After the brief window of commiseration after 9/11, we have been fortunate enough to have a long line of Europeans lining up to tell us that 9/11 was not such a big deal after all and we were all acting like children and needed some of that British stuff upper lip. The latest is senile Communist wannabe Doris Lessing, current Nobel Laureate, in the Nobel tradition of rewarding writers who have
A. produced nothing worthwhile
B. produced nothing anyone has ever read in the last 50 years
Not to be insensitive but in Israel that's considered just another day, when the very same Fatah or Hamas terrorists whom the British cultural and political elite coddles blows up a bus, they shrug their shoulders or openly smirk and talk about the wages of occupation.
Now this is a bombing that killed 12 people. 9/11 killed 3,000 people. Not that terrible?
Now let's see how the uber-sensible brits reacted to a bombing that killed only 12 people. They passed new anti-terrorism laws allowing terror suspects to be held for a week without trial and to deport suspects to Northern Ireland from England to "special courts" with special conditions for handling terrorist suspects. Sounds familiar doesn't it?
A. produced nothing worthwhile
B. produced nothing anyone has ever read in the last 50 years
Nobel laureate Doris Lessing said the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States were "not that terrible" when compared to attacks by the IRA in Britain. "September 11 was terrible, but if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible. "Some Americans will think I'm crazy. Many people died, two prominent buildings fell, but it was neither as terrible nor as extraordinary as they think. They're a very naive people, or they pretend to be,"Now for context, here is the IRA attack that the Guardian described as "the worst IRA outrage on the British mainland" and the BBC described as "one of the IRA's worst mainland terror attacks".
The M62 coach bombing happened on 4 February 1974 on the M62 motorway in England, when a bomb exploded in a coach carrying off-duty British Army personnel and family members. Twelve people were killed by the bomb, which consisted of 25lbs of high explosive detonated in a luggage locker of the coach.
Not to be insensitive but in Israel that's considered just another day, when the very same Fatah or Hamas terrorists whom the British cultural and political elite coddles blows up a bus, they shrug their shoulders or openly smirk and talk about the wages of occupation.
Now this is a bombing that killed 12 people. 9/11 killed 3,000 people. Not that terrible?
Now let's see how the uber-sensible brits reacted to a bombing that killed only 12 people. They passed new anti-terrorism laws allowing terror suspects to be held for a week without trial and to deport suspects to Northern Ireland from England to "special courts" with special conditions for handling terrorist suspects. Sounds familiar doesn't it?
Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the Sept. 11 attacks. About 3,700 died and tens of thousands of people were maimed in more than 30 years of violence in Northern IrelandSo nearly as many people died on September 11 as were killed in all three decades of the fighting with the IRA. ON BOTH SIDES. Yes that's not such a big deal at all.
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From Lessings bio:
ReplyDeleteDoris's early years were also spent absorbing her fathers bitter memories of World War I, taking them in as a kind of "poison." "We are all of us made by war," Lessing has written, "twisted and warped by war, but we seem to forget it."
In flight from her mother, Lessing left home when she was fifteen and took a job as a nursemaid. Her employer gave her books on politics and sociology to read, while his brother-in-law crept into her bed at night and gave her inept kisses. During that time she was, Lessing has written, "in a fever of erotic longing."
With age a fevered poisoned mind can go right over the edge I suppose. Fleeing from home says a lot too about her upbringing I guess.
It is sad when people must degrade, bend and belittle the death and tragedy of others for some low class jealousy they harbor. The source of such aberration of mind is hard to pin point but it is almost like the old skits where old people sit around comparing whose wound is worse, whose disease is the worst .
And, of course, the one who is in the most pain wins the sick prize and badge of honor.
It says she is 88 or so.
I hope by 90 she can finally grow up and get over herself involvement and reach out to others.
Europeans have to give the illusion of being proper, raising their pinky fingers when they drink tea, going to the opera etc. so after Sept. 11 Europeans observed three minutes of silence. The day after Sept.11, Le Monde declared "We Are All Americans."
ReplyDeleteJust as Hollywood delayed the Emmy Awards, held television fundraisers.
Now the mass murder of 3,000 Americans is no big deal, and in the eyes of many people Europeans and Americans alike, we all brought it on ourselves.
Sickening. And it's only been five years.
it didn't take 3 years, the world was never with us
ReplyDeletefrom the same LeMonde, "we are all americans" editorial
"But the reality is perhaps also that of an America whose own cynicism has caught up with. If Bin Laden, as the American authorities seem to think, really is the one who ordered the Sept. 11 attacks, how can we fail to recall that he was in fact trained by the CIA and that he was an element of a policy, directed against the Soviets, that the Americans considered to be wise? Might it not then have been America itself that created this demon?"
By 90 nobody will care what she does, just as for the past 50 years nobody has cared what she does. Just another PC appointment.
ReplyDeleteTY for providing the remainder of the editorial. The headline, which most of the world saw, "we are all Americans" was terribly misleading, and did give a false impression of how Europeans truly felt.
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