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David
Trad climber
San Rafael, CA
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Jun 27, 2005 - 12:50pm PT
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re"ALL of them vaporized? Impossible. Watch your CSI, lady. "
I have no doubt that if you're forming your view of the world based on corny TV shows that you would develop some strong opinions. However, how could we every hope to have an intelligent converstation about your fantasy world? Next you'll tell us that bigfoot was flying the planes on 9/11.
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Degaine
climber
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Jun 27, 2005 - 01:00pm PT
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Nice post – honest, forthright, and frankly the least partisan post I have read on this forum. I certainly respect your point of view, even if I disagree with you on certain points of your domestic outlook.
Your political philosophy on current affairs proves very coherent right up to the last paragraph regarding Iraq, Kerry, etc.
First, regarding the “sensitive” comment, Cheney used the word “sensitive” in a speech regarding Iraq and the war on terror the very same week. Kerry received a lot of flak for it, Cheney did not. Interpret that how you wish.
The hawkish, pro-Iraqi invasion crowd has done a very good job at labeling those against the invasion as being against any action at all on either the war on terror or attacks against this country.
Most (but not all including myself) people I know who sit on the left side of the political spectrum agreed with our decision to enter Afghanistan; if you recall, that military intervention received overwhelming support in Congress on both sides of the aisle, and had the majority of the American public’s support (and the western world for that matter).
The debate surrounding Iraq is not one of whether or not to take action, but one regarding the appropriateness of taking action in that particular country.
You post:
“These bastards attacked us, knocked down our buildings and killed our people. Why shouldn’t we squash the SOBs with whatever it takes to do it.”
Yes, a group made up primarily of Saudis – with a few Egyptians in the mix – led by a man living on or near the Pakastani/Afghani border flew planes into the World Trade towers of NYC. So we invade Iraq 1.5 years later?
But I digress, as this “invade Iraq/shouldn’t have invaded Iraq” debate has been played out ad nauseum.
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dirtineye
Trad climber
the south
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Jun 27, 2005 - 02:00pm PT
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OMG, Waterchossguy, HELP!!!!!!!
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Khun Duen Baad
climber
Retirement
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Jun 27, 2005 - 04:44pm PT
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Rokjox,
I want to believe that idiocy that I see spouted here is the result of a few morons who are just trying to get a rise out of people like you and maybe some of them even want to promote healthy debate, but sadly this is not the case. LEB is a good indicator; well-spoken, able to connect thoughts within a certain framework, and probably even a very nice and well-meaning person if you passed them on the trail. But unfortunately the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I think a large part of the problem is that society has created such a degree of specialization that people have become "departmentalized" is the same sense that intelligence agencies isolate and compartmentalize such that nobody knows their place in the big picture. It's how the Manhattan Project and the Stealth bomber were kept secrte. An analogy would be how there are no general practitioners anymore, you're either a kidney specialst, or a dermatologist or whatever; highly knowledgable is one area, useless in another. I would even speculate that LEB works for the governement, or has.
The two fundamental problems with our civilization are our work ethic and the idea that exponential growth is a natural and inexhaustable state. I ask you, how can infinite growth contiue in a finite world? They will all tell you technology will save us and they've entered circular thought without even knowing it. Nobody wants to hear about the difference between energy and technology either. Technology is the cruelest fantasy ever created when enrgy becomes scarce and America's largest export is now "intellectual property".
They want to continue with their Jiminy Cricket fantasy of "if we wish for it it will come true" that an entire generation had been raised with. I would also gamble that LEB was born right around the time Dinseyland opened, right around the time that 90% of Disney's studio output was for the US government. Economists don't make any connection between resources and markets. From an economist's point of view oil can never run out, and in the Machivellian sense they are dead right, pun intended. Really though, I hear "No blood for oil" and I have one question; how the fvck else did you think they were going to go get it for you, because you're using it right? LEB's thought process is too specialized and world view too lacking to truly appreciate the connection between an SUV, motorhome, or anything else in American life and not just oil, reletively abundant and tremendously undervalued oil. "The American way of life is not negotiable". We are entering an age where oil was a resource and now is becoming a commodity, the true ramifications of that are lost on people here. It took a pretty fvcked up situation to make me take a good hard look at our lifestyle as Americans and the economic results of that around the world, take cotton subsidies for one and corn for another, but nobody does.
Americans think they pay too much for oil already and they resent the growing cost as it becomes more obviously scarce. What if oil sat in pools above ground and we could see it such that the Hollywood generation could visually appreciate it. What if it looked like this?
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a002100/a002105/
What if people like LEB could make the connections between those images, farmers in Georgia, Nigeria, Uzbekistan (and the violence there recently) and the cotton all of us are wearing now?
What if?
"But there is a deeper part of human nature which covers the planet in a
sickly, light-sweet-crude blanket of denial. It is best exemplified from the
closing lines of Sidney Pollack's 1975 Three Days of the Condor, perhaps the
best spy movie ever made. As FTW has shown in recent stories - using
declassified CIA documents - the CIA was well aware of Peak Oil in the mid
1970s. Three Days of the Condor took that awful truth and said then, what
few in the post-9/11 world have had the courage to say. I can guarantee you
that it is the overriding rationale in Dick Cheney's mind, in the mind of
every senior member of the Bush administration, and in the mind of whomever
it is that will be chosen as the 2004 Democratic Party nominee. Getting rid
of Bush will not address the underlying causative factors of energy and
money and any solution that does not address those issues will prove futile.
Turner (Robert Redford): "Do we have plans to invade the Middle East ?"
Higgins (Cliff Robertson): " Are you crazy?"
Turner: " Am I?"
Higgins: "Look, Turner... "
Turner: "Do we have plans?"
Higgins: "No. Absolutely not. We have games. That's all. We play games. What
if? How many men? What would it take? Is there a cheaper way to destabilize
a régime? That's what we're paid to do."
Turner: "Go on. So Atwood just took the game too seriously. He was really
going to do it, wasn't he?"
Higgins: "It was a renegade operation. Atwood knew 54-12 would never
authorize it. There was no way, not with the heat on the Company."
Turner: "What if there hadn't been any heat? Supposing I hadn't stumbled on
a plan? Say nobody had?"
Higgins: "Different ball game. The fact is there was nothing wrong with the
plan. Oh, the plan was alright. The plan would have worked."
Turner: "Boy, what is it with you people? You think not getting caught in a
lie is the same thing as telling the truth?"
Higgins: "No. It's simple economics. Today it's oil, right? In 10 or 15
years - food, Plutonium. And maybe even sooner. Now what do you think the
people are gonna want us to do then?
Turner : " Ask them."
Higgins: "Not now - then. Ask them when they're running out. Ask them when
there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask them when their engines
stop. Ask them when people who've never known hunger start going hungry. Do
you want to know something? They won't want us to ask them. They'll just
want us to get it for them."
I've posted this elsewhere before but it is worth noting again here. It's written by a 25 year old girl in Baghdad.
American Media...
"Two years ago, the major part of the war in Iraq was all about bombarding us with smart bombs and high-tech missiles. Now there’s a different sort of war- or perhaps it’s just another phase of the same war. Now we’re being assailed with American media. It’s everywhere all at once.
"It began with radio stations like Voice of America which we could access even before the war. After the war, there were other radio stations- ones with mechanical voices that told us to put down our weapons and remain inside our homes, ones that fed us American news in an Iraqi dialect and ones that just played music. With satellite access we are constantly listening to American music and watching American sitcoms and movies. To be fair- it’s not just Iraq that is being targeted- it’s the whole region and it’s all being done very cleverly.
"Al-Hurra, the purported channel of freedom, is the American gift to the Arab world. What they do is show us translated documentaries about certain historical events (American documentaries) or about movie stars (American stars) or vacation spots. Throughout this, there are Arab anchors giving us the news (which is like watching Fox in Arabic). It’s news about the Arab world with the American twist.
"Our new “national” channels are a joke. One of the most amusing, in a gruesome sort of way, is Al-Iraqiya. It’s said to be American sponsored but the attitude is decidedly pro-Iran, anti-Sunni. There’s a program where they parade ‘terrorists’ on screen for us to see in an attempt to show us that our National Guard are not only good at raiding homes and harassing people in the streets. The funny thing about the terrorists is that the majority of them have “Sunni” names like Omar and Othman, etc. They admit to doing things such as having sexual intercourse in mosques and raping women and the whole show is disgusting. Iraqis don’t believe it because it’s so obviously produced to support the American definition of the Iraqi, Sunni, Islamic fanatic that it is embarrassing. Couldn’t the PSYOPS people come up with anything more subtle?
"The first time I saw 60 Minutes on MBC 4, it didn’t occur to me that something was wrong. I can’t remember what the discussion was, but I remember being vaguely interested and somewhat mystified at why we were getting 60 Minutes. I soon found out that it wasn’t just 60 Minutes at night: It was Good Morning, America in the morning, 20/20 in the evening, 60 Minutes, 48-Hours, Inside Edition, The Early Show… it was a constant barrage of American media. The chipper voice in Arabic tells us, “So you can watch what *they* watch!” *They* apparently being millions of Americans.
The schedule on MBC’s Channel 4 goes something like this:
9 am – CBS Evening News
9:30 am – CBS The Early Show
10:45 am – The Days of Our Lives
11:20 am – Wheel of Fortune
11:45 am – Jeopardy
12:05 pm – A re-run of whatever was on the night before – 20/20, Inside Edition, etc.
And the programming continues…
"I’ve been enchanted with the shows these last few weeks. The thing that strikes me most is the fact that the news is so… clean. It’s like hospital food. It’s all organized and disinfected. Everything is partitioned and you can feel how it has been doled out carefully with extreme attention to the portions- 2 minutes on women’s rights in Afghanistan, 1 minute on training troops in Iraq and 20 minutes on Terri Schiavo! All the reportages are upbeat and somewhat cheerful, and the anchor person manages to look properly concerned and completely uncaring all at once.
"About a month ago, we were treated to an interview on 20/20 with Sabrina Harman- the witch in some of the Abu Ghraib pictures. You know- the one smiling over faceless, naked Iraqis piled up to make a human pyramid. Elizabeth Vargus was doing the interview and the whole show was revolting. They were trying to portray Sabrina as an innocent who was caught up in military orders and fear of higher ranking officers. The show went on and on about how American troops never really got seminars on Geneva Conventions (like one needs to be taught humanity) and how poor Sabrina was being made a scapegoat. They showed the restaurant where she worked before the war and how everyone thought she was “such a nice person” who couldn’t hurt a fly!
"We sat there watching like we were a part of another world, in another galaxy. I’ve always sensed from the various websites that American mainstream news is far-removed from reality- I just didn’t know how far. Everything is so tame and simplified. Everyone is so sincere.
"Furthermore, I don’t understand the worlds fascination with reality shows. Survivor, The Bachelor, Murder in Small Town X, Faking It, The Contender… it’s endless. Is life so boring that people need to watch the conjured up lives of others?
"I have a suggestion of my own for a reality show. Take 15 Bush supporters and throw them in a house in the suburbs of, say, Falloojeh for at least 14 days. We could watch them cope with the water problems, the lack of electricity, the check points, the raids, the Iraqi National Guard, the bombings, and- oh yeah- the ‘insurgents’. We could watch their house bombed to the ground and their few belongings crushed under the weight of cement and brick or simply burned or riddled with bullets. We could see them try to rebuild their life with their bare hands (and the equivalent of $150)…
"I’d not only watch *that* reality show, I’d tape every episode.
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MikeL
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Jun 27, 2005 - 05:40pm PT
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Hmmmmm. . . . (I’ll probably regret this effort.)
As Americans we are probably a little confused about the philosophical differences at the core of the arguments from our two political parties. We’re just not making keen distinctions or being clear. Ask any European, and he or she is liable to tell you that they don’t see much difference between America’s two political parties at all. (But then, Continental thinking has always been thought by intellectuals to be deeper: American views—left and right alike—have always been thought to be particularly, well . . . “bourgeois.”)
(Some parts pasted below stolen from other’s writings.)
Lois makes reference to conceptions of issues of human nature. Philosophers would frame that issue as various investigations about The Good, The True, and The Beautiful. In modern development, there are two classical and competing views about man’s relation to nature, both founded on distinctions about nature and society. In the first classical approach to the subject, nature is the raw material of man’s freedom that gave rise to harsh times and necessity. In a second classical approach, man is the polluter of nature. Nature in both cases is nature without man, and untouched by man: mountains, forests, lakes, and rivers.
The U.S. is a great stage for the confrontation for these two philosophical approaches. The two present a classical confrontation between a comfortable, calculating, progressive approach to nature fundamentally grounded in rational self-interest, against that of a more feeling-oriented, primitive expression of man and nature that is somehow distant, attractive, and romantic—a longing for a state of nature unsullied by society’s impossible demands, where true happiness has been replaced by the pursuit of safety and comfort of modern civilization. For example, on the one hand, you have the farmer who never looked at America’s trees, fields, and streams with a romantic eye. The trees are to be felled, to make clearings, build houses, and heat them; the fields are to be tilled to produce more food, or as sources of power. Then on the other hand there is the Sierra Club, which is dedicated to preventing such violations of nature from going any further, and certainly seems to regret what was already done.
Perhaps more interesting is the coexistence of these opposing sentiments in the most advanced political minds today that leads to our political confusion. Nature is raw material, worthless without the mixture of human labor; yet nature is also the highest and most sacred thing of all. The same people who struggle to save the snail-darter bless the pill, worry about hunting deer and defend abortion. In some people’s view (like mine), it is a reverence for nature or a reverence for mastery of nature—but whichever is most convenient for us. (Doesn’t this look like the principle of contradiction has been repealed?)
The first approach above is responsible for our institutions, justifies our absorption with private property and the free market, and gives us our sense of right. The second more romantic approach lies behind our most widespread views of what life is about and how to seek healing for our social and psychic wounds. The former teaches that adjustment to civil society is almost automatic in practice; the latter laments that such adjustments are very difficult indeed and require all kinds of intermediaries (government, institutional regulation) between it and nature lost. The crisp, positive, efficient, no-nonsense economist or technician might best represent the people who favor the first approach. The deep, brooding, somber psychoanalyst might best represent the people who favor the second approach. In principle these positions should be blatantly incompatible, but easygoing Americans (that we tend to be, philosophically) allow temporary agreements between them. As Allan Bloom has said, economists will tell us how to make the money, and psychiatrists will give us a place to spend it (to heal our wounds from our efforts of making it, I guess).
From my observations, most climbers seem to represent the second view of nature. Climbers seem to be philosophically romantic, and they seem to yearn for more primitive, soulful experiences of living in nature and even with other men. Here’s how Rousseau said it:
“Natural man [like climbers?] is entirely for himself. He is a numerical unity, the absolute whole which is relative only to itself or its kind. Civil man [the man with the second view of nature] is only a fractional unity dependent on the denominator; his value is determined by his relation to the whole, which is the social body . . . . He [of] the civil order who wants to preserve the primacy of the sentiments of nature does not know what he wants. Always in contradiction with himself, always floating between his inclinations and his duties, he will never be either man or citizen. He will be good neither for himself nor for others. He will be one of those men of [the] day: a Frenchman, an Englishman, a ‘bourgeois.’ He will be nothing.”
Oh, I think I understand why many Americans took “values” to heart in the last election. People are desperate for certainty, clarity, and principles they can rely upon in a world where openness-to-everything-and-to-every-viewpoint relativism means there-is-no-Good-True-or-Beautiful. Well . . . , nice sentiments, but unfortunately, “values” cannot be argued. They are insubstantial stuff, to be adjusted at will incrementally, and existing primarily in the imagination. (As climbers know, death is real.) Values are not discovered by reason, and it is fruitless to seek them to find the truth or the good life. But in today’s world, there is no Good or Evil—only values. (Nietzsche said this was the beginning of a free fall into nihilism.) Indeed, haven’t so many threads on this site been arguments about “values?” Do you think they can really be argued?
So, about political party viewpoints here in the U.S. . . . what a mess. I don’t see that the political parties today stand for clear philosophical views anymore (“let’s take a poll to see what we think”), and they seem to forget where and how these ideas initially developed or what they stood for. No one reads philosophy today, and of the few who do read it, they mainly read it only for an informational point of view. I’ve found in school people don’t read literature, study cultures or people or political theory to see if those approaches are right; people only read them (if at all) to see if they create a context for their own personal thinking. Almost nothing is taken seriously except for personal freedom and absolute equality. (“What! Othello killing for love? What could that mean?”) Today, everything is about ME. The self has become the substitute for the soul.
Herr Professor Nietzsche was right: the modern, contemporary man is just a plain, thin, egoist--not in any vicious way, mind you, not in the way of those who know the good, just, or noble, and selfishly reject them--but because contemporary man’s own point of view and ego are all he knows. Ego is really all that we have been taught today (watch any commercial), and ego is about the only thing that we’re willing to spend any time to seriously explore. Contemporary cultures are decomposing, and modern men have lost any significant aspirations that they might have enjoyed previously. (Socrates would surely be a homeless person today, for an examined life is not longer possible in our society.) Rationalism, values, and egalitarianism have become contrary to creativity, and any attempt to a philosophical way of life has become poisonous.
I’ll say it: democracy is due for meaningful criticism.
Tocqueville predicted it almost perfectly in 1830. Sadly, I’ve come to believe that there are real limits to the ethics, truth, and aesthetics of democracy. Think just about this: you cannot have perfect equality and freedom at the same time, yet as Americans we hold these “values” absolutely sacrosanct, without reservation. Look closely: almost every complaint today points to an American-styled nihilism, yea even here on this site. (But I do appreciate many sentiments, and for that I thank you all.)
(Much of the above based upon ideas by Christopher Lasch, Allan Bloom, Ken Wilbur, and others.)
Thanks for your attention, mates. I do so love climbing.
ml
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Jun 27, 2005 - 11:43pm PT
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ROKJOX
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Spinmaster K-Rove
Trad climber
Stuck Under the Kor Roof
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Jun 28, 2005 - 12:14am PT
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There aren't nearly enough titties on this political thread to make it worth reading. At least on the other thread you get a little areola as a reward for getting through parts of it. This thread is a major gyp.
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MikeL
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Jun 28, 2005 - 10:33am PT
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Rokjox,
All of Shakespeare's best plays are about big ideas. Othello is a bona fide tragedy. Pride alone would not be enough.
First of all, in Othello Iago was a man who knew the good, and rejected it for selfish reasons. That's why Iago is a truly great villain. He's really evil. A tragedy must have a real monster in it.
Othello does not kill for a simple passion, for then the story would not rise to the level of a tragedy. There would have been no over-reaching of Othello's considerable capabilities. The story would have simply been a story about a murder.
Othello loved Desdemona, surely, but he also was in love with the the grandeur and ideal of love. Since he was in love with love, he killed for love.
My point in my post was that people do not take the story seriously and do not believe it could be true. The ideas are beyond most people's comprehension today. Here is a typical posting from a student in high school who had to study the play in the UK (http://www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/othello/);.
"Othello.....so dated
I'm sure i'm not the only one out there that thinks Othello is dated. I'm studying the play for A2 and just feel i would receive a much better grade in the summer if i could relate to the plot. Personally i feel that in todays society, there is no way a wife would be prepared to die and then cover for their husaband like Desdemona. It is much more likely that Desdemona would have her secret lover "deck" him and have him reported to the police. The whole play is so old and for students aged 16-18 there must be something we can relate to more easily which would allow us to score better results. Come one examiners, theres making it hard and theres taking the mick eh!"
Posted By Kayleigh at Tue 24 May 2005, 5:07 PM in Othello || 0 Replies
ml
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MikeL
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Jun 28, 2005 - 12:30pm PT
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yeah.
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Bruce Morris
Social climber
Belmont, California
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Jun 28, 2005 - 12:42pm PT
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Republican: Little "rugged individualist" small government anti-taxer. Small business donut-shop mentality.
Democrat: "New Deal" big government pro-tax the rich. Union member, government employee.
So much for rhetorical stereotypes. I want to know who's ripping off whom? Where's the money and how can I steal some.
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Spinmaster K-Rove
Trad climber
Stuck Under the Kor Roof
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Jun 28, 2005 - 03:09pm PT
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Nuf said :)
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ChrisW
Trad climber
boulder, co
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Jun 28, 2005 - 03:22pm PT
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I thought at first on this tread..here we go again...gotta read a very frggin long thread and get useless ideas or opinions or info...But. Wow! Those where some good posts! Good READING. Keep it coming! I would join, but i gotta improve my thoughts and writing skills more.
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Ouch!
climber
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Jun 28, 2005 - 09:39pm PT
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This thread reads like a dialogue between Socrates and Plato..er..Pluto and Snagglepuss.
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Shack
Trad climber
So. Cal.
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Jun 28, 2005 - 09:44pm PT
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my fingers hurt just thinking about typing that much.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jun 29, 2005 - 12:55am PT
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Hi Lois
Can't say I'm impressed by your case. Historical concepts behind the parties are irrelevant. Modern reality is what we live with.
Modern Reality. Clinton had a balanced budget and a surplus. Bush is in the hole for over 400 billion a year with no end in sight ever.
And less government? I've never seen so many laws and proposed laws to restrict the freedom of the people and so many lies to manipulate them.
Both parties are spending money they don't have. I'd rather spend on social programs than national aggression. (Defense is a joke, what need of defense from Iraq?) Maybe "sensitive" means sensitive enough to attack who realy threatens us and develop a dialog, reform and understand with those who aren't our enemies yet.
The real sin though, which Singer addresses, is that we are running out of finite energy, and instead of massively ramping up to deal with it, with conservation and alternative energy, before it gets out of control, we are content to simply try to steal control of the oil with blood. Not even willing to increase the cafe standards 10 percent!
Very sad morally in my mind.
We'll all wake up soon. Having 400 billion federal deficits, and 600 billion trade deficits is totally unsustainable. Bush's private accounts for SS are the biggest pump and dump scheme in the history of the world. When the economy and environment come home to roost, both Republicans and Democrats are going to have to answer for their long periods of corruption under the employ of capitalist power that cares only for quarterly growth and not long term human viability.
Peace
Karl
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Ouch!
climber
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Jun 29, 2005 - 03:13am PT
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Karl, everything you said is true and should be obvious to anyone. But you are pissing into the wind.
I sense the truth
in the things he said
and became unsettled
by his words I read
but I can't be bothered
just now, you see
cause I'm much too busy
watchin' Reality TV
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Khun Duen Baad
climber
Retirement
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Jun 29, 2005 - 03:54am PT
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Lois,
It's a good thing nobody is grading English essays here because I wasn't cohesive at all and there's little chance I will be now. It's hard for me, I don't devote much of my life to communicating with people. Prepare for fragmented thought.
First, who is a conservationist? The person who says we need to use less water and preserve our formerly pristine rivers, or the one who says we need to dam it up so it doesn't all waste out to sea?
Karl's right in that the parties today bear little resemblence to those of 20 years ago, my opinion is that they largely just play good-cop bad-cop for each other. See Ron Reagan's article The Case Against GWB:
http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2004/040729_mfe_reagan_1.html
I also think it's ridiculous that they get away with calling this [two-party] system democracy, especially within the wealthiest, most influential, and far-reaching (and the most "free", we're led to believe) empire that has ever risen. How do you think it will all come to an end? Everybody agrees that oil is a finite resource, but have you ever stopped to investigate or really consider the ramifications of that? Do you just assume that our Fearless Leader would tell us that something was seriously wrong?
http://www.energybulletin.net/5395.html
http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6&Itemid=2
http://www.energybulletin.net/5944.html
You should see Jimmy Carter's speech about the energy crisis from way back in 1977:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/filmmore/ps_energy.html
Again, in the Machiavellian sense GWB Inc. are absolute fvcking visionaries. At least they know what they are doing, I'd have a lot more respect for them if they came right out and said it. Can you imagine Dear Leader putting on the cardigan sweater and sitting in front of the fireplace to deliver that speech? (by comparison, does anybody remember when they put George the First in that massive speedboat and sent him rocketing across the Gulf for the media at the end of Gulf War One? the message clearly being "put the pedal to the medal, we'll go get it for ya") He won't because look what happened to Jimmy. He learned the hard way that oil is the sole driver of economic growth and by extension, the American Dream. He saw the limits, but that isn't what the masses want to hear. Remember, Jimmy didn't just fry because of the Iran thing either, which we'll get to in a minute, he was taken down by water reform:
http://library.thinkquest.org/27419/read/5/1.html
Onto Iran.
"The February 1979 revolution was first and foremost the continuation of a bourgeois-democratic revolution that had been abruptly interrupted and discontinued on July 19, 1953. The direct intervention of the U.S. government played a big part in the 1953 events. At that time, Norman Schwarzkopf Sr.-- "Desert Storm" commander Norman Schwarzkopf Jr.'s father--was sent to Tehran with two suitcases full of U.S. dollar notes. CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt accompanied him. Their assignment, in coordination with sections of the Iranian military, was to carry out a coup against the democratically elected government of Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh--and to bring back the shah, who had been booted out by the Iranian masses. The U.S. succeeded. The shah was back on his throne. Mossadegh was put under house arrest. Iran became once again safe for U.S. companies to rob its oil and take advantage of its vast and untapped markets. Iranian oil had been nationalized under Mossadegh. Now, once again, it was for all practical purposes back under the giant U.S. oil companies' control. For 26 years after that, Iran was a virtual colony of U.S. corporations and the Pentagon. During these 26 years the process of Iran's integration into the global capitalist market dominated by the U.S. was consolidated. Iran's role in the capitalist food chain, along with many other countries in the region, was to deliver cheap oil and receive mostly finished consumer commodities. Iran became what Saudi Arabia is for U.S. capitalist monopolies today.
Interestingly enough the Iranian revolution roughly coincided with that country's oil production peak, historically worth noting as Ceasar Chavez has recently ordered petrochemical companies to meet domestic demand first. And let's not forgot about how Cuba got into the situation they're in.
United States — Cuban Relations
US relations already tense after the show trials and confiscation of large farms
Peaked in May 1960
Cuban government asked major oil refineries to process soviet crude oil.
Refineries owned by Texaco, Standard Oil and Royal Dutch Shell
Soviet oil was cheaper that theirs
The companies refused after urge from US government
Þ Castro nationalised the refineries in June 1960
Nationalisation of refineries sparked series of hostile actions by two governments
President Eisenhower withdrew Cuban sugar quota
Castro nationalised most American-owned properties
President Eisenhower banned all exports to Cuba in October 1960
Again, this sparked off another wave of nationalisation.
Þ Relations deteriorated and cut off by Eisenhower on Jan 3, 1961
CIA started to back exile groups for arms and training
Set up a training camp for invasion force in Guatemala, summer 1960
President Kennedy gave go-ahead for expeditionary force 3 month later
Bay of Pigs started on April 15th 1961
Poorly planned and executed
Based on idea that people would rise to revolt once exiles landed
The invasion failed
Þ Increased Castro’s prestige and sparked radical reforms in economy and politics
Castro proclaimed allegiance with socialism 1 month after Bay of Pigs
"Despite the fact that the US embargo prevents Cuba from obtaining critical medicines and medical supplies, Cuba's public health system is one of the most reputable in the world. Free, comprehensive health care is guaranteed to everyone in Cuba, as are education, food, and other resources necessary for good health. With roughly one doctor for every two hundred people (the highest number of doctors per-capita in the world, and twice that of the US), Cuban doctors promote a preventative health care model that includes regular home visits, alternative and conventional medicine, and popular education. As a result, Cuba's health indicators are higher than most Latin American countries and on par with those in the US.
On a similar note:
"Iraq is highly educated, highly sophisticated, highly urbanised. Along with the Palestinians, it has the highest number of PhDs per capita on the globe. When the British left only a little over 30 years ago, the average life expectancy in Iraq was 26 years and the literacy level was just a little over 10 percent. By the time of the Gulf War the life expectancy was 74 for women and a little less for men and literacy was around 90 percent. There was also 93 percent access to clean water and the same for access to very sophisticated modern health care. These are World Health Organisation figures.
Since Guatemala was mentioned in the Cuba timeline we should mention for those who don't know:
"In 1954, a CIA-orchestrated coup ended what Guatemalans call the "Ten Years of Spring," which began with the bloodless overthrow of military dictator Jorge Ubico in 1944. During this period, two democratically-elected civilian presidents governed Guatemala, trying to provide opportunities and raise the standard of living. Jacobo Arbenz, elected in 1950, began to push agrarian reforms more seriously than his predecessor. The United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) (UFCo) protested when unused portions of its vast holdings were expropriated and distributed to land-less peasants. The Guatemalan government paid the US company the tax-declared value of the land, but UFCo protested to the highest levels of the US government. Two UFCo stockholders at the time were the Dulles brothers, Secretary of State and head of the CIA in the Eisenhower administration. © 1998, Piet van Lear, A War Called Peace
"Following the coup, Colonel Castillo Armas became the new president. the U. S. Ambassador furnished Armas with lists of radical opponents to be eliminated, and the bloodletting promptly began. Under Armas, thousands were arrested and many were tortured and killed. A "killing field" in the Americas: U. S. policy in Guatemala
The coup unleashed one of the most brutal military regimes in the hemisphere. Some 140,000 people have been killed and another 45,000 disappeared in a U.S. backed scorched earth campaign to wipe out dissidents, rebels and activists for peace and social justice in Guatemala. The abuses by the Guatemalan military and its death squads were so horrific that even Amnesty International reported that they "strained credulity." But next week, the guerrillas of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity or UNRG, will sign a controversial peace accord with the government and formally end a generation of war.
Are you starting to see a common theme here? Your government will do whatever is needed to get you what you want when you vote for them to do it with every single item you consume, putting gas in your motorhome is the least of of it. In the immortal words of Ronny Reagan when he was shipping Rummy over to shake hands with Saddam and kick him some chemical weapons and CIA maps of Iranian troop positions instructing him to do whatever was "necessary and legal" to make sure he didn't lose the war to the evil Iranians.
On the same note as our involvement in the fruit industry and oil for transportation (of which 90% is used for) the average piece of produce you eat in America is transported somewhere between 1400 to 2500 miles on average, I see broad estimates for that but the fact that it is large distances is no question. Also every calorie of produce here requires 10 calories of hyrdocarbon energy just to produce! It takes 900 times the amount of energy to ship asparagus to Britain that it does to eat it where it's grown in California. I've bought bananas in Kazakhstan that came from Ecuador via China a Russia. Start doing the math on that. How about fleece jackets that are made from pertolchemicals on the East Coast before we ship them to China to be sewn then ship them back to a warehouse in the midwest before they are then shipped all over the world where you can get in your SUV and drive to the mountains, or maybe tow it behind your RV. So my question is this, if you don't think we are all incredibly selfish (not to mention fantastically affluent and wasteful) in our lifestlye then do you think the Chinese people sewing your jackets and stocking your Walmarts deserve to drive Audia and jet set all over the world too? I do, and so do they, obviously. Surely you noted their move to purchase Unical? Did you know that if the Chinese drove as many per capita resources as Americans it would exhaust all the world's known resources in 5 years? No war for oil? Somebody please tell me a better reason to go.
"Capitalism requires people to be quiet souls in the workplace and wild pagans at the cash register" - Ron Chernow, 1949, US Journalist
Speaking of civilizations, each and every one throughout history has eventually overshot and collapsed except for our, global, civilization. And I don't have to tell you that it generally isn't pretty. How do you think this one might go? I'm sure you would agree that this planet couldn't support 40 billion people but what are the limits? What happens when we get there? Earth's actual carrying capacity is between 1 and 2.2 billion; after that you are is irreverable resource decline, i.e. the clock is ticking.
"Of all races in an advanced stage of civilization, the American is the least accessible to long views. . . . Always and everywhere in a hurry to get rich, he does not give a thought to remote consequences; he sees only present advantages. . . . He does not remember, he does not feel, he lives in a materialist dream."
—Moiseide Ostrogorski (1902, 302-303)
And what are you going to feed all the people on this planet? The "Green" revolution was entirely petroleum fed. You should look into two interesting aspects of all this, ghost acreage and Jevons Paradox.
Most people have a hard time really grasping what the word energy means and it's real impact in our lives. Let me try a simple correlation: the US horse population peaked two years after the introduction of the Model T. It been so long since anybody carried water to their house everyday or lived without electricity that nobody really respects the Machine's power over our lives. But the machine needs to be fed and bio-diesel isn't going to do it. Find a graph somewhere of how muscle exertion for work has dramatically decreased in exact correlation to increased fossil fuel consumption.
Want to talk about "alternative" fuels and how they are all fantasy too? And even if we can find more more hydro carbon energy to burn, should we? Aren't the results of that already clear? Aren't the dramatic weather patterns, melting ice caps, and heat waves enough for people. Of course not, it's all too tempting. Should we in our "free" society be allowed to pollute as much as we want as long as we "pay" for it? That's how it works when you put gas in your car.
So accepting that society will eventually reach it's limits and need to power down, how do we do it. Who do you think will suffer more in an energy crisis the US or North Korea? Britain or Cuba? Those societies who powered down slowly and gradually are likely to be in a much better position than ours, which will implode.
So why does everybody think that GWB Inc. are inceasing military spending, slashing social programs and generally acting like it's the end of the world? Because to them, it is.
Oh, in regards to your whole "those bastards knocked down our buildings" boo hoo thing. People throughout Indochina (not to mention a good portion of the rest of the world) still don't understand what the big deal was about 9/11, it's entirely within their nature to sympathize because, unlike Americans, they seen a lot of people killed on their home turf, by Americans, but the genuinely don't understand how 2800 people was such a big deal; any comparisons to what we;ve done there put aside....
"Tell me, Singha, why you country bomb my country? Boom, boom, boom, I think no good. Me nice people, why?"
Then you have to tell them that most Americans have no idea that the American War (in Laos) ever happened. They they don't know that we dropped more bombs (anti-personnel ones) there than on Germany and Japan combined in WWII. That they don't really care.
Someone once asked Mahatma Gandhi what he thought of Western civilization.
“It would be nice,” he replied
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Mountain Man
Trad climber
Outer space
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Jun 29, 2005 - 09:11am PT
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Neither
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jun 29, 2005 - 09:16am PT
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If the surplus was a myth, it was one that GWB repeated to the public and used to justify his tax cuts.
Got a surplus, better cut taxes!
Opps, turned it into a huge deficit, better cut taxes!
Dang, now we have terrorism and war, hundreds of billions more in expenses, better cut taxes some more. Of course we have to sacrifice some poor folks kids, but why should the rich have to pitch in during a supposed national emergency, or was it just a media event?
Do the math, the government is spending money as if they will never never pay it back, and they never will be able to. The real question is HOW do they intend not to pay it back?
Are they counting on devaluing the dollar to reduce the real value of the debt?
Or is Jesus going to arrive and let me off the hook?
Or with our huge military are we just going to tell everybody we decided to keep the money and what are they going to do about it?
It's not just about oil as a resource. There is no gold standard for money any more. We just print that crap. The US economy is made possible by the recycling of petrodollars created by the fact that world oil sales are denominated in dollars. Central banks in other countries have to buy treasury bills to get dollars to buy oil. Every oil producing country that has threatened to accept euros for oil has been invaded, threatened with invasion, or faced a CIA supported coup. If the world wants to wage war on the US, nobody has to fire a shot, just don't buy the T bills, and get the oily guys to accept euros for the juice. Interest rates would skyrocket, the housing bubble would burst. The party would end early.
Ironically, the great rise in oil prices has actually given our economy a little extra time.
Some kind of epic is in the wings, just don't know how soon or how it will come down. All those terrorism laws have been engineered to suppress DOMESTIC dissent to keep the angry people in line when they figure out they've been had.
Peace
Karl
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Jun 29, 2005 - 09:23am PT
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Who's hotter
Ann
or
Molly
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