| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Fredric L. Rice" |
| Date: |
11 Feb 2005 09:24:00 PM |
| Object: |
Hey, Fred Stone, ya fucking rightard. Eat this: |
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050228&s=klein
lookout by Naomi Klein
Getting the Purple Finger
[from the February 28, 2005 issue]
"The Iraqi people gave America the biggest 'thank you' in the best way
we could have hoped for." Reading this election analysis from Betsy
Hart, a columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service, I found myself
thinking about my late grandmother. Half blind and a menace behind the
wheel of her Chevrolet, she adamantly refused to surrender her car
keys. She was convinced that everywhere she drove (flattening the
house pets of Philadelphia along the way) people were waving and
smiling at her. "They are so friendly!" We had to break the bad news.
"They aren't waving with their whole hand, Grandma--just with their
middle finger."
So it is with Betsy Hart and the other near-sighted election
observers: They think the Iraqi people have finally sent America those
long-awaited flowers and candies, when Iraq's voters just gave them
the (purple) finger.
The election results are in: Iraqis voted overwhelmingly to throw out
the US-installed government of Iyad Allawi, who refused to ask the
United States to leave. A decisive majority voted for the United Iraqi
Alliance; the second plank in the UIA platform calls for "a timetable
for the withdrawal of the multinational forces from Iraq."
There are more single-digit messages embedded in the winning
coalition's platform. Some highlights: "Adopting a social security
system under which the state guarantees a job for every fit
Iraqi...and offers facilities to citizens to build homes." The UIA
also pledges "to write off Iraq's debts, cancel reparations and use
the oil wealth for economic development projects." In short, Iraqis
voted to repudiate the radical free-market policies imposed by former
chief US envoy Paul Bremer and locked in by a recent agreement with
the International Monetary Fund.
So will the people who got all choked up watching Iraqis flock to the
polls support these democratically chosen demands? Please. "You don't
set timetables," George W. Bush said four days after Iraqis voted for
exactly that. Likewise, British Prime Minister Tony Blair called the
elections "magnificent" but dismissed a firm timetable out of hand.
The UIA's pledges to expand the public sector, keep the oil and drop
the debt will likely suffer similar fates. At least if Adel Abd
al-Mahdi gets his way--he's Iraq's finance minister and the man
suddenly being touted as leader of Iraq's next government.
Al-Mahdi is the Bush Administration's Trojan horse in the UIA. (You
didn't think they were going to put all their money on Allawi, did
you?) In October he told a gathering of the American Enterprise
Institute that he planned to "restructure and privatize [Iraq's]
state-owned enterprises," and in December he made another trip to
Washington to unveil plans for a new oil law "very promising to the
American investors." It was al-Mahdi himself who oversaw the signing
of a flurry of deals with Shell, BP and ChevronTexaco in the weeks
before the elections, and it is he who negotiated the recent austerity
deal with the IMF. On troop withdrawal, al-Mahdi sounds nothing like
his party's platform and instead appears to be channeling ***** Cheney
on Fox News: "When the Americans go will depend on when our own forces
are ready and on how the resistance responds after the elections." But
on Sharia law, we are told, he is very close to the clerics.
Iraq's elections were delayed time and time again, while the
occupation and resistance grew ever more deadly. Now it seems that two
years of bloodshed, bribery and backroom arm-twisting were leading up
to this: a deal in which the ayatollahs get control over the family,
Texaco gets the oil, and Washington gets its enduring military bases
(call it the "oil for women program"). Everyone wins except the
voters, who risked their lives to cast their ballots for a very
different set of policies.
But never mind that. January 30, we are told, was not about what
Iraqis were voting for--it was about the fact of their voting and,
more important, how their plucky courage made Americans feel about
their war. Apparently, the elections' true purpose was to prove to
Americans that, as George Bush put it, "the Iraqi people value their
own liberty." Stunningly, this appears to come as news. Chicago
Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown said the vote was "the first clear sign
that freedom really may mean something to the Iraqi people." On The
Daily Show, CNN's Anderson Cooper described it as "the first time
we've sort of had a gauge of whether or not they're willing to sort of
step forward and do stuff."
This is some tough crowd. The Shiite uprising against Saddam in 1991
was clearly not enough to convince them that Iraqis were willing to
"do stuff" to be free. Nor was the demonstration of 100,000 people
held one year ago demanding immediate elections, or the spontaneous
local elections organized by Iraqis in the early months of the
occupation--both summarily shot down by Bremer. It turns out that on
American TV, the entire occupation has been one long episode of Fear
Factor, in which Iraqis overcome ever-more-challenging obstacles to
demonstrate the depths of their desire to win their country back.
Having their cities leveled, being tortured in Abu Ghraib, getting
shot at checkpoints, having their journalists censored and their water
and electricity cut off--all of it was just a prelude to the ultimate
endurance test: dodging bombs and bullets to get to the polling
station. At last, Americans were persuaded that Iraqis really, really
want to be free.
So what's the prize? An end to occupation, as the voters demanded?
Don't be silly--the US government won't submit to any "artificial
timetable." Jobs for everyone, as the UIA promised? You can't vote for
socialist nonsense like that. No, they get Geraldo Rivera's tears ("I
felt like such a sap"), Laura Bush's motherly pride ("It was so moving
for the President and me to watch people come out with purple
fingers") and Betsy Hart's sincere apology for ever doubting them
("Wow--do I stand corrected").
And that should be enough. Because if it weren't for the invasion,
Iraqis would not even have the freedom to vote for their liberation,
and then to have that vote completely ignored. And that's the real
prize: the freedom to be occupied. Wow--do I stand corrected.
---
Stop Elmer Fudd web site: http://www.ElmerFudd.US/
Covert text file server: http://www.notserver.com/
Scientology crooks: http://sf.irk.ru/www/ot3/otiii-gif.html
FRice Antiwar: http://www.skeptictank.org/antiwar.htm
Another Scientology murder: http://PerkinsTragedy.org
.
|
|
| User: "Fred Stone" |
|
| Title: Re: Hey, Fred Rice, you stupid DemoKKKrat. Eat this: |
11 Feb 2005 09:51:17 PM |
|
|
(Fredric L. Rice) wrote in news:110qtoqjecrmpd0
@corp.supernews.com:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050228&s=klein
lookout by Naomi Klein
Getting the Purple Finger
[from the February 28, 2005 issue]
"The Iraqi people gave America the biggest 'thank you' in the best way
we could have hoped for." Reading this election analysis from Betsy
Hart, a columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service, I found myself
thinking about my late grandmother. Half blind and a menace behind the
wheel of her Chevrolet, she adamantly refused to surrender her car
keys. She was convinced that everywhere she drove (flattening the
house pets of Philadelphia along the way) people were waving and
smiling at her. "They are so friendly!" We had to break the bad news.
"They aren't waving with their whole hand, Grandma--just with their
middle finger."
So it is with Betsy Hart and the other near-sighted election
observers: They think the Iraqi people have finally sent America those
long-awaited flowers and candies, when Iraq's voters just gave them
the (purple) finger.
The election results are in: Iraqis voted overwhelmingly to throw out
the US-installed government of Iyad Allawi, who refused to ask the
United States to leave. A decisive majority voted for the United Iraqi
Alliance; the second plank in the UIA platform calls for "a timetable
for the withdrawal of the multinational forces from Iraq."
"Coming in second" isn't quite "being thrown out".
There are more single-digit messages embedded in the winning
coalition's platform. Some highlights: "Adopting a social security
system under which the state guarantees a job for every fit
Iraqi...and offers facilities to citizens to build homes." The UIA
also pledges "to write off Iraq's debts, cancel reparations and use
the oil wealth for economic development projects." In short, Iraqis
voted to repudiate the radical free-market policies imposed by former
chief US envoy Paul Bremer and locked in by a recent agreement with
the International Monetary Fund.
In short, Naomi is cherry-picking the UIA "platform". There's also the
small detail that this assembly *still* isn't the final form of the
government of Iraq.
So will the people who got all choked up watching Iraqis flock to the
polls support these democratically chosen demands? Please. "You don't
set timetables," George W. Bush said four days after Iraqis voted for
exactly that. Likewise, British Prime Minister Tony Blair called the
elections "magnificent" but dismissed a firm timetable out of hand.
That "firm timetable" only tells the terrorists how long they have to
hold out in order to win.
The UIA's pledges to expand the public sector, keep the oil and drop
the debt will likely suffer similar fates. At least if Adel Abd
al-Mahdi gets his way--he's Iraq's finance minister and the man
suddenly being touted as leader of Iraq's next government.
Al-Mahdi is the Bush Administration's Trojan horse in the UIA. (You
didn't think they were going to put all their money on Allawi, did
you?)
Oh ho! Having it both ways, Naomi? We're fucked, but our "Trojan Horse"
won!
In October he told a gathering of the American Enterprise
Institute that he planned to "restructure and privatize [Iraq's]
state-owned enterprises," and in December he made another trip to
Washington to unveil plans for a new oil law "very promising to the
American investors." It was al-Mahdi himself who oversaw the signing
of a flurry of deals with Shell, BP and ChevronTexaco in the weeks
before the elections, and it is he who negotiated the recent austerity
deal with the IMF. On troop withdrawal, al-Mahdi sounds nothing like
his party's platform and instead appears to be channeling ***** Cheney
on Fox News: "When the Americans go will depend on when our own forces
are ready and on how the resistance responds after the elections." But
on Sharia law, we are told, he is very close to the clerics.
Iraq's elections were delayed time and time again, while the
occupation and resistance grew ever more deadly. Now it seems that two
years of bloodshed, bribery and backroom arm-twisting were leading up
to this: a deal in which the ayatollahs get control over the family,
Texaco gets the oil, and Washington gets its enduring military bases
(call it the "oil for women program"). Everyone wins except the
voters, who risked their lives to cast their ballots for a very
different set of policies.
Yeah, right. Sure, Naomi, it's all a plot. Suuuuure.
You damned fool, they haven't even made up a Constitution yet, and this
Naomi thinks that they've picked the final version of the government?
But never mind that. January 30, we are told, was not about what
Iraqis were voting for--it was about the fact of their voting and,
more important, how their plucky courage made Americans feel about
their war. Apparently, the elections' true purpose was to prove to
Americans that, as George Bush put it, "the Iraqi people value their
own liberty." Stunningly, this appears to come as news. Chicago
Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown said the vote was "the first clear sign
that freedom really may mean something to the Iraqi people." On The
Daily Show, CNN's Anderson Cooper described it as "the first time
we've sort of had a gauge of whether or not they're willing to sort of
step forward and do stuff."
This is some tough crowd. The Shiite uprising against Saddam in 1991
was clearly not enough to convince them that Iraqis were willing to
"do stuff" to be free. Nor was the demonstration of 100,000 people
held one year ago demanding immediate elections, or the spontaneous
local elections organized by Iraqis in the early months of the
occupation--both summarily shot down by Bremer. It turns out that on
American TV, the entire occupation has been one long episode of Fear
Factor, in which Iraqis overcome ever-more-challenging obstacles to
demonstrate the depths of their desire to win their country back.
Having their cities leveled, being tortured in Abu Ghraib, getting
shot at checkpoints, having their journalists censored and their water
and electricity cut off--all of it was just a prelude to the ultimate
endurance test: dodging bombs and bullets to get to the polling
station. At last, Americans were persuaded that Iraqis really, really
want to be free.
So what's the prize? An end to occupation, as the voters demanded?
Don't be silly--the US government won't submit to any "artificial
timetable."
The voters haven't demanded anything yet. Let's see what the actual
negotiations with the eventual elected Iraqi government produce. This is
not the final step.
Jobs for everyone, as the UIA promised? You can't vote for
socialist nonsense like that.
Hey, Naomi got one right, you *can't* just vote jobs for everybody. Duh.
No, they get Geraldo Rivera's tears ("I
felt like such a sap"), Laura Bush's motherly pride ("It was so moving
for the President and me to watch people come out with purple
fingers") and Betsy Hart's sincere apology for ever doubting them
("Wow--do I stand corrected").
And that should be enough. Because if it weren't for the invasion,
Iraqis would not even have the freedom to vote for their liberation,
and then to have that vote completely ignored. And that's the real
prize: the freedom to be occupied. Wow--do I stand corrected.
http://iraqelectionwire.blogspot.com/2005/02/partial-results-released-
on-thursday.html
Friday, February 04, 2005
Partial results released on Thursday by the Iraqi electoral commission
consistently placed the Shia Islamist-led United Iraqi Alliance first,
with more than two thirds of the 1.6m votes so far counted and confirmed
from the Baghdad and five southern majority-Shia provinces. The Iraqi
List of interim prime minister Iyad Allawi, meanwhile, came second
across the board, but nowhere except in Baghdad province did the prime
minister's list gain more than one third of the number of votes that
went to the Alliance. (Financial Times)
Following the low turnout of Sunni Arab voters in Iraq's national
elections Sunday, former Iraqi Governing Council member, Adnan Pachachi,
says he has initiated conciliatory talks with Sunni Arab groups that did
not take part in the balloting. The secular Sunni Arab elder statesman
worries that the credibility of the elected national assembly and the
constitution it drafts may be greatly diminished without Sunni-Arab
participation. Adnan Pachachi, who was only one of a handful of Sunni-
Arab candidates in Sunday's race, has spent the past several days
reaching out to leaders of Sunni-led opposition groups, who boycotted
national elections. (Voice of America)
US officials praised the election turnout in Iraq's restive third city
of Mosul, but political parties in its ethnically-divided province
protested about the lack of polling centres and ballot papers. (AFP)
Electoral officials in the southern city of Karbala have discovered a
case of election fraud in which voter education materials were tampered
with to add a plug for the major Shia-led coalition, the United Iraqi
Alliance. (Institute for War & Peace Reporting)
Boston Globe: For Shi'ite Najaf, a new direction.
The United States "will resolutely stand beside" the Iraqi people in
their struggle to achieve democracy, stability and prosperity following
the January 30 elections, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near
Eastern Affairs and Iraq Coordinator Ronald Schlicher says. "As we enter
this post-election period, our reconstruction efforts will be focused on
assisting the Iraqi Transitional Government to improve security, create
jobs, develop economic policy and regulatory frameworks, and expand
private enterprise," Schlicher said in a prepared statement before the
Senate Armed Services Committee February 3. (US Dept. of State)
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/0202robb02.ht
ml
Bush partly vindicated
Robert
Robb
Republic
columnist
Feb. 2, 2005 12:00 AM
Does the Iraq election vindicate President Bush's Iraq policy and the
Bush doctrine of the United States being an active agent for the spread
of freedom and democracy around the world?
The fair-minded answer, even by critics of the policy and the doctrine
such as myself, is: partially.
Certainly, the vote was impressive and moving.
The United States was founded on the natural-law belief that freedom and
democracy are the inherent right of all people. But whether they were
the universal aspiration of all people, as Bush has asserted, was a more
open question.
Some doubted whether Islam, as practiced in the Middle East, was
compatible with secularized self-government, as opposed to submission to
clerical authority in all matters.
The Iraqi vote was a convincing expression of the desire for
representative government. The voter narratives - the defiance of
threats, the sense of liberation and hope, the feeling of propitiation
for past repression - were a testimony to the transforming power of
democracy.
There is, obviously, a long way from this vote and a democratically
governed, secure, stable and united Iraq. But there is reason for
optimism that the country has started down that path.
The most powerful influence in Iraq, Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-
Sistani, has opposed direct clerical rule and supported a civil
government at least in some measure independent of clerical control.
There appears to be a commitment among the majority Shiite leadership to
create a government which minority Sunnis and Kurds find acceptable.
The most promising development was the extent to which Iraqis provided
for their own security in the election. The polls were protected by more
than 25,000 Iraqi troops, with the United States providing largely
unused standby backup. As the election approached, local militias
started stepping forward to volunteer to help with election day
security.
The terrorists have been targeting Iraqis more than Americans. It
appears that a critical tipping point may have been reached, in which
Iraqis view the battle as less between the insurgents and the United
States and more between the insurgents and their own future.
While, again, there is a long way between this election and a broader
democratic movement in the Middle East, this vote and that of the
Palestinians did reverberate. The prospects for democratic reform
elsewhere will undoubtedly improve.
If Iraq becomes a stable, secure democracy, the international view of
the Iraq war will undoubtedly change. The defiance of international
opposition to invasion and the failure to find the precipitating weapons
of mass destruction will give way to the success of the enterprise.
There are many difficult passages yet to negotiate. But if Bush's policy
turns out to have worked, does that make it right?
Success - now and in the future - shouldn't be the end of the argument
as to whether the Iraq war was a prudent exercise of American force.
The liberation of the Iraqi people, particularly if followed by secure
and stable democratic governance, is a wonderful event. But the purpose
of the United States government is to protect the freedom of and provide
security to the American people.
The Iraq war, at least in the short-run, unquestionably makes the United
States more of a terrorist target, not less of one. Islamic terrorists
are inflamed both by U.S. intervention in their lands and by the
prospect of secular democratic governance. So, the cause of their
grievance has been doubled.
A democratic Middle East would be less likely to spawn terrorism. Bush's
invasion of Iraq may hasten its spread. But there was at least some
indication that democratic change in the Middle East was already
occurring organically.
The cost of the region's freedom deficit was beginning to be more widely
acknowledged and discussed. Islam and the ruling elites have to
accommodate modernity or fall further behind.
There was also the alternative strategy of attempting to insulate the
United States further from Middle Eastern geopolitics, making the United
States less of a presence and thus less of a target.
The security of the United States may have been better protected at far
less cost than through the Iraq war. But if Bush hadn't invaded, the
Iraqi people would still be repressed, murdered and tortured by Saddam
Hussein's regime this week, rather than participating in free elections
to choose a government.
That's a difference even critics should acknowledge and celebrate.
--
Fred Stone
aa# 1369
Where am I to go, now that I've gone too far?
.
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| User: "Wolfie" |
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| Title: Re: Hey, Fred Stone, ya fucking rightard. Eat this: |
08 Mar 2005 09:19:04 AM |
|
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On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 03:24:00 GMT, (Fredric L.
Rice) crawled out of a cave and shouted to the world thusly:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050228&s=klein
lookout by Naomi Klein
Getting the Purple Finger
[from the February 28, 2005 issue]
<snip>
There are more single-digit messages embedded in the winning
coalition's platform. Some highlights: "Adopting a social security
system under which the state guarantees a job for every fit
Iraqi...and offers facilities to citizens to build homes." The UIA
<CHOKE> That's a lot more advanced and humanitarian that what we've
got over here.
Too bad that, from the rest of the post, they probably won't be able
to do it unless they kick out their "liberators".
--Wolfie
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