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Snuff shots traded for porn by US soldiers?
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee

Joined: 25 May 2003

Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 1:54 pm Post subject:

EFLtrainer wrote:

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote:

EFLT said:

Quote:

And you are still full of it. Yes, Joo did politicize the thread there for a bit and I did make the mistake of responding to him. But note Joo, the hyper-conservative politicized it. But you swing at the assumed "liberal(s)" instead. So, hypocrisy the drink of the day?

Voted for Clinton , Clinton , Gore. Support Kyoto and stem cell research. Even favor affirmative action for the most part

Opposed Bush's tax cuts. Favor increasing the gas tax way up.

My views are more or less the same as Bill Clinton , Thomas Friedman or Fareed Zakaria , John McCain or Rudy Gulliani.

Not hyperconservative . Maybe it is just that you are way left wing EFL Trainer.

As another poster once said it is just that "you all drank the Koolaid and live in Trostsky land"

My Momma always told me to watch what people do, not what they say. hile I do not call you a liar, there is nothing in your posts that I have seen that correlates to your earlier voting record. Your current posts/opinions and the fact you did, in fact, vote for Dumbya AFTER all this crap hit the fan, perhaps you are a traumatized Amerikan? I, too, cannot be defined as one thing, though many would assume I am "liberal" on all issues, which is not the case. However, even after 9/11 I had no trouble keeping tghe core of my beliefs intact because I knew over time they would see us/me through the touhest parts better than any reactionary actions possibly could. It seems to me Bush's message of fear has resonated. That is exactly why he got re-elected even after doing such a horrid job as president.

Just my view from very limited contact with you.

It wasn't Bush's message but rather after 9-11 I had seen enough. No more allowing what was going on to continue.

Again the views of Bill Clinton , Thomas Friedman or Fareed Zakaria , John McCain or Rudy Gulliani are more or less the same as Bush - at least when it comes to foreign policy. I would say you could also add to that list the writers of the New Republic who while they oppose the Iraq war and were against Bush they have really a very similar view of Europe , the UN and who is bad and good in the rest of the world.

Last edited by Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee on Mon Oct 03, 2005 6:36 pm; edited 1 time in total

On the other hand

Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue

Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 3:30 pm Post subject:

Quote:

Gopher wrote:
First: I've got to say: damn, she is an ugly woman.

Second: who remembers that Ivy-League sociology experiment a while back, where two groups of students were separated into "guards" and "prisoners" and then placed in a mock jail-setting? And before too much time had elapsed, the guards were abusing the prisoners, and this suggested a conclusion somewhere along the lines that this kind of thing is human nature, and that that's where it comes from.

"Every cop is a criminal." Mick Jagger

OOOHHHH!! You so radical, you so bad ... you just full of that Sympathy for the Devil, ain't joo?

The professor who conducted that experiment was not on the faculty of an Ivy-League school, unless Stanford has been included into their number while I was busy doing something else. His name was Zimbardo and even though it all happened about 30 years ago, there is much that we can learn from today - if we look, we can see that the reality of torture and cruelty come to exist when the conditions requisite for them exist.

And yes, this has pertinent applications to any discussion of Abu Ghraib or the current abuses and tortures being performed in the name of our country at the present time.

Lundie England has been called worse than simply ugly. The scariest thing you can say about her is that she is an average American and an average human being, not kuch different from most people who would have been in the place she was and at the time in history she was asked to be there.

As far as I can tell, Bobster, you and Gopher are in agreement about the relevance of the Stanford experiment to this issue. So I'm a bit puzzled as to why you opened your post in such an acerbic tone. Yes, he mistakenly referred to an Ivy League university, but we're all allowed to get a small fact wrong now and then, aren't we?

If you were taking issue with his labelling of Lynddie England as "ugly", I agree with you, it's not really fair to ridicule people for something they have no control over(and are we to assume that Gopher himself is ESL Cafe's answer to Brad Pitt?) However, if that was your point, you should have made it a bit clearer in your post.

The Bobster

Joined: 15 Jan 2003

Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 3:51 pm Post subject:

On the other hand wrote:

You might be right, but I was very unclear myself about what Gopher was intending by citing (in a vague, amorphous sort of way) the Zimbardo experiment. For instance, a lot was made at her trial about learning disablities in an attempt to justify a diminished capacity rationale - the goal of that from the govt's pov was to suggest that the abuse we've witnessed there was exceptional and unique - but the evidence we've seen from elsewhere, including Afghanistan and even Gitmo, shows that it was and is anything but unique.

It was never only about Abu Ghraib. The torture was not a finite and discrete set of incidents limited only to a particular time and place. It continues, as Kuros has been showing us here, and it does so because the conditions for it were created by the architects of our military adventurism over there.

If my tone seemed acerbic it reflects the fact that what I perceived Gopher as doing was simply, once again, trying to assert that our govt does not bear the full weight of responsibility for its actions and the results of those actions. If I am wrong and he really intended something else by it, I will make amends when that is shown to me.

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee

Joined: 25 May 2003

Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 6:54 pm Post subject:

Quote:

1. Bush and Cheney are on record as supporting the use of torture

2. Bush and Cheney are on record as stating the US is exempt from restrictions on the use of torture in these cases

whatever keeping Al Qaida fighters from sleeping or making them listen to punk rock music or keeping them cold , or thirsty isn't torture

Quote:

3. Bush and Cheney have shipped off prisoners to locations where there are NO restrictions on the use of torture

often to the countries where these guys came from in the first place.

If the US catches a guy from Egypt in Afghanistan fighting for the Taliban , ought the US not send him back to Egypt where they do use torture.

Question does the US have an obligation to protect the rights of Al Qaida fighters by not sending them back to their home nations where there is torture?

No.

Quote:

4. Bush and Cheney have have kidnapped people and shipped them to locations where there are NO restrictions on the use of torture...

You mean like this creep?

Quote:

CNN) -- An Italian court issued six new arrest warrants Monday for suspected CIA agents alleged to have kidnapped an Egyptian-born radical Muslim cleric in Milan.

Italian prosecutors allege the cleric was spirited to Egypt for interrogation and torture.

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/07/25/cia.italy/

It was justified.

Quote:

The agents involved in Milan, whoever they were and
wherever they came from, must be cursing their luck.
At first, everything went so well. The 42-year-old Abu
Omar, n? Mostafa Hassan Nasr Osama, was no common
immigrant, after all. His bad-guy credentials were all
in order. An Islamist firebrand, he came to Italy in
1997 by way of Afghanistan and Albania. In the
famously radical mosques on Via Quaranta and Viale
Jenner, he was always recruiting what he called 뱓he
youth?to go blow themselves up as 뱈artyrs?in one
jihad or another, according to Italian court documents
and official transcripts of taped conversations. He
was the kind of Islamic preacher the United States was
especially interested in after the attacks on New York
and Washington in 2001 by Islamist cells originally
organized among immigrants in Europe.
The Italian secret service known as DIGOS (formerly
뱓he political police? had focused on him in the
summer of 2002, when a bug they뭗 placed in the Via
Quaranta mosque picked up a conversation he had with a
visitor from Germany outlining plans to restructure a
terrorist organization that뭩 been connected to both
Al Qaeda and the now-infamous Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
So even people who knew and sympathized with Abu Omar
weren뭪 sure, at first, that he hadn뭪 decided
secretly to go fight the Americans in Afghanistan뾬r
maybe Iraq, where the war was just about to begin

.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8248794/site/newsweek/

The US ought to start assassinating Al Quida supporters worldwide. Anyone who supports Bin Laden ought to be blown away.

On the other hand

Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue

Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 7:28 pm Post subject:

Quote:

whatever keeping Al Qaida fighters from sleeping or making them listen to punk rock music or keeping them cold , or thirsty isn't torture

Joo:

I think you might start singing a different tune once the next batch of Abu Ghraib photos are released.

Quote:

The graphic videos and photographs that have so far been shown only to Congress are, I have been persuaded by someone who has seen them, not likely to remain secret for very long. And, if you wonder why formerly gung-ho rightist congressmen like James Inhofe ("I'm outraged more by the outrage") have gone so quiet, it is because they have seen the stuff and you have not. There will probably be a slight difficulty about showing these scenes in prime time, but they will emerge, never fear. We may have to start using blunt words like murder and rape to describe what we see.

http://tinyurl.com/79coq

Of course, all this is assuming that the photos get published. So far, the Bush administration has been doing everything in its power to ensure that doesn't happen. Hmm. Wonder why that might be?

EFLtrainer

Joined: 04 May 2005

Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 8:32 pm Post subject:

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote:

Again the views of Bill Clinton , Thomas Friedman or Fareed Zakaria , John McCain or Rudy Gulliani are more or less the same as Bush - at least when it comes to foreign policy. I would say you could also add to that list the writers of the New Republic who while they oppose the Iraq war and were against Bush they have really a very similar view of Europe , the UN and who is bad and good in the rest of the world.

I think there's a fair bit of wishful thinking here. They may be the same in that everyone agrees something needed to be done after 9/11, but the how and why are very, very different from Bush, don't you think?

EFLtrainer

Joined: 04 May 2005

Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 8:34 pm Post subject:

On the other hand wrote:

Quote:

whatever keeping Al Qaida fighters from sleeping or making them listen to punk rock music or keeping them cold , or thirsty isn't torture

Joo:

I think you might start singing a different tune once the next batch of Abu Ghraib photos are released.

Quote:

Propaganda includes the limitation of access to info, of course. No dead bodies, no counts, no public statements about the shoot first, ask later rules of engagement that are killing thousands of innocent Iraqis (or needlessly killing those that are involved), etc., etc.

On the other hand

Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue

Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 9:10 pm Post subject:

Quote:

Propaganda includes the limitation of access to info

Well, I don't have a dictionary handy, but I would say that limiting access to info falls more in the realm of censorship than propaganda. But, that's a minor quibble I guess: propaganda certainly works best when used in conjunction with censorship.

Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005

Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 10:30 pm Post subject:

On the other hand wrote:

As far as I can tell, Bobster, you and Gopher are in agreement about the relevance of the Stanford experiment to this issue. So I'm a bit puzzled as to why you opened your post in such an acerbic tone. Yes, he mistakenly referred to an Ivy League university, but we're all allowed to get a small fact wrong now and then, aren't we?

If you were taking issue with his labelling of Lynddie England as "ugly", I agree with you, it's not really fair to ridicule people for something they have no control over (and are we to assume that Gopher himself is ESL Cafe's answer to Brad Pitt?).

Thanks, On the Other Hand.

The Bobster probably knows more about this social experiement than I do. If he's looking for some deeper issue in the details of it, he's not going to find anything, at least with respect to my remarks. My intent in citing it was simply to draw attn to human nature and to perhaps reference the inevitable bad relations, even violence, that develop between guards and prisoners -- even when it's just "guards" and "prisoners."

On the England issue: she's an ugly woman, man, strikingly ugly. This wasn't meant to be the centerpiece of my post, though, and it wasn't name-calling. It's just a reaction. If you are offended by this, you have my apologies.

Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005

Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 1:08 am Post subject:

On the other hand wrote:

Quote:

Propaganda includes the limitation of access to info

"Propaganda" seems to be one of the least understood words used on this board. And it isn't a four-letter word, by the way.

In any case, here's what my dictionary says:

"1 capitalized : a congregation of the Roman curia having jurisdiction over missionary territories and related institutions
2 : the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person
3 : ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause; also : a public action having such an effect."

Also, I've always understood that propaganda usually plays on our emotions more than it appeals to dry logic or reason. (See, for examples of no. 2, Michael Moore's film or the play of imagery superimposed over the Bush roast on an earlier thread; for examples of no. 3, see any of Guevara's "armed propaganda" examples in Guerrilla Warfare.)

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee

Joined: 25 May 2003

Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 1:24 am Post subject:

EFLtrainer wrote:

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote:

I think there are some differences but there are many similarities -especially on foreign policy.

The Bobster

Joined: 15 Jan 2003

Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 4:56 am Post subject:

Gopher wrote:

lso, I've always understood that propaganda usually plays on our emotions more than it appeals to dry logic or reason. (See, for examples of no. 2, Michael Moore's film or the play of imagery superimposed over the Bush roast on an earlier thread; for examples of no. 3, see any of Guevara's "armed propaganda" examples in Guerrilla Warfare.)

Your examples betray a very strong bias. Nothing wrong with that, by the way. A few examples to portray my own bias : Colin Powell with aluminum tubes at the UN and Condi Rice speaking fearfully of mushroom clouds and smoking guns.

I don't count Michael Moore as propaganda because propaganda presents itself to the viewer as objective fact, and MM has never suggested anywhere that his opinions are anything but that, just a little more rational and capable of being listened to that Ruch Limbaugh's mouth-frothing or Bill Bennet's hate.

Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005

Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 4:59 am Post subject:

The Bobster wrote:

...what I perceived Gopher as doing was simply, once again, trying to assert that our govt does not bear the full weight of responsibility for its actions and the results of those actions. If I am wrong and he really intended something else by it, I will make amends when that is shown to me.

The U.S. is far from infallible. The U.S. errs, sometimes deliberately and maliciously so, and then, sometimes, it even attempts to cover some things up (always unsuccessfuly). The U.S. can be outright imperialistic, aggressive, even warlike as well.

Etc., etc. (there's a much longer list, but I'll assume you already know this part.)

But that's far from being the whole story -- and I'm still just talking about foreign policy.

And the issue I generally have is with those on this board who violently resist and steadfastly refuse to ever see anything good or even merely balanced about the Great Satan, the people who claim they are "for humanity" and "against injustice," etc., but people who only launch diatribe after diatribe against the U.S. (Bush or no Bush.) They produce entire lists of all that is wrong in U.S. foreign policy as if there were nothing behind U.S. foreign policy but sinister deed after sinister deed. They ignore regional and local actors and special conditions, they ignore other major actors, and pin all the evil in the universe on Washington's shoulders.

I'm sorry if it offends you, Bobster, but the U.S. govt and military is run and staffed by imperfect human beings, living in an imperfect human world. It's this world, then, that we should be thinking about, and not exclusively the Great Satan, which, incidentally, really isn't so Satanic at the end of the day.

If you really want to stand for humanity and against war, etc., you need to think more broadly about repeating problems, transcultural problems, in human history, rather than building case after case against something that is, in geolocial or astronomical time at least, just the scapegoat of the moment.

What are you going to say when the U.S. is gone and these same problems persist? (Not that I'm talking about our lifetimes, but I think you know what I mean.)

Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005

Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 5:02 am Post subject:

The Bobster wrote:

You're right. Sorry for only citing Michael Moore.

Any Republican (or Democratic) campaign add. Any govt information on "why we need to go to war" or "how the war is going," etc. Military recruitment posters. Bush (or any other president) having pics taken of himself touring a disaster area or a war zone. Michael Dukakis sitting in a tank with a thumbs up gesture. Limbaugh's "analysis," Ollie North "news reporting." Amost anything other than a very dryly worded news report or historical account -- and even then you still can't be certain. And almost any ad for any product -- see esp. smokes, anti-smoking ads, or beer. This is traditional propaganda.

Last edited by Gopher on Tue Oct 04, 2005 7:07 am; edited 2 times in total

Hanson

Joined: 20 Oct 2004

Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 5:23 am Post subject:

Quote:

It was justified

I have a lot of trouble justifying torture. I'm no counter-terrorist agent, I'm just a lowly ESL teacher, but I can't imagine justifying torture...

Wouldn't justifying torture mean America's enemies could do the same?

Seems a dangerous game to be playing, not withstanding the ethical questions.

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