passerby on 11/30 at 7:56 pm:

Hey, dude, thanks for a great laugh over yet another depressing piece of news about the greatest insanity of humankind: the filth of religion.

I converted when I first read your comment and now Mohammed has risen for me!  I feel so special!  And now I need only one hand to pray! 

Now, when I run into some dofus named Mohammed I can say, “Hey, just like my penis!”

Do they deserve this?  Oooohhh yessss they do, every freaking one of the inbreeds.  Just like the Jesus freaks, the Torah Toters, in fact, any moron who believes in any magical being.

None of them deserve any respect, only mocking laughter.  Nothing pisses them off more.  I tried it once with a Baptist.  I played really stupid and when he got to the part about Baptisim I laughed like crazy and and kept saying, “Dude, you’re kidding me, right?  I mean, you just saw that shit on an episode of South Park, right?” I kept laughing at every response, because, really, if you think about it, it IS really funny, it’s so damn stupid.  He went ape and assaulted me.  It was even funnier when I pressed charges.

Religious freaks, the best inbred entertainment in town!

May Mohammed rise for you, seem, seem, salabeem!

#117383 by Daniel on 12/01 at 1:21 pm: “GREAT suggestion! I just named my mother-in-law “Mohammed.”...”

Now you WILL get 40 lashes, ha ha!

Village Idiot, if you don’t see why this story is important, then your name suits you well. To address your examples of domestic equivalency, this is not a decision made by a few individuals on a local school board or an accidental victim of a bomb dropped by the military. This is the expression of the insanity of a substantial segment of Sudanese society calling for someone to be executed by the state for a perceived religious insult. This is about a psychological virus that is mainstream in many countries like Sudan and throughout the middle east, which threatens to spread through Europe like a plaque, eroding freedom, democracy and all that is good in western civilization.

Your absurd politically correct apologist rant here illustrates the blind tolerance that is going to cause Europe to either fall completely, or to ultimately resort to some fascist reactionary movement at the last minute once everyone there finally wakes up to the threat a few years too late for democratically implemented safeguards like immigration control and integration education policies.

In short, wake the hell up.

We criticize the mainstream media all the time for what they report (or fail to report), and this has been going on for decades. Most observers of the media quickly come to the conclusion that the stories being reported (or buried) are hand-picked to be so, which begs some questions. So does the fact that nearly all media outlets stay precisely on-message, so much so that a “variety” of channels is just like a “variety” of fast-food restaurants to choose from; it’s the same garbage from the same processing plant, you’re only choosing your favorite packaging.

Lately, we hear of a schoolteacher being vilified for something patently absurd and a young woman being treated like a criminal for being raped, both in Islamic countries. Why “these” stories but not “those” stories? And one of “those” could be the teacher in THIS country who was disciplined and actually charged for being unable to stop porno pop-ups from popping up on her computer at school, which was a mistake just as innocent as the teacher’s in Sudan (and no kids actually saw any images; it’s every bit as preposterous as the case in Sudan!). Our own culture is not blameless in terms of persecution of rape victims, either (you short-skirt wearing temptresses you), though things have improved greatly here in that respect over the past 30-40 years.

Yeah, let’s keep telling ourselves it’s all “them” being backward and superstitious “over there.” Mmm-hmm.  Watch how they gather in large, knife-wielding mobs and call for the blood of a schoolteacher, yes a SCHOOLTEACHER! How absolutely BARBARIC! Hey, does anybody know how many schoolteachers in Fallujah sucked in a big ol’ lung-full of white phosphorous that reacted with the water in their bodies, burning away all their flesh but leaving their clothing intact? But wait, that’s all different; different in the sense that we didn’t see it on TV (you can see it online though). It’s barbaric when people gather in the streets demanding blood; it’s apparently refined and civilized when people stay home being quietly complicit in the spilling of blood.

Who’s hand is doing the picking in this hand-picked media? Why are we even watching it? And OMG! Is Brittany going to keep the baby???

This is a good example of why organized religious should be banned worldwide. Total mob rule insanity. Islam is not the only religious group to display this type of behaviour, most religions have had their own moments of the crazies where some perceived slight toward them has been blown all out of proportion. Instead of looking at the slight-real or imagined- emotion, ignorance and total lack of common sense or respect for others over rule intelligence and level headed thinking.

Perhaps it’s time for all foreigners to leave all the countries they are invading for what ever reason they are there in the first place, be it an active war, a military base in another country, a job helping? educate the people of another country, to help with a crisis, medical, the list is endless, it is time to call it quits. There are to many problems when others invade another country claiming to help. All to often, as we have seen, it turns out for reasons other than what is claimed. Take Iraq for example. Besides people don’t like someone else invading their space uninvited.

To the interlopers: you have worn out your non-existent welcome along time ago.Leave these people to themselves. It is none of your business or as Ann Landers always said: MYOB-mind your own business. Perhaps if people did there would not be so many problems we see today. And that goes for organized religions everywhere who feel it is their right to dictate how you live and run your own personal life. They would be more than busy just managing their own business.

.....Religion is from the top down.....Spirituality is from the inside out....

#117207 by don knutsen on 11/30: “...When we can finally trandsend beyond the need to worship some diety instead of acknowleding whats best for a free and productive society we will always be shackled by the bone-headedness of religion.....  Its amazing really, that so many of us still cling to some notion that its someone else who choregraphs our existance and were just followers. Its a cop out, it keeps us from moving forward and adressing the ills in a productive way....”

“bone-headedness” has nothing to do with religion any more than religion has anything to do with god. One is a human construct and the other is a human condition.

God is the Creator. We are only a minor product of Its creation...... forever seeking to dictate terms as a result of our inner fears and anxieities (lack of spirituality).

Worshipping is a means of inducing people to get down on their knees and beg. It gives some a certain sense of power to get people to do that (humility is personal).

To have a quarter of some handled cheap dry biscuit then stuck in your mouth and to have a chance at a sip of watered-down wine from a dirty cup......well?!?!

Its all rather like going to a fancy French restaurant to have the experience of being insulted by some rude Parisian waiter who needs a good kick up the ass.

The reason is to avoid “addressing” one’s own delusions and shortcomings in any real way. If we know Truth, then we must also face the awful truth about ourselves, uhh.........

#117179 by lilmamzer on 11/30: “As you like to say, “uhh”.... the samet 9th century desert pedophile the Arabs decided would make an ideal figurehead for a violent death cult called Islam....”

Just when you had proven yourself to be as “moronic” as they come, you go one step further, lilmamzer.

Islam is a religion of self-sacrifice and martyrdom. Whatever “religion” you subscribe to, the pleasures and perils (most prominently, emasculation) inherent in being the son of a Jewish family.....  the women share the same neurotic need to submerge themselves in (your) Jewish identity so as to co-opt some of the same family love that was missing from their own lives....

“Doctor what should I rid myself of, tell me, the hatred… or the love?” http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portnoy_et_son_complexe

Lil, as I pointed out to you, you’d fit right in.

#117193 by P. T. on 11/30 at 4:04 pm
(346 comments total)

Hey, Lil, get a job as an Israeli diplomat.  You’d fit right in.  Click http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo= 892486&contrassID=0&subContrassID=0

Thanks for the link. It shows me that Israel, being the open society that it is, has a healthy press.

As if Israel is the only place in the world where individuals sometimes get in trouble? Get real.

You can’t do better than that to smear a whole nation?

L A M E

Hey, Lil, get a job as an Israeli diplomat.  You’d fit right in.  Click http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo= 892486&contrassID=0&subContrassID=0

#117183 by P. T. on 11/30 at 3:46 pm
(344 comments total)

Hey, I’d probably be better off there than under ZioNazi occupation getting run over by bulldozers.  The people of southern Lebanon understood that and acted accordingly.

Uh oh, he said “ZioNazi”. Now we know we’re dealing with a real sharp cookie.

Your analogy is childish and absurd. What does Israel have to do with hordes of bloodthirsty Muslims in Sudan demanding the death of a British schoolteacher, anyway?

Oh, right....it somehow all comes back to Israel, in your twisted mind, anyway.

Go to Sudan and get that job.

Israeli diplomat found naked and drunk in yard.  Click http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11& ar=1350

“PT, time for you to get a teaching job in Sudan.”

Hey, I’d probably be better off there than under ZioNazi occupation getting run over by bulldozers.  The people of southern Lebanon understood that and acted accordingly.

#117177 by Douglas Chalmers on 11/30 at 3:28 pm
(1376 comments total)

This has something to do with either or both (a) the USA criticizing the Sudanese government over its conflict with “rebels”, and (b) the US bombing of Sudan and other areas in the region recently and back to 1998

Just when you had proven yourself to be as moronic as they come, you go one step further.

The teacher is a Brit, Chalmers.

As you like to say, “uhh”.

This is the same instant reversion to violence that occurred when the Danes published those cartoons of Muhammad. Yeah, the samet 9th century desert pedophile the Arabs decided would make an ideal figurehead for a violent death cult called Islam.

Your logic would have us blame the US for THOSE riots, too.

LMFAO what a moron

#117176 by P. T. on 11/30 at 3:27 pm

The rabble misunderstand.  The bear is named Muhammad Ali.

Another day in the wonderful world of Islam.

PT, time for you to get a teaching job in Sudan. We gladly sacrifice you to the bloodthirsty Islamic mob. Keeps them pacified for a little while, and makes you at least semi-useful.

This has something to do with either or both (a) the USA criticizing the Sudanese government over its conflict with “rebels”, and (b) the US bombing of Sudan and other areas in the region recently and back to 1998 http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/africa/9908/18/sudan/

“The bombing of the El-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan by the United States was a “grave act of terrorism”, as heinous and cowardly as the bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam”, the Minister for External Relations of the Sudan, Mustafa Osman Ismail, told the (UN) General Assembly.....

Some history http://www.twf.org/News/Y1999/0507-SudanMistake.html

The rabble misunderstand.  The bear is named Muhammad Ali.