The Snowden Saga has revealed something else

[nadinbrzezinski]

Yes, he has revealed the extent of the spying of the Five Eyes on the world... that alone is sickening. But it has revealed something else... how impotent the Empire has become.

I remember the good ol' days when if the US snapped it's fingers and made demands, those were complied with in short order, sometimes with some public grumbling, for the benefit of the rubes, but the US got it's way. There was one exception, an irritant to the US, but they let it stand since it gave Mexico some room to maneuver, and that was the support of Mexico for the Cuban Revolution, that was more of a strategic decision.

So the US demands, yes demands is the right term, from Hong Kong that they detain Snowden. Hong Kong not only does not do that, and say the paperwork submitted by the US was not correct, but next you know... Snowden is on his way to Ecuador.

For those who don't remember this from history classes, Ecuador is fully in the area considered the American back yard though the Monroe Doctrine. Correa does seem to like to irritate the US, first with Wiki Leaks founder Christian Asange, still in the Embassy in London, where our Junior Partner is having all kinds of fits, and now this.

The world is seeing something that we have not seen in a while, an Empire failing to pressure other states to do what it wants.

Oh the US is threatening to take economic sanctions against Correa's government, that is predictable. What is not predictable, and time will tell if we again go there... invoke the Monroe Doctrine and actually INVADE.

Regardless, the number of cats coming out of that bag are making DC very uncomfortable to say the least. General Alexander is right. Snowden has done a lot of damage to the US and her allies, junior partners in Empire. Mostly he has revealed just how weak this empire is any longer and shown to the citizens of this empire just how hollowed out it's become.

Rome in it's last days did not maintain it's infrastructure either, and the Roman Senate became mostly a show... and Rome did turn on it's citizens. No, they did not use Computers, but they had an efficient internal police, and groups, not just Christians, had to go underground. Some have compared the US to Imperial Rome... and the comparison is to a point applicable. What is also true is that declining empires are some really scary critters, mostly to their own citizens, as the rage of has been is turned inwards as the rest of the world mocks the declining power and turns towards the rising one. Look West young man... China is also rising... And this whole saga has also revealed how unconcerned they are about the US, in a way similar to how unconcerned we were of both Germany and the UK back in the day.

Was this Snowden's doing? Well, to be honest, this is the point when all this became self evident, to use an often used term. He was the catalyst for all this to become so damn open and obvious... but this has been festering for some years. The catalyst for all this was actually Reagan, when he decided NOT to protect industries of strategic importance, such as Steel. And it accelerated with Junior and is ill fated Iraq misadventure.

And yes, I expect some to try to make this about well, the messenger... Historians will actually see this saga as a footnote in history. The fall of the American Empire is upon us, and Snowden might rate a couple paragraphs at best... a footnore surely... but for the moment it is interesting to watch.

[ProSense]

1. "The fall of the American Empire is upon us"

[Cooley Hurd]

2. Laugh at your own peril...

The MIC-induced train is about to wreck, and the apologists for the Authoritarians will be to blame. Guess who I'm talking about?

[treestar]

5. And they are gloating about it!

Like if it's true, it's what they want and they are happy about it!

[Control-Z]

10. It sure does sound like they are

happy about. I don't understand cheering-on the demise of ones own country.

[Harmony Blue]

27. Money spent exerting control elsewhere

while SNAP is on the chopping block is not about cheering about the demise of the United States. Please re-evaluate your world view.

[SidDithers]

42. There's an element among the far-left fringe and libertarian left...

that thinks the whole thing should be torn down, and a liberal utopia will emerge out of the ashes, like a phoenix rising from the flames.

Naive and delusional, they are.

Sid

[Harmony Blue]

46. You call it delusional

but history has shown to repeat itself.

It is not a matter if it happens, only when....

[1StrongBlackMan]

88. +1

[sibelian]

103. Not it's the rise of a liberal utopia that is foreseen.

That's a seperate process, if it's acheivable at all. It's the end of a self-interested power node that distorts ordinary human development. Different thing.

[MADem]

109. It'll be a real utopia, all right...one where, if you don't speak Chinese, you ain't shit!

And when all those assets are redistributed in this Utopian paradise, even the least among us might find ourselves with LESS, not more!

If we're real good, maybe we can get jobs putting together cellphones...!

[Cooley Hurd]

14. Oh. You're in favor of Imperialism?

You will mourn its destruction?

If I were you, I'd buy a history book.

[treestar]

18. what imperialism?

Name a country we colonized.

[Cooley Hurd]

33. Iraq. Afghanistan, Several S. American countries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man

[BOG PERSON]

35. mexico

[Cooley Hurd]

36. My bad. Absolute(ly) Mexico, as well.

[treestar]

37. Not the same thing

Imperialism, as defined by the Dictionary of Human Geography, is "an unequal human and territorial relationship, usually in the form of an empire, based on ideas of superiority and practices of dominance, and involving the extension of authority and control of one state or people over another."[2] It is often considered in a negative light, as merely the exploitation of native people in order to enrich a small handful.[3] Lewis Samuel Feuer identifies two major subtypes of imperialism; the first is the "regressive imperialism" identified with pure conquest, unequivocal exploitation, extermination or reductions of undesired peoples, and settlement of desired peoples into those territories, examples being Nazi Germany.[4] The second type identified by Feuer is "progressive imperialism" that is founded upon a cosmopolitan view of humanity, that promotes the spread of civilization to allegedly "backward" societies to elevate living standards and culture in conquered territories, and allowance of a conquered people to assimilate into the imperial society, examples being the Roman Empire and the British Empire.[4]

And we are backing off on Iraq and Afghanistan.

[Cooley Hurd]

39. Are we?

We're out of Iraq (which, due to our Imperialism, is an ally of Iran) but we continue to lose American Soldiers in Afghanistan. Those soldiers are dying in vain since NO MATTER who wins there - the Corporatist Karzai government or the Taliban - the people of Afghanistan are fucked either way.

[treestar]

77. I'm against that but at least can see it as a war

not an attempt at colonization and empire. Even the Bushies weren't trying for that.

We may be wrong to attack a country as a war aggressor but it's not the same as setting them up under our governing authority. If it were like that, you'd have no complaints about droning there - they'd all have trials.

[Cooley Hurd]

81. I don't see the Obama Admin as "imperialistic" by nature. At all.

...but DONORS to the political apparatus that helped elect them have vested (fossil fuel) energy interests (read MIC) in both Iraq and Afghanistan. THAT I am against.

[BobbyBoring]

87. I think that was the original plan

It just didn't work out too well. The stooges W originally installed turned out to duds, especially Chalabi in Iraq.

[BOG PERSON]

76. horried @ whitewashing of the crimes of british imperialism

god this place has gone to shit

[treestar]

78. That's ridiculous

What do you mean?

We are talking about the generic terms, imperialism, empire, colonization, etc.

The British weren't even in this discussion. No one argued they did not have an empire.

[BOG PERSON]

80. did you even read what you posted?

"The second type identified by Feuer is 'progressive imperialism' that is founded upon a cosmopolitan view of humanity, that promotes the spread of civilization to allegedly 'backward' societies to elevate living standards and culture in conquered territories, and allowance of a conquered people to assimilate into the imperial society, examples being the Roman Empire and the British Empire."

[sibelian]

104. You should never have gone into Iraq and Afghanistan in the first place...

...it's no use trying to score "nice guy" points by saying "Look how lovely I am, I've stopped doing stupid evil things". Most countries don't screw around with other countries for fun.

It is the demise of the power-node that made such invasions (which were self-interested) feasible that is desired (the United States itself is actually a subtly different structure from that power-node and is hihgly likely to survive in a new form). Your implication that there is something untoward about this desire is odd.

Perhaps you harbour a fairly simple, secret fondness for the ability of the US to inflect suffering on weaker nations?

[Melinda]

71. Countries the US has colonized.

Hawaii, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Philippines, Mariana Islands, Guam, American Samoa, Line Islands, Corn Islands, Phoenix Islands, and how about Liberia.

The US has also gone after (occupied) Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau), Marcus Island (or Minami Torishima), Ryukyu Islands, and the Bonin Islands. When the US couldn't directly colonize these countries, they made certain to install puppet govts controlled by the USA. We see this currently in Iraq & Afghanistan

And basically any country that participates in "Free Trade" via WTO is indirectly colonized by US interests.

And of course when "America" formed its government, there were 13 states. Ask native Americans if they believe their land was "colonized."

[treestar]

73. So this country is an empire because it was built up into a country?

Doesn't that make every country an empire?

Hawaii is not a colony now, it is part of the US. Guam, etc., is not a lot of territory.

Haiti, the DR, Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan are not colonies of the U.S.

The trade agreement theory is cool but not the definition of colony. Colonies wouldn't have the power to make trade agreements with the mother country.

[Melinda]

86. This land was colonized, period. Each of the examples I gave you were colonialized by the US

You asked for examples of countries that the US colonized - I gave them to you.

Again:

US Colonialism: Colonialism is the establishment, exploitation, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a set of unequal relationships between the colonial power and the colony and between the colonists and the indigenous population. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonialism)

WTO and trade agreements: Cocacolonization (alternatively coca-colonization) is a term that refers to globalization or cultural colonization. It is a portmanteau of the name of the multinational soft drink maker Coca-Cola and the word colonization.

The term is used to imply either the importation of Western (particularly American) goods or an infusion of Western and especially American cultural values that competes with the local culture.[1] While it is possible to use the term benignly, it has been used pejoratively to liken globalization to Westernization or Americanization. For example, according to linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann, "with globalisation, homogenisation and coca-colonization, there will be more and more groups added to the forlorn club of the lost-heritage peoples. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocacolonization)

History is replete. And burying ones head in the sand doesn't negate the truth - it just leaves that one person blind.

[Marr]

119. Weird, huh? They go from

castigating people for being pleased by thought of the American empire coming to an end, to denying that the US ever colonized any location in one easy step.

?

[Whisp]

22. That is mystifying, isn't it?

How the wanted and waited for destruction of the 'empire' isn't going to affect their own buttocks personally in a very bad way.

[BOG PERSON]

34. many romans welcomed the barbarians as liberators n/t

[Monkie]

115. the whole barbarian label is just a myth!

some propaganda lasts for centuries.
the barbarians were no more barbaric than the despotic roman empire at its most rotten

[Scootaloo]

56. If it is true, then I am happy about it

"Empire" strangles humanity. "Empire" feeds off the flesh and blood of soldiers and victims. "Empire" pays itself through pillage and extortion. "Empire" exists in a constant threshold of boom and crash.

Let the empire die, I want my nation back.

[undergroundpanther]

108. I want my nation back too

If I live to see it return that is.

[Cleita]

9. The Empire is failing as all empires do, not just Rome.

Imperialism is a failed system in the end and we have been going there it since the middle of the last century. We even watched the British Empire fail right before our eyes, not to mention the Nazis and Soviets and still America pursues this path because of industry. Now it's our turn. It's too obvious for anyone with any powers of observation to fail to see it. But go ahead and laugh.

[Cooley Hurd]

20. Empires fail because they're created for a primary reason:

...to steal resources of other lands. Stealing is wrong.

[Cleita]

24. Well, we've been doing that for a long time.

I grew up in an American owned copper mine in Chile that was stealing the resources of that country, legally of course, so to speak. All our foreign policy there was to protect the American companies operating there, even to the point of overthrowing their democratically elected government and installing a dictator thanks to Henry Kissinger and Prez. Dick Nixon. Yep, we have been doing this with impunity since we won WWII over the Nazis and do a lesser extent long before that.

[KittyWampus]

30. Now that's a huge pile of stupid. All Empires fail because they go bankrupt paying for expansions.

Morality has nothing to do with it.

[Cooley Hurd]

31. Not all...

...and your personal attack has been alerted on.

[Posteritatis]

92. "That argument is stupid" is not a personal attack. (nt)

[Cooley Hurd]

94. You quoted something that was not a quote.

The exact quote was "that's a huge pile of stupid". Referring to something I said. Personally.

[Posteritatis]

96. Close enough. Get off the cross, someone else needs the lumber. (nt)

[Cooley Hurd]

98. "Get off the cross..."

Drinking today?

[sibelian]

105. Empire's don't fall for singular reasons.

They fall for clusters of inter-related reasons, it's mostly because they become too large and inflexible to adapt to change. There's no reason to exlude morality.

[Harmony Blue]

3. I agree American imperialism

is coming to an end.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. It is becoming way obvoous

That is the damage Alexander is complaining about... all this money spent on the Legions...

[Th1onein]

4. Kicked and recommended!

I absolutely agree.

[Catherina]

7. +1! And all those countries have changed their encryption keys and rerouted communications

The NSA has gone blind.

Our ace in the hole to spy on everyone and use that to dishonest advantages, blackmail, destabilization etc... just went wooooooooooooooooooosh.

We'll have to play more honestly towards the world and towards our own people, at least for a while.

NO war on Syria.

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. That is what Keith Alexander was complaining about

among other things I suspect

[alsame]

11. It also reveals that they fear

dissent from within.

[nadinbrzezinski]

17. Like all other declining Empires

This is not surprising.

[Downwinder]

12. Lay it all on NSA's doorstep.

You can trace the loss of respect to the electronic eavesdropping at the United Nations.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

13. Ingrates! After all we've done to...er...for them!

[villager]

15. As I said in another thread, a sclerotic military/industrial empire, unable to truly respond

...to the fraying environment around it (both ecological and economic) will eventually dissolve into other, smaller components.

But of course those self-anointed "masters of the universe" running said empire, and continuously apologizing for it, will continue to sputter and bluster and demand their Imperial Due, right to the end....

[Cleita]

16. We may be better off if it happens.

It seems to have made things better for the Brits since their empire failed. They then were forced to look inward to start fixing their domestic problems and letting the Americans bear the burden of being the world police. I wonder who will succeed us? Or maybe we might form a global federation of nations at last to address the problems our planet faces and fix them to the benefit of all nations, perhaps bringing about world peace at last. But I guess I'm dreaming science fiction here. I have little hope of this.

[nadinbrzezinski]

21. China is the rising power

As to a federation... it might happen, forced upon humans. The crisis upon us is bigger than one super block

Or to quote Ronald Reagan (he was right on that one) if an alien invasion occurs

[agent46]

65. If an alien invasion hit the news

I wouldn't believe it for a moment - not even if I saw it on YouTube and Colon Powell produced hard evidence before the U.N.

[nadinbrzezinski]

67. Well my view is a tad different.

If this is the Federation, mostly research exploration and peace...we are lucky. Military...we are cooked. Anybody with the capacity to cross interstellar space we are children. New and old war and 1521 is a good model.

[agent46]

107. Unlikely - the timing is all wrong

Given their supposed advancement beyond our science, why didn't they come and take our shit a hundred years ago? Why wait until now? And who would bother at this point, anyway?



I'd still go with the false flag threory.

[FarCenter]

32. Aside from the North Sea oil & financial services boom, the last Century has been hell for the Brits

1913 - 2013 has not been a good time for England.

[Cleita]

38. They have done better from a social point of view. They have national health care

and other social safety nets that didn't exist during the days of Victoria, when "the sun never set on the British Empire". They still have the same freedoms and liberties we do and a certain amount of order in their society in spite of some rioting in ethnic neighborhoods, something we have gone through in the past too. They went through two world wars and got involved somewhat in our imbroglios because they are our allies so that really has not helped their economic growth over the decades.

We too will probably not be as prosperous as we were during the period between the Great Depression and 1975. Yes, I date the beginning of our decline domestically to the Nixon presidency. That's when we started eroding the middle class and has brought us to where we are today. We will have to go through a certain amount of struggling to regain a middle class again, but I believe it can be achieved once we kick the war hawks and billionaires out of our government.

[FarCenter]

47. The reason that we were so prosperous between 1945 and 1975 was we could exploit everyone else

We were arms merchant to the winning side in WW I & II, we had all the gold in the world in Fort Knox, we had the only unbombed major industrial infrastructure in the world, we had the world's greatest oil fields in California, Texas and Oklahoma, and we had rich agricultural, forest and mineral resources.

Of course we were rich.

The virtue of our economic and political systems or the merits of the American middle class had nothing to do with it.

The American middle class wasn't even a middle class -- they were just a working class benefiting from a historically anomalous confluence of circumstances that meant that they could live far better than workers in most of the rest of the world. The middle of our 5% of global population was living above the 90th percentile of the rest of the world. Our 1% was the global 1%.

[Cleita]

54. Whatever you want to call it. It was pretty middle class to all other countries looking in on us

enough to want to immigrate here either legally or illegally for a better life. We also had safeguards on our food and water, which we seem to be losing today.

[FarCenter]

57. The US middle class was well into the global upper class

Why wouldn't an Italian stonecutter working for next to nothing want to come to the US and work for our wages?

I recall that the starting wages for Electrical Engineers in the UK were about a fourth of those in the US back in the '70s.

[Cleita]

60. They were. Even a kid I knew from Mexico, back then, sixteen years old, told me

he crossed the border illegally because he had been working in a tile factory since he was ten years old for $1.25 a day. He heard he could make $3.75 an hour working in kitchens in California so he came over. Unfortunately, with a poor education, he was condemned to doing menial work the rest of his life, but still he was better off than in Mexico.

[WestStar]

19. The old Soviet Union only took 2 years to trade Gary Francis Powers

for a couple of their spies, Iran only took a year and a half to release our embassy personnel and North Korea still has the USS Pueblo in it's possession.

But oh for the good old days when the rest of the world trembled before our awesome powers.

They've been tweaking us forever, just ask the North Vietnamese.

[nadinbrzezinski]

23. And the Gary Powers saga is a perfect example

Do you remember perhaps what the USSR was at the time? Oh yes a SUPERPOWER... so it was a game between two SUPER POWERS armed to the hilt.

Care to remember what NK was at the time? Oh yes a CLIENT STATE of our polar oposites.

This is a fourth rate power, (from our POV) tweaking our nose, not a nuclear armed, naval capable, superpower.

[Cleita]

26. My husband, a naturalized American and very patriotic one as most immigrants

who take the oath are, was no fool though where this was concerned. He was fond of saying that the Americans were defeated by a bunch of farmers with the equivalent of shovels and pitchforks against our formidable military because they had the passion of patriotism in defending their country from invaders. We, on the other hand, were very unenthusiastic about participating in this war and did so grudgingly regardless of how much our war hawks pushed it. We were doomed to fail just as we have in Iraq and Afghanistan. It seems we are getting ready to hand Afgh. back to the Taliban, the outfit we went to war to defeat to begin with and give arms to the Syrian rebels, many of who are Al Queda, another faction we went to war with. Of course we all know that Iraq was a raid for oil and a vendetta Bush, Jr. held against Saddam.

[FarCenter]

25. The American Empire is approximately where the British Empire was in 1895

The unification of Germany after the Franco-Prussian war, the reunification of Italy, and the "opening" of Japan parallel the shifts in great power politics of the demise of the USSR, the restructuring of China, and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. The Panic of 1873 and the following Great Depression of 1873-96 decimated British agriculture and British manufactures become uncompetitive, paralleling the demise of US manufacturing and the growing lack of competitiveness of US service businesses.

But beware what you wish for. An American baby boy being born now probably has less probability of a long and happy life than an English baby boy born in 1895.

[nadinbrzezinski]

28. I think it is more like 1940

if you insist on those parallels.

And I know what the fall from Empire will mean for Americans. It will not be pretty. It could even lead to the dissolution of this Continental Empire, like the USSR and yes... Rome.

[Cleita]

40. I don't think that will happen. The poor states in this country depend on the more

prosperous ones to survive. I really wouldn't care if we on the West Coast became a nation and the East Coast became another nation. They can keep Washington DC, along with all its dysfunction if they like. Then that would leave the middle, which is not prosperous because of the idiots governing them without their East Coast and West Coast sugar daddies to prop them up. I think even the dopiest Tea Bagger would balk at that, meaning either East Coast or West Coast America would have to keep them, a thing neither would want. So we will remain altogether.

However, our outer regions and territories, like Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico et al might break off becoming sovereign nations or aligning with other nations.

[FarCenter]

43. 1940 was 2 years into WW II? WW II was just the tail end of the 1914-1949 global war.

And specifically with regard to the British Empire, it would not have collapsed had it not been bled white in WW I, followed by continued economic collapse in the interwar years.

The collapse of the USSR is an odd case, and similar to previous imperial disasters caused by monarchical sucession problems. Brezhnev was followed by Andropov and Chernenko in quick sucession, leading to the idealistic and incompetent Gorbachev. One man rule is always bad when the one man is incompetent.

The Roman Empire did not fall until 1453, even though there was a progressive loss of provinces prior to that time.

[nadinbrzezinski]

45. And I see this as a roman curve

Why I used that example.

A fourth rate power would not have tweaked our noses the way Correa is doing in oh 1965, not even 1985.

[DirkGently]

29. We've given other nations the ammunition to call us a rogue state.

Another thing that's supposed to identify the small and large "d" democratically minded is that we put principle over personality, what we do over who we are.

And we've been acting like a rogue state. Iraq, waterboarding, indefinite detention, and now illicit global surveillance.

We've never been a perfect country. But we used to at least have a good faith claim to occupying some kind of moral high ground. Bush destroyed a lot of it. Obama seemed to be putting some of it back.

But not on this stuff. Not on the new, red-hot, big-dollar world of massive electronic surveillance. And not on government secrecy. No one has abused the Espionage Act to punish whistleblowers this way. What Bush began in this arena has been expanded and worsened.

The fact that American "dissidents" are now fleeing to foreign countries is not a reflection on them, so much as it is on US.

Question is, what are we going to do about it? Become the old Soviet Union, demanding our "defectors" be returned to us in chains, to be stripped and held in some secret dungeon?

We claim to be better than that. But apparently when it comes down do it, we have plenty who are too scared, too stupid, or too otherwise motivated to stand up to it.

[Cleita]

41. All the abuses you mention is because our governing bodies have stopped

using the Constitution and other documents from our founding to guide us in our policy. We essentially are becoming the Weimar Republic under the Nazis. The documents are still there but no one pays much attention to them.

[DirkGently]

44. "I'm not going with 'Nazi'. But corruption occurs by degrees.

That's something people seem unable to grasp. You don't go from "beacon of the free world" to "despotic regime" in one go.

This is a back-and-forth struggle that goes on every day, all the time.

We are not guaranteed freedom or respect or even control over our government because we are Americans. The Constitution, as you say, is supposed to help protect us.

But there are ways to weasel past the Constitution. Ways that Nixon attempted. Ways that Bush put into practice.

Dick Cheney's conceit was that we are now always at war with "terror," and the the Executive can do anything, in secret, in the name of national security, when we are at war.

It's a despicable and transparently bad-faith conceit. I do not think Obama believes it. But this administration has not rooted it out and set it on fire. It apparently needs our help.

So let's help.

[Cleita]

49. Fine. Ignore history then. You know that the Weimar Republic was never overthrown

by the Nazis, which actually was a political party within many political parties. They just made sure that its Constitution, a very liberal one, became impotent as a governing document kind of like the Bush administration did with ours. It was the allies who overthrew the Weimar Republic, not the Nazis. Dick Cheney could have written "Mein Kampf" himself with the exception of the Jew and Slav hating parts. He substituted terrorists for those "enemies" Hitler outlined instead.

I have said before that if "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" had been assigned reading in high school when studying the WWII era, there would be no tolerance today for water boarding, indefinite detention, domestic spying and any number of other abuses against true liberty and freedom that Americans seem to be okay with today, just because our three branches of government say it's okay.

[DirkGently]

52. Not ignoring history. People wig out when Nazis are brought

into the conversation. They charge hyperbole. I am agreeing with you that authoritarianism occurs by degrees, and pointing out that on that spectrum, we are sliding in a bad direction, but are short of death camps and attempts to invade Poland.

I am with you brother. Just fleshing out the discussion.

[Cleita]

63. That's because those who are following in their footsteps want people not to discuss it.

They don't want people to see the parallels so instead they propagandize the conversation with Godwins law and all that nonsense. It stops the conversation, makes it seem unsavory. They were doing the same thing with the word "liberal" a couple of decades ago and all the masses went along with it. Liberal bad. They wear Birkenstocks, and that's bad.

Wake Up and smell the propaganda. Also, since when is discussing history considered a no no? The Nazis called themselves socialists but were anything but. What are the Tea Baggers calling themselves? They call themselves lovers of freedom while they vote for the very people who are taking their freedom away.

When you find you can't have open discussions about historical facts, because "we don't talk about it", you have lost your free speech and those who are taking it away from you like that.

[DirkGently]

68. It's idiotic to compare everything to the most extreme.

It's intellectually lazy, and it gets dismissed because it's a tool of the stupid.

Drawing parallels where they exist is fine. Leaping to a cliched extreme is just dumb.

It's not propaganda, and my free speech is working fine, thanks. I will continue to draw distinctions where they exist, because that's how discussion works.

[Cleita]

74. History is history. You cannot deny it. It's idiotic to ignore abuses of the past.

Some wise asses in the past have said,

"Those who don't learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it."

"You are entitled to your own opinion, not your own facts."

I will leave you with these two thoughts to ponder.

[DirkGently]

75. Don't need your help with "history," thanks.

You didn't understand my posts. Your problem, not mine.

Go "ponder" yourself.

[GoneFishin]

110. Totally agree with Cleita. The parallels are too similar for their comfort level, especially

the denial of the slow creep of fascism while everyone went about their business as usual. And the natural tendency for the human mind to accept incremental changes, little by little, with no regard for how all of those tiny changes have piled up over time. Which, if had occurred all at once, would have certainly provoked widespread protests.

[nadinbrzezinski]

64. In 1935 the Nazis were not there yet either

Regardless nazis is a bad analogy here...it's more like the dirty wars, including the new shiny...press kicking.

Mind you, this should not be surprising. This is the model we taught

[DirkGently]

70. Precisely. The point is to notice your frog

is boiling before it's cooked, not after.

[GoneFishin]

112. Yes, but if I wait until my frog is completely cooked then at least I have the piece of mind

knowing that I didn't succumb to your logic prematurely, but instead was loyal to my world view.

I think that this is going to need a

[FarCenter]

53. The US' current structure pretty much goes back to the Civil War

Appealing to the Constitution and the ideals of the founding fathers is fairly irrelevant.

[Cleita]

55. So maybe we should.

It's a fine document as it stands. It could stand some updating, but mostly we need a government that follows its principles instead of using it for a bird cage liner.

[One of the 99]

114. Weimar Republic under the Nazis rounded up political opponents en masse

and threw them in to concentration camps, it outlawed Jewish businesses and seized complete control of the media. Has anything like that happened here?

[Cleita]

116. Yes. You make a person illegal or an action illegal, then you can round them up

and throw them in jail. Happens to our undocumented workers all the time and it's not a coincidence that our jails, now privatized are full of people, who are ethnically not white. I just was reading about the horrors of the Florida privatized jail system. It's not hard to fall on the wrong side of the law there either if you are brown.

And really, you are talking about the media? Honestly, have you not paid attention? Sure we have a few oppositional voices in the media but they are fewer and fewer and shoved aside to obscure cable TV networks and low powered radio stations. The only free media we still have is the internet and there are movements to marginalize that too. In Germany it was possible to get other publications, but they were very few, and usually around places like hotels where foreigners might be staying, but mostly Germans got Goebbels propaganda thrown at them most of the time.

Also, the en masse round-ups didn't really begin until about 1938 and of course increased and went on steroids during the war as the Germans got more and more fanatical. I suppose you were okay with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. They didn't remind you at all of Austria, Poland and those other places in eastern Europe?

[One of the 99]

117. No the round ups of political opponents started after the Reichstag fire

in 1933. Communists and Socialists were rounded up and put in camps. When Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul and the tea party are rounded up and put in a camp you can get back to me.

As far as the media, I think FAUX News would dispute that they are doing the bidding of the government. As would, Rachel Maddow and many others.

And remember the undocumented workers did break our immigration laws. Unfair as those laws may be, they were still broken.

Finally, please don't put words in my mouth. I never said anything about Iraq or Afganistan, let alone that I supported them. That is just a dishonest tactic to divert from the fact that you made a very poor analogy that isn't supported by any facts.

[Cleita]

118. McConnell and Paul are communists? Your historical equivalencies are rather strange.

However, after 9/11, our Reichstag fire, our government went on crazy pills and started rounding up anyone who looked Muslim. Bush had to charter an airplane to fly his good buddies in the Bin Laden family out of this country allowing them to leave when no one else could fly lest they all end up being rounded up. That's how bad it was.

[One of the 99]

122. That's because they are based on the facts.

And while Paul and McConnell are not communists but they are the President's political opponents. And my muslism barber and grocer would disagree with you about anyone who looked muslim being rounded up. As far as what happened after 9/11, sure there were excesses but that was 12 years ago, not is what is currently happening. So you Nazi analogy is totally bogus.

[FirstLight]

83. this should be an OP

I think it is a huge thing to bring up, that we used to be some kind of 'moral' guiding light...and it has been deteriorating steadily in the past 10+ years, drastically, even.

but I suppose if we want to look back at history and see where we have been shining on the global community by pretending to be the 'good guys' meanwhile raping and pillaging resources for our own profit... well we could probably go back at least to Vietnam. Wasn't that all about tin resources as opposed to communism?

[The Second Stone]

48. Watch what you say because the US

government is spying on your every word and deed. Yeah, Snowden and the earlier whistleblowers who were ignored did break the rules to inform us of these unconstitutional invasions. The shame is on us.

[Cleita]

50. They have been spying on us since the cold war. I found out I have an FBI file on me

since the sixties over a travel magazine I subscribed to from the Soviet Union through a London publishing house. I thought it would get me a better grade in history classes. Silly me.

[nadinbrzezinski]

51. I know, and as a reporter I am doubly an enemy of the state.

[still_one]

58. Snowden signed papers and took oaths that he would not compromise information. He violated that,

and the law.

People can violate the law and still do the right thing

"Fall of the American Empire"

this country went through a civil war and came out intact

This drama queen bullshit is all that is, and frankly I am getting a little tired of it

Everyone is suddenly an expert, we will see. I bet on American, sorry about that

[nadinbrzezinski]

59. The US was not an empire in 1865

And you are talking of the footnote. Not what he revealed.

I love it.

[still_one]

66. If things are so terrible here, why don't you involve yourself with candidates that support your

view?

[nadinbrzezinski]

69. I thought I did, I even voted twice or him and gave money. (Never again, getting taken by a DC pol)

But hey, what can I say? So how about we talk of the implications of this massive security state that neither Obama or Bush started, instead of me, the footnote, or footnote number two?

Can we start with the constitutional implications? Or is that too much?

Suffice to say...I do think you are missing the big picture.

And yes, I expect things to be far from hitting bottom.

I don't think you want to. So with no further, this is the last answer you get from me on this thread.

[The Second Stone]

120. If only the judges, legislators and Presidents

who also took oaths to support the constitution and have utterly abandoned those oaths to spy on me were on the run. Snowden is small potatoes, he has never hurt me. The criminal oathbreakers who run the country spy on my every move. They start wars for personal reasons, then tax me to pay for those wars.

[Catherina]

61. We're learning quick, or pretending at least. We've gone from demanding to *hoping*

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/23/edward-snowden-gchq

[nadinbrzezinski]

62. Before long I expect the administration

To revoke his citizenship.

Non persons, in spite of UN conventions, have a hard time.

[Catherina]

72. Probably. And only to complicate things if they dare touch him afterwards lol n/t

[FirstLight]

79. ding!

The correlations to Rome have been, and are, quite applicable and eerily prescient...

[90-percent]

84. a minor embellishment to the OP

"General Alexander is right. Snowden has done a lot of damage to the US and her allies, junior partners in Empire."

Our government constructing a TOTAL INFORMATION AWARENESS surveillance state is what cost America her prestige, not Snowden revealing it.

Considering that perhaps there's 2 million people* that have the same security clearance as Snowden, if not Snowden, it surely would have been somebody else.

-90% Jimmy

*hope I got my facts right here. It may not be 2 million, but the number is pretty staggering. Secrets accessible to thousands of people would seem to be a formula for TOTAL INFORMATION LEAKAGE. Kind of absurd to expect thousands of people to keep a secret, don't you think?

[nadinbrzezinski]

85. Agreed and he is actually number seven

[cantbeserious]

90. The Travesty Is Not Snowden - The Travesty Is The Emasculation Of The 4th Amendment

eom

[timdog44]

93. I think

you may the number of people in the "spy" field correct. The number I saw, and can not remember where it was, is that about 850,000 have the same security clearance as Snowden. A ridiculous number of people to have available to them such sensitive information. The reason I remember the 850,000 is because it is a number that is larger than the number of physicians in the United States. Which I found to be sad.

[RC]

106. Snowden could not have done much or any damage to the US and her allies, junior partners in Empire,

if we, the United States were an honest, law abiding country, following our federal and State laws and interpreting our Constitution properly, as the law of the land.
Instead our government went off the rails and started gathering any and all communions information on everyone, everywhere, as if that were somehow legal and right, regardless of any actual legalities.

Any and all this communications data gathering against the law? Pass a law making it legal. If it violates the Constitution? Either ignore the Constitution or pass an unconstitutional law, making violating the Constitutional legal also. That is what we are seeing with all this spying on everyone, everywhere. Anyone that refuses to see the problem is part of the problem.
It does not matter who owns the meta data, the United States government is violating the Constitution in demanding that that information be gathered into searchable data bases for who know what nefarious ends.

[gateley]

89. Well done, Nad. I agree.

[temmer]

91. very interesting reads in this thread

thank you all!

[timdog44]

95. This has been indeed

a good thread. Thanks. Personally I think the solution is for us to become an isolationist nation. I know, dream on. But, become self sufficient and to hell with the rest of the world. Who needs them. It would some difficult years, but better than going down in flames.

[nadinbrzezinski]

97. I don't think we can do that

We have no industrial base, for example. And with global climate change the species will require a new way of thinking. We are truly not alone here.

What I suspect though is that we might also be at the end of the nation state (double whammy) and we need to prevent the rise of the corporation as a global entity. Short term, china is on the rise. But also the corps.

[timdog44]

99. I think the ingenuity

of the people of the United States could make it happen. I can dream. But the double whammy of the end of the nation state seems the likely end. At 65 years of age, not sure I will see it, but I feel for the coming generations. And fear for them too.

Corporations on the rise. China on the rise. Which is the lesser of two evils?

[nadinbrzezinski]

100. I write dystopian fiction

In the recent past it's like why bother?

[timdog44]

101. I have no answer.

I need you to write some Utopian fiction and make me feel better.

[nadinbrzezinski]

102. It has some of that.

I guess that's what keeps me going. Hitting bottom and somewhat rebuilding.

[One of the 99]

111. In good ol' days the rest of the world relied on the US

to protect them from the Soviet Union. That's why when we snapped our fingers they did our bidding. They don't need us to do that anymore so they are not as compliant to our demands.

[dionysus]

113. hoooookay nostradamus...

[tammywammy]

121. The US will fall due to our war with North Korea

At least the OP used to be all about war with North Korea.