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From: Jan Straathof <janstr@xxxxxxx>
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Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 21:39:12 +0100
Hi Bob, you wrote:
>Somehow I get the impression that you get your view of the world from
>Al-Jazeera.
Somehow i find this remark unfair, unless you think that f.i. Celan,
Levinas, Blanchot, the Sophists, Wallerstein and others which i
called upon in my postings of the last couple of weeks, are all part
of Al-Jazeera's network too.
Oh yeh, sure, i visit the Al-Jazeera website regularly, as i do visit
Asian sites, Israelian sites, Palestinian Sites, British sites, and Russian,
German, Frence and a lot of US sites (the wonders of cyberspace :-).
To get some understanding (view) of our complex and fragmentating
world, i try to access an as broad as personally possible (but of course
inevitably biased) spectrum of information sources. To find some truth
one has to filter out the lies and propaganda. This process of filtering
(decontamination in Rene's words) works best imho when different
accounts from different perspectives are compared with and layered
on each other. And further, personal experiences of travelling and
visiting have a lot of truth to offer. So maybe it's true that i'm a bit
'Arab/Islam biased' at the moment, but i hold the Arab/Islam world
quite dear. Over the years have travelled through Morocco, Algeria,
Niger, Tunesia, Egypt, Turkey and these journeys made me appreciate
this people and their culture very much. [And don't tell me about their
regimes, i know enough of that, i've lived in the locale, stayed at the
homes of students, farmers, musicians and teachers.] What biases me
is that somehow i know and feel how most of them are feeling and
thinking of this war in Iraq, namely, very angry and humiliated.
It makes me sad, this war was not neccesary.
yours,
Jan
ps. afaik Ahmed has no connections with Al-Jaz, and neither are they
specifically mentioned in the book. Yet Bob, what is your view of his
chapters 4 and 5 on 9/11, OK you can reject all his speculations, but
still we're left with a host of unanswered questions don't you think ?
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