September 13, 2001

4:33 PM

Recently I was made aware of a response to the terrorist attacks of Tuesday, by Serj Tankian, vocalist for the politically-themed band, System of a Down. The response was well written, highly articulated and, yet, it is now MISSING from the band's official website.

I have been unable to find a cached copy of the post, and I am wondering if this article was removed due to it's less-than 100% agreement with the current mindset of the media propaganda machine, or whether it is related to something else.

If anyone can dig up a cached copy, or shed some light on this matter, it would be much appreciated.
posted by Dark Messiah (12 comments total)

How about emailing the band or googling to your heart's content?
posted by mathowie at 4:37 PM on September 13, 2001

I tried googling, but I'm just damned inept... I search for about 10 minutes, yet found nothing. That's why I plopped it in the community's capable hands.

As for contacting the band, I don't know whether or not the band actually runs the website, or if it's done through a third-party. Though, I suspect it's the latter, as is the case with most -- if-not all -- band websites.
posted by Dark Messiah at 4:43 PM on September 13, 2001

Being one of the only of the new metal bands that I like or find even tolerable, I would love to hear what he had to say....

No luck on my end, either.
posted by Espoo2 at 5:09 PM on September 13, 2001

I doubt it would've been up long enough for the googlebot to snatch it up. But no matter who maintains the site, you'd best try contacting them -- for they must've posted it, right? & so should have a copy.
posted by EngineBeak at 5:23 PM on September 13, 2001

I was fishing around the BBS of the site and found this post that looks like the poster put the whole text in Quotes. perhaps he was quoting what was on the page?

Here is the post.

on a side note: Prison Song on Toxicity is one of the best songs of the year.
posted by Qambient at 5:35 PM on September 13, 2001

Qambient: That is Noam Chomsky's commentary quoted there.
posted by ericost at 6:15 PM on September 13, 2001

The post I read is not present on that page, though I may have missed it.

Amen on that "Prison Song" comment, though.
posted by Dark Messiah at 6:16 PM on September 13, 2001

Y'know, someone wrote a letter to the editor in today's Boston Globe (the Globe refuses to put those letters online, forcing me to continue my subscription) suggesting that if we just all read Noam Chomsky and a few other fairly obscure (to the average person) commentators, we'd understand just what we did to deserve all this. Well, now I've read good ol' Noam's piece, and I don't think I quite get why it was all justified. I still don't know if that was a pharmaceutical plant or a chemical weapons factory in the Sudan, but somehow Noam's come by this info. I'm not sure Osama was on the fence about hating us until we bombed Sudan; I have to lump that idea in with the other Globe correspondent who said this could all be traced back to Vietnam and Cuba-- I don't think the terrorists care about those places all that much.

I'm actually a fan of Chomsky, but in his element: linguistics, anthropology, whatever. My reaction to the idea that Chomsky could explain it all (a la Clarissa), is the same as it was before reading his piece: then why isn't he relevant?

"A cobbler should stick to his last"
-- Scrooge McDuck
posted by yerfatma at 6:39 PM on September 13, 2001

The Chomsky post is ridiculous. "The primary victims, as usual, were working people: janitors, secretaries, firemen, etc." Right. First, we don't have any idea what the demographic-class breakdowns of the victims. Second, is it really important? Can we presume that these janitors, secretaries, firemen, had a greater claim to life than others? I don't think so. Finally, Chomsky must not have heard it was the WORLD TRADE CENTER. The center of financial services for the western world. Most of these people were professionals. But they don't count in Chomsky's view. Guess they fall into the heartfelt "etc." category.
posted by prodigal at 6:49 PM on September 13, 2001

Ummm, prodigal... I believe Chomsky was contrasting the largely middle class civilians with the military and politicians. On the order of "this set of people makes the decisions and takes action, this other set of people suffers as a result".
posted by ToasterKing at 7:22 AM on September 14, 2001

OK. Thanks for correcting me.

This time though, I'm pretty sure I have found what you are looking for. (If you haven't found it yet)

Serj's commentary.
posted by Qambient at 8:10 AM on September 14, 2001

Ummm, ToasterKing... Secretaries and janitors are not your prototypical middle class symbols, are they? Regardless of what Chomsky meant to say, he spoke out of his ass. I guarantee you that more professionals died on Tuesday than janitors and secretaries. Furthermore, even if what you say is true, these professionals WERE decision makers at huge corporations. When respected figures use global tragedies to make mis-statements to further their own political agenda, they suck.
posted by prodigal at 1:24 PM on September 14, 2001