COMMENTS:
Imagine all the people ...John Lennon
I vote YES to every one of them except "nothing would change"!
by mojo on Thu Jun 03, 04 8:35am
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American students would be even more brainwashed.
Your country spends actually quite abit on education.Its just your not getting results.Could put money into healthcare or your space program.
I'd like to echo vanman in that we do spend an increasingly bloated shitload on education with no results. I'd only agree in a larger increase for education if those tax dollars were refunded to taxpayers in the form of school vouchers and the bureaucratic morass that strangles the education system is entirely dismantled. We need to de-socialize our public education system and we need to do it immediately.
Plus you don't need an educated workforce to sit at a computer all day and push buttons. If they are educated too well they start asking too many questions.
eeeeerrrr my brain hurts
If they did that Bush wouldn't have any votes in the next election.
come on now kiddies
lets all *&%%#^^^ *^$##&^**( 87^^^$ and '**%#$^& the teachers
Im surprised you could even ask this question without the conservatives calling you a communist or hanoi maxxman or something like that.
It seems like a good idea to me, since the last time we overspent on defense and created a massive deficit was during Reagans years in office preparing for a war we would never have with a country who was already not in a position to fight us despite what we thought they had (USSR).
I would like it if someone with half-a-brain, and not just someone pre-programmed to spout liberal drivel could explain how more government funding will improve education. There are only three countries who spend more than we do per student: Norway, Switzerland and Denmark. Only Switzerland outperforms us and barely (TIMSS testing conducted for 7th and 8th graders). Meanwhile countries like Japan, Singapore, Korea, The Czech Republic, Slovenia and The Netherlands spend far less per student than we do and substantially outperform us. Isn't it obvious that with less government interference, teachers are allowed more freedom to teach without bureaucratic interference, teacher unions diverting funds, and uniform approaches (one size fits all) to education? Isn't there more accountability with less government?
it would be a wonderful day.
It's not how much money is given to the education of the country but how it is used. I come from New York and we hae every test possible; S.A.T., E.L.A. and science and social studies tests. It is incredibly how much were giving to testing when we should be giving the money to increase teachers salaries. I've asked former teachers why they quit the profession there answer not enough money.
What happens if the child fails a test we fail him and up root his whole confidence and alienate him and all of his friends. the solution is to use the money that we save by not testing so much and hire better more educated teachers to help every child for there own specific needs.
Unfortunately some people are just mentally inferior and do not improve no matter how much money you throw at them. Not all men were created equal.
I doubt it.But we can try I guess.But you need to understand that this is a nation of immigrants.A lot of kids don't even speak English(well,they speak Spanish instead).So we have to spend bunch of money just to let them learn how to speak English rather than "improving education system".
True not every person was created equal however they can still learn if you give time, money and have a good teacher.
Electric Chairs, More barbed wire, racks, thubscrews , army ,navy, Nuclear fucking weapons
You'll need em when we destroy the fucking places
Money is not the problem; curriculum and teaching is.
As someone already pointed out, we spend plenty on education. Now I know that liberal doctrine states that all problems can be solved by taxing the rich and then blowing the revenue on usual social projects, but in the real world this doesn't work. Schools need discipline, a logical curriculum, they need to bring back the practice of actually holding back students who fail, and concentrate on teaching kids the basics. That is all, and they can do all that on a considerably smaller budget then they have now. Won't happen though as long as their union is still around, which keeps bad teachers in place and prevents them from ever having to do any real work.
I wonder how Herzog is gonna feel when the people rebel and he's got no one to keep him in diapers anymore
Hahaha. That's rich. It's socialist liberals like you who want the government to be your nanny, not conservatives.
And I hate to break it to you, but there isn't going to be a communist revolution in the US. Americans have seen what happens to other countries that go red, and frankly we prefer freedom, prosperity, and not being tortured/starved/machinegunned to death by the millions, thanks. You can put your faith in some workers paradise, and when it fails (again) we'll bail you out (again) with our evil capitalist money.
Thats very very funny.Me a socialist Liberal.gee I suppose thats all the Indians were to.And Ghandi, and Lao-tzu and Buddha and the simple farming folk prior to the elites expansion and so on.
Fortunately herzog, the world ISNT hanging around waiting for you to get informed about Glabal capitalism.The west will be kicked out of every soverign country on Earth and theres nothing they can do about it.An alternative economy is being established and unfortunately Herzog , you are not going to have a labour force to keep your Ivory Tower based system going.I wonder how you'll go planting your own food and so on all by yourself when the superstructures collapse as soon as NATO gets its yellow ass kicked
It would certainly help the other countrys when they no longer have to worry about the police states of the west installing despotic regimes and inflaming hostilities and arming both sides or just plain lying about genocide so they can come in like the lone ranger to save the day in order to plunder them
Actually ghandi was a socialist, and I'm not sure what the others have to do with anything. Are you planning on setting up a theocracy? If so bad idea. And near as I can see, reading actual newspapers not web-based conspiracy sites, the rest of the world is desperate for capitalism. Especially those nations that have gone your route, and are now crushingly poor. They want our aid, our trade, our money. There is no question of this. Your politics have been relegated to the ashheap of history once before, and we'll do it again if necessary.
Remember when this thread was about education? Monkey, we're talking education reform here WORKING WITHIN THE SYSTEM. We know how you feel. You are gonna come and kick us out of our houses...blah, blah, blah...and steal everything that decent people work for. In the meantime, do you have anything to say about about defense spending vs. education? How bout school vouchers? How bout uprooting the teachers' unions and paying teachers according to performance instead of tenure? How bout school-to-work vocational programs for non-college bound students? No? Gandhi, Buddha, fuck capitalism, whaaa?
I was typing to herzog supposablethumbs
Herzog, I already told you.When other countries get there countries back they wont have to worry about western corporate imperialism which you know ZERO about.The middle class are going straight into poverty and the civil war continued imposition of elitist wage-slavery and involuntary schooling at the point of a gun.The people dont want ANY economic political system, socialist or capitalist.
And supposable my answer to this ballot was clear.The conscripted "students", the nationalist cult programmers are and will continue getting their miserable asses kicked until their isnt a school left on the earth.
'Students" giving them nervous breakdowns is a perfect way of reform
herzog , i have no politics
And as a matter of fact since the wests rape of Russia relegated it to its current state its turned out to be a blessing.They are functioning very well on moneyless economies and its the west who are in serious shit once the system collapses.especially due to their frantic attempts to curtail freedom
"and steal everything that decent people work for."
LOL no dude ,Taking it back from parasites like you
This is great, I don't even have to type anything to make you look like a nut. You're doing a great job, keep it up.
PS, do you have any political beliefs that you didn't read off a sign?
Great comeback by herzog.Not
Once more the idiot has nothing to say but the empty debunking and repeating like a mindless tool what he gets off the TV.
i'll give you the evidence any time a punk like you wants it too have fun with more braindead debunking
Well for one, russia has a currency (the ruble), they are not doing well (one of the poorest industrialized western nations) and we are quite prosperous (still the wealthiest). There. Happy? I've refuted your arguments, although I shouldn't really have to. If you were to say the sky is red would I be required to refute that or should I just sit here laughing at you? Past a certain point there is really no reason to dispute your arguments as any sane person can see them to be nonsense.
"russia has a currency (the ruble), they are not doing well (one of the poorest industrialized western nations) and we are quite prosperous (still the wealthiest'
Nope, you didnt read it.I said moneyless economy.The countryside in particular.The value of the ruble makes no difference to those who don't need it.
The west is wealthy due to exploitation by the corrupt Industrial elites.The US foreign debt, the nature of imports , the corporate manipulation of the worlds currencies, etc.
Herzog shows no interest and total resistance to learning about how the real world operates
Such as the phony corporate war in Iraq
This is getting tedious. Russia has money, they are not wealthy and we are. The west is wealthy because we are free to create wealth. Ask me this, if we get wealth only by stealing from everyone else, where does everyone else get it?
And and try out that old tired line about stealing iraqi oil again, that hasn't been thoroughly disproven multiple times. Oops, too late.
By the way monkey, your bio says you live in australia, a wealthy, western, capitalist nation. If you despise those so much, as you claim over and over again, why not move? There are plenty of non-western, non-capitalist nations to choose from. North korea, iran, somalia, ethiopia, vietnam, sudan, zimbabwe, etc. Why not move to one of these anti-capitalist eastern utopias? Could it be like all socialists living in capitalist nations you realize that your argument is bullshit, that if your policies were ever actually enacted your standard of living would drop horrificly? No, can't be for that reason, so why?
The west is wealthy because we are free to create wealth.
Why is America the biggest debtor nation in the world, herZOG?
In 1999, the U.S. national security state -- which has been involved throughout the world in subversion, sabotage, terrorism, torture, drug trafficking, and death squads -- launched round-the-clock aerial attacks against Yugoslavia for 78 days, dropping 20,000 tons of bombs and killing thousands of women, children, and men. All this was done out of humanitarian concern for Albanians in Kosovo. Or so we were asked to believe. In the span of a few months, President Clinton bombed four countries: Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq repeatedly, and Yugoslavia massively. At the same time, the U.S. was involved in proxy wars in Angola, Mexico (Chiapas), Colombia, East Timor, and various other places. And U.S. forces are deployed on every continent and ocean, with some 300 major overseas support bases -- all in the name of peace, democracy, national security, and humanitarianism.
While showing themselves ready and willing to bomb Yugoslavia on behalf of an ostensibly oppressed minority in Kosovo, U.S. leaders have made no moves against the Czech Republic for its mistreatment of the Romany people (gypsies), or Britain for oppressing the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland, or the Hutu for the mass murder of a half million Tutsi in Rwanda -- not to mention the French who were complicit in that massacre. Nor have U.S. leaders considered launching "humanitarian bombings" against the Turkish people for what their leaders have done to the Kurds, or the Indonesian people because their generals killed over 200,000 East Timorese and were continuing such slaughter through the summer of 1999, or the Guatemalans for the Guatemalan military's systematic extermination of tens of thousands of Mayan villagers. In such cases, U.S. leaders not only tolerated such atrocities but were actively complicit with the perpetrators -- who usually happened to be faithful client-state allies dedicated to helping Washington make the world safe for the Fortune 500.
Why then did U.S. leaders wage an unrestrainedly murderous assault upon Yugoslavia?
The Third Worldization of Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia was built on an idea, namely that the Southern Slavs would not remain weak and divided peoples, squabbling among themselves and easy prey to outside imperial interests. Together they could form a substantial territory capable of its own economic development. Indeed, after World War II, socialist Yugoslavia became a viable nation and an economic success. Between 1960 and 1980 it had one of the most vigorous growth rates: a decent standard of living, free medical care and education, a guaranteed right to a job, one-month vacation with pay, a literacy rate of over 90 percent, and a life expectancy of 72 years. Yugoslavia also offered its multi-ethnic citizenry affordable public transportation, housing, and utilities, with a not-for-profit economy that was mostly publicly owned. This was not the kind of country global capitalism would normally tolerate. Still, socialistic Yugoslavia was allowed to exist for 45 years because it was seen as a nonaligned buffer to the Warsaw Pact nations.
The dismemberment and mutilation of Yugoslavia was part of a concerted policy initiated by the United States and the other Western powers in 1989. Yugoslavia was the one country in Eastern Europe that would not voluntarily overthrow what remained of its socialist system and install a free-market economic order. In fact, Yugoslavs were proud of their postwar economic development and of their independence from both the Warsaw Pact and NATO. The U.S. goal has been to transform the Yugoslav nation into a Third-World region, a cluster of weak right-wing principalities with the following characteristics:
* incapable of charting an independent course of self-development;
* a shattered economy and natural resources completely accessible to multinational corporate exploitation, including the enormous mineral wealth in Kosovo;
* an impoverished, but literate and skilled population forced to work at subsistence wages, constituting a cheap labor pool that will help depress wages in western Europe and elsewhere;
* dismantled petroleum, engineering, mining, fertilizer, and automobile industries, and various light industries, that offer no further competition with existing Western producers.
U.S. policymakers also want to abolish Yugoslavia's public sector services and social programs -- for the same reason they want to abolish our public sector services and social programs. The ultimate goal is the privatization and Third Worldization of Yugoslavia, as it is the Third Worldization of the United States and every other nation. In some respects, the fury of the West's destruction of Yugoslavia is a backhanded tribute to that nation's success as an alternative form of development, and to the pull it exerted on neighboring populations both East and West.
In the late 1960s and 1970s, Belgrade's leaders, not unlike the Communist leadership in Poland, sought simultaneously to expand the country's industrial base and increase consumer goods, a feat they intended to accomplish by borrowing heavily from the West. But with an enormous IMF debt came the inevitable demand for "restructuring," a harsh austerity program that brought wage freezes, cutbacks in public spending, increased unemployment, and the abolition of worker-managed enterprises. Still, much of the economy remained in the not-for-profit public sector, including the Trepca mining complex in Kosovo, described in the New York Times as "war's glittering prize . . . the most valuable piece of real estate in the Balkans . . . worth at least $5 billion" in rich deposits of coal, lead, zinc, cadmium, gold, and silver.1
That U.S. leaders have consciously sought to dismember Yugoslavia is not a matter of speculation but of public record. In November 1990, the Bush administration pressured Congress into passing the 1991 Foreign Operations Appropriations Act, which provided that any part of Yugoslavia failing to declare independence within six months would lose U.S. financial support. The law demanded separate elections in each of the six Yugoslav republics, and mandated U.S. State Department approval of both election procedures and results as a condition for any future aid. Aid would go only to the separate republics, not to the Yugoslav government, and only to those forces whom Washington defined as "democratic," meaning right-wing, free-market, separatist parties.
Another goal of U.S. policy has been media monopoly and ideological control. In 1997, in what remained of Serbian Bosnia, the last radio station critical of NATO policy was forcibly shut down by NATO "peacekeepers." The story in the New York Times took elaborate pains to explain why silencing the only existing dissident Serbian station was necessary for advancing democratic pluralism. The Times used the term "hardline" eleven times to describe Bosnian Serb leaders who opposed the shutdown and who failed to see it as "a step toward bringing about responsible news coverage in Bosnia."2
Likewise, a portion of Yugoslav television remained in the hands of people who refused to view the world as do the U.S. State Department, the White House, and the corporate-owned U.S. news media, and this was not to be tolerated. The NATO bombings destroyed the two government TV channels and dozens of local radio and television stations, so that by the summer of 1999 the only TV one could see in Belgrade, when I visited that city, were the private channels along with CNN, German television, and various U.S. programs. Yugoslavia's sin was not that it had a media monopoly but that the publicly owned portion of its media deviated from the western media monopoly that blankets most of the world, including Yugoslavia itself.
In 1992, another blow was delivered against Belgrade: international sanctions. Led by the United States, a freeze was imposed on all trade to and from Yugoslavia, with disastrous results for the economy: hyperinflation, mass unemployment of up to 70 percent, malnourishment, and the collapse of the health care system.3
Divide and Conquer
One of the great deceptions, notes Joan Phillips, is that "those who are mainly responsible for the bloodshed in Yugoslavia -- not the Serbs, Croats or Muslims, but the Western powers -- are depicted as saviors."4 While pretending to work for harmony, U.S. leaders supported the most divisive, reactionary forces from Croatia to Kosovo.
In Croatia, the West's man-of-the-hour was Franjo Tudjman, who claimed in a book he authored in 1989, that "the establishment of Hitler's new European order can be justified by the need to be rid of the Jews," and that only 900,000 Jews, not six million, were killed in the Holocaust. Tudjman's government adopted the fascist Ustasha checkered flag and anthem.5 Tudjman presided over the forced evacuation of over half a million Serbs from Croatia between 1991 and 1995, replete with rapes and summary executions.6 This included the 200,000 from Krajina in 1995, whose expulsion was facilitated by attacks from NATO war planes and missiles. Needless to say, U.S. leaders did nothing to stop and much to assist these atrocities, while the U.S. media looked the other way. Tudjman and his cronies now reside in obscene wealth while the people of Croatia are suffering the afflictions of the free market paradise. Tight controls have been imposed on Croatian media, and anyone who criticizes President Tudjman's government risks incarceration. Yet the White House hails Croatia as a new democracy.
In Bosnia, U.S. leaders supported the Muslim fundamentalist, Alija Izetbegovic, an active Nazi in his youth, who has called for strict religious control over the media and now wants to establish an Islamic Bosnian republic. Izetbegovic himself does not have the support of most Bosnian Muslims. He was decisively outpolled in his bid for the presidency yet managed to take over that office by cutting a mysterious deal with frontrunner Fikret Abdic.7 Bosnia is now under IMF and NATO regency. It is not permitted to develop its own internal resources, nor allowed to extend credit or self-finance through an independent monetary system. Its state-owned assets, including energy, water, telecommunications, media and transportation, have been sold off to private firms at garage sale prices.
In the former Yugoslavia, NATO powers have put aside neoimperialism and have opted for out-and-out colonial occupation. In early 1999, the democratically elected president of Republika Srpska, the Serb ministate in Bosnia, who had defeated NATO's chosen candidate, was removed by NATO troops because he proved less than fully cooperative with NATO's "high representative" in Bosnia. The latter retains authority to impose his own solutions and remove elected officials who prove in any way obstructive.8 This too was represented in the western press as a necessary measure to advance democracy.
In Kosovo, we see the same dreary pattern. The U.S. gave aid and encouragement to violently right-wing separatist forces such as the self-styled Kosovo Liberation Army, previously considered a terrorist organization by Washington. The KLA has been a longtime player in the enormous heroin trade that reaches to Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Norway, and Sweden.9 KLA leaders had no social program other than the stated goal of cleansing Kosovo of all non-Albanians, a campaign that had been going on for decades. Between 1945 and 1998, the non-Albanian Kosovar population of Serbs, Roma, Turks, Gorani (Muslim Slavs), Montenegrins, and several other ethnic groups shrank from some 60 percent to about 20 percent. Meanwhile, the Albanian population grew from 40 to 80 percent (not the 90 percent repeatedly reported in the press), benefiting from a higher birth rate, a heavy influx of immigrants from Albania, and the systematic intimidation and expulsion of Serbs.
In 1987, in an early untutored moment of truth, the New York Times reported: "Ethnic Albanians in the Government have manipulated public funds and regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs. . . . Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders to rape Serbian girls. . . . As the Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what ethnic Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years . . . an 'ethnically pure' Albanian region. . . ."10 Ironically, while the Serbs were repeatedly charged with ethnic cleansing, Serbia itself is now the only multi-ethnic society left in the former Yugoslavia, with some twenty-six nationality groups including thousands of Albanians who live in and around Belgrade.
Demonizing the Serbs
The propaganda campaign to demonize the Serbs fits the larger policy of the Western powers. The Serbs were targeted for demonization because they were the largest nationality and the one most opposed to the breakup of Yugoslavia. None other than Charles Boyd, former deputy commander of the U.S. European command, commented on it in 1994: "The popular image of this war in Bosnia is one of unrelenting Serb expansionism. Much of what the Croatians call 'the occupied territories' is land that has been held by Serbs for more that three centuries. The same is true of most Serb land in Bosnia. . . . In short the Serbs were not trying to conquer new territory, but merely to hold onto what was already theirs." While U.S. leaders claim they want peace, Boyd concludes, they have encouraged a deepening of the war.11
But what of the atrocities they committed? All sides committed atrocities, but the reporting was consistently one-sided. Grisly incidents of Croat and Muslim atrocities against the Serbs rarely made it into the U.S. press, and when they did they were accorded only passing mention.12 Meanwhile Serb atrocities were played up and sometimes even fabricated, as we shall see. Recently, three Croatian generals were indicted by the Hague War Crimes Tribunal for the bombardment and deaths of Serbs in Krajina and elsewhere. Where were U.S. leaders and U.S. television crews when these war crimes were being committed? John Ranz, chair of Survivors of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp, USA, asks: Where were the TV cameras when hundreds of Serbs were slaughtered by Muslims near Srebrenica?13 The official line, faithfully parroted in the U.S. media, is that the Serbs committed all the atrocities at Srebrenica.
Before uncritically ingesting the atrocity stories dished out by U.S. leaders and the corporate-owned news media, we might recall the five hundred premature babies whom Iraqi soldiers laughingly ripped from incubators in Kuwait, a story repeated and believed until exposed as a total fabrication years later. During the Bosnian war in 1993, the Serbs were accused of having an official policy of rape. "Go forth and rape" a Bosnian Serb commander supposedly publicly instructed his troops. The source of that story never could be traced. The commander's name was never produced. As far as we know, no such utterance was ever made. Even the New York Times belatedly ran a tiny retraction, coyly allowing that "the existence of 'a systematic rape policy' by the Serbs remains to be proved."14
Bosnian Serb forces supposedly raped anywhere from 25,000 to 100,000 Muslim women. The Bosnian Serb army numbered not more than 30,000 or so, many of whom were engaged in desperate military engagements. A representative from Helsinki Watch noted that stories of massive Serbian rapes originated with the Bosnian Muslim and Croatian governments and had no credible supporting evidence. Common sense would dictate that these stories be treated with the utmost skepticism -- and not be used as an excuse for an aggressive and punitive policy against Yugoslavia.
The mass rape propaganda theme was resuscitated in 1999 to justify NATO's renewed attacks on Yugoslavia. A headline in the San Francisco Examiner tells us: "SERB TACTIC IS ORGANIZED RAPE, KOSOVO REFUGEES SAY." Only at the bottom of the story, in the nineteenth paragraph, do we read that reports gathered by the Kosovo mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe found no such organized rape policy. The actual number of rapes were in the dozens "and not many dozens," according to the OSCE spokesperson. This same story did note that the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal sentenced a Bosnian Croat military commander to ten years in prison for failing to stop his troops from raping Muslim women in 1993 -- an atrocity we heard little about when it was happening.15
The Serbs were blamed for the infamous Sarajevo market massacre of 1992. But according to the report leaked out on French TV, Western intelligence knew that it was Muslim operatives who had bombed Bosnian civilians in the marketplace in order to induce NATO involvement. Even international negotiator David Owen, who worked with Cyrus Vance, admitted in his memoir that the NATO powers knew all along that it was a Muslim bomb.16 However, the well-timed fabrication served its purpose of inducing the United Nations to go along with the U.S.-sponsored sanctions.
On one occasion, notes Barry Lituchy, the New York Times ran a photo purporting to be of Croats grieving over Serbian atrocities when in fact the murders had been committed by Bosnian Muslims. The Times printed an obscure retraction the following week.17
We repeatedly have seen how "rogue nations" are designated and demonized. The process is predictably transparent. First, the leaders are targeted. Qaddafi of Libya was a "Hitlerite megalomaniac" and a "madman." Noriega of Panama was a "a swamp rat," one of the world's worst "drug thieves and scums," and "a Hitler admirer." Saddam Hussein of Iraq was "the Butcher of Baghdad," a "madman," and "worse than Hitler." Each of these leaders then had their countries attacked by U.S. forces and U.S.-led sanctions. What they really had in common was that each was charting a somewhat independent course of self-development or somehow was not complying with the dictates of the global free market and the U.S. national security state.18
Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic has been described by Bill Clinton as "a new Hitler." Yet he was not always considered so. At first, the Western press, viewing the ex-banker as a bourgeois Serbian nationalist who might hasten the break-up of the federation, hailed him as a "charismatic personality." Only later, when they saw him as an obstacle rather than a tool, did they begin to depict him as the demon who "started all four wars." This was too much even for the managing editor of the U.S. establishment journal Foreign Affairs, Fareed Zakaria. He noted in the New York Times that Milosevic who rules "an impoverished country that has not attacked its neighbors -- is no Adolf Hitler. He is not even Saddam Hussein."19
Some opposition radio stations and newspapers were reportedly shut down during the NATO bombing. But, during my trip to Belgrade in August 1999, I observed nongovernmental media and opposition party newspapers going strong. There are more opposition parties in the Yugoslav parliament than in any other European parliament. Yet the government is repeatedly labeled a dictatorship. Milosevic was elected as president of Yugoslavia in a contest that foreign observers said had relatively few violations. As of the end of 1999, he presided over a coalition government that included four parties. Opposition groups openly criticized and demonstrated against his government. Yet he was called a dictator.
The propaganda campaign against Belgrade has been so relentless that prominent personages on the Left -- who oppose the NATO policy against Yugoslavia -- have felt compelled to genuflect before this demonization orthodoxy.20 Thus do they reveal themselves as having been influenced by the very media propaganda machine they criticize on so many other issues. To reject the demonized image of Milosevic and of the Serbian people is not to idealize them or claim they are faultless or free of crimes. It is merely to challenge the one-sided propaganda that laid the grounds for NATO's destruction of Yugoslavia.
More Atrocity Stories
Atrocities (murders and rapes) occur in every war, which is not to condone them. Indeed, murders and rapes occur in many peacetime communities. What the media propaganda campaign against Yugoslavia charged was that atrocities were conducted on a mass genocidal scale. Such charges were used to justify the murderous aerial assault by NATO forces.
Up until the bombings began in March 1999, the conflict in Kosovo had taken 2000 lives altogether from both sides, according to Kosovo Albanian sources. Yugoslavian sources had put the figure at 800. In either case, such casualties reveal a limited insurgency, not genocide. The forced expulsion policy began after the NATO bombings, with thousands being uprooted by Serb forces mostly in areas where the KLA was operating or was suspected of operating. In addition, if the unconfirmed reports by the ethnic Albanian refugees can be believed, there was much plundering and instances of summary execution by Serbian paramilitary forces -- who were unleashed after the NATO bombing started.
We should keep in mind that tens of thousands fled Kosovo because of the bombings, or because the province was the scene of sustained ground fighting between Yugoslav forces and the KLA, or because they were just afraid and hungry. An Albanian woman crossing into Macedonia was eagerly asked by a news crew if she had been forced out by Serb police. She responded: "There were no Serbs. We were frightened of the bombs."21 During the bombings, an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 Serbian residents of Kosovo took flight (mostly north but some to the south), as did thousands of Roma and other non-Albanian ethnic groups.22 Were these people ethnically cleansing themselves? Or were they not fleeing the bombing and the ground war?
The New York Times reported that "a major purpose of the NATO effort is to end the Serb atrocities that drove more than one million Albanians from their homes."23 So, we are told to believe, the refugee tide was caused not by the ground war against the KLA and not by the massive NATO bombing but by unspecified atrocities. The bombing, which was the major cause of the refugee problem was now seen as the solution. The refugee problem created in part by the massive aerial attacks was now treated as justification for such attacks, a way of putting pressure on Milosevic to allow "the safe return of ethnic Albanian refugees."24
While Kosovo Albanians were leaving in great numbers -- usually well-clothed and in good health, some riding their tractors, trucks, or cars, many of them young men of recruitment age -- they were described as being "slaughtered." Serbian attacks on KLA strongholds and the forced expulsion of Albanian villagers were described as "genocide." But experts in surveillance photography and wartime propaganda charged NATO with running a "propaganda campaign" on Kosovo that lacked any supporting evidence. State Department reports of mass graves and of 100,000 to 500,000 missing Albanian men "are just ludicrous," according to these independent critics.25
As with the Croatian and Bosnian conflicts, the image of mass killings was hyped once again. The Washington Post reported that 350 ethnic Albanians "might be buried in mass graves" around a mountain village in western Kosovo. Such speculations were based on sources that NATO officials refused to identify. Getting down to specifics, the article mentions "four decomposing bodies" discovered near a large ash heap, with no details as to who they might be or how they died.26
An ABC "Nightline" program made dramatic and repeated references to the "Serbian atrocities in Kosovo" while offering no specifics. Ted Kopple asked angry Albanian refugees what they had witnessed? They pointed to an old man in their group who wore a wool hat. The Serbs had thrown the man's hat to the ground and stepped on it, "because the Serbs knew that his hat was the most important thing to him," they told Kopple, who was appropriately appalled by this one example of a "war crime" offered in the hour-long program.
A widely circulated story in the New York Times, headlined "U.S. REPORT OUTLINES SERB ATTACKS IN KOSOVO," tells us that the State Department issued "the most comprehensive documentary record to date on atrocities." The report concludes that there had been organized rapes and systematic executions. But reading further into the article, one finds that stories of such crimes "depend almost entirely on information from refugee accounts. There was no suggestion that American intelligence agencies had been able to verify, most, or even many, of the accounts . . . and the word 'reportedly' and 'allegedly' appear throughout the document."27
British journalist Audrey Gillan interviewed Kosovo refugees about atrocities and found an impressive lack of evidence. One woman caught him glancing at the watch on her wrist, while her husband told him how all the women had been robbed of their jewelry and other possessions. A spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees talked of mass rapes and what sounded like hundreds of killings in three villages. When Gillan pressed him for more precise information, he reduced it drastically to five or six teenage rape victims. But he admitted that he had not spoken to any witnesses and that "we have no way of verifying these reports."28
Gillan noted that some refugees had seen killings and other atrocities, but there was little to suggest that they had seen it on the scale that was being reported. Officials told him of refugees who talked of sixty or more being killed in one village and fifty in another, but Gillan "could not find one eye-witness who actually saw these things happening." It was always in some other village that the mass atrocities seem to have occurred. Yet every day western journalists reported "hundreds" of rapes and murders. Sometimes they noted in passing that the reports had yet to be substantiated, but then why were such stories being so eagerly publicized?
In contrast to its public assertions, the German Foreign Office privately denied there was any evidence that genocide or ethnic cleansing was a component of Yugoslav policy: "Even in Kosovo, an explicit political persecution linked to Albanian ethnicity is not verifiable. . . . The actions of the security forces not directed against the Kosovo-Albanians as an ethnically defined group, but against the military opponent and its actual or alleged supporters.'29
Still, Milosevic was indicted as a war criminal, charged with the forced expulsion of Albanian Kosovars, and with summary executions of a hundred or so individuals. Again, alleged crimes that occurred after the NATO bombing had started were used as justification for the bombing. The biggest war criminals of all were the NATO political leaders who orchestrated the aerial campaign of death and destruction.
As the White House saw it, since the stated aim of the aerial attacks was not to kill civilians; there was no liability, only regrettable mistakes. In other words, only the professed intent of an action counted and not its ineluctable effects. But a perpetrator can be judged guilty of willful murder without explicitly intending the death of a particular victim -- as with an unlawful act that the perpetrator knew would likely cause death. As George Kenney, a former State Department official under the Bush Administration, put it: "Dropping cluster bombs on highly populated urban areas doesn't result in accidental fatalities. It is purposeful terror bombing."30
In the first weeks of the NATO occupation of Kosovo, tens of thousands of Serbs were driven from the province and hundreds were killed by KLA gunmen in what was described in the western press as acts of "revenge" and "retaliation," as if the victims were deserving of such a fate. Also numbering among the victims of "retribution" were the Roma, Gorani, Turks, Montenegrins, and Albanians who had "collaborated" with the Serbs by speaking Serbian, opposing separatism, and otherwise identifying themselves as Yugoslavs. Others continued to be killed or maimed by the mines planted by the KLA and the Serb military, and by the large number of NATO cluster bombs sprinkled over the land.31
It was repeatedly announced in the first days of the NATO occupation that 10,000 Albanians had been killed by the Serbs (down from the 100,000 and even 500,000 Albanian men supposedly executed during the war). No evidence was ever offered to support the 10,000 figure, nor even to explain how it was so swiftly determined -- even before NATO forces had moved into most of Kosovo.
Repeatedly unsubstantiated references to "mass graves," each purportedly filled with hundreds or even thousands of Albanian victims also failed to materialize. Through the summer of 1999, the media hype about mass graves devolved into an occasional unspecified reference. The few sites actually unearthed offered up as many as a dozen bodies or sometimes twice that number, but with no certain evidence regarding causes of death or even the nationality of victims. In some cases there was reason to believe the victims were Serbs.32
Lacking evidence of mass graves, by late August 1999 the Los Angeles Times focused on wells "as mass graves in their own right. . . . Serbian forces apparently stuffed...many bodies of ethnic Albanians into wells during their campaign of terror."33 Apparently? The story itself dwelled on only one village in which the body of a 39-year-old male was found in a well, along with three dead cows and a dog. No cause was given for his death and "no other human remains were discovered." The well's owner was not identified. Again when getting down to specifics, the atrocities seem not endemic but sporadic.
Ethnic Enmity and U.S. "Diplomacy'
Some people argue that nationalism, not class, is the real motor force behind the Yugoslav conflict. This presumes that class and ethnicity are mutually exclusive forces. In fact, ethnic enmity can be enlisted to serve class interests, as the CIA tried to do with indigenous peoples in Indochina and Nicaragua -- and more recently in Bosnia.34
When different national groups are living together with some measure of social and material security, they tend to get along. There is intermingling and even intermarriage. But when the economy goes into a tailspin, thanks to sanctions and IMF destabilization, then it becomes easier to induce internecine conflicts and social discombobulation. In order to hasten that process in Yugoslavia, the Western powers provided the most retrograde separatist elements with every advantage in money, organization, propaganda, arms, hired thugs, and the full might of the U.S. national security state at their backs. Once more the Balkans are to be balkanized.
NATO's attacks on Yugoslavia have been in violation of its own charter, which says it can take military action only in response to aggression committed against one of its members. Yugoslavia attacked no NATO member. U.S. leaders discarded international law and diplomacy. Traditional diplomacy is a process of negotiating disputes through give and take, proposal and counterproposal, a way of pressing one's interests only so far, arriving eventually at a solution that may leave one side more dissatisfied than the other but not to the point of forcing either party to war.
U.S. diplomacy is something else, as evidenced in its dealings with Vietnam, Nicaragua, Panama, Iraq, and now Yugoslavia. It consists of laying down a set of demands that are treated as nonnegotiable, though called "accords" or "agreements," as in the Dayton Accords or Rambouillet Agreements. The other side's reluctance to surrender completely to every condition is labeled "stonewalling," and is publicly misrepresented as an unwillingness to negotiate in good faith. U.S. leaders, we hear, run out of patience as their "offers" are "snubbed." Ultimatums are issued, then aerial destruction is delivered upon the recalcitrant nation so that it might learn to see things the way Washington does.
Milosevic balked because the Rambouillet plan, drawn up by the U.S. State Department, demanded that he hand over a large, rich region of Serbia, that is, Kosovo, to foreign occupation. The plan further stipulated that these foreign troops shall have complete occupational power over all of Yugoslavia, with immunity from arrest and with supremacy over Yugoslav police and authorities. Even more revealing of the U.S. agenda, the Rambouillet plan stated: "The economy of Kosovo shall function in accordance with free market principles."
Rational Destruction
While professing to having been discomforted by the aerial destruction of Yugoslavia, many liberals and progressives were convinced that "this time" the U.S. national security state was really fighting the good fight. "Yes, the bombings don't work. The bombings are stupid!" they said at the time, "but we have to do something." In fact, the bombings were other than stupid: they were profoundly immoral. And in fact they did work; they destroyed much of what was left of Yugoslavia, turning it into a privatized, deindustrialized, recolonized, beggar-poor country of cheap labor, defenseless against capital penetration, so battered that it will never rise again, so shattered that it will never reunite, not even as a viable bourgeois country.
When the productive social capital of any part of the world is obliterated, the potential value of private capital elsewhere is enhanced -- especially when the crisis faced today by western capitalism is one of overcapacity. Every agricultural base destroyed by western aerial attacks (as in Iraq) or by NAFTA and GATT (as in Mexico and elsewhere), diminishes the potential competition and increases the market opportunities for multinational corporate agribusiness. To destroy publicly-run Yugoslav factories that produced auto parts, appliances, or fertilizer -- or a publicly financed Sudanese plant that produced pharmaceuticals at prices substantially below their western competitors -- is to enhance the investment value of western producers. And every television or radio station closed down by NATO troops or blown up by NATO bombs extends the monopolizing dominance of the western media cartels. The aerial destruction of Yugoslavia's social capital served that purpose.
We have yet to understand the full effect of NATO's aggression. Serbia is one of the greatest sources of underground waters in Europe, and the contamination from U.S. depleted uranium and other explosives is being felt in the whole surrounding area all the way to the Black Sea. In Pancevo alone, huge amounts of ammonia were released into the air when NATO bombed the fertilizer factory. In that same city, a petrochemical plant was bombed seven times. After 20,000 tons of crude oil were burnt up in only one bombardment of an oil refinery, a massive cloud of smoke hung in the air for ten days. Some 1,400 tons of ethylene dichloride spilled into the Danube, the source of drinking water for ten million people. Meanwhile, concentrations of vinyl chloride were released into the atmosphere at more than 10,000 times the permitted level. In some areas, people have broken out in red blotches and blisters, and health officials predict sharp increases in cancer rates in the years ahead.35
National parks and reservations that make Yugoslavia among thirteen of the world's richest bio-diversity countries were bombed. The depleted uranium missiles that NATO used through many parts of the country have a half-life of 4.5 billion years.36 It is the same depleted uranium that now delivers cancer, birth defects, and premature death upon the people of Iraq. In Novi Sad, I was told that crops were dying because of the contamination. And power transformers could not be repaired because U.N. sanctions prohibited the importation of replacement parts. The people I spoke to were facing famine and cold in the winter ahead.
With words that might make us question his humanity, the NATO commander, U.S. General Wesley Clark boasted that the aim of the air war was to "demolish, destroy, devastate, degrade, and ultimately eliminate the essential infrastructure" of Yugoslavia. Even if Serbian atrocities had been committed, and I have no doubt that some were, where is the sense of proportionality? Paramilitary killings in Kosovo (which occurred mostly after the aerial war began) are no justification for bombing fifteen cities in hundreds of around-the-clock raids for over two months, spewing hundreds of thousands of tons of highly toxic and carcinogenic chemicals into the water, air, and soil, killing thousands of Serbs, Albanians, Roma, Turks, and others, and destroying bridges, residential areas, and over two hundred hospitals, clinics, schools, and churches, along with the productive capital of an entire nation.
A report released in London in August 1999 by the Economist Intelligence Unit concluded that the enormous damage NATO's aerial war inflicted on Yugoslavia's infrastructure will cause the economy to shrink dramatically in the next few years.37 Gross domestic product will drop by 40 percent this year and remain at levels far below those of a decade ago. Yugoslavia, the report predicted, will become the poorest country in Europe. Mission accomplished.Postscript
In mid-September 1999, the investigative journalist Diana Johnstone emailed associates in the U.S. that former U.S. ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith, who had backed Tudjman's "operation storm" that drove 200,000 Serbians (mostly farming families) out of the Krajina region of Croatia four years ago, was recently in Montenegro, chiding Serbian opposition politicians for their reluctance to plunge Yugoslavia into civil war. Such a war would be brief, he assured them, and would "solve all your problems." Another strategy under consideration by U.S. leaders, heard recently in Yugoslavia, is to turn over the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina to Hungary. Vojvodina has some twenty-six nationalities including several hundred thousand persons of Hungarian descent who, on the whole show no signs of wanting to secede, and who certainly are better treated than the larger Hungarian minorities in Rumania and Slovakia. Still, a recent $100 million appropriation from the U.S. Congress fuels separatist activity in what remains of Yugoslavia -- at least until Serbia gets a government sufficiently pleasing to the free-market globalists in the West. Johnstone concludes: "With their electric power stations ruined and factories destroyed by NATO bombing, isolated, sanctioned and treated as pariahs by the West, Serbs have the choice between freezing honorably in a homeland plunged into destitution, or following the 'friendly advice' of the same people who have methodically destroyed their country. As the choice is unlikely to be unanimous one way or the other, civil war and further destruction of the country are probable."
I gave you the names herzog
leonard Horowitz, Michel Parenti , Richard K Moore, Richard heinberg. Susan Bryce, celereno casillo, Mccarthy , Smedley-Butler, Charles Higham. bla bla bla
Thats my answer.You read or dont read em.im not doing it for you
Education may not be a 'sexy' issue but it's the most important one (in my view). It's a shame that someone would subvert this necessary discussion by plagiarizing their favorite ganja-fueled conspirator and monopolizing 80% of the blog.
Now, unless someone can refute my suggestion that we need to uproot public education in AMERICA (no input needed from foreign perpectives-not your country) and establish a voucher program, then I will just assume that I have it all figured out. Vouchers-Yes
Government Education- No
ooh Im sure you'll survive disposableparrot
You have nothing to offer at any time, just vacuous debunking and CNN.The art of the legitimately stupid. You are just a time waster
And unfortunately that last article was herzog related
Plagiarising:Disposable needs a dictionary
Tedious and wrong. The American spelling is done with a 'z'; didn't think you could actually say anything about education since you lack one.
One more time. Looking for someone to defend the current American public school system. Want to debate someone who holds these beliefs. No monkeys need apply.
The american public school system is flawed, and I believe the most effective way to improve it is through vouchers. Let parents choose which schools they want to send their kids to, let the free market improve educational standards as it has improved quality everywhere else. If a school stands to lose money by producing substandard grads then it will act to correct the problem or it will go out of business so to speak, either way the school system as a whole is improved. Of course the vouchers should be large enough to cover the entire educational costs of each student, so that we still have universal education (about the only socialist idea I approve of).
And monkey, we talked about this, I thought you had agreed to stop cluttering up the comment space with your cut-and-paste rants.
you need to start teaching your kids about WWII. They have been watching too many movies like saving private ryan and now they think that they won the war single handedly
Thank you for your expertise on American education, English Bob. Now, listening skills people. I'm looking to see how AMERICANS feel about how we can improve a flawed system (especially K-12).
Anf herzog
i though you were gonna quit you mindless debunking and get an education.Youve been responded to
you read it or you dont read it..You investigate the subject or you dont investigate it
Thats ok disposablethumbs.
Thems places is gunna burn
we DID win the war by ourselves! no thanks to the cry-baby limeys and cowardly french! ALWAYS LOOKING for A HANDOUT FROM THE U.S. huh you EuroPEANS? hahahaha
No DisposableParrot
you horrid little man
I was talking of you looking up the meaning of the word.
Certain nitwits on this site need an education about the true nature of language
me monkeynuts. me call sense-talkers nitwits and then defy nwo by selective punctuation and lack of apostrophes. see watch me not use apostrophes: im not using apostrophes. me say you have you no education. thats extent of my knowledge on american education. why me posting on this blog if me not have any incite into american education. me not know.
And monkey, if you trully believed that there was some massive secret organization plotting to take over the world, an organization which you claim has started dozens of wars and killed millions of people in it's quest for power, would you really be spouting off all their secrets in public? I don't think so, because if they were capable of all that couldn't they kill you quite easily? Yeah, so either you are a true-believer and are incredibly dumb, or you don't really believe any of it and are just looking desperately for attention. Which is it? I'm going for option C, don't really believe and are incredibly dumb.
Please tell me this ballot is a joke.
The quickest way to insure the downfall of any great nation is to believe that a strong military is not needed. Look at the Romans, look at the Greeks, they became complacent and did not think their military needed to be improved upon. BOOM, they are destroyed.
Also, some people are saying the educational system in the United States is flawed and they are absolutely correct.
You have teachers who bitch about what they get paid, and compare their wages to those who work year round. Uhm, little problem with math there though. The average teacher works 9 months out of the year, so if they are making 27,000 annually, that actually works out to 36,000 when compared to someone who works year round.
How do I get to this number? Simple, divide 27,000 by 9, the number of months a teacher works, and take that number, 3000, and multiply it by 12, the number of months just about everyone else works, and voila, there you have it.
ANd don't give me that useless rhetorich shit about how "the teachers around here teach year round" because I'm talking about the average teacher and the average nationwide in the United States is still 9 months on, 3 months off.
Where am I going with all of this? I just wanted to point out that if teachers have this much trouble understanding a simple concept of salary, and always beg for more money on that basis, they obviously it trickles down to why they beg for more money for the school, when you see private schools educating with better resources and results on sometimes 1/3 of the budget.
ARGUE THAT!!!!
Well, I think teachers do deserve a raise. They put in a LOT of overtime at home throughout the entire year that they don't get paid for (grading, report cards, etc) and yes, most of them do work during the summer holidays, mainly preparing for the next school year and finishing up school related tasks.
Standard rhetoric from the teacher's union talking points, Jigsaw.
You're right in one regard. Some do deserve raises because some do work extra hard and get fantastic results through their methods. However, if you dig deeper and actually see how the budgets work in the majority of school districts around the country, you would be appalled. Teacher's Unions have a stranglehold on local school boards. Unions act in the self interest of the organization themselves, not the children and often times, not even in the interest of the teachers. They have powerful state lobbies and are well-organized and well-connected politically. When politicians pass legislation to increase funding for education, the cash goes into the hands of these sycophants, and a handful of one-size-fits-all 'social programs' that are usually PC crap like sex-education instruction, distributing condoms at school or developing poorly run afterschool programs taught by unqualified instructors.
What we need to do is expect better education from the wealthiest country on the planet. By privatizing education (school vouchers), the management (school shareholders) will personally feel the crunch of underperformance in their wallets. If they don't perform, they'll lose all their money when their schools shut down. Meanwhile, forward thinking entrepreneurs will revolutionize the way we teach children and will be able to innovate, unshackled by government bureaucracy. Kids who are good with their hands but could give a fuck about college could go to trade schools and come out skilled and ready to start earning right away. Same goes for college bound kids. Basically, we can make a high school degree mean more than it does today.
If anyone is interested in forward-thinking school voucher ideas, read "Education and Capitalism," by Joseph Bass. Many areas of the country (California, Arizona and Michigan) are already implementing these interesting concepts.
And to your original point Jigsaw: Yes, good teachers deserve raises. In a voucher systems, the market would set the value of a teacher, not tenure. If you're a good teacher, then I don't see why you shouldn't make more than $100,000/yr. The profession is just as valuable as medicine or law.
there are teachers who make that and more, they are called college professors
Whatever you are raving on about disposableparrot.It had nothing to do what I posted.Surely you didnt also misundstand "The nature of language " one.
Yeh, I guess so.You are a real yes man. So probably
Herzog
You are merely tedious.I have said none of that.And you are misquoting every word.Dont trouble yourself.You apparently dont have the intellect to grasp any of it.
Sorry bub, you're the one who has to stick 'nwo' in every other sentence, and that is exactly what you nuts believe the nwo to be. A giant conspiracy, which is attempting to take over the world through secret manipulation of world events. You people blame them for wwI, II, the cold war, the jfk assasination, the fact that you can't get laid, etc, etc. So if you really believed in all that you'd be insane to speak out publicly against it, of course if you really believed in any of it you'd be insane period. Kinda a catch-22 situation.
I wonder who "them" is.Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelts definition of that is the one Im using.Dont know what one you are using.
"wwI, II, the cold war, the jfk assasination"
Yep, thats all been covered by both mainstream and "fringe" people.pretty straightforward.No conjecture was needed.Just like with the Martin Bryant Port Arthur thing.
No conjecture was required.
Nothing secret going on. wall street people, bankers, industrialists, politicians, judges, generals as well as the general public know all about it.
we DID win the war by ourselves! no thanks to the cry-baby limeys and cowardly french! ALWAYS LOOKING for A HANDOUT FROM THE U.S. huh you EuroPEANS? hahahaha
by 1st_Mar_Div on Jun 10, 2004
Yeah they did win it by themselves, I don't know why we don't just admit it and be open about it.
I mean without the Americans beating the French in the Torch landings and saving us Kasserine whilst blunting Rommel's final offensive then Africa would have been lost.
And then there was the superb contributions of Mark Clark's leadership in Italy and American troop contributions at Salerno and Cassino and at the Gothic line then Italy couldn't have been won.
Meanwhile the US assistance in the Atlantic was remarkable while they were using Sunderland bombers to destroy U-boats, inventing and testing new techniques and inventing hf-df we Brits were responsible for a huge upsurge in ship losses in early 42 due to our Admiral's refusal to use convoys.
Whilst that purely American plane, the P-51 in the meantime our shitty Spitfires and Hurricanes were doing nothing and were equipped with shitty 20mm cannons instead of the leathal 50 cal.
Also those American typhoons and mosquitos were a huge contributor to the land battles in Europe.
And then there is America's massive contribution to victory by cracking both 3 reel and 4 reel enigma traffic.
There was also the joint mexican-American raid on Norsk which stopped Germany getting the Atomic bomb.
American inspired deception plans to which D-day owe it's success.
An American agent called Garbo was also used to great effect and practically convinced Hitler by himself of American intentions to invade across the channel on Calais.
Then there was D-Day itself, when Americans stopped a counterattack aimed at the British and Canadian beaches at pegasus and they destroyed 5 of the 7 major batteries in the invasion area.
And of course, there was the contribution of the American constructed Mulberry Harbours and of course Pluto.
And American Hobart's contributions to making DD tanks, crocodile tanks, flail tanks, AVREs etc. which greatly contributed to the success of the invasion and then there was PLUTO as well.
As if this wasn't enough, the then held 90% of German armour at Caen including the two best divisions in the entire German Army, 2nd SS panzers and Pazer Lehr division which allowed the Mexicans to break out of Normandy.
And then if that wasn't enough they strook a huge blow against the Germans forces in the West in Belgium and captured Antwerp intact, an amazing acheivement.
But unfortunately those Mexicans fucked up the operations in Holland.
Their security lapse meant that the Germans knew of American intentions and then the Mexicans failed to take the bridge at Nijmegen meaning that the American 1st airborne division along with the Eithopian regiment were destroyed by two German divisions at Nijmegen
Fucking mexicans.
And then there was the Mexicans painstakingly slow capture of the bridge at Remegan allowed the Albanians to partially destroy the bridge, they were lucky the didn't destroy the whole bridge.
Anyway without the Americans, Mexicans and Ethopians contributions to victory and the Albanians incompetance then the war against Germany would have been lost.
Ok, so you believe this 'nwo' is responsible for all these terrible acts of carnage, and yet you openly taunt them. Exactly what I've been saying, I don't know why you bothered to dispute that, then prove it in the next post. Multiple personality disorder?
ballot 37017
Didnt follow a word of that.
Ive been very clear with my definitions and have used direct references and quotes to elucidate it
those answers are WAY too long...if we educated Americans more, they'd all be smart, not just me! ;) (not really that arrogant)
Herzog, you are the one who has been misquoting, misunderstanding,forgetting answers, selective memory , selective interpretation, asks for clarification on definitions and then confuses that for the proof, asks for proof and then confuses the definitions and screwing up issues of category.I have been clear from the beginning.
The B and W comment box I only use for individuals to follow up or not on whatever they wish.You R free not to
What these guys were talking of
"The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not
behind the scenes." --Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli of England, in 1844.
"The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise their power from behind the
scenes."-- Justice Felix Frankfurter, U.S. Supreme Court.
1940 - A book entitled, The New World Order by H.G. Wells, in which Wells claims: "It is the system of nationalist individualism that has to go....We are living in the end of the sovereign states....In the great struggle to evoke a Westernized World Socialism, contemporary governments may vanish....Countless people...will hate the new world order....and will die protesting against it."
1928 - A book entitled The Open Conspiracy: Blue Prints for a World Revolution by socialist H. G. Wells is published. He declares that "..The political world of the Open Conspiracy must weaken, efface, incorporate and supersede existing governments....The Open Conspiracy is the natural inheritor of socialist and communist enthusiasms, it may be in control of Moscow before it is in control of New York...."
1931 - Historian Arnold Toynbee delivers a speech to the Institute for the Study of International Affairs at Copenhagen in which he explains: "We are at present working discreetly with all our might to wrest this mysterious force called sovereignty out of the clutches of the local nation states of the world. All the time we are denying with our lips what we are doing with our hands, because to impugn the sovereignty of the local nation states of the world is still a heresy for which a statesman or publicist can perhaps not quite be burned at the stake but certainly be ostracized or discredited." --International Affairs (journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, i.e. the British version of the Council on Foreign Relations) Nov 1931, "The Trend of International Affairs Wince the War"
1973 - August 10: The New York Times publishes "From a China Traveller" by David Rockefeller, who writes about Communist China: "One is impressed immediately by the sense of national harmony....There is a very real and pervasive dedication to chairman Mao and Maoist principles. Whatever the price of the Chinese Revolution, it has obviously succeeded not only in producing more efficient and dedicated administration, but also in fostering high morale and community purpose. General social and economic progress is no less impressive....The enormous social advances of China have benefited greatly from the singleness of ideology and purpose....The social experiment in China under Chairman Mao's leadership is one of the most important and successful in history."
'Herzog, you are the one who has been misquoting, misunderstanding,forgetting answers, selective memory , selective interpretation, asks for clarification on definitions and then confuses that for the proof, asks for proof and then confuses the definitions and screwing up issues of category.I have been clear from the beginning.'
Sadly monkey I don't have to do any of that to make you look like an idiot. All I have to do is repeat what you say and it becomes abundantly clear. You make my life very easy.
Ex. 'the US is wealthy because we pillaged czechoslovakia'.
'the US bombed pearl harbor'
it goes on like this.
Accepted by the majority and your CNN parrot speak was dismantled from the beginning.Youre inability to even so much as address it and continue the braindead debunking means you have nothing to contribute.
Have fun not finding out what half the planet already knows.
And herzog.
If you'd like for people to become as informed as yourself.Please give a point by point rebbutal of pearl harbour site on your user page and the case given about yugoslavia. i e No bodies etc
Otherwise drop it and we'll all just have to get our info from a non corporate source (as most of us are already doing)
'the US is wealthy because we pillaged czechoslovakia'.
'the US bombed pearl harbor'
The US bombed pearl harbour? No they didnt
And so you dont twist what was said about yugoslavia
It was stated rationally and clearly
1.How wealth is created
2How it is maintained
3 Why Yugoslavia was bombed and all that took place there
If you refute an argument make sure its the same one that was presented
And you should trust non-corporate sources because? Some idiot in his basement with an axe to grind is believable, but a world wide news organization held up to public scrutiny, lawsuits, and competition is not? You're deluded.
Point by point rebuttal: pearl harbor: the only 'proof' you have that it was a conspiracy is a US memo outlining a plan to use economic and political sanctions to contain the japanese empire. At the end of the memo it mentions, as a possibility, that this could lead to a japanese attack. Nowhere, on any document you've shown does it say anything to suggest a conspiracy. It has been predicted that CA might fall into the pacific due to the san andreas fault line, so if it happens some day could you say it was a conspiracy since they predicted it in advance? Nope, it just means the guess was correct. You've got nothing buddy, admit it and save us all some time.
And you keep saying that the majority of the worlds population agrees with you. Proof? Because except for an extreme minority no one is espousing your insane beliefs. No real media source, no textbooks, no politicians, no one with even a hint of education or common sense. So let's see some stats, some sort of proof that "half the planet" believes in your halfassed conspiracy concoctions.
"It was stated rationally and clearly
1.How wealth is created
2How it is maintained
3 Why Yugoslavia was bombed and all that took place there
If you refute an argument make sure its the same one that was presented "
Except when I pointed out that the west was wealthy because we created wealth you scoffed at the idea and said wealth couldn't be created, only stolen from other nations. When I asked where those other nations got wealth you changed the subjecte and posted a few novels that had nothing to do with the topic. So let me ask again, in your deluded paranoid fantasys where does wealth come from? And how exactly does it benefit the US to spend billions of dollars bombing a nation that is not our competitor, and has nothing worth stealing?
Your arguments are asinine, illogical, and unsubstantiated. You have no proof, every request for you to back them up with facts has been met with either insults or attemtps to change the subject. So here it is monkey boy, last chance. I challenge you to prove even one of you claims, using facts. Conspiracy websites need not apply.
Herzog
Im not arguing with you about it.I couldnt give a shit
When you can give a helpful reponse to what I actually said about Pearl Harbour and an answer to everything on the link I gave you on your user page rather than twisting my words..I.e.It was not a surprise attack.The US manipulated the war and were just as much a part of its preceedings as the others you.So far Im sticking to Higham
The nature of corporate media.Most , if not practically everyone knows about mainstream media.
Proof about the world?Theres plenty for that.The vast majority of the world knows about the "system" , Bush and Co.and always have.Europe especially know exactly what happened and why in yugoslavia
Ive put some quotes from various politicians etc and theres plenty more where they came from in regards to certain peoples stated intentions as well as the awareness of it
Im not the one making claims Herzog.Thats what the mainstream does and if you are not interested in doing your own research into it (because you feel it isnt necessary or whatever) then you have no need to respond.Im not arguing. you are.If those links etc are not to your interest then there is no need for you to respond
"Except when I pointed out that the west was wealthy because we created wealth you scoffed at the idea and said wealth couldn't be created, only stolen from other nations. When I asked where those other nations got wealth you changed the subjecte and posted a few novels that had nothing to do with the topic. So let me ask again, in your deluded paranoid fantasys where does wealth come from? And how exactly does it benefit the US to spend billions of dollars bombing a nation that is not our competitor, and has nothing worth stealing? "
sorry Herzog.I stated it clearly.
The way wealth is created
How it is maintained
Why Yugoslavia was bombed AND the amount that was gotten from it
Im not arguing with you about it.If you genuinely want to know I put it there again just now on the other ballot.
Your arguments are asinine, illogical, and unsubstantiated. You have no proof, every request for you to back them up with facts has been met with either insults or attemtps to change the subjec
herzog , you got the ball rolling with the insults and the misquoting and going all over the place.Ive given you references, facts ,links , quotes.Clear objective analysis.
And if you are specific to ww2.Just stick to the link on your user page and Charles Higham
And if it were in fact bullshit or true or if it is of no use TO YOU then then thats it
'The nature of corporate media.Most , if not practically everyone knows about mainstream media. '
Ah haahahahahahaha, I asked for proof of you grandiose claims and what do I get? More grandiose claims, unsupported by proof. Nice.
Proof about the world?Theres plenty for that.The vast majority of the world knows about the "system" , Bush and Co.and always have.Europe especially know exactly what happened and why in yugoslavia
That's not proof. That's you making more claims, why is this so hard for you to figure out? You can't simply make a ridiculous claim, then back it up with more of your opinion. Opinion =! facts. Opinion repeated over and over again in different ways still =! facts.
Example: The world is flat. How do I prove it? Easy, everyone knows the world is flat, duh. How do I prove that? It's so obvious, the majority of the worlds population, especially in europe, agrees with me. Is this proof monkey? You've dodged all my questions but just answer this one for me, are claims not supported by facts considered 'proof' in your mind? Yes or no. That's all I want from you, yes or no.
Who said it was meant as proof or stated as an argument to a specific topic?Herzog did.Who said someone cant stick to a topic?Herzog did.
Has bmn stuck to the topic .Yep
Do you want proof herzog? Then determine for yourself what would fulfill your criteria for proof and go and do some research
After reviewing what has been stated about ww2 , yugoslavia, etc etc, the corporate media are talked about at length
if there is a new topic that is going to be brought up with relevant proof then make a ballot or something
What questions has herzog asked about the monetary system, yugoslavia etc that werent answered.hmmmmm.None
All questions were answered.
Try asking yourself one of those questions you asked about the "system" and see if you can remember what the answer given was
Has bmn stuck to the topic .Yep
The topic is education, you are talking about yugoslavia.
And I see that a simple yes or no was out of your ability range.
No Herzog .That is a new topic.
The answer of course is no.Otherwise why bother giving you that proof and references etc which you have an inability even recalling
"Your arguments are asinine, illogical, and unsubstantiated. You have no proof, every request for you to back them up with facts has been met with either insults or attemtps to change the subjec "
hmm,If you're memory was tested I wonder if it would determine whether he's read a word of it.Very doubtful
So many answers would be appropriate. Since the US spends more than the accumulated defense expenditures of the NEXT FIVE countries ... put together (!) ... that would be one heck of a lot of money!
Education would be renewed ... no more struggling schools ... no more cutting programs ...
The possibilities are mind-boggling.
Whether it is education or not is almost moot ... just revving down the War machine would have great benefits.
maybe we could dust off that old War on Poverty, if people were still hungry for the War du jour.
I am not an American. I am great patriot of my last country. Dont ask why Im here its a long story. Anyways... This country is great. It could be even greater if it broke away from countries like Israel, Iraq, the Kosovo case. Uhh...the case in Africa,southeast Asia. Im not saying become isolated. Im saying break away from lost cases like war between Israel/Palestine or war between Kosovo/Serbia. People internationally hate this country cause it tries to fix things that just get worse with time and waste alot of money that is very much needed in the homeland.
If you were actually a veteran, you wouldn't ever say we spend too much money on defense, either that or you are the dumbest former soldier of all time
My greatest mistake was taking a military education.
---Robert E. Lee
Jappy, you are living proof that the United States does not spend enough money on education. Do the world a favor--go to Iraq.
I revise my statement given on this page after some thought and conversations with other professors. The problem with the education system is that many students don't learn anything. No i'm not talking about math problems or the cell structure of a Ameba. I'm saying that the students learn how to survie in there leaning society. Most don't learn anything abut actually living outside the structure of schools and colleges. Case and point is Xerox. They had to pay 14 million to retrain all there new employess that had gottn jobs for there great 4.0 grades and great recommindations. They learened the material but never learned how to function. Many teachers Gradatitude light on them to meet passing rates so they wouldn't be fired. And many referrences bent the truth or out right lied when asked about the employee. America and it's education system is more of an ego booster than a teaching and learning center. Society hasbecome to concern with making the feelings of the child better rather than the minds and it shows.
This explains even more. Why is there a rise in suicides in college than any other place? Because in high school the child isn't introduced to hardships and trials and tribulations, when they feel it for the first time they panic and a death is the result. Money isn't the reason for the education system being so uninclined as it is today. The lack of personnel account ablity for the student is; if the student achieves a B, Give him a B, not a A for the hardwork he or she did a B because that's what they earned. If the student failed the course, fail him. That's what he earned don't feel sorry and push the grade up to a C. That's the problem and there's the answer.
Funny how bigmonkeynuts talks a great game about education, yet he consistently misspells things and has terrible grammar. And lest we forget his increasing number of personal attacks against herzog and supposablethumbs as the blog continues, which is the last resort of the truly defeated.
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Unless america is willing to accept privately run charter schools as an alternative in all 50 states, nothing would change. We need our tax dollars going to children instead of UNIONS and union teachers. BRING ON THE CHARTER SCHOOLS AND GET GOVERNMENT OUT OF THE EQUATION.PUT THE TAX PAYER BACK IN CONTROL OF THEIR SCHOOLS.
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