All Bullshit Aside: Here Are the Issues

[Michael Tee]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20542-2005Feb13.html

well here's a Washington Post interview quoting Farid Ayar of the Independent Electoral Commission as giving 58% turnout.

[Plane]

Canadian turnout...

27 November 2000  61.25
28 June 2004          60.9
http://www.elections.ca/content.asp?section=pas&document=turnout&lang=e&textonly=false



US turnout isn't even that good.

http://www.usavotenet.com/popups/totalturnout.htm


Considering the difficulty , and also considering the presence of international observers , I don't see that the Iriqui turnout deserves our criticism.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Considering the difficulty , and also considering the presence of international observers , I don't see that the Iriqui turnout deserves our criticism.

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The situation in Iraq is totally different. Neither in Canada nor in the US has the possible future of democracy been considered at stake in any recent Canadian or US election, as in Iraq. In the US and Canada, political parties are well-established: in Iraq, there were huge numbers of parties, and the nationalities of the candidates (most of whom were unknown to the voters) and therefore their assumed political affiliations, were revealed to the voters by their names. Iraq is a tribal society: every Iraqi one knows a Kurdish, a Shiite, a Sunni, a Turkman name.

The differences between Iraq and Canada and the US are are far too great to assume that any comparisons are not much more than idle musings.

[Michael Tee]

Excellent answer, XO, and I'd only add that the turnout is virtually meaningless considering it had to be pumped up considerably by Shi'ite militia pressure in the Shi'a areas, free ration cards (as Ayar virtually admitted in the interview I posted previously) and the fact that the candidates were all vetted by the American occupation authorities.  And don't forget that farcical "international observer" bullshit - - the Carter Center admitted that because of the hazardous conditions it observers stayed in Jordan for the "election."

This thing was a well-managed farce, a publicity stunt by the U.S., complete with the "purple finger" photo ops.  IIRC, they staged a similar farce at one point in the Viet Nam War.

[Amianthus]

well here's a Washington Post interview quoting Farid Ayar of the Independent Electoral Commission as giving 58% turnout.

Ahh, you're talking about the election of the "interim government" that wrote the constitution.

I'm talking about the election of the actual government under the new constitution.

[Xavier_Onassis]

NO election in Iraq is or has been comparable to the elections in the US and Canada.
All the photos of purple-fingered Iraqi democrats are clearly propaganda and should not be taken as anything but propaganda.

One must remember that advertising was an invention of the US, and so was (under Wilson's AG Mitchell Palmer) propaganda. Goebbles adapted it to the German state, but Americans have continued to develop both advertising and propaganda (to the detriment of our culture, civilization and ethical standards) for decades since the defeat of the Nazis.

It has not been so prevalent in the Middle East because Americans are perfectly awful at foreign languages and cultures.At last count, there were SIX people in the US Embassy in Iraq capable of carrying on a conversation in Iraqi Arabic.

AIPAC is perhaps the only non-US propaganda that has a greater success than American propaganda.

Sure, we have all those Iraqi interpreters, but pretty much every one of them has a political ax to grind, and I don't think that staking my life on whether some Gyrene  understood his English would be a wise thing to do.

I sure would like some proof that Cheney and Juniorbush have truly altruistic motives. I fail to see why it would be unfair to request these of Sirs.

Of course, Sirs continues to believe that Juniorbush has never told so much as a fib.

[Amianthus]

One must remember that advertising was an invention of the US,

So, all those Roman ads that were so well preserved under the ashes at Pompeii were placed there by time-travelling Americans?

[Xavier_Onassis]

You know what I am talking about.

The Romans had no press. Ads on walls are hardly ad campaigns.

[Amianthus]

You know what I am talking about.

The Romans had no press. Ads on walls are hardly ad campaigns.

So, billboards are not considered advertisements? Many of the ads at Pompeii were series of political ads, in addition to those advertising brothels and other commercial establishments.

The Egyptians had papyrus ads. After the creation of the printing press, printed ads on paper became common - well before the founding of the US.

There are examples of ads going back 6,000 years.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Modern advertising was a US innovation. So was propaganda.
The whole idea of inventing 'diseases' (psoriasis, halitosis) to sell the 'cure', for example.

[sirs]

You know what I am talking about.  The Romans had no press. Ads on walls are hardly ad campaigns.

So, billboards are not considered advertisements? Many of the ads at Pompeii were series of political ads, in addition to those advertising brothels and other commercial establishments.  The Egyptians had papyrus ads. After the creation of the printing press, printed ads on paper became common - well before the founding of the US.  There are examples of ads going back 6,000 years.

D'OH....Ami with another right cross, square on Xo's debate chin.  It's starting to get bloody folks    

[Amianthus]

The whole idea of inventing 'diseases' (psoriasis, halitosis) to sell the 'cure', for example.

Advertising medicines came about during the plague in Europe.

[Amianthus]

Modern advertising was a US innovation. So was propaganda.
The whole idea of inventing 'diseases' (psoriasis, halitosis) to sell the 'cure', for example.

Look, I'll speed this up some.

Name branding was partially a US concept. It arose about the same time in the US and Europe (19th century). All other forms of advertising are ancient in origin.

Propaganda, which you speciously link to advertising, is also ancient in origin. Again, we can find examples of propaganda in Roman works, and pre-common-era Indian and Persian writings. There are also numerous ancient oriental and occidental sources of propaganda.

[Plane]

Considering the difficulty , and also considering the presence of international observers , I don't see that the Iriqui turnout deserves our criticism.

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The situation in Iraq is totally different. Neither in Canada nor in the US has the possible future of democracy been considered at stake in any recent Canadian or US election, as in Iraq.

I would not have guessed that the outcome was so unimportat if I were simply listening to the opponents of President Bush , who sometimes confuse him with Satan.

That it s much less dangerous and much more easy for us to approach a polling place is a greater credit to Iriqus than to us.

[Michael Tee]

<<to the opponents of President Bush , who sometimes confuse him with Satan.>>

No, Satan's a lot smarter and better looking.