Filmmaking for peace...

[8th Man]

They don't want it? This remindes me of the stories we hear so often of a big new chain store running the mom& pop store out of business and how awfull it is, but the blame never rests on the consumer who started buying from the new big store. No it's all the big new stores fault even though the people wanted it.
BTW I'll often support the mom& pop place on the principal that I do get tired of
traveling and seeind the exact same places everywhere I go.
Anyway the same is true here in China where there are western fast food places popping up everywhere. Why? Is it American imperialism at work again? No, not when you see that the people love it. They can't get enough Kentucky Fried Chicken.Seriously I don't get it , Three on one block and it not enough.
We(America) use cheaper labor around the world.That's why I'm here. And they use cheaper places yet. Moving production to places where cost of living is less is done by everyone. The progress has moved through the Pacifiic rim and is moving toward India and will eventallly go into Africa and by the time it's in the West again ,we'll have an army of robots to do our work for us but they will revolt, of coarse, and then we'll all wonder why we used to fight with each other.
I'm going to shoot some K40 now.

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PRM

[digvid]

Peter/redrice -

You missed the point of the "timeline" I posted. As I stated after the timeline, the point was that there are two sides to every disagreement. I wasn't trying to show that everything in the timeline was absolute fact. I was trying to show that both sides in the Arab/Israeli conflict have contributed equally to the problems at hand.

Please note also that America was not supporting Israel during the vast majority of these problems. Richard Nixon was the first American president to take active involvement in Israel. Previous administrations had held Israel at a distance to avoid angering Arab nations (yes, probably because we needed their oil).

I guess what offends me most about your arguments is that you say you are a pacifist and yet you make constant excuses for people like Osama bin Laden, who murder innocent people. Even if you somehow think that Americans are murderers too, how can you make subtle excuses for bin Laden?

One more thing: no one knows for a fact that American CIA trained bin Laden. America trained Afghani mujahadeen to resist a Soviet invasion, and bin Laden may have been among them. We did not train anyone to travel to some foreign country (even Russia) and run suicide missions, or to kill anyone other than invading soldiers. Your suggestion that America somehow made bin Laden what he is today is incorrect and offensive!

- digvid

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[MovieStuff]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Courier, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by redrice:
roger (also):

"With all due respect, Peter, you casually leave out the most important point here: WHY were Saddam's assets frozen and WHY is there an embargo?"

i don't see why this is the most important point. we are punishing a whole people for the actions of one man and the small gang of thugs around him. where is the justice in that? how does that make us any different from saddam himself, or ghadaffi, or bin laden?

peter
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

To start with, and this is REALLY important to remember in the context of things: The U.S. is not REQUIRED to do business with or feed or aid ANY country on the face of the earth.

Okay? Preface that everytime you begin to write something about "world economics" or "U.S. responsibility" and it certainly changes the perspective on things.

Economic sanctions are the same thing that would happen if we stopped doing business with a given country. No more moola. No more jack. No more greenbacks. No more trade. No more benefits. In other words, they want us out of their lives? Well, here's what it tastes like not to have a cash customer like the U.S. Again, the countries that seem to bitch the most are the ones that gained the most by interaction with the U.S. economy. They think we're infidel dogs and don't want our business anymore? Fine, but careful what you wish for.

"Punishment" would be defined as taking something that rightly belongs to a given group. Nothing the U.S. has belongs to Saddam or his people. They have no 'devine right' to our products or our money or our aid. Like the sign in the window says,"We have the right to refuse service to anyone."

Economic sanctions are the best way of showing Saddam's people that he cares more about himself than he does for his constituency. Like Osama, he has the wealth and means to take care of his people if he was really concerned. He's not and that's all there is to it. We are not required to do business with them and, if they suffer because of his agression and politics, then that's Saddam's fault, not ours.

Again, I don't see Saddam losing any weight or sleep over the sanctions. He knows that he has enough wealth to see him though to his end years. Like Osama and Ghadaffi, both hypocrits and cowards, he's just playing 'soldier' instead of dealing with real life and death issues that his people have to navigate every day.

What single positive achievement has any of the three stooges you mentioned ever offered the modern world? We're talking about three of the richest men on the face of the planet and what have they done for humanity compared to their own selfish goals associated with playing 'soldier'? Then compare that to what the U.S has done for underdeveloped countries and victims of famine.

You can not see a difference between the actions of the US and Saddam, Ghadaffi or Bin Laden? Come on, Peter. You're just being argumentative, here.

Roger

[This message has been edited by MovieStuff (edited October 14, 2001).]

[digvid]

redrice -

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i also think people are more responsible when they draw only on the resources which they have to hand, and don't get accustomed to a way of life which depends upon them living off other people's natural capital. so i think mutual responsibility and freedom generally go together, and more of one means more of the other, whereas you seem to think they are polar opposites.

perhaps we just have very different experiences of life?
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The mere fact that you are subscribing to an internet service and leaving messages on this board indicates that you are depending on others for at least part of your existence. Or do you own your own internet service? Do you grow all the food you eat? Did you manufacture all your film and camera equipment????

Peter, I have to say that some of your arguments seem so scatter-brained and "out there" that they are exhausting to read.

I'm sure that being European you have a different outlook on things than I do. I understand that. But most of my friends (yes, more than 50%) are not from the United States, and I don't know any of them that think the way you do, or that make excuses for murderers like Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein. This includes friends/family from India, Pakistan, Holland, France, the Philippines, China, Japan, Jordan, Thailand, etc. I think that you need to look around you and get a dose of reality.

Stay well,

- digvid


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[Mr Blackstock]

With the incredible amount of knowledge and capasity for philisophical discussion, can nobody offer information on middle eastern film makers? Although i did enjoy reading the board, there were no addresses or names. I am slowely attempting to create a web page, if anyone has info send it to my email address [email protected]. maybe i could do something with the info.

Help out someone?!

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[Alex]

A Quote from DigiDave which I strongly disagree with.....

"Peter, I have to say that some of your arguments seem so scatter-brained and "out there" that they are exhausting to read".

"I'm sure that being European you have a different outlook on things than I do. I understand that. But most of my friends (yes, more than 50%) are not from the United States, and I don't know any of them that think the way you do, or that make excuses for murderers like Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein. This includes friends/family from India, Pakistan, Holland, France, the Philippines, China, Japan, Jordan, Thailand, etc. I think that you need to look around you and get a dose of reality. Stay well",

- digvid

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If 80% of what Peter writes is brilliant, and 20% less so.....why throw the baby out with the bathwater?

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Alex

[This message has been edited by Alex (edited October 15, 2001).]

[redrice]

hi roger:

"Economic sanctions are the same thing that would happen if we stopped doing business with a given country."

until a few months ago, i thought the same as you did - that the iraqi people were dying because of saddam's selfishness, not because of the sanctions imposed by your country and mine. then i began to read about what was happening.

economic sanctions are not the same as the US refusing to sell stuff to the iraqis. they are are like the US and the UK refusing to let the iraqis buy anything, from anyone, without our permission. that is a wholly different situation. as a result we have a stranglehold on the country: we dictate, in effect, what goes in and what comes out. we decide how much medicine is available, how much vital infrastructure gets rebuilt, and at what rate, etc.

of course if saddam wanted to chip in, that would help. but even the wildest estimates before the gulf war commenced, generally agreed by conservative US commentators to be exagerated, put his family fortune at only $20 billion. that is less than we have deliberately denied iraq in the last 5 years.

as michael parenti wrote recently:

"Things were supposed to get better when the sanctions were eased in 1996, allowing Iraq to make ?oil for food? sales. Since then, $32 billion in oil was sold abroad but only $8 billion worth of materials has reached Iraq, less than $5 or $6 a month per person. Another $10 billion has been allocated for ?war compensation,? in effect forcing the Iraqis to pay the costs incurred by the UN aggressors when destroying Iraq. Another $11 billion in cash sits in Western banks. Worse still, many essential things needed to rebuild the infrastructure?including the technological, medical, educational, communicational, and industrial systems of the nation?are still not available. Under the deleterious ?dual use? doctrine, many vital commodities and materials needed for humanitarian and civilian purposes are banned because they conceivably could also be used by the military: computers, components for electrical transmitters and water pumps, even glycerin tablets needed for heart ailments. (It would take millions of glycerin tablets mixed with nitrogen to make one small explosive.)"

(you can find the full article at www.zmag.org. i don't agree with everything parenti says, - 'UN aggressors' is deliberately contenious - but his figures seem to be largely based on those provided by UNICEF and the Red Cross, and are probably quite reliable. certainly, his information agrees in general with that provided by dennis halliday and other senior UN officials who have resigned in protest at the sanctions).

so in my opinion, our responsibility in the deaths of 1.5 million people in that country over the last 10 years is quite clear. and our refusal to 'care' about this is a major obstacle to our winning over 'the hearts and minds of the arab world', as tony blair would put it.

on the police state:

"Again, what's your point? I don't know what it's like to wear women's underwear, either. Do you? Are you suggesting that Osama was forced to be a criminal? Are you suggesting that commiting acts of terrorism is the only tool available for one of the richest men in the world to help his people? Again, what he chose to do with his considerable wealth and influence is the difference. He isn't some destitute, down on his luck junky robbing someone because he's desperate and feels he has no choice. He has nothing BUT choices and he chooses violence and agression over progress, every time he's given a chance."

i have lived in a police state. i have known people who have been tortured for trying to express their opinions, and who have spent the best years of their lives in jail. these people weren't poor; they weren't outsiders. their parents were diplomats, or successful businessmen. they simply happened to value justice more than material comfort. when they tried to do something about it, - not something violent, just expressing their opinions - they discovered just how limited their room for manoeuvre was.

saudi arabia doesn't need more hospitals and schools. it has hospitals and schools coming out of its ears. osama bin laden is above all a saudi nationalist. he doesn't want to share his money with his countrymen: he wants to replace the ruling family, whose idea of islamic observance is a night in a five star hotel with a bumper bag of cocaine and a few under-age prostitutes while their security forces torture suspected dissidents in the basement. (as you will remember, these are the 'moderate businessmen' we buy so much of our oil from. a similar group of goons run kuwait, for whose 'honour' we have killed so many iraqis.)

there are many things money cannot buy. freedom is one of them. and there are many circumstances in which the violence of the status quo is so great, that the only possible remedy to that violence is to take up violence oneself. american history might have been designed to illustate that truth.

this is not to justify the attacks on america. but unless we try and understand the world out of which such attacks are born, then we simply condemn more innocent people to die, in the US, in Europe, in Iraq and in Afghanistan.

terrorism is never a solution. but the alternative to terrorism is not more 'business as usual'. and it is not terrorism wielded by the state, as the british did at dresden and the US did at hiroshima and nagasaki.

in this case, the alternative is letting the people of the middle east have a real say in their own destiny. my fear is that your country and my country will never willingly let that happen, because the cost to us - economically - would be too great. so we will continue to trade with corrupt dictators because we 'need' their oil, and because they agree to complain about the israelis to the UN, but never actually do anything to help the palestinians.
and because our governments refuse to pay that cost, i fear that we will all suffer from the greater violence that is yet to come, whether we agreed to those policies or not.

george bush put it very neatly, i thought, a few weeks ago, when he talked (i paraphrase) about wanting to get America back to being a country where 'flying is a way of life'.

that's the 'freedom' our governments put before all others. personally, it is not a freedom for which i would wish anyone to die.

good wishes,

peter

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[redrice]

hi digvid:

no, i understood your point about the time line. i was just trying to say that some of the possible objections to it are more complex and more difficult to pin down that any simple opposition between israeli and palestinian perspectives. those objections go to the heart of western myopia about the rest of the world.

likewise, i dont know any arab who would deny that the arabs have had appalling leaders for the last 50 years, and that the palestinians have been sold down the river by almost every arab nation.

"I guess what offends me most about your arguments is that you say you are a pacifist and yet you make constant excuses for people like Osama bin Laden, who murder innocent people. Even if you somehow think that Americans are murderers too, how can you make subtle excuses for bin Laden?"

i'm sorry if i wasn't clear. i'm not a pacifist. and i'm not universally opposed to terrorism, tho i think that it is a very dangerous tactic, which can easily backfire, and i certainly dont support it in the present case.

i'm simply opposed to military action against afghanistan, because i think it is another example of us punishing a nation for the acts of a small group of people, and that that is exactly what the people who committed those attacks on the US want. they want the US to flail out at muslim states and movements, so that they can generate more support for the more extreme elements within their cause, and hopefully destablise central asia and get their hands on a few fully functioning nuclear weapons.

meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of innocent afghans will die this winter for lack of food and of the infrastructure to get food to them.

i don't want those deaths on the conscience of my people. i don't know how to stop them, but i am prepared to try anything that might work, short of taking other innocent lives.

good wishes,

peter

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[Dominic3]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Dominic3:
[B][QUOTE]Originally posted by redrice:
terrorism is never a solution. but the alternative to terrorism is not more 'business as usual'. and it is not terrorism wielded by the state, as the british did at dresden and the US did at hiroshima and nagasaki".

Peter, what a comment!
Why are you deliberately attempting to SMEER history?
The bombing at Dresden and Nagasaki ( and the current bombing in Afganistan) were acts of SELF DEFENCE not "terrorism". What kind of world would we be living in now had we not excercised that moral right of retalitory force?

I am very suspicious of your comments.
You claim you want peace and yet you oppose retalitory force in order to establish peace. You claim you support freedom and yet you support the initiation of government coercion.You claim you want a wealthy world for all and yet you support forced re distribution of private wealth and government control of material production rather than the voluntary exchange of value for value for mutual profit - capitalist wealth creation. You claim you support freedom and yet you ally yourself with cultures that deny human rights and enforce obedience, sacrifice, the subordination of the individual to "god" or "the state", censorship, property rights, faith over science and the subjugation of women.

What kind of world do you want???

You appear,at your best, to be offering the fradulent alternative between "individual human rights" versus "individual property rights" - as if one could exist without the other and at your worst, you uphold the very moral ideals of every totalitarian political system in history.




[This message has been edited by Dominic3 (edited October 15, 2001).]

[redrice]

hi dominic:

if you think that dresden and hiroshima were acts of self-defence, then i would hate to meet you when you were in an aggressive mood:-)

you might also want to read gar alperovitz's book on the diplomatic and security context surrounding america's decision to use the atom bomb. he has read through all the now-declassified correspondence, and argues convincingly that Truman had received solid intelligence indicating japan was ready to surrender. the decision to use the bomb was not the last act of the second world war, but the first act of the cold war. the US government took that decision because they wanted to establish once and for all the balance of power in the post-war world and deter the soviets from coming on to strong.

i'm sure this is a very unpopular theory in some quarters. but for alperovitz, it is the most plausible interpretation of the evidence we have, and he has read everything that is in the public domain, and is very even-handed.
[ame="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679443312/o/qid=/sr=8-1/ref=sr_aps_b_1_1/026-1073614-3286045"]http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679443312/o/qid=/sr=8-1/ref=sr_aps_b_1_1/026-1073614-3286045[/ame]

i was brought up in the uk, and i never heard anyone refer to the carpet bombing of dresden as anything other than a cause for national shame.

my definition of terrorism is deliberately targeting civilians in order to achieve military aims, by terrorising the population and breaking their will to resist. i think that covers all the cases we're discussing.

who started it, which you seem to think is so important, is a question best left to the children's playground.

good wishes,

peter


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