We've noted that Mr. Obama tends to apologize for whatever's wrong anywhere in the world. He's apologized for American actions often enough that "apology tour" was invented to describe his travels. Forbes pointed out that Mr. Obama acts like a anti-colonialist which is "the doctrine that rich countries of the West got rich by invading, occupying and looting poor countries of Asia, Africa and South America."
Anticolonialism is Mr. Obama's ideas writ large. A dedicated anticolonialist argues that all problems in Africa and in the poorer countries of Asia are the fault of the European powers who traded there a century ago.
Zimbabweans couldn't operate the sewer systems that were left behind by the British and had a cholera epidemic? If the British had left them alone, they'd have still been living in healthy sustainable grass huts instead of moving to the cities where crowding made sewers necessary.
India can't realize its economic potential? It's all the fault of those rascally British who encouraged the government to play too big a role in the economy. Or maybe they didn't build enough railroads and other infrastructure. Either way, the British should've left them alone.
India and Pakistan don't get along? British surveyors drew the boundary line without taking into account the tribal sensitivities of the indigenous peoples.
American achievements make other nations feel inferior? Mr. Obama has a solution for that, too:
A few months ago NASA Chief Charles Bolden announced that from now on the primary mission of America's space agency would be to improve relations with the Muslim world. Come again? Bolden said he got the word directly from the President. "He wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and math and engineering." [emphasis added]
Muslim nations feel inferior because they don't manufacture much, don't discover anything useful other than more barbaric ways to slaughter innocents, and can barely manage the advanced technology they buy or steal? It's all the West's fault! We need to make amends by boosting their self-esteem so that they feel good about their history.
It's recently been revealed that on top of all their economic sins which destabilized African and Asian governments due to poverty, Westerners have heaped up more suffering by causing a huge sexual imbalance all across Asia. In "Western Governments Are Blamed for Asia's Shortage of Women," the Atlantic reveals it's all the fault of those scheming imperialists at the Rockefeller Foundation, the United Nations, and other co-conspirators. Science writer Mara Hvistendahl reveals all:
"[She] lays the blame squarely on western governments and businesses that have exported technology and pro-abortion practices without considering the consequences," unlike other accounts, that solely basing sex selection on cultural practices.
Amniocentesis and ultrasound scans have had largely positive applications in the west, where they have been used to detect fetal abnormalities. But exported to Asia and eastern Europe they have been intricately linked to an explosion of sex selection and a mushrooming of female abortions. Hvistendahl claims western governments actively promoted abortion and sex selection in the developing world, encouraging the liberalization of abortion laws and subsidizing sales of ultrasounds as a form of population control.
"It took millions of dollars in funding from US organizations for sex determination and abortion to catch on in the developing world," she writes.
The sexual imbalance has nothing to do with the Asian preference for sons over daughters. It has nothing to do with the fact that female infanticide has been practiced in Asia for millennia, though drowning baby girls after they're born is less efficient than using advanced technology to detect unborn femininity early enough to save the mother's energy in bringing the fetus to term.
Culture has nothing to do with it, it's all the fault of those imperialist Western know-it-alls. Instead of waiting for rising incomes to limit the number of babies women would have, these heartless conspirators pushed to limit population by arranging for girl babies to be aborted.
Aborting girls is clearly the most effective strategy for reducing population, of course. If a society has 100 men and one woman, the maximum number of babies per year is one. If, on the other hand, there are 100 women and one man, the society can have 100 babies per year, as well as one man who's either completely exhausted or enjoying paradisal satisfaction.
Lack of women can destabilize a society, of course, which makes wars far more likely. War kills off a lot of men, but that doesn't do much for future population growth because it's women that have the babies.
The Western imperialist conspiracy may have been effective in reducing future population growth, but the current women shortage is all the West's fault.
We wonder when Mr. Obama will get around to apologizing for all those abortions? What with the economic collapse, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, his apology agenda's a bit backlogged just now, but we're sure he'll get to it in due time.
What does Chinese history have to teach America that Joe Biden doesn't know?
"A dedicated anticolonialist argues that all problems in Africa and in the poorer countries of Asia are the fault of the European powers who traded there a century ago."~Will Offensicht
Actually a dedicated PR apologist for empire will frame a statement such as this; one that pretends that the European powers who traded there, actually disengaged and had nothing further to do with the situation. This is spurious hysterical apologia, based in myth not history.
Characterizing Obama as "anti-imperialist" is simply a joke, he is the titular figurehead for the most powerful global empire in the history of mankind.
ww
Interesting article, but your seeming defense of (specifically British) imperialism at the beginning strikes me as odd.
>Interesting article, but your seeming defense of (specifically British) imperialism at the beginning strikes me as odd.
Some countries really were better off under the Union Jack. Rhodesia comes to mind.
Rhodesia wasn't a nation it was the private fiefdom of the pirate C. Rhodes, and his compatriots like Milner and the rest of the maniacleFabian lunatics. The Union Jack is just a costume dinner jacket for the Jolly Roger.
Afrikaner heritage there Ian?
ww
Your points on Asian abortion are exactly right - a point I was making to someone myself recently. The idea that Western abortion and ultrasound have caused the Asian gender imbalance is **ludicrous** in every sense of the word. It has only allow them to do what they were already doing in a more humane way (Well, sort of more humane. Abortion isn't humane but it certainly beats a drowning).
If I am understanding the post correctly, the author is bemoaning the fact that technology developed by smart people has been misused by the not so smart for the wrong reason.
Our fearless golfer will continue his tour of apologies, because that is what he is being paid to do.
Since 1949 the Psychiatric community has been teaching that we shouldn't do well because those among us who can't do well will feel "bad". It is being taught in our schools. It is being taught by the sophomoric TV shows. It is being taught by the press. It is being taught in the sports arenas of our schools. Example: A coach was fired from a high school position because his team beat another team 100 to zero! We shouldn't do our best. Let's all be equal. But we're not. I cannot compete with Shaquille O'neal on the basketball court.
"Do your best." Is no longer the mantra that children hear at home. "Let's all be equal", is now the refrain.
Americans have been vilified because we used more of the natural resources than the rest of the world. We were smart enough to use the natural resources. That's what they are for, our use. Because an uneducated bushman didn't invent the solar panel, doesn't mean it shouldn't have been invented. Because the Chinese developed paper, does not mean that the product shouldn't have been developed.
The American people from all nations came together and created one of the wonders of the world - the United States of America.
The Chinese, German, Irish, English, French, Spanish, and others came together and have created this wondrous nation. One ignorant baboon is destroying it with his foolishness.
Thank you,
Robert Walker
"We were smart enough to use the natural resources. That's what they are for, our use"
+1
"One ignorant baboon is destroying it with his foolishness."~Robert Walker
The ignorant calling others ignorant...hmmm, there is a label for that, I seem hesitant to use.
Those who think ONE person in ANY capacity has ANY effect whatsoever on a systemic situation is...um, ignorant...a rant based on ignoring the true situation, one of systemic control.
As for "smart..use of natural 'resources'," this is a biased homocentric viewpoint that disregards nature as simply the "supplier of 'Product', rather than the miracle of creation that it is. This is NOT smart, this is utter and profound hubris.
ww
Yay, twibi! +1 for me, too.
The "ignorant baboon" has had a lot of help from such luminaries as Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid who add to their fortunes collecting campaign contributions from people who receives their earmarks.
He has had a LOT of help. He needed it - he's not enough, alone, to wreck us.
A gloss is a total system of perception and language ~ Talcott Parsons
ww
"Third World troubles are not our fault."~Subtitle
This assertion is absolute hogwash.
Third World troubles are in the main the result of IMF shock and awe restructuring programs. And these programs are ultimately backed up by the military arm of the US, as enforcer of the financial empire.
Certainly NATO is becoming more and more involved in the European and now the north African campaigns, but the first and formost general command is based in the US with it's Full Spectrum Dominance core strategy policy.
@ Robert Walker
Bravo! Well said again, sir.
I have often wondered: If America, as we are often accused, derive our vast wealth and prosperity solely from the plunder of resources from other peoples and lands across the world, then why the hell is it that those peoples living on those lands never seemed to be bright enough to put any of those resources to good use before Westerners arrived? There is no apology necessary.
Arab sheikhs are wealthy because they happened to have parked their tents on top of an oil field when oil became useful, not because they had any particular use for it.
Also, Robert: I have felt bad when performing poorly at something, especially something at which I was skilled. My response was to do better next time, the next poor bastard be damned. A lesson well-learned.
@ Willy:
I know of nothing Robert Walker has posted that was ignorant; whereas, the destruction wrought by the ignorant SOB in the White House is palpable and widespread and worsening daily.
Yes, Nature is quite properly viewed as a supplier of resource and product -- if, and ONLY IF, -- I cannot stress that enough -- we are conscientious stewards of those resources. Waste and destruction follow otherwise. Consider the Christmas Tree farmer. Whatever you think of the tradition of covering a tree in plastic crap, his business survives year to year because of his careful stewardship of the land he owns. If he were to clear-cut this year, he would have no trees to sell next year.
Third World troubles are only our fault inasmuch as we continue to prop up violent regimes under the guise of 'humanitarian aid.' Third World troubles have nothing to do with the IMF apart from their exacerbation. The chief causes of these troubles are these: one, evil people employing modern technology in evil ways in backward, violent cultures; and two, the fact that only in Western societies and those that followed them in the belief in the worth of the individual and his freedom was long-term prosperity and relative stability and peace possible.
"Third World troubles have nothing to do with the IMF apart from their exacerbation."~Bro John
You don't know what you are talking about here.
These nations are 'set-up' by the IMF in partnership with international corporations. It is a smooth working agenda and it is proven in the public record.
The "evil people employing modern technology in evil ways in backward"...
Are the people who manufacture wars and occupation for empire. This is the main 'business' of the High Cabal, war profits, reconsturuction profits in cyclical systemics.
This is no secret--this in no mystery nor 'conspiracy'. Just because you haven't read this history--because it is not propagated by the systems own PR, doesn't mean the history isn't there in vast detail.
I get this same jive from Ifon, and then if I present substantiating evidence--suddenly nobody has any interest in reading it. Or it is picked at like this is just a small example that can be explained in other ways--but it is a chain of evidence that must be followed.
And the commentators here have rejected it out of hand on the flimsiest of pretext.
Again, you have to be out of your mind that the US is still a constitutional republic in the face of the obvious police state now erected over the heads of Americans. The entire Bill of Rights, plus HabeuCorpus has been scrapped--wars of aggression are waged one after the other, without a congressional declaration of war. And this has been the history since the end of WWII. The militarist state has only grown steadily this whole time. And ALL of this is comprehended and resolved by understanding it as an ongoing long term agenda. And as you obviously fale to notice >> civil USA is not to be spared.
This is a stupid puppet show going on in DC - this so-called 'Debt' is a fairytale told in ledger books. The whole financial system is a ponzi scheme.
YOU are being snookered by the slight of hand distraction of spinning public relations. You actually believe this Punch and Judy show...it is jejune--utterly silly.
It is so in your face you should be able to figure it out without any lectures like this. This is obvious--if you don't see it, it is only because you don't want to.
The biggest mistake is to think this is all a mistake.~ww
"Yes, Nature is quite properly viewed as a supplier of resource and product -- if, and ONLY IF, -- I cannot stress that enough -- we are conscientious stewards of those resources."~Bro John
If you can sit there and pretend the "We"..."have been conscientious stewards," then there is probably no use in even discussing this with you. The assertion is stark raving mad.
This trite little story about the Christmas Tree Farmer is not the way the world works in the big picture. That is rhetorical hoak.
But the hyped up ululations of the choir here is sure to stand behind you in this nonsense. So I will just leave this as it is.
ww
The financial “wealth creation” game is over. Economies emerged from World War II relatively free of debt, but the 60-year global run-up has run its course. Finance capitalism is in a state of collapse, and marginal palliatives cannot revive it. The U.S. economy cannot “inflate its way out of debt,” because this would collapse the dollar and end its dreams of global empire by forcing foreign countries to go their own way. There is too little manufacturing to make the economy more “competitive,” given its high housing costs, transportation, debt and tax overhead. A quarter to a third of U.S. real estate has fallen into negative equity, so no banks will lend to them. The economy has hit a debt wall and is falling into negative equity, where it may remain for as far as the eye can see until there is a debt write-down.
One would think that politicians would be willing to do the math and realize that debts that can’t be paid, won’t be. But the debts are being kept on the books, continuing to extract interest to pay the creditors that have made the bad loans. The resulting debt deflation threatens to keep the economy in depression until a radical shift in policy occurs – a shift to save the “real” economy, not just the financial sector and the wealthiest 10 per cent of American families.
There is no sign that Mr. Obama’s economic advisers, Treasury officials and heads of the relevant Congressional committees recognize the need for a write-down. After all, they have been placed in their positions precisely because they do not understand that debt leveraging is a form of economic overhead, not real “wealth creation.” But their tunnel vision is what makes them “reliable” to Wall Street, which doesn’t like surprises. And the entire character of today’s financial crisis continues to be labeled “surprising” and “unexpected” by the press as each new surprisingly pessimistic statistic hits the news. It’s safe to be surprised; suspicious to have expected bad news and being a “premature doomsayer.” One must have faith in the system above all. And the system was the Greenspan Bubble. That is why “Ayn Rand Alan” was put in charge in the first place, after all.
The Obama-Geithner plan to restart the Bubble Economy’s debt growth so as to inflate asset prices by enough to pay off the debt overhang out of new “capital gains” cannot possibly work. But that is the only trick these ponies know. We have entered an era of asset-price deflation, not inflation. Economic data charts throughout the world have hit a wall and every trend has been plunging vertically downward since last autumn. U.S. consumer prices experienced their fastest plunge since the Great Depression of the 1930s, along with consumer “confidence,” international shipping, real estate and stock market prices, oil and the exchange rate for British sterling. The global economy is falling into depression, and cannot recover until debts are written down.
Instead of doing this, the government is doing just the opposite. It is proposing to take bad debts onto the public-sector balance sheet, printing new Treasury bonds give the banks – bonds whose interest charges will have to be paid by taxing labor and industry.
The U.S. economy is about to be “post-Sovietized.”
But we are far from having reached the end of the line. Celebrations that our present financialized economy represents the “end of history” are laughingly premature. Today’s policies look more like a dead end. But that does not mean that, like the Roman Empire, they won’t lead us down toward a new Dark Age. That’s what tends to happen when oligarchies do the planning.~Michael Hudson
This is not happening by mistake--this is the agenda.
ww
Systems Analysis
What's going on in Greece is exactly what's going to happen in America in a couple of weeks.
The big banks are forcing their bad debts on government.
They are also forcing governments to sell off national assets so the banks can install a "neofeudalism".
The European debt crisis is really financial warfare by the banks.
Indeed, the banks are in warfare against the rest of society."~Michael Hudson,
Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, who has advised the U.S., Canadian, Mexican and Latvian governments as well as the United Nations Institute for Training and Research. He is a former Wall Street economist at Chase Manhattan Bank who also helped establish the world’s first sovereign debt fund.
Warren Buffet, one of America's most successful capitalists and defenders of capitalism, points out: There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war ..
@Brohter John - Willy has a point that we have not taken good care of the earth. Isn't there a huge pile of floating plastic in the middle of the Pacific? Or is that another media myth?
As for climate change, the only meaningful consensus they reached is that their research ought to be funded. No money for the coming ice age, so they changed markets, just like McDonalds would. We can mess up the surface, but we can't do anything really meaningful to climate.
@ FredF:
You are quite correct; but, aren't you making my point that with the use of resources comes great responsibility? I didn't say we fulfilled that responsibility!
"I didn't say we fulfilled that responsibility!"~Bro John
Then what exactly is your argument against me Bro John?
You are using the term "we". Well just WHO is this "we"?
If you are talking about "Americans" which ones? Do you see them as having any real consensus?
Who is running things here? Do you actually believe 'the People' have a voice in this government any more?
You stridently hand wave factual information that you don't want to hear.
You make spurious arguments out of one side of your face and then give aplogia out of the other.
Now you say, "I didn't say we fulfilled that responsibility"...even though everythng that followed that statement about responsiblity was given in tenor of "as if" it has been fulfilled. The subtext is that, whether you backpeddle here or not.
ww
Willy, I may have misjudged you. Here is an article from a highly respected and credible source, Angela Codevilla of the Claremont Institute, saying something notably similar: in effect, that Obama is the product of a CIA setup.
http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1852/article_detail.asp
Thoughts?
Patience,
Thank you for the article. I am just now getting into the meat of it.
Codevilla {smile} has a very sophisticated grasp of modern spycraft;
"modified limited hang out"—siting him, but it is not really John Ehrlichman's phrase, but part of Intel Lingo, or lexicon as insider code. Associated with the term 'revetment', a holding wall. And these are pre-set contengencies by elaborate catagories. Every black op comes with such pre-existant off the shelf cover stories built into the operation itself.
"the image and narrative that he and his associates have carefully crafted for him."~Codevilla
In Inel Lexicon, this is called a "Legend."
I see where this is going as this Legend is discussed in my circles in an ongoing fashion.
But the article is excellent so far, and I am going back to finish it.
I suppose it will discuss who Soetoro actually is, as a high officer during the Indonesian coup...
but let me finish it, and I'll say more.
One note on the author...Codevilla? That is a rather "legendary" sounding name in itself, Lol {Secret House--Code House...etc.}
Quite interesting, even that.
ww
BTW that is 'Angelo', a male who wrote the article you brought up Patience.
Love the name; "Angel of the Code House."
Not to say that I don't believe it is his given name, such 'poetics' in real world synchronicities are not that uncommon.
There have been some very successful analysts who have used such, "Phantasmagorical" techniques for intuitive leads, that are remarkable in what they are led to. I think this can be attributed to a connection to what is called the "superconscious."
I have learned to keep a very open--but critical mind in studying Intel Analysis, there can indeed be, "spooky" features to spookworx.
ww
"Obama was housed at the University of Hawaii's East-West Center facility funded by the Asia Foundation, itself funded by CIA..."
..the Ford Foundation
"In the 1950s and '60s few cared where, say, the State Department or foundations such as Ford ended and the CIA began."~Codevilla
I have suggested going back to the Reece Commission on Tax Exempt Foundations a few times here. I do suggest it again, fo r any who hope to begin to understand the architecture of modern political power.
The last part about Cord Meyer is the most interesting, and you should go over that a few times to really get what is being revealed here.
There are some things I would say about the idea of "blowback" that Codevilla speaks to here--in that it too may very well be a 'modified limited hangout'.
Digging into the Foundations material would give you a clue to what I mean by that.
One last note; I think Codevilla's characterization of Wayne Madsen as "chechered" has more to do with Madsen speaking to things that even Codevilla thinks are too revealing for the 'commoners'. Madsen reaches at times, but the circumstantial evidence very often seems to me of a compelling enough nature to stretch with him.
ww
ww
Hey,
Where's Dave the rave on this one?
Surely he wants to probe for more of my personal lifestyle and such.
C'mon, where's the cardshark...??
We sure aren't using resources responsibly. On the other hand, the conservation movement started in America. I don't see other countries getting into preservation without Americans involved.
One more thing Patience,
Codevilla mentions that he is not going to address the Birth Certicicate issue--which is understandible, as his other information is the critical aspect of his particular argument.
However, just about any professional who works with Adobe's PHOTOSHOP, and ILLUSTRATOR programs, knew right away that the birth cert posted by the White House was an obvious rank forgery.
Being a professional in such skills myself, I can tell you there is simply no doubt whatsoever that the document is a counterfeit, a total fraud.
"I don't see other countries getting into preservation without Americans involved."~Fred
Well, when you don't see much of anything other that spun cotton candy on MSM in America, have you thought to look into what sort of efforts at preservation of other nations there might be?
I know that there have been great efforts by local tribes in and around the Amazon Rainforests to stop the ruin of that area. I think you will find that most indigenous peoples throughout the world make efforts to save their own home environments from the rape of international corporations.
Now this again, is a spoiler for that American Exeptionalist point of view. A point of view that may not even be conscious as such when put that way.
I guess my point is, presumption can be highly dangerous when held in large combinations thereof.
ww
Public Affairs wrote in Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences in a World Full of Men" that a 1% increase in the male to female ratio at birth led to a 5% increase in crime. Are we to blame for that, too?