Hossam el-Hamalawy's Library tagged Racism →  View Popular

Brian resorts to the oldest trick of Western journalists like Jeffrey Goldberg: to cite a token native who voices a racist or judgmental view against all natives

Yes, Brian. Go ahead and believe that if it makes you feel better. Go ahead and believe that Arab parents electrocute the genitals of their children and pull their fingernails, when they misbehave. Go ahead and believe that the father of the family leaves dead bodies of his children hanging from electricity poles. Go ahead and believe that Arab parents starve to death their children. And you believe that the Western family is not "patriarchal and authoritarian"? Brian Whitaker: are you aware how you seem to be channeling Raphael Patai? Also, he seems too inclined to make sweeping unsubstantiated generalizations about the people of the region: "Contrary to popular opinion, most human rights abuses in the Arab countries are perpetrated by society rather than regimes." I mean, did you actually think for a second before writing that sentence? Once second?? You believe that the Arab people themselves have killed as the regimes have killed, and have administered torture as the regimes have? Where do you get those gems from? Not even Octavia Nasr. But Whitaker has hope: in blogger. As a blogger, I have no hope in bloggers.

As Nation writer John Nichols correctly pointed out, "Van Jones' exit isn't [a] right-wing win, it's an Obama surrender." Rather than standing on principle in defense of Jones, whose radical background was no secret, Obama threw him under the bus, just as he did Rev. Jeremiah Wright during the campaign last year.

Rather than rallying the majority of the population that voted for him when he promised substantial change, Obama is pandering to the vicious minority of the minority that didn't vote for him.