as free people we must end the totalitrian system

If you were as astute as you like to think you are you'd realise that i put the term in quotation marks for just that reason. The point is he hailed from a Iraqi Christian background in an otherwise Islamic culture and enjoyed a position of authority in the government which is indicative of the religious tolerance which was a characteristic of Iraqi society even under Saddam. So enough with the bogus, inflated and media spun claims as to what people could or couldnt do in Iraq prior to the invasion.

 

There might have been a degree of religious tolerance, but you make it sound like Iraqis cuould just do whatever they wanted under Saddam. There was still censorship of the press, media, Internet, and everythign else, as well as a Gestapo-type secret police. Freedom of speech and expression were nonexistent, and if any of the demonstrations or protests going on now went on while Saddam was in charge, everyone taking part would be killed and their families been dragged away in the night for "questioning." The aveage Iraqi is much freer (if that's even a word) now then they were under Saddam, there's no denying that. There are plenty of good arguments against the war and the U.S. presence in Iraq, but "more/less free" argument isn't one of them.

 

Max,

Your posts here are difficult to respond to because it is obvious that you have not done your "homework" on these issues, but insist on weighing in on them as if you know what you are talking about. I sincerely do not mean this as an insult - it is quite common on these boards.

You claim that the US is not supporting some of the worst regimes on the planet? Would you agree that China, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Columbia are some of the worst regimes on the planet? If not, I'd recommend reading the country reports for these nations on Amnesty International's site - particularly China, which is arguably the largest and one of the worst oppressors currently in existence, but which receives the majority of its income from the US and which has been oppressing Tibet and murdering innocent Tibetan nuns and priests for years with US complicity.

You refer to the abuses the Russian government carried out against people rather than simply imprisoning them as the US government does. Those comments show a clear lack of any knowledge of the torture, abuse and murder that happen DAILY in US prisons - particularly in the newest "supermax" prisons, where prisoners are locked in tiny, unairconditioned cells for 23 hours a day. The accounts of torture in most US prisons - but especially Supermax prisons - should be horrifying to any country calling itsself "civilized." The US also continues to be one of the only "democracies" in the world that permits capital punishment - one reason the US was previously removed from the human rights commission at the UN. Capital punishment is recognized as barbaric and inhumane by most of the "civilized" world.

You say that 99% of people speaking out against the government are not being attacked - and I'll say again - one's right to speak freely lasts only so long as those words are irrelevant. When the speaker commands the respect and attention of millions and threatens real social change, that person or persons will be attacked, imprisoned, even possibly murdered. Certainly communist Russia was far worse in terms of the sheer number of people attacked and the official rejection of free speech - but saying "Well, we're not as bad as communist Russia!" is similar to the Bush administration torturing Iraqis and then claiming it's not really torture because "heck, we're not as bad as Saddam!"

My point in what I've been saying is certainly not to imply that Americans are as physically oppressed as the Russians under communism or the Iraqis under Saddam (though a fair argument could be made that americans are some of the most psychologically oppressed people to ever exist). My point is that the US - in its current state - is simply not currently CAPABLE of "spreading democracy" or "freedom" or "liberating" anyone. There are many reasons for this, starting with the fact that Americans THEMSELVES are not "liberated" or "free" or living in a real "democracy" - though sure, it's better than communist Russia. The main reason the US will not succeed in eliminating oppression is because it is encouraging it - through economic and military support of regimes like China, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Egypt, Columbia, Israel - through covert CIA actions and coups - through invasions that attempt to FORCE democratic change by installing "america-friendly" regimes - and through the spread of disinformation, outright lies, and limiting participation in the political process in the United States itself.

To the original poster, there are other options besides simply pulling out of Iraq and leaving it in chaos. Dennis Kucinich had introduced a 10 point plan which started with a US admittance of wrongdoing, requesting assistance from the UN, paying to rotate out ALL US troops and replace them with UN peacekeeping troops financed by the US, hold democratic elections as soon as possible, pay for all damage, and disallow the US from holding Iraqi oil contracts for some period of time (perhaps 10 years). Of course, this will NEVER happen, because the only reason for invading Iraq in the first place was so US oil corporations and the government could secure the right to control and contract for Iraqi oil. But if the US would follow through on something like Kucinich proposed, it would certainly be a wonderful show of good faith toward the international community and a demonstration of humility and honesty, rather than the disgusting display of arrogance and domination the world has been treated to for the last 4 years.

 

you make it sound like Iraqis cuould just do whatever they wanted under Saddam.

But they could. Under Saddam, most folks could in fact do whatever they wanted. That's how dictatorships work.

If you're not actively seeking to lessen the power of the chief executive, you're generally left alone. If you challenge that authority, you could find yourself held as an "enemy combatant" and perhaps even vanished without a whimper of complaint. In Padilla v. Rumsfeld, Bush has declared himself to have the same authority as Saddam- unquestioned absolute authority over any and every citizen without exeception and without any legal recourse- though the Supreme Court shot him down on that one.

Still, even in the softer dictatorships such as the USA, it's illegal for any citizen to complain about a USA-Patriot investigation. It's illegal to even confirm the existence of an investigation. And increasingly, even voicing the facts of the matter can lead to loss of employment and a place to live.

Republicanism is fascism in its purest and strongest form.

 

"republicanism is fascism in it's purest and strongest form?" i completely disagree with that. i think the dems were every bit as guilty as the repubs for passing that bs patriot act. so either their fascists, or they're just very very ineffectual.

 

Both Parties and their ongoing choice of elitist or career politicians as the only "electable" candidates are similarly guilty of being in the pay of big money corporate interests over the welfare of "the people" as a whole. What is needed is a sweeping paradigm shift which resotres the electoral process and the system itself to the control of people not corporate entities. Then and only then will we be able to free the media once again from the centralised control of a handful of conglomerates, resotre the plutality of public discourse and perhaps, just maybe, open the way for a true multiparty proportional representation system that truly reflects the divergence of our population and its interests and needs.

 

Laughin Willow-

You're right on a lot of those points, but you kind of missed my argument. I wasn't saying that the current administration is capable (or even very good) in any way, just that we sure are a hell of a lot better than Soviet Russia (which you made serious comparisons to). But, I do think that it's the responsibility of the democratic world as a whole, not just America, to get rid of the dictators and totalitarian states. Regardless of how good or bad the current president of the U.S. is, it should always be a priority to oppose opressive regimes whenever possible, no matter which party is currently in office.

And don't throw the "well the US backed dictators in the past so you're full of shit u fashist LOL!" argument at me, becuase it doesn't matter. Bush, Clinton and every president after them will have had nothing to do with any of the shit that went of during the Cold War and all the people America is responsible for killing, so they shouldn't have to answer for the mistakes of past leaders. Don't dig up events from decades ago to try and make an argument as to why we shouldn't be doing stuff now.

 

Yeah they could do anything they wanted to, as long as they didn't want to watch any kind of cable television, access the internet, send their daughters to school, speak without the fear of the government listening, drive a car (though techinically legal, the 300% or so auto tax that built Saddam's palaces kept most normal people from being able to afford a car. Oh yeah, and the sanctions didn't help either), read up on current events without blatant censorship and government spin, or do any of the other things that totalitarian states don't allow. Aside from that, sure, they could do whatever they wanted to.

I'd like to read that, got a link?

Really? The Patriot Act goes a little to far I agree, but in order to go that far you'd have to actually be doing something bad or be on some kind of "suspected list". "Confirming the existence of an investigation" and "voicing the facts" can lead to losing your job and your place? If you could tell me when that ever happened, I'd like to know.

No.

 

And don't throw the "well the US backed dictators in the past so you're full of shit u fashist LOL!" argument at me, becuase it doesn't matter. Bush, Clinton and every president after them will have had nothing to do with any of the shit that went of during the Cold War and all the people America is responsible for killing, so they shouldn't have to answer for the mistakes of past leaders. Don't dig up events from decades ago to try and make an argument as to why we shouldn't be doing stuff now.



Oh Max sorry to burst you complacent bubble but it is misguided or disingenuous to concentrate on the Presidents alone. What can be of much greater importance are the many people given appointments or promoted by an administration. Many of those that are or have been part of the Bush ‘team’ also have a past in the Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush Sr, governments, and they were very much involved in the support of some very nasty regimes, including Saddams. For example several people given a job by the Bush admin were deeply involved in the Iran-contra affair Poindexter, Elliot Abrams, Otto Reich, John Negroponte, to name a few and of cause Cheney was supporting the Reagan admin on this from outside. These people didn’t care about working with bloody and brutal regimes. In the light of Iraq let us look at just one John Negroponte -



**

John Dimitri Negroponte has been the United States ambassador to the United Nations since September 2001. He is a career diplomat who served in the US Foreign Service from 1960 to 1997. On April 19, 2004, Negroponte was nominated by US President George W. Bush to be US ambassador to Iraq after the June 30 handover.

His appointment to the UN post was a controversial one because of his involvement in covert funding of the Contras and his covering up of human rights abuses in Honduras in the 1980s. He is seen by many as a terrorist sponsor for supporting the Contra insurgency against the left wing Sandinistas, the first ever democratically elected government of Nicaragua. He is also acused of inciting Contra attacks on civilians.

From 1981 to 1985 Negroponte was US ambassador to Honduras. During his tenure, he oversaw the growth of military aid to Honduras from $4 million to $77.4 million a year. According to The New York Times, Negroponte was responsible for "carrying out the covert strategy of the Reagan administration to crush the Sandinistas government in Nicaragua." Critics say that during his ambassadorship, human rights violations in Honduras became systematic.

Negroponte supervised the creation of the El Aguacate air base, where the US trained Nicaraguan Contras and which critics say was used as a secret detention and torture center during the 1980s. In August 2001, excavations at the base discovered 185 corpses, including two Americans, who are thought to have been killed and buried at the site.

Records also show that a special intelligence unit of the Honduran armed forces, Battalion 3-16, trained by the CIA and Argentine military, kidnapped, tortured and killed hundreds of people, including US missionaries. Critics charge that Negroponte knew about these human rights violations and yet continued to collaborate with the Honduran military while lying to Congress.

In May 1982, a nun, Sister Laetitia Bordes, who had worked for ten years in El Salvador, went on a fact-finding delegation to Honduras to investigate the whereabouts of thirty Salvadoran nuns and women of faith who fled to Honduras in 1981 after Archbishop Oscar Romero's assassination. Negroponte claimed the embassy knew nothing. But in a 1996 interview with the Baltimore Sun, Negroponte's predecessor, Jack Binns, said that a group of Salvadorans, among whom were the women Bordes had been looking for, were captured on April 22, 1981, and savagely tortured by the DNI, the Honduran Secret Police, and then later thrown out of helicopters alive.

In early 1984, two American mercenaries, Thomas Posey and Dana Parker, contacted Negroponte, stating they wanted to supply arms to the Contras after the U.S. Congress had banned further military aid. Documents show that Negroponte brought the two with a contact in the Honduran armed forces The operation was exposed nine months later, at which point the Reagan administration denied any US involvement, despite Negroponte's participation in the scheme. Other documents uncovered a plan of Negroponte and then-Vice President George H. W. Bush to funnel Contra aid money through the Honduran government.

During his tenure as US ambassador to Honduras, Binns, who was appointed by President Jimmy Carter, made numerous complaints about human rights abuses by the Honduran military and he claimed he fully briefed Negroponte on the situation before leaving the post. When the Reagan administration came to power, Binns was replaced by Negroponte, who has consistently denied having knowledge of any wrongdoing. Later, the Honduras Commission on Human Rights accused Negroponte himself of human rights violations.

Speaking of Negroponte and other senior US officials, an ex-Honduran congressman, Efrain Diaz, told the Baltimore Sun, which in 1995 published an extensive investigation of US activities in Honduras:

Their attitude was one of tolerance and silence. They needed Honduras to loan its territory more than they were concerned about innocent people being killed. The Suns's investigation found that the CIA and US embassy knew of numerous abuses but continued to support Battalion 3-16 and ensured that the embassy's annual human rights report did not contain the full story.

When President Bush announced Negroponte's appointment to the UN shortly after coming to office, it was met with widespread protest. However, the Bush administration did not back down and even went so far as to try to silence potential witnesses. On March 25, the Los Angeles Times reported on the sudden deportation from the United States of several former Honduran death squad members who could have provided damaging testimony against Negroponte in his Senate confirmation hearings. One of the deportees was General Luis Alonso Discua, founder of Battalion 3-16. In the preceding month, Washington had revoked the visa of Discua who was Honduras' Deputy Ambassador to the UN. Nonetheless, Discua went public with details of US support of Battalion 3-16.

Upon learning of Negroponte's nomination, Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch in New York commented:

When John Negroponte was ambassador he looked the other way when serious atrocities were committed. One would have to wonder what kind of message the Bush administration is sending about human rights by this appointment.


http://www.california-recall.com/articles/article-136181083090027.html

 

Looks like I got hosed......

At any rate, yeah, Negroponte and others like him should be punished for their crimes, but my point in posting that bit that you quoted was to point out that the actions of the past shouldn't dictate the actions of the future. An example would be that people on the forums have used the "U.S. supported Saddam in the first place" argument as a reason of why not to dethrone Saddam, which I really don't understand. Bringing up something bad the U.S. did from the past every time the U.S. does something good now (and I don't necessarily mean Iraq, I mean the idea that we should oppose all totalitarian regimes) doesn't help anything.

 

Max, the examples I cited of US support for human rights violators was NOT from the Cold War. They were current. CURRENT support for China, for Nigeria, for Saudi Arabia, for Columbia, for the Phillipines, for Israel, for Egypt. CURRENT CIA actions in Haiti, in Venezuela, all over Africa. The US CURRENTLY supports some of the worst regimes on the planet. Regardless, many of the same policy-makers who were involved with the cold war (Rumsfeld, as a star example) are STILL making policy now, and there is certainly no reason to believe they have changed their tactics - the evidence suggests, rather, that they are continuing along the same path of comfortable support of the "worst common denominator," so long as it generates profit and/or greater US control of the planet.

We completely agree that the democracies of the world should stop supporting dictators and despots. I've written on this many times, and believe that we should IMMEDIATELY cut all funding and economic ties to nations that abuse their citizens and start handing out massive payments and contracts to those who improve. This would include cutting ties to Arab oil nations and refusing delivery of their oil, eliminating all trade with China, and refusing to fund Israel's illegal behavior. But as I've said before, this would require Americans to suffer with higher prices and less variety for goods - and would temporarily create instability in the power structure of the planet, so it won't happen. Americans are unwilling to sacrifice much of ANYTHING these days, even if it means an end to torture in the world.

 

And we should stop supporting them. Stopping trade with them is entirely different.

You mean like sanctions? Yeah, those work. That would cripple the economy, not only of the U.S. but those of the nations we stop traiding with as well. In the end it would only hurt the people of China, Saudi Arabia, etc. and do nothing to stop those in power.

 

I concur. Our petty Cuba embargo does just that.

 

Yeah they could do anything they wanted to, as long as they didn't want to watch any kind of cable television, access the internet

That's what I believed at one time, also. But "Salam Pax" blogged from Iraq before the US intervened, and was known world-wide for it. He even detailed what the Baathists were doing (the oil-filled ditches, for instance) as they prepared for the approaching US forces. He didn't post "we must kill Saddam," but his criticisms of the Baathists reached an audience of probably millions. Too bad we backstabbed the anti-Baathist activists by putting Saddam's party back in charge of the country once we reached Mission Accomplished. Even the Baathist "secret police." Then some Bushmen apparently decided that we were fighting on the wrong side, and declared the Baath Party to be the enemy once again. Not being a flip-flopper, Bush stood firmly against the evil Baathists, who were our enemy and who always had been our enemy. The last I heard we'd gone back and re-hired the Baath command structure and anti-Baathists are the enemy. And, as Orwell pointed out, they've always been our enemy.

Re my comment about Bush claiming the same authority over citizens as Saddam held... In the test case, "RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE v. PADILLA et al," Bush operatives had seized an American citizen, held him incommunicado at a secret location, and denied him any process of any sort whatsoever. The Bush operatives were ordered to turn Padilla over to authorities for prosecution and failed to do so. More details at

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&navby=case&vol=000&invol=03-1027

Bush has asserted the right to declare any citizen an enemy combatant and vanish them- without exception or any form of oversight. Literally, any citizen. You. Me. Ted Kennedy. Michael Moore. John Kerry. Talk of cancelling the 2004 election began only after the high court refused to give them the seal of approval to proceed.

in order to go that far you'd have to actually be doing something bad or be on some kind of "suspected list".

The problem is that Bush claims that his word, alone, is absolute, period. No further process of any sort whatsoever. Just like Saddam. Thus my continuing assertions that Republicanism is a full-fledged fascist movement and nothing less. No one asserts that level of totalitarian authority unless they believe in having it.

 

Plus we have the Patriot Act 2 (Also called Justice Enhancement and Domestic Security Act of 2003) coming along as well...This one is even worse.
http://foi.missouri.edu/domsecenhanceact/

http://www.alternet.org/story/15541
<LI>Americans could have their citizenship revoked, if found to have contributed "material support" to organizations deemed by the government, even retroactively, to be "terrorist." As Hentoff wrote in the Feb. 28 Village Voice: "Until now, in our law, an American could only lose his or her citizenship by declaring a clear intent to abandon it. But -- and read this carefully from the new bill -- 'the intent to relinquish nationality need not be manifested in words, but can be inferred from conduct.'" (Italics Hentoff's.)



<LI>Legal permanent residents (like, say, my French wife), could be deported instantaneously, without a criminal charge or even evidence, if the Attorney General considers them a threat to national security. If they commit minor, non-terrorist offenses, they can still be booted out, without so much as a day in court, because the law would exempt habeas corpus review in some cases. As the American Civil Liberties Union stated in its long brief against the DSEA, "Congress has not exempted any person from habeas corpus -- a protection guaranteed by the Constitution -- since the Civil War."



<LI>The government would be instructed to build a mammoth database of citizen DNA information, aimed at "detecting, investigating, prosecuting, preventing or responding to terrorist activities." Samples could be collected without a court order; one need only be suspected of wrongdoing by a law enforcement officer. Those refusing the cheek-swab could be fined $200,000 and jailed for a year. "Because no federal genetic privacy law regulates DNA databases, privacy advocates fear that the data they contain could be misused," Wired News reported March 31. "People with 'flawed' DNA have already suffered genetic discrimination at the hands of employers, insurance companies and the government."



<LI>Authorities could wiretap anybody for 15 days, and snoop on anyone's Internet usage (including chat and email), all without obtaining a warrant.



<LI>The government would be specifically instructed not to release any information about detainees held on suspicion of terrorist activities, until they are actually charged with a crime. Or, as Hentoff put it, "for the first time in U.S. history, secret arrests will be specifically permitted."



<LI>Businesses that rat on their customers to the Feds -- even if the information violates privacy agreements, or is, in fact, dead wrong -- would be granted immunity. "Such immunity," the ACLU contended, "could provide an incentive for neighbor to spy on neighbor and pose problems similar to those inherent in Attorney General Ashcroft's Operation TIPS."



<LI>Police officers carrying out illegal searches would also be granted legal immunity if they were just carrying out orders.



<LI>Federal "consent decrees" limiting local law enforcement agencies' abilities to spy on citizens in their jurisdiction would be rolled back. As Howard Simon, executive director of Florida's ACLU, noted in a March 19 column in the Sarasota Herald Tribune: "The restrictions on political surveillance were hard-fought victories for civil liberties during the 1970s."



<LI>American citizens could be subject to secret surveillance by their own government on behalf of foreign countries, including dictatorships.



<LI>The death penalty would be expanded to cover 15 new offenses.



And many of PATRIOT I's "sunset provisions" -- stipulating that the expanded new enforcement powers would be rescinded in 2005 -- would be erased from the books, cementing Ashcroft's rushed legislation in the law books. As UPI noted March 10, "These sunset provisions were a concession to critics of the bill in Congress."

 

What should have people equally concerned is that Tom Daschle (the leader of the so-called "opposition" (though no such thing exists in the US today) is co-sponsor for that very bill and it is in fact supported by Kerry as much as by Bush, which is why you don't find the corporate media making much noise about it.

Most analysts who are following this believe that the intent is to keep it all hush hush until after the election when it will undoubtedly be rushed through both houses and approved regardless of which of the two candidates achieves the Presidency.

 

Ah I heard about that expansion... I read though that it was leaked to some news sites and caused enough clamor to have it set by the wayside, for the time being at least. This was at least one site it was leaked to - http://www.publicintegrity.org/report.aspx?aid=94&sid=200

 

Just an exercise to guage what sort of other newsworthy diversions will be needed when the time comes to rush it through both houses and into law. Call it legislation by marketing survey.