Americans! Seen this?

Lucid Lounge
1

Well, I saw these links:

guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,2064157,00.html

youtube.com/watch?v=aW9PulYpjGs

on a Norwegian debating forum. What do you guys think about it? Is it bullshit? Is it an inconvenient truth that’s opening in front of our eyes?

I’m a Norwegian, but as the US. has been acting like the “worlds-police” the last years, is this really mindblowing!

And BTW about Iraq, I got the best arguments in the debate ever against the bloody war for oil:

What about North-Korea? Ok, you WORRIED about Iraq having weapons, and attacked. Then what about they we KNOW have weapons?CAN it be that there pretty much ain’t economic interests in the area?

2

Ok, first of all, consider whether the international world is criticizing America’s government system, the American citizens, or the Bush administration. Because the third will be out of your way in two years. And if democrats start doing the same things as the republicans are right now, then we have a problem.

Second, I am born and raised an American, so I don’t know much about how the rest of the world sees us. Just wondering, does everyone else see big-bad America, or do they see Democrats and Republicans? It makes a world of a difference.

I read the article you posted. Most of the things listed occurred in or since 2000. Hmm. That was the Bush Administration. In the fall of '08, however, it is very very likely that a democrat will be elected. Get back to me in 4 years. When Bush starts arresting democrats and lawyers and tries to get himself a 3rd term, you let me know.

I am personally insulted every time I hear criticism for my country. Not that I think it’s the shining beacon of hope. It has its problems just like every other human institution. But just because people don’t like our president or government, doesn’t mean the people are bad too. On the most part, we’re just trying to live our lives. I don’t like all these petty wars our government is waging, but there’s not much I can do about it. (Especially since I can’t vote until the mid-term elections in 2010 :razz: )

3

Just read the article, and I do find it quite scary, both for the people of the USA and for the rest of the world.

I’ve heard lots of these things before, but some of them are new to me. Unfortunately this seems to be the way things are going in lots of old democracies. Here in Britain things aren’t quite as bad, but they’re certainly going that way and no one seems to care.

May I ask why?

It’s perfectly possible to be anti the US government and not anti the people of the US (just like I’m anti the British government but I love the British people).

The US government (whether it was republican or democratic at the time) have done some terrible things in recent history, but very often the people have nothing to do with what the government does. Just because I dislike the US government for all of the democracies it destroyed over the last half century doesn’t mean I dislike the people of the US (just as I hope people wont dislike the British people because of Suez and Iraq).

A quick question for the people on the forum from the US, what sort of media coverage do you get about what your government does, especially foreign policy (because we’re always told in Britain that the media is much more biased in the US)? Did you know for instance that in 2002 the Bush administration backed a military coup against the democratically elected leader of Venezuala (Hugo Chavez) because he was effecting US business interests in the area (e.g. nationalizing the oil fields)?

4

I am an American and all of this might be just BS. I could just care less about it. What its basically saying is that we are like Germany in the 30s and we will be like them and be a world dictator? Is that what its saying?

5

Exactly. Bush has done much in the same vein as Hitler, and in some cases the American people are responding as such.

6

:lol: :rofl:

hahahahahaahahahahaha. The majority of the first article’s arguments are barely supported at all.

I agree with hunaynay on this one. “When” Bush starts for his third term, lets all talk. To be honest, I’d be more concerned with checking twice before crossing the street than the dreaded Bush taking over for a third term. A lot of the argument is just leftist fear-mongering. In many ways, these people are just as bad as those using the terror threat to their advantage.

Nevertheless, I’m just amazed I managed to get through that whole article. Not even going to read the other one, hahaha. Jonnay’s gotta get back to his essay.

7

Jon - Why would changing the constitution to allow Bush to have a third term be more shocking than what he’s already done, e.g. detention without charge, trial or access to legal representation and torture - both in Guantanamo Bay and through rendition flights (flying suspects to other countries where they can be tortured). Aren’t they both unconstitutional?

8

Well, mostly because the criticism is illogical and without support (?) You get really tired of it after a while.

Yeah, we knew about that… but he’s a terrorist! A communist! A threat! A guy who knows better than to do business with the US! :eh: Adjectives randomly thrown into the news cast gets the job done.

Our media is horribly biased, but in my opinion, it is easily neutralized by all the anti-American flames/rants on the internet. It’s also psychological. No one likes to think they’re the bad guys. The news stations/ newspapers want good ratings/circulation. Freedom of speech + the customer knows best!

9

There are degrees of unconstitutionality. Sure the others are unconstitutional, but I would say altering the constitution to allow a third term would be far more of an extreme alteration than that of the suspension of some peoples rights.

In any case, do you honestly think that the Democrats would let Bush do that? They hold the majority in the legislature and the senate. I’m not that familiar with the American governmental system, but I do understand that it takes the majorities consent. Not only that, but there is also the Judicial branch of government. There are checks and balances to make sure that a kook doesn’t alter the constitution as radically as that.

I honestly cannot believe that we are actually having this discussion.

10

I think I said America was becoming facist a while ago… in fact lemme find the qoute real fast.

America is going out of control from what I’ve seen… But at least it wont go George Orwell on our asses for while. And don’t pull out the illeagle wire tappings on me… its not 1984 unless I see thought crime. Well… actually internts were fired for not being loyal enough “Bushies”… okay screw it.

11

I’ve got to agree with you here. There would be a major revolution if that somehow happened.

But I think, in terms of morality at least, that denying some people rights and torturing them is as bad as him (Bush) getting a third term. The third term would only allow him to do that more. But there is a chance in hell of that happening, so it is a moot point.

12

I don’t think many people are alleging he will have a third term(or perhaps they are, I only skimmed the first article), but rather they are alleging that after him will come another member of the neo-con group, to continue his path of oppression.

13

You do know that the article was written by an American don’t you?

Anyway, it’s not criticism of America, it’s critcism of one government which is taking liberties with a constitution (and taking liberties away from people) that was put in place to stop this sort of thing from happening.

Also, whilst the article may be about America, it’s happening in England too, albeit at a slower rate, and we don’t even have a conservative government in power! It was hidden fairly well at the start, with every little change being put in place for “our safety”. But how long can it take for a nanny state to become a prison state?

14

huynaynay - I can understand you getting annoyed at illogical and unfounded criticism :smile:

And I do agree that there are too many anti-America flames and rants out there, what is needed is logical evidence based debate :smile:

Jon - I’m not saying that Bush is gonna go for a third term. Just that in my view (coming from a country that has no limit to the number of terms a prime minister can have) that torturing people and locking them up without charge or trial is just as dictatorial as trying to get a third term. As Daylight said, all it takes is another similar leader to continue down that road.

When Hitler came to power, many of the mechanisms that allowed him to take absolute power had been put in place by the previous government.

Another question - I know that to change the constitution there’d need to be a two thirds majority vote in your houses of parliament (I know that’s not how you guys describe them but I can’t think of the right word), but what if Bush were to declare a state of national emergency. Could he suspend elections for a set time (as happened in Britain during the war)?

15

I don’t really agree with that. I think the threat of Islamic terrorism is a lot greater than everyone here gives credit for. I think in one of Rudy Giuliani’s debates, he said something that there were about 27 planned attacks in America, which were all foiled by the FBI. (WHY CAN"T WE SAY DAM!!!) those meddling Feds! Further than this, in the UK, around the clock of every day, there are 4000 being followed and tracked by the Police (ROXANNE!, hehehe). There are also a lot of other foiled attacks that are not told to the media in the UK. To be honest, I think it would be better if the terror attacks were allowed to go on, unimpeded, so it would show to everyone how real of a threat it is. My belief is that, while these smaller attacks may be stopped, there will be much bigger attacks in the future on the West that do succeed, that may have been stopped had everyone taken the threat much more seriously.

16

I think that people give exactly the right amount of credit to the threat of Islamic terrorism. There is no great and powerful al-qaeda as such, there are fringe groups of worked up Muslims who are linked together by the most tenuous threads of evidence. They have family in the same country, or one of their friends once visited somewhere that was near an “al-qaeda training camp” A what? I’m sorry, if there are al-qaeda training camps that we know about, then why the hell haven’t we attacked them, surely it is those places that should be our target and not the so called “axis of evil” (also known as: any countries that don’t lie the f*ck down when we tell them to)

Now the seventh of July bombings were terrible, don’t get me wrong, a lot of innocent people died and it was a dreadful day and one from which I’m sure many people will never recover, whether they were there themselves or whether they lost family or friends. But terible though it was, it wasn’t particularly organised, it caught us by surprise, that’s all.

But what I was actually referring to in my post was Britain’s new terrorism laws, the new definition of the word terrorist, where previously terrorism was strictly in the realm of politics, it has now been extended to include any causes, political, religious or, and this is the bit that worries me, idealogical. Now, I’m not entirely certain, but I believe that I would be right in saying that all causes are Idealogical, that is in fact, the very essence of a cause: working towards an ideal.

So idealogical causes? well, that would include greenpeace (who I personally don’t like anyway, because they’re liars, but that’s a whole other subject) who could now be tried as terrorists for protesting. So that’s animal welfare groups, civil rights groups, workers unions, anyone working towards an ideal, who use protests to get heard, can now be tried as a terrorist.

Tell me that isn’t wrong.

Then there are the extra little things, such as a group, or a meeting of such a group, is now defined as being any gathering of three or more people. WTF!

And here’s an interesting link, I remember reading it a couple of years back and figured I’d hunt it down as it’s pretty relavent here.

irr.org.uk/2004/september/ak000004.html

Remember, I’m not arguing that there’s no threat from Islamic terrorism, or any other kind of terrorism for that matter, I’m arguing against the misuse of new terrorism legislation.

17

America is an illusion.

Laws exist to take our ability to think critically away.

Consider,
Johnny has an asthma inhaler, and Billy needs it. Billy doesn’t have a prescription, but he is hurting deeply and if Johnny doesn’t give it to Billy, Billy will die.

If there are no laws, Johnny does the right thing.
If there is a War on Prescription Medicine and men with machine guns come to school every day to tell kids how they must never share their medicine or else…

Billy is probably going to die because Johnny is going to be scared that by doing the right thing he will be punished… and Johnny won’t know what the right thing is because all he is taught is to be a good little Boy Scout, American, saluting that Red White and Blue and doing what authority says.

In actuality something like this has happened, and there was a threat of a child getting in trouble, for doing the right thing… go figure… but he did the right thing any way.

Sorry sir form XZ2072 says that I ought to not help you today… I really wish I could but I don’t want to get in trouble.

aint that why we don’t stop to jump start people’s cars? He could have a gun! He could be a stranger!

Well news for yalls

“Other” is missing a BR in front of it. They took the BR out when they started telling us that everyone could be a threat to us and that we’d best stay in doors away from the sun.

News for yalls, karma is a universal law. You could invest in the latest anti-bear technology. Buy bear mace. Set up security cameras to guard for bears, and spend all your time watching Faux News staying tuned for their Bear Threat Level analysis reports, but that won’t help you when you accidentally slip on the soap while taking a shower.

No way to prevent ANY-THING
any STRESS or FRET is NOT conducive to the alleviation of harm, rather CAUSES HARM

we are errantly taught that by being vigilant for boogeyman that we can be safe

so we cling to this dread, this fear, of the OTHER coming after us, but it is an ample illusion

there is no way of knowing. You have to trust GOD, that is, YOUR DIVINE SELF, and the highest GOD too, because that’s the only way. America can’t save you from shit, America can only drag you down with it as it sinks, so why don’t you take a life-preserver, find your angel wings, and fly off the doomed vessel…

war on this
war on that

when are we going to wage a WAR AGAINST WAR?

Did yall know that we spend enough money trying to destroy the cannabis sativa plant each year to feed the entire planet? That means that in the past 30 years we could have fed the planet more than thirty times, because we also spend enough money on building bombs and instruments of death to feed the entire planet EACH YEAR too…

Do you know what the department of plenty is?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Plenty

Now, drug addiction goes up the more drugs become cool because they are illegal, and plus if people don’t use illegal drugs, they use the prescription ones which are more dangerous, so… tell me how trying to destroy a PLANT from the EARTH is more sane than using that budget to feed the entire planet ?

It is very interesting, within the next year and a half to two years we will begin radically changing every-thing and balancing the world outward as a critical mass of sanity begins to govern the planet.

What we are seeing is the return of balance. This planet has been dominated by hyper-masculinity since agricultural society, and now it is shifting radically to a point that it is going to re-integrate with the feminine aspect.

We will see massive increase in humanitarian work, evolution of spiritual consciousness into the higher dimensions, and humbling and destruction of anything that refuses to help in the work for Honesty and Wholesome Goodness.

Be one hundred percent assured, America is insane and has been for a long time. It’s okay because the insanity is necessary to teach humans a lesson.

18

OK… now about the war for economic interests… I am from Italy and Italian soldiers went to Iraq and precisely in Nassirya… All the population here was against the war, there seemed to be no reason for it… until some day a paper comes out pointing that ENI (that’s our state agency for energy) bought licenses to extract oil in Nassirya like 3 months before the war began and if the place is occupied by any other state there could be problems in getting it… and everything finally goes in its place (while politics pretend they don’t know it)… then they say there’s just our military police there and the first italian dead is from the St Marco Battalion (they are saboteurs and assaulters… never heard saboteurs were police)… Lies and more lies… our army is there to protect civilian then you see our soldiers using a field machine gun shooting on civilian trucks and when the driver escapes shooting him and behaving like it was a game… nooooooo we’re not at war says mr Berlusconi… we just need to send there heavier stuff because they want it…

19

Why go to war? Money. Lots and lots of money. So the longer the war, the more money the big industries make. How start a possibly never-ending war? Accuse “terrorists”. A faceless enemy that could be anywhere at anytime. An un-winnable war.

Just for fun, wanna quote South Park here on the war in Iraq:
“We have to stop their production of weapons…with our weapons” (something like that anyway)