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Who marched? - Page 5

post #201 of 230
2/18/03 at 9:42pm
Quote:
RathBandu:
As do I. That's why I've detached myself from the anti-war movement. It seems to be divided into three groups: a) the Chomsky-Zinn disciples who believe America is the worst place on earth, b) those looking for a rush or to get laid, and c) those who care.
Rath, have you read much Chomsky?
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post #202 of 230
2/18/03 at 9:51pm
Quote:
raoul duke:
Rath, have you read much Chomsky?
No, but his name seems to get dropped an AWFUL lot here in that context. And in contexts that don't have anything to do with the war, too.
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post #203 of 230
2/18/03 at 9:53pm
Then why would you say something like that? Jesus Christ.
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post #204 of 230
2/18/03 at 10:08pm
Quote:
RathBandu:
No, but his name seems to get dropped an AWFUL lot here in that context. And in contexts that don't have anything to do with the war, too.
Don't you think the fact that he has written over 70 books that often deal with American foreign policy, media control, global economics and other such topics would explain why he's mentioned a lot? He is also one of the most cited people in history. Frankly, you should go read some of his books or rent Manufacturing Consent, you might learn something useful. Also, as far as I know he hasn't written much in the "America is the worst place on Earth" department.

I haven't read much Zinn, but I asked my library to order A People's History of the United States.
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post #205 of 230
2/18/03 at 10:26pm
Zinn is essentially a socialist. Good luck!
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post #206 of 230
2/18/03 at 10:40pm
Quote:
Agent 86:
Zinn is essentially a socialist. Good luck!
And Chomsky's an anarchist. So what?

I think Zinn's speech on Columbus that I read is far more truthful than the version you get in a high school textbook.
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post #207 of 230
2/18/03 at 11:01pm
Zinn on Columbus could very well be more accurate.

But have you read his views on what democracy is and what it should be? Socialism.
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post #208 of 230
2/18/03 at 11:01pm
Hard to disparage the effectiveness of protest given that there is still not a war.
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post #209 of 230
2/18/03 at 11:08pm
Socialism has nothing to do with democracy. On top of the fact that you don't live in a democracy.

Do they teach you anything in school?
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post #210 of 230
2/19/03 at 12:01am
Read what Zinn says a true democracy should be. Basically, he wants equal everything it doesn't matter who you may be.

Socialist.
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post #211 of 230
2/19/03 at 12:02am
I don't understand how that's not democratic. What does that have to do with VOTING ON GOVERNMENT?
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post #212 of 230
2/19/03 at 12:18am
Look, Zinn wrote on the definition of democracy. Because, apparently, it has several interpretations. And Zinn came up with his version.

Another man named Sidney Hook also wrote to debate what Zinn said as his definition. They go back and forth.

Basically, Zinn stands for the fact that the "end justifies the means."

And Hook is for the "means justifies the end."
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post #213 of 230
2/19/03 at 6:50pm
I have a problem with someone dropping those names when talking about television's intent. Men who, by your own admission, do not primarilly write about television or its history.

It would be like me quoting The Evil Dead in a discussion about classical music.
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post #214 of 230
2/19/03 at 6:58pm
Quote:
RathBandu:
I have a problem with someone dropping those names when talking about television's intent. Men who, by your own admission, do not primarilly write about television or its history.

It would be like me quoting The Evil Dead in a discussion about classical music.
Television and the media, in general, comprise a good portion of what Chomsky writes about, and he links them to the economy and politics. Agree or disagree with his theories, he has a place in conversations about both television and global politics.

I think you should read up, then re-evaluate your position, Rath.

I'll add there's also nothing wrong with bridging the gap between classical music and Evil Dead, but that's a different conversation.
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post #215 of 230
2/20/03 at 1:02pm
Quote:
RathBandu:
I have a problem with someone dropping those names when talking about television's intent. Men who, by your own admission, do not primarilly write about television or its history.
Yeah, because as we all know, television and the mass media are totally unrelated subjects.
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post #216 of 230
2/21/03 at 5:42pm
Not that anyone cares anymore, but they just revised the official estimate of protesters in San Francisco from 200,000 down to 65,000... they used aerial photography rather than eyeball estimates to get a more accurate count. I wonder how many more of the protests had their number of participants artificially inflated.
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post #217 of 230
2/21/03 at 5:50pm
Yeah, I always trust the numbers stated by the authorities at these.
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post #218 of 230
2/21/03 at 6:24pm
Rubber bullets? What rubber bullets?
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post #219 of 230
2/22/03 at 1:13pm
<a href="http://www.nationalpost.com/commentary/story.html?id=%7BD8722233-5375-4487-9D3E-51A053B310F5%7D" target="_blank">Rev. Jackson, let me speak</a>
Quote:
Amir Taheri
National Post

LONDON - 'Could I have the microphone for one minute to tell the people about my life?" asked the Iraqi grandmother

I spent part of last Saturday with the so-called "anti-war" marchers in London in the company of some Iraqi friends. Our aim had been to persuade the organizers to let at least one Iraqi voice be heard. Soon, however, it became clear the organizers were as anxious to stifle the voice of the Iraqis in exile as was Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

The Iraqis had come with placards reading "Freedom for Iraq" and "American rule, a hundred thousand times better than Takriti tyranny!"

But the tough guys who supervised the march would have none of that. Only official placards, manufactured in thousands and distributed among the "spontaneous" marchers, were allowed. These read "Bush and Blair, baby-killers," "Not in my name," "Freedom for Palestine" and "Indict Bush and Sharon."

Not one placard demanded that Saddam should disarm to avoid war.

The thugs also confiscated photographs showing the tragedy of Halabja, the Kurdish town where Saddam's forces gassed 5,000 people to death in 1988.

We managed to reach some of the stars of the show, including Reverend Jesse Jackson, the self-styled champion of American civil rights. One of our group, Salima Kazim, an Iraqi grandmother, managed to attract the reverend's attention and told him how Saddam Hussein had murdered her three sons because they had been dissidents in the Baath Party; and how one of her grandsons had died in the war Saddam had launched against Kuwait in 1990.

"Could I have the microphone for one minute to tell the people about my life?" 78-year old Salima demanded.

The reverend was not pleased.

"Today is not about Saddam Hussein," he snapped. "Today is about Bush and Blair and the massacre they plan in Iraq." Salima had to beat a retreat, with all of us following, as the reverend's goons closed in to protect his holiness.

We next spotted former film star Glenda Jackson, apparently manning a stand where "anti-war" characters could sign up to become "human shields" to protect Saddam's military installations against American air attacks.

"These people are mad," said Awad Nasser, one of Iraq's most famous modernist poets. "They are actually signing up to sacrifice their lives to protect a tyrant's death machine."

The former film star, now a Labour Party member of the British parliament, had no time for "side issues" such as the 1.2-million Iraqis, Iranians and Kuwaitis who have died as a result of Saddam's various wars.

We then ran into Tony Benn, a leftist septuagenarian who has recycled himself as a television reporter to interview Saddam in Baghdad.

But we knew there was no point in talking to him. The previous night he had appeared on TV to tell the Brits that his friend Saddam was standing for "the little people" against "hegemonistic America."

"Are these people ignorant, or are they blinded by hatred of the United States?" Nasser the poet demanded.

The Iraqis would have had much to tell the "anti-war" marchers, had they had a chance to speak. Fadel Sultani, president of the National Association of Iraqi authors, would have told the marchers that their action would encourage Saddam to intensify his repression.

"I had a few questions for the marchers," Sultani said. "Did they not realize that oppression, torture and massacre of innocent civilians are also forms of war? Are the anti-war marchers only against a war that would liberate Iraq, or do they also oppose the war Saddam has been waging against our people for a generation?"

Sultani could have told the peaceniks how Saddam's henchmen killed dissident poets and writers by pushing page after page of forbidden books down their throats until they choked.

Hashem al-Iqabi, one of Iraq's leading writers and intellectuals, had hoped the marchers would mention the fact that Saddam had driven almost four million Iraqis out of their homes and razed more than 6,000 villages to the ground.

Abdel-Majid Khoi, son of the late Grand Ayatollah Khoi, Iraq's foremost religious leader for almost 40 years, spoke of the "deep moral pain" he feels when hearing the so-called "anti-war" discourse.

"The Iraqi nation is like a man who is kept captive and tortured by a gang of thugs," Khoi said. "The proper moral position is to fly to help that man liberate himself and bring the torturers to book. But what we witness in the West is the opposite: support for the torturers and total contempt for the victim."

Khoi said he would say "ahlan wasahlan" (welcome) to anyone who would liberate Iraq.

"When you are being tortured to death you are not fussy about who will save you," he said.

Ismail Qaderi, a former Baathist official but now a dissident, wanted to tell the marchers how Saddam systematically destroyed even his own party, starting by murdering all but one of its 16 original leaders.

"Those who see Saddam as a symbol of socialism, progress and secularism in the Arab world must be mad," he said.

Khalid Kishtaini, Iraq's most famous satirical writer, added his complaint.

"Don't these marchers know that the only march possible in Iraq under Saddam Hussein is from the prison to the firing-squad?" he asked. "The Western marchers behave as if the U.S. wanted to invade Switzerland, not Iraq under Saddam Hussein."

They ignored the fact that the peoples of Iraq are unanimous in their prayers for the war of liberation to come as quickly as possible.

The number of marchers did not impress Salima, the grandmother.

"What is wrong does not become right because many people say it,"she asserted, bidding us farewell while the marchers shouted "Not in my name!"

Let us hope that when Iraq is liberated, as it soon will be, the world will remember that it was not done in the name of Rev. Jackson, Glenda Jackson, Tony Benn and their companions in a march of shame.

Amir Taheri is an Iranian author, journalist and editor of the Paris-based Politique Internationale.
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post #220 of 230
2/24/03 at 1:49am
What? Iraqis want Saddam gone? They, by and large, support the war? That doesn't make any sense!
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post #221 of 230
2/24/03 at 2:29am
Anecdotal evidence, the lamest thing to use.
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post #222 of 230
2/24/03 at 3:18am
Quote:
Dr Gonzo (devin):
Yeah, I always trust the numbers stated by the authorities at these.
The authorities were the ones who said 200,000... so yes, in this case we should not have trusted the authorities.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
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post #223 of 230
2/24/03 at 9:32am
Quote:
sorropa:
What? Iraqis want Saddam gone? They, by and large, support the war? That doesn't make any sense!
"By and large"? According to who, exactly? 4 or 5 high-profile exiles in the media?

You know, my first reaction is to wonder about these expatriate Iraqis who are so outspoken in their support of an invasion of Iraq, essentially advocating destruction of their country's urban infrastructure and cultural heritage and the potential mass killing of their former countrymen, all in the name of "liberation" by foreign powers whose intentions the Iraqis have all the reason in the world to feel hostile towards.

Is it possible they stand to gain from the restructuring of power in a post-Saddam Iraq? Could they be affiliated with upper echelons figures of the Iraqi opposition, by any chance?

In any case, an important point is raised here. How do the Iraqi people themselves feel about the imminent US invasion with its ostensible goal of toppling Saddam? It could prove instructive to put this question to the global community of Iraqi emigrants, provided that the number of fraudulent responders was kept at a minimum.

The most important question, though, is how do the Iraqis living within Iraq feel about it, the ones who will have to suffer the action and its immediate consequences.
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post #224 of 230
2/24/03 at 10:21am
<img src="http://www.rockwoodcomic.com/toons/03-0224.GIF" alt="" />
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post #225 of 230
2/24/03 at 12:14pm
Quote:
Englebert:
Quote:
sorropa:
What? Iraqis want Saddam gone? They, by and large, support the war? That doesn't make any sense!
"By and large"? According to who, exactly? 4 or 5 high-profile exiles in the media?

You know, my first reaction is to wonder about these expatriate Iraqis who are so outspoken in their support of an invasion of Iraq, essentially advocating destruction of their country's urban infrastructure and cultural heritage and the potential mass killing of their former countrymen, all in the name of "liberation" by foreign powers whose intentions the Iraqis have all the reason in the world to feel hostile towards.

Is it possible they stand to gain from the restructuring of power in a post-Saddam Iraq? Could they be affiliated with upper echelons figures of the Iraqi opposition, by any chance?

In any case, an important point is raised here. How do the Iraqi people themselves feel about the imminent US invasion with its ostensible goal of toppling Saddam? It could prove instructive to put this question to the global community of Iraqi emigrants, provided that the number of fraudulent responders was kept at a minimum.

The most important question, though, is how do the Iraqis living within Iraq feel about it, the ones who will have to suffer the action and its immediate consequences.
Well, since using exiles is, as Devin says, anecdotal evidence, let's look at some facts:
In 1991, the Kurds, Shiites, and Swamp Arabs rebelled. They gained control of most of Iraq before the Republican Guards crushed the rebellion.
In 1994 another uprising was crushed by the Republican Guards.
In 1996 another uprising was crushed by the Republican Guards.
Since the Gulf War, between 1 and 2 million Iraqis have fled their nation (according to Human Rights Watch).
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post #226 of 230
2/24/03 at 12:30pm
Those were just troublemakers, Sorro. I'm pretty sure life under Saddam isn't that bad. I bet you get free ice cream on Fridays in Iraq!
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post #227 of 230
2/24/03 at 12:33pm
Your little argument is so ridiculous. Why do you care what life under Saddam is like? When did you guys get to be huge human rights advocates?
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post #228 of 230
2/24/03 at 12:44pm
When did you?
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post #229 of 230
3/19/03 at 5:42am
I figured this was as good a place as any to post this:

Who's marching on Saturday?

I'll be. It shall be my first ever anti-war protest.
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post #230 of 230
3/19/03 at 4:11pm
Quote:
RathBandu:
Who's marching on Saturday?
Saturday, Saturday, lets see.... Nope, I think I will be renting some movies and going out to eat.
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