POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DOUG SAUNDERS IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
Dangerous fictions?
Which of the hundreds which humans adhere to should we busy ourselves with exposing?
We are chimpanzees with big brains, the big brains only making us more dangerous than our murderous ancestors.
Just as one example, we are inundated with dangerous fictions about the Middle East, and these are fictions which helped motivate Mr Breveik.
Israel murders 400 children in Gaza, but that's hardly worth commenting upon.
The United Nations’ raporteur for Palestine, Richard Falk, distinguished academic and an American Jew, recently reported that Israel's forces in their various attacks and punishments and raids have killed 1,335 Palestinian children since the year 2000.
I don't see you or other columnists getting worked up over that.
And the United States started an illegal war in Iraq - mainly to wipe off the board Israel's number-one enemy - which ended with the deaths of the best part of a million people, countless cripples, and an entire society set back for a generation.
Indeed, the killing the United States has been doing in recent years makes Mr Breveik look like a piker when it comes to murder.
How about all the crazy religious beliefs and values which motivate so much of the world into terrible injustice? Bride burning in India? Treatment of young widows in India? Selling girls to old rich men in India and Thailand and other places? The fairly routine murder of prostitutes in Mexico? The ghastly ritual murders in parts of Africa? Africa's brutal female mutilations, 3 million a year? Africa's common practice of men raping young girls in villages? The Catholic Church's countless thousands of abused children in all the corners of the world?
One of the dangerous fictions at the Globe is that Doug Saunders thinks before he writes.
The other is that he has anything worth saying.
Which of the hundreds which humans adhere to should we busy ourselves with exposing?
We are chimpanzees with big brains, the big brains only making us more dangerous than our murderous ancestors.
Just as one example, we are inundated with dangerous fictions about the Middle East, and these are fictions which helped motivate Mr Breveik.
Israel murders 400 children in Gaza, but that's hardly worth commenting upon.
The United Nations’ raporteur for Palestine, Richard Falk, distinguished academic and an American Jew, recently reported that Israel's forces in their various attacks and punishments and raids have killed 1,335 Palestinian children since the year 2000.
I don't see you or other columnists getting worked up over that.
And the United States started an illegal war in Iraq - mainly to wipe off the board Israel's number-one enemy - which ended with the deaths of the best part of a million people, countless cripples, and an entire society set back for a generation.
Indeed, the killing the United States has been doing in recent years makes Mr Breveik look like a piker when it comes to murder.
How about all the crazy religious beliefs and values which motivate so much of the world into terrible injustice? Bride burning in India? Treatment of young widows in India? Selling girls to old rich men in India and Thailand and other places? The fairly routine murder of prostitutes in Mexico? The ghastly ritual murders in parts of Africa? Africa's brutal female mutilations, 3 million a year? Africa's common practice of men raping young girls in villages? The Catholic Church's countless thousands of abused children in all the corners of the world?
One of the dangerous fictions at the Globe is that Doug Saunders thinks before he writes.
The other is that he has anything worth saying.
___________________________
I just love one particularly obtuse comment starting with "Let's be honest." I love it because after those words everything said is prejudiced, ignorant, and unbalanced.
"There is an inherent incompatibility between the Western culture and the teaching of Islam (Think "slut-walk" or "gay-pride") "Freedom" and human rights in the West are inimical to Islam."
Things like "slut walk" are no more acceptable to the Ultra-orthodox Jews who largely determine Israel's policies and laws.
Only a few years back in Israel, a group of women, known prostitutes, were mysteriously burned alive when their house, near an orthodox neighborhood, was burned down.
It is quite typical for Ultra-orthodox men to drive "loose women" off their streets with violence and vituperation.
And are you trying to tell me that "slut walk" would be acceptable to the millions of American Christian fundamentalists who support Israel and help distort American policies to its benefit? Or gay rights?
Try "slut walk" in strongly Catholic parts of South America? There would be some new murders of women.
Your comments are nothing but unthinking ignorance with no perspective, the same kind of prejudice which clearly motivated Breveik.
You are promoting Islamophobia.
Simply appalling.
You are the perfect example of why Doug Saunders' column is nonsense.
