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So, as far as the US is concerned, there is no significant problem.

Unless, of course, you actually check the details.

The fact that South America, China, and Africa are destroying their environments, destroying their farms, and experiencing overpopulation isn't our fault or our problem; those countries have chosen to become socialist shitholes and they will have to deal with that themselves or deal with the consequences themselves.

Actually, it has nothing to do with socialism, it's your corporations behind it. And churches.

Other countries do, but that's something "we" have no influence over.

Except for your massive efforts to destabilize local cultures, seize properties, and crush all opposition to your rule.

You've been doing that for over a century. Did you think nobody noticed?

http://fpif.org/u-s-empire-bas...
"Thirty-six years into the U.S. base build-up in the Greater Middle East, military force has failed as a strategy for controlling the region, no less defeating terrorist organizations."

It's not just Iraq. The US has bases in most middle east countries.
It's our oil, after all and we need to protect it.
http://fpif.org/u-s-empire-bas...

So the very polite and courteous email I received from the Cuban Foreign Office back after Hurricane Katrina will no longer be quite the unique bit of memorabilia after all?

Lest we forget, Cuba offered to send doctors and other medical assistance to help the suffering residents in New Orleans after Katrina did its thing .. and the US State Department was hardly even polite with their refusal.

http://fpif.org/bush_administr...
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/...

So I emailed the Cuban Foreign Office to apologize :-) I'm sure I tripped some intelligence tripwires on that little gesture, but meh .. who cares? I, being previously assigned to the 8th Special Forces Group in Panama back in The Day, was probably on a Cuban Intelligence list or two in any event :-) Luckily everyone (Cuban and US) apparently had a sense of humor, or sense enough not to screw with the topic. Or maybe NSA wasn't quite as invasive then as now. I still thought it awfully decent of the Cuban government to respond to my unsolicited email.. startled no doubt by the "SGM, USA SF (Ret)" in my email's signature.

Wow... some very suspicious modding on the informative threads in this article.
Parent is NOT a troll. Has good sites.
You may or may not agree with his opinion but modding him down is chickenshit and cowardly. Post why he's wrong with your own links. Fight speech with speech- not with censorship. Save the troll mod for real trolls.

Parent Poster said:

"The idea that our government could plan anything this complex and succeed is preposterous."

Just like the Koch brothers and big corporations never convinced america to vote against it's own interests? Corporations have been COMPLETELY successful at turning capitalism into a damn near religion in many western countries. If you're a right winger or a libertarian you're not going to solve poverty.

Prof. Francis Fukuyama (pol sci) in Foreign policy magazine says you're voting against your own interest if you vote for the corporate parties (repub and dem).

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/136782/francis-fukuyama/the-future-of-history

When even neocon cheerleaders like fukuyama are wishing there was a real left wing movement in america, you know corporations have succeeded in brainwashing many of the worlds electorates.

http://www.fpif.org/articles/the_next_marx

Americans (and people generally) aren't a politically literate bunch, they know a few bits and pieces of information about politics related to issues they personally care about and that's about it.

"The idea that our government could plan anything this complex and succeed is preposterous."

Just like the Koch brothers and big corporations never convinced america to vote against it's own interests? Corporations have been COMPLETELY successful at turning capitalism into a damn near religion in many western countries. If you're a right winger or a libertarian you're not going to solve poverty.

Prof. Francis Fukuyama (pol sci) in Foreign policy magazine says you're voting against your own interest if you vote for the corporate parties (repub and dem).

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/136782/francis-fukuyama/the-future-of-history

When even neocon cheerleaders like fukuyama are wishing there was a real left wing movement in america, you know corporations have succeeded in brainwashing many of the worlds electorates.

http://www.fpif.org/articles/the_next_marx

Americans (and people generally) aren't a politically literate bunch, they know a few bits and pieces of information about politics related to issues they personally care about and that's about it.

Fear of armed people is completely rational.

In my country, over 60,000 people have been killed by drug violence, most of it related to the USA's voracious appetite for illegal drugs and the laughably easy it is to buy military-grade firearms and smuggle them across the border.

So yeah, fuck guns and fuck drugs.

http://www.fpif.org/articles/arms_trafficking_at_the_us-mexico_border

Damn those drug-crazed yanquis, the root of all evil!

Fear of armed people is completely rational.

In my country, over 60,000 people have been killed by drug violence, most of it related to the USA's voracious appetite for illegal drugs and the laughably easy it is to buy military-grade firearms and smuggle them across the border.

So yeah, fuck guns and fuck drugs.

http://www.fpif.org/articles/arms_trafficking_at_the_us-mexico_border

Yeah but that requirement is obviously driven by the presence of human-piloted vehicles on the roadways.

Would be nice if you had reference what you mean by "that requirement"... Assuming you mean it in reference to dedicated roadways, it's not 'human-piloted' that's the issue, so much as the sheer volume of traffic. 250 million cars on the road is 250 million cars on the road, regardless of who's controlling them.

On top of that, thanks to our continuing foray into the abject failure that is trickle-down economics (/rant), people are hanging on their cars for much, much longer... If the trend continues, 25 years from now the majority of cars on the road very well may be 2012 model years.

In 25 years, do you think you'll be able to drive your own car anymore? I doubt it. Autonomous vehicles are coming, and I suspect that in a quarter century we'll be regulating human-operated vehicles off public roads.

First off, assuming we don't extinguish our species by then (always a possibility), who gets to drive what and where will be the least of our problems.

Second, 25 years is a long time in the socio-political and technological sense. Who knows what might happen? Any prediction that far out is pretty much guaranteed to be incorrect. Otherwise, we'd all have been flying our jetpacks to moon condos by the 1980s.

Thrid, no, I don't think I'll be able to drive my own car, I know it, and for several seemingly obvious reasons:

- Not everyone will want/be able to jump on to the self-driving car bandwagon.
- Preventing people from operating their own motor vehicles on publicly funded roads is a Constitutional violation of the right to travel freely
- Upgrades to the entire country's infrastructure would have to be decided, approved, and funded by Congress... you know, the fucktards who are typically so busy arguing about petty bullshit like spoiled 8-year-olds, they appear incapable of so much as considering such important matters.
- Again from the political angle, "regulating human-operated vehicles off public roads" sound commie. Nobody (in America, from an idiot-political standpoint) likes commies.
- There are almost 60 million miles of paved roads that would have to be altered, and another million miles of unpaved roads which, more than likely, would be ignored. No big deal for those living in highly urbanized areas, but what about those of us who live in the boonies? Your self-driving car would never make it within 10 miles of my country home.
- "Death by GPS," only w/ self-driving cars, you can't blame it on human error. Can't wait for the flood of lawsuits because of a simple map glitch (['turning left here' "Shit, that's a ravine, NNNNNOOOOOOOOOooooooooo..." SPLAT] * [every car on the road] = [one really big fucking mess])

I do imagine there will be a fair number of automated autos on the roads within the next 25 years, but the idea that they will completely replace human-controlled autos is specious at best.

Problem: nuclear power isn't ready for human hubris and greed, which puts profit above safety.

And that's before you get to the fact that nuclear is the most expensive power source, by far. Billions to construct plants and process ore. Billions more in insurance. Billions more in monitoring and containment costs.

even if you plan to bury it it the middle of the desert, 2,000ft underground

And your underground storage facility will have to be monitored and maintained - for hundreds of years.

Nuclear power is nothing more than a shiny toy for pedants, and a corporate cash cow for an industry totally co-opted by regulatory capture .

The level of public ignorance never ceases to amaze.

You mean the willful ignorance of the revolving door in nuclear power regulation or the willful ignorance of skirting safety measures to save a buck?

Though it's nice that you downloaded Linux using bit torrent, you can't "pirate" it that way. You'd have to distribute modified binaries refusing to provide the source.

And even then I'd rather call it copyright infringement, actual piracy is done just off the coast of Somalia.

For a perspective on the role of nuclear weapons in US foreign policy see here: Empire and Nuclear Weapons

In addition to using nuclear weapons, the US has also threatened to use nuclear weapons on more occasions than all other nations combined.

Further to that the US has threatened to use nuclear weapons on many occasions, probably more times that all other nations put together:

Empire and Nuclear Weapons

>wording that gives any member nation unilateral authority to ensure compliance with existing resolutions.

While carefully and deliberately avoiding phrasing that would authorize military force. The Security Council removed "all necessary means", the diplomatic code for using force, and substituted "serious consequences".

Legal opinion on UN resolution 1441.

No, you're wrong.

The Vietnam cost of $600B is in 2005 dollars. Using your calculator, that's already over $653B.

Iraq alone has already cost more than that, well over $700B.

And if you're interested in using a calculator, look into the fact that at least 80% of Iraq's cost is borrowed money, which (at typical 30 year Treasury bond rates) costs 155%. So that's already going to cost well over $1 TRILLION. And that's just Iraq, which has made us a lot more threatened.

Feel safer?

You can find a list of UN achievements here: http://www.un.org/aboutun/achieve.htm The UN is not perfect by any means but its achievements are not small. For those interested in the UN commentaries such as this one http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3417 will be more credible than the kind of wild-eyed, foaming at the mouth guff that is all too often heard from people 1. without passports 2. who have never traveled in the developing world 3. who left school early 4. who believe the UN is a cover for the "illuminati" and who subscribe to other paranoid, millenialist nonsense (world govt. conspiracy theories etc.) 5. who come from countries that think they can dispense with the rule of international law 6. who have ludicrous fantasies about the cost of the UN compared with the cost of war or who have fantasies about their own nation's generosity In terms of per capita contributions to international development the US is the meanest rich country in the world, by a large margin. You should be aware that Iraq was sucessfully disarmed by the UN and that it was completely unnecessary for the United States govt to lie to the American people about links with Al Qaeda, about weapons of mass destruction and to invade that country. As has been pointed out, your attack on the UN has nothing to do with scientific question of whether climate change is real or not. Have you considered flaming the US Supreme Court? Either way, your style is unattractive, even though I agree with the proposition that climate change presents a challenge and opportunity for social justice. We all have to live with the consequences of deforestation, conflict and competition for resources.

"they are indeed deliberately provoking the US"

There are several issues in the case of Iran. One is simply that it is independent and independence is not tolerated. Sometimes it's called successful defiance in the internal record. Take Cuba. A very large majority of the U.S. population is in favor of establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba and has been for a long time with some fluctuations. And even part of the business world is in favor of it too. But the government won't allow it. It's attributed to the Florida vote but I don't think that's much of an explanation. I think it has to do with a feature of world affairs that is insufficiently appreciated. International affairs is very much run like the mafia. The godfather does not accept disobedience, even from a small storekeeper who doesn't pay his protection money. You have to have obedience otherwise the idea can spread that you don't have to listen to the orders and it can spread to important places.

If you look back at the record, what was the main reason for the U.S. attack on Vietnam? Independent development can be a virus that can infect others. That's the way it's been put, Kissinger in this case, referring to Allende in Chile. And with Cuba it's explicit in the internal record. Arthur Schlesinger, presenting the report of the Latin American Study Group to incoming President Kennedy, wrote that the danger is the spread of the Castro idea of taking matters into your own hands, which has a lot of appeal to others in the same region that suffer from the same problems. Later internal documents charged Cuba with successful defiance of U.S. policies going back 150 years - to the Monroe Doctrine -- and that can't be tolerated. So there's kind of a state commitment to ensuring obedience.

Going back to Iran, it's not only that it has substantial resources and that it's part of the world's major energy system but it also defied the United States. The United States, as we know, overthrew the parliamentary government, installed a brutal tyrant, was helping him develop nuclear power, in fact the very same programs that are now considered a threat were being sponsored by the U.S. government, by Cheney, Wolfowitz, Kissinger, and others, in the 1970s, as long as the Shah was in power. But then the Iranians overthrew him, and they kept U.S. hostages for several hundred days. And the United States immediately turned to supporting Saddam Hussein and his war against Iran as a way of punishing Iran. The United States is going to continue to punish Iran because of its defiance. So that's a separate factor.

And again, the will of the U.S. population and even US business is considered mostly irrelevant. Seventy five percent of the population here favors improving relations with Iran, instead of threats. But this is disregarded. We don't have polls from the business world, but it's pretty clear that the energy corporations would be quite happy to be given authorization to go back into Iran instead of leaving all that to their rivals. But the state won't allow it. And it is setting up confrontations right now, very explicitly. Part of the reason is strategic, geo-political, economic, but part of the reason is the mafia complex. They have to be punished for disobeying us.

Both Ozone hole and global warming have similar causes though (emissions, in general). Don't forget that Ozone forming low on the ground (in smog) is another another problem.

The fact that phenomena are related and causality is not as easy as you think or thought it was isn't the scientist's fault. What matters is what we know now, based on current evidence. And that is that global warming is much greater than a normal, cyclical effect. It is clear that it is man-made, and there are absolutely plausible known mechanisms for this.

Sure, an administration can repress scientists and support the mineral oil business (owned by the President's family) and a globally harmful lifestyle. But that is not going to change the realities, and it's not going to save our habitat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plausible_deniability
http://www.kavinay.com/dictionary/plausible_deniab ility.php
http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol3/v3n20hri_body.html

Overall, the top suppliers of oil (crude and refined products) to the United States during 2003 were Canada (2.1 MMBD), Saudi Arabia (1.8 MMBD), Mexico (1.6 MMBD), and Venezuela (1.4 MMBD).

(MMBD = million barrels per day) from

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/usa.html

Dang Canadians! Lets stop giving those hockey playing moose chasing beer drinking hoosiers our money.

i thaught the majority of hijackers on 9/11 were from iran? correct me if im wrong. the usa has sancations against iran and libya, so they dont get any oil money from us.

maybe once we set up a democracy in iraq, they will become a big supplier of oil for america, who knows...

just read this while waiting for the preview...

U.S. competitors in Europe and Japan depend much more on Gulf oil than the U.S. does: 30% of European oil imports and nearly 80% of Japan's come from the Gulf. The U.S. exerts significant influence on these countries through control of Gulf oil.

from http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol2/v2n4oil_body.html
its old, but lots of stuff hasen't changed from 97.

Well, those Turks would have a much easier time if the U.S. hadn't been so insistent upon exporting over 9 billion dollars worth of arms over the last twenty years to their government.

On the other hand, if the police raid your house for drugs, but all they find are dead bodies, is it still not worth it?

Raiding houses for drugs is it's own problem, but we didn't raid Iraq for something relatively benign and find something horrible. We invaded for something horrible and found relatively benign things. Yes, he would have eventually developed into something that would be our immideate problem but I seriously doubt he would have come straight for us. Turning Israel into glass would have probably been his first objective. Regardless of the fact that nuking anybody is *NOT* in his best interests, as the same thing would instantaniously happen to his country. Remember, we support Israel at every turn. A nation that has consistently violated UN Security Council resolutions. And tell me such a disproportinately large percentage of our foreign aid goes there?

With all due respect, the Iraqis tried that. They were slaughtered. This isn't colonial times with muskets and sabres. Modern technology has made dictatorships all the more difficult to overcome.

You cannot force freedom on a people, even if it is people of your own nationality doing the liberating. If that enough people wanted it, then it would have happened. Whatever happened to open revolt of the populace? Why do we have to be "determined and resolved" for them?

A wise man once said:
"If I can't support a war without having served in the military,
then you can't support gay marriage without having taken it up the ass a few times."

I'm not trying to say that if you are not in a military you have no right to want to go to war. I'm saying that if you think that we should have invaded, then quit your job and start your own army. If there are enough people who think it will be worthwhile, then go overthrow a soverign nation. Don't send people that signed up to defend *their* country somewhere else to defend someone else's.

Since we are talking of democracy, the democratically appointed Kofi Annans opinion surely weighs more than that of the US installed Iyad Allawi.
Also at the risk of being modded off topic I'd like to make a genaral statement on international terrorism.
Recently a proBush stance by a columnist in my local free rag (Galway, Ireland) attracted a letters page full of rebukes. The columnist in question retaliated by saying that global terrorism is the biggest threat to "the world" today (it's not, poverty is) and that George Bush is the only solution. Well I agree that terrorism is a huge problem but ya know if the British government had listened to the plight of the Catholics in Northern Ireland in the sixties, there would be no IRA today. With aid reconciliation and understanding. Attempts to understand the root causes of support for radicalism ie. war, alienation and poverty are often met with more success then hate.
Hate breeds hate. Radical action breeds radical reaction. Stop bombing people into the ground and it just might not happen to you.
If you think I'm talking waffle then google 'canary wharf IRA' and compare that with last weekends round of talks where sworn enemies are now sitting around a table to talk.
There is a way out and it is not about increased defence spending, unethical imprisonment and unilateral invasion.
It is about putting peace before closing your eyes to world suffering.
Get informed

I don't agree with most of your post, but that's ok - we're each entitled to our own political philosophies.

Bush recognizes that this is a war, the bad guys started it, and it's only going to get worse unless we start fighting back.

But this line I had to address - the only "war" we have is the "war" the Bush Administration made up. The "war on terror" is no more of a war than the "war on drugs", and the "bad guys" didn't start it - that's just the simple black and white picture the Bush Administration (well, the whole federal government, really) wants you to believe.

You want to talk about who started what, you should take a look at American foreign policy in the middle east over the last few decades, particularly concerning covert intelligence operations that sponsored or supported coup d'etats and gov't overthrows.

Such a sordid history doesn't justify the 9/11 attacks, but you have to realize the context they took place in - not "evil-doers" who simply hate American freedoms, but violent people who are tired of the US interfering in their national affairs and overthrowing their governments to battle the Soviets or securing the flow of affordable oil.

[...]the U.S. had a positive image with many Iranians. After helping to convince occupying Soviet forces to leave the country, [...] the American government was generally well regarded.

The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was owned by British interests and supported by the British government. In a grossly unequal colonial-style arrangement, the Iranians were not even allowed to examine the ledgers. As the dispute with the British intensified, the Iranians finally became determined to nationalize their country's oil industry. [...] Although the Truman government had been sympathetic to Iran, [indicative of a Russian controlled government, of course - dvdeug] in 1953 the new Eisenhower administration accepted the British view that the Iranian regime had to go.

American and Israeli intelligence agents organized SAVAK, the Shah's personal secret security force. Before long, Iran developed into a full-blown police state complete with thousands of informers, censorship, arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, and widespread torture and assassination. [...] Aiming to terrorize an entire population, SAVAK repression was both extreme and widespread.

The youth tried to bring about change in 1999, demonstrating PEACEFULLY against the closing of an independent newspaper. The reaction? Government forces went into a university dorm in the middle of the night and threw students out of the window to fall several flights to their death/massive injury. Students were beaten up, jailed, disappeared. Even now, several students get picked up, beaten, or disappeared periodically. So it's not that they aren't trying - it just takes time.

Please also remember that this government was born of a revolution about 20 years ago, then there was one decade of the Iran-Iraq war, where one million Iranians were killed. So you're basically asking for a second revolution fresh after a lot of death and bloodshed, when the first revolution was what brought about this awful government in the first place. Do you see the dilemma?

Right now, I cannot see your world because it is too dangerous for me to go to Iran because of my skin color alone.

Not true. Iranians are aryans, so we have white skinned, blue- eyed Iranians as well as the more olive tones of those who mixed with Arab blood after the Arab conquest. This is a usual misconception. Iranians are not Arabs. If you follow the passage of Indo-european languages, you'll see that the root of Farsi, the main language in Iran, is germanic.

Neither are Iranians racist. Blacks, chinese, all skin colours are welcome. But you DO run into trouble if you don't believe in God, are a prostitute, or are an open homosexual. Iranian society has a very closed mind on those issues.

The US government has already gone too far with Afghanistan, and I hope that we, the people of the world wake up and hold them accountable for their crimes against humanity.

Crimes against humanity? Would the killing of thousands of innocents be a crime against humanity too? The Taliban attacked the center of our largest city.

Incorrect. Al Quaida members are believed to have been behind the terrorist attack. Al Quaida is a terrorist organization and is distinct and separate from the Taliban, which is the former government of Afghanistan. 3,000 innocents (the actual number is less than the original widely broadcast estimate of 5000) were killed in the US terrorist attacks, while at conservative estimates more than 4,000 innocents were killed due to the US bombings.

The killing of the women, children, and men in the US is a crime against humanity, just as is the killing of the women, children, and men in Afghanistan. Further, the trauma to Afghanistan is greater than that in the US in that the terrorist attack in the US was kept to one day and a handful of targets. The US bombings in Afghanistan embroiled the entire country and displaced millions from their homes for months (and the situation continues to be a crisis).

Keep in mind that the last three world-wide military actions the US has done (especially Bosnia) has been to save the oppression of Muslims, especially from violent Christians. That's right, mostly Christian soldiers fighting off Christians to save Muslims. Think about that for a little while. Would a Muslim attack another Muslim to save a Christian?

The war against Afghanistan has little to do with religion or humanitarianism and a great deal to do with oil pipelines/economics. I believe the same held true for Bosnia (what are the other two countries?) Generally, war has to do with strategic interests and regional politics, because no government worth its salt is about to invest billions of dollars and risk the lives of its soldiers otherwise. It's unwise to unquestioningly accept speeches from government spokespeople in any country of the world. Please see http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0201sou.html for Foreign Policy in Focus' comments on Bush's recent State of the Union address.

How would Islam react to another religion's extremists flying a jet into the center of Mecca during the haj? Would they be reasonable about that? Or would the whole Islamic world get stirred up like angry ants and try to kill all other religions? Would every imam scream for blood then? I know what Muslims are willing to do for Islam in a crisis.

Irrelevant. As my mother always used to say: if your friend jumped off a bridge....

Your belief that another group would have reacted violently in your place does not justify your own inability to control yourself. Let's place your comments in a different context for you to see what I mean:

You violently beat your wife. Then you say, Roger would have beaten his wife for the same reasons, and maybe even hit her far worse.

Your words do not justify your violence.

Crimes against humanity is not a relative term. We are trying to stabilize them after we get rid of a terrorist group we should have focused on a long time ago. We are dealing with racist, mass- murdering, lying, mass-destruction causing murderers.

Mmm. Osama bin Laden was trained by the CIA. The Taliban were birthed from the open support the US gave to Islamic fundamentalists when the USSR invaded Afghanistan 20 years ago. Back then, Reagan praised these same forces as 'brave freedom fighters challenging the Evil Empire.'

A few years ago the Paris weekly Nouvel Observateur asked Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's national security advisor, whether the policy of the US in training and supporting Islamic terrorism then may have been a mistake, given that 'Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.'

Brzezinski's answer: 'What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?'

Please keep this in mind. The 'stirred-up Moslems' that have been at the center of media broadcasts and discussion groups for these long long months are very much a product of past US support, and have caused misery all around the world. They have now struck with devastating force for the first time in US soil, and finally are being taken seriously as a global threat by the US.

Your rhetoric, at times, seems to reveal that you are poorly informed on the historical context of the growth of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism and the responsibility of your own government in nurturing it.