Bin Ladens latest speech

[ZIM]

...balls enough to face down these power-brokers and provide small and midsize businesses the opportunity to compete on a more level playing field.

"The rich will always be with you..." Or something like that....

[Nick Forrer]

'I don't think you can simultaneously chide America for a neo-socialist agenda and a capitalist ideology - seems like you must believe it to be one or the other.'

Chris, I am 'Chiding America' for PREACHING free market capitalism (Both to the electorate and to the rest of the world) while PRACTICING something else entirely- you call it 'post socialism', I call it hypocrisy. The term 'socialism' has been so manipulated and distorted (although not to the same degree as the term 'communism' granted) that its hard to use it in public discourse without causing confusion. This is why I dont like to bandy it about lightly and, when I do use it, I mean something very specific by it. The term 'National socialism', for example, meant something entirely different in 1930's Germany than it did in 1970's Britain.

An example of the kind of contradictions I am talking about: You cant provide Welfare to the poor because that constitutes a disencentive to work, but if you dont provide welfare to the rich (in the form of tax breaks/corporate subsidies) then there is no incentive for them to work. Ever hear a version of this (bogus) argument?

I hope my position is clear now- in essence: the entrenchment (that is, the unquestioning acceptance by a significant proportion of the electorate) of an ideology does not necessarily equate to that same ideology being implemented by the executive verbatim, as the issue at hand (in my view at least) clearly demonstrates. If my position is still not clear, however, Im going to assume the fault lies with my skills of communication rather than your skills of comprehension.

Victor- with the recent Enron and World com fraudulent auditing scandals and now the Shell one hopefully people are starting to wake up to the reality of transnational corporations and by extension transnational capital- I am not heavily optimistic though.

[jun_erh]

one reason these dictatorships stay around is because they don't open themselves up to criticism. In the United States you can have articles written in schlarly journals declaring the habitat of some bug in Oregon as too important to "humanity" to allow any rads to be built there or something (nt to disparage enviromentalists, that's not the point ). Wheres despotic regimes in Africa and the middle east fall under the untouchable catagory of "other" so they are somehow okay.

[fa_jing]

There are many problems with rampant capitalism and corporate welfare, etc. in the US. It does truly suck, and I've seen too many people, first hand, with 6-figure salaries who either shake hands, play golf, and go to baseball games for a living, or trade their own stocks on the internet all day while simultaneously leaning on their underlings to actually produce, and this same people are decrying slavery reparations and welfare and anything else they can think of. Not that these are necessarily great solutions to this society's problems, but neither should they be bad-mouthed by total schlepps born with silver spoons in their mouths. I will also allow that there are great managers/directors who actually work hard and care at least a little, but not very many. The two-party system and the fallacy of voting "against" the one you hate worst pretty much guarantees Republocrat hegemony, despite the rights of free speech and information that we enjoy in this country.

This has nothing to do with Bin Laden's speech.

[chen zhen]

dam.. this is the first time i respect Kung Lek...

u go gyrl

[Shaolinlueb]

Originally posted by Kung Lek
you @ssholes are almost making me laugh.

you friggin joke like your president does about the loss of life.

any wmds under your chair?

wads

Dude Bush knows they're there because he ahs the reciept.

[Christopher M]

Just found this; thought it may be of interest.

[Nick Forrer]

Another slant to the Kurdish issue and one that undermines any attempt by the US to take the high ground

Turkish massacres

[Christopher M]

I'm not sure that Turkish mistreatment of Kurds in any way undermines Iraqi mistreatment of Kurds. Is it ok if everyone does it or something?

[Nick Forrer]

No chris

The point is rather that we (as in the British and Amercian public) only get to hear about the atrocities of our official enemies when it suits the gov. agenda (like Hallabja- which, as im sure you know, was committed whilst Iraq was still a favoured ally/trading patner of the west) and not the atrocities of our allies, such as Turkey which is run by the military i.e. is not democratic and which has an appaling human rights record- murder, torture, arrest/imprisonment without trial, cencorship etc. but which nevertheless has been and is still to this day a leading recepient of Western arms exports. However because they refused to let the US invade Iraq from their country (i.e. because they sided with the vast majority of their population) they seem to have fallen out of favour with the present administration.

The lesson in both cases? Its fine to kill kurds (in fact we'll help you) but when you disobey an order (like invading Kuwait, or failing to help the US invade Iraq) then God help you.

[Christopher M]

I'm not sure that American or British ignorance of Turkish mistreatment of Kurds in any way undermines Iraqi mistreatment of Kurds. The Kurds suffer the same amount regardless of whether an American is aware of it.

[Nick Forrer]

Chris I think there is another misunderstanding here-

When I wrote

'Another slant to the Kurdish issue and one that undermines any attempt by the US to take the high ground'

I was talking about the US and British gov. deliberate use of the Hallabja massacre as a propoganda tool (among others- such as phantom WMDs, and a bogus AlQ link) to justify invasion of iraq. As far as I am concerned this reason is undermined (morally, logically etc. ) by British and American support for Turkey which, since the imposition of the no fly zone in the early 90's, is far and away the worst abuser of Kurdish human rights. Thus when I see someone using Iraqi mistreatment of Kurds (which incidentally ended once the no fly zones were imposed more than ten years ago) to justify invasion of and regime change in Iraq I wonder why they dont advocate the same thing for Turkey and how they can continue to support a US adminstration (do you?) that views Turkey as an important strategic ally and a worthy recepient of US arms.

Thats as clear as I can be.

[Christopher M]

Originally posted by Nick Forrer
I was talking about the US and British gov. deliberate use of the Hallabja massacre as a propoganda tool

Would you rather no one said a word about Halabja, and no one did anything to try and fix it?

Of course not. Yet here you're complaining that they are. Why would you complain about something that is going the way you want it to go?

I wonder why they dont advocate the same thing for Turkey

Do you really support the idea of America invading and militarily occupying every country that disagrees with its political position?

Of course not. Yet here you find it problematic that they're not. Why would you complain about something that is going the way you want it to go?

It seems like the answer is: your partisan political interests take priority in your decision making processes. Publicizing Halabja is wrong, because it's the 'bad guys' publicizing it. Not attacking Turkey is wrong because it's the 'bad guys' not attacking. Huh. You surely don't want the actions to change, just the people doing them.

Personally, I don't care how politically convenient or inconvenient a certain action is for America - if it's the right thing to do, I think they should do it; and if not, then I think they shouldn't. Talking about Halabja and trying to remedy the Kurdish situation is the right thing to do.

Is it politically convenient for America? I don't care. My concern is for the Kurds, not for political interests in the US.

Is American 'moral highground' on the Halabja issue contrary to someone's political interests? Too bad: political interests take back seat to the plight of the Kurds.

As for why they're not invading Turkey, the context in Turkey (or North Korea, or Congo, etc) is dramatically different than that of Iraq, so we should not expect it to warrant the same response.

[Nick Forrer]

'Would you rather no one said a word about Halabja'

No. I’m very happy that people are (belatedly) becoming more aware of the Kurdish fight for self determination and how they have suffered at the hands of a western backed dictator. However an independent Kurdish state does not (as you must know) fit in with the foreign policy objectives of either America or Turkey. If you remember just after the fall of Saddam Turkey made a number of threats to invade northern Iraq if they felt the Kurds were getting out of control.

And no one did anything to try and fix it?

No that horse has bolted- you cant bring those people back from the dead. Of course the people responsible should go on trial for war crimes at the international court (to which I am sure you are aware the US is not a signatory). However to repeat, Iraqi mistreatment of Kurds has not been a problem since the imposition of the no fly zones more than ten years ago. In fact again Turkey has been the worst abuser of kurdish human rights, abuse which has gone largely unreported by the international media and which the US gov. has been conspicuously quiet about (because they knew full well what was going on and not only did they not lift a finger in protest- they actually helped it along by continuing to sell Turkey arms just as Carter and Ford administrations did with Suharto when he invaded East Timor). On the other hand, at the same time as Turkey was killing Kurds US sponsored sanctions were killing Iraqi children in their thousands. In fact according to the W.H.O and the UN more than 500,000 iraqi civilians died, most of them children. Madeleine Albright (then US ambassador to the UN and later secretary of state under the Clinton admin.) didn't deny this. Instead she said it was an 'acceptable price to pay'. Just to be clear – partisan bias has nothing to do with this – I’m as anti Clinton as I am anti Bush. Say what you like about Huessein, as despicable as he was he didn’t kill 500,000 children, and do it with barely a murmur from the international community (there are some notable exceptions- Dennis Halliday and Hans von Spoenik come to mind).

'Why would you complain about something that is going the way you want it to go?'

Illegally invading a sovereign state (Iraq) on a false pretext (WMD’s –Uranium in Niger, mobile laboratories etc., ALQ connections etc.)

And thereby

- undermining international law,
- killing thousands of innocent people,
- setting off a civil war,
- imprisoning people indefinitely without trial under duress of torture,
- lying to the electorate,
- emboldening predatory regimes like that in Israel to commit further atrocities,
- and increasing support for terrorism in the Arab world

is not the way I want things to go.


‘As for why they're not invading Turkey, the context in Turkey (or North Korea, or Congo, etc) is dramatically different than that of Iraq, so we should not expect it to warrant the same response.’

Ohh so context is important. So it is okay for me to put US gov. bleating on Hallabja into the context of US support for Turkish atrocities during the 90’s. And to ask why we hear about one and not the other, why one merits armed intervention 15 years after the fact where there is no clear and present danger from the Baath regime to the Kurds owing to the no fly zone, whilst the other merits (lucrative) arms sales and covert support.