Monday, May 23, 2005

More postcards from Iraq (or, "You won't see this on FOX") The caption for this Associated Press photo is: "The brother of the driver cries out over his brother's body at Yarmouk hospital, after Maj. Gen. Wael al-Rubaei, director of the National Security Ministry's operations room, and his driver were assassinated by two carloads of gunmen in a drive-by shooting on their way to work in Baghdad's Mansour district in Iraq [today]. State employees and security forces have been prime targets of insurgents bent on disrupting the U.S.-backed Iraqi government. (AP Photo/Mohammed Uraibi)" The caption for this Associated Press photo is: "Nori Abdul Hussein, 4 years old, lies on a hospital bed [today] in Baghdad's al-Yarmouk hospital after being injured when a car bomb blew up outside the Abul-Fadl Abbas Shiite mosque in Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, killing at least 10 people at about the time worshippers would go to a mosque for sunset prayers.... (AP Photo/Haidar Fatehi)" The child's sibling, 6-year-old Ali Abdul Hussein, also was injured in the bomb blast and was treated at the al-Yarmouk hospital, as shown in the AP photo below: Above: The caption for this AFP photo is: "A worker from the destroyed Habaybna restaurant cries at the news that his friend, a tea vendor, was killed [today] in an explosion at the restaurant in this predominantly Shiite Muslim neighborhood in Baghdad. Nineteen people were killed in a new spate of car bombings in Iraq, including eight in a blast that ripped through a Baghdad restaurant packed with lunchtime customers. (AFP/Ahmad al-Rubaye)" The caption for this Reuters photo is: "Iraqi women mourn for relatives wounded in a car-bomb attack at a restaurant in Baghdad [today]. Al-Qaeda's wing in Iraq said it was behind the assassination of a security official [today], according to an Internet posting. 'Your brothers in ... [the] squadron of Al-Qaeda Organization for Holy War in Iraq killed Wael Rubaie, head of the operations room in the Ministry of State for National Security, as he headed to work in central Baghdad and his driver was also killed,' said a group statement on an Islamist Web site. Photo by Faleh Kheiber/Reuters"  The caption for this Reuters photo is: "A man is comforted by relatives in hospital after being wounded by a suicide truck bomb near the northern Iraqi town of Kirkuk [today]. Guerrillas seeking to topple Iraq's new government exploded a suicide truck bomb outside a mayor's office and shot a security official [today], killing at least seven people in an escalating campaign of violence. Reuters/Slahaldeen Rasheed" The Reuters photo below is of another victim of the same bomb. The caption for this Reuters photo is: "Men wait at the hospital for the body of a relative killed by a suicide truck bomb near the northern Iraq town of Kirkuk [today].... Reuters/Slahaldeen Rasheed" Yup. I'm pretty sure that it's Newsweek's fault that so many Muslims hate us.  9:21:09 PM    Comments []

Above: In a Mexican government photo, Al Sharpton shakes hands with Mexico President Vicente Fox at the Los Pinos presidential residence in Mexico City today. Sharpton visited Fox today to demand an apology from him for having made a remark that Sharpton and others incorrectly claim was "racist." Below: A publicity-shy Sharpton oh-so-reluctantly talks to the press after his meeting with Fox. Associated Press photo Memo to Al: Get a life, get a blog, get something... So is this what the civil rights movement has come to? Al Sharpton is like a superhero -- maybe we can call him Blackman -- who, when he sees in the night sky the signal of possible racism in progress -- maybe the signal can be the pointy-headed silouette of a KKK member -- he rushes to the scene to set everything right again? Don't get me wrong. I kind of like Al Sharpton. I like his fighting spirit. Journalists can count on him for colorful quotes. I was photographed with him back in January and I wouldn't be photographed with someone I thought evil, like traitor and war criminal George W. Bush or any of his fellow traitors and war criminals, such as Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld or Condoleezza Rice. But I don't see what good Sharpton is doing for civil rights, for blacks or for anyone or for anything when he rushes to the scene of a real or imagined racially related slight and bullheadedly demands an apology, such as he demanded today from Mexico President Vicente Fox, who recently made the politically incorrect but true statement that Mexicans come to the United States to do jobs that even blacks won't do. (The fact is that Mexicans come to the United States to do jobs that no one else will do.) Professional victim Sharpton (hey, he makes house calls, even to Mexico!) called Fox's assertion that his remark was misinterpreted as racist a "double insult of acting like I'm stupid on top of being one of the peons that 'won't even' do certain work." Well, you're acting stupid, Al. Get over yourself. You're no fucking victim. You're quite comfortable, from all appearances. Sharpton huffed of Fox, who understandably has refused to apologize for having made a racist remark when he never made a racist remark, "I absolutely will always, every time I see him, say: 'You should apologize. You owe us an apology.'" Gee, Sharpton is a reverend who doesn't know anything about the Christian concept of forgiveness. That's swell. I wish that Al would stop acting as self-appointed international representative of the United States, demanding an apology from the head of another nation, especially when the United States is notorious for refusing to fucking apologize to anyfuckingone for anyfuckingthing -- even the slaughter of thousands of innocent Iraqis based upon a bold-faced lie so that Halliburton and other war-profiteering subsidiaries of BushCheneyCorp can profit obscenely from the spilled blood of innocents. I'll give Sharpton the benefit of the doubt that every time he rushes to the scene of a real or perceived incident of racism his primary goal is not self-promotion. I'll assume that he really cares about blacks. Fine. So if he really wants to help blacks, he should stop role-modeling the mentality of victimization. I know of no instance in which a victim mentality ever helped anyone, in which a victim mentality ever made anyone stronger. 8:26:35 PM    Comments []