ShrinkWrapped

The Reavers of Islam

People recognize that when we try to communicate with each other, our tools of language and image are almost always inadequate to convey our full meaning, and at the same time, convey multiple meanings that we do not consciously intend.  The War on Terror, also known as the War on Isalmofascism, is being shaped by these meta-communications in ways that some of the main players seem not to recognize.

Yesterday,  Apollon Zamp guest blogged at Gates of Vienna, and in his post The Reavers' Jihad explicitly compared Islam to the marauders of the Firefly series.  The comparison may be an exaggeration, and may be based on a limited view of Islam, however it is a view that the proponents of Jihad have been assiduously advancing and in this our MSM have been complicit.  Here is Apollon Zamp's description of Reavers:

For those not familiar with the TV show “Firefly” and its subsequent film production, Serenity, the story line includes a savage breed of beings known as Reavers. Since the Firefly universe is set five hundred years in the future, one might — on a steady diet of Star Trek and other such sci-fi favorites — expect danger to come in the form of alien life. However, danger comes instead in the form of the Beast Within — the savage side of man’s nature that in civilized cultures is held in check by proper social conditioning, an instilled sense of morality, and regulation of the id by the superego.

What are they Thinking?

Sometimes news stories appear that make me scratch my head and wonder, "What are they thinking?"

This morning I took a five minute break from FNS to watch a few minutes of Meet the Press, where  Tim Russert had Madeline Albright and Lindsey Graham as guests.  (I don't have a transcript and may have some details wrong, but the meaning is clear.) Russert asked Lindsey Graham what could be done to increase the level of civility of discourse in politics.  Graham answered that it would help if the opposition stopped claiming that Bush lied, and Cheney lied, as a start.  When Russert passed the question along to Albright, she couldn't do it.  She looked down at the table and nearly sotto voce, said she wondered why Bush and Cheney had misstated the intelligence.  Russert persisted and quoted her own words back to her, to the effect that Saddam Hussein had WMD and added that she was part of the Clinton administration when regime change was voted on by the Senate to be official policy of the United States; was she repudiating that now?  Her response was that they had Hussein in a box and the threat of WMD was not imminent. (This has been proven repeatedly to be a real "lie" used by the opposition to discredit the admin; Bush said we needed to act before the threat became "imminent".)   Does she really believe what she is saying despite all the evidence of how the UN (Oil for Food scandal that most of the MSM and Democrats have apparently slept through) was corrupted by Hussein and how the Iraqi embargo was failing? Add in, can she really believe she was lied to about the intelligence when she was part of an administration which, while in office, apparently believed the same intelligence and was even more extreme in their rhetoric that the Bush administration was?  It is a puzzle and I am stumped and I wonder: What are they thinking?

Next, I bring to you the new Hollywood blockbuster, Brokeback Mountain.  Apparently, the critics love the movie.