[ExI] Sarah Palin

Tue Jul 20 18:05:17 UTC 2010

>Not supported in any way? I guess that's why on September 12 2001 huge demonstrations spontaneously >broke out all over the Islamic world condemning the hijackers. Oh wait that didn't happen. 

Just as a point of fact, I was in Harlem in October, 2001, the day after the anthrax was delivered to the NBC building (I was in the square itself the day before, and you couldn't find anyone but hotdog vendors and policemen there.) I stood behind a black woman on Martin Luther King Avenue whose exact words were--I will never forget them--"Terrorism? You wann talk terrorism? Look at what the whites have done to our people these last two hundred years!"

So you see, John, an atrocity to one cultural, political or national group may seem like a random political or war-sanctioned act, perhaps even a justice, to another group. Which is why that woman in Harlem or the members of the Arab world--which aren't all Muslims, btw--weren't protesting. I agree that wanting to erect a mosque near that sight shows a lack of forethought, empathy and even a degree of oafeshness. The trick is not pretending we all don't have cultural bias, it is being able to see it, recognize it and respect its power, even when we don't agree with it. 

The biggest example of out-right political and cultural bias in my books in the history of man-kind was pointed out by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The Nazi holocaust killed 6 million. Solzhenitsyn estimated that the gulags, purges and the Ukranian wheat tax of '38 killed 22 million. Yet because Russia was an ally on the winning side of the war we didn't here about it fully until Solzhenitsyn started writing about it in the late sixties, for which he was expelled from Russia (and had he not been a nobel prize winner he probably would have been purged himself.) No matter how great the atrocity, there is always a geo-political spin. If human beings have a threshold for horror, we don't seem to have reached it. 

Per Ardua Ad Astra
For more info on author Darren Greer visit 
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From: jonkc at bellsouth.net
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2010 11:28:51 -0400
To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
Subject: Re: [ExI] Sarah Palin

On Jul 20, 2010, at 2:55 AM, Robert Picone wrote:
 no, not the same fascists

Yes, the exact same fascists who nearly universally agree that it's a good thing to murder someone who writes a novel or draws a cartoon they don't like. The same fascists who degrade women and preach holy war. The same fascists who told people the lie, and actually convinced them of it, that if they killed themselves and committed mass murder in the process they would get to live for eternity in a place that sounds like Santa Claus's workshop. The same fascists who have demonstrated hyper sensitivity against the slightest criticism of their repugnant philosophy but claim to be baffled anyone would be upset at building, just yards from the hole in the ground that was once the World Trade Center, a 13 story 100 million dollar tax free monstrosity that they want to open on September 11 2011. 

they have the support of the community

They certainly have the support of the Islamic community and of spineless politically correct leaders of government that are so terrified of being called racist that they are willing to sanction evil. 

 and represent a group that while it has a dillusion or two in common with a handful of murderers

Except for that Mrs. Lincoln how did you like the play? 

aren't said murderers and don't support them in any way.

Not supported in any way? I guess that's why on September 12 2001 huge demonstrations spontaneously broke out all over the Islamic world condemning the hijackers. Oh wait that didn't happen. 

 Also:  Seems like a bit of an odd topic for this list.

Apparently you haven't been reading Extropians for long.

  John K Clark

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