Metal Reviews

Fine; equating western television adverts with etc etc is crazy. What is there on American television that is on an equal level with that? And don't say Fox News.

thanks for clarifying your position with regards to western media culture.

I'm not even going to bother. I'll just come back in a few months when you decide that, hey, the Israelis were right all along!

would you like a list of television shows which ingrain in american youth the following ideas:
1) capitalism is good
2) brown people are a-ok to bomb

or would you like to make smarmy remarks with little basis in reality some more

Children, not teenagers, but sure, show me a list of tv shows that do that.

Okay.

Let's take... GI Joe. Everything on Joe's side is good and wonderful, and everything on the side of Cobra Commander is evil and not for really any good reason, either; Cobra Commander's evil is banal and inexplicable. He is evil... because he is evil. GI Joe and his friends are good because they are good. They are NATO; Cobra Commander is Warsaw Pact.

That show promotes the idea, very ingrained in American culture, that the only acceptable violence is State Violence, violence which is sanctioned by America as morally without question. Violence from other sources is considered alien and repugnant, or morally bankrupt.

Now, other such examples: I think Disney films go without saying. Note, for example, the relative 'whiteness' of Aladdin to the ethnic features of Jafar, and Aladdin's lack of accent. Hell, the original intro song to Aladdin bespoke of the barbaric lunacy of the Middle East, with the line where they cut off your hand, if they don't like your face.

Look also at Anastasia, a film which is blatantly pro-monarchy by any measure, portraying the last Romanov as a great guy who was just misunderstood and represented badly by the evil communists who appealed to man's baser nature.

Pretty much all Disney movies are rooted in the dichotomous opposition of 'good, IE: American' and 'other,' I shouldn't really have to point that out or write paragraphs about it when they're all breathtakingly obvious.

Hell, look at modern kids' movies: The Incredibles is Ayn Rand fellatio.

Must I go on?

Well you've widened the goalposts considerable; I'm not denying that a lot of Disney films, especially the older ones, are far from PC and all but racist. As for GI Joe, I think you're going a bit far although admittedly I've never seen it; what about Lord Of The Rings, with the fair-skinned elves and the dark-skinned orcs? All fairy tales have explicitly clear good v evil elements to them, and equating that to Palestinian children being taught to hate Jews is a bit of a stretch imho.

I could mention that American children are less likely to grow up to be terrorists, but I'm not going to fall in the trap of equating the US army with terrorism and kicking off a shitstorm when the other Yank posters wake up.

That's not even slightly comparable, considering that in GI Joe the GI Joes are... AMERICAN, and the Cobra Commander-types are agents of the 'other.' Would you consider there to be a propagandist undercurrent to Lord of the Rings if it took place in America in the 1950s and the Hobbits were American spies that had to take the One Nuke of Power back to the frozen depths of Siberia where it had been forged under the watchful eye of Lord Stalin?

The US Army is a terrorist organization; it's just state-sponsored terrorism, which is considered legitimate by the international community, and I would argue that US kids are far more likely to grow up and join the army than, say, Iraqi kids are likely to grow up and join Al-Qaeda In Mesopotamia.

Except that the US army is (in theory) subject to the regulations of Congress and the International Community.

Thanks for saying in theory, it saves the trouble of me pointing out that the US Army is in no way obligated to obey any of these regulations or bodies of representation and to pretend otherwise is fallacious and ignorant.

It's no different from Boy's Own/Commando-type stories we get over here! Boys play with tanks, girls with dolls. And I'm saying there are all sorts of undertones to LOTR.

And as mentioned, I'm not touching America = terrorism, but I will say that the average Palestinian kid is more likely to join a militia than US kids are to join the army.

I wonder what kind of employment opportunity there is in Gaza compared to the USA.

So it's not their fault because they're ignorant and oppressed?

You're so good at making strawmen out of my statements; are you taking lessons from me?

No, I would argue that if I'd grown up in Gaza I would have joined Hamas at the age of 15 after Israel blew up my school and then the hospital where my parents were getting treated for the wounds they received when extremist settlers beat the shit out of them and burned down their house and the IDF justified it because 'there were combatants in that hospital; it was being used as a missile launching base,' and accompanied the press release of this statement with a video of another hospital three years ago.

I would argue that in a population of the actively, visibly oppressed, there are always revolutionaries, and the character of these revolutionaries may differ but at base they want to smash the state and build something better out of the ashes.

I would argue that in this oppressed population there are fewer distractions; Big Brother doesn't sing and dance so much and they can see more clearly because it's right in front of their face.

And they do what they can to end it.

What about moving to Israel and joining their army? You get a job, get to kill things, and are less likely to die.

From my western, liberal, nonviolent greeny point of view, growing up to commit more violence as a result of the violence that has been done to you is not the best way forwards. No argument about Israel being complete and utter shits, and I'm not saying that I wouldn't have chosen violence were I born in that place, with that happening to me.

But the Palestinian cause would be far more acceptable to far more people if they didn't do things like send children out to throw stones at tanks, use suicide bombers and have open antisemetic propaganda for their children (say what you like about GI Joe, it was nowhere near as blunt) not to mention Islam's treatment of women. One can't just embrace the lesser of two evils like this.

Yeah, name me one non-violent revolution that actually changed things in the face of a world that is mostly or entirely deposed against you and a state actor that is the very definition of brutal modern oppression.

(PS: If you use India as an example, I will be forced to laugh until I die, and the Civil Rights Movement is not even slightly applicable to this situation)

GI Joe is not as bloody blunt because the people producing it are far more adept at producing subtle propaganda than Hamas is; for the most part, Hamas is new to propaganda. Give them time! eventually the anti-semitism ingrained in their work will be as subtle as the anti-semitism in the comic strip Mallard Fillmore.

The suffragette movement?

Of course. Also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvet_Revolution

And India and the Civil Rights movement are applicable, as was that guy in California protesting workers' rights... Chavez someone? I could mention the monk that burnt himself and the likes of Bobby Sands, too. All too often the nonviolent elements in revolutions are squashed by the ones that want violence, but they have more impact than a violent world likes to admit.

and kill your relatives and friends?