The notion was actually doing the rounds that recent shark attacks at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheik were the work of Mossad, the Israeli secret service. Hadn’t someone seen an electronic device attached to a shark being directed from Tel Aviv, video-game style, to devour a Russian tourist’s leg?First of all, I don't believe that this "notion was actually doing the rounds," anymore than I believe Tommy Friedman has ever exchanged anything other than addresses and fare information with a cab driver. More generally, I love this idea that Arabs are uniquely deranged and conspiratorial. (I also love that poor Czeslaw Milosz has been hauled out of his basement of low-wattage banalities to turn a phrase that isn't aphoristic in the slightest.) I mean, good God, a fair number of Americans also believe that their own government directly perpetrated 9/11 . . . are they too victims of totalitarianism? In the words of my favorite film reviewer: I'll let you decide. But the answer is yes.
One Egyptian government official suggested the theory was plausible enough. After all, damage to the Egyptian tourist industry could only please Israel. Cui bono ?
-Roger Cohen
Subsequent to 9/11, America just happened to go invade a couple of predominantly Muslim countries that had fuck-all to do with 9/11; had nothing to do with it whether you believe the normative, official histories or believe that Dick Cheney's brood of reptilian shape-shifter offspring dynamited the foundation of the Trade Centers and shot a space-laser at the Pentagon. Is the "notion" that America used it as a pretext to go smash up a lotta Muslims inherently nuttier than the notion that Iraq was poised to conquer America with its advanced ability not to use or possess nuclear weapons?
Look, whatever you think about Arabs and their, uh, mind, the reason they view everything America and its allies do with intense suspicion is that America and its allies keep fucking killing Arabs.
31 comments:
Why is IOZ covering up for the remote-controlled sharks that brought down WTC 7?
The tourist in question was also, you know, German. But I guess he felt the Russians had to be involved somehow.
I read about this in an Egyptian newspaper - it was airing the silly conspiracy theory (unfortunately referred to by a very stupid local governor as something serious they were "looking into") for the purpose of having a marine biologist debunk it, which he did pretty thoroughly.
It's kinda ludicrous that people come up with these things in the first place, but then again, there are sane people who point out how ludicrous it is.
My favorite silly conspiracy theory from the time I lived in Egypt was that Israelis were dropping aphrodisiac bubble gum over Egyptian cotton fields so that their women would become rampant nymphomaniacs. I read this in an Egyptian economic journal. This was many years ago. Makes the nonsense about Sharia law in the US b/c of the Burlington Coat Factory seem almost sane doesn't it. Oh wait.
Dude, clearly the repts used the "space-laser" on the towers; shit basically disintegrated. The Pentagon strike was conventional explosives. And Building 7 was, indeed, cyborg sharks. Turtles did their best, though.
http://www.comicvine.com/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-adventures-the-future-shark-trilogy-part-2-of-3/37-121503/
I read this very comic in Burlington Coat Factory when I was eleven. Coincidence?
"Cyborg sharks" was a discarded plot from the mid-80s Thunderball remake, Never Say Never Again. No joke.
"It's kinda ludicrous that people come up with these things in the first place"
Weren't some bearly Mossad agents and a woman with a horrible hat caught in Dubai not long ago, or something?
I totally believe the Mossad shark theory. If there was ever a people who could become Shark Whisperers, it would have to be the Israelis.
If the world community airlifts in Serbs and a few C-130 loads of vodka, that shark infestation problem will be old news.
-- sglover
typical, ignoring the brutal steeler loss to the obviously far superior jets. what do the arabs have to say about that?
I think your explanation for Arab anti-Americanism is incomplete.
I think there are sectors of the Arab power structure which fear secularization as much as our own homebred Southern Baptists, Catholics, and Ortho-Hasidic Jews.
And for them, the anti-Americanism would still be there even if we had never killed a single Arab.
I mean - we don't go around indiscriminately killing Frogs, but L'Academie still hates us ...
Imma chargin' mah lazor-guided shark missiles!
This particular conspiracy theory is not crazy. (Though you probably couldn't do it with sharks.) At any rate, more than a kernel of truth. Nothing, my friends, is so crazy that bureaucrats won't go for it.
The Day of The Dolphin called, they want their script back.
Speaking of Friedman he was on the local radio station in Boston yesterday. The memorable quotes I took note of in the 3.75 minutes I could stand listening were;
"people ask me if I got it wrong in 'The Earth is Flat' and I say yes I did to which they say 'see I told you so, what did you get wrong?' I tell them the Earth is wayyyyyy flatter than I thought...."
and
"We need to invent our way out of this, GM might not be coming back but I met a girl that is making a living writing aps for ipads and iphones, we need more ap writing and more inventions that need aps written for them."
If you want a vision of the future, imagine an app writer... writing apps for another new invention... FOREVER!
...to the shores of Tripoli, man.
Well this old invention could cartainly use a new ap
After wading through more of these theories than I care to tell, I've come to a conclusion that the only responsible position to take is that the "World Trade Center" (which I've been in numerous times, having worked there) never existed in the first place.
After wading through more of these theories than I care to tell, I've come to a conclusion that the only responsible position to take is that the "World Trade Center" (which I've been in numerous times, having worked there) never existed in the first place.
"I mean - we don't go around indiscriminately killing Frogs, but L'Academie still hates us ..."
Perhaps, but there's hate and then there's hate. I don't see too many French people blowing themselves up to strike a blow against the Great Satan. Do you?
"Dislike" or "disdain" might be more accurate terms...
The point was, Dunc, that even if we hadn't been killing Arabs all these years, the anti-secular forces in the Arab world would still be trying to restrict our access/influence (a la pre-Perry Japan), and our neo-Kissingerian RealPolitik-ians might still be happy to decide that we have to send in a "warship" for that reason alone ...
Any analysis of middle east socio-politics that excludes religion is incomplete and probably uh incomplete.
Egyptian governmental silliness is not the same as fundamentalist groups' opinions of things. In fact they are pretty widely different.
And actually the vast majority of Arabs, religious or not, do not hate US citizens any more than the French do.
Changes in US policy would take the steam right out of the jihadi movement. Jihadis know this. They don't whip up outrage and gain followers by saying that we have gay sex and stuff. (Not that they don't criticize us for that but it is not their main selling point by any means.) They whip up outrage by talking about US and Israeli atrocities in the Middle East.
Anna in PDX---
Assuming you're not suggesting that we break up with Israel, on what basis do you conclude that "changes in U.S. policy would take the steam right out of the jihadi movement"? Is it because that's how you would respond in the jihadists' place?
Changes in U.S. policy would in fact vindicate and validate the jihadi movement beyond all dreams of success. In view of the history since Balfour, Abu Ghraib/Gitmo/Iraq/Afghanistan/Westergaard et al are no more dispositive than the names and pictures painted on the sides of WWII warplanes.
Ah, an Inky classic reprint! I guess he must have a bot running since it's The Holidays.
We must continue what we're doing, whatever the results, because changing what we're doing will have bad results! Oh, that Inkberrow.
If we don't jump the remote controlled Israeli shark, the terrorists win.
wish a safe and peaceful life. we must be strong,or we will be bullied.
We must be strong. This does not mean we must be bullies.
Cuneyt---
Ahhh, reprints. One year at a time, eh?
Among others, Fort Hood, Detroit, Times Square, D.C., Dallas, the Bronx, Portland, Baltimore, Luton and Stoke, Stockholm, and today Rotterdam.
Buncha bots! The wages of Dutch and Swedish bullying most surprising of all.....
Baltimore
Houshmanzadeh's a citizen of this country, dude, and anyway Flacco tends to favor Mason on most big plays.
PLAYOFFS, BABY!
Addendum---
New terror arrests in Denmark yesterday, bookmarking the recent bombing in Stockholm's shopping district. The ultra-liberal Dutch are under the gun as well.
Contrary to IOZ's wishfully exclusive connection between Islamist violence and Western military action, even (especially?) nations fully invested in bootlicking appeasement face a daily threat. It's a religious war, whether or not Western mod-progs find that rational or palatable.
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