Monday, August 08, 2005

And now, for a brief overview of things that have been in the news and have made me quite, quite annoyed.

GITMO


According to the LA times, there are over 600 people at Gitmo, and "dozens" may not be even related to terrorism.... But they can't be sure because they don't release the prisoner roster... if they don't have the prisoner roster, how can they be sure about it?

Answer, the law of averages.

The more I hear about Gitmo, the more I think it's a piss poor excuse for a Gulag. Did you see that list about the Koran "abuses"? 100 instances of "abuse," and some of them....

Did you hear about the one idiot who urinated near an air vent? The air vent exploded and hit the Koran; this is an abuse according to the Pentagon? It almost makes me think that they made some of them up. Sigh. Then again, the British army in the Napoleonic wars would hang a soldier for stealing a piece of rope, so the Pentagon comes by this tight-ass approach honestly.

But honestly, a Gulag? Amnesty Internationale may have just been exaggerating, "like with the Axis of Evil," but it helps that Saddam, Kim Jung Il, and the leading nuts of Iran are, well, um, evil? (Ok, in Kim's case, he's prolly just nuts, but anyway). Even the AI people reversed themselves on the Gulag pronouncement.

If the US army were running something that's even close to a Gulag, we wouldn't be releasing prisoners, we'd put two in the back of their heads, toss them into the Caribbean, and let the sharks dispose of them. Instead, we catch most of them in Iraq or Afghanistan, most while shooting at US troops, we bring them to Gitmo, then release them, and we find them face down in the sand after they--once again-- shoot at US soldiers.

I'm sorry, AI wants to compare Gitmo to the worst genocidal policies of the 20th century (worse because they lasted longer than the concentration camps and went into the hundreds of millions dead) and condemn US actions in Iraq, and when was the last time they said anything about the Sudan?

They made a lot of noise about the Sudan in the mid-1980s.... a lot of noise being that they mentioned it. Now where the hell are they? 2.5 million people have died in the Sudan over 25 years, some of them crucified, hacked to death, bombed or landmined, so you can probably round that figure up.

Can you see why I find GITMO food poisoning, sleep deprivation, and fake menstrual blood to be petty-ante garbage.... at least Gitmo prisoners can walk out on their own two feet, because we DIDN'T CUT THEIR FEET OFF. Food poisoning, sleep deprivation, fake menstrual blood vs. hacking off limbs, crucifixion, hacked to pieces by machetes..... and AI DARES to compare the two? THEY DARE TO CALL THE US THE WORSE HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSERS ON THE PLANET!!!! WHAT ARE THEY SMOKING DAMNIT).

Over two million people died in Iraq during Clinton's years in office alone, and AI was doing nothing, and the French were trying to break the embargos on Saddam (then again, they were promised an oil field or five all to themselves).


AFRICA

And now for the biggest piece of racism I've seen in years: the LIVE8 concert. I know, how can those idiots be of any harm.... let's see, when the premise is that dictators run Africa into the ground, and steal all of their foreign aid money, the solution is..... WE ROCK STARS HAVEN'T WHINED AT THE WEST ENOUGH ABOUT IT!!!

So, why AREN'T we doing anything in Sudan?

If "our interests" are natural resources, then Africa should be our first priority. And if we wanted quick, cheap and dirty oil, we invade South America.

But, why not bother with Africa? Well, where do I start?

So, you want to invade the Sudan for purely humanitarian purposes?

Wonderful, so are we, America going to invade it? Not a problem, we have a million man army, we're not even using 10% of it yet, so we can do that.

Oh no, wait, we can't go in on our own-- God knows we went into Iraq with almost all of NATO and were still yelled at (we didn't have Germany France or Holland, thus we're unilateral, go figure).

So, maybe we'll go to the UN. Granted, their troops have been raping and pillaging the towns they occupied since 1995 in Somalia, Kosovo, Congo, but we can use them for a few days and then kick their asses out of town afterwards when the fighting's through... or the US troops keep a close eye on them.

So, time to get the invasion force together, and we can of course put together a resolution on Human Rights violations by running it through the Human Rights Commission in the UN, right?

Oh, wait, THE SUDAN'S ON THE HRC, well, that's out. No matter, certainly the security council will help us.... wait, the People's Republic of China is making deals with the warlords because the Sudan has nuclear materials, the Russians are arming them, the French are selling them land mines.....

So we call upon our friends in the NATO alliance.... then again, Spain's a communist government in disarray and hates us, Berlusconi will give ransom money to whoever kidnaps an Italian puppy, France Germany, Holland, we won't go into, and the only militaries in all of Europe that have systems compatible with ours are the British, and Special Forces units....

Well, that doesn't matter, we can use them for border security, because God knows there is not a single country in Africa that has a secure border. We have a more secure border with Canada than any of them do.

Actually, how DOES one secure the borders in a country were everyone's busy blowing everyone else up. At least in Iraq, we're fighting one enemy-- first Saddam, then the leftovers (most of these losers are former Bathist party, and over a third of the suicide bombers sent out by Zarqawi are Saudi). But the Sudan is a mess of people...

Anyway, so we're "alone" in the Sudan, with our unilateralist agenda to try to get these idiots to stop killing each other. There were protesters in the street on 9-12 protesting an imperialist war for oil in Afghanistan (ps: Michael Moore's Afghan oil pipeline was only "connected" to the Bushes via the Carlyle group, but problem-- the elder Bush wasn't on the board until after the deal went south... but Moveon.org's man George Soros was on the board, and he backs Michael Moore. fascinating, ain't it?). What do you think these useful idiots are going to do after we invade the Sudan? Now we're not only imperialist, we're RACIST by implying that they can't get along by themselves. Multiple street protestations, another Michael Moore movie implying that everything was fine in the Sudan before we showed up, and that's just on the domestic end. Just wait until the press gets to the Sudan to find that we're going to actually have to kill... gasp... a few black people, because they have a Lord's Liberation army running down into Uganda every once in a while to enslave children for sex slaves. And, of course, since a republican president will have to do all of this (you don't want to see what Democrats do to military budgets), it'll all be for "big business," because only democrats can do humanitarian military actions.

Oh, and by the way, more's been happening in the Sudan than just in this little place called Darfur. "What?" you ask? Let's see.

Since the 1980s, the Arab, Islamic Sudanese of the North have been killing or enslaving any of the Black African Christians they can get—they’ve harassed Uganda by supporting the Protestant Lord’s Resistance Army, not to mention the Sudanese shifta murder gangs and pirates.

Sudanese law was rewritten in 1983 to reflect the Islamist policies favored by later guests of the state—including one Osama bin Laden. Under this Islamic law—sharia—imprisonment for theft was replaced by amputation of the hand, sentences for armed crimes became death, amputation, or life imprisonment, alcohol and gambling were outlawed, and adultery became a crime punishable by stoning or lashing.

What happens? What do the great and powerful United Nations do? They put Sudan onto the Human Rights Commission! Ha!”

If that weren't enough, that’s not the only issue. The Sudanese have old Antonov bombers from the Soviet Union, and their bombing runs target Churches; in fact, the government has chosen Sunday as the best day to bomb, because the churches are full. Some churches are bombed almost every Sunday. On Easter Monday of 2001, when an Archbishop was about to leave by plane, the government bombed the airfield; they barely missed the crowd watching him leave, and nearly destroyed his plane; this came shortly after an invasion of the Anglican cathedral in Khartoum—the capital—during Holy Week by government troops with tear gas and high-explosive grenades. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury of the Anglican Church, Dr. George Carey, described the policy towards Christians as a policy of ‘torture, rape, destruction of property, slavery and death, and forcible conversion.’”

Oh, yes, did I forget the conversions? When children are kidnapped—as they are all the time, even from Uganda—they are either sold to merchants as slaves or indoctrination with Arab-Muslim culture in Koranic schools for six or seven years. The children of refugees are the most exposed to abuses and violations, most of them belong to ethnic, racial and religious minorities—the UN knew this years ago, and still put them on the Human Rights Commission.

When the children are targeted for conversion and indoctrination instead of slavery, their heads are shaved, their names are changed to Arabic, and they are forced to pray five times a day starting at 4 a.m., and given military training so they can be martyrs for the cause. Any caught escapees are made to crawl naked across the ground until bloody, and then lashed.

It’s genocide, but who cares?

The Cold War ended in 1991, and the first Bush didn’t know what to do with the world until Saddam Hussein became an obvious threat. There were eight years of Clinton. The second Bush has to deal with international terrorism, and this is strictly local.

It’s also blacks versus Muslims, so which minority group does the American politician wish to offend? Aid the Sudanese murder gangs and promote genocide, or aid the Christians and risk offending vast amounts of future terrorists in Saudi Arabia, as well as a few Democrats, who seem to think that anything that gives aid to Christians seems to indicate support of one religion over another, and labeling it a problem of Church and state.

No one can profit. The UN only went along with Clinton because they believed the Balkan dispute was about to spread; they went against Iraq in 1991 because of Saddam’s threat to their oil reserves. The Sudan...no one wants to be bothered with a large potential mess over the long run. It’s not worth it.

Pope John Paul II was able to get the support of the United States and Ronald Reagan in Poland because it was a part of the larger Cold War. Sudan is merely one in what has been over a hundred petty little wars on what amounts to a petty little continent -- even Africans complain about all the intelligentsia leaving town-- unless you count the resource rich countries: Ghana has oil, South Africa has just about everything, and then there’s the blood diamonds of Angola.

The short version, it's a mess, but sorry, the US does have other problems to solve, and no one else cares. Give us ten years to clear up the middle east, then the People's Republic of China, then I wouldn't want to be the Sudanese dictators...

But oh, yeah, by then, the population will be wiped out by AIDS.

Hmm, plan B, John Bolton cracks heads in at the UN, and the United Nations works WITH us to clean up that hellhole.

Perhaps it's wishful thinking, but one can hope.

UPDATE:

As Jason of IR , pointed out to me, Live8 discouraged the Useful Idiots of the rock world from opening their mouths. To quote him, "the main guys were actually pushing for the African nations to take responsibility for themselves first, and then the rest of the world would step in, and they stressed the musicians to SHUT THE HELL UP about their myriad leftist fantasies... even Bono praised Bush."

And as I noted, there's what was instructed, there's what was said, and there's the African version: Cameroon columnist Jean-Claude Shanda Tonme wrote something similar to what I did on July 15. "But the truth is that it was not for us, for Africa, that the musicians at Live 8 were singing; it was to amuse the crowds and to clear their own consciences, and whether they realized it or not, to reinforce dictatorships. They still believe us to be like children that they must save, as if we don't realize ourselves what the source of our problems is." I can't link to this one, but a Lexis-Nexis search should net you a translation of it in the NY Times, July 15th, 2005.

ANOTHER UPDATE: a hat tip or kowtow, or something to Jason once more for noting something I should have:

The media, the LAST time we were in Africa, ie; Somalia, went out of their way to show the bodies of our brave men and women being dragged through the streets. People know of it better as the Black Hawk Down incident. Even Clinton was pissed off at the media. He bowed to the pressure to pull out our troops only after CNN and his cabinet all but revolted on him. According to the wise and somewhat right-leaning Dick Morris, his first inclination was to give the military a blank check, and bomb the heck outta them. This was not done.

No comments: