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sidd

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #750 on: March 18, 2018, 04:29:51 AM »
On another topic: Chinese influence in africa and elsewhere

While the USA runs military ops in 50 african countries

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/27/nick_turse_from_niger_to_somalia

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176272/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_the_u.s._military_moves_deeper_into_africa/

China is pouring money in. Hre is a speech by a Chinese Ambassador. Once you get past the posturing and propaganda, he lays out some truths that are hard to deny:

"The American friends are worried about Africa's debt crisis on the lips. But they have no willingness to issue loans to support Africa’s development, or to encourage their investors to Africa."

"Africa needs huge amounts of capital to develop its infrastructure to realize self-sustainable development. "

http://en.people.cn/n3/2018/0315/c90000-9437562-2.html

And here is China opening a port in Brazil, treading on the Monroe doctrine.. Neocons will be mad.

http://en.people.cn/n3/2018/0317/c90000-9438409.html

sidd


sidd

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #751 on: March 20, 2018, 01:00:13 AM »

TerryM

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #752 on: March 20, 2018, 09:38:00 PM »
Chinese exporting pollution ... to the USA.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-is-china-treating-north-carolina-like-the-developing-world-w517973

sidd


The article is good, but the comments took a strange turn. The right flaying the left for not supporting unions? The right complaining of the left's embrace of free trade?
I'm sure some of the left's comments were equally far fetched, but the above were the ones that jumped out at me.
Perhaps we really are in a post-factual era where truth is passe.
Terry

sidd

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #753 on: March 24, 2018, 07:25:37 AM »
I link an article below, which is quite rending on its own, and might fit in other threads. But here I want to discuss a quote from war criminal Cheney that struck me as sadly apposite: 

--
"if we make the wrong choice," as Cheney speciously claimed, "then the danger is that we'll get hit again."
--

Well, guess what. Wrong choice. Get hit again and again, as homegrown jihadis erupt in in San Bernadino or  Boston or Parkland or ... and eventually there will be a nuke in NYC.

More importantly, why does the USA keep making the wrong choice ? 

I posit that the violence done in the exercise of empire is the unrestrained twin of violence done within.

For within the country we see stunning levels of incarceration, health non care, school failure, gun violence and most shockingly gun violence by children against their fellows. If, indeed, this is all the regard the citizens have for their own, we ought fully expect the consequences of the same forces fully unleashed abroad.

The internal ills are well twined with the external.

I could, of course be wrong, but read the link anyway. There is much more than the throwaway quote from the war criminal.

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/43885-fifteen-years-in-iraq-there-was-no-place-safe-there-or-here

sidd




ivica

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #754 on: March 24, 2018, 04:26:38 PM »


14:10 Cambridge Analytica: "we just found out about this data mining firm manipulating the election. I wish someone, anyone, had told us about this earlier!" then clips follow:
One Week Ago, One Month Ago, One Year Ago,,,,.


gerontocrat

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #755 on: March 24, 2018, 05:15:14 PM »
I could be cruel and paraphrase a saying -

"America- whose future is all behind it". Watching Great Britain become Little Britain over many years also leads me to say "It's your turn now".
"Para a Causa do Povo a Luta Continua!"
"And that's all I'm going to say about that". Forrest Gump
"Damn, I wanted to see what happened next" (Epitaph)

ivica

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #756 on: March 28, 2018, 12:34:37 PM »
Singapore UN Ambassador Kishore Mahbubani:


 "... and thats the sign of the times that countries are now preparing for the world in which US will no longer be number one."

its a clip, full video here (above cite from 34:32) published on Apr 9, 2015 - Harvard University.

(46:26) "but I can tell you this as someone who travels to at least 30...40 countries a year - when I come to the United States and I go to my hotel room in Charles hotel and turn on the television I feel that I've been cut off from the rest othe world and literally ..."

< “quality of mind” >


ivica

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #757 on: March 29, 2018, 09:42:09 AM »
If you like Kishore Mahbubani lecture at Harvard above (2015.) here is more:

Kishore Mahbubani @mahbubani_k Mar 23: "Last month, I delivered the George Ball lecture at @ColumbiaSIPA on the topic, 'Can America and China Avoid a Collision?'.
Watch at":


(Event date: February 21, 2018.)

Links:
http://mahbubani.net/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kishore_Mahbubani
https://twitter.com/Mahbubani_k


JimD

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #758 on: April 05, 2018, 05:45:50 PM »
I would hope that this article has already been linked here, but just in case it has not.

We are likely very near one of the periodic inflection points.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176407/tomgram%3A_danny_sjursen%2C_cleaning_house%2C_enabling_war/#more
We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable. Alexander Solzhenitsyn

How is it conceivable that all our technological progress - our very civilization - is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal? Albert Einstein

TerryM

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #759 on: April 05, 2018, 06:21:58 PM »
Jim
I haven't come across you link previously, and it presents a scary scenario.
I had the great good luck to inform Louise Frechette that her nemesis, Bolton,had lost his own gig at the UN, Bolton had cost her a wonderful job as Deputy Secretary of the UN.
He's the consummate horses ass.


If Thierry Meyssan is correct Tillerson's firing may bode well for the near future.


http://www.voltairenet.org/article200232.html

Indicating a Trump who is steering us away from conflict with Russia. If true, perhaps Bolton and Pompeo will be kept on a short leash and fired before they cause lasting harm.
Perhaps I'm clutching at straws.
Terry

gerontocrat

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #760 on: April 05, 2018, 06:50:22 PM »
Clutching at straws? Yes.
"Para a Causa do Povo a Luta Continua!"
"And that's all I'm going to say about that". Forrest Gump
"Damn, I wanted to see what happened next" (Epitaph)

JimD

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #761 on: April 11, 2018, 05:33:05 PM »
We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable. Alexander Solzhenitsyn

How is it conceivable that all our technological progress - our very civilization - is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal? Albert Einstein

sidd

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #762 on: April 13, 2018, 06:43:46 PM »
I have remarked before that "Bellum sine fine" is the modern motto of the armies of the USA.

“Victory is sort [of] an elusive concept in that part of the world,”

"Infinite war"

“It’s not losing,”

 “We concluded winning is more of a continuum.”

 “The Taliban is not feeling defeated. The opposite.”

“Are we winning?” “I have no idea, sir,”

“How will you even know when you get there? God it is hard.”

"One answer, said veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, is simply to set aside the whole notion of winning in favor of something else.

“What does it even mean in the 21st century?” Crocker asked. “I don’t know.” "

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/for-trump-and-his-generals-victory-has-different-meanings/2018/04/05/8d74eab0-381d-11e8-9c0a-85d477d9a226_story.html

Read it and weep. War without end, amen.

sidd

sidd

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #763 on: April 13, 2018, 08:34:05 PM »
An oligarchy that none dare name:

" the problems plaguing U.S. democracy and the U.S. economy are definitely the work of oligarchs. But they don’t speak Russian."

https://consortiumnews.com/2018/04/13/do-u-s-oligarchs-exist-not-in-mainstream-media/

sidd

sidd

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #764 on: April 13, 2018, 10:31:27 PM »
Aidan O'Brien sees Empire in meltdown. I don't agree with everything he says bu he has some cogent observations which are worth considering.

" ... there’s space for an Assad and an Ali Khameini in the Middle East; for a Kim Jong-un and a Xi Jinping in the East. And for a Putin everywhere. And in Latin America there’s room for a Maduro. And a Castro is still there."

" ...  the anchors of this New World Disorder are proving to be the great Russian and Chinese Revolutions of the last century. "

But read the whole thing:

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/04/13/i-love-the-smell-of-imperial-meltdown-in-the-morning/

sidd


sidd

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #765 on: April 16, 2018, 05:58:18 AM »
Kissinger famously remarked that Africa was underpolluted. Gady flips that around, USA is "under warred." No large war on their own soil for a long time, so they do not understand suffering when they unleash war abroad.

https://thediplomat.com/2018/04/is-the-us-suffering-a-war-gap/

I am not so sure the Empire has entirely escaped consequence of foreign wars hitting home. Apart from terrorist attack, the violence inflicted abroad is reflected domestically in the cruelty of the treatment of underclasses and widespread armed violence by adults and, shockingly, children, upon their own. After all, when a country kills foreigners by the myriad, killing their own is not far behind.

But perhaps Gady is right, perhaps what the USA must first have to relinquish brutality in service of empire is another ferocious civil war. These days it might be a Red vs Blue replay of the Great Southern Rebellion as they call it on little monuments in Ohio.

sidd

sidd

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #766 on: April 18, 2018, 07:45:34 AM »
Stockman is always woth reading, even if i don't always agree:

"The fact is, there would be no justification for the $800 billion defense, intelligence and foreign aid apparatus on which the very prosperity of the Imperial City depends in the absence of a large state-based enemy; or, better still, without an imperial foreign policy that is implicitly designed to either bully or remove recalcitrant governments anywhere on the planet – whether or not they have the intent or capacity to harm the US homeland."

"How did the war on Vietnam, the First Gulf War to save the Emir of Kuwait’s oil wealth, the futile 17-year occupation of Afghanistan, the destruction of Iraq, the double-cross of Khadafy after he gave up his nukes, the obliteration of much of civil society and economic life in Syria, the US-supplied Saudi genocide in Yemen and the Washington sponsored coup and civil war on Russia’s doorstep in Ukraine, to name just a few instances of Washington’s putative "world leadership", have anything to do with preserving "order" on the planet?"

"The Dems were caught so flat-footed and befuddled by the Donald’s "impossible" win that they have succumbed to the rank anti-Russian propaganda that was fed to them by Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and the rest of the Obama inner circle on the eve and aftermath of the November 8th election."

https://original.antiwar.com/david_stockman/2018/01/04/war-partys-desperate-assault-america-first/


"In a word, Empire First easily consumes one-half trillion dollars more in annual budgetary resources than would America First. And that giant barrel of weapons contracts, consulting and support jobs, lobbying booty and Congressional pork explains everything you need to know about why the Swamp is so deep and intractable."

"You simply can’t make up $500 billion worth of phony reasons for an Empire First national security policy without going off the deep-end. You have to invent missions, mandates and threats"

https://original.antiwar.com/David_Stockman/2018/04/17/america-first-r-i-p/

sidd

JimD

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #767 on: April 18, 2018, 06:10:39 PM »
Good on yah sidd

I was just coming here to post the same article.  A must read for anyone who does not understand that America is an empire and making all the empire mistakes.  And helping terrorists in Syria.
We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable. Alexander Solzhenitsyn

How is it conceivable that all our technological progress - our very civilization - is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal? Albert Einstein

sidd

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #768 on: April 20, 2018, 08:00:24 AM »
Taibbi on iraq legacy:

--

Far from being an error, the war was a perfect expression of everything we stood for then, and still stand for now.

Al-Qaeda provided the perfect replacement for the domino theory. Here was an enemy that was at once everywhere and nowhere, that could be in the minds of any person here or abroad, that any country could be accused of sponsoring


Secret prisons? Sure. Torture? Sure. Warrantless surveillance? Sure. Need to read our library records, toss out habeas corpus? Sure and sure

If we could successfully prevent our own voters from seeing or thinking about the moral costs of our policies, then we could continue down the pure-force path indefinitely, without protest, without debate even.


 a Justice Department memorandum that apparently existed to provide a legal context for killing even American citizens by fiat.

Later rulings would describe the drone program using the Orwellian term “nonjusticiable,” i.e., simply not subject to review.

an entirely separate, secret set of rules giving them the right to kill, imprison, torture, or spy on anyone.


We flatter ourselves that Trump is an aberration. He isn't. He's a depraved, cowardly, above-the-law bully, just like the country we've allowed ourselves to become in the last fifteen years.

Osama bin Laden has to be laughing. He had to know all along that only Americans were capable of destroying America. But he couldn't have dreamed we'd do it so fast.

--

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/taibbi-the-legacy-of-the-iraq-war-w518193

sidd

sidd

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #769 on: April 25, 2018, 07:36:17 AM »
State power in the USA treats an increasingly large underclassethe same as brown foreigners in distant lands:

"18-day journey caged"
" ... 2005 Pontiac sedan had been reported stolen ..."
" ... report turned out to be false ... but not before ... arrested, arraigned on a fugitive warrant and extradited ..."
"financial incentive to pick up as many detainees as possible"
" ... pattern of abuse and neglect during prisoner transport by for-profit companies has been previously documented ..."
“Unless it’s life or death, we can’t open the cage on the vehicle,”
"denied his daily prescription medication"
"spent the duration of the journey sitting in human waste and filth"
"three vans through seven states over 18 days. It normally takes 20 hours"
"demanded detainees relieve themselves in empty bottles or on themselves"
"repeated requests to be taken to a hospital were ignored"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/04/24/privately-run-prisoner-transport-company-kept-detainee-shackled-for-18-days-in-human-waste-lawsuit-alleges/

Welcome to Abu Ghraib. Not just for Iraqis anymore.

sidd

sidd

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #770 on: April 25, 2018, 10:38:46 PM »
Nicaragua, again ? NED goes back to old stomping grounds, espousing Monroe Doctrine. I guess the warmongers don't learn too quick.

"the US shall never forgive the Nicaraguan people for overthrowing the US-backed Somoza dictatorship in 1979, for militarily defeating the Contras and for then voting back in the Sandinistas in 2007.  The NICA Act is pay-back for such crimes."

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/04/25/the-empire-turns-its-sights-on-nicaragua-again/

sidd

JimD

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #771 on: April 26, 2018, 03:45:04 PM »
Quote
Snipers ordered to shoot children, Israeli general confirms

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/snipers-ordered-shoot-children-israeli-general-confirms

Outrage over fake gas attacks but not a peep over real war crimes confirmed by the officers ordering the killing.  What a world we live in.
We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable. Alexander Solzhenitsyn

How is it conceivable that all our technological progress - our very civilization - is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal? Albert Einstein

ivica

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #772 on: April 27, 2018, 01:06:15 AM »
Fighting the amnesia force, #329

How about adding one more candidate to election list, "None Offered".  8)
If such wins, all are disqualified and new turn follows... or is it blasphemy/heresy for 'democracy' as we know :P

Personally I long ago came to the conclusion that democracy in the US was a farce.  As Emma Goldman once said, "If voting made a difference it would be illegal."

Eh, that reminds me on:



the Temptations


TerryM

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #773 on: April 27, 2018, 01:29:24 AM »
Quote
Snipers ordered to shoot children, Israeli general confirms

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/snipers-ordered-shoot-children-israeli-general-confirms

Outrage over fake gas attacks but not a peep over real war crimes confirmed by the officers ordering the killing.  What a world we live in.


It's becoming a post-reality world.
The presumption of our enemy's guilt takes president over the reality of our allies demonstrable guilt.


A hundred SAMS in Chicago, funded almost exclusively by USAID, are heralded as the voice of the Anti-Assad "majority" of Syrians, while the footfalls of the 800,000 refugees that have returned to Aleppo since Assad regained control of the city are ignored.


How do you discuss the atrocities that Israel is institutionalizing with Jewish friends? They are either ashamed of what their fellow religionists are doing, or they try to defend the indefensible.


I ranted against a program that Israel was promoting some decades ago. A long time friend/acquaintance accused me of anti-semitism? The terms I'd used were no stronger than those I'd used to attack policies of the American Government, or the Canadian Government. I wasn't denigrating the people, but rather a policy of the government.


One less friend/acquaintance.
Terry

oren

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #774 on: April 27, 2018, 04:46:22 AM »
How do you discuss the atrocities that Israel is institutionalizing with Jewish friends?
How do you discuss the atrocities that Israel is institutionalizing with Israeli friends?  :(

TerryM

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #775 on: April 27, 2018, 07:18:05 AM »
How do you discuss the atrocities that Israel is institutionalizing with Jewish friends?
How do you discuss the atrocities that Israel is institutionalizing with Israeli friends?  :(


Most of the friends I have that self identify as Jewish have never left North America for longer than a holiday, so they don't really qualify as Israeli. I'd have the same problem though under either circumstance.


I've no desire to embarrass anyone, and even less to lose respect for them should they feel compelled to defend the policies of the Israeli Government.


People can't be held responsible for the actions of governments, even though governments need to somehow be held responsible for their own actions. It's logical to despise Hitler's Nazis while praising German culture. The same is true with British, Canadian, and Russian people and governments.
I've railed against the American government, even as I married 5 Americans, yet I'm cowed from commenting on Israeli atrocities for fear of being branded a racist anti semitic.


What makes this one instance so different?
Terry

sidd

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #776 on: April 27, 2018, 09:38:11 PM »
Sjursen lays bare the department of offense:

" The army I was a part of never defended a damn thing."

"When was the last time our soldiers actually defended the homeland?"

" ... the Department of Defense hasn’t acted as an agency charged with “defense” in any logical sense, but as the department for obediently killing and dying for whenever an imperial president—and a complacent Congress—deems necessary and proper. "

"In the army you’re taught to “train and you fight.” Well, the point is, the U.S. military nearly always trains (and fights) in someone else’s neighborhood ... "

"Sometimes when you find yourself alone—in everyday life or in geopolitics—and with everyone else gathered on some other side, you might be the problem. Either everyone else is wrong, or you are."

Read the whole thing:

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-department-of-defense-in-name-only/

sidd

sidd

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #777 on: April 28, 2018, 05:08:17 AM »
"even as I married 5 Americans"

"You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!"

sidd

TerryM

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #778 on: April 28, 2018, 05:45:51 AM »
Serial monogamy, most of the time.  ::)
Terry

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #779 on: April 28, 2018, 03:45:56 PM »
Imagine the effect on the federal budget if they manage to do this.  It will not be long before there is nothing left but the defense budget.  A typical result with a declining empire.

Quote
Defense industry needs 5 percent annual budget growth to stay healthy, says new AIA report

....“We can fix whatever acquisition problems we see, but if we don’t have stable, robust, balanced spending, our free-market economy will not be able to respond to DoD’s needs in a timely, effective way,” John Luddy, AIA’s vice president for national security policy, told Defense News. “It doesn’t all boil down to money, but it starts with that.”

The 5 percent figure intentionally hews to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joe Dunford’s calls for sustained budget growth through 2023 to maintain the country’s military edge over competitors Russia and China, Luddy said....

This would add roughly a $160 billion to the defense budget from where we are now.  This is equivalent to China's entire defense budget.

There is no chance of fixing much of anything with military spending rising at a rate this far above inflation.  It will eat up everything else in short order.

https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2018/04/25/defense-industry-needs-5-percent-annual-budget-growth-to-stay-healthy-says-new-aia-report/
We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable. Alexander Solzhenitsyn

How is it conceivable that all our technological progress - our very civilization - is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal? Albert Einstein

sidd

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #780 on: April 28, 2018, 07:15:26 PM »
A rift in the lute ? Nato lawyer jumps off the bandwagon:

" ... van der Meij said the “humanitarian intervention” principle was not just unlawful, but also undesirable."

Guess he doesn't want to cover for warmongers any more.

sidd

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #782 on: May 09, 2018, 09:23:39 AM »
Sins of Empire come home: Supremes deny redress as usual:

"U.S. Supreme Court shut the doors on a whole suite of international human rights claims, ruling in Jesner v. Arab Bank that victims of corporate malfeasance overseas may not use U.S. courts to hold businesses to account."

This decision is quite far reaching. When you make reasonable change impossible, you make unreasonable change inevitable.

https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2018/05/08/supreme-court-overseas-corporate-accountability-000659

sidd

JimD

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #783 on: May 10, 2018, 12:47:13 AM »
Follow the money.  As they say.

Interesting reading.

https://lobelog.com/three-billionaires-paved-way-for-trumps-iran-deal-withdrawal/

Quote
....Trump appears absolutely determined to undo as much of what Barack Obama accomplished as possible. In addition, the sheer perversity of his personality may well explain today’s action. But it may also be useful to follow the apochryphal advice that Watergate’s famous “Deep Throat” offered to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in All the President’s Men, particularly in the unbelievably corrupt swamp of the Trump era.

Indeed, today’s unpopular announcement may have been exactly what two of Trump’s biggest donors, Sheldon Adelson and Bernard Marcus, and what one of his biggest inaugural supporters, Paul Singer, paid for when they threw their financial weight behind Trump. Marcus and Adelson, who are also board members of the Likudist Republican Jewish Coalition, have already received substantial returns on their investment: total alignment by the U.S. behind Israel, next week’s move of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and the official dropping of “occupied territories” to describe the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Adelson, for his part, was Trump and the GOP’s biggest campaign supporter. He and his wife Miriam contributed $35 million in outside spending to elect Trump, $20 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund (a super PAC exclusively dedicated to securing a GOP majority in the House of Representatives), and $35 million to the Senate Leadership Fund (the Senate counterpart) in the 2016 election cycle....
...Between them, the three billionaires account for over $40 million in pro-Trump political money. In the 2016 cycle, the three were also the source of 44% of individual contributions to the CLF and 47% of those received by the SLF, the biggest spending campaign finance vehicles for House and Senate Republicans.

Trump and the GOP are deeply indebted to anti-Iran deal billionaires who aren’t afraid to advocate for policies that push the country closer to another war in the Middle East.



We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable. Alexander Solzhenitsyn

How is it conceivable that all our technological progress - our very civilization - is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal? Albert Einstein

TerryM

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #784 on: May 10, 2018, 01:01:03 AM »
Speaking of another war in the Middle East

Missiles were/are flying in both directions around the borders of the occupied Golan Heights.

https://www.rt.com/news/426300-israel-syria-golan-shelling/

Adleson should be proud.
Terry

Niall Dollard

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #785 on: May 10, 2018, 01:21:04 AM »
And MSM are peddling this as being Iran responding to Israeli strikes (instead of Syrian Army).

How convenient. Must always get it to fit the narrative.


TerryM

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #786 on: May 10, 2018, 01:37:15 AM »
Why is Israel on the side of the head choppers that eat human hearts on TV?
Last I heard of was another missile attack on Damascus, and Israeli fighter planes over Lebanon.


You don't get to claim self defense after landing the first blow.

Terry

Martin Gisser

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #787 on: May 10, 2018, 01:53:01 AM »
Linking to Breitbart and RT. You guys are seriously nuts.

TerryM

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #788 on: May 10, 2018, 02:13:01 AM »
For those that just can't pull themselves away


https://syria.liveuamap.com/en/2018/9-may-prosyrian-government-news-outlet-almayadeen-reporting

Livemap gave accurate information during the Ukrainian civil war & may do the same for this dust up. Hover over an icon for information, click to get a link to the source.

Terry
« Last Edit: May 10, 2018, 02:47:50 AM by TerryM »

TerryM

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #789 on: May 10, 2018, 02:51:20 AM »
For those that just can't pull themselves away

https://syria.liveuamap.com/en/2018/9-may-prosyrian-government-news-outlet-almayadeen-reporting

Livemap gave accurate information during the Ukrainian civil war & may do the same for this dust up. Hover over an icon for information, click to get a link to the source.
Terry

This is a repeat of a post that I screwed up earlier - My bad

sidd

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #790 on: May 10, 2018, 05:49:11 AM »
--

The war isn't over 'til I say it's over. This is my picture

And if there ain't no war, then you, my friend, can go home and prematurely take up golf. Because there ain't no war but ours.

this is just, "Act One, The War". Now we really do need an Act Two.

--

Everyone needs to watch "Wag the Dog"


In other news:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/iranian-forces-fire-rockets-at-israeli-military-in-first-direct-attack-ever-israeli-army-says/2018/05/09/62e3a526-52f7-11e8-a6d4-ca1d035642ce_story.html

sidd


etienne

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #791 on: May 10, 2018, 07:09:58 AM »
People can't be held responsible for the actions of governments, even though governments need to somehow be held responsible for their own actions.

Well, here we have a major issue that has followed us since the beginning of humanity. It's not the taxi driver that decided to have a internal combustion engine on his car, but he will suffer more of climate change than the people who could decide to phase out faster the combustion engines.

A few years ago, I read parts of the Bible because I was curious to see what’s in it. It was too boring to read it completely, but there were some interesting ideas. One of them is that people would get punished for the sins of their kings. I believe that this is true. If you let corruption, bad management… happen in your country, you’ll suffer of it even if you are not involved. This is why I believe that changing ourselves, reducing our carbon footprint... is not enough, we also need to make sure that governments and companies do something on a global level. Walking the walk is very important, but more to be an example and to show what it is possible than to reduce our personal carbon footprint.

I had a good translation of the Bible https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traduction_%C5%93cum%C3%A9nique_de_la_Bible, they had for example a comment about the golden veal in the genesis that Hebrew certainly created something like a Minotaurs, but that the book only kept the idea of a veal to make fun of the people who did it. So I created a Kallef Duty T-shirt (Kallef measn veal in Luxembourgish) to make fun of the way kids pronounce the name of a famous computer war game over here. https://schrondweiler.teemill.com/product/kallef-duty/ . The joke is to ask a boy if he wants a kallef duty t-shirt, he always says yes, then to show him an image of the t-shirt.
« Last Edit: May 10, 2018, 07:15:02 AM by etienne »

Pmt111500

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #792 on: May 10, 2018, 08:26:54 AM »
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/trump-white-house-quietly-cancels-nasa-research-verifying-greenhouse-gas-cuts

We Europeans need to set import tax to US products according the CO2 measured on ESA satellites. These guys aren't playing ball don't care of the posterity and are damaging the earth.

sidd

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #793 on: May 10, 2018, 08:34:20 AM »
" I read parts of the Bible because I was curious to see what’s in it. It was too boring to read it completely, but there were some interesting ideas. "

I read the bible often (in english, King James version)  just for the language. The rendering of Ecclesiastes is marvellous, but so are many, many other passages.

To tie it back to this thread, i can think of many ways that the bible ties into american empire. Not of course, that it can be blamed for the sins of its purported followers any more than the Koran.


sidd

sidd

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #794 on: May 10, 2018, 09:57:38 PM »
Empire's hold weakens:

“It is no longer such that the United States simply protects us, but Europe must take its destiny in its own hands. That's the task of the future,"

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/387067-merkel-europe-cant-count-on-us-to-protect-us-anymore

sidd

etienne

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #795 on: May 10, 2018, 10:59:45 PM »
Too bad there is a Brexit and some right wings governments. If European can't be united, it will be difficult to take its destiny in its own hands.
We'll see if there is a link between good business and military protection.

TerryM

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #796 on: May 11, 2018, 12:07:23 AM »
Too bad there is a Brexit and some right wings governments. If European can't be united, it will be difficult to take its destiny in its own hands.
We'll see if there is a link between good business and military protection.
From whom does Europe need protection?


The US is always a threat, but supposedly is an ally.
Saudi seems content to murder their immediate neighbors.
Russia and China don't seem concerned with much beyond their own borders and terrorism.
Turkey hasn't been in the face of the Ottoman Empire for a very long time.


Europe's strength is in diplomacy, a much more rational scheme than constant, unwinnable arms races.
Terry

ivica

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #797 on: May 11, 2018, 12:25:31 AM »
Too bad there is a Brexit and some right wings governments. If European can't be united, it will be difficult to take its destiny in its own hands.
We'll see if there is a link between good business and military protection.
From whom does Europe need protection?


The US is always a threat, but supposedly is an ally.
Saudi seems content to murder their immediate neighbors.
Russia and China don't seem concerned with much beyond their own borders and terrorism.
Turkey hasn't been in the face of the Ottoman Empire for a very long time.


Europe's strength is in diplomacy, a much more rational scheme than constant, unwinnable arms races.
Terry

Ramen!
--ivica

Btw: I like the view on EU offered by Kishore Mahbubani in his talk during recent visit.
« Last Edit: May 11, 2018, 12:33:23 AM by ivica »

ivica

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #798 on: May 11, 2018, 02:17:18 AM »
At 31:11 of , Published on Apr 14, 2018:

"... Bill Clinton, and I quote him in the book, he says:
"If America assumes is going to be number one forever then just keep doing what you're doing, doesn't matter ...
but if you can conceive of a world where you are no longer number one then it's in Americas national interest those strengthen multilateral rules, multilateral procedures, multilateral institutions."

He gave this advice in 2003 in a speech in Yale, 15 years ago. No one has ever repeated that advice."

More:
Kishore Mahbubani at Yale - Monday, February 11, 2013: https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/us-ready-be-number-two

"Sadly, few Americans have heeded Clinton’s wisdom. Few dare to mention that America could well be number two. I discovered this when I chaired a panel on “the future of American power” at the 2012 World Economic Forum in Davos. "

etienne

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Re: Empire - America and the future
« Reply #799 on: May 11, 2018, 07:27:15 AM »
From whom does Europe need protection?


The US is always a threat, but supposedly is an ally.
Saudi seems content to murder their immediate neighbors.
Russia and China don't seem concerned with much beyond their own borders and terrorism.
Turkey hasn't been in the face of the Ottoman Empire for a very long time.


Europe's strength is in diplomacy, a much more rational scheme than constant, unwinnable arms races.
Terry

Well, during the 20th century, Switzerland was a neutral power. but they had a quite strong army compared to the size of the country. They had no offencive plans, security was mainly a diplomatic thing, there were many agreements with the Nazis, maybe this is a way to go for Europe. I'll look the Kishore Mahbubani interview posted by Ivica, looks interesting. I guess it is more complicated if you are like Japan or Korea, but they probably don't have the immigration issue like Europe and the US do.