Category: ThinkableWords

Words that induce thought…

Further context into this context

So here we go again. This past Friday a man named Anders Behring Breivik allegedly detonated a bomb in Norway, killing 7. And, in a separate incident, while impersonating a police officer, but carrying a firearm (which Norwegian police don’t do, according to one al Jazeera interviewee) shot and killed up to 84 additional people attending a youth camp on an island an hour or so north of the Norwegian capital of Oslo.

The details, while absolutely horrific and entirely deplorable, aren’t what I’m most interested in. Or even the hysteria that predictably ensued for most of the day Friday, not to mention part of yesterday, following these events. You know the typical rush to judgement these acts were immediately thought linked, as terrorism, with Fundamental Islam without creditable evidence. Turns out it wasn’t terrorism at all, thank God, it was just right-wing extremism — like people are supposed to be assured because this is different somehow? Which is my point.

Give me a break. Please, I’m begging you. Shut the fuck up!

Continue reading Further context into this context

Osama is dead!

Witnessing various reactions on the radio and internet today over the U.S. finally finding and killing Osama bin Laden — though when and how the U.S. knew where he was, not to mention what justification they had to go into Pakistan to get him, are well on their way to becoming the “stuff of legend” (surprizing, I know) — I can’t help but feel concerned over what comes next. Frankly, exactly how his death equals “justice” is beyond me, and is beside my point.

So instead of assigning any relevance towards an event I, not only couldn’t possibly know at this point, but probably will not understand when its implications inevitably come to fruition, I’ll simply urge everyone to read Chris Hedges Speaks on Osama bin Laden’s Death for some much needed context. In part;

So I was in the Middle East in the days after 9/11. And we had garnered the empathy of not only most of the world, but the Muslim world who were appalled at what had been done in the name of their religion. [But] [w]e responded exactly as these terrorist organizations wanted us to respond. They wanted us to speak the language of violence. […] These groups learned to speak the language we taught them. And our response was to speak in kind. The language of violence, the language of occupation — the occupation of the Middle East, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — has been the best recruiting tool al-Qaida has been handed. […] The tragedy of the Middle East is one where we proved incapable of communicating in any other language than the brute and brutal force of empire…

I think Mr. Herbivore said it quite succinctly on Twitter today, “SO glad that the US and NATO forces have no reason to be killing people in Afghanistan anymore. What a relief that’s over!”

Turn that noise down!

I was going to review the year that is quickly coming to an end, in my typical cynical tone, but add a personal and somewhat optimistic touch at the end. Then I read Chris Hedges piece, 2011: A Brave New Dystopia, and suddenly everything that happened in 2010 seems quite inconsequential to what is more than likely to be waiting in 2011 and beyond.

Which, I think, says much more than it’s share. 2010 has been quite the year — The AlJazeera Top 10 does a relatively sufficient job rounding out the year, so I’ll urge all those interested to check it out. But it’s people like Mr. Hedges that can and continue to give the world in which we live a frightening context. A context we all must understand if we ever want to halt it.

Everything else has had it’s volume turned down since reading that…

Spoon-Fed or Forked Over?

With the recent Julian Assange fiasco growing ever more convoluted with each passing day, it’s articles like Julie Webb-Pullman’s, Wikileaks: Play The Ball Not The Man and Check Who’s Kicking, that makes everything that much more difficult to follow.

Or so it would seem. But it’s words such as these that serve to “ground,” at least my opinions, concerning matters at hand. There are much more aspects to any one “story” than you hear from any one source or group of sources. “Play the ball not the man,” indeed. But it is what Julie wrote to end today’s Dissident Voice piece that everyone would benefit from;

But you don’t need me to tell you — read the links and their footnotes, and anything else you can get your hands on [emphasis mine!] — and take a stab at coming to your own conclusions. It beats being spoon-fed, or forked over.

No truer words could be written about these or any other issues of the day…