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UK National Archives Divulge Secrets
Sunil Sood writes "Yes, its that time of year again - no, not the New Year but when the UK National Archives release a whole lot of previously "classified" information (many govt papers in the UK, with only a few exceptions, are classified secret for a 'standard' 30 years) As normal, you have the usual combination of the amusing: The design of a coin to mark the UK joining the EEC was changed, after Prince Philip said he did not like the 'little p', and the more serious: it was believed the USA had plans for US airborne troops to seize the oil installations in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in 1973."
And it makes refrence that British Intel thought it would be likely that the US would invade, not that they were planning a direct attack. Its kind of a misleading headline.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
ours is 50 years, though. there was a /. post a few months back, regarding the unclassification of the documents from roswell on the date of the "alien landing". if i remember correctly, it reported the weather, and had nothing about little green men in a saucer...
You are aware, of course, that influential members of the current administration have called for the US to "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars" in order to maintain American military dominance.
Interestingly, this 'call to arms' was made well before September 11 2001.
US backs long-planned attack on Syria
My favorite theory is that someone just said "Catching terrorists is too hard, be we have to be seen to do something - lets get Saddam".
Sometimes, life is stranger than art, I suppose.
Proof of what?
All he's saying is that fifty year old military documents are being witheld by the government -- which is true. In fact, many documents are being held back. The FOIA has been weakened greatly since Bush took office, simply by the adminstration's outright refusal to release documents.
The only proof we have is that the government has documents which they are unwilling to release. The fact that we can't prove anything is exactly the point because we don't have the information to do so.
There's no conspiracy theory, because there's no information that a conspiracy exists, other than the suspicious reticence of the government. If you can hide all proof that your conspiracy exists, does to not exist anymore?
You're right to be skeptical of any conspiracy theory claims. But you're foolish to believe that no conspiracy exists because the only information that could prove or disprove it is in the guarded posession of those who would be involved in the conspiracy.
The FOIA is one of the greatest Acts in American history, IMHO. Information is the ultimate power, and that power should be held by the people. When the government witholds that power, you should be afraid.
The enemies of Democracy are
Nuke the Russian tank divisions with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles while they're still in the process of occupying Finland. Provide military assistance to Sweden and make a stand in Norway and in the northernmost Sweden (for Kiruna and the other mines).
This is why I am amazed why our last two governments have been talking the public to accept that we must NATO for our safety's sake.
The owls are not what they seem
The US gave Japan an ultimatum: withdraw your troops from China or we'll stop selling you oil. Realpolitik considerations about American business in China aside, pressuring Japan to end their war of conquest and exploit in China was the right thing to do. Japan could have forsworn militarism and ensured their oil supply from America; instead, they chose to expand the war by attacking the US. This was a decision that led to the eventually ruin of Japan. It was a decision made by Japan, not America. It's easy to say "America should have known they'd make that decision" but it apparently wasn't so obvious at the time.
I'm not generally an apologist for US foreign policy. But in the specific instance you mention, I feel obliged to set the record straight. Whatever the root causes of WWII, America was not trying to goad Japan into war. Japan chose to attack America as part of an expansionist campaign to secure the resources of the East Asia and the Pacific; the terrible consequences of that decision must be laid first and foremost on Japan.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Try googling for Opereration Northwood, one that did get declassified. Basically, your gov. wanted to shoot down civilian planes and shipping to justify a pre-emtive invasion of Cuba. It went all the way up to Kennedy, who was the only one that thought it morally reprehensible, and stopped it.
Quote from the original document:
The sad thing is, this all sounds strangely familiar...
And remember, this is one of the few that did get declassified. God knows what else your country has done. Despite the image presented by Hollywood, the USA is one of the most morally reprehensible countries on the planet. Your self-denial and ignorance of the problem makes it even worse.
We've had some bad moments, but 'most morally reprehensible' is incredibly ignorant. The ONE example you could come up with actually shows how incredibly good our system of government is (as is the oil example cited in the article above). Through a series of checks and balances these crazy ideas never saw the light of day. Just because a few people in goverment planned it, the proof is in action and both of these cases resulted in neither.
I can come up with thousands of instances of my government doing truly good works across the globe. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Have we had some really bad moments? You bet.. hell we've had some true monsters run this country for brief periods (Lyndon Johnson most recently). Yet, overall, our record is actually pretty damn good. We do look out for our own best interests most of the time (as does your country, whichever that is), but after all that is the job of government.
It's to bad that hating my country is so fashionable right now. We're actually a pretty good bunch. But people always need an enemy, and I guess we'll be it for awhile.
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