Magic of metaphors : Op-Ed Journey of Thomas Friedman

tahmed,

.... i don't consider george will to be a neo-con and will take him any day over these left wing whackos like al gore and tom friedman ...... yea, friedman is a bleeding heart, pot smoking, homo loving, clinton supporting, commie liberal ! .......... and don't worry about global warming - it is all liberal propaganda by the hollywood crowd that can afford solar panels ..... our ancestors were probably worried about it too, before the ice age killed them off ....... besides, we can always use a warm winter in michigan ....

.... and just to show that i am not biased against liberals, i like chris matthews - the man is so sincere, he makes me puke ...

hamidm #24 i normally dont read george will either since i think the man is a fake - he is too smart not to be aware of the incredible risk the entire planet is being placed in due to over-consumption, and yet writes an article (a couple of days back in the WP) where he sings of the miseries of the ultra-rich due to the increase in the CLEW (Cost of Living Extremely Well) without concerning himself with the realities of Global Warming and other costs that future generations will have to pay; and without concerning himself that more waste does not mean more happiness.

The new-cons are like any other ideology-driven nuts - living in a make-believe world, ignoring inconvenient truths (to borrow from Gore).

hamidm: romair may not be the sharpest crayon in the box, but he has a 100% track record of perfect predictions years in advance (and I say this per his own humble admission in #22 below). Indeed, Field Marshall Romair is the new-improved version of the Delphic Oracle and he smokes even more potent gas then they gave to the Delphic Oracle. In his first year of training at Kakul, Romair had already mastered the Theory of Everything and was almost awarded the Sword of Honor and the Nobel Prize at the same time, before they accidentally kicked him out!!

They all look and sound the same to me.

Re: # 22

romair,

.... you idiot ! ...... i don't like tom friedman for the same reason i don't like you - you are both mealymouthed pea brains with an exagerrated opinion of your meager intellect .....

...... for your information, tom friedman doesn't support the iraq war while i still support george bush - i just think that he is not tough enough! ...... given the present circumstances, i would support a division of iraq so that we can turn our attention to iran and saudi arabia ....

Re: # 21

tahmed,

.... i hate to admit this, but i used to like friedman ....over the years i found out that the man was just a salesman who had grown to believe his own bullshit -kind of like romair ... like i said, friedman is an empty suit who caters to a tv audience used to five second sound bites and pompous homilies ......... however, i still read his columns in the ny times to keep up with the trends ....... george will is my man, even though i disagree with him sometimes ...

Re: # 21

tahmed,

.... i hate to admit this, but i used to like friedman ....over the years i found out that the man was just a salesman who had grown to believe his own bullshit -kind of like romair ... like i said, friedman is an empty suit who caters to a tv audience used to five second sound bites and pompous homilies ......... however, i still read his columns in the ny times to keep up with the trends ....... george will is my man, even though i disagree with him sometimes ...

hamidm2 mian: ....you were totally in bed with individuals like tom friedman, and everything they represented, over the past years....i remember spending a lot of time trying to explain to you, how idiotic all these neo-con, bush-loving, world is flat idiots were......and i remember you declaring them to be the best thing since sliced bread.......and how clueless the rest of us were....

now you seem to have totally turned against these guys....have you jumped ship, completely......or are you slowly transitioning away from the losing side, on to the side the rest of us belong to?.......in the process, i see that are trying to associate the rest of us with your old comrades.....

....a bit too clever, for your own good hamidm2 mian....your views on everything tom friedmans of the world supported and the passion with which you defended them, are too well documented.......

as for the rest of us: we are still on the same side we always were......back then most of the usa disagreed with what i stated......and agreed with you and tom.......now it is the other way around.......

however, i would have far more respect for you if you stuck with your old friends, and did not try to ditch them at the first opportunity.......

hamidm: If Friedman is getting Fried by both Hamidm and Madani, then I assume it is OK that I havent read any of his stuff.

Re: # 16

ahmedmadani sahib,

....... i fully agree with you - tom friedman is the quintessential consultant and would also make a fine prostitute ..... as long as the client pays the full hourly rate, we will tell him anything he wants to hear .....

Re: # 17

bj mian,

.... you idiot! ... i am not blaming any messenger - the only messenger i blame is gabriel, who garbled al-lah's message and landed us in this fine mess .......... i just don't like hindoos with bad hairdos and tom friedman who has an eerie resemblance to romair ........ that's all

.... the problem with you hindoos is that you suffer from a terrible sense of insecurity and, like stuart smalley, have to keep on seeking affirmation by comparing yourself to us miserable pakis instead of real people like the swedes and chinese .......

now, repeat after me :"I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me"

The success of thoma friedman is due to his name, many confuse him with Milton Friedman the economist

Hamidm2 miaN,

You can keep blaming the messenger - but for how long?!!

Sooner or later, you have to deal with the message.

And the message is highly depressing!

Pakistan's Embattled Mosque Reopens With Fresh Momentum

By Griff Witte
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 14, 2007; A20

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Three months after a bloody commando raid shuttered a haven for radicalism in the heart of this mild-mannered city, the Red Mosque is open again. And in some ways, little has changed.

At prayers this month, calls for Islamic revolution once again echoed from the minarets. Worshipers talked of overthrowing the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, in favor of a Taliban-style government. Many wore the red knit prayer caps long favored by Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the firebrand cleric who was killed in the last hours of a nine-day standoff that transfixed Pakistan and seemed to embody the country's struggle with religious extremism.

But here's what was different at the Red Mosque: The crowd that turned out for prayers, relatively modest in size before the siege, spilled out of the mosque and into the courtyard. It continued down the street and filled an adjacent park. Afterward, impassioned worshipers talked about how they had come to honor the "thousands" who had died. (Government estimates put the number of dead at 103.) They walked the adjacent grounds where the girls' madrassa, or religious school, once stood, sifting the rubble for bits of bloodstained masonry. And they said a special prayer for the Red Mosque martyrs, at which point almost everyone began to weep.

The government had hoped that raiding the Red Mosque would strike a powerful blow against radical religious groups in Pakistan.

Instead, the mosque has become a memorial, a rallying cry and a propaganda tool for those groups, giving them more recruits and fresh momentum to unleash vicious attacks. Al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri have both dwelt on the Red Mosque in recordings that call for jihad against Musharraf. Their pleas have been answered in a surge of violence that has claimed more than 1,000 lives and has turned even more Pakistani territory into hostile terrain for the country's army.

Until a couple of weeks ago, the government could at least boast about the tactical victory of retaining control over the mosque itself. But after an aborted reopening in July that ended with the government-appointed cleric fleeing an angry mob, the mosque was returned to the group that operated it before the raid.

On Oct. 3, policemen peeled back layers of barbed wire, and forklifts hoisted away the roadblocks that had encircled the mosque for months. Hundreds of followers of Ghazi and his brother, the imprisoned Maulana Abdul Aziz, streamed in, many flashing victory signs.

"Inshallah" -- God willing -- "this mosque will be exactly the same as it was before. If it is not the same, then we will make it the same," said Abdullah Rahman, 20, an electrical engineering student with a scraggly beard and a red knit cap. "Ghazi was martyred because of the truth. Jihad is the truth. So if the same situation comes again, we will be ready to face it. Even more ready than before."

Syed Ali Hussain, also a student, agreed. Two years ago, he said, he believed "Islam was a religion of terrorists." But after listening to leaders such as Ghazi, he came around to their point of view. The United States and Musharraf, he said, are like burglars who break into a house and then are surprised when they are met with violence. "If the owner of that house defends himself, he should not be called a terrorist," said Hussain, 23, who spent the first two days of the siege in the mosque but was then sent home because there were not enough weapons. "Newton once said that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."

While the faithful said their prayers, vendors set up shop in the mosque's courtyard, selling a pamphlet written by Umme Hassan, Aziz's wife. The cover features an elaborately doctored image of the mosque under fire from attack helicopters and tanks. The mosque burns, blood drips down the page, and the headline reminds readers, "The martyrs say to you: Don't forget our sacrifice."

Within the pamphlet, Hassan, who ran the girls' school, offers her version of events. She tells how the government provoked the standoff and how her girls suffered once it began. They ran out of food and water after just two days, she writes, and anyone who ventured out into the open to find new supplies was instantly shot.

The government has told a much different story. The confrontation, the government says, was instigated entirely by the mosque's clerics, who were abducting prostitutes and police officers as part of their campaign to enforce Islamic law. Security forces were only reluctantly sent in to keep the peace, and once they laid their siege, they did everything possible to spare innocent lives while they battled heavily armed radical fighters. The clerics were well prepared for a fight they knew was coming and had stocked up on food and water, as well as weapons, officials have said.

But the government's version is not the one many people have chosen to believe.

In addition to the longtime followers of Ghazi and Aziz, huge numbers of newcomers have been attracted to prayer at the Red Mosque. A week ago Friday, the Islamic holy day, crowds were estimated at 20,000. This Friday, they remained much larger than usual.

"I had never said my prayers here," said Ubaid ur-Rehman, 25. "But today I came because there was great cruelty here. When it comes into my mind what happened here, my heart is filled with sadness."

Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said the government was forced to reopen the mosque by a Supreme Court order. Turning it over to its former management, he said, is only "a temporary arrangement."

For now, however, the followers of Aziz and Ghazi are making themselves at home. The new clerics -- one is a relative of Aziz, and the other is a teacher at the boys' madrassa -- have vowed to repaint the mosque its signature red after the government redecorated with a soft yellow.

At prayers this month, they played a recording from Aziz that was made in prison.

"Hundreds of people died here because they wanted to achieve Islamic revolution," Aziz's voice thundered over the loudspeakers. "This was the start of the Islamic movement in Pakistan."

But for all the rhetoric, the crowd was peaceful.

Many were in a jubilant mood when they arrived but turned somber as they gazed at the weedy field where the girls' school once stood. The school bore the brunt of the fighting, and the government demolished what was left when the siege ended.

After the formal prayers ended, the new clerics asked everyone to sit down in the field to remember those who had died. The sobs spread through the crowd, quietly at first, then like a torrent that swept up everyone, young and old alike.

"Just as Ground Zero is sacred, this place is sacred as well," said Parwaz Abbasi, a middle-aged businessman. "There was a great massacre here."

Afterward, a group of forlorn-looking men remained to wander through the rubble, occasionally bending down to scoop up a handful of soil, bring it close to the face and inhale the scent of martyrs.

Re: # 15 Hamid as cosultant you can appreciate how he packages his drive through observations and markets. That is called businessmanship amrketing of high order.

sometimes pakis and hindoos exchanging insults reminds me of two men with bad comb-overs making fun of each other's hairstyles .......

.... anyway, i must thank arjun for keeping track of romair's inanities over the years ....... i wish somone would do the same for tom friedman - an empty suit who picks up some silly idea based on a drive-by view and then goes around pontificating on it as if he was a fuckin scholar or womething ...... how romairesque! ........ and what really bothers me is that people actually think the man knows what the fuck he is talking about ..... like they say, a fool is born every minute ......

'It is either possible to appreciate Friedman's idea, or to know a fact, but never both at the same time'...... how true

arjun # 6 "I can understand your frustration to...in NYC, you're the cab driver and your rich wall street passenger is probably jewish...what's the matter? he didn't tip you well? maybe if you took a shower once in a while.. "

huh? I am sure you are being funny here, and I give you a passing grade for that. I also realize that this is an era of talking in sound bites and cliches, and I give you passing grade on that too. But could you please point me to which aspect of my post #4 do you disgree with?