Observations of an American Expat in Europe

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

FerozeK:

I am not from Pakistan

I am not keen on giving up my constitutional rights. As far as I know, I haven`t lost any yet.

Spare me the hyperbole.

Just tell me the specific constitutional rights of American citizens that have supposedly been repealed by the present administration.

Thank you.

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

Here the brave woman, Maureen Dowd`s -- of New York Times -- fiercest indictment of -- `our` LIAR President Bush, - `Our Monster`

never in the history of the United States Presidency -- such a characterless man -- and such an unscrupulous LIAR (``I am doing ``everything`` to ``avoid`` war``!) -- came to occupy the highest position of the world’s most powerful country – (albeit by a minority of half a million votes):

Mashing Our Monster
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON — Everyone thinks the Bush diplomacy on Iraq is a wreck.

It isn`t.

It`s a success because it was never meant to succeed.

For the hawks, it`s a succès d`estime. (If I may be so gauche as to use a French phrase in a city where federal employees are slapping stickers over the word ``French`` on packets of French dressing and on machines dispensing French vanilla yogurt at the Capitol.

Seeing this made me long for the cold war, when you could eat your Russian dressing in peace and when Jackie Kennedy brought France to heel with élan, brains and charm, rather than scattershot embargos and inane suggestions in the capital L` Enfant planned that we disinter our war dead in France.)

Sure, the Bushies might be feeling a bit rattled right now, with the old international system and the North Atlantic alliance crashing down around their ears.

But you can`t transfigure the world without ticking off the world.

It`s not a simple task, carving new divisions in Europe, just as Europe is moving past the divisions that led to the greatest tragedies of the 20th century.

The Bush hawks never intended to give peace a chance. They intended to give pre-emption a chance.

They never wanted to merely disarm the slimy Saddam. They wanted to dislodge and dispose of him.

The president`s slapped-together Azores summit is not meant to ``go the last mile`` on diplomacy, as Ari Fleischer put it.

If Mr. Bush really wanted to do that, he`d try to persuade some leaders who disagree with him; he`d confront the antiwar throngs in London, Paris or Berlin

and not leave poor, exhausted Tony Blair to always make the case.

The hidden huddle in the Azores is trompe l`oeil diplomacy, giving Mr. Blair a little cover, making Poppy Bush a little happy.

Just three pals feigning sitting around the campfire singing ``Kumbaya,`` as the final U.S. troops and matériel move into place in the Persian Gulf and the president`s ``Interim Iraqi Authority`` postwar occupation plan is collated.

The hawks despise the U.N. and if they`d gotten its support, they never would have been able to establish the principle that the U.S. can act wherever and whenever it wants to — a Lone Ranger, no Tontos.

Cheney, Rummy, Wolfy, etc. never wanted Colin Powell to find a diplomatic solution. They hate diplomatic solutions. That`s why they gleefully junked so many international treaties, multilateral exercises and trans-Atlantic engagements......(NYT)
_________________________________

... and these monsters have their fingers on the nuclear button!

As soon as the riches start flowing from the carcass of Muslim lands to the Americas and West, we will find such whining hypocrite Americans at the forefront of defending and praising the agression. I refuse to accept that so far no American has been able to put two and two together and hasn`t figured out that if Americans could get Gulf war syndrome just by being 20,000 feet above the Iraqi surface then what would have happened to the Iraqis who were actually on the ground for the past ten years. Such hypocrites chose to remain silent on the slow genocide of Iraqis for 10 years due to the chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons of mass destruction that Americans have used on Iraqis and now this sob is whining about why he is being asked about his culinary habbits. Mr. Dough, You have to do better than that to prove that you are only half as bad as you look to the rest of the world.

Re: Stuka

If you are so eager to give up your constitutional rights, in the United States, to gain a little security, then why did you leave Pakistan in the first place?

Why?

Pakistan would have given you the same sense of fear and lack of constitutional rights and you would not have to waste money on a plane ticket either! If you want a lack of freedom, you should have stayed in Pakistan and experienced facism in all its misguided glory. If you still want a lack of freedom, please move back to Pakistan and then, maybe if you are capable of realizing it, you will learn what is the true meaning of freedom. No matter what the reasons, freedom must be never be compromised and those, like yourselves, who compromise freedom in hopes of gaining a little more security are living in an utopian paradise.

You should visit Pakistan and experience, what it feels like to live under a facist country with no rights before you adovcate such an infantile suggestion.

Ciao

The dyslexic American Administrations will never learn – despite 9/11

after what US did for the rabid Islamization of Afghanistan’s and its worldwide repercussions -- we are once again embarked on the Islamization of another secular country – Iraq.

Herre is what a Christian from Iraq has to say to a Washington P{ost correspondent -- about the greatest friend of Islamists extremists -- the United States of America --


By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, March 15, 2003;

BAGHDAD, March 14 -- Under the shadows of shimmering white crosses stretching like a rampart along his Baghdad neighborhood, Nabil Jamil fumbled his keys as if they were worry beads.

With the nostalgia that so dominates Iraq, he recalled the days in the 1970s when President Saddam Hussein`s Baath Party kept religion out of political life, delivering a measure of space to the country`s religious minorities.

The veil (hijab) was an uncommon sight in Baghdad back then, bars flourished in some neighborhoods and the government appealed to a secular Arab identity that it hoped would arch over the country`s tapestry of faith and ethnicity.

Glumly, Jamil said he fears less and less of that tolerance remains.

On the eve of an expected war, religious sentiment is overshadowing the secularism that once defined Iraq.

Through speeches, symbols and slogans, Hussein`s government has increasingly turned to Islam in its search for legitimacy, playing down the Arab nationalism that once served as its ideology.

Many of its people -- Shiite Muslims and Sunnis, along with a small Christian minority -- have turned to faith, desperate for respite from the misery of war and more than a decade of sanctions.

The forces of faith, Jamil said, are a wild card in the future of an apprehensive country, shaping the fears of what might come after a war.

``To be honest, this is our biggest worry from the attack that is coming,`` he said, sitting with his wife at the St. George Greek Catholic Church in the neighborhood of Karrada.

``Our fear is that whatever comes next will not be tolerant.``...(WP)
_________________________________________

it would not be the height of cynicism to say -- that the history repeating -- almost cyclical events of past three decades have shown --

that the greatest ENEMY of Muslim Secularism and Muslim Progressivism -- is none other than -- the United Sates of America --

between the Peanut Farmer, a B Actor, a hyperthyroid and his coke sniffing, brain-damaged son -- this country has made a Shish Kebob of democracy and modernity in almost every Muslim country--

and as always -- is ever ready to HELP and OBLIGE -- the Extremist Islamist Hyenas -- to feast upon the dead carcasses of Muslim secularism in Iraq -- now

in 2003 -- folks get ready for another Mulla Omar and – for the second coming of Ayatollaa Khoomeany in Iraq and Middle East -- courtesy -- Texas OIL minister -- the Reverend Georgetulla Bushmeany.

hi tahmed,
i really enjoyed it.

Samina #29
``My def. of transnationalism is not one that in any way excuses or condones the use of terroristic or military invasions.``

I know that already :). To clarify, mine was a general comment on this thread, not a particular response to your post only.

tahmed #28

Very funny, couldn`t stop laughing...

TAhmed: It is funny but I am sorry to burst your bubble. It`s a rip off on future of India that was dreamed by some techies during the boom of 2001...no doubt those chaps are back to programming in Bangalore or Hyderabad which were the cities quoted in the original one.

#18 by sadna:

good for you!…we all do…just as we always speak the truth…don’t we? or hold opinion? (you do discern between holding opinion and being opinionated?)


the noblest pursuit:
the pursuit of truth


the sages found
and fought over it
now the mirror of truth
lies shattered
each piece valued
and possessed

rgds.

t

ps: oh!...wrong again!...i am not a preacher;)

Sadna,

My def. of transnationalism is not one that in any way excuses or condones the use of terroristic or military invasions. I refer you to Will Kymlicka for a definition that makes transnationalism a way of protecting undocumented workers in countries that discriminate against them.

Wait a minute. For the left, transnationalism should be upheld in the US but opposed in Iraq? Hey not recognising national boundaries is exactly what GW Bush is doing. Whats the left`s problem?

btw, the Islamic right ALSO believes in transnationalism, that the Muslim Ummah has a right to fight for the interests of Muslims any where in the world. Hey thats what GW Bush also believes, namely that the US has a right to fight for the interests of Americans anywhere in the world.

The positions taken by left are thus very curious.

The left never protests the transnationalism of the Islamic right, they even seem to support it, Arundhati Roy being one prime example. She objects to US campaigns to fight in another country, but doesnot object to jihadi campaigns(even state sponsered) to fight in another country.

Even in the US, the left seems to support Islamic transnationalism, by protesting at everything that tries to come its way, such as extra scrutiny of Muslims from countries where the concept of Islamic transnationalism has wide currency, or the US campaign against prominent Islamic transnationalists of inhuman tendency, the Al Qaeda.


Western transnationalism however is a big nono for the left, whether military like the Iraq or Aghanistan war, or economic like globalization.

The left and the Islamic right in fact seem to have become allies, because they have a common enemy, the capitalistic West.

The primary dislike the Indian left has for the BJP comes not from the BJP`s hate philosophy(Islamic transnationalists propagate A LOT OF hatred too and leftists have never protested this), but from the BJP`s alliance with the US.

Sab ke sab lafangey as Ahmed Madani would say :)