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Khun Duen Baad
climber
Retirement
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Lois, I know you're a nice person and that's what scares me and makes me most sad.
"Putting aside the whole issue of whether it was appropriate to invade Iraq, why must we as a nation or else we as individuals be "soft" on our enemies." It is a mentality and viewpoint which I simply cannot grasp. If someone attempts to harm me, why must I "care" about him. What am I missing?"
Putting aside the whole issue of whether it is appropriate to bomb buses, why must they as a nation or else as individuals be "soft" on their enemies? It is a mentality and viewpoint they simply cannot grasp. If we harm them, why should they "care" about us? What am I missing?
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""If you bomb our cities," Osama bin Laden said in one of his recent video tapes, "we will bomb yours." There you go, as they say. It was crystal clear Britain would be a target ever since Tony Blair decided to join George Bush’s "war on terror" and his invasion of Iraq. We had, as they say, been warned...
"It is easy for Tony Blair to call yesterdays bombings "barbaric" - of course they were - but what were the civilian deaths of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the children torn apart by cluster bombs, the countless innocent Iraqis gunned down at American military checkpoints? When they die, it is "collateral damage"; when "we" die, it is "barbaric terrorism".....
"But here’s the problem. To go on pretending that Britain’s enemies want to destroy "what we hold dear" encourages racism; what we are confronting here is a specific, direct, centralised attack on London as a result of a "war on terror" which Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara has locked us into. Just before the US presidential elections, Bin Laden asked: "Why do we not attack Sweden?"
"Lucky Sweden. No Osama bin Laden there. And no Tony Blair.
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"It’s strange that for a White House that writes screenplays, the words of Osama bin Laden appear so uninteresting. Whenever Bin Laden speaks, no one bothers to read through his speech. The questions are always: Was it him? Is he alive? Where is he? Never: What did he say?
"There are real perils in this. Let me show you why. On 13 February, 2003, Bin Laden’s latest audiotape was broadcast by the Arabic satellite channel, al-Jazeera. This, remember, was five weeks before the Anglo-American invasion.
"In that message, Bin Laden made a statement in which he said that "it is beyond doubt that this crusader war is ... directed against the family of Islam, irrespective of whether the Socialist party and Saddam survive or not ... Despite our belief and our proclamation concerning the infidelity of socialists, in present-day circumstances there is a coincidence of interests between Muslims and socialists in their battles against the Crusaders."
"And there you have it. Bin Laden, who hated Saddam - he told me this himself, in person - made a call to his followers to fight alongside an Iraqi force which included Saddam’s Iraqi Baathist "Socialists". This was the moment when Iraq’s future guerrilla army fused with the future suicide bombers, the message that would create the detonation that would engulf the West in Iraq. And we didn’t even notice. The US "experts" waffled about whether Bin Laden was alive - not what he said. For once, Bush got it right - but he was too late. Always, as they say, read the text.
http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles516.htm
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Minerals
Social climber
The Deli
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Nice post, Lois. I am confused on one thing though – what kind of an animal has four feet and feathers?
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Hi Lois
I wrote a couple extensive posts above in large degree because you posed the question. I hope you'll find the answers to some of your questions in them, or at least tell me where they don't made sense to you.
Peace
Karl
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nailbomb
climber
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The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders . . . All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism."
-HERMANN GOERING, Nazi Gestapo
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Dammit Lois Read my posts and say something! ;-)
Let's say somebody's dog ate my cat. It was attacked! I'm pissed off so I go Dog hunting and kill your dogs, even though there's plenty of proof they didn't eat my cat.
Fair enough eh? My cat WAS attacked! and I heard your dogs barking years earlier.
Maybe I rationalize that it doesn't matter than your dogs didn't eat my cat. If I got a new cats, your dogs would want to eat her. Dogs hate cats because of their FREEDOM!
Going to the wrong war with the wrong folks is a BIG deal. Iraq didn't attack us. THEY were ATTACKED by US. What are their rights to respond by the defense ethics you have written?
See, there is always the danger of things swinging both ways.
and don't forget, if you come after me for killing your cat eating dogs, you're a terrorist.
PEace
Karl
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Ouch!
climber
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LEB, even HowDeanWeird is smart enough to see we were attacked.
The big lie by the Bushies neocons was Iraq's being involved in WMDs and ties to Al Qaeda.
They should be impeached for treason and murder against their own people and crimes against humanity for making war because of a blatant lie.
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caughtinside
Social climber
Davis, CA
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Nailbomb said: The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders . . . All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism."
-HERMANN GOERING, Nazi Gestapo
WooHoo! Godwin's law!
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Pay no attention to the fat guy behind the curtain. Saddam denied having WMDs.
Besides, we DO have WMDs and we WILL use them if attacked, so why the double standard? Israel has em too, and will use them if attacked.
Preemptive war was an excuse to do what we planned for many years.
Peace
Karl
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Khun Duen Baad
climber
Retirement
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Lori, we are never going to understand each other. As far as I'm concerned, you haven't read more than 15% of the words in any of my posts (For instance, you never told me whether or not 1 billion Chinese people deserve motorhomes and SUV'S? Not to mention where you got this "martial arts expert" thing). If you had then I have a hard time believing that you are telling me that the "terrorists" have ABSOLTUELY NO REASON WHATSOEVER for attacking "us", the Allies of Evil. I'm confounded and having a hard time with any sort of response. I'm posting here for two main reasons: One, I haven't interacted much with Americans since right around 9/11 and I'm trying to understand where the collective American mind is at now; Two, I'm hoping that one of these "intelligent" climbers you spoke of will tell me to get the fvck out of this country if I don't like it and can show me some actual numbers and scientific analysis that will convince me to get on a plane nexdt week and never be heard from here again. The more I read, the more speechless and alarmed I get.
Let's try a little more Mespotomian and Persian history. This is going to be a cut and paste, but I'll chime in with a few missed details that come to mind. It's also going to long as I'm tired of hearing back rhetoric from people who don't know shlt about history, so if you can't read it then don't.
IRAQ [PLUS A BIT OF IRAN AND OTHER] HISTORY
Late 1800s -- British control Middle East in order to have a land route to India
[Why were the British so anxious to be in India? Ok, it would be easy to get off topic here as the War on Drugs is the longest war in US history and was the first war "declared" against nobody, hence it is by defintion unwinnable. Illicit narcotics production has skyrocketed since the "war" was declared by Nixon. Almost like how "terror" has increased since the war on it began. Hmmm, go figure. Interested parties should consider two must-reads on this topic: Martin Booth's "Opium: A History, and "The Politics of Herion in SE Asia: CIA complicity in the global drug trad" by Alfred W. McCoy, PhD (I'll post some choice excets if anyone wants them). Anyway:
"The Qing dynasty of China entered into a long decline beginning in the 1800's, beset by increasingly aggressive foreign powers that clamoured for two-way trade with China. Europeans bought porcelain, silk, spices and tea from China, but could sell little in return [hmmm, sounds about like the Chinese filling your Wal-marts and all they get back is these measly paper dollars http://www.energybulletin.net/6459.html]. The drain on silver in Europe further strained finances already squeezed by European wars.
"Opium itself had been manufactured in China since the 15th century. It was mixed with tobacco in a process invented by the Spanish, but dominated by the Dutch by the 18th century. Faced with the health and social problems associated with opium use, the Chinese imperial government prohibited the smoking of opium in 1729.
However, the British began manufacturing opium in India in quantity starting in the mid-18th century, learning the art from the Mughal state, which had traded in opium in the land trade since at least the reign of Akbar (1556-1605), and began an illegal trade of opium for silver in southern China. In 1764, when the British conquered Bengal, they began to see the potential profit in opium, which up until this point had been primarily out of Netherlands-controlled Jakarta. Profits approached 400%, and poppies grew almost anywhere.
British exports of opium skyrocketed from an estimated 15 tons in 1720, to 75 tons in 1773, shipped in over two thousand "chests", each containing 140 pounds of opium. "Relax, the fact of the matter is that white people tried to get the Chinese addicted to drugs so they could make money. Don't freak out because you can't handle it that the British were brutal monsters in the past. Right-wingers, god it's not enough that your politics of selfishness dominate our dying world, you want to seem like angels too. Give me a break."]
1904 -- British Navy shifted from coal to oil [Hmmmm, being that they ruled the world's seas from being stuck on that miserable little island I wonder where they thought they were going to get all that oil?]
1916 - British/French in Sykes-Picot agreement arbitrarily draw national borders in Middle East; southern Mesopotamia including Baghdad was to be administered by Great Britain. Arabs were needless to say upset by this secret agreement when it was published by the Russian government in 1917.
1917 - British forces invaded Mesopotamia and occupied Baghdad; Iraq became British Mandate
1918-Great Britain uses systematic aerial bombardment for first time in history to put down rebellions in Iraq.
1921 - British Colonial Office draws line across Southern Iraq creating Kuwait to prevent Iraq access to Persian Gulf. [Wait a minute, you mean there was no such thing as the Kuwaiti people until the Brits decided there was? That's odd. Sounds a bit like Kashmir or Palestine:
Brother Leader of the Revolution Moammar Ghadhafi:
"It is an obligation to solve Kashmir problem peacefully because doing that will solve the problem of the everlasting rifted relation between the two sister neighbors, that is India and Pakistan.
Semantically, the meaning of the word “ Shikak” is taken from the notion of the breakup of one thing into two or more parts. Originally. What is called now Pakistan, Bangladesh and India was one geographical nation before the incidence of the breakup. They are sisters, indeed.
"This breakup originated from a colonial conspiracy to avoid leaving behind a great nation with such demographic and geographic magnitude and such gigantic potentialities. The colonialism was the instigator of the different sectarian and doctrinal conflicts and the evidence is that before its incidence, the population was coexisting, peacefully, for a long period of time in the Indian peninsula.
"Therefore, British colonialism is responsible for the committed religious slaughters and the violent bloody clashes of that time. It’s this colonial conspiracy that escalated the situation to an unsolvable point that led to the breakup of that one and only entity into two sections, on sectarian and doctrinal basis, which is originally a reactionary and colonial theory.
"It’s none of the interests of the inhabitants of the Indian peninsula to be disrupted and to have their potentialities dissipated and to lose those advantages, let alone to kill each other. http://www.algathafi.org/kashmiri/kshmer-en.htm]
1932 - Iraq joins League of Nations and recognized as sovereign state
Late 1940s - after WWII British power begins to wane and America steps in. George Kennan, U.S. State Department stated in 1948," The US has about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming, and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford the luxury of altruism and world benefaction. We should cease to talk about such vague and unreal objectives as human rights, the raising of living standards and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."
1951 - Mossadeq takes power in Iran and declares that they will control their own oil.
1953 -After 2 years of U.S. sponsored sanctions CIA supports plot to overthrow Mossadigh and place Shah in power. American Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf Sr. helps Shah develop SAVAK secret police. Following Mossadeq's fall, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (Iran's monarch) grew increasingly dictatorial. With strong support from the USA and the UK, the Shah further modernised Iranian industry but crushed civil liberties. His autocratic rule, including systematic torture and other human rights violations, led to the Iranian revolution and overthrow of his regime in 1979. After more than a year of political struggle between a variety of different groups, an Islamic republic was established under the Ayatollah Khomeini by popular vote. [wait a minute, so the Iranian's didn't like US in control of their oil (not to mention the expats and their families who showed up in shorts and bikinis like they were in Orange County) nor the dictator that we gave them. So they kicked him out and everybody voted for the Ayatollah. Interesting... Also interesting that they don't have problems with internal strife other than the CIA supporting rouge militias. I'm starting to get confused. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8628.htm"
1958 - popular revolution led by Abd al-Kassem Quassim overthrows British-installed king of Iraq
1959-Saddam Hussein was one of assassins who wounded Quassim
1963 -coup aided by CIA overthrows Kassem. Baathist party briefly in power. Hussein runs torture center
1968 - Baathist Party comes to power for good in Iraq
1972-Iraq announces the nationalization of oil. Pres. Nixon plots with Shah to arm Iraqui Kurds. Iraq placed on list of nations supporting terrorism
1975-Iraq Vice-president Saddam Hussein and Shah reach agreement ceding control of Shatt-al-Arab waterway to Iran. Kurdish aid abruptly stopped. Concerning the Kurds who were left in the lurch, Henry Kissinger said , " Covert operations should not be confused with missionary work".
1979-Shah is overthrown. National Security adviser Brzezinski publicly encouraged Iraq to attack Iran to take back the Shatt-al-Arab waterway - which the U.S had forced Iraq to cede to Iran four years earlier.
1980-"Carter Doctrine" states U.S. will intervene militarily to protect U.S. access to oil. Iraq invades Iran at U.S. urging.
1982-Iraq removed from terrorist nation list.
1984-U.S restores full diplomatic relations with Iraq. Pres. Reagan authorizes intelligence sharing with Iraq. At same time U.S. begins sharing intelligence and selling weapons to Iran. [This was right about when Donald Rumsfled was shaking hands with Saddam and giving him CIA satellite maps of Iranian troop positions so that he could more effectively gas them .
1985-Oliver North tells Iran that U.S. will help Iran overthrow Saddam Hussein. [Do I need to here.....?]
1986-U.S increases aid to Iraq [?!?!?!?!]
1987-Norman Schwartzkopf Jr. Named head of CENT-COM. U.S bombs Iranian oil platforms.
1988-Cease fire signed between Iran and Iraq. Center for Strategic and International Studies begins 2 year study predicting outcome of war between U.S and Iraq. Saddam Hussein announces $40 billion plan to peacefully rebuild Iraq.
1989-War Plan 1002 originally conceived to counter Soviet threat is adjusted to name Iraq as main threat in region. Plan renamed 1002-90.
January 1990 - CENT-COM stages computer games testing 1002-90. U.S. War College report states that "Baghdad should not be expected to deliberately provoke military confrontations with anyone. Its best interests now and in immediate future are served by peace".
February 1990-Schwartzkopf tells congress of need to increase U.S. military presence in Gulf region
May 1990 - At Arab summit Saddam accuses Gulf states of waging economic war against Iraq. The Iraq economy has been devastated by the war. Iraq had borrowed billions to wage war against Iran. Price of oil was down because Gulf states were dumping oil on world market. Kuwait was slant drilling with American equipment [sold to them by Brent Scowcroft's oil firm] into Iraqi oilfield Kuwait and Saudi Arabia at behest of U.S. demanded immediate repayment of loans to Iraq.
July 1990 -- Saddam accuses Kuwait of conspiring to destroy Iraq economy. Iraq troops mass on Iraq border
August 2, 1990 -Iraq invades Kuwait.
August 3, 1990 -U.N. passes Resolution 660 condemning Iraq
August 6, 1990 - U.N. passes Resolution 661 levying sanctions against Iraq. At this time Iraq imports 70% of it's food.
August 7, 1990 - U.S. tells Saudi Arabia that Iraq troops are massed on their border and convinces reluctant King Faud to accept U.S.troop deployment. Satellite photos show no troops massing on Iraq side of border.
August 8, 1990 -U.S.dispatches 40,000 troops to "protect" Saudi Arabia. Iraq announces it is annexing Kuwait.
August 12, 1990 - Iraq suggests withdrawal of it's troops from Kuwait be linked to Israel withdrawal from occupied territories. U.S. rejects. Later proposal to withdraw troops not linked to Israel rejected by U.S.
back to WWFOR Iraq Interest Network page
September 2, 1990 -Iraq begins rationing food.
November 8, 1990 - with no significant change in crisis U.S. doubles number of troops in area to 400,000
November 29, 1990 - U.N. authorizes use of force if Iraq doesn't voluntarily leave Kuwait by January 15, 1991.
December 22, 1990 - Infant mortality has doubled due to sanctions
January 9, 1991-U.S threatens destruction of Iraq if not out of Kuwait by January 15.
January 12, 1991 - Congress authorizes use of force if Iraq not withdrawn by January 15.
January 17, 1991 - U.S. begins air assault. 42 days of 2,000 sorties a day throughout Iraq and Kuwait.
February 13, 1991 - U.S kills 1,500 civilians at Al-Amariyah shelter
February 15, 1991 - Pres. Bush urges Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam.
February 21, 1991 - Russia announces that Iraq has agreed to full and unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait. U.S rejects plan and says that if Iraq not out of Kuwait by noon February 23 a ground attack will proceed.
February 23, 1991 - ground assault begins
February 26, 1991 -- Iraq announces it's troops are withdrawing from Kuwait. U.S bombs road that would be used to retreat and kills thousands from air including civilians in "turkey shoot".
February 28, 1991-Iraq and U.S. agree to cease-fire
March 2, 1991 - 24th Mechanized Infantry slaughters thousands of Iraqi soldiers in post cease fire battle. No Americans die.
March 1991 - U.S-encouraged rebellions against Saddam are put down. Schwartzkopf allows Saddam helicopters to fly through U.S. lines to kill Shiites in south and Kurds in North. He refused to allow rebelling members of the Republican Guard in the South get weapons from their storehouses.
http://www.ilaam.net/War/IraqEmbargo.html
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"It will not come as news to anyone that the US dominates the world economically and militarily. But the exact mechanisms by which American hegemony has been established and maintained are perhaps less well understood than they might be. One tool used to great effect has been the dollar, but its efficacy has recently been under threat since Europe introduced the euro.
"The dollar is the de facto world reserve currency: the US currency accounts for approximately two thirds of all official exchange reserves. More than four-fifths of all foreign exchange transactions and half of all world exports are denominated in dollars. In addition, all IMF loans are denominated in dollars.
"But the more dollars there are circulating outside the US, or invested by foreign owners in American assets, the more the rest of the world has had to provide the US with goods and services in exchange for these dollars. The dollars cost the US next to nothing to produce, so the fact that the world uses the currency in this way means that the US is importing vast quantities of goods and services virtually for free.
"Since so many foreign-owned dollars are not spent on American goods and services, the US is able to run a huge trade deficit year after year without apparently any major economic consequences. The most recently published figures, for example, show that in November of last year US imports were worth 48% more than US exports1. No other country can run such a large trade deficit with impunity. The financial media tell us the US is acting as the 'consumer of last resort' and the implication is that we should be thankful, but a more enlightening description of this state of affairs would be to say that it is getting a massive interest-free loan from the rest of the world.
"While the US' position may seem inviolable, one should remember that the more you have, the more you have to lose. And recently there have been signs of how, for the first time in a long time, the US may be beginning to lose.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5949.htm
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"The last reason is the conversion, the switch Saddam Hussein made in the Food for Oil program, from the dollar to the euro. He did this, by the way, long before 9/11, in November 2000 - selling his oil for euros. The oil sales permitted in that program aren't very much. But when the sanctions would be lifted, the sales from the country with the second largest oil reserves on the planet would have been moving to the euro. The U.S. dollar is in a sensitive period because we are a debtor nation now. Our currency is still popular, but it's not backed up like it used to be. If oil, a very solid commodity, is traded on the euro that could cause massive, almost glacial, shifts in confidence in trading on the dollar. So one of the first executive orders that Bush signed in May [2003] switched trading on Iraq's oil back to the dollar."
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"In 2005-2006, The Tehran government has a developed a plan to begin competing with New York's NYMEX and London's IPE with respect to international oil trades - using a euro-denominated international oil-trading mechanism. This means that without some form of US intervention, the euro is going to establish a firm foothold in the international oil trade. Given U.S. debt levels and the stated neoconservative project for U.S. global domination, Tehran's objective constitutes an obvious encroachment on U.S. dollar supremacy in the international oil market.
http://www.energybulletin.net/2913.html
Hmmm, this is all really odd. you mean to tell me that the two countries MOST opposed to the Iraq war were the two wealthiest Euro states? And who were the most gung ho? The Brit's with their pound plus Spain and Italy, the two poorest Euro nations. How odd. And somehow we've got back to gold again....http://news.goldseek.com/GoldLetter/1119621601.php.
Lois, one thing you probably don't know about me is that I was actually kidnapped and held hostage by Islamic freedom fighters (IMU) in Central Asia several years ago. I don't need to hear any boo-hoo, poor us, the victimized American people bull-shlt. Yes, I knew within a hour that we'd have to kill at least one of them to escape, and no that wasn't a problem for me in the situation I was in at the time, BUT I didn't let that diminish my ability to rationally look back afterwards to question and try to understand WHY I was targeted when Australians, Germans, Russians, and Ukranians all skated free. when I got out of the situation I looked into it and found out that "THEY" DON'T EVEN KNOW HALF THE REASONS THE HAVE TO HATE US. Do you?
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Sounds like a fine plan to me Lois.
Of course the devil is in the details of everything we do. Some folks deal fairly with others even if they are in a position of advantage, others don't.
There are plenty of leased land farmers and sharecroppers in India who are virtual slaves. Not a Republican or Democrat issue but an issue of those with power leveraging over those without it.
But, particuarly looking at the peak oil threat, it's possible that you and your tenents will someday be important contributers to your own security and your communities viability. My hat's off to you.
But I agree with Singha, that you don't seem to have read very carefully.
Peace
Karl
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caughtinside
Social climber
Davis, CA
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Holy Crap! I haven't read 15% of KDB's words either. That's one long post.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jul 10, 2005 - 02:47am PT
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Hi Lois
It's good that you admit that you are not in command of the historical facts. You basically admit that for you, 9-11 came out of the blue, the first blow in what was previously a war of words. That's only your assumption.
You make a long argument that says that use of violence goes over the line, and invites retaliation, but you don't know what violence has been committed in your name and won't be expecting retaliation from the ones affected.
Bush kills a lot of folks and makes you feel safer, but are you? Osama is still loose, Zawahiri (the #2) is still out there. the leader of the Taliban is free, and Iraq is now free, free to become a fundamentalist state sometime in the future.
The problem is that many people in the world are just like you. If you kill their dad or their Mom or their sister, even if it's by accident, or because they are collateral damage, they get mad and want to get even. They want war, even if, like you, they were peaceful before.
Can you see where this leads? There are many, many more innocent victims of State violence and terrorist violence than there were a few years ago. Every new round of killing breeds new victims wishing revenge.
Nobody can stop the development of biological weapons by even small countries that can easily be smuggled into this country. We can't be safe and no amount of killing will make us safe. Peace and understanding are the only answer in the long term.
That's not going to happen unless some divine light shines on us. The future is looking kinda dim right now.
Maybe if we could just fit all the people lusting for war and revenge on a single island and let them fight each other, the hatred and misunderstandings could start to die out. I hope you can shoot!
peace
karl
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WBraun
climber
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Jul 10, 2005 - 12:02pm PT
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Yes this is true, LEB, we should take care of each other with a true heart.
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Spinmaster K-Rove
Trad climber
Stuck Under the Kor Roof
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Jul 10, 2005 - 12:59pm PT
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*cough*
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jul 10, 2005 - 05:01pm PT
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I quite agree Lois that, ideally, and maybe in the past, we could simply delegate our thinking to the politicians that we hire to serve our interests, just as we trust our physicians.
However, sometimes both Politicians and Physicians can be mistaken, even corrupt. That's when what could be taken for granted before turns into a hassle, an investigation, a second opinion, and a need for education.
Everybody can't be an expert on everything, it's very true. But, you have posted your views advocating a certain perspective. You are standing up and influencing public opinion and you have to take responsibility for that. If you use examples that conflict with fact, you need to be told that, even if you were sold a bill of goods by propaganda artists selling a war under false pretenses.
I was never a political guy. I have WAY better things to do with my time than study this stuff. I was forced to do so when I started to see danger signs in world events. I can't wait to stop keeping informed, although we've reached a point where I despair of regaining enough trust in our system, Republican or Democrat, where I can go back to being politically asleep with impunity.
You have a right to your opinion and I respect that you have arrived at it in good faith, You are obviously neither unintelligent nor a bad person. You basically diagnosed yourself. You have your views based on what you've been told, which is limited and not analyzed with critical facts.
To be told so is merely therapy for the problem, just as you might tell a patient that the cure the witch doctor prescribed might be dangerous.
We are all in a similar boat to some degree. Hopefully, by having these dialogs, we'll be forced to see the perspective of "the other side" and consider it as well. Those who merely wish to call names detract from this process, but I'm open to questioning my assumptions and the spin that I've heard. I'm careful to listen to right wing news,listen to Christian radio, read the BBC, log onto Arab News, Haaetz in Israel, Al Jazeera, and more, so I get a balance of everybody's views.
We all have to fight the very human tendency to believe what we want to believe, and that's not just in politics.
Peace
Karl
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Khun Duen Baad
climber
Retirement
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Jul 10, 2005 - 05:52pm PT
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Lois,
I wonder if you would allow me to recommend a few books for you if you haven't been through any of them yet? I have a few of them here I would be willing to ship and loan to you if you are interested. I mean it, these are select and, I feel, important in understanding the broad range of topics we are discussing; I don't have the time to break it down unless I know where you're coming from. As you start to get your information dialed, they other pieces, like the ones I'm tlaking about, fit in easier. I thought that timeline was very concise, even with the attached links. All of it can't be more than an hour of reading. Funny how societies with the most labor-saving devices have, inversely, the least amount of free time. Maybe that's why Indians read four times as much as Americans?
Shooting at the Moon : The Story of America's Clandestine War in Laos (history but written in a novel-like style making it more readable [enjoyable] for many), Roger Warner.
The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, Alfred McCoy
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Jared Diamond
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond
The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Alex Haley
The Art of War, Sun Tzu (recommend the Thomas Cleary translation, this book would maybe help you understand "divide and conquer" tactics like those that are used to divide us into a two-party system, "liberals" and "conservatives", us and them, barbarism and civilization, etc.)
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I'm not sure you appreciate some historical correlations such that, for exapmle, the Sugar War was a war we fought for drugs (sugar) [same as tea and coffee] and energy (sugar and slaves). Ever heard of the Boston Tea Party? Man (and woman) have been fighting for energy since the beginning of time, it just takes different forms through the ages. First hunting grounds, then arable land, wood, slaves, coal, etc. All of it is hyrdocarbon energy from the sun that is stored, one way or another, in organic matter over billions of years until we find a way to burn (or use, by slaves have to be fed, housed, controlled, transported, etc) it and release it into the atmosphere. The Industrial Revolution dramtically increased man's intake of energy dramatically:
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"The answers [as to why so much beef is consumed in spite of such environmental damage] involve understanding the relationships among Spanish cattle, British colonialism, the American government, the American bison, indigenous peoples, the automobile, the hamburger, and the fast-food restaurant".
— Richard Robbins, Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism, (Allyn and Bacon, 1999), p.222
To summarize his detailed account:
As Spanish colonization of the Americas took hold, cattle were introduced in places like Argentina, Central America etc.
By the seventeenth century cattle was so abundant, that one could be killed for the hide and the remaining meat left to rot.
Around the Industrial Revolution, England was the “beef-eating capital of the world.” Not only to increase food for a growing population, but also to keep wages down, and due to the influence of wealthy meat industry leaders and landowners, beef consumption was made affordable to more and more people.
The British Empire distributed much rum and meat to its military forces, thus helping to subsidize the sugar and meat industries.
To support an increasing demand, Britain would look to its empire, its colonies and other areas for additional beef and support of grain production.
American meat industries, eager to make profits from the British demand looked to increase their cattle production.
However, they had to overcome problems including available rangeland and meeting the specific taste requirements of the British which, involved having fatter cows.
But Indians and buffalo were in the lands that cattle producers needed for rangeland.
Hence, this led to the famous near extermination of the bison, which would also “deal” with the Indian problem.
From just 1870 to 1880, millions of buffalo were reduced to “virtual extinction.” (The famous Buffalo Bill and others profited from hunting expeditions.)
This destroyed the Indians of the Plains, to whom buffalo were central in their culture as both a major food source and spiritual power. They were moved off to reservations and other lands but no means of real chance of continued meaningful existence.
To meet demands of fatty beef by the British, corn was increasingly fed to cattle. Furthermore, the price of grain was so cheap, it was advantageous to feed corn to cows. Thus, this formed a symbiotic relationship to the extent that even today, “the price of corn is closely linked to the demand for the price of cattle” (p.227).
After World War II, the surge in automobile use (helped by a $350 billion project to construct 41,000 miles of highways in the United States) led to the growth of the suburbs and fast-food restaurants that were making beef, and in particular, the hamburger a prime choice. (See also, for example, Eric Schossler's Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001), a New York Times bestseller. It provides a lot of details about the rise of the fast food industry and its various impacts.)
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Consumption/Beef.asp
[Incidentally, I stopped eating red meat about 6 years ago when I discovered that it takes 340 gallons of water to produce one pound of ground beef]
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We need to make a few disassociations. First, Iraq and 9/11 had NOTHING to do with each other until we, the peaceful American people, made something up. We're only talking about them in the same thread because we are talking about the big picture, don't start thinking they have anything to do with each other. Additionally, Iraqi and Iranian people are two entirely different races, Arabic and Persian respectively, and have about as much in common as a Botson Irish Catholic, and an Indonesian Catholic; as they say in Asia "Same same, but not the same". But now we are making these connections for them and forcing them into an alliance (whilst trying to divide and conquer, a whole other topic), just like OBL said we would, as I previously posted.
There are a few reasons why I think the people who want the troops to come home now are even bigger a$$holes than those who wanted them to go in in the first place. I was getting on a plane in Bangkok when we started dropping bombs on Baghdad and landing in SF I went straight out to the protests with the rest of the misguided hippies. However, having spent a few years looking even deeper into the issue I had several amazing revelations:
1. This war isn't about oil, it's about the rest of the oil
2. This is going to happen either way, it is the natural course of events. Nothing will change until A LOT of white people die. GWB, Inc. are doing an effective job of making sure that that happens.
3. The machine must come to a grinding halt at some point. GWB, Inc. are doing an effective job of making sure that that happens.
4. Both the richest and pooerest 2% of the world population will be least affected by global strife and a potential die off, I'm not likely to be either.
5. My president is going out on a serious limb to do this for me, who am I to not appreciate that? You're right Lois, they're not only about personal greed because OUR greed (mine and yours) is the only thing that feeds theirs. They are the herders, we are the sheep. I hope you don't really still believe that this country was set up so that "every man gets a vote" (recent election issues completely aside) Did you know that Iraqis didn't get their food ration until they voted?:
"The suffrage requirements of the frontier states were more democratic than eastern ones. Beginning with Kentucky in 1792, all but two western states embraced white male adult suffrage; in the East, all but two states retained either a property or taxpaying qualification for all or part of the period from 1820 to 1860. Several western states even enfranchised aliens who had established permanent residence and Indians who had given up tribal citizenship. The new West's rapid movement toward universal white manhood suffrage was facilitated by insecure land titles, the erosion of social distinctions, the desire to attract new settlers, and the belief that Indians could eventually become enough like whites to exercise political rights intelligently. Electoral competition everywhere also encouraged politicians to lower suffrage qualifications so they could portray themselves as champions of popular democracy."
"With the advent of the second American party system, Democrats and Whigs hotly disagreed about the scope of political rights. The Democrats, worried less about civic virtue and more about each man's need to defend himself against governmental tyranny, viewed the suffrage as an inherent right of white males. The Whigs largely accepted republican notions of a hierarchical organic society and therefore treated the suffrage as a privilege. But by 1850, electoral pressure had converted most Whigs to the idea of white male democracy."
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I want to give you that 9/11 was "crossing the line", not because I agree with you, but because I want to agree on something so we move on to the bigger issues. But I'm sorry Lois, it my feeling that your statement contains absolutely zero understnading of any other culture. You view their acts and motivations from inside your own cultural framework when you can't even vaguely imagine the world they live in. I can't even begin to address it in depth. I'm 100% certain "they" will tell you the the United States of America crossed the line a long fvcking time ago, if they didn't do it by eagerly and ferociously attacking an innocent country and KILLING 25,000 of their civilians who had NO WEAPONS, NO CONNECTION WHATSOEVER TO OBL, AND NEVER COMMITTED ANY HOSTILE ACT TOWARD THIS COUNTRY. Who is the nation of six-year olds here? Wait a minute, where was the USS Cole when it was attacked?
Let me tell you how it sounds from here:
"Mah field nigger jussa snuck up behind me 'n wholluped me upsahd muh head wit a gol darn shovel! Now Ah wanna know, what inna HELL wrong wit them goddamn ingrates? They was ova in AFREECA swingin' frum tree like monkies 'till we brung 'em over n' give'm jobs anna roof ova thuh heads and thuh good knowledge and LOVE of his Lord Jesus, not to mention some good whippin' disipline theh done needed. Ya turn yer head on 'em for one minute and they take a CHEAP SHOT like that atch ya. Ooooooo, boy now that's crossing the line. Cheap shottin' nigger kint even STEP UP like man with his family's silver plated dueling pistols. Jerold, I tell ya, these people just don't respect life or their own worth, we needa educate'm."
You want to know why this makes me so angry? Because ALL (READ: NONE) of the evidence we have now, we had BEFORE the war. And myself and 80% of the rest of the world were sitting here staring at you bunch of blood-thirsty psychos wondering if you didn't even see the words on the pages in front of you??? What about the yellowcake uranium story did you believe? Or how about the schematic design of what a mobile weapons lab could THEORETICALLY look like if we were to design one ourselves? Or how about the fact that any sarin he could have had had LONG SINCE degraded into useless sludge? Don't tell me you took your president's word for it because it's the stupidest thing I've ever heard, I'm very sorry.
I want you to tell me that when we were rounding up Japanese Americans in the 40's siezing their property, and putting them into concentration camps out in the desert that you would have have told me that those people had crossed the line, too.
This is where we could quickly get on a tangent about torture, the definitions, and goals of it's use. Do you expect me to believe that my government wouldn't be on the cutting edge of torture?; that we are going to let the terrorists have better torture methods than we do?
Lois, I can understand why you would feel let down that your government wasn't able to stop 19 guys who had been in the country for years and were directed by a guy with a cane and dialysis machine from a cave in Waziristan. I think you should take a few days and pour over every single detail of the chain of command on that day, cross reference the points you question, and formulate your own opinion as to why you think it happened. I think you'll find a significant range of sources and times put together here:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/essay.jsp?article=essayairdefense
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&timeperiod=1:00am%20Sept%2011%202001
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Don't believe anything you read, and only half of what you see. Or, wait, is that the other way around. Lois, type "saddam statue" into Google and tell us what comes back. BTW, I should make it clear that you shouldn't believe anything I say either, I want you to consider things, look into them (both sides of the story, I watch Fox news and love Bill O'Reilly) then make a decision.
Here, let me help you:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2842.htm
Army report confirms Psy-ops staged Saddam statue toppling
http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=641
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3024.htm
The point I'm making here is that since we had no evidence to begin with, and we have no evidence now of WMD, and since we attacked them (for no reason) then that by definition mean that we are MURDERERS. RED RUM RED RUM RED RUM RED RUM We are also, by definition, terrorists:
terror
n 1: an overwhelming feeling of fear and anxiety [syn: panic] 2: a person who inspires fear or dread; "he was the terror of the neighborhood" [syn: scourge, threat] 3: a very troublesome child.
Even Fatty will probably tell you that terror is about fear, violence is simply a method (and the only one available). Did you expect Al Qaeda to sail over here and seige Ft. Bragg? Give me a break. Did an Iraqi jet fly over and drop a bomb ont he White House?
"NEVILLE WATSON: Without a doubt. I mean, the end of the Saddam Hussein rule is one for jubilation but the way it has been ended is one of great sorrow, because the bombing, the so-called ‘shock and awe’, was one of the most horrific things that I have ever seen. It was designed, as all terrorism is, to create fear by the use of violence and it amazes me that the description of ‘shock and awe’ was not one dreamed up by the opponents of America, it was dreamed up by themselves, and I'd go as far to say that what we saw in the bombing of Iraq was terrorist activity. It was designed to create fear by the use of violence. And that bombing will go down in history as one of the most unjustified and most horrific that we have seen of late."
"Marines draped the statue of Saddam Hussein with an American flag. When the crowd reacted negatively to that gesture, the US flag was replaced with a pre-1990 Iraqi flag, missing the words "God is Great"." So we get to use "In God We Trust", but they don't get to use "God is Great". Brilliant.
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Have you ever heard of Prescott Bush?
"President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Trading With the Enemy Act. On October 20, 1942, the U.S. government ordered the seizure of Nazi German banking operations in New York City. Prescott Bush's business interests seized under the act in October and November 1942 included:
Union Banking Corporation (UBC) (for Thyssen and Brown Brothers Harriman)
Holland-American Trading Corporation (with Harriman)
the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation (with Harriman)
Silesian-American Corporation (with Walker)
"Bush's interest in UBC consisted of one share. For it, he was reimbursed $1,500,000. These assets were later used to launch Bush family investments in the Texas energy industry."
"Toby Rogers has claimed that Bush's connections to the Silesian-American Corporation makes him complicit with the corporation's mining operations in Poland which used slave labor out of Oswiecim, where the Auschwitz concentration camp was later constructed. Allegations that Prescott Bush profited from slave labor or the Auschwitz concentration camp remain unsubstantiated."
"There are unsubstantiated rumors concerning Prescott Bush's associations with the Nazi party. The Anti-Defamation League has stated, "Rumors about the alleged Nazi 'ties' of the late Prescott Bush, the grandfather of President George W. Bush, have circulated widely through the Internet in recent years. These charges are untenable and politically motivated." [1] The rumors began with extreme right-wing attacks on George H.W. Bush during his 1980 presidential run and were renewed during his 1988 run."
"The New York Herald-Tribune referred to the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, as "Hitler's Angel" and mentioned Bush only as an employee of the investment banking firm Thyssen used in the USA. The label was ironic, since by the time the Tribune article appeared, Hitler had turned on Thyssen and imprisoned him. Shortly after George W. Bush's election as US president, Canadian bloggers, apparently affiliated with Lyndon LaRouche, began a determined effort to circulate reports that Prescott Bush himself had been known as "Hitler's Angel"."
"In any case, it is now indisputable that Prescott Bush (via his business interests) was extensively involved with and enabled the rise of Nazi Germany, and its war machine. This has been clearly shown in recently declassified (2003) documents from the National Archives [2] No apology was ever offered by Prescott Bush or (since his death) by any Bush family member for his activities with Nazis or Nazi Germany. This despite the fact that many of these activities occurred after Nazi outrages such as Kristallnacht, and the savage invasions of Austria, Czechsolovakia, Poland, France, Denmark, and Norway. It should also be noted that much of the current Bush Family fortune can be traced back (directly or indirectly) to Nazi profiteering."
"It could be argued that Prescott Bush's motivations with regard to the Nazis were strictly selfishly financial and not philisophical in nature. There is, however, strong evidence that Prescott Bush was a strong eugenicist. Bush was an acquitance of Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood and herself an avowed eugenicist. Margaret Sanger is on record favoring infanticide, compulsory sterilization, and (arguably) genocide [3]. In fact, Prescott served as Treasurer for Planned Parenthood's first national fund raising campaign in 1947 [4]
It should also be noted that the alliance between Hitler and the Harriman-Bush mileu went beyond mere business interests. Another area where they worked together extensively was race science--i.e. eugenics. For example, in 1932, W.A. Harriman arranged the Third International Eugenics Conference in New York, where Hitler's leading race scientist, Dr. Ernst Rudin, was unanimously elected president of the International Federation of Eugenics Societies. After studying the eugenics laws of California and Virginia, which had resulted in thousands of forced sterilizations in the United States, Dr. Rudin wrote the Nazi "Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseases in Posterity," which led to thousands of forced sterilizations and millions of exterminations in Nazi Germany."
Now we are quickly getting to the BCCI scandal, but I'll let you pursue that on your own if you're interested.
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/
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OBL doesn't give a shlt about your western "values" (alcohol, strip clubs, porn, eating the pig, gluttony) as long as you keep them to yourself, but that's not the business we're in, is it? Tell me again how a president who believes that God and sent him on "The Walk" and talks to him isn't a religious fanatic?
"I asked God for blessing on him and the troops. He saluted, I saluted back and left the room."
Did Mr. Bush ask his father for any advice? President Bush said, ‘Well, no," He said of his father, ‘He is the wrong father to appeal to for advice. The wrong father to go to, to appeal to in terms of strength.’ And then he said, ‘There's a higher Father that I appeal to.’"
Let me get this straight, he didn't ask his father, the former head of the CIA and the only ex-president who reads his daily CIA briefings?
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Finally getting to Pearl Harbor as it seems nobody else wants to break the news to you on this one. When I read your post I actually had to go ask somebody if Americans still believe that story. Whether or not FDR knew (or where and to what extent) is one thing, that he goaded them and needed it to happen is indisputable.
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=408
7 December - 1:50 P.M. Washington time. Harry Hopkins, who was the only person with FDR when he received the news of the attack by telephone from Knox, wrote that FDR was unsurprised and expressed "great relief." Eleanor Roosevelt wrote about December 7th in This I Remember p 233, that FDR became "in a way more serene." In the NY Times Magazine of October 8, 1944 she wrote: "December 7 was...far from the shock it proved to the country in general. We had expected something of the sort for a long time."
7 December - 3:00 PM "The (war cabinet) conference met in not too tense an atmosphere because I think that all of us believed that in the last analysis the enemy was Hitler...and that Japan had given us an opportunity." Harry Hopkins (top KGB agent and FDR's alter ego), Dec. 7 Memo (Roosevelt and Hopkins R Sherwood, p. 431).
We're going to have to leave the Chinese and their potential motorhomes out of it for now.
I just read HowweirdDean's most recent post and I'm with the elcapfool in never posting here again. I don't have any tollerance left and I found the answers I was looking for. HWD is truly an imbecile beyond my comprehension.
Lois, if you are going to see OutFoxed then you should also see The Control Room and make your own comparisons.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jul 10, 2005 - 05:54pm PT
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You had me sit down for that? (Edit: Referring to Lois' post above)
I could have told you what news you were listening to without any revelation.
Sure Fox is fun to watch. But that's why you still believe that "They hate us because we're free." which is the most transparent propaganda BS I've ever heard. Even Bin Laden got sick enough of hearing to to retort "Sweden is even more free, why don't we attack them."
So continue with Fox, but find something to balance it. You owe it to yourself to rent the DVD of "Out-Foxed." all about Fox News. Dr. Dean should see it too so he can get all excited.
If you get a few opposing views, you can at least consider both sides, and see what degree of spin you are getting. Something from outside the US, anywhere, is more likely to deduct the automatic US cheerleader bias.
You don't have to be an expert to have an opinion, but you should be sure that you are listening with an open mind.
Peace
karl
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Ouch!
climber
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Jul 10, 2005 - 06:06pm PT
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" I really do like Fox News and yes that IS where I get much of my information."
Classic case of the Fox guarding the Henhouse.
Al Jazeera is far and away more fair and balanced than Fox.
Fox News is to democracy as sandpaper to a hemorrhoid.
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Spinmaster K-Rove
Trad climber
Stuck Under the Kor Roof
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Jul 10, 2005 - 06:10pm PT
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"Have a cold Rove?"
Just allergic to bullsh#t.
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