wild, that actually had the beginnings of a pretty good article - up until the point the writer just had to start rambling on about all he finds distasteful about britain today. he probably thinks he made some profound point too, the liberal jackass; obviously we can go over each and ever country with a not so fine-toothed comb and blast its evil ways to hell. ps - i love the moral conscioussness allusion he makes with the comment on muslims; afterall, it's the fashionable thing to do for libs of the 21st century (or so it seems.) (you know, the ubelivably blind and naive "we gotta be careful not to offend the poor muslims" BS) (you gotta be careful not to offend a bunch of primitive jerkoffs, who's holy book makes a point to characterize non-believers as less than human (for all practical purposes). wonderful. if i had my way, i'd make every single muslim sign a written declaration that they explicitly reject the koran's command to kill infidels. i wonder how they'd take that?)
daniel_m, it is the last paragraph of this article that made me post it here. to many an American (and Briton) it appears hard to understand how successfully the Germans (the former "Huns") have not only been tamed and domesticised ... but even genuinely pacifist. regards wild
OK, let's not divide ourselves along religious / cultural lines... I was a victim of this mode of thought in the past, and some of my previous posts on ET were highly anti-Islamic... my last girlfriend (a Jewish Goddess ) was actually a model of tolerance, who supported the Palestinian state, as long as there were security guarantees for Israel... I frowned on her views for a while, thinking that she was being a softy and that the Islamic Scumbags (as I then thought of them) should simply be bombed to shreds... But it was my deep reflection on the evil (on a net basis) that constitutes US foreign policy that made me realise that my views were just as bad as the Nazi criminals who had persecuted the ancestors of my girlfriend... by supporting US policy with patriotic blinkers on, I was no better than the foot soldiers of the Third Reich, who had supported Hitler... I think that all that matters, in the wider scheme of things, is what is morally right... this is certainly independent of religious conviction, and all good-minded people should strive to overcome their inherent religious/ethnic/cultural biases in order to to discern right from wrong... The evil of US foreign policy will invite repercussions from the rest of the world... let's not delude ourselves...
Woman files lawsuit against President -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By LeaAnne Klentzman A Fort Bend County woman files a lawsuit on former Governor and current sitting President George W. Bush. Margie Schoedinger of Missouri City, Texas has filed a lawsuit against George W. Bush in Fort Bend County Court. In her suit she is alleging "race based harassment and individual sex crimes committed against her and her husband." The suit lists numerous offenses and asks for actual damages, punitive damages and judgments against George W. Bush. In her suit, among the many allegations, she has stated, "On or about, October 26, 2000, an attempt was made to abduct Plaintiff (Schoedinger) by three unknown assailants. Because of the actions of these assailants, Sugar Land police officers were dispatched to the scene. In the end, no report was taken. The assailants were treated respectfully and allowed to go free while Plaintiff (Schoedinger) was repeatedly and aggressively questioned. After filing a lawsuit, the Plaintiffâs family and past contacts were questioned and harassed." As a result, Plaintiff dismissed Plaintiffâs lawsuit. Irrespective of Plaintiff dismissing the lawsuit, the harassment continued." Schoedinger, goes on to allege "at some point, she contacted the Houston office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, filing a raced based harassment complaint, advising that the Sugar Land Police Department may or may not be harassing Plaintiff on behalf of her neighbors in Sugar Land or possibly on behalf of the First Colony Community Services Association." Schoedinger further states in her lawsuit, "The (FBI) agent in question advised her that the situation appeared to be highly organized and most likely higher level, such as a racist organization." Furthermore she states, "Throughout this conversation, she learned that there was no time that the Defendant (Bush) ever stopped watching Plaintiffâ, nor did he stop having sex with Plaintiff. The sole concern of the Defendant and his representatives was whether Plaintiff could actually recall whether Plaintiff could actually recall, the individual sex crimes committed against Plaintiff and Plaintiffâs husband, utilizing drugs. Section VII of the lawsuit states; "Whether or not Plaintiffâs husband was raped remains in question, as Plaintiff was drugged after she was raped and her husband was drugged before her rape. Plaintiff can only state that these men purported to be FBI agents raping her for the purpose of covering for how many times they had drugged her and allowed the Defendant to rape her in the same manner." She also alleges that in writing letters directly to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Houston Office," instead of assisting Plaintiff with her concerns, the FBI took on the same demeanor as the Sugar Land Police Department. Eventually, Plaintiff learned, via telephone conversations, that both the Sugar Land Police Department, and the Houston Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation were acting at the behest of the Defendant, George W. Bush. As a part of their defense, the Sugar Land Police Department conducted a background investigation into Plaintiffâs past activities. In the end, this investigation yielded the following information: Plaintiff had seven dates, (which became seven lovers), had told no lies, committed no crimes, gotten 2 traffic tickets and dated George W. Bush as a minor." Sugar Land Police Department Captain Marcaurele said his department has no record of any complaints by Ms. Margie Schoedinger. Several attempts were made to contact Ms Schoedinger, she never returned any calls. Ms. Schoedingerâs law suit was filed on December 2, 2002 and is currently in the Fort Bend County system in County Civil Court at Law 3. Schoedinger is listed as her own legal representative. http://www.fortbendstar.com/121102/n_Woman files lawsuit against President.htm http://www.incunabula.org/shrubrub/
Hey wild, that's going a bit far, don't you agree? I mean after all the heartache the American nation had to go through what with the Lewinsky scandal and stuff. And now George W. Bush? Get out of the city!!!
fairplay, Schödinger is clearly a German name. it wouldn´t surprise me at all if her father was attached to a muslim SS unit ... know what i mean ? regards wild
All reason is about to be gassed, poxed and nuked This week the countdown to war on Iraq may begin in earnest Simon Tisdall Monday December 16, 2002 The Guardian This will be a big week for Iraq and all those who wish to bomb it. Since last summer's heady excitements, when George Bush seemed ready to go Saddam-hunting all on his ownsome, Washington hawks and assorted birds of prey have endured a series of false dawns. First there was their rising hope that the UN security council, challenged by Bush in September to put up or shut up, would fail to agree a common course of action. That would have left the way clear for the US, claiming prior authority, to fire at will. But resolution 1441, passed on November 8 and mandating resumed weapons inspections, frustrated beaky avian hopes of early morning glory. Next came the seven-day deadline for Iraq's full, unconditional acceptance of the UN's onerous new rules. Vultures gathering on the Potomac shore figured the terms were just too tough. Maybe Saddam could live with foreign busybodies clutching clipboards and bleeping gadgets zooming around the country like so many misguided Scuds. Maybe Iraq's famously paranoid dictator would be able, just, to ignore the humiliating media circus that followed the UN parade. But surely even he, grimly locked though he is into best behaviour mode, would baulk at the prospect of Hans Blix plodding portentously through presidential palace boudoirs, magnifying glass in hand like a latterday Holmes, looking for the dog that didn't bark? No sir. Slippery Saddam disappointed them all. He met the deadline with time to spare and, in febrile US imaginings at least, went off to run an acid bath. It's been tough being a hawk since then. Every time Bush suggested the UN inspection regime was up the spout already, that annoying Kofi Annan popped up to say it was all going fine. The more Donald Rumsfeld sent his bombers into southern Iraq, defending Shia human rights by blowing up their airports and killing their men, the more wimpy Euro-appeasers shouted foul. There was minor consolation to be had in exposing the tawdry sex life of one UN inspector, in rubbishing Blix's professional qualifications, in playing soldiers in Qatar and conjuring spurious links between Iraq and al-Qaida. But when Saddam met his next deadline, the December 8 production of a dossier detailing his weapons of mass destruction (or rather, his lack of them), it seemed like all the fun was going out of this war before it had even got going. For thwarted Saddam-bashers, the whole process was turning out to be, well, too damn reasonable. Sadly, help for the hawks is at hand - and reason is about to be suspended. In fact, reason, along with rational thought, objective analysis and calm, considered discourse are about to be gassed, bombed, anthraxed, poxed and nuked. The US and the four other permanent security council members have now had a week to dissect Iraq's dossier. They have also, scandalously, had a chance to edit and censor it, omitting in all probabil ity Iraq's embarrassing list of western arms suppliers along with other inconvenient facts. On Thursday, Blix will submit his initial analysis of the declaration to the council. Whatever he says, that will also trigger the US and Britain's full, formal "preliminary" assessments. No prizes in this doomsday guessing game: we already know what they'll say, since they've already said it. To cut a very long story short, our elected representatives and people's tribunes will solemnly intone, Iraq's voluminous dossier is lies, lies, videotape, and more lies (without the sex). With this 12,000-page piece of recycled hocus-pocus, Saddam has proved he is not serious. By sins of omission, they will claim, Saddam has refused to disarm. By this irresponsible action, this unrepentant prince of darkness, this evil axle, this arch-foe of the free and the brave, this serial abuser of Kurds, Iranians and Kuwaitis has, regrettably, brought war very much closer. A pattern of non-compliance is developing, the US will assert. UN interviews of Iraqi scientists will be the next test. But on the banks of the Potomac, at the Pentagon, at Langley and in the Oval office, the hawks will not really be sad at all. Their perch-bound penury is near an end. Now just watch them fly and soar! And just listen for their battle-cry, as from England's Henry before Harfleur: "Once more unto the material breach, dear friends, once more! For America and King George!" Oh, and for democracy, too. Cock your B52s; unholster your bunker busters; let loose the doggerel of war. For this week the countdown to conflict may begin in earnest. For all the on-off hopes of a peaceful outcome, this avoidable, illogical denouement should come as no surprise. Unreason permeates every aspect of Bush's slow-burn, post-Afghanistan campaign against Iraq. Unreason is the warlord now and is now unleashed. For just consider. Bush says people planning to use weapons of mass destruction are the big global threat. So Washington has pledged itself to pre-emptive, any-time use of weapons of mass destruction if provoked. Is that reasonable or what? Bush says he has no quarrel with the Iraqi people. But for a decade the US starved and impoverished those same people with unleavened sanctions. Now, taking the direct approach, it is willing to kill them outright in order to "liberate" them. Bush says Iraq is but part of his wider "war on terror". But while he plots Saddam's downfall, al-Qaida is plotting his (and maybe ours). Bush surely knows that nuclear-arming, desperate North Korea and its ballistically unstable "Dear Leader" present a far greater, wider and immediate threat than Iraq's rusting Scuds and mutinous army. But do his eyes turn from the gates of Baghdad? No, they do not. Bush says he fights for democracy, in Iraq and beyond. No matter, apparently, that the US, not trusting the Iraqis with their own country, plans to install a US-confected military government or perhaps, a carefully vetted, pro-American puppet show, and tramples civil liberties at home. Bush says that in his coming battle, he has a host of friends and allies. But most have been bought, bullied or destabilised into bogus solidarity. Bush's moralistic war will set a woeful precedent for an immoral era of "pre-emptive" intervention. As long as the UN inspections continue, there is still a chance to stop this war. Maybe the French or Russians will dig in, will demand stronger evidence of Iraqi cheating going beyond the US's highly suspect dossier deductions. Maybe Blix and Annan will baulk. Maybe Colin Powell can hold the diplomatic line a little longer. All the same, this could be the week when the irrational becomes irresistible. Now, in dread, deadly prospect, is the dawning age of unreason. Or, as Byron put it: "This is the patent age of new inventions For killing bodies, and for saving souls, All propagated with the best intentions." http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,860736,00.html
some are hell bent on painting america as evil. Nobody would do that unless they felt they were getting something out of it. Some people are addicted to guilt, as in white males that suck up to feminists and Al Sharpton and now would like to think we deserve to be attacked by terrorists ( for those people we should send an open letter to Al Qaida with their addresses ). Some people are not americans and are upset about our military or economic power. Some people hate our culture. Some of them are just losers looking for attention. The one thing they all have in common is that they are totally full of shit.
the worst are those who complain on the one hand that rich america doesn't help the poor suffering people of the world, and then on the other hand condemn us for our foreighn policy that sticks our nose in other peoples business. Disgusting hypocrites.
The papers that cried wolf Brian Whitaker looks at how the American media are softening up public attitudes to war with Iraq Monday December 16, 2002 Last week brought yet another terrifying headline from an American newspaper: "US suspects al-Qaida got nerve agent from Iraqis". The 1,800-word story in the Washington Post last Thursday got off to a reasonably promising start by saying: "The Bush administration has received a credible report that Islamic extremists affiliated with al-Qaida took possession of a chemical weapon in Iraq last month or late in October, according to two officials with firsthand knowledge of the report and its source." Less promisingly, the second paragraph begins: "If the report proves true ... " The remaining 28 paragraphs offer little to suggest that it actually is true, and several reasons for thinking it may not be. Paragraph six tells us: "Like most intelligence, the reported chemical weapon transfer is not backed by definitive evidence." Paragraph eight says: "Even authorised spokesmen, with one exception, addressed the report on the condition of anonymity. They said the principal source on the chemical transfer was uncorroborated, and that indications it involved a nerve agent were open to interpretation." In paragraph 12, we are told that the report may be connected to a warning message circulated to American forces overseas and an unnamed official is cited as saying that the message resulted only from an analyst's hypothetical concern. As one would expect from the Washington Post, the story is carefully written and meticulously researched. But it's basically worthless. The reporter had clearly spoken to a lot of different people but he failed - not for want of effort - to substantiate the claim that Iraq provided al-Qaida with nerve gas. Although some officials were happy to describe the claim as "credible", none appeared willing to stand up and say that they, personally, believed it. The sensible course of action at that stage would have been to abandon the story, or at least file it away in the hope of more evidence coming to light. That might have happened with any other story, but in the case of Iraq at present the temptation to publish is hard to resist. This particular story was more tempting than many because it carried, as the American military would say, a multiple warhead. It not only suggested that Iraq - contrary to its recent declaration - does possess chemical weapons but, additionally, that it has close links with al-Qaida. The effect, if not the intention, of publishing the story was to give currency to both these ideas. Stories in the Washington Post are instantly regurgitated by other news organisations around the world, usually at much shorter length and without all the cautionary nuances of the original. Iraq itself helped the story along by issuing a denial which - since it could produce no evidence by way of rebuttal - simply sounded unconvincing. The Post's story is also discussed on the BBC website. Under the headline "Wanted: an Iraqi link to al-Qaida ", Paul Reynolds, the website's world affairs correspondent, views it as part of a long and unsuccessful effort to link Iraq with al-Qaida. "One of the most intriguing questions in the 'war on terrorism'," he writes, "is whether there are contacts between Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaida network. Intelligence agencies are constantly looking for the 'missing link'." The quotation marks around "missing link" distance the BBC from the idea that such a link exists, though the definite article preceding it suggests otherwise. Why are intelligence agencies looking for "the" missing link and not "a" missing link? Journalistically, it's more interesting to talk about a "missing" link than a "possible" link but even when the tone of discussion is sceptical - as it was in the BBC's case - there's still a drip effect. The more we mention missing links, the more people will assume they are out there somewhere, waiting to be found. The risk of giving currency to false or questionable claims is now a daily problem for those of us who try to write about Iraq without turning into other people's weapons of mass deception. Even a simple reference to Iraq's weaponry can be problematic. Some readers object that "weapons of mass destruction" is a tendentious phrase. "Chemical, biological and nuclear" is accurately descriptive, though it becomes too much of a mouthful when used repeatedly in a story. Reuters news agency and others increasingly - and rather emotively - talk about "doomsday weapons". In practice, "doomsday" is beginning to mean anything nasty possessed by Iraq, though not by the United States. Last Wednesday, for example, a Reuters report stated: "The United States threatened possible nuclear retaliation against Iraq if its forces or allies were attacked with doomsday weapons." Let's see how that looks the other way round: "The United States threatened retaliation with doomsday weapons against Iraq if its forces or allies were attacked with chemicals." In terms of mass death, it takes 28 Halabjas to make one Hiroshima. Meanwhile, to the delight of pharmaceutical companies, the United States is pressing ahead with its smallpox vaccination programme - though the recent New York Times "scoop" about an Iraqi smallpox threat looks increasingly shaky. On December 3, Judith Miller, the paper's "bioterrorism expert" reported an unverified claim that a Russian scientist, who once had access to the Soviet Union's entire collection of 120 strains of smallpox, may have visited Iraq in 1990 and may have provided the Iraqis with a version of the virus that could be resistant to vaccines and could be more easily transmitted as a biological weapon. (See "Poisoning the Air", World Dispatch, December 9.) Since the article was published, colleagues of the now-dead scientist, Nelja Maltseva, have said that she last visited Iraq in 1971-72 (as part of a global smallpox eradication effort) and last travelled abroad (to Finland) in 1982. Another of Ms Miller's scoops, on November 12, cited "senior Bush administration officials" as saying that Iraq had ordered a million doses of atropine, which is an antidote to nerve gas, but also a routine drug for treating heart patients. This was interpreted as evidence that Iraq not only possesses nerve gas but intends to use it in a conflict with the United States - hence the need to protect its own forces from accidental injury. The US then threatened to block a continuation of Iraq's oil-for-food programme unless atropine were included in the list of "suspect" items that Iraq cannot import without permission from the United Nations' sanctions committee. As I pointed out in world dispatch last week, the sudden horror over atropine was very strange, given that the US had previously allowed Iraq to buy large quantities on normal medical grounds, and that UN had lifted all restrictions on Iraqi purchases of the drug only six months earlier. This highly relevant information, which Ms Miller had failed to mention, eventually found its way into the Washington Post and the wires of Associated Press. The response from the New York Times was to run the Associated Press report without reference to Ms Miller's flawed scoop. By no means do all the dubious scare stories about Iraq come from shadowy intelligence sources or officials who can't be named. Last September, Turkish police announced the arrest of two men in a taxi who were apparently smuggling 35lb of weapons-grade uranium to Iraq from somewhere near the Syrian border. But a few days later it emerged that the material was harmless, containing only zinc, iron, zirconium and manganese. Its actual weight was only 5lb but the police, in their excitement, had weighed the lead container as well. One day, perhaps, one of these scare stories may turn out to be true - but don't hold your breath waiting for it. In the meantime, readers are welcome to send more examples by email, to the address below. Email brian.whitaker@guardian.co.uk http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,861126,00.html