Why Chinese Democracy?

[MetaSouL]

Having lived in the middle east for the past 3 years, the tone of 'Riad [should actually be Riyadh] and the bedoins' isn't well-informed - another 'one in a million' moment I guess - but filled with post 9-11 angst. Too bad. I lived there for 2 years and had great experiences.

It is painful to see people take these political stances when they are so unaware [not Axl, because we are still waiting to see the product]. Those who want to torch other nations politcally should become more objective of their own culture [read Chomsky for beginners], and then be able to tackle political evils abroad as well as at home. Ethnocentricity in rock 'n' roll has to stop sometime!

Just some ideas ...

Very good point. Chomsky has published over 70 books, so it should not be hard to find a few of them. I recommend "Hegemony or Survival" or "911".

Noam Chomsky has been quoted in scholarly literature more times than anyone in the history of the world (with the exception of Jesus and Shakespeare). This is a fact – look it up. Also, The New York Times stated that Chomsky is "quite possibly the most important intellectual alive today". Mainstream media is afraid to air him because his words are so dangerous, and not because of what he says, but the fact that he is a walking encyclopedia and can back up any statement he makes with numerous examples. He has a way of showing you life through other people's eyes. Chomsky will take our American standards that we hold select countries throughout the world to and then he will apply theses same standards to the US to give a polarized view of being in another’s shoes. Such as:

Comparing non-nuclear Iraq to nuclear Israel and asking the question, should we force inspections of Israel and invade them since they have the greatest known stockpile of WMD in the Middle East? How can we serious about a nuclear free Middle East with such stark hypocrisy? Or…when Iraq occupied Kuwait in 1991 and the US attacked them, Chomsky would say, ok, then we should also apply this standard to Israel, whom had occupied Gaza and Lebanon, both found illegal per international law (and condemned by the UN), and the later responsible for thousands of deaths beyond Saddam's aggressions, yet with U.S. military aid still flowing to Israel.

Another example is when we decided to go to war with Iraq in 2002 and switched our reasoning from “WMD” to “bringing democracy” because Saddam was a “murderer” (referencing the mass gassings of the Kurds). Chomsky asks who was supporting and funding Iraq during the height of the gassings? Then he goes on to site how we were giving Saddam billion dollar loans, how we sold him cyanide pre-cursers, dual use equipment, the helicopters that were used to spray the people, etc. He goes on to say things about how we not only supported was happening (until international pressure forced us to take a stance well after the worst of the atrocities), but we applauded the use of chemical weapons on Iran during the Iraq/Iran war. So he would say, from Saddam’s point of view, the Americans are funding him, supporting him, approving the use of WMD on Iranians, so why would the US care if he was gassing the Kurds in his own country who wanted him out of power. The short answer is that we didn’t care, but it makes a nice case to build the view that Saddam was a monster who needed to be removed from power. Chomsky would say that if this is the case, there are plenty of other “monsters” around the world whom are responsible for much greater death that we could pick on, if we were truly serious about policing crime around the globe. In fact, Chomsky would argue we empowed a great majority of them, such as Saddam, who we put in power via a CIA coup (Saddam was on the CIA payroll), or Osama Bin Laden, who was also a CIA agent, documented clearly through declassified documents. Relative to what Iraq was doing, Chomsky would go on to point out Turkey to the North of Iraq, where tens of thousands of Kurds were murdered by the Turkish government, who was the #2 recipient of US arms (and support) next to Israel, but did you see us invade Turkey?

Or a classic, when the Oklahoma City bombing occurred did we bomb New York where Timothy McVeigh was from? Did we Bomb Montana where his support group resided? No, we didn’t, so why are we bombing Afghanistan? Chomsky uses a myriad of examples like this, including Indonesia and East Timor where over a million people were slaughtered while the US financed, supplied arms, and applauded what was happening….just so we could have an economic foothold in the country. Afterwards, we went in and divided up the country, giving economic control to the top US mega-corporations, from Oil to copper to the rain forests. Or on the subject of Saddam breaking Security Council resolutions, Chomsky would point out the Israel has broken more, or that the US has vetoed more, insinuating that without our veto power, we would have likely violated more. Or he would bring up the fact that we are the only country in the world to be convicted of international terrorism by a court of law and defy any reparations. For example, when the World Court, the highest judicial authority on the planet, condemned us for our terrorism in Nicaragua in the 80’s, and we ignored the ruling with no consequences. Why? Because we are the superpower. Chomsky has often said that terrorists are the guys with little guns, while heroes are the guys with big guns.

Chomsky would ask how we can turn a blind eye from the fact that an estimated 100,000 civilians are dead in Iraq as a result of the US occupation and bombing, then ask you how 100,000 dead here (referring to Iraq), a million dead there (referring to Indonesia), is acceptable, yet 5000 dead in a New York building or 2000 American troops dead are enraging. As I stated in a previous post: How often do you hear about the dead children of US bombings in Iraq that total more than the US soldiers killed? Are children worth less? In sum, terrorism is terrorism and the best prevention is to stop participating in it. Being on the winning team doesn’t determine morality.

By the way, many artists love Chomsky. He was Rage Against the Machine's biggest influence (who also interviewed him), as well as a laundry list of other artists such as SOAD, Viggo Mortensen, and Buckethead to name a few...and with Finck also being a peace activist, I'm sure CD will bring up some well informed but unpopular subject matter.

[Takeshi]

I'm getting sick repeating this, but here goes again. The reason why we can't "force inspections" in Israel is that the Israelis never agreed to inspections in the first place. After the first war with Iraq, in the ceasefire agreement, the Iraqi's agreed to abandon their WMD programmes and allow UN inspectors unrestricted access to any part of Iraq to not only verify the destruction of their weapons but to ensure through a programme of random inspections that they could never restart the WMD programmes. By now allowing unrestricted access to the UN inspectors, the Iraqi's were in violation of the ceasefire agreement and this meant that the US had the legal right to resume hostilities.

At the time the gassing of the kurds happened during the war with Iran, the CIA believed that the intended target of the attack was the Iranian army and the kurds had been hit acidentally. It was only a number of years later that they discovered that it had been an intentional attack. As for who armed Iraq, his biggest suppliers were the germans and the russians. All his helicopters are russian made and he didn't get those from us, or the russian made tanks, artillery pieces, and AK's. Bringing up the term "dual use equipment" has to one of the more intellectually dishonest parts of your post. Dual use equipment can pretty much cover anything as almost anything has a possible military use. For example, a factory that makes yogurt can also be used to make biological weapons with only minor modifications. Should we refuse to sell equipment to make yogurt?

Your comment on montana is just beyond idiotic.

Your hero is just a "useful idiot" for the terrorists. Someone who helps their agenda. It would be a great thing if he went to iraq and got to meet the people he's helping. I'm sure they would welcome him with open arms, before they cut his head off.

[MetaSouL]

I'm getting sick repeating this, but here goes again. The reason why we can't "force inspections" in Israel is that the Israelis never agreed to inspections in the first place. After the first war with Iraq, in the ceasefire agreement, the Iraqi's agreed to abandon their WMD programmes and allow UN inspectors unrestricted access to any part of Iraq to not only verify the destruction of their weapons but to ensure through a programme of random inspections that they could never restart the WMD programmes. By now allowing unrestricted access to the UN inspectors, the Iraqi's were in violation of the ceasefire agreement and this meant that the US had the legal right to resume hostilities.

At the time the gassing of the kurds happened during the war with Iran, the CIA believed that the intended target of the attack was the Iranian army and the kurds had been hit acidentally. It was only a number of years later that they discovered that it had been an intentional attack. As for who armed Iraq, his biggest suppliers were the germans and the russians. All his helicopters are russian made and he didn't get those from us, or the russian made tanks, artillery pieces, and AK's. Bringing up the term "dual use equipment" has to one of the more intellectually dishonest parts of your post. Dual use equipment can pretty much cover anything as almost anything has a possible military use. For example, a factory that makes yogurt can also be used to make biological weapons with only minor modifications. Should we refuse to sell equipment to make yogurt?

Your comment on montana is just beyond idiotic.

Your hero is just a "useful idiot" for the terrorists. Someone who helps their agenda. It would be a great thing if he went to iraq and got to meet the people he's helping. I'm sure they would welcome him with open arms, before they cut his head off.

Actually, we used the same logic you suggest about yogurt on critical medicinal and vaccination supplies during our sanctions campaign which killed 1.5 million citizens in Iraq, a half-million of them being children. You can justify all night how Saddam refused to distribute supplies or how we didn’t know he gassed the Kurds or how Israel said this but Iraq said that…it doesn’t change the reality of the equation or the death toll. In fact, at times we were holding up to 700 million in life sustaining supplies during the time of the sanctions, 70 million of it was food, all the while we pointed the finger at Saddam, when in reality 88% of all humanitarian supplies that were allowed in the country were distributed to designated locations within one week of entering the country, and as George Somerwill, UN spokesman on Iraq stated, “not one of the UN observation mechanisms has reported any major problem in humanitarian supplies being diverted, switched or in any way misused.” 1.5 million fucking people…and we miraculously hold no responsibility…hell, the 70 million in food blockade amounted to more deaths in itself than 9-11 by far.

As for “dual use”…let’s look at the congressional record for those who don’t know their history. Much of the materials and technology were supplied by the US government, on the congressional record, from Hughes and Bell helicopters to biological and chemical agents, as detailed in a Senate Committee Report of 1994, including Bacillus Anthracis, cause of anthrax, Escherichia Coli (E.Coli) and dozens of others. CDC and congressional records from the early 1990s show that The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a biological sample company, the American Type Culture Collection, sent samples directly to several Iraqi sites that UN weapons inspectors determined were part of Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program. Study up…and take your quiz!

Q: Did the US government condemn the Iraqi use of gas warfare against Iran? A: No

Q: How many people did Saddam Hussein kill using gas in the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988? A: 5,000

Q: How many western countries condemned this action at the time? A:0

Q: How many gallons of Agent Orange did America use in Vietnam? A: 17 million.

Q: Are there any proven links between Iraq and September 11th terrorist attack? A: No

Q: What is the estimated number of civilian casualties in the Iraq War? A: British Medical Journal Lancet estimates 100,000 civilians killed.

Q: What is the estimated number of civilian casualties in the Gulf War (1991)? A: 35,000.

Q: How many tons of depleted uranium were left in Iraq and Kuwait after the Gulf War? A: 40 tons

Q: What according to the UN was the increase in cancer rates in Iraq between 1991 and 1994? A: 700%

Q: How many years has the U.S. engaged in air strikes on Iraq? A: 11 years

Q: Was the U.S and the UK at war with Iraq between December 1998 and September 1999? A: No

Q: How many pounds of explosives were dropped on Iraq between December 1998 and September 1999? A: 20 million

Q: How many years ago was UN Resolution 661 introduced, imposing strict sanctions on Iraq's imports and exports? A: 12 years

Q: What was the child death rate in Iraq in 1989 (per 1,000 births)? A: 38

Q: What was the estimated child death rate in Iraq in 1999 (per 1,000 births)? A: 131 (that's an increase of 345%)

Q: How many Iraqis are estimated to have died by October 1999 as a result of UN sanctions? A: 1.5 million

Q: How many Iraqi children are estimated to have died due to sanctions since 1997? A: 750,000

Q: Did Saddam order the inspectors out of Iraq? A:No

Q: How many inspections were there in November and December 1998? A:300

Q: How many of these inspections had problems? A:5

Q: Were the weapons inspectors allowed entry to the Ba'ath Party HQ? A: Yes

Q: Who said that by December 1998, Iraq had in fact, been disarmed to a level unprecedented in modern history. A: Scott Ritter, UNSCOM chief.

Q: In 1998 how much of Iraq's post 1991 capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction did the UN weapons inspectors claim to have discovered and dismantled? A: 90%

Q: How many UN resolutions did Israel violate by 1992? A: Over 65

Q: How many UN resolutions on Israel did America veto between 1972 and 1990? A: 30+

Q: How much does the U.S. fund Israel a year? A: $5 billion

Q: How many countries are known to have nuclear weapons? A: 8

Q: How many nuclear warheads does Iraq have? A: 0

Q: How many nuclear warheads does US have? A: over 10,000

Q: Which is the only country to use nuclear weapons? A: the US

Q: How many nuclear warheads does Israel have? A: Over 400

Q: Has Israel ever allowed UN weapons inspections? A: No

Q: What percentage of the Palestinian territories are controlled by Israeli settlements? A: 42%

Q: Is Israel illegally occupying Palestinian land? A: Yes

Q: Which country do you think poses the greatest threat to global peace: Iraq or the U.S.? A: ?

Q: What percent of US military spending would ensure the essentials of life to everyone in the world, according the UN? A: 10%

I gave you all the answers and you still failed…

Oh, and it doesn’t take a genius to conclude that regardless of whether or not Israel “agreed” to weapons inspections, a “nuclear free Middle East” will never be a reality without dropping the hypocrisy and double standards that lend to Israel being the 5th largest nuclear superpower…

[GunsN'Pringles]

maybe because theres a song called chinese democracy???

i really dont know

all i know that the next album is called japanese republic

the third one is called Taiwan Independence ! rock1

[King_of_Beers]

It's easy to turn people against fur because only the wealthy can generally afford it. It's the old politics of envy that the left is always ready to exploit. There are just as many animals used and abused in the creation of leather, wool and in food production. They find it easy to harrass a 60 year old woman in a fur coat, they're not as ready to fuck with a bunch of bikers in leather. I'm all for killing animals in as painless a way as possible but people who complain about fur while they're wearing leather, just look plain dumb.

People wear fur costs to keep themselves warm, like in Russia or Ukraine, also animal fur being natural is good to wear in the rain or snow. It sounds like I am a heartless bastard but that is the nature of the game, with bieng human animal fur serves us better than them.

However to get the fur, there is no excuse in unnecessary pain to the animals.

maybe because theres a song called chinese democracy???

i really dont know

all i know that the next album is called japanese republic

the third one is called Taiwan Independence ! rock1

I think you are wrong the titles are

1 - Chinese Democracy

2 - Nuclear Iran

3 - America Apologises

[jack99]

Loder: You're going to call this album "Chinese Democracy". What is the meaning of that, since there is no Chinese democracy, of course?

Axl: Well, there's a lot of Chinese Democracy movements, and it's something that there's a lot of talk about, and it's something that will be nice to see. It could also just be like an ironic statement. I don't know, I just like the sound of it.

Thanks, P4A!

This thread has gone way off-topic. Dobadog, please continue here:

http://www.mygnrforum.com/index.php?showtopic=60374

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