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Conclusion: The World We Want

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Perhaps the World we don't want

Contributor: jwitt

Date: 2003-03-31 18:21:40


Here is an interesting link.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2899823.stm

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Perhaps the World we don't want

Contributor: banquosghost

Date: 2003-03-31 20:31:23


http://www.buzzflash.com/ is another interesting link. These people just collate links throughout the news cycle. For instance, there's a link to Seymour Hersh's New Yorker article the BBC link you posted refers to.

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Perhaps the World we don't want

Contributor: cfallon

Date: 2003-04-01 13:43:58


No link here. Just some JS Mill:

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings, which thinks that nothing is worth war, is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight; nothing he cares about more than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

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Perhaps the World we don't want

Contributor: banquosghost

Date: 2003-04-01 23:09:57


Link http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/ to this article. Note that this is an article in a US paper! San Francisco of course, home of all things suspect no doubt, but still a US paper!

BushCo Wants You Stupefied
Please remain mesmerized by grainy live footage, ignore appalling larger schemes. Thank you

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist Friday, March 28, 2003

This is not the time to get complacent and lazy and reactionary and wallow in ennui and sadness and bourbon-fueled fatalism, the sense that all is hurling down the road to hell in a hot Republican-drenched handbasket. Tempting as that is.

This is not the time to be all shrugging and dismissive and think whelp, that's it then, nothing we can really do anymore, just sit back and watch the carnage I guess, the switch has been thrown and the snarling war machine is churning in high gear and the mass herd is mewling and subdued and misled and aggro and stupefied.

And therefore you can only sit there and guzzle your scotch and go numb and sigh, flip around to see which frantic network has the best video of windblown reporters riding high on U.S. tanks and yelling about food shortages and lack of sleep as they rumble nobly through the desert.

This is not the time to get thoughtless and simpleminded. The trigger has indeed been tripped and we are right this minute slaughtering thousands in Iraq and dozens of US soldiers are being killed by Bush's "peaceful" order and ooh look, stray bullets and raging dust storms and bedraggled reporters tagging along, all wide-eyed and chaotic and no one really having any idea what, exactly, is really happening.

Shock and awe it ain't. Grunt and bluster and confuse and choke on dust and realize, bitterly, sadly, holy Christ with a Koran and a $300 billion national budget deficit, this is gonna be ugly, and violent, and long, and fruitless, it most definitely is.

The idea is that you will be more sympathetic. The idea is that by allowing all those stunned reporters such unprecedented access, by embedding them right smack in the middle of the action, amidst select squads of equally wide-eyed, barely-old-enough-to-drink soldiers, the reporters won't be able to help but be more pro-military, and goodly Americans will feel sympathy and support the troops and, by extension, the entire insane and unnecessary war. Is it working?

And thus Rummy and Shrub can smirk and nod to each other and, quite literally, get away with murder, their PR coup working beautifully, so far, because you don't see the real action. You no longer see the big picture. You are no longer paying attention.

And they most definitely do not want you to see. No actual dead bodies, no gutted buildings, no burned and decapitated children, no blood, no true bleak horrors of war, just tired soldiers and water trucks and big U.S. tanks rumbling patriotically through the dust toward Baghdad. Go team!

As meanwhile, just outside the purview of the reporter's grainy video phones, just beyond the jerky shots of video-game night skies and soldiers milling about, military supply contractors are gloating like leeches, Dick Cheney's old cronies over at Halliburton are cheering like pirates, as they shamelessly snag the multimillion-dollar gov't contracts to build big tent-cities for our troops and to put out all those nasty oil well fires in Iraq, just like they did in Iraq War I. Oh yes they did. Did you miss that little detail?

Or how about Bush's corporate pals, literally lining up at the trough for their share of nearly a billion dollars in semi-secret contracts (and as much as $25-100 billion, eventually) to "rebuild" Iraq, which you can hereby translate to mean: install nice puppet government, build a few thousand oil rigs, refurbish a few nice palaces for the twins. To begin with.

Then there's all those pesky CIA analysts, still grumbling aloud about how ShrubCo has been twisting intelligence reports on Iraq to bolster the war. Did you miss that one?

About how they were particularly mortified when Junior publicly claimed that Iraq was restarting its nuke program, trying to buy uranium from Niger? Claims which were based on, ahem, painfully bogus documents? Whoops. Can't have that making too many headlines. Hey look! Dust storms and cool tracer bullets over Baghdad! Look! Please?

What about the much-bandied term "coalition forces"? The networks love that term, and Bush loves them using it. Reminder: There are no coalition forces. It is the U.S., Britain, a handful of Aussies. That's it. That is not a coalition, that's a rogue clump. The only true coalition is on the anti-war side. Shhh.

This is exactly the time to watch very, very carefully. This is exactly the time to discuss further and passionately, with everyone and anyone, what it is you are really seeing, what it might mean, and, more importantly, what they are omitting.

This is the time to protest harder, to write letters and journals, to think deeply and carefully, to donate to Oxfam and Truthout and FAIR and the like, to rethink what it really means to be an American in the new draconian, power-mad, kill-em-all preemtive-death Bush world order.

This is exactly the time to pay closer attention. To filter and stay infomed and get your info from more than, say, the uber-patriotic, holy goddamn but we love our Shrubster Fox News. Look around. The perspective is there. Activate the filters. Read up.

This is the time to fully feel those karmic blows, the ethical sucker punches, as the ShrubCo doens't even bother to try and hide the obvious cronyism, the White House actually having the smirking gall to deny that Cheney's Halliburton connection -- and his lovely $1 mil per-annum stipend for simply being a former Iraq-loving oil exec of the company -- had any bearing on the aforementioned oil-fire contract. Right. Believe that one, do you? I've got some prime downtown Baghdad condos to sell you, cheap.

Feel the bludgeoning. Because they figure you won't even notice. Or care. Look honey, poor hardscrabble Iraqi children looking desperate, and goodly U.S. soldiers delivering fresh water to them. Isn't that patriotic? Tanking U.S. economy? Deep recession? Intense, almost universal anti-American rage roiling all over the world like a bitter virus? Pay no heed. Just look at the startling pictures. Be mezmerized. Don't you support our troops? Of course you do. Genius PR, is what it is. One big reality-TV recruitment video.

Remember, this is an administration who truly believes you are insanely stupid. A full week into the war, and still no sign of WMDs? No sign of SCUD missiles, nuclear weapons, biological weapons, or chemical weapons? Oh well.

This is why you cannot be overwhelmed by montage images. The shock and awe is not for Iraq. It's for you. The shock of all those dusty violent videophone images, awe at how you are seeing a mere raw sliver of the real-time action, live, straight from on the front lines. Are you stupefied yet? Are you waving your flag? ShrubCo certainly hopes so. Because if not, you might actually see what's really happening.

And god -- Bush's reborn righteous Christian God, that is -- knows, they can't have that.



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Perhaps the World we don't want

Contributor: Barretm82

Date: 2003-04-02 08:53:22


The other question I have, "all this could be avoided if Saddam just left the country for awhile". The collation would investigate and all the Iraqi people would gladly elect Saddam back as president according to some here.


Note;------Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Saud, said Saddam should make a sacrifice for Iraq and step down if it would end the war. Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan responded with a rebuke: “Go to hell. ... You are too much of a nothing to say a word addressed to a leader of Iraq.”


----This is the type of response received from your man Saddam Hussein, banquosghost-----

Why doesn’t Saddam sacrifice for the lives of all the Innocent Iraqi people…. All Saddam has to do is leave the country for awhile? Even the most determined political leader in our countries would resign to save the lives of their countrymen. Why not Saddam?

If Saddam was to leave Iraq for 2 years, don’t you think Banquosghost that his departure would be worth the lives of thousands of Iraqi people?

IF Saddam left we could get the Red Cross in immediately and other human rights organizations into Iraq and stop this war!!!!

Do it now Banquo, tell Saddam to LEAVE and save the Iraqi people, for once in his life he has the chance to do something civilized.

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Perhaps the World we don't want

Contributor: jwitt

Date: 2003-04-02 17:33:04


----This is the type of response received from your man Saddam Hussein, banquosghost-----

C'mon, absolutely nothing Banquo has said here or elsewhere in this dialogue suggest's a "pro-Saddam" positon, as you implicitly refer. One thing I think many don't realize is that those who were adamantly opposed to Saddam in Iraq were eliminated by him, or fled the country. Those that remain have probably learned to 'work around him', and would probably find the prospect of living the rest of their lives under Saddam's rule considerably more appealing than the prospect of having "the mother of all bombs", as the pentagon likes to refer to their latest bunker busting toy, dropped on their heads. Myself, I would certainly choose the former as opposed to the latter.

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Perhaps the World we don't want

Contributor: banquosghost

Date: 2003-04-02 21:00:45


I'm getting fed up with being told my reponse is too long or finding that the board has timed out while I write.

He's not my Saddam.
This is foolish now.

Read this. Another State Department resignation. I agree with her. I guess that makes she and I both Saddam lovers.
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0303/032103wright.htm

Would you rather I stopped posting?

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Perhaps the World we don't want

Contributor: Barretm82

Date: 2003-04-03 10:29:53


Banquo asks, “Would you rather I stopped posting?”

“Please don’t do that Banquo”.

My relatives in WWII gave their lives so we could comfortably & safely express our opinions from our computers. I honor that and to shun you would be to disrespect what they bled for.

Today good people die around the world in struggle for those rights availed to you and I. I comprehend revulsion about war; Banquo may possibly have friends and relatives living in Iraq. He sees the sickening images of death on T.V. This is not lost on me.

I don’t have relatives living Iraq, but I did have friends and relatives living during the World War II and the Cold War in the Soviet Union, parts of my family tree don’t exist anymore because of communist regimes. The current images of murder chambers of Saddam’s régime and accounts of survivors hit home to my elderly relatives. Banquo and Jwit, I know that the two of you recognize that just because we don’t see daily images of Saddam’s regime brutality on T.V., doesn’t mean it has not been happening for the last 25+ years.

I’m going to be difficult to you banquo, not because I don’t understand where you are coming from, but because I do.

When people talk about those that will die, what about the ones that have already died and the one's that will be killed by their own government in ways we can't imagine any human being put through by another human. We live in a country where we can say what we feel and not worry about being killed by it. The people that died during WWI & WWII to ensure that we have that right -- is it not true that in 2003 we must continue to fight with those without (representative) democracy when necessary?


I have spent too much time on this website; I’ll get back to it in awhile or so when I have less work going on.

Bye for now.
Steve
Peace.

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Perhaps the World we don't want

Contributor: fatmomma

Date: 2003-04-05 00:46:23


My reletives fought in world war !! to stop a country from invading country ag=fter country: Not for democracy otherwise we would not have had Communist Russia as a participant on our side. It was to stop wars; not to start them. The only way to stop Saddam from committing atrocities on his own people is for the Iraqi people to overthrow him.(Assistance could be offered if asked for.) This is the only way that Iraq can become a strong independent country. An outside attack can only damage and destroy this country; any government formed will be
controlled by distrusted foreigners (USA) or governed by another corrupt government. The chances for a smooth changeover to democracy is very remote

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Perhaps the World we don't want

Contributor: codc01

Date: 2003-04-05 05:06:15


I absolutely agree with you!! You have exactly the same opinion as me, overthrowing a government is the work of the people of that country, not of foreigners, of course other countries can help secretly of course...

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Perhaps the World we don't want

Contributor: Barretm82

Date: 2003-04-05 13:44:05


Fatmomma Says, "The only way to stop Saddam from committing atrocities on his own people is for the Iraqi people to overthrow him.(Assistance could be offered if asked for.)"


The Kurd freedom fighters have asked and are now receiving help, I guess you support the war now?

As for WWII, people fought for freedom with/for their friends/family.

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Perhaps the World we don't want

Contributor: fatmomma

Date: 2003-04-05 17:22:35


What the USA coalition is giving is NOT help; it is control. The Kurds are not playing a large role; they are bit players and do not present a broad representation of Iraq.

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Perhaps the World we don't want

Contributor: fatmomma

Date: 2003-04-06 16:23:40


The Kurdish people are not a representation of the Iraqi people. They are non Arabic; represent approx 19% of Iraqi peopl. May 1988, many large and powerful Kurdish tribes and prominent Kurdish families (non tribal) supported the Central Iraq government.
The Kurdish people of Turkey are being attacked by that country. Turkey is still recieving money from America,
Interesting article on CBC News the other day; "Turkey's Kurds"
Supporting the Kurdish minority in this case would be like France sending troops to liberate Canada at Quebec's request.

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Perhaps the World we don't want

Contributor: Barretm82

Date: 2003-04-07 20:50:10


What can I say; you are comparing Saddam's Iraq to Canada???

I am not going to continue to debate you on ridiculous claims like that, it doesn't justify a response.

In time we will see how the people of Iraq fare.

"Yes, you can even have the last word. lol..."

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Perhaps the World we don't want

Contributor: fatmomma

Date: 2003-04-07 23:15:03


I made no claims just saying that you cannot hand over control of a country to a minority and expect it to work.
That we wouldn't like or accept being controlled by a distinct minority and neither would the Iraq's.
How is that comparing Canada to Iraq; stop putting a completely different slant on what I say.
People all over the world react much the same. Just made the comparison because Canadians are aware how badly that would be rejected. It would have to be a government that can represent all culture and races of the country

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Perhaps the World we don't want

Contributor: cfallon

Date: 2003-04-08 13:24:47


1) Iraq's regime is a minority (Sunni). And you, fatmomma, wanted to see the regime survive. so, if the country cannot work with a minority running it, why do you think Saddam's Iraq was working?

2) Trudeau, Mulroney and Chretien all hail from Quebec. Canada rolls along pretty well over the last 30 years of minority rule...

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Perhaps the World we don't want

Contributor: fatmomma

Date: 2003-04-09 03:19:54


1. I did not support any regime. Just believe if Iraqis don't want them they should lead the fight to remove them not some foreign country.
2. They were are Prime Minister; picked by party members country wide; not chosen by a minority or placed there by foreigners.
3.Trudeau and Cretien were federalists; Mulroney was American controlled a Canadian tragedy.
Canada needs another strong leader like Mr Trudeau. We may not have always agreed with his stand but we always knew what his stand was. Perhaps if we paid our Prime Ministers as much as we see hockey players being paid we would find a higher calibre of politician running for Prime Minister.
( ok, I would be screaming as much as anyone if they initiated such a raise)
It just shows where our priorities lie

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Perhaps the World we don't want

Contributor: cfallon

Date: 2003-04-10 10:09:51


Mulroney was a great leader.

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Perhaps the World we don't want

Contributor: fatmomma

Date: 2003-04-11 21:55:48


Most Canadians agree with my view; he sold us out. He is the reason the Conservative party was almost wiped out in Canada.

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Perhaps the World we don't want

Contributor: cfallon

Date: 2003-04-14 15:24:59


Yeah, but remember what Brian Tobin said at the Davos summit almost 4 years ago. He told Mr. Mulroney, who was in the audience at the time, that on free trade, Mr. Mulroney was right and the liberal party was wrong.

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Perhaps the World we don't want

Contributor: fatmomma

Date: 2003-04-16 01:52:15


That is Mr Tobin's opinion; it means nothing to me. I am sure there are SOME who think Mulroney did well for Canada; but I, like the majority of Canadians have not been impressed.
I have no strong political leanings. I make my decisions by judging the leader and candidates on the issues that I believe to be importants at the time. I do not support the idea of voting only to get rid of a party that is in power that seems to be prevalent these days.

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Perhaps the World we don't want

Contributor: cfallon

Date: 2003-04-17 16:19:17


Well, I'm just happy with free trade. I wish the world could trade freely, but us rich countries don't want to share our grocery stores with poor countries (our subsidies, Canada, US, EU prevent third world food producers from competing on level ground).

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