3 posts tagged “conflict”

And amidst all the terror they have created, they lie and lie and lie and lie......
This New Zealand interview shows the legendary reporter, Robert Fisk explaining his reasons for retiring. A seemingly broken man. The inhumanity he has witnessed in 30 plus years, has not turned him into a sub-human, but it may have nearly broken a very good man.

If he doesn't return to his job, his legacy will certainly live on in the journalists who follow his footsteps. This interview brings me to tears. I have long last seen the film called the Road to Guantanamo, and seeing these news clips in the video remind me why I have often turned the film off midway. I apologise for the language in the title, but I couldn't use the"F' word, so we will have to make do with the word "bastards".

Shame on you Bush and Blair and all your cronies. Shame on all who support these lies against all reason. Those who howl down the voices of reason and civilization, and continue to support these tyrants. History will not deal kindly with this generation. Shame on us all, for we have not done enough.

The debate began Aug 23rd when a blogger posted an  interesting item entitled Score one, ... for who actually? The item dealt with illegal immigrants in the USA. My sentiments were that the statements were xenophobic. I have since been proven totally wrong in my initial argument, at least as far as the comments left on Scio's blog may be considered. The debate has somehow taken a turn since the mention of "criminal immigration" and my response thereto. I was making  the point that the term "criminal" should be used with caution.

The debate has now turned to the criminality or otherwise of the war in Iraq.

Scio is a catholic voxer of some note, a confessed conservative, and in my opinion, a lot of other potentially significant things. But, I guess people in glass houses like myself shouldn't throw stones.

Which brings me to another point, to repeat the now cliched term made famous by the British TV series, Monty Python's Flying Circus:

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!

I have been considering of late, how terribly BOXED in one starts to feel at VOX. Perhaps it's my location in the far east, where the word "vox" is pronounced as "box"? Or perhaps it's merely my psychotic tendency to form loose associations between essentially unrelated issues? On a serious note, i should be careful for in the event some intelligent life form out there is also in profound disagreement with me, with a tendency to act with aggression, i may be in serious trouble. For my associations may be a dead give away to those who would really give it some thought. But then again, perhaps the producers of those great American TV shows like CSI are nothing more than figments of some writer's imagination, bearing no resemblance at all to personages in reality, drawing profiles and following leads as they do.

Enough about CSI then, what am i on about here? Well, paranoid-driven, i have set about trying desperately to think outside the BOX. Feeling claustrophobed by the complimentary comments, the conservative one hand washing the other, the liberals scratching one back and getting a complimentary scratch in return. I have an issue with adding friends to one's VOX who agree with me. I tend to seek out those who disagree and invite them instead, as a way of ensuring I don't become stale in my blogging efforts. The groups so often have this sort of claustrophobic feel to them as well. "If you aren't gay, don't come in". The group managers are bouncers ready to bounce your head on out there as soon as you post something they define as "outside the VOX". "If you don't always make the sign of the cross, then don't dig or del.ico.us.irise Gregorian chants". Blogs and groups become i scratch your back, you scratch mine affairs.  In this respect, i somehow see the logic of Aput's blog mentality of "sitting on the fence". The danger in this of course is that one viewpoint becomes superimposed over another. One voice being silenced into submission. One voice howling the conservative view, the other seeking acceptance at all costs. If this is the end result, then damn that route. Either VOXers are too polite, or we vox in a time of self-imposed censorship? I maintain of someone voxes something, he is seeking comment. If they were private thoughts that were not seeking comment, then they would have been hidden, unblogged, not voxed. For me, voxed is the antithesis of boxed.

I am interested to find out other's views on this matter. Be that as it may be, i am blogging at several other sites, just to get out of the Vox-Box so to speak. Trying to employ the causes and groups at Facebook, though this seldom seems to work, as social networking tools in this ilk, are often merely glamourised and modernised popularity runs, to see who get's the most friends before the pyramid falls flat. My other reason for being so many different monkeys with AK (a keyboard), is once again my paranoia that this blog will be shut down. My constant hope is that I will be that famous one day. Truly, it would be an honor to be shut down for more than merely exposing my more private aspects.

To end off, i will give readers a definition of blogging that i read in a comment on an Azanian blog, made in reference to the Thought Leaders blogging forum (an initiative of the Mail & Guardian). The person referred to blogging as "wanking with an audience". My Catholic persona rejects wanking as a total waste of time and good DNA. My other personae (one of me does a daily roll call) rejects the notion that all blogs fall into that category, just as all of us are not wankers. Some of us seek to utilize our DNA for what it was intended.

The article leads with this statement:

One of the most durable features of the U.S. culture is the inability or refusal to recognize U.S. crimes.

Herman goes on to debunk the idea that religious fanaticism is at the root of terror. He lists what he perceives as the contributing factors at the root of violence and hatred for the United States. He identifies the US installation of tyrants like the Shah of Iran in 1953, the military backing given to Saddam Hussein during the brutal war waged against the new Islamic Republic of Iran, and the US support for the illegal zionist entity in Palestine.

The statement ends with this relevant observation:

imperial terrorism inevitably produces retail terrorist responses; that the urgent need is the curbing of the causal force, which is the rampaging empire.

The complete posting is archived (right click to open in new tab)
http://web.archive.org/web/20011103060522/globalresearch.ca/articles/HER109A.html

In short, the much disliked yet apt words of brother Malcolm concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy remain true today:

a case of chicken coming home to roost

Moreover, apart from seeing their own violence turned on themselves,
Americans are paying the price for:

• their acquiescence of the fraudulent process which ushered in the current US presidency,
• their acquiescence of the assaults on freedoms which were instituted subsequent to Bush's election
• their acquiescence of the obvious deceptions created and then used as pre-texts for the military interventions
  
• their acquiescence of the abuses of the media meant to incite fear, then hatred
  
• their acquiescence of the illegal wars which are being waged today
• their acquiescence of the abuses at secret torture camps including but not exclusive to Guantanamo
  
• their acquiescence of the continued support for the criminal entity occupying Palestine

Sadly, we are all victims of this rampaging empire and we will all pay the price for inaction.

What feeds this process do you think? It defies all logic that so many will be fooled into so much irrational and blind support for a deceptive and a corrupt state. When confronted by reason, some people tend to bury their heads in the soil. Part of the problem of course is as a fellow blogger put it, a nation fed with the doctrine that it is superior to all others, cannot fathom anything other than this perception of themselves. To be exposed to anything other than confirmation of this illusion, becomes something tantamount to suicide. It is a fragile identity. Some would argue it is the mentality of a nation in a state of war, yet I cannot agree that this is a given or even natural state.

In the humble opinion of this blogger, this is more than natural. It is self-serving and it is obstinant. Another blogger noted that the Holy Quran mentions how the enemies of God will never accept the believers, until [the believers] embrace [the non-believers'] religion (identical in the translation to "way of life"). The Holy Bible mentions something similar in the book of Proverbs and elsewhere, I believe. We must in effect show our allegiance to the great satan by our wanton and obstinant embrace of death, violence, destruction, symbols of allegiance, if you will. Refusal to open one's mind to allow rational considerations into our thinking and our actions, is surely sinful at best, and dangerous at worst. For it prevents our God from using us as instruments in His correction of the wrongs of others.