Is encouraging democracy the same thing as imperialism?

[German guy]

Now THAT was an excellent response! Glad to see our European minions have finally learned to accept their place in the empire.

Glad I make you happy! :usflag2:

Seriously, without an occasional coffee at Starbuck's, burger at McDonalds and a Coke sometimes, I'd go crazy. :mrgreen:

 

[Agent Ferris]

If I may join this debate ... I am not sure about that. There have been pretty shady actions by the US occasionally, which can better be explained by a tendency to defend material interests rather than defending Western values (although that often was congruent in other cases), think of involvement in Latin America during the Cold War, for example.

Ya that was ideologically not financially motivated.

 

[rathi]

Ya that was ideologically not financially motivated.

Hardly. The CIA supported coups in Iran and Guatemala in '53 and '54 because they wanted to nationalize oil and land that American corporations had a stake in. Iran was particularly blatant as U.S. support was conditional on getting a slice of the oil pie after operation AJAX was complete.

 

[Demon of Light]

Yes I'm saying that the East Indian Company was nothing like a modern day corporation, it was under charter to legally control territory, which means they were able to police it, make laws, etc.

Every company controls "territory" in that they have property and they do have rules and security for that territory. The East India Company was just an extreme version of this as it was a corporation that ruled over nations. It was not the only corporation in history with that trait.

Is there something wrong with being opposed to pan-Arabism which was founded by national socialists were very similar to the fascists we had just gotten done fighting WW2 with?

The main thing is it had nothing to do with fighting communism and it wasn't because we actually cared about them being fascist. We happily embraced fascists around the world and used them. Resistance to pan-Arabism was motivated by a desire for control. The same motivation for our intervention in Lebanon can be found in our effort to incite and control the Iran-Iraq War and our war with Iraq soon after.

Hello, the U.S. didn't get involved until very late in the game, and what interests did we have in Yugoslavia or have in Yugoslavia?

The U.S. was involved in the Yugoslav Wars from the start. As for a reason, it is the simple matter of control once more.

No actually there is no legitimate evidence for those assertions.

There is a plethora of evidence I assure, but this is not really the place to discuss it. Suffice to say I think a system that is willing to sacrifice tens of thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands or millions of foreigners, would not really bat an eye at letting 3,000 citizens die.

Good to see you have a crystal ball.

I don't need one, it is simply how this goes. Keep in mind who Bush brought to power with him. They were all members of PNAC a group deadset on not only maintaining American dominance in the world, but building on it.

Cuba was clearly aligned with the Soviets, just who was India aligned with?

The same. India was a strong ally of the Soviet Union and remains a strong ally of Russia.

lol no he stole U.S. assets of private U.S. citizens what did you expect us to do?

We did not go after every country or leader who nationalized industries, regardless of who they belonged to in the world. Indeed, the U.S. was willing to cooperate with Cuba in regards to nationalization.

A) How did we support them exactly

The same way we support countless armed groups throughout the world.

B) This proves exactly what in your mind?

I think if communism was not a good campaign for the U.S. it would have oriented itself towards fighting colonization. Decolonization was the foundation of the U.S. empire in the first place. We advocated independence for Cuba from Spanish rule and as a result seized control of Cuba. Then when they sought to gain independence from the U.S. we tried to steal back control via the Bay of Pigs. After the Revolution U.S. constantly pushed Canadian independence in the hopes of incorporating Canada into the U.S. I don't think I need to tell you about Texas.

So we opposed Communism because it advocated human rights? Are you ought of your mind?

Obviously you buy the party-line regarding communism. Honestly, the actions of fascists like Stalin helped make the case for the Cold War campaign against anything even slightly resembling communism or Marxism, which basically meant anything that sought to assert people's rights against corporate and state imperialism.

I'm saying left to their own devices the Japanese waged a genocidal war across Asia and the Pacific. What were we supposed to ignore that? Bottom line is we were more magnanimous in Japan after victory than any other country has ever been.

We could have prevented a reoccurrence without forcing them to adopt our system of government.

Mao is directly responsible for the largest democide in history. Those figures come from the Chinese themselves.

I hate it when people parrot propaganda. Whether you are talking the famine in China or the Cultural Revolution you are simply wrong. The famine occurred for a myriad of reasons and to assign Mao direct responsibility is to simply the matter to an obscene level. What happened in the Cultural Revolution can certainly not be laid directly at Mao's feet. Though, I understand, you probably believe that was actually some sort of purge to consolidate power. I don't blame you for buying that crap considering most supposedly reliable sources in the West actually consider it as such.

It's not just a difference of degrees. I suggest you look into the Kirkpatrick doctrine which history has proven to be absolutely true.

That doctrine is B.S. Be they totalitarian or authoritarian they all tend to last and what cuts them short is some other factor. In many cases it is internal reform by the government that leads to its fall. Whether an intended surrender of authority or just a consequence it has been the main reason for transition from authoritarian or totalitarian systems to democratic systems.

Yes name a totalitarian rather than an authoritarian regime which we supported.

How about some we still support? Saudi Arabia ring any bells? Are you going to tell me they are only authoritarian?

This was not the clear position of the U.S. the clear position of the U.S. is "get out of Kuwait or there will be war."

We were referring to the time before the invasion in that part. There were two parts, first the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq and the eventual justification for war with Iraq. You seem to be mixing them up.

Yes I understand that the U.S. is somehow responsible for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, is there nothing we can't do?

Ya Saddam hadn't massed his army on the Saudi border or anything.

I think he began massing his forces there after we started massing ours, but that is hardly unexpected. The fact is, there was absolutely nothing to indicate he had any desire to invade Saudi Arabia.

So the U.S. fabricated the unjust and illegal invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union?

Yes the war was a fabrication in that it was created by the U.S. The U.S. always made the first act of aggression and only made a show of reacting to some unforeseen aggression that was in fact retaliation. It was all about framing the war as a defensive reaction when it was in fact a war orchestrated by the U.S.

lol, what more exactly could we have said to get Saddam to leave? We issued the most serious threat that there is.

Do you know how we demanded Japan to unconditionally surrender? We refused conditional surrender. By the same token we refused conditional withdrawal. Not much of an effort at negotiation when you insist the only thing to discuss is when and where you do what we say.

Um, I know exactly what I'm talking about, it was the Soviets and the French who provided Saddam with arms not the U.S.. And the U.S. did not start to aid the war effort until it looked as if the Iranians might actually conquer Iraq.

The U.S. aided Iraq from the beginning, it only ramped up its aid to one side or the other when it looked that one was losing. The point was not to protect Iraq from Iran or vice versa, but to simply maintain the status quo, a divided Middle East. This is why the Persian Gulf War was undertaken.

Critical in insuring that Iran didn't conquer Iraq.

Nice to see you finally recognize the crucial role the U.S. played in supporting Iraq.

What other nations have we been "ruling" or exerting our authority over since 1910? (Other than your questionable example of the Iran-Iraq situation.)

I love it how you people seem to think the U.S. has to appoint some colonial governor to be exerting authority over a nation.

Could it be possible that these are simply foreign policy tactics to help secure American financial interests, and not underhanded attempts to "rule" or extend "authority over" them as the definition suggests?

American financial interests? Do you mean American control of a nation's economy?

If anything, especially compared to nations such as Nazi Germany, the USSR, People's Republic of China, Fascist Italy, etc, over the past century, I would have to say America's involvement in foreign policy has been more reactive than proactive. Imperialism, by any definition, assumes a proactive foreign policy. Would you agree?

How has the PRC been more proactive than reactive in pursuing foreign policy? Of course, the U.S. has always been very proactive, though it often seeks to frame its actions as reactive when they are not.

Imperialist is a word kind of like "neocon" and "socialist" that people like to throw around as an insult nowadays without actually understanding what it is.

Also, like with many such words, there are people who will try to give an inaccurate and narrow interpretation of the word to defend their beliefs.

 

[Agent Ferris]

Every company controls "territory" in that they have property and they do have rules and security for that territory. The East India Company was just an extreme version of this as it was a corporation that ruled over nations. It was not the only corporation in history with that trait.

The East Indian Company was a de facto if not de jure government, that is not in anyway the equivalent of a modern corporation. To assert that managing over the internal affairs involving employees relations with the company is comparable to managing over the affairs of nations whether it has to do with employees or not or whether it has to company business or not is simply ludicrous.

The main thing is it had nothing to do with fighting communism and it wasn't because we actually cared about them being fascist. We happily embraced fascists around the world and used them. Resistance to pan-Arabism was motivated by a desire for control.

Franco is about the only fascist I can think of that we ever supported.

The same motivation for our intervention in Lebanon can be found in our effort to incite and control the Iran-Iraq War and our war with Iraq soon after.

The war with Iraq soon after wasn't caused by the U.S. it was caused by the illegal annexation of the state of Kuwait. Place blame where blame is due.

The U.S. was involved in the Yugoslav Wars from the start. As for a reason, it is the simple matter of control once more.

How exactly were we involved from the start? By brokering the peace treaty? :roll:

There is a plethora of evidence I assure, but this is not really the place to discuss it. Suffice to say I think a system that is willing to sacrifice tens of thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands or millions of foreigners, would not really bat an eye at letting 3,000 citizens die.

I understand that you subscribe to the conspiracist view of history. But here in reality there is no legitimate evidence for U.S. foreknowledge or involvement in the 9-11 attacks.

I don't need one, it is simply how this goes. Keep in mind who Bush brought to power with him. They were all members of PNAC a group deadset on not only maintaining American dominance in the world, but building on it.

The agenda of PNAC was diametrically opposed to a 9-11 type attack. They wanted to set a strategy that would continue a military footing on the basis of convention warfare between large nation-states, not asymetrical warfare in which lighter swifter forces and cheap drones would take precedence over billion dollar aircraft and supercarriers.

We did not go after every country or leader who nationalized industries, regardless of who they belonged to in the world. Indeed, the U.S. was willing to cooperate with Cuba in regards to nationalization.

The U.S. was not willing to cooperate with Cuba in nationalization because it was clear that they had turned to the Communist bloc.

The same way we support countless armed groups throughout the world.

How exactly? Could you provide a link to what you're actually talking about?

I think if communism was not a good campaign for the U.S. it would have oriented itself towards fighting colonization. Decolonization was the foundation of the U.S. empire in the first place. We advocated independence for Cuba from Spanish rule and as a result seized control of Cuba. Then when they sought to gain independence from the U.S. we tried to steal back control via the Bay of Pigs.

They had independence long before Castro.

After the Revolution U.S. constantly pushed Canadian independence in the hopes of incorporating Canada into the U.S. I don't think I need to tell you about Texas.

Ya um Texas was not forced into the Union, they seceded from Mexico and voted for statehood.

Obviously you buy the party-line regarding communism. Honestly, the actions of fascists like Stalin helped make the case for the Cold War campaign against anything even slightly resembling communism or Marxism, which basically meant anything that sought to assert people's rights against corporate and state imperialism.

Yes we know only your brand of Communism is the real Communism, FYI Stalin implemented ever plank of the Communist manifesto.

We could have prevented a reoccurrence without forcing them to adopt our system of government.

You mean popular sovereignty? Just how do you "force" popular sovereignty onto a country?

I hate it when people parrot propaganda. Whether you are talking the famine in China or the Cultural Revolution you are simply wrong. The famine occurred for a myriad of reasons and to assign Mao direct responsibility is to simply the matter to an obscene level. What happened in the Cultural Revolution can certainly not be laid directly at Mao's feet. Though, I understand, you probably believe that was actually some sort of purge to consolidate power. I don't blame you for buying that crap considering most supposedly reliable sources in the West actually consider it as such.

Ya flooding caused the death of 30 million people. :roll: The famine was a direct result of the policies implemented in the great leap forward, specifically the diversion of the peasantry from agriculture to steel production.

That doctrine is B.S. Be they totalitarian or authoritarian they all tend to last and what cuts them short is some other factor. In many cases it is internal reform by the government that leads to its fall. Whether an intended surrender of authority or just a consequence it has been the main reason for transition from authoritarian or totalitarian systems to democratic systems.

No outside pressure which forced the internal reform caused the collapse of the Soviet Union.

How about some we still support? Saudi Arabia ring any bells? Are you going to tell me they are only authoritarian?

Yes they are only authoritarian, their power is tied directly to the power of the Wahhabist power structure. If they were totalitarian then the Wahhabist power structure would not be able to hold any sway over the House of Saud.

We were referring to the time before the invasion in that part. There were two parts, first the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq and the eventual justification for war with Iraq. You seem to be mixing them up.

The assertion that there was a position other than the U.S. demanding Saddam not invade Kuwait is false.

I think he began massing his forces there after we started massing ours, but that is hardly unexpected. The fact is, there was absolutely nothing to indicate he had any desire to invade Saudi Arabia.

Saddam was within striking range of the Saudi's after he invaded Kuwait, and right after invading Kuwait he started threatening the Saudi's as if illegally annexing Kuwait wasn't justification enough.

Yes the war was a fabrication in that it was created by the U.S. The U.S. always made the first act of aggression and only made a show of reacting to some unforeseen aggression that was in fact retaliation. It was all about framing the war as a defensive reaction when it was in fact a war orchestrated by the U.S.

So in the U.S. made the first act of aggression in the Soviet-Afghan war? The Soviet Union invading Afghanistan was a defensive action by the Soviet Union instigated by an offensive action on the part of the U.S.? What bloody planet are you living on? Seriously wtf planet do you live on?

Do you know how we demanded Japan to unconditionally surrender? We refused conditional surrender. By the same token we refused conditional withdrawal. Not much of an effort at negotiation when you insist the only thing to discuss is when and where you do what we say.

Their offer of conditional surrender came with the condition that the militarists would remain in power. Why would we accept that?

The U.S. aided Iraq from the beginning, it only ramped up its aid to one side or the other when it looked that one was losing.

Ramped up its aid to a grand total of .5% of Iraqi's total foreign armaments consisting mainly of duel use items weaponized after the fact. Of course you completely ignore the fact that the vast vast vast majority of Iraqi military equipment came from the Soviet Union. Somehow they get a pass but the U.S.'s less than 1% of total military supplies is a big deal. Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound?

The point was not to protect Iraq from Iran or vice versa, but to simply maintain the status quo, a divided Middle East. This is why the Persian Gulf War was undertaken.

Yep the U.S. is responsible for Saddam invading Kuwait AND the Soviets invading Afghanistan.

Nice to see you finally recognize the crucial role the U.S. played in supporting Iraq.

It wasn't crucial, it was minimal. Less than minimal.

I love it how you people seem to think the U.S. has to appoint some colonial governor to be exerting authority over a nation.

I love how in your world the U.S. is responsible for the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and how U.S. intelligence aid to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war somehow was a more decisive factor than actual material aid.

 

[Agent Ferris]

Hardly. The CIA supported coups in Iran and Guatemala in '53 and '54 because they wanted to nationalize oil and land that American corporations had a stake in. Iran was particularly blatant as U.S. support was conditional on getting a slice of the oil pie after operation AJAX was complete.

Iran was ideologically not financially motivated, the U.S. at that point had no assets at stake in Iran, we were afraid that Mossadeq was aligning with the Soviets which he was, and after Mossadeq made his move and initiated the coup by dissolving parliament through a fraudulent referendum in which he garnered a 99.9% yay vote, the U.S. acted in support of the countercoup.

Oh and you couldn't be more wrong about the situation with Arbenz, it had nothing to do with UFC and everything to do with the fact that Arbenz was a Marxist:

{I}n the past 18 years, researchers have gathered and analyzed new evidence, refining the interpretations of the Guatemalan revolution. Piero Gleijeses uncovered Guatemalan documents and interviewed prominent actors, most notably María de Arbenz, the widow of the deposed president. His book, Shattered Hope: The United States and the Guatemalan Revolution, 1944–1954, focused on the internal dynamics of the revolution, providing the intellectual counterpart to Immerman’s analysis of the Washington foreign policy apparatus. Gleijeses, an admirer of Arbenz, produced irrefutable evidence of Arbenz’s gravitation toward the Communist Party and ideology, shattering previous portrayals of Arbenz as an economic nationalist or reformer. He also reassigned a portion of responsibility to the Guatemalan military, which ultimately betrayed Arbenz and allowed Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas to march unopposed into Guatemala City. Jim Handy mined the archives of Guatemala’s Agrarian Reform Institute to produce a sophisticated analysis of Arbenz’s agrarian reform. Revolution in the Countryside demonstrates how Arbenz’s agrarian reform triggered conflicts far beyond the United Fruit Company (UFCO) and the United States government. The agrarian reform generated conflict within and between indigenous communities, alienated Guatemala’s landowners, and disturbed the Guatemalan military because it disrupted the order that had long prevailed in the countryside...

...While some of Bitter Fruit’s general conclusions may remain intact, recent research calls into question Schlesinger and Kinzer’s characterization of important events and people. They maintain their original position on Arbenz’s ideology, arguing that Arbenz’s primary ideology was nationalism and that accusations that Arbenz was a communist “dupe” were “farfetched”(pp. 60– 61). Their characterizations of Arbenz’s ideology and his program lose credibility in the wake of Piero Gleijeses. Based on interviews with Arbenz’s widow, José Manuel Fortuny and other Communist leaders, Gleijeses concluded that although Arbenz did not join the Guatemalan Communist Party until 1957, he considered himself a communist during the last two years of his administration.

Arbenz apologists have long felt compelled to deny Arbenz’s communist inclinations to maintain the case against the CIA. Yet Gleijeses, an open admirer of Arbenz and his program, explains how and why Arbenz believed that the triumph of communism in Guatemala and around the world was both inevitable and desirable. To reach that stage, Arbenz and other Latin American communists believed that Guatemala had to pass through a capitalist stage in its inevitable evolution toward socialism. Hence, the agrarian reform was indeed designed to make Guatemala into a modern capitalist state, as Schlesinger and Kinzer argue, but that did not make Arbenz a capitalist. Arbenz’s long-term objective, as his opponents in UFCO and the CIA alleged, was the creation of a communist state.

Schlesinger and Kinzer maintain some positions that are no longer tenable. They argue, for example, that the Czech weaponry carried on board the Alf hem and confiscated by the Guatemalan Army in May 1954 was “intended solely for the Guatemalan Army”(p. 153). However, Arbenz’s closest political associates have confirmed that a portion of the Alfhem weapons were to be used to arm workers’ militias. Schlesinger and Kinzer insist that the Americans trumped up the charges about the workers’ militias in order to prove their case about a communist conspiracy. But the Americans did not lie in this case; at least a portion of the arms were intended for the workers.

None of this justifies the American intervention, but assessing responsibility for the collapse of the Arbenz regime hangs in the balance. In the Bitter Fruit account, the CIA orchestrated the counterrevolutionary movement on behalf of “The Overlord,” or the United Fruit Company. After an inept and bumbling covert campaign, spearheaded by a poorly trained army of only 150 men, Arbenz simply resigned. According to Schlesinger and Kinzer, Arbenz did not fight because “he was never more than he seemed to be—a bourgeois reformer whose ideology did not extend beyond basic precepts of nationalism and the stimulation of domestic industry and agriculture” (p. 198). It is now clear that Arbenz was a communist who did not fight because he did not have an army or workers’ militias to lead into battle. He failed in his gamble to arm the workers’ militias, and the army, even knowing that it would win, refused to fight because the officers did not want a direct military confrontation with the United States...

...Cullather also concluded that the United Fruit Company played a minor role in the decision-making process. He argues that the CIA recognized Guatemala as a serious threat even before Arbenz expropriated the company’s property. According to Cullather, “the threat to American business was a minor part of the larger danger to the United States’ overall security” (p. 37). In Cullather’s account, United Fruit is not the “overlord” of the operation but a tool used by the CIA to remove a perceived security threat. Once the company’s usefulness expired, the Eisenhower administration proceeded with its suspended antitrust action, which ended in 1958 with a consent decree that forced the company to divest of its Guatemalan holdings (p. 118).

Cullather’s account is in line with recent research on the Guatemalan revolution. It is significant that Piero Gleijese wrote the afterword to Secret History, giving the account his approval by praising Cullather’s intellect and integrity. Cullather’s research in the CIA files confirms that the UFCO played a minor role in the Guatemalan tragedy. He prefaces his account with a quote culled from Gleijeses’ interview with José Manuel Fortuny, who concluded: “They would have overthrown us even if we had grown no bananas” (p. 7). For those who want to believe that the CIA overthrew Arbenz simply to protect a banana company, Bitter Fruit is required reading, and a great read at that. For those who want a full account of the complex array of factors involved in the Guatemalan affair, Cullather’s Secret History has now been added to the required reading list.

Dosal, Paul J. (Paul Jaime), 1960-

Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, and: Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account of its Operations in Guatemala, 1952-1954 (review)

Hispanic American Historical Review - 80:3, August 2000, pp. 633-635

http://proxy.usf.edu:81/cgi-bin/ez_auth.pl?url=http://hahr.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/80/3/633

 

[Demon of Light]

The East Indian Company was a de facto if not de jure government, that is not in anyway the equivalent of a modern corporation. To assert that managing over the internal affairs involving employees relations with the company is comparable to managing over the affairs of nations whether it has to do with employees or not or whether it has to company business or not is simply ludicrous.

Actually I was thinking of the Reedy Creek Improvement District run by the Walt Disney Company and look into the town of Celebration, Florida which is governed in part by groups appointed by a subsidiary of Disney and was once under the direct authority of the District.

Franco is about the only fascist I can think of that we ever supported.

You can't be serious.

The war with Iraq soon after wasn't caused by the U.S. it was caused by the illegal annexation of the state of Kuwait. Place blame where blame is due.

We didn't give a damn about Kuwait and even that was something we helped instigate. However, ultimately the U.S. did everything it could to insure we went to war either way.

How exactly were we involved from the start? By brokering the peace treaty?

*puts face in hands* Please tell me he's joking. Please tell me he's joking. Please tell me he's joking.

I understand that you subscribe to the conspiracist view of history. But here in reality there is no legitimate evidence for U.S. foreknowledge or involvement in the 9-11 attacks.

Conspiracism is just the recognition of the crucial role played by behind-the-scenes groups and individuals in the shaping of history. I doubt many people are aware that the Scopes Monkey Trial was manufactured by local businessmen and officials as a promotional gag for Dayton, Tennessee.

The agenda of PNAC was diametrically opposed to a 9-11 type attack. They wanted to set a strategy that would continue a military footing on the basis of convention warfare between large nation-states, not asymetrical warfare in which lighter swifter forces and cheap drones would take precedence over billion dollar aircraft and supercarriers.

Are you kidding? Do you think the public would be so supportive of war with Iran if it weren't for 9-11? This is really the only instance in history when a country's alleged development of nuclear weapons has been offered as the primary basis for war. Hell, 9-11 is a big part of why the war in Iraq happened. Look at how much money has been poured into the military as a result and you need to understand the global nature of Operation Enduring Freedom. It is not limited to Afghanistan but includes operations in Africa and Southeast Asia both on land and off shore. Plus, it is far easier to take any inconvenient insurgency and declare it to be a terrorist operation as opposed to declaring it communist.

The U.S. was not willing to cooperate with Cuba in nationalization because it was clear that they had turned to the Communist bloc.

Not at that time it wasn't. There was no Communist Party of Cuba until much later in the 1960's and their turn to the Soviet Union, much like Egypt's, was motivated more by our policies than anything on Cuba's part.

How exactly? Could you provide a link to what you're actually talking about?

Meaning, we used covert means as in the CIA.

They had independence long before Castro.

In what way did they have independence? Our companies ran pretty much everything. Batista was our stooge. You can call that independence if you like, but it is independence that exists only on paper.

Ya um Texas was not forced into the Union, they seceded from Mexico and voted for statehood.

I did not say anyone was forced, only that the U.S. sowed dissent and revolution in territories as a way of bringing them into the fold.

Yes we know only your brand of Communism is the real Communism, FYI Stalin implemented ever plank of the Communist manifesto.

The hell he did. I am sure you think giving things to the State means what Stalin did is consistent, but the Communist Manifesto clearly describes the State as the rule of the working-class and there is no mention of the vanguard party, that was something Lenin devised. The term communism has been subject to considerable abuse both by self-proclaimed advocates and vigorous opponents of it. Also, I do not give my own ideology any label and it would not fit into the definition of communism or Marxism. The fact you are completely slandering them due to misinformation just annoys me.

You mean popular sovereignty? Just how do you "force" popular sovereignty onto a country?

Our system is not expressed in such simple terms, unless of course you lap up every bit of U.S. propaganda out there. The Japanese Constitution was written by the U.S. military so yes we did force our system of government on them.

Ya flooding caused the death of 30 million people. :roll: The famine was a direct result of the policies implemented in the great leap forward, specifically the diversion of the peasantry from agriculture to steel production.

Past famines in China killed millions at least. Your issue was that communism caused the deaths, but it is not quite that simple. Aside from the natural disasters you had more ill-considered policies like the Four Pests campaign that were far from communist-inspired and had as much if not more of an impact than what you mentioned. Pretty much all those policies you mention were not forced either, but merely promoted campaigns.

No outside pressure which forced the internal reform caused the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Wow, do you actually believe Reagan brought down the Soviet Union? Gorbachev brought down the Soviet Union, though this was not his intent. To assign what happened in the Soviet Union to outside circumstances is to completely misunderstand the situation there. After Brezhnev the first person to replace him died within two years and his successor also died within about the same amount of time. It was this confluence of circumstances that led to Gorbachev taking power and he had become greatly disenchanted with the Soviet system. Even then real reason the USSR collapsed is ultimately the August coup which ended any chance of the Union surviving, absent a few smaller members.

Yes they are only authoritarian, their power is tied directly to the power of the Wahhabist power structure. If they were totalitarian then the Wahhabist power structure would not be able to hold any sway over the House of Saud.

What the hell are you talking about? Do you even know what these terms mean?

The assertion that there was a position other than the U.S. demanding Saddam not invade Kuwait is false.

The position was that we would not get involved. We might wag our finger at them, but we certainly wouldn't go to war with Iraq. That is how our position was presented. Indeed, many leaders emphasized over and over our good ties with Saddam during this lead-up.

Saddam was within striking range of the Saudi's after he invaded Kuwait, and right after invading Kuwait he started threatening the Saudi's as if illegally annexing Kuwait wasn't justification enough.

There was some smack talk, but that's just another day in the Persian Gulf. Also, one has to consider that his talk was more a matter of saying he had the most oil now so they better listen to him. Iraq did not build their forces up on the border until after we began building our forces up on the border and thus they were positioned defensively.

So in the U.S. made the first act of aggression in the Soviet-Afghan war? The Soviet Union invading Afghanistan was a defensive action by the Soviet Union instigated by an offensive action on the part of the U.S.? What bloody planet are you living on? Seriously wtf planet do you live on?

The one that is not clouded by lingering Cold War propaganda.

Their offer of conditional surrender came with the condition that the militarists would remain in power. Why would we accept that?

You see, the thing is, when you don't even allow conditions it doesn't really matter what their first offer is because it only ever gets that far.

Ramped up its aid to a grand total of .5% of Iraqi's total foreign armaments consisting mainly of duel use items weaponized after the fact. Of course you completely ignore the fact that the vast vast vast majority of Iraqi military equipment came from the Soviet Union. Somehow they get a pass but the U.S.'s less than 1% of total military supplies is a big deal. Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound?

Military equipment is all well and good, but there are far more critical things like financial aid, training, and intelligence, which we provided in spades and we provided weapons and aid through third countries as well.

Yep the U.S. is responsible for Saddam invading Kuwait AND the Soviets invading Afghanistan.

We did everything we could to help those things happen short of directly intervening.

I love how in your world the U.S. is responsible for the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and how U.S. intelligence aid to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war somehow was a more decisive factor than actual material aid.

Iraq was losing badly even with all that material aid. It was the type of aid provided by the U.S. that was critical to Iraq and ultimately helped them turn things around.

 

[Agent Ferris]

Actually I was thinking of the Reedy Creek Improvement District run by the Walt Disney Company and look into the town of Celebration, Florida which is governed in part by groups appointed by a subsidiary of Disney and was once under the direct authority of the District.

lol they are still governed by state and federal law and the two surrounding counties provide their police force.

You can't be serious.

Well I'm sure like imperialism you will redefine fascism to suit your agenda but yes Franco is the only actual Fascist that we gave support to, and by support I mean formed a military and trade agreement with, he didn't need our support.

We didn't give a damn about Kuwait and even that was something we helped instigate.

No actually it's not something we helped to instigate.

However, ultimately the U.S. did everything it could to insure we went to war either way.

No war was something we tried very hard to avoid giving Saddam countless warnings to withdrawal his forces or suffer the consequences.

*puts face in hands* Please tell me he's joking. Please tell me he's joking. Please tell me he's joking.

No I'm not joking, the U.S. brokered the peace treaty in the Bosnian war in 1994. First of all which part of the Yugoslavian war are you actually referring to and just how exactly are you pinning blame for it on the U.S.? I can't wait to here this one. So the U.S. is to blame for the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, the Iraqi annexation of Kuwait, and now somehow the internal ethnic strife which caused the breakup of Yugoslavia and the subsequent wars to follow.

Conspiracism is just the recognition of the crucial role played by behind-the-scenes groups and individuals in the shaping of history.

Ya like the freemasons and the illuminati. There is no legitimate evidence that stands up to the slightest bit of scrutiny that the U.S. had foreknowledge or was complicit in the 9-11 attacks.

Are you kidding?

No I'm really not kidding 9-11 was counterproductive to the agenda set for by PNAC which was to continue the U.S. on a cold war type footing of large armies and billion dollar fighters capable of taking on other nation-states not an asymetrical war in which special ops and drone aircraft would take precedence.

Do you think the public would be so supportive of war with Iran if it weren't for 9-11? This is really the only instance in history when a country's alleged development of nuclear weapons has been offered as the primary basis for war.

No actually it was a primary basis for war with Cuba.

Hell, 9-11 is a big part of why the war in Iraq happened. Look at how much money has been poured into the military as a result and you need to understand the global nature of Operation Enduring Freedom. It is not limited to Afghanistan but includes operations in Africa and Southeast Asia both on land and off shore. Plus, it is far easier to take any inconvenient insurgency and declare it to be a terrorist operation as opposed to declaring it communist.

Once again fighting wars A) wasn't part of the PNAC agenda rather simply maintaining U.S. military hegemony through advanced technology and a large standing army, and B) small guerrilla wars in which large standing armies and billion dollar fighters are useless are counterproductive to the PNAC agenda.

Not at that time it wasn't. There was no Communist Party of Cuba until much later in the 1960's and their turn to the Soviet Union, much like Egypt's, was motivated more by our policies than anything on Cuba's part.

lol Castro's first act was to oust the government of liberals and democrats and then set about seizing private property in mass. :roll:

Meaning, we used covert means as in the CIA.

Ya that narrows it down to exactly what the hell you're even talking about.

In what way did they have independence? Our companies ran pretty much everything. Batista was our stooge. You can call that independence if you like, but it is independence that exists only on paper.

Batista was backed by the Communists at least for his first run for presidency.

I did not say anyone was forced, only that the U.S. sowed dissent and revolution in territories as a way of bringing them into the fold.

Ya the U.S. is responsible for the dissent against the yoke of tyranny which Texas was under prior to declaring independence. :roll:

The hell he did. I am sure you think giving things to the State means what Stalin did is consistent, but the Communist Manifesto clearly describes the State as the rule of the working-class and there is no mention of the vanguard party, that was something Lenin devised. The term communism has been subject to considerable abuse both by self-proclaimed advocates and vigorous opponents of it. Also, I do not give my own ideology any label and it would not fit into the definition of communism or Marxism. The fact you are completely slandering them due to misinformation just annoys me.

lol Engles promoted state terror and both he and Marx promoted the dictatorship of the proletariat, every single planket of the Communist Manifesto was implemented by Stalin:

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

 

[Agent Ferris]

Our system is not expressed in such simple terms, unless of course you lap up every bit of U.S. propaganda out there. The Japanese Constitution was written by the U.S. military so yes we did force our system of government on them.

It was written by the U.S. but only as an amendment to the existing Meeji Constitution, and it was ratified by a duly elected Japanese government.

Past famines in China killed millions at least. Your issue was that communism caused the deaths, but it is not quite that simple. Aside from the natural disasters you had more ill-considered policies like the Four Pests campaign that were far from communist-inspired and had as much if not more of an impact than what you mentioned. Pretty much all those policies you mention were not forced either, but merely promoted campaigns.

The Great Leap Forward was the major cause for the famine because it transferred peasants from agricultural to steel production. The Four Pests policy which caused the locust outbreak was the policy of the ruling Communist party so that too goes to being Mao's fault. Furthermore; there were far more people killed than just the 30 million caused by the starvation millions of which were executed in overt acts of democide, and once again the famine itself was caused by the policies of the Communist regime, namely Mao and his cult of personality.

Wow, do you actually believe Reagan brought down the Soviet Union?

No just Reagan's policies but U.S. policy of roll back and containment.

Gorbachev brought down the Soviet Union, though this was not his intent.

No Gorbachev was forced to implement market reforms because he saw the writing on the wall.

To assign what happened in the Soviet Union to outside circumstances is to completely misunderstand the situation there. After Brezhnev the first person to replace him died within two years and his successor also died within about the same amount of time. It was this confluence of circumstances that led to Gorbachev taking power and he had become greatly disenchanted with the Soviet system. Even then real reason the USSR collapsed is ultimately the August coup which ended any chance of the Union surviving, absent a few smaller members.

The Soviet economy was done for before Gorbachev came to power and that is the reason why went on his reform campaign.

What the hell are you talking about? Do you even know what these terms mean?

Yes I do, you apparently do not. A totalitarian system of governance does not allow for any competing power centers; such as, a strong clerical class as exists in Saudi Arabia, they are authoritarian not totalitarian.

The position was that we would not get involved. We might wag our finger at them, but we certainly wouldn't go to war with Iraq. That is how our position was presented. Indeed, many leaders emphasized over and over our good ties with Saddam during this lead-up.

Yes, the U.S. is responsible for the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, the Iraqi annexation of Kuwait, and the Yugoslavian civil wars.

There was some smack talk, but that's just another day in the Persian Gulf. Also, one has to consider that his talk was more a matter of saying he had the most oil now so they better listen to him. Iraq did not build their forces up on the border until after we began building our forces up on the border and thus they were positioned defensively.

lol so a nation that has just annexed another nation threatening another nation with invasion is now to be labeled "smack talking" can I visit the planet you live on sometime?

The one that is not clouded by lingering Cold War propaganda.

The one where the U.S. is responsible for the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, the Iraqi annexation of Kuwait, the Yugoslavian civil wars, and the one where Mao isn't responsible for tens of millions of dead bodies, and Stalin wasn't really a communist. Gotcha.

You see, the thing is, when you don't even allow conditions it doesn't really matter what their first offer is because it only ever gets that far.

The conditional surrender which they offered was one that we could not except, they never offered any acceptable conditional surrender.

Military equipment is all well and good, but there are far more critical things like financial aid, training, and intelligence, which we provided in spades and we provided weapons and aid through third countries as well.

No the U.S. only provided a grand total of .5% of total weapons sales to Iraq. No more no less. As to financial assistance, Iraq only received federally backed loans from a single bank, it was an Italian bank with a U.S. branch and those loans were illegal and the person responsible has since been tried, convicted and sentenced to prison. And no training and intelligence to use weapons is not as important as the billions and billions of dollars worth of weapons themselves. Without U.S. training (prove this BTW) or U.S. sat-photos, the outcome would have probably been about the same.

We did everything we could to help those things happen short of directly intervening.

Really how did we "do everything we could" to get Iraq to annex Kuwait or the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan? Is the U.S. the only country on the planet responsible for its own military actions? Is the Soviet Union responsible for the U.S. invasion of Vietnam for example due to its funding and arming of the North Vietnamese?

Iraq was losing badly even with all that material aid. It was the type of aid provided by the U.S. that was critical to Iraq and ultimately helped them turn things around.

You mean a few satellite photos of Iranian troops positions helped turn it all around? K gotcha, U.S. intelligence was a much more influential and damning reflection on the U.S. than the billions upon billions of dollars of foreign military equipment from the Soviet Union, China, and France? :roll:

 

[rathi]

Iran was ideologically not financially motivated, the U.S. at that point had no assets at stake in Iran, we were afraid that Mossadeq was aligning with the Soviets which he was, and after Mossadeq made his move and initiated the coup by dissolving parliament through a fraudulent referendum in which he garnered a 99.9% yay vote, the U.S. acted in support of the countercoup.

Mossadeq did not align himself with the soviets, the Tudeh party was communist, and he was not a member. The U.S. had already put operation Ajax into operation long before the coup, so it had nothing to with the motivation. The undeniable fact that you failed to address if why the U.S. demanded access to oil if we only cared about communism.

Oh and you couldn't be more wrong about the situation with Arbenz, it had nothing to do with UFC and everything to do with the fact that Arbenz was a Marxist:

More propaganda. Arbenz was not a soviet puppet, a fact confirmed after looking at de-classified soviet papers Dulles enacted the coup only after Arbenz pushed for land reform, which would have personally hurt Dulles financially from his interest in the UFC. Its possible he was just an incompetent idiot, but his blatant conflict of interest doesn't help his case.

I find it interesting that someone who defends anarcho-capitalism is also an apologist for blatant coercion with state power.

 

[Demon of Light]

lol they are still governed by state and federal law and the two surrounding counties provide their police force.

I love how you shift the goal posts and then play like that isn't what you are doing. Actually they are given exemptions from certain state laws, though naturally this is from the state and doesn't exempt them from federal laws, but then Disney itself is not exempt from federal laws. Also while they have no police force of their own they provide many of the others services provided by governments. The point is they carry out many functions that a government does and, in the case of Celebration, Florida, play a significant role in the governance of a town. It is not outside the scope of possibility for them to have a private police force either as some states vest them with the same authority as regular police. The East India Company received its authority from the government, in essence they were contracted to govern these territories in the place of the British government itself. It is not something most companies have the power to do in modern times, but this doesn't change anything. Ultimately corporate dominance has been a historical method of imperialism for centuries or longer.

Well I'm sure like imperialism you will redefine fascism to suit your agenda but yes Franco is the only actual Fascist that we gave support to, and by support I mean formed a military and trade agreement with, he didn't need our support.

I have not redefined anything. I am going by the definition of imperialism and the definition of fascism. The problem is certain people like to look at the dictionary and take the first definition they find.

No war was something we tried very hard to avoid giving Saddam countless warnings to withdrawal his forces or suffer the consequences.

If we were trying to avoid a war we would not have ruled out conditional withdrawal, we would not have made friendly up to the moment he invaded Kuwait, and we would not have manufactured a pretext of Iraq planning to invade Saudi Arabia.

No I'm not joking, the U.S. brokered the peace treaty in the Bosnian war in 1994.

I am flabbergasted, because you have no knowledge of U.S. involvement before that.

First of all which part of the Yugoslavian war are you actually referring to and just how exactly are you pinning blame for it on the U.S.?

I am talking about Bosnia specifically, I don't think there was any international involvement in Croatia until after the war.

Ya like the freemasons and the illuminati.

Those are actual groups that have influenced events in the history and the freemasons especially have had considerable influence in history. However, I am speaking of countless groups of varying importance and influence.

There is no legitimate evidence that stands up to the slightest bit of scrutiny that the U.S. had foreknowledge or was complicit in the 9-11 attacks.

You are wrong, but this is not the place to discuss it anyway.

No I'm really not kidding 9-11 was counterproductive to the agenda set for by PNAC which was to continue the U.S. on a cold war type footing of large armies and billion dollar fighters capable of taking on other nation-states not an asymetrical war in which special ops and drone aircraft would take precedence.

I really, really wish they had the picture of a smiley banging its head on a desk so that I could fully communicate the absolute absurdity of your remarks.

No actually it was a primary basis for war with Cuba.

Head-banging smiley pleeeeaaase!!!!!

Once again fighting wars A) wasn't part of the PNAC agenda rather simply maintaining U.S. military hegemony through advanced technology and a large standing army, and B) small guerrilla wars in which large standing armies and billion dollar fighters are useless are counterproductive to the PNAC agenda.

How can you be this badly informed? PNAC and its members openly advocated the invasion of Iraq! As a result of 9-11 we have gone to war with two countries and have been close to war with several others. The defense budget exploded, we are seeing personnel levels increased, and do I even need to point out that PNAC actually advocated ending certain weapons programs?

lol Castro's first act was to oust the government of liberals and democrats and then set about seizing private property in mass.

A lot of dictators did that, they weren't all touting themselves as communists.

Ya that narrows it down to exactly what the hell you're even talking about.

Honestly, given the fact you consistently show that you have terrible understanding of pretty much every aspect of world history I really don't feel obligated to provide much more than that. If you honestly can't get how we would have supported them then it can only mean you have no knowledge of the Cold War and I'm not about to give you an introductory lesson.

Batista was backed by the Communists at least for his first run for presidency.

So?

Ya the U.S. is responsible for the dissent against the yoke of tyranny which Texas was under prior to declaring independence.

The yoke of tyranny? Americans who moved to Texas were pissed that they couldn't bring their slaves with them!

lol Engles promoted state terror and both he and Marx promoted the dictatorship of the proletariat, every single planket of the Communist Manifesto was implemented by Stalin:

The dictatorship of the proletariat merely refers to the working-class being the ruling class and that is also what is meant by the State. Stalin may have implemented some of these things, but those parts mentioning the State he definitely did not implement because the working-class did not have control. The vanguard party, which was not an idea of Marx or Engels, was in control.

It was written by the U.S. but only as an amendment to the existing Meeji Constitution, and it was ratified by a duly elected Japanese government.

How can a government be duly elected in an atmosphere of pervasive censorship and military occupation? Also, calling it an amendment is really cute, the reality is the only amending it involved was taking their old constitution and replacing it with the one our military wrote.

The Great Leap Forward was the major cause for the famine because it transferred peasants from agricultural to steel production. The Four Pests policy which caused the locust outbreak was the policy of the ruling Communist party so that too goes to being Mao's fault. Furthermore; there were far more people killed than just the 30 million caused by the starvation millions of which were executed in overt acts of democide, and once again the famine itself was caused by the policies of the Communist regime, namely Mao and his cult of personality.

There was no requirement for people to try and forge steel in their backyards. It was just something the leaders promoted like the Four Pests campaign. Also natural disasters have to be considered as those played a significant role. As far as overt acts of democide I would love to know exactly what you are referring to in this case.

No just Reagan's policies but U.S. policy of roll back and containment.

Lol, that is just funny.

No Gorbachev was forced to implement market reforms because he saw the writing on the wall.

The Soviet economy was done for before Gorbachev came to power and that is the reason why went on his reform campaign.

He wasn't forced to do anything. Gorbachev was seeking to fix what he saw as a broken system riddled with corruption. You just really want to believe that we won, as if the Cold War was even ever about the USSR or communism.

Yes I do, you apparently do not. A totalitarian system of governance does not allow for any competing power centers; such as, a strong clerical class as exists in Saudi Arabia, they are authoritarian not totalitarian.

Wow, you really don't know what it means.

lol so a nation that has just annexed another nation threatening another nation with invasion is now to be labeled "smack talking" can I visit the planet you live on sometime?

They didn't threaten Saudi Arabia with invasion. Saddam did talk smack about Saudi Arabia, but that was it.

The one where the U.S. is responsible for the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, the Iraqi annexation of Kuwait, the Yugoslavian civil wars, and the one where Mao isn't responsible for tens of millions of dead bodies, and Stalin wasn't really a communist. Gotcha.

Stalin wasn't a communist, but a fascist plain and simple. Indeed, Stalin purged the more left-wing members of the party.

The conditional surrender which they offered was one that we could not except, they never offered any acceptable conditional surrender.

Don't you get it? The U.S. policy was that no conditional surrender was acceptable.

No the U.S. only provided a grand total of .5% of total weapons sales to Iraq. No more no less.

You're just a broken record. The U.S. provided weapons through other means than direct sales. Since I'm tired of this crap chew on this this and this.

As to financial assistance, Iraq only received federally backed loans from a single bank, it was an Italian bank with a U.S. branch and those loans were illegal and the person responsible has since been tried, convicted and sentenced to prison.

Illegal, yet allowed with the full knowledge of the government. As for people being convicted, that does happen since these people are committing crimes. Viktor Bout got arrested by the DEA, but they made damn sure the CIA didn't know what they were doing lest it give him the heads-up. Also, we gave him plenty of financial assistance, though we never loaned him money.

And no training and intelligence to use weapons is not as important as the billions and billions of dollars worth of weapons themselves. Without U.S. training (prove this BTW) or U.S. sat-photos, the outcome would have probably been about the same.

No, it most certainly would not have. In fact, something I forgot to mention was that we gave them considerable assistance on strategy and tactics.

Is the U.S. the only country on the planet responsible for its own military actions?

No, but in the cases I mentioned the U.S. was seeking to provoke or invite such actions from other countries in order to achieve some other end.

You mean a few satellite photos of Iranian troops positions helped turn it all around? K gotcha, U.S. intelligence was a much more influential and damning reflection on the U.S. than the billions upon billions of dollars of foreign military equipment from the Soviet Union, China, and France?

Anyone who downplays the significance of battlefield intelligence should really just keep quiet on anything involving war.

 

[Agent Ferris]

Mossadeq did not align himself with the soviets,

Yes he did.

the Tudeh party was communist, and he was not a member.

He was an ally.

The U.S. had already put operation Ajax into operation long before the coup, so it had nothing to with the motivation.

Um operation Ajax was the counter coup against Mossadeq, so no it didn't happen before Mossadeq's coup against the Iranian Constitutional Monarchy.

The undeniable fact that you failed to address if why the U.S. demanded access to oil if we only cared about communism.

What do you mean by "demanded access" how exactly did we "demand access" where is the record of this "demand" and who was this demand issued to and by?

More propaganda. Arbenz was not a soviet puppet, a fact confirmed after looking at de-classified soviet papers Dulles enacted the coup only after Arbenz pushed for land reform, which would have personally hurt Dulles financially from his interest in the UFC. Its possible he was just an incompetent idiot, but his blatant conflict of interest doesn't help his case.

I find it interesting that someone who defends anarcho-capitalism is also an apologist for blatant coercion with state power.

Arbenz is a confirmed communist who was aligning with the Soviets in order to arm a "peoples army". The assertions regarding UFC influence are laughable as the UFC was divested of its Guatemalan holdings by the Eisenhower administration after the coup. You people really need to learn your actual history and not the revisionist history.

{I}n the past 18 years, researchers have gathered and analyzed new evidence, refining the interpretations of the Guatemalan revolution. Piero Gleijeses uncovered Guatemalan documents and interviewed prominent actors, most notably María de Arbenz, the widow of the deposed president. His book, Shattered Hope: The United States and the Guatemalan Revolution, 1944–1954, focused on the internal dynamics of the revolution, providing the intellectual counterpart to Immerman’s analysis of the Washington foreign policy apparatus. Gleijeses, an admirer of Arbenz, produced irrefutable evidence of Arbenz’s gravitation toward the Communist Party and ideology, shattering previous portrayals of Arbenz as an economic nationalist or reformer. He also reassigned a portion of responsibility to the Guatemalan military, which ultimately betrayed Arbenz and allowed Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas to march unopposed into Guatemala City. Jim Handy mined the archives of Guatemala’s Agrarian Reform Institute to produce a sophisticated analysis of Arbenz’s agrarian reform. Revolution in the Countryside demonstrates how Arbenz’s agrarian reform triggered conflicts far beyond the United Fruit Company (UFCO) and the United States government. The agrarian reform generated conflict within and between indigenous communities, alienated Guatemala’s landowners, and disturbed the Guatemalan military because it disrupted the order that had long prevailed in the countryside...

...While some of Bitter Fruit’s general conclusions may remain intact, recent research calls into question Schlesinger and Kinzer’s characterization of important events and people. They maintain their original position on Arbenz’s ideology, arguing that Arbenz’s primary ideology was nationalism and that accusations that Arbenz was a communist “dupe” were “farfetched”(pp. 60– 61). Their characterizations of Arbenz’s ideology and his program lose credibility in the wake of Piero Gleijeses. Based on interviews with Arbenz’s widow, José Manuel Fortuny and other Communist leaders, Gleijeses concluded that although Arbenz did not join the Guatemalan Communist Party until 1957, he considered himself a communist during the last two years of his administration.

Arbenz apologists have long felt compelled to deny Arbenz’s communist inclinations to maintain the case against the CIA. Yet Gleijeses, an open admirer of Arbenz and his program, explains how and why Arbenz believed that the triumph of communism in Guatemala and around the world was both inevitable and desirable. To reach that stage, Arbenz and other Latin American communists believed that Guatemala had to pass through a capitalist stage in its inevitable evolution toward socialism. Hence, the agrarian reform was indeed designed to make Guatemala into a modern capitalist state, as Schlesinger and Kinzer argue, but that did not make Arbenz a capitalist. Arbenz’s long-term objective, as his opponents in UFCO and the CIA alleged, was the creation of a communist state.

Schlesinger and Kinzer maintain some positions that are no longer tenable. They argue, for example, that the Czech weaponry carried on board the Alf hem and confiscated by the Guatemalan Army in May 1954 was “intended solely for the Guatemalan Army”(p. 153). However, Arbenz’s closest political associates have confirmed that a portion of the Alfhem weapons were to be used to arm workers’ militias. Schlesinger and Kinzer insist that the Americans trumped up the charges about the workers’ militias in order to prove their case about a communist conspiracy. But the Americans did not lie in this case; at least a portion of the arms were intended for the workers.

None of this justifies the American intervention, but assessing responsibility for the collapse of the Arbenz regime hangs in the balance. In the Bitter Fruit account, the CIA orchestrated the counterrevolutionary movement on behalf of “The Overlord,” or the United Fruit Company. After an inept and bumbling covert campaign, spearheaded by a poorly trained army of only 150 men, Arbenz simply resigned. According to Schlesinger and Kinzer, Arbenz did not fight because “he was never more than he seemed to be—a bourgeois reformer whose ideology did not extend beyond basic precepts of nationalism and the stimulation of domestic industry and agriculture” (p. 198). It is now clear that Arbenz was a communist who did not fight because he did not have an army or workers’ militias to lead into battle. He failed in his gamble to arm the workers’ militias, and the army, even knowing that it would win, refused to fight because the officers did not want a direct military confrontation with the United States...

...Cullather also concluded that the United Fruit Company played a minor role in the decision-making process. He argues that the CIA recognized Guatemala as a serious threat even before Arbenz expropriated the company’s property. According to Cullather, “the threat to American business was a minor part of the larger danger to the United States’ overall security” (p. 37). In Cullather’s account, United Fruit is not the “overlord” of the operation but a tool used by the CIA to remove a perceived security threat. Once the company’s usefulness expired, the Eisenhower administration proceeded with its suspended antitrust action, which ended in 1958 with a consent decree that forced the company to divest of its Guatemalan holdings (p. 118).

Cullather’s account is in line with recent research on the Guatemalan revolution. It is significant that Piero Gleijese wrote the afterword to Secret History, giving the account his approval by praising Cullather’s intellect and integrity. Cullather’s research in the CIA files confirms that the UFCO played a minor role in the Guatemalan tragedy. He prefaces his account with a quote culled from Gleijeses’ interview with José Manuel Fortuny, who concluded: “They would have overthrown us even if we had grown no bananas” (p. 7). For those who want to believe that the CIA overthrew Arbenz simply to protect a banana company, Bitter Fruit is required reading, and a great read at that. For those who want a full account of the complex array of factors involved in the Guatemalan affair, Cullather’s Secret History has now been added to the required reading list.

Dosal, Paul J. (Paul Jaime), 1960-

Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, and: Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account of its Operations in Guatemala, 1952-1954 (review)

Hispanic American Historical Review - 80:3, August 2000, pp. 633-635

http://proxy.usf.edu:81/cgi-bin/ez_auth.pl?url=http://hahr.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/80/3/633

 

[Agent Ferris]

I love how you shift the goal posts and then play like that isn't what you are doing. Actually they are given exemptions from certain state laws, though naturally this is from the state and doesn't exempt them from federal laws, but then Disney itself is not exempt from federal laws. Also while they have no police force of their own they provide many of the others services provided by governments. The point is they carry out many functions that a government does and, in the case of Celebration, Florida, play a significant role in the governance of a town.
It is not outside the scope of possibility for them to have a private police force either as some states vest them with the same authority as regular police. The East India Company received its authority from the government, in essence they were contracted to govern these territories in the place of the British government itself. It is not something most companies have the power to do in modern times, but this doesn't change anything. Ultimately corporate dominance has been a historical method of imperialism for centuries or longer.

So Disney can write legislation then? They can arrest people, convict them in a Disney court, and send them Disney jail? They don't have the powers of government as did the East India Company in the territories they controlled.

I have not redefined anything. I am going by the definition of imperialism and the definition of fascism. The problem is certain people like to look at the dictionary and take the first definition they find.

Then which fascist did we support aside from the trade and military alliance formed with Franco?

If we were trying to avoid a war we would not have ruled out conditional withdrawal,

What would a conditional withdrawal have consisted of? :roll: Oh no problem Saddam leave some troops in Kuwait? What are you talking about?

we would not have made friendly up to the moment he invaded Kuwait,

Iraq was told that we would not accept a invasion of Kuwait.

and we would not have manufactured a pretext of Iraq planning to invade Saudi Arabia.

Saddam had just annexed Kuwait, was verbally threatening Saudi Arabia with invasion, and was massing his troops on the Saudi border.

I am flabbergasted, because you have no knowledge of U.S. involvement before that.

Just how were we involved before that?

I am talking about Bosnia specifically, I don't think there was any international involvement in Croatia until after the war.

Our involvment in Bosnia consisted of what exactly?

Those are actual groups that have influenced events in the history and the freemasons especially have had considerable influence in history. However, I am speaking of countless groups of varying importance and influence.

Yes yes now the question is are the Freemasons and Illuminati really shapeshift aliens from the planet Xenon, or are they a clan of satan worshippers?

You are wrong, but this is not the place to discuss it anyway.

No I am right, all assertions regarding U.S. foreknowledge or complicity in 9-11 have been thoroughly debunked by numerous government and independent researchers.

I really, really wish they had the picture of a smiley banging its head on a desk so that I could fully communicate the absolute absurdity of your remarks.

Yes its absurd to suggest that 9-11 was counterproductive to PNAC's ambition to maintain a large standing army consisting of advanced technology to fight another nation state, considering that 9-11 was the impetus for guerilla war in which large standing armies and advanced fighters are ineffective and special forces and cheap UAV's take precedence over large tank regiments and billion dollar aircraft and multi-billion dollar super carriers. Completely absurd.

Head-banging smiley pleeeeaaase!!!!!

PNAC was interested in transforming the U.S. military through new technologies.

How can you be this badly informed? PNAC and its members openly advocated the invasion of Iraq!

Really? Prove it. What PNAC openly advoctated was what PNAC got and that was for Clinton to sign the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998.

As a result of 9-11 we have gone to war with two countries and have been close to war with several others. The defense budget exploded, we are seeing personnel levels increased, and do I even need to point out that PNAC actually advocated ending certain weapons programs?

Oh I see, blame 18 Saudi's and an Egyptian for 9-11 to get a war with Iraq. Brilliant.

A lot of dictators did that, they weren't all touting themselves as communists.

You learn new things everyday, the U.S. caused the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, the Iraqi annexation of Kuwait, the ethnic strife in former Yugoslavia, 9-11, and now Castro wasn't a communist.

Honestly, given the fact you consistently show that you have terrible understanding of pretty much every aspect of world history I really don't feel obligated to provide much more than that. If you honestly can't get how we would have supported them then it can only mean you have no knowledge of the Cold War and I'm not about to give you an introductory lesson.

Supported who? You haven't even named the group you're referencing let alone explained how exactly we supported them.

So?

By the time of the Cuban revolution Kennedy was publicly condemning Batista and convening support for Castro.

The yoke of tyranny?

Yes yoke of tyranny, Santa Anna dissolved state legislatures, disarmed state militias, and abolished the Constitution of 1824.

Americans who moved to Texas were pissed that they couldn't bring their slaves with them!

Ya and slavery was allowed after Texas independence from Mexico? FYI Texas fought on the side of the Union during the Civil War.

The dictatorship of the proletariat merely refers to the working-class being the ruling class and that is also what is meant by the State. Stalin may have implemented some of these things, but those parts mentioning the State he definitely did not implement because the working-class did not have control. The vanguard party, which was not an idea of Marx or Engels, was in control.

Stalin implemented every single plank of the Communist manifesto which Marx and Engles called for in order for a given state to be in the transitional socialist period.

How can a government be duly elected in an atmosphere of pervasive censorship and military occupation? Also, calling it an amendment is really cute, the reality is the only amending it involved was taking their old constitution and replacing it with the one our military wrote.

The Japanese were allowed to hold free elections, the Constitution we helped write was ratified by the elected government of Japan. The fact of the matter is that the U.S. acted more magnanimously in its treatment of defeated Japan then any other country has ever acted towards its defeated enemy.

There was no requirement for people to try and forge steel in their backyards. It was just something the leaders promoted like the Four Pests campaign. Also natural disasters have to be considered as those played a significant role.

Yes the fact that the policies implemented by Mao led directly to the famine are not to be blamed on Mao, it was the forced collectivization couple with assinine campaigns; such as, diverting labour to steel production and killing off locusts which caused the famine. :roll:

Peasants were forced to stay in their starving villages due to the system of household registration, the worst effects of the famine were on those labeled enemies of the regime, those labeled "black elements" were given the lowest priority for food allocation and died in the greatest numbers, and not all of the deaths from the great leap forward were a result of starvation many were tortured and killed by the Communists for failing to meet grain quotas.

As far as overt acts of democide I would love to know exactly what you are referring to in this case.

The rural purgesresulted in between 2 and 5 million deaths between 1946-49, deaths in labour camps resulted in upwars of 20 million dead, 3 million were killed by violent death during the cultural revolution. The Communist outright exectuted millions of people or worked them to death in labor camps.

Twentieth Century Atlas - Death Tolls

 

[Agent Ferris]

Lol, that is just funny.

With the added benefit of being 100% true.

He wasn't forced to do anything. Gorbachev was seeking to fix what he saw as a broken system riddled with corruption. You just really want to believe that we won, as if the Cold War was even ever about the USSR or communism.

No Gorbachev was forced to seek a way to fix a broken economic system (it wasn't just his perception it was in fact broken) which is why he began his liberal reform campaigns.

Wow, you really don't know what it means.

Totalitarian - characterized by a government in which the political authority exercises absolute and centralized control; "a totalitarian regime crushes all autonomous institutions in its drive to seize the human soul"- Arthur M.Schlesinger, Jr.

The wahhabist power structure would not exist in a truly totalitarian system of governance.

They didn't threaten Saudi Arabia with invasion. Saddam did talk smack about Saudi Arabia, but that was it.

The illegal annex of Kuwait put Saddam in range of Saudi oil fields then he began a propaganda campaign denouncing the Saudi government as illegetimate. This was more than just bluster. But regardless we didn't need any other raison de'tre other than the illegal annexation of Kuwait.

Stalin wasn't a communist, but a fascist plain and simple. Indeed, Stalin purged the more left-wing members of the party.

Stalin was a Communist who implemented every single plank of the Communist manifesto as advocated by Marx.

Don't you get it? The U.S. policy was that no conditional surrender was acceptable.

Don't you get it? The Japanese never offered any conditional surrender that wouldn't leave the militarists in charge.

You're just a broken record. The U.S. provided weapons through other means than direct sales. Since I'm tired of this crap chew on this this

This article says that we provided $280 million in uniforms. OMFG not uniforms. That would be included in the .5% of total arm sales.

and this.

This article likewise provides 0 evidence of any U.S. third party arms shipments to Iraq save for commenting on comments from a convicted felon who now has an axe to grind with the U.S. government. Please provide actual evidence for these alleged third party arms sales made by the U.S..

Illegal, yet allowed with the full knowledge of the government.

Prove it.

As for people being convicted, that does happen since these people are committing crimes. Viktor Bout got arrested by the DEA, but they made damn sure the CIA didn't know what they were doing lest it give him the heads-up. Also, we gave him plenty of financial assistance, though we never loaned him money.

Um Viktor Bout was arrested by Thailand with aid from the U.S.. Not really sure what this has to do with anything though.

No, it most certainly would not have. In fact, something I forgot to mention was that we gave them considerable assistance on strategy and tactics.

Assistance such as?

No, but in the cases I mentioned the U.S. was seeking to provoke or invite such actions from other countries in order to achieve some other end.

In the cases you mentioned you have blamed the U.S. for the illegal actions taken by other countries.

Anyone who downplays the significance of battlefield intelligence should really just keep quiet on anything involving war.

Yep sat photos are more important in a war of attrition than billions of dollars worth of tanks and fighter jets. :roll:

 

[Demon of Light]

So Disney can write legislation then? They can arrest people, convict them in a Disney court, and send them Disney jail? They don't have the powers of government as did the East India Company in the territories they controlled.

I am not saying they had the same powers, but there are corporations out there with governmental powers. Those powers are granted by the governments and this was also the case with the East India Company, but even before being given these powers the company had security forces, bases, and fought wars. I'm not sure if you have heard about their practices, but Chinese corporations and Russian corporations like Gazprom have their own security forces. Nowadays you'll have corporations control territory more clearly because they will buy land from the government or local business. Also some corporations are given such a monopoly on general services that even without governmental powers no one can do anything without them.

There are many ways to control industries without actually buying them up as well. Not to mention other relationships like defense relationships. For instance, the U.S. is responsible for the defense of several island nations in the Pacific and obviously Japan has constitutional limitations on its military powers, limitations we imposed on them, and so they rely on our military for defense from any conceivable foreign threat. Having a monopoly on the use of force in a country can be all the control you need.

Then which fascist did we support aside from the trade and military alliance formed with Franco?

How about Estado Novo? Saddam Hussein? Hell, I know you are going to say it isn't fascist, but Saudi Arabia. Taiwan under the KMT had classic characteristics of fascism. Then there are the numerous fascist organizations we supported and even used to perform operations all over the world.

What would a conditional withdrawal have consisted of? :roll: Oh no problem Saddam leave some troops in Kuwait? What are you talking about?

Some conditions mentioned would be that Iraq would not be attacked and that Iraq would not receive serious penalties if it withdrew.

Iraq was told that we would not accept a invasion of Kuwait.

Really, because we kept emphasizing that we had no obligation to protect Kuwait and how Iraq was an ally in the region.

Saddam had just annexed Kuwait, was verbally threatening Saudi Arabia with invasion, and was massing his troops on the Saudi border.

He was doing neither of these things, though with the latter he did respond to our massing of troops with massing his in a defensive position.

Just how were we involved before that?

Here's a thought, just do about five seconds searching for the Bosnian war and NATO I'm sure you'll get the point eventually. We were involved openly since at least 1993

Yes yes now the question is are the Freemasons and Illuminati really shapeshift aliens from the planet Xenon, or are they a clan of satan worshippers?

While the exact legacy of the Illuminati may never be known since the formal groups was disbanded two centuries ago, though like the Knights Templar many got away and joined other groups, the Freemason have a well-known and dutifully recorded influence on world history. Many of the Founding Fathers were high-level Masons and the Boston Tea Party was actually planned in a Masonic lodge. These are not conspiracy theories but parts of established history. Many groups like the Jacobin Club and the Carbonari originated in or were organized like Masonic lodges. It isn't all that unusual honestly since the very nature of Masonry is that it is a secretive group of people from all walks of life with varying levels of influence in society coming together and pledging a strong fraternal bond. Many elements of it were downright revolutionary as well in countries known for having state religions and embracing the differences in the classes.

Freemasonry has had influence on history even to the modern era, such as the P2 Masonic lodge in Italy that had ties to Operation Gladio and the strategy of tension. Not to mentions the lodge's connections to Argentina and the Dirty War. Silvio Berlusconi was a member of the lodge.

No I am right, all assertions regarding U.S. foreknowledge or complicity in 9-11 have been thoroughly debunked by numerous government and independent researchers.

Look, it's not a matter to discuss in this thread, but you are simply wrong.

Yes its absurd to suggest that 9-11 was counterproductive to PNAC's ambition to maintain a large standing army consisting of advanced technology to fight another nation state, considering that 9-11 was the impetus for guerilla war in which large standing armies and advanced fighters are ineffective and special forces and cheap UAV's take precedence over large tank regiments and billion dollar aircraft and multi-billion dollar super carriers. Completely absurd.

Dude, seriously, we have invaded two countries in response and as a result of our policies in the "War on Terror" are on the verge of a regional war with Iran and its allies. Look at our policy with regards to the surge in Iraq and Afghanistan. That was in response to this guerrilla warfare and has served as the basis for increasing the amount of active personnel in the military. Are you really going to keep insisting, against all evidence and reason, that 9-11 did not achieve exactly what PNAC wanted? You can argue over whether PNAC somehow helped 9-11 happen, but even if they were not involved that does not mean the event did not help them achieve what they wanted.

PNAC was interested in transforming the U.S. military through new technologies.

Some new technologies yes, not any new technology. Remember Rumsfield was involved in PNAC and he insisted on using a much smaller number of soldiers in Iraq than generals suggested. Also, what hell does that have to do with the Cuban Missile Crisis!?

Really? Prove it. What PNAC openly advoctated was what PNAC got and that was for Clinton to sign the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998.

*sigh* Liberate Iraq

Oh I see, blame 18 Saudi's and an Egyptian for 9-11 to get a war with Iraq. Brilliant.

It worked didn't it?

You learn new things everyday, the U.S. caused the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, the Iraqi annexation of Kuwait, the ethnic strife in former Yugoslavia, 9-11, and now Castro wasn't a communist.

Take everything out of context why don't you? I was only saying that cracking down on dissent and seizing private property does not make one a communist. Hell, like it even mattered given that we worked and with and even armed communists in other parts of the world.

Supported who? You haven't even named the group you're referencing let alone explained how exactly we supported them.

Seriously, we are talking about the Cold War here. If you cannot figure out how we would support a rebel group in a country then you should go do some basic research before discussing this further. As far as the name of the group I believe it would be FNLA in Angola.

By the time of the Cuban revolution Kennedy was publicly condemning Batista and convening support for Castro.

Kennedy was a softie who believed in human rights and all that. Probably why he got whacked. Also, by the time Kennedy was president the revolution was over.

Yes yoke of tyranny, Santa Anna dissolved state legislatures, disarmed state militias, and abolished the Constitution of 1824.

The source of the conflict goes back much further than that. American colonists never really respected the authority of the Mexican government and flagrantly disobeyed countless laws.

Ya and slavery was allowed after Texas independence from Mexico? FYI Texas fought on the side of the Union during the Civil War.

What on earth are you talking about? I know they didn't actually leave their slaves at home, and that was part of the reason for the Mexican government's frustration with American colonists in Texas. They circumvented every limitation on slavery and when it was outlawed continued to keep slaves.

Stalin implemented every single plank of the Communist manifesto which Marx and Engles called for in order for a given state to be in the transitional socialist period.

No, he didn't, and since I've already explained why he didn't I really don't know what else to tell you.

The Japanese were allowed to hold free elections

How can there be free elections when the occupying military forces censor anything negative about them or their policies and even disallow the appearance of censorship, meaning it cannot look like something has been censored?

 

[Demon of Light]

The fact of the matter is that the U.S. acted more magnanimously in its treatment of defeated Japan then any other country has ever acted towards its defeated enemy.

Japan stopped being a defeat enemy and became a territory. It is natural for empires to be more gentle towards their territories, so long as they don't defy their master.

Yes the fact that the policies implemented by Mao led directly to the famine are not to be blamed on Mao, it was the forced collectivization couple with assinine campaigns; such as, diverting labour to steel production and killing off locusts which caused the famine. :roll:

There is no evidence that forced collectivization had any impact in China or any country for that matter. Also while Mao bears some responsibility for those policies the famine itself cannot be reasonably blamed on Mao or communism. Natural disasters played a role and most of what more directly caused the famine was not forced on anyone but taken up willingly.

Peasants were forced to stay in their starving villages due to the system of household registration, the worst effects of the famine were on those labeled enemies of the regime, those labeled "black elements" were given the lowest priority for food allocation and died in the greatest numbers, and not all of the deaths from the great leap forward were a result of starvation many were tortured and killed by the Communists for failing to meet grain quotas.

Ripping stuff straight from Wikipedia ftl. It seems most of this comes from a book by Jasper Becker who seems to be a classic Sinophobic war-monger. Someone who can say China is "just as undemocratic as before" is not someone I would ever consider to be capable of presenting an objective and accurate account of any event in China's history.

The rural purgesresulted in between 2 and 5 million deaths between 1946-49, deaths in labour camps resulted in upwars of 20 million dead, 3 million were killed by violent death during the cultural revolution. The Communist outright exectuted millions of people or worked them to death in labor camps.

Twentieth Century Atlas - Death Tolls

:shock: You're honestly going with that overused piece of propaganda? There is very little evidence justifying these figures at all.

With the added benefit of being 100% true.

The U.S. policy of containment did jack because it was never really about the Soviet Union in the first place. What

No Gorbachev was forced to seek a way to fix a broken economic system (it wasn't just his perception it was in fact broken) which is why he began his liberal reform campaigns.

He was not forced by anyone or anything. He, simply saw the existing system was crap and sought to fix it, several leaders before him functioned just fine with this system. Gorbachev pursued reform because he believed in reforming the country. He sought reform even before he became leader.

Totalitarian - characterized by a government in which the political authority exercises absolute and centralized control; "a totalitarian regime crushes all autonomous institutions in its drive to seize the human soul"- Arthur M.Schlesinger, Jr.

Wow, you went out and found a single person who defined totalitarianism the same way, how easy. Unfortunately, you will not find any major group identifying it this way. Rather totalitarianism merely refers to a government that sees itself as having unlimited authority over every aspect of people's lives and seeks to exercise that perceived authority. If you are arguing a country needs to actually have such authority then there is no such thing as a totalitarian government, but of course, you are only using the definition you could find that best fit your irrational position.

The illegal annex of Kuwait put Saddam in range of Saudi oil fields then he began a propaganda campaign denouncing the Saudi government as illegetimate. This was more than just bluster.

It was all bluster. He was just asserting his newly-gained power.

But regardless we didn't need any other raison de'tre other than the illegal annexation of Kuwait.

So why'd we claim he was massing forces on the Saudi border when he wasn't? Why did the Kuwaiti royalty have to manufacture atrocities?

Don't you get it? The Japanese never offered any conditional surrender that wouldn't leave the militarists in charge.

I do not believe that is correct, but it is quite irrelevant as refusing negotiation altogether leaves no room for anything.

This article says that we provided $280 million in uniforms. OMFG not uniforms. That would be included in the .5% of total arm sales.

Dude, did you read the article?

This article likewise provides 0 evidence of any U.S. third party arms shipments to Iraq save for commenting on comments from a convicted felon who now has an axe to grind with the U.S. government. Please provide actual evidence for these alleged third party arms sales made by the U.S..

Lol, he got out of jail thanks to a hush-hush document received by the U.S. attorney.

Prove it.

Bah, just look up CIA and BNL and you'll find all you need.

Um Viktor Bout was arrested by Thailand with aid from the U.S.. Not really sure what this has to do with anything though.

The DEA was the main force behind it and as I noted they explicitly sought to avoid tipping off the CIA. The point being that we have used international arms dealers and actually continue to use them.

Assistance such as?

Uh, strategy and tactics. Do you know what that is?

Yep sat photos are more important in a war of attrition than billions of dollars worth of tanks and fighter jets.

Like I said if you are growing to dismiss the value of up-to-date intelligence in warfare then you really have no business discussing anything about war.

 

[Agent Ferris]

I am not saying they had the same powers, but there are corporations out there with governmental powers. Those powers are granted by the governments and this was also the case with the East India Company, but even before being given these powers the company had security forces, bases, and fought wars. I'm not sure if you have heard about their practices, but Chinese corporations and Russian corporations like Gazprom have their own security forces.

So now having renta-cops is somehow the equivalent of the East India Company which actually governed over nations.

Nowadays you'll have corporations control territory more clearly because they will buy land from the government or local business. Also some corporations are given such a monopoly on general services that even without governmental powers no one can do anything without them.

There are many ways to control industries without actually buying them up as well. Not to mention other relationships like defense relationships. For instance, the U.S. is responsible for the defense of several island nations in the Pacific and obviously Japan has constitutional limitations on its military powers, limitations we imposed on them, and so they rely on our military for defense from any conceivable foreign threat.

They were allowed to have a defense force after our occupapation had ended; furthermore, they are now free to change their constitution and have a larger army they have chosen not to.

How about Estado Novo?

Not really fascist.

Saddam Hussein?

Support was minimal, we didn't put him into power, and we ended up taking him out of power.

Hell, I know you are going to say it isn't fascist, but Saudi Arabia.

Not fascist, they are a monarchy with theocratic tendencies.

Taiwan under the KMT had classic characteristics of fascism.

Authoritarian not fascist. See this is what I mean you label as fascist anything that fits your agenda.

Then there are the numerous fascist organizations we supported and even used to perform operations all over the world.

For example?

Some conditions mentioned would be that Iraq would not be attacked and that Iraq would not receive serious penalties if it withdrew.

Um they should have recieved serious penalties for the war crimes which they perpetrated during their illegal occupation and plundering of Kuwait.

Really, because we kept emphasizing that we had no obligation to protect Kuwait and how Iraq was an ally in the region.

Really, we told Saddam in no uncertain terms that we would not support his invasion of Kuwait and Glaspie reportedly warned Saddam against an invasion of Kuwait, after he annexed Kuwait we demanded he withdrawal or face war.

He was doing neither of these things, though with the latter he did respond to our massing of troops with massing his in a defensive position.

He was doing both. Do you even know where ****ing Kuwait is? The annexation of Kuwait put Saddam in striking range of Kuwaiti oil fields, this was coupled by a propaganda campaign denouncing the Saudi government as illegitimate.

Here's a thought, just do about five seconds searching for the Bosnian war and NATO I'm sure you'll get the point eventually. We were involved openly since at least 1993

You mean enforcement of a no-fly zone?

While the exact legacy of the Illuminati may never be known since the formal groups was disbanded two centuries ago, though like the Knights Templar many got away and joined other groups,

Damn those pro-democracy anti-monarchy illuminati.

the Freemason have a well-known and dutifully recorded influence on world history.

Damn those enlightenment figures.

Freemasonry has had influence on history even to the modern era, such as the P2 Masonic lodge in Italy that had ties to Operation Gladio and the strategy of tension. Not to mentions the lodge's connections to Argentina and the Dirty War. Silvio Berlusconi was a member of the lodge.

Just wondering if they're shape shifting reptilians or satan worshippers.

Look, it's not a matter to discuss in this thread, but you are simply wrong.

No you are simply wrong, twoofers have been pwned from this side of the interwebs to the other on every bull**** claim they have ever made, I find it interesting that you twoofers still have the nerve to show your faces these days considering the sheer amount of pwnage you have suffered.

Dude, seriously, we have invaded two countries in response and as a result of our policies in the "War on Terror" are on the verge of a regional war with Iran and its allies.

Dude seriously two wars; the tactics of which are diametrically opposed to the goals of PNAC.

Look at our policy with regards to the surge in Iraq and Afghanistan. That was in response to this guerrilla warfare and has served as the basis for increasing the amount of active personnel in the military. Are you really going to keep insisting, against all evidence and reason, that 9-11 did not achieve exactly what PNAC wanted? You can argue over whether PNAC somehow helped 9-11 happen, but even if they were not involved that does not mean the event did not help them achieve what they wanted.

Yes I am going to argue that 9-11 was counterproductive to the goals of PNAC because it was. Once again PNAC didn't want a shift from large standing armies and billion dollar fighters to smaller lighter forces and cheap UAV's. That was not their agenda.

Some new technologies yes, not any new technology. Remember Rumsfield was involved in PNAC and he insisted on using a much smaller number of soldiers in Iraq than generals suggested.

They wanted information technologies, they also wanted to expand on advanced strike fighters, and other things which are only useful in batteling other nation states; such as, the missile defense shield which is completely useless in the type of war we are actually fighting.

*sigh* Liberate Iraq

Sigh an op-ed from the Weekly Standard calling for U.S. military support in the event of an armed insurrection against the Saddam regime by U.S. sponsored opposition groups, hardly the same thing as calling for an invasion of Iraq.

It worked didn't it?

:roll:

Take everything out of context why don't you? I was only saying that cracking down on dissent and seizing private property does not make one a communist. Hell, like it even mattered given that we worked and with and even armed communists in other parts of the world.

And yet Castro was in fact a Communist.

Seriously, we are talking about the Cold War here. If you cannot figure out how we would support a rebel group in a country then you should go do some basic research before discussing this further. As far as the name of the group I believe it would be FNLA in Angola.

But wait, I thought we supported the Portugal fascists?

Kennedy was a softie who believed in human rights and all that. Probably why he got whacked. Also, by the time Kennedy was president the revolution was over.

Oswald killed Kennedy and he acted alone. Kennedy was killed by a Communist.

"I believe that there is no country in the world including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, in part owing to my country’s policies during the Batista regime. I approved the proclamation which Fidel Castro made in the Sierra Maestra, when he justifiably called for justice and especially yearned to rid Cuba of corruption. I will even go further: to some extent it is as though Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States. Now we shall have to pay for those sins. In the matter of the Batista regime, I am in agreement with the first Cuban revolutionaries. That is perfectly clear."

– U.S. President John F. Kennedy, interview with Jean Daniel, October 24, 1963

The source of the conflict goes back much further than that. American colonists never really respected the authority of the Mexican government and flagrantly disobeyed countless laws.

You mean laws which forced them to grow certain crops? You mean laws that dissolved their state legislatures and overturned their Constitution?

No, he didn't, and since I've already explained why he didn't I really don't know what else to tell you.

Yes he did, all things listed in the Communist manifesto were implemented by Stalin.

How can there be free elections when the occupying military forces censor anything negative about them or their policies and even disallow the appearance of censorship, meaning it cannot look like something has been censored?

Yes I understand now the U.S. should have allowed anti-U.S. propaganda during the occupation, hey maybe we should have allowed them to rearm too. :roll: Once again the treatment of Japan after WW2 was far more magnanimous than the actions of any other victor in the history of this planet against a defeated enemy in such a costly war.

 

[Demon of Light]

So now having renta-cops is somehow the equivalent of the East India Company which actually governed over nations.

I never said they were equivalent, but you were arguing that having governmental powers somehow meant the East India Company wasn't a corporation and I merely noted that there are corporations with governmental powers.

They were allowed to have a defense force after our occupapation had ended; furthermore, they are now free to change their constitution and have a larger army they have chosen not to.

It is not that easy to change the constitution:

CHAPTER IX: AMENDMENTS
Article 96:
Amendments to this Constitution shall be initiated by the Diet, through a concurring vote of two-thirds or more of all the members of each House and shall thereupon be submitted to the people for ratification, which shall require the affirmative vote of a majority of all votes cast thereon, at a special referendum or at such election as the Diet shall specify.

Source: The Solon Law Archive

Not really fascist.

It most certainly is fascist. I know there are apparently some people who claim because it isn't expansionist that means it isn't fascist, but Spain was not expansionist either. It is not the critical defining element of fascism. Estado Novo was definitely militarist and fought bitterly to keep the colonies it had.

Support was minimal, we didn't put him into power, and we ended up taking him out of power.

Minimal? When he gassed the Kurds we tried to pin the blame on Iran! That's not minimal support.

Not fascist, they are a monarchy with theocratic tendencies.

Saudi Arabia's government controls even the most minor aspects of the lives of their citizens. Their education system serves to inundate developing minds with feeling of nationalist pride and a culture amenable to the State. You'll note the fascist states have often used religion of some form to maintain control and this is no different in Saudi Arabia.

Authoritarian not fascist. See this is what I mean you label as fascist anything that fits your agenda.

Actually, no, you make up your own definition of fascism that means you can say the U.S. did not support Fascism, except Spain.

For example?

DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THE HISTORY OF U.S. FOREIGN POLICY!?

Um they should have recieved serious penalties for the war crimes which they perpetrated during their illegal occupation and plundering of Kuwait.

Really? That is more important than liberating Kuwait without massive loss of life?

Really, we told Saddam in no uncertain terms that we would not support his invasion of Kuwait and Glaspie reportedly warned Saddam against an invasion of Kuwait, after he annexed Kuwait we demanded he withdrawal or face war.

We didn't tell him anything in certain terms. Officials told Congress we had no obligation to go to war over Kuwait and our leaders before the invasion kept emphasizing our strong ties with Iraq. Hell, after the invasion Glaspie responded that they "didn't know Iraq was going to invade all of Kuwait" seemingly suggesting they were ok with Iraq invading part of Kuwait.

He was doing both. Do you even know where ****ing Kuwait is? The annexation of Kuwait put Saddam in striking range of Kuwaiti oil fields, this was coupled by a propaganda campaign denouncing the Saudi government as illegitimate.

I know exactly where Kuwait is and that doesn't mean anything. Iraq already borders Saudi Arabia and his denouncement of the Saudi government only indicates what was always the case, that he thought Iraq should be leader of the Arab world. Having control of Kuwait gave him the confidence to assert that position.

You mean enforcement of a no-fly zone?

The U.S. engaged Yugoslav forces during that time.

Damn those pro-democracy anti-monarchy illuminati.


Damn those enlightenment figures.

Just wondering if they're shape shifting reptilians or satan worshippers.

You can be snarky all you like I am just stating the facts.

Yes I am going to argue that 9-11 was counterproductive to the goals of PNAC because it was. Once again PNAC didn't want a shift from large standing armies and billion dollar fighters to smaller lighter forces and cheap UAV's. That was not their agenda.

I really want that head-banging smiley. Nothing quite depicts the frustration I am experience with your comments. Ok, these two wars have actually served as a justification for building up the size of our active military force. Also, the PNAC explicitly advocated abandoning the Joint Strike Fighter and using more UAVs. Given your apparent lack of knowledge on military matters I don't expect you to know this, but many see unmanned vehicles as the potential mainstays of future warfare. Many countries are looking to develop combat UAVs.

They wanted information technologies, they also wanted to expand on advanced strike fighters, and other things which are only useful in batteling other nation states; such as, the missile defense shield which is completely useless in the type of war we are actually fighting.

You are so wrong it is just sad. Of course, the missile defense shield has made advances partly because the campaign against "terrorist-supporting states" includes countries with ballistic missile programs. Do you remember Bush talking about go after terrorists and their supporters? Well Iran was listed and there is plenty of justification with Iran. Hell, they are developing a fifth-generation stealth fighter also meaning it provides a justification for all sorts of military technologies.

Sigh an op-ed from the Weekly Standard calling for U.S. military support in the event of an armed insurrection against the Saddam regime by U.S. sponsored opposition groups, hardly the same thing as calling for an invasion of Iraq.

Did you even read the damn thing!? This article by the ****ING CHAIRMAN is posted on the PNAC's site and he explicitly talks about sending tens of thousands of U.S. troops or more into Iraq!

And yet Castro was in fact a Communist.

The Communist Party of Cuba before the revolution was against Castro and after the revolution it wasn't until the middle of the 60's that the ruling party included the term communist in its name. Indeed, it was the actions of the U.S. that pushed Castro to communism and alliance with the Soviet Union. Castro established ties with the Soviets from the beginning, but U.S. companies continued to operate there until they began politicizing their business operations in response to Castro establishing ties with the Soviets and finally after the Bay of Pigs Castro turned away completely. We can observe a similar process with Egypt. Nasser was actually strongly anti-communist and an ally of the U.S., but then his government recognized the PRC and we abandoned economic projects with him. That, together with other developments caused him to turn towards the Soviet Union and away from the West, though he didn't make as radical a shift as Castro.

But wait, I thought we supported the Portugal fascists?

We did support Portugal, that's the kicker. We gave weapons and intelligence to Iran while we were helping Iraq as well. Do you remember how we pressured the UK and France to leave Egypt alone in 1956? The point is we supported the government in Portugal

Oswald killed Kennedy and he acted alone. Kennedy was killed by a Communist.

Suuuurrre he was.

You mean laws which forced them to grow certain crops? You mean laws that dissolved their state legislatures and overturned their Constitution?

Like laws against slavery. Americans recognized no laws of the Mexican government and behaved as though the Mexican government had no authority over them. They chose to move to those parts and got approval from the Mexican government and then acted like they didn't have to obey any of the laws that did not suit them. I do not think Mexico's government was a good government, but then American colonists didn't have to move there and it is quite easy to see how Mexico could interpret this constant immigration, legal and illegal, from the U.S. coupled with our numerous attempts at buying the territory as signs of a plot to take Texas from them.

Yes I understand now the U.S. should have allowed anti-U.S. propaganda during the occupation, hey maybe we should have allowed them to rearm too.

We didn't allow even legitimate reporting of the negative aspects of our occupation. Hell, we didn't even allow reports to appear censored.

 

[cpwill]

not to get too involved, but I would just like to point out that Oswald did not actually manage to kill Kennedy. It is well documented that Chuck Norris, in fact, traveled backwards in time to save the President and deflected all three shots with his steely gaze. Unfortunately, Kennedy was in the danger area, and the dissipated force of Chuck Norris' glare caused his head to explode.

 

[Winston Smith]

I have often seen many posters make reference to American "imperialism". Since the establishment of the 50th state, I find it hard to argue that we fit the ideal of traditional "imperialism" anymore, as it relates to aspects of taking and holding land for the benefit of the state. IMO, American imperialism, which could be best described as our expansion into the current 50 states from the original 13 colonies formed after the Revolution against the British Empire, is effectively over.

From our actions in WWII to support our allies from the fascist Nazi regime, and our efforts during the cold war to keep the communists out of western Europe, the liberation of South Korea from the communists, the liberation of Iraq from its dictator, our continued support for democratic allies around the world I find it hard to equate our actions with the imperialistic past of european colonialism, Persian imperialism, etc.....

And if these actions are the actions of imperialism, were we not also imperialistic in our dealings in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 90s?

We have influence, yes. But I don't necessarily equate our influence with imperialism. I don't necessarily equate fighting a war, regardless of its location, as imperialistic. Its the attitude of taking and subjecting other states as your territory or vassals that equals imperialism.

"Empire" is the proper word for a political structure in which a conquering power formally annexes territory. "Imperialism" is a newer term coined in the 19th century to refer to empire-like policies, not necessarily political structures. The informal hegemony maintained by the US is the kind of thing it was always meant to denote.

As for encouraging democracy, I would argue that that's the last thing our policies have been designed to do. In the Middle East, Africa, Central America, and elsewhere, one of our main tactics has been to subvert democracy whenever we thought it wasn't quite congenial enough to American business interests. Iraq is only one of the latest examples. There we set up a new government and proceeded to engage in open combat with legitimately elected factions of that government over oil rights. The real agenda doesn't get much more blatant than that.

 

[peepnklown]

I assume there is a difference in ‘encouraging’ democracy, like being a good example to other nations or diplomacy, maybe sending an informational packet and installing military bases on their land, ‘secretly’ killing one leader and installing your leader, sending troops, etc.

 

[Klaus.C]

I assume there is a difference in ‘encouraging’ democracy, like being a good example to other nations or diplomacy, maybe sending an informational packet and installing military bases on their land, ‘secretly’ killing one leader and installing your leader, sending troops, etc.

I suspect that we have a wrong understanding between imperialism and democracy.

Even in the current conditions of the Libya, Eygpt, Yemen etc, they have been introduced with the western style of democracy into their culture. A lot of times, people think that western culture = democracy because democracy was first known to had existed in a western culture. But that does not mean that other countries are unable to develop democracy, even though it maybe culturally different from the western ones, they will still find a middle ground which would work for the government and its people. Democracy can only rightfully call itself that when it can be applied to a society effectively at a practical level.

Democracy does not feed and provide for the people, it means nothing to a nation if they cant even get their basic needs fulfilled. Democracy however, is best recognized when it enhances the quality of living for the people who have already had their basic needs fulfilled.

Imperialism and democracy are two different philosophies atthe fundamental level although they may share some similar traits.

Imperialism from my understanding has a stronger institutional implication than democracy which focuses more at the individual and social level. Of course, there can be democracy within imperialism, but that is only if you are with the imperialistic host rather than the one being colonized. Also democracy borne within imperialism is often more restricted than another because the institution has "guidelines" or "policies" of how they think a colony or an issue should be dealt with.

Democracy and freedom are also two fundamentall different concepts but I shall leave it for another day

 

[SolonOfAthens]

I have often seen many posters make reference to American "imperialism". Since the establishment of the 50th state, I find it hard to argue that we fit the ideal of traditional "imperialism" anymore, as it relates to aspects of taking and holding land for the benefit of the state. IMO, American imperialism, which could be best described as our expansion into the current 50 states from the original 13 colonies formed after the Revolution against the British Empire, is effectively over.

From our actions in WWII to support our allies from the fascist Nazi regime, and our efforts during the cold war to keep the communists out of western Europe, the liberation of South Korea from the communists, the liberation of Iraq from its dictator, our continued support for democratic allies around the world I find it hard to equate our actions with the imperialistic past of european colonialism, Persian imperialism, etc.....

And if these actions are the actions of imperialism, were we not also imperialistic in our dealings in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 90s?

We have influence, yes. But I don't necessarily equate our influence with imperialism. I don't necessarily equate fighting a war, regardless of its location, as imperialistic. Its the attitude of taking and subjecting other states as your territory or vassals that equals imperialism.

There has been virutally no promotion of Democracy in our foreign policy in the time period you mention. We supported totalitarian regimes on three continents in the past 60 years. We did not become involved in Korea to spread Democracy. We were there because of the threat of Maoism and the Soviets, the same reasoning behind Vietnam. Our invovlement in the Middle East has never been to promote self determinition, in fact quite the opposite. We have engaged in a different form of imperialism than the traditional view than you are mentioning.

 

[_Markum_]

"Imperialism" is the policy of extending a nation's authority beyond its own borders. "Encouraging democracy" is essentially a euphemism for this policy. In the US, this policy is expressed as "the interests of national security". It is political authority extended via economic influence.

To the extent that democracy "works", its success encourages its acceptance elsewhere--it doesn't have to be "encouraged". In the corporation in which I previously worked, it was well-understood that "help" was something to be avoided at all costs, because "help" meant that someone on a higher level would make decisions to "help" that invariably would create problems. We were encouraged to solve our problems ourselves so as to avoid "help". I think the world is learning this same lesson after decades of economic oppression ("help") by the US, just, maybe, too late.

 

[RoccoR]

SolonOfAthens, WI Crippler, et al,

The US is not an Imperial Nation. It was, at one time, and expansionist nation; but, now - it is an hegemony that is in decline.

I have often seen many posters make reference to American "imperialism".
...
...
...
We have influence, yes. But I don't necessarily equate our influence with imperialism. I don't necessarily equate fighting a war, regardless of its location, as imperialistic. Its the attitude of taking and subjecting other states as your territory or vassals that equals imperialism.

There has been virutally no promotion of Democracy in our foreign policy in the time period you mention. We supported totalitarian regimes on three continents in the past 60 years. We did not become involved in Korea to spread Democracy. We were there because of the threat of Maoism and the Soviets, the same reasoning behind Vietnam. Our invovlement in the Middle East has never been to promote self determinition, in fact quite the opposite. We have engaged in a different form of imperialism than the traditional view than you are mentioning.

(DEFINED for CLARIFICATION)

1. (n.) hegemony is a leadership, predominant influence, or domination, esp. as exercised by one nation over others.

September 5, 2011 7:35 pm > The end of US hegemony: Legacy of 9/11
SOURCE #1: Bloomberg: The end of US hegemony: Legacy of 9/11 - FT.com

Monday 31 May 2010 05.01 EDT > US hegemony in Middle East is Ending
SOURCE#2: Guardian: US hegemony in Middle East is ending | Chris Phillips | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

May/June 2007 | The National Interest > Beyond American Hegemony
SOURCE #3: New America Foundation Beyond American Hegemony | NewAmerica.net

2003, Volume 55, Issue 03 (July-August) > U.S. Weakness and the Struggle for Hegemony
SOURCE #4: Monthly Review hegemony, :: Monthly Review​

2. (n.) imperialism is the policy of extending the rule or authority of an empire or nation over foreign countries, or of acquiring and holding colonies and dependencies.​

(COMMENT)

I then to think (my opinion), that it is pretty much generally recognized that the US is an Hegemonic nation of varying degrees, depending on the region of the world one observes. It is generally understood, by those that are outside observers with no political - economic - military notion at stake, that nearly all the influence that America once had - is rapidly declining as a self-inflected injury after the events of 9/11.

Of course there are some staunch diehards out there that still think America is a Super Power by virtue of its military strength. For decades, that was the dominant definition and critical ingredient. But as the last half century has shown, you can win every battle of every conflict and still manage an outcome that is only marginally satisfactory, if not an outright failure. While the US may still be capable of influencing international events - or altering the acts and policies of less powerful nations; but, that influence is fast dwindling away.

We have forgotten who we are and where we came from. We are capable of monumental acts of ego and self-righteousness. We give ourselves names, fight over lines on maps. And pretend our light is better than everyone else's.

Most Respectfully,
R