aw. RE: The Nobel Prize for War 2009 goes to ...

[John Carvill]

<< Amazon.com review:
"A high-profile action/exploitation thriller set in the present, The
Siege is really a fantasy that extrapolates from major terrorist
attacks.
>>

Come on! How likely is that? Pffffffffft!

<< New Yorker Review:

"New York is terrorized by Islamic militants. Bombs go off everywhere;
casualties climb into the hundreds; no one can go shopping.  >>


Heh. The New Yorker gives a positive review to a New Yorker Contributor's film?

"New York is terrorized by Islamic militants."

Right there you have a problem. Do they mean Islamist militants? Big
difference between Islamist and just Islamic.

Hey, Wright can at least call his movie 'prescient' in that it posits
what may happen after a major terror attack. Then again, there'd
already been an attempt on the Twin Towers prior to 'The Siege' being
made. I visited New York not long after that first attempt and
remember standing on top of the tower, thinking about that.......

My memory of 'The Siege', aside from it being the usual Hollywood
junk, is that it was populated by quite offensively stereotyped
characters. I'm not about to subject myself to another viewing, but I
do accept that my views might change if I did, who knows.

I live in the UK, not the US, so I really don't have any idea of how
day to day life feels over there, with regard to the distinction
between 'Islamic' and 'Islamist'. But I know that it's become
dangerously muddied over here since 9/11. Quite a few public figures,
on 'the Left', have swung hard to the Right, and many have embraced a
sort of politically macho Islamophobia which will prove very harmful
to us all in the long run.

I've heard otherwise sane and balanced people, on programmes such as
'Newsnight', etc., make casual conversational reference to "the
Muslims", and it makes me shudder. Cast your mind back a bit and
replace 'the Muslims' with 'the Jews', or 'the Blacks', or - as
someone pointed out to me, most relevantly to us up until quite
recently, there were of course, 'the Irish'.