Things are getting better.
Right? Right? 🙂
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Category: government
why the USA must QUIT the Middle East
President Barack Obama said on Sunday the longest war in American history was coming to a responsible conclusion.
Obama was welcoming the end of US combat operations in Afghanistan, which was marked with a ceremony in Kabul. …
Obama honored the more than 2,200 Americans who have died in Afghanistan since the war started 13 years ago. Obama said those years had tested the US and its military. From a peak 140,000 troops in 2010, the US and Nato plan to leave just 13,500 behind. …
Obama heralds formal end of war in Afghanistan after 13 years
The Taliban immediately declared they’d ‘defeated’ Nato:
A Taliban statement said the US-led force had “rolled up its flag” without having achieved “anything substantial”. …
Like every other Afghan invader, the costs NATO paid far outweighed anything gained. 😦
Afghanis must decide their own fate.
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On December 12th, 2013 a wedding convoy, outside the town of Radda in the al-Baydah province of Yemen, was struck by a US drone.
Following the attack, Yemeni officials claimed that around ‘14 innocent civilians were killed, 22 injured and 9 were in critical condition.’
According to the US government, the attack had intended to strike a known AQ militant Shawqi Ali Ahmad al Badani. The US government denied the deaths of civilians, claiming that they had killed militants associated with al Badani.
The U.S. government lied, as they do often.
Most of those killed were innocent.
This is an example of why so many people distrust and fear the U.S. military overseas. This is an example of an incident which inspires and motivates terrorists. Ultimately making the USA and the world less safe.
If the U.S., which claims the strike was clean and justified, didn’t pony up the $800,000 in cash and guns as reparations, then who did?
Nothing Says “Sorry Our Drones Hit Your Wedding Party” Like $800,000 And Some Guns
Update Dec 2014 – The Unspoken Truth Of The US War Against Terrorism in Yemen
Officially, the money awarded in Yemen came from the Yemeni government. But the human rights group Reprieve says the funds must have come from Washington …
Africa – Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is a short novel (1899) about Charles Marlow’s life as an ivory transporter down the Congo …
The story is a complex exploration of the attitudes people hold on what constitutes a barbarian versus a civilized society and the attitudes on colonialism and racism that were part and parcel of European imperialism …
Joseph Conrad acknowledged that Heart of Darkness was in part based on his own experiences during his travels in Africa. In 1890, at the age of 31, he was appointed by a Belgian trading company to serve as the captain of a steamer on the Congo River. …
He reportedly became disillusioned with Imperialism, after witnessing the cruelty and corruption perpetrated by the European companies in the area. …
Leopold II (9 April 1835 – 17 December 1909), second King of the Belgians, was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 2 to 15 million Congolese. Yet very few remember him as one of the worst mass killers all time.
A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.
– Joseph Stalin
In 2014 Africans are quick to blame European imperialists for … everything.
Yet in 2014 if you see something of QUALITY in sub-Saharan Africa, you assume some foreigner is involved. Africans have been – in the main – very unsuccessful in moving themselves from tribal cultures to modern societies.
Long term, I’m not optimistic for Africa. Despite tremendous economic opportunities.
For example – Bill Gates – Can the Asian Miracle Happen in Africa?
To move forward, Africa needs clean drinking water, education of girls and good leadership.
Will that happen?
In nations like Congo Brazzaville, the richest Africans move money out of the country faster than foreign aid comes in. They steal as much as they can, moving their families to Paris or London.
With African leadership like this, what future for Congo?
Corruption is killing African potential.
The most corrupt nations in the world 2014:
Somalia
North Korea
Sudan
Afghanistan
South Sudan
Iraq
Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan
Libya
Eritrea
One bright spot, I hear, is Rwanda. A British woman living there told me the nation is moving forward rapidly. Internet is faster than in London.
If another dozen nations make progress like Rwanda, over the next ten years, then there is hope. Those nations will thrive, draw business investment. Forcing the corrupt, less efficient nations to compete.
In the end, it’s competition that improves the world.
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related – The 10 least corrupt countries in the world:
Denmark
New Zealand
Finland
Sweden
Norway
Switzerland
Singapore
Netherlands
Luxembourg
Canada
gun safety in the USA
A slight majority of Americans still defend the rights of everyone, including the mentally ill, to own and even stockpile firearms with a minimum of regulation.
That will change, I believe.
Tea Party extremists and other gundamentalists are less and less vocal on public social media. They don’t like answering questions like this:
The New York Cop Killer Was Arrested 19 Times. Why Was He Able to Get a Gun?
Washington State is the most progressive.
Two years after the Newtown shooting, the gun-rights lobby still holds the edge when it comes to gun policy in America.
On the federal level, gun-rights groups, led by the National Rifle Association (NRA), spent roughly twice what gun-control groups spent on national political campaigns and nine times what they paid to lobby Congress, according to data from the Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Responsive Politics. …
Don’t Call It “Gun Control”
Advocates have also started to rethink the way they talk about their goals. Today, none of them actually use the term “gun control.” “That’s a phrase that was pointed to as divisive, or didn’t have the right tone or implications,” said Shannon Watts, who founded Moms Demand Action.
They talk instead about “gun safety,” “common-sense gun laws,” or more simply, “keeping guns out of the wrong hands.” They underscore that even as Americans support firearm ownership, 91 percent also want mandatory background checks.
“This framing of pro-gun versus anti-gun, or pro-restriction versus Second Amendment rights, is not a healthy way of looking at this issue if our goal is to save lives,” said Dan Gross, head of the Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence. “We need to look at the opportunities that clearly exist to prevent gun deaths and crime while being consistent with the Second Amendment and the desire of law-abiding citizens to own guns.”
“Stolen guns account for only about 10% to 15% of guns used in crimes,” Wachtel said. …
on Obamacare …
Here’s the good news.
Number of Uninsured Americans Near Historic Low
Just 11.3 percent of Americans were uninsured in the second quarter …
But that progress has come at great cost. Sen. Tom Harkin, one of the co-authors of the Affordable Care Act, now thinks Democrats may have been better off not passing it at all and holding out for a better bill.
It’s a mixed legacy.
Mayday.US fights corporate lobbyists
Mayday.US is a nonpartisan group using the people’s money to challenge big donors and corporate lobbyists.
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Red Terror Museum, Ethiopa
The Ethiopian Red Terror, or Qey Shibir … was a violent political campaign in Ethiopia and Eritrea that most visibly took place after Communist Mengistu Haile Mariam achieved control of the Derg, the military junta, on 3 February 1977.
It is estimated that between 30,000 and 500,000 people were killed over the course of the Red Terror. …
Mengistu was found guilty of genocide in absentia and was sentenced to life in prison in January 2007. After his conviction, Zimbabwe, where he received sanctuary due to friendship with Robert Mugabe, said it would not extradite him. …
The Red Terror Martyrs Memorial Museum in Addis is the #1 tourist attraction.
It’s sobering.
The museum is well laid out and incredibly moving. Nothing more so than the walls of photos and names of just some of the estimated half a million killed under the Derg, or the display cabinets filled with human remains dug out of mass graves. Some of the skulls and other bones are displayed alongside a photo of the victim and personal artefacts they had on them when they died. …
There’s very little reason, aside from this museum, for tourists to spend many days in Addis Ababa. It’s a dusty construction nightmare right now.
I’d like to return some day, but only after the new Addis Ababa Light Rail opens.
It looks great. Addis Ababa’s rail project keeps Ethiopia on track for transformation.
Even more ambitious is the new Grand Ethiopian Renaissance dam. Ethiopia’s Nile dam project signals its intention to become an African power.
I wish them luck.
Net Neutrality – Explained by Common Craft
Net Neutrality is far, far better for you and me than the alternatives.
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Obama 2nd worst President all time
I was an early fan of Barack Obama. He gave me … HOPE.
His Presidency has been deeply disappointing to me.
Neil Macdonald, CBC News:
Six years after he assumed power, nearly 120 of his promises remain unfulfilled, according to the Pulitzer-prize-winning website Politifact. For example, he promised to “hold accountable” the financial firms whose criminal negligence — let’s dispense with euphemisms — nearly destroyed the economy in 2008.
Obama’s attorney-general eventually decided not to charge a single Wall Street executive, fearing the “collateral consequences” might be too hard on shareholders and office workers who might lose their jobs if a corporate collapse resulted.
Obama also promised a foreclosure prevention fund to protect homeowners threatened by Wall Street’s behaviour, and a law allowing judges to modify people’s mortgages as the vultures descended. Never happened.
Obama has not enacted protections for striking workers, or made it easier to unionize, or required employers to provide at least seven days of paid sick leave per year, all of which he promised.
He has not raised the federal minimum wage. …
CBC – ANALYSIS – How Barack Obama’s presidency has come undone
Nice guy. Could have. Should have done better.
He should have done the opposite of GW Bush, not continued as a weaker version of the same.
He’ll be a far, far better exPresident.
Upsides?
Obamacare was a slight improvement to an extremely expensive and inefficient Health Care system.
He did bring down the deficit GW Bush left him.
He did manage to pull most troops out of the Middle East … and dodged the Red Line bluff in Syria. But the current military adventures in the region will turn out to be a huge mistake.
USA should QUIT the Middle East completely aside from working with Nuclear powers Pakistan and Israel.
Still, he should have gone stronger to the left. Instead, history will judge him a weak Republican.
USA spent $10 trillion in the Middle East
Are U.S. taxpayers getting good value for that expenditure?
NO. The USA should QUIT the Middle East.
The U.S. gets only around 10% of its net oil and natural gas from the region.
David Vine:
With the launch of a new US-led war in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State (IS), the United States has engaged in aggressive military action in at least 13 countries in the Greater Middle East since 1980. In that time, every American president has invaded, occupied, bombed, or gone to war in at least one country in the region. …
As in prior military operations in the Greater Middle East, US forces fighting IS have been aided by access to and the use of an unprecedented collection of military bases. …
In the Persian Gulf alone, the US has major bases in every country save Iran. …
Members of Congress spend billions of dollars on base construction and maintenance every year in the region, but ask few questions about where the money is going, why there are so many bases, and what role they really serve. By one estimate, the United States has spent $10 trillion protecting Persian Gulf oil supplies over the past four decades. …
On their own, the existence of these bases has helped generate radicalism and anti-American sentiment. …
Mother Jones – America Still Has Hundreds of Military Bases Worldwide. Have They Made Us Any Safer?
David Vine, associate professor of anthropology at American University in Washington, D.C. He is the author of Island of Shame: The Secret History of the US Military Base on Diego Garcia.
The USA has about an $18 trillion dollar debt. Canada, by comparison, will run a surplus budget this year,
Rick McCharles 