SL Capitol Hill Anti-War Protests
by Pixeleen Mistral on 20/02/07 at 6:25 pm
Sun honcho John Gage joins virtual protests
by Onder Skall
February 20, 2007, 14:45 SL Time – Capitol Hill sim
Protesters from a wide variety of groups converged on the Capitol Hill sim today to speak out against the proposed attacks on Iran. Word spread from one group to the next organically, and suddenly the sim went from completely unoccupied to full in less than fifteen minutes. Shirts and signs were created and handed out on the spot, and chants of “Bush is a criminal!” and “no war on Irani children! no war on Palestinian children!” filled the chatlog.
Plot Tracer of the SLLU covered the details for me: “i think it is important that all people unite against the warmongering US President. It is important that those Americans who stand for peace and goodwill tell him to backdown. It is also important that the US’s real friends tell Bush he is wrong. The children of Iran are innocent, just as the children of Iraq are. No to war and no to any more of US imperialist adventures in the Middle East.”
Soon members of SL Capitol Hill arrived to observe the situation. One member said: “It’s nice to see the park getting used.”
John Gage dons an anti-war t-shirt
When asked why he was here today, Anit-Ban leader Cochise Collas simply said: “I am against war and afraid the US will attack Iran.” I think he was going to say more but a dog and a bear came charging through at that point dancing to an infinite-looping “La Cucaracha”. That’s protesting SL style!
Amid the bizarre spectacle of a Second Life protest, one person that caught my eye was John Gage from Sun Microsystems. I asked him what brought him here: “I didn’t plan to be here, but I come here often [...] Years ago, I was one of the organizers of Vietnam Moratorium…we had 400,000 people on the Washington Monument grounds, and had a significant impact on Nixon. Dan Ellsberg has said that it helped stop the use of nukes on vietnam….we should do the same here.”
Prokofy Neva
Feb 20th, 2007
Yes, I figured that John Cage’s funding of this supposed “bi-partisan” Capitol Hill project was heavily-ideologically driven by a leftist agenda, to capture the symbolism and the respect for a pluralistic and democratic institution in RL for his own political agenda — and I wasn’t wrong.
Like the war on Iraq, I oppose the war on Iran. It’s not a just war by any stretch.
But that doesn’t mean you need to lose your mind and start chanting hysterical stuff about the innocent children of Iran, as if suddenly we have to front children and forgot about all the criminals and thugs running the country of Iran that even makes it a target of the USG in the first place.
Ahmadinejad is a far worse criminal than Bush, my God, the murderous habits of ths president of Iran are amply on record. Who do you think fuels all the attacks on lines of people waiting to train as police in Iraq? Whose backing all the terrorism and abductions and mayhem in Iraq? How can that be justified?
It’s always regrettable that anti-war movements lose many followers by their absurd, sectarian, shrill leftism.
While we’re condemning U.S. imperialist adventures in the Middle East, which I’m all for doing, will we be condemning any of the murderous and thuggish regimes in the Middle East that make the societies of the Middle East the oppressive places they are today?
No, I’m hoping that this time a more rational and enlightened peace movement could get started that doesn’t irrationally embrace the thugs of the Middle Eastern regimes as “the enemies of my enemy are my friends” like they did in the Soviet era, but I’m likely to be disappointed in that hope.
At least we’ve flushed out the fact that this Capitol Hill project is just the usual sectarian lefty SL effort which has therefore no credibility when it claims to represent a diverse institutional presence like the RL Congress. Glad we got that straight.
Nacon
Feb 20th, 2007
Bush doesn’t play Second Life….. so wtf?
Prokofy Neva
Feb 20th, 2007
No, but you do, so maybe you could be forced to think a thought in your brainless little head by being exposed to something like this.
Economic Mip
Feb 20th, 2007
It is still going on, and I am laughing so hard. These people, their arguments just to absurd.
Bernabe Fugazi
Feb 20th, 2007
Hey maybe this will keep Bush’s avatar from declaring war against this “Iran” part of the grid
Frickin morons
Mullah Cimoc
Feb 20th, 2007
Mullah Cimoc say
this funny joke for ameriki: why all government in middle east forbid the intermarriage between of the turk and the kurd.
ANSWER: BELOW
BECAUSE THEM OFFSPRING BE KNOWN AS THE “TURDS”.
Janice Furlough
Feb 20th, 2007
Prokofy Neva – I’m a little confused by your stance here. Are you saying that military attacks are the only option and that those children must die? Are you saying that this is a foregone conclusion and that objecting is only killing more kids in the long term?
Or are you under the impression that very few innocents will be killed?
HammerHead Bailey
Feb 20th, 2007
TOWELHEADS MUST BE PURGED
Mike
Feb 20th, 2007
There is far less citizens in my RL hometown than there is users in SL, and if people organize protests here to reach the people of my hometown. Why should´nt avatars organize demonstrations in SL to reach it´s people(and by that reach the real people behind the avatars).
I get the logic, “if you did´nt see our protest in RL because you were playing second life, then you can see it in SL instead and listen to our arguments here”
Mike
Feb 20th, 2007
There is far less citizens in my RL hometown than there is users in SL, and if people organize protests here to reach the people of my hometown. Why should´nt avatars organize demonstrations in SL to reach it´s people(and by that reach the real people behind the avatars).
I get the logic, “if you did´nt see our protest in RL because you were playing second life, then you can see it in SL instead and listen to our arguments here”
Prokofy Neva
Feb 20th, 2007
I’m all for having protests in the virtual world. That doesn’t bother me at all. why not? It’s a good organizing tool. But I do want to point out that when this character John Cage of Sun Microsystems comes out and claims a few months ago when he first opened this sim he supported that it’s “bi-partison” and “neutral” and a “place to learn” and blah blah blah, I didn’t buy it. I said, oh, is this how certain Congressmen get bought? Is this how certain political causes get promoted? Because bi-partisan my ass, if the guy supporting this supposed “bi-partisan institution” comes out with a t-shirt on his avatar that says “stop the war” etc. It’s as bi-partisan as a three-dollar bill.
Re: ”
Prokofy Neva – I’m a little confused by your stance here. Are you saying that military attacks are the only option and that those children must die? Are you saying that this is a foregone conclusion and that objecting is only killing more kids in the long term?”
Of course not. I oppose military attacks. I oppose the war in Iran. Why start a war in Iran to top off the badly botched war in Iraq? My God, masses of civilians have been killed already and our soldiers are dying.
What I’m objecting to is this sudden emotional exploitation of “the children”. Suddenly, we are to weep for the children for Iran. Huh? Could we weep for the adults that the mullahas have executed? Could we weep for Israel children killed by Palestinian suicide bombers? I mean, I’m not going to drop a facile tear here for the children of Iran. I’m not going to pump up “the children of Iran” as a reason why you don’t go to war with Iran.
Iran has a murderous thug as a president who has killed thousands of people and maintains a dangerous, destabilizing regime that is responsible for backing terrorism all over the place, including against our soldiers. So let’s not get weepy and sentimental here.
Other ways need to be sought to stop Iran, like other ways should have been sought to stop Sadam. And one of the first things that needs to be done is to get rid of all the facile and infantile illusions about these dreams in the mind of hard sectarian lefists, who make common causes with these regimes in the mistaken belief that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
What can be done? The diplomatic resources of turning around France, Russia, Qatar, etc. on this have not at all been exhausted. When you can expose all those regimes’ support of the deadly Middle East regimes, you go a long way to getting at the root of the problem.
We don’t belong in Iraq or Iran, and war is not the answer. But the question is not, “What about the children?”
higgleDpiggle Snoats
Feb 20th, 2007
Thanks again to the Herald for covering this story. To Prokofy – the protests were not *in support* of the Iranian regime, they were *against* the killing of innocent civillians, and more potentially catastrophic and incompetent US military blunders in the Middle East. I do not know why you would choose to assume those attending these protests or reading this story are incapable of making such a basic distinction.
For those, like Mike, who may be interested in the idea of using SL to protest and raise awareness of international issues, please drop by the SLLU’s office in Scotland, and use our ‘suggestions box’ to let us know your ideas on how you would like to see the medium of SL fully utilised to this end.
Right Rules
Feb 20th, 2007
John Cage’s presence here in no way influences how this space is being used or how we will be allowed to use it in the future.
There is no “gotcha” here.
This is a bi-partisan space. Next time the Dem’s get up to their tricks you can bet you’ll see that.
Prokofy Neva
Feb 20th, 2007
Right Rules, I fail to find your statement persuasive. John Cage has an agenda. He has a clear-cut set of political beliefs. You know, they usually come in a cluster. Stop the imperialist war in Iraq, buy my computers, net neutrality, and hate on SUV drivers. That sort of thing. Don’t pretend it’s something that isn’t.
All the people who have paraded through this “bi-partisan space” are all Democrats, and all tend to be those with the more leftist point of views. And that’s fine. But then open up a sim called “The Left-Wing of the Democratic Party”. Don’t open up a sim called “Capitol Hill as Brought to You By the Left Wing of the Democratic Party”.
Right Rules
Feb 21st, 2007
You’re missing the point: everybody has an agenda. Everybody. Anybody who says they don’t is a liar.
You bring your agenda to Capitol Hill and you put it forward. That’s democracy. You don’t leave it at home and try to figure out what everybody else thinks you should do. That’s a communism.
There’s nothing stopping right wingers from coming to Capitol Hill. Name one thing that has been built into the sim or into policy that keeps right wingers away and I’ll back right down.
LaBlanc
Feb 21st, 2007
So the Jew-hating fascist that thinks he’s the messiah and wants to remove Israel from the map has access to Nuclear weapons.
Personally I don’t see what the big deal is.
MAYBE the BUSHiSTAs just want MORE OIL.
LaBlanc
Feb 21st, 2007
Oh, and yes, think of the children. We should never take any military action in which children are put in danger. Even if that action could prevent an exponentially greater number of children of being reduced to cinders. This is by all means NOT a transparent emotional gimmick to hide the real agenda which is an extreme phobia of the United States having more influence and power around the world. In any event, I refuse to continue living under the label “White Opressor.” Maybe if there was a war here White Americans could have the label “opressed” and I wouldn’t feel so guilty on my college campus. It’s bad enough that I have to lie about being bisexual to get opression-creds.
But, in all seriousness, Iranian children deserve to live in the future that only a nuke-crazy, Israel-scapegoating, man who thinks he’s the Islamic “messiah” can give them. I say this because I am an American who is compassionate. If history has taught us anything, its that people like this can be controlled through a system of appeasement and diplomacy.
P.S. Bush mentioned “God” in his last address, it sucks living under a theocratic psychopath like Bush.
Evan Sonaro
Feb 21st, 2007
>> All the people who have paraded through this “bi-partisan space” are all Democrats, and all tend to be those with the more leftist point of views.
Gosh! The word “all” repeated three times in only one sentence! In his typical nihilistic approach Prok conveniently “forgot” that the US SL residents account for only 30% of the total residents, so probably the Democrats are something like 15% or less, and the residents that belong to “The Left-Wing of the Democratic Party” are something like nada%. Ah well… nihilism originated in Russia after all.
As for the rest 70% of SL, a quick look at the SL countries statistics and another quick look at RL surveys about their thoughts toward the Bush administration policies, will be enough for opening hundreds of sims with the prefix “The Extreme-Left-Wing of (insert word here)”. As always, the word “left” can be used loosely, given that a Prok’s Left-Wing could be considered like a Center-Right-Wing by many other non-US residents.
Prokofy Neva
Feb 21st, 2007
*in support* of the Iranian regime, they were *against* the killing of innocent civillians, and more potentially catastrophic and incompetent US military blunders in the Middle East. I do not know why you would choose to assume those attending these protests or reading this story are incapable of making such a basic distinction.
Then why is absolutely nothing said at this demonstration, and most like in in RL and SL, that criticizes the murderous thugs of the Middle East? Eh?
How can I assume that the people in these demonstrations can’t make the distinction, and are supporting these regimes? Very simply, higgle, because they do not condemn the murderous regimes — ever. You never hear them criticize them. They invoke “the children of Iran” but never “the children of Israel” or any other children, including the children of Iran and Iraq that are killed by their own murderous governments.
They may not support them if you quiz them; they may have no idea what they are like. They may resent feeling as if they are being asked a “loyalty test”. But that’s just the problem. They cannot develop a more sophisticated world-view that can advocate a democratic US foreign policy and cooperation with the international system like the UN, without having to turn anti-American, pro-Palestinian, and thunderously silent on murderous thugs like Ahmadinejad who has called for Israel to be wiped off the map. In fact, if Ahmadinejad and his regime wasn’t the way it was, we wouldn’t be having this conversation because there’d be no justification for war. And each time you on the hard left are silent about these realities, or you equivocate or minimize them, or make one-sided peace movements, you just feed into their justification.
It’s like all the useful idiots that found a way to protest Pershing and Cruise Missiles, but were blind to the Soviet SS20s pointing at them that served as the justification for the Western rockets.
Instead, the only sort of shrill, dramatic rhetoric these demonstrators use is “Stop War Criminal Bush”. What, Sadam isn’t a war criminal? Ahmadinejad hasn’t committed crimes against humanity? Of course they have! So where’s the protest against them? Do I see a picket from any of these groups in front of the Iranian mission to protest the murder of the Canadian journalist or the hanging of the boys deemed to be gay, or the thousands of exiles assassinated and all kinds of opponents of the regime disappeared and murdered, from Bahais to disloyal government officials? Of course not.
Right Rules, I totally disagree. The people who put up Capitol Hill are hijackers and sectarians. They grab a symbol, fill it with their agenda, pump it, and then declare lamely, well, if someone doesn’t like it, well, bleh, that’s democracy, they can come and protest us. The fact is, the Sun-supported group Clear Ink owns the sim. While they might be tolerant of some right-wing group coming in, that group won’t have prim access and estate tool access. Yes, the exigencies of literal serveral management tell the story of real life as well as Second Life: this is pwned by a partisan group. If the Christian right came in and built a Capitol Hill and started putting anti-abortion protests on it, I’ll bet we’d hear all of you screaming about how they are hijacking a symbol. And they would be.
Evan, you’re engaging in blustering bullshit. We’re talking about the people putting on events and actions *on this sim* called “Capitol Hill,” not *the entire population of Second Life* which is a separate topic, and is diverse — although not as diverse as one might imagine looking at cooked LL statistics.
higgleDpiggle Snoats
Feb 22nd, 2007
‘Then why is absolutely nothing said at this demonstration, and most like in in RL and SL, that criticizes the murderous thugs of the Middle East? Eh?
…What, Sadam isn’t a war criminal? Ahmadinejad hasn’t committed crimes against humanity? Of course they have! So where’s the protest against them? Do I see a picket from any of these groups in front of the Iranian mission to protest the murder of the Canadian journalist or the hanging of the boys deemed to be gay, or the thousands of exiles assassinated and all kinds of opponents of the regime disappeared and murdered, from Bahais to disloyal government officials? Of course not.’
The agenda on which US military aggression hinges, is not whether or not these regimes are just and humane, it is whether or not they threaten US interests. Maybe once we can convince our own governments to take an ethical and responsible role in the world, and live up to their own proclaimed moral standards, then we can start preaching to others how to follow our wonderful example. In the meantime, we cannot impose democracy by violent means, as the catastrophe in Iraq is proving. However, one of our greatest obligations as supposed democratic citizens is to ensure that our own governments are sane, competent, accountable and able to play by their own professed rules. That is why the issue of US power and international dominance deserves to receive priority focus. It has disproportionate power, and therefore disproportionate responsibility, which, if continuously misused, is the much bigger threat to GLOBAL justice and stability, than anything which the current Iranian regime has to offer.
Seola Sassoon
Feb 22nd, 2007
At what point do you define children and killers? Some gun wielding killers are as young as 8 years old. Do you pick and choose not to kill them because of age, or do you see them as a threat when they are shooting at you?
War sucks. But talking doesn’t resolve it all the time either. First you gotta talk politics, then you gotta talk to the country about THEIR politics, then you gotta go back to your own, then off the consult all the grass roots groups, then back to your politics then back to the other country’s politics, and tell them what YOU think is humane and proper and all that good stuff.
No one could talk Saddam into anything. He was also training children.
Women have repeatedly said in Iraq and Iran that they hate Americans and will train their children to hate and kill Americans. Should we let these women who may have 15 sons live because they are women? Let them teach their kids to kill those who are dying every day?
At what point does an ‘innocent person’ become a ‘threat’?
Too many questions to pick and choose to be sympathetic to the ‘innocent’.
Numbers
Feb 22nd, 2007
The number of people oppressed by the current regime is less than the total number of random innocent bystanders stuffed into Guantanamo Bay and tortured. This does not take into account the other secret US torture camps.
The number of average citizens killed in Iraq during this latest adventure far exceeds the number of people Saddam has ever killed by several orders of magnitude.
Don’t buy the pro-war hype. The numbers don’t bear out.
There are many other ways of handling the situation that nobody seems interested in because they don’t make anybody feel ballsy and not enough people explode. When the next few thousand people die (who would have all lived without a war), I hope it makes you all feel good that the world is safer for it. It solved everything in Vietnam.
LaBlanc
Feb 22nd, 2007
“it is whether or not they threaten US interests”
Oh God forbid!
“Maybe once we can convince our own governments to take an ethical and responsible role in the world, and live up to their own proclaimed moral standards, then we can start preaching to others how to follow our wonderful example”
Please, shut the fuck up. We’re in an entirely different moral category than people who smash people with walls because they practice homosexual sex, you America-hating toad. When the United States rounds people up for being gay, a member of a particular religion, or a political dissident, and feeds them feet first into a woodchipper, then you can talk about the United States not having the moral highground. You can point to mistakes the government has made in supporting the wrong person somewhere in the world, but we haven’t descended to Iranian, Korean, or Saddamish levels.
“In the meantime, we cannot impose democracy by violent means,”
Watashi wa amerika-jin desu ka
“That is why the issue of US power and international dominance deserves to receive priority focus. It has disproportionate power,”
i.e. you want to weaken the United States’ power. Maybe if we were weaker *they* wouldn’t hate us! They are all benevolent minorities, anyway, they are just striking out against the evil White, corporate, colonialist power. I long for the day they pat my head and say “You’re one of the Good ones.”
“if continuously misused, is the much bigger threat to GLOBAL justice”
Right, because not having the power to stop North Korea, Iran, or Iraqi injustices against their own people — real injustices, like starving them to death, executing them for having sex — will really lead to justice on a global scale.
“than anything which the current Iranian regime has to offer”
This is how I know that you and people that think like you are full of shit. The Iranian regime *IS* the liberal caricature of the Bush administration. They have nuclear ambitions, they talk about wiping neighboring countries off the map, they have a theocratic regime in which they execute homosexuals and women, and their leader *literally* believes he’s from God – the Islamic “Messiah” no less.
The leftist outrage against him and his administration should be exploding on the streets. But instead you get boners when a fascist South American calls Bush the “devil” — something you’d be embarrased about if our president called another foreign leader that.
You people are morons of the first order.
higgleDpiggle Snoats
Feb 22nd, 2007
That people will fight for their lives when confronted with an aggressor, does not excuse or justify the actions of the aggressor to begin with. And neither can all civillians automatically be regarded as ‘fair game’ simply because some will have inevitably become militarised in response the the aggression inflicted upon them. The Iranian people have not requested American ‘assistance’ in their affairs, it is unwanted, and will be resented and resisted. And NO nation on earth deserves to suffer the bloody chaos and moral disentegration which has been unleashed in Iraq as a result of the US-led occupation. Pre-emptive aggression has not proven to be any kind of solution in Iraq, and there is absolutely no evidence to suggest it will result in any less of a nightmare if this same clumsy, incompetent course of action is attempted with its neighbour Iran. This remains true, regardless of whether you choose to be ‘sympathetic’ to the loss of non-American life in your name or not.
LaBlanc
Feb 22nd, 2007
“he Iranian people have not requested American ‘assistance’ in their affairs”
Who gives a shit? If you know that western civilization, with its problems, is superior to the kind of culture that the Iranians are living in, then their future generations will thank us.
But even if they don’t – who cares? Disgusting civilizations that smash womens’ faces in for driving or execute people for having gay sex don’t deserve to exist.
higgleDpiggle Snoats
Feb 22nd, 2007
LaBlanc – you want me to ‘shut the fuck up’ because you don’t like my opinions? Do you want me to believe *you* stand for US-style democracy, rationality, decency, free-speech, and all those virtues which you claim the US represents? The most hateful and belligerent attitude in this entire thread has come from you, sadly.
Panda
Feb 22nd, 2007
Who gives a shit? If you know that mid-east civilization, with its problems, is superior to the kind of culture that the Westerners are living in, then their future generations will thank us.
But even if they don’t – who cares? Disgusting civilizations that invade other countries for their resources, support occupation and genocide and allow people to have sex before marriage don’t deserve to exist.
- LaBlanc, Judge, Jury, Executioner
Anon
Feb 22nd, 2007
LaBlanc – western civilization is superior? *snigger* You watch FOX News, don’t you? Two words for ya buddy: completely brainwashed.
Reality
Feb 22nd, 2007
Want to solve the problem of wars?
Nuke the entire planet until not a single creature is left alive. There is your end to all war.
LeBlanc
Feb 22nd, 2007
“LaBlanc – western civilization is superior? *snigger* You watch FOX News, don’t you? ” …. “[HILARIOUS Parody of my statement by which The West is interchanged with Middle East Civilization]”
HURRRRR
Okay, lets do it this way. We’ll cut the country in half. We’ll have one be ruled by the way things are now, and we’ll have the other ruled by how things are in the middle east/Iran.
Which do you prefer to live in?
And if you have any preferance at all, you are determining that one is superior to the other.
Enjoy being smashed by a stone wall because you had gay sex, retards.
“The most hateful and belligerent attitude in this entire thread has come from you”
No, the most hateful and nasty attitudes come from people who turn their guns on their country of origin while making excuses for murderous dictators who stand for everything they project on the Bush administration.
You are no more compassionate or reasonable than people who hear neighbors beating the shit out of their children and don’t do anything about it because “well, we have our problems too…”
When will you be launching a protest against the Iranian government’s policiies? Send me an e-mail for when you do that in Second Life.
Panda
Feb 22nd, 2007
“Okay, lets do it this way. We’ll cut the country in half. We’ll have one be ruled by the way things are now, and we’ll have the other ruled by how things are in the middle east/Iran.
Which do you prefer to live in?
And if you have any preferance at all, you are determining that one is superior to the other.
Enjoy being smashed by a stone wall because you had gay sex, retards.”
I would prefer to live in the “Western” part, and someone from the middle-east would probably want to to live in the “Eastern” part. Are you saying my opinion is superior because I’m already a westerner? If so, then you are indeed the retard here.
Anon
Feb 22nd, 2007
brainWASHED
Prokofy Neva
Feb 22nd, 2007
>That people will fight for their lives when confronted with an aggressor, does not excuse or justify the actions of the aggressor to begin with.
I really have to try to get you to see reason on this one.
Have you actually *followed* what’s been going on at the UN and such with Iran? Iran is the aggressor at the get-go. It funds and sustains terrorism in the region. It threatens its neighbours. It has violated all kinds of UN resolutions and all kinds of diplomatic efforts to get its murderous regime to stop. It defies them all.
Here’s a case where two wrongs *don’t* make a right. If the US tortures people in its custody abroad; if the US has nuclear weapons and proliferates them, that’s bad, but that doesn’t somehow “right” the wrong of Iran torturing and proliferating. Yet that’s what the hard left would have us believe.
Iran is the original aggressor in this situation. The response to that aggression may be invalid; you may find Bush’s recipes facile. Many do. But do portray Iran as some kind of innocent little weakling beaten up by a bully on the playground is to defy logic and information and dishonour the memory of all the people who have given their lives struggling against this regime from within Iran or in exile.
>And neither can all civillians automatically be regarded as ‘fair game’ simply because some will have inevitably become militarised in response the the aggression inflicted upon them.
Actually, if those civilians are doing stuff like using human shields or are in places like television stations considered strategic, you might not find that even international law is on your side on these matters.
>The Iranian people have not requested American ‘assistance’ in their affairs, it is unwanted, and will be resented and resisted.
Well, who are the Iranian people? Not the mullahs. Even the moderates who were “elected” in what are not really recognized as real elections are persecuted. Really, who are they? Are YOU in a position to know? I don’t think so. Is it this exile group? That exile group? The fact is, the Iranian people are not in a position to exercise their will. They might or might not want American assistance. Some might, some might not, but you’ve painted the picture far too simplistically here.
>And NO nation on earth deserves to suffer the bloody chaos and moral disentegration which has been unleashed in Iraq as a result of the US-led occupation.
No, it does not. What was your solution for the bloody chaos and moral disentegration — and then vicious totalitarianism and mass murder — that occurred under Sadam and the mullash in the Iranian revolution? Seriously, what IS your solution to the problem of rogue regimes? Would you like to hold hands with them and sing Kumbayah? You really need to think about this some more to develop the kind of argumentation that will be more persuasive in the modern world with all its information about the nature of regimes. The people in the Soviet GULAG being starved to death or executed couldn’t send us an email or maintain a website. The people in their plight in Iran can. You don’t have the luxury to remain morally indifferent to their fate.
>Pre-emptive aggression has not proven to be any kind of solution in Iraq, and there is absolutely no evidence to suggest it will result in any less of a nightmare if this same clumsy, incompetent course of action is attempted with its neighbour Iran.
Ok, no argument there, but then…do you have a good answer for what amounts to the pre-emptive aggression Iran has launched against Israel? I mean, have you ever even opened up a map of the Middle East? And seen this tiny appendix of a country in the midst of giant regimes with many times the territory? Did you ever wonder why these behemoths with all their populations and territories and military might and oppressive regimes so fear such a dinky little blot on the map? Could it be because their religious and culture makes women equal, and values openness of scholarly inquiry, and freedom of speech? My God, do you think THAT could be something more powerful than all the weapons of all the Saudis and Iranians and Syrians? The answer is: yes it is. And that’s why all those oppressive regimes quake, and become hysterical about every move Israel makes in its defense, and goes on dysfunctionally pumping up the dysfunctionality of the Palestinian refugees, never resolving their status, never accepting them in neighbouring countries, never contributing significantly to real peace processes.
>This remains true, regardless of whether you choose to be ‘sympathetic’ to the loss of non-American life in your name or not.
Iraqis have died by the thousands, far more than Americans. It’s a sad fact of life that people like yourself don’t tune into wars when they’re killing only the locals or the UN workers who gave their lives caring for the locals (did we hear from you on August 19, 2004?). Instead, only when the news media begins to pick up both increased soldiers’ death for America and weeping grandmothers’ having their homes crudely searched by those American soldiers do you tune in.
I would suggest to you that the world is a far more complex and less one-sided place than you conceive it.
You could get rid of “Bush” whom you blame for all ills. You could get rid of “American foreign policy and wars” which you imagine to be alone among the sources of the world’s evils. You could do what people did after Reagan, and put in Clinton, have a lovely successful Middle East peace process for years (Oslo), have lovely foreign aid programs to support women’s education instead of wars, and have lots of nice things that go with all of that…but then somehow lead us back into the cycle where we get Bush and 9/11 and so forth.
You really do need a sturdier world view to tide you through the next 25 years of your life, I assure you.
higgleDpiggle Snoats
Feb 22nd, 2007
‘But do portray Iran as some kind of innocent little weakling beaten up by a bully on the playground is to defy logic and information and dishonour the memory of all the people who have given their lives struggling against this regime from within Iran or in exile.’
Nowhere have i claimed this Prokofy, and your entire objection to my presumed stance seems to arise from this mis-equation. I believe that the citizens of Iran are ill-served by their government, but that does NOT justify heavy-handed US interventionist aggression. I believe the entire world is ill-served by current US foreign policy. You are correct: two wrongs do not make a right. And that is why i do not see it as invalid to protest against the US’s doctrine of pre-emptive intervention and the brutalising of civillian populations *simply because* the Iranian regime is not a bastion of human rights itself. Even if the motivations for regime change in Iraq had ever seriously been about US concern over human rights abuses – can anyone now say that the Iraqi’s are better off as a result of US-led intervention? So for anyone to claim that an attack on Iran would be about improving their citizens’ human rights is just plain bogus. I am not a professional international diplomat, and, unsurprisingly i do not have a glib solution to the current stand-off, any more than you do Prokofy, and neither do i pretend to. But that does not prevent myself and many others both within the US, and internationally from seeing that another US-led war will do nothing other than worsen an already compromised human rights situation. As i have already stated, if our governments are operating irresponsibly, recklessly and aggressively supposedly on our democratic mandate, then it is our obligation as citizens to challenge *their* actions first and foremost.
LeBlanc
Feb 22nd, 2007
“Are you saying my opinion is superior because I’m already a westerner”
Are you saying “It’s bad to kill gays for having sex” is an inferior opinion? Are you saying “It’s bad for women not to have rights”? Are you saying “it’s bad to have a theocracy?”
No. You don’t have the balls to make a statement about an obviously corrupt and terrible regime – far easier to criticize Bush where you know you have freedom of speech and won’t be fed to dogs for offering your “opinion.”
Continue mewling about how the corrupt regimes of Iran and such are just “different opinions,” and morally no different from the regimes of the West.
CloudyLane
Feb 22nd, 2007
It would be irresponsible of an American president to allow a nut like Ahmadinejad to attain nuclear weapons because it puts ME as a US citizen in danger and it is his job to safeguard my liberty.
Panda
Feb 22nd, 2007
LeBlanc, nowhere has it been said that the matter of Iran “different opinions”. That was about your Western/Eastern thought experiment, and is not valid anywhere else you might want to pull it out.
No, killing gays for having sex is not justifiable, you do however not go invading other countries over it. That’s lunacy, and just a quick way to validate middle-east people attacking us over what they see as OUR immoral behaviour.
There ARE other ways to influence and change besides war. You just see things in black and white, absolutes of right/wrong, and therefore anyone who disagrees with you must obviously believe in the opposite of everything you stand for. Things are not that simple, and two corrupt regimes do not make one right.
Prokofy Neva
Feb 22nd, 2007
Nowhere have i claimed this Prokofy, and your entire objection to my presumed stance seems to arise from this mis-equation.
Oh, but you do, by shrilling protesting “Bush the War Criminal” and bleating about “the children of Iran”. It’s a one-sided approach. You have only cheap and facile slogans when you do that. They set up a paradigm: Bush bad, Iranian president, victim.
>I believe that the citizens of Iran are ill-served by their government, but that does NOT justify heavy-handed US interventionist aggression.
Yes, but you didn’t open with that, did you? I had to pull it out of you after about 12 rounds. The kind of facile peace demonstration to which you adhere doesn’t make this point. They don’t have ready-made statements about the nature of Iran; they don’t have protests about the Iranian president’s evil nature; only about Bush’s evil nature.
Saying “it doesn’t justify aggression” is no good. It’s not persuasive. It’s a cop-out. Nobody in charge or supporting the people in charge buy it. In fact, you know there’s little that WOULD justify aggression in your book, because anything done by the U.S. would already be tainted for you. Better that….UN peacekeepers or something do it, eh? Seriously, I don’t think you have good answers for the complexities of the world. And therefore I won’t be marching with your banners or even in your column.
>I believe the entire world is ill-served by current US foreign policy.
Well, did anything I said about the map of the Middle East register with you? Guess not. The U.S. is in a position to make decisions that influence the world. But so is Russia, China, France. Have you spoken to them about their support of the Iranian regime? Have they used up their chits yet? Are they not part of the problem here? What’s your plan for reaching these important pieces to the puzzle?
>You are correct: two wrongs do not make a right. And that is why i do not see it as invalid to protest against the US’s doctrine of pre-emptive intervention and the brutalising of civillian populations *simply because* the Iranian regime is not a bastion of human rights itself.
The problem is that your high moral certitude isn’t persuasive. It’s an isolated moral certitude that is self-righteous and feels itself to be pure, but nobody buys it. As in the Soviet era, when Reagan could sell Star Wars, people look at one country and see bloody purges, bread lines, and overflowing prisons, and they look at another country and see racism in some states or support of some thuggish Latin American regimes, and while you may consider yourself above equivalencies, the average person isn’t. They pick. They figure out which is worse. You can’t lie to them. They know. And they don’t side with you.
You’re still silent on the Iranian doctrine of pre-emptive aggression or Hezbollah’s doctrine of pre-emptive aggression. Can you not see how one side’s begets another?
>Even if the motivations for regime change in Iraq had ever seriously been about US concern over human rights abuses – can anyone now say that the Iraqi’s are better off as a result of US-led intervention? So for anyone to claim that an attack on Iran would be about improving their citizens’ human rights is just plain bogus.
Oh, it would be. And it was even before Iraq, if you looked at Afghanistan. But that doesn’t mean that the human rights situation then in Iran can be suborned to your shrill and incessant bleating for “peace” and “stopping the US war machine”. You need to find a way to say something about the real, horrible, awful situation of Iran TOO. And Hezbollah TOO. and the Palestinians TOO. You can’t just suddenly react and remember these problems when it comes time to say, oh, but human rights doesn’t matter, because it cannot serve as a pretext.
One of the problems you’ll have nowadays with that point of view is that the left, including Tony Blair supporters, supporting the bombing of Kosovo and the toppling of Milosevic. They supported the freeing of East Timor — a very popular leftwing cause. These same people all support military forces and flyover zones in Chad and Darfur — and all in the name of human rights. So there’s already enough “progressive” causes where “humanitarian intervention” was used that people now look at a situation like Iran and say, “Maybe it will work”. Obviously some thinkers and military planners are found to make these assessments. They may be dead wrong, but they now have a history to point to.
>I am not a professional international diplomat, and, unsurprisingly i do not have a glib solution to the current stand-off, any more than you do Prokofy, and neither do i pretend to. But that does not prevent myself and many others both within the US, and internationally from seeing that another US-led war will do nothing other than worsen an already compromised human rights situation.
Well, I disagree. There’s a ton of stuff out there plenty worse than this “U.S.-led war” that um…cough…didn’t take place yet. Sudan, which has massacred 2 million people in the last 15 years or so, and hundreds of thousands of them just in the last few. It’s a Muslim, Egypt-backed regime with China and Russia backing and arming it to the hilt, fueling the genocide. Where are you and your progressive lefty friends when it comes time to saying, hey, another Sudanese-led war will only compromise human rights?
Or take Chechnya, Tibet, or take active conflict zones now like Sri Lanka — or Northern Uganda. None of these necessarily have the U.S. as “an actor” in them. They have other actors that don’t even act and allow nature to take its course.
With all the obsessiveness placed on Palestine and Iraq, it’s hard to point out to people that the number of casualties in these wars is actually dwarfted by the casualties in Africa.
That doesn’t mean you should do nothing. You should respond to situations where you can take action even if they aren’t as bad. But I don’t see that you yourself and your ideology have a good solution for a problem like Iran.
>As i have already stated, if our governments are operating irresponsibly, recklessly and aggressively supposedly on our democratic mandate, then it is our obligation as citizens to challenge *their* actions first and foremost.
Well, yes and no. People do that anyway. It’s very free to do in the U.S. and nobody hardly winds up in jail unless they break windows. But we’re in an increasingly global, and interconnected world. How can you live in Second Life, and encounter people from all over Europe and Asia, and not raise the question, but…what about France’s and Russia’s support of the Iranian regime? Can they not use their influence? Can they not kick away the struts? Ditto Sadam before the Iraq war. These situations don’t arise overnight, nor do they arrise only due to “the evil U.S.”
Peace movements come and go. I’ve seen a lot of them. They have 10,000 or they have 100,000, they get on TV, everyone feel important. But you need to come up with workable, positive plans that can really change the world. Waving the same idiotic sign that you wave around in RL in SL is not one of them. And nobody will even see you there. I’m for using Second Life to make a more global and sophisticated movement of citizens that finds a way to do as much about murdered journalists in Iran as it does about crabbing about Bush — which is cheap, and costs nothing. I think ultimately when you can create more sophisticated parties and organizations like that, they will be a more formidable force against simplistic visions like Bush’s.
Plot Tracer
Feb 22nd, 2007
Good to see the US govt have agreed with SLLU and the protestors here on sl. They have assured us they are not going to invade. Lets see if they can tell the truth for more than six months…
Hopefully, the US will get rid of the lying incumbent in the Whitehouse and vote in a safe pair of hands – look at how many americans and foriegn nationals have died because of this oil man.
Bush has been a disaster for the States and the world.
For real SL news go to: http://slleftunity.blogspot.com
CloudyLane
Feb 22nd, 2007
Plot Tracer,
No word for the millions who have died at the hands of merciless dictators? I didn’t think so.
Reality
Feb 22nd, 2007
Let’s do it this way hmm?
Eliminate Humanity – problem solved.
Plot Tracer
Feb 22nd, 2007
By the way, forgot to say – good to see real people with realistic and inherently good views on this forum. Well done HiggleDpiggle Snoats. Pity the rest of u cant think outside the big neo-con box, tho.
http://slleftunity.blogspot.com
Prokofy Neva
Feb 22nd, 2007
>By the way, forgot to say – good to see real people with realistic and inherently good views on this forum. Well done HiggleDpiggle Snoats. Pity the rest of u cant think outside the big neo-con box, tho.
>http://slleftunity.blogspot.com
I’m not in the Neo Con box. But I won’t get in the rigid, orthodox, hard leftist box with you. I’m a liberal. I want the movement against the war to be intelligent, and not the usual stupid fellow-travelling tripe. Is that too much to ask? I’m tired of sectarians like you dictating the agenda for the social movements in this country — such as they are. And many people feel as I do. Grow up, get over your infantile preoccupiation with your own country’s leader and develop a global vision.
Prokofy Neva
Feb 22nd, 2007
>Hopefully, the US will get rid of the lying incumbent in the Whitehouse and vote in a safe pair of hands – look at how many americans and foriegn nationals have died because of this oil man.
Plot Tracer, I think it’s very safe to say that far, far more innocents have died at the hands of the oil man Bashir in Khartoum than ever died from the hands of the oil man Bush.
Get over your infantile preoccupiations with the father figures of other people’s countries. What have you done to change the world where you live?
Oh dear, what a sectarian wasteland “SL Unity” is about. Ugh. Let’s hope it doesn’t um “unite for unity” with very many sectarians of its kind and splits into factions lol. This site is replete with the extremist “Spartacist League” crap, that most sectarian of sects; it’s even got Castro (!). My God, can’t we grow up and do better than this????
This sort of ridicularity was left behind in the 60s I thought?
LeBlanc
Feb 23rd, 2007
Panda: “LeBlanc, nowhere has it been said that the matter of Iran “different opinions”.”
Panda: I would prefer to live in the “Western” part, and someone from the middle-east would probably want to to live in the “Eastern” part. Are you saying my opinion is superior because I’m already a westerner? If so, then you are indeed the retard here”
“No, killing gays for having sex is not justifiable,”
Gee, so a country is civilization is greatly, flamboyantly unjust — that certainly doesn’t make it an inferior place to live!
higgleDpiggle Snoats
Feb 23rd, 2007
Prokofy, no-one in this thread has put forward a convincing argument that war against Iran would be ethically justified, or practically effective. You may not like the ‘manner’ in which we are raising this issue, but as far as i know, we are the only group as yet attempting to bring this issue to wider attention within SL. You seem to believe that US foreign policy must only be be criticised tentatively, with equivocation, and conditions. That is fine, if that is the approach you choose. But the substance of the criticisms themselves remain valid, and must not be glossed over. The US government has already disastrously pursued regime change in Iraq on a phoney pretext, and it *must* be held fully accountable, not least by its own citizens, and those of its allies, and especially if it is talking about pursuing further military intervention in the region on a bogus moral agenda of ‘defeating evil’. If you genuinely want to see these criticisms raised within SL in a way that is more credible in your eyes, then why do you not attempt to organise an alternative political movement, which is able to achieve exactly that? If you are not prepared to do so yourself, then your constantly ridiculing of those who ARE attempting to take some positive intiative in this direction begins to develop a distinctly hollow ring to it.
Panda
Feb 23rd, 2007
“Gee, so a country is civilization is greatly, flamboyantly unjust — that certainly doesn’t make it an inferior place to live!”
This just shows your complete failure to stick your head outside your own little thought box. If that is the only excuse you need to invade another country, then NO WONDER pursuing atomic power becomes a high priority. It’s the only way to deter US from steamrolling over them to force on them the Only Just, Right, True Way To Live(tm).
Plot Tracer
Feb 23rd, 2007
Well done, Prokofy! A name calling rant wins hands down. Of course – you have convinced me that I am wrong (even when you dont seem to understand any of my arguments, as you dont seem to have researched them…). I shall return to the non -sectarian capitalist creed. You have convinced me that lobbying is dead in the west.
And a solution? Well – yes I do think there is a solution – but one you will find too ludicrous to contemplate…. and that is for America to realise that oil profits are miniscule compared to the good will and lives that would be saved if it were to become the state it set out to be – that is one run with the peoples interests at heart rather than the interests of the money man and the priveledged few. Of course adherence to capitalism is NOT sectarian – and the subsect of capitalism that is liberalism does not fit that description. A subset that allows money to freely roam the globe finding poor people to exploit – while people are not allowed to leave their own countries as freely (if at all) to find work to feed their families.
By the way, the UK has announced a £100billion replacement of its nukes – nukes that will never be used – and money borne out of the working mans sweat. How will these nukes benefit the working man? Well much in the way the old ones did – not a jot.
And as for the man in the Whitehouse and his stooge Blair here in the UK – they can lay claim to over 100 000 deaths (Iraq Body count, the site that only counts the deaths reported by a media afraid to travel in iraq and by govt sources put the figure at over 62000 – still even more than Saddam and his american installed regime – and deaths are now at a rate of 100 a day – a figure unthinkable before the US and UK troops went in to secure the Iraq oil ministry…. erm help the people….cough cough). These people WOULD NOT have died had Saddam not decided to change his oil currency to euros rather than dollars – as the Iranian Govt recently did, so racking up the US pressure.
Lies lies lies. And speaking from the first imperialist country to go into the middle east and slaughter for a lie, the lie will not be forgotten – as will the slaughter of children (which started back in Clinton and Majors days – but people seem to think the war in Iraq was a recently started phenomena). And speaking as someone born in Ireland and having lived there for 27 years – I can assure you, people in the middle east will fight and fight and fight until the yoke of the invader has been lifted.
Solution? Don’t give them anything to fight about – lets get the hell out and bring home our boys!
http://slleftunity.blogspot.com/
Prokofy Neva
Feb 23rd, 2007
Why is identifying someone with their proper label “name-calling”? It’s so typical of peace movements and causes of various kinds that very hardline leftists and extremists hide out in them. They cloak their agenda with a few single-issue or simplistic slogans. You come from a very hardcore extremist political movement, than turns off anyone with half a brain if they read the silly newspapers you distribute on the street or in alternative bookstores, but when a mass movement gets started, you show up to hijack it.
In SL, this is apparently very much easier to do. You can make a t-shirt, plot a movement as “plot tracer” and get none other than John Cage of Sun Microsystems, who is the “Man” that you would like to “bring down” in your silly newspapers, to don that t-shirt.
I think it’s important to expose this sort of stuff as it gets going in SL.
I’ll bet few people showing up at this demo thought they were also showing up for an extremist agenda a la the Spartacist League. They may have wished to protest US involvement in a war, full stop. They may not have wished to embrace Castro and every other rogue tyrant out there, but yet, hooking up with you and your website, now they are. It’s despicable.
Sectarians with fervent belief systems and doctrinaire programs are always energized to show up, hijack agendas, move among people who are clueless, etc. and take advantage of them. I hate that sort of thing.
I don’t think you can get America to stop being a capitalist country. That’s not only what the majority of people want it to be; it’s what the millions escaping tyranny and povery from other shores whose regimes you sanctify (like Castro’s) want it to be. So I’m afraid that the masses you love to invoke vote with their feet.
No, I don’t think espousing a capitalist or liberal world view is at all sectarian. That’s because when people are free and have the democratic institutions to chose, they chose it. Socialism has mainly had to be imposed on people by force; when they chose it, they chafe under it and then chose out of it unless they’re killed.
I don’t know the current issues surrounding the UK’s missiles, but I have to say, that in Europe, Western Europe is still in the gunsights of the old Soviet Union, which hasn’t reformed much. Europe now gets 60 percent of its energy from Russia and Central Asia — it’s hugely dependent. Even when a Russian ex-psy is poisoned, they are powerless to do anything. So perhaps they hang on to their nukes because they understand deep down the nature of the forces they are dealing with on their continent.
I’ve followed bodycount religious. I used to even cite it in my own news stories. But then I began to see they were filling it up with every single unchecked wire story. Wire stories are always inflated, and often get re-filed and corrected a dozen times, but sources that grabbed them the first time don’t come back and fix them. But what matters isn’t whether there are 100,000 deaths or 10,000. The war is wrong, and even 1 death is wrong in Iraq. If you are going to bandy about numbers, do keep in mind that terrorists funded by Iran, and various other homegrown insurgents have also contributed to the deaths, and they’re the ones doing most of the assassinations of intellectuals, doctors, engineers, former governemnt officials, police trainees, current governemnt ministers — it’s the extremist believe that you can impose this fascistic form of Islam through murdering the skilled people in the society. I don’t hear you condemning THAT.
And I don’t hear you having a solution for what to do about that murderousness. If U.S. force is clumsy and suspect and tainted — which it is — then…um…I guess you can leave it to Russia, China, and Sudan to run things. Good luck!
BTW, the “slaughter of the children” in Iraq is one of the biggest fake canard stories of all time. Even the Nation debunked that old myth concocted by a few UN third world bureaucrats to try to affect policy. Life expectancy of children was higher in the areas Sadam controlled the least. This story is one of the ones easily refuted.
It’s like the “100,000 children” who were going to be slaughtered when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan or Iraq. Um, it didn’t happen that way, and not in those numbers, and not for those reasons. Oppose these invasions all you like — just don’t make up totally fake stories about kids to do it.
I’m all for bringing home our boys, and reducing U.S. intervention — and I’d like to hear your plan for minimizing the impact on the region of war-hardened terroristic extremist organizations.
and that’s why I won’t be reading your website, as it will not grapple with those kinds of complex problems.
Plot Tracer
Feb 23rd, 2007
Thanks Prokofy – you are indeed wise. Don’t read anything if it may challenge your world view – and, yes of course, you are right – there is no place for dissent in this world. If we could just all agree with exploitation, the world would be a better place… and those profit taking alternative bookstores and leaflet distributers should just stop annoying us!
You are indeed a wise old sage… any chance of a free office on one of your sims?
http://slleftunity.blogspot.com/