Posted by pancho (64.165.200.252) on February 09, 2002 at 10:07:23:
People think if they never apologize, never admit a mistake, it means they never make one. It seems I am wrong about the reason for JasPeteBetMinMoo's name change. I did something I should have done earlier...checked with more people, who all said he changed his name because Jassim sounded too Kurdish...too un-Assyrian. It indeed happened before his sister's marriage.
Any number of slanders and lies he allowed to stand, and levelled at me himself, we will let go by the board. This was hardly tit for tat on my part. My concern is that he formulates policy, as Nanny Hajjar does, based on his own narrow prejudices.
When you apologize it doesn't mean you grovel. You don't have to go down on your knees and kiss some hairy arsed priests robe or beg to tell three thousand Hail Mary's...and it doesn't send you to Hell, make a sinner out of you, or cause a statue made of plaster to weep blood. You apologize, standing upright and tall all the time...say what you did etc. and all the time you don't drool or dribble.
I still maintain that there was no intention to hurt anyone's sister...that's the advantage of apologizing openly, once you do it for what you actually did, you can make distinctions between what was intentional and what wasn't, and also between what actually hurt someone, and what someone who would change his family name because of it's sound would deliberately do to get back at me...with little regard for what he says he cares about...ie, his sister's "pain" and humiliation. I admitted to the one count...why would I refuse to cop to two or three or a hundred more counts against me?
The worst that can be said was that I bothered myself with a slimeball and got slimey and slimed as a result.
But the point of it all was the name change. And whether he did it because of his sister's marriage, or because he didn't like the "sound" of his name...he didn't address the issue...and it begs to be addressed. It goes a long way to explaining his attitude toward Muslims, among which Kurds with Kurdish sounding names figure prominantly.
It matches the rest of him...that he is about the sound and appearance of things and not their substance. And just how did that Kurdish sounding Muslim name come to be his in the first place? Is it really Muslim sounding? Is it Muslim? Could Peter himself be that thing he dreads...a Muslim Assyrian? Even just a Muslim "sounding" Assyrian...and does that silly coincidence propel his "politics" and his "facts" and his "truths" about Islam and all things Kurdish and Muslim?
Does it not manifest a profound self-hatred to distance yourself from your family, after all the rest of them kept the name, by simply making a change in the sound of your name? When out in the company of your family would you give your name as different than that of the people you were born among and into? What are you trying to convey to others...for surely if you dwelled alone on the planet what would it matter what your name was...and indeed what DOES it matter what your name is. Do those few letters make an Assyrian out of you...did they make a Muslim out of you?
Poets don't usually deal in superficialities and artists especially tend to look behind labels to get at the hidden meaning of things. Peter has to give his poetry away because it doesn't strike a chord in anyone. It doesn't because he himself exists on the surface of things where names and appearances and clothing and watches and shoes "make the man".
His entire identity and political and intellectual base is built on the sound and appearance of his last name. My criticism of him as a thinker and an expert and even an Assyrian still stands. he is motivated by hatred of anything that sounds or looks Muslim or Kurdish. When real work and understanding needs to be forthcoming...Peter will give us a "new look".