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Syamsu  Suspended Member (Idle past 5618 days) Posts: 1914 From: amsterdam Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Violent propaganda | |||||||||||||||||||
contracycle Inactive Member |
quote: No - I think the "terrorists" are in the right, and the West is in the wrong.
quote: This would be a good example of something that would send the (accurate) message that the west is comprised of a bunch of ignorant intolerant hypocrites.
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contracycle Inactive Member |
quote: Correct - but equally, I think the whole attribution of the cause of the present conflict to religion is mistaken. The third world is conducting an armed resistance to Western imperialism - much as it has done, on and off, for the last 200 years. Certainly, their rhetoric is phrased in religious terms, just like Bush's rhetoric is phrased in democratic terms: both structure their arguments in the light of the prevailing ideology.
quote: Oh yes, very good indeed, although as it happens I also only saw 2 of the 3. Indeed, I think that case is entirely plausible; its one of the reasons I have taken to saying "if they exist" whenever I mention Al Qaida.
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contracycle Inactive Member |
quote: quote: quote: This message has been edited by contracycle, 04-14-2005 06:01 AM
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contracycle Inactive Member |
quote: You ARE the bad guys. The villains. The Black Hats. The evildoers.
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contracycle Inactive Member |
quote: Why should I bother? I am already a civilian, and therefore a target. You may be amused to know that in the recent PCGamer review of America's Army, they captioned a picture of 4 guys covering different directions as "the Women & Children formation, in which you spray bullets wildly into crowds of civilians".
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contracycle Inactive Member |
quote: Nonsense. There was nothing gained by attacking Afghanistan; it was merely the first bit of Imperialism that the administration knew it would get rubber-stamped.
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contracycle Inactive Member |
quote: - according to intelligence - the same intelligence that reported WMD in Iraq.- Even if he was there, Afghanistan was still a soveriegn state - By your admission, your beef was not with the Taliban, but AQ (if it exists). quote: There was no justification for "going after the Taliban". The Taliban were doing their own thing in their own country and did not pose a threat to you; they had no effective army and minimal weaponry.
quote: And my point is, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is ALSO a crime and one for which the USA will be held accountable.
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contracycle Inactive Member |
quote: I'm afraid that IS correct. Remember, Clinton was on this bandwagon too - that is why he authorised the Desert Fox campaign, and December 16th 1998 he said:
quote: What Bush did was to substantially underplay the tentativity of the intelligence. But as the subsequent reports on US intelligence show, there was a manifest willingness to accept the worst case scenario as most probable, and that they heard what they expected, or wanted, to hear. The blame cannot be laid purely at Bush's door, or that of the Republicans. The whole American establishment has read the situation incorrectly in almost every detail. It is not even clear that Al Qaida even exist in any objective sense, or whether US intelligence "deduced" the existance of AQ from first principles.
quote: The Taliban can only be said to be "funding and sheltering" Bin Laden and Al Qaida if AQ actually exists in a meaningful sense. And no evidence has ever emerged from Afghanistan making this conclusive case. American intelligence alleged these "facts" - but they also alleged, and Rumsfeld presented this on TV, that AQ had vast underground concrete bunkers in the mountains - none of which have ever been found. To date, almost no claims about AQ have ever been verified. The few identifiable AQ activities we are certain of all postdate 9/11 by some way. It is not clear that the demand to the Taliban was therefore reasonable or achievable. Furthermore, what right does the US have to go around unilaterally demanding that citizens of other states be handed over to you merely becuase you demand it? It is outright bullying, and the threat was followed up by actual violence. Please remember that ALL American citizens are protected from prosecution by other states even if they commit war crimes. Why do you hold the Taliban to a standard you yourselves do not honour?
quote: Well that bit is indisputable. Its also why you are in the wrong.
quote: And once again we see here the self-righteousness of declaring the violence of your enemies illegitimate. Americas support of Israel and its persecution of Palestinians is the real issue, and America paid the price for its cruelty on 9/11. This message has been edited by contracycle, 04-19-2005 05:21 AM
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contracycle Inactive Member |
quote: Inasmuch as they are both pretexts for American Imperial expansion the Middle East, yes.
quote: I'm well aware of the allegations. That said, I consider some of them spurious - one is that a group of guards refused to let them into an HQ; that could be simply cockup rather than conspiracy. You will need to more specific about alleged attacks on inspectors - I don't recall any such. And clearly, no such WMD plans or programmes were in fact uncovered: because as we now know, they were clean since 1991. This is exactly the 'seeing what you want to see' I suggested. Everyone "knowns" that Iraq has WMD, therefore anything suspicious "must" be indicative of an attempt to conceal. Nevertheless, the point remains that you simply cannot lay the Iraq debacle on Bush's door alone. Bush did and Clinton were both willing to kill and maim on the basis of their dodgy intelligence reports alone. Clinton, and his Democratic administration, were every bit as convinced that Saddam was armed to the teeth as Bush was. Bush exagerated; he understated the partial data; for these he can and should be held to account. And so should Bomber Bill. And before you ask, yes I was out on the streets protesting against Desert Fox. You may be pleased to learn that American pilots managed to bomb a flock of sheep, so that only bits of said sheep and their shephard could be found. Of course, nobody was held responsible.
quote: Thats the allegation that has now been comprehensively disproven. You will remember that Scott Ritter testified that "we got it almost entirely wrong", and as I recall he ran USNCOM during this period. This is also the period in which UNSCOM inspectors were revealed to be US intelligence agents, in total violation of the agreed tersm of the inspection. Once again, these alleged products that justified Desert Fox have never been found.
quote: Riiiiight. Is that because you supported 'Fox, huh? There was no evidence - there were merely allegations, since disproved.
quote: The problem is, the rest of the world does not haver access to US intelligence sources, and cannot verify US claims. And that is all we have to go on. I never said that AQ certainly did not exist. I say, IF it exists. But the real problem is that it is not clear if AQ EVER existed in any meaningful sense until the US invented it. As the Wikipedia link reports:
quote: Bin Laden certainly had contacts. He probably had intent. But he probably never had an actual organisation that existed in conspiratorial cells, being organised by an international terrorist master-mind. But now that the US is so insistent there is such an organ, the name has certainly acquired a currency and cachet it never had before. The US is fighting demons largely of its own creation, and own invention.
quote: As you well know, many rival organisations are proine to claiming reponsibility for any given act of resistance. And if AQ is indeed the paranoid figment of US imagination, then it might even be easy to claim the strike on behalf of AQ as a means of putting the US off the scent. Frankly, AQ does not behave like any other terrorist organisation anyone has ever heard of. It behaves like a James Bond villain. This alone is reason to doubt is actual existance as a meaningful entity - a threat deduced from nothing more than a single list in the posession of one individual. Seeing what you want to see again, especially as the predictions of huge bunkers in Afghanistan - the cited reason for the invasion - are now utterly discredited.
quote: Why should they, when Bin Laden was administering justice? But yes, the Taliban did publicly say they would hand Bin Laden over if they knew where he was. There are some suggestions they were lying about that, and did know where he was, but lets bear in mind: the Taliban have absolutely no responsibility whatsoever to the USA. When, for example, will you be handing your killers and torturers over to the Iraqi judicial system?
quote: No its not well known - its violently disputed not least by the very people who wqere arrested by the US in those very camps. They repeatedly report that the camps exiosted for training militia and mujahadeen for work in the India-Pakistan border, for theongoing Palestinian conflict and indeed for anti-Westerrn strikes. But it is quite clear that Bin Laden did not "run" any of these camps - they were run by the likes of Hizbollah and related organs and sympathisers. And these are the people that the US has been obliged to release back to the UK without charge. There are undoubtedly more innocent victims presently languishing in American gulags. By the way, the Kurds run similar camps for their expats too. And I have known several British Pakistanis who have attended training camps in Pakistan learning to use AK's and RPG's. But you know the real reason they go? Charity donations by paying for that service in Western currency; they have no intention of taking up the struggle thmeselves. Thus the point is the whole region is rife with armed "terrorist" camps, by which, once again, the term terrorist merely means "army without uniforms". There is absolutely no way the simple coincidence of Bin Laden at such a camp indicates he was ever in charge. He may have been the afternoon guest preacher.
quote: Yes thats true. Unfortunately, we are fools to support America in this regard ever, becuase it will be thrown back in our faces: the US still will never sign up to the conventions governing war crimes which would allow its citizens to be extradited to face justice. What this incident is a demonstration of is only the silly sympathy the world felt for the US after 9/11, and the fact that appeasement of US imperialism does not work. This message has been edited by contracycle, 04-19-2005 10:26 AM
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contracycle Inactive Member |
quote: *I* most certainly do NOT have a double standard - remember, I was opposing Aemrica's support for the brutal Saddam back when washington was feting him as Our Friend in the Middle East. It is America that demonstrably has the double standard, turning round know to complain about events like Halabja which it turned a blind eye to at the time. In fact, they even said that it was understandable Hussein was using extreme measures against Kurdish terrorism. The fact of ther matter remains that however terrible Saddams regime was, it was not so unusually terrible that it was in immediate need of toppling. The hypocritical military humanists who seem to think that democracy is achieved by laser guided munitions from 15,000 feet clearly never examined the consequences of their use of force properly, and far far more Iraqi's have died at the hands of the West than died at the hands of Saddam.
quote: Yes, I do - your own media's subsequent collective and public confession that they failed to apply due scrutiny to official pronouncements about the Iraqi government. Which is much like the same confession they gave over Vietnam. Your media has a discernible and repeated pattern of being overawed by the executive and failing to hold it to any kind of account. This is why I say the USA is the most thoroughly propagandised state on the planet.
quote: Source for what? Ritters testimony to the committee? Otr the allegations of espionage? I'm sure you have cited Ritter yourself in the past; as for the espionage allegations, by all means see here:
quote: http://bss.sfsu.edu/...20360/Readings/cia%20AND%20unscom.HTM
quote: Of course they do. But that does not mean that they know the things the US knows or claims to "know" - this is not science-land, everything is murky. We are not taking about independant reproducibility at all. And no intelligence agenceis had heard of this alleged "al Qaeda" before the US advanced its claims. Not one.
quote: What they monitor is people alleged to be members of Al Qaeda according uncheckable and unverifiable US claims. They also monitor local extremists, who may NOW be in contact with an "organisation" calling itself al qaida; but that does not imply AQ had a prior exiostance or was being monitored. Nobody had ever heard of them before 9/11.
quote: War is hell, Schraf. Maybe Bomber Bill should have though about that when he adminstered justice to make-up girls, programme producers and cameramen when he orderd the bombing of Belgrade's TV station. Or is it OK and not really murder if you are a Democrat? Once again American Exceptionalism insists that the US not be held accountable for its brutality and cruelty. Well, Bin Laden DID hold you accountable, and you didn' like it much, did you? I remind you of the debts you owe, yet unpaid:
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contracycle Inactive Member |
quote: Thats outright nonsense and personal slander, Schraf. And amazingly hypocrtitical; having frequently criticised Republican apologists for damning anyone who opposes the state as unaptriotic, here you know resort to their same dishonest technique of launching aspersions against my character and suggesting I am a "Saddam lover". Are you going to call me a cheese-eating surrender monkey next? Secondly,I have never suggested that Saddam was anything other than a homicidal sociaopath - rather like Bush and Clinton in that regard. or have I ever said that he was just an virtuous under any circumstances. Those are outright lies to blacken my character, are they not, Schraf? Third, I am not "willing" to see "conspiracy" in a government I don;t like - what I see, and have abundant evidence of, is an agressive racist and Imperialist state that executes a foreign intervention nearly every years in the last hundred. The idea of the USA as a peaceful state contributing to stable world order is a groos nationalist fiction. As we already, you are insufficiently knowledgeable of your own states long and thoroughly documented history of assasination, torture, invasion and deception that you cannot even name 10 US interventions in Latin America - so I am substantially better informed of the FACTS about your state than you are. Do I have to give you a massive list of American crimes again?
quote: Except of course, that is NOT the world *I* live in - that is the world the US lives in. Just as we saw when the Us turned on its buddy Saddam, having gone from claiming he was one of the virtuous good guys and defenders of dmeocracy to denouncing him as a sociapth. the blind, Orwellian doublethink switch from 100% good to 100% bad; this happens in YOUR political environment, not mine.
quote: Possibly. But not probably, becuase both states regard their leadership and the decisions of its state apparatus as inherently virtuous and unequesionably good.
quote: I'm quite sure he did think about it. In fact, I know he thought about it, because his statement on thw 9/11 strike makes that explicitly clear:
quote: and...
quote: quote: quote: Bin Laden is abundantly clear - America was struck in just vengeance for its crimes. Bin Laden speaks for the free people of the world, albeit in a religious voice. He points out the hypocrisy we are all aware of; he highlights the disregard America exhibits for non-American lives, and the hysteria it falls into when Americans die. He points out that Americans should not expect to live in peace while they wage war and bomb from the skies. While they fund and support and arm the state terrorism of Israel. Fundamentally, Bin Laden is right and the US is wrong, murderous and hypocrticial state that it is.
quote: Ha ha. Of crouse I'm a terrorist apologist - and have been for years. Thats becuase the "terrorists" - by which the West means a peoples army - is usually in the right, and criticism of "terrorists" is invariably hypocritical. Why should I not be proud to challnge that Western hypocrisy? Of course I am. And if you want to start talking about accountability, why don't you state exercising some at home Schraf? Why don't you impeach your war criminal president? Why did you re-elect the mass murderer in the first place? How can you have the outright hypocratical arrogance to denounce terrorists for striking the twin towers while your terrorist state, lead by a war criminal, is openly allied with the terrorist Israeli state, also lead by a war criminal, while providing funds and weapons to aid the Israeli state in killing more civilians? You don't have even the slightest trace of self-awareness, guilt or conscience, do you? And you wonder why I think the brutal US is the most propagandised place in the world, huh.
quote: Ha ha ha - you know I can't prove a negative. But I can point to some of the reports:
quote: Revelation casts doubt on Iraq find | Politics | The Guardian Note how Kay builds his case purely based on allegations of intent, rather than material evidence. He looks for confirmation of his expectations, and lo and behold, he finds them. What a hard job that must be. On Maqy 17th 2004 Fox News reported:
quote: Now, how is it that this is the FIRST FIND of a chemical weapon, if chemical weapons were allegedly found in 2003, huh? And this one is thought to have been an old shell that the IED-planters probably did not even know contained gas. As Scott Ritter, UNCOMS head until 1998, wrote in War on Iraq"If you listen to Richard Butler, biological weapons are a "black hole" about which we know nothing. But a review of the record reveals we actually know quite a bit. We monitored more biological facilities than any other category, inspecting over a thousand sites and repeatedly monitoring several hundred... For Iraq to have biological weapons today they'd have to reconstitute a biological manufacturing base... [the inspectors] blanketed Iraq--every research and development facility, every university, every school, every beer factory: anything that was a potential fermentation capability was inspected--and we never found any evidence of ongoing research and development or retention." The Washington Post wrote, of Desert Fox:
quote: So Schraf, these alleged chemical weapons found in Iraq in 1998 such that it justified Desert Fox are:1) refuted by the head of UNSCOM at the time 2) refuted by the result of Iraq Survey Group 3) not reflected in the targetting list actually used in Desert Fox And we also see from the likes of David Kay that the Us was purposefully applying the worst and most malicious spin it could concoct to any finding in Iraq whatsoever. Desert Fox, Afghanistan and the occupation of Iraq - all based on paranoid, hypocritical and frankly racist assumptions about foreign states. It is America that is in the wrong in all these matters, case closed. And September the 11th was not nearly enough payback, not at all.
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contracycle Inactive Member |
Burma gas attack alleged
John Aglionby, South-east Asia correspondentFriday April 22, 2005 The Guardian The Burmese army used chemical weapons in an attack on ethnic Karenni rebels in February, the UK-based rights group Christian Solidarity Worldwide alleges in a report published today. Martin Panter, the organisation's international president, told the Guardian he had interviewed and examined five reported survivors of the February 15 assault on Karenni positions in Nya My, just over the border from the northern Thai town of Mae Hon Son. "I believe there's overwhelming and compelling circumstantial evidence that these soldiers are victims of chemical weapons," he said. "I cannot say exactly what the cocktail of chemicals was but it appears to have contained blister agents, mustard gas and neurological agents." He said the Karenni forces had allegedly been enduring an artillery bombardment for more than a month when, on February 15, a shell exploded with a different sound. "They said there was a strongly pungent acrid yellow vapour," Dr Panter said. "The gas was yellow, tasted like chilli and was hot." The Karenni allegedly told Dr Panter their eyes watered, and they suffered severe nausea and vomiting, coughed up blood and suffered gastro-intestinal illnesses such as diarrhoea and had great difficulty walking for some time. "I have a report from a doctor who examined them five days after the attack and what I saw was completely consistent with what was in that report," he said. --Burma gas attack alleged | World news | The Guardian So now we wait and see what the moral west will do in response. This message has been edited by contracycle, 04-22-2005 07:52 AM
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contracycle Inactive Member |
Tal isn't much interested in reality, Mick. As you can see, all his arguments depend on quotes from leaders of large instutions, and invariably ones which have a vested interest.
Whish is why I'd like to ask Tal if any of these great works were paid for with American money? Because as you will no doubt recall, USAID said the considtions in Iraq were so unstable they had only been "able" to spend 2% of their budget up until last year, despite finding ways to spend the entirety of the aid budget allocated by the United Nations. So, is Tal here claiming credit for spending paid for for by the UN while American money remains in American banks?
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contracycle Inactive Member |
quote: Thats reasonable enough, but is that a valid scenario? If people are fighting for their freedom, acceeding to some of their demands shows you are not a tyrant. The dogmatic refusal to even discuss the demands and aims of the violent movement confronting you can only escalate the conflict.
quote: Ha ha. In the first instance, it is quite remarkable that you hear little about Irish terrorism, becuase after all America was the primary fundraiser for this terrorism, harboured terrorists, and contributed to the murder of British citizens. All of which makes the outcry against terrorism rather hypocritical coming from the US, and al;so why you hear little about that dirty little semi-secret. Secondly, the reason for the decline in violence was becuase the IRA's political strategy was working. It's political wing, Sinn Fein, stood for and won elections (thus demonstrating the IRA had a genuine constituency) and moves by the British government toward a power-charing agreement. In other words, precisely the mature, negotated strategy that Mick was pointing to. And indeed, that discipline on the IRA side - not for nothing described as the most professional of European terrorist organs - arises in large part from the materialism and political praxis it acquired from its Marxist links and history.
quote: First, note that the leader of the SDLP is not the British government. Second, the reason it did not work earlier was because the public position of the UK was "we do not negotiate with terrorists". The main impediment was a) BritGov coming to the deicsion to negotiate, and b) BritGov backtracking on its unwillingness to negotiate. At the same time, the British and Us governments were backing the hardline stance of the NAtional Party in South Africa against negotiating with the ANC on exactly the same grounds. I specifically recall Ronald Reagan expressing sympathy for the South African state and its struggle against evil. Quite clearly, negotiation does work. It does work because the combatants do have grievances that can be met. The main impediment is moralism, and the illingness to keep fighting and dying becuase of the alleged danger of negotiating with terrorists - a danger all the more hypocritical becuase we manifestly do, as states, use the threat of violence to force others to do as we say.
quote: What public outcry? You forget, the IRA are the leading edge of a legitimate and broad-based popular concern. While there are concerns about the use of violence, the British Army is after still in occupation, is it not? What controlled violence is that the IRA leadership were able to rein in their members becuase they had reason to believe that negotiations were making progress. Throughtout the history of the troubles, the IRA have been quite diligent in trying to de-escalate the conflict. That hard-line, no negotiation, no compromise, fanatical position was on the part of the British Government. {Fixed 1 quote box. - AM} This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 05-04-2005 12:56 PM
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contracycle Inactive Member |
You're not answering the question.
Is the money being spent that provided by the US, or by the UN? Can you tell me what proportion of the funds allocated by congress have been spent?
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