Saturday, January 10, 2015

After Paris, Time to Drop the "T" Word

Tired of seeing the portraits of the three murderers of Paris -- let's see portraits of those killed. The innocent folks killed in the kosher supermarket just because they were Jewish - now the world can see the true identity of Al Qaeda-allied terror. It's not just about "Zionists"-- their targets are all Jews and opponents to their self-styled regimes. But as Haffner described about Hitler -- it's hate and murderous anti-Semitism at the dark heart of their actions, not defense of some imaginary realm or leader.

 Tired of hearing the words "terror" and "terrorists"-- Jean Baudrillard long ago, after 9/11 discussed the new forms of this word that gain strength by playing on the use of violent gestures magnified by the global media spectacle as political tools. "Terror" implies that we in democracies are afraid or terrorized. We are disturbed and outraged, angered and hurt, as humans and humanists, as democratically free peoples who choose to live under the rule of law and justice, not under the whip and the beheading and medieval codes of violence. So let's dial down on use of the words terror and terrorists that have already become almost meaningless labels and descriptors that reflect more on the presumed impact of these actions on us, democratically free peoples in whose societies these criminals are sadly able to operate with greater freedom. Let's just recognize all of these villains as the criminals, law breakers,  kidnappers and murderers that they are.

Though it will take time, they will no doubt eventually be destroyed as was Hitler and in turn will destroy themselves. But democratic nations must be resolute and never surrender to the evil of theocratic extremists. 
 
Sure, #JeSuisCharlie, #JeSuisAhmed. But also let's never forget "#JeSuisJuif". And while we are at it, JeSuisDemocracy, indeed.

--Anthony Napoli
Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn

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Current Reading

  • Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War- Tony Horwitz
  • A Sultan in Palermo - Tariq Ali
  • Hitch-22: A Memoir - Christopher Hitchens
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  • Dead Funny: Humor in Nazi Germany - Rudolph Herzog
  • Exile on Main Street - Robert Greenfield
  • Among the Truthers - A Journey Among America's Growing Conspiracist Underworld - Jonathan Kay
  • Paradise Lost - John Milton
  • What Is Your Dangerous Idea? Thinking the Unthinkable - John Brockman
  • Notes from the Edge Times - Daniel Pinchbeck
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  • Un Juif pour l'exemple (translated as A Jew Must Die )- Jacques Cheesex
  • The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
  • Pale King - David Foster Wallce
  • David Bowie: Starman bio - Paul Trynka
  • Tobacco Stained Mountain Goat - Andrez Bergen
  • The Future of Nostalgia -Svetlana Boym
  • Living in the End Times - Slavoj ZIzek
  • FIrst as Tragedy Next as Farce - Slavoj Zizek
  • How to Survive a Robot Uprising - Daniel Wilson
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  • Charles Addams: An Evilution
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  • Violence - S. Zizek
  • Luba - a graphic novel by Gilbert Hernandez
  • Life in Ancient Egypt
  • Great Apes - Will Self - riveting and disturbing
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  • The Book of Genesis - illustrated by R. Crumb - visionary
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  • Ubik - Philip K. Dick
  • Nobody's Fool - Richard Russo
  • Hitler's Empire - Mark Mazower
  • Nazi Culture - various authors
  • Master Plan: Himmler 's Scholars and the Holocaust - Heather Pringle
  • Eichmann in Jerusalem - Hannah Arendt
  • Living in Ancient Rome
  • Traveling with Herodotus -R. Kapuszynsky
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  • Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace - still wrestling with this great book
  • Netherland - Joseph O'Neill - staggeringly great read
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  • John Brown
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  • ALEX COX - Alex Cox
  • FIASCO by Thomas Ricks
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  • Best of 20th century alternative history fiction
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  • Moscow 2042 - Vladimir Voinovich - Pre-1989 curiosity & entertaining sci fi read; love his portrayal of Solzhenitsyn-like character
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  • Rome
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  • The Metaphysical Club - Louis Menard
  • Coast of Utopia - Tom Stoppard
  • Physics of the Impossible - Dr. Michio Kaku
  • Managing the Unexpected - Weick & Sutcliffe
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  • Burning Down the Masters' House - Jayson Blair
  • Howl - Allen Ginsberg
  • Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
  • The Palace Thief - Ethan Canin
  • John Adams - David McCullough
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  • Youth Without Youth - Mircea Eliade
  • A Team of Rivals - Doris Goodwin
  • Ghost Hunters -William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death - Deborah Blum
  • Dream -Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy - Stephen Duncombe
  • Love & Theft - Eric Lott
  • Exit Ghost - Philip Roth
  • Studio A - The Bob Dylan Reader

Current Listening

  • Alexi Murdoch Wait
  • Wilco Summer Teeth
  • Wilco The Album
  • Carmina Burana - Ray Manzarek (& Michael Riesmann)
  • Polyrock - Polyrock
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  • Ghost of a Chance Garland Jeffries
  • Yellow Magic Orchestra
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  • John Lee Hooker
  • Black and White Years
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  • Wild Palms - Soundtrack -Ryuichi Sakamoto
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  • Commander Cody& His Lost Planet Airmen Live at Armadillo