Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [OT] facism gaining ground in US

[Pierce T . Wetter III]

On Jul 17, 2004, at 2:34 PM, nadim wrote:

> > > - IMO the US has been a fascistic state for half a century! I don't
> > > like
> > > Bush but I stopped being a dreammer as soon as as became politicaly"
> > > (more) mature and that was long before bush
>
> >    You've never lived or experienced a fascist state if you truly 
> > think
> > that. In Iran people get beaten & jailed for talking about having fair
> > elections.
> 50 years ago, black were beaten to death because they talked to a white
> girl or wanted to have equal rights.

 Yeah, that was 50 years ago. And at the same time that was going on, we
were sending our army into schools to protect the rights of those same
black people. You're trivializing a complicated issue. Two out of the 3
most powerful people in the US are black. While the US has a ways to go,
we've also come a long way.

 Contrast this with just a casual reading of my European sources, and
they seem more racist then we do lately. I hear anti-semitism is on the
rise in Europe...I hear about beatings of guest workers...I hear you're
thinking about not letting Turkey in the EU.

 Anyways, racism and fascism are two different things.

>  I'm sorry Pierce but you have been
> taking us for idiots long enough.

 Can't tell whether you're an idiot or not. I certainly don't assume 
that
you are, but when you go around sending senseless things like:

 "The US is a fascist state"

  you aren't exactly showing a large capability for reasonable 
discussion.

> Open your eyes and stop talking about
> other when the subject is about you. You might not feel that the US is
> fascistic towards its people but I think it is towards the world.

  Ok, we've gone from being a fascist state to "fascist towards the 
world".

  That doesn't mean any sense. I'm guessing that you meant to say:

   1. Other countries perceive the US as being unilateral.

   2. Other countries are concerned about our overwhelming military 
power
 and our willingness to use it.

   What surprises me is the widespread perception outside of the US 
that we don't worry about the same issues. We do. We just don't really 
have an answer. Yes we have a large military. Yes, we've been willing 
to use it. No, we're not willing to be like one of the Scandinavian 
countries and insist on UN approval before we can scratch our nose. We 
might be willing to do that if the UN was more effective, but its not. 
Sometimes problems have to be
resolved without arguing over it for 2 weeks.

  Its also not clear that the UN is the right place for _all_ problems. 
Nor does it make sense to involve Europe in every problem worldwide. 
Europe may have an opinion about Timor, but the locals probably should 
have more say.


> > > - I'm afraid that there are few US citizens ready for a discussion
> > > with ,say, europeans because they (most often and there are great
> > > exception) are on the defensive all the time (I wonder why).
> >
> >    Because its a lot of work to read enough history, culture and
> > political
> > studies to be able to counteract some of the common European memes.
>
> Which are? you seem to know more about us then we know ourselves.

  I'm talking to a European now aren't I? I've talked to others too.
There's this tendency in all countries with modern media for certain
things to get repeated that aren't true for so long that everyone starts
to believe them. That doesn't make them true, and most Americans know
they're not true. Whether its worth arguing with someone who goes around
spouting "the US is a fascist state" and thinks that's a sign of
reasoned intelligent discussion is another thing.



> > > - Want to compare with europeans, let's start comparing bombs amounts
> > > and
> > > usage, attentats, terrorist activities, support for fascistic states,
> > > military support, falsness, comitment to ideas that are only because
> > > of the financial aspect (we can skip Irak (you  can't even fool
> > > yourselves anymore on that one)),
> >
> >  I can. I think going into Iraq was the right thing to do. How we
> > presented it to the world was terrible, but that's a different issue.
>
> This is exactly the kind of answers that piss me off. You should work 
> for
> Bush because you master the "denial" technique better than he does. Do 
> you
> think it was a good idea to invade Irak because it could use the 
> weapons
> you sold it to attack you?

  Ah, another common meme. You're confusing the US with France:

  Here are some counter facts:

http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Arms_sales_to_Iraq_1973-1990
http://projects.sipri.se/armstrade/atirq_data.html

 Not convinced by the Swedes? Look at it this way. The Cold War was 
still
going strong, and Reagan was in office. Do you really expect
the US to sell arms to a Soviet client state?

  Here's a much better document discussing some of the history:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/

 You're going to be tempted to cherry-pick the document to try to prove
your point, but I suggest you refrain. The document is worth reading
simply because it really documents the whole blunder of the Iran-Iraq 
war,
which I see as a failure of both US and European foreign policy.

 The fact is that the whole world played Iran and Iraq off against each
other in a classic case of "let's you and him fight". (Israel was 
selling
weapons to Iran for heaven's sake.) Saddam was a problem that Europe, 
the
US, and Iraq's neighbor's worked very hard to create. Saddam invaded
Kuwait in part because he didn't want to have it pay his war bills.

 Now you might be thinking of this:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-09-30-iraq-ushelp_x.htm

 But then I suggest you re-read the article carefully.

  First off, providing samples of a disease is not the same thing as
providing a biological weapon. Its very easy to get samples of Anthrax 
for
instance: visit a dairy farm, all animals have small amounts of all 
diseases.
Weaponizing Anthrax is a very complicated task.

  Second, don't put down to a conspiracy what could have just been 
stupidity.
ATCC is in the business of selling biological samples. According to 
this, the entire transfer was only $8000. Basically, someone left the 
door unlocked
and Saddam's scientists walked in. It wasn't until recently when a 
domestic nut did the same thing that the US government decided it would 
be prudent
to keep track of this stuff.

> > > (sorry I don't have the source) , 70% of the europeans think that the
> > > most dangerous man in the world is Bush (I am and that's because I
> > > think he is a fascist).
> >
> >  Just because someone thinks something doesn't make it true. That
> > could mean that Bush truly is the most dangerous man in the world,
> > or it could mean that
> > he gives the impression of being a loose cannon.
>
> Saddam also gave the impression to be a loose canon but in fact was a 
> nice
> guy that had quite a lot of pals in the US. Maybe someone should invade
> you, kill your people, steal your oil and beat your people in jails for
> you to understand the question. Where are the WMD and all other nasty
> stuff? Still think it was worth killing 10K+ people to prove nothing.

  As an example of just how fucked up the world is, the fact is that
Saddam would have killed more then 10,000 people in that time period.

 But lets separate out all these accusations:

  1. Invade you:

     Yep, we did that.

  2. Steal your oil:

     If all we wanted was their oil, we could have gotten that very 
easily.
Saddam offered the US these huge discounts if we would lift sanctions, 
etc. And anyways, how exactly did we steal their oil? It's still there. 
They pump it out of the ground and sell it.

  3. Beat people in jails

    Look dude, in a world of imperfection, intent matters. Under 
Saddam's rule, beatings happened, under our rule, beatings happened. 
The difference is one of intent. In our case, those guards were being 
prosecuted for doing that. Under Saddam, those guards would have been 
promoted. We put our sadists in Jail, Saddam put them in Charge. You 
can be indignant about the fact that they happened at all, and I'll 
join you. You should acknowledge though that one of the reasons this 
all came out was because these guards were being prosecuted.

  4. No WMD

  As far as the WMD goes, while Saddam didn't have any functioning WMD 
its worth noting he had several programs to try to create one. The fact 
that the UN inspectors mock his attempts as misguided and futile I see 
as particularly dangerous hubris. Sure, maybe having a giant program to 
produce Camelpox is just dumb, but what if one of his scientists had 
blundered into something
worthwhile.

  But that really is missing a whole bunch of complex things about our 
decision to go into Iraq "no matter what". WMD was just one of the 
issues that the State Department discussed.

 Here's a cowboy parable for you:

 So there was a snake in my front yard, and I let it go by because it 
was
just a green snake, and they aren't poisonous.

 There was a snake in my back yard, where my children play, and I 
killed it because you don't stop to check whether a snake is poisonous 
if its in your back yard.

 Then a snake bit one of my kids.

 Now I kill the snakes in my front yard whether their poisonous or not.


> > We don't have to be perfect: The US is often looked to as an honest
> > broker, not
> > because we're truly honest, but often just because we're the best from
> > a list of bad choices.
>
> The one that sees the US as anything close to honnest is a fool. I 
> think
> you (Pierce) are either taking this as a joke or are completely brain
> washed.

  Like I said, I don't think people think we're honest, just more honest
then their other choices.

> I would have prefered to argue with a Bush lover (hell it would have 
> been
> nice to hear their political opinion) than with you because I believe 
> you
> to be false!

  I've been known to be wrong. I think its worth arguing with me because
I'm one of those people who will actually change their opinion with 
enough
data. I'm not going to change my opinion just because you state some
contrary belief. That's just peer pressure, and it doesn't work on me 
very
well. You need to state facts and back them up, not just repeat the 
tired old line that the US sold Saddam weapons.

> Thanks to the two or three "real mails" (IMHO of course),
> that some (other) guys wrote, this thread wasn't completely useless. 
> What
> I was looking for was feelings and description of lifes some Us guys 
> have
> so I could understand better how it is to be one of you and try to
> understand how your society works (and still have hope after, which I
> still do )

 Well, you need to ask some questions then. Any perception of the US as
fascist is probably way off. We're a very chaotic country. Saying 
anything
definitive about the US is very hard.

 For instance, Arizona tends to be very right wing, but we have a sort
of fiercely independent streak that makes us suspicious of all 
government.
We actually blew getting some huge amount of money from the federal
government because they wanted to tell us what to do...

 Contrast that with our neighboring state, California, where they keep
passing all these weird laws in an effort to make everyone "nice".

 I live in Arizona but was born/raised in California. I now think of 
myself
as more Arizonan then Californian. Confused yet?

> not empty rethoric which main point was to go from the primary
> subject (though you are right, more than 10 focused answers are 
> difficult
> to achieve but you diverged quicker than that)

 By the time you'd dived in, the thread had mostly died out. It's all 
about you now Nadim. :-)


> Happy voting to all of you, Nadim.

 Very few US citizens have been happy voting since the press decided it 
was
more important that a presidential candidate be bland then good.

 The Republican party seems to think they can pass laws to make 
everyone good, while the Democratic party seems to think they can pass 
laws to make everyone nice. They're both idiots.

 Pierce