Friday, November 29, 2002 :::
This reminds me of something I remember thinking last year.
Plan focuses on giant Buddhas ruined by Taliban
By GEORGE EDMONSON
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer
Washington -- An effort has started in Afghanistan to preserve the little that remains of two ancient Buddhas destroyed last year by the Taliban.
I remember thinking, "We will be at war with these people soon." I knew we couldn't invade them to save those statues, but I thought, they have no compunction about destroying harmless or even good things simply for their own sense of righteousness. The word I learned since then was "Nihilism." And many have described the Islamist approach as exactly that.
Over the line!
::: posted by Brian Jones at 11:32 AM
Tuesday, November 26, 2002 :::
You must read this commentary about the coverage of the death of Mary Stachowicz, a woman who was killed for offending a gay man. Hate crime? Of course, under any meaningful definition of the phrase.
However, the comment that stands out to me is one that I've been shopping around to the various big-time pundits for the last few days, because I think it's worth noting somewhere besides here. Cheers to Rod Dreher for pointing it out, but it won't get a lot of traction:
In just the past week, you could observe this dynamic at work in reporting on two widely reported stories. In Nigeria, Muslims angry over a line in a newspaper article destroyed churches, beat and maimed Christians, and even murdered some of them. Yet in many of the press accounts, there was no mention of who started the violence (Muslims), and who the victims were (Christians). Typical of the nonjudgmental approach was a report I heard Monday from CNN correspondent Nancy Curnow, who mentioned "religious violence between Muslims and Christians."
My theory is that the writers of these stories all saw a non-story: Muslims rioting, killing innocents in the street, yada yada yada; then when the Christians started defending themselves (and there have been atrocities by Christians, but not nearly as many as by Muslims) the writers heaved a sigh of relief: "balance" was achieved; it was "between" two groups, not "caused by" one group. They're wrong. It would be interesting to know the numbers of victims of Muslims compared to the number of victims of Christians in this particular case.
::: posted by Brian Jones at 12:39 PM
Monday, November 25, 2002 :::
Friday is Buy Two Things Day!
(Or as much as you think will be necessary to negate the effect of these wankers.)
::: posted by Brian Jones at 10:48 AM
