rebel with a cause
1st February 2002, 02:29
That has nothing to do with soc vs cap, I think he just posted it here so those ignorant right-wingers can see it too, and yes GI John "Stebby" Stebbins, renamed Company Clerk John Grimes in the film, is now serving a 30-year sentence in Fort Leavenworth military prison for raping a 12-year-old girl.
reagan lives
1st February 2002, 16:31
The technique is called "argumentum ad misercordiam." It means appealing to emotion to make an argument, instead of actually making factual or theoretical points. It's supposed to go like this:
1. An American soldier was convicted of rape.
2. Rape is bad.
3. The American soldier is bad.
4. America is bad.
5. America is capitalist.
6. Capitalism is bad.
Eureka. You've convinced me. I've been reformed. Viva la revolucion. Hooray for centrally controlled economies. Now I have to run, because I have to completely revamp my wardrobe to fit my new hip revolutionary image. This is so exciting.
(Edited by reagan lives at 5:31 pm on Feb. 1, 2002)
pastradamus
1st February 2002, 17:34
The point I was making is that he shouldn't have been a highlighted as such a big hero & I know those fighters did a dam good job against the somalian milita but raping a girl is fucking nasty,espically at 12 yrs old.When I posted this I just wanted to rub it in those right-wingers faces!
"Death stares us all in the face,we may as smile back"
Supermodel
1st February 2002, 18:44
Peacenicked...but he's not free, he's in jail.
Reagan lives, SWL!!! What does your new outfit look like? What the hell did your old outfit look like?
Word up to everyone...there are lots of bad people out there!!! I'm pretty sure the capitalists are well aware of it!!
And as for Somalia...what the hell does that have to do with capitalism? What does the movie have to do with capitalism? Are you telling me there are no communist rapists out there?
Moskitto
1st February 2002, 19:16
Someone did the same thing in Kosavar, except the soldier actually killed the girl afterwards by breaking her neck with his boot.
And the soldier had a pretty dodgy history, he was convicted of raping 2 sisters in Haiti a couple of years before.
I'm trying to find the article on the Independant's website but it seems to have vanished.
And no I don't think rape is caused by capitalism. Problems within society are the main cause.
Supermodel
1st February 2002, 20:43
Rape is a violent crime, nothing to do with sex. Many men still fail to see women as partners with them in the human race.
That's why one of the tactics they say to prevent rape (other than taking out your Glock 9MM and blowing the bastard away) is to personalize yourself to the rapist, say something like "hey, weren't we in high school together?" or "Your mom and my mom know each other"
Society doubly victimises the victim by treating her/him as used/soiled goods as a result. For pete's sake, the catholic church made one woman a saint for the sole reason that she died rather than give in to rapists.
The best prevention against rape is the way we teach our sons.
the end of history
2nd February 2002, 00:12
I think Reagan Lives old outfit was a three piece suit made in a sweatshop in Indonesia with extra pockets for all the kickbacks, bribes, and shady agreements to represent Reagan's involvement in all three. I can't think of any sort of new outfit he could wear, but i'm sure the old one left a huge stink. And if you're going to name yourself after a republican leader, make sure it's one who still has his mental capacities (not that Reagan ever had those) or else it looks like you're wishing for someone who can't even remember his name to have some sort of political power. I don't want to make fun of Reagan for his disability, but he more than gives me enough material with his politics alone.
rebel with a cause
2nd February 2002, 06:20
Quote: from Supermodel on 10:44 am on Feb. 1, 2002
And as for Somalia...what the hell does that have to do with capitalism? What does the movie have to do with capitalism?
What does Somolia have to do with Capitalism? What does the movie have to do with capitalism?
Alot actually........
The movie dealing with Somoila, didn't deal with it, it totally neglected the issues of what ignited the events of black hawk down, and the movie industry, put out a blockbuster film while the public is on this "United we Stand" "Go America" bullshit (actually I'm pro America, but anti-US government, its not the country, its those that rule it) so its gonna rake in a grip of bucks and probably win an academy award, thats capitalism babe, i didn't post this to dis you in anyway, just noticed a mistake, I still love ya ;)
now here's some info regarding balck hawk down
Reality v. heroismThe real ‘Black Hawk Down’ involved allied murder, not bravery
The disjuncture these days between reality and what one reads in the press here is pretty much absolute. The other day I opened up the San Francisco Chronicle and found a piece hailing what the writer described as something most unusual for Afghanistan, a "peaceful" transfer of power. Now granted, the mostly civilian casualties are probably in the low thousands, and the most effective agent in that same transference of power was large cash bribes to all the relevant warlords, but even so, the word "peaceful" is scarcely the most just. Now for disjuncture on another front, viz., Somalia, now touted as a prospective target nation in the war on terror. The new movie "Black Hawk Down" hails the heroism of U.S. special forces, in the form of the Delta Force and Army Rangers. The reality was somewhat different. Recall that prior to U.S. intervention by Bush I in 1993, Somalia had spent many years under the corrupt sway of Siad Barre, and that the role of U.S. oil companies was sufficiently strong for the post-intervention U.S. embassy to be located in the Conoco compound. Citing famine in Mogadishu and in the southern part of the country, and an urgent need to restore order, President Bush I sent in the Marines. (The desire to distract attention from his pardon of Caspar Weinberger was another motive imputed by cynics at the time.) The "humanitarian" intervention was touted as one of the first bouts of nation building of the New World Order, supervised by various nonprofit aid groups and protected by the UN-sponsored military force. Soon, ugly stories of murder and torture by Canadian "peacekeepers" appeared in the Canadian press. To efface such unpleasantness, the U.S. press whipped up a frenzy about a local warlord called Mohammed Aideed, a sort of mini-Osama, and he became public enemy No. 1, target of various bumbling efforts to kill or capture him. On Oct. 3, 1993, a team of so-called "elite troops" composed of the Delta Force and Rangers tried to nab Aideed again in central Mogadishu. Aideed was nowhere to be found, and soon the American troops became confused. Shortly after, they were surrounded by angry crowds. There ensued a massacre in which somewhere between 500 and 1,000 Somalians were killed, along with 18 Americans. In 1999, Mark Bowden's book "Black Hawk Down" appeared. Bowden had worked for the Philadelphia Inquirer and had filed pieces right after the 1993 massacre. As the movie director Alex Cox points out in a recent, excellent discussion of "Black Hawk Down" in The British Independent, "It's interesting to observe how the story was retold over that time. An article by the former Independent correspondent Richard Dowden (not to be confused with Mark Bowden) the previous year makes the clear point that U.S. troops killed unarmed men, women and children from the outset of their mission: 'In one incident, Rangers took a family hostage. When one of the women started screaming at the Americans, she was shot dead. In another incident, a Somali prisoner was allegedly shot dead when he refused to stop praying outside. Another was clubbed into silence. The killer is not identified.'" Now Bowden's original articles were filled with these unpleasant details. They are not to be found in the book. I am reliably informed that the publisher, Grove Atlantic, thought it politic to remove them, preferring an unblemished epic of American heroism. The only blemish that disfigures the release of the movie is the fact that GI John "Stebby" Stebbins, renamed Company Clerk John Grimes in the film, is now serving a 30-year sentence in Fort Leavenworth military prison for raping a 12-year-old girl. Cox cites a subsequent U.S. Army investigation of organized racism in the U.S. Army, which concluded the problem was particularly serious in all-white, so-called "elite" and "Special Operations" units. Such racial separatism could lead to problems, the report warned, because it "foster(s) supremacist attitudes among white combat soldiers." (The Secretary of the Army's Task Force Report on Extremist Activities, Defending American Values, March 21, 1996, Washington D.C., page 15) After the massacre, Canada, Italy and Belgium all held inquiries into the behavior of their troops. Canada placed some of its soldiers on trial for torture and murder. The U.S. never held any such public investigation nor reprimanded any of its commanders or troops for the Somalian debacle, now inflated by Hollywood into an heroic epic -- the ultimate disjuncture of truth from claptrap.
The Long and Hidden History of the U.S in Somalia
Stephen Zunes, AlterNet
January 17, 2002
The East African nation of Somalia is being mentioned with increasing frequency as the next possible target in the U.S.-led war against international terrorism. With what passes for the central government controlling little more than a section of the national capital of Mogadishu, a separatist government in the north, and rival warlords and clan leaders controlling most of the rest of the country, U.S. officials believe that cells of the Al-Qaida terrorist network may have taken advantage of the absence of governmental authority to set up operation.
Before the United States attacks that impoverished country, however, it is important to know how Somalia became a possible haven for the followers of Osama Bin Laden and what might result if the United States goes to war.
As one of the most homogeneous countries in Africa, many would have not predicted the chronic instability and violent divisions which have gripped Somalia in recent years. During the early 1970s, Somalia was a client of the Soviet Union, even allowing the Soviets to establish a naval base at Berbera on the strategic north coast near the entrance to the Red Sea. Somali dictator Siad Barre established this relationship in response to the large-scale American military support of Somalia's historic rival Ethiopia, then under the rule of the feudal emperor Haile Selassie. When a military coup by leftist Ethiopian officers toppled the monarchy in 1974 and declared the country a Marxist-Leninist state the following year, the superpowers switched their allegiances, with the Soviet Union backing the Ethiopia Dirgue and the United States siding with the Barre regime in Somalia.
In 1977, Somalia attacked the Ogaden region of eastern Ethiopia in an effort to incorporate the area's ethnic Somali population. The Ethiopians were eventually able to repel the attack with large-scale Soviet military support and 20,000 Cuban troops. Zbigniew Brzezinski, then-National Security Advisor under President Jimmy Carter, has since claimed that this conflict sparked the end of détente with the Soviet Union and the renewal of the Cold War.
From the late 1970s until just before Siad Barre's overthrow in early 1991, the U.S. sent hundreds of millions of dollars of arms to Somalia in return for the use of military facilities which had been originally constructed for the Soviets. These bases were to be used to support American military intervention in the Middle East. The consequences of U.S. military support for the Barre regime on the Somali people was deemed of little importance by American policymakers. The U.S. government ignored warnings throughout the 1980s by Africa specialists, human rights groups and humanitarian organizations that continued American aid to the dictatorial government of Siad Barre would eventually plunge Somalia into chaos.
These predictions proved tragically accurate. During the nearly fifteen years of support by the United States and Italy, thousands of civilians were massacred at the hands of Barre's increasingly authoritarian regime. Full-scale civil war erupted in 1988 and the repression increased still further, with clan leaders in the northern third of the country declaring independence to escape government persecution. In greatly centralizing his government's control, Barre severely weakened traditional structures in Somali society which had kept civil order for many years. To help maintain his grip on power, Barre played different Somali clans against each other, sowing the seeds of the fratricidal chaos to come, which in turn would contribute to mass starvation and spur the ill-fated humanitarian intervention by the United States in 1992.
Meanwhile, by eliminating all potential rivals with a national following, a power vacuum was created by Barre that could not be filled when the U.S.-backed regime was finally overthrown in January 1991, an event barely noticed outside the country as world attention was focused on the start of the Gulf War. With the end of the Cold War and the United States now granted bases in the Persian Gulf itself, Somalia fell briefly off the radar screen of U.S. foreign policy.
There is widespread agreement among those familiar with Somalia that had the U.S. government not supported the Barre regime with large amounts of military aid, he would have been forced to step down long before his misrule splintered the country. Prior to the dictator's downfall, former U.S. Representative Howard Wolpe, then-chairman of the House Subcommittee on Africa, called on the State Department to encourage Barre to step down. His pleas were rejected. "What you are seeing," observed the Congressman and former professor of African Politics, "is a general indifference to a disaster that we played a role in creating."
A U.S. diplomat who had been stationed in the Somali capital of Mogadishu acknowledged, "It's easy to blame us for all this." But, he argued, "This is a sovereign country we're taking about. They have chosen to spend [U.S. military aid] that way, to hurt people and destroy their own economy."
As the United States poured in more than $50 million of arms annually to prop up the Barre regime, there was virtually no assistance offered that would have helped build a selfsustaining economy which could feed Somalia's people. In addition, the United States pushed a structural adjustment program through the International Monetary Fund which severely weakened the local agricultural economy. Combined with the breakdown of the central government, drought conditions and rival militias disrupting food supplies, there was famine on a massive scale, resulting in the deaths of more than 300,000 Somalis, mostly children.
In November 1992, the outgoing Bush administration sent 30,000 U.S. troops, primarily Marines and Army Rangers, to Somalia in what was described as a humanitarian mission to assist in the distribution of relief supplies which were being intercepted by armed militias without reaching the civilian population in need. The United Nations Security Council endorsed the initiative the following month. Many Somalis and some relief organizations were grateful for the American role. Many others expressed skepticism, noting that the famine had actually peaked that summer and the security situation was also improving gradually. At this point, the chaos limiting food shipments was limited to a small area; most areas functioned as relatively peaceful fiefdoms. Most food was getting through and the loss from theft was only slightly higher than elsewhere in Africa. In some cases, U.S. forces essentially dumped food on local markets, hurting indigenous farmers and creating greater food shortages over the longer term. In any case, few Somalis were involved in the decisions during this crucial period.
Most importantly for the United States, large numbers of Somalis saw the American forces as representatives of the government which served as the major Western supporter of the hated former dictatorship. Such an overbearing foreign military presence in a country which had been free from colonial rule for only a little more than three decades led to growing resentment, particularly since these elite combat forces were not trained for such humanitarian missions. (Author and journalist David Halberstam quotes the U.S. Secretary of Defense telling an associate, "We're sending the Rangers to Somalia. We are not going to be able to control them. They are like overtrained pit bulls. No one controls them.") Shootings at U.S. military roadblocks became increasingly commonplace and Somalis witnessed scenes of mostly white American forces harassing and shooting their black countrymen.
In addition, the U.S. role escalated to include attempts at disarming some of the war lords, resulting in armed engagements, often in crowded urban neighborhoods. This "mission creep" resulted in American casualties, creating growing dissent at home in what had originally been a widely-supported foreign policy initiative. The thousands of M16 rifles sent, courtesy of the American taxpayer, to Barre's armed forces were now in the hands of rival militiamen who had not only used them to kill their fellow countrymen and to disrupt the distribution of relief supplies, but were now using them against American troops It wasn't long before the slogan of American forces was "The only good Somali is a dead Somali." It had become apparent that the U.S. had badly underestimated the resistance.
The United States passed the mission on to the United Nations in May the following year, marking the first time the world body had combined peacekeeping, peace enforcement and humanitarian assistance. It was also the first time the UN has intervened without a formal invitation by a host government (because there wasn't any.) But Somalis had little trust of the United Nations, either, particularly since the UN Secretary General at that time was Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a major supporter of Barre when he led Egypt's foreign ministry. U.S. forces, now leading the UN mission, went on increasingly aggressive forays, including a major battle in Mogadishu which resulted in the deaths of 18 Marines and hundreds of Somali civilians, dramatized in the highly-fictionalized thriller Black Hawk Down. The U.S.-led UN forces had become yet another faction in the multi-sided conflict. Largely retreating to a fixed position, the primary American objective soon became protecting its own forces. With mounting criticism on Capitol Hill from both the left and the right, President Bill Clinton withdrew American troops in March 1994. The United Nations pulled its last peacekeeping forces out one year later.
The U.S. intervention in Somalia is now widely considered to have been a fiasco. It is largely responsible for the subsequent U.S. hesitation about so-called humanitarian intervention outside of high-altitude bombing. It was the major factor in the tragic U.S. refusal to intervene either unilaterally or through the United Nations to prevent the genocide in Rwanda during the spring of 1994. The Somalia intervention was most likely an ill-advised assertion of well-meaning liberal internationalism, though there may have been other factors prompting the American decision to intervene as well: perhaps as a rationalization for increased military spending despite the end of the Cold War; an effort to mollify the Islamic world for American overkill in the war against Iraq and the inaction against the massacres of Muslims in Bosnia; and possibly as a preemptive operation against possible Islamic extremists rising out of the chaos. If the latter was the goal, it may have backfired. Islamic radicals were able to find some willing recruits among the Somalis, already upset by the U.S. support for Barre, now additionally angry at the destruction wrought by direct U.S. military intervention in their country.
In subsequent years, there has been only marginal progress towards establishing any kind of widely-recognized national government. Somalia is still divided into fiefdoms run by clan leaders and warlords, though there is rarely any serious fighting. Some officials in the current Bush Administration believe that Al-Qaida has established an important network or active cells within this factious country.
If this is indeed the case, it begs the question as to how the United States should respond. It is possible that U.S. forces have access to remarkably accurate intelligence and would be able to pinpoint and take out the cells without once again becoming embroiled in the messy urban counter-insurgency warfare of 1993-94 or relying on air strikes in heavily-populated areas, which would result in large-scale civilian casualties. Based on the current methods employed by the Bush administration to combat terrorism, however, this is rather doubtful. The result of renewed U.S. military intervention in Somalia, then, could be yet another debacle that would only encourage the extremist forces we are trying to destroy.
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