Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
Editorials & Other Articles
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
The brainwashing of Americans is breathtaking
Since the inception of the USA it has been engaged in the abuse and all out war against others.
Whether it be the Native Americans, slavery, attacks on the third world to extract natural resources, and of course the middle east.
But yet somehow many many Americans believe we are the "victims".
Bottom line is, and the cold hard truth is, our lifestyles here are at the expense of the poor.
"The rich man's living is the poor man's Hell" - Peter Tosh
77 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Response to SHRED (Original post)
that much truth so bluntly. And he's more than smart enough to make the point more subtly than I feel is worth the effort. 
... expressing "who is doing the bombing, who is doing the beheading, who is blowing up stuff all over?" 
Hmmm. I wonder too.
Air Force burning through bomb stockpiles
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/12/03/isil-iraq-syria-hellfire-missiles-drones/76741954/
Everything the modern reichwingers and corporate neo-fascists - of BOTH parties - know they learned from these two.
This pony, Princess Celestia, can send others to the moon for indefinite and basically eternal time-outs, though she's usually the wise, benevolent philosopher-queen type. Gads, I am such a nerd.
Celestia would send the Zombie King to the moon for a thousand years. She's done it for others.
And 
declaring a Jewish state on land that was majority non-Jewish, which obviously severely violated the rights of the Palestinians. That was a terrible move that assisted in the Palestinian Nakba. Of course the Zionist terrorists attempted to seize all of Palestine, claiming legitimacy based on the illegitimate UN resolution. Later on, the US became much more deeply involved.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
The 1953 Iranian coup d'état, known in Iran as the 28 Mordad coup, was the overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in favour of strengthening the monarchical rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on 19 August 1953, orchestrated by the United Kingdom (under the name "Operation Boot"
and the United States (under the name TPAJAX Project).
Mossadegh had sought to audit the books of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), a British corporation (now BP) and to change the terms of the company's access to Iranian petroleum reserves. Upon the refusal of the AIOC to co-operate with the Iranian government, the parliament (Majlis) voted to nationalize the assets of the company and expel their representatives from the country. Following the coup in 1953, a government under General Fazlollah Zahedi was formed which allowed Mohammad-Rezā Shāh Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran (Persian for king), to rule the country more firmly as monarch. He relied heavily on US and UK support to hold on to power until his own overthrow in February 1979. In August 2013, 60 years after, the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) admitted that it was involved in both the planning and the execution of the coup, including the bribing of Iranian politicians, security and army high-ranking officials, as well as pro-coup propaganda. The CIA is quoted acknowledging the coup was carried out "under CIA direction" and "as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government.
and the United States (under the name TPAJAX Project).
Mossadegh had sought to audit the books of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), a British corporation (now BP) and to change the terms of the company's access to Iranian petroleum reserves. Upon the refusal of the AIOC to co-operate with the Iranian government, the parliament (Majlis) voted to nationalize the assets of the company and expel their representatives from the country. Following the coup in 1953, a government under General Fazlollah Zahedi was formed which allowed Mohammad-Rezā Shāh Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran (Persian for king), to rule the country more firmly as monarch. He relied heavily on US and UK support to hold on to power until his own overthrow in February 1979. In August 2013, 60 years after, the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) admitted that it was involved in both the planning and the execution of the coup, including the bribing of Iranian politicians, security and army high-ranking officials, as well as pro-coup propaganda. The CIA is quoted acknowledging the coup was carried out "under CIA direction" and "as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government.
The US had a major role in spreading radical Islam and much of it was deliberate:
In the 20th century, Muslims didn't come close to standing out as more brutal than other groups. The current conflict in the Middle East is a recent phenomenon, unless you want to go back hundreds of years. The Western nations were difficult to beat in terms of violence, though no group had a monopoly:
If we're going to be pointing fingers of blame for the savageness of the Century -- and you know you want to -- raw numbers are probably not enough. There have been plenty of episodes of concentrated brutality that don't show up on the list above simply because the affected population is so small. Meanwhile, a major reason that Russia and China stand so prominently at the top of the list is that they have so many potential victims to begin with. Therefore, I've taken all the episodes of mass killing of the 20th Century and divided them by the population of the country that suffered the losses.
The 25 highest percentages of national populations killed during periods of mass brutality (20th Century):
If you look carefully at the chart with the intention of determining which race, religion or ideology has been the most brutal, you'll see a pattern emerge. It's quite a startling pattern, so I'd rather you find it by yourself. Go back and take a second look. I'll meet you at the next paragraph after I explain that, honestly, I did not manipulate the data. I simply took the most likely death toll (military and civilian) among the natives of each country (such as all the South Vietnamese -- ARVN soldiers, civilians and Viet Cong -- who were killed in the Vietnam War), and divided it by the population of that country (prewar). I didn't take, say, only the military dead, or only the victims of genocide. I didn't arbitrarily decide to split one horror into two in order to make each seem smaller (the only borderline case is that I calculated the Russians dead from WW2 and Stalin separately. A judgement call.), or eliminate countries of a certain size. No, I had no predetermined point to prove. I did the math and let the chips fall where they would. (Here are the raw numbers if you want to check behind me.)
That's why I was so startled to discover that there is absolutely no pattern to the chart. If I had simply picked 25 countries out of a hat, I could not have gotten a more diverse spread than we've got here. We've got rich countries and poor countries; industrial and agrarian; big and small. We've got people of all colors -- white, black, yellow and brown -- widely represented among both the slaughterers and the slaughterees. We've got Christians, Moslems, Buddhists and Atheists all butchering one another in the name of their various gods or lack thereof. Among the perpetrators, we've got political leanings of the left, right and middle; some are monarchies; some are dictatorships and some are even democracies. We've got innocent victims invaded by big, bad neighbors, and we've got plenty of countries who brought it on themselves, sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind. Go on -- take a third look. Find any type of country that is not represented among the agents of a major blooding, and probably the only reason for that is that there aren't that many countries in that category to begin with (There are no Hindu or Jewish countries on the chart, but then, there's only one of each on the whole planet, and they're both waiting in the wings among the next 25.).
In a way, it's rather disheartening to realize that we can't smugly blame the brutality of the century on the Communists, or the imperialists, or the Moslem fundamentalists, or the godless. Every major category of human has done it's share to boost the body count, so replacing, say, Moslem rulers with Christian rulers, or white rulers with black rulers, is not going to change it at all.
The 25 highest percentages of national populations killed during periods of mass brutality (20th Century):
If you look carefully at the chart with the intention of determining which race, religion or ideology has been the most brutal, you'll see a pattern emerge. It's quite a startling pattern, so I'd rather you find it by yourself. Go back and take a second look. I'll meet you at the next paragraph after I explain that, honestly, I did not manipulate the data. I simply took the most likely death toll (military and civilian) among the natives of each country (such as all the South Vietnamese -- ARVN soldiers, civilians and Viet Cong -- who were killed in the Vietnam War), and divided it by the population of that country (prewar). I didn't take, say, only the military dead, or only the victims of genocide. I didn't arbitrarily decide to split one horror into two in order to make each seem smaller (the only borderline case is that I calculated the Russians dead from WW2 and Stalin separately. A judgement call.), or eliminate countries of a certain size. No, I had no predetermined point to prove. I did the math and let the chips fall where they would. (Here are the raw numbers if you want to check behind me.)
That's why I was so startled to discover that there is absolutely no pattern to the chart. If I had simply picked 25 countries out of a hat, I could not have gotten a more diverse spread than we've got here. We've got rich countries and poor countries; industrial and agrarian; big and small. We've got people of all colors -- white, black, yellow and brown -- widely represented among both the slaughterers and the slaughterees. We've got Christians, Moslems, Buddhists and Atheists all butchering one another in the name of their various gods or lack thereof. Among the perpetrators, we've got political leanings of the left, right and middle; some are monarchies; some are dictatorships and some are even democracies. We've got innocent victims invaded by big, bad neighbors, and we've got plenty of countries who brought it on themselves, sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind. Go on -- take a third look. Find any type of country that is not represented among the agents of a major blooding, and probably the only reason for that is that there aren't that many countries in that category to begin with (There are no Hindu or Jewish countries on the chart, but then, there's only one of each on the whole planet, and they're both waiting in the wings among the next 25.).
In a way, it's rather disheartening to realize that we can't smugly blame the brutality of the century on the Communists, or the imperialists, or the Moslem fundamentalists, or the godless. Every major category of human has done it's share to boost the body count, so replacing, say, Moslem rulers with Christian rulers, or white rulers with black rulers, is not going to change it at all.
"It is patently obvious that you are anti-Semitic. But the Democratic party isn't. The vast majority of Democrats believe that Israel has the right to exist and the right to defend itself."
You write very few things on DU that are remotely correct, including that statement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination
The division of Palestine severely violated the native Palestinians' right to self-determination. I'm on a frickin liberal site and someone here doesn't even understand this simple concept? You should also look up the Golden Rule, and apply it.
That's some heavy authoritarian crap there. The British didn't own Palestine. The people that actually lived there are the only people that have a right to determine their own fate.
Nowhere is it completely peaceful and the US is one of the least peaceful nations. You were slamming the Middle East for being particularly violent. They actually have a recent history of being less violent than the West.
There is a good reason a number of Muslim countries have/had a diverse minority population going back many centuries. They had managed to get along better than in other parts of the world, including Europe. Powerful nations causing havoc against weaker nations doesn't help the situation.
http://www.alternet.org/belief/despite-wingnut-freakout-obama-right-christian-violence-just-bad-muslim-violence
[URL=
.html][IMG]
[/IMG][/URL]
It's weird that my defending Muslims against your bigotry is anti-Semitic in your view.
The right of nations to self-determination (from German: Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Völker) is a cardinal principle in modern international law (commonly regarded as a jus cogens rule), binding, as such, on the United Nations as authoritative interpretation of the Charter’s norms. It states that nations, based on respect for the principle of equal rights and fair equality of opportunity, have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no external compulsion or interference which can be traced back to the Atlantic Charter, signed on 14 August 1941, by Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, and Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom who pledged The Eight Principal points of the Charter.
The division of Palestine severely violated the native Palestinians' right to self-determination. I'm on a frickin liberal site and someone here doesn't even understand this simple concept? You should also look up the Golden Rule, and apply it.
"How exactly, can the action of the U.N. about land that Britain had sovereignty over (due to the collapse of the Ottoman empire) be quote "illegal" unquote? Do you even read what you write?"
That's some heavy authoritarian crap there. The British didn't own Palestine. The people that actually lived there are the only people that have a right to determine their own fate.
Nowhere is it completely peaceful and the US is one of the least peaceful nations. You were slamming the Middle East for being particularly violent. They actually have a recent history of being less violent than the West.
There is a good reason a number of Muslim countries have/had a diverse minority population going back many centuries. They had managed to get along better than in other parts of the world, including Europe. Powerful nations causing havoc against weaker nations doesn't help the situation.
http://www.alternet.org/belief/despite-wingnut-freakout-obama-right-christian-violence-just-bad-muslim-violence
[URL=
.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]
It's weird that my defending Muslims against your bigotry is anti-Semitic in your view.
