Re: What's our freedom worth ?

Howard9 wrote:

People al over the world want freedom and democracy. It is wanted and
prayed for by every culture and every race and every nationality. Sadly
the world of Islam has denied it's people this freedom in the cause of
their own selfish power.

I see. You know what Muslims want (even if you don't actually know any
Muslims personally) and you know what's best for them and you're going on a
crusade to make sure they get it.

Be very careful. Wiser and better-informed minds than yours or mine have
sounded a note of warning you would do well to heed:

"The Middle East lacks the conditions, such as a democratic political
history, high standards of living, and high literacy rates, which stimulated
democratic change in, for example, central Europe and East Asia."
(Patrick Basham, senior fellow, Center for Representative Democracy, Cato
Institute)

"Even if some version of democracy took root...anti-American sentiment is so
pervasive that Iraqi elections in the short term could lead to the rise of
Islamic-controlled governments hostile to the United States."
(Bureau of Intelligence and Research, US State Department, Feb. 2003)

This is the logistical problem facing the West, not only in Iraq, but in
most of the Middle East.

The present elections in Iraq are a huge gamble. To pretend otherwise is
folly.

The Americans defeated a brutal and militaristic religious/emperor
society [in Japan]

Oh, the early Meji period was brutal and militaristic, all right, but during
the second half of the 19th century Japan did what no other country has
done. It pulled itself from the middle ages into the modern world, and it
did it under its own steam, not propped up by the Americans or anyone else.

and gave freedom and democracy and incredible economic success
to the Japanese people.

Believe me, whatever they've got they worked for.

The turnout at elections is a testament to it's stability and success.

Voter turnout is in danger of dropping below 50% within the next few years,
especially as many younger people are politically apathetic.

I think you have very confused notions of how much the Japanese people have
shown themselves capable of achieving on their own initiative. Just as an
example, how long do you think it might have been after the Americans
dropped the atom bomb on the city of Hiroshima before the buses were up and
running again?

These are very determined people. You are right, their society is stable,
but its stability comes from within, not from some candy called democracy
given by the Americans.

Not voting is a democratic right not enjoyed by anyone in the middle
east before the present Iraqi liberation.

Gasp! I'm sorry. I had assumed you were at least moderately well-informed.
But you really are ignorant, aren't you?

For your information, Turkey first adopted democracy in 1923, and continues
to be a parliamentary democracy today. The Palestinians - also a democracy -
just voted Hamas into power. Don't you read the papers? A November 2002
report on"the recent sweep of elections in Morocco, Bahrain, Turkey and
Pakistan" comments on "a voter turnout of more than 50 percent in all four
countries", noting drily that "the last midterm elections in the US saw only
a 36 percent participation". The same article also points out that "elected
parliaments exist in every Arab country except Saudi Arabia and a few other
small Gulf states" (though it rightly observes that in some countries the
elections are a farce).
(http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DK07Ak05.html)

So much for your knowledge of the basic facts.

To its credit, America has encouraged these democratic developments, but the
other side of the coin is that Al Qaida is motivated, in part, by America's
support for repressive regimes in the Middle East (notably Saudi Arabia and
Egypt).

Ask the Japanese if they want to give it up ? they do not. They value
it enormously and celebrate their freedom and success, greatly received
by the blood of young American lives.

Ask them if they support Bush's invasion of Iraq. They do not. If the people
had their way...oops...funny...I thought that was what democracy was meant
to be about...If the people had their way Japan would not have given one yen
or one soldier in support of that war. Strangely enough, a similar mood was
widespread in Britain (very different from the mood of the first Gulf War).
Two cheers for democracy.

Democracy is the natural right and desire of every human being on this
planet. No human being does not desire it except those who use their
power to oppress and deny them that natural right.

Wrong. Democracy can and does fail at the ballot box when the people vote
for fascism, nazism, communism, religious fundamentalism, etc.. You
evidently know little of human nature and even less of history or current
affairs.

If the invasion of Iraq had had a broad-based mandate, like the
first Gulf War, I'd have accepted it as a painful necessity, but it
didn't, did it?

Yes it did.

What made the 1991 Gulf War notable was that - in addition to having a
specific mandate from the UN - Kuwait, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi
Arabia, Syria, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates were among those who
joined the coalition, giving it a very broad-based mandate that included
significant support from Islamic countries. The absence of these Islamic
countries weakens the mandate for the occupation of Iraq fatally.

The IRA's Green Book explicitly expounded the policy of "A war
of attrition based on causing as many deaths as possible so as
to create a demand from their [the British] people at home
for their withdrawal", and the catalogue of grievances and
atrocities by all parties involved is well-nigh endless.

There were no street demands for the extermination of the
British people. There were no marchers wearing suicide
vests. There were no marchers supporting murder or
beheadings.

Oh, well, that's all right then. As long as there were only assassinations,
mutilations and bombings of public places, .

The IRA represented less than 2% of the Irish people. Your
knowledge is astonishingly limited and faulty.

I'm not quite sure what that 2% is supposed to mean. Do you mean that less
than 2% belonged to the IRA? If so, you are right; my knowledge is indeed
faulty. I would have put it something in the region of 0.1% if I'd been
asked to guess, and my guess is that the membership of Al Qaida in the
Islamic world is much lower again.

Or do you mean that less than 2% of the Irish people felt that the IRA
represented their wishes and aspirations? But how could you possibly mean
that? The IRA had substantial support during the '60s and '70s, and once
Sinn Fein started to stand in elections in the 1980s it won a lot more than
2% of the vote.

Either way, don't you see that that is my very point? A few extremists in a
society quickly create the perception that the whole society is rabidly
violent. And the society feeds that perception, since, even though the
majority may not approve, or engage in such activities themselves, they will
not fail to open the door and give shelter to an IRA fugitive pursued by
British soldiers...

Bombings and kneecappings were an action by a tiny minuscule
element in a struggle of 'claimed' nationalism. There was no
support among Irish people

I repeat, even though the majority may not approve, or engage in such
activities themselves, they will not fail to open the door and give shelter
to an IRA fugitive pursued by British soldiers. That is tacit support,
either out of fear of what might happen if they are seen as traitors to the
cause, or simply because, well, in the end, they are "our boys".

are you denying that Western hegemony continues in the form of
the IMF, the World Bank, the EC farming subsidies, multinationals,
etc., etc.?

Utter conspiratorial nonsense. What hegemony is imposed by the IMF who
loan money and demand conditions in return ?

Is this a serious question? Very well then:

"The IMF/World Bank conditions -- 'structural adjustment programs' -- force
Southern countries to promote sweatshops, exports to rich countries, and
high-return cash investment. The resulting increase in international
commerce -- corporate globalization -- led to demands by corporations and
investors for ways to lock in their privileges and protection against the
perceived danger of governments seizing assets or imposing new regulations.
The WTO was the answer to those demands, an institution whose secret
tribunals can overrule national laws if they are found to violate the rights
of corporations."
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/wbimf/facts.html

"Many developing nations are in debt and poverty partly due to the policies
of international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
and the World Bank.

"Their programs have been heavily criticized for many years for resulting in
poverty. In addition, for developing or third world countries, there has
been an increased dependency on the richer nations."
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/SAP.asp

Colonialist repression in another guise.

What hegemony is imposed by the EU who look after their own farmers
and make no demands of other countries ? What nonsense.

Again, I can only assume you are as ignorant as you seem. Here is the answer
to your question:

"agricultural subsidies in industrial countries, which are equivalent to 2/3
of Africa's total GDP, undermine developing countries' agricultural sectors
and exports by depressing world prices and pre-empting markets."
http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/ib/2001/110801.htm#iii

And before you start snorting that this is just the ranting of some quango,
take a good look at the source - that is the view of the IMF itself!

Japan has 60 years of freedom and democracy. It's actions are those
desired by it's people.

I'm sorry, one of the basic flaws of representative democracy is that its
actions are *not* necessarily those desired by its people. The occupation of
Iraq is very much a case in point, as a pre-invasion round-up of public
opinion shows:

"While Europe's leaders are bitterly divided on whether they should support
President Bush on the looming war with Iraq, opinion polls indicate that the
vast majority of ordinary citizens across the entire continent of Europe are
united in their opposition to war. As the prospect of conflict with Iraq
grows ever closer, anti-war sentiment in Japan is surprisingly in-step with
worldwide public opinion. Not even in Israel, the closest ally of the United
States, is there majority support for a war with Iraq. From Tokyo to
Toronto, from Osaka to Oslo, opinion surveys suggest that without a second
U.N. resolution, most Europeans, Japanese and other nationalities are
overwhelmingly against military action."
http://www.glocom.org/special_topics/social_trends/20030224_trends_s28/

Your suggestion is an insult to every Japanese person.

No, Howard, it was the Americans who insulted the Japanese people, by
interning Japanese nationals on US soil during the war and by treating the
Japanese people like children after it. There is only one word to explain
why they treated the Japanese differently from the Germans in these
matters - racism.

The IMF has absolutely no control over other countries.
They loan money to countries and demand conditions in
return. If they don't want the money they are free to reuse.

Oh, for God's sake. Take a desperately poor country, already so deeply in
debt that no one else will lend it money, dangle offers of money that - like
other loans before them - will largely go to lining the coffers of the
ruling elite (who of course won't refuse the offer), force them to produce
tobacco or bananas or coffee, or T shirts, or sports shoes, or carpets, or
whatever else will feed the insatiable appetite of the West as a condition
for giving the loan, do the same in other countries and build up a surplus
of such products that will drive the price down so the West can have them
even more cheaply, while the sufferings of the poor increase...

Are you really an apologist for all of that?

Good point. All good points, with at least a germ of truth in
them.

They are all 100% true. Otherwise you would have contradicted
them.

No, I just have limited time and prefer to stick to the main issues.

Many bad things happened to Islam. As they did to all nations
around the world. This is no excuse for the present actions
of what some claim to be the xtreme elements of Islam and
I suggest may be more mainstream.

Why are you still chewing on this? I've already said that nothing excuses
atrocities.

One side offers freedom and democracy. One side offers
brutality, oppression and poverty.

The West is not a charitable institution. Everything it does it does for
itself. The best hope to redress the wrongs of the IMF and the World Bank -
which, in their own way, have spread untold brutality, oppression and
poverty - is to convince them that it is in the West's best interests to
promote wealth and foster genuine development, instead of continuing
colonial exploitation by other means.

For many Islamic countries, the paradox is that, if the West succeeds in its
stated aim of spreading democracy, Islamic fundamentalism runs a serious
risk of being endorsed by the ballot box. Where's the freedom in that? I
applaud the courage of liberal reformists in Islamic countries, but I cannot
blame them if, when push comes to shove, they prefer to stick with the devil
of authoritarianism rather than risk letting the illiterate masses have the
final say in "democratic" elections.

For the record, it was Barricadezone who expressed outrage at Islamic
anti-semitic cartoons.

Wrong. I read what he said. he simply described the outrageous character
of them.

I see. He said they are outrageous, but he didn't express outrage at them.

You always confuse those concepts.

No, I just think you're splitting rather fine hairs.

The British were scared of the Irish at that time. They went through
all the same dance steps - counter-terrorist laws, emergency powers.
And, when the cities were "full of snarling hate filled" Catholics
(as they saw it) they had their tanks and SAS squadrons out in the
streets to "deal" with it.

Completely untrue and inaccurate.

Oh. So there were no counter-terrorist laws, no emergency powers, and no
tanks or SAS squadrons out in the streets to deal with rioting crowds.

I don't believe anyone who lived here in those times could be so
inaccurate.

Ahem.

It is immoral to stand by while people suffer and are oppressed.

Yep. Best soften them up from the air first and then send in an army to the
rescue. That'll work.

Suppose someone had come along and tried to teach us how to do it,
round about the time of Henry VIII, or Oliver Cromwell, or George III?
Do you think that would have "helped" us? Do you think we'd be better
off today?

Yes.

You *are* potty!

it is a moral imperative to liberate fellow human beings.

By invading their country? By publishing demeaning and offensive caricatures
of the things they most venerate and hold dear? By assuming that whatever
you have to offer is better than anything they can possibly come up with
themselves?

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are filled with a passionate intensity." (Yeats)

A possible tombstone carving on the downfall of Western
Civilisation

And you are one of those chiselling away.

--
John
http://rarebooksinjapan.org



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