US a fading superpower?

What Zip is trying to tell you, although I'm not sure he knows himself, but he just might, is that you should dump your TV set in the garbage and cancel all your usual reading material.

You're a very smart guy!

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This might be slightly out of topic: Zionists are very powerful.



Just some information to consider. Have you wondered why France is suddenly sucking up to Bush and buddies?

maybe it would be easier to figure out what your own motives were if you organized everything into a website, or blog. until then, i think this is just too tiresome, and really looks one-sided.

you can't understand the middle east by spending all your time talking about jews but not arabs, or arabs but not jews, or israelis but not palestinians, or palestinians but not israelis. at the point that it becomes one-sided it becomes bullshit, sorry.

You are the most reasonable person that i have seen on here. Of course you are right to view my posts as one sided on this thread. There are two sides to the middle East/Israeli conflict...However, there is no reason to involve Arabs/Palestinians when talkng about U.S government and it's Superpower status. I don't see how the 'Arab Lobby' have any influence at all. There are zero Arabs that have any power in the WhiteHouse. There are zero arabs who have power in U.S media...or anywhere in the U.S.

You're forgetting that this thread is about the decline of U.S superpower status. There is zero Arab influence in the United States. Infact the Israel Lobby tells us that they're ALL terrorists...read: Zionist David Horowitz and his 'message' of Islamo-Fascism.

I may actually work on a website or blog...thanks for the tip

i try to be reasonable. and i'm serious about the blog. if you're also being reasonable, it's a tip that can only help you.

i find it very odd that you think arabs have no influence in the united states. i was under the impression that saudi arabia was an ally, (and a founding member of the united nations,) that arab terrorists have gotten pretty much what they wanted (our country has gone totally to ****, albeit through george bush) and i've even heard that 10% of our economic debt is to saudi arabia, although that was a few years ago.

most people in t.v. polls don't agree they're an ally: http://www.pollingreport.com/saudi.htm

but at least in 2002, they did see them as influential:



52 percent think we can't live without them.

but this doesn't mean that i support the israeli government. i want israel to exist, and america to exist, but not by regimes (george bush and ariel sharon, although olmert is in now) that i don't support that are hurting both countries.

as to which side i'm on, i'm sure i've mentioned, there are arabs and palestinians that want peace with israelis and jews, and there are jews and israelis that want peace with arabs and palestinians.

they don't want things to be one-sided. they don't want this conflict and pointless violence, and they don't support it. i'm with them.

and i happen to like jewish people a lot. i don't know any that are in government, and that probably helps. i never met an arab i didn't like either, but i've known very few arabs. and the only palestinian i ever knew was christian, and a human rights activist living in the united states.

i guess people read your posts, and they're all negative, and they're all about jews. it's a pretty understandable reaction to assume you're an anti-semite. i'm not sure, but it would help you make your points if you did something- i'm not talking about being "sensitive" (it wouldn't hurt your case,) or censoring yourself, but occasionally learning from these experiences where you offend nearly everyone.

they may be wrong, but if this is something you care about, you'll help them learn without being... um, i don't know what. but if it isn't something you care about, i can't imagine why you'd do all this. i don't know what to make of it.

i know that i'm exhausted by it at this point, and i'm pretty sure i'm the only one that tried defending you, but one never knows for sure.

Investors agree: Anything but the dollar
Currency traders gave the U.S. dollar a thorough pounding Wednesday and pushed the value of the euro to $1.47, the highest on record.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/07/business/dollar.php?WT.mc_id=newsalert

The US dollar is still officially the world's reserve currency, but it cannot purchase the services of Brazilian super model Gisele Bundchen. Gisele required the $30 million she earned during the first half of this year to be paid in euros.

Gisele is not alone in her forecast of the dollar's fate. The First Post (UK) reports that Jim Rogers, a former partner of billionaire George Soros, is selling his home and all possessions in order to convert all his wealth into Chinese yuan.

Meanwhile, American economists continue to preach that offshoring is good for the US economy and that Bush's war spending is keeping the economy going. The practitioners of supply and demand have yet to figure out that the dollar's supply is sinking the dollar's price and along with it American power.

The macho super patriots who support the Bush regime still haven't caught on that US superpower status rests on the dollar being the reserve currency, not on a military unable to occupy Baghdad
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts11072007.html

Rama, them super models aint as dumb as they look.

Blueflame as usual you are a rare person with high tolerance..


"The dilemma being faced by the only superpower in the world is that power has drastically shifted.

Superpower made sense when there were two of them--it took military giants to come to a nuclear stalemate. But as the Iraqi war is demonstrating every day (and as the Soviet Union discovered in Afghanistan in the 80s) determined insurgents can render a superpower impotent.

And it's only going to get worse. Internet terrorists could one day cripple stock markets, banking systems, defense communications, air traffic, and any number of vital services in any country they desire to target. Terrorism is the main enemy at this point, but it cannot be fought by superpower in the first place. Terrorism isn't insanity. It grows out of social conditions that are well known: poverty, social oppression, dictatorship, and a void of meaning in the lives of ordinary people.

America's superpower must be used to end those conditions. There is no other moral way to use our power, and if we continue to use it for military incursion and economic selfishness, the reality of being a superpower will turn into an illusion. At this moment the U.S. finds itself at a turning point. There is still time to become the world leader in disarmament, global warming, medical assistance to AIDS-infected countries, and overpopulation. It's gratifying that more people seem to realize that this change must occur.

Will they become a majority? The odds are impossible to calculate. Historically, the U.S. has been a forward-looking country that doesn't wait for impending catastrophe to act. But against this we have the head-in-the-sand attitude of the current administration, which ordinary citizens are coaxed into believing. Inertia is comforting, and Americans will be extremely reluctant to make any change that might affect their high standard of living.

So the decisions are being made for them. The right-wing backlash is keeping the myth of superpower going, as if the victory over communism has resulted in permanent hegemony. The mass media is keeping the illusions of inertia going by idealizing the consumer life and its empty values. But in truth power has shifted East already, and when crude oil reaches some future price ($80? $100?) and China builds as many cars as GM (in 2015? 2020?) a massive economic shift will force change. The U.S. is amassing a staggering debt while sending as much as a trillion dollars of value-added oil money to the Arab states per year.

It would be so much better if the U.S. anticipated this global power shift and learned to lead it rather than preserve the hollow title of the world's only superpower. Thirty years ago Pres. Nixon said that the U.S. would turn into a "pitiful helpless giant" if he didn't invade Cambodia. The same danger looms now, and the reasons haven't changed all that much

http://www.intentblog.com/archives/2005/10/superpower_real.html

Old World Disorder
"Every aspect of Bush's foreign policy has now collapsed. Every dream of neoconservatism has become a nightmare. Every doctrine has turned to dust. The influence of the United States has reached a nadir, its lowest point since before World War II, when the country was encased in isolationism.

Gone are the days when the stern words of a senior U.S. official prevented rash action by an errant foreign leader and when the power of the U.S. served as a restraining force and promoted peaceful resolution of conflict. In the vacuum of the Bush catastrophe, nation-states pursue what they perceive to be their own interests as global conflicts proliferate. The backlash of preemptive war in Iraq gathers momentum in undermining U.S. power and prestige."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/11/08/musharraf_bush/

Airbus sales to oil rich Gulf states hit giant upswing.

Consume more oil boys and make them even richer. They spend it here.

America, I can barely stand the sight of you and I know you feel the same way about me.

I know I'm less than a prize myself -- but just take a look at yourself: You've grown fat, and stupid, and mean, and intolerant. How did you become such a phony, such a hypocrite, such a liar?

Not that you were ever pure or perfect, I mean, what or whom ever was. Lord knows we made a bad start of it: Starting with that awful little secret of the southern side of your family, regarding the matter of its livelihood being derived from the toil of slaves. Sadly, its vile and moronic legacy still lingers. When they start talking about "southern strategy" and "red states," I just want to go bug-**** crazy. I've have had my fill of it! I can't bare to hear one more toxic syllable of that cretinous cracker cant. It's stupid and pernicious and it has shriveled and stunted us all. Sure, you've traded the shotgun shack for a suburban track home, your Klan meetings for right-wing radio, rickets and pellagra for high blood pressure and diabetes, the lionizing of slave owners and confederate generals for the hagiography of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. By the way, Reagan was and Bush is a dim, manipulative opportunist, who will fawn over you and will tell you that your sins are your virtues, your denial is divine inspiration, and the dimming, dying flame of your spite is the light of a distant lode-star guiding your way to paradise. That is... as long as you're willing to blindly transfer the rightful fruit of your labors to them and their powerful benefactors (people who would laugh aloud in your face if you ever had the temerity to approach them as equals) as you go on hating, resenting, and blaming everyone but them for your troubles.

Then there was that embarrassing matter of building our house upon the real-estate we had shamelessly stolen from the original inhabitants of the land. Just once, I'd like to hear you utter the word: Genocide. Yes, that's how the land came to be ours. And we both know it. Let me hear you say it: G-E-N-O-C-I-D-E. Is that so hard? Now, we can work on the word R-E-P-A-R-A-T-I-O-N-S.

In the beginning, we were so young and intoxicated with each other and with our fumbling discovering of this exotic and erotic thing called freedom. Also, the abundance of all those new world intoxicants such as tobacco, coffee, and cheap corn liquor didn't do much to dampen our delusional passions. Yes, the cliché is true, that Rome (or any other empire for that matter) wasn't built in a day -- it only feels that way if you have the right buzz going.

But Christ on a Crackpipe, the high has been harshed. I wake up in the morning and I want to scream, "How did it come to this?" Your breath stinks of carbon monoxide -- it's like you've been French kissing the tailpipe of a Humvee. Sometimes, I wish you'd just wrap your lips around that tailpipe and commit suicide by internal combustion engine fellatio. (I mean it's coming to that anyway, you know.... But you selfish prick, must you take the rest of the world with you when you go?)

I want to weep every time I look into your eyes, eyes that have been dimmed by too many meaningless jobs, stupid television shows, dissembling commercials, time-devouring traffic jams, the idiot's orgy of corporate sports events; your eyes, they contain that glazed look that people get at the end of Super Bowl Sunday, that sullen, vacant expression brought on by being pummeled insensate from all of the meaningless hype, eyes that betray that sense of hollowed-out loss that descends at the game's end, just at the moment, when they turn, once again, to face the emptiness of their lives. You've seen it, America: the dismal spectacle of a hundred million blunted minds not registering the yawning abyss we've made of our existence, but our eyes, nevertheless, reflecting it, becoming as empty as mirrors facing a void.

When I try to talk to you, these days, you become a mindless phalanx of sneering riot cops in full body armor, blocking the wide boulevards of free discourse. If I persist and I speak my mind to you, you answer me back with pepper spray, tear gas, and rubber bullets.

That violent streak was always there, I suppose. Just ask the Filipinos, the Nicaraguans, the Vietnamese, the Panamanians, the Iraqis. For that matter, just ask minorities and the poor right here, right now. That is precisely the problem: You never ask. I think I know why -- because you really don't give a rodent's rectum.

You just want us to shut up and subsist on a diet of your lies, but I cannot swallow another bite. Worse yet, it's not only that you want me to live off your lies: You want me to buy the groceries at inflated prices, cook them for you, serve them to you, smile submissively at you across the table, laugh at your bad jokes, ignore your gluttony and your terrible table manners, then clear the table when you're finished and wash the dirty dishes. I want to pound my fist on the table, hurl my plate against the wall, and I want to scream at the top of my voice, Enough! I don't care if the neighbors hear. I don't care what they think. It's not as if they don't know the truth about what's going on in here.

Yes, I know you have the power to silence me, by marginalizing me, by labeling me a misfit, or a malcontent, or even a traitor. But: Every cell in my mind and body is shouting out -- that, at this point in time, silence itself is treason.
You may even succeed in silencing me. You have destroyed those far more powerful than I. Time and time again, you have proven your ruthlessness. You have a talent for tenacity. You will not rest until you destroy any and all you perceive as a threat to your power. You take to the task like a tick to blood.

If you succeed in suppressing all who oppose you, what then?
http://www.swans.com/library/art10/procks16.html

We have too many veterans. We have too many living veterans. We have too many dead veterans. We have too many wounded veterans. We have too many disabled veterans. We have too many veterans who have fought in wars. We have too many veterans who have never fired a shot. Any way you look at it, we have too many veterans.

Veterans Day began as Armistice Day - a day to commemorate the signing of the armistice on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month that ended fighting on the Western Front in World War I, "the war to end all wars." A few years after World War II, the holiday was changed to Veterans Day as a tribute to all soldiers who fought for their country. Veterans Day has now become a day to honor, not just those who have served in the military during wartime, but those who have served during peacetime or are serving now. It has also become a day - even though we have Armed Forces Day - to recognize all things military.

Why?

Why do most Americans hold veterans and current members of the U.S. military in such high esteem? Why is there such a military mindset in the United States?

It is high time that Americans stop elevating members of the military to a position of honor. It is long past the time when veterans have done anything honorable. We should abolish Veterans Day. And because of our shameful foreign policy and militarism during the twentieth century, we should abolish any Armistice Day celebration as well.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance126.html

He forgets or would rather ignore the fact that he is free to write that crap because of the freedom he enjoys protected by people who he derides.

Isn't that the same old crap too, Au?

Much of what he says, though it's said in anger, is absolutely true. If it weren't, you would have pointed out how he was mistaken. Instead, you go to the default excuse used by all who don't want to face the truth.

The good is there of course, but that doesn't mean that you ignore the bad and there is plenty of that to explore.

But what does that drivel have to do with abolishing veterans day. People who answered the call. fought and many died in defense of this nation should be honored.

He made the excellent points:

"Why is there such a military mindset in the United States?"

"It is long past the time when veterans have done anything honorable."

You have to ask yourself just how many of these veterans died in defence of anything except greed.

Was it their fault, partially yes, partially no. Many were young, impressionable, poor people duped by an avarice government.

Why do you allow that this one sham of a day should go on, yet you aren't screaming to the heavens about government policies that spend billions on the armaments, enriching the corporations, but leaving these veterans lying in the streets?

The day is to honor those who answered the call anf put their lives on the line. Not the government or to justify the wars in which they fought.

Your statements are an insult to anyone who ever served . I would probably be banned if I told you what I thought of them and you.
What I think of our government relative to it's actions is a different
subject.

JTT,

To certain folks, the ww2-honorable soldier mindset will never go away, no matter what ya say.

Cycloptichorn

Cyclo
What branch of the service did you serve in