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Last year I lived with one exiled persian ba'hai and two pakistani sunnis. They are anti-american for the same reason that everyone else is. they read znet and chomsky. they are educated and have the internet over there. Like 95% of the world they hate America - news flash- everyone outside of...

haha, sorry, you didn't word it that badly, I just misread it. My apologies I really misconstrued your arguments above. But my basic point remains, if we bother to differentiate all these groups in europe and america as politically significant, then why not do the same for other areas.

Look, I'm not the language police. You can say whatever you want, but in what way does using this sloppy category help anything? If you know what you are talking about then why not say Sunni when you mean Sunni or Shia when you mean Shia. Or Iranian Shia when that is who you're talking about...

Alabama and Manhattan DO have very little in common, as cities/states go. Thats why they are different. They have different laws and different culture, and many in Alabama would rather not be a part of the States. Thats what it means when they fly the confederate flag FYI (history 101, the...

I disagree. Just because "the west" is a cohesive cultural concept, and the word "east" is literally the opposite of "west", it doesn't necessarily make east a cohesive concept. I'm sure you're aware of Said, so I won't bother getting into the exotic "other" and all that. But seriously, it's...

which is a non-entity, a strawman how are saudi arabia and iran in any way part of a single socio-political entity?

Yeah it is unfortunate. She just happened to write a convenient literary strawman that ended up serving as the platform for a debate which had been brewing for a long time. I think she understands, from what I have read she doesn't take it too personally. Even she has joined in bashing White...

yeah, like a younger brother you catch masturbating to Adbusters. then he gets all defensive and calls you a kapitalist konformer.

Yeah, as I said earlier, its not the greatest working definition, as it is often employed to lump together any new authors writing ambitious novels in lively prose. For example, Eggers often gets counted among the hysterical realists, but I really don't see how he is one. He doesn't use a...

I wouldn't say he embodies those things, but that he is clearly an under-acknowledged (because he largely gets ignored by the literary establishment) precursor to the style I was trying to describe. Other people have called it hysterical realism (as opposed to magical realism), but I find that...

A lot of what I re-read consists of books I read as a kid or in high school that went right over my head at the time. I must have read Heart of Darkness by Conrad 4 or 5 times. The first time I read it I was 12 and really into Apocolypse Now. I don't think I understood 5% of it. I couldn't...

In what way am I wrong? The editors of counterpunch obviously read Harper's. It is a certainty that they read that article. then they post an article that takes the basic proposition of the article and sensationalizes it. In what way is any of this incorrect, please elucidate... or just...

I don't think I was being overly harsh. I like junkfood. It's better than being the literary equivalent of gruel: Canadian Literature The problem with Foer is that while he touches on all these BIG TRAGIC EVENTS, he never really does them justice. I really don't think the guy is a very deep...

I agree posting that article was a waste of time. Mostly because it is a garbage article. and I'm almost 100% certain that it is a dumbed down, sensationalized rip-off of an article that appeared in Harper's last month entitled "Army of Altruists". the author argues that liberals (the...

I agree with your friend. Behind the 'cleverness' it's all a bit vapid. Good style desperately lacking anything substantive or new to say. Yeah yeah, him and his brother have a cute relationship, but when you look beyond that to the treatment of any other relationships in the book (the...