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Thread: Have a Nice World War, Folks

  1. #1
    Banned Melonie's Avatar
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    Default Have a Nice World War, Folks

    (snip)"Here is news of the Third World War. The United States has invaded Africa. US troops have entered Somalia, extending their war front from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen and now the Horn of Africa. In preparation for an attack on Iran, American missiles have been placed in four Persian Gulf states, and "bunker-buster" bombs are said to be arriving at the US base on the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

    In Gaza, the sick and abandoned population, mostly children, is being entombed behind underground American-supplied walls in order to reinforce a criminal siege. In Latin America, the Obama administration has secured seven bases in Colombia, from which to wage a war of attrition against the popular democracies in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay. Meanwhile, the secretary of "defense" Robert Gates complains that "the general [European] public and the political class" are so opposed to war they are an "impediment" to peace. Remember this is the month of the March Hare.

    According to an American general, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is not so much a real war as a "war of perception." Thus, the recent "liberation of the city of Marja" from the Taliban’s "command and control structure" was pure Hollywood. Marja is not a city; there was no Taliban command and control. The heroic liberators killed the usual civilians, poorest of the poor. Otherwise, it was fake. A war of perception is meant to provide fake news for the folks back home, to make a failed colonial adventure seem worthwhile and patriotic, as if The Hurt Locker were real and parades of flag-wrapped coffins through the Wiltshire town of Wooten Basset were not a cynical propaganda exercise.

    "War is fun," the helmets in Vietnam used to say with bleakest irony, meaning that if a war is revealed as having no purpose other than to justify voracious power in the cause of lucrative fanaticisms such as the weapons industry, the danger of truth beckons. This danger can be illustrated by the liberal perception of Tony Blair in 1997 as one "who wants to create a world [where] ideology has surrendered entirely to values" (Hugo Young, the Guardian) compared with today’s public reckoning of a liar and war criminal.

    Western war-states such as the US and Britain are not threatened by the Taliban or any other introverted tribesmen in faraway places, but by the antiwar instincts of their own citizens. Consider the draconian sentences handed down in London to scores of young people who protested Israel’s assault on Gaza in January last year. Following demonstrations in which paramilitary police "kettled" (corralled) thousands, first-offenders have received two and a half years in prison for minor offenses that would not normally carry custodial sentences. On both sides of the Atlantic, serious dissent exposing illegal war has become a serious crime.

    Silence in other high places allows this moral travesty. Across the arts, literature, journalism and the law, liberal elites, having hurried away from the debris of Blair and now Obama, continue to fudge their indifference to the barbarism and aims of western state crimes by promoting retrospectively the evils of their convenient demons, like Saddam Hussein. With Harold Pinter gone, try compiling a list of famous writers, artists and advocates whose principles are not consumed by the "market" or neutered by their celebrity. Who among them have spoken out about the holocaust in Iraq during almost 20 years of lethal blockade and assault? And all of it has been deliberate. On 22 January 1991, the US Defense Intelligence Agency predicted in impressive detail how a blockade would systematically destroy Iraq’s clean water system and lead to "increased incidences, if not epidemics of disease." So the US set about eliminating clean water for the Iraqi population: one of the causes, noted UNICEF, of the deaths of half a million Iraqi infants under the age of five. But this extremism apparently has no name.

    Norman Mailer once said he believed the United States, in its endless pursuit of war and domination, had entered a "pre-fascist era." Mailer seemed tentative, as if trying to warn about something even he could not quite define. "Fascism" is not right, for it invokes lazy historical precedents, conjuring yet again the iconography of German and Italian repression. On the other hand, American authoritarianism, as the cultural critic Henry Giroux pointed out recently, is "more nuance, less theatrical, more cunning, less concerned with repressive modes of control than with manipulative modes of consent."

    This is Americanism, the only predatory ideology to deny that it is an ideology. The rise of tentacular corporations that are dictatorships in their own right and of a military that is now a state within the state, set behind the façade of the best democracy 35,000 Washington lobbyists can buy, and a popular culture programmed to divert and stultify, is without precedent. More nuanced perhaps, but the results are both unambiguous and familiar. Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, the senior United Nations officials in Iraq during the American and British-led blockade, are in no doubt they witnessed genocide. They saw no gas chambers. Insidious, undeclared, even presented wittily as enlightenment on the march, the Third World War and its genocide proceeded, human being by human being.

    In the coming election campaign in Britain, the candidates will refer to this war only to laud "our boys." The candidates are almost identical political mummies shrouded in the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes. As Blair demonstrated a mite too eagerly, the British elite loves America because America allows it to barrack and bomb the natives and call itself a "partner." We should interrupt their fun."(snip)

    from

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    Veteran Member Citychick's Avatar
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    Default Re: Have a Nice World War, Folks

    This whole article is disturbing but not unexpected.

    The final statement on the candidates in the forthcoming election is correct and a fact that has been acknowledge by the British public and media for the past year or more.
    Unfortunately people feel that there is no option left, and this attitude is what led the BNP to their seats in European Parliment.
    When a blatantly facist party which comprises of Nazi sympathisers rises up from the ridiculous....well there is clearly something very wrong in our countries political waters.

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    God/dess Deogol's Avatar
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    Default Re: Have a Nice World War, Folks

    Shit, there is a war brewing here in the states if this unemployment/underemployment shit doesn't get fixed.

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    God/dess threlayer's Avatar
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    Default Re: Have a Nice World War, Folks

    Hey! Here's an idea....

    Why not go looking for doomsday, impending apocalyse, cockamamie articles and post them here for everyone to read?

    We could have a lot of fun seeing if we can believe anything in those articles.
    I loved going to strip clubs; I actually made some friends there. Now things are different for the clubs and for me. As a result I am not as happy.

    Customers are not entitled to grope, disrespect, or rob strippers. This is their job, not their hobby, and they all need income. Clubs are not just some erotic show for guys to view while drinking.

    NOTE: anything I post here, outside of a direct quote, is my opinion only, which I am entitled to. Take it for what you estimate it is worth.

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    God/dess kitana's Avatar
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    Default Re: Have a Nice World War, Folks

    Quote Originally Posted by threlayer View Post
    Hey! Here's an idea....

    Why not go looking for doomsday, impending apocalyse, cockamamie articles and post them here for everyone to read?

    We could have a lot of fun seeing if we can believe anything in those articles.

    Note, this was said to me tonight by a aging stoned hippy.

    2012's gotta be real man, just look at how many earthquakes we have had this year, and it's only Feb! (yes, he said Feb, not April, lol!)

    (he then started rambling about aliens, and war maaaan, and Mayans, and some stuff I'm not sure, and the like, lol!)

    But it got me thinking, there have been a few bizarre locations where they have happened this year, IMO. So I had to go check it out. This is what I found.

    http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquak...ar/eqstats.php
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
    Quote Originally Posted by ExoticEngineer View Post
    Feel like a damn salt lick at the goats petting zoo!
    <08SM>

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    Banned Melonie's Avatar
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    Default Re: Have a Nice World War, Folks

    ^^^ perhaps, but for the most part, 'natural' events are beyond human control. Human events are obviously a different story !

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    God/dess kitana's Avatar
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    Default Re: Have a Nice World War, Folks

    Quote Originally Posted by Melonie View Post
    ^^^ perhaps, but for the most part, 'natural' events are beyond human control. Human events are obviously a different story !

    That's true Mel, but I do have this off the wall "conspiracy theory", that the Hedron Collider is actually causing these micro holes and that those holes are causing instability in the crust and core, thus resulting in more "natural disasters".

    IMO, it's a self fulfilling prophecy. Everyone knows about "Dec 21, 2012"; so my theory is that we are actually causing ourselves to set in motion; either consciously or subconsciously.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
    Quote Originally Posted by ExoticEngineer View Post
    Feel like a damn salt lick at the goats petting zoo!
    <08SM>

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    Default Re: Have a Nice World War, Folks

    Quote Originally Posted by Melonie View Post
    ^^^ perhaps, but for the most part, 'natural' events are beyond human control. Human events are obviously a different story !
    Agreed, I don't see how the other 'examples' you guys are listing here are related...?

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    Default Re: Have a Nice World War, Folks

    Quote Originally Posted by kitana View Post
    Note, this was said to me tonight by a aging stoned hippy.

    2012's gotta be real man, just look at how many earthquakes we have had this year, and it's only Feb! (yes, he said Feb, not April, lol!)

    (he then started rambling about aliens, and war maaaan, and Mayans, and some stuff I'm not sure, and the like, lol!)

    But it got me thinking, there have been a few bizarre locations where they have happened this year, IMO. So I had to go check it out. This is what I found.

    http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquak...ar/eqstats.php
    Its confirmation bias. One story hits big (haiti earthquake) so the media starts blowing every other similar story way out of proportion. It happened here in Florida several years ago when the media went nuts about shark attacks reporting every little incident that happened every day until one news channel actually put an expert on TV and asked him why there had been so many attacks lately, his answer? "actually this is the lowest year for attacks in the last two decades". The interviewer just sat there dumbfounded.

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    Banned Melonie's Avatar
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    Default Re: Have a Nice World War, Folks

    I worry much more about 'human' events like these ...

    (snip)" After laying hands on the record-breaking 61.5 mph speedboat, built for a British sporting adventurer, the Iranian navy plans to arm it with the reputedly fastest torpedo in the world, the Russian-designed Shkval (Squall), which moves at speeds of 360 kph. debkafile's military sources report Tehran is aiming for a seaborne weapon able to sink a US carrier in the Persian Gulf.
    Blogs tracking the international weapons trade and the Financial Times reported Monday, April 5, that after purchasing the Bladerunner 51 powerboat from a Florida boatyard in 2005, the British sailor Neil McGrigor smashed the Italian-held record for the fastest circumnavigation of Britain in 27 hours 10 minutes.

    Advertised for sale next year, the British government blocked it its purchase by Iran, which finally managed to purchase it under cover through South African agents in the face of an international embargo.
    In Jan 2009, US special forces stood ready to intercept the Iranian merchant vessel carrying it to the Revolutionary Guards headquarters in Bandar Abbas, but the operation was called off for some unknown reason.

    The deputy commander of the IRGC, Gen. Ali Fadavi has boasted that no warship can escape from the Shkval torpedo whose speed makes it almost impossible for radar to pick up. This claim has not been tested, but the US Persian Gulf naval command is concerned that the Iranians are outfitting the former Bladerunner 51 to lead the Guards navy's fleet of fast boats in attacks on the big American warships and aircraft carriers deployed in these waters. "(snip)

    from ... or even more worrisome ...

    (snip)" Five people suffering serious burns were hospitalized in West New Delhi this week from contact with radioactive material in a Delhi scrap market identified as Cobalt-60 which may be used for making a dirty bomb. Indian police cordoned off the 200 market stores and sealed nearby establishments up to a one-kilometer radius. Scrap dealer Deepak Jain and his helpers lost consciousness when they cut a piece of scrap metal. A white fluid oozed out causing the burns, Jain's hair fell out and within minutes his skin turned black. His workers suffered and nausea.
    All five are battling for their lives in hospital, setting off a security scare in the Indian capital, with prime minister Manmohan Singh briefed on the incident before leaving for Washington to attend the nuclear security summit which opened Monday, April 12.
    Nuclear scientists from the Baba Atomic Research Center and Narora Atomic Power Plant identified the material and are working around the clock to investigate its source.

    debkafile's sources report that German chancellor Angela Merkel has asked to talk with Obama about the dirty bomb terrorist threat when they meet Tuesday.

    Cobalt-60 is used in radiotherapy for treating cancer and welding steel. A US report last year recommended monitoring this material along with Caesium-137, Strontium-90 and Plutonium to effectively counter nuclear terrorism. Unlike a nuclear bomb, a dirty bomb does not involve nuclear fission and can be used like a conventional weapon.

    Ahead of the Washington conference, US president Barack Obama called nuclear terror "the single biggest threat to US security, short term, medium and long-term."

    The day before the conference, the Indian prime minister met Obama and tackled him about Pakistan's inaction against Muslim terrorists and exhorted him to jointly combat terror emanating from Pakistan as the most dangerous source of potential nuclear terror. According to debkafile's military and intelligence sources, the Indian and US leaders failed to agree on whether Pakistan's nuclear arsenal was sufficiently secure. Indian leaders as well as their military and intelligence advisers have repeatedly warned Washington that al Qaeda and Taliban were moving in on Pakistan's nuclear facilities through their deep penetration of Pakistan's intelligence service and may soon be in position to take over."(snip)

  13. #11
    God/dess threlayer's Avatar
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    Default Re: Have a Nice World War, Folks

    FWIW :

    Debka. com is a reactionary (ultra-conservative, anti-Muslim) opinion/news machine out of Israel. (Ironically the name "Debka" refers to a widely popular folk dance in the Arab world. It would be like an opposite news force named Klezmer or Maazeltov in the Arab world.) BTW....Israel will not even tell the truth about whether they have the 'bomb' (they most certainly do). I'd bet they have hundreds of US-funded lobbyists trying to stop the IAEA from initiating a well-deserved investigation of Israel's nuclear capabilities, as IAEA has tried to maintain knowledge of every other nuclear power. (Or nukular in the Bush/Palin vernacular.)

    That being said... If Iran clearly shows the least bit of military aggression against the US, there will be little domestic resistance in applying overwhelming military force against Iran's capabilities, but not its populace. The problem with nuclear materials is not limited to sloppy controls in Pakistan, nor is Pakistan's sloppiness limited to nuclear materials. Associated with the Paki idea, when Pakistan's chief nuclear scierntist (Khan, a hero at home) admitted that he gave the North Koreans the secrets of the nuclear bomb during the Bush (43rd) administration, there was nary a single word about punishment either to Khan (the scientist) or Pakistan for allowing that to happen.

    Basically if these are legitimate claims (re Debka, Pakistan), there also many more things happening around the world. Obama's chief international concern is nuclear proliferation, as opposed to Bush's concern of spreading democracy, is infinitely more on the mark than was his predecessor's. Praise be that Bush's nightmarish eight years are up.
    Last edited by threlayer; 04-20-2010 at 10:19 AM.
    I loved going to strip clubs; I actually made some friends there. Now things are different for the clubs and for me. As a result I am not as happy.

    Customers are not entitled to grope, disrespect, or rob strippers. This is their job, not their hobby, and they all need income. Clubs are not just some erotic show for guys to view while drinking.

    NOTE: anything I post here, outside of a direct quote, is my opinion only, which I am entitled to. Take it for what you estimate it is worth.

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