The Smiley Smile Message Board

 :o

Just turned on CNN to see the headline.

Somewhere Dubya's pissed off. Now he know how his daddy felt when he couldn't get Saddam but his brain-dead son did ^_^

Great news

I feel a real sense of pride in my country. After seeing the Grand Canyon last week from a copter and having this happen I am just proud to be part of what my holocaust survivor grandfather used to say. "America is the best country on earth!"

News story from 6 days ago. Odd timing.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h9ouUwZB0vhDcEsGB8N2uVcvGFqQ?docId=CNG.e738123e4ccce6019851c695501ca633.9e1 (http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h9ouUwZB0vhDcEsGB8N2uVcvGFqQ?docId=CNG.e738123e4ccce6019851c695501ca633.9e1)

I watched Ken Burns' National Parks documentary a while back and was filled with awe. I envy your copter ride!
_____

After all the sh*t this country has dumped on itself (Viet Nam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya) I really can't feel pride for the leadership. I feel pride for the people who work hard every day to try and make it a great place - but knowing that people on top just f*** it up really gets my goat.

It was wonderful!

We do live in a beautiful country, and no matter how bad the economy gets or who the president is, that's not going to change. (Not talking about our current way of life, we're killing the planet but that's a whole 'nother subject.) People don't appreciate what we have in our country when you strip away all the bullcrap.  ;D

Stuff like what happened tonight puts faith back into people, and eventually we'll crawl out of this hole. Be even more prosperous and whatnot. And we'll be everybody's friend again.  ;)

you guys really buy this, huh?
And you think that endless wars that have killed hundreds of thousands and affected uncounted more are now justified because a guy who isn't even wanted (according to the FBI) for the crime everyone blames him for has supposedly been killed?! How ridiculous can you be? America is great because of this? Take a look around you. If killing is what makes 'America' great then I guess you are right.
Humans are individuals, not vague groups, and certainly not defined by the humans who call themselves 'our' government. This flag waving is ridiculous and as a person who believes in the non-aggression principle I find it totally disgusting.
Rah-Rah!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_state_terrorism

You really think the USA is the clear winner in the terrorism game?

He died years ago!!
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/227953-Benazir-Bhutto-confirms-Osama-bin-Laden-is-dead

(http://www.yasrsly.com/wp-content/main/2011_05/obama-sorry-it-took-so-long.jpg)

(http://i.imgur.com/1ZtvR.jpg)

(http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lkjsa0vvlq1qzu2tdo1_400.gif)

To quote Mark Twain, 'I've never wished a man dead. However, there are obituaries I have read with great pleasure.'

Well, let's just hope that this doesn't lead to an increase in attacks. And it looks like Obama's just locked up the next presidential election. Great.

I quite like your avatar/pic Billy, I might hateva steal it ;D

With the rising gas prices, terrible economy (that is getting worse by the day), the president's track record of golf outings and lack of press meetings, I'd say that this OBL thing with boost him 20 points for a while - then in 3 weeks, when people are still looking for jobs and are still paying $5 for gas, he'll be back down again.

Besides, no matter who gets in office next they'll carry the same war-mongering/Patriot-Act-signing/money-wasting torch that was passed to Obama from Bush. There really is no difference between the political parties anymore.

Reading this post makes me feel like I'm over at reddit again

From Strike-The-Root.com

 
On Sunday, the elected mass murderer and head of the world’s largest organization of violent thugs (headquartered at lavish facilities in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere) crowed over the success of a hit-squad that rubbed out the small-scale thug that it created during the late 1970s to do its dirty work against the second-largest violent gang (known as Soviets in their neighborhood), which had been engaged at the time in a battle over turf in Afghanistan. The elected Washington-based mass murderer-in-chief managed to pack as many lies, half-truths, and misleading statements (as well as overusing the adjective “clear”) into a tawdry victory speech full of bellicose saber rattling as his elected mass-murdering predecessor, who was most notable for being unable to pronounce the word “nuclear” and consequently spawned an entire cottage industry of sycophantic imitators who also seemed unable to pronounce this word correctly.
 
The gang-subsidized parasites and hit-men employed by the Washington-based gang shamelessly crowed about their tawdry victory by utilizing state-controlled media channels, and these media channels assisted the elected mass murderer in keeping up the illusion that the citizens who were under the thumb of the Washington-based mass murderer were somehow safer now that the leader of their one-time subsidiary gang had been rubbed out. The elected mass murderer also was careful not to allow into his tawdry victory statement the meme that it was his own organization that was responsible for creating the smaller criminal organization in the first place and that his organization’s free-wheeling policy of worldwide murder rampages and financial assistance to allied violent gangs engaged in turf wars was responsible for provoking the retaliatory attack of the leader of the Afghanistan-based franchise gang on September 11, 2001 against one of the cities controlled by the Washington-based gang.
 
Because of the massive number of lies and half-truths – as well as the general avoidance of speaking frankly about the nature of the retaliatory attack and the related violent activities of the Washington-based organization – a large number of people in the geographical landmass controlled by the Washington-based gang will continue to allow themselves to be systematically ordered around; abused, molested, stripped, X-rayed, and photographed naked at airports; forced to reward the servants and allies of the gang with their hard-earned money; regularly suffer from the consequences of the gang’s turf wars with other vicious agencies (known as collateral damage); told what kinds of foods, beverages, and drugs that they as peaceful people may ingest; forced to “purchase” unwanted and wanted “services” from monopoly providers against their will; pay for dozens of expensive and inhumane prison camps, where people are incarcerated for engaging in peaceful behaviors that are forbidden to all but members of the gang; told where and when they may conduct business to feed their families; be subjected to injections of syphilis and other dangerous substances; forced to surrender their children to institutions where these children learn to obey members of the gang and also may learn some valuable skills (not very well) to make them capable of generating more wealth for the violent organization; suffer from the violent activities of many small criminal drug gangs that were fostered in urban and suburban areas by a policy of making substances illegal (again creating innocent victims of those living near turf battles); and would continue to suffer from the ravages of being systematically kidnapped, tortured, secretly renditioned, and targeted for assassination by the Washington-based gang. Otherwise, it was a typical Sunday.

tl;dr

It basically states that the CIA trained and funded Tim Osman to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. After the Soviets leave he turns on America and masterminds 9/11 (though the FBI states there is very little evidence for this claim - hence why 9/11 is not on his list of attacks on his FBI wanted sheet). The US government then starts a war to find Mr. Osman....spending billions to do so, killing countless in the process.

Anarcho-capitalism FTW!

As I saw posted elsewhere, you can kill a man but you can't kill an idea.

For that we have to kill lots of people, but it's worth it.

   

What a load of horseshit

The 'terrorists' are thinking the same thing.

^ Good point

Can't be done. Simply killing enemies only creates more enemies. Kill one enemy, and you'll turn his family and friends into your new enemies.

In reality, Obama has probably become stronger in death than he was alive. Now, he's a martyr.

Ahem....  ::)

-_-

Wow. I'm no fan of Obama, but cripes. Apologies if I offended anyone.!

Bin Laden killed over 3000 innocent people in those towers on 9/11/2001. I feel no sorrow or remorse over his death. He lived by the sword and died by the sword. If there is an afterlife, I hope he surely rots in hell.

Really? As has been stated above there is very little evidence that Bin Laden had anything to do with 9/11....this is according to the FBI. Bin Laden was trained to use the sword by US officials....this according to the CIA.

And I think America has killed more innocent civilians in their 'war on terror' than those who were killed on 9/11. But we were doing it spread to McDonald's and democracy across the Middle-East, so it's okay....sigh.

You go ahead and believe that crap. Yes, he has denied it, but later he also took credit for it too. Name me a government that hasn't had it's hands in clandestine operations that killed some innocent folk. I hate to see it, but it does happen. McDonald's does just fine on it's own killing people without ever needing the U.S. Government to fire a single shot.

I have some swamp land that I'd like to sell you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_state_terrorism

Linked again for relevance.

I had written out paragraphs of information...then I remembered AGD's much repeated quote....you can't tell someone something they don't want to hear.

However, I will say, your "killed some innocent folk" line is more sad than funny. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDVfNMD_-6Q&feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDVfNMD_-6Q&feature=related)....just one example of MANY of how sick the American Government has become. Hundreds of thousands of innocent folk have died since the start of these wars....FAR, FAR more than had died on 9/11....and FAR FAR FAR more will die in the future.

Rab, fodder off! Thank you very much for trying to tell me what to think and believe. You will not change my mind no matter what you spout off. My country men died for no other reason than mad men hijacking planes and flying them into buildings. Though I am not religious, I am more of an eye for an eye person than turn the other cheek. President Obama absolutely made the right call to take him out.

Relevance? Did you happen to read the warnings at the top of the page?

Bin Laden masterminded an attack that killed three thousand people. Since Governor Bush(yes, you read that right) had the brilliant idea of sending us to Iraq, about four thousand more Americans have been killed. And nobody wants to tell us how many innocent men, women, and children Iraqi citizen's were killed, because lets face it, it makes for very bad PR in The White House. Yes, we killed one of the essential elements of Al-Quida. Another huge victory on the American war against terrorism. But I have to ask myself, was it really worth it? Find the cost of freedom, buried in the ground.

Call me paranoid.   Didn't this go on an awfully long time after OBL took up residence in that compound?  Seems it might be someones political agenda that the hit happened now.  Just seems odd somehow.

I'm merely stating the bleedin' obvious - I'm not asking or telling you to believe it. Name one thing I've said that's false, then you can justifiably tell me to f*** off.

The only reason I started looking into these wars is because years ago good friends of mine were called to serve over there multiple times. I became interested in the why because of this. I didn't start questioning these wars just to piss people off. I did it because I couldn't justify my support based solely on what FoxNews told me. The world is not black and white.

Too close to home, huh?

nah, just a load of horseshit

With profound apologies to Peter Gabriel for taking his brilliant lyric out of context:

"You can blow out a candle
But you can't blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher"

["Biko", 1977]

@rab

I never said that I supported the Iraq War. My feelings were strictly on Bin Laden. As much as I hate to admit, humans are terrible killers. As long as humans rule the world, there will never be world peace. Just in my lifetime I doubt that there has been at least one year where some kind of war or genocide hasn't taken place. Not to mention just the everyday killings that happen everyday between everyday people. It is appalling, but it is the way it's been since the time of man began.

I'm glad the fu*ker's dead.

I only referenced the Fallujah video to show how the great peacekeeper America is fighting its wars. And even if we are just talking about Afghanistan, tens of thousands of innocent civilians have been killed there since we invaded. And as long as people say that humans will never be at peace then that stupidly justifies our right to continue the killing. We cheer in the streets over the death of a former CIA asset who killed for us. We cheer in the streets when we kill a man who was supposedly making WMDs - when we gave him WMDs in the first place! I think my cynicism of the US government is justified.

Okay, back to the main board....and then we'll get to know world peace..... ;D

Being proud of being irrational is not a virtue.

Bite me!

I actually agree with this. I am against war and violence due to my personal beliefs. That said, Bin Laden is no different in my eyes than someone like Hitler.

Bin Laden was a pig. Obama is a pig - as was Bush. All killers of innocent lives. The only difference is Obama is not trying to kill me and my kind, given half a chance Bin Laden would have. We the people are just caught inbetween these lunatics war games.

Well, you sure showed me.

It's the rational discourse on this board I love  :lol

Seriously, I'm not out there waving a banner and having street parties, but there was not exactly much ambiguity about this man and his crimes. Even if you disregard 9/11. And although I would have rather they caught him and given him a fair trial (although finding an impartial jury would have been a hell of a task), I can't claim too much heartache over his death. That's the way it is.

Agreed. Saying there has always been war and there has always been killing is hardly evidence to excuse it from happening nor does it say anything about whether it will continue to happen. You could have said the same thing about slavery. You could have said the same thing about excluding women from the public sphere.

If there is really one constant in human history, it is man's capacity to change.

There was a guy at the corner of Laurel Canyon with a sign reading "Well, war sure solved THAT!"

Well, I supposed it solved OBL. I hope the guy didn't mean that, by extension, it would solve everything.

Well, It seems very apparent that you don't like me. I definitely think your a dick-head. How's that? Clear enough? Better than "Bite Me"? You want a fight? I'm in a foul enough mood to give you one if that is how you want to play it. Plain enough for you now?

Honestly? I don't know who you are nor do I know a single thing about you personally. This is why I have never uttered a single word about you and instead have critiqued your ideas. The distinction that I make is clearly something you have yet to learn yourself.

I find it funny that Americans are out drinking, partying, celebrating, etc, because this man died - yet our US government gave him his head start! We gave Saddam his head start. We instigate so much of this crap then ignorant Americans praise the deaths of these leaders without realizing what made these people leaders to begin with. We created these monsters - yet we are too ignorant to hold ourselves responsible. We are too busy drooling at Fox News and American Idol that we don't think long enough to put ourselves in the places of people who hear these bombs go off day after day. We don't think about the millions of children with PTSD in Iraq and Afghanistan. We don't think about the children in Fallujah who are born with birth deformities because we use uranium firepower. We don't think about the soldiers in Viet Nam who were directly effected by agent orange. We don't think about the American and Vietnamese children who are indirectly effected by agent orange. We just want an excuse to wave a flag in the air. *not saying that the people on this board believe this....but many Americans have no clue about the effects that these wars have had on innocent people.

Forgive me, I have a few beers in me tonight. I'm just fed up with the blatant ignorance of these Americans that think that Bin Laden was the root of the problem. If we want to get down to brass-tacks, we are the root of the problem. We start half of these problems, then we spend billions of dollars and thousands of lives to "solve" the problem....and then Americans praise our leaders for this....Yeah, God bless America ::)

I swear, I don't why we continue with arguing in this forum? We never seem to learn our lesson. We bicker, get pissed, and nothing gets accomplished from it. You know, I am 54 years old and I should know better. So, I apologize to you for calling you names, I lost my head.

Everyone should read Eisenhowers final address.

Also, those that don't read history are doomed to repeat it. You would think after two world wars that man would get his sh*t together and learn his lesson. Most of all these Middle East issues all arise from the immediate days following WW II. Land and Oil, all at the cost of human life. Shoot, we've known the immediate issues for 66 years, yet the same battles are still being fought and thousands upon thousands still die over it. Until power and greed is overcome, man will continue to fight to attain both.

tl;dr

ie: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

Thats the part!

Thanks for referencing that speech - I had totally forgotten about it. Sad even a former president was wary about this power - now it's just a fact of life that the military does this crap....and the presidents go right along with it...and we Americans are powerless to stop it.
_____

I apologize for my rant above. Too much to drink tonight...I can get hot-headed about politics when sober - and really hot-headed when drunk LOL. I did mean what I said, but didn't mean to come off that harsh. Sorry again.

No worries from my end...I agreed with what you said. I'm glad Bin Laden got what was coming to him, but I also considered Dubya a terrorist in his own right.

I agree. Cheney, Rumsfield and Bush should all be tried for war crimes. Zapata oil and all their dirty black water ops.

I would like to just point out to anyone reading this thread who may think otherwise that not all Americans were partying in the street after Bin Laden's death. Not all of us are simple-minded, blindly flag-waving people who don't crack open a newspaper or a history book. Many of us are well aware that the U.S. government has had blood on its hands numerous times. We know that the U.S. government has rallied American sentiment in battles against groups they had previously funded. Some of us hated Bin Laden and were devastated after 9/11 (especially those of us who live close to Ground Zero and the other sites) but are having a hard time celebrating the death of a human being no matter how horrible he was. And we know that while Bin Laden was at the center and apprehending him was necessary, his death probably won't change anything. Many people watch Fox News, but others listen to NPR or watch PBS, where there is much more critical analysis of what happened.

No offense, but give me a break. Just because they tow the OTHER party line doesn't make them critical of anything. I don't see any of those NPR listeners out in the streets raging against the wars (count em...4) or complaining that the first thing Obomba did when in office is order drone strikes on Pakistan (that's war number 3 for those keeping count). The lame-stream media, right or left, is simply the lap-dog of the state.
Government has had 6,000 years to get it right but only leads people into more wars while slowly (or quickly) bankrupting those same folks, who think that because they were born on the land mass that the government claims to own it must be all right to be pushed around by their 'public servants'. Time to move on to a new paradigm folks and stop defending the violence and wickedness of the state.
just sayin...

@ grillo
While I totally agree with you in principle, do you really expect a paradigm shift? As you stated, this crap has been going on some 6000 years (essentially Civilization) with no end in sight. Though there are many in this world that abhor violence and war, there are just as many (and in higher authority) who use it to justify their power and greed. I see this all as the nature of man. While I agree that man can change for the good, he can just as easily be corrupted. We have seen this happen over and over throughout history. I am just not convinced that enough human beings are on board for this change. As history has shown, it takes so very few to corrupt all that is good.

Very good post.

PBS was very critical of the Bush years (I highly recommend Frontline's Bush's War: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/bushswar/view/ (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/bushswar/view/) - a very good look at the politics behind the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq)...but Grillo is right, they are the lapdog for the left....very little criticism is thrown at Obama from PBS even though he has carried on many of Bush's policies (policies that Obama said were criminal at one time (the wars, The Patriot Act)). Same with regards to FoxNews - they praise Bush for the wars, but lambast Obama for continuing them.

The Right and Left are two sides of the same coin. Nothing has changed in Washington in the last 10 years:

- many democrats keep voting for the wars (even though they apparently disagree with them).
- Many vote for the Patriot Act (even though they agree that it is unconstitutional).
- Republicans refuse to do anything about the border problem (though they promise every election season that they'll do something).
- Our peace-loving president bombs countries without the consent of our representatives (even though he said himself "the president does not have power under the constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack" - and later went on to say that it is criminal to attack someone who is not an imminent threat to national security).
- Our national debt is $14,000,000,000,000.00 and rising fast - and our 'representatives' fight rabidly over $250 million in cuts while we probably spend that much in a day just on the wars.

Anyone looking for decent news sources: check out truth-out.org (http://truth-out.org) (very left-leaning independent news site), infowars.com (http://infowars.com) (very right-leaning news site), rt.com (http://rt.com) (very anti-American-policies news site). Every one of these sites has an agenda - but it's nice to get a well rounded look at the world news without it being filtered and spoonfed to us by MSNBC or FoxNews.

Osama Bin laden's Dead
No no no no
he's outside, looking in

"If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged." - Noam Chomsky

Food for thought...

I agree with a lot of what you're saying except I would qualify the above statement and suggest that the Left is not on the "same coin" as the right, in the United States. Rather, there is no left at the political level whatsoever, after years of  being de-legitimized and decimated. At one point in the US there was actually a Socialist Party of America, which itself was an amalgam of two left-of-centre political organizations. The party had a considerable degree of popularity. Today, it would be unthinkable to run as a Socialist and believe you had that capability of getting a million votes. So because the actual left has been destroyed in the US, the Democrats function as "the left" because, as a centre-right party, they represent the farthest you can go to left in the US that is acceptable.

I am also skeptical of your suggestion that infowars is a "decent news source" when it typically acts as an industrialized distraction machine which serves the interests of the powerful just as much as your mainstream news outlets.

Way to completely miss the point of my post.  ::)

In regards to the first paragraph, I'd also add that there is no real "right wing" party either - right wingers are people who want smaller government and less spending: GW Bush outspent every president before him combined and created a MUCH larger government...and Obama is on his way to outspending Bush (or possibly has already). Our political parties have become an illusion for the majority of voters who fully believe in their 'political party'.

On your second paragraph - infowars has been continually writing about the Fukushima crisis - which mainstream media has, for some reason, completely abandoned the story (radiation levels are way through the roof there and it has been spreading to America - with no end in sight). They also keep me informed on Libya, the debt levels, etc.

Relatively, every news source is designed as a distraction (whether sensationalist journalism to sell more ads, whether it's sensationalist journalism to sell us a political candidate) - every news site out there has an agenda - which is why I go to far-right sites, far-left sites, pro-America sites, anti-American-policy sites - and deduce what I can from what I read.

May I ask you where you get your news from?

Well, that's not quite correct. I mean, yes, maybe some people who identify themselves as right wing (particularly in the United States, I would imagine) would say that they are in favor of a small government but that's not really what identifies the right on the political spectrum. If anything, government gets smaller the further to the left you go. The ultimate goal of Marxism and anarchism is to abolish state power completely. Ultimately the right stands for private power and if that means letting private power do what it wants, then they are non-invasive but if that means private power needs to be protected, then they are very much invasive. This is why someone like Bush spent so much money - because he was fulfilling his role on the right of protecting private power by invading two countries to control their resources on behalf of corporate interests. The terms "left" and "right" typically signify economic distinctions and there can be both big and small governments on either side. To be honest, it is somewhat a consequence of US ideology that has led to the right being misrecognized as the party of small government.


OK, but that's not what I mean when I use the word distraction. I'm suggesting that "infowars" have a tendency of wading into conspiracy theories which do nothing but distract the population and serve to reinforce powerful interests.


To be honest, I don't quite agree that getting a wide range of information is necessarily helpful in coming to conclusions about issues. Yes, it is important to be well-informed but as an example (and, this is just to make my point on this clear, you may agree with me on this) I don't think it is particularly helpful to read an article about the dangers of global warming followed by an article that insists that global warming is not a man-made phenomenon. Yes, I believe both stories should exist and I wouldn't censor one, but I don't think I'm being particularly better informed nor do I feel I am better able to make a decision about the issue by reading both.


Because of the nature of my job, I have the luxury of reading a lot of scholarly articles that deal with contemporary politics.

In fact, I mostly read mainstream news. They happen to accurately report a lot of information but they do it from an appalling point of view. If one has the time to actually educate themselves on politics (my leanings towards anarcho-syndicalism is a consequence of having read a lot of Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Chomsky) then you can engage critically with what you are reading.

My stance on American politics can be summed thusly...

There are 3 sides to every story...yours, mine, and the truth.

Very good first point. I have honestly never looked at it that way.

As I said about infowars - take the Fukushima crisis - If I were to watch nothing but mainstream news I would be at a complete loss about what is going on over there - because for some reason the media wont talk about it. MSM won't talk about the humanitarian crisis in Fallujah for some reason either....which should be HUGE news. I don't buy into most of the conspiracy theories touted on the site - I just go there to get news I would not find on MSM.

"[the MSM] happen to accurately report a lot of information but they do it from an appalling point of view" - however, the media is fairly bias in what they want to cover. Who owns NBC? GE. Does GE want nuclear power to go away? No. Thus NBC won't talk about how Fukushima is filling the ocean/air with deadly amounts of radiation....because it would probably create a lot of rightful backlash towards nuclear-power. This same thing happened with Toyota a while back - a few cars had brake malfunctions and for weeks I watched NBC/CBS/ABC lambast Toyota for it. The Ford F-150 currently has a recall for malfunctions with airbag deployment - and I've heard nothing about it on the MSM.

Granted, not every media organization is owned by an industrial-powered company....but many of the Big Six have fingers in many pies. My point is that it is good to get news from multiple sources - lest we're not being told the whole story.

Four sides. Yours, mine, the truth, and what the government wants you to believe.

Actually, I should clarify - I think of MSM as the televised Nightly News, or FoxNews, or MSNBC. You can find a lot of information on online-MSM sites.

I suppose I'm just cynical about the MSM and the way they report the news.

I absolutely agree. In fact, I would go one further and say that it is not simply a matter of being "owned by an industrial-powered company". Yes, that's a problem but an even more pressing concern is that all mainstream media is corporate controlled. Consequently, you're not going to get information in a way that threatens the legitimacy of corporate power. This is why, for example, mainstream newspapers have a Business section but they don't have a Labor section - or why 60 minute news programs devote time to stocks, the dollar, etc. but no time whatsoever to pressing working class concerns such as wages, or the growing disparity between the rich and the poor.

Because the news is owned in this way, we often get a lot of information but it is given in a particular way. So, for example, in the earliest days of the Iraq invasion, US forces bombed a hospital in Fallujah. The New York Times reported on it immediately - they certainly weren't hiding anything. With that in mind, though, neither the Times or any mainstream US source who reported on the incident (and most did) noted that this constituted a very serious war crime. To be perfectly honest, I would bet that most of the reporters didn't even know it was or, at least, wouldn't even allow themselves to entertain the thought. And the reason is simple: if someone else does it, it's a crime. If we do it, it's fine, because we have the right to do it. This is, quite simply, the unquestioned assumption that is made in every imperial and powerful state since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. So, yes, lots of information is given but it is given from an appalling point of view.

Now, why isn't NBC reporting on Fukushima anymore? It could be because of the points you raised about nuclear power but, to be honest, I'm skeptical. There are lots of ways to report on the matter that would divorce the story from the kinds of political implications you mention. And, in fact, if this were completely true, NBC would have never reported on the story in the substantial way that they did in the first place. In fact, Fukushima has dropped off the radar for all mainstream media and they don't all have the same interest. My gut reaction (of course, I haven't quite considered this long enough to form a solid argument) is that the Fukushima story is a victim of the mainstream media packaging news like it's entertainment and, consequently, very few stories have a long shelf life unless they can be spun into a narrative with colourful characters, like the OJ Trial. The decision to turn the media into entertainment is very much politically motivated, of course because it stresses stories over analysis and, once you do that, corporate power (which doesn't stand up well to analysis) can hardly ever be challenged.

It is the USA's job to "point out the bad guy". In doing that, and giving the American public a "bad guy" to focus on, then everything is fair game for various forms of corruption. That's how we could get away with putting Japanese-American citizens in concentration camps during World War II, how we could justify removing Mossadeq, how we could get away with killing everything that moved in North Vietnam and Cambodia, how we could get away with giving Indonesia "aid" in effectively slaughtering East Timorese, how we could get away with funding the contras in Nicaragua, how we could get away with effectively circumventing democracy in Central and South America in the name of "democracy", how we could get away with bombing an aspirin factory in Sudan...the list goes on and on.

Chomsky argues that the USA is a leading terrorist state; I tend to agree with him.

The problem with America's philosophy right there in one sentence.

As an Englishman I can say we are quite lucky in that we have the BBC which provides very good comprehensive and impartial investigative journalism. To watch FOX News over here is like watching a comedy spoof news show, it is so blatantly Republican bias and reports everything with a flag saluting spin to it. An ego massage for the rich, predominately white, corporate America and brainwashing propaganda for dumbfuck rednecks who have no clue as to how the world really runs.

I definitely don't expect a paradigm shift in my lifetime, but i do hope that as more and more humans realize that violence and theft are hardly legitimate ways to organize society, a new (stateless and voluntary) society might emerge.