Cool Video - Battle of the Bees -vs- the Hornets

[350HP930]

Looks like about as fair of a fight as the US military -vs- our third world enemy of the week.

http://www.olympus.co.jp/en/magazine/pursuit/200301/movie/m01_hi.asx

[Staylo]

How dare you attack the dignity and character of the Hornets by posting such graphic depictions of a "few bad apples".
What purpose does it serve?

[350HP930]

Uber-LOL

I imagine they are only liberating the hive so the bee larva can benefit from their honey wealth after the wasps have a little sip.

[ronin]

pretty sick analogy. it really takes one hell of a stretch of the imagination to liken a regime that killed its citizens by the tens-of-thousands to a hive of bees. sure, that's right, Saddam and his henchmen wanted nothing more to make honey in peace on the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris

I've been wondering where all the liberal idealism went recently when it came to giving an opressed nation a chance at liberty and democracy. I found out when the stories of the mistreatment (and yes, they were definitely mistreated) of Iraqi prisoners began to make the headlines and suddenly the libs go into a fit about how atrocious this all is when the Iraqi leaders have been doing much worse on a daily basis to their constituency for decades. simply proves that it's not the issues at all but rather the people in control with which you have a problem. had Clinton been at the helm of all of this, you'd definitely be singing a different tune

[350HP930]

So you are arguing the hornets are morally superior to the bees?

I guess you might be right since the queen bee kills off all of her rivals and the drones will kill off any worker bees that get out of line.

I guess we won't need to wonder if the hornets engage in similar behavior.

[ronin]

well, o.k. I took a valium and I'm cool now. I suppose that you could liken Saddam to the queen bee

[350HP930]

Yup, and I'm sure all that carnage was justified since the hive despot was killed in the process.

[ronin]

see? my point as before. wrong analogy. the despot was arrested and will stand trial, and the carnage in Iraq is also caused by the Iraqis themselves. they don't return fire with flowers and bee pollen, y'know

[350HP930]

Could you imagine that those bastard bees had the nerve to defend their hive and their evil queen.

They even were so dispicable as to kill a few of the hornets in the process. Those bees brought all that carnage upon themselves.

I think the hornets also had intelligence that the bees were hiding a couple cans of raid somewhere in their hive. I don't think they found it yet but at least the honey is secure.

[ronin]

final point, take your ideology to the tens-of-thousands of Iraqis killed by their own government and see if they agree. oh wait, they can't because they're DEAD

[lendaddy]

I think if the honey bees would have just shared their honey and young with the misunderstood hornets, this whole thing could have been avoided. Can't we all just get along

[ronin]

NO!

[cstreit]

No political analogies here....

...man is that brutal. It's good to be high on the food chain.

[joeclarke]

final point, take your ideology to the tens-of-thousands of Iraqis killed by their own government and see if they agree. oh wait, they can't because they're DEAD

oh wait, but we can ask the Iraqis that have dodged the daisy cutters how they feel about the situation. Hm, they do seem to be saying something over there, don't they?

Oh wait, I remember now, those unhappy people are simply brain-washed idealogues, that's right, yeah that's the ticket - why they're just brain-washed idealogues. Why I'll bet they're getting their brains washed right now as we speak, come to think of it!

Why, those lousy brain-washed idealogues - they're the next worst thing to terrorists!

[vash]

that wasp killer spray is awesome. anybody know what type of wasp that was? i guess the bees should have made a smaller entrance into the hive, then the fatasss wasp wouldnt be able to get thru.

[ronin]

Originally posted by joeclarke
Oh wait, I remember now, those unhappy people are simply brain-washed idealogues, that's right, yeah that's the ticket - why they're just brain-washed idealogues.

brainwashed? you tell me

(from back in 2002 , but still relevant nonetheless)

Impressed by Sick Distortion of Democracy

Hopefully, this week was not a sneak preview of the kind of coverage reporters have planned if the American military is called upon to remove Saddam Hussein and his cronies from their power perch in Baghdad. The broadcast networks covered the “re-election” of the Iraqi dictator with plenty of illustrations of the people’s alleged support for their leader, and few hints that the whole exercise was a big fat lie.

“All 11,440,638 eligible voters went to the polls with one thought: Yes to Saddam Hussein!,” NBC’s Keith Miller asserted on Wednesday’s Today. “The government proclaimed it a victory of light over darkness, good over evil. It seemed more like a political miracle.“

”On the streets it was like Saddam won the mother of all elections. The celebrations were genuine, but already the validity of the vote is being questioned,” Miller added. He called it “unbelievable” — but put doubts in the mouths of others. “The Bush administration dismissed the vote as not credible,” Miller conveyed, carefully preserving his neutrality (see box). He also passed along the spin that the “vote” was a repudiation of Bush: “Pollsters show that the Iraqi people reject President Bush's demand for a regime change.”

None of the Baghdad correspondents embraced the fraud, but most couldn’t say it was a fraud, either. Instead, viewers were given understated hints that, even as Iraqis were forced to mechanistically pledge their support for another seven years of Saddam, the whole exercise was, in fact, hollow. One exception: CBS’s Tom Fenton put the “election” in proper context on Tuesday’s Evening News: “It’s no surprise everyone seemed to be voting ‘yes.’ You would be foolish not to; a UN human rights report said 500 people were jailed in the last referendum after casting a negative ballot.”



At the opposite end of the spectrum, on ABC’s World News Tonight David Wright compared the Iraqis’ voting procedures to those of an actual democracy like the United States: “In some ways, election day in Iraq looked a lot like its American counterpart. But there were some obvious differences, too. Outside, throngs of enthusiastic supporters. Inside, voters picked up their ballots, recorded their choice behind a screen, and dropped the completed form into the slot. The ballot, one question, do you agree to re-elect President Saddam Hussein?”
World News Tonight's David Wright reporting from Kerbala, Iraq

Wright showed an Iraqi man who insisted individual voters really could reject Saddam. “When the last referendum took place, Saddam Hussein won 99.96 percent of the vote,” Wright noted, adding “it is impossible to say whether that's a true measure of the Iraqi people's feelings.” So in his mind such orchestrated unanimity could possibly be a “true measure” of Iraqi opinion?

During the 1991 Gulf War, network reporters similarly presented the tightly-controlled statements of unfree people as genuine opinions. An MRC study found 94 percent of comments from Iraqis shown on ABC, CBS and NBC in February 1991 were pro-Saddam. There were absolutely no anti-Saddam soundbites; the other six percent were ambiguous.

Pretending that the Iraqi public was pro-Saddam was preposterous, but that was the sum and substance of TV’s on site reporting from Baghdad. Only after the war was over did reporters reveal the Iraqi people’s true opinions. “The one thing people have to know is that this man, privately, Saddam Hussein, is a hated man,” Betsy Aaron told Dan Rather on the March 7, 1991 Evening News. But Aaron showed no anti-Saddam opinions in her dispatches from Iraq. As this week’s coverage suggests, accurate reporting may again have to wait until a new war is concluded, and access-hungry reporters don’t have to impress Saddam with their “fairness.” -- Rich Noyes

doesn't sound very brainwashed to me

[350HP930]

The above article would lead me to believe the average iraqi liked saddam a lot better than they do bush and our troops.

Even though saddam was nasty to his opponents the average iraqi sure appeared to have it a lot better before the invasion.

[ronin]

so did the average German before the outbreak of WWII

[joeclarke]

Glad you brought up pre-war Germany in the context of this discussion. You know the more I think about it, the more I realize you're on to something here, pre-war Germany is a great analogy for Iraqnam:

(1) Pre-war Germany was the dominant industrial and military force on the face of the planet. - As is the US today.
(2) Pre-war Germany blamed many of it's woes on a specific group of people and saw that group of people as a significant threat to their lifestyle. As does the US today.
(3) Pre-war Germany believed in it's manifest destiny and entitlement to be the supreme leaders of the planet based somewhat on a platform of genetic superiority. Very similar to the treatises on US manifest destiny and foreign policy exemplified by Washington today - somewhat less the genetic component, but the basic premise of "got too full of themselves (ourselves)" is readily apparent in both scenarios.
(4) Pre-war Germany felt a (stated) need to invade Czechoslovakia due the supression of self-determination of the Sudenten Germans under the Czech "regime". These poor, poor Germans rights and freedoms were being supressed and abused by the Czechs, you see. Very similiar to the stated reasons for the US invasion of Iraq.
(5) Pre-war Germany really invaded Czechoslovakia to gain control of it's military industrial base. Very similar to the real reason the US invaded Iraq - to gain political certainty around the continued supply of crude oil.
(6) Pre-war German people rallied behind the premises and reasons for the progressively unspeakable acts of a charismatic leader. Very similar to the argument supporting the killing of thousands of Iraqis by US soldiers being sold to (and largely bought by) the US public today.

Good point Ronin, thanks for the analogy.

[lendaddy]

What a load