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top of the heap to third world status in one generation

Gry

Well-known member
Veteran
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]You may not vote on any more threads today. [/FONT]
 

TychoMonolyth

Boreal Curing
picture.php
 

redlaser

Active member
Veteran
When two brothers fight to the death, a stranger inherits the property.~ African proverb.
Seems to have political/ partisan applications
 

Elmer Bud

Genotype Sex Worker AKA strain whore
Veteran
^^ You got half right so that is something. The US has depended on legal and illegal immigration to run a fake economy or ponzi scheme. Trump was the only one to call them on that. The government is fully in support of immigration legal or not to keep this crap train rolling and has been forcing it on the public forever. It was never voted in by the public at any time.

Ponzi schemes fail at the end btw and with a bunch of different tribes barely assimilated it will not be pretty.

Trump is the best president of my lifetime and executes very well. You missed those points. Oh you are Canadian, you are excused I guess. Carter and Obama the worst with the rest being not very good imo.

G `day Yesum

Please excuse my curiosity .
But I`m fascinated by your statement ; Trump is the best president of my lifetime and executes very well.

Could you cite some examples so I could better understand why you feel that way ?

Thanks for sharin

EB .
 

Elmer Bud

Genotype Sex Worker AKA strain whore
Veteran
I'm a citizen of this good planet 1st, and a Canadian 2nd.

You can get what you want by being diplomatic. He just doesn't know how. He's lived his life by strong arming his way around, and that can backfire. What do I mean by diplomacy? Canada's Immigration is merit based. "What have you got to offer? What is your education? Do you have money to invest and are you starting a business?" and it goes on. We do accept refugees, but only a set amount every year, and they must take language classes and other helpful (for us) cultural assistance. And if church groups want to sponsor a family, the group is responsible for their financial support.

Trump has said publicly, several times, he wants an immigration system like Canada's. The problem is you don't get that type of system over night, and it has to be done covertly. Does that make us hypocrites? Yup. But you do what ever it takes, the easiest way you can. Trump is doing it the hard way.

On trade, he's absolutely right, but you'll pay for it. He can raise tariffs on steel all he likes, but the American people will pay for the tariffs while the target country loses a tiny fraction. You can't just build a smelter when you need one. it's more complicated than that.

G `day TM

Trade sanctions are also about preparing for war .
USA has sent so many industries off shore it now has to import many resources . eg aluminium not produced in USA anymore .

Wanna wage war ? Better have domestic supplies of materials involved in manufacture of war weapons .

Biggie is printed circuits . Not enough manufactured in the USA to supply armed forces during time of conflict .

US army ATM = occupational army . Very different requirements compared to an invading army .

Thanks for sharin

EB .
 

Elmer Bud

Genotype Sex Worker AKA strain whore
Veteran
I think we do not agree on much but I do hold Reagan responsible for not stopping illegal migration. His amnesty encouraged it and then he blames the dems for failing to follow his directions on that, like he was a newbie in politics and could not see that coming.

Carter was not that bad I guess just not very good. Not getting into a war was a plus. Iran was terribly handled. The Shah was no nice guy but what followed was far worse.

G `day Yesum

Iran ...
We never hear the reason why the students took the hostages at the US Embassy in Iran was because they wanted the USA to return the Shah from exile in the USA for justice !

Only ever about the radical muslims .

Could of saved a whole shit storm and a few million lives by handing over their boy to face the music in his home country where he had fcked over his own citizens .

Thanks for sharin

EB .
 

mean mr.mustard

I Pass Satellites
Veteran
G `day Yesum

Please excuse my curiosity .
But I`m fascinated by your statement ; Trump is the best president of my lifetime and executes very well.

Could you cite some examples so I could better understand why you feel that way ?

Thanks for sharin

EB .

I think he meant Jamal Khashoggi
 

Klompen

Active member
G `day Yesum

Iran ...
We never hear the reason why the students took the hostages at the US Embassy in Iran was because they wanted the USA to return the Shah from exile in the USA for justice !

Only ever about the radical muslims .

Could of saved a whole shit storm and a few million lives by handing over their boy to face the music in his home country where he had fcked over his own citizens .

Thanks for sharin

EB .

Yet instead, because our nation is lead by psychopathic bankers and industrialists, we're more interested in the Petrodollar even though Saudi Arabia is everything we should really hate and Iran is actually far more friendly to the values of the average American citizen.

The fact is, the USA crushed Democracy in Iran, and the USA(along with France and England) supported monarchy in Vietnam. The USA and its allies ignored Ho Chi Min's pleas for help at the Versailles Treaty Summit, and left him only the Russians to go to for help. The USA supported and enabled Israel's genocidal treatment of its neighbors and captive Arab population. US leaders ignored Israel's illicit nuclear program. The USA crushed democracy in Korea, and at one point even helped murder 30,000 civilians on one island just because they didn't want to be subject to the military dictatorship US leaders installed to oppose the Kim regime. The USA has repeatedly crushed democratic movements in the Middle East, South America, Africa, and Asia; all because of business interests and honestly because of laziness(its easier to deal with one dictator than an elected government). The USA has been a source of terror and repression that has lashed out, manipulated, and dominated most of the Earth for the last century.
 

Elmer Bud

Genotype Sex Worker AKA strain whore
Veteran
Yet instead, because our nation is lead by psychopathic bankers and industrialists, we're more interested in the Petrodollar even though Saudi Arabia is everything we should really hate and Iran is actually far more friendly to the values of the average American citizen.

The fact is, the USA crushed Democracy in Iran, and the USA(along with France and England) supported monarchy in Vietnam. The USA and its allies ignored Ho Chi Min's pleas for help at the Versailles Treaty Summit, and left him only the Russians to go to for help. The USA supported and enabled Israel's genocidal treatment of its neighbors and captive Arab population. US leaders ignored Israel's illicit nuclear program. The USA crushed democracy in Korea, and at one point even helped murder 30,000 civilians on one island just because they didn't want to be subject to the military dictatorship US leaders installed to oppose the Kim regime. The USA has repeatedly crushed democratic movements in the Middle East, South America, Africa, and Asia; all because of business interests and honestly because of laziness(its easier to deal with one dictator than an elected government). The USA has been a source of terror and repression that has lashed out, manipulated, and dominated most of the Earth for the last century.

G `day K

Executed regime change in Australia too !
North West Cape and Pine Gap are 2 US military Spy Bases in Oz . Government at the time wanted them gone . Nope ,,, Gov was gone 1st .



Thanks for sharin

EB .
 

Gypsy Nirvana

Recalcitrant Reprobate -
Administrator
Veteran
picture.php


Patrice Lumumba became the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1960, and was killed in 1961.


Not many people can remember, or care about what went on in the African nation of Congo/Zaire- during the 1960's when they got their first ever democratically elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba - after many years of Belgian colonial rule - Lumumba was murdered in what many people consider to be a CIA plot - because he didn't want to play ball with the USA and its allies.

*Here is an old Guardian article - for your reading pleasure.

Patrice Lumumba: the most important assassination of the 20th century
The US-sponsored plot to kill Patrice Lumumba, the hero of Congolese independence, took place 50 years ago today.



Patrice Lumumba, the first legally elected prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), was assassinated 50 years ago today, on 17 January, 1961. This heinous crime was a culmination of two inter-related assassination plots by American and Belgian governments, which used Congolese accomplices and a Belgian execution squad to carry out the deed.

Ludo De Witte, the Belgian author of the best book on this crime, qualifies it as "the most important assassination of the 20th century". The assassination's historical importance lies in a multitude of factors, the most pertinent being the global context in which it took place, its impact on Congolese politics since then and Lumumba's overall legacy as a nationalist leader.

For 126 years, the US and Belgium have played key roles in shaping Congo's destiny. In April 1884, seven months before the Berlin Congress, the US became the first country in the world to recognise the claims of King Leopold II of the Belgians to the territories of the Congo Basin.

When the atrocities related to brutal economic exploitation in Leopold's Congo Free State resulted in millions of fatalities, the US joined other world powers to force Belgium to take over the country as a regular colony. And it was during the colonial period that the US acquired a strategic stake in the enormous natural wealth of the Congo, following its use of the uranium from Congolese mines to manufacture the first atomic weapons, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.

With the outbreak of the cold war, it was inevitable that the US and its western allies would not be prepared to let Africans have effective control over strategic raw materials, lest these fall in the hands of their enemies in the Soviet camp. It is in this regard that Patrice Lumumba's determination to achieve genuine independence and to have full control over Congo's resources in order to utilise them to improve the living conditions of our people was perceived as a threat to western interests. To fight him, the US and Belgium used all the tools and resources at their disposal, including the United Nations secretariat, under Dag Hammarskjöld and Ralph Bunche, to buy the support of Lumumba's Congolese rivals , and hired killers.

In Congo, Lumumba's assassination is rightly viewed as the country's original sin. Coming less than seven months after independence (on 30 June, 1960), it was a stumbling block to the ideals of national unity, economic independence and pan-African solidarity that Lumumba had championed, as well as a shattering blow to the hopes of millions of Congolese for freedom and material prosperity.

The assassination took place at a time when the country had fallen under four separate governments: the central government in Kinshasa (then Léopoldville); a rival central government by Lumumba's followers in Kisangani (then Stanleyville); and the secessionist regimes in the mineral-rich provinces of Katanga and South Kasai. Since Lumumba's physical elimination had removed what the west saw as the major threat to their interests in the Congo, internationally-led efforts were undertaken to restore the authority of the moderate and pro-western regime in Kinshasa over the entire country. These resulted in ending the Lumumbist regime in Kisangani in August 1961, the secession of South Kasai in September 1962, and the Katanga secession in January 1963.

No sooner did this unification process end than a radical social movement for a "second independence" arose to challenge the neocolonial state and its pro-western leadership. This mass movement of peasants, workers, the urban unemployed, students and lower civil servants found an eager leadership among Lumumba's lieutenants, most of whom had regrouped to establish a National Liberation Council (CNL) in October 1963 in Brazzaville, across the Congo river from Kinshasa. The strengths and weaknesses of this movement may serve as a way of gauging the overall legacy of Patrice Lumumba for Congo and Africa as a whole.

The most positive aspect of this legacy was manifest in the selfless devotion of Pierre Mulele to radical change for purposes of meeting the deepest aspirations of the Congolese people for democracy and social progress. On the other hand, the CNL leadership, which included Christophe Gbenye and Laurent-Désiré Kabila, was more interested in power and its attendant privileges than in the people's welfare. This is Lumumbism in words rather than in deeds. As president three decades later, Laurent Kabila did little to move from words to deeds.

More importantly, the greatest legacy that Lumumba left for Congo is the ideal of national unity. Recently, a Congolese radio station asked me whether the independence of South Sudan should be a matter of concern with respect to national unity in the Congo. I responded that since Patrice Lumumba has died for Congo's unity, our people will remain utterly steadfast in their defence of our national unity.

• Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja is professor of African and Afro-American studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People's History.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-...atrice-lumumba-50th-anniversary-assassination
 

Gry

Well-known member
Veteran
Every pictue tells a story

Every pictue tells a story

picture.php
The photographer said about the photo

"On February 13 1961, United Nations ambassador Adlai Stevenson came on the phone. I was alone with the president; his hand went to his head in utter despair, 'Oh, no,' I heard him groan. The ambassador was informing the president of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, an African leader considered a trouble-maker and a leftist by many Americans. But Kennedy's attitude towards black Africa was that many who were considered leftists were in fact nationalists and patriots, anti-West because of years of colonialisation, and lured to the siren call of communism against their will. He felt that Africa presented an opportunity for the West, and, speaking as an American, unhindered by a colonial heritage, he had made friends in Africa and would succeed in gaining the trust of a great many African leaders. The call therefore left him heartbroken, for he knew that the murder would be a prelude to chaos ..."


the backstory....

An Assassination’s Long Shadow

TODAY, millions of people on another continent are observing the 50th anniversary of an event few Americans remember, the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. A slight, goateed man with black, half-framed glasses, the 35-year-old Lumumba was the first democratically chosen leader of the vast country, nearly as large as the United States east of the Mississippi, now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This treasure house of natural resources had been a colony of Belgium, which for decades had made no plans for independence. But after clashes with Congolese nationalists, the Belgians hastily arranged the first national election in 1960, and in June of that year King Baudouin arrived to formally give the territory its freedom.

“It is now up to you, gentlemen,” he arrogantly told Congolese dignitaries, “to show that you are worthy of our confidence.”

The Belgians, and their European and American fellow investors, expected to continue collecting profits from Congo’s factories, plantations and lucrative mines, which produced diamonds, gold, uranium, copper and more. But they had not planned on Lumumba.

A half-century later, we should surely look back on the death of Lumumba with shame, for we helped install the men who deposed and killed him. In the scholarly journal Intelligence and National Security, Stephen R. Weissman, a former staff director of the House Subcommittee on Africa, recently pointed out that Lumumba’s violent end foreshadowed today’s American practice of “extraordinary rendition.” The Congolese politicians who planned Lumumba’s murder checked all their major moves with their Belgian and American backers, and the local C.I.A. station chief made no objection when they told him they were going to turn Lumumba over — render him, in today’s parlance — to the breakaway government of Katanga, which, everyone knew, could be counted on to kill him.

Still more fateful was what was to come. Four years later, one of Lumumba’s captors, an army officer named Joseph Mobutu, again with enthusiastic American support, staged a coup and began a disastrous, 32-year dictatorship. Just as geopolitics and a thirst for oil have today brought us unsavory allies like Saudi Arabia, so the cold war and a similar lust for natural resources did then. Mobutu was showered with more than $1 billion in American aid and enthusiastically welcomed to the White House by a succession of presidents; George H. W. Bush called him “one of our most valued friends.”


There is an even deeper back story which I feel is very appropriate here. Let me see if I can find a reasonable encapsulation.
 

subrob

Well-known member
ICMag Donor
Veteran

I'm curious what the narrative is from those on the right, regarding the facts put fwd in this video. Will one of you please come fwd and tell me why I shouldn't believe every word?
Not curious about Obama, Hillary, bill, Jimmy c, or Abraham Lincoln. I'm just curious how one goes from the facts above, to "there's nothing to see here, lock her up".
 

subrob

Well-known member
ICMag Donor
Veteran
Anyone else? Looking for donnie world supporters! Before whatever shit breaks today to distract us from yesterday. I get nervous when he is around actual world leaders ..what humiliation will he hurl at his home country today? Any guesses?
 

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