Meet the U.S.

[Anonymouse]

Oh and for the record I'm not 'making a difference' I'm just saying it how it is and pissing off those 'patriotic' idiots.

 

I guess that is tantamount to making a difference.

[Armen]

America in the world: A nation's narcissism

 

By H.D.S. Greenway IHT

Tuesday, February 3, 2004

 

America in the world

 

DAVOS, Switzerland The corporate captains and the kings, prime ministers and Nobel prize-winners have departed. The armed helicopters assigned to provide security during the World Economic Forum no longer kick up clouds of snow in this alpine town.

 

The forum, with its unrivaled convening powers, is always a good place to find what ails the world, and the conventional wisdom is that the hostility that divided many Europeans from Americans in the run-up to the Iraq war a year ago was less in evidence this year.

 

Yes, the tension was less palpable at this year's forum. Europeans realize that what was done in Iraq is done and that it is now in everybody's best interest to put that bitter divide behind them. But the wounds have not healed.

 

There is still dismay over the American tendency toward unilateral action. There is dismay, too, over the inability of the United States to deliver security in Iraq, and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction has given credence to the strong doubts about American wisdom and even veracity.

 

If Europeans realize that American primacy is something they have to live with, the reality of Iraq is forcing the Bush administration to climb down from its disdain of the United Nations and international cooperation. Thus, sending the administration's archduke of anti-United Nations sentiment, Vice President Dick Cheney, into the lions' den of Davos was a bold move. He put his best foot forward, but little in his speech to the forum convinced doubters that the Bush administration's doctrine of pre-emptive force would end anytime soon, even as the Bush administration begged for UN help with Iraqi elections.

 

Nor did Cheney leave much hope that America was going to step up its efforts to secure a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Censure was reserved for the Palestinians in the vice president's rhetoric. When a questioner mentioned the ideas of Shimon Peres, Cheney rapped the questioner's knuckles by saying: "Mr. Sharon is the one we pay attention to at present."

 

In much of the world beyond Europe, anti-Americanism is growing at an alarming and corrosive rate. President George W. Bush seemed genuinely shocked when he heard this from moderate Muslim leaders in Bali last October. In visits to four Muslim countries last year I came away equally shocked at how the high regard in which the United States was once held is slipping away, even among those who are still our friends. Whether it be Cairo's council on foreign relations or Pakistan's Foreign Ministry, the distrust of the United States is noticeably high.

 

Among those not predisposed to admire the United States, even America's good motives are misunderstood in the general climate of mistrust. Last month in Lahore, Pakistan, at a two-day meeting of Muslim clerics to celebrate the centenary of Maulana Maududi, the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami, speaker after speaker spoke of a Muslim world under attack and siege, saying that Bush's call for democracy was a cover for imperialistic designs to undermine Islam and spread Western culture.

 

Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, who is in a life-and-death struggle with Islamic extremists in his own country, told the forum last week that "there is a deep feeling of injustice, abandonment, hopelessness, powerlessness and a sense of deprivation" in the Muslim world. "The fallout of this has been resignation and desperation."

 

In the opinion of many experts at Davos this year, the United States had not successfully addressed the root causes of terrorism: It has concentrated its efforts on military solutions, which run the risk of recruiting ever more terrorists.

 

Even among America's friends there is something about the trumpeting of American exceptionalism, especially when wedded to what seems to many to be a desire to make the world over in America's image, that is profoundly offputting. It was during a panel on narcissism at the World Economic Forum last week that a Yale University assistant clinical professor of psychiatry, Dr. Bandy Xenobia Lee, quoted the standard medical description of narcissistic personality disorder from the Diagnostic Statistical Manual. A sufferer of this disorder is defined as someone who:

 

Has a "grandiose sense of self importance, e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements."

 

"Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance."

 

"Requires excessive admiration."

 

"Has a sense of entitlement, i.e. unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations."

 

"Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes."

 

In light of current events, Lee thought the diagnosis might at times be applicable to nations as well as individuals.

 

H.D.S. Greenway's column appears regularly in The Boston Globe.

[Sasun]

All that and much in this thread said - the good thing about the U.S. is that it can fix its problems internally. That is, problems are noticed and dealt with by its own citizens and leaders rather than forced to solve them in the face of external danger. There is a significant capacity (immunity if you wish) to diagnose corruption and cure it (more less on time, with more less success). This is in contrast to other empires where corruption only developed deeper and deeper and caused decay and eventual collapse.

Just wanted to make this quick note in praise of America...

[gevo27]

All that and much in this thread said - the good thing about the U.S. is that it can fix its problems internally. That is, problems are noticed and dealt with by its own citizens and leaders rather than forced to solve them in the face of external danger. There is a significant capacity (immunity if you wish) to diagnose corruption and cure it (more less on time, with more less success). This is in contrast to other empires where corruption only developed deeper and deeper and caused decay and eventual collapse.

Just wanted to nake this quick note in praise of America...

Ayo Sasun jan, very true..

 

Mafia checka , well maybe a little but the influence can always be overcome

[Anonymouse]

All that and much in this thread said - the good thing about the U.S. is that it can fix its problems internally. That is, problems are noticed and dealt with by its own citizens and leaders rather than forced to solve them in the face of external danger. There is a significant capacity (immunity if you wish) to diagnose corruption and cure it (more less on time, with more less success). This is in contrast to other empires where corruption only developed deeper and deeper and caused decay and eventual collapse.

Just wanted to nake this quick note in praise of America...

If you only knew how deep the corruption in this country is.

 

And on a side note, why do we "vote" for "leaders"? I am curious. So do we indirectly admit that some people are leaders over our lives and we cannot rule ourselves?

[THOTH]

http://www.theonion.com/4005/infograph.html

[Stormig]

Basically I hate people who laud and applaud the current American imperialistic behavior. Yep, who cares about the rest of the world and their lives, we are "American", or so the Romans thought about 2000 years ago, the other empire when Christianity ushered in and now 2000 years later we have another similar empire whoch morphed from a republic to an empire, a "democracy".

Age of mind-control or what?

[Sasun]

If you only knew how deep the corruption in this country is.

I will retract from my opinion if Bush gets re-elected.

[Anonymouse]

I will retract from my opinion if Bush gets re-elected.

It will be down to Bush and Kerry, and both are members of the Skull and Bones. How much different is it?

 

Well, Bush has republican governors and republican majority in most of the country, hell, the whole california recall was a desperate attempt to secure this position, as well as the soon to come electronic voting scam.

[Sasun]

It will be down to Bush and Kerry, and both are members of the Skull and Bones. How much different is it?

Well, I don't see any link between the Skull and Bones club and the U.S. politics

[Anonymouse]

Part 1 - Starting with a solid base

By David Isenberg

 

Somewhere on the Yale University campus, Paul Michael Kennedy must be smiling. Remember Paul Kennedy? Back in 1987 the then relatively unknown history professor published the book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, and almost instantaneously introduced the expression "imperial overstretch" into popular discourse. Although it did not take long for right-wing commentators to attack him, saying that it was the Soviet, not the US empire that had overstretched, his basic point remains the same.

 

As he wrote 10 years later in Atlantic Magazine: "The United States now runs the risk, so familiar to historians of the rise and fall of Great Powers, of what might be called 'imperial overstretch': that is to say, decision-makers in Washington must face the awkward and enduring fact that the total of the United States's global interests and obligations is nowadays far too large for the country to be able to defend them all simultaneously."

 

Well, now talk of empire is back in vogue since the war in Iraq has focused the attention of the American public, normally caught up in the soma of reality television, to an unusual degree on the burdens and costs of empire.

 

But while empire in all its imperial, multicolored, geopolitical hues may be an alluring sight, there is one thing to keep in mind. The process of creating and maintaining an empire, like making sausage or passing congressional legislation, is not a pretty process. In fact, it is costly, very costly, in terms of lives, money and liberty. It requires a large military establishment, which can consume a substantial, if not disproportionate amount of the national treasury. And it requires stationing and deploying forces around the world.

 

A base for every need

It is not easy being a global military power. It takes a lot of behind the scenes work to allow the F-15s and F-16s to fly over Iraq airspace, for the soldiers and Marines to deploy to Japan and South Korea, and to get the M-1 tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles and a myriad of other military equipment to the far-flung corners of the empire. Despite the rush to outsource federal programs, this is not yet a job that the Pentagon is willing to entrust to Federal Express or DHL.

 

Even in the 21st century, with jet and space travel, the world is a large place. The division of the world into military fiefdoms, or what US military planners euphemistically call the Unified Command Plan, requires something very old-fashioned: a network of overseas military bases.

 

True, the contours of the network change, waxing and waning over time. Many overseas US military bases overseas have closed since the end of the Cold War, and the number of US troops permanently stationed overseas has dropped by more than 250,000 since the Berlin Wall fell. But preparations to deploy American legions remain a primary Pentagon concern.

 

In fact, a number of individuals who now are part of the Bush administration (including Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld) produced in the fall of 2000 a 90-page blueprint for transforming the US military and the nation's global role. The report, "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces, and Resources for a New Century" released by the Project for the New American Century, argued that the US should not only attain and maintain military dominance, but should also project it with a worldwide network of forward operating bases over and above the country's already extensive overseas deployments.

 

That is why the Pentagon plans to dramatically change the shape of US military basing abroad. Unlike the Cold War era with its large permanent garrisons - like the over 200,000 troops that were kept in Germany - the fashion nowadays is for more temporary forward deployments to Spartan bases. While such plans were in the works before President George W Bush took office, September 11, 2001, did much to accelerate them. The goal is to create a web of far-flung, lean, forward-operating bases, maintained in peacetime only by small permanent support units, with fighting forces deployed from the US when necessary. To that end, a large reduction of the traditional US military presence in Europe is necessary.

 

The Pentagon is quite open and candid about it. In a speech last December 3, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith said: "President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld likewise are thinking about the relatively distant future. In developing plans to realign our forces abroad they're not focused on the diplomatic issues of the moment but on the strategic requirements and opportunities of the coming decades. Let's be clear about what we are and what we're not aiming to achieve through transforming our global defense posture.

 

"We are not aiming at retrenching it, curtailing US commitments, isolationism or unilateralism. On the contrary, our realignment plans are motivated by appreciation of the strategic value of defense alliances and partnerships with other states. We are aiming to increase our ability to fulfill our international commitments more effectively. We're aiming to ensure that our alliances are capable, affordable, sustainable and relevant in the future. We're not focused narrowly on force levels that are addressing force capabilities. We are not talking about fighting in place but moving to the fight. We are not talking only about basing, we're talking about the ability to move forces when and where needed.

 

"In transforming the US global defense posture we want to make our forces more responsive, given the world's many strategic uncertainties. We want to benefit as much as possible from the strategic pre-positioning of equipment and support. We want to make better use of our capabilities by thinking of our forces globally rather than as simply regional assets. We want to be able to bring more combat capabilities to bear in less time that is, we want to have the ability to surge our forces to crisis spots from wherever those forces might be."

 

Feith reiterated the point during a speech a week later in Romania. He said: "What we are interested in doing as we realign our global posture is taking advantage of the opportunity, with a much lighter footprint, to have the kinds of capabilities around the world that will allow us to react quickly with easily deployed forces, with lighter forces, to provide security and shore up our commitments around the world."

 

Last year saw the removal of some US troops from Germany and the establishment of new bases in, as Rumsfeld phrased it, "New Europe", the new North Atlantic Treaty Organization members Romania and Bulgaria.

 

Also it was reported that the 1st Armored Division, half the US Army's Europe combat force, traditionally based in Europe, would not return to its German bases. During the invasion of Iraq, air bases opened up for US use in Bulgaria's Sarajevo airfield, where refueling aircraft were based; the Bulgarian port of Burgas, the Romanian port Constanta and the Romanian military airfield of Mihail Kogalniceanu.

 

US military plans also include huge ex-Warsaw Pact training ranges and other bases in Poland and Hungary. Thousands of American and British troops have been conducting exercises on the Drawsko Pomorskiy and Wedrzyn training areas since 1996, taking advantage of the lack of restrictions compared to Germany. Use of the Krzesiny airbase outside Poznan, Poland, is also anticipated. In January Poland's Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski announced that Poland had launched negotiations with Washington on hosting US military bases on its territory.

 

The Taszar airbase in Hungary is also a possible candidate for an increased US presence, as it has supported US operations in the region since the US entry into Bosnia in 1995.

 

During his recent Asian tour, General Richard Meyers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the US is likely to use the joint military training facility it is seeking to establish in northern Australia to pre-position equipment and material.

 

The Air Force wants to return to the Cold War-era practice of basing fighter jets and other strike and support planes on Guam, the Pacific island that is in ready striking distance of the Korean peninsula, according to General William J Begert, commander of Pacific Air Forces.

 

An empire that spans the world

Despite this restructuring, the US military empire is still staggeringly large. The global "footprint" as it is called, conjuring up interesting images of just who and what the US treads on, spans the world.

 

Currently Pentagon officials are in the final throes of crafting an updated National Military Strategy that is expected to acknowledge a need to redistribute US forces and revamp their chains of command throughout the globe. "Global sourcing", a term used to describe the distribution of US forces across the Earth, is also an issue to be addressed in the new national military strategy. The new posture is expected to carry with it a new lingo for bases, including "power projection hubs", main operating bases and more flexible and agile "forward operating sites".

 

Under the plan, US troops, rather than inhabiting a small number of large garrisons, would rotate through dozens of small bases throughout the world on exercises, staying for only a few weeks or months at a time. Those bases could serve as launching points for military strikes to protect US interests or quickly strike out at terrorists.

 

Part of this redistribution is what author Chalmers Johnson calls "Baseworld". Johnson writes: "It's not easy to assess the size or exact value of our empire of bases. Official records on these subjects are misleading, although instructive. According to the Defense Department's annual 'Base Structure Report' for fiscal year 2003, which itemizes foreign and domestic US military real estate, the Pentagon currently owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries and has another 6,000 bases in the US and its territories. Pentagon bureaucrats calculate that it would require at least [uS]$113.2 billion to replace just the foreign bases - surely far too low a figure, but still larger than the gross domestic product of most countries - and an estimated $592 billion to replace all of them. The military high command deploys to its overseas bases some 253,288 uniformed personnel, plus an equal number of dependents and Department of Defense civilian officials, and employs an additional 44,446 locally hired foreigners. The Pentagon claims that these bases contain 44,870 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and that it leases 4,844 more.

 

"These numbers, although staggeringly large, do not begin to cover all the actual bases that we occupy globally. The 2003 Base Status Report fails to mention, for instance, any garrisons in Kosovo - even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel, built in 1999 and maintained ever since by Kellogg, Brown & Root. The report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar and Uzbekistan, although the US military has established colossal base structures throughout the so-called arc of instability in the two-and-a-half years since September 11."

 

Nor does it include new facilities being built. In Iraq engineers from the 1st Armored Division are midway through a $800 million project to build half a dozen camps for the incoming 1st Cavalry Division. The new outposts, dubbed enduring camps, will improve living quarters for soldiers and allow the military to return key infrastructure sites within the Iraqi capital to the emerging government. According to GlobalSecurity.org these include such places as Camps Anaconda, Dogwood and Falcon, just to name a few.

 

The largest of the new camps, Camp Victory North, will be twice the size of Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo - currently one of the largest overseas posts built since the Vietnam War.

 

Also bear in mind that the deployment of military forces abroad means negotiating complicated legal arrangements, euphemistically called Status of Forces agreements, so that US forces remain largely immune from host country laws. The United States has yet to begin serious negotiations with Iraqis on an agreement to guarantee that American troops in Iraq will remain immune from arrest and prosecution by local authorities once a new Baghdad government takes over in June.

 

This was a way of life for 19th century imperialists, who, for example, carved out little extraterritorial enclaves all along the coast of China. This was certainly the case of the collapsed empire of the Soviet Union, whose military men led privileged lives elsewhere in the communist bloc. This is the peacetime way of life of the US military, whose forces abroad are largely shielded from local judgments. Increasingly, if the Bush administration has its way (thanks to bilateral agreements forced on other nations), American soldiers in wartime will be responsible to no other body, certainly not to the new International Criminal Court, for crimes of war or crimes against humanity.

 

David Isenberg, a senior analyst with the Washington-based British American Security Information Council (BASIC), has a wide background in arms control and national security issues.

 

 

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FB13Aa01.html

[Stormig]

From informationclearinghouse.info mail:

 

19 terrorists in 6 weeks have been able to command 300 million North Americans to do away with the entirety of their civil liberties that took 700 years to advance from the Magna Carta onward. The terrorists have already won the political and ideological war with one terrorist act. It is mindboggling that we are that weak as a society: Rocco Galati

 

=

 

The decision to attack the entire nation [of Yugoslavia] has been counterproductive, and our destruction of civilian life has now become senseless and excessively brutal. ... The United States' insistence on the use of cluster bombs, designed to kill or maim humans, is condemned almost universally and brings discredit on our nation (as does our refusal to support a ban on land mines). Even for the world's only superpower, the ends don't always justify the means: Jimmy Carter

[Stormig]

Anyone interested in Haiti? More from ICH

 

 

 

Haiti Erupts: Haiti is burning.

 

In the past week, armed rebels across the country have been literally setting fire to the homes and businesses of supporters of Jean-Bertand Aristide, the nation's first democratically elected President.

http://www.theconnection.org/shows/2004/02...0212_a_main.asp

 

===

 

White House rebukes Haitian government for unrest :

 

With the Haitian government locked in a deadly battle with opponents, the White House on Wednesday issued a rebuke of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's government.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...1619EST0761.DTL

 

===

 

Is the US Funding Haitian "Contras"

 

Otto Reich? Is this the same Otto Reich who once used taxpayer dollars under the Reagan administration, from within his shadowy Office of Public Diplomacy, to cajole the U.S. press into supporting the Contra war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua?

http://www.blackcommentator.com/36/36_guest_commentator.html

 

===

 

Is Washington Backing Another Coup in Haiti?:

 

This week the Bush administration stopped just short of calling on the Aristide to resign. State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher told reporters, "We recognize that reaching a political settlement will require some fairly thorough changes in the way Haiti is governed."

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/12/1552237

 

===

 

HAITI -- REGIME CHANGE: CAUGHT BETWEEN A ROCK & A BUSH a.k.a. Caught between Iraq and Aboush

 

Whilst the US tells the world of its desire to see freedom and democracy in Iraq, it’s busy starving Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere into submission by enforcing a complete embargo on economic aid through its control of the IMF, World Bank and the International Development Fund, unless the Aristide government bows to US pressure to ‘reform’.

http://www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-026.html

[Stormig]

And yet again:

 

Liberty can not be preserved without general knowledge among people. (August 1765) John Adams

[Stormig]

Posted on Mon, Feb. 09, 2004

 

 

Public, classified versions of Iraq intelligence report differed

 

Knight Ridder Newspapers

 

 

 

WASHINGTON - Following are excerpts from the public and classified versions of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons capabilities. The first set of quotes under each topic is from the public version, "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs," which was released by the CIA in October 2002. The second set is from the classified version of the NIE, portions of which were declassified and released by the White House in July 2003.

 

 

---

 

 

WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

 

 

"Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in defiance of UN resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon within this decade." -public version.

 

 

"We judge that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program in defiance of UN resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon within this decade. (See INR alternative view at the end of these Key Judgments.)" -classified version.

 

 

"Iraq hides large portions of Iraq's WMD efforts." -public version.

 

 

"We judge that we are seeing only a portion of Iraq's WMD efforts, owing to Baghdad's vigorous denial and deception efforts. ... We lack specific information on many key aspects of Iraq's WMD programs." -classified version.

 

 

---

 

 

NUCLEAR PROGRAM

 

 

" ... most analysts assess Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program." -public version.

 

 

"The activities we have detected do not, however, add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons. Iraq may be doing so, but INR considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment. Lacking persuasive evidence that Baghdad has launched a coherent effort to reconstitute its nuclear weapons programs, INR is unwilling to ... project a timeline for the completion of activities it does not now see happening." -classified version, "State/INR Alternative View of Iraq's Nuclear Program."

 

 

---

 

 

BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS

 

 

"Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating BW agents and is capable of quickly producing and weaponizing a variety of such agents, including anthrax, for delivery by bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers, and covert operatives, including potentially against the US Homeland." -public version.

 

 

"We judge Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating BW agents and is capable of quickly producing and weaponizing a variety of such agents, including anthrax, for delivery by bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers, and covert operatives.

 

 

"... Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW against the United States, fearing that exposure of Iraqi involvement would provide Washington with a stronger case for making war.

 

 

"Iraq probably would attempt clandestine attacks against the US Homeland if Baghdad feared an attack that threatened the survival of the regime were imminent or unavoidable, or possibly for revenge.

 

 

" ... we have no specific intelligence information that Saddam's regime has directed attacks against US territory."-classified version.

 

 

---

 

 

UNMANNED AIRCRAFT

 

 

"Baghdad's UAVs - especially if used for delivery of chemical and biological warfare (CBW) agents - could threaten Iraq's neighbors, US forces in the Persian Gulf, and the United States if brought close to, or into, the US Homeland." -public version.

 

 

" ... The Director, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, US Air Force, does not agree that Iraq is developing UAVs primarily intended to be delivery platforms for chemical and biological warfare (CBW) agents. The small size of Iraq's new UAV strongly suggests a primary role of reconnaissance, although CBW delivery is an inherent capability." -classified version.

 

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington...ion/7914375.htm

[Anonymouse]

Posted on Mon, Feb. 09, 2004

http://www.angelfire.com/az2/lepconnie/vidcaps/lep2/lep43.JPG

 

"Aye. And they say me films are violent."

[Armat]

Anon, frankly I find your childish pictures and immature comments rather annoying especially where you have absolutely no content and without any merit. Please refrain the urge to be on every thread without having anything worth saying.

If you must visit Disneyland and can not then hold the urge…

[Anonymouse]

Anon, frankly I find your childish pictures and immature comments rather annoying especially where you have absolutely no content and without any merit. Please refrain the urge to be on every thread without having anything worth saying.

If you must visit Disneyland and can not then hold the urge…

It seems you are perturbed by my posting. I find your arrogance and ignorance in many of your posts very annoying as well, you don't see me telling you what to do and how to behave do you? Ahh but you are into political systems and voting to tell other people how to live. As a true a statist I can understand your need to tell me what to do, which is synonomous with why you vote, to tell others how to live. Maybe if people like you just concentrated on yourself, the world would be a much better place.

[Armat]

If you only knew how deep the corruption in this country is.

 

And on a side note, why do we "vote" for "leaders"? I am curious. So do we indirectly admit that some people are leaders over our lives and we cannot rule ourselves?

So this is the teenage left over rebel ageist authority! Anon, do you work? Do you have a boss? Self employed? If yes, then you must pay taxes and hold it I am slowly getting there and if those taxes are not paid at all then fines fallow, not paid the fines possible jail time. Now this is the moment of reality check. Sir! You have no choice! No matter what you think you cannot rule yourself in reality. (Refrain arguing your personal inner reality that is not the topic)The best we can do is elect the representatives that best reflect our values. Is this very hard to understand?

Your passive stance does not exclude you from the laws in reality you live in. There are roughly fifty million Spanish speaking population in US and their participation in electoral process is minuscule and because of that their issues are almost ignored in Washington and on State level. Let us assume those passive Hispanics are all self delusional geniuses who don’t believe in authority and so what they dearly pay a price for their ignorance.

[Anonymouse]

So this is the teenage left over rebel ageist authority! Anon, do you work? Do you have a boss? Self employed? If yes, then you must pay taxes and hold it I am slowly getting there and if those taxes are not paid at all then fines fallow, not paid the fines possible jail time. Now this is the moment of reality check. Sir! You have no choice! No matter what you think you cannot rule yourself in reality. (Refrain arguing your personal inner reality that is not the topic)The best we can do is elect the representatives that best reflect our values. Is this very hard to understand?

Your passive stance does not exclude you from the laws in reality you live in. There are roughly fifty million Spanish speaking population in US and their participation in electoral process is minuscule and because of that their issues are almost ignored in Washington and on State level. Let us assume those passive Hispanics are all self delusional geniuses who don’t believe in authority and so what they dearly pay a price for their ignorance.

Oh no, now I am accused of being the "teenage leftover". Of course you will get jail time for not paying taxes, that is coercion at its finest and you proved my point brilliantly on how the State is institutionalized violence, a monopoly of violence. That is very "anti-Democratic" on behalf of the State, and contrary to "freedom" and making "choices" which you upheld in another thread regarding "Democracy". Why the need to coerce taxes out of you? You highlight fear of the system if your slave obligations are not met ( we are viewed as slaves to the State by those who rule ). You praise State authority and you downplay individuals exercising self responsibility and choices. Your idea that "you have no choice" and that "the best we can do is elect the representatives that best reflect our values" is flawed and shows a dependency on the State and collective thinking. Yes it is hard for me to understand why anyone would execise such contradictions. Your statements assumes that individuals are not capable of making decisions for themselves and that somehow a "State power" and "representatives" must be there for all time. It implies therefore that without a "State authority" people can't make decisions for themselves.

 

Such thinking presumes that it would be bad for individuals to exercise complete control over their own lives, but quite reasonable for the State to enjoy a monopoly of such powers over the lives of all individuals in order to define the purposes and limits of human action. Such a view is highlighted by a contradiction. It assumes that the same people ( individuals ) who are not to be trusted and cannot make decisions in the management of their own affairs, ( since you believe individuals cannot make choices or rule their own lives ), will suddenly be transformed into selfless servants of an alleged "public interest" or "the people" when cloaked with the robe of being "representative" or a "state authority". Such faith can only be sustained by folks unburdened both by a study of history as well as an awareness that the self interest that invariably drives us all is a force only to be trusted in the hands of private individuals, and never in coercive collectives.

 

And if we don't like it what do we do? Vote them out of office? There seems to be little evidence that this produces any change. There is little difference among our "leaders" and most of our government consists of unelected bureaucrats anyway. The power that a medieval emperor wielded was nothing like the monolithic control of the modern democratic state.

[Armat]

Anon

Please read my reply again carefully. You have a real talent of taking sentences out of context and attributing wrong conclusions.

Few things to clarify since you have developed this habit of attaching preconceived notions about myself.

PR=Public Reality

IR=Inner reality

Two are different! Voting is not equivalent to having the “need” for authority but rather the authority is there by default and I am simply curtailing the outcome to suit my needs. You can moan and cry about the outcome but what do you expect! You are passive and by default you do not exist electorally!!!

[Anonymouse]

Anon

Please read my reply again carefully. You have a real talent of taking sentences out of context and attributing wrong conclusions.

Few things to clarify since you have developed this habit of attaching preconceived notions about myself.

PR=Public Reality

IR=Inner reality

Two are different! Voting is not equivalent to having the “need” for authority but rather the authority is there by default and I am simply curtailing the outcome to suit my needs. You can moan and cry about the outcome but what do you expect! You are passive and by default you do not exist electorally!!!

You assume that only via the system or through voting is where peoples' interests should be or ought to be. That is quite a hefty assumption you are making. In fact you proved my point brilliantly of how individuals are victims in a democracy, by your previous post to this one, which you won't admit.

 

As I highlighted in my democracy thread, it is perhaps the worst form of government ever, that is why everyone from Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, to the framers of the U.S. Constitution abhored it.

[Armat]

You assume that only via the system or through voting is where peoples' interests should be or ought to be. That is quite a hefty assumption you are making.

It is not an assumption but what takes place in a real world.

 

I never believed in a perfect system since humans are not perfect hence democracy in its many forms is the closest thing. You can argue that it is not perfect and yes it is not but you and wolf are yet to present your alternatives if any out there.

[Stormig]

Anonyrat, grow up. OK, it's not my place to tell you that you belong in the drum-totting tribal societies of Africa where not only do you not have to worry about being subjected to "violence" for not paying taxes but you also don't have to worry about whether education should be free to everyone and all the rest of it or whether you own spears or not because everyone has them to poke each other, but I don't want "cute" posts in my thread any more than I want asswipe "do you endorse Palestinian suicide-bombers?"... If you want to talk about "government," please do so in another thread so I don't have to skip your off-topic (or any) posts in this one. And yes it is my thread and I want to keep it clean of juvenile rubbish. Oh you are so smart I can't possibly dream of understanding you. Skitter along now.

[Anonymouse]

It is not an assumption but what takes place in a real world.

 

I never believed in a perfect system since humans are not perfect hence democracy in its many forms is the closest thing. You can argue that it is not perfect and yes it is not but you and wolf are yet to present your alternatives if any out there.

Your statements are based on an assumption. If not then waht? You assume that everyones interest ought to be the same, to be within the system, they cannot think outside of it, out of that rigid framework. I'm hardly an idealist, nor am I arguing for an idealism, I am merely arguing against political systems, a critique if you will, particularly of Democracy. Democracy is the worst form of government due to its nature and its structure and the amount of damage it has caused humanity with its premise being "the people", in which came along with it mass mindedness and collective thinking of the mob.

 

Thus in the 20th century you had 200 million people die, because of the increase of mass mindedness and collective thinking. Your unwillingness to question said truths and cling to something just because 'its there' is indicative of unburdened minds who aren't familiar with history nor philosophy, and believe "voting" is the only way, even though it solves nothing. As Biafra of the Dead Kennedy's said, "If voting changed anything, it would be illegal".

 

To participate in political systems is to tell other people how to live, thus that was the purpose of my political thought experiment. Thus conflicts arise when people tell other people how to live. This is part of human nature, but it was collectivized and harnessed with the political thought experiment of Democracy and and the rise of the Nation-State in Europe. Differences are in degrees, not in kind.

 

To quote P.J. O'Rourke, "Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race. All through history mankind has been bullied by scum. Those who lord it over their fellows and toss commands in every direction and would boss the grass in the meadow about which way to bend in the wind are the most depraved kind of prostitutes. They will submit to any indignity, perform any vile act, do anything to achieve power. The worst off-sloughings of the planet are the ingredients of sovereignty. Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy the whores are us."