support oue military men and women!

Kintaro.
Uzma has said on several occasions that she is a Muslim woman.

Uzma.
So the team is called Manchester United. Now I remember, you are right. I think they wear red uniforms.

Bill.
There are many strong, independent minded women who are not into the feminist, leftist, feel sorry for yourself victim mentality. I like to think I am one of them also.
It is possible to be tolerant and progressive and still in many ways be traditional and conservative. And, I might also say, feminine.
This is something I think I share in common with Uzma and an increasingy number of women.

Uzma, you sound like you know what you are talking about. You must drive your leftist friends crazy. A strong, self confident women who doesn't espouse the leftist ideology of victimhood. I bet you send shivers down their spines. God, I love a real intelligent woman. Keep the faith, but don't be afraid to share it. We need strong ladies like you to speak up in our great nation. BTW, I hope all is well in the hair growth efforts.

Imagine a world where there are no countries, no poverty, no hunger, no war and no government.

Close your eyes. Think about it for 15 seconds.

Open them now. In the next 15 seconds, I doubt 1 % will actually do something to get close to the human dream of peace.


As for race, religion, and other biases, the only way to get rid of them is to re-vamp the whole idea or throw it out. Like religion especially. The convert and die people, on all sides of the multi-sided fence.... the "God bless this side, God bless the other."..... It's engrained in the definition of most religions, clearly christianity and islam.

And this may not sound like a news breaker, especially when it is ignored by both sides, God's not on your side or any other's, and he's not playing dice with the world for one reason, that the concept of a divinity is flawed. If you care for the here and now, you love people in the here and now. If you care about a ticket to heaven, most (not all) people wait to love in the there and then, which quite logically doesn't exist, or at least doesn't exist in any (wo)man-made concept.


America is the strongest nation in the world because they have a loving hand as soft as silk, and an iron fist as the other. Some may debate that they use the other hand too much, but liberating the world (or at least attempting to) is a two-hand job. Both hands must work together, to weed out problems, and to fill them in with solutions.

The only 2 problems with this semi-utopic description of the world is this : 1, Bush's, and practically everyone else's references to God doesn't advance the cause, real people do...... and 2, the most probable cash cow scenario (i.e. profiting from the oil fields) will most likely happen.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, but I see the road since there is no hell, just here.

P.S.
I'm glad you find me entertaining Uzma, us Americans are into entertainment, as I'm sure you know.

You are entertaining too!!!

Melba

Why have you allowed a civilized discussion to deteriorate into abuse?

All of us have our own viewpoints and although we may not respect those views, let us conduct ourselves with good manners?

I do not want a world war. I want peace, harmony and justice. I want a world where Christians, Jews, Hindus peacefully co-exist, with autonomy and without interference with each other.
You to your ways and we to ours.

As Kintaro said, terrorism is terrorism not matter who is pulling the trigger.
I did not wish to inflate or incense people, just to make them see both sides. I am glad that Lady Maria presented her views as strongly as I did.

It is a pity that you have to resort to slurs.
I forgive you and hope that you improve yourself so that you can have reasonable articulate discussions in future.

We really don't care about your dumb ideas Uzma. How come us Christians don't have a problem with the Chinese buddha people or the Hindus? How come its allways the Muslims that fight with everybody?
When I lived in Chicago the most prejudiced people towards us blacks was the arabs. They looked at us like animals, they were worse than Ku Klux Klansmen. Maybe the problem ain't America or Tony Blair or the Buddhas or the Christians. Maybe it is your Jihad Muslim holy war garbage!!!!!
Uzma you and Saddam Hussein can KISS MY BLACK A#S!!!!! SADDAM IS DEAD MEAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Turkey is a secular democracy. The people of Turkey have democractic governments that behave like autocrats. The people are Muslim, but the govt wants to be part of the Europe and the EU. The people have been restricted in their religious practises for generations. The dervishes were outlawed and head-scarves were banned until recently. People are Muslim but the govt is not and if it were a true democracy, the elected govt. would not be abusing the basic human rights of their people to freely practise their religion.
No Arab wants an evil dictator. Arabs are historically, socially and politically, tribal people. They are used to being led by a benevolent dictator. It has been this way for generations. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, etc are all wealthy Arab states. They are not democracies. You don’t see their people requring liberation from autocracy. That is because they have money. They are fed.
The Afgans are tribal and we want to impose democracy on them. It has and will fail. They follow tribal leaders. Period. Pakistan is a democracy but go onto the streets of Karachi. Speak to the ordinary person, speak to the middle classes – basically you will hear the same thing. They want the Muslim political system. They are detached from democracy and it from them. It hasn’t worked – they have tried it. They don’t want it. This is what the US/K fears. A wholesale Muslim revolution like they had in Iran. Why don’t we just leave them alone to get on with it, rather than interfering.
Last week, I had dinner with (among others) a Slovakian doctor and a Lithuanian scientist. You are right. They have been through hell with communism and democracy is better because it is not so invasive in terms of their personal freedoms. But they are uncomfortable with how democracy will develop. Democracy detaches state from people. We talked about exactly that happening in Britain at the moment and what it really said about western states. They are demonstrating yet…they still fear that they will be silenced by invisible hands who now have the shelter of a west-sanctioned political system. Vladmir Putin – the Russian premier – is not seeing mass demonstrations on the streets of his nation. Except the anti-war ones which have the satisfaction of knkowing that their leader reflects the will of their people.

Muslim immigrants and refugees want the economic benefits of the west. They do not want, need or share western values.
I socialise with a wide range of Arabs, Iranians, Egyptians and Pakistanis who have settled in our countries. I know plenty who have been born in the UK. Some of them have given up. They feel they had better behave like the white majority and become "integrated", i.e indistinguishable from the "host" population. Indeed they have been "encouraged" to do this in Britain by David Blunkett - a Cabinet member (Senior Government) and others. They are "encouraged" to speak to their young children exclusively in english. A slow cultural genocide.

But something interesting is going on. They young people of Muslim origin are turning away from western values. They are recovering their Muslim identities and expressing repugnance at their parent moral ambiguity. Today we saw thousands of children and teenagers flow onto the streets of a number of major British cities in Anti-war protest.
With them were their teachers, Members of Parliament, intellectuals, etc. Not just the usual left-wing suspects, those who did not belong to any political party or had ever had a political opinion were out in force for the first time. Ordinary British people with their children. Grandparents.

My point is that what the new, west-born, un-westernised Muslim community wants is not what we think every "intelligent" person would want. That is racist and ignorant, because it assumes that they don’t have anything better.
Islam has it's own ideal political system, women's rights are intrinsic in this as is a welfare state. What the west offers is timely economic security and a secular, distant political system that prefers the individual not to think too much.

With respect, you appear to believe that democracy is synonymus with freedom. That made me laugh. Have you heard of Israel? Please wake up!!!
Also, you imply that some of my comments were racist. I wish we were face to face and you knew who and what I am. And I have been to the US, specifically, DC, Iowa, LA and Chicago. Indeed I have lots of family members in the US and in Canada. People are basically good and well-meaning. I also work in a multi-national corporation, with Americans. I have relatives (including my sister) in various UN agencies.
Yes, Americans are “nice” people. They also tend (I generalise) to have a particulary American characteristic of thinking that because they are the No.1 superpower in the world at the moment – that they are right. That we all want to be Americans. I find this incredibly arrogant and I am not alone. This, and US foreign policy, is why America is so hated around the world.

My prediction for the next few years is that US/K aggression in the Middle-east will be tolerated by the rest of the world for a while. But that arrogance I spoke of earlier will go too far at some point and there will be a backlash. I think the scale will be unprecedented and that it will make WW2 look like picnic.

Debate is good.
Thank you for being an articulate opponent.
Back to hair….?

I think we all agree that Sadam is doing no good. But the way the US and UK have gone about this isn't anything to write home about either. They have completely undermined the UN and refuse to listen to other opinions. This week I heard Tony Blair say they cannot back off now because what message would that give to Sadam. The fact is the US and UK put themselves in that situation where it was politically impossible not to go to war!
And truly believe that the US and K will in fact not beat Sadam with this war. He has a massive tunnelsystem where he can hide. Most Iraqi people have nowhere to hide, and they are the ones who will get hurt.

And yes, countries are dependent on us economically, as we are them. It is interdependence.
The life expectancy in Latin America in 1950 was 40 years. Today it is 65 years on average. The "terrible" Americans and our"colonialism", our economic system and our science and medical science, has increased life expectancy by 25 years there.
If you don't believe me check the stats.

Golbalization and the spread of modern economics and democracy isn't just benefiting the West. Every rational person wants it. Everyone wants what the U.S. and Britian have, that's why they want to move to our countries or have what we have in their countries.
I don't feel sorry for you Uzma even if you have lived through a war. My respect goes to those who support our military and modernization and women's rights., and they are not "brainwashed".

I have a male cousin who is in the military and his political and human rights positions are much better thought out than yours are. He is very intelligent and articulate, hardly anyone's "puppet" or dupe. He is brave and has good values as most Americans do . Contrary to the myth, most of us aren't criminals, drug addicts or prostitutes, we are good people. I hope you can visit the U.S. some day Uzma. There are many nice people here.

I call the military personnel innocents because by virtue of being pawns of the government they are not engaging their individual brains. This is termed “neotony” – a condition of voluntary, child-like brainwashing and suspension of the personal conscience i.e. the personal discrimination between right and wrong. I have heard the words of war veterns from WW2. There were many who came out wearing their medals with pride last month during the Anti-War march. And they were carrying banners saying “Not in Our Name”. These men were interviewed on TV and expressed their total opposition to what they called an unjustified and immoral war.
And do the US/K soldiers truly know what they are doing and why they are fighting – truly know the agenda of our so-called leaders? We have heard the US say that they will “bring democracy to Iraq”. If that is anything like the democracy the US brought to Afganistan, it will be replacing a dictator with a puppet whose strings are pulled by the US. You cannot import the Western development and political model into the Muslim world. It doesn’t fit. The only thing the US will achieve – and this is to their own advantage – is neo-colonialism. Wake up.

As for WW2 – yes the Allied Forces (UK & US plus others) defeated the nazis. But lets not confuse the leaders of the past with the leaders of the present. And lets not confuse the Western societies of the 1930s & 40s who did not live in gangland, drug culture, etc – but had a sense of morality, honour and integrity. Sadly lacking in these materialistic and self-serving times.
With due respect, if your origins are Latin, than you know about the impact of US foreign policy in Nicaragua & Cuba. Oh and what about the freedom and democracy in Brazil and Argentina. What about the abject poverty and soaring wealth. What about the death squads. What about the disappeared. Social problems perpetuated and supported by so-called democracy.
It is naïve to think that human rights abuses do not occur under democracies. They are covered up or are taken abroad. I guess this may seem like a totally crazy statement to you, but justice, peace and women’s rights existed before the version of “democracy” you have placed on a pedestal. Wake up.

What has hurt the Iraqui people has been the collusion of the US/K in supporting Saddam for decades. He is playing games. He was taught well be his US/K masters. Now he is an easy target. His people have been brutalised by his western supported regime. We sold him the chemical & biological weapons, because he was keeping the middle-east in a state of chaos via the Iran-Iraq war. That was really good for our countries. It distracted everone from the Palestinian death-count and nicely started the demonization of Islam process for us.
I don’t think the US/K want Iraqi oil. They want ALL the oil. They want it under their control and they want the people of the regions possessing oil to become like the neotonized military. Wake up.

The Iraqi people want peace. They want to be able to live in security. They do not want to be invaded by us. SH spends aid money on palaces while his people starve. We let him do this because it suited us. We let the Palestinian situation continue because this too is in our interests.
What will we bring the Iraqis? Our forces will “open” Iraq and then go for the next country on their list. What we are offering these people is trade. We trade your dictator for our subtle, hypocritical dictatorship. We hope you are too stuffed with food, clothes, and the other goodies we will tempt you with, to notice. Wake up.

The US/K have declared themselves – because of their economic and military power – as having the right to impose their agenda on the world. Anti-War protestors in the UK and all over the world are far from ignorant. The ignorant ones are those who believe the lies without looking deeper – without thinking.
The argument you used, the “spread of democracy” was used two centuries ago by the colonialist. They said they were spreading civilization. And the inquisition – they were spreading Christianity. And the slave-traders? – they didn’t bother with a justification, they just knew that “Might was Right”. Wake up.

Democracies are here to represent (a) the will of the electorate (b) the best interests of the state.
(a) is being ignored. Democracy is a casualty of this war, along with truth.
(b) is being implemented in the most malicious manner.

Finally, I am not a pacifict. I will fight for justice and peace. I have lived through two wars and know how that feels. I am now in a democract country that is acting like the agressive terrorists it hates.
The US/K are rebelling against the United Nations – which was set up after WW2 to prevent another world war. They have undermined it’s authority as much as Saddam has.

Lets not pretend that we are the "good guys" - we are not fooling anyone in the world - not the governments and not the populations, except those who are too scared or dependant on trade/aid to oppose us (and of course, some of our own sleeping populations).