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internisus
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Joined: 25 Nov 2006
Posts: 354
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 Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2006 5:10 pm Post subject: What's wrong with the world? (thread of woe) |
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So I'm currently rewatching Babylon 5, and one of the things that makes it so great is the way the terrible and tragic things that happen seem to be inevitable outcomes of the simple facts of the initial setup -- the Earth's incessant paranoia regarding "alien influence" and desire to control information and colonial freedom; the bloody history of the Narn and Centauri as well as each race's cultural characteristics, etc. Everytime some horrible political event occurs, you wind up shaking your head (or weeping, if you are so inclined) in disappointment and sorrow, but you somehow feel that you understand how it has come to this.
Anyway, I quit watching B5 for awhile and go and read some stuff. Like this article, for example. Or this description of a book:
| Quote: | well. the book was called 'The New Rulers of the World' and the chapter on 90s Iraq was called 'Paying the Price'. Dennis Halliday was made co-ordinator of humanitarian relief to Iraq after being at the UN for about 30 years, he promptly resigned in 1998, saying "we are in the process of destroying an entire society. it is as simple as that ... five thousands children are dying every month ... I don't want to administer a programme that results in figures like these." His successor, Hans Von Sponeck, resigned feb 13th, 2000, having calculated that the Oil for Food programme allows each person $100 to live on for an entire year, this includes paying for public services, healthcare, taxes etc etc. 2 days after his resignation he was followed by Jutta Burghardt, head of the World Food Programme in Iraq, who couldn't continue knowing what they were doing to the Iraqi people.
and what they were doing was breathtaking; because of uranium shells fired by the US and UK in the south of Baghdad, cancer rates increased fivefold. The UN sanctions barred the sending of any significant quantity of medicine getting through, with the result that through the 90s Iraq went from having one of the best (lowest) child mortality rates in the region to being pretty much the only country on Earth where child mortality was increasing. Pretty much everything was blocked by the sanctions, including things like thermos flasks and nitrous oxide as they could 'potentially be weaponised'. All this led to a preponderance of secret elite clinics in Baghdad to service the regime officials, making a mockery of the sanctions' purported aim of punishing Saddam. Any sort of literature or information on human rights was blocked from being sent over, to the point where the sending of Joyce's Ulysses to an aid worker was blocked.
Of course the US was 'called out' on this, as it was only really the UK (shame on Peter Hain - I had a reasonably high opinion of him due to his work in dismantling apartheid in South Africa, until I read about the atrocities he signed off on in Iraq) and the US who supported the sanctions. This was of course when the infamous Madeleine Albright interview took place where she was asked if 500,000 dead Iraqi children was a fair price for punishing Saddam, and she said "we think it is a fair price".
John and Karl Mueller, writing in the Journal of Strategic Studies (vol 23 1 2000 p163), said that "economic sanctions have probably already taken the lives of more people in Iraq than have been killed by all weapons of mass destruction in history". Pilger suggest that over the course of the 90s well over a million Iraqis were indirectly killed by the policies put in place by the US and UK governments.
Anyway, it was a bit of an eye opener.
I also read yesterday a chapter in Monbiot's Age of Consent which was great coz it was explaining, for dummies (well, people who are bespazzed at economics, ie Me) how the IMF and the World Bank, and consequently the US and Europe, get rich from poor nations. I mean, i knew about the vicious circle of debt but he explained exactly how they do it and get away with it which was very good of him. |
And after reading some of these things I find myself rather shocked that here, in the real world, outside Babylon 5, in a place where tragedies aren't inevitable (depending upon your definition of tragedy) and we have free will and such, in our modern, 21st century world, leaders and institutions and governments do unspeakably evil things every single day. And I'm naive, but not that much so. I've been actively angry about my own country's activities for years and years. It's just that, you reach a point where there's simply too much, and you go into a small kind of shock where your innocence comes rushing back and you can't understand anymore how this could be. You hit a wall. I mean, you couldn't make up shit that's half as evil as the truth. I think the correct word here is "astounding". It is astounding. Yes.
So what's the problem? How can it be that the good people of the world do not rise up and smite their evil power-hungry leaders? How can it be that the citizens of powerful countries don't come even close to fulfilling their responsibility of keeping informed of these goings-on? How can it be, 2000 years after the whole Jesus thing got started, that the primary educational force in children's lives is still 50 Cent? How can so many ideologies be a priori intolerant of others', as though these people don't realize that they are breeding themselves for a created necessary conflict? How can the people of the first world be so unwilling to give up luxuries that no war, no mass crime, is too big a price for the acquisition of material resources like oil? How can it be that the majority of the citizens in the most powerful country in the world value wealth above all other values and worship celebrity above all other gods? How can the nations of the world still invade one another, enslave one another, and kill one another? How can the same countries that preach democracy employ so much propaganda and rhetoric, control so much information, and have citizens who aren't willing or even capable of discussing their political ideas?
There are just times when all of that evil hits me all at once and I remember that it's real and terrible, that it probably could not be any more terrible without simply destroying itself immediately, and I look at it again, as we must, and I become stunned, paralyzed, and turn to stone. How do you even begin to approach such truth? |
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Dracko
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Joined: 10 Oct 2005
Posts: 2613
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| Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2006 5:31 pm Post subject: |
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Further disillusionment required.
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Harveyjames
the meteor kid
Joined: 06 Jul 2006
Posts: 3636
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| Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2006 7:15 pm Post subject: |
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| I saw the title of this thread, clicked on it, and then I read Interniscus' first six words. Then I did a LOL. |
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internisus
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Joined: 25 Nov 2006
Posts: 354
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| Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2006 8:01 pm Post subject: |
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Ok, well I just read your post, and it made me LOL.
I don't know if you read anymore after that bit, but I was trying to set up a contrast. |
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dhex
Breeder
Joined: 13 Dec 2004
Posts: 6319
Location: brooklyn, Nev Yiork
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| Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2006 12:15 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | How can it be, 2000 years after the whole Jesus thing got started, that the primary educational force in children's lives is still 50 Cent? |
| Quote: | | "Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it." (Matthew 10:34-39 NASB) |
| Quote: | | "49 I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled? 50 But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished! 51 Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division: 52 For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. 53 The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. (Luke 12:49-53) |
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Scratchmonkey
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Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 1439
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| Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2006 1:13 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | How can it be, 2000 years after the whole Jesus thing got started, that the primary educational force in children's lives is still 50 Cent? |
It's on the front page of the papers
This is their hour of need
Wheres a policeman when you need one
To blame the colour tv? |
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Harveyjames
the meteor kid
Joined: 06 Jul 2006
Posts: 3636
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| Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2006 2:23 am Post subject: |
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| Jesus wrote: |
And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it. |
Wait, how did he know he was going to die on a cross? I call shenannigans. |
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Dracko
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Joined: 10 Oct 2005
Posts: 2613
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| Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2006 2:56 am Post subject: |
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The Sect of the Thirty were right!
P.S. No love for Muhammad ITT
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!" |
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dhex
Breeder
Joined: 13 Dec 2004
Posts: 6319
Location: brooklyn, Nev Yiork
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| Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2006 1:03 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Wait, how did he know he was going to die on a cross? |
holy rood is a hell of a thing
when people hippify jesus it's sort of disconcerting, but at the same time, isn't that what symbols are for?
i like arguing with myself.
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ApM
Admin Rockstar
Joined: 14 Oct 2004
Posts: 1210
Location: Ottawa, ON
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| Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2006 2:05 pm Post subject: |
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| Man, raise your hand if you can even get out of bed in the morning, much less throw off the yoke of your evil government oppressors. |
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