So Prince William's girl friend is hunted by the photographers; bet she feels like the fox being hunted by the toffs init?
This was taken from The Demacracy Now Files. Here I am explaining to myself what he says in my simple way.Explaining Dr Chalmers Johnson's "Nemessis".
Nemesis is the Greek goddess of revenge. She punishes people for their arrogance and hubris (overbearing pride or presumption). North american politics have gone bad. There cannot be democracy and imperialism at the same time. US politics have been based on Roman Republic. If it sticks to imperialism it will lose the democracy of the country to a dictatorship. Take British Empire for example, after the WW2, the adminstrative massacres which they carried out in India - the jewel of the crown, the savage repression of the Kikuyu in Kenya and the bad fallback from the attack in Egypt which they carried out with French and Israels; they had to give up the empire one bit at a time. That way they kept their democracy. But Blair foolishly wanted to expand the empire in Iraq.
Connect the breakdown of constitutional government with militarism.
To 'ave and to keep the empire going, you need wars. To have wars you need military, spending vast amounts of tax payer's money for the army and the military-industrial complex. this is the "intervening connection" in the social side of the empire. George washington in his farewell speech said that the great enemy of the republic is stading armies. In the US republic, there are three branches, which keep the balance of power in the government. They are the Executive, the Legistative and the Judicial. They are supposed to check each other. But the standing armies, militiarism, military establishment, military-industrial complex all draw power from the rest of the country to Washington and ultimately to the presidency. Don't forget the taxes as well. This in turn create an imperial presidency - dictator - who then starts to pass laws to make everything secret, and even the congress is kept in the dark let alone the public.
The following paragraph I am lost:
"It seems to me that this is also the same warning that Dwight Eisenhower gave in his famous farewell address of 1961, in which he, in quite vituperative language, quite undiplomatic language -- one ought to go back and read Eisenhower. He was truly alarmed when he spoke of the rise of a large arms industry that was beyond supervision, that was not under effective control of the interests of the military-industrial complex, a phrase that he coined. We know from his writings that he intended to say a military-industrial-congressional complex. He was warned off from going that far. But it's in that sense that I believe the nexus -- or, that is, the incompatibility between domestic democracy and foreign imperialism comes into being."
The latest US bases approved by the Pentagon and the resident is in Africa. This could be in Djibouti, where there already is a base. This could be enlarged. Or the Navy is interested in Gulf of Guinea where there is oil. So it could be there.
Imperialism is a form of tyranny. It never ask the people who are governed for their consent. So we have a system of spreading democracy at the point of a gun. Anyone who is governed this way wants to revolt. (They become terrorists.)
There has been at least three different revolts against the bases in Okinawa. There is a collution between the governments of Japan and US. Japanese goverment do not want the US soldiers prancing about in main land Japan. So they dump them or quarentine them in the island of Okinawa. In Italy, there was a 100,000 people, who demostrated against the enlargement of US base in Vicenza, a Palladian city of great and famous architecture; that they would become a target of terrorism. It is already in the news; Italy trying to indict 25 CIA officers, kidnapping and torturing an Italian citizen (Abu Omar).
Where as in Spain, PM Zapatero, due to public pressure got its army out of Iraq and radically reduced the US military presence in Spain.
Has the US government asked the people in the Persian Gulf, before it put 2 to 4 Carrier Task Forces in the fifth fleet in CENTCOM's navy in the Gulf. Looks like it is preparing to attack Iran or may be not.
In Greece in late 60's and early 70's, putting Greek colonals in power - who later self destructed themselves - and US bases were hated by the local population.
The reason US went to war in Iraq is, to have a base there, as the old friends US had are going and gone. Iran was lost in 1979 after the revolution against the Shah. The second Saudi Arabia had become less and less useful because of US's bungling. For Example putting US bases in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War in 1991. This is stupid and arrogant. It made enemies out of the patriotic Saudis eg Osama Bin Laden, as Saudi Arabia is charged with defence of Mecca and Medina. They do not want infidel troops who know nothing about their religion, country, lifestyle or anything else. Over time Saudis stopped using Prince Sultan Air Base outside Riyadh. So during the attack on Iraq US major operations headquaters was moved to Qatar.
Then US chose Iraq second most oil-rich country in the world to put its roots. There has never been an exit plan as there was never a plan to get out of the country. So we have five very, very large heavily reinforced, long double runways. five air bases strategically placed all over Iraq. The Ambassodor, Department of defence or the President never admits to having bases in Iraq. Neither will the Congress say a word about it. Only commander of Air Force in CENTCOM has said , when asked "How long do you think we'll be here?"; "Oh at least a decade in these bases.". Then they reinforce them.
Then comes The oil-rich Caspian Basin countries. US interfered after the demise of the Soviet Union in these countries' elections. And put puppet regimes who are in accord with US. Now one country has thrown the bases out due to heavy handed interference. Krydyztan is still going alright but the price US pays has quadrupled.
The president's private army.
There will not be any peace until the CIA is abolished. The National Security Act of 1947 created CIA and lists five functions for it. The purpose is to prevent surprise attacks and to prevent recurrance of the attack, such as Pearl Harbour. Of the five functions four are various forms of information gathering through open sources, espionage, signals intelligence (Dict). The fifth is a catchall, that CIA will do anything what the President says, through the National Security Council.
Intelligence is not taken seriously. It is just kept secret. And as the agency develpoed over time, every president who was inaugurated, after Truman, was told that he has a private army at his disposal, without congressional oversight until 1970's. Even then it was found incompetant as you find in the Iran-Cotra and things like that. President can do anything; he can order assasinations, governments overthrown, economies subverted, instruct Latin American military oofficers in state terrorism, carry out extra-ordinary renditions and order the torture of people. As US law says that if torture victim dies the perpetrator can get death penalty. So they do it in Egypt.
No president after Truman ever admited to the fact, nor did they fail to use it. Starting from in 1953 in Iran the overthrow of Mohammed Massadegh it has been rapidly advanced. The "blowback" means retaliation for cladestine activities carried abroad.
As these cladestine activities were carried out without the knowledge of the people, when retaliation comes it is not easy to explain in a proper context. An example:
Recruiting, arming and sending to battle, the Mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union in 1980, (and sending and forming bases in Saudi Arabia), created the September 11 tragedy. It is a blowback.
There are crooked congressmen, like Charlie Wilson from Texas was named charman of the House Intelligence Oversight Committee during Afghan period, he wrote to his pals in the CIA, "The fox is in the hen house. Gentlemen do anything you want to do."
China's role as a growing world power.
China is carrying on what the people want, moving towards moderation slowly. They dismantled the Leninist economy without having problems Yeltsin's Soviet Union had. It has unleashed its growth potential and is moving ahead with great power and insight.
China is feared by the neoconservatives, just like the English-speaking people had in the 20th century about Germany, Russia and Japan. The English-speaking people had nasty wars to adjust to threat at that time. But China has adjusted to the interests of countries like Indonesia an Vietnam, who do not like China.
US is egging Japan to go against China for the WW2 astrocasies. But a war with China is stupid like the Vietnam war. China had a couple of bad centuries but it is back, Hong Kong joke.
Remember Chinese bringing down one of US's spy planes. Bush sabour rattled against the Chinese about Thaiwan, but if US goes against Chinese it will be stupid. As if all the Chinese and all the Americans killed eachother there will be 800 million Chinese left!
The Star Wars program will not work but will make jobs for various constituencies where the military-indutrial complex has its facteries.
Most of the industrial world depends on high and low orbit sattellites, for global positioning, telecommunication, mapping and weather forcasting. The Chinese, Europeans and the Russians, have been asking US repeatedly to sit down and make decent international treaties, to prevent weapononization of space, to prevent growing catastrophy of orbiting space debris, that are extremely lethal to satellites and space travel. One time a piece of paint hit the challenger in orbit at 17,000 miles per hour and put a dent in the windshield as the commander Sally Ride reported.
A space Pearl Harbour, would mean, what the Chinese done in January, when they tested an anti-satellite weapon against their own old and redundant satellites, which destroyed the satellite and produced massive amount of debris in the low orbit. True after a whie the low orbit debris will come down to the atmosphere and burn out.
This is a bluff, the so called threat which can be removed by having space weaponry system. If the Chinese can knock them off what is the use of having them?
Fort Greely, Alaska
US Air Force think, that, there are three ways of bringing a missile down. This missile have to be a third rate North Korean one. Not the up to date Topol-M the Russian one which goes up into orbit extremely rapidly, with maneuvering ability to make it undetectable. The first is to get it on blastoff. For that the Boeing 747 with the laser gun will have to be on top of the launch site. Chances are practically nil. And it is bloody expensive. The next is to intercept it in space, while it is heading towards US at high speed. This is what the interceptors that have been put in the ground at Fort Greely, Alaska, and a couple of them at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, are supposed to do. They have not intercepted any at the moment. The radar is not there to track it. These are scarecrows to keep the North Koreans at bay.
If the North Koreans attack US or Japan there won't be a North Korea left in the future. They know it. So it is a waste of funds and labour.
Iran is surrounded by nuclear powers, Russia, Israel, Pakistan and India. So they should be armed as well. (What the hell US can make a few bucks mean time out of Iran?).
The Future
Us is stuck with the military-industrial complex for the time been. If the Secretary of Defence out of common sense try to close down a redundant base, there is an uproar in the surrounding community from newspapers, television, priests and local polititions to save their base.
Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and Dianne Feinstein of California, the two states with the largest number of military bases, will carry on doing their good work. So it is upto the people like Amy Goodman and the Democracy Now to get the inattentive citizens and open their eyes. Let Rupert Murdoch get so huge and give him enough rope to hang himself.
And I tell you ...eick....bit of puff and a bit of vodhka makes ....eick.... appy init?
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