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22 comments:
Antoine I can't believe that you can actually visualize me without me posing! It's amazing! I am more amazed by your ability to visualize the shark without having him pose for you...
By the way, to the general public: Nadine can't draw.
What revolution? Are you people planning a revolution?
I am a very angry Arab living on a faraway planet. Today a friend (he's a frog) sent me this article to outrage me. We Arabs of planet "Zahta" (slip) feed on news that outrage us, anger is our favorite desert, and the national sport here is crushing apricots and making apricot jam.
So this friend sent me an article published in the Daily Star sometime last week. This friend is a very, very angry fellow. I read the article and I must say that I was about to explode. For the first time from a long time I felt like saying to the author of the article: “Mr. Lee (his name), take the 3 to 4 million dollars of US tax payers’ money and shove it up your ass, the AUB doesn’t need it and will find the money somewhere in the Gulf or in Canada where there are plenty of Alumni who donate many more millions every year.”
It’s been a long time that I haven’t felt such an urge, such an anger, such a need to scream and tell Mr. Lee to go and get fucked along with the Daily Star, its editor in chief and its owner.
I am invading all the blogs that I find interesting and posting the article in the form of comments for you beebol to read (beebol is “sha3b” “people” “people”…). If you get angry, please make a short comment. I hope the person in charge of the blog will take the article and post it officially so that more beebol can see it.
From Gulag U.S.A., a tenured dissident
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
By Lee Smith
On the eve of his first-ever visit to Lebanon last week, Noam Chomsky told a reporter he would "try to familiarize himself with the country by 'riding around in taxi cabs.'" For anyone familiar with Chomsky's work, the implication was truly astonishing, suggesting one of the great "man-bites-dog" stories in contemporary intellectual history: "Chomsky to listen! World-famous American dissident intellectual will consider other perspectives and facts to integrate into rigid worldview. Washington role as 'mother of all evil' in jeopardy."
His cab drivers must have been reading an awful lot of Chomsky because by the time the Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor of linguistics gave a lecture titled "The Great Soul of Power" at the American University of Beirut exactly one week ago, this newspaper described it as "vintage" Chomsky. "It is the responsibility of intellectuals to take dissident positions," Chomsky said; "This is all the more the case for Western intellectuals who can't blame their subservience on fear, only cowardice."
To be honest, I didn't get to hear this particular dissident Western intellectual call out every other Western intellectual and journalist for not speaking truth to power because I was home that night getting to the stunning surprise ending of Michael Moore's "Dude, Who Stole My Country?" - don't worry, I won't give it away. But I'm curious if everyone was too fearful, subservient and cowardly to inform the professor who co-sponsored his appearance. No? Poor Chomsky, only he could find the tens of thousands souls lost in the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory bombing in Sudan, and still miss the petro-fortune buried right under his lecture notes. Prince Walid bin Talal, owner of Kingdom Holdings, with extensive investments in American media companies, started the Center of American Studies and Research, host of the Edward Said lectures that Chomsky was invited to give, with a $5.3 million endowment.
For that much money, you'd think the AUB could hire someone to vet the subject matter to avoid any potential embarrassment. "The great soul of power," a reporter for this newspaper wrote, "refers to the special reverence which public intellectuals and journalists ordinarily hold toward those in political power." What was Chomsky thinking? Oh, but I wasn't talking about you, your highness, you're not politically powerful, just one of the world's richest men, and I'm not an intellectual or journalist, I'm a dissident.
Professor, maybe you and Michael Moore missed it while on the dissident circuit, enhancing your brand visibility, but there was plenty of intellectual debate before the Iraq war that continues to this day, from the mainstream New York Times to scores of books and new media like satellite television and the Internet. To pretend it doesn't exist may help you to market your marginalization, but in the end it makes you not an intellectual but an ideologue.
At its best, Chomsky's political analysis strikes me as though it was written by a sensitive, deeply disillusioned teenager who has just found out from someone's older brother that states pursue interests. At his worst, Chomsky's just a vicious sensationalist, like when he asserted that the United States' demanding Iran cease its interference in Iraqi affairs "is like Hitler calling on the Americans to stop their interference in the affairs of a Europe pacified under German occupation." Is it really like that, professor? Don't be naive. Do you have any facts to back up that rhetoric, professor? Don't be naive.
In short, Professor Chomsky is the kind of luxury that only the U.S. can afford. Apparently, so is the AUB, which receives between $3 million to $4 million dollars every year in American taxpayer money. If I didn't know better, I'd think that the university still took its role seriously as a bridge between the U.S. and the Arab world. As such, it would try to present a fuller range of American political discourse and intellectual life, an especially useful calling at this time in our shared history. But recent invited speakers and conference attendees like Chomsky, University of Michigan professor Juan Cole and Mark LeVine of the University of California, Irvine, suggest that the only American voices worth hearing on Bliss Street are from a left decidedly hostile to current U.S. Middle East policy. Wouldn't it be instructive to hear other voices? Does everyone, even in Lebanon, think American policy in the region is really sinister? Or is it just every academic invited by the AUB who thinks so?
Here's a strange comparison: In Lebanon, democracy looks like Hizbullah, Amal, the Free Patriotic Movement, the Progressive Socialist Party, the Lebanese Forces and the Future Movement, among many others. But at the American University of Beirut's American studies lecture series, the oldest and largest democracy in the world is represented by a left-wing professoriate that believes their country has been hijacked by an extremist right.
Maybe this perspective is soothing to the university's expatriate community, which likes to be reminded of how hard it is to speak truth to power back in the gulag, and it's probably a pleasant diversion for American grad students about to head home to train another generation of dissident intellectuals or opt for the big payout in the private sector; but I wonder what it's like for Arab undergraduates who might really want to know how the U.S. works. I sure won't blame Lebanese kids graduating from AUB who having been lectured to by an endless series of tenured radicals if they are wondering who actually voted for Bush, if every American they have ever met says they hate the elected leader of the U.S. I, too, would think there was a secret cabal running the U.S. government. So, how is the AUB educating Arab students at a time when it is pretty useful to have a close understanding of the American political process, cultural and intellectual life?
There are plenty of excellent universities in Lebanon - St. Joseph, the Lebanese American University, Haigazian, among others - that could no doubt use the U.S. aid money funneled to the AUB every year, largely because of its reputation and (Chomsky will love this) the power of its Washington lobbyists. So, maybe there should be more competition for those $3 million to $4 million dollars, which American taxpayers are happy to share - just as long as you give them credit for the great diversity of American political and intellectual life and represent it as such. After all, like Lebanon, the U.S. is a democracy.
Lee Smith is a journalist and Hudson Institute visiting fellow based in Beirut. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR.
i also would like to say to Mr. Lee:
btiswa Ayri!
i appreciate the fact that ANGRY ARABS visit my blog.
thank you angry arab.
the blogger.
very angry arab... your lack of self awareness is inspirational...
By the way, my name is Samir and I didn't get what you mean by my lack of self-awarness...
samir!?
it seems that we have new audience. welcome!
w ya ahla bi samir?
samir? kifak samir?
to very angry arab:
this is not the place for this article, people are already bored when they come here and the article is too long, regardless if it is interesting or not
Actually the article is not ineteresting, I read it because (fill in the blanks for those who like to guess). Samir my friend, not that you are my friend but just so that I can address you with some other name than your own, so Samir let me ask you, are you one of those people who don't drink Coca Cola to boycott Israel?
You people are silly. You don't care about your country and what will happen if you don't react to such opinions.
Very angry arab AKA samir AKA very serious fundamentalist AKA you are killing me with your article AKA i don't drink COCA COLA to boycot israel AKA nikna bi lutfak:
Ayya country ya ghashi??!!!
this is all what you want to say???????? If you can't live without Coca Cola or Starbucks i mean your life is stupid
i can live without coca cola. can you live without preaching? is that how you justify your existence? we were really happy cracking jokes before we found out that you actually exist.
actually let me tell you something.
noone actually needs to know that you exist. you are a nothing.
a no body.
crack a joke, you'll feel better.
Very Angry Arab... hahahahahah wlik ur nickname.. ur comments.. seriously i dunno where to start... i tell u what here's a professional's number.. 03261187.. (i hope u like white?!)
hey you people! I got to this blog by error but it's nice!! Angry Arab guy maybe you want to look at this blog angryarab.blogspot.com
I live in Egypt. Where you people live?
we are from the distant planet called zoohoor.
angry arab is an intruder from the planet of frogs. he's making our life miserable with his stupid comments
have a good time and keep visiting us mr. hassan
I don't believe how no respect you people have!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You are insulting other people all the time and you think that this is funny. I think this blog should be closed. If you are soooooooo bored go and do something!!!!! Btw, I think I know some of you whom are on this blog and I tell you now and I don't care that I don't like you.
it is very impressive how persistent this very angry arab is to get insulted all the time.
please keep posting stuff very angry arab so we can keep kicking your ass.
i would imagine you have a very red and infected butt cheek from consistent spanking.
everyone! jledouu!!!!!!!
kiss the very angry arab''s butt.
p.s. we don't care if you know who we are.
Ok. I have the "presentiment" that I will be stuck in Saudi Arabia for the summer. The Saudis seem to have really lost my passport.
Very Angry Arab: Fuck off.
noooooooooooo fadi!
u can't be stuck in ksa!!!!
what about our rendez-vous in paris?
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