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marksimons

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About marksimons

  • Birthday 05/27/1983

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    Mark TVG
  • Website URL
    http://www.totalvideogames.com

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  • Biography
    A student at Liverpool University, I write for www.totalvideogames.com and enjoy messing around in politics with the Liberal Democrat Youth and Students.
  • Location
    Liverpool, England, UK.
  • Interests
    Music, Movies, Videogames, History, Politics, the odd reefer..
  • Occupation
    Student
  • Gender
    Bloke

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  1. Which Side Are You On? by Joyce Marcel Say it's 1770 in the Colonies. Tempers are starting to boil over land ownership, taxes and debt-collecting. Yet many are thriving under the rule of the English king, George III. It's treason and heresy to publicly damn him. Are you a Whig or a Tory? Which side are you on? That's what I was thinking when I saw "The Equivalent Lands," last weekend, a play put on by the Vermont Theater Company and sponsored by the Dummerston and Putney Historical Societies. The play tells the story of Lt. Leonard Spaulding, who bought land on the western bank of the Connecticut River from the governor of New Hampshire. He cleared the land, built a home on it, brought his family there, and began working it, only to have it taken away by New York during a land grant dispute. Spaulding eventually led a rebellion against the king that some consider the first volley in the Revolutionary War. History is written by the winners, so from our view, the Revolutionary War looks like a fait accompli, a dead cert from the start. It was fought and won by patriots and heroes and for all the right reasons: independence, self-determination, taxation with representation, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." Good stuff, all of it. But the truth is that the Revolution pitted neighbor against neighbor. Many supported the king. It takes a lot to challenge the status quo, especially when the costs are high. Back then, the status quo was George III. I couldn't help wondering if I would have had the courage to damn the king and possibly die for my beliefs? Would I have risked "Our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor," as the Declaration of Independence says? Which side would you have been on? Or say it's 1950, and for a while there you really believed in the ideals of brotherhood and socialism - before the realities of Soviet-style Communism made a mockery of them. Now Sen. Joseph McCarthy is holding hearings in Washington, and you're trembling in fear. Will they call you to testify? Will you lose your job and your standing in the community? If you are called, will you name names? Or will you have the courage of your convictions and be blacklisted for life? Which side would you be on? We've been brainwashed by our entertainment industry into identifying with the victorious -with the heroes, the leading actors and actresses of any play or movie or show on television. No matter what we look like, while they are on the screen we are them. In our national life, this translates into thinking of ourselves as "the greatest country on earth," and "the good guys." The other guys are the villains, or, in the language of our president, "the evil-doers." Now which side are you on? After 9/11, several columnists lost their jobs for pointing out that Pres. George W. Bush hid in a bunker on the day of the attacks. Dixie Chicks's records were burned. Censorship was everywhere. Americans, suddenly aware of their vulnerability, desperately wanted to believe they had a leader who could keep them safe. Playing on that, the right-wing Republicans erected an impermeable wall around Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney: no press conferences; no public appearances that weren't scripted; lies and evasions from the press secretary to a cowed and imprisoned White House press corps. Speaking against Bush was called treason. People were denounced for it. Muslims were randomly put in jail. The wall helped maintain the illusion that the government was on our side, working to protect us. God save the King! Now the wall has been shattered. First came the immensely touching photographs of flag-draped coffins. Then ABC's "Nightline" showed us the names and faces of 721 Americans who have died in Iraq. Then came the Abu Ghraib torture photos and videos. Then came the even more shocking information that "contractors" (read mercenaries), not American soldiers, are running that show. Now we have the revenge beheading of an American businessman. Next, I understand, we'll be seeing videos of American soldiers sodomizing Iraqi prisoners and having sex in front of them. Meanwhile, the conservatives - Who are these people? How deeply can one person dig his or her head in the sand and still be able to breathe? - are doing their best to regain control. Secretary of Defense (we attacked Iraq without provocation - shouldn't the name of his department be changed to the Dept. of Offense?) Donald Rumsfeld has taken "full responsibility" and apologized, as if that means anything more than a Britney Spears song: Oops! We did it again! Sinclair Broadcast Group and Piedmont Television, companies which own ABC stations, censored the "Nightline" show as "a blatant political act to undermine support for Pres. Bush and the war." Rush Limbaugh said our soldiers in Abu Ghraib were just "letting off steam" and their interrogation techniques were no more serious than a college hazing. (That kind of hazing is outlawed now, Rush.) Meanwhile, the Administration - the one supposed to keep us safe before and in the wake of 9/11 - is mining new Middle Eastern terrorists as if they were golden nuggets, while at the same time bankrupting our country with the cost of the war. (The woman who took the coffin photos was fired from a $100,000 contract job. Is anyone in the United States making $100,000 a year loading cargo planes?) Which side are you on, America? Why aren't you in the streets, demanding that Bush resign? Why aren't you demanding that he be tried as a war criminal? Why aren't you demanding the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, where we have no right to be? How much more truth do you need slammed down your throats? Now think back to those Revolutionary War days. Those of you who were right-wing conservatives then - the Tories - backed the king and lost. And you're still backing the wrong horse. I know it's hard to admit you are wrong. No one wants to believe their king, or their president, is a liar and a jackass. No one wants to believe that everything they are told, everything they believe in, is a lie. George Orwell said, "Speaking the truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." After a year in Iraq, Americans know the truth. When do they become revolutionary? When do they say, "Enough. No more. We don't want to be the biggest bully the world has ever seen." Which side are you on? In December of 1941, just before America entered World War II, the great essayist E. B. White wrote in "Intimations": "To hold America in one's thoughts is like holding a love letter in one's hand - it has so special a meaning... (But) who is there big enough to love the whole planet? We must find such people for the next society." -- vive la revolution!
  2. "WASHINGTON ? An Army Reserve general whose soldiers were photographed as they abused Iraqi prisoners said Saturday that she knew nothing about the abuse until weeks after it occurred and that she was "sickened" by the pictures. She said the prison cellblock where the abuse occurred was under the tight control of Army military intelligence officers who may have encouraged the abuse. "The suggestion by Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski that the reservists acted at the behest of military intelligence officers appears largely supported in a still-classified Army report on prison conditions in Iraq that documented many of the worst abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad, including the sexual humiliation of prisoners." Anyone who knows anything about interrogation knows that interrogators like to have prisoners 'softened' up. read the rest of that article here: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0502-03.htm
  3. like bush is going to admit that this was policy, does he even know it was policy, did anyone mention, 'by the way, you know you said there were no torture and rape rooms in iraq, erm, that was wrong sir, we've got a few here and there, just to soften up the prisoners for interrogation you realise sir'... I doubt it. worthless repugnant piece of shit? I'm not the one making naked human pyramids out of prisoners, prisoners who for the most part have not been through anything resembling judicial process. if you think this is a new policy for your country, think again, if you think this is the first time your nation has been lied like this, think again, if you going to try and make this the last time that America can be manipulated in such a way, then you better start thinking, and yor better start getting involved. no amount of apologising, of saying this wasn't his fault, that this is not representative of the attitude of America's forces, well, for most people, it is. This was inevitable, perhaps not this in this exact way, but something like this was, it was obvious to me that the people planning this war would not be able to control it, and now, well now we've reached a point of no return. The US should get out of Iraq as soon as possible, before anything else is irreparably fucked.
  4. I think you'll find the most worrying thing about the torture is this: This wasn't sporadic, heat of the moment, a one off. This was, is, policy. The CIA apparently instructed military officers to 'soften up' their prisoners for interrogation, and torture is the best way of softening people up. this wasn't a few people bringing the reputation of the US army and government into disripute, this is symbolic of the way your country is run, what leaders, military and civilian, are willing to tolerate. They are quite literally no better than saddam when it comes to their respect for the lives of ordinary Iraqi's it seems.
  5. it's not 'them' and 'us' human beings. we're all in this together. straw, back, camel. Igloo. where are you? you guys denied there was torture, that things for many iraqi's were no better for saddam, that things could have been worse. now there is photographic proof of shit I've been saying for about a year now. shocked. yes. surprised. no. but the whole world knows about this now.
  6. words fail me. I believe this is one of those, 'I told you so' moments.
  7. cintron is like you igloo, but a little (a lot?) smarter, he can actually argue and make some good points that actually force me to think and consider the statements I made, not just rant, rave and insult me, which does nothing but make me wonder what sort of person you are. I just got back from switzerland, and I think my time in this internet cafe is running out, but I'm looking forward to replying to cintron when I get home...
  8. no, but I don't recall US law being decided by a 2000 year old fundamentalist religious text. the US constitution forbids cruel and unusual punishment. I believe the death penalty falls under that catagory. the US claims to be christian, but was the holocaust your country inflicted on indo-china an act of people behaving as christ would? would jesus be praising the people sending B52s to bomb a country back to the stone age? or would jesus be protesting, or would jesus be like me, travelling around the world, meeting people, talking, listening, learning, arguing, trying to get in a position to be able to make a difference to the world, to get rid of the corrupt empire from where it is not wanted. anyway. yeah, death penalty is not christian, I mean, jesus would have been around a bit longer without it... perhaps the world would have been a better place for it, if he actually managed to set up the church he wanted...
  9. ghhhhhost does make some good points. but he is biased towards serbia. serbian forces (not all serbians) under the control of milosovic planned and carried out acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing, against muslims and croats. this is fact. all sides in that conflict committed war crimes, and everyone has a different angle on it. a fact clear in most conflict zones around the world, hell we still argue about the first and second world wars here!
  10. ain't just something that them africans or arabs like, look, good ol' white americans doing a bit of stringing up the people they hate, and them negroes weren't even an part of an occupying force! Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light,What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave, o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, In full glory reflected now shines on the stream: 'Tis the star-spangled banner! O long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. And where is that band who so vauntingly swore That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion A home and a country should leave us no more? Their blood has wiped out their foul footstep's pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave: And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
  11. The Dude: It's like what Lenin said... you look for the person who will benefit, and, uh, uh... Donny: I am the walrus. The Dude: You know what I'm trying to say... Walter Sobchak: That fucking bitch... Donny: I am the walrus. Walter Sobchak: shut the fuck up, Donny! V.I. Lenin. Vladimir Illanich Uleninov!
  12. yes. I have no idea what I'm talking about. whereas you do... igloo... tell me igloo, can you even point to colombia on a map, without the names or lines on it?
  13. Saddam and Pablo are similar figures. they ruled large swathes of their country by fear. the Colombian jungles are probably trickier terrain, or equally as challenging (in different ways) to Iraq. pablo had a well trained army, places to run, people paid off in the country, and bodyguards and state of the art equpiment. he may even have been harder to kill than saddam, his standing amongst the public was similar, his ability to get people to fight for him, probably similar, could probably cause as much damage. have you ever looked into how Pablo Escobar was killed? ... if not, then please don't tell me my analogy is fantasy land when you don't know the facts.
  14. as I've said before, if you're familiar with how the US secret services and colombian special forces managed to track down and kill Pablo Escobar, I think you'll see that something similar could have been done against Saddam. it's not James Bond, it's army business, I'm sure the CIA, NSA, FBI, Navy Seals in co-operation with the British SAS or SBS and local Iraqi's could have taken out Saddam. Read 'Killing Pablo', it details how the US and Colombia got Escobar, it's very interesting, and a good read. -- quick lesson in war; 1) the soliders wear camo 2) civilians dont -- yes, tongue in cheek or not, this shows a level of naievity I hereto excpected, but hadn't yet seen demonstrated so clearly. this was one of the major major problems of vietnam, fighting a guerilla war, like the one in iraq, or in vietnam, the main problem is that the civilians and soldiers are indistinguishable. the US police have had undercover agents in civilian clothes in demonstrations in the US, they have grabbed, dragged and beaten protestors. the US probably uses undercover secret service agents, I'm pretty sure CIA agents wouldn't be in combat fatigues for a start...
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