Sept. 11th

[~Lazarus~]

Originally posted by Damini


Wasn't Saddam offering money to the families of suicide bombers? I might be wrong, but I thought I read that somewhere.

And Shocko, I find your comments disgusting. It's the same as me hoping your mother gets killed by the IRA this weekend, because obviously the brits have failed to take enough notice of being bombed by the IRA in the past. You completely undermine your own arguments and intellect by acting like a prize cunt. How can you scream hysterically about the evil of america, whilst simultaneoulsy endorsing the murder of innocent Non Military Civilians in America? Stinks of hypocrisy to me.

Wow. Damini. I think thats the first time I ve seen you using that language.

I reckon you are well mad!!

Not that I disagree with you.

 

[tris-]

Originally posted by Shocko
And to get back on track:
I bloody well hope the US is attacked today, because the first attack didn't hit home, to the Americans, why no-one likes them. But then again, should we expect the decendants of a bunch of renegade merchants and rebellious slave owners, to beat the arrogance that comes so naturally to them?

Shocko, i agree in free speach and all that but for FFS is there need to say that? Do you ever think about anyone but your self? Not only is this probably very offending to any American reading this but you are even making out like you support terrorism, not something you should be mouthing about and hope not to have people come down on you liek 600 tonne of bricks. The US may not be my favourite country but that doesnt mean i wish them mass death and fear.

uke: in your face

 

[Sir Frizz]

That's a disgusting post there Shocko, have at you!

 

[Nos-]

Originally posted by Shocko

And to get back on track:
I bloody well hope the US is attacked today, because the first attack didn't hit home, to the Americans, why no-one likes them. But then again, should we expect the decendants of a bunch of renegade merchants and rebellious slave owners, to beat the arrogance that comes so naturally to them?

don't be gay

 

[Shocko]

I am entitled to my oppinions, as you are entitled to yours. Several people, have endorsed attacking Iraq, without even bringing up the question of proof - To me this is illegal terrorism, as much as was the IRA's campaign against the UK.

We have also seen pro-US viewpoints, expressed whilst ignoring the Isreal issue. It's very well to say that you disaprove of the US' involvement in Isreal, but to then go and try to justify everything else the US has done, and declare the US god's gift to the world, well, do that, but don't expect me to keep quiet volunterilly.

My views on the 11sept? I think it was the direct result of the US' foreign policy, and was inevitable - For the US to respond like it is doing now, and declaring Iran and Iraq "evil", whilst war mongering, i think it's clear that those disgruntled with the US enough to fly planes into their tallest buildings, had a point. I would not fly buildings into American buildings, i would not support "terrorism", however i support an unlawful state getting its just reward for 50years of shit; Verbal support, mind.

And don't all jump on the bandwaggon and have ago at me for the sake of it - I can see being "outraged" at me has become trendy within 10mins

 

[Sir Frizz]

Extremist opinions should be kept to yourself.

 

[tris-]

So, you dont support terrorism but still you would fly something into a building just to kill a lot of innocent people, and your reason is - you dont like them? Great, im glad you dont actually know me, cos i hate to think what youd do.

 

[Mavoric]

You are damn lucky you live in the UK Shocko and you really need to grow up.
If you lived in certain Countrys and expressed those views you would either be looking for asylum in the West or be lying dead in some ditch.
You go on about lack of Human rights in the US
This is what no Human rights means
www.gendercide.org/case_honour.html

www.web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/index/ASA330181999

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/454117.stm

This what you support Shocko ?

www.almuhajiroun.com/index.php

 

[S-Gray]

It wasnt only the Americans who lost lives in the WTC Shocko, you should know that, so i think that comment you made before would offend pretty much everyone

 

[stu]

Originally posted by Damini
Wasn't Saddam offering money to the families of suicide bombers? I might be wrong, but I thought I read that somewhere.

Nope. Like I said, the US Government tried to dig up evidence of Saddam supporting/promoting terrorism, and found nothing. They concocted some ridiculous story about the 9/11 hijackers meeting with senior Iraqi intelligence agents, but it turned out to be complete bollocks. Same as the payments to suicide bombers story.

Saddam is very clever. He knows that if he's caught supporting terrorism then the US has the perfect excuse to get rid of him.

 

[stu]

Originally posted by Mavoric
You go on about lack of Human rights in the US
This is what no Human rights means...

You might be interested to know that the USA Patriot Act abitrarily suspends things such as Freedom of Association, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Information, the Right to Legal Representation, the Right to Trial, Freedom Against Unreasonable Searches, and the Right to Liberty.

What this means is that you can be locked up for no reason, with no access to a lawyer, visitation, not be told what for, not be taken to trial or be given the chance to confront any evidence against you, not to be allowed to talk about it (if anyone else mentions that you have been locked up, they can also be detained).

Last time I checked that breached the following US Constitution Amendments: Article I (twice), Article IV, Article V (three times), Article VI, Article VII.

Note that no evidence needs to be given of any terrorist activity, or even suspected terrorist activity, for these to come into effect.

Don't forget to send a letter to the inmates of Guatanamo Bay telling them what an easy time they have.

 

[Shocko]

SG:
Reguardless of who was in the WTCs at the time, the attack was on America. On the most famous city in America. On the tallest buildings in America, that a symbol of American prosperity. It was an attack on America. People die everyday, get over it.

Mavoric:
I express my oppinions, because i am able to. I have some oppinions(not related to this topic might i add), that i choose not to share with others, because they would have severe aftereffects. If i didn't have the freedom to safely express my oppions, i wouldn't, so don't tell me how lucky i am.

Newbie:
Throughout the world, there are people with hate on the mind. Some hate Gays, because they think it's unnatural or whatever. Others hate asians because they view them as leeching off the Uk or whatever. Others hate blacks because they think they're inferior - Etc etc etc. Now, a large portion of the western populations would dissagree with such racism and homophobia; Indeed, i would go as far as to say that many people would express hate at these racists.

Now, we have people, who hate a whole group, because they hate whole groups for being in that group. There is irony here, however the fact of the matter is, you have to draw the line somewhere. Personally, i dislike racists, homophobes, and i doso because of what they are, not because i've spoken to them all and decided i disliked them. This doesn't bother me, because i dislike what they do too much. The same goes for the US - I dislike their terrorism, i dislike their war mongering, i dislike their uneducated masses* who are filled with blind "patrioism", arrogance and hate. I dislike these people, without even knowing them, because that's how life is - If i could go and meet every person in America and make a note of who i dislike, and who i don't, then that would be nice, expect that's not how it is, so deal with it.

*Uneducated masses, as in not including the educated/sensible/liberally-minded minority - Is that still too much of a sterotype for you?

 

[tris-]

you dislike racists but your being one your self. :sleeping:

 

[Damini]

Stu, I didn't think he was offering money to the families of Al Queda, I should have been more clear, I thought he was offering money to the families of Palistinian suicide bombers. I read it fleetingly somewhere though, so I don't know the in's and out's of it.

Shocko, I'm hardly going to buy the "Shocko is teh arsehole" t-shirt, just because it's the fad of the second. What you said I found genuinely deplorable, and it astounded me that someone who's spent so long in this thread trying to reach some intellectual high ground would suddenly lower their tone and spout second class racism (and yet ironicly state you dislike racism). You can't fight the intellectual fight and then conclude "Well, I hope more die, they're descended from bad people, they deserve it".

As for "the attack was on america", if it was purely an attack of an idealogical symbol, then for fucks sake, wait till after work hours. If they planned enough to train pilots, study aviation, fuel capacity, velocity, angle of impact, structure of the building, blah blah, then they trained enough to know most people work 9-5 Monday to Friday. That attack was timed for maximum impact as a death toll as well as symbolicly.

You are entitled to an opinion, but don't act all surprised when you spout extremist bull as a tag on line and get offended when people call you up on it.

 

[Scooba Da Bass]

Oh well, I'll be on Shocko's side for a while 'cause 50 onto 1 isn't fair.

He's mostly expressed a discontent with the US' foreign policy, this translates into a dislike of USA as an entity. Not the people who make that up, as he said, if he could meet everyone and make a note of the good people it'd be alright.

Personally, I'd side with him, I dislike America, and American's in general, from living their for a significant period, and because of the effects of their foreign policy on my life personally.

Does this make me a racist?

 

[Damini]

No, but are you saying that you hope more could get blown up today, to teach them a lesson? Because thats the part I have a problem with, none of the latter.

 

[tris-]

Originally posted by Scooba Da Bass
Personally, I'd side with him, I dislike America, and American's in general, from living their for a significant period, and because of the effects of their foreign policy on my life personally.

Does this make me a racist?

you decide

 

[Shocko]

Originally posted by n3wbie
you dislike racists but your being one your self. :sleeping:

I spent 2 paragraphs explaining this concept, and why i percieve it to be acceptable, yet you say this. I know it is ironic, however if all us none-hating types didn't hate the haters, then the haters would rule the world. Wait a minute, the most powerful country in the world is... America! Bastion of illegal invasions, assasinations and terrorism, or, if you wish to stick to the metaphore, hate. You really are as dumb as first impressions suggest.

Damini, i wasn't really pointing at you with the accusations of an anti-me fad - I allready know that you have an unfounded trust in the US, and i would have expected both you and Prime1 to react as you didso - I was waving in the general direction of the few who joined the thread to jump on me when i was [apparently] caught off balance. Needless to say, the weakness of these people when it comes to both debate, and actual beliefs, has dragged down the whole "Anti-Shocko" movement, as far as i can see

My point on it being an attack on the US, was a responce to someone(SG?) stating that it wasn't just Americans who died there. I don't go around terrorising people, yet i support the Palestinean attacks on Isreal, and i think the attacks on the US were a good thing - I agree with the reasons, and i don't consider human life "precious", hence i will put up with the methods used to achieve the goal.

 

[tris-]

Originally posted by Shocko

You really are as dumb as first impressions suggest.

Why am i dumb? Because i am using the dictionarys term for racist? It doesnt matter if you see it as acceptable, its still racism.

 

[Scooba Da Bass]

Originally posted by n3wbie



you decide

1) The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
2) Discrimination or prejudice based on race.

The answer based on those definitions is no, and neither is Shocko, please try again.

 

[Scooba Da Bass]

Originally posted by n3wbie


Why am i dumb? Because i am using the dictionarys term for racist? It doesnt matter if you see it as acceptable, its still racism.

AND YET IT'S NOT YOU FUCKWIT

AMERICAN IS NOT A RACE

I'm gonna repost somehing I posted last year sometime

The aftermath of the unconscionable September 11 suicide attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre, an American newscaster said: "Good and evil rarely manifest themselves as clearly as they did last Tuesday. People who we don't know massacred people who we do. And they did so with contemptuous glee." Then he broke down and wept.

Here's the rub: America is at war against people it doesn't know, because they don't appear much on TV. Before it has properly identified or even begun to comprehend the nature of its enemy, the US government has, in a rush of publicity and embarrassing rhetoric, cobbled together an "international coalition against terror", mobilised its army, its air force, its navy and its media, and committed them to battle.

The trouble is that once Amer ica goes off to war, it can't very well return without having fought one. If it doesn't find its enemy, for the sake of the enraged folks back home, it will have to manufacture one. Once war begins, it will develop a momentum, a logic and a justification of its own, and we'll lose sight of why it's being fought in the first place.

What we're witnessing here is the spectacle of the world's most powerful country reaching reflexively, angrily, for an old instinct to fight a new kind of war. Suddenly, when it comes to defending itself, America's streamlined warships, cruise missiles and F-16 jets look like obsolete, lumbering things. As deterrence, its arsenal of nuclear bombs is no longer worth its weight in scrap. Box-cutters, penknives, and cold anger are the weapons with which the wars of the new century will be waged. Anger is the lock pick. It slips through customs unnoticed. Doesn't show up in baggage checks.

Who is America fighting? On September 20, the FBI said that it had doubts about the identities of some of the hijackers. On the same day President George Bush said, "We know exactly who these people are and which governments are supporting them." It sounds as though the president knows something that the FBI and the American public don't.

In his September 20 address to the US Congress, President Bush called the enemies of America "enemies of freedom". "Americans are asking, 'Why do they hate us?' " he said. "They hate our freedoms - our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." People are being asked to make two leaps of faith here. First, to assume that The Enemy is who the US government says it is, even though it has no substantial evidence to support that claim. And second, to assume that The Enemy's motives are what the US government says they are, and there's nothing to support that either.

For strategic, military and economic reasons, it is vital for the US government to persuade its public that their commitment to freedom and democracy and the American Way of Life is under attack. In the current atmosphere of grief, outrage and anger, it's an easy notion to peddle. However, if that were true, it's reasonable to wonder why the symbols of America's economic and military dominance - the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon - were chosen as the targets of the attacks. Why not the Statue of Liberty? Could it be that the stygian anger that led to the attacks has its taproot not in American freedom and democracy, but in the US government's record of commitment and support to exactly the opposite things - to military and economic terrorism, insurgency, military dictatorship, religious bigotry and unimaginable genocide (outside America)? It must be hard for ordinary Americans, so recently bereaved, to look up at the world with their eyes full of tears and encounter what might appear to them to be indifference. It isn't indifference. It's just augury. An absence of surprise. The tired wisdom of knowing that what goes around eventually comes around. American people ought to know that it is not them but their government's policies that are so hated. They can't possibly doubt that they themselves, their extraordinary musicians, their writers, their actors, their spectacular sportsmen and their cinema, are universally welcomed. All of us have been moved by the courage and grace shown by firefighters, rescue workers and ordinary office staff in the days since the attacks.

 

[Scooba Da Bass]

cont

America's grief at what happened has been immense and immensely public. It would be grotesque to expect it to calibrate or modulate its anguish. However, it will be a pity if, instead of using this as an opportunity to try to understand why September 11 happened, Americans use it as an opportunity to usurp the whole world's sorrow to mourn and avenge only their own. Because then it falls to the rest of us to ask the hard questions and say the harsh things. And for our pains, for our bad timing, we will be disliked, ignored and perhaps eventually silenced.

The world will probably never know what motivated those particular hijackers who flew planes into those particular American buildings. They were not glory boys. They left no suicide notes, no political messages; no organisation has claimed credit for the attacks. All we know is that their belief in what they were doing outstripped the natural human instinct for survival, or any desire to be remembered. It's almost as though they could not scale down the enormity of their rage to anything smaller than their deeds. And what they did has blown a hole in the world as we knew it.

But war is looming large. Whatever remains to be said must be said quickly. Before America places itself at the helm of the "international coalition against terror", before it invites (and coerces) countries to actively participate in its almost godlike mission - called Operation Infinite Justice until it was pointed out that this could be seen as an insult to Muslims, who believe that only Allah can mete out infinite justice, and was renamed Operation Enduring Freedom- it would help if some small clarifications are made. For example, Infinite Justice/Enduring Freedom for whom? Is this America's war against terror in America or against terror in general? What exactly is being avenged here? Is it the tragic loss of almost 7,000 lives, the gutting of five million square feet of office space in Manhattan, the destruction of a section of the Pentagon, the loss of several hundreds of thousands of jobs, the bankruptcy of some airline companies and the dip in the New York Stock Exchange? Or is it more than that? In 1996, Madeleine Albright, then the US secretary of state, was asked on national television what she felt about the fact that 500,000 Iraqi children had died as a result of US economic sanctions. She replied that it was "a very hard choice", but that, all things considered, "we think the price is worth it". Albright never lost her job for saying this. She continued to travel the world representing the views and aspirations of the US government. More pertinently, the sanctions against Iraq remain in place. Children continue to die.

So here we have it. The equivocating distinction between civilisation and savagery, between the "massacre of innocent people" or, if you like, "a clash of civilisations" and "collateral damage". The sophistry and fastidious algebra of infinite justice. How many dead Iraqis will it take to make the world a better place? How many dead Afghans for every dead American? How many dead women and children for every dead man? How many dead mojahedin for each dead investment banker? As we watch mesmerised, Operation Enduring Freedom unfolds on TV monitors across the world. A coalition of the world's superpowers is closing in on Afghanistan, one of the poorest, most ravaged, war-torn countries in the world, whose ruling Taliban government is sheltering Osama bin Laden, the man being held responsible for the September 11 attacks.

The only thing in Afghanistan that could possibly count as collateral value is its citizenry. (Among them, half a million maimed orphans.There are accounts of hobbling stampedes that occur when artificial limbs are airdropped into remote, inaccessible villages.) Afghanistan's economy is in a shambles. In fact, the problem for an invading army is that Afghanistan has no conventional coordinates or signposts to plot on a military map - no big cities, no highways, no industrial complexes, no water treatment plants. Farms have been turned into mass graves. The countryside is littered with land mines - 10 million is the most recent estimate. The American army would first have to clear the mines and build roads in order to take its soldiers in.

Fearing an attack from America, one million citizens have fled from their homes and arrived at the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The UN estimates that there are eight million Afghan citizens who need emergency aid. As supplies run out - food and aid agencies have been asked to leave - the BBC reports that one of the worst humanitarian disasters of recent times has begun to unfold. Witness the infinite justice of the new century. Civilians starving to death while they're waiting to be killed.

In America there has been rough talk of "bombing Afghanistan back to the stone age". Someone please break the news that Afghanistan is already there. And if it's any consolation, America played no small part in helping it on its way. The American people may be a little fuzzy about where exactly Afghanistan is (we hear reports that there's a run on maps of the country), but the US government and Afghanistan are old friends.

In 1979, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the CIA and Pakistan's ISI (Inter Services Intelligence) launched the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA. Their purpose was to harness the energy of Afghan resistance to the Soviets and expand it into a holy war, an Islamic jihad, which would turn Muslim countries within the Soviet Union against the communist regime and eventually destabilise it. When it began, it was meant to be the Soviet Union's Vietnam. It turned out to be much more than that. Over the years, through the ISI, the CIA funded and recruited almost 100,000 radical mojahedin from 40 Islamic countries as soldiers for America's proxy war. The rank and file of the mojahedin were unaware that their jihad was actually being fought on behalf of Uncle Sam. (The irony is that America was equally unaware that it was financing a future war against itself.)

In 1989, after being bloodied by 10 years of relentless conflict, the Russians withdrew, leaving behind a civilisation reduced to rubble.

Civil war in Afghanistan raged on. The jihad spread to Chechnya, Kosovo and eventually to Kashmir. The CIA continued to pour in money and military equipment, but the overheads had become immense, and more money was needed. The mojahedin ordered farmers to plant opium as a "revolutionary tax". The ISI set up hundreds of heroin laboratories across Afghanistan. Within two years of the CIA's arrival, the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderland had become the biggest producer of heroin in the world, and the single biggest source of the heroin on American streets. The annual profits, said to be between $100bn and $200bn, were ploughed back into training and arming militants.

In 1995, the Taliban - then a marginal sect of dangerous, hardline fundamentalists - fought its way to power in Afghanistan. It was funded by the ISI, that old cohort of the CIA, and supported by many political parties in Pakistan. The Taliban unleashed a regime of terror. Its first victims were its own people, particularly women. It closed down girls' schools, dismissed women from government jobs, and enforced sharia laws under which women deemed to be "immoral" are stoned to death, and widows guilty of being adulterous are buried alive. Given the Taliban government's human rights track record, it seems unlikely that it will in any way be intimidated or swerved from its purpose by the prospect of war, or the threat to the lives of its civilians.

After all that has happened, can there be anything more ironic than Russia and America joining hands to re-destroy Afghanistan? The question is, can you destroy destruction? Dropping more bombs on Afghanistan will only shuffle the rubble, scramble some old graves and disturb the dead.

 

[Scooba Da Bass]

cont 2

The desolate landscape of Afghanistan was the burial ground of Soviet communism and the springboard of a unipolar world dominated by America. It made the space for neocapitalism and corporate globalisation, again dominated by America. And now Afghanistan is poised to become the graveyard for the unlikely soldiers who fought and won this war for America.

And what of America's trusted ally? Pakistan too has suffered enormously. The US government has not been shy of supporting military dictators who have blocked the idea of democracy from taking root in the country. Before the CIA arrived, there was a small rural market for opium in Pakistan. Between 1979 and 1985, the number of heroin addicts grew from zero to one-and-a-half million. Even before September 11, there were three million Afghan refugees living in tented camps along the border. Pakistan's economy is crumbling. Sectarian violence, globalisation's structural adjustment programmes and drug lords are tearing the country to pieces. Set up to fight the Soviets, the terrorist training centres and madrasahs, sown like dragon's teeth across the country, produced fundamentalists with tremendous popular appeal within Pakistan itself. The Taliban, which the Pakistan government has supported, funded and propped up for years, has material and strategic alliances with Pakistan's own political parties.

Now the US government is asking (asking?) Pakistan to garotte the pet it has hand-reared in its backyard for so many years. President Musharraf, having pledged his support to the US, could well find he has something resembling civil war on his hands.

Operation Enduring Freedom is ostensibly being fought to uphold the American Way of Life. It'll probably end up undermining it completely. It will spawn more anger and more terror across the world. For ordinary people in America, it will mean lives lived in a climate of sickening uncertainty: will my child be safe in school? Will there be nerve gas in the subway? A bomb in the cinema hall? Will my love come home tonight? There have been warnings about the possibility of biological warfare - smallpox, bubonic plague, anthrax - the deadly payload of innocuous crop-duster aircraft. Being picked off a few at a time may end up being worse than being annihilated all at once by a nuclear bomb.


The US government, and no doubt governments all over the world, will use the climate of war as an excuse to curtail civil liberties, deny free speech, lay off workers, harass ethnic and religious minorities, cut back on public spending and divert huge amounts of money to the defence industry. To what purpose? President Bush can no more "rid the world of evil-doers" than he can stock it with saints. It's absurd for the US government to even toy with the notion that it can stamp out terrorism with more violence and oppression. Terrorism is the symptom, not the disease. Terrorism has no country. It's transnational, as global an enterprise as Coke or Pepsi or Nike. At the first sign of trouble, terrorists can pull up stakes and move their "factories" from country to country in search of a better deal. Just like the multi-nationals.

Terrorism as a phenomenon may never go away. But if it is to be contained, the first step is for America to at least acknowledge that it shares the planet with other nations, with other human beings who, even if they are not on TV, have loves and griefs and stories and songs and sorrows and, for heaven's sake, rights. Instead, when Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, was asked what he would call a victory in America's new war, he said that if he could convince the world that Americans must be allowed to continue with their way of life, he would consider it a victory.

The September 11 attacks were a monstrous calling card from a world gone horribly wrong. The message may have been written by Bin Laden (who knows?) and delivered by his couriers, but it could well have been signed by the ghosts of the victims of America's old wars. The millions killed in Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia, the 17,500 killed when Israel - backed by the US - invaded Lebanon in 1982, the 200,000 Iraqis killed in Operation Desert Storm, the thousands of Palestinians who have died fighting Israel's occupation of the West Bank. And the millions who died, in Yugoslavia, Somalia, Haiti, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Panama, at the hands of all the terrorists, dictators and genocidists whom the American government supported, trained, bankrolled and supplied with arms. And this is far from being a comprehensive list.

For a country involved in so much warfare and conflict, the American people have been extremely fortunate. The strikes on September 11 were only the second on American soil in over a century. The first was Pearl Harbour. The reprisal for this took a long route, but ended with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This time the world waits with bated breath for the horrors to come.

Someone recently said that if Osama bin Laden didn't exist, America would have had to invent him. But, in a way, America did invent him. He was among the jihadis who moved to Afghanistan in 1979 when the CIA commenced its operations there. Bin Laden has the distinction of being created by the CIA and wanted by the FBI. In the course of a fortnight he has been promoted from suspect to prime suspect and then, despite the lack of any real evidence, straight up the charts to being "wanted dead or alive". From all accounts, it will be impossible to produce evidence (of the sort that would stand scrutiny in a court of law) to link Bin Laden to the September 11 attacks. So far, it appears that the most incriminating piece of evidence against him is the fact that he has not condemned them.

From what is known about the location of Bin Laden and the living conditions in which he operates, it's entirely possible that he did not personally plan and carry out the attacks - that he is the inspirational figure, "the CEO of the holding company". The Taliban's response to US demands for the extradition of Bin Laden has been uncharacteristically reasonable: produce the evidence, then we'll hand him over. President Bush's response is that the demand is "non-negotiable".

(While talks are on for the extradition of CEOs - can India put in a side request for the extradition of Warren Anderson of the US? He was the chairman of Union Carbide, responsible for the Bhopal gas leak that killed 16,000 people in 1984. We have collated the necessary evidence. It's all in the files. Could we have him, please?)

But who is Osama bin Laden really? Let me rephrase that. What is Osama bin Laden? He's America's family secret. He is the American president's dark doppelgänger. The savage twin of all that purports to be beautiful and civilised. He has been sculpted from the spare rib of a world laid to waste by America's foreign policy: its gunboat diplomacy, its nuclear arsenal, its vulgarly stated policy of "full-spectrum dominance", its chilling disregard for non-American lives, its barbarous military interventions, its support for despotic and dictatorial regimes, its merciless economic agenda that has munched through the economies of poor countries like a cloud of locusts. Its marauding multinationals who are taking over the air we breathe, the ground we stand on, the water we drink, the thoughts we think. Now that the family secret has been spilled, the twins are blurring into one another and gradually becoming interchangeable. Their guns, bombs, money and drugs have been going around in the loop for a while. (The Stinger missiles that will greet US helicopters were supplied by the CIA. The heroin used by America's drug addicts comes from Afghanistan. The Bush administration recently gave Afghanistan a $43m subsidy for a "war on drugs"....)

Now Bush and Bin Laden have even begun to borrow each other's rhetoric. Each refers to the other as "the head of the snake". Both invoke God and use the loose millenarian currency of good and evil as their terms of reference. Both are engaged in unequivocal political crimes. Both are dangerously armed - one with the nuclear arsenal of the obscenely powerful, the other with the incandescent, destructive power of the utterly hopeless. The fireball and the ice pick. The bludgeon and the axe. The important thing to keep in mind is that neither is an acceptable alternative to the other.

President Bush's ultimatum to the people of the world - "If you're not with us, you're against us" - is a piece of presumptuous arrogance. It's not a choice that people want to, need to, or should have to make.

 

[Shocko]

Now now, trying to thrust such complicated concepts at him like that, will just confuse him.

Newbie:
If i didn't like gays, i wouldn't be a racist. I would be a homophobe. It's still hate(using the metaphore), yet it isn't racism. I'm sure there is another, other than phrases such as 'US Hater' and 'Anti-American', for hating a specific nationality, however these such phrases will do. As previously explained, it is not Americans that i hate, but the uneducated, dimwitted, sheep-like masses, that go around chanting 'USA USA USA' etc etc. And of course the war mongering republicans, who know exactly what's what, but like the sound of 'American Empire', and the thought of being mentioned in history books like the Romans, and European powers are today. I can't speak for Scooba, however i get the impression that it is these sections of the American populace that bothers him, also.

 

[Damini]

I don't have an unfounded trust in the USA. I have said they are heavily flawed, but I care about the normal every day people in the USA just as I do about the normal every day people in Iraq. I have a problem with the kind of blind hatred that leads to these situations happening in the first place. You seem unable to differentiate between the man on the street and the man in the white house, and direct your malice towards all and sundry. I'm not arguing that the USA is a saint, but what I'm trying to find is some empathy. Kenny works in London, much as those people worked in the twin towers, suited and booted and doing his nine till five. If someone murdered him out of the blue simply because he was english, or not even english but working in an english building, my world would be ripped apart. It is upsetting just thinking about it. And thats the issue as I see it. Thats what 3,000 people went through on that day, and I can empathise with just how harrowing that must be for them. His life, to me, is precious, much as all those peoples lives were to someone.

But you can't relate to that. And I find that disturbing. Your politics and your rational may be sound (though your description of the american back ground sounds like a white rendition of the "savage blacks" racism) but how can you argue politics and war when you can't attribute any value to human life? Surely that makes it all meaningless?

 

[Sar]

Hard as it is to believe, n3wbie is actually correct - to a degree.

Rascism can be apportioned to someone who discriminates based on someone's nationality.

Race describes people of a particular genetic background (say skin colour, black for example), or that of a country's people.

The English race
The American race and so on.

But I don't think Shocko, as abhorrent as his post was (which was very unusual for him tbh), was being rascist, just xenophobic.

 

[exxxie]

Some figures and quotes to think about on this day of reflection:

105 - babies born to widows of September 11 victims.

0 - confirmed sightings of Osama bin Laden.

1,700,000 - number of Iraqis killed by bombs and sanctions since US involvement (source Iraq Daily)

19,365 - number of US citizens that have been legally executed


"Americans are largely innocent of the fact that much of the rest of the world believes that it is American power, and not terrorists with weapons of mass destruction, that is destabilizing the world." - Francis Fukuyama, Washington Post.


"Nothing can justify 9/11. Those guilty deserve maximum punishment, but it makes sense for America to examine motivations promptly and as carefully as possible. Nine-eleven would not have occurred if the U.S. government had refused to help Israel humiliate and destroy Palestinian society." - Palestine Chronicle


"Bush's fundamental case on Iraq is that America's uncharacteristic worship of the false god of stability brought the ultimate instability: September 11. The Arab world, left to fester in its own despotism, was an unstable mixture that blew up in America's face..." - Jewish Post

 

[tris-]

Originally posted by Shocko
Now now, trying to thrust such complicated concepts at him like that, will just confuse him.

Newbie:
If i didn't like gays, i wouldn't be a racist. I would be a homophobe. It's still hate(using the metaphore), yet it isn't racism.

And why would that confuse a man with dictionary.com at his finger tips? uke:

 

[tris-]

Originally posted by Sar
Hard as it is to believe, n3wbie is actually correct - to a degree.

Rascism can be apportioned to someone who discriminates based on someone's nationality.

Race describes people of a particular genetic background (say skin colour, black for example), or that of a country's people.

The English race
The American race and so on.

Yes, this is what im trying to say, but no, if i say it then dont even read it propley, just be insulting.

Its what i anticipated before i decided to begin posting for the first time, so no matter.

 

[Shocko]

Sar is rightish, however it doesn't change the fact that i don't have grievances with those Americans who... Well... Think like me really, on the subject of US foreign policy, at least. This is because i don't hate them for being American - I hate them for their uneducated oppinions, vomit-inducing love of the US("Patrioism"), their racism(against both Arabs, and non-Americans in general), and their willingness to take an active stance on subjects that they don't know anything about.

Exxie:
I believe by December last year, the number of confirmed civilian deaths, caused by US bombing in Afghanistan, was...
Just over 3000.

Number of people killed in Sept11 attacks:
3000?

I don't want to make it seem that i think the number of dead is important, however i think it's fair to say, that the US has caused far more civilian casualties than the terrorists did, yet terrorism is still there, hiding, waiting, and scheming :uhoh: