Mantiq al-Tayr – June 6, 2009
1. For the past two weeks the tuyuur here at Mantiq al-Tayr have been extremely busy working on a new computer program which we now believe we have perfected as you shall see presently.
As many of you know, the “About” section of this site is written in Arabic. This caused many Mantiqiyyans some angst because they can’t read Arabic – just like most of the people who formulate US Middle East policy. However, one particularly smart Mantiqiyyan reader dropped the Arabic text into an on-line computer translator and managed to get a pretty good rendering. There is no doubt that machine translation has come a long way. However, it still has a long way to go – until now.
I know you guys are just chomping at the bit to see what we’ve come up with here. Be patient for just a second. Here’s a sample sentence that we will run through a standard on-line machine translation tool.
The sentence says “God is everywhere.” We ran it through this translator and we got this result:
God everywhere
Not bad, but clearly deficient.
We proudly announce that we have completed the development of a computerized translation program that not only renders the original source text accurately into English but if you buy a special add on our program will also provide accurate interpretations of the source text. We boldy announce the perfection of this great program that we have named the Tafsiranatortm. So, for example, let’s take the source text and run it through the basic version of the Tafsiranatortm. The result is:
God is everywhere.
We just love complete sentences here at Mantiq al-Tayr. Really.
But the true value of the program lies in its ability to provide interpretive commentary that will elucidate the true meaning behind the text – our program can literally “read between the lines” as some pseudo fake phony people in the language business like to say.
So, we ran the same text through the Sport version of the Tafsiranatortm and this is what we got:
God is everywhere.
Comment: This means that what the Quran says in Surah 2: verse 115 is quite literally true. That passage says that: ”Wheresoever ye turn, there is the face of God.” God is at once transcendent and immanent.
Pretty cool, huh?
We also like the fact that the Tafsiranatortm can highlight its comments in
bold.
2. The Tafsiranatortm has another great feature. It can translate text from English to English while also providing commentary. Going from English to English was the most difficult challenge we faced here at Mantiq al-Tayr since discerning the actual meaning of all the bull shit that is in the main-stream press can be pretty challenging. But, again, as you shall presently see, the Tafsiranatortm is without peer in this regard.
So, for example, we took the following text from an article written by ADL kingpin Abe Foxman. In this article, Foxman supports the idea of a two-state solution to the Zionist-Palestinian problem. Yes indeed even Foxman is on the two-state bandwagon these days which ought to tell you that that bandwagon is a complete total fraud and that Obama’s blathering about it is a deception, but again, I digress. We ran the following text from that article through the Sport version of our program:
“Israel should simply find a way to acknowledge that a solution to the conflict requires a Palestinian state. By saying already that it accepts all prior agreements that it will abide by the road map, and by virtue of their looking to the actions of President George W. Bush, who was the first American president to call for a two-state solution, the Israeli government has all but accepted that concept.”
And this is what we got:
Fuck the Palestinians. Israel can use the two-state rhetoric coming out of the White House to its own advantage by arguing over every fine point in all the prior agreements while continuing to build settlements, confiscate Palestinian land, and murder all the Palestinians it wants while continuing to talk about how much it wants peace. Comment: Abe Foxman is a goddamn liar.
You gotta admit it, the Tafsiranatortm is one hell of a program.
3. So, we here at Mantiq al-Tayr decided that with all the furor caused by Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo this week, said furor being completely fake of course, that we would run parts of that speech through the Sport version of the Tafsiranatortm in order to “read between the lines” and get some true insight into what the White House is really up to. Remember, the White House is being run by a professional Israeli-firster who actually volunteered to serve the Israel military, but not the US military. Oh my, again I digress.
Anyway, one item in the speech that attracted lots of attention from all the usual suspects was Obama’s alleged criticism of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.
David Ignatius and
Charles Krauthammer, are really in a huff about the settlements – though Krauthammer is, as usual, so extreme that he is really funny. He doesn’t even need a Tafsiranatortm .
But we have a problem here at Mantiq al-Tayr with the term “settlements” when applied to areas of occupied Palestine that now house over half a million Jews. “Settlements” is such a nice word. The Israelis are “settling” Palestine, making the desert gloom –er – bloom, as they say. “Settlements” are nice things, we all want to live in a settlement. Who wants to live in a trailer park or in “sprawl”? No one, but everyone loves settlements – so reminiscent of settling the USA back in the 1800s.
But, as everyone actually knows, these settlements are illegal structures. Furthermore, as Ignatius points out, you can actually get tax breaks by contributing to them if you know how. Yes, the settlements use lots of our money in various ways to carry on their illegal business of stealing Palestinian land and screwing the Palestinians.
So, we took the full text of Obama’s speech and did a search and replace on the word “settlements”. First of all, we found that the word only appeared twice in the whole condescending supercilious address, so again we wondered why Ignatius, Krauthammer and others are so vexed by the issue. But anyway, we replaced the word “settlements” with “whorehouses” since the settlements basically take our money and screw the Palestinians. Also, “whorehouses” just has a different ring to it and shows the illegality of the whole operation.
So here is Obama’s original text –
the entire portion of his nearly hour-long address that talks about settlements – but with our search and replace operation completed.
“At the same time, Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel’s right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine’s. The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli whorehouses. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these whorehouses to stop.”
We ran each of these three sentences through the Sport version of the Tafsiranatortm and here are the results, sentence by sentence.
Sentence One:
At the same time, Israelis, but not the Israeli government, might want to consider the possibility that that just as Israel’s right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine’s. Comment: while Israelis are thinking about acknowledging Palestine’s right to exist they will continue to take more and more of Palestine’s land, thus acknowledging Palestine’s existence and in the way actually intended by the speechwriter.
Sentence two:
Rahm Emmanuel does not accept the legitimacy of brand new Israeli whorehouses, but has no problems with the whorehouses already built and which house about half a million Jews. Comment: Since Rahm is an Israeli masquerading as an American the whole sentence is meaningless anyway and requires no interpretation.
Sentence three:
“It is time for these whorehouses to stop, or whatever.” Comment: Note that the verb “to stop” is being used in an intransitive way. The whorehouses are “to stop” just like a car stops – all by itself. No one is being asked to stop the whorehouses and since the whorehouses by their very nature – just read Charles Krauthammers disgusting piece on the matter – must grow, the US will do nothing to actually stop the whorehouses.
So, we have quite a mess don’t we oh fellow Mantiqiyyans? And we now will use the French word for a mess:
Bordel
http://mantiqaltayr.wordpress.com/2009/06/06/quel-bordel/
Last updated 11/06/2009
Homepage