Fyi - RT is paid for by the Russian Government.
What’s you’re point?
Do you point out that the BBC is owned/paid by the British government when someone posts BBC? (or NPR for that matter)
Remarks on the Decline of American Empire
51–60 of 76 posts
Re: Remarks on the Decline of American Empire
#52To me the lynchpin is the monumental catastrophe represented by Iraq War II and the entire decades-long Middle East quagmire in general. It's been nothing short of national suicide, especially when one considers what else might have been done with all that money. We almost literally set the surplus of an entire American generation on fire and watched it burn. The neocons are the worst villains but not the only ones.…
Not only that but the torrent of lies used to sell it and the torture regime that went along with it destroyed the ability of the populist right wing to discern the difference between truth and reality and led directly to Trumpism. The failure of the policy led people to look for scapegoats and trump handed them to them. Ironically the people who pushed the policy were the first victims and I can’t think of anyone more deserving.
Re: Remarks on the Decline of American Empire
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not only was the disaster entirely predictable, they themselves predicted it. For Gulf War I, Cheney (then Secretary of Defense) explained why they left Saddam in power - that removing him would create a power vacuum and a civil war leading to regional instability. Gulf War II - with Cheney as VP - has exactly this outcome, leading us to dump blood and money (ours and others) in the desert sands.
So who was the mastermind? Wolfowitz?
I’m not sure there was _a_ mastermind. More of a confluence of economic and political incentives combined with a bloodthirsty populace post-911.
Re: Remarks on the Decline of American Empire
#54Fyi - RT is paid for by the Russian Government.
What’s you’re point? Do you point out that the BBC is owned/paid by the British government when someone posts BBC? (or NPR for that matter)
They’re very different. The BBC is an independent organization funded directly by license fees paid by television owners. Unlike RT, it is independent from direct government intervention, and it doesn’t attempt to advance the interests whichever party is in power. The BBC primarily exists to serve people living in Britain. RT is directly funded by the Russian government, and is targeted primarily at other countries outside Russia.
Re: Remarks on the Decline of American Empire
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
One hopes neoconservatism is good and dead. It was an ambitious ideology which presumed everyone in the world shared western values or wanted them. I think the American public tired of this neocon hawkishness and I'm hopeful we see a change in our foreign policy.
> One hopes neoconservatism is good and dead. It was an ambitious ideology which presumed everyone in the world shared western values or wanted them. I dunno, seemed to last well into Obama's tenure in practice if not in rhetoric, from what I can tell, and Syria may well be a bigger disaster than Afghanistan and Iraq combined by any measure, including realpolitik (see: its effects on European politics, maybe also on…
I happily voted for Obama twice, but his policy in Syria and Libya was a complete clusterfuck and in retrospect I think perhaps the country would be in better shape today had we elected Romney, who while I disagreed with his policies is fundamentally a decent human being and probably would have allowed the country to blow off steam without electing a monster like trump.
Re: Remarks on the Decline of American Empire
#56Fyi - RT is paid for by the Russian Government.
What’s you’re point? Do you point out that the BBC is owned/paid by the British government when someone posts BBC? (or NPR for that matter)
In the context of a nation the UK had an adversarial relationship with, yes, that would be a prudent thing to point out.
Re: Remarks on the Decline of American Empire
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Machetes work just as well, if that is all you have (see Rwanda). I imagine rocks and sticks could be used if your civilization has not got to the universal machete ownership level.
How does what happened in Vegas happen with Machetes?
This thread is not talking about Vegas.
It's talking about genocide. If internal strife gets to the point of extreme hatred, then you don't need guns to kill each other. Not saying I agree that would happen in the U.S., but that's what they're talking about. Not Vegas.
To reiterate: See Rwanda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide
Re: Remarks on the Decline of American Empire
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well I guess that I implicitly expect opinionated front page HN content to come from someone whose opinion is more informed than mine. I’m not sure what to take away from this post, given the lack of supporting evidence for the assertions made. Currently I’m at “huh, interesting opinions, who is this guy and how did his post make it to the front page of HN?” Of course this is just my interpretation of why things get…
He made it to the front page because people here read it, thought it was interesting, and gave it a point. The fact it's on the front page means nothing more than that. Any reputation youre attaching to it doesn't exist.
Hmm, I see your point. So you don't think that reputability of the source plays into what makes it to the front page?
Generally, and purely anecdotally, I find HN content to be both interesting and either a) from a reputable source, generally for opinion pieces such as this or b) supported by facts, with sources, or with broadly-accepted knowledge held by the audience (such as with technical posts). Either a) or b), establish for me at least, some metric of reputability of the arguments presented.
I found this particular post to be interesting, but neither a) from a reputable source in the field (not trying to put down the author of the blog, just don't think based on his bio that this is more than one dude's opinion or he's just summarizing the content of the video) b) backed up by facts to support his opinions and assertions.
Re: Remarks on the Decline of American Empire
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does he need to be notable? Maybe he's just some guy on the internet with an opinion like you and me.
Well I guess that I implicitly expect opinionated front page HN content to come from someone whose opinion is more informed than mine. I’m not sure what to take away from this post, given the lack of supporting evidence for the assertions made. Currently I’m at “huh, interesting opinions, who is this guy and how did his post make it to the front page of HN?” Of course this is just my interpretation of why things get…
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Re: Remarks on the Decline of American Empire
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It was an ambitious ideology which presumed everyone in the world shared western values or wanted them. Eastern European here. After the fall of the iron curtain, what we really craved for was economic cooperation with the West, liberty of expression and civil and property rights. Instead, we got US-sponsored liberal NGOs to steer the public opinion in certain directions, NATO military bases to protect us from evil…
I would argue that the disillusionment in the Czech Republic not only the fault of the Americans, but also the fault of the former communists, who remained in power for the most part. During the privatization process the countries assets were sold to the corrupt ex-communists and westerners for pennies on the dollar. There is as much evil and profiteering from within as there is evil from outside. Which NGOs are you…
I will outline the Bulgarian perspective of events.
By the mid 1980s, "perestroychiks" in the Bulgarian communist party had prevailed over the old generation of die-hard communists. Despite officially calling themselves "communists", these people were avid pro-westerners and believers in market economy. One such key figure in Bulgaria was Andrey Lukanov, a minister of foreign trade during that time. When the Berlin wall fell, he headed the first democratic government and remained an influential force until his murdering in 1996.
Andrey Lukanov spoke eloquent English and was actively seeking economic ties and advices from the US. He even went so far to ask two American economy professors to devise a detailed economic plan which would guarantee the optimal transition to a market economy. Even the long-time president and communist dictator Todor Zhivkov officially admitted during his final resignation speech in 1989 that "communism was ill-conceived and we must be welcoming all foreign western capital". The trouble is, western capital didn't come as quickly as expected. We were left with factories and enterprises which were unable to compete with their western counterparts and our market was quickly flooded mostly with foreign goods. Everything else follows from this.
The privatisation therefore was more of an emergent act of saving the failed state enterprises. They were sold for pennies because they couldn't export their production and the domestic market was dire.
Nowadays, we have tens of US-backed NGOs (most notably "Otvoreno Obshtestvo", America for Bulgaria Foundation, Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, etc.) which work very hard to persuade us that gay rights, minority rights and saving the polar bears are the most important problems on our agenda, without ever acknowledging the deep economic problems that cause social tension and emigration.