You're the man. Apparently Dubbya is also a christian fundamentalist and he wanted all the congress to swear on the bible or something like that...
i'm not sure what the ashcroft part refers to, but the basic difference, as i see it, would be that the typical christian fundie isn't screaming from the pulpit demanding death to the infidels in the name of jesus/god... (christian fundies are more concerned with things like getting Creation 'science' into the classroom...)
Itâs late for this but I donât care , Traderfut, That will be very convenient for you. But more convenient for me! and especially if I am also on ignore. I am perfectly happy to declare that my knowledge on these political subjects is limited, but I don't profess it to be anything else. My criticism was at the way you post one sided bs America is racist and fascist Nazi crap. I accede to the better educated on this subject, the likes of daniel_m, Candle and rs7. But the difference is I am interested to learn and hear both sides of the argument. I don't post the propaganda bullshit like you have been doing and following up with the repetitive fascist crap agenda. What I do know is that there was a lot of Anti American anti Western spewage coming out of the mouths of people like you before, during and for some time after , Bosnia. Strangely all went quiet as the new government was installed. All you do is wrap your sorry ass around Candle when he agreed with daniel_m on the subject. Pathetic. Two words "I agree". But a thousand pages of bullshit cut & paste and a hundred fascist American pig comments. I also know daniel_m was quite right there was no oil issue. So America and the Western allies can and do act for the better of mankind Wow. I wonder if the same might occur when/if Saddam gets his vicious ass kicked. But this time the oil is a good diversion for those inclined to hurl the same venomous bilge at the West to accuse America of being anti Islamic and anti musliim. Another convenience. How convenient !! I am not like max I don't waste my time like that, I have better things to do but I will still make my responses when I am happy to make them , when you are acting like a complete toss pot. From now on I will have the advantage, as you won't be responding haha.
Senior Member Registered: Sep 2001 Posts: 408 12-10-02 06:58 PM what´s the basic difference between a muslim fundamentalist and a "christian" fundamentalist ... like Ashcroft ? Wild, I find your question to the point! Christian fundies are equally despicable. Think of the massacres conducted all over the world in the name of that religion, to this day!
{{""War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses. I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket. There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism. It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service. I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." -- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933 by Major General Smedley Butler
wild; ....War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses. I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket. ... Very well said. It's truly amazing how the mass populous eats up the media bs like candy, and follows the political rhetoric without examining the facts, history, and effects. It' like the markets, where the sheep and pigs follow the hype, all the while the so called analysts selling even shorting against the naive public. Public ends up broke, while the hypesters laugh all the way to the bank. Josh
A pretty good historical overview of mainly US and other superpower interests in the Persian Gulf area, from early 1900 to the Iran - Iraw war period. Oil, money trails, projection of power, who benefits from oil price moves, formation of US policy, UN involvement Russia, China France, who were the friends and who the enemies and why... ...Primary responsibility for the eight long years of bloodletting must rest with the governments of the two countries -- the ruthless military regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the ruthless clerical regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. Khomeini was said by some to have a "martyr complex," ... for that matter, it was also no less characteristic of much of the world community, which not only couldn't be bothered by a few hundred thousand Third World corpses, but tried to profit from the conflict.... ...The U.S. objective was not profits from the arms trade, but the much more significant aim of controlling to the greatest extent possible the region's oil resources. Before turning to U.S. policy during the Iran-Iraq war, it will be useful to recall some of the history of the U.S. and oil... ...As far back as the 1920s, the State Department sought to force Great Britain to give U.S. companies a share of the lucrative Middle Eastern oil concessions. The U.S. Ambassador in London -- who happened to be Andrew Mellon, the head of the Gulf Oil Corporation (named for the Mexican, not the Persian/Arabian, Gulf) -- was instructed to press the British to give Gulf Oil a stake in the Middle East.<4> At the end of World War II, when the immense petroleum deposits in Saudi Arabia became known, Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal told Secretary of State Byrnes, "I don't care which American company or companies develop the Arabian reserves, but I think most emphatically that it should be _American_."<5> And it wasn't the Russians that Forrestal was worried about. The main competition was between the United States and Britain for control of the area's oil.<6>... ...the early 1950s, oil was used as a political weapon for the first time -- _by_ the United States and Britain and _against_ Iran. Iran had nationalized its British-owned oil company which had refused to share its astronomical profits with the host government. In response, Washington and London organized a boycott of Iranian oil which brought Iran's economy to the brink of collapse. The CIA then instigated a coup, entrenching the Shah in power and effectively un-nationalizing the oil company, with U.S. firms getting 40 percent of the formerly 100 percent British-owned company. This was, in the view of the _New York Times_, an "object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid" when an oil-rich Third World nation "goes berserk with fanatical nationalism."<8>... ... For the oil companies, higher prices would be beneficial, making profitable their growing investments in the developed nations (for example, in Alaska and the North Sea).<12> Any higher prices could be passed on to consumers -- and, indeed, in 1972-73 the companies raised their prices to a greater extent than crude costs alone warranted.<13>... ----->for more than forty years, through many changed circumstances, there has been one constant of U.S. policy in the Gulf: support for the most conservative available local forces in order to keep radical and popular movements from coming to power, no matter what the human cost, no matter how great the necessary manipulation or intervention. The U.S. has not been invariably successful in achieving its objective: in 1979, it lost one of its major props with the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, who had policed the Gulf on Washington's behalf. But the basic pattern of U.S. policy has not changed, as is well illustrated by its policy toward the war between Iran and Iraq<---- ----*The United States did not have diplomatic relations with either belligerent in 1980 and announced its neutrality in the conflict. One typically humanitarian State Department official explained in 1983: "we don't give a damn as long as the Iran-Iraq carnage does not affect our allies in the region or alter the balance of power."<29> In fact, however, the United States was not indifferent to the war, but saw a number of positive opportunities opened up by its prolongation<--- ...President Carter proclaimed the "Carter Doctrine," declaring that the U.S. was willing to use military force if necessary to prevent "an outside power" from conquering the Gulf. As Michael Klare has noted, however, the real U.S. concern was revealed five days later when Secretary of Defense Harold Brown released his military posture statement. Brown indicated that the greatest threat was not Soviet expansionism but uncontrolled turbulence in the third world... ...President Carter proclaimed the "Carter Doctrine," declaring that the U.S. was willing to use military force if necessary to prevent "an outside power" from conquering the Gulf. As Michael Klare has noted, however, the real U.S. concern was revealed five days later when Secretary of Defense Harold Brown released his military posture statement. Brown indicated that the greatest threat was not Soviet expansionism but uncontrolled turbulence in the third world... ...Under Reagan, the CIA secretly concluded that the possibility of a Soviet invasion of Iran was "remote"<47> -- not surprisingly, given that the Red Army was hardly having an easy time with the Afghanis, who had half the population and were much less well equipped.<48> The remoteness of the Soviet threat, however, did not slow down the build up of the RDF.... ...Starting in 1982 the CIA provided $100,000 a month to a group in Paris called the Front for the Liberation of Iran, headed by Ali Amini, who had presided over the reversion of Iranian oil to foreign control after the CIA-backed coup in 1953... ....Simultaneous with these activities, the U.S. pursued its second track: trying to establish ties with the Iranian mullahs based on the interest they shared with Washington in combating the left. The U.S. purpose, Reagan announced in November 1986, after the Iran-Contra scandal blew open, was "to find an avenue to get Iran back where it once was and that is in the family of democratic nations" -- a good trick, as Mansour Farhang has commented, since pre-1979 Iran was hardly democratic... cont'd next post
...Reagan administration officials claimed that their efforts in Iran were designed to build ties to moderates. In fact, however, they were aware that they were dealing with the clerical fanatics. Oliver North told Robert McFarlane and John Poindexter in December 1985 that the anti-tank weapons the U.S. was secretly providing to Iran would probably go to the Revolutionary Guards, the shock troops of the mullahs.<68> In August 1986, the special assistant to the Israeli prime minister briefed George "Out-of-the-Loop" Bush, telling him, "we are dealing with the most radical elements....This is good because we've learned that they can deliver and the moderates can't."<69>... ...At the same time that the U.S. was giving Teheran weapons that one CIA analyst believed could affect the military balance<88> and passing on intelligence that the Tower Commission deemed of "potentially major significance,"<89> it was also providing Iraq with intelligence information, some misleading or incomplete.<90> In 1986, the CIA established a direct Washington-to-Baghdad link to provide the Iraqis with faster intelligence from U.S. satellites.<91> Simultaneously, Casey was urging Iraqi officials to carry out more attacks on Iran, especially on economic targets.<92> Asked what the logic was of aiding both sides in a bloody war, a former official replied, "You had to have been there."<93>... ...Washington's effort to enhance its position with both sides came apart at the end of 1986 when one faction in the Iranian government leaked the story of the U.S. arms dealing. Now the Reagan administration was in the unenviable position of having alienated the Iranians and panicked all the Arabs who concluded that the U.S. valued Iran's friendship over theirs. To salvage the U.S. position with at least one side, Washington now had to tilt -- and tilt heavily -- toward Iraq.... THE AMERICAN ARMADA The opportunity to demonstrate the tilt came soon...But when the U.S. learned in March 1987 that the Soviet Union offered to reflag eleven tankers, it promptly offered to reflag the same eleven ships -- which would both keep Soviet influence out of the Gulf and give the United States the opportunity to demonstrate its support for Iraq.<94>... ...The Kuwaitis accepted the U.S. offer, declining Moscow's, though chartering three Soviet vessels as a way to provide some balance between the U.S. and the USSR,<95> the Kuwaitis being less afraid of Soviet contamination than their American saviors were. Undersecretary of Political Affairs Michael H. Armacost explained in June 1987 that if the USSR were permitted a larger role in protecting Gulf oil, the Gulf states would be under great pressure to make additional facilities available to Moscow.<96> The U.S. view was that only one superpower was allowed to have facilities in the region, and that was the United States... ....If the U.S. were concerned with free navigation, it might have given some consideration to a Soviet proposal that the U.S. Navy and all national navies withdraw from the Gulf, to be replaced by a United Nations force.<109> But Washington wasn't interested. Indeed, some, like the _New York Times_, noted that it was the United States that could close the Gulf -- to Iranian exports -- though the _Times_ added that "such action would of course be unthinkable unless requested by the Arab states of the region."<110> So much for freedom of navigation.... ...Gary Sick, a former National Security Council officer in charge of Iran, asserted that American naval units "have been deployed aggressively and provocatively in the hottest parts of the Persian Gulf." "Our aggressive patrolling strategy," he observed, "tends to start fights, not to end them. We behave at times as if our objective was to goad Iran into a war with us."<117> According to a Congressional report, officials in every Gulf country were critical of "the highly provocative way in which U.S. forces are being deployed."<118> When in April 1988 the U.S. turned a mining attack on a U.S. ship into the biggest U.S. Navy sea battle since World War II,<119> _Al Ittihad_, a newspaper often reflective of government thinking in the United Arab Emirates, criticized the U.S. attacks, noting that they added "fuel to the gulf tension."<120> The aggressive U.S. posture was in marked contrast to the posture of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union too was escorting ships in the Gulf, particularly vessels carrying weapons to Kuwait for Iraq. On May 6, 1987, Iranian gunboats attacked a Soviet merchant vessel,<121> and two weeks later one of the Soviet ships chartered by Kuwait was the first victim of a mine attack since 1984.<122> These facts are not widely known, because the Soviet response was extremely mild.... ---->The provocative U.S. naval deployments in the Gulf took a heavy toll on innocent civilians.In November 1987, a U.S. ship fired its machine guns at night at a boat believed to be an Iranian speedboat with hostile intent; it was in fact a fishing boat from the United Arab Emirates. One person was killed and three were wounded.<125> The most serious incident was the shooting down by the U.S. cruiser _Vicennes_ of an Iranian civil airliner, killing all 290 people aboard. The commander of another U.S. ship in the Gulf noted that while "the conduct of Iranian military forces in the month preceding the incident was pointedly non-threatening," the actions of the _Vicennes_ "appeared to be consistently aggressive," leading some Navy hands to refer to the ship as "Robo Cruiser."<126> <----- ( how would someone like to be the surviving, brother, sister, father, or son of any of these 290 completely innocent people, not sure if thre would be a lot of pleasant feelings towards US) INDIFFERENCE AND DIPLOMACY Aggressive U.S. naval deployments in the Gulf elicited no dissent from the _New York Times._ The editors acknowledged that Washington's "profession of neutrality is the thinnest of diplomatic fig leaves," that in reality "America tilts toward Iraq." But the tilt was "for good reason," for it was a strategy designed to achieve peace.<128> The administration had been confused, the _Times_ admitted, but now Washington had developed "a coherent policy to contain Iran. It has thereby earned the right to take risks in the gulf."<129> And when the risks resulted in the destruction of the Iranian airliner, the editors declared that the blame might lie with the Iranian pilot, but if not, then it was certainly Teheran's fault for refusing to end the war.<130> ...Iraq offered to withdraw its remaining forces from Iran and to cease fire. In Teheran a vigorous debate ensued as to whether to accept the offer or to continue on. The militant mullahs had seen their power grow during the war; though the Shah had originally been ousted by a wide range of political forces, the crusade against Iraq had enabled the right-wing clerics to mobilize the population and to prevail over their domestic opponents. In addition, just as Iraq had erroneously assumed that Iran was on the verge of collapse in September 1980, so now it looked to Iran as though Saddam Hussein was about to fall. Khomeini decided to go on with the war, declaring that Iran would not stop fighting until Saddam Hussein was overthrown, Iraqi war-guilt assigned, and reparations paid.... ...On chemical weapons, the Security Council passed no resolution. The United States condemned the use of chemical weapons, but declined to support any Council action against Iraq.<143> The Council did issue a much less significant "statement" in 1985 condemning the use of chemical weapons, but without mentioning Iraq by name; then, in March 1986, for the first time a Council statement explicitly denounced Iraq. This, however, was two years after Iraq's use of chemical warfare had been confirmed by a UN team.<144>... ...In late 1986 the Iran-Contra scandal broke, forcing the U.S. to go all-out in its support for Iraq in order to preserve some influence among the Arab states jolted by the evidence of Washington's double-dealing. In May 1987, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Murphy met with Saddam Hussein and promised him that the U.S. would lead an effort at the UN for a mandatory arms embargo of Iran; a resolution would be drawn up calling on both sides to cease fire and withdraw, and imposing an embargo on whoever didn't comply, presumably Iran... ...For Washington the important issue was whether it would be able to maintain the status quo in a region of great strategic value to the Pentagon and economic value to the oil companies. But for those outside the corridors of power, the real issues have been, and will continue to be, how to promote peace, justice, and self-determination in the Gulf and elsewhere -- and these issues do not lend themselves to gunboat diplomacy... http://www.khomeini.com/gatewaytoheaven/Articles/UnitedStatesAndIranIraqWar.htm Scroll down in the page to get to the text. And so it goes.. war is a racket... I just hope cool heads prevail. Josh
Wild and Josh, Bravissimo to you. I don't think that a war is moral. the principles that are behing any war are debatable. Saddam was inexsitant 6 months ago, today he is worse than Bin Laden. That's the sad truth and that's what I am trying to explain to my friends that think I am the one brainwashed... The difference between me and you is that I lived with what you call fundamentalist extremists dirty arabs and that I lived also in the west, studied and obtained the highest degrees. I have also suffered a lot from racism and I was astonished by so much hatred and blindness could even exist. This hatred the west has does not exist in our countries and yet it should exist after all the crimes perpetrated by the west. But this is why I really believe those people are the civilised one. They do not abuse of sthrenght and they are always welcoming you. Even in Palestine the sad thing was that the palestinians at first welcomed the jews... They did not know that those people came to palestine to occupy their own land. Anyway, as I said before and there is no provocation in my words be careful in the future .... Muslims are quickly and surely becoming the first and the youngest religion in our planet. The West is scared and that's why it perpetrates more and more victims and tries to preserve its interests. But till when.. May be as daniel M put it the muslim are developping like rabbitt and they are But don't forget that this is how europe started its development by producing more and more young people in the 15th century... These are historial facts. And we need young people to achieve more things. They are hungry and they want to succeed. As I said it before why europe is trying to expand quickly to poor and underdevelopped eastern europe??? a few years ago, it was not even imaginable. the condition were drastic and today the doors open very quickly and easily???? The answer is demography. The population is getting older and older. Europe and the USA need more and more young people to pay taxes and to enable the survival of the system. If not the system is certainly doomed to failure. All our landscape will change in 50 years. Remember my words and print that if you want. I am sure you will be astonished by how silly and stupid our interrogations were. Peace my friends