Category: America

Lost in translation

 Bad translation makes fundamentalists of us all By Marie Dhumières, guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 July 2010 16.00 BST http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/jul/20/translation-arabic-language-fundamentalist-muslim or http://bit.ly/a2gGGW or http://tinyurl.com/2fjebba I was recently watching the Spanish documentary To Shoot an Elephant, about the Israeli attacks on Gaza in January 2009. The documentary is good, but the subtitles in English struck me as strange: “For the sake …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2010/07/21/lost-in-translation/

Refudiating Muslims

 Geoffrey Dunn’s HuffingtonPost post (is that redundant?) today: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/geoffrey-dunn/palins-bigoted-twitter-cal_b_650562.html or http://huff.to/a69dg9 or http://tinyurl.com/32dx5vc Palin’s Bigoted Twitter Calls on Muslims to “Refudiate” Echoing the bigoted and right-wing contortions of the National Republican Trust PAC and disgraced Tea Party leader Mark Williams, Sarah Palin has sent the world of Twitter on fire this afternoon, with a series of Tweets …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2010/07/18/refudiating-muslims/

You know who

 Robert Fisk on Fadlallah again, this time on our present season of grovelling whenever “anything might offend you know who.” http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-theyre-all-grovelling-and-you-can-guess-the-reason-2028720.html or http://bit.ly/d9tSpU or http://tinyurl.com/32lxjd8 Last paragraph: Looking back, the Obama grovelling started in that famous Cairo reach-out-to-the-Muslim-world speech, when he referred to the Palestinian “relocation” of 1948 (as if the Palestinian Arabs got up one morning on …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2010/07/17/you-know-who/

Robert Plant and the Band of Joy

 She Who Must Be Obeyed and I drove to Little Rock last night to see Robert Plant and the Band of Joy perform at Robinson Center Music Hall.  Great Show!  The latest incarnation of Band of Joy is Robert Plant, Patty Griffin (wow!), Buddy Miller, Darrell Scott, Byron House, and Marco Giovino. The show opened …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2010/07/16/robert-plant-and-the-band-of-joy/

We did it right

 Friends: Over the past few days, there has been some interesting debate going on about the relative merits of the ‘spy swap’ concluded with the Russians.  I have my own views of the case, and thought I’d share them with you.  I’ve already sent these views to a number of former CIA colleagues and to …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2010/07/11/we-did-it-right/

Fisk on Fadlallah

 Robert Fisk’s commentary on CNN’s firing of Octavia Nasr for a tweet praising Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah (who died this week): Poor old CNN goes on getting more cowardly by the hour. That’s why no one cares about it any more. That can’t be said about Fadlallah. The Americans put it about that he had blessed …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2010/07/10/fisk-on-fadlallah/

Patriot’s Dream

 Words and music by Arlo Guthrie: Living now here but for fortune Placed by fate’s mysterious schemes Who’d believe that we’re the ones asked To try to rekindle the patriot’s dreams Arise sweet destiny, time runs short All of your patience has heard their retort Hear us now for alone we can’t seem To try …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2010/07/04/patriots-dream/