@Jephery, about empires and stuff, I promised you a more substantive response to your thoughtful post.
First of all, I would distinguish between (1) the existence of an empire (i.e. a polity which has control over multiple national/cultural groups), and (2) the act of conquest and/or a pro-conquest ideology ("imperialism"). I would almost always be against the latter; but I am not opposed to the existence of empires, or the maintenance of an empire's territorial status quo, as a matter of course. Sometimes independence from an imperial power would be better, sometimes not. It would depend on the nature of the empire and the independence movement, who would benefit the most, and the harmfulness of the ensuing security vacuum.
You asked, incredulously, what people in history would have wanted to be conquered by an empire. First of all, for most of history, you probably already lived in an empire, so the question isn't "do I want to pay tribute to a conquering empire" but rather "which empire would I rather pay tribute to." Secondly, I think you are anthropomorphizing "peoples" and treating diverse cultures as monoliths. Many sub-groups within native cultures have actively cooperated with an invading empire—in fact I am having trouble thinking of any imperial conquest that didn't depend on some significant local support. The Mesopotamians welcomed the Medes in the conquering Neo-Babylonian alliance because many of them hated the Assyrians. Same story with the Persians, who conquered the Babylonians. Many Jews cooperated with Greece and Rome. Many Mesopotamians Persians preferred the rule of their Muslim conquerers (possibly because they could convert to Islam and thus gain social status); Jews preferred Islamic rule to Christian rule because it was less oppressive. During the Mongol invasions, non-Muslims cooperated with the Mongol conquerers. In the Americas, the bloodthirsty conquistadors enjoyed support from people who detested their local imperial rulers, the Aztec and Inca. America's invasion of Afghanistan was supported by the Hazara and local warlords who fought against the Taliban. The Islamic State enjoys local support from Sunnis in areas it conquers. And so on.
I'm sure the "pro-conquering empire" camp has rarely (if ever) been close to a majority—not enough to ever warrant the assumption that a conquering empire will be welcome as liberators. And in many cases the local cooperators tend to be wildly corrupt (Herod the Great being the archetypal example, with Ahmed Chalibi being an interesting modern parallel). At the same time, I reject the notion that preferring a foreign empire's rule to that of your own "people" is some kind of immoral betrayal of principle, which seems to underlie a lot of discourse and is kind of my Big Thing.
I always look at this issue through the lens of the Roman-Jewish conflict. Jews still celebrate their resistance to Roman conquest: the fort at Masada is famous for its garrison's suicidal last stand, where they all killed themselves rather than surrender. Except—the Jews were fighting to establish the late-antiquity Jewish equivalent of the Islamic State. Roman society was horrible, to be sure, but it was more cosmopolitan, literate, and technologically-advanced than the isolated, theocratic society ruled by Judean zealots; you kind of sneered at the prospect of assimilation, but many Jews chose to surrender and assimilate into the culture of their Roman conquerers and not without reason. One of these Jews was Josephus, a Jewish general who surrendered to the Romans rather than commit suicide; he became a slave to Vespasian, defected fully to the Romans, eventually became a citizen, and went on to write one of the most important historical works of the era. My Jewish grandfather once called Josephus a "traitor," but the world is far richer for Josephus's defection to his Roman conquerers, and I think he made the right decision to "betray" his own people in their hopeless struggle and join the Romans. If I were facing many of the imperial conquests I mentioned above, I would have made the same decision as well.
Which gets back to my earliest point—it all depends on the nature of the empire, and the nature of the alternative. This is why I can't really bring myself to care much about Russia's "imperialism" in Crimea and the Ukraine in terms of priority of outrage. I don't support Putin's actions, and it's absolutely tragic what's happening, but Russia is not actually an evil empire, and many people in those places seem to prefer Russian rule to Western suzerainty. America's imperialist conquest of Iraq, on the other hand, was not just tragic but unprovoked and predictably destructive, and thus immoral. Americans who want to conquer the Middle East and spread democracy are delusional and dangerous—but not as delusional and dangerous as, for example, the Islamic State, who are fighting to establish a society and rule of law based on ancient, barbaric mythology.
You said you're glad that empires are dead, but I don't think they're dead at all. Putin's Russia, warhawk Americans, and the Islamic State all want to strengthen or expand their empires. The fact that they're advocating conquest is indeed alarming, but it's not the whole story, it doesn't reduce to economics/resources, and I dislike the rah-rah notion embedded in popular culture that "fighting against the empire" is automatically worthy.
You say those groups cooperated with their conquerors, but again neglect to mention that they would soon rebel against the new conquerors just as they did the old ones. Empires live in a cycle of conquest and rebellion, until the conquered assimilate or are reduced to almost nothing or scattered to the winds. You forget that the Romans ethnically cleansed the Jews out of their homeland and transported them as slaves across the empire in the aftermath of the rebellion, which is why the majority of Jews would not live in their homeland until the 20th century.
The Islamic State isn't an empire though it aspires to be. At the moment they're little more than a Sunni Arab rebellion and a brand name for terrorism. The multinational/religious Republic of Iraq was a empire for all of two years - an empire of Shia Arabs dominate over Sunni Arabs and Kurds. An empire that is dead as the Sunni Arabs have rebelled under the banner of the Islamic State and the Kurds are de facto independent due to the weakness of the Iraqi military.
We're getting to watch right now what happens to those who rebel against an empire and lose - the Sunni Iraqi Arabs get driven or burned out of their homes, executed as traitors, and will be marginalized as a people.
Its a lesser evil, but I won't stop recognizing it as an evil.
Jephery on
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Clinton foundation != Hillary. Unless you intend to allege some form of altruistic corruption, or really convoluted kickbacks, just don't post any if that crap. This is like the tenth time some group has tried to paint her as corrupt because a charity she founded gets international donations. At least one of these cases involved donations years before she became secretary.
Your posts are normally worth reading for being well sourced, but the Clinton Foundation stuff is basically Benghazi 2.0
I disagree; I respect David Sirota as a journalist and I usually agree with his political views. The IBT article I posted seems pretty substantive and consistent with other credible media reports on similar dealings. Hillary Clinton at least appears to be the most corrupt presidential candidate in US history that I'm aware of. The corruption doesn't look terribly 'convoluted'. The idea that 'philanthropy' is very often a front for types of corruption or aggrandizement, especially when politics come into play, should among the most ordinary complaints one can possibly make about US society. On H. Clinton, I've not really seen a case in which the appearance of corruption was more blatant. I'm surprised at how often here the most mundane statements, which credible sources appear to not dispute, are somehow regarded as 'conspiracy theories'. In this case, I'm not even sure where that 'conspiracy' angle is coming from, given that these claims are usually being taken seriously by serious media.
My overall opposition to H. Clinton predates these stories and is primarily due to her neoconservative orientation on foreign policy.
I'm not sure what 'Benghazi 2.0' would refer to -- different things are different. The particular narrative hyped almost exclusively by conservative media regarding Benghazi was actually basically incoherent; whatever 'scandal' they were trying to create about an intelligence failure, if any individual should have been primary focus of blame on that it really should have been David Petraeus, who formulated the intelligence assessment that was repeated by others in the Obama administration. But Petraeus is generally idolized by types like Glenn Beck who primarily attacked Clinton on this. The Clinton Foundation corruption stories have, on the contrary, involved substantive accusations and received very wide coverage from media outlets that are generally seen as favoring the Democrats, especially the New York Times (and Washington Post, Newsweek, Politico, among many other sources). This really seems very different than whatever the Benghazi pseudo-scandal was.
Referring to all of this coverage as a 'conspiracy theory' seems dense, or reflexively and unthinkingly partisan. And it's actually basically itself a conspiracy theory, through implying that vast numbers of generally liberal journalists are conspiring to smear Clinton with a false scandal. A leading source of criticism of the Clinton Foundation is the non-partisan Campaign Legal Center, which has issued many complaints against both Republicans and Democrats.
sorry for being tl;dr, but it's frustrating when professional journalists and basically all campaign finance watchdog organizations are accused of pathological paranoia for raising such blatantly-fucking-obvious points.
edit: I could post 30 articles here which seem to show appearance of corruption, but one could just argue it's a 'conspiracy theory' because there is 'no smoking gun' establishing Clinton determined or changed policy, from stances she previously held, as a result of contributions. This one, also featuring Sirota as an author, seems more clear in terms of causation regarding changing her position to support a 'free trade' deal with Colombia; she also repeatedly issued certifications that Colombia was meeting human rights requirements necessary for that country to receive US military aid. http://www.ibtimes.com/colombian-oil-money-flowed-clintons-state-department-took-no-action-prevent-labor-1874464
Here's the thing - the journalists bit sounds a lot less impressive to those of us who remember the hate the Village (the American political media) has had for the Clintons since the 90s, and how that hate has routinely led to the undermining of the integrity of their reporting.
So no, I don't give a shit what they are reporting, because they have poisoned that we'll, and show no signs of repairing their damage.
You say those groups cooperated with their conquerors, but again neglect to mention that they would soon rebel against the new conquerors just as they did the old ones. Empires live in a cycle of conquest and rebellion.
Isn't this just "humans" and not necessarily "empires"? In the next paragraph of your post you say the IS is not yet an empire and nevertheless is still part of the same vicious cycle. Kingdoms and nations have also experienced cycles of conquest and rebellion ... of course once a kingdom or nation succeeds in conquering another kingdom/nation they become an empire, so I feel this is almost a semantic exercise.
Clinton foundation != Hillary. Unless you intend to allege some form of altruistic corruption, or really convoluted kickbacks, just don't post any if that crap. This is like the tenth time some group has tried to paint her as corrupt because a charity she founded gets international donations. At least one of these cases involved donations years before she became secretary.
Your posts are normally worth reading for being well sourced, but the Clinton Foundation stuff is basically Benghazi 2.0
I disagree; I respect David Sirota as a journalist and I usually agree with his political views. The IBT article I posted seems pretty substantive and consistent with other credible media reports on similar dealings. Hillary Clinton at least appears to be the most corrupt presidential candidate in US history that I'm aware of. The corruption doesn't look terribly 'convoluted'. The idea that 'philanthropy' is very often a front for types of corruption or aggrandizement, especially when politics come into play, should among the most ordinary complaints one can possibly make about US society. On H. Clinton, I've not really seen a case in which the appearance of corruption was more blatant. I'm surprised at how often here the most mundane statements, which credible sources appear to not dispute, are somehow regarded as 'conspiracy theories'. In this case, I'm not even sure where that 'conspiracy' angle is coming from, given that these claims are usually being taken seriously by serious media.
My overall opposition to H. Clinton predates these stories and is primarily due to her neoconservative orientation on foreign policy.
I'm not sure what 'Benghazi 2.0' would refer to -- different things are different. The particular narrative hyped almost exclusively by conservative media regarding Benghazi was actually basically incoherent; whatever 'scandal' they were trying to create about an intelligence failure, if any individual should have been primary focus of blame on that it really should have been David Petraeus, who formulated the intelligence assessment that was repeated by others in the Obama administration. But Petraeus is generally idolized by types like Glenn Beck who primarily attacked Clinton on this. The Clinton Foundation corruption stories have, on the contrary, involved substantive accusations and received very wide coverage from media outlets that are generally seen as favoring the Democrats, especially the New York Times (and Washington Post, Newsweek, Politico, among many other sources). This really seems very different than whatever the Benghazi pseudo-scandal was.
Referring to all of this coverage as a 'conspiracy theory' seems dense, or reflexively and unthinkingly partisan. And it's actually basically itself a conspiracy theory, through implying that vast numbers of generally liberal journalists are conspiring to smear Clinton with a false scandal. A leading source of criticism of the Clinton Foundation is the non-partisan Campaign Legal Center, which has issued many complaints against both Republicans and Democrats.
sorry for being tl;dr, but it's frustrating when professional journalists and basically all campaign finance watchdog organizations are accused of pathological paranoia for raising such blatantly-fucking-obvious points.
edit: I could post 30 articles here which seem to show appearance of corruption, but one could just argue it's a 'conspiracy theory' because there is 'no smoking gun' establishing Clinton determined or changed policy, from stances she previously held, as a result of contributions. This one, also featuring Sirota as an author, seems more clear in terms of causation regarding changing her position to support a 'free trade' deal with Colombia; she also repeatedly issued certifications that Colombia was meeting human rights requirements necessary for that country to receive US military aid. http://www.ibtimes.com/colombian-oil-money-flowed-clintons-state-department-took-no-action-prevent-labor-1874464
Here's the thing - the journalists bit sounds a lot less impressive to those of us who remember the hate the Village (the American political media) has had for the Clintons since the 90s, and how that hate has routinely led to the undermining of the integrity of their reporting.
So no, I don't give a shit what they are reporting, because they have poisoned that we'll, and show no signs of repairing their damage.
...So no negative reporting on the Clintons can be taken seriously, then? At least not in the US?
Impressive little echo chamber you've built there.
edit - also, have we mentioned the phosphate money from the illegally occupied territory of Western Sahara yet?
Clinton foundation != Hillary. Unless you intend to allege some form of altruistic corruption, or really convoluted kickbacks, just don't post any if that crap. This is like the tenth time some group has tried to paint her as corrupt because a charity she founded gets international donations. At least one of these cases involved donations years before she became secretary.
Your posts are normally worth reading for being well sourced, but the Clinton Foundation stuff is basically Benghazi 2.0
I disagree; I respect David Sirota as a journalist and I usually agree with his political views. The IBT article I posted seems pretty substantive and consistent with other credible media reports on similar dealings. Hillary Clinton at least appears to be the most corrupt presidential candidate in US history that I'm aware of. The corruption doesn't look terribly 'convoluted'. The idea that 'philanthropy' is very often a front for types of corruption or aggrandizement, especially when politics come into play, should among the most ordinary complaints one can possibly make about US society. On H. Clinton, I've not really seen a case in which the appearance of corruption was more blatant. I'm surprised at how often here the most mundane statements, which credible sources appear to not dispute, are somehow regarded as 'conspiracy theories'. In this case, I'm not even sure where that 'conspiracy' angle is coming from, given that these claims are usually being taken seriously by serious media.
My overall opposition to H. Clinton predates these stories and is primarily due to her neoconservative orientation on foreign policy.
I'm not sure what 'Benghazi 2.0' would refer to -- different things are different. The particular narrative hyped almost exclusively by conservative media regarding Benghazi was actually basically incoherent; whatever 'scandal' they were trying to create about an intelligence failure, if any individual should have been primary focus of blame on that it really should have been David Petraeus, who formulated the intelligence assessment that was repeated by others in the Obama administration. But Petraeus is generally idolized by types like Glenn Beck who primarily attacked Clinton on this. The Clinton Foundation corruption stories have, on the contrary, involved substantive accusations and received very wide coverage from media outlets that are generally seen as favoring the Democrats, especially the New York Times (and Washington Post, Newsweek, Politico, among many other sources). This really seems very different than whatever the Benghazi pseudo-scandal was.
Referring to all of this coverage as a 'conspiracy theory' seems dense, or reflexively and unthinkingly partisan. And it's actually basically itself a conspiracy theory, through implying that vast numbers of generally liberal journalists are conspiring to smear Clinton with a false scandal. A leading source of criticism of the Clinton Foundation is the non-partisan Campaign Legal Center, which has issued many complaints against both Republicans and Democrats.
sorry for being tl;dr, but it's frustrating when professional journalists and basically all campaign finance watchdog organizations are accused of pathological paranoia for raising such blatantly-fucking-obvious points.
edit: I could post 30 articles here which seem to show appearance of corruption, but one could just argue it's a 'conspiracy theory' because there is 'no smoking gun' establishing Clinton determined or changed policy, from stances she previously held, as a result of contributions. This one, also featuring Sirota as an author, seems more clear in terms of causation regarding changing her position to support a 'free trade' deal with Colombia; she also repeatedly issued certifications that Colombia was meeting human rights requirements necessary for that country to receive US military aid. http://www.ibtimes.com/colombian-oil-money-flowed-clintons-state-department-took-no-action-prevent-labor-1874464
Here's the thing - the journalists bit sounds a lot less impressive to those of us who remember the hate the Village (the American political media) has had for the Clintons since the 90s, and how that hate has routinely led to the undermining of the integrity of their reporting.
So no, I don't give a shit what they are reporting, because they have poisoned that we'll, and show no signs of repairing their damage.
...So no negative reporting on the Clintons can be taken seriously, then? At least not in the US?
Impressive little echo chamber you've built there.
edit - also, have we mentioned the phosphate money from the illegally occupied territory of Western Sahara yet?
How is it an echo chamber, exactly? The simple fact is that the media has run their credibility into the ground on this matter, and has refused to fix things. And yes, that means that it undermines the credibility of any story coming out.
You want people to take these stories seriously? Show them that they CAN take them seriously.
You say those groups cooperated with their conquerors, but again neglect to mention that they would soon rebel against the new conquerors just as they did the old ones. Empires live in a cycle of conquest and rebellion.
Isn't this just "humans" and not necessarily "empires"? In the next paragraph of your post you say the IS is not yet an empire and nevertheless is still part of the same vicious cycle. Kingdoms and nations have also experienced cycles of conquest and rebellion ... of course once a kingdom or nation succeeds in conquering another kingdom/nation they become an empire, so I feel this is almost a semantic exercise.
We mostly ended the era of empires in the aftermath of World War 2, which established self determination as sacred in the international order.
It wasn't perfect since the USSR only played theater with regards to that, China remained an empire, and the multinational and multireligious post-colonial nations would remain miniature snap shots of the Imperial era, but it is better than the never ending cycle of empire building and rebellion we had in the past in the areas of the world we did ensure true self determination of nations.
That a new empire wasn't built out of the corpses of Yugoslavia or the USSR goes to show how far we've come.
Jephery on
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Clinton foundation != Hillary. Unless you intend to allege some form of altruistic corruption, or really convoluted kickbacks, just don't post any if that crap. This is like the tenth time some group has tried to paint her as corrupt because a charity she founded gets international donations. At least one of these cases involved donations years before she became secretary.
Your posts are normally worth reading for being well sourced, but the Clinton Foundation stuff is basically Benghazi 2.0
I disagree; I respect David Sirota as a journalist and I usually agree with his political views. The IBT article I posted seems pretty substantive and consistent with other credible media reports on similar dealings. Hillary Clinton at least appears to be the most corrupt presidential candidate in US history that I'm aware of. The corruption doesn't look terribly 'convoluted'. The idea that 'philanthropy' is very often a front for types of corruption or aggrandizement, especially when politics come into play, should among the most ordinary complaints one can possibly make about US society. On H. Clinton, I've not really seen a case in which the appearance of corruption was more blatant. I'm surprised at how often here the most mundane statements, which credible sources appear to not dispute, are somehow regarded as 'conspiracy theories'. In this case, I'm not even sure where that 'conspiracy' angle is coming from, given that these claims are usually being taken seriously by serious media.
My overall opposition to H. Clinton predates these stories and is primarily due to her neoconservative orientation on foreign policy.
I'm not sure what 'Benghazi 2.0' would refer to -- different things are different. The particular narrative hyped almost exclusively by conservative media regarding Benghazi was actually basically incoherent; whatever 'scandal' they were trying to create about an intelligence failure, if any individual should have been primary focus of blame on that it really should have been David Petraeus, who formulated the intelligence assessment that was repeated by others in the Obama administration. But Petraeus is generally idolized by types like Glenn Beck who primarily attacked Clinton on this. The Clinton Foundation corruption stories have, on the contrary, involved substantive accusations and received very wide coverage from media outlets that are generally seen as favoring the Democrats, especially the New York Times (and Washington Post, Newsweek, Politico, among many other sources). This really seems very different than whatever the Benghazi pseudo-scandal was.
Referring to all of this coverage as a 'conspiracy theory' seems dense, or reflexively and unthinkingly partisan. And it's actually basically itself a conspiracy theory, through implying that vast numbers of generally liberal journalists are conspiring to smear Clinton with a false scandal. A leading source of criticism of the Clinton Foundation is the non-partisan Campaign Legal Center, which has issued many complaints against both Republicans and Democrats.
sorry for being tl;dr, but it's frustrating when professional journalists and basically all campaign finance watchdog organizations are accused of pathological paranoia for raising such blatantly-fucking-obvious points.
edit: I could post 30 articles here which seem to show appearance of corruption, but one could just argue it's a 'conspiracy theory' because there is 'no smoking gun' establishing Clinton determined or changed policy, from stances she previously held, as a result of contributions. This one, also featuring Sirota as an author, seems more clear in terms of causation regarding changing her position to support a 'free trade' deal with Colombia; she also repeatedly issued certifications that Colombia was meeting human rights requirements necessary for that country to receive US military aid. http://www.ibtimes.com/colombian-oil-money-flowed-clintons-state-department-took-no-action-prevent-labor-1874464
Here's the thing - the journalists bit sounds a lot less impressive to those of us who remember the hate the Village (the American political media) has had for the Clintons since the 90s, and how that hate has routinely led to the undermining of the integrity of their reporting.
So no, I don't give a shit what they are reporting, because they have poisoned that we'll, and show no signs of repairing their damage.
...So no negative reporting on the Clintons can be taken seriously, then? At least not in the US?
Impressive little echo chamber you've built there.
edit - also, have we mentioned the phosphate money from the illegally occupied territory of Western Sahara yet?
How is it an echo chamber, exactly? The simple fact is that the media has run their credibility into the ground on this matter, and has refused to fix things. And yes, that means that it undermines the credibility of any story coming out.
You want people to take these stories seriously? Show them that they CAN take them seriously.
It's an echo chamber because you've set up a filtration device that only lets positive reporting through.
What set of requirements does negative reporting on Hillary Clinton have to meet in order to be regarded as legitimate? Alternatively, how should the media "fix" things, in your view?
Clinton foundation != Hillary. Unless you intend to allege some form of altruistic corruption, or really convoluted kickbacks, just don't post any if that crap. This is like the tenth time some group has tried to paint her as corrupt because a charity she founded gets international donations. At least one of these cases involved donations years before she became secretary.
Your posts are normally worth reading for being well sourced, but the Clinton Foundation stuff is basically Benghazi 2.0
I disagree; I respect David Sirota as a journalist and I usually agree with his political views. The IBT article I posted seems pretty substantive and consistent with other credible media reports on similar dealings. Hillary Clinton at least appears to be the most corrupt presidential candidate in US history that I'm aware of. The corruption doesn't look terribly 'convoluted'. The idea that 'philanthropy' is very often a front for types of corruption or aggrandizement, especially when politics come into play, should among the most ordinary complaints one can possibly make about US society. On H. Clinton, I've not really seen a case in which the appearance of corruption was more blatant. I'm surprised at how often here the most mundane statements, which credible sources appear to not dispute, are somehow regarded as 'conspiracy theories'. In this case, I'm not even sure where that 'conspiracy' angle is coming from, given that these claims are usually being taken seriously by serious media.
My overall opposition to H. Clinton predates these stories and is primarily due to her neoconservative orientation on foreign policy.
I'm not sure what 'Benghazi 2.0' would refer to -- different things are different. The particular narrative hyped almost exclusively by conservative media regarding Benghazi was actually basically incoherent; whatever 'scandal' they were trying to create about an intelligence failure, if any individual should have been primary focus of blame on that it really should have been David Petraeus, who formulated the intelligence assessment that was repeated by others in the Obama administration. But Petraeus is generally idolized by types like Glenn Beck who primarily attacked Clinton on this. The Clinton Foundation corruption stories have, on the contrary, involved substantive accusations and received very wide coverage from media outlets that are generally seen as favoring the Democrats, especially the New York Times (and Washington Post, Newsweek, Politico, among many other sources). This really seems very different than whatever the Benghazi pseudo-scandal was.
Referring to all of this coverage as a 'conspiracy theory' seems dense, or reflexively and unthinkingly partisan. And it's actually basically itself a conspiracy theory, through implying that vast numbers of generally liberal journalists are conspiring to smear Clinton with a false scandal. A leading source of criticism of the Clinton Foundation is the non-partisan Campaign Legal Center, which has issued many complaints against both Republicans and Democrats.
sorry for being tl;dr, but it's frustrating when professional journalists and basically all campaign finance watchdog organizations are accused of pathological paranoia for raising such blatantly-fucking-obvious points.
edit: I could post 30 articles here which seem to show appearance of corruption, but one could just argue it's a 'conspiracy theory' because there is 'no smoking gun' establishing Clinton determined or changed policy, from stances she previously held, as a result of contributions. This one, also featuring Sirota as an author, seems more clear in terms of causation regarding changing her position to support a 'free trade' deal with Colombia; she also repeatedly issued certifications that Colombia was meeting human rights requirements necessary for that country to receive US military aid. http://www.ibtimes.com/colombian-oil-money-flowed-clintons-state-department-took-no-action-prevent-labor-1874464
Here's the thing - the journalists bit sounds a lot less impressive to those of us who remember the hate the Village (the American political media) has had for the Clintons since the 90s, and how that hate has routinely led to the undermining of the integrity of their reporting.
So no, I don't give a shit what they are reporting, because they have poisoned that we'll, and show no signs of repairing their damage.
...So no negative reporting on the Clintons can be taken seriously, then? At least not in the US?
Impressive little echo chamber you've built there.
edit - also, have we mentioned the phosphate money from the illegally occupied territory of Western Sahara yet?
How is it an echo chamber, exactly? The simple fact is that the media has run their credibility into the ground on this matter, and has refused to fix things. And yes, that means that it undermines the credibility of any story coming out.
You want people to take these stories seriously? Show them that they CAN take them seriously.
It's an echo chamber because you've set up a filtration device that only lets positive reporting through.
What set of requirements does negative reporting on Hillary Clinton have to meet in order to be regarded as legitimate? Alternatively, how should "the media" (which is not actually a monolithic entity) "fix" things, in your view?
That they have to repudiate their past actions and acknowledge the many ways they got snookered regarding the Clintons in the past. Considering that the NYT paid good money for information from a guy who unironically referenced the Clinton Body Count and I've seen Kathleen Willey popping her discredited head up again, I wouldn't hold my breath.
(And considering both the incredible consolidation of the media and the amazingly incestuous nature of the Village, they should be treated as a monolith.)
You don't get to say that both sides need to be heard without someone else pointing out that one side has a miserable track record. Broderism is no way to go through life.
Ok, hmm, so all US journalists are believed to be literally a singular, monolithic force driven purely by an inexplicable personal hatred of the Clintons? Ironically this is a pretty blatant conspiracy theory in itself; even the most negative critical scholarly analyses of US media, such as Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent, do not involve this sort of actual personalized conspiracism.
From what I remember from the 1990s, it also seems remarkably inaccurate.
But even if you are correct that all journalists form a collective hive mind with no goal other than destruction of the Clintons, how does that resolve the issue of campaign finance watchdogs, law professors, etc also treating these as problematic ethical issues?
And people are taking the Foundation stories seriously enough that H. Clinton's poll numbers have taken a hit.
Only two people would not be so important we were not discussing such a small group as billionaires who are particularly obsessed with influencing the US political process.
The billionaires bankrolling Republican and Democrat US presidential candidates are 'absolutely on the same page' when it comes to Israel:
Do you understand the difference between these two ideas?
There is not a difference between those two statements. 'The billionaires bankrolling Republican and Democrat US presidential candidates' meaning the single most important person who will be bankrolling Rubio (probably, or whoever), and the single most important person who will be bankrolling Clinton (seemingly inevitably). They happen to enjoy sharing stages in order to express their love for Zionist Apartheid and declare that under their influence US policy biases in support of Israel will only strengthen.
If there were a subset of billionaires who happened to fervently support the Palestinian position and also had major influence on US presidential politics toward that, there could be some distinction along the lines you're trying to assert here.
Two billionaires is not a sufficiently large portion of all billionaires (or even just all billionaires bankrolling political campaigns) to generalize like that.
Ok, I will apologize for my apparently confusing use of language, and I should have have been much more clear and stated something more along the lines of, "The billionaires who are the leading bankrollers of Republican and Democratic US presidential candidates"
Edit: I was not in any sense 'generalizing' beyond what the article I linked to described (what would be the point?), and now I think the 'clarified' sentence I just posted actually reads almost identically to the initial sentence, and I'm honestly surprised people were confused by the meaning in context, which seemed obvious, however I will attempt most exact clarity of writing possible with a message board audience in mind. But I am honestly surprised my meaning was not immediately pretty clear (or maybe it was; Kana has a habit of falsely accusing me of errors). Think 'newspaper headline speak' (which a brief incomplete sentence posted before an article link would resemble in style and purpose) -- did anyone at all think the Bloomberg article's headline stating 'US billionaire political rivals' was 'generalizing', or intending to dishonestly imply that all US billionaires who are political rivals were joining forces on this issue, and that the headline was inappropriate or incorrect? If not -- How was my usage any different??
Anyway, hijacking/diverting a thread for 8 posts for no plausible purpose other than to nitpick someone's grammar seems very impolite (to everyone, not just to me). In the future, if my writing confuses you, you can send me a direct message indicating this and I will edit to clarify, which is more appropriate than distracting from the subject of the thread in this way, thank you. This thread should be about the Middle East, not about A. Sokolov's writing style imperfections.
Interpretation of events is what this thread is about. I'm not critiquing your grammar, don't be a goose.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Ok, hmm, so all US journalists are believed to be literally a singular, monolithic force driven purely by an inexplicable personal hatred of the Clintons? Ironically this is a pretty blatant conspiracy theory in itself; even the most negative critical scholarly analyses of US media, such as Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent, do not involve this sort of actual personalized conspiracism.
From what I remember from the 1990s, it also seems remarkably inaccurate.
But even if you are correct that all journalists form a collective hive mind with no goal other than destruction of the Clintons, how does that resolve the issue of campaign finance watchdogs, law professors, etc also treating these as problematic ethical issues?
Well, the first mistake you make is saying that their hatred is inexplicable, because it is quite explicable - it's all based on class (and if you want to understand that better, look up Sally Quinn's infamous op-ed rant about the Clintons.) Once we have that understanding, then it becomes a lot clearer about how this attitude came about - no need for conspiracies, when you can easily explain it through social dynamics.
In dissent, Chief Justice Roberts said the majority had taken a bold step. “Today’s decision is a first,” he wrote. “Never before has this court accepted a president’s direct defiance of an act of Congress in the field of foreign affairs.”
That seems like a weird as fuck argument to make.
Like, I can see how in certain realms that may be true, like ok if congress declares war the president can't just say lol no we aren't.
But it's pretty obviously not in the same realm as congress unilaterally deciding Jerusalem is part of Israel.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Ok, hmm, so all US journalists are believed to be literally a singular, monolithic force driven purely by an inexplicable personal hatred of the Clintons? Ironically this is a pretty blatant conspiracy theory in itself; even the most negative critical scholarly analyses of US media, such as Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent, do not involve this sort of actual personalized conspiracism.
From what I remember from the 1990s, it also seems remarkably inaccurate.
But even if you are correct that all journalists form a collective hive mind with no goal other than destruction of the Clintons, how does that resolve the issue of campaign finance watchdogs, law professors, etc also treating these as problematic ethical issues?
And people are taking the Foundation stories seriously enough that H. Clinton's poll numbers have taken a hit.
Yes, of course her poll numbers dropped. That's the entire point of writing a piece like that.
Arguing a story is reliable because it impacted poll numbers is effectively circular reasoning.
In dissent, Chief Justice Roberts said the majority had taken a bold step. “Today’s decision is a first,” he wrote. “Never before has this court accepted a president’s direct defiance of an act of Congress in the field of foreign affairs.”
That seems like a weird as fuck argument to make.
Like, I can see how in certain realms that may be true, like ok if congress declares war the president can't just say lol no we aren't.
But it's pretty obviously not in the same realm as congress unilaterally deciding Jerusalem is part of Israel.
It's an asinine argument, because the Executive telling Congress to go fuck itself over constitutionally murky laws is a time honored and bipartisan tradition - see the War Powers Act, which no administration has ever acknowledged as constitutional.
In short, Roberts is disingenuous, day ends in "y".
I very honestly don't believe Sally Quinn and David Sirota are part of a singular hive mind which hates the Clintons out of elite class snobbishness. Anecdotally -- my best friend in NYC used to be advertising manager at The Nation (he's still on good terms with Scahill and Greenwald). When I lived in Austin I was employed by an attorney whose friend (current room mate) was another attorney who happened to be Seymour Hersh's nephew. I have another estranged friend who presently writes for the Village Voice. And there was a while when I was couchsurfing at the apartment of one of the music writers at New York Times. So I feel like I see/know at least enough of this 'village' or their intimates up close to have some sense about their social class. You want to talk about snobs, I would talk about sociology professors and grad students. Very honestly, while I have many structural criticisms of the biases of oligarchic media in the US, I just really do not get a sense that this is any result of journalists being elitist as a rule, and I perceive flashes of the exact opposite. Many journalists have personal backgrounds not very dissimilar, or less privileged overall, to Hillary Clinton's, anyway. I do not believe these stories are due to a raging class hatred, not at all. An alternate conspiracy theory could maybe convince me.
Note that the source for many of the Clinton Foundation stories is the New York Times -- which endorsed Clinton over Obama in 2008 despite a general sense that 'liberal' parts of media overall supported Obama over Clinton. (Edit: and I would assess NYTimes coverage of Obama as president as often overwhelmingly positive, especially over time from reporter Peter Baker.)
And I cited Clinton's poll numbers as evidence that people were taking the stories seriousy, not any statement about their validity.
You say those groups cooperated with their conquerors, but again neglect to mention that they would soon rebel against the new conquerors just as they did the old ones. Empires live in a cycle of conquest and rebellion.
Isn't this just "humans" and not necessarily "empires"? In the next paragraph of your post you say the IS is not yet an empire and nevertheless is still part of the same vicious cycle. Kingdoms and nations have also experienced cycles of conquest and rebellion ... of course once a kingdom or nation succeeds in conquering another kingdom/nation they become an empire, so I feel this is almost a semantic exercise.
We mostly ended the era of empires in the aftermath of World War 2, which established self determination as sacred in the international order.
It wasn't perfect since the USSR only played theater with regards to that, China remained an empire, and the multinational and multireligious post-colonial nations would remain miniature snap shots of the Imperial era, but it is better than the never ending cycle of empire building and rebellion we had in the past in the areas of the world we did ensure true self determination of nations.
That a new empire wasn't built out of the corpses of Yugoslavia or the USSR goes to show how far we've come.
How far we've come ... after the worst war and systemized slaughter in human history, and mostly because of a balance between two imperial powers maintained via the threat of global annihilation via nuclear weapons.
I hope you're right that this is a relatively permanent new state of affairs, but 70 years isn't that long a time. You edited one of your posts to mention the Romans' ethnic cleansing of the Jews at the end of the war. Well, that was in 70 AD; Pompei conquered Judea in 60 B.C and established a puppet state. It was only after more than a century of insurrections, civil wars, and acts of terrorism by Jewish zealots that Emperor Titus apparently had enough and began "the desolating sacrilege." I worry very much that things could get worse in a similar way today.
Lumping in Sirota with the village is wrong because he's a perfect is the enemy of the good liberal, which is why he doesn't like Clinton.
The accurate definition of The Village is DC and NYC based political reporters who view themselves as part of the permanent ruling class. So you won't find them at alternative weeklies and liberal magazines, where you'll find them is at the major news networks, the NYT, the Washington Post, etc. Sally Quinn is basically the definition of such a person, but others would include David Broder's corpse, Thomas Friedman, Maureen Dowd, Fred Hiatt, Tom Brokaw, Chuck Todd, and Bob Schieffer.
The alternate and even less complementary version is Versailles on the Potomac, and they've abandoned their roles as watchdogs in favor of becoming courtiers.
EDIT: Basically this dates back to Iran-Contra where the press collectively decided that "America couldn't afford another failed Presidency" and so they downplayed a scandal that was considerably worse than Watergate and should have gotten Reagan (among others) indicted. Which leads directly to both Bushes.
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
I think this discussion is pretty interesting, but maybe it should be continued in a US politics or media/journalism thread (I think we still have one of each?), as it has little to do with the Middle East at this point.
In Middle East news, Israel has apparently been testing radiological bombs in the Negev desert. The stated aim is to study their effects in case of a possible dirty bomb attack on Israel. This doesn't actually strike me as all that implausible at this point - IS obviously can't make nuclear reactors, but could they potentially get ahold of some radioactive material created elsewhere?
edit - I mean the Hillary discussion, the imperialism discussion is relevant in my opinion
You say those groups cooperated with their conquerors, but again neglect to mention that they would soon rebel against the new conquerors just as they did the old ones. Empires live in a cycle of conquest and rebellion.
Isn't this just "humans" and not necessarily "empires"? In the next paragraph of your post you say the IS is not yet an empire and nevertheless is still part of the same vicious cycle. Kingdoms and nations have also experienced cycles of conquest and rebellion ... of course once a kingdom or nation succeeds in conquering another kingdom/nation they become an empire, so I feel this is almost a semantic exercise.
We mostly ended the era of empires in the aftermath of World War 2, which established self determination as sacred in the international order.
It wasn't perfect since the USSR only played theater with regards to that, China remained an empire, and the multinational and multireligious post-colonial nations would remain miniature snap shots of the Imperial era, but it is better than the never ending cycle of empire building and rebellion we had in the past in the areas of the world we did ensure true self determination of nations.
That a new empire wasn't built out of the corpses of Yugoslavia or the USSR goes to show how far we've come.
I don't think we should limit our conception of empire to those defined by formal control of territory. The US government's involvement in the overthrow Salvador Allende's left wing government in Chile, for example, is in my view an instance of imperialism - the US did not annex Chilean territory, but it helped replace a government it didn't like with one that would allow it to economically exploit the country. Modern US imperialism is about imposing a specific system of political economy and ensuring geopolitical dominance through installing governments that are amenable to US/Western interests. The empire takes the form of international institutions like NATO and the IMF, as opposed to a single sovereign political entity. The nation-states of the Middle East and Africa aren't just snapshots of the imperial era; they are (edit - in part) a continuation of imperialist policies and institutions.
Your statement that the USSR was merely playing theater in its supposed break from imperialism seems accurate to me, but also seems to apply at least as well to the USA.
Clinton foundation != Hillary. Unless you intend to allege some form of altruistic corruption, or really convoluted kickbacks, just don't post any if that crap. This is like the tenth time some group has tried to paint her as corrupt because a charity she founded gets international donations. At least one of these cases involved donations years before she became secretary.
Your posts are normally worth reading for being well sourced, but the Clinton Foundation stuff is basically Benghazi 2.0
I disagree; I respect David Sirota as a journalist and I usually agree with his political views. The IBT article I posted seems pretty substantive and consistent with other credible media reports on similar dealings. Hillary Clinton at least appears to be the most corrupt presidential candidate in US history that I'm aware of. The corruption doesn't look terribly 'convoluted'. The idea that 'philanthropy' is very often a front for types of corruption or aggrandizement, especially when politics come into play, should among the most ordinary complaints one can possibly make about US society. On H. Clinton, I've not really seen a case in which the appearance of corruption was more blatant. I'm surprised at how often here the most mundane statements, which credible sources appear to not dispute, are somehow regarded as 'conspiracy theories'. In this case, I'm not even sure where that 'conspiracy' angle is coming from, given that these claims are usually being taken seriously by serious media.
My overall opposition to H. Clinton predates these stories and is primarily due to her neoconservative orientation on foreign policy.
I'm not sure what 'Benghazi 2.0' would refer to -- different things are different. The particular narrative hyped almost exclusively by conservative media regarding Benghazi was actually basically incoherent; whatever 'scandal' they were trying to create about an intelligence failure, if any individual should have been primary focus of blame on that it really should have been David Petraeus, who formulated the intelligence assessment that was repeated by others in the Obama administration. But Petraeus is generally idolized by types like Glenn Beck who primarily attacked Clinton on this. The Clinton Foundation corruption stories have, on the contrary, involved substantive accusations and received very wide coverage from media outlets that are generally seen as favoring the Democrats, especially the New York Times (and Washington Post, Newsweek, Politico, among many other sources). This really seems very different than whatever the Benghazi pseudo-scandal was.
Referring to all of this coverage as a 'conspiracy theory' seems dense, or reflexively and unthinkingly partisan. And it's actually basically itself a conspiracy theory, through implying that vast numbers of generally liberal journalists are conspiring to smear Clinton with a false scandal. A leading source of criticism of the Clinton Foundation is the non-partisan Campaign Legal Center, which has issued many complaints against both Republicans and Democrats.
sorry for being tl;dr, but it's frustrating when professional journalists and basically all campaign finance watchdog organizations are accused of pathological paranoia for raising such blatantly-fucking-obvious points.
edit: I could post 30 articles here which seem to show appearance of corruption, but one could just argue it's a 'conspiracy theory' because there is 'no smoking gun' establishing Clinton determined or changed policy, from stances she previously held, as a result of contributions. This one, also featuring Sirota as an author, seems more clear in terms of causation regarding changing her position to support a 'free trade' deal with Colombia; she also repeatedly issued certifications that Colombia was meeting human rights requirements necessary for that country to receive US military aid. http://www.ibtimes.com/colombian-oil-money-flowed-clintons-state-department-took-no-action-prevent-labor-1874464
Here's the thing - the journalists bit sounds a lot less impressive to those of us who remember the hate the Village (the American political media) has had for the Clintons since the 90s, and how that hate has routinely led to the undermining of the integrity of their reporting.
So no, I don't give a shit what they are reporting, because they have poisoned that we'll, and show no signs of repairing their damage.
...So no negative reporting on the Clintons can be taken seriously, then? At least not in the US?
Impressive little echo chamber you've built there.
edit - also, have we mentioned the phosphate money from the illegally occupied territory of Western Sahara yet?
How is it an echo chamber, exactly? The simple fact is that the media has run their credibility into the ground on this matter, and has refused to fix things. And yes, that means that it undermines the credibility of any story coming out.
You want people to take these stories seriously? Show them that they CAN take them seriously.
Here's an article from the Economist I read recently, about Hillary's perception troubles when it comes to all her dollars. A non-"Village" point of view, I found it interesting.
We can't just take the huge amounts of money paid or donated and assume there's no political motive behind it.
IN AMERICAN public life, surprising angst is generated by the task of finding private jets for political bigwigs to borrow. The chore is easy when a big corporation makes a plane available. Some billionaires relish flying political chums around, which is even handier. But sometimes, when all else fails, flights end up being cadged from frankly unsavoury jet-owners. This does not matter much once a political leader has left office and hit the global-grandee circuit—a lucrative world of paid speeches, charity work and discreet consulting gigs. But it does if a politician still has campaigns left to run.
Lumping in Sirota with the village is wrong because he's a perfect is the enemy of the good liberal, which is why he doesn't like Clinton.
The accurate definition of The Village is DC and NYC based political reporters who view themselves as part of the permanent ruling class. So you won't find them at alternative weeklies and liberal magazines, where you'll find them is at the major news networks, the NYT, the Washington Post, etc. Sally Quinn is basically the definition of such a person, but others would include David Broder's corpse, Thomas Friedman, Maureen Dowd, Fred Hiatt, Tom Brokaw, Chuck Todd, and Bob Schieffer.
The alternate and even less complementary version is Versailles on the Potomac, and they've abandoned their roles as watchdogs in favor of becoming courtiers.
EDIT: Basically this dates back to Iran-Contra where the press collectively decided that "America couldn't afford another failed Presidency" and so they downplayed a scandal that was considerably worse than Watergate and should have gotten Reagan (among others) indicted. Which leads directly to both Bushes.
That's an interesting point of view. Any further reading you can recommend on the media's reaction to Iran-Contra?
You say those groups cooperated with their conquerors, but again neglect to mention that they would soon rebel against the new conquerors just as they did the old ones. Empires live in a cycle of conquest and rebellion.
Isn't this just "humans" and not necessarily "empires"? In the next paragraph of your post you say the IS is not yet an empire and nevertheless is still part of the same vicious cycle. Kingdoms and nations have also experienced cycles of conquest and rebellion ... of course once a kingdom or nation succeeds in conquering another kingdom/nation they become an empire, so I feel this is almost a semantic exercise.
We mostly ended the era of empires in the aftermath of World War 2, which established self determination as sacred in the international order.
It wasn't perfect since the USSR only played theater with regards to that, China remained an empire, and the multinational and multireligious post-colonial nations would remain miniature snap shots of the Imperial era, but it is better than the never ending cycle of empire building and rebellion we had in the past in the areas of the world we did ensure true self determination of nations.
That a new empire wasn't built out of the corpses of Yugoslavia or the USSR goes to show how far we've come.
I don't think we should limit our conception of empire to those defined by formal control of territory. The US government's involvement in the overthrow Salvador Allende's left wing government in Chile, for example, is in my view an instance of imperialism - the US did not annex Chilean territory, but it helped replace a government it didn't like with one that would allow it to economically exploit the country. Modern US imperialism is about imposing a specific system of political economy and ensuring geopolitical dominance through installing governments that are amenable to US/Western interests. The empire takes the form of international institutions like NATO and the IMF, as opposed to a single sovereign political entity. The nation-states of the Middle East and Africa aren't just snapshots of the imperial era; they are (edit - in part) a continuation of imperialist policies and institutions.
Your statement that the USSR was merely playing theater in its supposed break from imperialism seems accurate to me, but also seems to apply at least as well to the USA.
It gets into semantics again. Empires historically have demanded tribute from territory they control, ostensibly in exchange for military protection. The US doesn't collect taxes from areas under its influence, but you could argue that its tribute takes the form of submitting to a capitalist system which itself tends to extract resources and concentrate them in the hands of the powerful.
Lumping in Sirota with the village is wrong because he's a perfect is the enemy of the good liberal, which is why he doesn't like Clinton.
The accurate definition of The Village is DC and NYC based political reporters who view themselves as part of the permanent ruling class. So you won't find them at alternative weeklies and liberal magazines, where you'll find them is at the major news networks, the NYT, the Washington Post, etc. Sally Quinn is basically the definition of such a person, but others would include David Broder's corpse, Thomas Friedman, Maureen Dowd, Fred Hiatt, Tom Brokaw, Chuck Todd, and Bob Schieffer.
The alternate and even less complementary version is Versailles on the Potomac, and they've abandoned their roles as watchdogs in favor of becoming courtiers.
EDIT: Basically this dates back to Iran-Contra where the press collectively decided that "America couldn't afford another failed Presidency" and so they downplayed a scandal that was considerably worse than Watergate and should have gotten Reagan (among others) indicted. Which leads directly to both Bushes.
That's an interesting point of view. Any further reading you can recommend on the media's reaction to Iran-Contra?
On Bended Knee is the seminal text (this is the whole Reagan Presidency, but obviously Iran-Contra plays a big role in that)
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
As of June 9th or 10th, it will be 1 year since Mosul fell to ISIS.
I'm personally shocked the group is still around, and still controls so much territory. I predicted back then that while troubles and war would continue, ISIS as an organization would fracture under the pressure. This clearly hasn't happened. Despite US airstrikes and battles against various other factions, the group is still going strong. It was on June 29th of last year that the group changed their name to Islamic State and declared their caliphate. Barring something exceptional happening, the caliphate will live out its first year, diminished in some ways but making still making territorial gains in both Syria and Iraq.
I know no country is going to recognize it, but they really do have a state going. Its pretty frightening to think about. And oh god do I not even want to think about retaking places like Mosul or Raqqa. They've got bloodbath written all over them.
0
Options
Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
I know no country is going to recognize it, but they really do have a state going. Its pretty frightening to think about. And oh god do I not even want to think about retaking places like Mosul or Raqqa. They've got bloodbath written all over them.
I read somewhere that they've instituted "every man must grow a big-ass crazy beard"* rules in occupied territory, ostensibly for religious purposes. Locals call bullshit and say that they're doing it so that ISIS members can melt away into the populace if attacked. They've also ditched the military vehicles inside the city and switched to regular cars.
*being some of the World's Worst People, they're huge dicks about it too. The piece had an interview with a few guys who couldn't grow beards who asked ISIS for an exemption, and got "tough shit, stay home or we'll beat you" as a response.
Imo, the whole Clinton money thing reaks of partisan craziness to me.
The Clinton Foundation has little to do with the Clintons themselves. It would be like trying to bride someone with a 40 dollar notation to the ASPCA in thier name.
Second, I think most of us know how much money influences politics in America. It should be a bigger story. It should be a talking point. But it seems to be focused only around Clinton, which I find suspious. I get the feeling conservatives want to crucify Hillary over something their side does as well. That this is all about a convenient excuse to tarnish Hillary and win the White House. I doubt many actually care about campaign finance reform.
As of June 9th or 10th, it will be 1 year since Mosul fell to ISIS.
I'm personally shocked the group is still around, and still controls so much territory. I predicted back then that while troubles and war would continue, ISIS as an organization would fracture under the pressure. This clearly hasn't happened. Despite US airstrikes and battles against various other factions, the group is still going strong. It was on June 29th of last year that the group changed their name to Islamic State and declared their caliphate. Barring something exceptional happening, the caliphate will live out its first year, diminished in some ways but making still making territorial gains in both Syria and Iraq.
I know no country is going to recognize it, but they really do have a state going. Its pretty frightening to think about. And oh god do I not even want to think about retaking places like Mosul or Raqqa. They've got bloodbath written all over them.
They do have a pretty good recruitment drive going, there's quite a lot of people willing to join the cause...
'Perfect is the enemy of the good' seems inapplicable when the argument is actually that Clinton is bad. I basically campaigned (I mean, on the internet) for Obama in the 2008 primaries out of fear about H. Clinton's foreign policy. On that, she really seemed to fuck up Obama's first term anyway. I honestly hope either Kerry or Gore (both severely imperfect) runs and think either would easily dispatch her, at this scandal-heavy point, in the primaries (both have won this pennant before, she failed last time she tried against a rookie); I am currently a registered Democrat but have no sense for 'team loyalty' like this was fucking football. In 2012 I voted for Jill Stein (in a safe blue state; in a swing state I would have very carefully considered my vote). I would not vote for Hillary Clinton under any circumstances.
The Clinton Foundation has little to do with the Clintons themselves.
That seems absurd. This provides vast means for their social networking, facilitates many corporate projects important to their friends, consumes much of their scarce time, and is regarded as their family 'slush fund' (see Sunlight Foundation, campaign finance reform and pro-transparency group on the left). I mean, this is Chelsea's primary source of personal employment. (It seems Chelsea just moved into this weird ultra-luxury futuristic building on 15th St which has high-tech windows that change shape with variations in weather and things and requires this ugly permanent crane structure on top of the building to clean the windows, and also blocks view of the Empire State Building from Greenwich Village.)
if 'elite media' hate the Clintons so much, why would NBC have given Chelsea such a sweetheart 'correspondent' gig where she got hundreds of thousands of dollars just for showing up at work?
It gets into semantics again. Empires historically have demanded tribute from territory they control, ostensibly in exchange for military protection. The US doesn't collect taxes from areas under its influence, but you could argue that its tribute takes the form of submitting to a capitalist system which itself tends to extract resources and concentrate them in the hands of the powerful.
The US does collect 'tribute' through financing of its otherwise-unsustainable government budgets, with that debt in the vast majority of cases (China is the major exception) covered by countries under US military occupation.
U.S. debt is largely based on maintaining military spending; the military is sitting on these countries that then finance that debt by making these loans that they know will never be repaid. You can call that ‘protection money’ in either sense of the term, depending on your point of view. In a way it’s a mix of both, because they are getting physically protected, but it’s also a shakedown.
U.S. debt is largely based on maintaining military spending; the military is sitting on these countries that then finance that debt by making these loans that they know will never be repaid. You can call that ‘protection money’ in either sense of the term, depending on your point of view. In a way it’s a mix of both, because they are getting physically protected, but it’s also a shakedown.
About a third of US debt is held by foreign countries with the two largest holders, at a little over a trillion each or about a fifteenth of the total US debt, being Japan and China. I guess you could attempt to make this argument with Japan, but another explanation is that they, like China, want a strong dollar for their exports. The same applies to a lot of the countries that hold US debt. I also don't see a lot of evidence for this, or the US running unsustainable budgets, in the US debt to GDP ratio which spikes for WW2, declines to the 80s and then there is a modest increase until Clinton and then a dramatic rise under Bush II and Obama which has stated to level off. The US is marginally running an unsustainable budget currently, though unsustainable only in the long term, and that could be fixed with some combination of modest spending cuts or tax increases.
US-made TOW anti-tank missiles are seemingly becoming more common on the Syrian battlefield. IS apparently used them in its assault on Palmyra and al-Nusra has used them in various battles in Idlib province. I don't know a lot about military technology, but from the videos I've seen the TOW is a powerful weapon, which can potentially neutralize the regime's armor/vehicle advantage. From my perspective, allowing such potent anti-armor weaponry into Syria seems like a terrible idea for obvious reasons. Not sure why the KSA/Jordan/Turkey/Qatar aren't concerned by the prospect of jihadist armies that can destroy their armored vehicles.
edit- also, the southern front has witnessed its first significant fighting between rebel/regime forces in a bit. Recently there were large protests in rebel-held parts of Deraa city, aimed at pressuring the rebels to push the regime out of the city. The southern rebels have been restrained lately, which is odd given the major regime defeats elsewhere (you'd think it would be a good time to push another front), but this battle might be a sign that popular pressure is forcing them to take a more aggressive stance.
In 2012 I voted for Jill Stein (in a safe blue state; in a swing state I would have very carefully considered my vote). I would not vote for Hillary Clinton under any circumstances.
Same here, on both counts. HRC's foreign policy honestly doesn't seem too far off from John McCain's. I'm considering doing some field work for Bernie's campaign here in Maine, but since I'm not a registered Democrat I unfortunately can't vote in the primaries. Since Bernie is unlikely to be allowed a real shot it's probably gonna have to be Jill Stein 2016 for me... maybe she can get arrested for attempting to attend a debate again, that was pretty cool.
Kaputa on
0
Options
EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
Only two people would not be so important we were not discussing such a small group as billionaires who are particularly obsessed with influencing the US political process.
The billionaires bankrolling Republican and Democrat US presidential candidates are 'absolutely on the same page' when it comes to Israel:
Do you understand the difference between these two ideas?
There is not a difference between those two statements. 'The billionaires bankrolling Republican and Democrat US presidential candidates' meaning the single most important person who will be bankrolling Rubio (probably, or whoever), and the single most important person who will be bankrolling Clinton (seemingly inevitably). They happen to enjoy sharing stages in order to express their love for Zionist Apartheid and declare that under their influence US policy biases in support of Israel will only strengthen.
If there were a subset of billionaires who happened to fervently support the Palestinian position and also had major influence on US presidential politics toward that, there could be some distinction along the lines you're trying to assert here.
Two billionaires is not a sufficiently large portion of all billionaires (or even just all billionaires bankrolling political campaigns) to generalize like that.
Ok, I will apologize for my apparently confusing use of language, and I should have have been much more clear and stated something more along the lines of, "The billionaires who are the leading bankrollers of Republican and Democratic US presidential candidates"
Edit: I was not in any sense 'generalizing' beyond what the article I linked to described (what would be the point?), and now I think the 'clarified' sentence I just posted actually reads almost identically to the initial sentence, and I'm honestly surprised people were confused by the meaning in context, which seemed obvious, however I will attempt most exact clarity of writing possible with a message board audience in mind. But I am honestly surprised my meaning was not immediately pretty clear (or maybe it was; Kana has a habit of falsely accusing me of errors). Think 'newspaper headline speak' (which a brief incomplete sentence posted before an article link would resemble in style and purpose) -- did anyone at all think the Bloomberg article's headline stating 'US billionaire political rivals' was 'generalizing', or intending to dishonestly imply that all US billionaires who are political rivals were joining forces on this issue, and that the headline was inappropriate or incorrect? If not -- How was my usage any different??
Anyway, hijacking/diverting a thread for 8 posts for no plausible purpose other than to nitpick someone's grammar seems very impolite (to everyone, not just to me). In the future, if my writing confuses you, you can send me a direct message indicating this and I will edit to clarify, which is more appropriate than distracting from the subject of the thread in this way, thank you. This thread should be about the Middle East, not about A. Sokolov's writing style imperfections.
It isn't nitpicking grammar but pointing out (again) that your sweeping generalizations and assertions from a place of authority often fall apart under a minor degree of scrutiny.
US-made TOW anti-tank missiles are seemingly becoming more common on the Syrian battlefield. IS apparently used them in its assault on Palmyra and al-Nusra has used them in various battles in Idlib province. I don't know a lot about military technology, but from the videos I've seen the TOW is a powerful weapon, which can potentially neutralize the regime's armor/vehicle advantage. From my perspective, allowing such potent anti-armor weaponry into Syria seems like a terrible idea for obvious reasons. Not sure why the KSA/Jordan/Turkey/Qatar aren't concerned by the prospect of jihadist armies that can destroy their armored vehicles.
So many countries have had them (Iraq and Syria included) that this shouldn't exactly be surprising. That we intend to send more to Iraq is however. I really wish we didn't export our military technology so freely, but I imagine it would also be difficult not to from a politics perspective.
It isn't nitpicking grammar but pointing out (again) that your sweeping generalizations and assertions from a place of authority often fall apart under a minor degree of scrutiny.
What 'assertion from a place of authority' are you referring to? And didn't I explain pretty clearly that I was not 'generalizing' at all? No one explained how my usage differed from than that which was actually in the headline of the Bloomberg article I posted. I pretty clearly explained what my meaning was, and that any interpretation otherwise was due to a lack of perfect clarity of language. Do people actually think I intended to mislead about the content of an article that I was posting? (Why would I be posting the article if I wanted to communicate something different than its actual content?) The nitpicking was over my word choice in communicating meaning, not over the meaning I was trying to communicate.
Why do I face so much more harassment here than Tycho and Kaputa?
Edit:
Seeing that no matter how clearly I explain myself, any personal insult against me no matter how inexplicable will get 5 or 10 'agrees' (I am noting more agrees with Enc's personal insults, even after I made this post re-re-re-clarifying my statement) -- and these are posts purely intended to insult me, completely disregarding my own self-explanation, and bringing in accusations that seem inexplicable to me -- I will no longer be posting on this forum as it seems my contributions are not only seen as lacking value, but are so obviously seen negatively by the overwhelming majority of posters here given divergence from nationalist orthodoxy on US militarism (which is itself viewed as evil by most of the world, and increasingly rejected by basically all sane/educated parts of US society).
I've also never heard of another place for discourse where citing sources is literally regarded as weakening your argument.
Since this forum has become all about personal attacks even after pleas that these should happen privately so as to not divert from the thread's topic --
My last statement here will be that I knew Qingu personally years ago and before he spent most of his free time on the internet engaging in defenses of western military violence against children, he was the sort of person who thought it was amusing to engage in mutilation of helpless animals, commit mass sexual harassment against females in situations like summer camp, and scream the 'n-word' as loud as possible in public. Presumably most of the posters here are similar types of people.
About a third of US debt is held by foreign countries with the two largest holders, at a little over a trillion each or about a fifteenth of the total US debt, being Japan and China. I guess you could attempt to make this argument with Japan, but another explanation is that they, like China, want a strong dollar for their exports. The same applies to a lot of the countries that hold US debt. I also don't see a lot of evidence for this, or the US running unsustainable budgets, in the US debt to GDP ratio which spikes for WW2, declines to the 80s and then there is a modest increase until Clinton and then a dramatic rise under Bush II and Obama which has stated to level off. The US is marginally running an unsustainable budget currently, though unsustainable only in the long term, and that could be fixed with some combination of modest spending cuts or tax increases.
Long discussion about US debt ratios or sustainability of debt outside foreign financing, maybe not the right thread although I'm tempted. My main point was not really about the sustainability of US debt as such, rather on how imperial 'tribute' takes the form of financing this debt.
China, or a class within China, obviously still regards this as a strategy in their own interests. But the particularity of the Asian 'Tiger' economies was specifically a US-determined strategy in countries under its occupation.
The right-wing economist Milton Friedman used to talk about how the oft-lambasted US 'trade deficit' (which now has reached the point where the US has no significant industrial exports at all aside from weapons) was actually a wonderful thing and basically a display of US supremacy in that it implied the US was exchanging basically worthless pieces of paper for another country's useful items.
Asokolov on
+1
Options
Andy JoeWe claim the land for the highlord!The AdirondacksRegistered Userregular
The US does collect 'tribute' through financing of its otherwise-unsustainable government budgets, with that debt in the vast majority of cases (China is the major exception) covered by countries under US military occupation.
U.S. debt is largely based on maintaining military spending; the military is sitting on these countries that then finance that debt by making these loans that they know will never be repaid. You can call that ‘protection money’ in either sense of the term, depending on your point of view. In a way it’s a mix of both, because they are getting physically protected, but it’s also a shakedown.
Saying that countries like Japan, Germany, and South Korea are currently under "military occupation" because of the presence of U.S. military bases is at best inaccurate, and at worst disingenuous and deliberately inflammatory.
The US does collect 'tribute' through financing of its otherwise-unsustainable government budgets, with that debt in the vast majority of cases (China is the major exception) covered by countries under US military occupation.
U.S. debt is largely based on maintaining military spending; the military is sitting on these countries that then finance that debt by making these loans that they know will never be repaid. You can call that ‘protection money’ in either sense of the term, depending on your point of view. In a way it’s a mix of both, because they are getting physically protected, but it’s also a shakedown.
Saying that countries like Japan, Germany, and South Korea are currently under "military occupation" because of the presence of U.S. military bases is at best inaccurate, and at worst disingenuous and deliberately inflammatory.
Tell that to the Japanese and Koreans who constantly protest against US bases and have to deal with their women getting raped by US soldiers. (This happening when US soldiers aren't raping each other with total impunity -- internal military rape culture being a problem that had gotten a lot of coverage but has been strangely out of the news since Hagel was sacked as Defense Secretary.)
In South Korea US soldiers have been banned from many social spaces such as night-clubs because their behavior is so bad.
The US does collect 'tribute' through financing of its otherwise-unsustainable government budgets, with that debt in the vast majority of cases (China is the major exception) covered by countries under US military occupation.
U.S. debt is largely based on maintaining military spending; the military is sitting on these countries that then finance that debt by making these loans that they know will never be repaid. You can call that ‘protection money’ in either sense of the term, depending on your point of view. In a way it’s a mix of both, because they are getting physically protected, but it’s also a shakedown.
Saying that countries like Japan, Germany, and South Korea are currently under "military occupation" because of the presence of U.S. military bases is at best inaccurate, and at worst disingenuous and deliberately inflammatory.
Tell that to the Japanese and Koreans who constantly protest against US bases and have to deal with their women getting raped by US soldiers. (This happening when US soldiers aren't raping each other with total impunity -- internal military rape culture being a problem that had gotten a lot of coverage but has been strangely out of the news since Hagel was sacked as Defense Secretary.)
In South Korea US soldiers have been banned from many social spaces such as night-clubs because their behavior is so bad.
Equating protests against the presence of a military base to a military occupation is absurd unless you have polling data showing that a majority of the population opposes any form of foreign military presence.
The latest AP-GfK poll I could find on the issue regarding Japan shows that the support for the US military presence in Japan is growing, not shrinking, and is currently a majority held opinion. This tends to be due to growing instability/concerns regarding China and North Korea actions in Asia.
I did not spend an extensive amount of time researching this, if you have any data showing that a majority of South Koreans or Japanese citizens oppose US military presence I'd be happy to see it.
The US does collect 'tribute' through financing of its otherwise-unsustainable government budgets, with that debt in the vast majority of cases (China is the major exception) covered by countries under US military occupation.
U.S. debt is largely based on maintaining military spending; the military is sitting on these countries that then finance that debt by making these loans that they know will never be repaid. You can call that ‘protection money’ in either sense of the term, depending on your point of view. In a way it’s a mix of both, because they are getting physically protected, but it’s also a shakedown.
Saying that countries like Japan, Germany, and South Korea are currently under "military occupation" because of the presence of U.S. military bases is at best inaccurate, and at worst disingenuous and deliberately inflammatory.
Tell that to the Japanese and Koreans who constantly protest against US bases and have to deal with their women getting raped by US soldiers. (This happening when US soldiers aren't raping each other with total impunity -- internal military rape culture being a problem that had gotten a lot of coverage but has been strangely out of the news since Hagel was sacked as Defense Secretary.)
In South Korea US soldiers have been banned from many social spaces such as night-clubs because their behavior is so bad.
I would happily tell those protestors that calling it a 'military occupation' is disingenuous and deliberately inflammatory.
The US remains in Japan, Korea, and Germany at the invitation of their government. For example, Japan could terminate the 'Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan' at any time (with one year notice) but chooses not to. Similarly, South Korea could revoke the 'Mutual Defense Treaty Between the United States and the Republic of Korea' with one year notice. Germany is a member of NATO. Etc.
Were any of those treaties revoked by the host government, there's no reason to expect that the US would remain, as we've seen in the past such as when we closed Clark / Subic and left the Philippines.
The rape statement is a non-sequitur and deliberately inflammatory. Nor does the behavior of those soldiers and their interactions with private businesses have anything to do with a 'military occupation'.
IS continues its expansion around Sirte in Libya. As in Iraq and Syria, IS in Libya is at war with every other faction in the country - Libyan Dawn, Haftar's army, Misratan militias, and other Islamist groups including the al-Qaeda affiliated Ansar al-Sharia and the Abu Salim Martyr's Brigade.
In particular, the Islamic State has targeted Fajr Libya (Libya Dawn), a coalition of militias. The two sides have fought one another in Sirte and elsewhere for months. After a Tunisian suicide bomber blew himself up at a Fajr Libya checkpoint last week, the group issued a threatening statement. “The apostates of Fajr Libya…must know that a war is coming to cleanse the land of their filth unless they repent and go back to their true religion,” Agence France Presse (AFP) quoted the Islamic State as saying.
...
The Islamic State and the ASMB have clashed on multiple occasions, with the ASMB issuing a lengthy warning to its jihadist rivals in May. The ASMB has even appealed to Abu Muhammad al Maqdisi, a major pro-al Qaeda ideologue, for advice on how to confront the Islamic State.
This civil war began in earnest when Haftar declared war on "terrorism" and led a battle against Islamist factions in Benghazi. Despite Haftar's claims to be fighting "terror," the Tobruk government continues to ignore IS while focusing on other rival factions, especially Libyan Dawn. Haftar's forces have even taken a page from Bashar al-Assad's playbook, with recent assaults on Libyan Dawn coinciding with the latter's offensive against IS in Sirte. I've said it before, but I really don't understand why Haftar's faction merits UN recognition; most of the country is outside of their control and (at the risk of abandoning objectivity) they seem like a bunch of assholes.
Posts
SCOTUS rules Congress may not require passports to state Jerusalem is part of Israel
You say those groups cooperated with their conquerors, but again neglect to mention that they would soon rebel against the new conquerors just as they did the old ones. Empires live in a cycle of conquest and rebellion, until the conquered assimilate or are reduced to almost nothing or scattered to the winds. You forget that the Romans ethnically cleansed the Jews out of their homeland and transported them as slaves across the empire in the aftermath of the rebellion, which is why the majority of Jews would not live in their homeland until the 20th century.
The Islamic State isn't an empire though it aspires to be. At the moment they're little more than a Sunni Arab rebellion and a brand name for terrorism. The multinational/religious Republic of Iraq was a empire for all of two years - an empire of Shia Arabs dominate over Sunni Arabs and Kurds. An empire that is dead as the Sunni Arabs have rebelled under the banner of the Islamic State and the Kurds are de facto independent due to the weakness of the Iraqi military.
We're getting to watch right now what happens to those who rebel against an empire and lose - the Sunni Iraqi Arabs get driven or burned out of their homes, executed as traitors, and will be marginalized as a people.
Its a lesser evil, but I won't stop recognizing it as an evil.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Here's the thing - the journalists bit sounds a lot less impressive to those of us who remember the hate the Village (the American political media) has had for the Clintons since the 90s, and how that hate has routinely led to the undermining of the integrity of their reporting.
So no, I don't give a shit what they are reporting, because they have poisoned that we'll, and show no signs of repairing their damage.
Isn't this just "humans" and not necessarily "empires"? In the next paragraph of your post you say the IS is not yet an empire and nevertheless is still part of the same vicious cycle. Kingdoms and nations have also experienced cycles of conquest and rebellion ... of course once a kingdom or nation succeeds in conquering another kingdom/nation they become an empire, so I feel this is almost a semantic exercise.
Impressive little echo chamber you've built there.
edit - also, have we mentioned the phosphate money from the illegally occupied territory of Western Sahara yet?
How is it an echo chamber, exactly? The simple fact is that the media has run their credibility into the ground on this matter, and has refused to fix things. And yes, that means that it undermines the credibility of any story coming out.
You want people to take these stories seriously? Show them that they CAN take them seriously.
We mostly ended the era of empires in the aftermath of World War 2, which established self determination as sacred in the international order.
It wasn't perfect since the USSR only played theater with regards to that, China remained an empire, and the multinational and multireligious post-colonial nations would remain miniature snap shots of the Imperial era, but it is better than the never ending cycle of empire building and rebellion we had in the past in the areas of the world we did ensure true self determination of nations.
That a new empire wasn't built out of the corpses of Yugoslavia or the USSR goes to show how far we've come.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
What set of requirements does negative reporting on Hillary Clinton have to meet in order to be regarded as legitimate? Alternatively, how should the media "fix" things, in your view?
That they have to repudiate their past actions and acknowledge the many ways they got snookered regarding the Clintons in the past. Considering that the NYT paid good money for information from a guy who unironically referenced the Clinton Body Count and I've seen Kathleen Willey popping her discredited head up again, I wouldn't hold my breath.
(And considering both the incredible consolidation of the media and the amazingly incestuous nature of the Village, they should be treated as a monolith.)
You don't get to say that both sides need to be heard without someone else pointing out that one side has a miserable track record. Broderism is no way to go through life.
From what I remember from the 1990s, it also seems remarkably inaccurate.
But even if you are correct that all journalists form a collective hive mind with no goal other than destruction of the Clintons, how does that resolve the issue of campaign finance watchdogs, law professors, etc also treating these as problematic ethical issues?
And people are taking the Foundation stories seriously enough that H. Clinton's poll numbers have taken a hit.
Interpretation of events is what this thread is about. I'm not critiquing your grammar, don't be a goose.
Well, the first mistake you make is saying that their hatred is inexplicable, because it is quite explicable - it's all based on class (and if you want to understand that better, look up Sally Quinn's infamous op-ed rant about the Clintons.) Once we have that understanding, then it becomes a lot clearer about how this attitude came about - no need for conspiracies, when you can easily explain it through social dynamics.
That seems like a weird as fuck argument to make.
Like, I can see how in certain realms that may be true, like ok if congress declares war the president can't just say lol no we aren't.
But it's pretty obviously not in the same realm as congress unilaterally deciding Jerusalem is part of Israel.
Yes, of course her poll numbers dropped. That's the entire point of writing a piece like that.
Arguing a story is reliable because it impacted poll numbers is effectively circular reasoning.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
It's an asinine argument, because the Executive telling Congress to go fuck itself over constitutionally murky laws is a time honored and bipartisan tradition - see the War Powers Act, which no administration has ever acknowledged as constitutional.
In short, Roberts is disingenuous, day ends in "y".
Note that the source for many of the Clinton Foundation stories is the New York Times -- which endorsed Clinton over Obama in 2008 despite a general sense that 'liberal' parts of media overall supported Obama over Clinton. (Edit: and I would assess NYTimes coverage of Obama as president as often overwhelmingly positive, especially over time from reporter Peter Baker.)
And I cited Clinton's poll numbers as evidence that people were taking the stories seriousy, not any statement about their validity.
I hope you're right that this is a relatively permanent new state of affairs, but 70 years isn't that long a time. You edited one of your posts to mention the Romans' ethnic cleansing of the Jews at the end of the war. Well, that was in 70 AD; Pompei conquered Judea in 60 B.C and established a puppet state. It was only after more than a century of insurrections, civil wars, and acts of terrorism by Jewish zealots that Emperor Titus apparently had enough and began "the desolating sacrilege." I worry very much that things could get worse in a similar way today.
The accurate definition of The Village is DC and NYC based political reporters who view themselves as part of the permanent ruling class. So you won't find them at alternative weeklies and liberal magazines, where you'll find them is at the major news networks, the NYT, the Washington Post, etc. Sally Quinn is basically the definition of such a person, but others would include David Broder's corpse, Thomas Friedman, Maureen Dowd, Fred Hiatt, Tom Brokaw, Chuck Todd, and Bob Schieffer.
The alternate and even less complementary version is Versailles on the Potomac, and they've abandoned their roles as watchdogs in favor of becoming courtiers.
EDIT: Basically this dates back to Iran-Contra where the press collectively decided that "America couldn't afford another failed Presidency" and so they downplayed a scandal that was considerably worse than Watergate and should have gotten Reagan (among others) indicted. Which leads directly to both Bushes.
In Middle East news, Israel has apparently been testing radiological bombs in the Negev desert. The stated aim is to study their effects in case of a possible dirty bomb attack on Israel. This doesn't actually strike me as all that implausible at this point - IS obviously can't make nuclear reactors, but could they potentially get ahold of some radioactive material created elsewhere?
edit - I mean the Hillary discussion, the imperialism discussion is relevant in my opinion
Your statement that the USSR was merely playing theater in its supposed break from imperialism seems accurate to me, but also seems to apply at least as well to the USA.
Here's an article from the Economist I read recently, about Hillary's perception troubles when it comes to all her dollars. A non-"Village" point of view, I found it interesting.
We can't just take the huge amounts of money paid or donated and assume there's no political motive behind it.
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21650116-democratic-front-runner-has-troubled-relationship-more-one-kind
That's an interesting point of view. Any further reading you can recommend on the media's reaction to Iran-Contra?
On Bended Knee is the seminal text (this is the whole Reagan Presidency, but obviously Iran-Contra plays a big role in that)
I'm personally shocked the group is still around, and still controls so much territory. I predicted back then that while troubles and war would continue, ISIS as an organization would fracture under the pressure. This clearly hasn't happened. Despite US airstrikes and battles against various other factions, the group is still going strong. It was on June 29th of last year that the group changed their name to Islamic State and declared their caliphate. Barring something exceptional happening, the caliphate will live out its first year, diminished in some ways but making still making territorial gains in both Syria and Iraq.
I know no country is going to recognize it, but they really do have a state going. Its pretty frightening to think about. And oh god do I not even want to think about retaking places like Mosul or Raqqa. They've got bloodbath written all over them.
I read somewhere that they've instituted "every man must grow a big-ass crazy beard"* rules in occupied territory, ostensibly for religious purposes. Locals call bullshit and say that they're doing it so that ISIS members can melt away into the populace if attacked. They've also ditched the military vehicles inside the city and switched to regular cars.
*being some of the World's Worst People, they're huge dicks about it too. The piece had an interview with a few guys who couldn't grow beards who asked ISIS for an exemption, and got "tough shit, stay home or we'll beat you" as a response.
The Clinton Foundation has little to do with the Clintons themselves. It would be like trying to bride someone with a 40 dollar notation to the ASPCA in thier name.
Second, I think most of us know how much money influences politics in America. It should be a bigger story. It should be a talking point. But it seems to be focused only around Clinton, which I find suspious. I get the feeling conservatives want to crucify Hillary over something their side does as well. That this is all about a convenient excuse to tarnish Hillary and win the White House. I doubt many actually care about campaign finance reform.
That seems absurd. This provides vast means for their social networking, facilitates many corporate projects important to their friends, consumes much of their scarce time, and is regarded as their family 'slush fund' (see Sunlight Foundation, campaign finance reform and pro-transparency group on the left). I mean, this is Chelsea's primary source of personal employment. (It seems Chelsea just moved into this weird ultra-luxury futuristic building on 15th St which has high-tech windows that change shape with variations in weather and things and requires this ugly permanent crane structure on top of the building to clean the windows, and also blocks view of the Empire State Building from Greenwich Village.)
if 'elite media' hate the Clintons so much, why would NBC have given Chelsea such a sweetheart 'correspondent' gig where she got hundreds of thousands of dollars just for showing up at work?
The US does collect 'tribute' through financing of its otherwise-unsustainable government budgets, with that debt in the vast majority of cases (China is the major exception) covered by countries under US military occupation.
See Graeber: http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/debt_slavery_and_our_idea_of_freedom_part_2
About a third of US debt is held by foreign countries with the two largest holders, at a little over a trillion each or about a fifteenth of the total US debt, being Japan and China. I guess you could attempt to make this argument with Japan, but another explanation is that they, like China, want a strong dollar for their exports. The same applies to a lot of the countries that hold US debt. I also don't see a lot of evidence for this, or the US running unsustainable budgets, in the US debt to GDP ratio which spikes for WW2, declines to the 80s and then there is a modest increase until Clinton and then a dramatic rise under Bush II and Obama which has stated to level off. The US is marginally running an unsustainable budget currently, though unsustainable only in the long term, and that could be fixed with some combination of modest spending cuts or tax increases.
edit- also, the southern front has witnessed its first significant fighting between rebel/regime forces in a bit. Recently there were large protests in rebel-held parts of Deraa city, aimed at pressuring the rebels to push the regime out of the city. The southern rebels have been restrained lately, which is odd given the major regime defeats elsewhere (you'd think it would be a good time to push another front), but this battle might be a sign that popular pressure is forcing them to take a more aggressive stance.
Same here, on both counts. HRC's foreign policy honestly doesn't seem too far off from John McCain's. I'm considering doing some field work for Bernie's campaign here in Maine, but since I'm not a registered Democrat I unfortunately can't vote in the primaries. Since Bernie is unlikely to be allowed a real shot it's probably gonna have to be Jill Stein 2016 for me... maybe she can get arrested for attempting to attend a debate again, that was pretty cool.
It isn't nitpicking grammar but pointing out (again) that your sweeping generalizations and assertions from a place of authority often fall apart under a minor degree of scrutiny.
So many countries have had them (Iraq and Syria included) that this shouldn't exactly be surprising. That we intend to send more to Iraq is however. I really wish we didn't export our military technology so freely, but I imagine it would also be difficult not to from a politics perspective.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/196386#.VXbiis9Viko
What 'assertion from a place of authority' are you referring to? And didn't I explain pretty clearly that I was not 'generalizing' at all? No one explained how my usage differed from than that which was actually in the headline of the Bloomberg article I posted. I pretty clearly explained what my meaning was, and that any interpretation otherwise was due to a lack of perfect clarity of language. Do people actually think I intended to mislead about the content of an article that I was posting? (Why would I be posting the article if I wanted to communicate something different than its actual content?) The nitpicking was over my word choice in communicating meaning, not over the meaning I was trying to communicate.
Why do I face so much more harassment here than Tycho and Kaputa?
Edit:
Seeing that no matter how clearly I explain myself, any personal insult against me no matter how inexplicable will get 5 or 10 'agrees' (I am noting more agrees with Enc's personal insults, even after I made this post re-re-re-clarifying my statement) -- and these are posts purely intended to insult me, completely disregarding my own self-explanation, and bringing in accusations that seem inexplicable to me -- I will no longer be posting on this forum as it seems my contributions are not only seen as lacking value, but are so obviously seen negatively by the overwhelming majority of posters here given divergence from nationalist orthodoxy on US militarism (which is itself viewed as evil by most of the world, and increasingly rejected by basically all sane/educated parts of US society).
I've also never heard of another place for discourse where citing sources is literally regarded as weakening your argument.
Since this forum has become all about personal attacks even after pleas that these should happen privately so as to not divert from the thread's topic --
My last statement here will be that I knew Qingu personally years ago and before he spent most of his free time on the internet engaging in defenses of western military violence against children, he was the sort of person who thought it was amusing to engage in mutilation of helpless animals, commit mass sexual harassment against females in situations like summer camp, and scream the 'n-word' as loud as possible in public. Presumably most of the posters here are similar types of people.
Long discussion about US debt ratios or sustainability of debt outside foreign financing, maybe not the right thread although I'm tempted. My main point was not really about the sustainability of US debt as such, rather on how imperial 'tribute' takes the form of financing this debt.
Regarding export-driven economies of Japan and China and how these are of benefit to an imperialist US, this is an interesting article on the subject:
http://newleftreview.org/II/60/ho-fung-hung-america-s-head-servant
China, or a class within China, obviously still regards this as a strategy in their own interests. But the particularity of the Asian 'Tiger' economies was specifically a US-determined strategy in countries under its occupation.
The right-wing economist Milton Friedman used to talk about how the oft-lambasted US 'trade deficit' (which now has reached the point where the US has no significant industrial exports at all aside from weapons) was actually a wonderful thing and basically a display of US supremacy in that it implied the US was exchanging basically worthless pieces of paper for another country's useful items.
Saying that countries like Japan, Germany, and South Korea are currently under "military occupation" because of the presence of U.S. military bases is at best inaccurate, and at worst disingenuous and deliberately inflammatory.
Tell that to the Japanese and Koreans who constantly protest against US bases and have to deal with their women getting raped by US soldiers. (This happening when US soldiers aren't raping each other with total impunity -- internal military rape culture being a problem that had gotten a lot of coverage but has been strangely out of the news since Hagel was sacked as Defense Secretary.)
In South Korea US soldiers have been banned from many social spaces such as night-clubs because their behavior is so bad.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/05/17/national/politics-diplomacy/thousands-protest-u-s-futenma-base-in-okinawa/
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/5614:protest-heightens-against-military-base-at-south-koreas-island-of-world-peace
Equating protests against the presence of a military base to a military occupation is absurd unless you have polling data showing that a majority of the population opposes any form of foreign military presence.
http://surveys.ap.org/data/GfK/AP-Gfk Poll Japan Topline FINAL_2nd release.pdf
The latest AP-GfK poll I could find on the issue regarding Japan shows that the support for the US military presence in Japan is growing, not shrinking, and is currently a majority held opinion. This tends to be due to growing instability/concerns regarding China and North Korea actions in Asia.
I did not spend an extensive amount of time researching this, if you have any data showing that a majority of South Koreans or Japanese citizens oppose US military presence I'd be happy to see it.
I would happily tell those protestors that calling it a 'military occupation' is disingenuous and deliberately inflammatory.
The US remains in Japan, Korea, and Germany at the invitation of their government. For example, Japan could terminate the 'Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan' at any time (with one year notice) but chooses not to. Similarly, South Korea could revoke the 'Mutual Defense Treaty Between the United States and the Republic of Korea' with one year notice. Germany is a member of NATO. Etc.
Were any of those treaties revoked by the host government, there's no reason to expect that the US would remain, as we've seen in the past such as when we closed Clark / Subic and left the Philippines.
The rape statement is a non-sequitur and deliberately inflammatory. Nor does the behavior of those soldiers and their interactions with private businesses have anything to do with a 'military occupation'.
This civil war began in earnest when Haftar declared war on "terrorism" and led a battle against Islamist factions in Benghazi. Despite Haftar's claims to be fighting "terror," the Tobruk government continues to ignore IS while focusing on other rival factions, especially Libyan Dawn. Haftar's forces have even taken a page from Bashar al-Assad's playbook, with recent assaults on Libyan Dawn coinciding with the latter's offensive against IS in Sirte. I've said it before, but I really don't understand why Haftar's faction merits UN recognition; most of the country is outside of their control and (at the risk of abandoning objectivity) they seem like a bunch of assholes.