[lbo-talk] The 12 Hour Job - Iraq Construction Minister: Shrinebombing was specialist job

[Leigh Meyers]

Doug Henwood wrote:
> Carrol Cox wrote:
>
>> I haven't been following this thread at all, but Doug is exactly right
>> -- in general over the last couple of centuries there has tended to be
>> strong racist elements lurking in almost all conspiracism.
>
> Before he became a reality TV star, George Galloway told me that these 
> sorts of conspiracy theories are popular in the Middle East because 
> many Arabs have internalized the western view of them as incapable of 
> mastering a technologically or organizationally complex assignment 
> like the 9/11 hijackings - or, apparently, the mosque bombing. It's of 
> a piece with the weird Anglophilia he encountered in Iraq - even in 
> Saddam's bunker deep underground, where the Evil Man personally served 
> Galloway some English chocolates.
>
I'm totally flabbergasted that you evade the simple assumption
that some western affiliated entity (make of it what you will) might
have PAID someone (read Iraqi) to blow something up.

...and I absolutely agree that racism plays a strong role in
*conspiricy* theories, but I think Mr. Galloway condescends
as to the actual number of Iraqis who think of themselves as
technologically ignorant.... maybe to write driver code for microsoft
(currently), But to build a bomb? I think they've been doing that
for a long long time, perhaps longer than the west.

The trade routes to China have traditionally run through muslim
lands, and I'm sure explosives technology has been around that
area of the world for a more extensive period of time than the west.
(...and it's racist to think that the Iraqis don't know that!)

We just build'em bigger, more expensive, and we come up with
terminology like 'standardized kill ratio per ton'.

I guess that makes us the more intelligent (superior) culture.

BTW.... didn't Bill Clinton do something 'nasty' with a Cuban cigar?
(or was it an El Producto?). I guess that means he was somehow
culturally subserviant to Cuba.

Scuse me, overposted again.
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