Discussion Groups Today's News War and Iraq

A patriotic thing to do right now is ...

Sydneysider - 11:02pm Feb 12, 2003 PST

A PATRIOTIC THING TO DO RIGHT NOW IS ... BUY FRENCH

American hawks, unable to back their case for war with Iraq with an iota of hard evidence, are fighting back with petty forms of retaliation. Given that France is spearheading the international campaign to resolve the problem of Iraqi WMD by peaceful means, an economic boycott of French products is the latest low to which the Bushies are sinking.

According to a BBC news story today (February 12), many American consumers are ‘reducing their purchases of French cheese and wine.’ Allegedly, sales of ‘the French cheese website, fromages.com, which gets 80% of its business from the US, have dropped as the site as received many e-mails from angry customers. "Because of the current position your government is taking on not supporting the U.S. at this time regarding Iraq, we are not going to support France in any way," one e-mail said.’

We should not take this news story entirely seriously - the BBC website is a transparently pro-Blair news source which, like the US corporate media, consistently deprecates antiwar activists and underestimates the antiwar movement’s popularity. (For obvious reasons. The BBC’s political editor, Andrew Marr, is highly regarded both by Blair and his press secretary, Alastair Campbell, the spindoctor responsible for the recent Iraq dossier fiasco - which is why the BBC took days to cover the story.)

So the BBC may well be exaggerating the extent to which French opposition to Bush’s war is inciting retaliation in the US. After all, there is no reason to believe that the people emailing fromage.com are actually bona fide customers. Almost certainly, the suggestion to email French websites like fromages.com came from a Republican National Committee newsletter or other such source. My guess is that people who never came within an inch of a Camembert are now suddenly declaring that they will never buy French cheese again - something they probably never did anyway.

Even if the story about Fromages.com is more than BBC spin, I don’t know how much harm a few rightwing fruitcakes can do to French exports. After all, the current balance of trade is so far in France’s favor (over $8 billion dollars), that it would take quite a campaign to register even a small dent.

But if you believe (as I firmly do) that war against Iraq is bad for America, then the only logical conclusion is .... it’s patriotic to BUY FRENCH!

You can write to fromages.com to express your support for Chirac’s quest for a peaceful solution - or to order some delicious French cheese - at one of the following addresses:

MANAGING DIRECTOR MARC REFABERT
marc@fromages.com
INTERNATIONAL DIRECTOR DAVID NUTT
david@fromages.com
CUSTOMER SERVICE PASCALE BEIGER
pascale@fromages.com
EDITORIAL CECILE DARMANDRAIL
cecile@fromages.com

If, on the other hand, you want to use your consumer power negatively, the obvious thing to do is start boycotting British and Spanish goods. After Britain’s Tony Blair, Spain’s PM Aznar is Bush’s biggest supporter in Europe. The balance of trade is only 452 million dollars in Spain’s favor - we should be able to make a sizeable dent in that if we try hard enough. Spain mainly exports manufactured products to the US, including ceramic tiles, but also a significant amount of foodstuffs. Hold the olive oil!

But if you really want to use your consumer power to best advantage, the best way would be to target the companies that support the Bush regime. In that case the appropriate place to start is http://www.boycottbush.net, which has a complete list of the biggest corporate donors to the Bush campaign in 2000.

SOURCES

BBC news story:
“Congress lashes out at 'old Europe'” by Steve Schifferes
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2753669.stm

BBC ‘establishment’ bias:
“New chairman confirms the BBC as a mouthpiece for establishment views” by David Edwards
http://www.medialens.org/articles_2001/de_new_chairman_bbc.html

My thoughts exactly!

Bring on the war - for everyone's sake
 
Mark Steyn
National Post
copyright National Post, 2003

Monday, March 10, 2003

Is there a columnar equivalent of Viagra? I mean, I started writing about the impending war with Iraq in late September 2001 and after a year and a half I'm beginning to flag. I don't think I've had a new thought on Iraq in months. I agree with what I said about toppling Saddam on this page way back on September 27th 2001. Don't bother looking it up. I've said the same words in a slightly different order a gazillion times since and, even taking the President at his word that this is Saddam's last last chance, that still gives me a couple more weeks or so to say it another half-dozen times. I'm like Tony Orlando in Atlantic City, getting older and sadder singing the same song every night.

This is the Mesopotamian desert of punditry. I've been parched of fresh opinion for months, and the damn mirage of war shimmering on the horizon never gets any nearer.

The only consolation is that the anti-war crowd are having an even harder time keeping it up than I am. The "human shields" are leaving Iraq, having given up trying to shield anything but the remaining shreds of their dignity. "They have the courage of their convictions," said one of their defenders on the radio. Au contraire, that's the one thing they don't have. They got to Baghdad only to find their Iraqi "co-ordinators" wanted to deploy them not at "humanitarian" facilities but at military bases. One British teacher said he was used to working with young children and would have preferred to be deployed at an orphanage. Pity the poor Iraqi official who had to explain to the guy that the orphanage has already got all the human shields it needs: they're called "orphans."

The bewildered Brit seemed to find this hard to follow: Here's a man who's convinced that Bush and Rumsfeld are slavering to drop a bunch of daisycutters on Iraqi moppets, but thinks they'll cease and desist just because some droning Welsh leftist is sitting amongst all those inviting underage targets. It would be nice to think that these posturing ninnies will be slightly ashamed at the realization that they were no more than pathetic Saddamite stooges, but no doubt by the time they're back home their cheerleaders on the left will have restored their sense of their own heroism.

Even more telling than the human shields scramming out of town is the alarming failure of recent "naked protests" to get naked. Many of my fellow warmongers have mocked the nude protests mounted by the women of California's Marin County, cruelly pointing out that many of the bits on show are excessively flabby and saggy. But I'll take what's on offer. If we have to have an incoherent, self-loathing "peace" movement, then women showing off their hooters in support of a culture that would stone them to death for showing off their ankles is about as good as it's gonna get.

But, even by the impressive standards of risibility demonstrated by the "peace" movement, has there ever been a sadder "naked protest" than that staged this week by the students of Illinois Wesleyan University? The male "nudes for peace" stood around wearing their boxer shorts and, worse, little white ankle socks and sneakers. C'mon, guys, why so shy about letting us inspect your weapons of mass destruction? According to the Security Council resolution on nude protesting, it's a material breach to put material over your breech. If you don't want to take it off, maybe you should skip the naked thing entirely, stay inside and read up on what's the capital of Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, the celebrities keep yakking on, despite a poll indicating that celebrities pontificating on the war doesn't change the public's attitude to war, only to the celebrity. So the Screen Actors' Guild is now worrying about a new "blacklist" against anti-war celebrities. No such blacklist exists. And for Ed Asner and Mike Farrell to lose work over their o

71% (as Poland, Spain, Italy and others are already on board), a clear majority no matter how much hypocritical Hollywood starlets and Mother Jones cultural Marxists piss and moan:

Fifty-eight percent of Americans said the United Nations was doing a "poor" job of handling the Iraq crisis, up 10 points from last month, said a CBS-New York Times poll taken after Mr. Bush made his case Thursday in a nationally televised news conference.
     With the United Nations continuing to debate enforcement of its resolution demanding that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein disarm or face "serious consequences," six in 10 Americans responding to an ABC News poll say U.N. authorization to use force is not necessary. That number rises to 71 percent if "some" U.S. allies participate in military action.

One patriotic thing we can do is accuse bush of WAGGING THE DOG!

One patriotic thing we can do is to spread the message that bushy tail has been WAGGING THE DOG for TEN MONTHS now and came up with his evil empire crap one year ago.

Remember, its a lot easier for bush to run the country by saying saddams a bad man, saddam has weopons of mass destruction over and over than it is to actually try to do something about the economy and other domestic problems.

Also that it keeps the media off his tail.. Everytime they start to get on him he says WMD or saddams a bad man and the media goes into a tailspin.

On Posting Copyrighted Material

All: As both Laura and I have said on several occassions, posting copyrighted material is not kosher. It puts us in a potential legal bind, and it wastes space and bandwidth. Please just link to the article in question, or summarize the argument if you feel that's necessary.

Thanks.
Will

Thank you Will, Laura

Spank, not to spank you... but I don't read anything that I have to scroll too much.

@spanky 08:28am Mar 4, 2003 PST (#2 of 11)

yes it's true, he put those drawings there, but admitted he could not prevent french and germans from entering his shop and munching pizza due to danish rights. so far, it seems they have a real democracy there..

I M P E A C H B U S H!!!!!!

'Nuff said!!!!!

Say What

I M P E A C H B U S H!!!!!!

'Nuff said!!!!! >Mier

NO, what do you really mean?

S

Prove bush has been WAGGING THE DOG & you can get him impeached.

Follow bush's timetable back one year when he stole his evil empire from Reagan and to May 1st when he started saying Saddams a bad man, saddams a bad man day after day and threw the media into a feeding frenzy by the middle of last june, did nothing but campaign from June to Nov. accusing the dems of being unpatriotic and saying Saddams a bad man during that time and you can eventually come up with his plan and routine.

Its been easy for bush to run the country the past 10 months. Everytime the media got on him about the economy he said saddams a bad man and diverted the media and got them off his tail.

also made it easy for him to fool the dems and regain control of congress and pass the phoney homeland security bill.
Bush never dreamed it would be this easy to be president. Just say Saddams a bad man over and over and he hsn't had to do anything else.
Think of the billions of dollars that have been wasted moving troops around just to further bush's diversions.

Who is this Man Who Leads Us?

The C-in-C learned about war the hard way. Forsaking the muck and mire of Vietnam for the harsh reality of Republican fund raisers, he became a deeply religious man, clinging to a moving faith the quantity and quality of whose commandments are constantly shifting to meet the challenges of the real world.
The business world was never kind to him; only the fact that he shared his father's name kept him from ruin and ridicule. Even his greatest triumph would be tainted, but he would grab the brass ring by the tiniest of margins of one Supreme Court Justice.
But when fate thrust him onto the center stage in the aftermath of that terrible September day, he would rise to the occasion as few others could, causing a world that united in grief to rally to our support to quickly abhor and turn against us, veritably snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
"You're after the wrong man. Forget Osama, forget Afghanistan (I certainly have). There is only one enemy now. I know this because my father told me. In fact, he helped create him. Dick Cheney nurtured him. But he and his people must be destroyed in order to save them, and us. (And save Halliburton,too, because of a bad deal Dick made.)"
So he and his band of rough riders prepare to make the Middle East safe for American business interests. For raised by the corporate welfare that was the Cold War, peace had left them floundering in it's wake. And the Iraqi lucky enough to survive this onslaught will indeed get a thorough education, as he promises. A sub-par minimum wage, no health care, and their retirement savings looted.
He will have truly exported Democracy to Iraq.
To quote Walt Kelly, "We have met the enemy, and they are us."

I don't know who he is, Kevrik

in fact my mind boggleth at the contemplation thereof: but your piece is brilliant...thanks.

War Crimes

The neoconservatives are running scared, they built up a war against Iraq based on lies. Now that the bombs are falling over Iraq they are pressuring the Democrat lawmakers into supporting Bush's bloodbath under the banner of supporting the troops. The real reason they want Democrat support for this unjust attack on Iraq is to keep the Bush regime from being singled out and prosecuted for their crimes against humanity

Discussion Groups Today's News War and Iraq A patriotic thing to do right now is ...