McCain Adviser Plans Casino on the Tigris
Update: This appears to be a hoax. See comments below.
Hat tip to Raed Jarrar and to Rick B at Ten Percent.
A 'foreign policy adviser' to the McCain campaign was interviewed last February on television in Baghdad about plans for a Las Vegas-style five star hotel and casino smack dab in the middle of the Green Zone in Baghdad. He promises a trickle down effect of wealthy gamblers' losses helping Iraq's poor. He promises Iraqi women jobs as maids in the hotel rooms. He promises Thai and Russian masseuses. He reduces Iraqis to being like Native Americans on reservations.
Actually, casinos are always socially regressive, hurting the poor disproportionately. The Green Zone is like a stone's throw away from Sadrist-dominated Sadr City. Why does he think the religious Shiites will put up with all this? The Iraqi maids will be viewed as violating norms of gender segregation. The other activities would attract . . . sanctions under the sharia. In fact, that wonderful Iraqi constitution that the US Republican Party was so enthusiastic about forbids parliament to pass any law contrary to Islamic canon law. Since gambling is forbidden in the Qur'an, it is unlikely that the Iraqi parliament can legalize it.
The 'foreign policy adviser's' comments are particularly tasteless in light of the actual conditions under which most Iraqis live.
But, well, if McCain does plan to turn Iraq into sort of a big Las Vegas, at least that would explain his odd desire to be there for a hundred years.
posted by Juan Cole @ 6/27/2008 12:02:00 AM
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25 Comments:
Dear Professor Cole
He promises Thai and Russian masseuses.
Casino? Surely the correct word is Bordel?
Pure insanity! Delusion! This man is so sick!
I guess since the Kurds already had a casino before they passed the new constitution, it's OK? Some kind of "grandfather" clause?
It is interesting that he mentioned backgammon. I remember that Sistani said that Shi'ites are forbidden from playing Chess and Backgammon (they actually degrade it by calling it Blackgammon!)
I'm not sure Casinos have helped the Native Americans more than it has hurt them.
and who would be the owner of this new "bringing the iraqis together" under the dollar banner project ?
sheldon adelson ?
or somebody else ?
theft as humanitarian offering... the greenzoners sink into new depths of indecency.
Perhaps this is Sheldon Adelson's influence. See the Connie Bruck article on him in the new New Yorker.
The video is unbelievable! How could the media have possibly missed it? I'm guessing that it's from Mosaic at LinkTV.
Hey Juan,
Just wanted to point out that the "McCain advisor" is a hoax and is the same guy that put out the Abrad2345 videos.
Regards,
Bill
This is surely a parody, like "War INC". If it was made in Iraq it probable reflects Iraqi popular opinion about America and it's culture.
Is this a joke??
How removed from reality ARE these people???!? Oh, yeah, I forgot, the "surge" is working. I'll shut up now. Go, team!!
- X.
Assuming this was a joke, it was well done.
Wolfram... For You.. NOT a joke either:
[Llewellyn] Werner, chairman of C3, a Los Angeles-based holding company for private equity firms, is pouring millions of dollars into developing the Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience, a massive American-style amusement park that will feature a skateboard park, rides, a concert theatre and a museum. It is being designed by the firm that developed Disneyland.
In Full
If you WANT a parody, check this:
"The construction began in November 2003 on a site that had once contained a set of apartment blocks, a school and a public library, but had been conveniently levelled by US bombs.
Thousands of Iraqis showed their support for the project by lining up for jobs. "I need this for my starving wife and children," one man happily told a Fox News crew.
"I have a doctorate in applied mathematics and was affluent before the war, but now the only chance we have for survival is for Disney to hire me to shovel asphalt."
Sadly, this man and twenty-four others were killed by a suicide bomber a few minutes after giving this interview."
My Site
This might be a hoax! See the following:
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2008/06/when-abrad2345-exited-m-thomas.html
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2008/06/when-abrad2345-exited-m-thomas.html?disqus_reply=763258#comment-763258
http://samsedershow.com/node/3356
longhairred
Hi, the Sam Seder post is also me so that doesn't determine hoax or not, but Wofrum's work does make it look suspicious this is a satire of 'A Modest Proposal'-esque proportions. If it is it is note perfect!
I'm now sure it's a fake, he changed his name to avoid being tied to the trail of debunking Wolfrum had on him. And I'm less sure what his motivation is. Sorry to people who were suckered like me.
If the events scrolling by in the 'crawl' at the bottom of the screen match events from 'last February' and IT IS a fake, the people who produced it should win an Emmy.
To me it appears to be a total fake now. I suggest that the interviewer was filmed separately from the interviewee and then the films were put together, details added later. Look at where the images meet, especially at the knees - proportions are off and they wouldn't sit with knees overlapping. The 3 dimension relationships of the men are inconsistent and change. Possibly the same actor plays both and the interviewer part was digitally changed to hide this. I think these clues registered subconsciously earlier and they sent me on the info hunt.
longahairred
The crawler at the bottom of the screen is moving from left to right... unfortunately, Arabic is read left to right.
Yeah,Good work, And a Point Well Taken.
This is completely disgusting! The video editing and compositing quality coming out of the Middle East is positively 1983. Didn't we conquer and colonize Iraq to help drag them into the 21st Century? Give them some iMacs loaded with iMovie and firewire capabilities.
Anyway, if McCain gets it, it's proof positive there is no such thing as God. Or evolution, for that matter. Surely we should have evolved out of regressive right-wing cowardice by now?
Whether or not it is a fake, the damage to Muslim sensibilities is done ("here's further evidence, from an American, how the Great Satan intends further to humiliate our men and dishonour our women").
The Holy Qu'ran forbids gambling.
Sura 2, verse 219
They ask thee concerning wine and gambling. Say: "In them is great sin, and some profit, for men; but the sin is greater than the profit."
Sura 5, verse 90
O ye who believe! Intoxicants and gambling, (dedication of) stones, and (divination by) arrows, are an abomination,- of Satan's handwork: Eschew such (abomination), that ye may prosper.
Sura 5, verse 91
Satan's plan is (but) to excite enmity and hatred between you, with intoxicants and gambling, and hinder you from the remembrance of Allah, and from prayer: will ye not then abstain?
From the nosupercasino.com web site (the content for which I collected): Gambling and "games of chance" are associated with customs pre-dating the coming of Islam, and considered to be on the same level as drugs and alcohol, and are forbidden. Moreover, wealth earned through dishonorable means is unacceptable. Islam promotes a sober, philosophical, and a higher understanding of the world one lives in and the one beyond this life for the purpose of contributing to the advancement of society and religious thought. Such an approach can only be pursued with the proper discipline of the body and the spirit. The Qu'ran teaches that destiny is predetermined by Allah and cannot be affected by chance. Games of chance, it continues, draw men away from Allah because the gamblers begin to believe in luck, and distance themselves from God. No good Muslim will have anything to do with a casino.
Well there are two things going on here:
1. the video is so well done and so in line with realistic satire that it's tough to tell whether it's legit.
2. mccain etc. are so out of touch with reality that we can no longer differentiate between Republican political stances and good parody
I was suspicious even before reading the comments. Hearing the man's unmitigated enthusiasm, the well-choreographed and cheap-looking graphics co-ordinating with the man's supposed changes in speech, and looking at the Harding Institute's bare-bones website and timeline of the "development" of the "Institute", it all seemed completely delusional. That said, as Daniel said in the comment before me, what used to be considered delusional has been tolerated for so long in the public discourse that people are on occasion conned.
Duh. Of course this is a satire (hoax, fake, whatever you want to call it) - Firedoglake posted it two weeks ago, and all of us got the joke. Surely I'm not the only person here who reads both blogs? (score one for the gals at FDL)
If it is a prank, it's friggin brilliant. But I read Wolfrum's posts and have come to two possible conclusions:
Either he's a complete tool who just wants to be a tattletale and killjoy.
Or, he's the hoaxster himself, in which case, I bow down to his sheer chutzpah and brilliance. He and Shakesville have a history of doing their own hoaxes (see Benjamin H. Grumbles). So in this case, me thinks whoever dost smelt it, didst proverbially dealt it, too.
Oh come on. Wolfrum isn't behind this. That's ridiculous. Have you read Wolfrum's posts? Guy doesn't have a creative bone in his body. He oozes jealousy and pettiness in every sentence. His postings on women's issues strike me as insincere, at best. More likely, a shameful fraud. I don't know who this Eisenstadt guy is, but I just finished reading a bunch of Wolfrum's writings, and I'll tell you, Eisenstadt, real or imagined, is more sympathetic than Wolfrum. Sorry for the rant, but I feel like I need a shower after wasting my time reading that idiot Wolfrum's musings.
If you ask me, and no one did, the last two comments above are frauds, written by Wolfrum himself.
This post is not a fraud, however, and has neither been written by nor endorsed by Wolfrum.
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