Forum > General discussions > Non mobile discussion > Explosions on London Underground!

On 2005-07-13 15:31:35, Cornholio_666 wrote:
these people say that the attacks were in response to the massacres Britain committed in Iraq and Afghanistan, as if everyone went to iraq and afghanistan and killed someone. when are they going to learn that its a few politicians who make the decisions, and not the whole country? if i remeber correctly a shit load of people were against the war in the first place.

On 2005-07-13 21:34:36, peeta wrote:
Its a point they making to the politicians!

I'm sorry but that is the biggest load of bs i've heard. they have no point except maybe all they wanted to do was be martered and remembered by the world as dying for some cause to give their meaningless little lives some short term aim. we should treat them like the man who shot Lennon, so their real motive becomes meaningless. Did Blair suddenly say sh*t what was i thinking of course invading Iraq was wrong...sorry. NO i don't quite remember that.

On 2005-07-13 21:43:03, Vlammetje wrote:
I remember one day is sept 2001 when we held 3 mins of silence for that one country across the atlantic........
Strange how it seems a lifetime ago already

On 2005-07-13 21:37:35, absinthebri wrote:

What's the point of the war in Iraq?

How should we treat Blair, the murderer of 20,000 innocent Iraqis? What is/was his motive?

On 2005-07-14 00:20:31, london-uk wrote:

Quote:

On 2005-07-13 21:37:35, absinthebri wrote: What's the point of the war in Iraq? How should we treat Blair, the murderer of 20,000 innocent Iraqis? What is/was his motive?

Saddam was killing people daily.

Although the premise at the time was that Saddam's regime had WMD's (which was later found to be untrue), I believe that the right decision was made, when it was decided to invade.

You say that Blair is the murderer of 20,000 people.

Incidentally, based on figures from the U.N. this would in fact be a smaller number of fatalities than that of a similar period of time during Saddam's regime.

Additionally, may I note that the vast majority of people killed in Iraq now are in fact killed by suicide bombers, who are obviously not affiliated with the US or the UK.

The choice was made to remove the previous Iraqi regime,

On 2004-05-19 08:13:26, gelfen wrote:
finally, i would like to attach the text of an interview on Australian television with Salam Pax, aka "The Baghdad Blogger", who maintained an online diary throughout much of the Coalition incursion into iraq and for several months preceeding the invasion. Salam Pax has much to say about the current situation in Iraq, and it is refreshing to hear the opinion of an Iraqi rather than the biased and self-serving commentary provided by most media outlets (both left- and right-wing). i urge you all to read this interview and absorb what Salam Pax has to say, and not try to colour it with your own prejudices and (deliberate) misinterpretations.

Salam Pax appeared on the ABC television show Enough Rope with Andrew Denton which is an interview/chat style show hosted by (funnily enough) Andrew Denton, an Australian presenter/commedian/radio announcer. The interview was pre-recorded in front of a live audience on Monday, before the assassination of Governing Council President Izzedin Salim.

Salam Pax
When he began keeping a diary, he had no idea that the world would read it. An Iraqi living in Baghdad before the invasion of last year, he was typing his thoughts and observations onto the Internet just to keep his friends up to date. But as the coalition of the willing closed in, word of his writing spread. At great risk he became an accidental journalist more embedded and often more truthful than many of the Western press could hope to be. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Salam Pax.

Andrew Denton: If I could just give a bit of background first, Salam. You're an architecture student. You come from a reasonably well-off Iraqi family. You've lived several years in the West, including Vienna. Your mum's a Shia Muslim, your dad's a Sunni, you're an atheist…

Salam Pax: Yeah, but don't say that.

Andrew Denton: OK. I won't mention… And you're gay.

Salam Pax: Er, yeah. Don't say that as well.

Andrew Denton: OK, I won't say that. Am I wrong, or is this not a typical Iraqi profile?

Salam Pax: No, it's very typical. No. The problem, you see, um, you have so many things that you want to say and coming from such background my mother is Shia, my father is Sunni, and I being different. It's just that there is so much you really want to say, and in Iraq before the war there was no way you could really express any of these opinions or feelings. And this diary was great when I found out there was a place I could express all these feelings and say these things.

Andrew Denton: Nonetheless, I would have thought, a risky thing to do because on the Internet you are public.

Salam Pax: Yeah. You see, when I first started it, just trying to get in touch with my friend, it was supposed to be a very small personal thing and it was really two people at most reading it and then just slowly building up. I didn't think of the risks, I didn't see it as a risk because it wasn't supposed to be that big any way. It attracted too much attention at the point where I had to stop. Only just before the war started thinking of the risks, really, it was a bit foolish.

Andrew Denton: Absolutely. You were chronicling a country that was about to be invaded. A scary, scary prospect. Why did you stay in Baghdad? You didn't have to.

Salam Pax: Actually, you do have to. It is your country going through really one of the most important changes. There was at a point a discussion within the family. What do you do, do you stay? Do you leave? Do you at least go out of Baghdad into some other city? I think we all decided… We got all together, my uncles and aunts, we stayed together, like, my aunt's house and ours was close together. Everybody was there. You have your family, your loved ones, stay together, let's stay here. In the end you want to see what happens. You cannot leave when something like this happens to your country. You need to know.

Andrew Denton: The benevolent West was coming to save your country from a despotic tyrant. You weren't too happy about that, were you?

Salam Pax: There is this one problem, is that when they come with this idea that "Let's teach those backward brown people over there how it's supposed to be done." It's a problem with who thinks is superior to us. And coming over to Iraq telling you what you're supposed to be doing without understanding your own culture is a problem. But of course we all realised there was no way to get rid of Saddam without foreign intervention. You are standing in the middle not knowing whether to invite them in or to kick them out. You don't know what to do. You have to wait. I am still hoping and trying to be optimistic with all the problems, just looking forward and hoping that some time in the future things will get better. The 'benevolent West'. Well, they're trying. They are not listening enough to Iraqis, but they're kind of trying.

Andrew Denton: Sorry, I didn't hear a thing you just said then.

(Pax laughs)

Andrew Denton: It is something very few of us have been through. How do you prepare for an invasion when it's your country that's about to be invaded?

Salam Pax: I can give you a long list. Dig a well, water will get cut off. Buy a little generator, lots of candles. Buy alcohol, the shops will close. Food, I don't know. Just get whatever. But to prepare… I guess the important thing is having your family and loved ones close to you. Keeping in touch is very difficult after the war. The problem was always in Iraq that we never had information. When you don't know what's coming… People just needed to know what's going to happen, what's the situation. Is it going to happen tomorrow? In a month? The slack of knowledge and information was actually the most difficult part. We had to smuggle a tiny little satellite dish every couple of hours to check the news because satellite dishes, you get 6 months in prison for having a satellite dish. The most important thing is you need to know what is going to happen. At least we know something bad is happening in this city. Then we just didn't know. Suddenly the bombs would start falling.

Andrew Denton: What was the city like in the last few days before the war started?

Salam Pax: Very strange. I've never seen Baghdad like that. People just didn't close their shops, they actually built their shops. You'd see people just building all the windows and doors of shops and houses and there were lots of people trying to leave Baghdad. But then the neighbouring countries, they were very friendly. They kind of cut us off. You were not allowed to go out Jordan, Syria, of course not Kuwait, Turkey, Iran — they closed the doors and you Iraqis stay here, wait to get bombed. The decision to stay in Baghdad was not just a decision we made. It was made for us. "You're staying."

Andrew Denton: You chronicled all this, and your web diary, which started with a readership of one — your friend in Jordan — suddenly was being read by hundreds of thousands all around the world. What sort of reactions were you getting?

Salam Pax: All sorts. Most were kind of not believing that someone in Baghdad would be writing this. There was so much doubt and thinking, "No, no, no." Then came the period when everybody was saying, "He's definitely either CIA or the secret police," which was fun. Then came the part where people started asking questions. It went slowly into building up this readership, which is good, because in the beginning you tend to almost know the people who are reading what you are writing. At one point it get out of proportion. By then I didn't know what was happening because we didn't have any Internet. Apparently the 'Guardian' published huge chunks of the weblog. When I came back online much later I was very amazed at how much attention it got. It was almost scary.

Andrew Denton: I am going to show you footage of what you would be familiar with. This is what we saw on our TV screens at the start of the war, Operation Shock and Awe, which, from where we sat, was extraordinary television. What was it like from where you were?

Salam Pax: It was very strange war, to be watching this while you were getting bombed. It was very strange. We had this small room, the safest room in the house, and we'd be like 15, 16 people sitting in there with a tiny TV and watching this while it was happening. It was very strange.

Andrew Denton: You said your family were all together. You had 30 people waiting out the war in your house. How did you pass your days?

Salam Pax: It is good to have everyone around you. You talk. When we'd have electricity we'd watch a movie on video, and everybody of course would be sitting in front of the TV or the radio trying to figure out what's happening where.

Andrew Denton: What sort of movies would you watch?

Salam Pax: For some reason 'Ice Age' was a favourite. I don't know why. We sat there once watching… What that film was called? It's about an American President who gets in love…

Andrew Denton: 'The American President'. You were watching 'The American President'?

Salam Pax: So strange. It was really weird. Besides, you get all these shots of the White House and you are thinking, "Why are they complaining about Saddam's palaces? The White House was really nice." It was very, very strange watching these things. I think it was for some reason a favourite.

Andrew Denton: You're an architecture student, but first and foremost, Baghdad is your home. Is it painful to watch your city being bombed?

Salam Pax: Of course. I remember watching… Inside the palace complex there's a building that looks almost like a pyramid with its head chopped off. And it's scary how precise the bombs are. It fell right in the middle, and it was spectacular, how it just exploded and everything went boof! And you go there thinking, "My God." It… Yeah, the first couple of days was very difficult. It was very difficult to watch this. But then, I guess it's, you know, human nature — you kind of get used to it. You wake up, another bomb there, explosions there. It just goes on.

Andrew Denton: Another building gone, another day.

Salam Pax: Yeah. The good thing is that every day, while we were able to do it, before the troops went in, we could go during the day, very early on, and look at the sites that were bombed. I just needed to do that. I just needed to go. Me and my cousin would sit in his car and we would go and try to find, you know, from the pictures, to see what happened to these buildings. I just needed to see what happened. What really hurts is that it's been a year now and the buildings are still there, you know, bombed, and it doesn't give you good feeling about your city. It looks like it's just been in a war. We don't need to see this anymore, we need to see change.

Andrew Denton: You, on your online diary, were very critical of the way the Western media covered the war. What did they get wrong?

Salam Pax: I don't know. I don't think it's… It's not exactly the way… Before the war they had a problem, they had a real problem with reporting. There was no way they could move around without secret police around them. I got really annoyed every time I read someone interviewing "the man on the street", an Iraqi. You knew that there's secret policeman standing right beside him and he would never be able to tell you anything but "We love Saddam." So it was kind of…that was really frustrating. During the war, I don't know, it was just seeing all these explosions and the way the troops moved. You'd never get an idea what was really happening. What was really scary is that you'd see, for example, on Western media, the side of the…the coalition army moving in. You'd see them bombing. You'd never see what happens when the bomb falls. Then comes something like 'Jazeera'. They would show, right in the beginning of the war, in Basra, really horrible images, because hospitals were never capable to deal with…

If something serious happened, they were never able to deal with it. They went into a hospital and I just remember thinking, "This will never be good. You have one opinion here and another opinion there and you can't try to find where the middle is."

Andrew Denton: You… As you said, people were speculating as to who you were — were you Secret Service, were you Israeli, were you Iraqi, who were you and did you exist? One man found out eventually. That was your father. How did he find out and what was his reaction?

Salam Pax: (Laughs) Oh, that wasn't a good day.

LAUGHTER

Salam Pax: You see, at one point, I think it was BBC or 'Voice of America', they…for some reason… Why did they do it? They just went on air and said, "There's an Iraqi who is writing all about the war," and he comes down from upstairs, going, "Salam?" I go, "Uh-oh, that's no good." And, um, he's saying to me, "There is an architect called Salam writing stuff about the war." I'm going… (Innocently) "Mmm?"

LAUGHTER

Salam Pax: Yeah, it was… You know, when you think of it, it was really foolish. We sat down later, much later on, and had this talk. I had to admit that it was foolish and it could have gotten us all into real, real serious trouble. But at the time when I was doing it, it became so important to me, it became such an outlet, and people were reacting. I could talk. We were just, you know, getting…exchanging opinions, which was so important. I didn't think about the problems. But then it was lucky. I was really lucky that nothing happened.

Andrew Denton: I'm going to show you another piece of footage now we all saw, which was the pulling down of the statue of Saddam Hussein. Was this a good day?

Salam Pax: It was a very good five hours. We…we… Oh, God. We sat there and electricity was out. We had a generator. Many of the family was in my aunt's house. So we ran over, called them just to watch this. It took forever. Of course, the whole thing about the Americans coming and pulling it down with the cows, it's like, "Oh, God, no we don't want this to happen bad," you know. But still, pulled down, and then just half an hour after that, 'Jazeera' started showing reports of looting in the city and everybody went crazy, everybody wanted to go back to their house. It was a very good five hours just watching this happen. Of course I am not really sure this wasn't just done for the benefit of the reporters who were around the hotels. Why choose this place out of the other places? I don't know. But still, it was a good day, it was a good day. But then we were hoping things would get better. They didn't. It just went up and down and up and down.

Andrew Denton: Your dad was optimistic, wasn't he, about…

Salam Pax: He still is. Kind of to a point where I sometimes think, "Please, get real." He still is so very optimistic. He was kind of all up and happy about the governing council, which I was thinking, "Come on, they don't know Iraqis." He goes, "No, no, no, they'll do something." Now he is very excited about the next interim government, which, again, I don't think they'll have much to do, but he's going, "Oh yes, they'll bring us to good points." I don't know.

Andrew Denton: It's not just the Americans you're ambivalent about, though, because you write about the freedom fighters that have come from other countries to fight the Americans. You don't seem to have a great deal of time for them?

Salam Pax: Uh… I was once in Jordan, in a taxi, and talking to the taxi driver, and he said something which got me really angry. He said, "Look, we want to, you know, we want to be jihadis and we want to fight the infidel, and Iraq now is the place." Fight your wars somewhere else. That's the problem. We ended up being a battlefield. Not only… We have enough problems in Iraq — you know, the Kurds, the Sunni the Shiah — everybody has its own agendas. And now, you know, other people seem to be fighting their wars inside our country, which is even more frustrating. I mean, you can't even deal with your own problems. Now you have to deal with these people who are coming in. It is very strange. Um, I don't know… We were never expecting something like this to happen — that we've become a battleground for all this. Everybody is trying to, you know, settle their problems inside our country.

Andrew Denton: Your name, 'Salam Pax', means 'peace' in Arabic and 'peace' in Latin. Do you see any peace for Iraq?

Salam Pax: Um…as I said, I always try… The now is difficult. It's always difficult to watch what's happening now. I'm always amazed at how things can get worse and worse. Every time I think, "This is really as bad as it gets," it gets just a bit worse. So I'm kind of always… It's nice to have little milestones in front of you. The next interim government with its preparations for elections and everything — I'm looking at that, I'm hoping that this is something that can get us out of the slump here and now. Oh, yes, peace. We'll get peace some day. We'll just have to learn. It's a learning process.

Andrew Denton: After what we've learnt from the torturing of prisoners, would it be better if the coalition withdrew? Would that help?

Salam Pax: No. Um…that was very unfortunate. Bad timing. It shouldn't have happened. Part of the war the West is fighting is a moral war, showing what's wrong to the ignorant people in the Middle East. That was not good for your moral. It's…you're losing that battle. This shouldn't have happened. But still it doesn't mean that everybody should go, "OK, 'bye," because it will plunge us deeper into chaos. People are using this to drive away the coalition. It's very unfortunate. It shouldn't have happened. It's horrible, but nobody should just lose hope. They just need to listen more to Iraqis. They just need to understand Iraqis more. They have been trying to communicate.

Andrew Denton: It is fantastic to have an Iraqi voice on Australian television. Salam Pax, may your name be true. Thank you very much.

Salam Pax: Thank you very much.

the transcript of an online forum chat with Salam Pax and Andrew Denton can be read here

On 2005-07-14 00:20:31, london-uk wrote:

Quote:

On 2005-07-13 21:37:35, absinthebri wrote: What's the point of the war in Iraq? How should we treat Blair, the murderer of 20,000 innocent Iraqis? What is/was his motive?

Saddam was killing people daily. Although the premise at the time was that Saddam's regime had WMD's (which was later found to be untrue), I believe that the right decision was made, when it was decided to invade. You say that Blair is the murderer of 20,000 people. Incidentally, based on figures from the U.N. this would in fact be a smaller number of fatalities than that of a similar period of time during Saddam's regime.

Additionally, may I note that the vast majority of people killed in Iraq now are in fact killed by suicide bombers, who are obviously not affiliated with the US or the UK.