No. I think he gets his presents from Iran. I hear he likes missiles.moono said:
More presents for the Lebanese army today though.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18876532/
Lebanon army takes on militants
- Thread starter mears
- Start date
More presents for the Lebanese army today though.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
warren said:
I note that your revisionist tendencies are at work again.
I offered to fight you, subject to you being "handicapped" with the same problem I have, one leg shortened. You even have the option to have it done under anaesthetic, a choice I didn't have.
Chicken.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
nino_savatte said:You do surprise me! I mean, knock me down with a feather, you don't read books by other authors.
I've never read any Lewis but I have read some Coulter and Hannity. What awful reads they were too!
Imagine comparing Bernard Lewis with Ann Coulter.
The difference between you and me, is that my opinion of Lewis was formed after actually reading things that he wrote.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
ViolentPanda said:
Is that what he's saying, or is he commenting on a disestablishmentarian element in Shiism itself?
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
ViolentPanda said:
I've researched a couple of your authors. I'm impressed that you didn't try to load me up with biased propagandists.
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
Johnny Canuck2 said:
Like you would have done.
Mirielle Sircoff anyone?
david dissadent
New Member
And where did the money for this new group come from?
Well Seymore Hersh seems to think the same brains trust that cooked up al Queada in the first place.
*edited to say the link is very very well worth a read*
Well Seymore Hersh seems to think the same brains trust that cooked up al Queada in the first place.
*edited to say the link is very very well worth a read*
david dissadent
New Member
I wrote this to explain why the neocons keep backing the wrong horses. Its rambling thinking aloud so feel free to skip it.
Britain is small nation, poor in resources with a relatively small population. Yet it managed to rule a very significant portion of the worlds population and territory for a couple of hundred years. Its indirect influence was greater still. While no simple statement could genuinley be accurate one that has more validity than most is that the British were able to rule because they understood power. The ruling classes of Enland had been holding foreign populations in check for centuaries, since 1066 in effect. Slowly developing a culture that got it right did not happen immediately or particularly painlessly as there set backs such as the great anarchy that beset Enland in the mid 1100s or getting thrown out of Scotland in the 1300's. Nor was there application of power without near constant threat inside there Empire during its heyday.
Today it is called devide and rule, but it was more subtle than that. It was about cultivating local leaders and winning the loyalty of the local power structure, inserting themselves into the local class system morphing themselves enough to subvert the local conditions to rule at times unseen. The vast majority of the inhabitants of india are widely believed never to have seen a single whiteman in all the time they ruled India for example.
The American Empire did not spring full grown from the head of Zeus in 1945. They too spent centuaries building up there power from a weak base. They never had a ruling class dedicated to ruling a subverted peoples. There ruling class was all about making money. They however did have a civil service that was capable of learning and applying the subtleties of the old England to its own control over its ever expanding Empire. Most Americans were oblivious to its Imperial role in Latin America over the decades before WWII.
While America paid little head to the world beyond its borders the mandrins were able to run the Empire as an Empire should be run, with minimum use of your own troops. But America is a democracy not a Monarchy so leaders would emerge without the understanding of how to run an Empire and go charging of into greater world expecting it to be a cowboy film. Vietnam was such an adventure. Idealism infected the descion making and the tradegdy ended up arriving in small town America.
In the 70s and 80s America turned away from the world and the madrins run the Empire again. From Afghanistan to El Salvidor, Angola to Indonesia, America played the game with skill taking risks, murdering hundreds of thousands and very few American deaths.
Then idealists got back in power. They are not an ounce more greedy or evil than the Clintons, Carters, Nixons, Kennedys or Eisenhowers of the world. But the neocons believed, believed in good and virtue of there ideals and that all humanity wished to share them. They did not listen to the mandrins of the Empire in the CIA or the department of State, with there flawed machivalian veiw of humanity. They truly believed they could make a profit doing good. They just lacked the subtlety of understanding power.
Perhaps a lack of subltety is an american trait, that outside of the mandrins they are a good hearted brash people: one can compare Radiohead to Nirvana, cricket to baseball, Monty Python to Robin Williams cheap and easy to do but perhaps there is a truth in it. Even in religion it is there: Jerry Falwell and there literlist readings of the bible versus Rome's Aqunius theology that draws from Aristotle, Plato and even Arab sources and the super churches with there airbrush art vs the Vatican and Michael Angelo.
The neocons turn up in Lebanon, big loud brash with good intentions provided they can turn a profit but no real understanding of Empire. Dish out the dosh to likely looking lads and get it all wrong again.
Post 9/11 bin Laden was an eminently manageble problem. He is the outcome of not paying attention to the aftermath of the vicotry in Afghanistan. 3000 lives is a nasty loss, but a total one off, bin Laden is an errant pawn on a great chess board. Easily brought to heel with a bit of time and the right knights and rooks being mustered.
Saddam was one of there own pieces who had gone off reservation but was well contained.
Until idealists turned up believing that the empire was a force for good and profit. Given places like East Timor and Guatamala the idealists have not increased the human mysery (over bussiness as usual), perhaps all they have done is brought it home to America..........
Sorry should that not be the idealists have not increased the human mysery YET. They may have unleashed forces far far beyond there controll.
Britain is small nation, poor in resources with a relatively small population. Yet it managed to rule a very significant portion of the worlds population and territory for a couple of hundred years. Its indirect influence was greater still. While no simple statement could genuinley be accurate one that has more validity than most is that the British were able to rule because they understood power. The ruling classes of Enland had been holding foreign populations in check for centuaries, since 1066 in effect. Slowly developing a culture that got it right did not happen immediately or particularly painlessly as there set backs such as the great anarchy that beset Enland in the mid 1100s or getting thrown out of Scotland in the 1300's. Nor was there application of power without near constant threat inside there Empire during its heyday.
Today it is called devide and rule, but it was more subtle than that. It was about cultivating local leaders and winning the loyalty of the local power structure, inserting themselves into the local class system morphing themselves enough to subvert the local conditions to rule at times unseen. The vast majority of the inhabitants of india are widely believed never to have seen a single whiteman in all the time they ruled India for example.
The American Empire did not spring full grown from the head of Zeus in 1945. They too spent centuaries building up there power from a weak base. They never had a ruling class dedicated to ruling a subverted peoples. There ruling class was all about making money. They however did have a civil service that was capable of learning and applying the subtleties of the old England to its own control over its ever expanding Empire. Most Americans were oblivious to its Imperial role in Latin America over the decades before WWII.
While America paid little head to the world beyond its borders the mandrins were able to run the Empire as an Empire should be run, with minimum use of your own troops. But America is a democracy not a Monarchy so leaders would emerge without the understanding of how to run an Empire and go charging of into greater world expecting it to be a cowboy film. Vietnam was such an adventure. Idealism infected the descion making and the tradegdy ended up arriving in small town America.
In the 70s and 80s America turned away from the world and the madrins run the Empire again. From Afghanistan to El Salvidor, Angola to Indonesia, America played the game with skill taking risks, murdering hundreds of thousands and very few American deaths.
Then idealists got back in power. They are not an ounce more greedy or evil than the Clintons, Carters, Nixons, Kennedys or Eisenhowers of the world. But the neocons believed, believed in good and virtue of there ideals and that all humanity wished to share them. They did not listen to the mandrins of the Empire in the CIA or the department of State, with there flawed machivalian veiw of humanity. They truly believed they could make a profit doing good. They just lacked the subtlety of understanding power.
Perhaps a lack of subltety is an american trait, that outside of the mandrins they are a good hearted brash people: one can compare Radiohead to Nirvana, cricket to baseball, Monty Python to Robin Williams cheap and easy to do but perhaps there is a truth in it. Even in religion it is there: Jerry Falwell and there literlist readings of the bible versus Rome's Aqunius theology that draws from Aristotle, Plato and even Arab sources and the super churches with there airbrush art vs the Vatican and Michael Angelo.
The neocons turn up in Lebanon, big loud brash with good intentions provided they can turn a profit but no real understanding of Empire. Dish out the dosh to likely looking lads and get it all wrong again.
Post 9/11 bin Laden was an eminently manageble problem. He is the outcome of not paying attention to the aftermath of the vicotry in Afghanistan. 3000 lives is a nasty loss, but a total one off, bin Laden is an errant pawn on a great chess board. Easily brought to heel with a bit of time and the right knights and rooks being mustered.
Saddam was one of there own pieces who had gone off reservation but was well contained.
Until idealists turned up believing that the empire was a force for good and profit. Given places like East Timor and Guatamala the idealists have not increased the human mysery (over bussiness as usual), perhaps all they have done is brought it home to America..........
Sorry should that not be the idealists have not increased the human mysery YET. They may have unleashed forces far far beyond there controll.
Baboonking
Registered Baboon
david dissadent said:
Good find. That sheds some on light on the background why this violence kicked off. I wonder if the new Fatah splinter group fighting were in direct receipt Saudi/lebanese government cash and weapons or perhaps were upset at other groups recieving support? Sounds like a very short timeframe for a case of 'blowback'
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