Having a diversity of published opinions at a time like this shows that something is right with America. First amendment, and all that.
But that's exactly what you don't have!! From what I've heard, the mainstream media in the US (in terms of print, radio, TV) are overwhelmingly refusing to address and cutting off any dissenting opinion that dares to ask if there is something wrong with American foreign policy. As usual, but more so. The British BBC is also guilty (Newsnight cutting off comentators in the middle of their answers). [So much for the BBC's "left-wing bias" alleged elsewhere in this thread.]
This is not about the First Amendment. The First Amendment only restricts the passing of laws. It doesn't say that there can't be a media oligopoly that consistently refuses to give significant airtime to left-wing views that are over-critical of the US government. In fact, in recent years even supposedly "liberal" papers have given huge coverage to "controversial" rightwing pundits, but none at all to lucid, well-informed and critical radical left pundits.
For more background read "The Manufacturing of Consent" by Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky, or see www.zmag.org
You cannot ignore all the US-sponsored crimes of the past 50 years by pointing the finger at someone else and saying "we didn't deserve this"! No you didn't deserve it, but you can't ignore your own crimes.
From WW2, through Cuba, Vietnam and Iraq, the USA has clung to the farcical idea that you can win hearts and minds by bombing and starving a population back to the stone age.
It's more depressing than that. The US government doesn't care about "winning hearts and minds" except insofar as that's necessary to achieve its goals. All it cares about is keeping its constituents happy, in this order:
(1) Big business
(2) Voters
And since voters are so easily manipulated and so individually insignificant, big business interests are consistently given much higher priority.
I would estimate that 90% or higher of the population is completely behind the US.
Even though we don't know exactly what they're going to do yet? Writing a blank cheque is pretty stupid, unless you trust the US to do what's right all the time. And I don't. I remember the alleged "surgical strikes" of the Gulf War, which in reality were nothing of the kind. Essential civilian infrastructure was targeted and the country was devastated.
Hiroshima. Nagasaki. Vietnam ("We had to destroy the village in order to save it"). Kosovo. Iraq - Basra Road atrocity. The genocide in East Timor in which 1/4 to 1/3 of the population were slaughtered by Indonesian troops. Did the US object? No, of course not - it STEPPED UP arms sale to Indonesia!
Why have you not heard about / heard evidence for these US atrocities? Because the mainstream media are complicit, and you obviously haven't read many of the alternative radical left media like Z Magazine or SCHNews. See e.g.
"Manufacturing Consent", by Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman
Any political book by Noam Chomsky
Any book by John Pilger
Almost any issue of Z Magazine (www.zmag.org)
"A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn
There are BOOKS FULL OF EVIDENCE. Go read them if you don't believe me.
First, they do not restrict themselves to military targets. This is the first rule of civilized warfare.
Precisely. The first rule of "civilised" (hah!) warfare, as history shows, is that civilians are always attacked. Hiroshima, Dresden, Vietnam, Iraq, Kosovo... the list goes on. Don't believe me? Just search the net for "myth of surgical strikes".
The reason people starve is not because of unequal distribution of wealth, it's because of unequal distribution of capitalism (not my phrase, not sure who said it).
Where's the proof? People like Susan George have written several books arguing for trenchantly for the former view. There is plenty of reason to believe that inequality causes starvation. Poor, displaced farmers are more vulnerable to droughts etc. than rich farmers, for one thing. Yet dogmatic "free market" views always seem to be based on ignorance, or worse, self-contradictory.
Yes, read the rest of the FAQ - but only if you accept that all benchmarks are valid only for certain types of applications. CPU-intensive benchmarks don't mean much for IO-intensive database apps.
What's broken about it? They didn't do enough optimisation on it until this year (1.4), sure, but that's not a fundamental external API problem, just an internal design problem.
Our media is about as open as you can get in showing the US citizens the problems in their own government.
It may be among the most open in the world, but that's only because most of the rest of the world is even worse. There is fucking mountains of evidence of US media deception, I'm not joking - read "Manufacturing of Consent" by Herman and Chomsky, or look at www.zmag.org
But saying that this tragedy was brought on by this policy is living in the same delusional mental state that the terrorists lived in. It is this delusional mental state which brought on this tragedy, and the policy did not cause the delusional mental state, it was idiots listening to evil politicians and clerics - spouting blind hatred and lies about promises of paradise.
We're saying it might have been, we don't know for sure. Why is that delusional? Bear in mind that events can have more than one cause.
Since when did I start calling everything false? I am calling bullshit because I know of facts that starkly contradict. What for goodness sake is wrong with that?
The Iraqis, as a result of their own actions, have been placed under strict conduct limits. American military power protects those limits. The Iraqis choose - voluntarily - to test those limits and are assaulted in return. This is not naked aggression we're talking about , unlike the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. This is the enforcement of an internationally agreed-upon cease-fire to which Iraq itself is signatory. It is perhaps easiest to think of Iraq as a criminal here in America who has broken the law and has given up a large measure of his or her rights as a consequence.
The analogy is broken. The bombings are a minor issue compared to the full horror of the sanctions. And Iraq is not a person. It consists of many people, many of them innocent human beings like you or I. It simply defies all humanity to sit by and let 5,000 children per month die for want of adequate food and medical supplies (such as aneasthetics, spare parts for hospital equipment and ambulances, medical journals, and much, more more). Dennis Halliday, former humanitarian co-ordinator for Iraq, said it best: We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that. It is illegal and immoral."
Well, not entirely unreported. You can get a truer picture of what goes on by not relying on only US and Israeli media. People, look on the net for Arab and other international news sites. Not unbiased either - but a different bias. I recommend www.zmag.org (more analysis than news).
We are responsible for the Govt's actions. They did it for us. We say "we want cheap oil" and we say "we want cheap beef." The Government that wants to stay in power just listens and obeys like a humble a-moral robot.
This is a highly misleading picture. Yes we do have a responsibility not to put up with this - but it's extremely difficult for us to do anything about it (especially at an individual level, where it's blindingly obvious that it's hard to make any noticeable difference). The influence runs both ways. The US military actually stationed propaganda experts in news centers during the Kosovo war, to influence public opinion. I know this sounds impossible to believe that this could happen in the United States - but search the net, it's true, I swear.
They will not hesitate to distort the truth to get public backing. The news agencies and media are complicit - no journalist wants to get locked out, refused access to information, and that's what would happen if they said something the Pentagon didn't like. The Pentagon controls the flow of information in a war zone - they say what footage gets cut, because reporters cannot get anywhere near the action without military assistance.
The propaganda machine is enormously powerful, and serves the interests of the rich and powerful first and foremost. One man or woman is not going to be able to make a dent in that. Your urge to become a politician is futile, I'm afraid. Do something less soul-destroying, like grassroots activism or volunteer work. Politics will destroy your soul, or you will give up in disgust - one or the other. Or you will be one of the few idealist politicians - sidelined, but with a tiny bit of power. Maybe that's the best you can hope for. Who knows?
Remember "We had to destroy the village in order to save it"? Think what kind of mind says those words.
The US stepped up arms to Indonesia while it was in the process of genocidally murdering 1/4 to 1/3 of the population of East Timor in the 70s. Now tell me civilians have never been a target of US policy.
I have a hard time condeming Israel going after terrorists who are killing people who's only crime is trying to get married.
This is not the only thing Israel are doing. Bulldozing homes? Racist segregation? Shooting at children who dare to throw stones at the police?
I think your news sources are a little biased. Hint: Most US and Israeli news sources are heavily biased in the Israeli direction.
* And if the sanctions are so horrible in Iraq, then why doesn't Saddam simply comply with the UN resoultions and allow them to inspect for bio and chemical weapons?
This is a joke. The sanctions will only be lifted when the UN is satisfied that they are not developing weapons - but there is no way to prove a negative, hence this gives carte blanche to continue the sanctions forever.
Besides, everyone agrees Saddam is evil. If it's his fault, it's madness to place the Iraqi economy in his hands, and therefore it's the US's fault as well. If it's not his fault then it's the US's fault, so either way the US must shoulder some responsibility. Why is the US supporting central planning, for God's sake? I thought the US was supposed to be anti-communist? Why don't they allow innocent Iraqis to trade on the open market?
Yes, everyone loves to complain about American foreign policy.
You can't just dismiss this! Bah. Loans and grants don't make up for installing evil dictatorships, Vietnam, and supporting genocide in East Timor. Wise up. America is no angel on the world stage. More like a Satan, on balance. Don't believe me - read www.zmag.org
As far as Iraq goes, neither sanctions nor bombings would ever happen if Saddam Hussein would simply abide by the terms of the agreements he made at the end of the Gulf War.
So if we cut off all food aid to Iraq tomorrow unless Saddam complied, Saddam would be the only one to blame for the mass famine? That's the logical extension of your argument.
At some level the US has to accept responsibility. Their blockade causes mass deaths, including thousands of innocent children.
And are 5,000 Iraqi babies really dying every day due to economic sanctions while Saddam rests comfortably in one of his many palaces? Even if it's true, how can it possibly be the fault of the US when Saddam clearly has the resources to deal with it, but chooses instead to spend them on militancy?
I have no wish to justify Saddam's behaviour. But the Iraqi economy is highly oil-dependent - and therefore import-dependent - and Saddam is simply not allowed to trade on the open market. That's what the word sanctions means! He can only get what scraps of supplies the US sees fit to allow him to get - which is not enough to ensure basic living standards.
This is how I interpret the article, in a nutshell: Now you know how it feels, now, will you finally start to care about the oppression and violence that America and Israel are perpetrating in your name and with your dollars? How about waking up and caring about people outside the borders of your own country - and putting that caring into practice?
How many times do we have to say it? Correlation does not equal causation. The US have stated that the purpose of the sanctions is to get rid of Saddam. Even if you believe this (which you shouldn't), it does not take a genius to realise that they are going to be harsher on Saddam-controlled areas than "international"-controlled areas.
Slashdot Mirror
But that's exactly what you don't have!! From what I've heard, the mainstream media in the US (in terms of print, radio, TV) are overwhelmingly refusing to address and cutting off any dissenting opinion that dares to ask if there is something wrong with American foreign policy. As usual, but more so. The British BBC is also guilty (Newsnight cutting off comentators in the middle of their answers). [So much for the BBC's "left-wing bias" alleged elsewhere in this thread.]
This is not about the First Amendment. The First Amendment only restricts the passing of laws. It doesn't say that there can't be a media oligopoly that consistently refuses to give significant airtime to left-wing views that are over-critical of the US government. In fact, in recent years even supposedly "liberal" papers have given huge coverage to "controversial" rightwing pundits, but none at all to lucid, well-informed and critical radical left pundits.
For more background read "The Manufacturing of Consent" by Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky, or see www.zmag.org
It's more depressing than that. The US government doesn't care about "winning hearts and minds" except insofar as that's necessary to achieve its goals. All it cares about is keeping its constituents happy, in this order:
(1) Big business
(2) Voters
And since voters are so easily manipulated and so individually insignificant, big business interests are consistently given much higher priority.
Even though we don't know exactly what they're going to do yet? Writing a blank cheque is pretty stupid, unless you trust the US to do what's right all the time. And I don't. I remember the alleged "surgical strikes" of the Gulf War, which in reality were nothing of the kind. Essential civilian infrastructure was targeted and the country was devastated.
Hiroshima. Nagasaki. Vietnam ("We had to destroy the village in order to save it"). Kosovo. Iraq - Basra Road atrocity. The genocide in East Timor in which 1/4 to 1/3 of the population were slaughtered by Indonesian troops. Did the US object? No, of course not - it STEPPED UP arms sale to Indonesia!
Why have you not heard about / heard evidence for these US atrocities? Because the mainstream media are complicit, and you obviously haven't read many of the alternative radical left media like Z Magazine or SCHNews. See e.g.
"Manufacturing Consent", by Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman
Any political book by Noam Chomsky
Any book by John Pilger
Almost any issue of Z Magazine (www.zmag.org)
"A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn
There are BOOKS FULL OF EVIDENCE. Go read them if you don't believe me.
Precisely. The first rule of "civilised" (hah!) warfare, as history shows, is that civilians are always attacked. Hiroshima, Dresden, Vietnam, Iraq, Kosovo... the list goes on. Don't believe me? Just search the net for "myth of surgical strikes".
Where's the proof? People like Susan George have written several books arguing for trenchantly for the former view. There is plenty of reason to believe that inequality causes starvation. Poor, displaced farmers are more vulnerable to droughts etc. than rich farmers, for one thing. Yet dogmatic "free market" views always seem to be based on ignorance, or worse, self-contradictory.
It may be among the most open in the world, but that's only because most of the rest of the world is even worse. There is fucking mountains of evidence of US media deception, I'm not joking - read "Manufacturing of Consent" by Herman and Chomsky, or look at www.zmag.org
We're saying it might have been, we don't know for sure. Why is that delusional? Bear in mind that events can have more than one cause.
"Do something" about what, exactly? Something about the fact that Iraqi oil threatens Western profits? That's the real reason for the sanctions.
As for the biological and chemical weapons research, preventing sufficient food and medicine imports is simply not necessary.
The analogy is broken. The bombings are a minor issue compared to the full horror of the sanctions. And Iraq is not a person. It consists of many people, many of them innocent human beings like you or I. It simply defies all humanity to sit by and let 5,000 children per month die for want of adequate food and medical supplies (such as aneasthetics, spare parts for hospital equipment and ambulances, medical journals, and much, more more). Dennis Halliday, former humanitarian co-ordinator for Iraq, said it best: We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that. It is illegal and immoral."
This is a highly misleading picture. Yes we do have a responsibility not to put up with this - but it's extremely difficult for us to do anything about it (especially at an individual level, where it's blindingly obvious that it's hard to make any noticeable difference). The influence runs both ways. The US military actually stationed propaganda experts in news centers during the Kosovo war, to influence public opinion. I know this sounds impossible to believe that this could happen in the United States - but search the net, it's true, I swear.
They will not hesitate to distort the truth to get public backing. The news agencies and media are complicit - no journalist wants to get locked out, refused access to information, and that's what would happen if they said something the Pentagon didn't like. The Pentagon controls the flow of information in a war zone - they say what footage gets cut, because reporters cannot get anywhere near the action without military assistance.
The propaganda machine is enormously powerful, and serves the interests of the rich and powerful first and foremost. One man or woman is not going to be able to make a dent in that. Your urge to become a politician is futile, I'm afraid. Do something less soul-destroying, like grassroots activism or volunteer work. Politics will destroy your soul, or you will give up in disgust - one or the other. Or you will be one of the few idealist politicians - sidelined, but with a tiny bit of power. Maybe that's the best you can hope for. Who knows?
The US stepped up arms to Indonesia while it was in the process of genocidally murdering 1/4 to 1/3 of the population of East Timor in the 70s. Now tell me civilians have never been a target of US policy.
This is not the only thing Israel are doing. Bulldozing homes? Racist segregation? Shooting at children who dare to throw stones at the police?
I think your news sources are a little biased. Hint: Most US and Israeli news sources are heavily biased in the Israeli direction.
* And if the sanctions are so horrible in Iraq, then why doesn't Saddam simply comply with the UN resoultions and allow them to inspect for bio and chemical weapons?
This is a joke. The sanctions will only be lifted when the UN is satisfied that they are not developing weapons - but there is no way to prove a negative, hence this gives carte blanche to continue the sanctions forever.
Besides, everyone agrees Saddam is evil. If it's his fault, it's madness to place the Iraqi economy in his hands, and therefore it's the US's fault as well. If it's not his fault then it's the US's fault, so either way the US must shoulder some responsibility. Why is the US supporting central planning, for God's sake? I thought the US was supposed to be anti-communist? Why don't they allow innocent Iraqis to trade on the open market?
Yes, everyone loves to complain about American foreign policy.
You can't just dismiss this! Bah. Loans and grants don't make up for installing evil dictatorships, Vietnam, and supporting genocide in East Timor. Wise up. America is no angel on the world stage. More like a Satan, on balance. Don't believe me - read www.zmag.org
So if we cut off all food aid to Iraq tomorrow unless Saddam complied, Saddam would be the only one to blame for the mass famine? That's the logical extension of your argument.
At some level the US has to accept responsibility. Their blockade causes mass deaths, including thousands of innocent children.
And are 5,000 Iraqi babies really dying every day due to economic sanctions while Saddam rests comfortably in one of his many palaces? Even if it's true, how can it possibly be the fault of the US when Saddam clearly has the resources to deal with it, but chooses instead to spend them on militancy?
I have no wish to justify Saddam's behaviour. But the Iraqi economy is highly oil-dependent - and therefore import-dependent - and Saddam is simply not allowed to trade on the open market. That's what the word sanctions means! He can only get what scraps of supplies the US sees fit to allow him to get - which is not enough to ensure basic living standards.