Bush, Killing an Arab

by redjade Sat Aug 12, 2006 17:05

The Cure:
'Killing An Arab'
I can turn
And walk away
Or I can fire the gun
Staring at the sky
Staring at the sun
Whichever I chose
It amounts to the same
Absolutely nothing

I'm alive
I'm dead
I'm the stranger
Killing an arab

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/cure/killinganarab.html

by redjade Sat Aug 12, 2006 17:08

The Cure's
Killing an Arab
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_an_Arab
'Composer Robert Smith has said that the song "was a short poetic attempt at condensing my impression of the key moments in L'Étranger (The Stranger) by Albert Camus"'

"The Pet Goat" (erroneously known as "My Pet Goat")
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pet_Goat

Plot:
'"The Pet Goat" is the story of a girl's pet goat which eats everything in its path. The girl's parents want to get rid of the goat, but she defends it. In the end, the goat becomes a hero when it butts a car robber into submission.'

by redjade Sat Aug 12, 2006 17:14

President Discusses American and European Alliance in Belgium
Brussels, Belgium
February 21, 2005
'We know there are many obstacles, and we know the road is long. Albert Camus said that, "Freedom is a long-distance race." We're in that race for the duration -- and there is reason for optimism.'
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/02/2005022....html

——————

Ronald Aronson
the author of
Camus and Sartre:
The Story of a Friendship and the Quarrel that Ended It.
writes....

The quote, "freedom is a long-distance race," was ripped from its context, one that establishes beyond doubt that Camus' words were not meant straightforwardly. No, a careful reading makes clear they were intended as a spoof of the thought of his former good friend, Jean-Paul Sartre.

[....]

The paragraph from which the president quoted begins by having Clamence extolling slavery, as Camus believed Sartre had done by aligning himself with the French Communist Party. Then Camus has Clamence condemn himself of hypocrisy, for which Camus criticized Sartre in his journal, by saying that that he "was always talking of freedom. At breakfast I used to spread it on my toast, I used to chew it all day long, and in company my breath was delightfully redolent of freedom. With that key word I would bludgeon whoever contradicted me; I made it serve my desires and my power."

[....]

Camus' character, while sounding resolute and tireless about pursuing freedom, making it seem daunting and thankless but the mark of a true human being, is really prattling on about freedom. He is intimidating people with it, using it for purposes of self-interest and does not at all believe in it. The grand-sounding phrase about freedom being a "long-distance race" is just another piece of flimflam. Camus, a writer who pondered every phrase, every word, might turn in his grave upon hearing Bush misunderstand his meaning.

quoted at
http://afterthepledge.blogspot.com/2005/03/bush-camus-a....html

by redjade Sat Aug 12, 2006 17:16

The Stranger (novel)
[ The Stranger, or The Outsider, (from the French L’Étranger, 1942) is a novel by Albert Camus. ]
The novel tells the story of an alienated man, who eventually commits a murder and waits to be executed for it. The book uses an Algerian setting, drawn from Camus's own upbringing.

[....]

Meursault afterwards goes back to the beach and shoots the Arab once, in response to the glare of the sun. The Arab is killed, but Mersault fires four more times at the dead body.

At the trial, the prosecution focuses on the inability or unwillingness of Meursault to cry at his mother's funeral, considered suspect by the authorities. The killing of the Arab apparently is less important than whether Meursault is capable of remorse. The argument follows that if Meursault is incapable of remorse, he should be considered a dangerous misanthrope and subsequently executed to prevent him from doing it again, and making him an example to those considering murder.

As the novel comes to a close, Meursault meets with a chaplain, and is enraged by his insistence that he turn to God. The novel ends with Meursault recognizing the universe's indifference for humankind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stranger_(novel)

by Fallujah Sat Aug 12, 2006 20:01

A camera crew followed a marine company into a mosque during the 'battle'
for Fallujah. They filmed a young marine shooting an arab therein.
It was the turning point of that particular aggression-unnoticed by the
beligerents.

Margaret Hassan was assinated in Fallujah.

This took place around the time that Bush took the bible in his right hand
and swore the oath to become president (again).

The old man who was shot had no weapon, the murder happened in a holy place-
it did not alone indicate the bestiality of the axis of US/UK beligerence it
laid it bare.

by Translator Sat Aug 12, 2006 20:48

Fallujah means lake.

http://www.fallujah.us

and:

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article...0.ece

by Flynn - agrescon@agrescon.nl Tue Aug 15, 2006 11:25 agrescon at agrescon dot nl 0031102102055

The Holy Land, has now reached the Politics of King Herod, the Characters of this Unspeakable Abattoir, all taken from the Bible itself are these, Pontious Pilate, I wash my hands of it ! Doubting Thomas, I Dont believe you, and of course Judas Iscariot always avaliable to sell Humanity Out. This Cowboy aproach to Politics will become a Classic,and will sweep the Oscars on its remake, The Ugly,The Grotesque, The Obscene, The Criminal . Flynn OFlynn.

by Mr. Demeanour Fri Aug 18, 2006 16:21

I just can't get my head around the multiple ironies of this throwaway story. And BTW, I suspect that he did read it - the book is very short, and the language in which it's written is almost childishly simple (and anyway, I don't subscribe at all to the popular notion that Bush is a moron).

That Bush would brag about reading a novel by a committed atheist, life-long pacifist and opponent of capital punishment is extremely weird. The protagonist (Meursault) kills an arab youth in the sand for no good reason. He feels no remorse. In fact his lack of affect concerning either his mother's death, the arab that he murders or his own impending execution is the essence of the story; the only thing that provokes an emotional response from him is the priest's urging him to embrace God before his execution (and the response is rage).

It's hard to think of a novel less likely to appear in W's holiday reading list. It's utterly bizarre to see it listed alongside Abe Lincoln. Absurd, in fact; truth, in this case, seems to be more absurd than fiction.

by redjade Wed Aug 23, 2006 19:09

President Bush's Summer Reading List
Provided by the White House Press Office

source: http://www.booktv.org/misc/081706_bush.asp

Quick Red Fox
by John D. MacDonald

The Dreadful Lemon Sky
by John D. MacDonald

After Fidel:
The Inside Story of Castro's Regime and Cuba's Next Leader
by Brian Latell

Challenger Park
by Stephen Harrigan

Flashman at the Charge
by George MacDonald Fraser

Finding Fish:
A Memoir
by Antwone Quenton Fisher

Revolutionary Characters:
What Made the Founders Different
by Gordon S. Wood

The Bridge at Andau
by James Michener

Flash for Freedom
by George MacDonald Fraser

Mayflower : A Story of Courage, Community, and War
by Nathaniel Philbrick

Through a Glass, Darkly :
A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery
by Donna Leon

Manhunt:
The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer
by James L. Swanson

Decision at Sea:
Five Naval Battles that Shaped American History
by Craig L. Symonds

The Big Bam:
The Life and Times of Babe Ruth
by Leigh Montville

Clemente:
The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero
by David Maraniss

American Prometheus:
The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
by Kai Bird & Martin J. Sherwin

The Messenger
by Daniel Silva

The Places in Between
by Rory Stewart

Beach Road
by James Patterson & Peter de Jonge

Lincoln:
A Life of Purpose and Power
by Richard Carwardine

Polio:
An American Story
by David Oshinsky

The Stranger
by Albert Camus

Lincoln's Greatest Speech:
The Second Inaugural
by Ronald C. White, Jr.

Promised Land, Crusader State
by Walter McDougall

Cinnamon Skin:
Travis McGee Mysteries
by John D. MacDonald

Macbeth
by William Shakespeare

Hamlet
by William Shakespeare

by redjade Wed Aug 23, 2006 23:01

redjade note: if you believe fairy tales....

'...perhaps he was just eager to dispel his image as an intellectual lightweight. But President Bush now wants it known that he is a man of letters. In fact, Bush has entered a book-reading competition with Karl Rove, his political adviser. White House aides say the president has read 60 books so far this year (while the brainy Rove, to Bush's competitive delight, has racked up only 50)...'

more at
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060820/28pre...y.htm

—————————

So two of us did the maths tonight.....

60 Books so far this year
7.5 books per month
4 days per book

Ten random books selected from the list:
number of pages in these ten books
320, 288, 304, 416, 400, 336, 208, 304, 124, 288
[looked them up on amazon.com]
average length of books:
298.8 pages

totally guessing but arrived at a somewhat scientific method....
407 words per page

the average book has
121,612 words

or....
7,296,720 words
from all 60 books (on average)

Today: 234 days since year began

20,848 minutes spent to read the 60 books (7,296,720 words - assuming he reads at 350 words per minute)

336960 minutes from 234 days

20,848 / 336,960 = 0.0618708452

0.0618708452 * 24 = 1.48490028

or... 1 and half hours a day reading fiction.

so, YES it is possible that George W Bush has read all 60 books.

note: this maths experiment does not however test for reading comprehension.

* Wikipedia says:
'Educated adults read at 200-350 wpm, at best 400 wpm for full comprehension.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute

by redjade Wed Aug 30, 2006 20:16

WILLIAMS: We always talk about what you're reading. As you know, there was a report that you just read the works of a French philosopher. (Bush laughs)

BUSH: The Stranger.

WILLIAMS: Tell us the back story of Camus.

BUSH: The back story of the the book?

WILLIAMS: What led you to...

BUSH: I was in Crawford and I said I was looking for a book to read and Laura said you oughtta try Camus, I also read three Shakespeare's.

WILLIAMS: This is a change...

BUSH: Not really. Wait a minute.

WILLIAMS: A few months ago you were reading the life story of Joe DiMaggio by Richard Ben Cramer.

BUSH: Which was a good book.

WILLIAMS: You've been on a Teddy Roosevelt reading kick.

BUSH: Well, I'm reading about the battle of New Orleans right now. I’ve got an eclectic reading list.

WILLIAMS: And now Camus?

BUSH: Well, that was a couple of books ago. Let me look. The key for me is to keep expectations low.

full transcript at
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14576012/

watch the video
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/08/30/brian-williams...bush/

'The key for me is to keep expectations low.'

by Ciaron - somewhere in leftfield Wed Aug 30, 2006 21:33

I knocked over Camus's "The Sranger" while a guest of Daddy Bush back in '91 in Oklahoma Federal Prison. All roads may lead to Rome, but all Con Air flights lead to El Reno, Ok.

I had The Cure album for years, without getting around to reading the book....a staple for most French classes (I failed French in ''73...came 91st in a class of 92 13 year olds. The guy who came 92nd couldn't speak English either!)

"The Stranger "is a shorty. I think George Jr. grasped the climax conclsion of the protaganist..."Freedom liesin benign indifference to the universe!" Not a bad existential conclusion, but a bit of a worry when your fingers on the button!

My favourite description of George Sr.'s illuison that he was a self made man is
..... "He (George Sr.) was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple!"
George Jr. of course just bought a baseball team with daddy's money and saved himself the trouble.

by hummm Fri Sep 01, 2006 11:17

commonly referred to as the wimmin.

Intellectually, the chimp likes boys stuff...

a bit like the mainstream media which includes a minority of women writers as a kind of tokenism, a nod to gender equality.

by Curehead Fri Sep 01, 2006 17:47

Hi, went see the cure in Berlin last Summer, they played killing an arab in encore, changing the title and lyrics to 'Kissing an Arab'. Being an anti war actvist and anti-islamophobe i thought that was pretty cool. Anyway all of the albums which contain the song carry and anti-racist sticker pointing out that the song is anti-racist. can't wait for cure's nect album, due out soon.

by redjade Sun Dec 28, 2008 13:26

''Critics of President Bush often refer to him as something less than an intellectual giant, but Republican strategist Karl Rove begs to differ.

According to him, President Bush has read 186 books in the last three years alone.

In a column titled "Bush Is a Book Lover" published in The Wall Street Journal, Rove revealed that he and the president have contested one another in reading since 2006 -- a contest Rove said he won every year, including this one.''

• more at http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Rove_I_defeated_Bush_in_b....html

''But 95 books a year? Wow. That is a lot of time spent curled by the fireplace for the Leader of the Free World.''
• more at http://www.usnews.com/blogs/john-farrell/2008/12/26/bus....html

Rove: There is a myth perpetuated by Bush critics that he would rather burn a book than read one.

by redjade Wed Dec 31, 2008 12:43

Richard Cohen writes...

In his column, Rove says that Bush read 95 books in 2006 alone. In 2007, he read 51 books and as of last week, he had read 40 in 2008. The numbers are precise because Bush challenged Rove to a contest: who could read the most books. Rove always won, but Bush had the ready excuse that he was, as he put it, busy being "Leader of the Free World." This, though, is not an excuse. As Dwight Eisenhower once told me (I'm not making this up), he had more time as president to dabble in painting than he did in retirement. Such is the virtue of The Bubble.

[....]

It is awfully late in the day for Rove -- and, presumably, Bush -- to assert the president's intellectual bona fides. Now feeling the hot breath of history, they are dropping the good ol' boy persona and picking up the ol' bifocals one. But the books themselves reveal -- actually, confirm -- something about Bush that maybe Rove did not intend. They are not the reading of a widely read man, but instead the books of a man who seeks -- and sees -- vindication in every page. Bush has always been the captive of fixed ideas. His books just support that.

The list Rove provides is long, but it is narrow. It lacks whole shelves of books on how and why the Iraq war was a mistake, one that metastasized into a debacle.

the wizard behind the curtain, revealed

by Observer Wed Dec 31, 2008 13:04

No wonder he laughs at Michael Moore!

With reference to the omission of women authors, I think the poster will find that, for whatever reason, very little good history, biography or fiction has been written by women. One for Germaine Greer to puzzle out!

Interviewer also slipped up in throwing in reference to biography of Joe Di Maggio as though any educated person of the world could not be interested in sport AND Camus! Says more about the interviewer than Dubya.