Sadam (2 Viewers)

[jane]

Father Ramadan


And then his autobiography will be out in June and will be entitled: The Sunni Side Up

Based only on this, I am appointing myself president of the Billy Gannon fan club. And I do mean 'President' in the self-appointed, dictatorial Saddam/Bush sort of way.

 

[broken arm]

It will be an interesting trial. Pity it will be outside the ICC because then we would hear all the details of US support for Saddam in the eighties and how they helped create another dictator. I am glad for the many Iraqis who suffered under Saddam but I also put some perspective on it.

Pictures speak a thousand words and all that so. for me its a case of...

going from this:

to this:

 

[Rimbaud]

Well - his finished - sky is fuked for news after they squezze the shit out of this story....after that????

Bin Laden i guess.

Then back to the Palistinian conflict and maybe a bit more Cheechan coverage to fill space?

 

[broken arm]

what about the corporate takeover of Georgia? oh yea and the building of an oil pipeline through said 'free' state...................

 

[Rimbaud]

It will be an interesting trial. Pity it will be outside the ICC because then we would hear all the details of US support for Saddam in the eighties and how they helped create another dictator. I am glad for the many Iraqis who suffered under Saddam but I also put some perspective on it.

Pictures speak a thousand words and all that so. for me its a case of...

going from this:

to this:

Its going to drag on like hell though - i`m still waiting on the outcome of the Milosovic trail - its going on so damn long that the media have lost interest.
I can see the same thing happening for Sadam - i`ll be an old man and Sadam will still be "on trail"...

 

[Rimbaud]

what about the corporate takeover of Georgia? oh yea and the building of an oil pipeline through said 'free' state...................

"Abashidze, the mafia boss in Batumi supposedly re-elected with 120% of the vote, does not recognise the new government in Tbilisi, and has effectively sealed the internal borders of Achara province.
Abashidze has apparently also managed to negotiate visa free travel for Georgians to Russia, but olnly for residents of Achara. The new govt in Tbilisi is reported to be furious about this. Expect long delays at the internal Achara border as each side tries to punish the other by protracted border procedures. "

Taken from some news site - can`t remember where...
The thing about Georgia is it seems to be still firmly rooted in its traditions of clans and territory, where certain people control certain areas of the country - the west might call them Mafia. i don`t know....

 

[Ed]

Sick of that footage already, but I love that the first thing they seem to have done when they got him out of the hole was check his teeth.

I figured they were checking his teeth to make sure he didn't have any suicide pill type things in there. I liked the way they were banging on about him being found cowering in a corner, when it's more likely they found him asleep on the big pile of cash.

 

[broken arm]

Taken from some news site - can`t remember where...
The thing about Georgia is it seems to be still firmly rooted in its traditions of clans and territory, where certain people control certain areas of the country - the west might call them Mafia. i don`t know....

dont want to go off topic but from le guardian

[font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]A controversial scheme led by the oil giant BP to build a huge, strategically important pipeline is about to win crucial backing, according to a leaked document.


Despite widespread criticism, the World Bank is due to approve at a meeting tomorrow a $250m (£149m) loan to a consortium to build a pipeline from Baku in Azerbaijan on the Caspian Sea to the Turkish port of Ceyhan via Georgia.

British-based campaigners have been leading an international protest against the scheme, claiming that the 1,000-mile long underground pipeline will cause environmental damage, increase ethnic tensions and accelerate global warming.

The protesters have compiled a 220-page dossier claiming that the scheme breaks World Bank lending guidelines in 173 ways.

The pipeline is supported by the US government as an important route for reducing its dependence on oil from the troubled Middle East. It also keeps large quantities of oil out of the hands of the Russians who have supported an alternative pipeline to their Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. [/font]

 

[Rimbaud]

I guess it was either that, or proclaim an evil-Dictatorship in Georgia and take it over....

 

[jane]

I figured they were checking his teeth to make sure he didn't have any suicide pill type things in there. I liked the way they were banging on about him being found cowering in a corner, when it's more likely they found him asleep on the big pile of cash.

Yeah, it's like they immediately started to present him as this dishevelled and frightened old man, like they'd dug him out of a skip or something. It seems like that was their way of displaying how the mighty US military had reduced the worlds biggest tyrant to nothing but a cowering, down-and-out bum. Really, really sick. I feel so bad for Iraqis, who were understandably happy that he'd been caught, being used as proof that this war was somehow justified.

I hadn't thought of that suicide pill thing. I did wonder if maybe they were trying to check if it was the 'real' Saddam from his teeth, the way corpses are sometimes identified by their dental records. Then I realised the implausibility of using the dictator's dental records.

It's all just so sick. Too convenient. Kind of like how the war itself started during a slow time of year for American sports and was over just as baseball season started...I was kicking myself for months that I REALLY believed it might start before the Super Bowl.... It all just looks so goddamn carefully orchestrated and timed.

And yeah, the Milosevic trial did cross my mind, too: is this trial going to go on for so long that, like with him, everyone will have lost interest?

The whole Roman Empire parallel makes me cringe. There are a lot of more recent historical analogies, though, too. I have often found myself getting a bit freaked out at 16th century English colonial stuff, even made a list one day of which 16th-century figures could correspond with which 21st century ones. What a performance.

 

[Rimbaud]

Milosovic is still on trial - his defending himself.And the 2 key figures of the Balkans wars are still roaming around.

From B92.net:

"KRAGUJEVAC -- Saturday – A senior official of the Serbian Radical Party told an election rally today that the party would not cooperate with the Hague Tribunal.
Party secretary-general Aleksandar Vucic told supporters in the central Serbian city of Kragujevac that while Serbia should cooperate with the West, it should not be anybody’s servant.

“We are openly telling you, all the people of Serbia, that we are not going to extradite Radovan Karadzic or Ratko Mladic or any other Serb indictee to the Hague Tribunal.

“We would not dream of it,” Vucic told the rally, to loud applause. "

Still alot of Nationalist hardliners and Milosovic supporters about Serbia.

I don`t think Sadam`s capture is going to change things in Iraq, it`ll probably just encourage more attacks on US troops.

 

[Speed Racer]

Saddam will probably be shot by an angry Iraqi.

 

[Ex-User (250)]

yeah, but what are we going to do about it? keep posting facts on thumped? or crash some planes? talk, like dignity, is pretty cheap. people have short memories. i'm aware that i'm posting facts on thumped by the way.

 

[Pantone247]

yeah, but what are we going to do about it? keep posting facts on thumped? or crash some planes? talk, like dignity, is pretty cheap. people have short memories. i'm aware that i'm posting facts on thumped by the way.

 

[Ex-User (250)]

how should i know? that was like 5 minutes ago... i have a short memory...

don't come over all with me... it's kinda anti-fun

 

[Pantone247]

how should i know? that was like 5 minutes ago... i have a short memory...

don't come over all with me... it's kinda anti-fun

 

[jane]

I don`t think Sadam`s capture is going to change things in Iraq, it`ll probably just encourage more attacks on US troops.

I agree. It will just encourage more resentment because it's now seen as licence to push Western interests one step further.

The way so much of the West has been so totally ignorant about what the Iraqis REALLY want has always disturbed me. I was at this world archaeology congress in DC over the summer where the fate of Iraqi antiquities was widely discussed. The middle eastern archaelogists who were not prevented from entering the US (a large proportion were sent home) were not consulted on any of the issues, and several of the ones I spoke with had never been so angry about our own discipline's response to the situation. The big museums, in conjunction with the US State Department, held these sessions that ended up just being press conferences about the 'stuff'. When the middle eastern archaeologists were finally given a chance to speak (these included an Iraqi, a Jordanian and a Lebanese woman), they all agreed that even in their capacities as archaeologists, the Iraqi people who are there today have to come first. This was seen as totally controversial: the Iraqis were literally being talked about in the third person when they were right there in the room.

This Congress is supposedly left-wing, and even they were disappointingly ignorant to the real needs of Iraqis. Some of the delegates just wanted to get in there and 'help' in order to forward their own careers. It really opened my eyes to exactly how greatly the resentment of the West is driven by doing what we perceive as 'helping', and that it isn't just coming from the military.

Until we actually acknowledge that 'helping' the Iraqi people has to mean putting them before what we think is good for them we will continue to be resented and continue to be attacked.

I mean, of course people there are glad to see that their evil dictator has been captured, and maybe they're just hanging on to what little hope that might give them for the future, but I can't imagine what it must feel like to be an Iraqi right now. If you're happy about the capture, you risk being used as a tool for the US media; if you're not, then you must be a Saddam supporter. How can they win?

 

[broken arm]

how should i know? that was like 5 minutes ago... i have a short memory...

don't come over all with me... it's kinda anti-fun

 

[Pantone247]

If you're happy about the capture, you risk being used as a tool for the US media?

yeah...

em...

I *seriously* doubt anyone is Iraq is concerned about their portrayl by the US media. *Seriously*

Lets not get all Michael Moore here okay.

They found him in a hole. They thought he was organising malitia groups around the country sucsessfully attacking US troops.... but he was in a hole.

I wonder if he had any WMD down there?

 

[Ex-User (250)]

what that mean? seriously, i don't get it. it's not very intuitive.