deliaruhe
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Academic freedom is supposed to cover students, not just faculty. Clearly not at Yale. But there's nothing like classifying something as secret to get people like Julian Assange to ferret it out.
Engineer a failure? Sure, why not.
O, the things Washington won't do for Israel would make a very short list.
Hey, TREFOR MOSS, are you trying to rain on the Pentagon's parade? How else is that bloated behemoth supposed to justify continued budget increases if they aren't free to fearmonger about an up-and-coming enemy superpower? Many observers are nostalgic for the good old days of the Cold War, and the Pentagon is only too eager to provide them with Cold War II.
I thought it had more to do with whether Greece's exit was orderly or disorderly? Given the mood of the Germans and, to a slightly lesser extent, the ECB, Spain, Italy, and Ireland are not likely to get any protection against Greece's default.
Stated openly or camouflaged, China and the West appear to nurture the same prejudices.
You forgot to include "economics" in that final statement. Military spending and the American arms industry are what is holding the US economy -- such as it is -- together.
The people who don't apologize just happen to be the people who should have been fired, impeached, and/or jailed. That includes not just the banksters and Cheney-Bush & Co, but also much of the media. I wonder if Bill Clinton is still waiting for an apology from all the journalists who did their very best to knee-cap him during the Whitewater "scandal" they helped to manufacture? I suppose not. He's smarter than that.
Why is there still a NATO? I mean, really -- not the excuses provided by politicians and militarists.
Look, people. This occupation has been going on for 45 years. If the US really wanted to see a peaceful, mutually satisfactory agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, one would have been reached about 40 years ago.
As it happens, in the wake of the 7 day war, Moshe Dayan said: "No solution is the best solution." Neither Israelis nor Americans have seriously swerved from that, despite the 45-year-long song and dance the two states have been performing.
Not unless the Palestinians agree to the 2000 Camp David offer made by Barak will anything change -- unless, of course, the Palestinians wish to take over the Jewish tradition of wandering the earth for 2000 years without a home. Or perhaps they, too, could produce a book of fairy tales and pass it off as an official deed to the land where they've been living for thousands of years.
The Pentagon knows that the shortest route to getting rid of NATO is for the US to cut back its military budget severely and then demand that everybody else pick up the slack. The only country likely to comply is Canada, whose prime minister is trying to earn his balls by supporting Washington's military fantasies.
"Americans' ambivalence about the role of government also infects foreign policy. Consider the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As the Gallup satisfaction chart above shows, both campaigns produced an initial frisson of satisfaction with the country's direction."
Have no fear; this will soon change. In a little-noticed addition to a $642 billion defense bill, bipartisan legislators are proposing getting rid of two previous acts, the Smith-Mundt Act and Foreign Relations Authorization Act, aimed at forbidding the State Department and Pentagon from unleashing misinformation campaigns on its own citizens, allowing "U.S. propaganda intended to influence foreign audiences to be used on the domestic population."
Propaganda should heal that terrible ambivalence that won't let the ruling elite wage war without interference from the pesky masses.
I guess the downside as you describe it, Stephen, should be expected: after all, the AKP is a conservative party. Fear is what drives most conservatives -- especially fear of criticism, especially from "the masses," and fear of liberty, especially within the masses. Conservative self-confidence has always rested on a rather fragile foundation.
You are quite right about the global power elite speaking and dealing only with each other. That model has been the default setting for "civilization" for the last 5000 years. Paying some attention to those whom one governs has always been a threat to those leaders who are opposed to it. And right now, it seems to me, American leaders violently opposed to it. Moreover, American leaders are opposed to treating other leaders as equals -- to wit, Obama's arrogant behaviour at the Americas Summet -- not to mention Hillary's pushing around of the Turkish leadership to get them to do what she wants with respect to Syria.
NATO and the responsibilities of membership in it are a problem for Turkey -- and, in fact, a problem for virtually all of its members, since the US calls the shots. Thanks to NATO (and the WTO), we are stuck in this important transition from unilateralism to multilateralism. NATO should be abolished, but the only way for that to happen is for members to withdraw. I wish Turkey would/could set the example.
Thanks for this favourable impression. I guess I want to think well of emerging nations, especially Turkey.
Your plan for congresspeople is excellent -- providing they have passports. I have only met the boys from homeland security once, and it was such a bad experience that I pledged never to fly to or through the US until it does something about its dreadful paranoia. Of course, that's the impact that homeland security wants to have on all "aliens." Otherwise, why make the experience so "memorable"?
You have to admire a guy who can just get up and go on a trip halfway around the world the minute his grades are in. Takes me two weeks to recover.
I'll be most interested in Stephen's impressions of Turkey. There are days when I think that Erdogan and his crew are the best thing that's happened to the region in centuries. Other times, not so much. I read the Turkish papers but it's so difficult to get an accurate sense of what's happening. My sense of it is that there are real perks to being a NATO member, but that maybe they're outweighed by the disadvantages. Hillary has pushed Erdogan around a lot on the Syria situation, and I get the distinct feeling that he's been forced to do things he wouldn't otherwise have done.
Maybe he really does have other fish to fry. At any rate, the requisite genuflecting before the American president is not all that urgent, is it?
If America's cures for state failure weren't so driven by fantasies of Full Spectrum Dominance, the rest of the wealthy world could be persuaded to participate more.
@Hughman Finland, with the highest care for mothers, is the highest baby-producing country in Europe.
Read much?
What?!! Caring for mothers?!! That's SOCIALISM!!
Maybe Obama's pandering for religious fundamentalist votes? They don't "believe in" global warming (as if science were to be "believed in" or not -- like the bible).
More seriously, he's not interested in climate change because those countries that are important to him don't want to be interested in it either. Should he get interested, Canada will just turn around and sell its toxic glop to China. Britain won't like the pressure that would be on them, should Obama suddenly get interested in decreasing global CO2. And Russia would be very unhappy, as would all the other oil suppliers.
So Obama's happy to keep the public focused on gay marriage and mean ol' Iran.