posted on September 27, 2003 09:44:42 AM new
The questions have been answered time after time austbounty, your blindness to truth must be the reason you can't read the answers...
But once again you deviate from your own country, where the average wage is dropping consistently, you treat your own people of color the same as we did 50 years ago and yet you still feel the need to bash the US... are you afraid to speak out about your own country's fallabilites, are you so envious of the US that you feel the need to bash it?
It is typical of people who are not #1 in anything to find all the fault they can with the #1 country in the world... it is not unexpected... so how about it, is Australia free of pollution? You complain about you government supporting our causes...is it because they know it to be a just and right cause... or is it also gratitude knowing that during WWII we kept Japan from invading... or both...
Are you upset the Australia may not get all the oil they need?
AIN'T LIFE GRAND...
posted on September 27, 2003 10:10:50 AM new
Ok, so without having to spend money on defense, which the Canadian government knows the US will protect them... it does allow for more efforts in those areas... also with the asian immigration to Vancouver and surrounds... it is no wonder that educational levels improved.
The US is the only SUPER Power in the world... that means we have to take pot shots...
Let us cut off all foreign aid.... all monies to any out of country entity and listen to the people scream...
posted on September 27, 2003 10:19:18 AM new
I repeat 12
I have no problem admitting my faults or the faults of those who represent my country.
I have no probs with saying Sorry to Australia's Aboriginals for the sins of the past and current, unlike many of my Anglo 'brothers'.
If it were up to me, I would reduce oil consumption for the whole world.
Are you afraid that America may not get all the oil it needs???
Face it, oil dominance legally and morally BELONGS to the Arabs, not to scared and spineless lying thieves that send armies marching in there to take it.
US motive for attacking Japan was not philanthropic as you imply, it was self-interested.
Why don’t you show some gratitude to the French for saving your rebel ASSets from the English, when the great land owner George Washington didn’t want to pay his British taxes.
And why do you think the French ‘helped’ you; for the same reason that you ‘helped’ us; self interest.
PNAC is your call cry.
You are about as important to Dumbya and the other neo-fascists as Jesus Suarez (sp?) was.
Now your turn
What was it about Henry Kissinger that made your President request him above all other Americans to take the key role in another 9/11.??
posted on September 27, 2003 10:23:04 AM new
Kiara, Twelve is obsessed with you, Helen and myself... and with good reason!
One thing you forget, Twelve, is that this is an American board. Most people here are American, so the subjects tend to be USA related. If there was a lot of interest in Canada, the posts would reflect that, but they don't (except yours of course, because of your obsession.) Maybe a Canadian political board is what you're looking for. (??)
As far as refusing to discuss Canada's issues, you just made that up! I don't see any of us backing down from any discussion presented, but what I DO see, is a person that needs a perceived sense of balance before he can come up with a good arguement.
P.S. Forget about Kissinger, austbounty. They don't get it.
[ edited by kraftdinner on Sep 27, 2003 10:25 AM ]
posted on September 27, 2003 10:25:31 AM new
Just so you know twelvepole, the people of Canada have always been highly educated.
We will disagree on this one but military might does not necessarily make a country better.
Let us cut off all foreign aid.... all monies to any out of country entity and listen to the people scream...
Interesting.
But experts say that the U.S. government has given aid more often to reward political and military partners than to advance social or humanitarian causes abroad.
How much aid does the United States give?
Less than 1 percent of the U.S. budget goes to foreign aid.
posted on September 27, 2003 10:28:47 AM new
FOREIGN AID?????
Is that what you call the $200MILL+ you gave to Ossama and the Billions you give to Israel each year
And all the other back door American Industry ‘protectionism’.
You give money to Africa IF they buy your cotton with it and meanwhile their superior cotton just rots and their growers struggle.
North and Poindexter gave ‘AID’ too.
When will the war reparations start coming in for the benevolent Operation Iraqi Freedom.
posted on September 27, 2003 10:29:54 AM newKiara, Twelve is obsessed with you, Helen and myself... and with good reason!
I agree Kraft. This is the second time at least that he accuses us of being the same person. I think he fantasizes so often that he mixes the three of us up.
posted on September 27, 2003 10:33:40 AM new
Of course we would no longer be at the top of the "list" for the UN... that gutliess organization should move to Toronto or Sydney... would be a-ok with me
Yeah I do fantasize about all three of you... can you post some pics?
posted on September 27, 2003 10:39:39 AM new
What was it about Henry Kissinger that made your President request him above all other Americans to take the key role in another 9/11.??
posted on September 27, 2003 10:40:05 AM new
What was it about Henry Kissinger that made your President request him above all other Americans to take the key role in another 9/11.??
posted on September 27, 2003 10:40:36 AM new
What was it about Henry Kissinger that made your President request him above all other Americans to take the key role in another 9/11.??
posted on September 27, 2003 10:41:01 AM new
What was it about Henry Kissinger that made your President request him above all other Americans to take the key role in another 9/11.??
posted on September 27, 2003 11:09:41 AM new
The problem with posting pictures of ourselves, Twelve, is that they'll make the women here jealous and the men will want to leave their wives or girlfriends for us. The distraction would cause problems, probably resulting in Vendio shutting down. Sorry!
posted on September 28, 2003 03:31:08 AM new
Anti-Americanism
Too Much of a Good Thing?
By MICHAEL NEUMANN
Many people throughout the world--leftists, Islamicists, and nationalists--are far too anti-American.
It's not that they're wrong. Any impression to the contrary comes from pitching anti-Americanism as the main event in a Clash of Civilizations, jihad versus big mac, Floridian democracy and tight-fittin' jeans. Anti-Americanism has more to do with taking the US to be a grownup democratic nation, one fully responsible for its 'mistakes' and 'collateral damage'. These include its genocide-for-dummies 'blunder' in Vietnam, and its support for our friends: dozens of satanically brutal Latin American 'strongmen', the mass murderers of Indonesia, and peasant-killers from India to Guatemala to Brazil. What America actually intends, or 'stands for', or offers to the world as a civilization, would not compensate for a millionth of this.
The extent to which America is oblivious to its responsibilities is quite extraordinary. The overwhelming majority of Americans manage no contrition for the millions--yes, millions--their country slaughtered in Vietnam. Instead they wallow in a maudlin, falsely populist and deeply racist compassion for the terrible trauma 'our' soldiers endured while they killed. America likes to search its soul for wrongs done to fellow-citizens--Indians, blacks, Japanese-Americans--but not to those foreign victims who make cameo appearances as stick-figures in the self-pitying recitations of America's recent past. For most Americans, the famous napalmed, naked Vietnamese girl, photographed in her terror, is a symbol, not of an atrocity, but of some tragic drama in which God or fate or the complexities of history obligingly pitch in to let America off the hook for its cruelties. Even the American left--so approving of the efforts to bring the criminals of Argentina and Chile to justice--has never agitated for a war crimes tribunal to judge all those implicated in the Vietnam war. Excoriating Kissinger doesn't go very far towards calling to account the soldiers and pilots who actually did the killing, much less the politicians and generals who made the war, or the electorate who cheered them on.
Faced with this disgusting spectacle, what retribution would seem too severe? Yet any retribution is unjustified, and an anti-Americanism that dwells on American sins is unjustified as well.
Anti-Americanism is a political stance which implies political action. As such, it must have some reasonable prospect of being effective. If not, it is wrong: a truly tragic misdirection of effort for which many innocent people will suffer, just as they suffer in the aftermath of that quintessentially anti-American act of September 11th, 2001. And this suffering goes nowhere.
The futility of anti-Americanism becomes apparent with the lightest consideration of history. World powers do not disappear to make way for a cozy community of nations; they make way for other world powers. (This may not be an eternal law, but it's a pattern that shows no sign of changing for quite some time.) All the primary states of Europe--England, France, Germany, Russia, Italy and Spain--have in their day displayed the very same mixture of gross ignorance, stupidity, sadism and placid racism that one finds in America today: Colonel Blimp's blustery good spirits and xenophobic irritability would fit right into the American scene and, at one time or another, go down quite well in the drawing rooms of the former colonial powers. The same may be said for Japan. America, should it go, will not be replaced by anything better.
But can American power be checked? Recent events suggest otherwise. America is certainly in decline relative to the rest of the world. Even the consensus about its 'crushing military superiority' is quite unfounded: there can be no foundation, because America has not, since its defeat in Vietnam, fought anything but basket cases. And even though it is the Vietnamese who deserve the credit for humiliating the US, they fought with the backing--almost, one might say, in the shadow--of two great military powers, the USSR and China. This imposed certain constraints on American military plans. Today, no great power or alliance is willing, or perceived as willing, to confront America militarily. This is going to change eventually, but not in the near future. America, for a good long while, will not have to answer to anyone for what it does.
Perhaps individual small states can still, in limited conflicts, defeat American aggression. Even so, we onlookers can do little to contribute to such defeats, and we are not about to try. It is not as if the American left, for all its detestation of American power, would make any substantial contribution to Iraqi resistance.
All this points to one great big ugly fact: America, for the foreseeable future, is the only game in town. Like all colonial powers, it is utterly immune to moral appeals until, like the British in India, it blunders off, leaving more agony in its departure than its arrival. This is not right; it is not just; it is everything leftists critics say it is, but so what? This is the world in which we must live.
If America will, more or less, do whatever it likes, then the only possible effective check to America's foolish and destructive policies lie in appeals to American self-interest. The notion that there is no such interest, or that American policies benefit only a ruling class, is so much posturing. Ordinary Americans benefit greatly from America's military and economic dominance, and will be harmed by its decline. (This dominance is established by fair means as well as foul.) The fact that many Americans suffer from America's atrocious domestic policies may obscure the benefits of America's imperial ventures, but that hardly means the benefits do not exist. America's wealth and power is no less for being unequally divided, and if the pie were smaller, ordinary Americans would of course have less, not more.
When America policy becomes obviously, patently stupid--as in the case of Iraq--critics do not fail to point out how America defies its own interests. But even then, the case is diluted by moralizing and strained efforts to show that, after all, American interests are being served. If, for example, America is really going to get such a bonanza of oil wealth and strategic power out of Iraq, how can this be interpreted as anything but an encouragement to hang in there? And how exactly will this supposedly enormous bonanza harm ordinary Americans? Even if it strengthens some ruling class, even if wealth does not trickle down to the bottom, how would a noble rejection of advantage destroy American elites or improve the condition of other Americans?
When American policy is not obviously stupid, just terribly misguided, the moralizing complaints tend to drown out any effective criticism. There is a deep inconsistency underlying this approach. Any good anti-American ought to know that Americans will never give a damn how many Palestinian children are shredded by Israeli shrapnel. Any good anti-American ought to know that, at best, the plight of other peoples will never rate more than patronizing sniffles provoked by images of starving kiddies, shoved onto TV by enterprising charities. Why bother complaining or addressing the conscience of a public that respects, not even all white folks, but only those--like Blair--who abase themselves before American 'values', hoping for a pat on the head and a future handout? Moralizing to Americans is worse than irrational or futile; it is itself immoral. It is a counterproductive waste of commodities we cannot afford to waste--of effort and dedication.
The world can improve only if America changes from the inside, and it will change only on the impulse of self-interest. It doesn't matter if Americans seek wealth and power. What difference does that make? some dominant nation will always be doing this, always at great cost to others. What matters is when America increases this cost for no good reason, often against its own interests. That is something no American, no matter how selfish or insular, can welcome, so that is something that can be changed. Addressing such an audience requires no new facts, but a rearrangement of old ones.
This means that Americans don't need to be preached at. Americans need to be scared, just as they were scared after 9-11. They need to realize that the invasion of Iraq, for instance, is more than an unpardonable and stupid mistake; it is a very dangerous one. While the left is fond of talking about how America out to dominate the world, it isn't important that America has these bad intentions. What is important is that it can't realize them.
America, despite its pre-eminence, does not have the military might to do what it wants. It wanted to get Bin Laden and the Mullah Omar; it couldn't. Even if they were both captured tomorrow, to elude the US for so long is a victory that encourages others to follow in their footsteps. America claims to have won the war in Iraq: quite apart from the continuing resistance, can you be said to win the war before you capture the enemy leader? Again, even if Saddam Hussein is caught tomorrow, the record hardly encourages the leaders of 'rogue states' to tremble for their personal safety.
It is sometimes claimed that the US is militarily unstoppable, but somehow politically squeamish about war, or prone to errors of grand strategy. But everything that contributes to victory or defeat in warfare counts in assessing military capacity: poor planning and overconfidence weaken America's military power just as they did France's when the French put their faith in the Maginot Line. And many American 'mistakes' were born of some sort of weakness. If the US didn't go on to Baghdad in 1990, it was because the US felt it needed its allies, and didn't dare offend them. If the US let itself get chased out of Iran, Lebanon, and Somalia, it was because it felt unable to react more forcefully. If America now has problems in Iraq, it is because American intelligence had no very good idea of what was going on there, and because America, for whatever reason, feels unable to send in another 400,000 troops it should have known would be needed. These sort of strategic and intelligence failures are not something distinct from America's military incapacity. In America's supposedly information-sodden warfare, they are part of it.
In other words what matters is not the extent to which America pushes everyone around, but the extent to which it can't. Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of Israel. Pro-Israel lobbies have certainly been effective in promoting the insane practice of paying Israel to make itself hated and thereby draw hatred on the United States--all this to 'stand by a valued ally' who must, at all costs, be prevented from helping the US in any military conflict. But this is not the whole story. The internal pressure to support Israel has been effective partly because the US cannot do what it wants in the Middle East. Critics of America's Israel policy seem to forget that, for the most part, America's recent official position has been almost unobjectionable. The US has pretty consistently: opposed any attempt to make Jerusalem Israel's capital; condemned Israel's helicopter assassinations; and, most important, opposed the settlements while promoting the idea of a Palestinian state in the occupied territories. In other words, despite all the efforts of the Israel lobbies and all the Jewish neo-cons who supposedly guide US policy, America has pretty consistently backed an approach which, stripped naked, would fall well within the spectrum of left-wing views.
Why is this? It seems odd to suppose that the lobbies are strong enough to make America lavish so many billions on Israel, yet too weak to change basic official policy. More likely, things are more or less as the American government would probably claim them to be: America can't impose a settlement on Israel, and is prevented by the lobbies from abandoning it, so it backs Israel with mountains of cash instead of providing the more lasting security that a settlement would produce. The notion that this is all part of some sinister plan runs aground on the simple fact that the US gets nothing from Israel's continued war with the Palestinians.
In other words, here again, the US is too weak to get what it wants. It knows that the Israelis should pull out of the occupied territories, but it is in no position to make that happen.
If that's the situation, what can be done about it? If anything, America needs to be convinced of its weakness. Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are not the strongest enemies the US has. They are among the weakest, and the US can't even deal properly with them. So the US needs fewer enemies and more friends. Almost all its potential friends are seriously anti-Israel, and will not align with the US until the US aligns against Israel. But pro-Israel lobbyists block any such realignment. So the US needs to understand two things: that the Israel lobby is a serious threat to its security, and that it is the only such threat the US can actually overcome at this point. Indeed that very realization would alone make victory over the lobby possible.
http://www.counterpunch.org/neumann09132003.html
posted on September 28, 2003 03:51:48 AM new
cut'n'paste
In an October 2002 opinion poll by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, 66 percent of Americans said they believed Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11 attacks on the United States, while 79 percent believed that Iraq already possessed, or was close to possessing, nuclear weapons. The same poll looked at why many people supported war and found that the main reason was their belief that it would reduce the threat of terrorism. The principal reason cited by 25 percent of war supporters related to their perceptions of Hussein or the nature of his regime (he's "evil," a "madman," "represses his own people". However, more than twice that number-60 percent-gave a reason related to their concerns stemming from 9/11 (getting rid of weapons of mass destruction, preventing future terrorism).
In January 2003, Knight-Ridder Newspapers conducted its own, separate opinion poll. "Two-thirds of the respondents said they thought they had a good grasp of the issues surrounding the Iraqi crisis, but closer questioning revealed large gaps in that knowledge," it reported. "For instance, half of those surveyed said one or more of the Sept. 11 terrorist hijackers were Iraqi citizens. In fact, none was." Moreover, "The informed public is considerably less hawkish about war with Iraq than the public as a whole. Those who show themselves to be most knowledgeable about the Iraq situation are significantly less likely to support military action, either to remove Saddam from power or to disarm Iraq."
This gap between reality and public opinion was not an accident. If the public had possessed a more accurate understanding of the facts, more people would probably have seen a "pre-emptive" war with Iraq as unwise and unwarranted. The public's erroneous beliefs developed through a steady drumbeat of allegations and insinuations from the Bush administration, pro-war think tanks and commentators-statements that were often false or misleading and whose purpose was to create the impression that Iraq posed an imminent peril.
http://www.counterpunch.org/rampton07312003.html
posted on September 28, 2003 03:54:56 AM new
America's first major imperial conquest was in the early 1900s, when American troops fought the Spanish to occupy the Philippines. An interesting aside to point out here is that in 1905, American writer Mark Twain wrote a story called 'The War Prayer,' in which he condemned the war. The story was considered 'unsuitable for publication at a moment of high and patriotic feeling.' It was not published till 1923, almost twenty years after the war and thirteen years after Twain's death. So, contrary to the myth that America is a free country in which every civilian has the right to speak, censorship in the US has been alive and well for at least a hundred years. http://www.counterpunch.org/khan04152003.html
posted on September 28, 2003 05:06:09 AM new
There's two kinds of people!
Americans and those that wish they were Americans.
Amen,
Reverend Colin
http://www.reverendcolin.com
posted on September 28, 2003 05:43:53 AM new
Colon, America is divided between those who let the regime pull the wool over their eyes and those who don't.
Helen
Above all, you can lie the country into war and your lies can be exposed—and, if a majority prefers ignorance to civic responsibility, you can still be reelected.
posted on September 28, 2003 07:38:55 AM new
Once again you are wrong Helen, some of us new that Saddam had to go down and are proud that President took the initiative to do so...
posted on September 28, 2003 09:17:59 AM new
Col’
Some people are in denial with delusions of grandeur and get played for suckers.
You and Dumbya are Israel’s toy boys.
http://www.counterpunch.org/alam04052003.html
Why would I not want to be an Australian?
In some countries, relatives never know what's happened to their loved ones -- and police don't have to explain.
Have you heard of PATRIOT II ???
http://www.counterpunch.org/neale04102003.html
Someone may report to the authorities that some of the guys you hang with look like terrorists.
posted on September 28, 2003 10:07:43 AM new
sure thing 12
here's some other predictions.
On Aug. 26, 2002, Cheney announced to the Veterans of Foreign Wars that "simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction," and in mid-March he declared that U.S. troops would be "greeted as liberators." Since then, no weapons of mass destruction have been found and American troops face up to 17 attacks a day.
Are_You_Sure_You_Can't_Smell_AnythingWhy not be a spineless coward and deny it??
Toy Boy Cheerleader.
[ edited by austbounty on Sep 28, 2003 10:15 AM ]
posted on September 29, 2003 02:57:36 AM new
I'm glad I'm a little to the right. Seems you leftist are burdened with hate of anything good.
Lies, seems to be what you propagate, Lies, half truths and imaginary stories that only the truly simple would believe.
You'll jump from one news item to another, anything to put America in a bad light.
If this gives you a reason for being...so be it. You have a following of a handful that seem to be easily duped with bullsh*t.
Yes there are problems with and in our country.....problems all over the world. We do our best to keep the lid on.. We don't just bend over and take crap anymore. We do what we think is right. 20/20 hindsight is nice but not very helpful in the real world.
posted on September 29, 2003 07:00:06 AM new
No, we will demonstrate we trust our president and will give him 4 more years.
edited to add: Also austbounty, we paid the French back during WWI and WWII for their help in the Revolutionary War... saving them from Germany should make them very grateful... but they have done nothing but pizz and mona ever since...
AIN'T LIFE GRAND...
[ edited by Twelvepole on Sep 29, 2003 07:07 AM ]
