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Humankind is ill, and its illness resides in having his consciousness off. If we don't wake up our consciousness, there is no posible hope.

Spirit wrote: I don't think many people have enough information on the behind-the-scenes intelligence to know even a fraction of the real causes and motivations.

The motivation was based on the knowledge that Saddam imposed a threat to the world, that he had significant amounts of WMD, at the moment of the decision to go there. "We could not wait for the smoking gun, that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud" is what Bush told his people. Hans Blix, Swedish UN chief weapons inspector, kept insisting there was nothing there to find. Finally he asked the CIA, who apparently had satelite pictures of the WMD production, if they would give him a hint - but nothing. Collin Powell stood up in the UN and claimed that "Iraq produced 8500 liters of Anthrax, (..) and could have produced 25000 liters of it" Up to today, are we still looking for it? Or are we just imposing democracy?
Joe Wilson, a friend of the Bush family, was asked by the Dick Cheney to visit Nigeria to inform if they had sold uranium to Iraq. He talked to several responsibles, and reported there was nothing to it. In his State of the Union shortly after that, Bush confirmed that "the government has proof that Saddam recently saw significant amounts of uranium from Africa". All the reports say that is not true. The inspectors found nothing in Iraq that Saddam could use to become a nuclear power. Dick Cheney had many investigators running around looking for proof on nuclear trades, but none reported anything that could point in that direction. Then he goes and declare that they did find them.

Shortly after, Senator Robert Bird, the oldest member of the Senate at 85 years and private friend of Bush senior and Reagan, gives a speech that they didn't like a lot:
"This reckless and arrogant Administration has initiated policies that may weep desastrous consequences for years." "Will we seize Iraq's oil fields, becoming an occupying power which controls the price and supply of that nation's oil for the foreseeable future? There's some who think so." "Frankly, many of the pronouncements made by this Administration are outrageous - there is no other word. Yet this chamber is hauntingly silent, silent!!"

The Partiot Act allows for, in Bush's words, "surveillance of all communications used by terrorists: emails, internet and cellphones". They can just walk into anybody's property without them even having to say they did. Anybody who sees anything suspicious should report that - last time that was done was in the USSR. Big Brother huh. As I withnessed the writer of the base of Partiot Act say: "Those kinds of activities can quickly turn oursselves into a Gestapo state."

Again, new in US history, the president and vice-president are oil farmers. There's some companies that make huge money in Iraq. Vice precident was formaly CEO of Halliburton, world top in oil services. It was the first employer of Bush senior when he was young. All the advisors are so involved in the oil and weapons industry... I will save you the list, it's rather long. All these companies' stock value has gone up tremendously. Prescott Bush, current president's grandfather, in the 40ies, he was a banker for Hitler financing the German war - while his son was feighting their allies in the Pacific. Another of his companies were taken over by the government due to his cooperation with the Third Reich. One of the companies used people from a concentration camp to work in the mines in Poland, as forced labour.

George Bush senior, later, became good friends with Saddam. The CIA provided Saddam with the necessary intelligence to win his war. Between 1985 and 1989, 60 deliveries of biological stuff were made to Saddam. They even helped them building the factories to make these WMD.

Frank Carluchi, who runs Carlyle, a major inverstors company, was deputy director of CIA and secretary of defense under Reagan. The majority of it's top people used to serve the CIA, White House, Pentagon etc. On the advisary board there is Bush senior. They have access to secret information, and build armed transport at the same time. Carluchi was having a meeting with the Bin Laden at the time the airplanes crashed on the WTC. The only plane that was allowed to fly in the whole US on 10/11, was the one flying home the Bin Laden's family and that brought them home safely, in Saoudi Arabia.

Bush never had a passport before he became president, he had never left the country before.

These are not accusations, but facts. These facts are not questioned, the problem is why people just accept or ignore it like that eh.

What's left of your democracy when the Administration is composed of people from the industry that benefits from this war. A company does not work for people, it's the other way round. In this beautifully working democracy, 52% of the people dictates the life of the rest. Where's the questioning and discussions when laws are made up behind closed doors?

So here's some food for thought. I could go on and on, but I gotta run for work.

That's the usual list which people are pretty familar with and, for better or worse, really don't seem to care about.

The real issue is what all that means. What do you think is the strategic thought behind it ?

On 2004-11-10 14:55, at0m|c wrote:

The motivation was based on the knowledge that Saddam imposed a threat to the world, that he had significant amounts of WMD, at the moment of the decision to go there.

Up to today, are we still looking for it? Or are we just imposing democracy?

The CIA provided Saddam with the necessary intelligence to win his war. Between 1985 and 1989, 60 deliveries of biological stuff were made to Saddam. They even helped them building the factories to make these WMD.

I cut this out, because something is wrong. One claim is that Iraq had no WMD. Another claim is, that US helped Iraq build facilities for making it. It doesn't fit, unless we acept the option, that Iraq stopped making WMD - WHY do that? I do believe, that GWB is not the best thing, that could happen to the planet Earth, but we have to question even the facts which we like.

I will just join the line and say, that there is a whole lot of information, that we do not get. Massive amounts of Iraqian (bad word?) ammonition disapeard in US custody. How could that happen? Who has it? Terrorists or US or Iraq government or ...?

spirit wrote: "such bloody campaigns can bring about sustained good."

i really don't get it. Then could japan's, italy's and German's fascism could have brought also some benefits after a while...

you can't face it. Imperialism and power are the general strategy. democracy, the "superior" western culture and these things are the bell for the postmodern pavlovs dog.. but i 've never saw the bone...
it isn't that complicated, we don't need the fucking details to understand what is going on.


now excuse me i have to pray for these lost souls out there hahahaha

or should i watch some more tv????

On 2004-11-10 15:15, Spirit wrote:
That's the usual list which people are pretty familar with and, for better or worse, really don't seem to care about.

i think people aren,t that familiar with that list, but don't care anyway.

in the words of Homer (S) - "just because i'm ignorant, doesn't mean i care"

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: wayne on 2004-11-11 02:39 ]</font>

On 2004-11-10 01:43, Spirit wrote:

I'm just saying that nothing major has changed in recent years. We've just got
a few new words to excite people's imaginations. Yestercentury we had anarchists and communists and "the Yellow Plague" from China to gnash our teeth about.

I'm sure many people shared these views in 1938.

So what changed in 1938, for that matter?

• The orgy of military buildup around the world? -- No, that started in the 20s, with every country in Europe arming itself to the teeth and spying on all
  the other countries. They were all preparing for war for 15 years before 1938.
• Anti-Semitism? -- No, that was a global phenomenon. T.S. Eliot denounced non-Christian schools in the early 30s. It was fashionable to hate the Jews.
  Like wearing a nice fedora. The Brits had been dumping Jews in Palestine since
  the late 19th century. Before the start of the concentration camps, many countries refused to take them off Germany's hands. We didn't want to save them. The whole world was complicit in the rise of anti-Semitism.
• Imperial expansion? -- No, northern Africa and the Middle East had already been invaded during the 20s and 30s by Britain, Holland, France, ... Japan was already ransacking Korea and China. What was different about Germany trying to expand?

1938 was an inevitable step along the long and tedious road to 60 million deaths that we now complacently look back on as "the west saving the world from the Nazis". 60 million people died, and still we speak of World War II as though it were "unexpected" (and, worse, "just").

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the European leaders all made a pact to slaughter Europeans and Africans, get rid of the Jews, all the while supporting massive military economies. 1938 was nothing new. It was but one brief year in the execution of that pact.

Sometimes things DO change. The trick is being able to see it.

Seeing and believing are two different things. I see all kinds of fearmongering propaganda about "extreme Islam". But I choose what to believe very carefully. I'm sure you do to; neither one of us is blind. We have simply reached very different conclusions on the importance of "terrorism" in the contemporary world, and whether it affects the average westerner.


Re: the lead-up to the Iraq war -- Great summary, At0m|c! Lots of food for thought.

However this is nothing new either. Right now the UN is failing miserably at railroading Milosevic -- another "evil dictator" according to our western presses. Funny thing, though, that the mass graves containing a hundreds of thousand Kosovar bodies are nowhere to be found.

We westerners lie to ourselves all the time in order to justify war. God knows
why. If someone had said simply "Milosevic is evil, just believe us, it's true", and then shown some grisly photos on the cover of
Time Magazine, we still would have gone cheering in to "save" Serbia from its own leader. Why bother with words like "genocide" when westerners just love to start wars overseas, whatever the cause? What's the point of all this propaganda, all these big words like "genocide", "terror", "rogue state", "weapons of mass destruction"? Why don't we just bomb whoever we're going to bomb and skip the doublespeak?

I agree with Nestor: humankind is ill. It has always been thus. People love violence and killing. When people like Bush, Blair or Clinton get the opportunity, they kill in the name of whatever is fashionable. Right now it's "peace". Once it was "empire". In some places in the world it's "revenge" or "jihad". The names change depending on where you live and when. But the thrill of the violence never stops.

$0.02.

On 2004-11-11 04:05, blazesboylan The names change depending on where you live and when. But the thrill of the violence never stops.

sad but true... sad but true.

people are people... we have always been 'like that'. due to modern technologies everything is just happening in our backyard now (satelite, internet, fast long distance travelling,...). yet, we don't know anything. i tend to believe, like spirit, that a lot of stuff is talked about/arranged on levels we're not even aware of. you gotta admit: bush is nothing more than a face and a hand to sign, with a big wallet.

things are likely not to change. it's clear that we learn nothing from history. (we may learn things, but not how to develop into peaceloving folks).

'so are they all, all honorable men'
Z is packed with nice, integer people. however how many of us are willing to swap their DAWs for a fostex 4-track tape recorder or a casio synth, even if it meant at least one person in a famine stricken area wouldn't have to look death in the eyes, unless of old age?
people are people...
dare i even say, that we wouldn't have our beloved scopes if it weren't for war?


i'm looking for ways to finance/promote my new plan... every earthling receives a small mirror for her/his 12th birthday. three times a day you will have to look at yourself, in the eye, for five minutes.
make that sixth birthday... can't start young enough.

...you and i should get along so awfully

sorry for this post... my last one before leaving my Z-childhood-age.


Zappa for world leader!!!


btw: latest news on holland: the politician that was threatened by islam extremists after the theo van gogh assassination. it was a setup by the (right wing) party he was in...


hellfire and brimstone. that's what's in store for all of you

_________________
andy
<FONT SIZE="-2"> the lunatics are in the hall </FONT>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: borg on 2004-11-11 08:03 ]</font>

On 2004-11-11 04:05, blazesboylan wrote:
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the European leaders all made a pact to slaughter Europeans and Africans, get rid of the Jews, all the while supporting massive military economies.

Most European nations became vulnerable in the late 20s and 30s exactly because they were NOT maintaing a modern military. Nor do I know of any evidence for this "pact". Do tell more though, sounds very interesting.

And my point about 1938 was not to draw a historic parallel in detail, but merely to suggest that we could be living on the cusp of profound conflict and not realise it.

I agree with Nestor: humankind is ill. It has always been thus. People love violence and killing. When people like Bush, Blair or Clinton get the opportunity, they kill in the name of whatever is fashionable.

The suggestion here being that they enjoy using their power to create death & war ? Clinton too ? What a poor job killing people he did.

This is a bleakly depressing world view. It's like the world being run by some sort of non-human demon kings.

I think my "fanatical-muslim-jihad-out-to-destroy-the-west" view is much more upbeat

On 2004-11-11 07:56, borg wrote:

Z is packed with nice, integer people. however how many of us are willing to swap their DAWs for a fostex 4-track tape recorder or a casio synth, even if it meant at least one person in a famine stricken area wouldn't have to look death in the eyes, unless of old age?

But it's only recently that TV have let people sitting comfortably at home see the horrors of the world. And packaged so well into a well produced news show. All so unreal.

I don't think peoples emotions and ethics have caught up with what technology can present to us.

On 2004-11-11 08:09, Spirit wrote:
Most European nations became vulnerable in the late 20s and 30s exactly because they were NOT maintaing a modern military.

Vulnerable to what exactly?

Britain bombed and gased Iraq all through the 20s and 30s. They used their military might in Burma in the early 30s. They massacred Arabs in Palestine in the late 30s. All through the 20s and 30s Britain also had soldiers stationed in Ireland, the Suez Canal, Sudan, India, and so on.

Italy started arming under Mussolini. They were also active militarily, fighting in Corfu and gasing Libya, during the 20s. In 1935 Italy invaded Ethiopia.

Spain was fighting in Morocco all through the 20s, relying heavily on chemical weapons. Spain itself also blew up into civil war in the latter half of the 30s.

France was in Syria in the early 20s, and invaded part of Germany (the Ruhr) when the latter failed to live up to its Versailles payment schedule.

Russia was at war almost continually through the 1920s and 30s with its neighbours in Poland, Turkistan, Georgia, Chechnya, Armenia, China, etc.

In the late 1920s Germany adopted the Enigma machine for military use (and the Poles invested huge efforts throughout the 30s in deciphering German military messages and cracking the "Enigma Code"). Germany started building up the Luftwaffe in 1930. In 1935 Germany introduced mandatory military service. In 1936 Germans marched on the Rhineland. By the end of the 30s, the nuclear arms race was already underway.

Throughout the 20s and 30s Europe and the U.S. were aggressively researching military aircraft. The aviation industry grew in leaps and bounds as a result, the upper atmosphere was explored, rockets were invented, etc.

All nations that had signed the treaty on the limitation of naval armament in 1922 in Washington continued to build their fleets as fast as they were allowed to under the treaty, until Japan announced in 1934 that it was ditching the treaty. Then the navies got back on track and started bulking up in earnest starting in 1935 and 1936.

Again, in my view 1938 was nothing special. Just one year out of a long and tedious and easily-predictable buildup to WW2 and 60 million deaths.

Nor do I know of any evidence for this "pact". Do tell more though, sounds very interesting.

If you don't believe that Europe was eager to fight in the 20s and 30s, then I'm sure you'll dismiss my point of view on this one. But the numerous treaties signed in the late 1910s and early 1920s (Versailles, the naval limitations, etc) and culminating in the Kellog-Briand Pact in 1928, were, in my opinion, nothing more than agreements to "wait" for war. Nobody wanted to ruin their economies (again) right after WWI. Everyone wanted to spend time conquering Africa and the Middle East. Everyone also wanted to dominate Europe, but not at the same cost as World War I. So the thinking went: let's hold off, develop our new technologies, and make sure that we don't go to war in Europe until we are assured of victory -- until we have superior weapons, faster airplanes, submarines, aircraft carriers, better communications, etc etc etc.

When war finally did break out in Europe, it was because Germany had decided that it couldn't wait any longer -- it had to pounce with its powerful air force, and move quickly with its swelling ranks of soldiers, before the rest of the world caught up to them in preparing for the war.

And my point about 1938 was not to draw a historic parallel in detail, but merely to suggest that we could be living on the cusp of profound conflict and not realise it.

Fair enough. I would agree with you that there is a good possibility that we are on such a cusp -- or approaching it. Where we disagree is over who the combatants will be. China, India and Pakistan, along with the old cold war players (U.S., Russia, not to mention Britain, France and Germany) all have powerful armed forces and huge military budgets.

Al Qaeda, by contrast, has 18 000 operatives and is relatively puny.

I agree with Nestor: humankind is ill. It has always been thus. People love violence and killing. When people like Bush, Blair or Clinton get the opportunity, they kill in the name of whatever is fashionable.

The suggestion here being that they enjoy using their power to create death & war ?

Not what I said. I said: people love killing. Most, if not all, people in this world consider violence justified given the right context. Powerful people just enjoy coming up with the context, the doublespeak, the new names for old wars, so that every bloodbath is in the name of something modern and fashionable.

Clinton too ? What a poor job killing people he did.

Afghanistan, Bosnia, Haiti, Iraq, Somalia, Yugoslavia. Seems to me he did a pretty good job.

This is a bleakly depressing world view. It's like the world being run by some sort of non-human demon kings.

I don't see why my world view is "bleakly depressing". I'm not sure who, in my view, runs the world, or why they're "non-human demon kings". I must have made a typo somewhere.

I'm also not sure you've understood my only point.

Violence and killing, and terrorism and war and everything else, are bred in the bone -- I can't see any room for debate on this one since we've got thousands of years of recorded history to show it's so.

But our justifications of xenophobia and bloodthirst with fashionable expressions like "Red threat", "Yellow Plague", "extreme Islam", "anarchism", "terrorism", and so on, are pointless. If we did away with all the fearmongering doublespeak there would still be just as much slaughter in the world. But there might be just a touch more honesty and empathy in our debates and discussions.

$0.02 worth as always,

Johann

true words. true history. tip of the iceberg, always.

this is not about what side one is on, but what is the truth...

OK i read the somewhat dry document and didn't see anything that says everyone should go round killing Jews and Africans and building up huge armies for the next war. Also given that Britain was one of the 'winning' nations of WWI and Germany was in such dire straits after such a severe trouncing, how come the British government was wholly unprepared for WWII when we new it was coming?

Not arguing against your points at all blaze just need some more extrapolation from some other sources i think.

Mr A

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Mr Arkadin on 2004-11-12 03:25 ]</font>

On 2004-11-12 03:21, Mr Arkadin wrote:
OK i read the somewhat dry document and didn't see anything that says everyone should go round killing Jews and Africans and building up huge armies for the next war.

I probably should have mentioned 1) that the Kellog-Briand Pact was a peace treaty; and 2) I have never ever in my life been known to exaggerate, not even the minutest detail.

On 2004-11-12 03:21, Mr Arkadin wrote:
... Also given that Britain was one of the 'winning' nations of WWI and Germany was in such dire straits after such a severe trouncing, how come the British government was wholly unprepared for WWII when we new it was coming?

Several reasons, assuming you want to accept the premise that the Brits were particularly unprepared for war in the first place, which they really weren't.

True, the Germans had a few things going for them. The Krupp arms/steel concern illegally employed a few highly talented arms designers in the wake of WWI. Shortly after Hitler seized power, the fruits of many years of surreptitious industrial/war planning were presented to him, thus enabling the Nazis to churn out weapons systems, tanks, ships, etc. much faster than anyone had imagined possible. By the time the-powers-that-were had a chance to effectively respond, they were pretty much confronted with a fait accompli.

Next, the single most important 'jump ahead' that Hitler got was incredibly dumb luck: getting the spoils of Czechoslovakia without having to fight for them. Rather than losing much (most?) of his army to a pyrrhic victory vs. the Czechs (the Germans had rather badly underestimated the strength of the Czech defenses), Hitler instead obtained (swindled) a political victory. The conquest of the Czech resources (e.g. the Skoda works) allowed Germany to expand its army by several divisions almost overnight.

The capitulation of the Czechs in turn can be traced to Chamberlain's attempts to appease the Nazis and avert a global war; without any prospect of British military support on the horizon and with the suddent advent of a 'new' German border in the wake of the Anschluss (annexation of Austria), the Czechs were pretty well demoralized.

It then didn't help matters any that the British and French refused to get in bed with the Russians in a military alliance to counter the growing Nazi threat. There was a general hope that the Soviet Union and Germany could be manipulated into fighting each other, so when Hitler made a surprise deal with Stalin to carve up Poland and share the wealth rather than fight each other over it, the rest of Europe was pretty much caught with its collective pants down.

But these lucky breaks notwithstanding, it still isn't obvious that the Brits were all that far behind. Although the British couldn't immediately project military power on the continent, the Germans in turn never really posed a serious invasion threat to the British Isles, German military propaganda notwithstanding. Throughout the war, the British navy pretty much dominated the oceans and the English Channel, albeit with a fair amount of Canadian and US assistance in the form of destroyer, frigate, and corvette 'escort ships' that helped contain the threat from the U-boats.

Finally, British military technology at the start of the war was unsurpassed in many key fields. When the US earnestly joined the British war effort vs. Hitler in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, they unexpectedly received gifts of several advanced British technologies in return. Among them: portable radar sets that could be carried in patrol airplanes (ironically based on an obscure US invention, the cavity magnetron), very effective torpedo fuses (the lack of which kept the U-boat fleet from having a chance of winning the naval war for Hitler until it was much too late), advanced codebreaking technology including cracks of German Naval ciphers, aircraft engine designs, etc. Although they lacked the manufacturing capacity and the raw materials of the Americans, the Brits were anything but 'behind the times' militarily at the outset of WWII.

Thanks Slowgenius, that was a thoroughly enjoyable + informative read.

You know I met someone last year who believes that Chamberlain was actually not a pacifist (or a "coward" etc) at all; but that he was actually just as hell-bent on war with Germany as Churchill was. Unfortunately I didn't have much time to find out why he thought that, but I did get the impression that there is a sort of conspiracy theory circulating that Chamberlain was, contrary to the usual perception, a hawk.

I wish I knew the details, I love conspiracy theories...

Cheers,

Johann

small addendum:
in some german federal banks there were bets going, after the 36 olympics,
when in the future the Schacht system would crash and they start a war.
The Schacht system is about:
a system to guarantee a future payment
by a guarantee of the payment in the future with a renewed guarantee.
this works until the total of all guarantees is higher then what you have.
And this point became visible after the olympics.
It can help in cases of short breath, but was overdone at this time.
Another reason why it's them who started. Not the only one, of course.