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The diary of a Saudi man, currently living in the United Kingdom, where the Religious Police no longer trouble him for the moment.

In Memory of the lives of 15 Makkah Schoolgirls, lost when their school burnt down on Monday, 11th March, 2002. The Religious Police would not allow them to leave the building, nor allow the Firemen to enter.

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Little Green Footballs 

A reader has asked my opinion of this blog. I feel humble - after all, we're talking about a Major League blog here. Nevertheless, with all due deference, here are my thoughts.

1. The original posts by the owner, Charles, are a very useful source of examples of idiotic behavior by Muslim extremists and their sympathisers. Clearly he is putting forward his own world view, and I have no argument with that; aren't we all?

2. What I do find off-putting about LGF is the behavior of its camp-followers. Each original post is followed by hundreds of comments. While a few of these are original, witty, even insightful, the overwhelming majority are repetitious one-liners that just agree with everyone else. I just don't see the point of their "contributions". They remind me of my Uncle and his cronies sitting round drinking coffee and smoking their sheesha pipes, discussing the ills of the world. Someone would say the same thing he said yesterday, and the rest would say "Yes", "That's right", "I know", more or less in turn. Same thing yesterday, same thing tomorrow. You wonder why they don't have anything more pressing to do, like a job or a family or a game of golf, than write "bastards" or "right on" for the nth time. Perhaps they all need reassurance that other people think like them.

Thankfully it's not registering any new commentors, so at least the tedious repetition is contained.

3. Just as you can go to some Muslim sites and see the true "dark side" of Islam, down in its depths you can see the alternative "dark side". Comments along the lines of "Let's round up all the Middle East in one large camp and rape all the women and eat all the children and then nuke all the rest" keep popping up. I don't know how serious they are, but some of the contributors do seem to view genocide as a solution to any conflict. Sometimes it reads like a porno site for wannabe war criminals. Genocide didn't work for Hitler, nor for Slobodan Milosevich, not even in Central Africa, but they obviously get really excited talking about it.

4. As a result of all the commentors agreeing with each other, there's no real debate. There's never any sense of balance either. No doubt if Pope Benedict went in there and repeated his comment that there's often little difference between Palestinian terrorists and the Israeli Army when it comes to indiscriminate deaths of civilians, they'd jump all over him and call him a "Birkenstock-wearing, Tofu-eating, tree-hugger" - (this being a Mantra to ward off anyone to the left of Darth Vader, same as garlic and crosses for vampires). There's little room for "on the one hand ... on the other". It's a very flat and one-dimensional world where everything is simple and there are no complications or ambiguities.

So I go there for news sources. But stimulating debate or insight - forget it.

Posted by: alhamedi / 2:43 AM|

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