So, we killed hundreds of thousands to prevent a genocide that actually happened in a different country, one that was destabilized by bombings carried out at Kissinger’s advice, but going against both US and international law`? This seems like an after the fact cooked up and even though cooked up terrible defense. It makes no sense and would be immoral even if Kissinger was psychic which he clearly was not.
It’s astonishing to me how little most gringos actually know about their own wars.
Really bonkers. That’s the kind of mental laziness that gave us George W. Bush. Neocons. Hey I don’t really know whats going on there, but let’s get in there and make it a democracy. A policy Clinton was happy to pursue as Secretary of Defence.
But, you know, you found the bad guys, good for you.
Even Kissinger slipped up there. It’s hard to understand because he gives a pretty accurate description of Rumsfeld in his memoirs of the second term of Nixon’s presidency.
The question wasn’t do you support the invasion of Iraq or not. The question was holy shit who put Donald Rumsfeld in charge of the most powerful military machine in the history o mankind?
Couple of fzzacts for you:
-That different country was being used as a corridor by the Vcong. They knew they could violate that country’s soveregnty with impunity while the US would have its hands tied by international and domestic resistance. So they used it, to great effect, and arguably that won them the war, by the time Kissinger bombed the damage was done.
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So JFK goes into Vietnam. LBJ sends in a good amount of troops cause Vcongg are getting rowdy. By the time Nixon, the democratic movement that runs out of South Vietnam, as well as the sorrounding civilized governments, are all liike “pleeeeaaase don’t fo, please don’t go, these guys and also the Khmer Rouge are psychos. Man, please don’t go.”
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I just realized that you just said that, because the US bombed some country, it’s ok that the southeast Asia communists then committed GEN-O-CIDE.
Why was Rumsfeld such a dangerous choice? Because he’s an airhead. Not a very smart guy. Got to where he was by sheer will to climb the ranks of government. And Cheney was his apprentice.
“Just look mean, we’re republicans, we’re supposed to look mean!” That’s Cheney.
If you actually bothered to read some detailed history of the thing, rather than just clever opinion pieces with some data in them, it wouldn’t seem like anything. You would just know.
I’m starting to wonder if you even know what the political history of South-East Asia just prior to JFK’s invasion was.
Cambodia, Laos, Thailand.
It’s a very complicated region of the world. Why do you think Thailand came out of the Vietnam war thing relatively unscathed?
I’m just gonna mention this, because the US has something precious few other places have:
Quality, well stocked public libraries with a wealth of extremely well researched history books on almost anything. And that’s just the H to K section.
Seems we Dutchies have a good outpost into Venezuala for the coming times, Curacao, part of our kingdom, 100 miles off your coast, is being installed as a hub for humanitarian aid, - meaning of course whatever is convenient for whomever commands convenience. But in general, Holland is of all Euro nations probably the most reliable ally of the US. I dont want to count the Brits as theyre more their own thing. WWII transformed us into what would be a vassal state if we werent the original Empire and still resonate it in cleverness and being in the right places when it matters.
Anyway my compliments on whats easily the most interesting thread here in this politics forum Ive ever seen. Reads like a good detective novel. Informed Noir. Could be a genre.
( Im not like you or mr R, crime was never my scene. But we can use some bloody honesty )
You think if I opened a Patreon account, anybody would donate?
But then, if that held, Orson Welles would have been a multi-gazzilionaire. Film-noir is the hero you are allowed to hate.
I mean, objectively, Gone With The Wind is still the greatest film ever made, not A Touch Of Evil.
Chinatown…
Oh Chinatown…
Polanski…
He IS pretty rich. But he’s more capitalism-conscious than Welles and your humble servant.
Chinatown, you know? He accepts the triumph of the villain.
Anyway, thanks for the opportunity for that satisfying gaze to my belly button.
Polanski and cinema in general arent necessarily about stories as much as about psychic magic. You need the semblance of a story or the incentive for the mind to go build one at the images, make them its own, and the movie actor is the center piece.
What a good movie story? Back to the Future. The Terminator. As a chronicle, Forest Gump is good. Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, those are good stories. The Usual Suspects wasnt bad… but Spielberg stories arent as interesting. Nor is the story of Star Wars. These are about the Totem, in Freud. The unleashed shadow, the rolling Rock in Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom… what??? Zool in Ghostbusters 1.
What Hitchcock suggested. Spielberg understood. Had the nerve to pick the perfect Hitchockian threat behind all the threats. Actually the Shark music is actually reminiscent of the Psycho scene.
But yeah all this aside, the world can use a Win in Venezuela.
Big winners, big players.
The US always is the lead in the whole organization with its unrelenting legislature but it is the opportunity to strike some long lasting deals in general. What I like about your discourse (pardonnez) is that it is standing on the solid power of appreciation of every good effort for power. Thats refreshing.
Im always of the opinion that a long lasting political solution is to let people keep their shit and just get them to allow some others to have some stuff as well. Its kind of true what Serendipper says about the luck we have with the few multi billionaires that top the list - theyre not the best but theyre not the worst people in the world. Maybe this trend will persist and in a while wealth and nobility will come to align. Im sure poverty and nobility never will. Theyll always be at odds and create the philosopher, in the Christian sense. Daemonism. We all know we are supposed to step firmly on rock away from that toxicating swamp, but cant leave it without the fishes.
“Were eating their fish”
-a general
The story about Back to the Future isnt the thing with his mom but the deal with the nuclear technology and the lightning. Its a movie about mankind possessing powers in strange places no ancient ever dreamed of. Except Ezekiel.
The path from Prometheus to Doc Brown was long
Solutions are bold if theyre worthy of the name. The wheel is a bold plan. The axis, is what is meant when we say the invention of the wheel. The invention of the axis.
Some Dutch Iraqi guy is in Venezuela buying up cheap real estate. Solid angle, I suppose, if youve got the means and the balls to go into Caracas strapped with cash, step in a taxi and make some deals, I suppose Iraqis arent as easily deterred. But its a sign that things are already looking up. People see investment instinctively as a logical choice. Seeing as the news is full of ships of gold and big oil contracts added to the general attraction of Venzuela for visceral reasons, someone needs to play their cards right for everyone to get their chips worth.
Buying up real estate in Venezuela right now and for some years has been like buying bitcoin back in the day. Fucking genious, the appreciation will be in the 1000’s%, but I’m broke as a fucking joke.
It takes balls, not so much because you gotta walk around Caracas. There’s safe ways, all you need is a local. But because there is always that slight chance that the socialist regime will just barely skid by with the help of China for decades more. China prefers a thriving Venezuela, but it will take a broke Venezuela that belongs to it over one that belongs to the Free World. Maybe they’ll finally be able to coerce Maduro to allow real Chinese industrialists to go in there and extract that fucking oil.
But really, odds are agianst it. It’s really more Maduro that would have to play his cards right. The default will be a collapse and an opposition ready with detailed plans to get the thing back on track.
This new guy in the assembly, he’s not some kind of genious. I mean he has balls the size of tanks, but the international non-communist community is really just looking for an excuse to get rid of the Looney Toon gang. That’s why the guy still draws breath. This time, when the US said don’t fucking touch this guy, they know they mean it.