troelsjust.dk

Taking a good deal of interest in the US 2008 elections, for various reasons such as concern for the future, and a good laugh from classic comedy as well, I watched the vice presidential debate live through a CNN video stream. Not being either liberal or conservative (I’m a socialist!), I don’t really agree a lot with either side (Especially these general notions of “affording to go to college”, “affordable healthcare”, just make me laugh out loud!), but when the topic came to Iraq, I wish I could shake Joe Biden’s hand. I was about to explode at times!

First of all, one thing John McCain and Sarah Palin love to argue is that the US should not “surrender” in Iraq, and that “victory” is in sight, even though that the word surrender, in a military context means “to yield (land, a town, etc.) to an enemy.” (Source: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/surrender), which is absolutely not what would happen if the US handed control of Iraq to, doh, Iraq!
Being both strongly opinionated and being Danish, I just can’t say this in other ways: BULL-FUCKING-SHIT !!!
This just shows a mountain of Republican idiocy!
First of all, the UN didn’t approve of the US going into Iraq, and at the same time, Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11, in fact Saddam didn’t like al-Qaeda and Islamic fundamentalists in the first place, and hadn’t attacked the US at all, or done anything that in any way could justify military retaliation. So here we could talk for hours about whether the whole thing was a big-ass war crime (And yes I believe it was, and George W. Bush and Dick Cheney should be sent to the Hague, maybe they can chit-chat with a few guys from Serbia!). Secondly, it has been an absolutely horrendious humanitarian catastrophe. Over one million Iraqis, the vast vast vast majority being innocent civilians, have died as a result of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, and if you ask me, George Bush’s oil-wet-dreams. Thirdly, the war in Iraq has been a ginormous strategic disaster. Complete and utter failure is what it has been. What the hell was the US thinking when they, in 2003, disbanded the Iraqi army, which they had full control over, even when an Iraqi general came to the Americans and said, that he could have thousands of troops on the streets of Iraq, to prevent plunder, and maintain law and order. Not only did this blunder cause many families to be robbed of all of their belongings, violence and other shit, but it also left thousands of men, whom had military training, without a job and without a means to care for their families, and at the same times, the militias were like “We can help you, go kill some Americans and we will make sure you can take care of your family”.

The stance of John McCain on the issue of Iraq, just shows incompetence and abysmal judgement beyond comprehension!

My country, Denmark, a NATO-ally and supporter of the ISAF effort in Afghanistan, has over 700 soldiers in Afghanistan. Now, that may not sound like a lot at all, especially compared to the US (Oh and by the way, US generals in Afghanistan are saying how they need more troops!!!), but I can tell you that for us, a small nation, it’s taken significant amount of resources. I’ve come to the conclusion that if the US doesn’t get their shit together in Afghanistan within a year or a year and a half, so that we can actually start hunting down al-Qaeda and make progress on non-military fronts, I say just pull out! Not because I am opposed to the war in Afghanistan, but because I am opposed to not accomplishing anything through it. It’s not worth wasting money and resources, and potentially lives, for absolutely nothing. At home we have problems with our welfare state that we need to fix, if our contributions to ISAF don’t make a difference anyway, let’s go home and spend the money where it does make a difference.
Unlike Iraq, I support the NATO effort in Afghanistan, which the UN has approved of by the way, I really really want this mission, which I believe is an important one, to succeed! But I don’t support incompetence, stupidity, neglect, idiocy and failure, which is pretty much all the US has demonstrated in Afghanistan! Because you know what, it’s not going well at all in Afghanistan, in fact it’s sliding towards chaos, al-Qaeda and the Taliban are not withering away, it’s going LOUSY!!! Which John McCain didn’t seem to get until somewhat recently.

Another thing that pisses me off, is that the world always seem to wait for the US to make a move on something. Darfur is one of the best examples of the world. We have a large-scale genocide taking place, and we’re doing absolutely nothing!! This brings shame on us all!
If the ship known as the United States of America sinks as a result of the economic crisis, or even if it doesn’t, I believe it’s time to take the European Union (Which I am a strong supporter of) to the next level. Why couldn’t Europe stand up and say “ENOUGH!” in Darfur, and end this genocide once and for all! This is about thousands of people’s lives, not whether some asshole named George W. Bush can fulfill his money-money wet-dreams of oil. Maybe I’m just angry tonight, but the thought of constantly having to say “We have to wait for America!” just pisses me off, when it comes to things that REALLY REALLY matter.

Just came back from a visit to the local church office on my parish, where I filled out a form to quit the Danish state church, folkekirken. Boy does it feel good to finally having that done! 😀

I’m fairly happy I got this done this week, because next week is my 20th birthday, so I’ll be entering a new decade in my life, with this fresh change, which is going to be nice. Now I never have to worry about accidentally paying the church tax (In the case I had forgotten about quitting the state church) when I get a job in the future, which would go towards funding what I have termed the Sunday Circus, when I am being polite, or the weekly circle jerk on Sundays, when I am not being polite.

Anyway, I hope we Danes get our act together and separate church and state in the future, if the Swedes can do it, bloody hell we can too!
Being a socialist, I am obviously not that big a fan of privatizations, however there is one privatization I’d love to see done, and that would be the privatization of the Danish state church, buildings, employees, every damn thing that has got to do with this joke that only 2,5% of the population actually use. And then we could stop spending 650 million DKK a year for funding this stuff!
If we look at history, it shows us that there’s tons of money in religion, I’m sure there’d be a buyer for the state church! 😈

If you are a member of the Danish state church, and just got offended, look in the upper-right corner of your screen, there’s a small button with a cross on it, just click that, come on go ahead! 😉

Early this month I joined a political party here in Denmark called Socialist People’s Party (Danish: Socialistisk Folkeparti, commonly shortened to just SF), which has recently been attracting quite a few new members, after a good result in the last election (Where they more than doubled their number of seats in parliament).

Personally, I hope to attend party meeting and events that I find relevant in the future. If you’re a member of SF and reading this, I hope to meet you some day! 🙂

I’ve also updated the “My Political Position” of my blog accordingly.

“A Chinese teacher has been detained for posting images on the internet of schools that collapsed in the Sichuan earthquake, a rights group has said.”

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7532813.stm

The Chinese dictatorship is up to it’s old tricks again. During the earthquake in May, a bunch of schools collapsed (And I bitch Danish school buildings were getting bad! 😛 ) resulting in the deaths of many children. A teacher gets upset that the government have not maintained these buildings, publishes pictures of it, and is sent to a labour camp for “re-education”, take a wild guess at what that means …

Why the hell was this asshole government allowed to host the Olympic Games in the first place!! Makes absolutely no sense.

The comment made to my post FARC… A big farce!, can be seen in full here: http://www.troelsjust.dk/?p=231#comments.

” … Indeed they have killed a lot of civilians by accident in their actions against the paramilitary and governmental repression they have been met with, …”

Do you really see people dying in captivity as an “accident” ?

“Let me say this straight: the whole regime of Colombia is corrupt and based upon cocaine production from both sides – even FARC! The national economy and one’s social rights in the country are a disaster, and due to what I have heard, the constantly liberal and conservative governments since the beginning of elections have been preventing socialistic parties from taking active part of the national parliament (= unfree elections for socialist parties!). Furthermore the paramilitary groups in direct coorporation with the government are responsible for murders of central persons of the trade-union and directly terrorizing the movement and its struggle for better social policies and worker’s rights (read more about such kind of murders on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Violencia).”

I completely agree, and during the documentary I saw, that was mentioned over and over again. This is definitely not democracy. In fact, I generally don’t like bipartisan systems of government, where you only have two major parties that can govern, such as in the United States, the United Kingdom etc. etc. I won’t say they undemocratic, but they’re worlds from what I would call “a true democracy”.

“What a lie! Legal attempts have been tried – a party called Unión Patriótica (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uni%C3%B3n_Patri%C3%B3tica_(Colombia)) once contested a few decades ago, but 5000 of their members were killed during that time, and so FARC gave up peaceful behavior and reentered the armed conflict. Sounds like a very wimpish way of leading a democracy by killing members of the opposition, if you ask me!”

If you consider murder and kidnapping of innocent people and holding them for ransom, drug trafficking and other crap to be legitimate “armed conflict”, then so be it, but it’s simply terrorism if you ask me. And yes, I wholeheartedly agree, killing members of the opposition is not only a tremendous human rights violation, it’s dictatorish behavior. It’s something Russia and China does all the time, and definitely represents corruption and pisses on the concept of democracy.

“The analysis you posted above is too simple and primitive within its conclusion, sorry to say it, and it offends me a lot, since you clearly don’t have knowledge of the historical background from the current situation in Colombia.”

While I agree with you that the government in Colombia is corrupt and borders being undemocratic, I don’t think FARC is any better at all. They remind me of the Tamil Tigers, who claim to have a just cause for fighting (and killing thousands of innocent people along the way) for an independent Tamil state in Sri Lanka, yet they have done nothing but kill innocent people and keep the country at civil war for decades. And no, I am not ignoring atrocities comitted by the Sri Lankan government, search around on my blog, and you’ll see me lambast them as terrorists, and somebody replying essentially saying I was being a Sinhalese shill, being “ignorant” and being a “smart parot” etc. etc.

First of all, if you get offended by my statements, you shouldn’t be reading my blog, because I honestly couldn’t care less about whom I might offend, be it Iranian fascists, Chinese dictators, Japanese nationalists, American imperialists (George W. Bush), Jewish/Christian/Muslim/Hindu fundamentalists, or just your average Joe reading a random blog on the Internet. You know what, your attitude towards the United States that I responded to earlier offends me as well. In my original blog post I simply say “Happy Independence Day!” to the American people, among whom I have a few friends that I talk to regularly, and yet you accuse me of praising the US government (Which so far is the Bush administration). I cannot stand George W. Bush, this guy, along with his administration, should be put on trial for war crimes. If you want to demonize an entire nation for something their government does, go ahead, I just don’t see it as being any different from demonizing all Germans for the things Hitler and his regime did, or demonizing all Japanese for what Imperial Japan did during World War 2, or their current government’s refusal to apologize for it, and compensate victims (Look up “comfort women” on Wikipedia if you want to know more).

“If you want to read some more objective, left-wing oriented articles (Danish) about the case (you say that you identify yourself as a socialist),”

1. Any of various political philosophies that support social and economic equality, collective decision-making and public control of productive capital and natural resources, as advocated by socialists.

2. The socialist political philosophies as a group, including Marxism, libertarian socialism, democratic socialism, and social democracy.

3. (Leninism) The intermediate phase of social development between capitalism and full communism. This is a strategy whereby the State has control of all key resource-producing industries and manages most aspects of the market, in contrast to laissez faire capitalism.

4. (Classical Marxism) The international communist society where classes and the state no longer exist.

Source: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/socialism

As I state on the “My Political Position” page of my blog, I’m a social democrat, which qualifies as socialism if we’re talking about true social democracy (The ideology), according to Wiktionary, and not this neo-liberal bullshit many people who call themselves social democrats, are doing these days. The Labour Party of the United Kingdom is probably one of the best examples of this crap.

“(when the USA invaded the Ecuadorian territory recently to assassinate the leader of FARC, Paul Reyes, which forced Ecuador and Venezuela to rearm and put their military forces at the borders to Colombia protesting against the insulting behavior – if you ignored this TERRORIST ATTACK on the Ecuadorian side of the borders by the COLOMBIAN GOVERNMENT itself and the UNITED STATES, you showed yourself as truly ignorant by writing this blog post! Sorry for the hard words, but FARC is more than just ‘pointless terrorism’. It’s the only serious socialist alternative to the current form of government. Of course I lament their use of i.e. child soldiers, but sometimes it can be the only way of succeeding in a greater struggle.)”

If FARC is more than “pointless terrorism”, then why are they deliberately killing and kidnapping innocent people? They’re no flipping different from the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Both claim to have righteous intentions, yet they murder innocent people.
I didn’t follow that whole debacle with Ecuador and Venezuela that you mention, and I refuse to be called “truly ignorant” for not following everything you do as much as you do. You’re the ignorant one if you ignore killing of the innocent on ANY SIDE of ANY CONFLICT. Because you seem to be glorifying FARC for their fight against the Colombian government, and only lightly skip over their killing of civilians and use of child soldiers, yet you beat a dead horse about corruption and misdeeds by the Colombian government (Which, just so we’re clear, I agree with you completely on) and how evil the United States is. Sure, I admit that I didn’t mention the Colombian government’s killing of opposition members or corruption, but my post was not about that, it was about why I see FARC as hypocrites when they refer to them as “People’s Army” or socialists. If I blogged about Japan’s outrageous atrocities during World War II, and their current government’s continual refusal to apologize for it, I’m sure somebody would reply and say how “truly ignorant” I was and how China and Korea exaggerate the things Japan did and blah blah blah. And oh by the way, I view China the same way as I view FARC. Let’s take the name of China’s military as an example. It’s official name is “People’s Liberation Army”, well, don’t you think it ought to be called People’s Oppression Army after the outrageous oppression of pro-democracy movements and human rights advocates, especially in Tibet?

One last thing about FARC, because we clearly have different opinions of them, WHY THE FUCK do they kidnap a politician (Íngrid Betancourt) who was actively trying to fight corruption!!! That’s just retarded! I could understand (But DEFINITELY NOT agree) if they kidnapped the leader of the liberal party, but kidnapping a person who essentially agrees with them on something, is simply stupid, let alone be unjust! That’s like an African-American kidnapping Martin Luther King!!!