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2005-07-08 Home Front: WoT
If It's a Muslim Problem, It Needs a Muslim Solution
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Posted by tu3031 2005-07-08 12:33|| || Front Page|| [11128 views since 2007-05-07]  Top

#1 I call bullsh*t. Let's try this exercise:

If it's a Nazi problem, it needs a Nazi solution.
If it's a Communism problem, it needs a Communist solution.

Um, no. No, I don't think so at all.
Posted by BH 2005-07-08 12:39||   2005-07-08 12:39|| Front Page Top

#2 Friedman. Heh.
Posted by .com 2005-07-08 12:50||   2005-07-08 12:50|| Front Page Top

#3 "In part, it's [disturbing] because one assault may have involved a suicide bomber, bringing this terrible jihadist weapon into the heart of a major Western capital."

I hate to ask a stupid question, but isn't that exactly what the 9/11 attackers did? Where the hell have you been all this time, Friedman?

"The Muslim village has been derelict in condemning the madness of jihadist attacks."

No shit, Sherlock; did you just now figure that out, all on your own? That's brilliant, Thomas!

Jesus... how the hell do we ever survive?
Posted by Dave D. 2005-07-08 13:27||   2005-07-08 13:27|| Front Page Top

#4 We WON'T survive if we depend on the Thomas L. Friedmans.
Posted by Tom 2005-07-08 13:32||   2005-07-08 13:32|| Front Page Top

#5 Where the hell is my ClueBat? This guy needs a good whack.
Posted by mmurray821 2005-07-08 13:35||   2005-07-08 13:35|| Front Page Top

#6 Where the hell have you been all this time, Friedman?

Taking either cash or flattery from the Saudis.
Posted by Robert Crawford">Robert Crawford  2005-07-08 14:04|| http://www.kloognome.com/]">[http://www.kloognome.com/]  2005-07-08 14:04|| Front Page Top

#7 If it's a "muslim problem", why are there so many dead Jews, Christians, Hindus, etc. in its wake?

This is a GLOBAL problem, and the sooner the world takes definitive action to solve it, the better. But that won't happen with all the apologists and fifth-columnists like Friedman pussy-footing and navel-gazing.
Posted by Dar">Dar  2005-07-08 14:22||   2005-07-08 14:22|| Front Page Top

#8 While we're bashing Friedman, it's worth pointing out this amazingly funny and harsh review of his new book "The World Is Flat."
'HTTP://www.nypress.com/18/16/news&columns/taibbi.cfm'

A few highlights:

"I'll give you an example, drawn at random from The World Is Flat. On page 174, Friedman is describing a flight he took on Southwest Airlines from Baltimore to Hartford, Connecticut. (Friedman never forgets to name the company or the brand name; if he had written The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa would have awoken from uneasy dreams in a Sealy Posturepedic.) Here's what he says:

"I stomped off, went through security, bought a Cinnabon, and glumly sat at the back of the B line, waiting to be herded on board so that I could hunt for space in the overhead bins.

"Forget the Cinnabon. Name me a herd animal that hunts. Name me one."

. . .

"The significance of Columbus's discovery was that on a round earth, humanity is more interconnected than on a flat one. On a round earth, the two most distant points are closer together than they are on a flat earth. But Friedman is going to spend the next 470 pages turning the "flat world" into a metaphor for global interconnectedness. Furthermore, he is specifically going to use the word round to describe the old, geographically isolated, unconnected world.

"Let me... share with you some of the encounters that led me to conclude that the world is no longer round," he says. He will literally travel backward in time, against the current of human knowledge.

"To recap: Friedman, imagining himself Columbus, journeys toward India. Columbus, he notes, traveled in three ships; Friedman "had Lufthansa business class." When he reaches India—Bangalore to be specific—he immediately plays golf. His caddy, he notes with interest, wears a cap with the 3M logo. Surrounding the golf course are billboards for Texas Instruments and Pizza Hut. The Pizza Hut billboard reads: "Gigabites of Taste." Because he sees a Pizza Hut ad on the way to a golf course, something that could never happen in America, Friedman concludes: "No, this definitely wasn't Kansas."

"After golf, he meets Nilekani, who casually mentions that the playing field is level. A nothing phrase, but Friedman has traveled all the way around the world to hear it. Man travels to India, plays golf, sees Pizza Hut billboard, listens to Indian CEO mutter small talk, writes 470-page book reversing the course of 2000 years of human thought."

. . .

"Let's speak Friedmanese for a moment and examine just a few of the notches on these antlers (Friedman, incidentally, measures the flattening of the world in notches, i.e. "The flattening process had to go another notch"; I'm not sure where the notches go in the flat plane, but there they are.) Flattener #1 is actually two flatteners, the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the spread of the Windows operating system. In a Friedman book, the reader naturally seizes up in dread the instant a suggestive word like "Windows" is introduced; you wince, knowing what's coming, the same way you do when Leslie Nielsen orders a Black Russian. And Friedman doesn't disappoint. His description of the early 90s:

"The walls had fallen down and the Windows had opened, making the world much flatter than it had ever been—but the age of seamless global communication had not yet dawned.

"How the fuck do you open a window in a fallen wall? More to the point, why would you open a window in a fallen wall? Or did the walls somehow fall in such a way that they left the windows floating in place to be opened?

"Four hundred and 73 pages of this, folks. Is there no God?"
Posted by Tibor 2005-07-08 14:32||   2005-07-08 14:32|| Front Page Top

#9 ROFLMAO!!!

Oh man, my face hurts, lol!

When will he review a Krugman book?

Thx, Tibor - Best Laugh of the Day!
Posted by .com 2005-07-08 14:49||   2005-07-08 14:49|| Front Page Top

#10 if he had written The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa would have awoken from uneasy dreams in a Sealy Posturepedic.

Heh, that gets *my* vote for Snark O' The Day. I used to regard Friedman as a voice of reason on the Middle East, but lately he is becoming a real asshat.

True, it is a Muslim problem and needs a Muslim solution to make Islam compatible with the modern world. However, due to the nature of radical Islam, anyone resembling a Martin Luther attempting an Islamic Reformation will find himself fatwahed and whacked in short order.

Since this is also an intolerable Western problem - Exhibit A being the corpses and burnt wreckage - with no Muslim solution in sight, the West will need to fix it. Sadly, this will involve killing a lot of people. The only question in my mind is how long it will take for the rest of the Muslim world to get on board and whether Islam will end up marginalized or extinct before that happens.

Posted by SteveS 2005-07-08 15:01||   2005-07-08 15:01|| Front Page Top

#11 I have seen Friedman interacting with Muslims. He is to busy fellating them to explain them. NYT scum and on the other side.
Posted by Sock Puppet 0’ Doom 2005-07-08 15:13||   2005-07-08 15:13|| Front Page Top

#12 Which door do you want?
1 2 3
Seems Friedman believes in #2.
Its going to be a long long wait TOM!
Better get a lounge chair and some Saudi coffee. Oh , while your at it convert now.
Posted by 3dc 2005-07-08 15:13||   2005-07-08 15:13|| Front Page Top

#13 I agree that Friedman is somewhat dense but he is influential and maybe, just maybe he has begun to see what Islam has become and begun to realize it hasn't become what he had imagined it to be.
Posted by mhw 2005-07-08 15:32||   2005-07-08 15:32|| Front Page Top

#14 Well if this whole Muslim jihad thing needs a Muslim solution, they had best get to working on a good one asap. A non-Muslim solution isn't likely to be something Muslims would be too happy with, I'm sure.
Posted by Bomb-a-rama 2005-07-08 15:44||   2005-07-08 15:44|| Front Page Top

#15 It is a Muslim problem. It is our problem to motivate Muslims to solve it.
Posted by gromgoru 2005-07-08 20:02||   2005-07-08 20:02|| Front Page Top

00:13 Bomb-a-rama
23:53 Jan
23:37 Redneck
23:35 Barbara Skolaut
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23:13 11A5S
23:06 Frank G
22:41 Mike
22:38 Seafarious
22:35 Dave D.
22:23 Unomomp Snesing6221
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21:56 Pappy
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21:42 had enough
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21:10 Tom
21:00 3dc









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