AndrewL

The other fellow who commented  made no sense and has no right to belittle my full military service to Canada.

Actually he does.  Or have you already forgotten what your purpose was in the armed forces?

Andrew

Yes, I do thank God the British colonized the world.  They created the modern western culture, the country I live in.  It was not perfect, but I choose to look at the positive.  Slavery was a terrible thing and has been abolished.  There are no people alive today that were slaves of the British Empire in N America, just people who live off the self pity of the legacy.  If you go back far enough in time, my ancestors were enslaved, killed, brutalized, should I sit around and feel sorry for myself, demand compensation???  My ancestors were actually the victims of an Indian raid, should I demand compensation.  The Indian tribes of N America were tripping over themselves to sell each other out to the French & British, slaughtering homesteaders etc....  They are not innocent victims, they fought back and lost, the same as the Saxons & Normans defeated the English.  We are here AndrewL, we are not leaving, get used to it!!!

Can't you just acknowledge the reality that our ancestors who came to this land were genocidal and succeeded in destroying a totally viable and wonderful culture?  Why do they have to be celebrated - its so phony...  And to thank god for this... well thats just perverse.  Nobody says you have to feel guilty -  i certainly don't.   I just prefer to be honest.

Humans colonize, that's what we do, since we first left Africa a million or so years ago.  The Cro-Magnons invaded the Neanderthal territory, Homo sapiens invaded territories etc etc......  Welcome to human history!!!

Tribal peoples are not colonists, only civilized people are colonists, in the truest sense of the word.

The USA is not an empire, they only buy & sell to the world.  There are plenty of nations out there that benefit, including Canada.  The USA has the power to take if they wanted too, they do not, and they buy.  There are those out there that have nothing to offer the free market world, either because of lack of resources or lack of initiative.  They are jealous of the power & wealth of the US and the countries the USA trades with. They are jealous of the wealth of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar etc...  Even Iraq was a very wealth country courtesy of the USA.  Saddam chose to spend his cash on palaces & tanks instead of for his people, not the USA's fault.  Are the Americans supposed to tell the world how to spend the money they get for selling to the USA?  Do you tell someone you buy a car from how to spend the $$ you gave them??

Well i still don't know what definition of empire you are using so im not sure exactly how to read your paragraph.  

But you seem to be confused about something  - which is that the US pays for what they need.  On the surface that might appear to be true but lets take a deeper look.  As you may be aware the US imports 70% of its energy.  The US is approximately 4% of the worlds population and uses approximately 25% of the worlds resources.  Now who are they paying for these resources and energy?  It seems to me they are paying client states that keep the restless natives mostly obedient with brutal military force.  A military force trained and equipped by America and her closest most like minded friends.  And who benefits?  Do the people who live off these resources benefit?  Or does the client government benefit? Yes.  Do the industry CEO's and shareholders benefit? Yes.  The people remain in perpetual poverty while the 'west' cuts down their forests, converts their land to factory farms, pollutes their water, and generally rapes them.   This is all done for the benefit of the people who live in the core of the empire.  Meanwhile we are fed constant incessant lies that it is actually good for these people that we exploit them and their land.  If only they would just obey and get with the program....

As for Saudi, sounds like you have never been there.  There are very few poor people there.  The only people I saw there, in the many times I have been, that could be considered poor is perhaps the Bedouins, but I think it is not poverty, just their lifestyle.  They are I will agree very hard on third party nationals, the Pakistani & oriental people they bring over to do their domestic and lower end work.  Saudis do not shovel shit, flip burgers or clean toilets, you’d' know that if you were ever there!!

Let me guess, you hung out with other rich people at nice hotels?

The fact is their GDP has collapsed dramatically since the 70's.  This is what happens when you have hundreds of spoiled princes spending billions of dollars on palaces, fleets of cars, private hunting reserves on tribal lands in africa, and other forms of extreme decadence.  The worlds largest exporter of oil can't even compete in GDP with most resource depleted countries belonging to the american empire - a very revealing fact IMO.  The royal family is just another dictatorship armed by America to protect the constant and abundant flow of oil to the market.   Saudi Arabia's GDP by all measurements is even lower than Iran, and Iran has been under US sanctions for decades....  

Corporations, WE ARE THE CORPORATIONS, US!!!  We buy their products, we work for them.  Corporations employ millions, billions of people throughout the world.  Government cannot ignore the jobs or tax revenue they bring in.  People who bitch about corporations most likely don't have a job, are not living the life of the rest of us and want to whollow in self pity, and cry about society instead of getting off their asses and getting to work.

I work for a very large corporation and have worked constantly since i was 14 all the way through university.  

I think corporations right now exist in a world of total unaccountability.  Look at Burma (Myanmar) - a major source of their human rights abuses is Total/Chevron - but they are exempt from the sanctions that have been in place against that brutal regime for years.  But it is Total/Chevron that pay the military to make sure no people get in the way when they exploit and pollute and displace the people who live in on the land.  Meanwhile this junta is slaughtering monks in the streets - but still nobody mentions sanctions against the corporations or would consider holding them accountable.  That has to change.

I think its terribly sad that you identify yourself with corporations.  To me a corporation is just another powerful entity that does whatever it can to turn a profit.  A corporation to me is just an unfortunate reality that helps me buy the food they keep locked up.    I don't  celebrate them as you seem to.  I have no allegiance or loyalty to any corporation.  Im not one of those people who treats themselves as a free billboard for their bosses, walking around pathetically displaying the company logo.....  i prefer to identify myself with... well i just want to experience what it truly means to be human.  Here is something i read today from Chris Hedges that i really liked and what i prefer to identify with:


"There is a meaning to existence.  It is found, as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Joseph Conrad and Vasily Grossman knew in simple, blind acts of human kindness, especially towards the outcast and the stranger.  It is discovered when we confront and acknowledge the inevitable chains and limitations of human nature but do not completely succumb to them.  These small acts of compassion, never free from the taint of self-interest, do not make the world a quantifiably better place.  We will not be rewarded for them.  We will not save ourselves from evil, suffering and death.  But these acts mean that we have, if only for a moment, felt what it means to be fully human."

http://www.truthdig....ges_black_mass/

I choose to look at the positive of my culture and society.  I know it is not all perfect, but I have seen may other societies and we have it very good.  Whether you are a winner of failure in our society depends on YOU!!  Your choices, your ambition, your goals.  I have noticed that only our society’s failures, the lame & lazy seem to want to bitch & whine.  Myself, I have a new car, a new house, hot wife and my kids are doing great.  My bills are paid, and life is good, because of choices I made.

There is nothing wrong with discovering and promoting the positives of any culture or society.  I certainly think that in the west we do in fact have a pretty rich heritage of free inquiry and discussion - among other things.  The very act of posting here is to promote the free exchange of information that exists and is valued and protected in this culture.  I'm likewise in the same situation as you.  I'm paid fairly well, have a house and can contribute along with the mother of my child to the well being of his life.  You seem to purposely ignore and gloss over the real problems of this culture though.  You seem to want to pretend they don't exist.  But they do, and i feel compelled to understand and reveal them.   I dont even care so much if anybody agrees or even listens.

Andrew

Aren't we tired of the same old story from the Liberals? From the PC? From all the establishment?

Aren't we tired of party lines? Tired of either "right wing" or "left wing" solutions?

Why not consider the Greens on Oct. 10th. At least check out their platform.
As a former member of another party I came to find the Green Platform after a long period of
disappointment with the same old ideas over and over and over again.

The Green Platform covers a wide breadth of the political spectrum. From "progressive" social policies, to
a tried and true message of economic responsibility.

They aren't left-wing hippy environmentalists, and they aren't slash and burn right wing nutjobs.
They are a serious party, wanting to make a real difference. Whatever the good idea may be.

Why not check em out? They're only unelectable if you don't vote for em.
www.gpo.ca/platform
Matt Wanting Change

Fuck...im tired of federalism, provincialism, municipalism, ---- the only politics that are not corrupt and useless is at the level of the community league.

Andrew

tbud' date='Sep 27 2007, 11:15 AM' post='254017']
you see you are just thinking in black and white, as is in vogue these days, stylish
oh it is the modern mantra, alright.
It's a new spin on some old propaganda.
But that is lost on the simple minded.
"I know two types of law because I know two types of men,
those who are with us and those who are against us."
~ Nazi Hermann Goering, 1936

"Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."
~GWB
it is the language used by an  empire, in an expansionist mood.
To get the populace onside.
it's simplistic appeal lies, in it's call to act (stay on the "right" side) and not to REALLY think, about what is ACTUALLY going on.

"He who is not with me is against me..."

--Jesus Christ, in Matthew 12:30 and Luke 11:23 of the New Testament of Christianity.

This false dilemma goes back probably long before Jesus Christ im sure.....  buts it origin is neither modern nor does it originate with Goering.  The most classic reference to it is from the bible.  Good to see old Georgie is stuck in 1st century moral concepts....


Andrew

You have a logic problem. B does not follow A

I think you can agree that Canadians do not want street crime. Yet after years and years street crime still exists.

Apparently you have a problem recognizing that we have very little street crime in Canada.  I think you would agree that because most Canadians do not want street crime, we actually have a fairly low rate of street crime.  This can partly be explained by the fact that most Canadians are not partaking in street crime because they do not want street crime....  

Can you honestly say that after 5 years NATO has won the hearts and minds of Afghanis - or are they losing them?  I think they probably will end up hating NATO and its members as much as they hate the taliban.  Such is they way these things always go.

Lets put it another way. The will of the Afgan people is being thwarted by war lords and the Taliban. It has been for qalmost 20 years since the Soviet occupation and before that, 100 years.

How do you know what the will of the Afghan people is?  I assume its the same as anybody else's - that is to be left alone, to be free of interference from foreigners; be it the Soviets, be it the British, Pakistan, the Taliban, the US, Saudi Arabia, or NATO......  Is there actually any credible polling done that shows the majority of Afghans want a foreign military presence of any type in their country?  Does anybody actually talk to the villagers before they kill them?

There is no reason to believe that the situation would change in only 5 years. How long did it take to destroy the Shining Path?

You mean the resurgent shining path that bombed a market in Peru a few months back?  I suspect they are resurgent because the conditions that lead to the rise of internal conflicts and insurgencies still exist - which is mainly foreign interference in all its oppressive and exploitive forms.

Andrew