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Politics : Stop the War! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rrufff who wrote (15739)	4/24/2003 12:53:06 PM
From: zonder	Respond to of 21614

Perception can also be influenced by opinion. That is not a good thing, though. Let's say, you are looking at a blond girl from the Middle East (me, for example :-) If you perceive her to be brunette because your opinion is that Middle East people are dark-skinned, there is a problem there, I hope you agree. My understanding is that perception is not influenced by opinions in healthy individuals. If you perceive/see something that does not fit into your opinion, then perhaps it is time to change the opinion. It's pretty clear that the "protests" are marches that have been well-organized Maybe I have not understood well enough what "protests" you are referring to. If you are referring to the recent images from the millions marching towards Karbala, please be assured that the goal there is not protesting the US, and I doubt if they are "organized" at all, much less by the Iranians. That is a very important ritual for the Shiites based on the story of Hussein that I told you about. If not, please say which "protests" you are referring to. I disagree with you with the extent of the natural outpouring that leads to beating one's self over the head with a sword, etc. If it makes it any easier to believe me, I have observed that ritual in various places before. This one is no more violent than any of the others, which were definitely not covertly organized by the Iranians :-) You must be aware that what Jordan, for example, says about Israel in the press is not the same thing they tell US, Russia or even Israel The same is true for all countries of the world, except perhaps for the US of late, where Bush is saying all that comes to his head, with the grace of a bull in a china shop. They may be opposing the war officially but they know they are better off and "dancing in the dark." No doubt the neighbouring states were eventually brought in some sort of a line (with bullying & billions dangled under their noses) but you cannot have missed the fact that this was completely opposite of what their people wanted/felt about the invasion of Iraq by the US. Yes, Iraqis are also starving Ah, I knew you would say that :-) Now, please look it up before you take my word on this - Whatever else the Iraqis might be under Saddam, they were NOT starving. Saddam's was a SOCIALIST dictatorship, and everybody was entitled to basic culinary necessities such as flour, sugar, etc. 60% of all Iraqis used this system. The allocations were (sensibly) increased to fivefold (iirc) in the weeks running up to the war. Iraq is not like Afghanistan. It was not as if people were deprived of resources forever. Yes, they had to sell assets to make ends meet, but people were not starving. There was trade going on. voanews.com abcnews.go.com reuters.com washingtonpost.com One of the signs, for me, that US was ill-advised for the realities of Iraq was the fact that they kept bringing food to Iraqis during the invasion. While of course very welcome, what they needed was WATER rather than food, and we all saw just how difficult their conditions got as a result of unforseen need for water. I realize that the US media has been pumping all these stories of how Iraqis have been starving etc, but a simple research will show that the basic necessities were met in Saddam's socialist system (which might actually be the one good thing he ever did) and they were NOT starving like the people in some parts of Africa or even like the North Koreans. As for other tyrants, one at a time, one at a time We will see. My bet is that nothing will be done about dictators as a group, because it was not because dictators are Not Nice that Iraq was invaded.