The Firmware Page

Does 1 MILLION Rwandese = one red herring?

phil

This statement IS offensive and untrue.

1/ Some US journalists and US channels have reported about this Genocide. While the cost in human lives is disputable (different sources put it between 600 000 to 1.2 million), the reality of the Genocide is NOT.
Googling around should be enough to make you understand the reality of this genocide, If not, I will refer you to this PBS Frontline article or this Report of the Independant Inquiry into the actions of the United Nations during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Both mention a figure of 800 000 killed. But of course, we all know that whatever the UN reports is not to be trusted and this is why it is always better to ignore whatever the UN has to say about the lack of evidence for WMD in Irak and send troops there regardless.

2/ Your ignorance that a massive genocide occured in Rwanda 10 years ago only highlight the fact that some US citizen like you don't give a damn about the lives of people in other countries.

3/ Does 3 000 killed in the WTC attacks on US soil have greater weigth than 800 000 people killed in a Genocide abroad? Judging by the actions of the US post Sept 11, it looks so.

I would be a very sad person if I worried about every person that was ever killed.

Phimlore I dont blame the US people...entirely...

But how is it the REST of the world knows about Rawanda and a hell of alot more Foreign Policy decisions the US Govt makes that only self serve their own interests.. And yet Joe Citizen in the US seems to know nothing ??

Are people in the US so ignorant of world events...??? My experinces on different forums has told me yes to that question!!!

I think your media truly donot do you guys justice... I think they really donot show just how much of the world is ANTI US... And I can assure you its not just the 3rd world countries its alot of the 1st world countries..


I just dont know where the US comes from on some of their Fireign policy decisions....?????????? If it serves the US self interest their in like a flash if it doesnt its just ignored...

And please dont go on about Foreign Aid or Foreign intervention in disputes being ALL left up to the USA...

I can tell yuo here in Australia we are a vountry of around ONLY 2000000 people and we give a crap load of foreign aid... As to military intervention...

We currently have Miltary comitttments in the following countries..

1. EAST TIMOR
2. Solomon Islands
3. Iraq
4. Somalia
5. Papua New Guinuea
6. Cyprus

Just to name a few.... And we aint even a 1/4 of the pop of the USA... But guess what ALL of those BAR Iraq (where our dipshit PM jumped on the Bush Band wagon) we were invited and the Local couldnt be happier that we are and that includes Somalia where the US werent so Popular...

What irks me so much about Iraq is the US Government jus tottally IGNORED the UN i.e the Rest of the worlds opinion and said up yours we dont need UN approval... Which pretty much makes the UN look like a joke now if its Biggest member just ignores it... the US just didnt give a crap what the rest of th world thought they just did whatever they wanted to serve their own self interest...

Its doesnt matter that ALL the WMD they talked about dont exist... it doesnt matter they lied .... They just get away with it and continue on ... What a crock..

A country like the USA who tries to dictate to the rest of the world for instance as to who can and cant have Nuclear Weopons ??? Because all thos eother countries cant be trusted right ???? Thsi coming from the Only country in the world thats ever used a nuclear bomb NOT ONCE but TWICE against a human population remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki ???

The ignorance iof the US people surely you can be better nformed on world events... when the rest of us surely are...???????????//

If I post what I feel in this thread, what would happen? Do i run the risk of getting banned by saying something?

No, we only ban people who attempt to hack the forum or who spam it with advertisements.

Well it is always acceptable to express your opinion regarding what someobody else posted provided you stick to the facts.

Saying that X or Y is a moron simply because you disagree with their statement could get your post edited/deleted, and repeated offences like these could result in a ban.

If you disgaree with someone, then your opinion is most welcome (this is after all a FORUM), but please explain why you disagree.
If you want to debate something, always try to respect aother's opinion and find the best argument you can think of to try to prove they are wrong.

This thread is not an excuse for a US sucks / US rules / I SCREAM LOUDER THAN YOU kind of debate (notice that the title of the thread is neutral) or a vote Bush / vote Kerry poll. If you post here, try to be considerate of others who might disagree with you.

As to the relevance of this thread on this forum, it originated by a disagreement on the opinion that the RPC-2 scheme was introduced by the Motion Picture Association of America to protect the interest of DVD retailers from other countries.

maybe a little off topic...but I leave it to the mods to decide...Im currently just trying to stick with what I believe this threads theme as I understand it...
well, I decided not to post the entire thing...but do remember Hitler and Japan...Hitler was sick and died so it doesnt count, but the only reason Japan doesnt control everything is because of the US...Japan planned on backstabbing Hitler...Also...Iraq was under a different President than Rwanda...2 different people, 2 different political sides...you cant blame the current US for getting involved in Iraq and not with Rwanda...it just doesnt fit...maybe if we had the same person ruling us, then yes...but we dont...About political things that we SHOULD know about...most of us just dont care...we are always in something, and it gets old after a while...personally, I wish we didnt help anyone out...some people may say we dont help anyone, but we sure help the French a hell of a lot...I didnt know about 9/11 until a day after...and I sure wish it didnt happen JUST SO I DIDNT HAVE TO HEAR ABOUT IT EVERY FREAKING YEAR!!! God, im tired of 9/11 this 9/11 that...moaning about it isnt going to change anything, let it go...make your peace with those that died and GET ON WITH YOUR LIFE...Jesus.

Ok, thats all I have to say, Im sure ill invoke some responses...fine, im not gonna respond again because nothing anyone says will change how I feel...I do think US should stop butting in to others wars...let the people die burning...but we cant do that because if any 1st world country falls, then all countries will fall...its common economics

Mh, i think there is an easy explanation. What has the Iraq to "offer" what Rwanda doesn't have?
Biz & Money is ever behind that, everywhere in this world.

yes I can, precisely because, the US involvement in one and not in the other it "just doesn't fit."
If the US didn't get involved in Irak in what I have come to the conclusion is an utterly fallacious pretext (WMDs), I would only regret that they stopped getting invloved in foreign affairs.

But when the US show a very different approach to a very real critical situation (Rwanda) and what many have come to think was very fake one (Irak) I can't help but wondering why the US failed to deliver the same response in the first case as it did in the second.

There is something very wrong in the fact that the UN failed to assist the Rwandese people in their hour of need, and since the US seems pretty much to dictate whether a UN military operation will be successful by deciding to participate in it or not, I am trying to understand why the US failed to act, as they pledged to act in 1948 (with every other country in the UN) if a Genocide was ever committed again.

If I didn't think that the US have the power or the will to go help people out there when they are in need, I wouldn't make such a big deal out of it. I'd just leave US do what pretty much all the rest of the world does, which is focus on their own domestic issues and only get involved when there is a direct threat.

But the US have proven time and again that they still want to get there and help people. So why did they fail getting involved in 1994 and failed again by getting involved (when they needn't be) in 2004?
If there is nobody in the US to realise that something is seriously wrong with these 2 failings, then maybe it will come down to foreign people to try to alert US citizen that something is amiss with the way the US military is being used (or not) in other countries. And if this discussion can make a few more US citizen question their foreign policy and prevent another thousands of US people being killed in a needless war like Irak, and prevent hundred thousands non US people being killed with a US intervention when a genocide occurs, I don't think I am ready to shut up on that subject just yet.

The problem is that, in a democratic system, it is ultimately the citizen that tell the government what they should care about. And a Genocide is not something that you SHOULD know about. It is something that you MUST know about and it is the duty of every person of this planet to try to prevent it when it happens, especially if you are a citizen of the most powerful country in the world.

Is that what you were supposed to say to the survivors of the Holocaust in 1954? That's there's no use in remembering those who died. That their death was in vain? Or will it take another Spielberg to make people realise that something terribly wrong happened there?
Well, if your point is saying that, "Trying to keep a Genocide in the common memory so that it can never happen again does not work", then you do have a point, because IT did happen again, and if people don't want to hear about it and take action, IT will happen again, unless the current superpowers (i.e. the US) do something about their foreign policy to act when they need to act (and saty at home when they don't).

ok first off...you can not say that you can blame the current US...
1. Bush is in power, the whole reason we are involved in Iraq is because he made a greivous error and is trying to correct it without being truthful...it all started with his father...Saddam made a fool of his father and W wanted to correct that, so he made up WMD to get Saddam...nothing more...as Ive said before, revenge isnt a great motive, but it does happen...people feel this need to "get back" at people that wrong them or their family...honestly W should have been honest and said he wanted Saddam for revenge and yea, itd look bad, but people would think more of him for being honest...Now, we are in Iraq because we want to start a Free-Elect society over there...Iraq is in a state of civil war...the people who want an election like we have dont have the ability to protect themselves, so we are there to protect them...personally, I say we pull out and let them fight it, if they die, they die...too bad, it is time for US to stop helping everyone so that when a mass genocide occurs, we dont get ALL THE BLAME IN THE WORLD.
2. I believe Clinton was President at the time of Rwanda...Clinton is Democrat, Bush is Republican...you may not understand the differences, but there are HUGE differences in the political parties.
As I said, you cant blame current US for what a different president did...if you do, then you REALLY need to study people more, and political parties for that matter...
I explained the whole Iraq thing...as you can see, its nothing more than revenge...it really isnt...but W wanted to save face rather than tell the truth...do you tell the truth all the time...if you do, youre better than just about 99% of all people in the world

Hmmm...answering chef here...Im pretty sure we sold weapons to Iraq...maybe it was Iran...dunno...why cant people at least use completely different names for their countries...or ffs combine them together if its gonna be like that...but we want to have someone over there we can semi control so what we did in the past doesnt come back to haunt us...Im pretty sure its Iraq we sold weapons too, but if not, then disregard this...and we will stay with chef's theory that it is all about Biz and money.

Back to >NIL:,
I never said anything about KNOWING, or REMEMBERING...Im just tired of hearing about it...I know the holocaust happened, but I damn sure dont hear people moaning about it...nor does it almost EVER come up in conversation...NEVER. Knowing about something and hearing about something every single freaking day...are 2 very different things...I believe 9/11 should go in history books, I believe everyone should know about it...I mean how bad is it that when you turn on your tv, there is a paid advertisement wanting you to buy a coin for $20.00 + s/h that will forever be a symbol of what happened...this ad is on EVERY DAY...or buy this, or buy that to forever symbolize "our promise" (dont ask what it is, cuz I dont know, but Bush made a promise or something or other)...I feel bad for the people who died...anywhere...but it was their time...not to get into a religious debate, but I believe god, or whoever has a set time for everyone to die...so naturally, since the mass genocide happened...it was meant to happen...its called POPULATION CONTROL...there are WAY too many people in the world...a lot of people need to die...if Im one of them, or if all of the US is to die, then so be it...Ive made my peace...Im not saying I believe Rwanda SHOULD die, just that it was time...If I thought that Rwanda SHOULD die, then why would I offer myself to be one of the ones killed (or whatever...in my theory, GOD KILLS PEOPLE - if you want a religious debate...Ill be there, but do keep an open mind...cuz in my belief GOD IS MEAN!)...where are we going to go if more people dont die? the moon? yea, thats gonna happen soon...Mars? not likely...so where? the ocean? more people are being born than are dying...to even that out and make sure we dont run out of land and resources, more people need to die than are being born right now...now, what ways can God achieve this? there arent a whole lot of them...AIDS is one, mass genocide is another, having planes run into buildings is another...if it is not their time to die, they wont...people may think im crazy, but its been damn near proven...lets take an accident for example...both without seatbelts (just to even the odds)...same exact type of crash, same everything, but 2 different accidents...one person has their head chopped off, the other walks away pretty much unscathed...explain that one away...it was one guys time to die, wasnt the other guys...there are arguments about this, which is fine, cuz nothing is ever definite in these types of scenarios, but honestly, think about it.


I believe I answered everything, maybe not...guess Ill wait and see what the responses are...and since you brought up the Holocaust with 6 million Jewish people dying...yes I believe it was their time also...and Jewish people werent the only ones killed in the Holocaust...Hitler killed a bunch of Germans also, tons of Russians were killed...but the Holocaust is usually only associated with the Jewish people that died...

Right now, Chinese politicians in Beijing are giving orders to use force against North Koreans who want to come to South Korea. NK has always been more totalitarian, more inhuman, and a source of mass-destruction arms for all kinds of terrorists and anti-West and/or anti-capitalist countries. Somehow the United States of America used many times more of its resources for/against Iraq than for/against NK. Oil and Israel maybe.

A reunified Korea is going to want some part of Manchu back from Red China, stolen from Korea step by step in the past, especially during the Japanese occupation, along with Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and other lands from other peoples, tribes, and nations. Meanwhile, SK is undergoing a national disintegration as to whether it needs to abolish the "national security law" that has existed for half a century to integrate SK people to keep peace against NK assisted by USSR and Red China. NK is 100% communist-nationalist. SK is 50% communist-nationalist. The other 50% is capitalist-nationalist. Imagine what's going to happen after reunification.

Big thanks to Powell to mention that "No-Visa" thing at an interview during a visit to SK. It'll help me to something about my wife's cerebral palsy and help my six-month-old daughter learn English, if it ever comes true I mean.

evilvoice,

1. At least we seem to agree that going to Irak was an error, but I have to disgaree with your "let's go there, create a mess, then pull out and let them clean the mess by themselves".
First of all, if Bush took the decision to go to war just because Saddam made a fool of his father, this proves that you guys have a very dangerous and incompetent man in power, who is far from fully understanding the dreadful consequences of going to war.
I don't say that Saddam is a good guy, far from it, but would the Irak be in state of Civil war and would as many people have died hadn't the US decided to go to war against him, I don't believe so.
When you go to somebody claiming that he has plans to kill you, shoot him, and then discover that he has no weapon whatsoever and was in no position of doing you harm, if there is any kind of justice, you should be trialed and imprisonned.
When the US go to war claiming that Irak have plans to harm the US and then discover that Irak was in no position to do any kind of harm to its citizen - well, God protects anyone who dares tell that what the US did was absolutely wrong...
Even if a president has flaws, the democratic system should prevent him to go to war just because he wants to. If a president manages to go to war simply because someone insulted his father, it means your nice democracy is really nothing more but a dictatorship.

2. Whoever is head of the state at the time of a Genocide does not matter. Hell, even if your president had been a communist then, it wouldn't matter. There are enough advisers at the white house and they are supposed to give accurate reports regardless of their political tendancies
The reason I talk about Rwanda is that few people know about it, and even fewer people care about it, despite the fact that it happened only a decade ago, during OUR lifetime. This was a lot more dreadful than what happened on Sept 11 and justice has still not been done.
This means that if the same thing happened in the neighbouring Burundi (which is not completely unlikely) or in a remote country that has little ties to the western world, once again, if citizens of the world and especially the US citizen don't give a f*cking damn, we will have the blood of a few more million people on our hands!
What part of NEVER AGAIN is so hard to understand?
Let me refer you to this page and especially this part:
What happened in 1994 is that, because the US are the most powerful military power in the world, other countries waited on the US to act. But (mostly because of the Somalia fiasco) the US didn't want to act. And because the US citizen felt neither concerned nor interested in a remote Genocide, they didn't ask on the US president to hold his pledge to the Genocide Convention.

This is why I say that the US foreign policy really has only the US interests at heart, even when the most dreadful of crimes happen on the other side of the planet, and that as long as the US citizen does not want to feel concerned, it will remain so.

It is OUR job to make OUR gouvernments stick to the promise they upon such thing when they happen. Then again, in a democratic system, if only a few people care about such things, OUR gouvernments will refuse to act as they did for Rwanda. We have a lesson to learn from Rwanda, and trying find excuses to dismiss the importance of it is not the way to go.
In 1994, it was the job of the journalists to give an accurate picture of the Genocide that was going on and alert citizen. They failed! Why did they fail? Probably because they knew that people wouldn't care.
That you don't want to care is your choice (and it is pretty clear from what you expressed above). But if I can make a handful of people realise that they have a duty to keep an eye open to what is happening in the rest of the world, I will.

Oh, and one last thing about POPULATION CONTROL as you call it.
If somehow terrorists manage to place an use a WMD on American soil (which I hope will never ever happen) and kill a few million people, don't expect other countries to sympathise with you guys. After all, it's just POPULATION CONTROL as you say...
And finally, GOD doesn't murder people. Only people murder other people. If you think that you live in a world where there is no free will, then maybe your president has done a hell of a good job in making you believe so.

I've always wanted some kind of population control where I live. 50 million's too much where 5 million is already too much. Most of the people who now control most of this country's wealth wanted many sons for their own sake because for millenia that meant increasing one's personal property (and security.)

Not that it has anything to do with the genocide (or whatever) in some African country or Iraq. Many times more people were killed right here so it's not really easy to care about other problems. Regarding everyone on this planet as equal creature could mean a lot of sacrifice on the part of every individial among the OECD nations, by the way. I'm often amazed at how some people are comfortable at regarding one billion Chinese lives are not as important as one billion Westerners but then that's only very human, isn't it? Sorry about my nonsense.

First of all Since Nil: is the Administrator I guess he has the right to move my reply to a lesser area. But since he is of the opinion he has a right to make political statements in the firmware thread (which of course he does have that right) I thought that is where this portion of that thread should have run its course. His reply to my first post did. My short reply to his didn

Pardon my second post but I just looked through some of the previous posts in this thread. I hadn't done so before posting. All I can say is WOW!! You assume alot.

Nil: Wrote,

2/ Your ignorance that a massive genocide occurred in Rwanda 10 years ago only highlight the fact that some US citizen like you don't give a damn about the lives of people in other countries.

What makes you think I'm ignorant on Rwanda? My only reference to it was to say "Does 1 MILLION Rwandese = one red herring?" Do you even know what the term 'red herring means'? Talk about ignorance. And yes all of us Ignorant U.S. citizens don

_________________
>NIL: [I am now retired and no longer browsing these forums]

This is precisely the problem.
The rest of the world sits on their ass and waits for the US to "do something".
Just what the hell is stopping you from "doing something"?
It sure doesn't stop you from criticizing us for doing nothing or doing the wrong thing (from your point of view that is).
I for one am sick of my tax dollars going to pay for your inaction.
How much foreign aid is your country pouring into the US?
We have people here that "have not".
I would like to see our "foreign aid" be spent on our own domestic needs, then if there is any left we'll "save the world".

I don't even know where you are from but I'd bet your country receives "foreign aid" from my country...
Why not just refuse it if we are such a bunch of "pi$$ offs"...?

Nothing personal, but this thread pi$$es me off...

I understand your US-domestic problems but then why do you pay tax and vote for politicians at all? It's your choice in a free country. If you don't want your money spent on tax is wasted on helping other countries, then why not emigrate to such countries and not pay tax for helping the US citizens and receive aid instead? I haven't seen any US citizen that does exactly that. I have seen millions of South Koreans who want to do such a thing from various statistics and history books and South Korea only represents 1% of Asian population.

I mean I see quite many US citizens on international forums complaining they pay tax (as if those living in other countries didn't) which is used for aiding or attacking or saving other peoples. This is one country created by such a US help out of the tax money gathered from US ciziten pockets during the first half of the 20th century. Your ancestors should't have supported Roosevelt indeed.

Reactions out of frustration and being "[*oops*] off" hardly help anything. They just enhance the chance of deeper misunderstanding and risk of war just as has happened in CDFreaks forum and between South Koreans and the United States.

I have no problem with our tax dollars being spent "wisely" to help people in need no matter where they are in the world.
Our country has a habit of helping the world to the sometimes detriment of it's own people.
What ticks me off in a thread like this is the complaining that the US "does nothing" or "acts out of it's own self interest".
Why in the rest of the worlds view is it our job to do something?
Is the rest of the world in such bad shape that other nations can do nothing unless we act first?
If anyone is acting out of "self interest" it is the nations that do nothing and rely on the US to be the worlds caretaker.
I feel that people should try and do for themselves before asking for help.
If help is needed it should be given but not till the ones in need have tried to "help themselves".

Nil: You go on and on you postulate, assume take for granted and out right LIE. All this to bolster both your ego and your hatred of Americans. Since we are all so ignorant why have anything to do with us. Solve your own problems. When some tyrant is at your door you go kick his ass, don

Perhaps Slovakia and Slovenia, Austria and Australia, Latvia and Lithuania, etc, etc, should unite to prevent confusion.

An American was asked a question about the Middle East. He asked: Where is it? Is it between the East Coast and the Mid West?

At the end of the day, I don't think we should be too hard on the Americans. Afterall they're people like the rest of us. And to paraphrase Dr Zeus [was is he?] from Planet of the Apes: "Of all animals, beware of man. For he's the only spicies who kills for greed and lust".

Don't take what you wish to read for what I am actually saying because I could extrapolate this thing exactly as you did:
"Because I am criticizing the recent aspects of the American foreign policy, this must mean that I hate all Americans".
That's a bit of an oversimplification, isn't it? It's not because someone thinks that the foreign policy of the US needs closer scrutiny and express their views on that subject that they hate the US people (or are high on an ego trip).

Again, not what I said. You are generalizing again while accusing me of generalizing.


_________________
>NIL: [I am now retired and no longer browsing these forums]

I'm American, and I dislike American foreign policy.

I think that one problem with the American *people* is the kind of mentality that we've had. This country was built on sweat and work and not on a gleaming ivory tower. If you look at various trends in American history, you will see that there is a thread of anti-intellectualism, with strength and vitality favored over thought and discourse.

This kind of mentality has led, I think, to what we have today. One of the most conservative nations in the developed world with strong fundamentalist beliefs. And a population that, quite frankly, cares very little for what goes on in the world and a population that knows very little of what goes on in the world. The surveys all show it: the majority of Americans don't even know the difference between country X and country Y.

All this is, granted, slowly changing, I think, and perhaps in a few more generations, the US would be more progressive and there would be more people reading the National Geographic instead of Sports Illustrated.

Anyway, in regards to >NIL:'s comments about our scrubby friend, I heard an interesting interview on the radio a few weeks ago with a family-friendly movie producer who has recently produced a movie about Bush and why Bush is such a great President. And it basically boils down to Bush being the most faith-based President ever, who spends a lot of time on his knees and who makes his foreign policy decisions because he feels that he is on some sort of mission. Hmm.

Interestingly, a few days after hearing that interview, the New York Times (not exactly what one would call a bastion of conservative thought ) published an editorial saying why Bush was bad for the country--because of those same reasons--he relies so much on faith, the NYT believes, that he becomes dangerously stubborn in his belief that he is doing the right thing.

So I guess what I have to say is that it is admirable that he seems to be doing what he truly feels to be the right thing for the country. It's just unfortunate that he is so lost in his beliefs that he doesn't realize that when the majority of the country (the most recent poll that I am aware of puts slightly more than half the US population in the "dissatisfied with Iraq" category) feels that he is wrong, that perhaps he really is wrong.

I just thought that it was interesting because I had trouble trying to understand why he acts the way he does, and now, I seem to understand him better (and dislike him more, though I'm sure that there are many who love him just that much more because of this).

My point of view about this is that the US Government has forced this often enough by itself, starting by declaring the USA as "the only superpower" on this planet left.
It's historical ok, but other countries who are not friendly to the USA and other western ideologies & culture (IRAN, Pakistan, North-Korea) kinda feel engaged to do something against that, starting to science on and build nuclear/atom bombs etc...
No one will deny that the USA is the keyfactor in the industry of the world and kinda "rules" it, but for me personally all that "hyping" and self-worshipping makes me sick sometimes. I just can't stand it. The same about the patriotism - mania, it's too penetrant.
US citizens have nothing really to do with that but the government should work for the peoples and not for their ego-trips.

Damn, hopefully this is a little bit "english" and will not be understood too wrong cause my mother-tongue isn't english. Excuse my ignorance.

I think it's time for a (little) change in the US-Government, starting at the top, right now.
(The campaign "Vote Or Die! is kind of kinky, oh boy.)