Please Scroll Down to See Forums Below 
.jpg "Research Chemical Sciences")
.png "Research Chemical Sciences")
Alright, well you said you started hating Canadians for the things we are saying. Well, i would like to publicly say that your views are narrow and biased. You say the US is PROTECTING Canada from Saddam?!?!
Have a read and maybe you will learn a thing or two.
The barbarities of Saddam Hussein are on a minor scale compared with the consistent, and censored, terrorism of the west.(Column)
Author/s: John Pilger
Issue: Sept 13, 1996
President Clinton's attack on Iraq produced an impressive if disspiriting consistency in the media. The 1991 Gulf war, although opposed by a majority of the public, was supported by all the mainstream media, with the lone exception of the Guardian. Feats of technology were allowed to dominate the news, many of them fake, such as the attacks on Iraq's Scud missile sites, none of which were destroyed as claimed. Contrary to the propaganda at the time, fewer than 10 per cent of the "smart" weapons hit their targets.
Still, the Independent and others rejoiced in the "miraculously few casualties". The opposite was true. By all authoritative studies, some 200,000 people were slaughtered by the Allies, mainly by US and British forces. Most were the Kurdish and Shi'a minorities George Bush and John Major claimed to be protecting.
Last week the television news reports described actually destroyed buildings as "allegedly hit", while the Tomahawks and B52s were said to have struck only "radar sites" and "strategic control centres". Technology was once again celebrated, with Dan Dare maps and the Tomahawks looking sleek and marvellous on the BBC and ITN (which used the same Pentagon footage) as they launched against the sunrise. Clinton's electoral priorities were mentioned in passing, though matters of life and death were irrelevant. Once again, the news was cast in Hollywood.
Apart from the promotion of war as a science, the propaganda triumph of the 1991 Gulf slaughter was the elevation of Saddam Hussein as a second Adolf Hitler. This meant that "getting Saddam" was a justifiable imperative, while any suggestion that thousands of innocent, already suffering Iraqis would be "got" instead of him was suppressed. The required contortion of intellect, let alone morality, was not confined to the tabloids.
In their 1993 study of the British media's reporting of the Gulfwar, for the Glasgow Media Group, Greg Philo and Greg McLaughlin describe the incessant replaying of Pentagon videos on the BBC. "Like two sports commentators, David Dimbleby and defence correspondent, David Shukman were almost rapt with enthusiasm", they wrote. "They called for freeze-frames and replays as they highlighted 'tine action' on screen with computer 'light-pens'. 'This is the promised hi-tech war . . .' said Shukman 'without causing casualties amongst the civilian population around.' "
Has time stood still since 1991? Clinton's act of terror was illegal at the very least. Moreover, his missiles were aimed at the south of Iraq, where there were no Kurds to "defend" and no advancing Iraqi army to punish. And this week the Kurds whom Saddam helped have occupied all of the disputed north, rendering hollow the rationale for the Clinton attack. Imagine the media reaction had the Soviet Union done something similar in Turkey, a Nato "ally" whose army has been routinely slaughtering its Kurdish population with American-supplied aircraft and the approval of Clinton.
No missiles have rained down on Jakarta as the Indonesian tyrant, Suharto, has gone about his western-approved task of decimating the population of East Timor and murdering his own people "on a staggering scale", according to Amnesty. No missiles have rained down on the venal, drugs-enriched regime in Colombia, Latin America's leading violator of human rights, and the recipient of the majority of American military aid. The list would fill this and the following pages.
The question persists: when will journalists break the mould and report the hypocrisy and terrorism of their own governments, instead of covering for them? "Imperial" is the word no one dares speak; yet the rehabilitation of western imperial power and thought in the post-cold war world is the news that people have a right to know. The journalists who understand this might ponder the reports of Reiner Luyken, the London correspondent of the independent Hamburg newspaper, Die Zeit. Reporting on the "cultural Chernobyl" effect of the Murdoch newspapers on Britain, he writes, "I have lived in Britain a long time. Self-censorship is now so commonplace that journalists admit to it without blushing."
Lastweek, the World Health Organisation reported that 500,000 children had died in Iraq as a direct result of sanctions imposed by the US and Britain. The Red Cross has described the "catastrophic conditions" among the Iraqi population as Washington seeks to stop the Iraqis selling $2 million worth of oil to pay for essential food and medical supplies. For most of the media this is not news.
Neither is the fact that the Anglo-American campaign against Saddam Hussein is bogus; that the "Beast of Baghdad" remains the convenient incarnation of what the Foreign Office used to call its "Arab Facade". The American administration, according to the New York Times, longs for the good old days when Saddam's "iron fist held Iraq together, much to the satisfaction of the American allies, Turkey and Saudi Arabia". During the 1991 slaughter the British government imprisoned as many Iraqi opposition leaders as it could round up. The truth is that Saddam Hussein was still their man, or rather George Bush's man, whom he backed against the mullahs in Iran and trusted to guard America's interests. Alas,the beast got uppity.
Shortly after Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990 -- the Kuwaiti tyranny was then sapping his oil -- the US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, argued against military intervention, predicting that Saddam would withdraw and put "his puppetin [and] everyone in the Arab world will be happy".
Saddam certainly tried to extricate himself, but the Bush administration was not interested; it wanted to demonstrate its new single-superpower status, and Iraq was the perfect place. It wanted also to show off its enduring military power, thus overshadowing the decline of its economic power; and along the way it wanted to protect Saudi oil from the competition of cheaper Iraqi oil. Every overture Saddam made, and there were plenty, was ignored.
This was hardly reported outside New York's Newsday. For further details, I recommend Noam Chomsky's latest book, Power and Prospects (South End Press, Boston).
"We need," said Erskine Childers, the great Irish broadcaster, writer and United Nations peacemaker before he died last week, "to unite our popular forces to resist and overcome the sordid mess we have allowed tired and cynical elites to make of a world whose human spirit yet holds so much promise on a planet of breathtaking beauty."
Those whose job is to keep the record straight and who prefer to see themselves as agents of people, not power, might heed his words.
COPYRIGHT 1996 New Statesman, Ltd.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group
The only person who made Saddam the enemy is the US. Get your facts straight before you start making comments about my mom being *raped* by Saddam in Canada's backyard.
Have a read and maybe you will learn a thing or two.
The barbarities of Saddam Hussein are on a minor scale compared with the consistent, and censored, terrorism of the west.(Column)
Author/s: John Pilger
Issue: Sept 13, 1996
President Clinton's attack on Iraq produced an impressive if disspiriting consistency in the media. The 1991 Gulf war, although opposed by a majority of the public, was supported by all the mainstream media, with the lone exception of the Guardian. Feats of technology were allowed to dominate the news, many of them fake, such as the attacks on Iraq's Scud missile sites, none of which were destroyed as claimed. Contrary to the propaganda at the time, fewer than 10 per cent of the "smart" weapons hit their targets.
Still, the Independent and others rejoiced in the "miraculously few casualties". The opposite was true. By all authoritative studies, some 200,000 people were slaughtered by the Allies, mainly by US and British forces. Most were the Kurdish and Shi'a minorities George Bush and John Major claimed to be protecting.
Last week the television news reports described actually destroyed buildings as "allegedly hit", while the Tomahawks and B52s were said to have struck only "radar sites" and "strategic control centres". Technology was once again celebrated, with Dan Dare maps and the Tomahawks looking sleek and marvellous on the BBC and ITN (which used the same Pentagon footage) as they launched against the sunrise. Clinton's electoral priorities were mentioned in passing, though matters of life and death were irrelevant. Once again, the news was cast in Hollywood.
Apart from the promotion of war as a science, the propaganda triumph of the 1991 Gulf slaughter was the elevation of Saddam Hussein as a second Adolf Hitler. This meant that "getting Saddam" was a justifiable imperative, while any suggestion that thousands of innocent, already suffering Iraqis would be "got" instead of him was suppressed. The required contortion of intellect, let alone morality, was not confined to the tabloids.
In their 1993 study of the British media's reporting of the Gulfwar, for the Glasgow Media Group, Greg Philo and Greg McLaughlin describe the incessant replaying of Pentagon videos on the BBC. "Like two sports commentators, David Dimbleby and defence correspondent, David Shukman were almost rapt with enthusiasm", they wrote. "They called for freeze-frames and replays as they highlighted 'tine action' on screen with computer 'light-pens'. 'This is the promised hi-tech war . . .' said Shukman 'without causing casualties amongst the civilian population around.' "
Has time stood still since 1991? Clinton's act of terror was illegal at the very least. Moreover, his missiles were aimed at the south of Iraq, where there were no Kurds to "defend" and no advancing Iraqi army to punish. And this week the Kurds whom Saddam helped have occupied all of the disputed north, rendering hollow the rationale for the Clinton attack. Imagine the media reaction had the Soviet Union done something similar in Turkey, a Nato "ally" whose army has been routinely slaughtering its Kurdish population with American-supplied aircraft and the approval of Clinton.
No missiles have rained down on Jakarta as the Indonesian tyrant, Suharto, has gone about his western-approved task of decimating the population of East Timor and murdering his own people "on a staggering scale", according to Amnesty. No missiles have rained down on the venal, drugs-enriched regime in Colombia, Latin America's leading violator of human rights, and the recipient of the majority of American military aid. The list would fill this and the following pages.
The question persists: when will journalists break the mould and report the hypocrisy and terrorism of their own governments, instead of covering for them? "Imperial" is the word no one dares speak; yet the rehabilitation of western imperial power and thought in the post-cold war world is the news that people have a right to know. The journalists who understand this might ponder the reports of Reiner Luyken, the London correspondent of the independent Hamburg newspaper, Die Zeit. Reporting on the "cultural Chernobyl" effect of the Murdoch newspapers on Britain, he writes, "I have lived in Britain a long time. Self-censorship is now so commonplace that journalists admit to it without blushing."
Lastweek, the World Health Organisation reported that 500,000 children had died in Iraq as a direct result of sanctions imposed by the US and Britain. The Red Cross has described the "catastrophic conditions" among the Iraqi population as Washington seeks to stop the Iraqis selling $2 million worth of oil to pay for essential food and medical supplies. For most of the media this is not news.
Neither is the fact that the Anglo-American campaign against Saddam Hussein is bogus; that the "Beast of Baghdad" remains the convenient incarnation of what the Foreign Office used to call its "Arab Facade". The American administration, according to the New York Times, longs for the good old days when Saddam's "iron fist held Iraq together, much to the satisfaction of the American allies, Turkey and Saudi Arabia". During the 1991 slaughter the British government imprisoned as many Iraqi opposition leaders as it could round up. The truth is that Saddam Hussein was still their man, or rather George Bush's man, whom he backed against the mullahs in Iran and trusted to guard America's interests. Alas,the beast got uppity.
Shortly after Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990 -- the Kuwaiti tyranny was then sapping his oil -- the US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, argued against military intervention, predicting that Saddam would withdraw and put "his puppetin [and] everyone in the Arab world will be happy".
Saddam certainly tried to extricate himself, but the Bush administration was not interested; it wanted to demonstrate its new single-superpower status, and Iraq was the perfect place. It wanted also to show off its enduring military power, thus overshadowing the decline of its economic power; and along the way it wanted to protect Saudi oil from the competition of cheaper Iraqi oil. Every overture Saddam made, and there were plenty, was ignored.
This was hardly reported outside New York's Newsday. For further details, I recommend Noam Chomsky's latest book, Power and Prospects (South End Press, Boston).
"We need," said Erskine Childers, the great Irish broadcaster, writer and United Nations peacemaker before he died last week, "to unite our popular forces to resist and overcome the sordid mess we have allowed tired and cynical elites to make of a world whose human spirit yet holds so much promise on a planet of breathtaking beauty."
Those whose job is to keep the record straight and who prefer to see themselves as agents of people, not power, might heed his words.
COPYRIGHT 1996 New Statesman, Ltd.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group
The only person who made Saddam the enemy is the US. Get your facts straight before you start making comments about my mom being *raped* by Saddam in Canada's backyard.
