Wednesday 27 July 2011

Initial reactions to the attacks in Norway showed a "clash of civilisations" exists, but not in the way many understood.

[..] This tragedy underlines the urgency with which normal people around the world must combat fundamentalist nationalists and chauvinists wherever they may be. But it also demonstrates the extent to which reactionary bigotry has infected mainstream thought.


Many reacted to the news from Oslo with wide eyes and a pointed finger. The most animated reactionaries took to the pages of the New York Times comment section to issue sweeping proclamations about the Clash of Civilisations and something called "the cult of death". In many ways, readers were merely reinforcing the paper's woefully editorialised reportage. As Glenn Greenwald helpfully pointed out, the editors of the NYT - America's allegedly liberal newspaper - reserve the word "terrorist" solely for use in conjunction with the word "Muslim".


When news emerged that the perpetrator of the murders - the terrorist - was a man whose religion and skin pigmentation closely resembled those of the editors of the NYT, the story changed. The terrorist became a deranged "Christian extremist" whose tactics clearly mirrored "Al Qaeda's brutality and multiple attacks". In that way, the paper linked the terrorist with Muslims, despite his strong antipathy for them. [..]

But the combatants are not Islam and the West. Instead, the war is between the normal, sane people of the world and the right-wing zealots who see doom, destruction, hellfire and God's Will at every turn. [..]


These men are insecure, violently inclined, and illiberal. The outside world scares them. They hate homosexuals and strong women. For them, difference is a source of insecurity. Their values are militarism, conformism, chauvinism and jingoism. Worst of all they seek to pressure us into compliance while they work frantically to destroy themselves - and the rest of us with them. [..]

It is a credit to the Norwegian people that their prime minister did not respond to the terror attack with scorched-earth rhetoric or a carpet-bombing campaign. A real liberal with strong principles, he did not succumb to fear or vicious speculation.


Instead, he pledged to strengthen Norwegian democracy. This is what he said shortly after the terrorist attacks: "Our answer is more democracy, more openness to show that we will not be stopped by this kind of violence." His words illustrate the difference between a society that takes liberal principles as a foundation and one that treats them as an inconvenient luxury.




Friday 22 July 2011

National Geographic`s 2010 Photo Contest

A sample of the fantastic pictures:



more here

Towards understanding 'the other'

"Rageh Omaar (play /ˈræɡi ˈmɑː/SomaliRaage OomaarArabicراجح عمر‎), (born 19 July 1967) is a Somali born British journalist and writer. 
His latest book Only Half of Me deals with the tensions between these two sides of his identity. He used to be a BBC world affairs correspondent, where he made his name reporting from Iraq. In September 2006, he moved to a new post at Al Jazeera English, where he presented the nightly weekday documentary series Witness until January 2010. The Rageh Omaar Report, first aired February 2010, is a new one-hour, monthly investigative documentaries in which Rageh Omaar reports on the world's most important current affairs stories."


I like the way he explains things, the variety of points of views he gets in his reporting without judging, and above all his very human approach to any subject matter. In these episodes, precisely because of the two sides of his identity he tries to explore notions of history and depict reality as perceived by many. Understanding differences and bridging divides is important. The first step in any case, is to be informed.