British writer, Doris Lessing has imagined a bizarre world where men evolved from women.
Posted on 10/21/2007 12:05:19 PM PDT by MaestroLC
Madrid - Nobel prize winning author Doris Lessing said in an interview published on Sunday that the September 11 attacks had not been "so bad" when compared to Irish Republican Army action.
"September 11 was terrible, but if one re-examines the history of the IRA, what happened in the United States wasn't so bad," Lessing - who captured this year's Nobel literature prize - told Spain's leading El Pais daily.
The IRA waged a lengthy armed struggle against British rule in Northern Ireland. It declared an end to its armed campaign in 2005.
"Some Americans believe I'm crazy. Many people died, two prominent buildings fell, but it was neither as terrible nor so extraordinary as they think," Lessing said of the 2001 attacks in New York and Washington in which about 3 000 people were killed.
In similarly pointed remarks in the Spanish translation, she described former British prime minister Tony Blair as a "little showman" who proved disastrous for Britain and US President George W Bush as a "world calamity".
"Everyone is weary of this man. Either he is stupid or he is very clever," Lessing said of Bush adding that the US leader came from "a social class which has profited from wars".
She told El Pais she had recently finished a book on war.
The 87-year-old British author, who has written about feminism, politics and her childhood in Africa, won the Nobel Prize on October 11.
Along with her epic novels, she is also known for her political views that have embraced Marxist, anti-colonialism, anti-apartheid and feminist causes over the years.
Al Gore?
Is she not smart enough to tell us which it is?
Omitting the damage and deaths at the Pentagon, as well as the plane crash in Pennsylvania. Nice.
On ‘yer bike, Doris...
“Either he is stupid or he is very clever,” Lessing said of Bush”
At least with her there is no choice involved.
JUST STOOOOOPID!
To avoid cognitive dissonance, at various times she chooses one or the other to be true.
“Some Americans believe I’m crazy. “
That’s a 10-4 little buddy.
I’m disappointed in Doris Lessing. She started out as a Communist, but left the party and seemed to be making sense in her later novels. I guess not.
Not to excuse everything the IRA did, they were fighting for Irish liberation from centuries of British oppression. I say that although I am in general an Anglophile.
Also, with very few exceptions, they phoned warnings before bombs went off, and went out of their way to avoid killing innocent civilians. The IRA Provos, a splinter group, were less considerate, but even they were not nearly as evil as al Qaeda.
In recent years the IRA has kept the truce, even though the other side has not kept its promises to let them share power in the government.
bttt
This American thinks you're crazy as a coot, honey. If 3000 dead in two flaming skyscrapers wasn't "extraordinary" then perhaps you might come up with another instance remotely resembling it? No? And if 3000 innocent people dead in a flaming holocaust wasn't "terrible" then what was it?
I wasn’t aware that the IRA killed nearly 3000 people in the space of a few hours.
No sooner than Al Gore wins a Nobel a bunch of the Laureates are revealed to be lunatics.
not to mention 3000+ innocent lives.
More civilians were killed by Muslim extremists in two hours on September 11th than in the 36 years of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/violence/death95w.htm
Doris, put down that crack pipe!
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9504E6DE1539F934A25754C0A9649C8B63
“Of the 1,800 people killed by the I.R.A. since the late 1960’s, about 650 were civilians rather than members of security forces or paramilitary organizations.”
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/109/story_10949_1.html
“Among the more than 3,600 people killed in political-sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, Britain and the Republic of Ireland since 1968, the IRA and rival anti-British groups were responsible for more than 2,000 dead.”
http://www.wesleyjohnston.com/users/ireland/past/troubles/major_killings.html
(Detailed list)
.
NEVER FORGET
.
The Man who predicted 9/11 =
.
9/11 Lifesaver RICK RESCORLA, ..R.I.P.
.
(RICK RESCORLA Foundation Website)
http://www.RickRescorla.com
.
(RICK RESCORLA ‘Follow Me’ Statue unveiling Pictures - Ft. Benning, Georgia)
http://www.RickRescorla.com/The%20Statue.htm
.
(RICK RESCORLA’s Rest of the Story)
http://www.ArmchairGeneral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24361
.
NEVER FORGET
.
“Not to excuse everything the IRA did, they were fighting for Irish liberation from centuries of British oppression. I say that although I am in general an Anglophile.”
I’ll give her the prize for being even stupider than Al Gore. And he’s a tough act to follow.
Count me among them.
Now we see the real reason the Nobel prize committee decided to give her the award...Bush derangement syndrome.
Yes, you raise the religious issue. As far as I can tell, Protestants live much easier lives in the Republic of Ireland than Catholics have experienced in Northern Ireland.
The original population was Catholic. But the British rulers followed the advice of Machiavelli: they moved in a lot of mostly Scottish Protestant colonists, so the factions would fight against each other, and would be forced to rely on the British to protect them against their neighbors, instead of fighting against the outsiders. It worked very effectively, the only problem being that there was continual fighting among the inhabitants of the country.
Stalin followed the same policy, uprooting colonial populations and moving them elsewhere, so they would fight each other instead of against the central government.
It’s right in Machiavelli’s Prince.
Fools are celebrated. We live in a dreary age; I wonder if normal people ever get a respite from this crap.
False idols are always brought low.
You can’t admire any public person because eventually God will break your heart.
Interesting, because I was taught that Machiavelli himself was a Catholic.
British writer, Doris Lessing has imagined a bizarre world where men evolved from women.
Over such a long career she has variously been influenced by her lonely childhood in Africa - she was brought up what is now Zimbabwe - in communism (which she later rejected), feminism, sufism and science fiction.
Her best known books include her first, The Grass is Singing, about the relationship between a white farmer and her black servant, her breakthrough novel The Golden Notebook (1962), which was hailed as an emancipating classic by feminists, and The Fifth Child (1988) about a hedonistic couple whose lives are turned upside down by the birth of a malevolent troll-like son.
Lessing, a no-nonsense figure with a reputation for iciness
Lessing was born to British parents who were living in what is now Iran before they moved to Southern Rhodesia.
After two failed marriages - by whom she had three children - she moved to London in 1949.
She has always denied being a feminist and caused controversy in 2001 by denouncing modern women as "smug, self-righteous" and far too quick to "denigrate" men.
She declared that modern men were both "rubbished" and "cowed" by women.
Who cares what some old British fart says?.
In the North, Catholics were legally denied jobs on the basis of their religion and once unemployed could be denied welfare...
That's pretty tough stuff...
Machiavelli was an early version of a CINO = Catholic in Name Only. The Catholic Church put his book, The Prince, on the Index of Forbidden Books. Princes all across, Europe, and in particular Protestant ones took it to heart, however (shown well enough in Rash’s The English Face of Machiavelli)
If I am not mistaken, Machiavelli wrote a play entitled The Mandragula in which a priest is a ephebophile.
I guess in this case Lessing is not more.
‘Have Protestants been treated badly in the South?
In the North, Catholics were legally denied jobs on the basis of their religion and once unemployed could be denied welfare...
That’s pretty tough stuff...’
Protestants in the Irish republic were not well treated and were encouraged by many different methods to leave. The source I quote below is certainly partisan, but nonetheless, the facts referred to are easily verifiable as facts.
http://www.ianpaisley.org/article.asp?ArtKey=treatment
When any people take control of another country by force, their primary role is to ensure that they can remain in control. Britain did this with Ireland and the white settlers did it with America. You can’t conquer lands without breaking eggs, to mix a metaphor.
If Paisley is upset about the decline in Protestant population, perhaps he should import some more from Scotland?
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