Cobblestones said:
p.s. That is a great link....thankyou for posting it....I recommend people reading it....I am truly amazed it is from the mail though....but oddly heartened given their track record.
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p.s. That is a great link....thankyou for posting it....I recommend people reading it....I am truly amazed it is from the mail though....but oddly heartened given their track record.
straydog said:
After these first three paragraphs im not going to bother to read the rest of what you say.
Thats the second and third time you have made the claims that I am mindlessly taking as gospel everything Hitchens says.
You did it previously with the following post
I told you that this is a weak argument. It is clearly an unfair one. But you come back and repeat it 2 more times in this post.
You have no basis for making such an accusation and your repeated use of it indicates clear trolling.
I would argue that this is a violation of rule 11. "Blatant lying, baiting, or teasing other members will not be tolerated".
My opinions are my own. My words are my own. My name is a mark of respect to the man.
You have no basis to challenge any of these 3.
The Hitch said:
Simply put Hitch...and I am saying this real S L O W...
I challenged a statement you made....and your attempt to back it up was three regurgitated arguments from your hero. And initially you said my contention of a previous statement was a fail because "it was Hitchens opinion" and as such I was "wrong". Absolute basis hitch. Absolute. Again I would ask...what do you think? Although i don't think many of us are holding our breath for a response. It might take you some time to actually formulate.
Your unwillingness and inability to answer anything I have challenged is telling my friend....very telling.
Listen, I understand when someone gets frustrated on here they want to call someone a "troll". But generally it kind of concedes defeat....and an inability to counter something someone has said, with reasoned argument.
Hitch, I am not teasing you. I think you are very mistaken and naive, and your arguments ill conceived. If you disagree, then prove me wrong.
straydog said:
Well if they did or would have found current WMD during the 2003 invasion the story would have changed some. Yes he was wrong for starting a war with Iraq but they would have claimed a victory over WMD’s at the same time. Something they were unable to do since the WMD’s either were all used up or so old and outdated that nothing was usable, and maybe he destroyed some like he was pressured to do so by the UN. I am not easily going to buy that he gave them to Syria etc. Maybe someone or country stole some?
I know for a fact Iraq had some Bio and Chemical Agents around 1990. After that who knows what was happening in Saddams land.
straydog said:
Seems like the two women either got together and formulated something or maybe they were working from a PLAN all along?
No idea regarding the fish wrap that wrote the article. We do not get good journo or media coverage usually so I am not expecting anything close to the work done in the linked article.
This is the very first paragraph you wrote to me
The very first paragraph and you are already going to great lengths to mock my lack of “knowledge and history”. Pretty serious insults, and nothing I had said to you warranted such an opening paragraph.
The next bit was this
These have been the tangents which every post of yours has followed.
Constant ad hominem coupled with claims to know what I am thinking.
None stop mockery of my lack of knowledge, coupled with several claims to be intellectually superior yourself.
On the few occasions that you do try to adress a POLITICAL issue, you do so in the following manner
Note that there is actually no political argument presented here. You do not tell me why I am “uninformed” , instead choosing to once again go to great lengths to mock my stupidity.
This latest post as the others follows the same lines.
Its true that i myself have also insulted other posters, and I fully accept the rights of others to insult me.
But your posts lack anything else. The constant adhominem attacks are starting to get tiring. It was present in the very first thing you said to me, and it has been present throughout. You do not address my points, choosing instead to mock my intelligence, and in a very cheap way dismiss my opinions as being copied from someone else.
So for those who read this, that is why I am placing Stray Dog as the first and only person on my ignore list.
I hope at least some will, after looking at the barrage of insults adhominem and nothing else that straydog posts directed towards me contain, understand why I took this action.
The very first paragraph and you are already going to great lengths to mock my lack of “knowledge and history”. Pretty serious insults, and nothing I had said to you warranted such an opening paragraph.
The next bit was this
These have been the tangents which every post of yours has followed.
Constant ad hominem coupled with claims to know what I am thinking.
None stop mockery of my lack of knowledge, coupled with several claims to be intellectually superior yourself.
On the few occasions that you do try to adress a POLITICAL issue, you do so in the following manner
Note that there is actually no political argument presented here. You do not tell me why I am “uninformed” , instead choosing to once again go to great lengths to mock my stupidity.
This latest post as the others follows the same lines.
Its true that i myself have also insulted other posters, and I fully accept the rights of others to insult me.
But your posts lack anything else. The constant adhominem attacks are starting to get tiring. It was present in the very first thing you said to me, and it has been present throughout. You do not address my points, choosing instead to mock my intelligence, and in a very cheap way dismiss my opinions as being copied from someone else.
So for those who read this, that is why I am placing Stray Dog as the first and only person on my ignore list.
I hope at least some will, after looking at the barrage of insults adhominem and nothing else that straydog posts directed towards me contain, understand why I took this action.
The Hitch said:
I consider myself blessed hitch...hitch?....hitch?
I am pretty sure that this ridiculously over verbose post, rehashing everything you have said 3 times already, as a result of actually having nothing relevant to say about the discussion at hand, without responding to my clear addressing of your "points", will provide further ample evidence to anyone who "reads this" that I am right.
Since you won't be....well, you might miss it, which would be a pity
And there you were saying that rebutting my arguments was "too easy"
straydog said:I consider myself blessed hitch...hitch?....hitch?
I am pretty sure that this ridiculously over verbose post, rehashing everything you have said 3 times already, as a result of actually having nothing relevant to say about the discussion at hand, without responding to my clear addressing of your "points", will I am sure provide further ample evidence to anyone who "reads this" that I am right.
Since you won't be....well, you might miss it, which would be a pity
And there you were saying that rebutting my arguments was "too easy"
Well that whole exchange was sofa king we Todd did.
Alpe d'Huez said:
The biggest irony in all of this is that the economic 'opening', which supposedly should be followed by democratization, didn't turn out to be true. What the situation around Wikileaks and Assange has demonstrated is that the strong trade relations with China have led to a 'Chinafication' of the US in particular and 'the West' in general. And in that sense it's very ironic that the process started with Nixon.
'It took Nixon to go to China' might acquire a new meaning soon.
Cobblestones said:
IMO there is often confusion between democracy and capitalism; I know I don't understand the connections or relationship between the two. I usually assume the US is trying to impose its preferred form of capitalism (in addition to subservience or obligation) on other nations when it claims to be introducing them to democracy.
Could you elaborate a little on your claim that trade relations with China have led to "Chinafication" of the US? I don't see how one necessarily follows from the other. (Perhaps I don't understand your use of the term Chinafication.)
Glenn_Wilson said:
This is a rather easy way to wiggle your way out of seriously engaging the salient points Friedman has put forth, don't you think?
Mine was a rhetorical question, of course, because your response clearly demonstrates to the contrary.
Indeed the journalist admits that nothing is simple and yet, the article clearly lets us know that as far as America is concerned, in the immortal words of "Pogo": "We have seen the enemy, and it is us." The Middle East may never be congenial to our Western culture, however, it must be said that we have done everything possible to ensure that our relations are of the worst imaginable. But it wasn't written anywhere, that it had to be that way. Friedman has pt forth some ideas about what we could, and probably should, have done to have created the best possible chance that things would not have wound up between us the way they actually did. The same goes for China.
The greed and conservative agenda's of a couple of industries (which means the plutocracy) who dictate the political agenda, namely oil and finance, have been those very things which have accounted for America's rapidly ascending star, but also are the same reasons why today we are politically and even economically it is in such a weak position. And why it will be increasingly necessary, no longer having a valid plea bargaining power, for America to rely upon its miltary trump card to try and create a world in its image an liking, as unfortunately recent history has demonstrated. But this will only exacerbate the alread increasing anti-Americanism around the four courners of the globe.
Kind of ironic, don't you think? The truth is that with more foresight, more moral impetus and more courage the US body politic could have chosen a different course, though quite simply chose not to in caving into the pressures of wealth (which means in this case the non-voted powers behind the scenes). In the spirit of that great Italian Renaissnace expression, which after all is the law and rule of history itself: Si svolge ("It Turns"), that is Fate.
And as I was reading that nicely summed up article about why the US is in a real fix, another article yesterday addressed the new Noah's Ark and Tower of Babel theme park being constructed to "educate" folks on the history of the world in blue grass Kentucky. Which gives us some comic relief.
"Noah had 600 years when the Great Flood occured, that is when the whole earth was covered with water," so recites the Bible. Well the guy who was reading this to an enthusiastic audience where the Ark is to be built has only 66 years, but he happens to be Steve Beshear the governor of of Kentucky. Beesher has decided to use the state's tax payer's money to realize the project according, of course, to the biblical measurements.
Well at least the Louisville Courier-Journal had this response: "the last thing that the governer of Kentucky should be doing with tax payers' dollars in our state, is to encourage the youth to exchange creationism for something scientifically valid." The state of Kentucky has the world's only Creationism Museum which "demonstrates" that the world, according to the Bible, is only 6000 years old and that once men and dinosaurs roamed happily together!!
In any case, all this, in light of what Friedman has explained, allows us to appreciate in what state the country has found itself.
Spare Tyre said:
I made up the word 'Chinafication' when I posted this.
What I mean with this is exemplified by what you see going on around Wikileaks.
Freedom of press? Only for mouthpieces. Inconvenient publications (like the NYT by Sen. Lieberman) are denounced as traitors of the state.
Freedom of the individual? Not when it comes to inconvenient individuals such as Assange. Ex Gov. Palin denounces him as a terrorist who should be hunted down like Osama bin Laden. Apparently, when you publish inconvenient truths, you're no longer a journalist.
Australia considered to rescind citizenship. That was the method of choice of the old USSR when some of their critics managed to leave the country. Other examples are: the former GDR rescinded citizenship to critical artists who were on tour in West Germany, so they were not allowed to return to their families.
The charges brought against Assange in Sweden. Now, I don't know what really, really happened there. I linked an article to the Daily Mail which I have reasons to believe. If this turns out to be true, then it is obvious that the charges were dropped at one point very early (but were publicized widely). While I don't think the charges themselves were planted via the 'honey trap' method, the fact that they were resurrected at some later point, might be explained by intervention in the Swedish justice system. Again, China (and other former Eastern Block countries) charged and put to jail many of their critics on 'ordinary' crimes. It was a very popular method to muddy the water and draw attention away from those critics.
All in all, I see parallels between the US and Western world in the treatment of Assange to how Chinese dissidents are treated by China.
And I'm not even getting into the actual contents of the leaks. When you see how China and the US made common cause in Copenhagen, there's apparently a much closer approach between these two countries than anybody bargained on.
rhubroma said:
I really do not think that the religious information is relevant to this discussion. (That is my opinion.)
What ever the tax payers of Kentucky want to do is up to the voters don't you agree? You can not really change people with that mindset so why try, OR where you just trying to make fun of the people from Kentucky for their religious beliefs?
Friedman does allow YOU to appreciate in what state the country has found itself. I believe it should allow "us" to appreciate in what STATES the country has found itself.
Glenn_Wilson said:
No I wasn't making fun of anyone, because it is far too serious a matter to take lightly. That people like yourself have lost all sense of the ridiculous, allows us to see just how serious the matter has become.
In any case you mention the problem of appreciating in what STATES the country has found itself. Now I could take this as a comment regarding pluralism, in that there are many America's. I could also take this to mean something having to do with the the multiple States in which America is unfortunately having to cope with to try and maintain its so called "way of life."
In the second instance, I can only refer to what I see as a flaw in Friedman's position. Namely what Friedman misses, of course, in his nostalgic musings is the connection between capitalism and the state. How could anything have taken a different path? From the US Army invading South America at the command of United Fruit to the invasion of Iraq to save Wall Street, the Golden Age Friedman sees is invisible to me.
The only Golden Age has been the period during which the US plutocracy was capable of getting away with murder, while the American people felt content in their apparently unlimited material posibilities. But all that came with a price. Friedman's possition, and this was its mertit, let us know that the plutocracy can't any longer simply get away with murder. This, however, has less to do with his nostalgic musings than the inherent nature of capitalism and the state, which means the Price that is now being paid.
The greatest illusion of the American leadership of late has been that the so called Golden Age could have through force been made perpetual. This is what they are at present in fact trying to do by an ideology that means we will probably witness the US increasingly taking recourse to its military apparatus.
The problem is that Americans don't care to begin to seriously think about the occultish nature of Power, as Assange has tried to do. Friedman's position in this light even becomes dangerous, because it gives them the illusion that this is merely a problem of the plutocracy, of diplomacy of neocon ideology etc. and not something much more fundamental: namely, the system of which they represent.
But that is the rebus that men like Friedman (and most liberal Americans) find too upsetting to confront head on as they say.
rhubroma said:
That everyone does not share the same views in the United States is a good thing. I just wanted to point out that there has been that way of thinking in most of the United States from probably the beginning. I do not pretend to judge your senses so you should do the same with regards to posting here.
Your statement “But that is the rebus that men like Friedman (and most liberal Americans) find too upsetting to confront head on as they say.” is this to say that they lack intestinal fortitude? Meer weaklings?
Cobblestones said:
Chinafication has existed for quite some time in America.
You may find this article interesting:
CounterPunch Diary
> Julian Assange: Wanted by the Empire, Dead or Alive
>
> By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
>
> The American airwaves quiver with the screams of parlor assassins
> howling for Julian Assange's head. Jonah Goldberg, contributor to the
> National Review, asks in his syndicated column, "Why wasn't Assange
> garroted in his hotel room years ago?" Sarah Palin wants him hunted
> down and brought to justice, saying: "He is an anti-American operative
> with blood on his hands."
> Assange can survive these theatrical blusters. A tougher question is
> how he will fare at the hands of the US government, which is hopping
> mad. The US attorney general, Eric Holder, has announced that the
> Justice Department and Pentagon are conducting "an active, ongoing
> criminal investigation" into the latest Assange-facilitated leak under
> Washington's Espionage Act.
> Asked how the US could prosecute Assange, a non-US citizen, Holder
> said, "Let me be clear. This is not saber-rattling," and vowed "to
> swiftly close the gaps in current US legislation…"
>
> In other words the espionage statute is being rewritten to target
> Assange, and in short order, if not already, President Obama – who as
> a candidate pledged "transparency" in government - will sign an order
> okaying the seizing of Assange and his transport into the US
> jurisdiction. Render first, fight the habeas corpus lawsuits later.
>
> Interpol, the investigative arm of the International Criminal Court at
> The Hague, has issued a fugitive notice for Assange. He's wanted in
> Sweden for questioning in two alleged sexual assaults, one of which
> seems to boil down to a charge of unsafe sex and failure to phone his
> date the following day.
>
> This prime accuser, Anna Ardin has, according to Israel Shamir,
> writing on this CounterPunch site, "ties to the US-financed
> anti-Castro and anti-communist groups. She published her anti-Castro
> diatribes in the Swedish-language publication Revista de Asignaturas
> Cubanas put out by Misceláneas de Cuba…Note that Ardin was deported
> from Cuba for subversive activities."
> It's certainly not conspiracism to suspect that the CIA has been at
> work in fomenting these Swedish accusations. As Shamir reports, "The
> moment Julian sought the protection of Swedish media law, the CIA
> immediately threatened to discontinue intelligence sharing with SEPO,
> the Swedish Secret Service."
>
> The CIA has no doubt also pondered the possibility of pushing Assange
> off a bridge or through a high window (a mode of assassination favored
> by the Agency from the earliest days) and has sadly concluded that
> it's too late for this sort of executive solution.
>
> The irony is that the thousands of diplomatic communications released
> by WikiLeaks contain no earth-shaking disclosures that undermine the
> security of the American empire. The bulk of them merely illustrate
> the well-known fact that in every capital city round the world there
> is a building known as the U.S. Embassy inhabited by people whose
> prime function is to vanquish informed assessment of local conditions
> with swaddling cloths of ignorance and prejudice instilled in them by
> what passes for higher education in the United States, whose governing
> elites are now more ignorant of what is really happening in the
> outside world that at any time in the nation’s history.
>
> The reports in the official press invite us to be stunned at the news
> that the King of Saudi Arabia wishes Iran was wiped off the map, that
> the US uses diplomats as spies, that Afghanistan is corrupt, also that
> corruption is not unknown in Russia! These press reports foster the
> illusion that U.S. embassies are inhabited by intelligent observers
> zealously remitting useful information to their superiors in
> Washington DC . To the contrary, diplomats – assuming they have the
> slightest capacity for intelligent observation and analysis -- soon
> learn to advance their careers by sending reports to Foggy Bottom
> carefully tuned to the prejudices of the top State Department and
> White House brass, powerful members of Congress and major players
> throughout the bureaucracies. Remember that as the Soviet Union slid
> towards extinction, the US Embassy in Moscow was doggedly supplying
> quavering reports of a puissant Empire of Evil still meditating
> whether to invade Western Europe!
>
> This is not to downplay the great importance of this latest batch of
> WikiLeaks. Millions in America and around the world have been given a
> quick introductory course in international relations and the true arts
> of diplomacy – not least the third-rate, gossipy prose with which the
> diplomats rehearse the arch romans à clef they will write when they
> head into retirement.
>
> Years ago Rebecca West wrote in her novel The Thinking Reed of a
> British diplomat who, "even when he was peering down a woman's dress
> at her breasts managed to look as though he was thinking about India."
> In the updated version, given Hillary Clinton's orders to the State
> Department, the US envoy, pretending to admire the figure of the
> charming French cultural attaché, would actually be thinking how to
> steal her credit card information, obtain a retinal scan, her email
> passwords and frequent flier number.
>
> There are also genuine disclosures of great interest, some of them far
> from creditable to the establishment US press. On our CounterPunch
> site last week Gareth Porter identified a diplomatic cable from last
> February released by WikiLeaks which provides a detailed account of
> how Russian specialists on the Iranian ballistic missile program
> refuted the US suggestion that Iran has missiles that could target
> European capitals or that Iran intends to develop such a capability.
> Porter points out that:
>
> "Readers of the two leading US newspapers never learned those key
> facts about the document. The New York Times and Washington Post
> reported only that the United States believed Iran had acquired such
> missiles - supposedly called the BM-25 - from North Korea. Neither
> newspaper reported the detailed Russian refutation of the US view on
> the issue or the lack of hard evidence for the BM-25 from the US side.
>
> "The Times, which had obtained the diplomatic cables not from
> WikiLeaks but from the Guardian, according to a Washington Post story
> Monday, did not publish the text of the cable. The Times story said
> the newspaper had made the decision not to publish 'at the request of
> the Obama administration'. That meant that its readers could not
> compare the highly distorted account of the document in the Times
> story against the original document without searching the Wikileaks
> website."
>
> Distaste among the "official" US press for WikiLeaks has been
> abundantly apparent from the first of the two big releases of
> documents pertaining to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The New York
> Times managed the ungainly feat of publishing some of the leaks while
> simultaneously affecting to hold its nose, and while publishing a
> mean-spirited hatchet job on Assange by its reporter John F Burns, a
> man with a well burnished record in touting the various agendas of the
> US government....
>
The rest...
> There have been cheers for Assange and WikiLeaks from such famed
> leakers as Daniel Ellsberg, but to turn on one's television is to
> eavesdrop on the sort of fury that Lord Haw-Haw – aka the Irishman
> William Joyce, doing propaganda broadcasts from Berlin -- used to
> provoke in Britain in World War II. As Glenn Greenwald wrote in his
> column on the Salon site:
>
> "On CNN, Wolf Blitzer was beside himself with rage over the fact
> that the US government had failed to keep all these things secret from
> him... Then - like the Good Journalist he is - Blitzer demanded
> assurances that the Government has taken the necessary steps to
> prevent him, the media generally and the citizenry from finding out
> any more secrets: 'Do we know yet if they've [done] that fix? In other
> words, somebody right now who has top secret or secret security
> clearance can no longer download information onto a CD or a thumb
> drive? Has that been fixed already?' The central concern of Blitzer -
> one of our nation's most honored 'journalists' - is making sure that
> nobody learns what the US Government is up to."
>
> These latest WikiLeaks files contains some 261,000,000 words - about
> 3,000 books. They display the entrails of the American Empire. As
> Israel Shamir wrote here last week, "The files show US political
> infiltration of nearly every country, even supposedly neutral states
> such as Sweden and Switzerland. US embassies keep a close watch on
> their hosts. They have penetrated the media, the arms business, oil,
> intelligence, and they lobby to put US companies at the head of the
> line."
>
> Will this vivid record of imperial outreach in the early 21st century
> soon be forgotten? Not if some competent writer offers a readable and
> politically vivacious redaction. But a warning: in November 1979
> Iranian students seized an entire archive of the State Department, the
> CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) at the American embassy
> in Tehran. Many papers that were shredded were laboriously
> reassembled.
>
> These secrets concerned far more than Iran. The Tehran embassy, which
> served as a regional base for the CIA, held records involving secret
> operations in many countries, notably Israel, the Soviet Union,
> Turkey, ****stan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan.
>
> Beginning in 1982, the Iranians published some 60 volumes of these CIA
> reports and other US government documents from the Tehran archive,
> collectively entitled Documents From the US Espionage Den. As Edward
> Jay Epstein, a historian of US intelligence agencies, wrote years ago,
> "Without a doubt, these captured records represent the most extensive
> loss of secret data that any superpower has suffered since the end of
> the Second World War."
>
> In fact the Tehran archive truly was a devastating blow to US national
> security. It contained vivid portraits of intelligence operations and
> techniques, the complicity of US journalists with US government
> agencies, the intricacies of oil diplomacy. The volumes are in some
> university libraries here. Are they read? By a handful of specialists.
> The inconvenient truths were swiftly buried – and perhaps the
> WikiLeaks files will soon be fade from memory too, joining the
> inspiring historical archive of intelligence coups of the left.
>
> I should honor here “Spies for Peace” – the group of direct-action
> British anarchists and kindred radicals associated with the Campaign
> for Nuclear Disarmament and Bertrand Russell’s Committee of 100 who,
> in 1963, broke into a secret government bunker, Regional Seat of
> Government Number 6 (RSG-6) at Warren Row, near Reading, where they
> photographed and copied documents, showing secret government
> preparations for rule after a nuclear war. They distributed a
> pamphlet along with copies of relevant documents to the press,
> stigmatizing the “small group of people who have accepted
> thermonuclear war as a probability, and are consciously and carefully
> planning for it. ... They are quietly waiting for the day the bomb
> drops, for that will be the day they take over.” There was a big
> uproar, and then the Conservative government of the day issued a
> D-notice forbidding any further coverage in the press. The cops and
> intelligence services hunted long and hard for the spies for peace,
> and caught nary a one.
>
> And Assange? Hopefully he will have a long reprieve from premature
> burial. Ecuador offered him sanctuary until the US Embassy in Quito
> gave the president a swift command and the invitation was rescinded.
> Switzerland? Istanbul? Hmmm. As noted above, he should, at the least,
> view with caution women eagerly inviting his embraces and certainly
> stay away from overpasses, bridges, and open windows.
>
> In 1953 the CIA distributed to its agents and operatives a killer's
> training manual (made public in 1997) full of hands-on advice:
>
> "The most efficient accident, in simple assassination, is a fall
> of 75 feet or more onto a hard surface. Elevator shafts, stair wells,
> unscreened windows and bridges will serve... The act may be executed
> by sudden, vigorous [excised] of the ankles, tipping the subject over
> the edge. If the assassin immediately sets up an outcry, playing the
> 'horrified witness', no alibi or surreptitious withdrawal is
> necessary."
> There have been cheers for Assange and WikiLeaks from such famed
> leakers as Daniel Ellsberg, but to turn on one's television is to
> eavesdrop on the sort of fury that Lord Haw-Haw – aka the Irishman
> William Joyce, doing propaganda broadcasts from Berlin -- used to
> provoke in Britain in World War II. As Glenn Greenwald wrote in his
> column on the Salon site:
>
> "On CNN, Wolf Blitzer was beside himself with rage over the fact
> that the US government had failed to keep all these things secret from
> him... Then - like the Good Journalist he is - Blitzer demanded
> assurances that the Government has taken the necessary steps to
> prevent him, the media generally and the citizenry from finding out
> any more secrets: 'Do we know yet if they've [done] that fix? In other
> words, somebody right now who has top secret or secret security
> clearance can no longer download information onto a CD or a thumb
> drive? Has that been fixed already?' The central concern of Blitzer -
> one of our nation's most honored 'journalists' - is making sure that
> nobody learns what the US Government is up to."
>
> These latest WikiLeaks files contains some 261,000,000 words - about
> 3,000 books. They display the entrails of the American Empire. As
> Israel Shamir wrote here last week, "The files show US political
> infiltration of nearly every country, even supposedly neutral states
> such as Sweden and Switzerland. US embassies keep a close watch on
> their hosts. They have penetrated the media, the arms business, oil,
> intelligence, and they lobby to put US companies at the head of the
> line."
>
> Will this vivid record of imperial outreach in the early 21st century
> soon be forgotten? Not if some competent writer offers a readable and
> politically vivacious redaction. But a warning: in November 1979
> Iranian students seized an entire archive of the State Department, the
> CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) at the American embassy
> in Tehran. Many papers that were shredded were laboriously
> reassembled.
>
> These secrets concerned far more than Iran. The Tehran embassy, which
> served as a regional base for the CIA, held records involving secret
> operations in many countries, notably Israel, the Soviet Union,
> Turkey, ****stan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan.
>
> Beginning in 1982, the Iranians published some 60 volumes of these CIA
> reports and other US government documents from the Tehran archive,
> collectively entitled Documents From the US Espionage Den. As Edward
> Jay Epstein, a historian of US intelligence agencies, wrote years ago,
> "Without a doubt, these captured records represent the most extensive
> loss of secret data that any superpower has suffered since the end of
> the Second World War."
>
> In fact the Tehran archive truly was a devastating blow to US national
> security. It contained vivid portraits of intelligence operations and
> techniques, the complicity of US journalists with US government
> agencies, the intricacies of oil diplomacy. The volumes are in some
> university libraries here. Are they read? By a handful of specialists.
> The inconvenient truths were swiftly buried – and perhaps the
> WikiLeaks files will soon be fade from memory too, joining the
> inspiring historical archive of intelligence coups of the left.
>
> I should honor here “Spies for Peace” – the group of direct-action
> British anarchists and kindred radicals associated with the Campaign
> for Nuclear Disarmament and Bertrand Russell’s Committee of 100 who,
> in 1963, broke into a secret government bunker, Regional Seat of
> Government Number 6 (RSG-6) at Warren Row, near Reading, where they
> photographed and copied documents, showing secret government
> preparations for rule after a nuclear war. They distributed a
> pamphlet along with copies of relevant documents to the press,
> stigmatizing the “small group of people who have accepted
> thermonuclear war as a probability, and are consciously and carefully
> planning for it. ... They are quietly waiting for the day the bomb
> drops, for that will be the day they take over.” There was a big
> uproar, and then the Conservative government of the day issued a
> D-notice forbidding any further coverage in the press. The cops and
> intelligence services hunted long and hard for the spies for peace,
> and caught nary a one.
>
> And Assange? Hopefully he will have a long reprieve from premature
> burial. Ecuador offered him sanctuary until the US Embassy in Quito
> gave the president a swift command and the invitation was rescinded.
> Switzerland? Istanbul? Hmmm. As noted above, he should, at the least,
> view with caution women eagerly inviting his embraces and certainly
> stay away from overpasses, bridges, and open windows.
>
> In 1953 the CIA distributed to its agents and operatives a killer's
> training manual (made public in 1997) full of hands-on advice:
>
> "The most efficient accident, in simple assassination, is a fall
> of 75 feet or more onto a hard surface. Elevator shafts, stair wells,
> unscreened windows and bridges will serve... The act may be executed
> by sudden, vigorous [excised] of the ankles, tipping the subject over
> the edge. If the assassin immediately sets up an outcry, playing the
> 'horrified witness', no alibi or surreptitious withdrawal is
> necessary."
Glenn_Wilson said:
You know differences of view point are really quite the norm around the globe, in case you didn't know.
I can't have a conversation with someone who lacks any sense of irony.
Sorry, it's stronger than me.
rhubroma said:
Well since I have never been anywhere “around the globe” I guess my opinion is limited according to you. I completely understand the irony bit because if you would not have spelled it I would have never been able to look it up in the dictionary.
Now the article above was a good read but why not just link the article?
Actually you guys both seem to pretty much be on the same page of thinking.
US policy has been like this for some time. Go back to the Cold War and how the US actions in Latin America were constantly looking away from horrible human rights violations as long as regimes they were supporting fought communism.
But it's my belief that the system we have now is much more akin to the post-Gilded Age, and actions of the robber barons. One can look back to 1970 and see the fear of communism and the power of the Soviet Union and their global aggression. But there is no such powerful antagonist today. While it may be masked as "terrorism", the general actions of the United States in Middle Eastern policy has to do with oil, control, and money. Because oil barons have so much influence over government, and the general rule of acceptance being that greed and hoarding is good for the economy, we continue the path with Obama that we did with Bush.
About 300 pages ago on this thread I wrote about Jimmy Carter's famous "Malaise Speech" and while his speech was poorly received as negative, in retrospect he was completely correct. Imagine if today we weren't importing much oil because over the last 30 years we had built more nuclear power plants, worked at clean(er) coal, built electric cars, etc.
US policy has been like this for some time. Go back to the Cold War and how the US actions in Latin America were constantly looking away from horrible human rights violations as long as regimes they were supporting fought communism.
But it's my belief that the system we have now is much more akin to the post-Gilded Age, and actions of the robber barons. One can look back to 1970 and see the fear of communism and the power of the Soviet Union and their global aggression. But there is no such powerful antagonist today. While it may be masked as "terrorism", the general actions of the United States in Middle Eastern policy has to do with oil, control, and money. Because oil barons have so much influence over government, and the general rule of acceptance being that greed and hoarding is good for the economy, we continue the path with Obama that we did with Bush.
About 300 pages ago on this thread I wrote about Jimmy Carter's famous "Malaise Speech" and while his speech was poorly received as negative, in retrospect he was completely correct. Imagine if today we weren't importing much oil because over the last 30 years we had built more nuclear power plants, worked at clean(er) coal, built electric cars, etc.
We now know that Minister for Sport, Senator Arbib was the man who leaked information about Rudd out to US diplomats which that informatin was leaked to Wikileaks!
Alpe d'Huez said:
But not really..Anyone who fought a military junta tinpot general/presidente' was a "communist" ..Most republicans now view anyone who disagrees with them the same way..Rand Paul's stomper dude would have broken that girl's neck if he'd had a few more seconds..
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