Watching BBC world broadcasting live Allawi stating in a Castro-long speech how he plans to put Iraq under a hardcore military rule with integral curfew - in order to protect freedom and the Iraqi people.
I personally prefer my Tony Soprano sticking to fiction programs.
That's one more guy to add to the list of country rulers who are glad Bush won the election, and some more reasons for us to be sorry - and possibly apologectic - he did.
I promess I'll try to post something witty and lighhearted in the near future, I just kind of like the punch for it, right now.
Jason wrote:
"It's just that... well, I can't really think of a single thing Putin has to gain by Bush being in office."
Well, call me simplistic, but it seems to me that Putin and the Bush administration show a common taste for authoritarian methods and a similar disdain for the rule-of-law, and both seem quite fond of teaching their select choice of muslims how to and to whom to obey.
It seemed pretty clear at the time of starting the operations in Iraq that Putin wouldn't insist too much on opposing it as long as the US looked away from Tchetchnia and other contreversial russian businesses.
Just my two eurocents.
Yaka.
PS: Oh, and don't forget to add Berlusconi to the list, as well as a couple of ex-USSR countries leaders who got shiny new toys and monies for their joining the effort of bringing democracy and freedom to Iraq...
For what it's worth, this year's Reporters Without Borders worldwide index of press freedom is out since Nov 26.
The numbers are striking (US ranking lower than france, in turn lower than... Estonia), but more interesting are the detailled reports, available from the same page (PDF).
The Freedom Fries perspective:
Patrick's quote combined with the flag is perfect.
Especially - but not only - on the homefront, it can help clarify things about the flag and other patriotic symbols not being the property of conservative nuts.
Until this clarification is made, and until it is unambiguous what values the flag stands for, it seems unwise to push it it the face of overseas people.
The flag without a very clear an unsubtle statement about it not being in any way an endorsment of the current administration and US foreign policy would make this T-shirt useless if not counterproductive overseas (at least).
A simple, first-hand example of how far this can go:
April 2004, Fellujah, Iraq.
A three persons, one car team from a french NGO in Iraq, including a national staff MD and native from the city is trying to reach one hospital rehab'ed by said NGO to assess drugs and equipment needs.
Being a local to the city really does make a difference in avoiding trouble from all sides in such cases, as the warning coming from a distant accointance made pretty clear:
"Don't take this road, democracy* is shooting on sight there."
When democracy can become a synonymous for "strangers with heavy weaponry shooting civilians", it becomes pretty obvious one has to be careful what meaning supposedly virtuous symbolic labels can convey.
Another, less striking maybe, example:
Jan 2004, Baghdad, Iraq.
During an inter-NGO corrdination meeting, the topic of translation of work papers, handbooks etc in arabic is discussed.
One national NGO worker raises the issue of how literal translation of Non Governmental Organization(s) in arabic can be really inappropriate, because anything with the word "Government" in it, be in in a, exclusive clause will draw people away and trigger defiance mechanisms in their minds.
Oh so true, as everyone agreed after fifteen seconds of stunned silence in the room.
In the same fashion, vocal patriotism at home may be fine. Beyond one own's borders, it usually will be seen as chauvinistic (at best) or imperialist (at worst) provided any of those two traits are among the prejudices foreigners may nurture against the emblazoned country's symbols.
For any number of reasons (good or bad), many of which are anterior to the current president and administration, a large number of foreigners are ready to think of USA as chauvinistic and imperialist, were they to be hinted at it.
It would be sad for the Dems to forgo their legitimate right to claim the US flag as theirs.
It would be sadder even for the Dems to fail to convey their message because of their use of symbols associated (at this point) with more bad than good impressions.
Maybe what foreigners may feel or think about the current state of things un USA is non-relevant to the T-shirt issue at hand, and it is not my place to argue pro or con this issue here, but if it were to be relevant, I hope this bit will help you make an informed decison.
TTFN,
Yaka.
---------
*In english.
Thanks for the answers about the whole than/then thing, I suspected so, but running into this one on a daily basis under the quill (blattant gallicism, I think) of otherwise good writers led me to doubt myself.
Any suggestion for a good grammar/style handbook, preferably in electronic form (laptop wanderer here) would be welcome.
Grammar checkers - as in MS word - I don't use, since they are so obviously unreliable in french, and would most of the time prove only confusing in english.
Spellchecker I try to avoid, too, instead paying attention to my spelling and checking manually in a dictionary when in doubt, which in my case proved a better - if tedious - way to learn and avoid future mistakes.
Other than that, is there - as in french litterature - a 'reliable era' in US/UK books history, during which literary standards were high enough that style and grammar are generally correct, while being modern enough to not sound anachronistic ?
Larry Brennan wrote:
"Only bits and pieces of your construction betray a non-native speaker. (Well, non-native writer, anyway.)"
Good point, and my mistake, my spoken english sounds much more exotic than my written, I suspect, my accent being a weird patchwork of bits caught from movies, songs and TV shows, somewhat smoothed out over time, to the extent than speaking in circles of non-native speakers (airport/UN english) can help.
"Unless you're writing formally in English, my advice would be to not worry and just go with the flow, much as you do in French. If it really matters, ask a native speaker to proofread."
I didn't have to write anything overly formal at this point, except for very technical work papers, where legibility is a must and reader's enjoyment scores low, traditionally.
Were I to consider publishing for a larger public in english, I wouldn't dream of submitting a manuscript without serious proofreading, lest I later have to change my name and live under a rock for a couple centuries.
Thanks to a bad copy paste job in my above post (that will teach me to be lazy about html tags) I actually provided a counter example:
[I used to assume then was the appropriate form for comparative clauses, as in:
"My blue donkey is smarter yet less succesful than your red pachyderm."]
Should obviously (as per my sample sentence) have read:
[I used to assume than was the appropriate form for comparative clauses, as in:
"My blue donkey is smarter yet less succesful than your red pachyderm."]
Arguably unimportant, typo-grade mishap, nevertheless confusing (not to mention embarassing) in this peculiar context.
[gross hijack]
As a self-taught (obviously broken) english speaker, and likewise lacking any academy-endorsed training in my native language, I find myself facing a recurrent challenge when in doubt about english grammar:
how to figure whether I got it right ?
In French I can - so to speak - "play by ear", thanks to the respectable amount and variety of litterature and other french-language experiences piled up in the back of my brain (plus we have this fairly clear-cut separation between oral and written word).
When it comes to english, and even more so US english, I find harder to teach and correct myself based on what I read since what is proper, barbaric, sub-par, witty or poetic may be harder to tell apart from each other for my untrained eye.
Typical example: than or then ?
I used to assume then was the appropriate form for comparative clauses, as in:
"My blue donkey is smarter yet less succesful than your red pachyderm."
More than often I read the above construction with then substituting than ; so frequently, in fact, that I come to doubt my reference material (originally in this case a mid-'50s L.J.Kennel dog food commercial).
Did popular US english change so much over a measly half-century ?
Is that a barbaric form like the obnoxious your/you're that somehow made it to common acceptance 'dom ?
Did I just miss the obvious ? Then what is ?
I know by experience how in France the word-conscious foreigner (or for that matter native) should avoid like plague using contemporary mainstream media (written or otherwise) as reference material when it comes to grammar/syntax - the sacred cow "Le Monde" itself daily newpaper is not above third-choice prose quality.
The easy part, tough, is that *proper* french (at least in the written form) is a slow mover, so one can reasonably trust literary references up to late '70s to tell the 'correct' from the 'creative' when it comes to grammar, syntax and style.
French spelling ambiguity is close to a non-issue since it got mostly frozen somewhere around the time public schools became mandatory, more than a century ago.
Now, about contemporary english, how does one draw the line ?
Is there a convenient way to learn as you go and discriminate that comes to mind ?
...or am I doomed to take english classes 101 to make up for my autodidactic flaws (I'm not very good at that sort of learning, tbh) ?
Any advice from natives and non-native english speakers is welcome.
I would like to thank John Scalzi for what I believe was in no way a personal attack against anyone but a bullseye display of the kind of attitude that the progressive party supporters should work on if the blue are to gain ground in red stater's hearts and minds.
I wish I would have been able to word it this good.
Dems will have a hard time reclaim church from the Reps, and it's art'o'war 101 that you don't let the enemy chose the battlefield if you can avoid it.
Blue states are bringing in the most taxes ? Then there's money in the blue stater's blue pockets, possibly enough to rival the conservative church-monies, the more if those big higher-ed progressive brains focus on using it smartly to make the kind of difference NASCAR fans will find relevant.
[disclaimer: I found Adam Felber's concession speech hilarious, yet also liberating in the way you have to get this "throw it all" impulse out of your system before resuming rational thinking, imnsho.
That's the atheist high-school dropout socio-liberal axis-of-evil country citizen speaking here, so let's move on.]
By semi-explicit popular request of one, I repost here yet-another twisted perspective on this election outcome.
[original source here.]
--------------------------------------------------------------
With Dubya here to stay, I believe truism season is officially open, so let me spew a few and see how they relate to the current situation.
First tired old quote: "The voters have spoken, the bastards ..."(1)
That they did, to great effect.
Some would argue this isn't such a clear-cut case, that the Bush-Cheney ticket didn't win with an overwhelming majority, and some will go so far as cry out fraud at the results, by I respectfully must disagree.
As corrupt, servile and gullible one makes the media, it seems highly unlikely they would as a whole be willing and able to cover up for a ballot fraud of more than 20%, which is what it should have taken to quench the reasonably expectable expression of the people's opposition to a fanatic murderous clique ruling their lives.
For the math-challenged ones, I'm speaking of ballot results favorable to Kerry in the above-70% range.
Think that can't happen ? Think a democratic presidency ballot should never set the 2 finalists apart by more than 2-3% ?
Maybe so, but when the stakes are high enough, the menace obvious enough, and the general people's feeling of the urgency of the situation is strong enough, that can happen.
Take France, a pretty good example of what a complacent, corrupt and disgruntled democracy can look like.
We had our Kerry-Bush-Nader moment over here during the 2002 presidency where the left-wing voters played smartypants and voted for any of the 14 small-time candidates during the first round of ballot instead of supporting the single left-wing candidate Lionel Jospin against the then-and-still president Chirac, by most accounts a crook, demagogue and cronyism expert.
(Interestingly enough, Jospin lacking popularity rooted partly in his low sex-appeal and inhability to connect with the layman despite a fairly good track record as a prime minister and general acknowledgment of his governing skills.)
After first round of elections (not actually comparable to US partisan primaries, yet likewise resulting in trimming the finalists number to two), the french people found themselves facing an unpleasant choice at the time of casting their vote: either re-elect the crook or fail to strongly oppose an overt racist, homophobic, chauvinistic grassroots fanatic.
Now, at many levels, France can be seen as less democratic than USA, with little to no representation of minorities, no constitutional protection of freedom of speech and a bunch of other obvious disfunctions, but in the same fashion that death penalty sounds a bit too far out for most french people, a hustler isn't even remotely as distasteful than a hateful fanatic to them.
Here's how a good fraction of the french population, who no more than one month earlier hoped to see Chirac sent to court once his presidential immunity would get lifted, ended up helping re-elect him with an amazing 82% score.
At the time I thought - paraphrasing another old and tired truism - Democracy really gives people the democracy they deserve (2).
Remember, here: we're talking about a disgruntled population, used to be ruled with condescension by a caste of people with whom they only share mutual distrust.
Yet, when faced with this stern and totally unsexy, yet important choice, then voted massively to take a stance against fanatism.
If that could happen in a country whose democratic habits aren't the forte, we should expect at least that from the citizenry of the land of the free when comes the time to stand up for their freedom and ability to have a say in their country's ruling, right ?
I for one never was a big fan of democracy - so I might be biased - yet I still tend to favor democracy over totalitarianism, and the 2004 US presidency election's results are difficult to read any other way than this:
Democracy has done its job, the US voters have spoken, what they want is a modern despotism.
...powered by a hybrid faith/fear engine.
To paraphrase yet-another famous quote (and here I can't even remember the original, please help): democracy is a risky bet(3), but it must be played to its end or not at all.
Will democrats hold true to their belief that the people should rule, and therefore accept the fact they are just a minority that oppose democratically chosen dictatorship ?
Or would they have to recuse the whole universal suffrage and electoral process, much like the Founding Fathers who opposed democracy on the principle that jerks shouldn't be entitled to rule ?
That would make them republicans (in the historical, not partisan, sense).
Bad morning, indeed.
-------------
(1) Sometime attributed to R.Nixon, also said by Morris Udall after his 1976 primary demise. Corrections/confirmations welcome.
(2) I really could use a hand with this one. It seems to be originating in Joseph de Maistre's "Toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle merite", ie "Every nation has the government it deserves", to later evolve into "In a Democracy, the people get the government they deserve." attributed to Tocqueville, Ben Franklin and many others depending on the bias or best knowledge of the source.
(3) Seriously, if anyone has a clue on this one, I have a cookie and a tip'o'the hat ready for them.
[forgot to add in the usual disclaimer in the above post]
Sorry about bad grammar and spelling, english is not my native language.
Any corrections more than welcome.
Thank you.
Very striking how this discussion somehow drifted towards the issue of acceptance of others as relevant despite/with their differences.
As a foreigner with a lot of US accointances, and a medically-certified skeptic, I find interesting how both this election results and the ongoing discussion here seem to revolve above one-sided empathy.
Nearly every US citizen I know who lives abroad - or merely travels customarily beyond US borders - who voted on this ballot voted not-Bush (ie, many of them may or may not have voted Kerry otherwise, but the general consensus was the Bush system being a threat to their idea of the world's present and future good).
I say nearly because I also know a few US citizens among abroad-living or frequent travellers who voted pro-Bush (interestingly enough none of those seemed to be motivated by anti-Kerryism but really meant to support Bush).
Without exception, the Bush supporters in this arbitrary group of people are military and/or working for the administration in one way or another, or in one case are married to a government employee.
To end my foray into meaningless statistics, I'd like to point out this is also the second time the vote from population of the famous Harry's Bar in Paris didn't reflect the national outcome (last time was in '76).
Back on track and to the current discussion about "try to put yourself in the other guy's shoes". This seems to have played a big part in leading most of those people (many of which couldn't pretend being Dems to save their lives) to vote against Bush.
These people can't avoid looking at the issues at hand from a slightly different standpoint than the average american seem to do.
In the Bush-ite world, I guess one could indeed call those un-patriotic and un-american, since some of them even seem to have been contaminated by the relativistic views on morals, religion, history and politics so common among disenfranchised cosmopolites.
At the end of the day, they still did vote like other legitimate americains did: led by empathy and emotional pull.
I think the divide really isn't that wide, and there may not be an actual gap cutting USA down the middle of the electorate that needs to be bridged.
Maybe it's just an issue of which border of the pond you look at USA from.
Some people voted for Bush out of fear of what evil (real or imaginary) lurks beyond their homeworld's border, and threatens them and USA.
Some people voted against Bush out of fear of seeing USA drifting apart from the rest of the world, becoming increasingly defiant and hostile to it, to the point of endangering itself and the world.
You fear the heretic sand-niggers killing good american boys in Iraq and threatening your faith and freedom: vote Bush.
You fear USA leading the world into WW3 out of cynical arrogance: vote against Bush.
In all fairness, neither of the above propositions is totally accurate nor exactly consistent with the facts that may or not support them.
Earlier in this thread Laurie Mann made what I think is an excellent point about confronting one's fears as the best way to overcome it.
I respectfully suggest - I feel like I'm stating the obvious - that ignorance and misplaced empathy is the key, here.
Since most of the US population is accustomed to believe in very important things (say God) with little factual evidence (say an apocryphal book babelfished half a dozen times) and take it seriously, it makes sense to assume they should be able to consider different - yet equally subjective - sets of beliefs with open minds, and hopefully achieve empathy with people out of their personal or likeminded social circle.
Have the Dems try to figure what the Bushites actually think (really, some do) and what and why they believe what they do.
Have the Bushites get to know and understand those they currently fear, too, and maybe try to get in their shoes and see how scary (and I don't mean *good* scary) they themselves may look - seen from outside.
That won't fix it all, but that should go a long way to put stupid misundertandings out of the way and leave us to deal mainly with issues worth grownups attention.
TTFN,
Yaka.
(Teresa, I got a signed-yet-anonymous comment about the other post on this other blog, can you confirm it's yours and whether I should post it here ?)
A view from the other side of the pond, the old world.
Rant mode on /
Tonight here in Paris, FX, we'll have a big chili con carne evening. This is, after all, the traditional Texan dish, and Crawford, TX apparently is the new - and likely permanent - capital of the US theocracy.
Obviously, it would have been interesting to watch how the Bush clique would have reacted to a blatant electoral demise.
To be perfectly honest, my money was on a bunch of "terrorist strikes" happening before the end of the ballot count and the country falling under military rule, but the ever-amazing citizens of the land of the free were brave enough to save themselves from the humiliation of falling to a military coup.
Instead they preemptively pulled the plug off their terminally ill democracy.
Bold move, indeed, if careless, but in doing so, aren't the voters making a strong statement for consistency and persistence in what seems to have been the US policies' motto for the past few years: Bold and Righteous ?
Of course, mean spirited anti-patriotic pagans wouldn't blink before twisting these all-american virtues in unpleasant wording, substituting Shortsightedness to Straightforwardness, Careless to Bold, Narrowminded to Resolute, and even Dictatorial to Righteous.
But godloving America knows better, and those blessed next years of freedom saved from the communist so-called "Democrats" should be more than enough to make sure no sheep is left behind the flock of believers in America.
"America, love or leave it."
While things aren't that good in old-moldy-europe, I suspect our less stringent immigration laws will allow pagans, muslims, freethinkers and other heretics to escape the rightful wrath of Freedom/God/America/ymmv.
Of course we don't have democracy and first amendment around here either, but these are so last-century anyways...
That is until a pacified, re-united America sets out to save the entire planet population from itself and bring the good word of Freedom/God/America to all of mankind, using the unstoppable combination of Total War doctrine and Christian faith to convert or crush the unfaithful.
Fear not, friends, for a few years from now, we will look back at those days of doubt and sorrow with a confident smile, one hand on the Bible and a gun in the other, with no need for any other answer.
/rant mode off
Don't misunderstand this rant for some typical french anti-americanism, please.
This rant was triggered only by sadness and empathy (and very actual concern) with not even a drop of anger or hate.
Another, slightly less comedic piece can be found here.
Hopefully two days from now we'll have build enough steam to be able to blow the new national anthem, thanks to the mighty chili-con-carne.
Just a thought: leaving translators or intelligence people behind and out of harm's way is a luxury one can't always afford the turmoil of realworld operations.
Handling of contacts and informants sometimes requires you to go to them, and it is sometimes easier to go meet people than expect them to tarvel cross-governorate to queue in line and in clear sight at the entrance of some army compound to report.
Getting oneself in trouble by a twist of (bad) luck during a non-combat mission happens, too.
Not that it helps figure whether the thing is genuine, second-hand, fiction or a blend, but at least the story sounds more consistent and believable from this perspective.
As was mentionned, no plan survives contact with the enemy, and daily operations of US forces in Iraq (even before the last days uprisings) sure didn't went as a drill, more than often.
Just a few comments:
- she's unlikely to be a geek in the tech sense of it, I believe she mentionned not caring much about learning how to use a GPS unit, double unlikely if you consider that means she didn't know already ;
- I can tell from direct experience that military interprets/translators are in short supply in some areas (including Baghdad) and I suspect a reservist who'd also happen to be a decent shot can be considered handy ;
- headers/IP in this case don't mean a thing. Many people use auth-SMTP, for resons ranging from privacy to lack of SMTP in cybercafes (common when relying on satellite links) when travelling ;
- as a trained - if not professional - writer, she might be willing and able to tune down the military jargon and mannerisms in her journaling, for various motives (see below) ;
- she obviously doesn't enjoy very much some elements of the military lifestyle, including closequarter fartfest and lack of privacy, and writing is a very efficient way to cope, be it only by virtue of casting a different light on your daily tedium ;
- for the exact same reasons mentionned above, she might equally be a reservist in Iraq risking her life on the frontline (because it happens) and LJ'ing over Halliburton-provided netlink (that's satellite, for those who asked) or a bored translator in some Halliburton-ran compound in the dead of Colorado, scanning soldiers' email and writing fanfic about being in the field.
She might even do the latter as part of her reservist duties.
And no, I won't tell what my guess is.
Good literature, in any case.
Well, about Salam Pax: he's making a nice appearance on BBCWorld tonight: friday, 0330, 0830, 1130, 1530, 1830 and 2330 GMT.
I'm mentionning it not only because of Salam himself, but also because I agree that this blogeress mentionned earlier sound very believable to me, and no less likely to slip under the military censorship radar for a while than say, "turning tables" or pre-war Salam Pax once were.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 16 |
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