"Shock and awe" starting

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-12272494,00.html

It depends on what you mean by permission. Normally simply not preventing someone from doing something isn't described as giving them permission. Should it be different when it comes to not preventing a government from taking some action?

can anyone actually list the nations in the coalition? i wonder...

Australia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, the Phillipines, Afghanistan (obv), Columbia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Australia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Denmark, the Netherlands, and basically Eastern Europe and Soviet break-aways as a block: Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland, and then like Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Uzbekistan, blah, blah, blah.

It's just a funny list to me because saying "El Salvador and Uzbekistan are on our side" raises questions like "what, were Malawi and Benin busy or something?"

To be used to open the can o'whup-ass, no doubt.

Also Spain and *sigh* Portugal. Leftist party members left parliament today because they weren't allowed to wear their "NOT IN MY NAME" t-shirts- there are very important conflicts going on in our country right now as you can see.

How? Because I used Mozambique? What difference does it make? Don't brand me like that for using a third world country that just so happens not to be populated by white people. Ignore the fact that apart from Eastern Europe and South Africa, there aren't any third world countries populated by whites, which would make it a "tough choice" to find something that wouldn't make you yell "you're playing the race card!" Want me to use Moldovia or Appalacia (not a country, but a region of the US) instead? Fine. Same rules apply.

Of course, now I'll be a racist for saying that lots of blacks/asians/latinos/etc live in squallid third world countries (or that 3rd world countries have a lot of what westerners consider "minorities" living there). But whatever, man. Feel free to discuss Egyptians gassing Yemenis or something like that one of these days anyways.

I had just bought Double Fantasy and was so utterly disappointed in it that I thought that he would never be able to redeam himself. And that made me more sad than his actual death did.

I agree... it's hardly arbitrary to be sad today but not wearing black during the Burundi massacre.

Upthread I was taking exception to people's emotions veering into indignance/self-righteousness. But it's a volatile time -- I regret being snarky.

My point is not necessarily that they don't know (you would have to have had your head in the sand to miss Rwanda), but that they don't care. Just as they don't care enough about any of the other problems in the world, and why there are Iraq and Afghanistan threads and not Algeria or CAR threads here and elsewhere. There are some people here who know what's up (I think No One might be the other guy who worships Pelton's book like I do), but for the most part, a lot of protestors know dick about the world, sorry to say. And I don't think they'll ever "care" about Subsaharan Africa or Southeast Asia or the former Yugoslavia like they do about whatever the current protest trend is (Tibet, Iraq, WTO, whatever). I'd love for them to prove me wrong, but I see it as wildly unlikely.

Well it seemed pretty damned loaded a comparison to me. Esp. after your anti-"liberal" content in other parts of this thread.

Haven’t read it; will look it up.

for the most part, a lot of protestors know dick about the world

In general, television media seems to delight in showing the unintelligent. Yesterday, I listened to a television reporter from channel 7 (Chicago) on the radio laughing about finding the most stoned-looking protester to interview and letting her ramble for five minutes. She assumed that the tape would be edited to something sort of coherent, but the news producer(s) played the interview unedited, painting all protesters with the color stoned hippy.

One doesn't have to be independently wealthy to know what's going on in the world. God knows I'm not. They just have to sit down and do some work every once in awhile, as horrible as that seems. But if people are willing to do it for bands or jokes or whatever, they should be willing to do it to learn about what's happening in the world.

I don't "care" in the same sense that I care about the US military's actions in Iraq because:::::::: their suffering wasn't imposed by a government that claims to speak for me.

Maybe it's naive of me to assume this connection between my government and myself. I know from our Christianity thread that Alan you have a MAJOR aversion to "belonging" and given the events of the past few days I can't say I blame you. But you can't effect any kind of social change without belonging to something, so if that's your goal you're going to have to unfold those arms of yours.

I understand that people get hit by cars all the time. But if I hit someone with my car on the way home today, I am not going to speed off thinking "ahh well, no point getting any more upset over him than the last guy."

I work with a lot of anti-war students. They're really well-informed and are dedicated to sharing information. But I've also met a lot of those young people - with dreads or purple hair or whatever - who just come to the meetings with a vague sense that something is terribly wrong with this. That's okay - like I said, activism is where they learn.

The media often picks these young people to parade in front of the cameras. I noticed this in the ABC and FOX coverage of the protest in Chicago last night - when in fact there were old people, and families and lots of other "types".

the notion that somehow kids with only a "vague sense that something is terribly wrong with this" getting involved - even if just to boost numbers or sign petitions - being a BAD thing, even in the long term, is again such a chauvinistic and defeatist idea that it boggles me...makes me sick, really.

Again, going back to the car analogy, *you* are personally responsible for hitting those people, not someone else who's obeying military orders. Perhaps a better analogy would be to say that you're in a car piloted by someone else who hits a person and you feel indifferent about it.

I am a rock, I am an iiiiii-sland!

(talk about emo!)

One might as well ask you why you're arguing with what people are saying here on ILM -- after all, there are people on a million other message boards saying much dumber things, why get so worked up about this one?

I shouldn't have to. People should know by now that what happens in other countries directly effects their own (like the civil disobedience in Venezuela and how it affects oil consumption in the US). If they haven't figured that out, we're all fucked.

-
Alan

Also, Jess is right that there's something very chauvinistic about your assumption that people here are necessarily indifferent to things like people getting chopped up in Africa. I've had relatives chopped up in Africa.

Umm, no. Rather, you're supposed to vote in municipal elections because they directly affect you and the way you'll be living (taxes, schools, police, etc). The way a town in China is policed has no direct bering on your location for the most part. On the other hand, the bombs in Iraq aren't directly affecting you in such a manner. And in whatever manner they will affect you, its probably not that much different than say, a coup in Belarus or the UAE (not involving the US) would affect you. Those would probably affect you more, in fact. Ignoring problems never helped the US; we knew about the Taliban and Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan for years and did very little other than some Tomahawk missles. Now look at what happened as a result. That's why people should care about things like the Sudan; it will affect them, just as much as us dropping bombs in Iraq will. And that's why the ignorance/apathy to what happens there pisses me off.

Had I at here and told you that I had gone on humanitarian missions and handed out leaflets and wrote for magazines, I would have been called either a liar or self righteous. Not so say I've done any of that, but its a catch 22. Kinda like when someone's branded a "racist" and then gets beaten down everytime he tries to prove otherwise.

Well let me recommend a bit of strategic thinking, then. If you're upset that Americans are indifferent toward various parts of the world, it is NOT AT ALL a good plan to jump on them and tell them off when they do show empathy for people in certain portions of it.

I mean, I'm imagining you training a dog. You say "Sit!" Nothing. You say "Sit!" Nothing. You say "Sit!" Nothing. You say "Sit!" It sits!

So you bonk it over the head with a newspaper: "Oh, now you're going to sit? What about all those other times I asked you, eh?"