Via Bloggers4Labour, more HYS goodness:
“If the court follows international law, then he will have to be returned to power. If it doesn’t follow the law, the UN should refuse to accept the new government. It will be tough on Iraqis, but the principle of non-aggression must be upheld at all costs, and Bush must be humiliated and driven from power.
Colin Danforth, Montreal”
One presumes that this is irony (“It will be tough on Iraqis”), but the phrasing otherwise (“If the court follows international law, then he will have to be returned to power”) would suggest not (and Mr Danforth does live in Quebec – which is Canadian and French!).
“I think the victim has already had enough torture – mental and physical i.e. death of sons, fall from power, focus from the spider hole he was found in …
Misiko Amos, Kampala, Uganda”
If you like, you can look at thousands of Iraqi spider holes (slightly graphic if you don’t like to see skeletons)
On the subject of Saddam’s enormities, note the side bar has a link to Counting the Dead, which appears to be an editorialised re-broadcast of the Iraq Body Count. There is nothing to indicate that the IBC’s figures are disputed or subject to methodological criticism.
In the backgrounding, there is no mention of the crimes with which Saddam is charged. If you go to FoxNews, and look at “Background”, you find transcript of the charges, as well as:
“Background• Fast Facts: Saddam Aides to Be Tried •Fast Facts: Saddam Hussein• Transcript: Saddam’s Arraignment Video•Saddam Defiant in Court Photo Essays• Saddam’s Day in Court• Iraq’s Dirty Dozen• Saddam’s Downfall Stories• July 1, 2004: Defiant Saddam Refuses to Sign Charges• July 1, 2004: Kuwaitis Demand Justice•July 1, 2004: Iraqis Offer Mixed Take on Saddam• July 1, 2004: Plenty of Evidence Against Saddam”
When it comes to Milosevic, you get transcript and Q&As.
Whence the difference? Both ordered or were complicit in the killing of hundreds of thousands of Muslims, but one killer was (sort of) Christian and white. It wouldn’t be because France, Germany and Belgium supported Clinton‘s atack on a “sovereign member state of the UN”, in “flagrant breach” of “international law”, by any chance?
Now who is “fair and balanced”?
How many people were executed under the Pinochet regime? And yet the MSM are desperate to have him tried (and were particularly willing to have him tried in Spain; remember that Pinochet was under house arrest in London for some time before returning to Chile), but not Hussein.
29,000, which appears to include torture and not just death (although the article is slightly unclear).
Pinochet was very bad – sure he reformed Chile’s economy so that it is one of the jewels of South America today, but really? I think Chile should deal with Pinochet, rather than the “ICJ”, since Chile can do it (if Chile can’t pardon him, why can South Africa pardon its killers?).
The US, UK, Australia and NZ all reformed their economies in the 1980s too but they didn’t need to kill people to do it (fatuous accusations that Thatcher and Reagan just offshored killing to grease capitalism notwithstanding).
Your point is certainly valid – Saddam is far worse than Pinochet, but the MSM hounds Pinochet in a way that it doesn’t Saddam.
Off Topic:
It’s My Story : The Vietnamese Buddha
Documentary about a Buddhist master returning to Vietnam for the first time since the war.
Discussing the Buddhist monks who immolated themselves in protest at the Vietnam war the presenter drops in this staggering bit of amoral relativism:
‘I kind of think about what happened at 9/11 and I suppose I’m trying to figure out how that’s kind of different’
What kind of question is that to ask for anyone with any moral sense whatsoever?
Though I suppose both the Buddhist monks and the 9/11 hijackers committed suicide protesting the Imperialism of the evil Americans so it IS a tricky conundrum in the mind of a presenter impregnated with the BBC/Guardian/Independent worldview to say who’s better or worse.
Nine minutes in,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/itsmystory/pip/9uuqw/
The major difference that springs to my mind is that the monks killed only themselves while the hijackers killed three thousand innocent bystanders.
Suicide as protest isn’t my cup of tea but it has a long history in Far Eastern cultures – especially Japan. On the other hand Islam is supposed to be against both murder and suicide as are Judaism and Christianity
There’s a thought I’m having trouble articulating. Jan Palach was the young Czech student who in 1969 burned himself to death in Wencelas Square in protest at the Soviet invasion and crushing of the Prague Spring.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Palach
I’ve always admired the enormous courage it must have taken to do what he did, especially as it was not (as far as I know) done in the name of any religion, and hence with no obvious promise of Heavenly reward.
The same would apply to those Buddhist monks, although they presumably did take comfort in their faith.
I do have a problem with the 9/11 and 7/7 etc., crowd though: inheritors and adherents of a distorted and sick philosophy, and guilty of mass murder, true, but choosing to end your life by self-detonation or self-immolation must take some courage.
I’m still not sure what I’m trying to say, so if anyone can help me out, I’d love to read their contribution(s).
Cheers.
how much courage if you truly believe that in the next split second – or your next conscious moment, or whenever – you will be in paradise precisely because of your murderous, terrorist act?
also, i think you are saying that it might take YOU a lot of courage to commit suicide
and it would take an inordinate amount for me to commit suicide being the person that i think i am
but to apply such thinking and need for courage to anyone else, especially those of different cultural and religiou beliefs, might simply be self-projection, i suspect