[Peace-discuss] Thomas Friedman's Inanities

Fri Mar 4 22:43:14 CST 2011

Since I can see both the "Bird Nest" (2008 Olympic Stadium) and the 
accompanying Pangu Hotel from the northwest window of the office at 
Madianqiao, and seeing that many have taken in hand to write about the 
effect of the Beijing Olympics on the world, I had better set this 
matter straight.

I am sure that most of you are familiar with that particular enhancement 
of chaotic chain of events called the "Butterfly Effect".  The notion is 
that a butterfly flapping its wings on the west side of Beijing might 
alter the singularly lousy weather in some place as remote as Winnipeg.  
No doubt the Manitoban hosers are profusely cursing Beijingers and their 
meddlesome Lepidopteran qingren and tongzhimen with each infernal 
invernal vagary.

But actually in this case it is not a "butterfly effect" or the gyring 
gypsy moth that gypped Egypt's Gaddhafan general, but rather a "mosquito 
effect", the tale of how the flapping of a mosquito's wings resulted in 
revolution in a far off land.

Lao Chen, a retired jidanbing cook living in the environs of the Madian 
neighborhood just inside the north 3rd ring road was enjoying a hot cup 
of tea in the courtyard with his friends one evening when suddenly they 
were all distracted by the fireworks celebration accompanying the 
opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.  He watched the fireworks 
display going on north of his home with his five-year old granddaughter 
and forgot his rapidly cooling tea, now open and exposed to the elements.

While the tea cooled, its delicate scent attracted mosquitoes who laid 
eggs in the lukewarm fluid.  Due to the warmth of the tea and the unique 
chemistry, the eggs hatched and developed from hatchling larva to 
pupation in less than one hour.  After all the oohing and ahhing 
associated with the pyrotechnics, Lao Chen was athirst, and finding his 
now cold tea, downed it in one gulp, unaware of the mosquito peril 
lurking within.

The mosquitoes immediately began to hatch inside Chen's empty stomach 
and began biting him in the stomach, causing him to develop an 
incredible itch.  It was the worst itching he had ever felt in his 
life.  He rushed up to his 7th floor apartment where his wife was 
slicing vegetables.  She suggested that vinegar might stop the itch.  It 
failed.  Finally they tried corn flakes and baking soda to scratch the 
itch. He ate a whole box of dry corn flakes.

But now that mixture was reacting in his bowels and he developed gas 
pains, unbearable gas pain.  He sought in vain for some way to relieve 
it.  Just then his granddaughter dropped a chopstick on the floor and 
bending to pick it up, his problem was suddenly resolved.

Chen's wife upbraided him mercilessly for his flatulent indiscretion, 
and the uproar distracted drivers on the 3rd ring road causing a 43-car 
pileup and the Egyptian revolution.

On 2011-3-3 22:50, David Green wrote:
>
>
>   http://inanities.org/2011/03/this-is-just-the-start-and-it-never-fucking-ends/
>
>
>   This is just the start and it never ... ends
>
> Posted on March 2, 2011 
> <http://inanities.org/2011/03/this-is-just-the-start-and-it-never-fucking-ends/> 
> by Sarah Carr <http://inanities.org/author/sarah-carr/>
>
> /After reading this gem 
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/opinion/02friedman.html> in the New 
> York Times, we prevailed on Thomas Friedman to provide us with a part 
> two. And here it is./
>
> Future historians will long puzzle over how I was given an 
> international platform to freely pontificate on the Arab people and be 
> remunerated handsomely for it. It is true that I am not the only 
> person in the world who formulates dubious theories based on scant or 
> no evidence which I then harangue people with. Other people do it. 
> They are called taxi drivers. But they are not as rich as me and 
> haven’t been awarded three Pulitizer Prizes.
>
> Since I’ve been here in Egypt I’ve been putting together a list of 
> “the-absolutely-irrelevant forces” that have captured the captive Arab 
> mind and ignited the simmering coals of the instant garden BBQ that is 
> the Middle East. You might ask why, since I am in Egypt, I don’t ask 
> an Egyptian – possibly two Egyptians – about what inspired them to 
> completely ignore my theories on the Arab peoples and take to the 
> streets. The answer is this: I am Thomas Friedman and I write a column 
> in the New York Times.
>
> I started my last extremely important column with an introduction in 
> which I listed tyranny, rising food prices, youth unemployment and 
> social media as the “big causes”. Rather than just stop there, I did a 
> Google “surprise me” search and chose five of the random results for 
> my special “mix of forces” which inspired the Arab mass revolts. These 
> included Barack Obama, Google Earth and the Beijing Olympics.
>
> But there are other critical factors integral to an understanding of 
> my bollocks theory on the Middle East. Here they are:
>
> *MY MOUSTACHE* – Americans have never really appreciated what a 
> radical thing I did in growing a moustache, long the symbol of Arab 
> male virility. I’m convinced that when Arab men catch a glimpse of my 
> moustache as they bring me my breakfast in my hotel they are inspired 
> and say to themselves: “Hmmm. Let’s see. He’s middle-aged. I’m 
> middle-aged. He’s slightly tanned. I’m roughly the same colour. His 
> name is Thomas. My name is Hussein. He is a prick. I sometimes act 
> like a prick. He is not president of the United States. I am not 
> president of the United States. Lincoln is the capital of Nebraska. 
> Water boils at 100 degrees centigrade. He has a moustache. I have a 
> moustache. Both our moustaches have no voice in my future”. I’d put 
> that in my special mix of hallucinogenic drugs and ingest it.
>
> *HOME SHOPPING NETWORK.com* – While Facebook has gotten all the face 
> time in Egypt, Tunisia and Bahrain, don’t forget the Home Shopping 
> Network which has never been particularly relevant to any Arab state 
> but let’s shoehorn it in anyway. A big issue in Bahrain- particularly 
> among nobody at all – has been access to home solutions. On Nov. 27 
> 2006, the Washington Post ran this report from there: “Mahmoud, who 
> lives in a house with his parents, 97 siblings and their uncountable 
> number of children, said he became even more frustrated when he looked 
> up the Home Shopping Network and saw huge numbers of spring cleaning 
> ideas for the home. ‘We are 1798 people crowded into one small house, 
> like many people in the southern district,’ he said. ‘And you see on 
> Home Shopping Network how they have the best solutions for mess and 
> free shipping.’ Bahraini activists have encouraged people to take a 
> look at the crafts section of the website, which has $5 shipping on 
> Cricut machines.
>
> *ISRAEL* – The Arab TV network Al Jazeera has a big team covering 
> Israel today. They frequently report Israeli incursions on Palestinian 
> towns, illegal settlements on Palestinian land, Israeli killings, 
> torture and illegal detention of Palestinians as well as Israel’s 
> continual transgression of international law. I will ignore this and 
> focus on a few incidents of domestic housekeeping (and include a 
> completely irrelevant reference to Google maps!) in order to prop up 
> my theory and ignore the fact that if Egyptians are in any way 
> inspired by anything that happens in Israel, it is their ability to 
> identify with Israeli oppression of the Palestinians. When you write a 
> column for the New York Times and your name is Thomas Friedman, well, 
> that’s what you do.
>
> *THE COOPER’S HILL CHEESE-ROLLING AND WAKE NEAR GLOUCESTER* – 
> Gloucester and Egypt both have G in their names. Today Gloucester is 
> the host of this event and Egypt is still living on foreign aid. What 
> do you think Egyptians thought when they watched the dazzling opening 
> ceremony of the 2008 Cheese-Rolling competition? It was another 
> wake-up call – “in a way that America or the West could never be” – 
> telling young Egyptians that something was very wrong with their 
> supermarkets, argues Whata Loadofbollox, who teaches recreational pot 
> pourri mixing.
>
> *THE MUBARAK FACTOR* – Former Egyptian president Hosny Mubarak 
> introduced a new form of government thirty years ago, something I, and 
> others, have dubbed “enlightened Western-friendly leader” and others 
> call “oppressive, corrupt dictator in bed with the West”. It says: 
> judge me on my foreign policy towards Israel, not how I treat my own 
> people. Every Arab could relate to this. Chinese had to give up 
> freedom but got economic growth and decent government in return. Arabs 
> had to give up freedom and got the Arab-Israeli conflict and my 
> columns and books in return.
>
> Add it all up and what does it say? It says you have a major US 
> newspaper whose editor either has low standards or is taking 
> backhanders so that my stuff gets published. It says that I am a huge, 
> pompous twat. And it says that the difference between a good day a bad 
> day for informed New York Times readers will continue to hinge on 
> whether they open the opinion section and see my face staring out 
> smugly at them.
>
>
>
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