People are generally at their most vulnerable when they're contacting you (assuming it's a genuine contact and not a scammer). Whether a person respects that or not speaks volumes to their character.
You're joking, right? Yes, he had, I think it was actually 550 tons of yellow cake uranium ore, which was later sold to Cameco, right here in Saskatchewan.
Yes, that's what Saddam had- yellow cake uranium ore. NOT in WMD form, NOT being processed to make nukes, NOT doing ANYthing but sitting there.
And, yes, Saddam was in talks with Nigeria to acquire another 500 tons of yellow cake uranium.
But what you're talking here, and this is a hot-button issue internationally, is the making of pre-emptive war, which is the making of war based upon assumptions, what if's, might's, could have's, and so on. This, instead of relying upon actual, real, genuine threats and scenarios.
Pre-emptive war is a form of dyslexia. It's also an example of corrupted logic and twisted thinking.
Oh, I see! Brutal dictator . . . that gives the US the right!
Don't see the US going after lots of other brutal dictators. Care to explain that little bit of hypocrisy and convoluted thinking?
Noble? Killing innocents was noble? Illegally killing Iraq soldiers in a battle that, top US brass at the time said was like "Star Wars vs the Flintstones"? You call that noble? You call the use of depleted uranium noble?
The world does not hate the US. There is a LOT of support for the US in Iran, for example, especially among young university students.
But the US has a nasty habit of betraying and pissing on its supporters.
Oh, I see! Brutal dictator . . . that gives the US the right!
Don't see the US going after lots of other brutal dictators. Care to explain that little bit of hypocrisy and convoluted thinking?
Noble? Killing innocents was noble? Illegally killing Iraq soldiers in a battle that, top US brass at the time said was like "Star Wars vs the Flintstones"? You call that noble? You call the use of depleted uranium noble?
The world does not hate the US. There is a LOT of support for the US in Iran, especially among young university students.
But the US has a nasty habit of betraying and pissing on its supporters.
Hey, I've received comments with this mis-naming before!
Let me tell you something about it:
My last name is Monks- that's M-O-N-K-S. It's ostensibly an Irish name. The original was Monaghan, but the English, when they invaded Ireland, "anglicised" Irish names. "Monaghan" became "Monks".
Now, the name Monk is not Irish. It's Jewish. And bigots (the anti-semite variety) sometimes spot my last name and misread it, either by accident, or on purpose, or accidentally on purpose.
So that's what's behind Conrad's usage of the name Monk.
Before any of you go thinking Conrad accidentally mis-spoke, keep in mind that I've dealt with this exact same thing many, many times. It's no accident.
This has been a problem with the US for a LONG time. My relatives south of the border and those living north of the 49th get into it all the time. The US has this thing that they can do whatever they want, anywhere else in the world, but when something happens to the US, their response is over-the-top and completely out of proportion to what was done to them.
9-11 is a perfect example. The Iraq war was illegal, was not sanctioned by the UN, and the Bush administration, in their overbearing Pax Americana arrogance, decreed that the UN was "irrelevant" to use their own words. Indeed, the US had no business whatsoever in going into Iraq. Once there, they slaughtered many thousands- soldiers (illegally killed) and civilians alike. And when they attacked Afghanistan, they decreed that the soldiers they killed were "unlawful combatants"- another example of overbearing hubris.
Many Americans, even today, think that the deaths of 3000 (not all of them Americans) during 9-11 somehow justifies illegal invasion and mass-murder. They simply just don't get it.
Make no mistake about my personal position- I was all for the invasion of Afghanistan and the killing of bin Laden, who was a scumbag who read girly magazines and flaunted and made a mockery of Islam while his dupes were doing his bidding and dying in the bargain. Those are two counts where US foreign-policy makers got it right.
But again, so many Americans and America-lovers are so brainwashed that when they hear one thing, another automatically pops into their empty heads, and it comes out in the form of a thoughtless utterance, backed up, not by reason, but by endless thoughtless utterances. That is what really gets my ire up.
We're not discussing the former USSR. It's not part of this thread.
Having presented nor discussed no evidence whatsoever, your credibility is zero. All you've done is come out with childish "nyah, nyah, nyah" non-posts.
You want the evidence or not? Or do you just want to keep playing this silly two-year-old's game?
I never said I hated the US. What I did say was that US foreign policy needs a kick in the groin.
As to my personal ties to the US, the French part of my family, the Ouellettes, have been in North America for over 400 years (the Oullettes were one of the 26 original French families in North America), many of whom moved to Louisiana and the Oregon Territory, which was later divided up into the Washington, Idaho and Oregon states. The Scottish part of my family has been in North America for over 200 years, and the Irish for around as long.
So . . . we were here before there was a United States or a Canada.
In future, I suggest you don't blather on about what you know absolutely nothing about.
I never said the US planned or executed 9-11. I've heard and read about that conspiracy theory for years. That's all it is- a conspiracy theory, like "Heroic ghost of Elvis foils bank-robbers again!" or "Alien Baby Found On Mars!"
Half my family is American, by the way. My cousin Earl was an the Pueblo when it was captured by the North Koreans. My granddad John Monks was a US soldier in WWI and trained at For Lewis. So don't give me any crap about "foreign parties".
We're not discussing the former USSR. It's not part of this thread.
Having presented nor discussed no evidence whatsoever, your credibility is zero. All you've done is come out with childish "nyah, nyah, nyah" non-posts.
You want the evidence or not? Or do you just want to keep playing this silly two-year-old's game?
What's your problem with the facts? Fact: Indonesia committed genocide in East Timor. Fact: several journalists were there and were murdered, some of them known to me. Fact: they were murdered with arms supplied by the US, who KNEW what they were being used for.
I used to write music for documentaries, Conrad. Some of the guys I worked with are now dead. Some of the stories they were covering were atrocities connected with US foreign policy.
Here are some facts and stats. Read 'em, and tell me that the deaths of 3000 warrants this:
By Haroon Siddiqui Editorial Page (from the Toronto Star)
How many civilians have been killed, maimed and displaced in Iraq and Afghanistan? I spoke to four leading experts on this grim topic, which governments avoid and the media don't seem to care much about.
Gen. Tommy Franks, who oversaw the U.S. invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, famously said: "We don't do body counts."
His words now headline the website of Iraq Body Count, the U.K.-based non-profit group that does count the Iraqi dead.
Others do as well, albeit periodically. The latest is a British polling firm that puts the Iraqi dead at 1.22 million. That's roughly five times the number killed in the conflict in the former Yugoslavia.
Opinion Research Business conducted face-to-face interviews last month with a representative sample of 1,461 Iraqis.
Nearly one in two said their households had suffered at least one death by violence. Many reported multiple deaths. Projecting the findings on to Iraq's 4 million households, ORB estimated the death toll at more than a million.
The methodology is not universally accepted, though variations of it have been used to measure mortality figures in the conflicts in Congo, Kosovo, Sudan, etc.
Questions were also raised last year about a study by Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, done in partnership with Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad.
Surveyors knocked on 1,849 doors asking if the household had suffered a death by violence. Projecting the responses nationally, the study put the toll at 654,965.
About a third of the deaths were attributed to coalition forces. Responsibility for 45 per cent of the deaths couldn't be determined.
The Iraq Body Count count, updated daily, stood yesterday at "between 72,596 and 79,187."
The group, run by academics and peace activists, insists on corroborating every death from two reliable sources – police, hospital and mortuary records, media and NGO reports.
The estimate is "irrefutable," says John Sloboda, professor of psychology at Keele University, and a co-founder of IBC. "Nobody can say that fewer people have died. There are many deaths that go unrecorded – kidnappings, assassinations, disappearances, etc.
"The death toll could be twice our number, but it could not possibly be 10 times higher," he told me, referring to the other studies.
His group, in turn, has been attacked for underestimating the casualties. But he insists: "We should not exaggerate. We ought not to debase the currency of death.
"If it becomes part of the public record that there have been 1 million deaths and it later turns out that it was only 100,000, then people will say, `Fine, it wasn't all that bad.'
"But 100,000 dead is still a great tragedy, and the Iraq adventure has been an utter and complete disaster at every level."
How many injured Iraqis?
At least 125,000. That's "quite firmly established," says Hamit Dardagan, another IBC co-founder. "It's not an estimate, but a tally or compilation of known injuries."
As for Iraqi refugees, it is well established by United Nations agencies that more than 4 million have been displaced: 1.2 million in Syria, 800,000 in Jordan and the rest internally – and barely surviving.
James Paul, executive director of Global Policy Forum, which monitors policy making at the United Nations, says: "Considering the number of the dead and displaced, this is probably the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world."
You wouldn't know that listening to the politicians in North America or following the media.
(More on Sunday.)
Haroon Siddiqui, the Star's editorial page editor emeritus, appears Thursdays and Sundays. hsiddiq@thestar.ca
Here are some facts and stats. Read 'em, and tell me that the deaths of 3000 warrants this:
By Haroon Siddiqui Editorial Page (from the Toronto Star)
How many civilians have been killed, maimed and displaced in Iraq and Afghanistan? I spoke to four leading experts on this grim topic, which governments avoid and the media don't seem to care much about.
Gen. Tommy Franks, who oversaw the U.S. invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, famously said: "We don't do body counts."
His words now headline the website of Iraq Body Count, the U.K.-based non-profit group that does count the Iraqi dead.
Others do as well, albeit periodically. The latest is a British polling firm that puts the Iraqi dead at 1.22 million. That's roughly five times the number killed in the conflict in the former Yugoslavia.
Opinion Research Business conducted face-to-face interviews last month with a representative sample of 1,461 Iraqis.
Nearly one in two said their households had suffered at least one death by violence. Many reported multiple deaths. Projecting the findings on to Iraq's 4 million households, ORB estimated the death toll at more than a million.
The methodology is not universally accepted, though variations of it have been used to measure mortality figures in the conflicts in Congo, Kosovo, Sudan, etc.
Questions were also raised last year about a study by Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, done in partnership with Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad.
Surveyors knocked on 1,849 doors asking if the household had suffered a death by violence. Projecting the responses nationally, the study put the toll at 654,965.
About a third of the deaths were attributed to coalition forces. Responsibility for 45 per cent of the deaths couldn't be determined.
The Iraq Body Count count, updated daily, stood yesterday at "between 72,596 and 79,187."
The group, run by academics and peace activists, insists on corroborating every death from two reliable sources – police, hospital and mortuary records, media and NGO reports.
The estimate is "irrefutable," says John Sloboda, professor of psychology at Keele University, and a co-founder of IBC. "Nobody can say that fewer people have died. There are many deaths that go unrecorded – kidnappings, assassinations, disappearances, etc.
"The death toll could be twice our number, but it could not possibly be 10 times higher," he told me, referring to the other studies.
His group, in turn, has been attacked for underestimating the casualties. But he insists: "We should not exaggerate. We ought not to debase the currency of death.
"If it becomes part of the public record that there have been 1 million deaths and it later turns out that it was only 100,000, then people will say, `Fine, it wasn't all that bad.'
"But 100,000 dead is still a great tragedy, and the Iraq adventure has been an utter and complete disaster at every level."
How many injured Iraqis?
At least 125,000. That's "quite firmly established," says Hamit Dardagan, another IBC co-founder. "It's not an estimate, but a tally or compilation of known injuries."
As for Iraqi refugees, it is well established by United Nations agencies that more than 4 million have been displaced: 1.2 million in Syria, 800,000 in Jordan and the rest internally – and barely surviving.
James Paul, executive director of Global Policy Forum, which monitors policy making at the United Nations, says: "Considering the number of the dead and displaced, this is probably the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world."
You wouldn't know that listening to the politicians in North America or following the media.
(More on Sunday.)
Haroon Siddiqui, the Star's editorial page editor emeritus, appears Thursdays and Sundays. hsiddiq@thestar.ca
3000 dead? Big deal! The US is guilty of the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and then has the presumptuous arrogance to tell the world its hands are clean!
Oh, really? You must have missed out on all those times the US backed corrupt regimes to "balance things out" with the USSR.
How about when the US bombed Guatemala's capital when Guatemala nationalised its oil reserves? We did that here in Canada, and the US painted Trudeau as a "red".
How about when Carter signed an arms deal with Indonesia, while Indonesia was committing genocide in East Timor?
I could go on for pages, here.
Propaganda and garbage? Looks like you bought into it.
Negotiating? It's about bloody time. As to the position, "These are the people guilty of 9-11!", your point is? The Taliban exists because they were created jointly by the US (specifically the CIA) and Pakistan during the Cold War. The CIA and US foreign policy have been playing a dirty game for many years, and have caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents. 9-11 is a scrape on the knee compared to the humanitarian crimes the CIA and US foreign policy are guilty of. It's really a case of the chickens coming home to roost.
The US has long got away with thinking it's untouchable, and above being included in the death and destruction it has engineered in other countries.
As to negotiating with the Taliban, for the US this is like a father negotiating with a son he trained to be a killer, turned him loose to work some agenda, and when the dirty deed was done spat in his face instead of saying so much as "well done".
In other words, chances of making things right aren't good, but the onus is on the US to make the effort, regardless the outcome.
Negotiating? It's about bloody time. As to the position, "These are the people guilty of 9-11!", your point is? The Taliban exists because they were created jointly by the US (specifically the CIA) and Pakistan during the Cold War. The CIA and US foreign policy have been playing a dirty game for many years, and have caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents. 9-11 is a scrape on the knee compared to the humanitarian crimes the CIA and US foreign policy are guilty of. It's really a case of the chickens coming home to roost.
The US has long got away with thinking it's untouchable, and above being included in the death and destruction it has engineered in other countries.
As to negotiating with the Taliban, for the US this is like a father negotiating with a son he trained to be a killer, turned him loose to work some agenda, and when the dirty deed was done spat in his face instead of saying so much as "well done".
In other words, chances of making things right aren't good, but the onus is on the US to make the effort, regardless the outcome.
gsmonks Forum Posts (386)
emoticons? 
RE: If someone e mails you and you dislike there look and know there not for you ... do u ???
People are generally at their most vulnerable when they're contacting you (assuming it's a genuine contact and not a scammer). Whether a person respects that or not speaks volumes to their character.