Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Funniest film ever. Curse you for bringing it up as I am now doomed to repeat the theme song in my head for remainder of the day.

OK. The Iraq invasion is the result of extreme ideology turned into hatred and contempt for muslim civilization. I think Hitler's offsider Hermann Goering put it best : "Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger. It works the same in any country.". I'll reserve comment on other coutries' leaders, but IMHO Mr Howard has used/attempted to use things like the the Tampa incident and the Iraq invasion to bolster support in this country. Tampa worked a treat, and turned around an unwinnable election is his favour. Iraq may have back fired.
There is nothing "simple" about the Middle East conflict, and it's origins well exceed three generations. IMHO wars come from power struggles, rather than religious struggles. The Crusades are often purported to be about spreading Christianity amongst the muslim infidels, I say they where about wrestling trade routes from the Turks. The Israel/Palestine conflict comes from the Israelis being handed control of the region after WWII, and the Palestinians lost both land and self determination. I can see why the Palestinians are angry, but in no way support targeting innocents anywhere/anytime.

Depends what you mean by share power. Saudi, Pakistan, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt and UAE all allow US military bases and/or US companies to share in the oil extraction . Is that what you mean? Coincidently the 911 terrorists came from that list of counties, but the Afganis/Iraqis cop the retribution.

I would like to join the President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad bagging, in that in his current visit here he stated there are no homosexuals in Iran. You sir are an idiot, if that wasn't already obvious by your Holocaust denial.

Since when is that up to the US to decide who can and can't rize in power around the world. I believe we already have a world organization that is meant to oversee international laws and human rights violations etc. However the US government decided that they would not listen to the rest of the world, and they would forcibly invade and occupy Iraq..

You know, Hitler justified his invasion of other countries to his people as well, and there were many who believed that it was necessary for their mighty country to look after their interests by expanding into neighbouring territories.

I think that if the US government was really to do the right thing by the whole world, they would get behind the UN, they would make the UN a voice to be heard and a force to be reckoned with on the world stage, helping to create a truly global voice of reason that is democratic and fair. But no, instead they stand as a global bully, answerable to no one except themselves and create a mockery of the UN.

The REAL destructive nature of man? You don't have to look back 60 years, it's happening now... About 80,000 civilian deaths so far, and rising every day. OK, the US is in a unique position where they do have the most advanced military in the world, but now they have the choice of how they will use that. At the moment it seems like it will be for the purpose of world control and dominance in the name of freedom and democracy, and what they want. Realistically, for the good of the whole world there needs to be a step back..

The US government does not have the right to invade other countries when they are of no threat to the rest of the world, without the backing of the UN. the countries that joined in, including Australia are just pandering to the bully because they want to be mates with the person that has the biggest gun.. While the US pressured others to join so that they were not going it alone, this adds validity to what they have done, because they weren;t the only ones.

To me this is unacceptable, a world bully that has total military dominance, and flies in the face of world governing bodies ignoring what the rest of the world says, to follow their own agenda. THIS is truly scary to me...

Keep in mind that the middle east was not solely responsible for the 9/11 attacks. It was (supposedly) the work of the terrorist group, Alkeida. Afghanistan didn't organize the attacks, iraq didn't fund the organisation, pakistan was only Bin Laden's refuge; Iran, Israel or Lebanon had nothing to do with it. What a about Saudi Arabia, lets ask Jamie Foxx he might know. Who thought that invading these countries was a good idea? Afghanistan is worse than ever. I watched a show on foxtel showing the women in Afganistan, yes they may have more rights and freedom, but their husbands are now dead or gone and they are forced to beg on the streets. It hasn't got any better. The iraq war will go on for at least another 3 years. Then who will be next... Iran?

So where did Bin Laden get his training and money and ultimately his power? Hmmm, USA. When the USA had their "mines bigger" war with Russia Afghanistan got heaps of money and weapons from the US.

B2. I had resisted using comparisons to Goering's development of the means of propoganda and state control of the media to dictate the views of a population....

But I'm glad you said it.....

Many, I say again .... MANY of the current leaders of religious fundalmentalist, political, media and lobby groups in the hallways of Western governements, media publishing empires and spin doctor corporations are extremely well versed in the techniques of propoganda developed by Goering and the Nazi SS, and more recently techniques of NLP, neuro-linguistic programming.... techniques widely used in the revivalist movements of many "modern" church movements....

The quote from Goering rings as spine chillingly clear today as it did all those years ago....

And touche EB..... indeed yes if the western world was to throw it's weight and commitment (and if necessary, it's military power) behind the UN and accept and enact UN policy rather than playing the bizarre games of hippocracy we indulge in... then yes, perhaps theere could be a different approach to world affairs.

I'm sorry but I really have had a gutful of the hippocritical bullocks exspoused by our western leaders, particularly when layered with a supposed moral position that serves as nothing more than to thinly disguise our economic interests....

If we wish to take the moral position we expouse then I believe it beholds us to act accordingly..... WE DONT..... simple as that.....

While we staunchly defend OUR right to self determination, self interest, self protection through arms etc.... we deny that right to other states and if necessary for economic and/or strategic reasons inflict huge misery and death upon the citizens of any country that we may "deem" to be against our interests "at the time".... even if that same country/regime had even recently been viewed as a "friend" within a region.

To disguise our "moral" interests and expouse democracy on the world stage while we turn a blind eye to crushing poverty of Africa as a whole, the atrosities of Cambodia, Rwanda, Somalia, Zimbabwe.... the dictatorships of Pakistan, Burma etc, the abuse of womens rights in countries like Saudia Arabia, most Gulf states, Afganistan, the occupation by force and abuse of human rights in countries like Tibet, Palestine, Lebanon etc.....

Is the most hippocritical, gutless, cowardly and damning indictment of our foreign policies and reveals to the rest of the world our real agendas of rascism, enslavement and dominance.

But then I suppose a lot of those countries are either full of primative black natives or don't have any oil eh......

Let me make my position clear... and IMHO the major thing that needs to be done to make this world a safer place.....

The UN should be embraced, endorsed AND FUNDED by all countries as the SOLE means of resolution of dispute....

The UN should draw up a worldwide charter of "human rights", that all member nations are obliged to recognise and endorse

The Security Council of the UN should be abolished and all members have the same voting rights

The UN should be the ONLY body that has a military capacity.... worldwide.

ALL weapons of mass destruction in all countries should be declared and disposed of under the auspices of the UN

The UN should incorporate the bodies of the "International Court", WHO, Red Cross etc and be solely respoinsible for the resolution of disputes, enactment of justice in relation to crimes against humanity and human rights abuses, disaster relief and if necessary to acheive any of these functions against a rogue or beligerent leader/nation be solely responsible for any armed intervention required/requested by the body as a whole.

The UN should be endorsed, funded and given the capacity to build worldwide infrastructure across national boundaries.....

i.e water, power, transportation etc....


Imagine ......

I am sort of with you on the UN, though the security council thing is strange one. I agree the current system of 7 (or 7ish) members holding the power is suspect, but every nation having the same could pose problems. It's a bit like the voting system Olympic Committee or the whaling body. The smaller countries are easily persuaded to do the bigger one's bidding with carrots. Maybe you get a per capita vote. Then China and India can lay down the law

The biggest problem with the Security Council B2 is twofold.... it enshrines an entrench power base/point of view....

Each member of the council has the right to veto...... renders the council useless and impotent.

If countries wish to lobby, debate, even "buy" other member countries votes within a single worldwide body/organisation, then in some ways I see that as more acceptable, transparent and apparent than the methods of economic and military coersion that occurs today between many countries.....



Better that surely, than a Tomahawk... (cruise missile)

And I still believe and hope that over time such a UN body would adopt a different and more balanced approach to the problems of the world.

I do agree with your UN ideas rupe. However I say good luck to anyone wanting to disarm china, russia or USA. The problem is the superpowers have pissed off so many people over the years, they are too afraid to throw down all their weapons.

- Every country should have a army/air/navy for the protection of the nation and its people. So defense. Any foreign conflicts, voted for and initiate by the UN, may call for the assistance of other countries armed forces.

- Nuclear weapons do not have a defensive role so they should be deactivated, along with the VX gas, sarin, anthrax and mustard gas weapons the US and most likely china and russia possess. These are all first strike weapons. The world knows that as soon as the first nulcear missile leaves its silo the world is dead, and I mean literally. It is a stale mate situation.

- One country should not be able to initiate or declare, war or conflict on another nation. This should be recognized as a defiance of the UN and would need to be dealt with.

- Countries would need to allow the UN to take control over certain circumstances that could threaten other nations. Ie Afghanistan could have been resolved more peacefully through negotiation and intervention. If there is world backing behind an issue then they would have no choice.

- The one problem I see is who would be in charge. Or a bigger issue would be who would lose power because of it. Ie. Major world leaders may not like the changes. A certain constitution may also hinder the effectiveness of the disarming. How do we stop corruption and deceit on such a large scale?

Ultimately, probably by time and a cultural change to our way of thinking.... corruption and deceit have become enshrined in political and corporate physicies....

By transparency, failing that by weight of numbers and judgement by collective opinion of nations and by punitive powers that can be endorsed and acted upon by the UN....

At the moment when exposed those at fault usually reach for the distraction of invasion/takeover/war..... be that political or corporate

To my mind, the betrayal by corruption and/or deceit by those in power or positions of trust and/or prestige, be that political or corporate, of expected ethical, moral, legal or monetary values and standards is a greater crime than that of theft and/or embezzlement and should be held to account accordingly....

If humanity cannot trust those who lead us politically or corporately then we have no basis for trust and belief.... sadly we often also end up with no basis for recourse as well....

IMHO... if you occupy a position of great power/trust/responsibility and fail to act accordingly... then you should be held accountable with a magnitude of law that sadly doesn't appear to exist in most countries these days....

I read this speach and collected it for my friends to read.
To me it makes more sense than any speach I,ve heard from the White house of late.
It was delivered to Al Jazeera in the form of a video on Sept elleven 2007 and aired that day.
The speaker was Osama Bin Laden.
Our western media told us that within the speach he urged us all to join Islam,they also told us that he congratulated the 9.11 perpetrators.
They told us he had put on weight and dyed his beard.
But no more.
I hope you enjoy it.


"Your information media during the first years of the war lost its credibility and manifested itself as a tool of the colonialist empires, and its condition has often been worse than the condition of the media of the dictatorial regimes which march in the caravan of the single leader.


Why are the leaders of the White House keen to start wars and wage them around the world, and make use of every possible opportunity through which they can reach this purpose, occasionally even creating justifications based on deception and blatant lies, as you saw in Iraq?

In the Vietnam War, the leaders of the White House claimed at the time that it was a necessary and crucial war, and during it, Rumsfeld and his aides murdered two million villagers. When Kennedy took over the presidency and deviated from the general line of policy drawn up for the White House and wanted to stop this unjust war, that angered the owners of the major corporations who were benefiting from its continuation.

And so Kennedy was killed, and those corporations were the primary beneficiary from his killing. The war continued after that for approximately one decade. But after it became clear to you that it was an unjust and unnecessary war, you made one of your greatest mistakes, in that you neither brought to account nor punished those who waged this war, not even the most violent of its murderers, Rumsfeld. Even more incredible is that Bush picked him as Secretary of Defense in his first term after picking Cheney as his vice president, Powell as secretary of state and Armitage as Powell's deputy, despite their horrific and blood history of murdering humans. It was a clear signal that his administration - the administration of the generals- didn't have as its main concern the serving of humanity, but rather, was interested in bringing about new massacres. Yet in spite of that, you permitted Bush to complete his first term, and stranger still, chose him for a second term, which gave him a clear mandate from you - with your full knowledge and consent - to continue to murder our people in Iraq and Afghanistan.

History shows the genocide and holocausts which took place at your hands: only a few specimens of Red Indians were spared, and just a few days ago, the Japanese observed the 62nd anniversary of the annihilation of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by your nuclear weapons.

Then you claim to be innocent! It is impossible to humor any of you in the arrogance and indifference you show for the lives of humans outside America, or to humor your leaders in their lying, as the entire world knows they have the lion's share of that. Not taking past war criminals to account led to them repeating that crime of killing humanity without right and waging this unjust war in Mesopotamia.

"This war was entirely unnecessary, as testified to by your own reports. Among the most capable of those from your own side who speak to you on this topic is Noam Chomsky, who spoke sober words of advice prior to the war, but the leader of Texas doesn't like those who give advice. The entire world came out in unprecedented demonstrations to warn against waging the war and describe its true nature in eloquent terms like "no to spilling red blood for black oil," yet he paid them no heed.

It is time for humankind to know that talk of 'the rights of man' and 'freedom' are lies produced by the White House and its allies in Europe to deceive humans, take control of their destinies and subjugate them.

Among the things which catch the eye of the repercussions of your unjust war against Iraq is the failure of your democratic system, despite it raising of the slogans of 'justice, liberty, equality and humanitarianism'. It has not only failed to achieve these things, it has actually destroyed these and other concepts with its weapons - especially in Iraq and Afghanistan- in a brazen fashion, to replace them with fear, destruction, killing, hunger, illness, displacement and more than a million orphans in Baghdad alone, not to mention hundreds of thousands of widows. Americans statistics speak of the killing of more than 650,000 of the people of Iraq as a result of the war and its repercussions.

People of America: the people of the world have recently come to know that, after several years of the tragedies of this war, the vast majority of you want it stopped. Thus, you elected the Democratic Party for this purpose, but the Democrats haven't made a move worth mentioning. On the contrary, they continue to agree to the spending of tens of billions to continue the killing and war there, which has led to your disappointment.

And here is the gist of the matter, so one should pause, think and reflect: why have the Democrats failed to stop this war, despite them being the majority?

The answer to this question is: they are the same reasons which led to the failure of former president Kennedy to stop the Vietnam war. Those with real power and influence are those with the most capital. And since the democratic system permits major corporations to back candidates, be they presidential or congressional, there shouldn't be any cause for astonishment in the Democrats' failure to stop the war.

You're the ones who have the saying which goes, "Money talks." After the failure of your representatives in the Democratic Party to implement your desire to stop the war, you can still carry anti-war placards and spread out in the streets of major cities, then go back to your homes, but that will be of no use and will lead to the prolonging of the war.

It has now become clear to you and the entire world the impotence of your 'democratic' system and how it plays with the interests of the peoples and their blood by sacrificing soldiers and populations to achieve the interests of the major corporations.

It has become clear to all that they are the real tyrannical terrorists. In fact, the life of all of mankind is in danger because of the global warming resulting to a large degree from the emissions of the factories of the major corporations. Despite that, the representative of these corporations in the White House insists on not observing the Kyoto accord, with the knowledge that the statistic speaks of the resulting death and displacement of millions of human beings, especially in Africa. This greatest of plagues and most dangerous of threats to the lives of humans is taking place in an accelerating fashion as the world is being dominated by the 'democratic' capitalist system, which confirms its massive failure to protect humans and their interests from the greed and avarice of the major corporations and their representatives.

And despite this brazen attack on the people, the leaders of the West - especially Bush, Blair, Sarkozy and Brown- still talk about 'freedom' and 'human rights' with a flagrant disregard for the intellects of human beings. So is there a form of terrorism stronger, clearer and more dangerous? This is why I tell you: as you liberated yourselves before from the slavery of monks, kings, and feudalism, you should liberate yourselves from the deception, shackles and attrition of the capitalist system.

If you were to ponder it well, you would find that in the end, it is a system harsher and fiercer than your systems in the Middle Ages. The capitalist system seeks to turn the entire world into a fiefdom of the major corporations under the label of "globalization" in order to protect 'democracy'.

Iraq and Afghanistan and their tragedies; the reeling of many of you under the burden of interest-related debts, insane taxes and real estate mortgages; global warming and its woes; and the abject poverty and tragic hunger in Africa - all of this is but one side of the grim face of this global system.

So it is imperative that you free yourselves from all of that and search for an alternative, upright methodology in which it is not the business of any class of humanity to lay down its own laws to its own advantage at the expense of the other classes as is the case with you, since the essence of the laws under which you live is that they serve the interests of those with the capital and thus make the rich richer and the poor poorer."


The capitalist system is rotten and unfair, and choosing to be governed by corporation-grovelling millionaires like Bush, Clinton or Obama will only prolong the agony, but the alternative need not be an authoritarian God-fearing Theocracy. The opposite of Corporation Capitalism is Humanitarian Socialism - a system based on true justice, equality and harmony, a world where religion is irrelevant, but where the basic law of all faiths (acceptable even to atheists) is the rule: "Don't treat other people in a way you would not like them to treat you.

Or, for those with an inclination for the Divine, what better words than those of Benjamin Franklin, who believed in a benevolent Deity: "The most acceptable service to God is doing good to his other children."

And Benjamin Franklin was an American!

Vince...no thanks for posting the rhetorical bullshit of a deranged lunatic as though it were sensible and factual. You need to go find Bin Laden in his cave and take your bromance to the next level. In the meantime, on behalf of all who perished in the 9/11 attack, you are an absolute insensitve ass!

no personal attack, please.

good bye

net please.

Some positives from the "deranged lunatic".
I like "the alternative need not be an authoritarian God-fearing Theocracy".
I like "the rule: "Don't treat other people in a way you would not like them to treat you. ""
However, the last statement seems to be at odds with previous rhetoric from said deranged lunatic. For example:
"We should fully understand our religion. Fighting is a part of our religion and our Sharia [an Islamic legal code]. Those who love God and his Prophet and this religion cannot deny that. Whoever denies even a minor tenet of our religion commits the gravest sin in Islam."

"The pieces of the bodies of infidels were flying like dust particles. If you would have seen it with your own eyes, you would have been very pleased, and your heart would have been filled with joy." -- At the wedding of his son in southern Kandahar about the 17 sailors who died suicide bombing of the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen

"Every American man is an enemy to us." -- Independent.

In short a man who encourages the targeting of innocents deserves no respect, and will get none from me.