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| 5/24 |
| 2003/5/16-17 [Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq] UID:28463 Activity:insanely high |
5/15 I highly suggest everyone read this... a compelling, eloquent
talk by Arundhati Roy that I was lucky enough to witness:
http://www.cesr.org/roy/royspeech.htm
[reposted... if someone wants to repost any of the responses that
also got deleted, feel free]
\_ Holy shit! She had to travel to Iraqi to find out that wars not
only kill civilians but destroy civil infrastructure, too! What
a shocker! I'll sell all my stock in General Dynamics at the
opening bell! Who would've thunk war kills people and blows shit
up? This is highly compelling!!!
\_ Compelling my eye. Bitch bitch bitch. Where was she when
Hussein was producing those mass graves of his? Or is it only
fashionable to bitch at the United States because someone with
a large wallet and a guilty conscience might be knocked for some
mula there?
\_ You miss the point. Mass graves were not a reason to go to
war. Internal injustice has never been a reason.
Anyway the problem with her speech is what the person below
says: it doesn't matter what we think, it matters what the
dumb bastards in Texas et al think.
\_ So if you saw millions of people getting killed in death
camps in another country, you'd write it off as an internal
political debate and it's not your problem, eh? You're one
sick bastard. And I mean that as a statement of fact not a
childish motd insult.
\_ Reasons are not important, effects are.
\_ You seem to imply that the war has had good effects.
If we were in Iraq to right the wrongs of a half-century
of bad foreign policy, excellent. But so far all I see
is a lot of angry proto-terrorists who are getting
getting some good practice with looting and lawlessness.
\_ You mean the war had no good effects? Are you insane
or trolling? Don't let the western coverage fool you,
Iraqis are happy as can be that Hussein is gone, and
that is what's important. Interestingly enough, this
looting of which you speak was greatly exaggerated by
the western press, and turns out was often perpetrated
by baath party members.
\_ Nah, Iraq is currently an anarchic mess. Hopefully
US troops would impose some order soon.
\_the truth is, most people in iraq were probably
deeply ambivalent about the US's intervention.
check out that "where is raed" weblog as a good
(and fascinating) anecdotal example of this. Also
true is that the costs of this war (and by that I
include the years of sanctions since they are all
part of essentially the same western aggression)
are quite real and severe (loss of life,
diminished quality of life for nearly all but the
iraqi elites) while the benefits are only
questionable.
\_ Ah yes, sanctions, the same sanctions people like
you said would get Iraq out of Kuwait in '90 and
now are a tool of "western aggression". Make up
your mind.
\_ This is where a lot of (us) liberals tend to get
confused: we want to believe, ultimately, that
any war is wrong. The sad truth, however, is that
sometimes military action is required to effect
meaningful change. Military action prevented the
ultimate genocide of the Kosovars and caused the
topple of Saddam Hussein. These are good things. The
difference between the two (and where most Cons get
mixed up) is that the first was a necessary action
carried out when all other alternatives had been
tried and the danger was imminent, while the second
involved a brash decision to brazenly and callously
disregard the alternatives despite a lack of
evidence of a need for urgency. We're all happy
that Saddam Hussein is no longer in power. What
we (liberals) are unhappy about is the way it was
done. And despite what you may think you learned in
high school civics, the ends does not always justify
the means. In this case, the means have compromised
the security of the ends. --erikred
\_ I suppose you get easily flustered. Regardless
of why you may think Bush went to war, it seems
pretty clear that ousting Saddam was a good
thing. How can this be confusing? The man
gassed hundreds of thousands. If you want to
question motives fine, we can have an argument
about that, but questioning whether the outcome
of the war was a good thing makes people not
take you seriously.
\_ I suggest you read my post again and then
consider erasing your response. I'm not
arguing that getting rid of Saddam Hussein
was wrong. I'm saying that the way it was
done was wrong. --erikred
\_ Why was the way wrong? The diplomatic
way would have taken longer, (perhaps
infinitely long). Meanwhile Hussein
would have had free license to continue
his butchery. How is a faster way not
more humane? Do you really hate Bush this
much?
\_ hundreds of thousands? why don't you just
say millions. the most he gassed are
the iranians during the iran/iraq war,
during which the us actively supported
iraq.
\_ because he didn't gas millions. however he
is responsible for more arab deaths than
any other individual, group, .org, or
entity throughout *ALL* of history. think
about that for a second.
\_ most of those deaths occurred when the
US was *actively* (with money and
weapons) supporting Iraq and Saddam.
and US leaders at the time knew about
it. Hence Arundhati's point that
ousting Sadam is in some sense a good
thing to do, but if we hold him
responsible for those deaths we should
likewise consider those that
enabled him war criminals.
\_ yea, I supported war against the taliban but
not iraq. taliban is hopeless and anything is
better than taliban.
\_ but the baath party wasn't hopeless? it just
needed a slight diplomatic push to reform?
\- AR for someone who comes across as a nice person is sort of a
rhetorical terrorist. --psb
\_ Good god, partha. What does that make you? At least she's
easy to look at.
\- i think jhumpa lahiri is more attractive. --psb
\_ that lahiri is more attractive doesn't mean roy is
altogether unattractive. and both are certainly more
pleasing to the eye than you, partha.
\_ Dis not the Everlasting And Infinite Beauty of The PSB!
--psb #1 Fan
\- was she smoking [tobacco] when you saw her?
ask her wht she think about giving money to
tobacco companies. --psb
\_ Really, is that the best you can do?
\_ Infidel! The psb shall crush you like the tiny
insect you are and devour your soul!
--psb #1 Fan
\_ If DanS were here, he should observe the correct
use of brackets in a sentence.
\_ AR speaks from a place of outrage, and it's a justifiable
outrage. Unfortunately, the only people who want to hear
what she has to say are the people who already know all of
this. If the outraged want their message heard by the rest,
they'd better learn how to soundbite it, give it punch, and
market it. Only when it appears as a matter of course on
The View will it actually have any chance of waking people up.
\_ Outraged about being civilised and not lingering in, or
returning to, some third world feudal shithole?
\_ Where was this wench and all the other libs during Clinton
taking out Slobo? All this rhetoric is thinly veiled proganda
(by communists) aimed one side of the political spectrum- Iraq
simply provides a rallying point. Also, if not for Western
imperialism in her native land she would be burned to
death in her husbands pyre.
\_ Communists? Who the fuck are you, J. Edgar Hoover? Nobody
bothers blaming the communists anymore. Just chalk it up
to the ineffectual intellectual left and be done with it,
you rabid left-baiting twink.
\_ "Nobody bothers blaming the communists anymore". That's a
silly statement. When the Soviets were around, you leftists
claimed they weren't "Real Communists" so they didn't count as
such. Now that they're working on making a real western style
capitalist democracy you make some silly noise about the
commies being dead and completely duck his question about
Slobodon and Kosovo. Your rhetorical fu is weak! You are
busted! Thank you for playing, please review chapters 1 and
2 in your Rhetoric 1A book for the quiz on Monday.
\_ Please say something intelligent / factual if you want
me to reply, and not prate trite epithets.
\_ I'd like to see a response to the Slobo question.
\_ She probably was not supporting that US intervention
either... although many were. A genocidal dictator
was taken out of power and tried in international court.
This is very different from the Iraq case where the US
provided a dictator with money and weapons for years, and
then when he stopped obeying orders took the country
by force.
\_ imperialism does not go hand-in-hand with modernization/
globalization. You are probably one of those fools who shouts
about how great women in Afghanistan have it now that Bush
has intervened.
\_ 1) statement of opinion, not fact. you can't possibly back
up your imperalism/modernization comment.
2) modernization is *not* globalization.
3) who the hell wants globalization anyway?
\_ Case in point: Cuba. A modernized country that is not
part of the US international trade empire. |
| 5/24 |
|
| www.cesr.org/roy/royspeech.htm Also available are the Introductory Remarks of Roger Normand, CESR's Executive Director, for downloading and printing as a 17 PDF (16K). All of us at CESR are honored to be part of the beautiful spirit present here tonight. I know that we are all eagerly anticipating Arundhati Roy's talk, but I hope you won't mind if I take some time to tell you a little about how CESR got started and what we do. Above all, we didn't like being lied to by our own government. And we still don't like being lied to, especially not in the name of freedom and democracy. We traveled throughout Iraq and came to learn the real lesson of modern war: bomb now, die later. We found that the entire civilian infrastructure had been destroyed: electric power stations, water and sewage plants, food warehouses, factories, phone lines, roads, and bridges. People couldn't even turn on the kitchen tap for a glass of clean water. We documented a three-fold increase in child mortality due largely to simple diarrhea. Officials in both Washington and Baghdad deplored the tragic loss of life but simply blamed it on each other. The UN Security Council discussed the need for humanitarian relief while continuing to impose economic sanctions. No one accepted responsibility for the undeniable fact that Iraqis were dying every day-especially children of the poor and powerless. Two years after the Iraq mission, we established the Center for Economic and Social Rights to challenge this kind of injustice as a violation of international human rights. We seek legal accountability for those who create and perpetuate the crime of poverty. Our mandate is based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognizes that rights to health, education, housing, food, work, and social security are as fundamental to human dignity as the right of free expression. When we started as a three-person outfit here in New York, economic and social rights had been ignored globally for decades, another victim of Cold War politics. In the past ten years, we've been very fortunate to participate in a movement to reclaim the meaning of human rights through engagement with community struggles for social justice. Let me briefly describe what this means in practice: * In Ecuador, we worked with a coalition of indigenous peoples, environmental groups, and scientists to document massive toxic dumping by oil companies in the Amazon rainforest, establish a community monitoring system, and launch a national human rights campaign that forced the government and companies to reform their unlawful practices. We also serve on the steering committee of the US Campaign to End Israeli Occupation, a national effort to change unjust American policy. As secretariat of the Network, CESR is bringing several hundred activists to Thailand next month to share strategies and build solidarity. We are an active member of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, a national initiative led by grassroots organizations and inspired by the Reverend Martin Luther King's appeal, just before his murder, for a new mass movement to achieve economic rights for all Americans. In all this work, our guiding purpose is not only to enforce human rights law and change destructive policies, but equally to help marginalized communities, and the broader public, reconceptualize the struggle against poverty as a matter of justice rather than charity. Now that American Cruise missiles have "liberated" Iraq, our government will try to convince the public to forget all those promises about democracy and instead start getting very scared and very angry about the imminent threat posed by Iran or Syria-or perhaps France. CESR will do its utmost to keep faith with the people of Iraq by holding the Anglo-American military occupation accountable under international law-first, for ending the occupation as soon as possible, and, in the meantime, for guaranteeing human rights to education and health rather than corporate rights to profit and plunder. We will be working closely with one of the most respected authorities on Iraq-former UN Humanitarian Coordinator Hans von Sponeck-to establish an office in Iraq and continue to advocate for human rights. We know that you share our concerns and hope that you will support our commitment to this work. Margaret Mead has famously said that we should never underestimate the ability of a small group of committed people to change the world. Today in Washington, there is a small group of fanatics and fundamentalists putting her idea into practice, with terrifying results. But they have set into motion not just the destruction that we all can witness, but also a popular liberation that is not yet fully visible. We are responsible to our children, to each other, and most of all to the world itself, which did not allow us to be born so that we might allow it to be destroyed. And, finally, we must never underestimate the ability of a large group of committed people to change our world. Tonight represents an important collective step in our march toward justice. In choosing a venue, we first turned to Carol Nixon, director of the Mission and Social Justice Commission of The Riverside Church. We thank Carol and the Social Justice staff-especially Quelyn Purdie and Marie Burgos-as well as the Commission's Global Peace and Justice Ministry, for making this event possible with grace and good humor. We also thank Reverend Forbes, Michle Ivey, Tinoa Rodgers, Rob Vivona, and the entire staff of The Riverside Church for their tremendous hospitality in allowing over three thousand of us to celebrate in their house tonight. For twenty-five years, South End Press has brought us the words of Arundhati Roy, Howard Zinn, and so many other sane voices in insane times. After the program ends at 8:30pm, South End books, including War Talk and Power Politics, will be available right here in the Cloister Lounge, courtesy of the Community Bookstore of Park Slope. You will also find informational materials there from CESR and several other organizations. Our thanks to the Pacifica Foundation, WBAI, and Democracy Now! Iara Lee and Caipirinha Productions came to our rescue in a crunch, and we're grateful for their generous support of CESR. Last and most, thanks and praises to Anthony Arnove, who knows the true meaning of progressive solidarity because he lives it every day, and to Jacob Park for all his hard work, and above all to Brenda Coughlin, who really pulled this event together with remarkable talent, enthusiasm, and a great big heart. Before turning the podium over to Patrick Lannan, let us all salute the generosity of the Lannan Foundation for supporting this event. We also thank Lannan's Board and staff-especially Laurie Betlach, Jaune Evans, and Frank Lawler-for the courage to recognize visionary and humane writers and to promote cultural freedom, creative expression, and the rights of indigenous communities. Let me close by expressing deep appreciation to Arundhati Roy for inspiring us all to work toward a better world with her insight, passion, and compassion. As we lurch from crisis to crisis, beamed directly into our brains by satellite TV, we have to think on our feet. Ruined cities, parched fields, shrinking forests, and dying rivers are our archives. Some uncomfortable thoughts about money, war, empire, racism, and democracy. Some worries that flit around my brain like a family of persistent moths that keep me awake at night. Speaking for myself, I'm no flag-waver, no patriot, and am fully aware that venality, brutality, and hypocrisy are imprinted on the leaden soul of every state. But when a country ceases to be merely a country and becomes an empire, then the scale of operations changes dramatically. So may I clarify that tonight I speak as a subject of the American Empire? Since lectures must be called something, mine tonight is called: Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free). Vincennes, a missile cruiser stationed in the Persian Gulf, accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner and killed 290 civilian passengers. George Bush the First, who was at the time on his presidential campaign, was asked to comment ... |