Anna playing
Archive for September, 2011
Freak show of simpletons
I have lately been reminded of this
he gets into his stride, or rather his lurch, announcing every stale revelation of the newly enlightened, like stout Cortez coming upon the Pacific — war is profits, politicians are puppets, Parliament is a farce, justice is a fraud, property is theft… It’s all here: the Stock Exchange, the arms dealers, the press barons… You can’t fool Brodie — patriotism is propaganda, religion is a con trick, royalty is an anachronism… Pages and pages of it. It’s like being run over very slowly by a travelling freak show of favourite simpletons, the India rubber pedagogue, the midget intellectual, the human panacea…
Tom Stoppard, The Real Thing
Madness
The person who contacted me claiming:
- the West ‘harboured’ Christian terrorists
- the Taliban attempted to hand over bin Laden to the US
- the FBI has never claimed Bin Laden was responsible for 9/11
has sent another message. She’s not backing down on her previous random nonsense, oh no; she has blithely moved on leaving spectators baffled by the chaff spewed out. Now she’s linking to a Glenn Greenwald column. Not sure why…
Here’s a video.
The dark day that brought out the worst in Britain
The tragic events of 9/11 were immediately followed by a grotesque and shameful fusillade of anti-Americanism, which still resonates today.
…The Guardian led the way, of course, with a now infamous series of comment pieces which reiterated the same vengeful theme: America had got what it deserved.
Its pages were filled with callous triumphalism (“They can’t see why they are hated”, “A bully with a bloody nose is still a bully”) alternating with frank threats: until the US changes its policy on the Middle East, it will continue to suffer terrorist attacks – which turned out, thankfully, to be wrong. (Oddly, there were no claims that the Spanish had got what they deserved after the later Madrid bombings, even though that incident was related to the Islamist goal of re-establishing the caliphate.)…not quite everybody. When I wrote about this vicious campaign in the following weeks, I was deluged with letters from readers (in those days, people still wrote letters to columnists rather than posting comments on a website) who were as appalled as I was, and deeply ashamed of the picture that was being created of British public opinion
Which pretty much mirrors my memory – and not only memory. Case in point the lunatic commentator on this blog mentioned below.
Related articles
- JANET DALEY: 9/11: The dark day that brought out the worst in Britain. “The tragic events of 9/11 … (pajamasmedia.com)
