Al-Jazeera Blog!
Nov. 27th, 2005 04:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oneirophreniaHere's something you may not know: Al-Jazeera, the pan-Arab television network, has a
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Here's something you may not know: Al-Jazeera, the pan-Arab television network, has a <a href='http://dontbomb.blogspot.com/">blog of their own</a> on Blogger!
The sad thing is...the title of their blog is "Don't Bomb Us," since it's well-known that the US Army has in the past targeted a few of their offices for bombing for, let us say, less than solid reasons. It's often very easy for even open-minded Westerners like myself to think that the Arab world is nothing but a seething pit of religious maniacs and useless third-worlders, mainly because so little Arabic news--by Arabic people, <i>for</i> Arabic people--is available in English. Arabic script is <i>very</i> difficult to read (though I've been learning it very, very slowly), which makes hopping over to Al-Jazeera's website a little difficult...though now they also have an English-language website as well--which is a <i>brilliant</i> move on their part. This blog is another. These web outlets let Westerners see how actual Arabs think--not just religious maniacs, but everyday folks such as you or I who wake up in the morning, go to work, come home, have families, eat and breathe and do their best to enjoy their lives though they may be surrounded by hostile forces acting both inside as well as outside their own culture.
The truly depressing thing about all this is that the "War on Terror" is rapidly becoming an indiscriminate war on many large-scale aspects of Arab culture that have absolutely jack-shit to do with terrorism--like the Arab media. Oh, no doubt there are Total Assholes within Al-Jazeera who support the various Jihads, but that would only make sense: there are, after all, war pigs in the American media who clearly advocate invading Iran, Syria, and so forth as well. There are bad eggs everywhere you look, but the "War on Terror" is slowly evolving into a war on anyone even remotely associated with terrorists, including journalists and other media personnel who unfortunately happen to work for the news network that terrorists like to send their videotapes to. Bombing an Al-Jazeera office is tantamount to bombing the Fox News offices in New York just because the Unabomber sent them a videotaped message for some reason. It's flatout unjustifiable.
I will say one thing about the Arab world, though: it's becoming more and more apparent to them that the Arab world <i>itself</i> is also a victim of terrorism--the recent bombing in Jordan is a perfect example--and they need to take matters into their own hands...or else the Western world is going to destroy 1400+ years of Arabic/Islamic culture in an effort to stamp out a threat nestled in their midst. It's horrible, but that is what will happen. When cultures clash badly, even though the clashing is between relatively small groups of fundamentalists, the more dominant culture <i>always wins</i>--and right now, that's American/European culture. We have the robot bombs. We have the robot soldiers. We have the nukes and the laser-guided smart missiles.
I dread the day some insane Islamic jihadist sets off a backpack nuke in some American city (and it'll probably happen one of these days). That one single asshole, working for an organization of religious idiots acting out of a zealous Islamic protectionism, will doom Arabic/Islamic culture for good. That one single person, convinced that he is serving Allah in the best possible way by sacrificing himself to take out infidels for the glory of Islam, will have signed Islam's death warrant. Do you think that the American people will honestly even take a moment to realize that said work is the action of one shitheaded zealot and <i>not</i> the work of the Arabic People in general? Not a chance in hell. The bombs will be falling before the mushroom cloud dissipates and the Arabic world will be smashed into ruins, over a thousand years of culture obliterated. There won't be a Middle East within a month of that backpack nuke going off.
And who will suffer the most in the purge that follows? People like the guys who work for Al-Jazeera. Average, everyday men and women.
The sad thing is...the title of their blog is "Don't Bomb Us," since it's well-known that the US Army has in the past targeted a few of their offices for bombing for, let us say, less than solid reasons. It's often very easy for even open-minded Westerners like myself to think that the Arab world is nothing but a seething pit of religious maniacs and useless third-worlders, mainly because so little Arabic news--by Arabic people, <i>for</i> Arabic people--is available in English. Arabic script is <i>very</i> difficult to read (though I've been learning it very, very slowly), which makes hopping over to Al-Jazeera's website a little difficult...though now they also have an English-language website as well--which is a <i>brilliant</i> move on their part. This blog is another. These web outlets let Westerners see how actual Arabs think--not just religious maniacs, but everyday folks such as you or I who wake up in the morning, go to work, come home, have families, eat and breathe and do their best to enjoy their lives though they may be surrounded by hostile forces acting both inside as well as outside their own culture.
The truly depressing thing about all this is that the "War on Terror" is rapidly becoming an indiscriminate war on many large-scale aspects of Arab culture that have absolutely jack-shit to do with terrorism--like the Arab media. Oh, no doubt there are Total Assholes within Al-Jazeera who support the various Jihads, but that would only make sense: there are, after all, war pigs in the American media who clearly advocate invading Iran, Syria, and so forth as well. There are bad eggs everywhere you look, but the "War on Terror" is slowly evolving into a war on anyone even remotely associated with terrorists, including journalists and other media personnel who unfortunately happen to work for the news network that terrorists like to send their videotapes to. Bombing an Al-Jazeera office is tantamount to bombing the Fox News offices in New York just because the Unabomber sent them a videotaped message for some reason. It's flatout unjustifiable.
I will say one thing about the Arab world, though: it's becoming more and more apparent to them that the Arab world <i>itself</i> is also a victim of terrorism--the recent bombing in Jordan is a perfect example--and they need to take matters into their own hands...or else the Western world is going to destroy 1400+ years of Arabic/Islamic culture in an effort to stamp out a threat nestled in their midst. It's horrible, but that is what will happen. When cultures clash badly, even though the clashing is between relatively small groups of fundamentalists, the more dominant culture <i>always wins</i>--and right now, that's American/European culture. We have the robot bombs. We have the robot soldiers. We have the nukes and the laser-guided smart missiles.
I dread the day some insane Islamic jihadist sets off a backpack nuke in some American city (and it'll probably happen one of these days). That one single asshole, working for an organization of religious idiots acting out of a zealous Islamic protectionism, will doom Arabic/Islamic culture for good. That one single person, convinced that he is serving Allah in the best possible way by sacrificing himself to take out infidels for the glory of Islam, will have signed Islam's death warrant. Do you think that the American people will honestly even take a moment to realize that said work is the action of one shitheaded zealot and <i>not</i> the work of the Arabic People in general? Not a chance in hell. The bombs will be falling before the mushroom cloud dissipates and the Arabic world will be smashed into ruins, over a thousand years of culture obliterated. There won't be a Middle East within a month of that backpack nuke going off.
And who will suffer the most in the purge that follows? People like the guys who work for Al-Jazeera. Average, everyday men and women.
