71–80 of 297 posts
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Because the United States of America didn't lose any wars, and winners make policy.
How about Vietnam, Iraq, Afganistan?
Iraq is in utter chaos, the US is doing just fine.
How exactly did the US "lose" in Iraq?
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Often wondered what the world would be like if there was an intelligence group that only did good.
Not feasible. Until we develop an ethical calculus "good" will always be relative. The problem with this is that one cannot infer ethics from logic. Also, human basic psychology is such that more power one has the less scrupulous one becomes. Therefore, either the group would be within a range of totally good in nature and totally feeble in power, or totally corrupt in nature and totally powerfull.
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If you were an ANC strategist at the time (cold war), who would you have aligned yourself with for financial & military support? Remember, you are a "3rd world" movement, European colonialism is still in full swing (though wavering), you are probably the wrong color and civil rights aren't a thing yet -Jim Crow laws are still being enforced in the US, and the apartheid government you are fighting have been aligned wi…
Same thing all over the place. Castro went on a PR tour of the US trying to gather support and was snubbed long before he went to talk to the Soviets. Few years later his party finally called itself Socialist. Another few years and they finally called themselves Communist. Ho Chi Mihn was a Comintern member, but the Viet Minh was a broader alliance that included nationalists and others as well alongside the communist…
But try that with a colony or some place with a large US corporate presence (banana republic, anyone?) and you were begging for trouble.
Frankly the cold war seems in hindsight to be just an extension of the so called great game.
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If we extrapolate, humans will sooner or later create "true AI". Such an AI system can break free from our control (it will end up manipulating us in the physical space), it should become wiser than humanity as a collective (because it will evolve much faster then us). And in this case, we'd end up having such "an intelligence group that only did good". The problem lies in how we manage to bridge the period between n…
You're assuming that a "true AI" if it existed would care about the continued existence of humanity? Past the point of ability to self-repair and self-fuel, what would be the reason to even care about humanity then beyond self-defence?
The CIA is the reason for most of the unstable regions and it's hard to understand how after messing with other places and making it worse for everybody but weapons manufacturers, they're still doing the same thing over and over. Previously it was the fight against Communism, now Islam, I wonder what it will be in 2020. Middle-east, Asia, South America, all are right to be very angry with the CIA, but turn it into a…
I recently read Legacy of Ashes[0], which I thought would be a sort of thrilling history of the spy game in America, but turned out to be a chronicle of blunder after blunder by the CIA. Fascinating stuff.
Having read that, I'm not naive enough to believe the cause of "most" global instability is due to the CIA; that's giving them far too much credit.
[0]http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/030...
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> Just for the record: of course large parts of it were manufactured. Some of it was manufactured by a so-called "source", but that source was so in-/non-credible that you wouldn't buy a used hammer from him Yet Powell built his case, before the UN with Curveball's informations. Curveball who ultimately admitted he was a taxi driver and not a scientist. Some might say "the US has been misled", I don't believe one sec…
AFAIK Powell himself has been sceptical and deceived. That is why he eventually resigned after he realized he had been played.
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Osama Bin Laden told the US the reason for his fight (which is the origin of violent movements such as ISIS): American politics/interference in Muslim countries. Do you see the pattern?
One thing I find bizarre about 9/11 is that very few people seem to openly question why the World Trade Center was amongst the top targets that day. Perhaps if people looked a little deeper into what the WTO does it might help us make better decisions going forward. In the interest of balance, the situation on 9/11 wasn't completely the fault of the US. Saudi Arabia appears to have been the main driving force behind…
I agree, though even if the US solved its energy problems today, we (i.e. the entire Western world) need to survive the generation or two of pretty angry Middle-Easterns seeking revenge for their destroyed homes and killed families, as well as our own politicians using that to further their agendas.
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Not feasible. Until we develop an ethical calculus "good" will always be relative. The problem with this is that one cannot infer ethics from logic. Also, human basic psychology is such that more power one has the less scrupulous one becomes. Therefore, either the group would be within a range of totally good in nature and totally feeble in power, or totally corrupt in nature and totally powerfull.
I'd settle for an intelligence organisation that followed basic human rights law. Intelligence is dominated by a "the ends justify the means" attitude that permits all sorts of grave injustices.
I too do dream of S.H.I.E.L.D.
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Not sure if trolling... ?? Just for the record: of course large parts of it were manufactured. Some of it was manufactured by a so-called "source", but that source was so in-/non-credible that you wouldn't buy a used hammer from him, never mind a used car. And it was well known that this source was completely non-credible. In addition, various other bits were combined in ways that the appearance of a threat was manuf…
> Just for the record: of course large parts of it were manufactured. Some of it was manufactured by a so-called "source", but that source was so in-/non-credible that you wouldn't buy a used hammer from him Yet Powell built his case, before the UN with Curveball's informations. Curveball who ultimately admitted he was a taxi driver and not a scientist. Some might say "the US has been misled", I don't believe one sec…
How do Americans maintain this doublethink that their government's military actions are bad but the people who carry them out are good? Is a US soldier somehow more righteous than an ISIS soldier? They both kill innocent people, they both do it to serve "bad" purposes. Why not treat them all as what they are - killers?