Irish Times breaks silence about Bush fraud 2004

Forum posts

• 18 April 2005, 04:32

  Yes we saw it even in the propaganda: intimidation and weird registration procedures.

  USA is a bad example for a living democracy. Moreover the media makes the public think that some opposition of the democrats to the current government which got the majority in both houses is just not right. Because we - the Americans want things to be done - even if their enforcement is wrong.
  This kind of negativism and also the political correctness have done so much damage to America.

• 18 April 2005, 14:31

  the reason "journalists" try to play "dumb" or "skeptical"....is because the US corp. media smear machine is powerful, global, and has been compromised by US intelligence outfits.

  So when you are ready to speak to truth to power, you are facing: ridicule, financial ruin, and/or physical harm.

  It’s best to walk on egg shells, especially if you have a family you care about. Those that have nothing to lose, will be more assertive.

• 18 April 2005, 20:27

  NEWSFLASH: John Kerry lost the election.

  When President Clinton won the election in 1992 with less than half of the vote, did you spread conspiracy theories about the election being stolen? If not, why not?

  Would you like it if Americans meddled in Ireland’s election process?

  Can’t you mind your own business? Ireland’s too wonderful a place to spend your time skulking around on creepy conspiracy websites. (I’m on this site as a tourist.)

  • 19 April 2005, 04:28

    NEWSFLASH UPDATE: BUSH STOLE THE ELECTION OF 2000 & 2004! As well as the 2002 theft by the Repubs.
    Wake up.... I think you do need a vacation, as you are delusional... we were ALL robbed as our votes were hijaked by Repub. backed business’s. I didn’t like John Kerry but ALL the evidence shows he won and there isn’t one bit that proves W. won.
    You are living in a Fascist Country and soon when your rights are taken away you will see the light!

  • 19 April 2005, 06:10

    If we want to shake off this fascist administration, we will have to use the one thing it really fears: Massive, organized, united opposition. The techniques used by Karl Rove are geared to taking down one individual at a time - those brave souls who work up the guts to speak out when others remain silent. When there are too many all working together and supporting one another, he won’t know where to start and he won’t be able to keep up. The Democrats, lacking a real leader to fall behind are splitting into factions that pursue different tactics they hope will get them into the White House. They need to work as the 3 Musketeers did: One for all, and all for one. The rest of us common citizens will have to do the same. We can’t depend on a few. We have seen what happens to them.

    "The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms are in the physical. . . . It is medicine necessary for the sound health of government." Thomas Jefferson, 1787

    "Aw, c’mon. They can’t kill us all." John Wayne

  • 19 April 2005, 13:44

    Excuse me, but America has spent a lifetime meddling in Irish politics via financial support for the IRA and the refusal of all requests to proscribe the organisation as terrorist. Then you also have a habit of meddling in the politics of anyone you don’t happen to agree with..... i.e. Chile, Nicaragua, Iraq (twice), Haiti etc, etc, etc. You also fail to notice that because of your bullying pre-eminence on the world stage the rest of the world has every right to examine the democratic credentials of any US president. You stay out of our lives and we’ll stay out of yours.

  • 19 April 2005, 15:35

    "Excuse me, but America has spent a lifetime meddling in Irish politics via financial support for the IRA and the refusal of all requests to proscribe the organisation as terrorist."

    You’re right—a bunch of pathetic drunk micks in Boston who have a romanticized notion of a country they’ve never visited have a sad history of funding and apologizing for terrorism in Ireland. You really want to link your behavior to theirs? By the same token, when the Chinese government shoots Tianenmen Square democrats in the head, then bills their families thirteen cents for the bullet, I’m not supposed to complain to their embassy?

    When other liberal democracies (think Europe) choose to elect loons, I’ve typically given them a pass, reasoning that their people are better informed on the issues and candidates than I am. If you want to criticize the American government, great—there’s plenty of good reasons to do so, and you’ve indeintified a couple (though you missed the mark on Iraq). But there’s no need to invent fairy tales of stolen elections and fascists lurking behind every door based upon what you read on the ’net. I can assure you that I see plenty of anti-Bush stuff every day (bumper stickers, campaign signs) left over from the election. Dissent is alive and well. And to the fool who posted above that the US is a fascist state, I guess you’ll just have to eat crow when W. leaves office in early 2009 per the Constitution. Meanwhile, revel in your fantasies.

    I’ve lived in mainland Europe. There is far more mono-think there than in the US, and far less diversity of opinion. And there’s plenty of sanctimonious grandstanding—could Europe have built its walled paradise without generations of American soldiers manning those walls, spending the best years of their lives sleeping in frozen mud holes on maneuvers in Germany?

    It’s high time to end the American occupation of Europe. Let’s take the training wheels off and see how long Europe can go without genocide. (Slobo hit the reset button in the Nineties—another European mess America had to come across the world to clean up—so Europe is up to almost eight years now without genocide.)

    "Beeeeeellaciao: Where We Think Fascism Means That One of The Two Mainstream Political Parties Won the American Election"

  • 20 April 2005, 00:23

    Clinton won 43%, Bush Sr. won 37% and Perot won 19%. There were no discrepancies between exit polls and final tallies, either.

    It is hardly correct to imply that Clinton did not win. There is no comparison between 1992 and 2000, or between 1992 and 2004.

  • 20 April 2005, 19:55

    The American presence in Europe served a single function..... It simply meant that any war against the Soviets would be fought here and not in the US. Gee thanks, all us Europeans can get nuked, bombed, blown up etc... while the US fires missiles from a safe distance and your poor GI’s have to put up with dying for nothing as per usual. If your soldiers had any sense they would see that endless corrupt overseas adventures are not worthy of them. They are better than that. Americans can be (and often are) the most generous and kind of people. It simply amazes me how thick they are when they get any where near an election booth. They seem to have lost all critical filters in favour of accepting any old crap that Fox delivers. It’s incredibly sad that it has to be this way and if I were you I would hope that your elections have been stolen otherwise you’re actually telling us that Bush was a choice and not a mistake. And that really is sad.

  • 20 April 2005, 19:55

    The American presence in Europe served a single function..... It simply meant that any war against the Soviets would be fought here and not in the US. Gee thanks, all us Europeans can get nuked, bombed, blown up etc... while the US fires missiles from a safe distance and your poor GI’s have to put up with dying for nothing as per usual. If your soldiers had any sense they would see that endless corrupt overseas adventures are not worthy of them. They are better than that. Americans can be (and often are) the most generous and kind of people. It simply amazes me how thick they are when they get any where near an election booth. They seem to have lost all critical filters in favour of accepting any old crap that Fox delivers. It’s incredibly sad that it has to be this way and if I were you I would hope that your elections have been stolen otherwise you’re actually telling us that Bush was a choice and not a mistake. And that really is sad.

  • 20 April 2005, 23:48

    WWIII against the USSR would have been fought at a "safe distance" from America? Seriously? You never heard of ICBM’s? Armageddon? Nuclear winter? That’s what the anti-American crowd was so terrified of in Europe in the 80’s, remember? Ronald Reagan was a cowboy warmonger who wanted to incinerate us all, etc. etc.? Couldn’t have been more wrong about that, either. As Gorbachev later said in an interview, when the US deployed Pershing missiles in Western Europe (based on a 1970’s request to do so by fickle Western Europeans who later changed their mind), he knew the game was up—Russia simply didn’t have the economic power to keep up. The USSR collapsed. Millions were freed, to the benefit of us all.

    Ah, the old "Fox News" chestnut. Fox is a small island in a sea of left-leaning media. If you followed the American media closely, you’d realize that. It’s also new, so Americans weren’t "brainwashed" by Fox when we elected Reagan twice. I don’t trust what they report any more than I trust any single media outlet, but I do tune in. (Their morning show is funny, which is all that counts in the morning.) They keep the other networks honest by reporting things the others omit. I also tune in to NPR, the BBC, CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, talk radio, this silly website, a number of ‘blogs, the Drudge Report, La Reforma, expatica.com, etc. etc.

    Please choose to think we’re "sad" "idiots" for voting the way we do. Please. It’s far less insulting than pretending we’re brainwashed sheep. Intelligent, well-meaning, well-informed people can differ drastically in philosophy and worldview. Meanwhile, I’ll scratch my head and wonder why Europeans who choose not to topple a fascist dictator (a reasonable enough position) are so passionately opposed to somebody else doing it. I mean, it’s not like you’re sacrificing any of your blood or treasure, or anything.

    Look, I lived a year in Britain (with 4 Irish girls, no less). I think they considered me somewhat exotic (tongue firmly planted in cheek) because they’d never met ANYBODY who thought Reagan was okay, and because I didn’t feel any great need to apologize for my country. I’d imagine that if the five of us were together now, tempers would flair now due to the nature of world events, but at the time, we got along fine. We were much more focused on music and beer.

    You’re right about one other thing—Americans generally prefer to keep wars offshore. I think that only makes sense.

    “American soldiers die for nothing.” Nothing? WWI? WW2? Cold War? Nothing? Surely you can’t believe that.

    For the zillionth time, this war isn’t about grabbing oil. There are far easier ways to get oil. It can be bought cheaply, occasionally from bloodthirsty dictators, which has been done by plenty of nations, America included. If America were simply trying to conquer to steal oil, wouldn’t it make more sense to just invade Mexico? They’ve got tons of underdeveloped oil reserves. They also have great food, fun music, beautiful women (who aren’t wearing the front-hall rug), no kamikazi or jihadi-martyr tradition—they’re got it all! We could run a pipeline straight to my car.

    Do you know anyone serving in Iraq or Afghanistan? Would it surprise you to learn that what I hear from people I know who are (or have been) there doesn’t mesh very well with what I hear on the MSM (to say nothing of what I see on this site)? Hell, I’m writing this because sticking up for them is really the only thing I can do.

    Of the 40 million+ Irish Americans, I can assure you that millions of them voted for Bush.

    One last thing: if our elections ARE ever stolen, us crazy Americans will use the guns that we trust each other to have to make things right. (How’s that for a REAL revolutionary thought?)

    I’ve prattled on enough, but you seem worth it. (I’m an optimist.) Cheers, as y’all say.

    PS—my computer periodically gets blocked from this site, and my messages (though no loopier than this one) get deleted from time to time. It’s their right—they own this site, after all—but any concerns you may have about dissent being stifled would seem to be misplaced.

  • 21 April 2005, 00:18

    PPS—Thank you for the kind words (they’ve in your post, I saw ’em.) It’s nice to hear ANYONE from any other country (other than our millions of new immigrants, most of whom I seem to talk to daily) say anything nice about Americans. I’ll take what I can get.

  • 21 April 2005, 12:38

    You’re welcome to the kind words. I genuinely believe that a majority (or maybe a very large minority) of US citizens are fantastic people who would be devastated if the consequences of their Government actions were actually known. It is a matter of public record that many stories reported in Europe (stories with accuracy, depth and intelligence) are never reported at all in the US. I do, however, find your claim that Fox is known to be rubbish but the rest of the media is "liberal" to be more than a little amusing. I have seen enough of NBC, ABC, CNN etc to be able to reassure you that if any of this is left leaning then it is leaning left from a position on the extreme right. There is an insularity within the US psyche which, perhaps, comes from such a position of strength and power within the world that you feel a need to lead rather than follow anyone..... even if your position is demonstrably wrong. You have suffered from two stolen elections and if your media does reflect this fact then it is the media that is at fault and not other nations or individuals who point out the facts. The terrifying fact that currently faces us in Britain is that our media (even the much beloved BBC) is adopting US tactics. Our news is becoming anodyne, government centred and disingenuous in its reporting which was something I never believed would happen. It just goes to show, I suppose, that all nations and not just the US can fall prey to well packaged lies. I don’t know anyone serving in Iraq at present but as a journalist working during gulf war 1 I did get the job of attending the funerals of a large group of local boys (they were little more than kids at 17 and 18) who had been killed by ’friendly fire’ despatched from one of your planes so the pain of war is not as distant as you may think. The freed millions of the Soviet Union being to the benefit of us all is a little strange as it certainly hasn’t been to the benefit of a large majority of Russians who have expressed a desire to return to communism - choosing relative poverty and security (not military but in life) over the rapacious greed of rampant capitalism. Yes I have heard of ICBM’s and I’m also aware that your 20 minute warning (as opposed to our 4 minute one!) came as a direct result of monitoring stations you placed in Europe, which frankly were of little use to anyone actually living on our continent but very helpful to you with your "duck and cover" routine. I accept that a global nuclear conflict would indeed render your distance of little practical use but the first stages of any war were expected by both sides to reveal themselves in a land war fought primarily across the open plains of northern Germany rather than in Idaho or New Jersey. WWI and WWII are interesting and there is much discussion to be had about your entry into either of those dark periods of history. Yes we "allowed" a facist dictator to rise on our continent and that is to our eternal shame but the US has actually installed and inflicted facist dictators on other countries such as Chile which makes any arguments along those lines a little redundant. As a British subject (sadly we don’t even qualify as citizens of this giant aircraft carrier) I am in no position to throw stones about the cruelty and downright barbarism of expansionist colonial policies. We wrote the book. But I had hoped that when the book was written it might have contained enough lessons in its own futility to educate those who were thinking of following it. With Mr Bush it seems not. There is only one final result in Iraq, Afghanistan and any where else on the list and it’s not pretty. It involves the US either being removed by force or scuttling away a la Vietnam. Saddam was a vile dictator - not unlike many others - but he was not involved in 911 and provided absolutely no threat to the US or Britain. Therefore, as only one player on a corrupt stage shared by so many others (Saudi, China, Zimbabwe, Uzbekistan) one has to look for reasons for your actions. Iraq has oil - QED. Yes I do believe your soldiers have died in vain many times over the years - what was achieved by Vietnam? what will be achieved by Iraq? or Afghanistan? And does it not concern you that one of the biggest financiers of Mr Hitler was the grandfather of your president? You sound like a good guy and I would never, ever approve of your posts being removed. I may disagree with some aspects of your opinion but I would die defending your right to hold it. Take care and watch out for that constitution of yours..... it’s under great threat.

  • 21 April 2005, 12:40

    PS - I’m an optimist too :-)

  • 21 April 2005, 14:30

    Wow, lots to respond to there. The magic of the internet is that it fosters global communication at the click of a mouse. This is wonderful, in the case of our dialogue, and terrible, in the case of the jihad-cheering drones who seem to dominate too many corners of this site. I’d like to send an email address so we can take this conversation off the air, but I’m not sure how to do that without inviting a mailbag full of flaming spam from the aforementioned drones. Hmmm. Maybe I’ll set up a throwaway account over at hotmail . . .

    For now, I have to go be—in the words of the ex-wrestler and ex-governor of Minnesota, Jesse "The Body" Ventura, "productful."

    By the way, I can assure you that us ’mercans were horrified when our A-10 ripped up your APC in ’91. Fratricide is the ugliest aspect of war.

    More to come . . . on this thread.

  • 21 April 2005, 20:04

    You’re dead right. It would be good to continue this away from the "jihad-cheering drones". :-)
    If you try to find a way..... I’ll try to find a way..... I’ll try and leave a message with an address that I can use temporarily tomorrow. Either way you’ll find it in this topic. Take care.

  • 21 April 2005, 20:54

    Okay, I’ll watch this space . . . tomorrow afternoon for you (pesky time zones).

  • 21 April 2005, 21:38

    Nevermind waiting ’til tomorrow afternoon. Here it is: atlanticbuzz@hotmail.com. (Catchy, huh?) And to those interlopers out there who will shortly be signing this shiny new account up for free porn and truck-driving school, I hope you’re proud of yourselves. To the person to whom this post is addressed, it may take a while for me to be convinced that you are you. Please bear with me. (Everyone else around here is paranoid, so why can’t I be?)

    [gritting of teeth, strapping on of helmet.]

    Standing by . . .

  • 22 April 2005, 11:02

    Grit your teeth, strap on that helmet and await an E-Mail from a name that bears a striking resemblance to a Byrds song..... and no, I’m not Mr Tambourine Man.

  • 28 April 2005, 20:12

    An otherwise fairly intelligent contributor said:
    "There is far more mono-think there [in Europe] than in the US, and far less diversity of opinion."

    Heh, this sounds like somebody who saw the tourist spots and doesn’t speak any language but English.

    You wouldn’t say this if you had been in Copenhagen in December 2002 to see tens of thousands demonstrating on various issues against the expansion of the European Union, and at the same time two thousand anarchists defying the Danish police to march _against_ the direction of the main demonstration, away from the city centre and towards the city prison to demand the release of two Italian comrades arrested on arrival in the country.

    Nor are you entitled to say until you found a system in the United States where a range of ten parties, from xenophobic national romantics to outright communists can be represented in parliament.