While the 'civilized world' looked elsewhere...

Dude, the posts get censored and no one can read a damn thing that you're saying.

Calm down, take deep breaths, find your ritalin, and then post.

Originally posted by The Other One
ok to me Bush and all those other ****heads in the government are stupid*** ***** ****ing w***es....Bush doesnt give **** about no ****ing people he just wants revenge on him and **** like that to "improve' upon his stupid**** ego that he has....its sad that he's off killing millions of innocent people while he won't even let gay people get married or stuff like that...he has no regard for the well-being of society or the nourishment of mankind nor does anybody else in his bull**** republican party...

and for that i say [u]F**K YOU PRESIDENT BUSH!F**K YOU AND YOUR STUPID BULL**** EXCUSE FOR A GOVERNMENT! F**K YOU ALL![/u] (of course by all i mean the the government not u guys...:))

o and BTW i luv that Pearl Jam song 'Bu$hleaguer' just cuz of the content of its lyrics...(plus im a big fan of pearl jam)

5,000 Iraqi civilians died because of the US war in Iraq.

Approximately 150,000 - 200,000 Iraqi civillians would have starved to death under UN sanctions, if Iraq was totally cooperative thoughout the rest of the inspections process. Iraq has never been totally cooperative with UN inspectors

How do you get around that?

And really -- if you have to exadurate/lie to make your point, you're no better than Bush.


EDIT: You're crapping on the pollitical party that abolished slavery and segregation. Think you maybe aught to tone down the rhetoric a might?

[Edited by Raskolnikov on 08-26-2003 at 12:17 AM]

Originally posted by Incidents Happen
Once again, I admit that I am not the most knowledgable person on this topic, i was four years old when Iraq invaded Kuwait.

Had the Bush administration said initially, "This is an oppressive government, and by taking out this dictatorship will improve human rights...." or something to do with human rights, I might've said "hm...okay". But by saying he has WMD's, instilling fear into American Ignorants, and putting on hold any change in the government (Note that the republicans took everything in 2002, largely because George Bush went to most states and urged them to vote for the republican).

He did say that. He also said we think he as WMDs (his key assertion) and it looks like he's supporting terrorism. Realisticly speaking, neither the terrorism nor WMD allegations have been disproven yet. Terrorist links have been established, and it's easy to hide a few shells or documentation or enough biological samples to rebuild chemical and biological weapons programs in the Iraqi desert. Let's face it; there's A LOT of it. There's no way for the UN to monitor all of it.

If Saddam did disarm, it was only to get the UN monitoring and inspections overwith so he could go back to rebuilding his military. It's not because he had a change of heart and decided to be a good global citizen. He's a lot like a man who beats his wife, but acts reformed at parole hearings so he can go back to doing what he's always done. He wasn't reformed, he was (one way or another) playing possom.

i think we can easily be manipulated with all those numbers because noone of us was there counting and noone of us is into this topic deep enough to know what was realy going on.
also i dont see some pro-US users here reply to the fact that the US has hardly ever done anything for the sake of humanity exclusively - they always used it as a cover for other goals. however - i thought that in the eye of law someone is inocent untill proven guilty, and not guilty untill proven innocent. but what you just said, rask, is the complete oposite. basically what the US did was accusing the Iraq of certain things WITHOUT having a reasonable proof, tellin the US population that Saddam is the Devil and is even threatening the whole world blah blah etc etc, and then doing what they ca ndo best - destroy.
i´m not saying saddam is good nore am i defending him. what i say is, that the attitude of the US is as filthy as the attitude of nations like Iraq. and it is absolutely SHOCKING to see how government brainwashing works. it works so well that peeps will fight for things they dont fully comprehend nore haven been fully informed about and even give their lives for it.
if this is where the developement of our civilisation goes, than i´m ashamed of beeing a human

Originally posted by PonyOne
but you must admit that there is something to the fact that my country dishes out more humanitarian aid than the rest of the world combined

that is very true - but does that justify the not-so-humanitarian actions? sounds to me like someone is doing some bookkeeping of "good vs evil" actions as if one good action eliminates a bad action.

i mean.. al capone also did give alot of money to the poor - but does that make him less criminal?

that somehow reminds me of the pictore of the baby-kissing politicians

Originally posted by Azrael
i think we can easily be manipulated with all those numbers because noone of us was there counting and noone of us is into this topic deep enough to know what was realy going on.

Every single humanitarian group I know of reported Iraqi civillian deaths under UN sanctions in the thousands per month. The lowest number I've seen was 500,000 for the first decade of sanctions.

also i dont see some pro-US users here reply to the fact that the US has hardly ever done anything for the sake of humanity exclusively - they always used it as a cover for other goals

Name one nation that gives more foreign aid than the United States of America.

however - i thought that in the eye of law someone is inocent untill proven guilty, and not guilty untill proven innocent. but what you just said, rask, is the complete oposite. basically what the US did was accusing the Iraq of certain things WITHOUT having a reasonable proof,

It's already been prooven that he had those things, he's been put on probation, the standard of proof is lower. But no matter how you look at it, UN inspections would have taken at least another two years to wrap up. That would have cost several tens of thousands (at the very least) of Iraqi civillians their lives.

tellin the US population that Saddam is the Devil

::cough::
1.5 - 2 million innocents dead at his own hands, and you don't think he needs to go?

and is even threatening the whole world blah blah etc etc, and then doing what they ca ndo best - destroy.

The US dropped more tonnage of bombs on Iraq than has ever been droped on a nation before and only around 5,000 Civillians died in the process. Why? Because almost all of that tonnage landed on military targets. Much more accurately than ANY nation in the world today could do. Yes, the US can destroy, but we have the ability to destroy legitamate military targets - the same people who gassed the Kurds and raped Kuwaiti women as well as oppressed their own people - facts which NOBODY denies, with a minimum of collateral damage. You're as guilty of skewing facts as any Bush administration press release when you say the word "destroy" so indescriminantly.

i´m not saying saddam is good nore am i defending him.

No, you're making excuses for him. I have to ask, where was your voice of opposition when Iraqis were only starving to death by the tens of thousands every year? Were you standing in protests then?
NO.


Did you ever get into the streets to protest Saddam's torture of prisoners or assassinations of political rivals?
NO.

But a war that saved more lives than it took... Well, now there's something that's gotta be stopped! Let's protest!

what i say is, that the attitude of the US is as filthy as the attitude of nations like Iraq. and it is absolutely SHOCKING to see how government brainwashing works. it works so well that peeps will fight for things they dont fully comprehend nore haven been fully informed about and even give their lives for it.
if this is where the developement of our civilisation goes, than i´m ashamed of beeing a human

First off, as has been said before, I've held my opinion on Saddam Hussein and Iraq much longer than President Bush has been in power. Second, the US government is as much in control of the US media as I am of my mother's cat. I can tell it anything I want, but the little bastard ain't listening. If you actually bother to pay attention to it, it will be immediately obvious. The US media cares about one thing: Ratings. It will do anything it can to get them, which basicly means it forcuses in on hot topic (currently Kobe Bryant), and doesn't let go until a new "crisis" pops up. Annoying? Yes. Uninformative? Yes. Under goverment control? Not hardly.

But hey, I think a war that has been proven to cost less lives than it saved is good, so I must be brainwashed, right? Somewhere (I think in this thread) I once figured the statistics (fairly accurately) and it came out to something like 20:1 in favor of a war in Iraq compared to the long term deaths directly associated to UN sanctions. That's equating a violent death with a starvation death. Obviously you feel that one person dying because of an errant bomb is worse than 20 starving slowly under sanctions.

Sarcasm aside, I'm ashmed that you're willing to say "well, people are dying by the hundreds of thousands, it sucks, but the guy responsible isn't after me, so I can't do anything about it."

But that's me.

Every day now, in the United States, the all-pervasive media tell Americans that their bloodletting in Iraq is well under way, although the true scale of the attacks is almost certainly concealed. Soon, more soldiers will have been killed since the "liberation" than during the invasion. Sustaining the myth of "mission" is becoming difficult, as in Vietnam. This is not to doubt the real achievement of the invaders' propaganda, which was the suppression of the truth that most Iraqis opposed both the regime of Saddam Hussein and the Anglo-American assault on their homeland. One reason the BBC's Andrew Gilligan angered Downing Street was that he reported that, for many Iraqis, the bloody invasion and occupation were at least as bad as the fallen dictatorship. But This is unmentionable in America. The tens of thousands of Iraqi dead and maimed do not exist.

As for the great human catastrophe in Iraq, the bereft hospitals, the children dying from thirst and gastroenteritis at a rate greater than before the invasion, with almost 8 per cent of infants suffering extreme malnutrition, says Unicef; as for a crisis in agriculture which, says the Food and Agriculture Organisation, is on the verge of collapse: these do not exist. Like the American-driven, medieval-type siege that destroyed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives over 12 years, there is no knowledge of this in America: therefore it did not happen. The Iraqis are, at best, unpeople; at worst, tainted, to be hunted. "For every GI killed," said a letter given prominence in the New York Daily News late last month, "20 Iraqis must be executed." Task Force 20, an "elite" American unit charged with hunting evildoers, murdered at least five people as they drove down a street in Baghdad, and that was typical.

Thanks to the freest press on earth, most Americans, according to a national poll, believe Iraq was behind the 11 September attacks. "We have been the victims of the biggest cover-up manoeuvre of all time," says Jane Harman, a rare voice in Congress. But that, too, is an illusion.

Americans, says Time magazine, live in "an eternal present". The point is, they have no choice. The "mainstream" media are now dominated by Rupert Murdoch's Fox television network, which had a good war. The Federal Communications Commission, run by Colin Powell's son Michael, is finally to deregulate television so that Fox and four other conglomerates control 90 per cent of the terrestrial and cable audience. Moreover, the leading 20 internet sites are now owned by the likes of Fox, Disney, AOL Time Warner and a clutch of other giants. Just 14 companies attract 60 per cent of the time all American web-users spend online.
The director of Le Monde Diplomatique, Ignacio Ramonet, summed this up well: "To justify a preventive war that the United Nations and global public opinion did not want, a machine for propaganda and mystification, organised by the doctrinaire sect around George Bush, produced state-sponsored lies with a determination characteristic of the worst regimes of the 20th century."
excerpts from znet

*shakes head*

PonyOne...
It would be wise for you to do some serious research into cannabis before you challenge me to the fact game.Cannabis is the most versitile substance in the world.As for it being physically addictive,I would like to know the study that fact was derived from.One study I recall suffocated monkeys "proving" cannabis smoke could kill...needless to say that doctor resigned and announced his studys meaningless.I would also like the chemical/s named responsible for the addiction.Corn oils and other substances cant come close to the ease and purity of production of Cannabis.Cannabis uses around 3x less pesticide than cotton for example.As for the "its worse then cigarettes for you" argument,you at least acknowleged that nobody smokes a pack or more joints a day,But the problem can be avoided all together by ingesting it.This method is not safe since chances are your local street dealers supply isnt sanitary.This is prohibitions fault,not cannabis's.comparing Cannnabis to tobbaco is insane anyway considering the enormous body count tobacco holds.If your wondering why I find prohibition personally a problem,you should know that I dont smoke.I cant smoke cannabis because it triggers panic attacks.Theres a strain with which it dosnt occur with and infact helps.Its called sativa.Unfortunatley do to PROHIBITION I couldnt get that strain often and if I could it most certainly wouldnt be medicinal grade and would be far to exspensive to take on a regimine.Instead I'm on three SYNTHETIC medicines for the panic attacks and sever depression it has brought.I am now ADDICTED to these medicines and they have caused me side affects like Gyncomastia(development of breast tissue or large nipples),zero sex drive,lack of appetite,weight loss,decreased night vision(I now see a purple tint at night)jitters,fatigue,moodswings,occasional naseua among some other lesser effects.I cant get quality medicine(cannabis) because the RX companys have 100+ billion dollar market as long as cannabis is illegal and the public is misinformed.I now cant get off of the medicines becuase of severe withdrawls.You could see why I(and another few billion people)find the prohibition of cannabis very personal since it is for others personal gain(like ive said in another post,the Bush family has large amounts of stock in RX companys).I cant change your mind about cannabis and I wouldnt(I couldnt if I wanted to.You cant reverse a lifetime of disinformation with one post.)Do your own research for the truth or rest on your opinion(Which i respect).Just stand for truth...the lack of it has ruined a good portion of my life.

posted by PonyOne: "and marijuana is worse than a regular filtered Marb for your lungs (it's just that it's hard to smoke as many joints as it is cigarettes)"

You indeed did compare cannabis to tobacco...

Anyway,sorry if my post came of as an "I accept your challenge" kinda thing.Worded that wrong.And you did say somthing about a concentrated pill so hats off to that too.

Just a strange fact:cannabis seed has one of the highest protien content in the world...even higher than soy.

I know I'm draging this on,but I really am curious as to why you(and others)possibly "dislike"(that may be the wrong word)cannabis.I dont base my life around it in ANY way,and have never been a pot head.I simply found out that everything that my D.A.R.E officer,teachers,parents,friends parents and other authority ever told me about cannabis was a lie(it will kill you,ruin your life e.c.t).The government for the past 60 years has turned its back on the plant for profit.Its insane.Is it a substance that when abused like any other material in our life can lead to bad things/events?Of course.I could eat to much candy and rot my teeth out and have a belly ach,but its consumed with common sense among responsible people...and abused by others.When cannabis comes to mind people dont think of buisness men in suits,lawyers,doctors and other people generally respected in life.They think of low lifes,losers,drug addicts and other bottom of the barrel persons in society.Its the way we all were raised(with some phenominal exeptions)to associate materials,events,spiritualistic,and almost all tangible things with different internal biases towards humankind.There are many buisness men and high profile employees that use cannabis...but they dont come to mind often.Another strange fact:somthing like 3 out of 5 dentists use cannabis...think about the next time your getting your teeth cleaned.Anyway...

In the end,the only bad thing about cannabis i have found is...its illegal.Makes me laugh when I hear "land of the free".At least canada is moving in the right direction.

This post isnt completley TARGETED at you PonyOne...its simply a reply.I agree with you about the water.I think if americans drank the 10 ounces of water a day recommended,it would be a thinner,healthier country.

LATER! \m/

It's very common in history, a western country invade some poor eastern country for ordinary colonial reasons :

- increasing their power & domination.
- controling economical natural resources (fossils,minerals,agricultural,etc.) , and strategic geographical positions.
- spreading good ideologies against the evil ones (oh yeah, su*k my di*k!)
- protecting foreigner interests against local ones.
- religious doctrine, mythologies , and general crap (crusades ,,,,,hmm....errr.... israel !).
- etc.etc.etc.

Then they scream "BARBARIANS , UNCIVILISED, TERRORISTS" .... WTF , what do you expect from people under foreign occupation , flowers & greetings ??!
Why can't you imagine yourself in their place for just a moment?


The U.S. gov can easily speak of spreading democracy and making iraq a better place , and they can still say that oil wasn't the reason , but why don't they prove their good intentions , which is a lot easier and more reasonable job to do compared to (iraq having to prove not having WMDs) !!

About the WMDs , did someone just say that Saddam was trying to make an impression on the U.S. that he possesses WMDs ?? You mean he tricked the U.S. by giving them the fake excuse to blow him away ?
I know people who can creat manipulated funny stories like that forever , but what's the point ? We were all following all kinds of media , and we know this isn't true.


Why don't you learn how to live with people instead of living on them ?

Media="Blah,blah,blah pass it down"...filter,rearrange,typo..."did you hear?Blah,blah,blah pass it down"...typo,delete,revise...and so on.

\m/

OH PonyOne!
Just another fact that I think would help you(after reading one of your other posts).
Cannabis has some of the most powerful anti-spasmatic/anti-seiziure properties know to mankind.Justa thought.I have a cousin(4th or 5th cousin or somthing)that had seiziures real bad,fell down the stairs and such.Cannabis helped him out immensley from what my uncle told me.

I believe in medicinal marijuana; Although I love the Grateful Dead, that doesn't make me a pothead, or a hippie (stereotypes, people), that makes me a music-lover. I have only smoked marijuana a handful of times, and really only got 'high' once. The other 4 times were just to relax my nerves before my first four gigs; each of those four times, i just smoked a very little, just enough to calm down, before I overcame stage fright.

My grandfather died of cancer in March; You know what they give people to help against the pain? Morphine. Yeah, thats right, Morphine; You may say "well, what's wrong with morphine?"; Let me tell you that Morphine is much worse for your body than marijuana, while the benefits are much less. Morphine makes you sleep constantly (he could only go a few hours awake at a time), reduces your appetite, makes you see hallucinations, can cause seizures, you can become addicted to it, etc. Not just that, but the price; Morphine is expensive, derived from opium, etc.

Now, I want to make this extremely clear that I have reasons for believing medicinal marijuana should be legalized, and it's not some idiotic left-wing protest for nothing. Why not legalize medicinal marijuana? Would you want to make Aspirin illegal because it can kill? No, I bet that you wouldn't. Why, then, would you want to take away a possible cure/pain reliever from these people (and I'm not making people up; i've seen it, face to face)? If marijuana is getting heat for what it does, then Alcohol and Cigarettes should get more. Cigarettes are starting to become 'uncool', but what about alcohol? I live in Wisconsin, there are more taverns here than in any other state; We drink it up (i don't drink, by the way...don't like the taste) Why is it that alcohol/cigarettes can remain legal, yet marijuana can't? Follow the money trail, boys.

PonyOne- Marijuana has no 'addictive' chemical. THC is the active chemical, but you can't get addicted to it. What can happen, and there is a difference, is become "dependant" on it. This is much less severe than addiction, however; You both are right/wrong in that category.

Here's a good laugh;

Page 16, Gainer says (which was a very nice comment, too) how much he appreciated the fact that we could have an intellectual conversation without really harping on each other, and keeping it all clean. The next post.....

Well, just go and read it for yourselves (this isn't a bash, and don't respond with bashes, I just thought this segment was very funny).

~Incidents

Originally posted by SLY
It's very common in history, a western country invade some poor eastern country for ordinary colonial reasons :

- increasing their power & domination.
- controling economical natural resources (fossils,minerals,agricultural,etc.) , and strategic geographical positions.
- spreading good ideologies against the evil ones (oh yeah, su*k my di*k!)
- protecting foreigner interests against local ones.
- religious doctrine, mythologies , and general crap (crusades ,,,,,hmm....errr.... israel !).
- etc.etc.etc.

There is an equally long history of Arab (and other Eastern) nations invading other countries for exactly those reasons.

Should we all continue to live in the past, or shall we just accept that people are people and try to make a better future?

Listen, Lord of the strings (cool name by the way), I'll be the first to be there if there's left bashing going on, but you should check the subject of this website first. It's a GUITAR forum not a political forum.

Originally posted by Number of the Beast
... you should check the subject of this website first. It's a GUITAR forum not a political forum.

We've had discussions like this one a time or two before this, (please learn to use the search button at the top of the page), but I'll briefly summarise the salient points:

- This section of the Forum is called Open Discussion. I shouldn't have to explain the unlimited nature of that category.

- as musicians, we are the kind of people who have a strong need to express ourselves. That isn't limited to just playing music.

- life, at any level that involves more than one person, has some political element to it.

- where else are you going to be able to debate important issues with fellow string-slingers from all over the world?

- no one's forcing you to either read, or add to, this thread.

Ok, you win...but if that's the case...can we bash protesters again?

Originally posted by Number of the Beast
...can we bash protesters again?

I think Raskolnikov made the most eloquent possible statement along that line, back on the first page. Unfortunately, the second picture, (showing an adult and a baby Kurd huddled in death after one of Saddam Hussein's poison gas attacks), doesn't show up any more.

We live in a world where the 'known facts' are shaded and distorted to the point that people in the Canadian province of Ontario feel that their discomfort at not having air conditioning available for their homes, during the recent electrical power blackout, is equivalent to the grief endured by residents of another Canadian province (British Columbia) who have no homes, because of a huge, out-of-control forest fire!

Given the magnitude of that schism over a distance of 2500 miles, it becomes apparent that we need to have this kind of discussion if there's to be any hope of assessing the global picture. I started this thread to point out that we may be at risk of missing something very important in the Kashmir because too much of our attention was focused on Iraq. It turns out the situation was not as dire as I feared, or maybe it was, and we just didn't hear about it.

These days, it looks like the same cretins who were brutalizing the Iraqi people are now sabotaging the efforts being made to rebuild that sad country. Or maybe a noble band of Freedom Fighters is bravely struggling to rid their land of foreign invaders. :confused:

thats exactly what i meant. we have to face the fact that our picture of the world is mainly based on the informations we get trough history books, school and mass media. very little of it comes from own experience.

think about it - if there was no TV, no Newpaper ,no radio, etc - you wouldnt even know about whats goin on in your neighbour town.

now start thinking - in a world where like 90% of your knowledge is based on information other peeps give you, how likely is it, that the information is incorrect? there are ALOT of reasons why such info can be incorrect. Maybe someone wants you to think everything is ok while it isnt. maybe someone said something and it has been misinterpreted by another one (and that "another one" is in charge to write a newspaper article in a million-selling news company). the list is endless.

So we can conclude that is is very likely that a more or less big ammount of our view of the world is tinted by false info that we believe is the truth. That is the weak point of the masses and it is naive to think that those who have the power to decide whats broadcasted on media dont know about that. Media is IMO the most powerfull tool there is to controll the masses - even more powerfull than war and dictatorship or punishments. Why? because you can broadcast a specific picture of the world directly into the brains fo the masses and (if broadcasted in an appealing way) they will even stand up and fight for those ideals.
You have no idea how EXTREMELY easy it is to manipulate someone. and you will be surprised how passionately that certain someone will stand up and fight as soonn as someone tells him that he´s wrong.

There are so many examples in history that show how even history itself has been rewritten by the powerfull to fit it to their needs. just take hitler as an example. he has tried to rewrite history and teach it at school so that it fits the german picture as the rulers of the world. lets assume for a second that hitler has won.. our history books and ideals would be totally different. but we would believe that it is the truth and when someone claims that history is false, what would we do? we would bash him of course.

and the moral of this story? to put it simple.. we should be carefull with what we say and what we defend. we shoul dbe more openminded. we should maybe waste a second to think about "could i be wrong?"

i know so many folks who absolutely believe in the system "why should they lie to us? thats all paranoic chitchat from conspiracy-theoreticians"

i wish that there was a world where i can absolutely rely on our leaders and think of them as persons of integrity and honor. unfortunately ther isnt.




[Edited by Azrael on 08-27-2003 at 02:16 AM]

Originally posted by Raskolnikov

Originally posted by SLY
It's very common in history, a western country invade some poor eastern country for ordinary colonial reasons :

- increasing their power & domination.
- controling economical natural resources (fossils,minerals,agricultural,etc.) , and strategic geographical positions.
- spreading good ideologies against the evil ones (oh yeah, su*k my di*k!)
- protecting foreigner interests against local ones.
- religious doctrine, mythologies , and general crap (crusades ,,,,,hmm....errr.... israel !).
- etc.etc.etc.

There is an equally long history of Arab (and other Eastern) nations invading other countries for exactly those reasons.

Should we all continue to live in the past, or shall we just accept that people are people and try to make a better future?

Exactly what I meant , so why can't the west quit their old conquering habbits ?


BTW , 99.9% of all wars fought by arab countries were self defense and fought on their own land (including all wars with Israel).