Why are pacifists so horribly uncool?
Bristol Socialist Choir demonstrates against war in Libya
While Italian communists of a certain age mass in Piazza Navona in Rome under the Emergency banner, to protest against war in Libya, the UK Arab Society is doing the same in Bristol, England, and has attracted the support of none other than the city’s socialist choir.
The sight and sound of people like this makes me want to jump up and down shouting ‘YES TO WAR – AND PUT ON SOME MAKE-UP, BRUSH YOUR HAIR AND EAT A BIT OF STEAK WHILE YOU’RE AT IT.’
The days of flower-power and the Age of Aquarius seem light years away. None of it translates into 2011.
The reason? The hippy era coincided with widespread wide-eyed innocence – a new age, a new world and a new way of doing things.
Now we’re all hard-boiled, and we know that shoving flowers down the barrel of a gun while painting sparkly hearts on our cheeks is not going to solve anything.
The peaceniks of the 1960s were decorative at least. Shame we can’t say the same about the Bristol Socialist Choir and all those middle-aged Commies in Rome.
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Jeez, Daphne. Can’t you get it wrong just once? Aren’t you human in the least?
They look middle aged and therefore quite odd for them to keep getting it wrong, time and time again. I’m still 23 and I’ve never fallen for idealism or ideology. I also learn from my mistakes too.
“Bristol Socialist Choir” …what the hell? Thank God the new generation is being brought up the correct way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFw5a2_2xK4
Why are pacifists so horribly uncool? They know they will be the first to die but have no inclination other than whining, to change the status quo. The reason they are so vocal now is solely due to the lack of war removing them from the gene pool.
While the peaceniks get me riled up, naivety is an understatement here. It is the Western civilised-no-collateral-damage crap that pisses me off to no end. War is neither romantic (humanitarian lol?) nor civilised – wage it fast, bloody and ruthless.
A match between the West and any other country (except China and Russia) is a numbers game – fewer lives are lost if the conflict is waged on business terms.
The greatest mistake Western democracies ever committed was to allow the communists to survive the Nazi downfall. At least twenty million people in the Soviet Union and satellite states alone paid with their lives for that decision. Uncounted others died and still are dying to tinpot dictators like Gaddafi propped up by the cold war in the name of socialism.
Yes Daphne, I was one of those happy hippies and remember with fondness my Afghan coat, loon pants and platform shoes. At least you could say there was an excuse for us dressing like Joseph and his amazing multi coloured dream coat.
When are you joining the military?
The only solution is for all people like yourself to live either north or south of the equator,all pacifists on the opposite.
When you have all butchered one another we can all return to live in peace.
The (so called) pacifists always shout ‘no to war’ but they never explain to us exactly how to stop or prevent war.
Oddly enough (or perhaps not) they mostly protest against those intervening to stop or prevent bloodshed rather than those who are causing it in the first place.
These people hunger for something – anything- to protest about – I pity their negativity to reality
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110403/local/maltese-companies-in-libya-should-get-assistance-to-keep-afloat-muscat
Bla Bla Bla! Politicians are fascinated by the sound of their own voices. They could listen to themselves for hours.
I am not a hawk by any means, but I’d like to ask these people what the alternative is. You can’t just say NO TO WAR in Libya and not give a solution. And don’t say ceasefire and diplomacy. Gaddafi doesn’t do diplomacy. Well he does, but it’s his own style of diplomacy. “I either get my way, or no way”
A good argument:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/opinion/03kristof.html?_r=4
Pacifists tolerate rape victims who go missing for speaking.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/04/02/libya.rape.case/
Judging by your continuous barrage regarding the situation in Libya I have to take it that your solution to such problems is war and nothing else will do.
[Daphne – If you have any other suggestion, Etil, I am sure world leaders would be glad to hear about it. The only thing other than war which will work in these circumstances is the assassination of every member of the Gaddafi family and their immediate circle. How exactly do you think the opposition can remove him – by holding elections/ By taking him some nice gifts and hoping that he’ll pack his suitcase and go? Too many people need a reality check round here.]
Thanks Daphne, somebody had to say it. Geez!!
The number of those secptical of or even contrary to military intervention in Libya is increasing in many countries as in the UK and the USA, and will increase if the current conflict continues.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12948467
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100081828/10-reasons-why-we-shouldnt-be-in-libya/
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,14960964,00.html
[Daphne – Yes, well. When you have worked out what exactly that has to do with the price of eggs, come back and let me know.]
Read this, David:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/opinion/03kristof.html?_r=4
The world is full of sinister creatures like Stalin, Gaddafi, Hussein, Amin, Pol Pot, Hitler, so I have always ‘believed’ in wars. I maintain that peace will only be achieved six feet underground – in the burial place, at least in this world.
One of the most effective pacifists was Gandhi. He established ‘satyagraha’ which means ‘resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience’.
This cannot be used effectively in Libya because the regime has no qualms about mass killings. If the rebellion did continue along this path deaths by attrition would have been in their thousands so the logical alternative was to take up arms.
This mess of an article reflects a highly superficial understanding of world events. It claims to look to the future yet it’s clearly stuck in a false past. Even the peacenik caricature of the 70s remains intact.
Today’s ‘peaceniks’ are of a different marrow – the type you would know nothing about because reality is so alien to you your only chance of coping is to lump it in your ‘conspiracy theory’ bin. Otherwise your whole fantasy world would crumble.
This is a fantasy B&W world where the ‘good’ West is on a global missionary quest against ‘evil’ – a crusade to democratise the world, infested with evil dictators opposed to the immaculate doctrine of the West.
And yet, the root of most of this evil IS the West, which is itself far from immaculate and where the democratic game is played out to the benefit of those whose world lies well above the ineffectual inanities of the left-right paradigm
Here’s an alternative take by an American dissenter – a Western dissident whose truth you will find so annoying you’ll immediately dispel it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8txxny-E7w And yet, if you were to commit thousands of hours of solid research you’d discover that what this dissident is saying is well documented. And I mean VERY well documented. And this is just a particle on the tip of the iceberg. Whichever line you take and however you connect the dots, that’s up to you. But don’t expect the opiatic media to do that for you, for precisely when you think the media are doing their job, that’s where you should be looking for the big lies.
If you find all this incredible, that’s because you’ve been bred on a staple of Western dogma and illusion. Reality does not have to sound credible to be true. If that were so we would still have believed the globe to be flat. And yet, in politics, Hitler himself had taught us that a lie must be so “colossal” that no one would believe that anyone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”
Today’s crusaders are fully immersed in a world of big lies layered over each other over time. For them, anyone who is against war is a ‘1970s peacenik with no clue of world politics’. The irony is astounding. Which is why the joke’s on them.
[Daphne – For God’s sake, Kevin, you can tell by that man’s voice, accent and appearance that he’s a redneck meathead. Were you deprived of fairy-tales when you were little? You crave them now – to the extent that you are completely undiscerning. You live in a Dan Brown novel. Anyone who talks about The System deserves derision.]
There you go again – “redneck meathead” – hit the messenger, ignore the message, parrot Western offialdom.
You’ll be having plenty of wars to support. And you will always be right because all you do is repeat the Western mantra, which as we know is always right.
[Daphne – The medium is the message. Remember that? You can’t take a message out of its context, or consider it without factoring in where it comes from and who speaks it.]
The guy in the video reminds me of Gerry Scotti in Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Yet, no one walks away from his program with more than a couple of thousands. He is just selling smoke.
This is not a Soviet dissident, Daphne, but an American dissident. Most other American dissidents are saying the same thing because the evidence is the same. The message, Daphne, not the messenger. Your prejudices have kept you ignorant of most messages.
[Daphne – You take a big risk, Kevin, when you hector me about messages, medium and context. This is my field, remember? No, you cannot divorce a message from its context or its source. The context and the source are an integral part of the message. You have an example of that in the current Libyan crisis: Germany’s noncommittal stance has met with disapproval, but Malta’s noncommittal stance has met with suspicion. The declared message is more or less the same, but the speaker and the context are different. Germany does not have Malta’s history of closeness to Gaddafi. Similarly, with your man in the YouTube video, redneck = redneck reasoning. He will be taken seriously only by other rednecks – and the US is full of them, which means that he is more or less the norm and not a dissident – or by conspiracy theorists like you who press the pause button on logical thought when it suits them.]
Haha.. Alex Jones. Is your tin foil hat comfortable Kev?
“And yet, if you were to commit thousands of hours of solid research you’d discover that what this dissident is saying is well documented. And I mean VERY well documented. And this is just a particle on the tip of the iceberg.”
Kev, exactly how many thousands of hours of solid research have you committed discover that what this dissident is saying is VERY well documented?
You have to be careful – you do need some quality time for Sharon and yourself.
Ten years’ worth, Ciccio. That’s two decades for you.
Yes to war? Of course…right across Europe in August 1914, people were thrilled and excited at the news that the major European powers had declared war, each cheering on their national army.
Among them, in one such demonstration in Berlin, was a young Austrian, whose face was captured among the crowd on that fateful day. Must have been very, very cool to be in those crowds those days.
Albert, let’s say no to war and yes to dictators, shall we?
Albert Farrugia, the war you mention and the one that followed it were horrific. The relative peace in Europe now is testimony to the sacrifices of those past and lost generations. The battles in Libya are a people’s uprising. They had no other choice.
Yes, damn it. Yes and yes. The youth of 1914 went through unspeakable horrors in the trenches. They came back and lived fulfilling lives. Today’s youth are duped by the promise of fulfilling careers and live out their existence in desperation.
If you have found inner peace and fulfilment, you can keep your precious peace. The rest of us want war.
“They came back and lived fulfilling lives” – oh no they didn’t. 9.7 million died and that’s just military personnel.
“The rest of us want war” – have you joined the rebels yet or you prefer to stay in your comfy armchair and BHS slippers?
Yawn! Godwin’s law. You Albert, should know that the young Austrian in question managed to carry out the Kristallnacht pogrom and take over Czechoslovakia because some of the people who dealt with him happened to be pacifists like you. Ask yourself how many people you think should be sacrificed to uphold your antiwar values.
[Daphne – Yes, ‘peace in our time’, Albert. Remember that? The result was a six-year world conflagration with tens of millions dead.]
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110403/local/gilletti-reads-letter-from-malta
Reading the comments on timesofmalta, one might expect Lawrence Gonzi to call in the Italian Ambassador and hand him an ultimatum calling for an apology and the the dismissal of Massimo Giletti, presenter of one of those confusional chat shows (a tarted up Xarabank type of programme) on RAI 1 on Sunday afternoon.
It appears that last Sunday Giletti said that the Malta gets so few illegals as we shoot at them; must have got mixed up with the FKNK.
He’s just a talk-show host on a Sunday afternoon programme on ITALIAN TELEVISION, for crying out loud. Why has everyone taken him so seriously?
West country folk have their brains addled with incest and cider, usually at the same time.
Forgive them.
They look like they need an emergency aid shipment of hair colour.
They are not real pacifists but simply anti-Western and nostalgic for the return of the Soviet Union.
That is why they never protest against Kim Song-Il, China, Castro and Gaddafi himself.
Isn’t it better to inconsistently save some lives than to consistently save none at all?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/opinion/03kristof.html?_r=3
Read that earlier and I dare anyone to fault his logic!