[lbo-talk] query: Arundhati Roy

Jim Devine jdevine03 at gmail.com
Mon Mar 6 14:18:06 PST 2006


On 3/6/06, Chris Doss wrote: Afghanistan >is in abominable shape. But things have greatly improved in the countries AROUND Afghanistan, since the Taliban are out of the spreading international jihad business. From the viewpoint of people in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, India, and Russia, that was the point of the war.<

are you sure? I'm no friend of the Taliban (for some reason they wouldn't have me ;-), but isn't it possible that U, T, I, and R's leading cliques were simply blaming the Taliban for internally-generated problems? It's common to blame class or ethnic or nationalist antagonisms on "outside agitators."

For example, India has problems with "jihadists" because of the ongoing fight over Kashmir. Might not this problem (including the terrorism at India's parliament) have occurred anyway, even without the Taliban? After all, India or Kashmir wasn't the major focus of the Taliban's ire, was it?

(do you know about the new radical washing machine?

(yes, it has an outside agitator!

(rim-shot) -- Jim Devine / Bust Big Brother Bush! "Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense." -- Gertrude Stein



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