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A Holy War for Delicious Naan
If you have a spare six hours, be sure to sit down with Larissa MacFarquhar's never ending, hagiographic profile of Shock Doctrine author Naomi Klein in this week's New Yorker. There is plenty of material to boil the blood, though I particularly liked this bit, when Klein explains how the so-called "Tipton Three" ended up being captured on a battlefield in Afghanistan:
While they were waiting for the interview to start, the interviewer, a young man in a black T-shirt, asked her what she'd been doing lately. She told him that she'd been working on the movie version of "The Shock Doctrine," which was being made by the director of "Road to Guantánamo."
"Did you see ‘Road to Guantánamo'?" she asked.
"No. I heard about it, though."
"It's excellent-it's intercut between interviews with the Tipton Three"-three young British men who were held in Guantánamo for two years-"and they're just, like, blokes, you know? The best moment in the film was when one of them suggests going to Afghanistan because they've got massive naans there. That was the reason."
Read that again. These three religious zealots ended up in a warzone a month after the 9/11 attacks because Afghanistan is notorious for its huge naan bread.
Now. Either Klein is the most credulous writer working today or she is willfully distorting the story of the these three bozos (And as one London Times columnist wrote, if their "account is to be believed then these three are either the luckiest or unluckiest men in Britain, and certainly among the stupidest."). I haven't seen the Michael Winterbottom film, and, from what I have read, I would doubtless agree with his argument that the case was poorly handled from the get go, but this doesn't mean that these Keystone Talibianistas are telling the truth. Klein might want to look beyond the Road to Guantanamo film and see that one of the three recently admitted that did he indeed visit a terror training camp, where he trained with weapons. As The Guardian noted after this rather consequential revelation, "None of [this new evidence] justifies or excuses his sub-legal and subhuman treatment in Guantanamo, but it does raise some questions about the portrayal, in some quarters of the media, of the Tipton Three as blameless heroes."
Johan Norberg debunked The Shock Doctrine in reason here.
thoreau|12.5.08 @ 4:02PM|#
I dunno, what if they're stoners? I could totally see stoners being like "Hey, man, they've got, like huge naans! I mean, yeah, there's a war, but wouldn't it be just so cool to see how round those naans are?"
Ska|12.5.08 @ 4:05PM|#
And what if it was garlic naan, not just regular naan? And imagine the size of the tandoori ovens they must have! Fo'serious!
Deus ex Machina|12.5.08 @ 4:05PM|#
She told him that she'd been working on the movie version of "The Shock Doctrine," which was being made by the director of "Road to Guantánamo."
They already made a movie version of The Shock Doctrine.
It's called Quantum of Solace.
Lefiti|12.5.08 @ 4:14PM|#
Geez, so she believed they liked the naan. At least she doesn't believe that letting plutotarchs rule everything will maximize human freedom.
ed|12.5.08 @ 4:22PM|#
Larissa MacFarquhar's never ending, hagiographic profile of
Shock Doctrine author Naomi Klein
But why? Why?
thoreau|12.5.08 @ 4:28PM|#
If the real Lefiti is indistinguishable from the spoofs, then the wavefunction of this blog is symmetric under the exchange of Lefiti and spoofs. I therefore conclude that Lefiti is a boson.
|12.5.08 @ 4:30PM|#
"None of [this new evidence] justifies or excuses his sub-legal
and subhuman treatment in Guantanamo, but it does raise some
questions about the portrayal, in some quarters of the media, of
the Tipton Three as blameless heroes."
Libertarians ought to reserve special hate for the people who
portrayed these assholes as blameless heroes. There are real issues
regarding how to prosecute terror. But pretending that realigous
zelot assholes who went to Afghanistan to learn how to kill people
are anything but scum just gives more ammunition to the people who
want to use the war on terror as a justification to violate
people's rights. Anyone who thinks that these guys are blameless is
not a serious person.
thoreau|12.5.08 @ 4:32PM|#
I have never written anything as stupid as what has just been submitted under my name.
|12.5.08 @ 4:37PM|#
In any given comments section, there is a superposition of Lefiti and not-Lefiti.
|12.5.08 @ 4:41PM|#
Thoreau,
If that was you, I thought it was pretty funny. But I am a physics
jock strap sniffer.
|12.5.08 @ 4:45PM|#
I just followed that link. I didn't realize Thoreau had a blog and that Thoreau is apparently a border collie. I always have heard they are an intelligent breed.
|12.5.08 @ 4:45PM|#
"film and see that one of the three recently admitted that did
he indeed visit a terror training camp"
libertarians do support the right to bear arms and the right of
free association, innocence until proven guilty, huge Naan, not
torturing people, etc. that is unless they run against the wrath of
Moynihan.
|12.5.08 @ 4:51PM|#
"libertarians do support the right to bear arms and the right of
free association, innocence until proven guilty, huge Naan, not
torturing people, etc. that is unless they run against the wrath of
Moynihan."
Just average law abiding people go to AFghanistan in a middle of a
war and visit terrorist training camps for the fun of it? Yes you
can bear arms. But you can't bear arms for the purpose of killing
innocent people. Yes you do have free association, but you can't
associate with people for the purpose of killing large numbers of
innocent people. No you shouldn't torture. But even if these guys
were tortured that doesn't mean they aren't scum.
thoreau|12.5.08 @ 4:58PM|#
Naan shall pass.
That's a win. Even my impersonators should be able to agree.
Kolohe|12.5.08 @ 5:01PM|#
These three religious zealots ended up in a warzone a month
after the 9/11 attacks because Afghanistan is notorious for its
huge naan bread.
Sounds like big naan sense.
|12.5.08 @ 5:02PM|#
I love that spoofers are too damned stupid or lazy to enter the
spoofees e-mail addresses in the comments form.
Trolls like lefiti don't submit e-mail addresses. That coupled with
the fact that his actual posts are so inane, make it harder to tell
who's the spoofer and who's the real lefiti.
|12.5.08 @ 5:11PM|#
If the real Lefiti is indistinguishable from the spoofs, then the wavefunction of this blog is symmetric under the exchange of Lefiti and spoofs. I therefore conclude that Lefiti is a boson.
Or the boson's mate.
Fluffy|12.5.08 @ 5:35PM|#
The Guardian link only says that one of the guy
admitted receiving training. It doesn't say from whom, or when he
received it.
Right up until the day the US invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban was
not our enemy.
If they received training from Al Qaeda, then yes, they're
terrorists and should be prosecuted as members of a criminal
conspiracy.
But the Taliban was simply an armed force engaged in a conflict to
rule Afghanistan. If they travelled to Afghanistan prior to our
invasion and trained with the Taliban, I don't give a rat's ass.
It's nothing worse than travelling to Spain the 30's to train with
one of the parties to that civil war. And it certainly doesn't make
them enemy combatants. Right up until the day we invaded, no
British Muslim would have any reason to believe that the Taliban
would imminently be at war with the US or Britain. The act of
training with the Taliban would not be the same as declaring war on
the US.
We fought the Taliban because they refused to extradite bin Laden.
Not because they were terrorists. That means that Joe Asshole who
was a supporter of the Taliban prior to our invasion can't just be
uniformly assumed to be a terrorist, and should not be
automatically considered an enemy combatant unless he was captured
bearing arms in the field.
|12.5.08 @ 5:43PM|#
Fluffy,
Someone who served in the SS was an enemy combatant. That fact
didn't make them blameless victims or heroes when the Soviets found
them and shot them. Further, it seems very unlikly that a foreigner
would go to AFghanistan merely to live and fight with the Taliban.
It seems a lot more likly they went there to be trained as
terrorists.
|12.5.08 @ 5:45PM|#
One other thing Fluffy. The Taliban were in no way equivilent to even the facists in 1930s Spain. They were by far one of the most barbaric regimes of the last 20 years. Really the only thing they didn't do was exterminate the population like Pot or Mau. But they engaged in every other form of barbarity short of mass murder. Please tell me you think that anyone who went to joing and fight for them is anything but a religous fanatic scumbag.
|12.5.08 @ 5:51PM|#
And Fluffy, there was that small matter of the Taliban harboring and refusing to extradite the people responsible for 9-11. You make it sound like the Taliban were just a typical government and going to join them no different than the French Foreign Legion. That is a lie of the first order.
|12.5.08 @ 5:52PM|#
"Please tell me you think that anyone who went to joing and
fight for them is anything but a religous fanatic scumbag."
They wouldn't make my Christmas card list. But thats seperate to
how we should go about treating them and their supporters.
|12.5.08 @ 5:55PM|#
"But thats seperate to how we should go about treating them and
their supporters."
Certainly if these two had ever gotten a hold of you or I, we would
have had it a lot worse than they ever had it in GUITMO. They are
cold blooded fanatics and are getting to laugh at us while living
in freedom. We should have just hung them as soon as we captured
them. We wouldn't have taken any worse a PR hit when we did and
they would be dead and are enemies would fear us. Nothing could
have been worse than the way we handled it.
Lefiti|12.5.08 @ 6:14PM|#
This thread was funny until Fluffy's Aserperger's syndrome showed up and ruined it.
|12.5.08 @ 6:18PM|#
Man we got to get to Afghanistan! The chicks there got these massive naans that jiggle and shake! They're almost more than one man can handle!
John|12.5.08 @ 6:23PM|#
My points are so important that I must post not once, not twice, but thrice in a row in order to share all of my brilliance with you!
Michael Powell|12.5.08 @ 6:32PM|#
Going to a warzone to get naan sounds like something Naomi Klein fans would do.
Mark|12.5.08 @ 7:30PM|#
I was going to point out that the one thing more annoying than
Naomi Klein herself was her acolytes. Have you ever tried to
discuss No Logo with a Klein fan in 2007? It becomes
painfully obvious that they rarely pick up the business section of
a newspaper, let alone understand how a retail outfits operate, let
alone the fact that some of her targets like the Gap haven't been
financially healthy for quite some time...
But to hell with that - I'll just spam the forum.
Mike Laursen|12.5.08 @ 7:38PM|#
Certainly if these two had ever gotten a hold of you or I,
we would have had it a lot worse than they ever had it in GUITMO.
They are cold blooded fanatics and are getting to laugh at us while
living in freedom.
And this is how one should decide on one's own ethical standards.
By benchmarking against the lowest standard you can find?
|12.5.08 @ 9:05PM|#
Begin William Shatner impersonation...
NAAAAAAANNNNNNN!!!!!!
ending William Shatner impersonation
|12.5.08 @ 11:31PM|#
All I want for Christmas is for someone to make a movie exposing what a huge fraud Naomi Klein is.
|12.5.08 @ 11:48PM|#
Damn, what a great thread. best one all day in my book. It's got
everything: Naan, boobs, Lefiti spoofing, urkobold, thoreau making
fun of himself, and a self referential comment that used the word
"jock-sniffing".
I can die happy.
David Ross|12.6.08 @ 7:13PM|#
I've just finished Norberg's
takedown of The Shock Doctrine. Thomas Frank's The Wrecking
Crew is another work in TSD's genre (also detrousered on this
site); "republican wrecking crew" is now part of the political
lexicon, according to Google anyway.
It's certainly valuable to have these arguments on hand, if only so
we don't become one of Klein's cultists ourselves, but it's a waste
of time arguing with a cultist. Klein's readers aren't normal
people with jobs. They are "agitators in corporations
unions, ... societies in the towns formed of directors of
assignats and trustees for the sale of church lands
zoning and eminent-domain, attornies, agents,
money-jobbers, speculators, and adventurers, composing an ignoble
oligarchy, founded on the destruction of the crown, the church, the
nobility, and the people". We could add to this list of villains
the idle rich brats of wealthy men, playing at revolution. And
they've just about done with destroying the crown, church, and
nobility; guess who's next?
Thomas Frank|12.7.08 @ 11:06PM|#
You all support corporate welfare! Admit it! I don't care that you've always protested loudly when the government starts bailing out large corporations! Admit it, you corporatist scum!
|12.8.08 @ 10:24AM|#
I believe its possible to simultaneously and rationally believe
that
(1) These numbnuts went to Afghanistan to play terrorist, and their
tall tale about the big naan is the weakest alibi ever.
(2) As (alleged) illegal combatants, they can and should, if
captured, be held in some kind of prison facility while their
actual status is determined.
(3) That determination should happen reasonably quickly.
(4) They should not be tortured, for reasonable values of
"torture."
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