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InvisibleXlea321
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Registered: 02/25/01
Posts: 9,134
The Orientalist Project
    #2673008 - 05/13/04 10:07 AM (19 years, 10 months ago)

Emasculating Arabia

Images of an American being beheaded in Iraq have horrified the west, but the photographs of prisoners being abused in Abu Ghraib jail sparked surprisingly little outrage among Arabs. Why? Because, says Jonathan Raban, it was precisely what they expected

Thursday May 13, 2004
The Guardian

Seeing the terrible pictures of the beheading of Nicholas Berg, it's easy to miss the significance of the soundtrack that accompanies them. The taped voice - presumably that of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian associate of Osama bin Laden - rails not just against the Bush administration, but against the torpor of the Arab world. "The shameful photos are evil humiliation for Muslim men and women in the Abu Ghraib prison. Where is the sense of honour, where is the rage? Where is the anger for God's religion? Where is the sense of veneration for Muslims, and where is the sense of vengeance for the honour of Muslim men and women in the crusaders' prisons?" Professing himself to be outraged by the absence of Arab outrage at the photos from Abu Ghraib, Zarqawi proceeds with his gruesome remake of the videotaped killing of Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in 2002.

That portion of Zarqawi's repellent message - his claim that people in the Middle East haven't been as shocked by the Abu Ghraib pictures as one might expect - is surely true. For days, there was a feeling of tentative, nervous relief in the United States that the pictures streaming out of Abu Ghraib had not - yet - provoked the wave of uncontrollable and violent popular protest across the Arab world that many Americans had feared. It was suggested that Arabs are so inured to torture in their own countries that they had lost the ability to be shocked by it, also that Iraqi Shia Muslims and Kurds were unlikely to be greatly upset by the sight of Ba'athist Sunnis getting a taste of their own medicine from their western jailers.

Both these quasi-explanations were self-serving shots in the dark. What was clear from reading the English-language Arab press over last weekend was the truth of the old saying: "American viciously humiliates Arab" is not news; only when the terms are reversed are headlines made. To most of the Arab editorial writers, and perhaps to most Arabs, the digital photos merely confirmed what they had been saying since long before the invasion of Iraq took place: America is on an orientalist rampage in which Arabs are systematically denatured, dehumanised, stripped of all human complexity, reduced to naked babyhood.

Defining the orientalist project, Edward Said wrote of how occidentals feminised and infantilised Arabs, crediting them with "feminine" traits like intuition and an incapacity for reason (so Arab magicians figure large in the mythology, but Arab mathematicians not at all), and rendered Arabia as pliant, sensuous, passive, awaiting penetration by the rational masculine west.

In classic orientalist fashion, Iraq was brutally simplified before it was invaded. Because of the way that the British, operating on the principle of divide and rule, had cobbled together three profoundly dissimilar Ottoman provinces to make a nation, Iraq stands alone in the Arab world in its complex rifts of religion, politics, tribe, race and class. For 80 years, Iraq has been an immensely tricky spiderweb of social and cultural lines and intersections. None of this was recognised by the invaders. As recently as last January, so we are told, George Bush was cheerfully ignorant of the deepest, most conspicuous fault-line in Iraqi society, the division between Sunni and Shia. The Bush administration rhetorically homogenised the several peoples of Iraq by endless iteration of the phrase "the Iraqi people", or, when speaking of Saddam, "his own people".

The Iraqi people were pictured as yearning, femininely, childishly, with one voice, for a pluralist free-market democracy, and (bad taste though it is to recall this detail) they would greet their liberators, femininely, childishly, with flowers. In the early autumn of 2002, the secretary-general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, warned that a western invasion of Iraq would "open the jaws of hell", but the orientalists listened to no one from the region, preferring to trust the Middle Eastern expertise of Paul Wolfowitz, who blithely represented Iraq as a comely bride, trapped in a dungeon by her wicked stepfather.

By the time of the invasion, Iraq had been so exhaustively orientalised that it had lost almost all connection to reality. Much of this effort was grandly sentimental, oozing goodwill toward "the Iraqi people". All of it was dehumanising, robbing Iraqis of their intractable particularity. None of it fooled the long-memoried Arabs in neighbouring states, who had seen this stuff many times before.

It is necessary to go over this old and painful ground in order to read the messages from Abu Ghraib. One searches the photos in vain for signs of furtiveness on the part of the torturers, for any indication that they were snapped on the sly. To the contrary: the soldiers, fresh-faced, smiling, happy, look as if they are taking pride in a job well done - and the job in question looks like the orientalist enterprise, acted out in gross cartoon form. Here is Arabia nude, faceless under a hood, or ridiculously feminised in women's panties, forced into infantile masturbatory sex and sodomy. (These people are ruled by their nether organs, not by their higher faculties, is the orientalist line.) The jail has become a grotesque nursery, with Private Lynndie England (her very name like the nom de guerre of a sex worker), cigarette jutting from her cheerful grin, playing the part of the au pair from hell. The pictures appear to be so single-minded in their intent, so artfully directed, so relentlessly orientalist in their conception, that one looks instinctively for a choreographer - a senior intelligence officer, perhaps, who keeps Edward Said on his bedside table, and ransacks the book each night for new ideas.

That speculation is probably misplaced. A chilling story in last Saturday's New York Times made plain that the humiliations depicted in the Abu Ghraib pictures are regularly practised in domestic American prisons. The reporter, Fox Butterfield, dug up examples of hooding, stripping naked and forced sex inflicted by guards in jails in Arizona, Utah, Virginia and Texas. At least two of the American soldiers due to be court-martialled are reservists who are "corrections officers" in civilian life, and it seems likely that in Baghdad they were indulging in sadistic amusements perfected back home in the US. Like Esperanto, dehumanisation is an international language with a universal grammar, and orientalism is one of its local dialects - a distinction that will, unfortunately, be lost on every Arab and Muslim who brings the photos up on his or her computer.

However fortuitously, the pictures of torture fit snugly into the larger pattern of the orientalist conquest of Arabia as it is perceived on the peninsula. What began as romantic simplification of the real life of Iraq - the Wolfowitz scenario - culminates in the erasure of human identity and the rendering of men and women as inanimate objects.

Seymour Hersh, who broke the Abu Ghraib story in the New Yorker, quotes Specialist Matthew Wisdom of the Military Police: "I remember SSG Frederick hitting one prisoner in the side of its ribcage ... I saw two naked detainees, one masturbating to another with its mouth open." When pronouns drift so casually from he to it (and the speaker here is a whistleblower, not a torturer), we are in a nightmare world where men are barely distinguishable from flies or black beetles.

The gruesome murder of Nicholas Berg should not obscure the fact that the pictures from Abu Ghraib were generally accepted in the Muslim world with eerie, almost philosophical calm. It is as if they knew all along that it was like this. Even before President Bush drew tides of men into his hands and wrote his will across the sky in stars, and long before the goons with digital cameras came on the scene, Arabs knew they were thought of as "it"s.

A released detainee, quoted by the New York Times on May 10, says: "I realised [the Americans] came to obliterate a whole society, a whole civilisation" - a thought so old and so commonplace that one might hear it uttered, world-wearily, in any Arab cafe, anywhere across the globe. The questionable truth of the thought hardly matters now: it is so widely believed, so amply, extravagantly confirmed in the grinning face of Lynndie England. "American humiliates Arab" is not news. Unfortunately for us, those - like Zarqawi's al-Qaida franchise - bent on exploiting the injuries of the humiliated know all too well what does make news.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1215375,00.html


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Don't worry, B. Caapi

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Invisiblevampirism
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Registered: 03/14/04
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Re: The Orientalist Project [Re: Xlea321]
    #2673177 - 05/13/04 11:04 AM (19 years, 10 months ago)

goddamnit

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OfflineDivided_Sky
Ten ThousandThings

Registered: 11/02/03
Posts: 3,171
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Re: The Orientalist Project [Re: vampirism]
    #2673244 - 05/13/04 11:21 AM (19 years, 10 months ago)

I think there is a big problem with accusing the Bush Administration of Orientalism. It involves Orientalizing reality with stupid theories.


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1. "After an hour I wasn't feeling anything so I decided to take another..."
2. "We were feeling pretty good so we decided to smoke a few bowls..."
3. "I had to be real quiet because my parents were asleep upstairs..."

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OfflineLightningfractal
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Re: The Orientalist Project [Re: Xlea321]
    #2673322 - 05/13/04 11:43 AM (19 years, 10 months ago)

So it's all a racism thing, damn that sucks.

Still, those arabs consistantly display their grotesqueries. They really are, when taken as a whole, an extremely violent and phychotic race of people.

If this is the last great war which must be fought to determine who survives, the bloody arabs, or the technical west, I can only pray that a world remains after the dust clears.


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Hi how's it going, wanna kick Heroin basically painlessly on your own, in your own house, without any government "help" ,or the "help" of a crazy condescending, judgmental medical doctor? Read this:

https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=42&Number=7342616&page=0&fpart=all


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OfflineGazzBut
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Re: The Orientalist Project [Re: Lightningfractal]
    #2676940 - 05/14/04 05:58 AM (19 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Still, those arabs consistantly display their grotesqueries. They really are, when taken as a whole, an extremely violent and phychotic race of people.




As opposed to the white man who has mass murdered millions in concentration camps, dropped nuclear bombs on people and been responsible for both world wars.


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Always Smi2le

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Invisibleluvdemshrooms
Two inch dick..but it spins!?
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Registered: 11/29/01
Posts: 34,247
Loc: Lost In Space
Re: The Orientalist Project [Re: GazzBut]
    #2678291 - 05/14/04 02:03 PM (19 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

As opposed to the white man who has mass murdered millions in concentration camps, dropped nuclear bombs on people and been responsible for both world wars.



Really.... seeing as none of that has happened in around 60 years, I'd say the "white man" as you put it, has learned not to repeat those acts. What have the muslims learned?

Jack shit.


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You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers

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InvisibleXlea321
Stranger
Registered: 02/25/01
Posts: 9,134
Re: The Orientalist Project [Re: luvdemshrooms]
    #2678302 - 05/14/04 02:05 PM (19 years, 10 months ago)

How many did the white man kill in Vietnam?


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Don't worry, B. Caapi

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Invisibleluvdemshrooms
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Re: The Orientalist Project [Re: Xlea321]
    #2678362 - 05/14/04 02:15 PM (19 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Alex123 said:
How many did the white man kill in Vietnam?



A bunch, but unless you are going to try and redefine "millions in concentration camps", "dropped nuclear bombs" and "world wars" the answer stands. When has that happened in the last 60 or so years?

Shame you still can't read. Or as I suspect is more accurate, it's a shame you're still disingenuous.


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You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers

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InvisibleXlea321
Stranger
Registered: 02/25/01
Posts: 9,134
Re: The Orientalist Project [Re: luvdemshrooms]
    #2678393 - 05/14/04 02:19 PM (19 years, 10 months ago)

So what was your point? How many people have the muslims killed in concentration camps, how many nuclear bombs have they dropped and how many world wars have they started? You have destroyed your own argument. The muslims were clearly way too smart to ever do these things in the first place.

Your dishonesty knows no end.


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Don't worry, B. Caapi

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Invisibleluvdemshrooms
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Re: The Orientalist Project [Re: Xlea321]
    #2678420 - 05/14/04 02:26 PM (19 years, 10 months ago)

And yet, you've never been able to show any dishonesty on my part, despite your claims.

My offer still stands..... I'll be glad to show you examples of your lies and dishonesty. Feel free to show me mine.

And your tactic of making that claim that each time I point out yours is as lame as you are and merely provides more proof that you're a dishonest sack.

The point was liar, that we seem to have learned some lessons and do not repeat the mistakes that taught us the lessons, the muslims who preform this type of act have not.


--------------------
You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers

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InvisibleXlea321
Stranger
Registered: 02/25/01
Posts: 9,134
Re: The Orientalist Project [Re: luvdemshrooms]
    #2678431 - 05/14/04 02:28 PM (19 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

And yet, you've never been able to show any dishonesty on my part, despite your claims.

My offer still stands..... I'll be glad to show you examples of your lies and dishonesty. Feel free to show me mine.

And your tactic of making that claim that each time I point out yours is as lame as you are and merely provides more proof that you're a dishonest sack.

The point was liar, that we seem to have learned some lessons and do not repeat the mistakes that taught us the lessons, the muslims who preform this type of act have not.




--------------------
Don't worry, B. Caapi

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Invisibleluvdemshrooms
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Re: The Orientalist Project [Re: Xlea321]
    #2678447 - 05/14/04 02:32 PM (19 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Alex123 said:
Quote:

And yet, you've never been able to show any dishonesty on my part, despite your claims.

My offer still stands..... I'll be glad to show you examples of your lies and dishonesty. Feel free to show me mine.

And your tactic of making that claim that each time I point out yours is as lame as you are and merely provides more proof that you're a dishonest sack.

The point was liar, that we seem to have learned some lessons and do not repeat the mistakes that taught us the lessons, the muslims who preform this type of act have not.






Don't worry oh dishonest one, unlike you.... I don't edit my posts unless I mark them as such.

Would that you could say the same.


--------------------
You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers

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InvisibleXlea321
Stranger
Registered: 02/25/01
Posts: 9,134
Re: The Orientalist Project [Re: luvdemshrooms]
    #2678458 - 05/14/04 02:33 PM (19 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Don't worry oh dishonest one




--------------------
Don't worry, B. Caapi

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Invisibleluvdemshrooms
Two inch dick..but it spins!?
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Registered: 11/29/01
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Re: The Orientalist Project [Re: Xlea321]
    #2678484 - 05/14/04 02:38 PM (19 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Alex123 said:
Quote:

Don't worry oh dishonest one






Don't worry. As I said.... I don't edit without saying so.

Unlike you.


--------------------
You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers

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Invisibleluvdemshrooms
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Re: The Orientalist Project [Re: Xlea321]
    #2678525 - 05/14/04 02:42 PM (19 years, 10 months ago)

Deleted another one I see.


--------------------
You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers

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InvisibleEvolving
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Registered: 10/01/02
Posts: 5,385
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Re: The Orientalist Project [Re: luvdemshrooms]
    #2678895 - 05/14/04 03:53 PM (19 years, 10 months ago)



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To call humans 'rational beings' does injustice to the term, 'rational.'  Humans are capable of rational thought, but it is not their essence.  Humans are animals, beasts with complex brains.  Humans, more often than not, utilize their cerebrum to rationalize what their primal instincts, their preconceived notions, and their emotional desires have presented as goals - humans are rationalizing beings.

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Invisibleluvdemshrooms
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Re: The Orientalist Project [Re: Evolving]
    #2678910 - 05/14/04 03:57 PM (19 years, 10 months ago)

But bickering and argueing are why we are here.

That was a funny segment of that movie though.


--------------------
You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers

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InvisibletrendalM Happy Birthday!
J♠
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Registered: 04/17/01
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Re: The Orientalist Project [Re: luvdemshrooms]
    #2678990 - 05/14/04 04:15 PM (19 years, 10 months ago)

Walking a line around flaming, I see :nonono:


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Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free.
But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

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Invisibleluvdemshrooms
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Re: The Orientalist Project [Re: trendal]
    #2679000 - 05/14/04 04:16 PM (19 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

trendal said:
Walking a line around flaming, I see :nonono:



Nope. Just being honest and accurate.


--------------------
You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers

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InvisibletrendalM Happy Birthday!
J♠
Male User Gallery

Registered: 04/17/01
Posts: 20,815
Loc: Ontario, Canada
Re: The Orientalist Project [Re: luvdemshrooms]
    #2679042 - 05/14/04 04:25 PM (19 years, 10 months ago)

Well then be "honest and accurate" about the topic of this thread, instead of going off-topic to take a bite out of a fellow member :wink:


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Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free.
But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

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