Political and religious rants...Excoriating the right and left (and keeping it out of other threads

A number of our members have noted how many of our topic threads get hijacked and once promising discussions bogged down or blown off course into weird tangents, usually because of politics or religion.

I'm as guilty as anybody else, so I ain't casting aspersions at any one person.

So, folks, if you have something good or (more likely rotten) to say about some political or religious figure/entity, drop it in here and those who want to engage, have at it. Anyone who veers into that territory in a thread on "The Music in James Joyce's writing" or "Humour in science fiction" can be politely steered to this thread and encouraged to vent to their heart's content.

Humour in sci fi. Great topic. You have no idea how many times I read Douglas Adams as a kid.

Oho, hijacking this thread already, you swine, with your oddball tangent.

I'll get ya for that...

Re: ethnic cleansing in Iraq:

I think the U.S. has at least TACITLY supported some aspect of that by letting the Kurds run the northern third of the country, often to the detriment of other minorities like the Shiites and Sunnis, many of whom fled the area, fearing reprisals after the Kurds were granted semi-autonomy.

I also believe the U.S. has a "nudge nudge" relationship with the Shiite death squads that are operating around Baghdad and what's referred to as the "Sunni triangle". The Sunnis under Saddam ran the country with only 25% of the population base and there's a lot of score settling going on, bodies found beside the road and in city dumps, grotesquely tortured and executed. Many of these murders are being committed by paramilitaries utilizing off-duty Iraqi soldiers and policemen the U.S. has trained and no one seems to be in any great hurry to shut them down. They clearly serve a purpose to the occupying forces and the murders are clearly ethnic oriented.

So I don't think the term "ethnic cleaning" is out of place in this context.

4: There are a lot of displaced people in Iraq post-2003, some counts say more than a million, many of them Arab Sunnis b/c of the Sunni/Shia or Kurd/Arab problems that were exacerbated by the US invasion. While this may not have been completely intentional on the part of the US armed forces it's defacto ethnic cleansing.

Cliff, I'd tend to agree, although the latter example isn't really ethnic cleansing so much as extrajudicial execution.

It's no coincidence that death squads migrated from Central America to Iraq under American advisors.

Anna, the existence of displaced persons doesn't prove that ethnic cleansing is going on; it's an inevitable consequence of war. Ethnic cleansing occurs when you deliberately move the populace by rounding them up and taking them away.

Accusing the US of conducting a campaign of ethnic cleansing is similar to the accusation that they used "chemical weapons" in the form of white phosphorus shells; since WP is not actually a chemical weapon, it's sloppy and dishonest rhetoric.

Why not suggest that the US is tacitly involved in, for example, extrajudicial executions?

Now, really, let's get back to Douglas Adams.

A warning: you start a thread on "humour in SF" and you're gonna have people like Sales and me pointing out much of the humour in SF is unintentional--more the result of bad writing. We hates the Heinleins and Asimovs, we does...

Interestingly, the Left endorses the main force of ethnic cleansing in Iraq - Kurdish nationalists.

While the US is certainly not stopping it, I don't think it's fair to say that the US is carrying out ethnic cleansing there.

I didn't say carrying it out--I said "tacitly supporting"...

(I'm away for a couple of days, so we'll have to continue this when I get back.)

8 and 6: Yeah, chiming in here with 9: neither Cliff nor I was arguing that the US is purposely ethnically cleansing anyone.

I think big imperial countries tend to be a bit disingenuous about the consequences of their invasions of other countries and in many cases they are or were aware of these consequences but are not technically directly responsible for them. I am not trying to use hysterical terminology in saying "de facto ethnic cleansing" which is why I used the term "de facto."

I always get into this type of discussion when it comes to wars of occupation or invasion. I guess I am just always against them and assume the worst of those carrying them out - that given that they have a pretty good idea of how these things work, being professional military, the "oh gee we had no idea our action X would result in tragedy Y" thing gets awfully old.

Also, I wish we could have a discussion of Iraq on its merits without assuming that any of us are "the Left" or whatever. I can't discuss a statement like "the Left thinks X" - I'm not "the Left" and I've never met him.

Who here referred to "the Left?"

I'm not arguing that it's any kind of surprise that wars displace populations. But displacing a population is not the same thing as ethnic cleansing; ethnic cleansing is by definition a deliberate act. It's not disingenuous to make the distinction between the ordinary consequences of war and active campaigns against civilian populations.

11: in re "The Left" I am referring to 8 in his comment about Kurds.

You point out: "It's not disingenuous to make the distinction between the ordinary consequences of war and active campaigns against civilian populations."

I would only respond that the invading power does bear some sort of responsibility for the consequences of the invasion, and these things didn't just happen...

12: you're right, I missed that "the Left."

I agree; it goes without saying that the invading power bears responsibility for the consequences of its (illegal, in this case) invasion. That's why I didn't say it. ;)

Aren't we currently being punished in blood and treasure for our rash and pointless invasion of Iraq? I think we are paying the price of empire.

btw - as i was definitely fussing about the seemingly random political hijacking of any and all threads, I didn't mean to have people exclude political comments where they were appropriate. A thread devoted on Ayniee randee girl is gonna be nothing but politics, since her writing was so abysmal. But if one was discussing, Syriana or the Triumph of the Will in a movies thread - there's an obvious political context that belongs in the thread.

On the other hand to have "Finally a Librarything group that appreciates the point of view of the rich, white males who rule the world (and have done a very good job at it until everyone else started feeling left out because they cannot produce the beautiful things that we do)" showing up in a fairly apolitical thread about musics people enjoy and suggest seems a lot like pointless trolling. Even though it's true that if we're talking about many (though by no means all) classical musics in the western tradition most of the sig. players have been white males - w/ a disproportionate #of Germans/Austrians i'd guess if one bothered w/ a ratio wtf./

Esp, since music is one of the genres in which all sorts of peoples HAVE been able to produce amazing stuff - since the means of production for music can be pretty damn basic.

On the third hand, a while back, Iceland - thanks to Bjork, the Sugarcubes and a few other bands, led the world in per capita major pop bands.

My views on religion and politics boil down to a snide assessment, "Cosmetic differences aside, they pretty much all suck."

16: I'm sure that no one here is still confused regarding your views on religion or politics. But thanks for letting us know.

>16 kswolff: - I, for one, wouldn't dream of arguing on that front. For me, honest discussion goes in the direction of which ones suck more, and in what ways. :-)

Re: Iceland's contribution to world music; let's not forget Sigur Ros, one of Cliff's fave bands to scribble along to...

But I'm listening to a Mogwai compilation at the moment.

Yeah, I'm back from the big city and we had a wonderful time.

And the beat goes on:

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/10/14/iraq-death-toll-war-invasion.html

Funny how in the 21st century we still have trouble coming up with an accurate number for people killed; one source says this much, another source says THIS much, etc. etc.

A tip o' the hat to Prez Obama for calling the dogs off medicinal marijuana providers. I've said some mighty harsh things about the man in the past few months but for this, at least, he deserves applause and kudos...

I'd like to see this guy as Obama's economic adviser:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-Dqf6Ptjoo

The Church of Ed Wood

http://www.edwood.org/

Ha ha, good stuff...

The Church of Dead Wood.

On the ball, as always, Gene...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/books/review/Kirsch-t.html?nl=books&emc=bo...

a book i won't be reading anytime soon: AYN RAND AND THE WORLD SHE MADE
By Anne C. Heller
Illustrated. 567 pp. Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. $35
review from the NYTimes

Jeez, as long as a Randian tome itself. The photo looks like she's getting ready to beat the sht out of a future chairman of the fed if he doesn't toe the line

The idea of Ayn Rand "making a world" scares me.
But Iʻm not sure she aspired to that. I think she was trying to depict a (to her) "real" world the reality of which was sporadically chipped away at by "looters".

If anyone can make looters look sympathetic, it would be Ayn Rand. She can have her utopian, rape-tastic, free market, libertarian world. She makes Camille Paglia look erudite and emotionally balanced.

Given the right circumstances, Rand could have been a fantastic administrator of the GULAG Considering their sensibilities, I can't imagine why she didn't hook up with Amon Goeth and/or Lavrenti Beria?

Not so much a rant, but I am reading Judgment at Nuremberg by Richard Conot It is fascinating because the cases were far from black-and-white, especially with the USSR as one of the tribunal powers. The book shows just how challenging it was to set up a system of international law. This was something that needed to happen, given the enormity of crimes committed by the German political apparatus, but ... but ... it was far from perfect. But it's imperfection is noble in a way, given the genocide, war, and human suffering created to entertain the Nazis utopian pipe dreams. (Also, like Ayn Rand, the Nazis didn't know a damn thing about how economics actually works.)