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Brown Sauce
Joined: 07 Jan 2007
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 Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 9:35 pm Post subject: re Lukes pilger post "Bringing down the new Berlin Wall |
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http://www.couchtripper.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?p=59764#59764
I didn't really want to put this comment in the thread, 'cause it might derail it ..
A grand bit of journalism as usual, but one bit in particular worries me ...
"One of Barack Obama’s chief whisperers is Zbigniew Brzezinski, architect of Operation Cyclone in Afghanistan, which spawned jihadism, al-Qaeda and 9/11. "
I hadn't a clue who this Brzezinski geezer is but Pilger didn't seem so keen, so I had a look. He wrote a book in '97 called -
"The Grand Chessboard - American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives".
It looks to me like the definitive "American Imperialism and How to Accomplish it" textbook.
Why has Obama chosen this one to be his top foreign policy advisor ?
"...This regionalization is in keeping with the Tri-Lateral Plan which calls for a gradual convergence of East and West, ultimately leading toward the goal of "one world government'....National sovereignty is no longer a viable concept..." Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter.
he's dirty.
I managed to get a copy of his book, 2mb,
| Code: | | http://rapidshare.de/files/38595674/bchess.rar.html |
rarpass:McCainFries
I'm off to bed, goodnight ... |
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faceless
admin
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 12:45 pm Post subject: |
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cheers sauce, I can't say it sounds like an exciting read but it'll be useful for reference.
arses, that rapidshare just kicked me off saying I'd taken my limit. Any chance you could put it in your humyo account? It's a lot easier that way. |
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Brown Sauce
Joined: 07 Jan 2007
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faceless
admin
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 1:36 pm Post subject: |
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| have you made it private on there? |
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Brown Sauce
Joined: 07 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 2:00 pm Post subject: |
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| try it now ... |
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faceless
admin
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 8:15 pm Post subject: |
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| got it, cheers |
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faceless
admin
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 3:15 pm Post subject: |
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I've just had a quick flick through this book and have been very impressed. It's nowhere near as dry as I thought it might be, with the language being clear and easily understandable.
It's quite a lengthy tome though, but it seems to cover just about every major incident in the last 100 odd years in a smooth, connected, timeline. |
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Brown Sauce
Joined: 07 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 7:34 pm Post subject: |
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I haven't had time to read it through. I did flick through it, and I read the conclusion before posting this thread. In my opinion the guy is a fascist dressed in an intellectuals gown.
I don't want American global domination. That's the top and bottom of it. Whether it's the boy Bush McCain Clinton or now it seems Obama too.
I don't want any global domination. I don't go for the Geko "big is beautiful" crap.
If I have read this right, the only difference to me is the style of delivery.
"THE TIME HAS COME for the United States to formulate and prosecute an integrated, comprehensive, and long-term geostrategy for all of Eurasia. This need arises out of the interaction between two fundamental realities: America is now the only global superpower, and Eurasia is the globe's central arena. Hence, what happens to the distribution of power on the Eurasian continent will be of decisive importance to America's global primacy and to America's historical legacy."
"America's historical legacy."
that friggin' "Legacy" word again. What he means to say is "My historical legacy."
prat |
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faceless
admin
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 7:46 pm Post subject: |
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| ah right, well I'm glad I didn't say I liked his position rather than his writing style! |
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Brown Sauce
Joined: 07 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 8:05 pm Post subject: |
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you are more than welcome to disagree 
I'm just saying what I think .. right or wrong. Obama does have a following, I just hope it isn't misplaced and I'm right ... |
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Aja
Reggae Ambassador
Joined: 24 Jun 2006
Location: Lost Londoner ..Nr Philly. PA
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| Posted: Fri Feb 22, 2008 1:35 am Post subject: |
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the tune *young gifted and black* just popped into my head .....
Dont ask me why ......... |
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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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| Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 6:26 pm Post subject: |
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thanks for that brown sauce - i've not read it all but i've started, its interesting seeing the way he sees the world - reading it you'd think it was someone from pnac so its surprising to hear this guys with obama, although i've never really thought he was that great - but if the choice is him, hillary or mccain, you'd have to go with obama ... not much of a choice is it ...
reminds me of a debate last week on democracy now, with obamas senior foreign policy adviser, samantha power - she sounds a bit dodgy if this debate is anything to go on
| Quote: | Samantha Power v. Jeremy Scahill: A Debate on U.S. Actions in the Balkans, the Independence of Kosovo, the Iraq Sanctions and Humanitarian Intervention
As Kosovo declares its independence, we speak to two people who have closely followed the situation in the Balkans. Samantha Power wrote extensively about Bosnia and Kosovo in her book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, which won a 2003 Pulitzer Prize. Jeremy Scahill is an independent journalist and Democracy Now! correspondent. He covered the NATO bombings of Kosovo and Yugoslavia for Democracy Now! in 1999. [includes rush transcript]
Samantha Power, Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy, based at Harvard University’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. She wrote extensively about Bosnia and Kosovo in her book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, which won a 2003 Pulitzer Prize. Her new book is Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World.
Jeremy Scahill, independent journalist and Democracy Now! correspondent. He covered the NATO bombings of Kosovo and Yugoslavia for Democracy Now! in 1999. He is author of the book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. |
from http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/22/samantha_power_v_jeremy_scahill_a |
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Brown Sauce
Joined: 07 Jan 2007
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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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| Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 10:47 am Post subject: |
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when i posted the above message about her i knew i knew the name from somewhere ... and i've now remembered where;
| Quote: | Samantha Power, Bush & Terrorism
By Noam Chomsky at Jul 31, 2007
The following exchange took place in the ZNet Sustainer system, where Noam hosts a forum...
ZNet Sustainer: Noam, Would you be willing to comment on Samantha Power's review essay in the 29 July NYT Book Review? The Times presents her as the very model of the liberal academic -- a columnist for Time, adviser to Democratic presidential candidates, etc. The article is a good deal more than a book review.
Noam Chomsky: It was an interesting article, and her work, and its popularity, gives some insight into the reigning intellectual culture.
There are many interesting aspects to the article. One is that "terrorism" is implicitly defined as what THEY do to US, excluding what WE do to THEM. But that's so deeply engrained in the state religion that it's hardly worth mentioning.
A little more interesting is Power's tacit endorsement of the Bush doctrine that states that harbor terrorists are no different from terrorist states, and should be treated accordingly: bombed and invaded, and subjected to regime change. There is, of course, not the slightest doubt that the US harbors terrorists, even under the narrowest interpretation of that term: e.g., by the judgment of the Justice Department and the FBI, which accused Cuban terrorist Orlando Bosch of dozens of terrorist acts and urged that he be deported as a threat to US security. He was pardoned by Bush I, and lives happily in Florida, where he has now been joined by his associate Luis Posada, thanks to Bush II's lack of concern about harboring terrorists. There are plenty of others, even putting aside those who have offices in Washington. Like John Negroponte, surely one of the leading terrorists of the late 20th century, not very controversially, so naturally appointed to the position of counter-terrorism Czar by Bush II, with no particular notice.
Even keeping to the completely uncontroversial cases, like Bosch, it follows that Power and the NY Times are calling for the bombing of Washington. But -- oddly -- the Justice Department is not about to indict them, though people are rotting in Guantanamo on far lesser charges. What is interesting and enlightening is that no matter how many times trivialities like this are pointed out -- and it's been many times -- it is entirely incomprehensible within the intellectual culture. That reveals a very impressive level of subordination to authority and indoctrination, well beyond what one would expect in totalitarian states.
A little more subtle, perhaps, is her observation that "if you continue to believe (as I do) that there is a moral difference between setting out to destroy as many civilians as possible and killing civilians unintentionally and reluctantly in pursuit of a military objective, you will indeed find "On Suicide Bombing" disturbing, if not always in the way he intends." Let's accept her judgment and proceed.
Evidently, a crucial case is omitted, which is far more depraved than massacring civilians intentionally. Namely, knowing that you are massacring them but not doing so intentionally because you don't regard them as worthy of concern. That is, you don't even care enough about them to intend to kill them. Thus when I walk down the street, if I stop to think about it I know I'll probably kill lots of ants, but I don't intend to kill them, because in my mind they do not even rise to the level where it matters. There are many such examples. To take one of the very minor ones, when Clinton bombed the al-Shifa pharmaceutical facility in Sudan, he and the other perpetrators surely knew that the bombing would kill civilians (tens of thousands, apparently). But Clinton and associates did not intend to kill them, because by the standards of Western liberal humanitarian racism, they are no more significant than ants. Same in the case of tens of millions of others.
I've written about this repeatedly, for example, in 9/11. And I've been intrigued to see how reviewers and commentators (Sam Harris, to pick one egregious example) simply cannot even see the comments, let alone comprehend them. Since it's all pretty obvious, it reveals, again, the remarkable successes of indoctrination under freedom, and the moral depravity and corruption of the dominant intellectual culture.
It should be unnecessary to comment on how Western humanists would react if Iranian-backed terrorists destroyed half the pharmaceutical supplies in Israel, or the US, or any other place inhabited by human beings. And it is only fair to add that Sudanese too sometimes do rise to the level of human beings. For example in Darfur, where their murder can be attributed to Arabs, the official enemy (apart, that is, from "good Arabs," like the tyrants who rule Saudi Arabia, "moderates" as Rice and others explain).
There's a lot more like this. It's of some interest that Power is regarded -- and apparently regards herself -- as a harsh critic of US foreign policy. The reason is that she excoriates Washington for not paying enough attention to the crimes of others. It's informative to look through her best-seller Problem from Hell to see what is said about US crimes. There are a few scant mentions: e.g., that the US looked away from the genocidal Indonesian aggression in East Timor. In fact, as has long been indisputable, the US looked right there and acted decisively to expedite the slaughters, and continued to do so for 25 years, even after the Indonesian army had virtually destroyed what remained of the country, when Clinton, under great international and domestic pressure, finally told the Indonesian generals that the game was over and they instantly withdrew -- revealing, as if we needed the evidence, that the immense slaughter could have been easily terminated at any point, if anyone cared. The implications cannot be perceived.
But in general US participation in horrendous crimes is simply ignored in Problem from Hell. Few seem to able to perceive that a similar book, excoriating Stalin for not paying enough attention to US crimes, would very likely have been very highly praised in the old Soviet Union. What better service could one provide to the cause of massacre, torture, and destruction -- by the Holy State and its clients, of course, whose only fault is that they do not attend sufficiently to the crimes of others.
I don't think, incidentally, that it would be fair to criticize Power for her extraordinary services to state violence and terror. I am sure she is a decent and honorable person, and sincerely believes that she really is condemning the US leadership and political culture. From a desk at the Carr Center for Human Rights at the Kennedy School at Harvard, that's doubtless how it looks. Insufficient attention has been paid to Orwell's observations on how in free England, unpopular ideas can be suppressed without the use of force. One factor, he proposed, is a good education. When you have been through the best schools, finally Oxford and Cambridge, you simply have instilled into you the understanding that there are certain things "it wouldn't do to say" -- and we may add, even to think.
His insight is quite real, and important. These cases are a good illustration, hardly unique.
NC |
from http://www.zcommunications.org/blog/view/1012 |
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