And now for something completely identical

I’ve always thought that the Tamils deserved more credit for their role in the development of suicide bombing. Just because they’re insurgents in a small, relatively unimportant country, they shouldn’t be dissed.

Perhaps they should join the Chechens and the Basques and form a consortium of terrorist groups speaking exotic languages. The Axis of Just as Evil, Thank You.

But it’s a damn good song.

Now, now; what on earth could possibly have made you so…cynical?

See, Jet is already taking this as a serious threat to Western civilization rather than a completely unimportant and unserious phenomenon, and he hasn’t even been told to by Tom DeLay.

Just the suggestion is enough.

Or the Axis of Kick Your Ass, Emerson Jet.
Promoting the state of mind that results in what you’re afraid of most.
Which is not suicide bombings per se, but people whose courage shames you, who’d rather die than capitulate to your greed, and don’t mind taking you with them.

yeah freedom fighting def’ly jumped the shark in ireland, 1922.

but… she’s ENGLISH!!!

Of course, Rea. That’s part of the rules. The left must spend all its time condemning obscure clowns like Ward Churchill, but the right can’t be expected to say anything negative about outrageous statements by people who actually have political influence, like Sun Myung Moon, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, or even various members of Congress.

Uncle Kvetch today: “Who cares if MIA supports the Tamil Tigers, her music is da bomb.”

Uncle Kvetch 1939: “Who cares if Mussolini supports the Nazis, he makes the trains run on time.”

Choice quotes from M.I.A.:
“Freedom fighting Dad bombed this pad / Called him a terror put him on wanted ads / Daddy M.I.A. missing in action / Going to start a revolution” — M.I.A. “FREEDOM SKIT”

“That’s why I wrote the song ‘Sunshowers,'” Maya says over the phone from Berlin before a gig. “You can’t separate the world into two parts like that, good and evil. Terrorism is a method…”
— M.I.A. Eye Interview

“Uncle Kvetch today: “Who cares if MIA supports the Tamil Tigers, her music is da bomb.”

Uncle Kvetch 1939: “Who cares if Mussolini supports the Nazis, he makes the trains run on time.””

That’s unfair, adding the “who cares”, especially. Aesthetics is a different issue, for not wholly clear reasons. Would you have people shut out Ezra Pound or Dostoevsky for their deeply anti-semitic views. How about Mayakovsky or Brecht for their Leninism? The list could go on. . .

We can still like her music even as we condemn her so far still opaque defence of the LTTE.

I had the same objection as Azad. For a sec I was confused and thought I’d missed the bit about her being American.

I thought it was a tacit agreement that each nation had to find their Real Face of the Left within their borders. Who changed the rules?

Come on, you’ve gotta love anyone who calls their first CD Piracy Funds Terrorism.

Maybe if liberals joined the conservatives in condemning a loud voice promoting something antithetical to Western values

You’re sounding remarkably like Tipper Gore these days, Jet.

Hey, no biggie, it’s not the first time Jet’s put words in my mouth and/or thoughts in my head.

I would attempt to defend myself, but he’d just respond by calling me “Cap’n” and telling me to “lighten up.”

Ted, there’s a far more likely candidate in the running for the conservative outrage treatment—n.A.T.o. She’s a pop(ish) singer from the Svengali who brought the world t.A.T.u. She sings in Arabic, she dresses like a (busty) Chechen suicide bomber (apparently), she travels with an entourage that carry fake AKs, and her first single is “Chor Avon”, which means “black widow.” Made in a lab to give Bill O’Reilly an erection.

In second place comes Immortal Technique, a hip-hop guy whose stuff is run-of-the-mill but inflammatory. You can seek out a singled called “bin Laden” (produced by Green Lantern) that involves some pretty funny lyrics about starting an insurgency in NYC. The chorus alternates between “Bin Laden didn’t blow up the projects” and “Bush brought down the towers.”

Robin,
Uncle Kvetch has never once, to my knowledge, been “fair” to someone he disagrees with on here. His usual style of argument is to wait until the thread is dieing down, misinterpret their argument in the most obscene way, and then bash them for that. So if I used his own style and hurt his little feelers, I’m deeply sorry. I mean really….what…you don’t believe me? Maybe next time, Robin, you can stand up for someone that Kvetch is kvetching to in the same manner.

bi,
I always like a good joke. Contact me sometime, maybe we can put together something that’s actually clever. And what makes you think I’m a Christian? The fact that I piss in the cheerios of people who voice support for suicide bombing whenever I get the opportunity? I would have thought it very liberal ideal to stand up against random violence, reguardless of the cause.

Ted,
I misread your post regretfully. I first read it to mean that all that would happen after MIA was on the cover of Time. But you were meaning it would put her on the cover of Time. I do agree with you 100%. It would be kind of Orweilien if MIA is propped up to be much more than she is, just to beat the left up. But then again, all people on the left have to do is agree she’s a nut, instead of whining about the label. When Ward Churchill made the pages, all we heard from talk left radio (Garofalo couldn’t have stood up for him more), academia, etc is how the Right is making him a target for political purposes in a semi-defense of him. Not that he’s a nut and they are right he’s a nut, and they should stop blaming him on us because they have nuts too (as CT did).

Jet, I’m going to respond after all. I don’t know why, really, I just feel compelled to.

If you look at my first comment, you will see that I was asking for someone to fill me in on exactly what was controversial about M.I.A., because up until this morning, all I knew about her was that I really liked her songs. The Slate article made a passing reference to her support for the Tamil Tigers–something I knew nothing about–but gave no details. Rather than wading through several thousand comments on the thread that Gypsyfrocksbedlam linked to, I thought I would take the lazy route of asking if somebody here might be so kind as to bring me up to speed.

Your response was to call me a fascist.

When taken to task for this, your response was that this is exactly the kind of thing I do all the time, so I deserved it.

I guess that’s all I want to say. I had 3 or 4 more paragraphs written for this comment, but to what end…to “clear my name”? I think the people who read CT regularly can judge your notion of “fairness” for themselves.

“If she were Palestinian and sympathizing with the much-more-widely-recognized oppression of Palestinians while chucking passing references to bombs and refugee camps in her music, would you be quite so ready so be incensed?”

There are huge differences. While the SL state has been thuggish and while the discrimination of the 1960s/70s and pogroms of the 1980s are unconscionable, it has made large strides, offering autonomy, ethno-federalism, strong, official apologies, among other things. Moreover, the LTTE wiped out other Tamil groups (the EPRLF, e.g.), has mowed down Tamil student demos at Jaffna university, has ethnically cleansed the Muslims in the east, suffers from a cult of personality akin to the Sondero Luminoso, and has strong fascistic tendencies. The opportunities for a secular-binational SL is not being opposed by the SL state at this point, and LTTE has opposed elections in LTTE controlled areas.

Btw, this video of Sunshowers does play up some LTTE imagery http://www.blastro.com/player/miasunshowers.html

Jet, I don’t follow kvetch, and I’ll be happy to condemn all misrepresentation manufactured strawman arguments. The main unfairness is to compare an appreciation of an artist with some stupid views with appreciation for a fascist dictators administrative results. Her musical talent is not essentially tied to her views on the LTTE, while Mussolini’s making the trains run on time is tied to making Italy more and more unfree.

Uncle Kvetch,
I simply saw an opportunity to walk in your footsteps and took it. You said something that could, at the far reaches of rationality, have been totally misinterpreted, so I misinterpreted it. Like I said, if my purposeful unkindness hurt your feelers, maybe you’ll take pity on the next person you feel like doing the same. As for me, I enjoy our little game of traded unkindnesses, kind of like venting to a friend. We can not like each other and still be friends, right? I mean, I wouldn’t hesitate to give you a ride or pull you out of a burning car, or whatever ;)

Robin,
I hate to keep wasting your time by not being clear enough. My response to Kvetch was purposefully misinterpreting him and casting his words in the worst possible light. That seems to be his favorite method of argument, and I try to be accommodating.

Bi,
I wasn’t calling you a liberal, I was making claim that my ideas were liberal. And a gang related school yard shooting is random violence. A suicide bomb going off in a crowded market is random. The Battle of the Bulge is not random. And you’re the one who alluded to me being a Christian (and going to hell), apparently based solely upon my most evil and heinous crime of mocking Uncle Kvetch (certainly this follows in the spirit of the Grand Inquisition, how Spanish of you). Oh, and I’d praise the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Approxametely 100,000 civilians in occupied Japanese lands were dieing every month from starvation and murder by the Japanese. Somewhere between 500 thousand to 1,000 thousand US soldiers and 10’s of millions of Japanese would have died in a US invasion of mainland Japan. At the end of the war, Japan had lost around 350,000 civilians. Japan had one of the lowest civilian casulty figures in the war, especially based on how large a part of the war Japan was. So those two bombs saved hundreds of people for every one they killed. In real life, Dostoevsky’s morality question turns out to have a real answer.

jet:

Oh, I get it now. If it’s called “Battle of _X_” or “War of _X_”, then it’s non-random.

Or do you mean something else? Can you actually give a _general_ standard of what’s random and what’s non-random instead of just picking ad-hoc examples?

Otherwise, I hereby proclaim the LTTE’s struggle as the “War of the LTTE”. And since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki clearly don’t follow the pattern of “Battle of _X_” or “War of _X_”, it follows that they’re _random_ violence, so they’re 100% Wrong.

(Incidentally, the “somewhere between 500 thousand to 1,000 thousand US soldiers and 10’s of millions of Japanese would have died in a US invasion of mainland Japan” claim is disputed.)

_(certainly this follows in the spirit of the Grand Inquisition, how Spanish of you)_

Oh, OK. Suddenly “Spanish” has become a swear word because the Spanish citizens didn’t have the courage to vote a bunch of liars back into office.

I had a fun response to bi, but in the greater intererst of CT I’ll refrain. But I can’t refrain from this one little excerpt (In the spirit of a perpetual alcoholic, my deepest apologies Ted).

bi, if you don’t think the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan have anything to do with a particular “War of X”, you might want to be careful how you wield that “idiot” word.

I had a fun response to bi, but in the greater intererst of CT I’ll refrain.

Let me guess: you were going to call him/her a serial child rapist.

You should have gone ahead with it, Jet. That would have been hilarious. Bi was just asking for it, anyway.

Hmmmm…salad dressing and Pat Buchanan. It’s Saturday night, why not?